Alexandria,

Good distinction. Perhaps the Neo-Caths took the pedestal and turned it into a rock stage ( ala JPII) etc.

My point was more that a decent amount of Pre-VCII Catholics after VCI ,out of very well meaning motives, had a sense of obedience to the clergy  that was almost absolute. And before VCII that obedience served them well and the clergy deserved it.

But the obedience "error by excess" proved to be their undoing when they excessively obeyed orders that destroyed faith because they came from clerics. Only the devil could be so ingenious.

Fr. LeFloc (ABL's seminary professor) warned that an overzealous interpretation of VCI (everything the Pope says we follow) would lead to problems. He was right.

Yeah, there is something off about the timing of the dogma of papal infallibility.  I don't disagree with it, don't tar me with that brush, but it was dangerous to make it a dogma that the Pope was infallible at a time when he was in a very precarious position.  I mean, Pius IX was a true prisoner in the Vatican -- all his lands had been removed from him by the government and he was holed up in the Vatican, literally, never leaving it!  Defining the dogma of infallibility must have been a spiritual power grab by the Pope who really was having his temporal power, at least, stripped from him.  

I read in Tumultuous Times by the Radecki Bros. at CMRI that there was a volley of lightning and thunder when infallibility was approved.  That always made me wonder -- "Does this mean God is an Old Catholic?  Did he disapprove?"  Now I realize that, if this was a sign, it was a sign that anticipated Vatican II and how people would use infallibility as a reason to trust the Pope in all things, even when he's a heretic.  

I must say, everyone should read about the limits of infallibility.  Sedes ( though I number myself among them ) are the WORST when it comes to overemphasizing the power of the Pope  -- many of us believe everything the Pope says or does is infallible.

Stevusmagnus said:

And before VCII that obedience served them well and the clergy deserved it.

Not sure about that.  It's not like the pre-VII clergy just magically was purged and up sprouted the post-VII clergy.  It is more continuous than people like to believe.

For instance, Pius XI went out of his way to acclaim, elevate and praise the young Achille Lienart, making him a bishop and then cardinal at an extremely young age.  As everyone knows, Lienart was later one of the most progressive prelates at Vatican II ( and also famous for having ordained and consecrated Abp. Lefebvre, how's that for paranoia? )  He even wrote him a famous personal letter.  Lienart was showing his spots way back in the 30's, being friendly with a socialist politician and very active in that whole "Catholic social justice" and labor-union movement which most people speculate is what actually won him the favor of the ominously pro-democracy, anti-reactionary Pius XI.  Remember, this was the strange time of the "worker priest."   Lienart was also involved in a big strike against a factory owner who apparently was Catholic and treated his workers comparatively well!  

I don't know the whole story there -- it's on my to-do list of things to research.   All I know is that the outlines of all of this, along with the Cristero debacle, does not speak at all well of Pius XI.  There is just an increasingly socialistic undertone starting from Leo XIII as the Church began its fateful blend with ʝʊdɛօ-Masonry, which was probably loaning it necessary funds to stay afloat.  That is why I believe that the Church should have gone underground in the late 19th century, and that this was the time when he should have actually given up his secular power.  I'm not saying that the Pope should have no secular power, as that would be heresy -- I'm saying he shouldn't try to have it when the Jєωs are paying him and thus control him.   I think we all know the results of that.

It's hard to say if the secret societies already had the Pope at the time of Leo XIII, or at least his little finger.  It makes you wonder when the Pope is talking about the state intervening for the rights of the worker and such.  It's possible the Popes were just trying to make the best of a bad situation by trying to get the state to intervene when necessary, knowing that the workers were about to be crushed by monopolies.  But the state is not the friend of the workers either, as these Popes should have known.  It would have made more sense to prepare people for hard times, to tell them who owned the state, and who owned the monopolies, and to have explained to them that they should be very tight with their money and not trust the government.

Am I the only one who wonders why the Popes never really filled us in on the nature of who was running these democracies?  Why did they not tell us where all of this was going?  Pius X did talk about a One-World Government, but elsewhere, in Notre Charge Apostolique, he actually said "The advent of universal democracy is of no concern to the action of the Church in the world"!  There is a comment that is surely not infallible!  I know that it can be defended by saying that democracy in the abstract, as a political system, doesn't affect the action of the Church -- but we're not in the abstract, are we?  This is reality, and the reality is that ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic democracy is very much a problem for the Church.  This is what enrages me about all the Popes beginning from Benedict XV, how they always spoke of democracy in the abstract, as if we weren't in a specific kind of evil democracy that people needed to be warned about.  

I believe the Church has been at least partially bought off since Pius IX, but that the bounds of infallibility weren't crossed until Pius XII.  I am definitely not one of those who are nostalgic for some belle epoque that never was.  I am nostalgic for the belle epoque yet to come when this pustule known as Vatican II finally bursts, even if it takes the Chastisement to do it.