This should be interesting:



To Stephen's credit, he has interviewed quite a range of persons in a short amount of time from all across the "trad-o-sphere" and he often asks thoughtful questions.

Pope Palmar de Roya ...

Yes ... though I think sometimes Stephen's grasp of the theological problems involved is a bit weak and therefore inhibits some of the questions and challenges that could be made.

While I respect Bishop Roy a great deal, here are the problems I see with his analysis ...

So, he speaks about needing an Imperfect Council to decide whether the See is vacant.  That's a chicken-egg problem, since nobody's going to convene in an Imperfect Council to decide whether the See is vacant ... unless they already believe that the See is vacant.  I think +Roy realizes this when later on he says that it would be open to anyone who thinks the See MIGHT be vacant.

Imperfect Councils are tough because, as he admits, nobody really has any authority to call one.  So you'd need practical universal attendance at such a thing, and that simply won't happen barring some development that would cause even SSPX and FSSP to consider Prevost or his successor illegitimate.

Now, here's the crux of the problem, and this is the difficulty that most Totalist Sedevacantists actually labor under, this compelling need to reduce everything to binaries, which end up being false dichotomies.  Bishop Roy says that either that's the Church or we're the Church.  OK, but who'se we?

Are Eastern Rite Catholics not part of the "we", the Catholic Church?  18-20 million worldwide.
Are FSSP / Ecclesia Dei / Motu Catholics not part of the "we", the Catholic Church?  150,000 worldwide.
Are SSPX Catholics not part of the "we", the Catholic Church?  600,000 worldwide.
Are Sedeprivationists not part of the "we", the Catholic Church? 10,000 worldwide.

So, Totalist Sedevacantists comprise perhaps 30,000 out of this pool of 20 million plus people that most Traditional Catholics believe might be Catholic.  It's only the radical / dogmatic SVs who hold that those who belong to these groups are not Catholic.

I, and many others, do NOT believe that.  I believe that very many of them could in fact be in material error only.

With regard to this binary of either they are Catholic or we are Catholic ... since +Roy uses the example of the Great Western Schism, which one of those groups, Bishop Roy, was the Catholic Church, of the 3 that were in play at one point?

Well, INSTITUTIONALLY, only one of the groups was Catholic, the one that happened to be with the actual legitimate pope.  But, there were clearly many Catholics in all 3 groups, who were separated MATERIALLY (due to being scattered across the different groups) but united FORMALLY (due to their profession of the same faith).  Those who ended up in the wrong group, including St. Vincent Ferrer, were in material error only.

So, this false dichotomy about absolutely one or the other is the Catholic Church is completely false, again due to this apparent inability to understand the material / formal distinction, which so many Trad clerics appear to struggle with despite it being at the very foundations of scholastic philosophy and theology.  During the Great Western Schism, there was only ever ONE Holy Catholic Church (as +Roy quoted from the Creed), and yet there were 3 groups, with Catholics in each.  So how was there one Church?  Well, let's brush off those philosophy books from first year seminary, and the answer is clear.  Even though there were, MATERIALITER, 3 different groups claiming to be the Church, there was only ever ONE Church FORMALITER.

Now, our situation is even worse ... if you hold that we have no Pope.  At least with the Great Western Schism, you had a legitimate Pope, and once the identity of that Pope had been ascertained, the material disunity immediately evaported.  Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia.

What have today is a great MATERIAL SCATTERING of Catholics, scattered due to different positions, views, some in material error, some adhering to the truth, etc.  We're far more fragmented than we ever were during the Great Western Schism, and that's because ... the Pope is the only real visible sign of unity among Catholics, meaning that which can eliminate the purely-material scattering.  Yes, we can be united FORMALLY by all having the Catholic faith and professing it, but MATERIAL unity becomes increasingly elusive and, naturally speaking, absent divine intervention, practically impossible.

So, Bishop Roy, unless you're going to claim that only the 30,000 or so Totalist Sedevacantists are Catholics, and all that remain of the Catholic Church ... this initiative is a total non-starter ... and we have little choice but to wait for God's intervention.

