Matthew said:Now THAT accuses God of giving us no options, even for those who are OF GOOD WILL and LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH. And for how many blasted years? 50? 100? The more years, the more serious the charge against God.
Careful! No charges against God can be or are being laid, as to do so would be blasphemy. His justice is perfect. In
The Glories of Mary St. Alphonsus cites God saying to St. Theresa, who was worrying about a similar question, "Don't worry, my child. No one is deceived who doesn't first want to be deceived." We are the ones who have turned our backs on God, not the other way around.
There are those who really care about truth, and those who are in love with truth as an abstract concept only. If we had all
really cared about the truth from the beginning, and from avoiding every heresy and every error, this never would have happened. Modernism was warned against by Pius X; the warnings against Masonry go back to the reign of Clement XII in the 1730's! No one can say there was no preparation. They just weren't paying attention.
CM goes way over the top by saying all those would be damned for following Benedict XV, if Benedict XV were an anti-Pope. I've asked him if he believes those who followed the wrong "Pope" in the Schism were damned, and he is shifty, but from what I've gathered he thinks some of them were in invincible ignorance but that that won't save them. So the answer is yes, they are damned. This is the typical interpretation of decrees you see from Feeneyites, which is not "literal-minded" as I often say so much as just wrong. Since Boniface VIII said "It is necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff," he thinks that if someone is in league with the wrong Pontiff, or a false Pontiff, they are doomed, not comprehending that these people intend to do what the Church wants them to do, that they have submitted themselves to what they think is the Roman Pontiff, to a man who appears as the Roman Pontiff.
This falls under the category of what is called a "colored title." During the French Revolution, those who confessed to excommunicated priests, the revolutionary jureurs, not knowing that they were excommunicated,
did not have to re-confess when they came back into the Church. This is because those priests had a colored title, meaning they can validly perform functions of their Holy Orders although illicitly.
That doesn't mean it would have been a good thing to die while attending Masses of a jureur priest. But the way the devil gets your soul there is not by getting you to attend the Mass of an illicit priest, if you don't know he's illicit; it's by swallowing his heresies. How many people through the last couple centuries have attended the Masses of priests who were secret Freemasons? Now, Freemasons are automatically excommunicated, so these people were going to Masses of an illicit priest. Does that mean they are damned? This is where the Feeneyite logic takes you, and yes, it is OCD.
With the VII "Popes" or even Pius XII -- because at that time heresies against EENS were rife and almost no one cared, hence Father Feeney's overreaction -- it's different, because the heresies are dressed up like Mardi Gras revelers. They are by no means hidden.
But it's too early for me to get into that right now.