So, BOTH sides gravely oversimplify the debate regarding infallibility.
Dogmatic SVs make the assertion simpliciter, i.e. categorically and without any qualification that "the pope cannot teach error to the Church" ... rendering the Vatican I definition entirely moot. So, another little dirty secret there is that ... you cannot find a SINGLE CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN between Vatican I and Vatican II who held such a broad, general, and oversimplified view of infallibility.
Yet, on the other side, you have the R&Rers who claim that pretty much everything else apart from those once- or twice- per-century solemn dogmatic definitions can basically turn to sheer rubbish, is a total free for all, a flip of the coin, no more likely to be right than any given Traditional priest giving a sermon, and probably less so ... and enjoying no protection whatsoever from the Holy Ghost. That's tantamount to positing the defection of the Church.
As is often the case, the truth is in the middle. I encourage everyone to read Msgr. Fenton's essay on the authority of papal encyclicals, where he finds the perfect balance between the two extremes above.
I argued with Verrechio on X about this, and he responded with "muh internal religious assent", which they have warped into being the same thing as the assetn of faith, which would in fact mean that everything taught by the Pope is infallible and completely immune from error. I asked to define it, and he could not ... which I knew would be the case because they all use it as if it were synonymous with the assent of faith with an absolute certainty that can only be had from a teaching that's infallibly guaranteed to be true. He claimed that m definition was bogus, until I cited about a paragraph from Fenton, who verbatim backed up my definition (where did he think I got it from in the first place? ... that I just made it up). He had claimed that I didn't understand Fenton (because he was imposing his own definiton on it) ... and then I cited it, explained it a bit ... and ... crickets.
On the other side, increasingly more R&R have become thinly-veiled Old Catholics.
In this regard the opposite erroneous extremes are exerting a polarizing influence on the entire Traditional Catholic movement just as when you pull the ends of a rubber band, and everything in between starts to stretch out also. If Traditional Catholicism could only slough off the erroneous extremes, there might be hope for unity, but the more extreme one side gets, the more extreme the equal and opposite reaction from the other side.
Unfortunately, Father Cekada did a grave disservice by coining the term "R&R", since it's actually a mischaracterization of the actual position of +Lefebvre, and the more he used it, the more non-SVs began to rally around it. But what +Lefebvre held and most other SSPX held in the good old days was what I refer to as "Doubt & Resist". So, the SVs regularly cite Canon Law to the effect that one is not to be counted a schismatic if they refuse to obey someone due to well-foudned doubts about their legitimacy. We've had +Lefebvre, +Williamson, +Tissier all publicly express the opinion that it's possible that these men have not been legitimate popes and that the Church might someday make that finding. So, the mere expression of that opinion is entirely contrary to the notion that we must know the legitimacy of a pope with dogmatic certainty, i.e. where doubt or uncertainty is not actually "sedeplenism", but what I referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as "sededoubtism". Now, given that you have serious doubts, and Canon Lawyers admit that you can resist them based on these doubts without schism being imputed to you ... the next step might, as a logical corollary, be that, well, since we're not sure he is, that also means we're not sure he isn't. Consequently, just in case we're wrong, if he does order or teach something that happens to be correct (even if in blind squirrel or broken clock fashion), we will obey it and submit to it since ... well, there's just no harm in it it if it's good or true. So why not? That is what I call "Doubt & Resist", or "sededoubtism", and I have presented the evidence here that it's what +Lefebvre actually held (well, from 1976-1978, and then again from 1984/5 - 1991). Even Fr. Schmidberger, the Superior, was fond of quoting the expression melior est conditio possidentis, which also effectively means that ... "we're gving them the benefit of the doubt [when we can do so in good conscience]". Sede-Doubtism.
So if the modern R&R, many of whom are slouching precipitiously toward Old Catholicism, and many who have crossed that line into a very-thinly-veiled Old Catholicism, could revert to the "D&R" position of +Lefebvre or else to Father Chazal's "sedeimpoundism", those would be perfectly acceptable and Catholic positions. Then if the dogmatic SVs could wake up to the fact that they grossly exaggerate the scope of papal infallibility to an extent that no actual Catholic theologian every held, and realize that one can be a non-sedevacantists for reasons other than a denial of the MAJOR (the Church's indefectibility) ... then, there's no reason that we "can't ... just all get along" (as per Rodney King). Sure, we couldn't always cooperate for practical reasons, but there's no reason we have to consdier other Trads non-Catolics. There have always been theological agreements WITHIN the Church, some of them extremely fierce, with accusations of heresy being hurled in both directions, such as during the Thomist vs. Molinist controversy, where the Church had to step in and tell both sides to just "knock it off".
Topic: leaked photo of imperfect council taking place (Read 3898 times)