If he holds that all who aren't Traditional Catholics are outside the Church, then he can run off with all those Totalist SVs and elect a Pope I guess, and they might believe he's the Pope, but to paraphrase Father Schmidberger "I not so sure as you are", and most people wouldn't be sure.  So if you had Pope Palmar de Roya and he declared a dogma ... would even his own followers have "certainty of faith" about it?  Probably not.  You might think so, but there would be these nagging doubts.  And, guess what, nagging doubts by definition preclude certainty of faith.  Especially if Pope Palmar de Roya declares or condemns something you don't agree with.  "We, Palmar de Roya, declare that sedeprivationism is heretical!"  Well, within 5 minutes, you'd have the Sedeprivationists declaring de Roya here a heretical usurper.

And now we come full circle once again to the problem with Totalism.  What's to stop anyone from just declaring a Pope heretical if he defines something you disagree with?

Let's say I'm a Feeneyite or Dimondite, and Pope de Roya condemns the denial of Baptism of Desire to be heretical.  What's to stop me or the Dimond Brothers or anyone else form rejecting de Roya as a heretic?  Nothing.

It's just a mess, and this constant quest that Totalist SVs have for a clean binary solution leads to false dichotomies that invariably end up in an absurd reductio ad absurdum.

Well we are living in some pretty "absurd" times.

But,

The Core Insight
Your conclusion is the only one consistent with Catholic ecclesiology:
We cannot manufacture unity.
We cannot elect a pope without the Church.
We cannot resolve the crisis by multiplying private judgments.
We wait for God’s intervention.
That is not quietism.
It is simply the recognition that the Church is a divine institution, not a political party that can be rebooted by a caucus of 30,000 people.

But then again,

If I see the morally unanimity - on getting together to talk - start growing among bishops (especially "non-totalist" bishops), then I am open to where that goes without having to stomp them into the ground before even giving them a chance to get out the starting gate to even speak openly. Making these things public and talking about it is the first "baby" step - keep things transparent and open - though the chance of success is minuscule and most-likely nothing will come of it.

But then again...

So, I agree.  UNITY comes from the POPE, the PAPACY.  God is teaching us that, and the message is coming through loud and clear.  We cannot create visible institutional unity by means of some grass roots movement.  Of course, those who still profess and actually have the Catholic faith, we're all united formally, just like all the Catholics in the 3 Great Western Schism camps were all UNITED formally, but ... they were materially divided, and until the identity of the true legitimate pope was made clear, there was never going to be a solution outside of that.  Same thing here.

We'll never get an Imperfect Council together since ... really only the Pope has the authority to force the convocation of a Council.  That's the intrinsic self-contradiction of an "Imperfect Council" that not a few theologians have struggled with.  When is such a Council a sufficiently univeresal representation of the ENTIRE CHURCH?

Plus, if we rely upon our own devices, then, since the minions of Satan rule this world ... what's to stop them from bombing the Council location, or, if they were to do it in a distributed manner, what's to stop them from shutting down our technology?

Personally, I think Bishop Roy's initiative here suggests ... hopelessness, that nothing will happen unless we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do it ourselves (almost a Protestant mentality), and he's wavering on Totalism.

As for me ... if God willed the vacancy to go on for 1,000 years, then that's what He wills.  If God wills that the end of the world comes before we get a legitimate pope, then that's what He wills.  If God wills to convert Prevost, and everybody suddenly accepts him, then that's what He wills.  I do have a personal issue with that since it's clear to me that he's of sodomitical inclination ... so I'm not really too high on that theory, but, again, if that's what God wills, then that's what He wills.

So ... I've long had a different proposal in mind, and would suggest it, except that I'm a nobody and so it'll go nowhere.  I believe there's a way to have a certain alternative type of unity, focusing on what formally unites us, and in line with how many people believe the Crisis will finally end.

There was once a young priest who took a terrible turn later in life who said, "No Pope, no Church; no Church, no Christianity; no Christianity, no religion, at least for a people that was once Christian ; and, consequently, no society.”

That's well put.  It's too bad that he took a bad turn.

We could have a website and publish the names of those who had joined and their ranks, and could even have these little pin-on medals created that would be an insignia of your rank.

I was on the fence about whether to require a Total Consecration to Our Lady per St. Louis de Montfort, but perhaps that would be just a the Officer level, since the very point of this is that the entry level be very easy, that it be simple to join and would require so little, but then St. Alphonsus and I think another saint both gave their word that anyone who practiced the 3 Haily Marys devotion would not be lost.

We could have various bishops and priests join and / or give it their endorsement.  In the old days, it would be great if we could get some indulgences attached to membership, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, so we just leave it to Our Lady.