For sedevacantists:

How do we explain Archbishop Lefebvre's former seminary director Fr. Le Floch's quote about it being heresy to attribute to the Papacy more than its due?

Also, what should be made of Pius IX saying not to follow a Pope who would teach anything contrary to the faith?

How would this all square with St. Pius X's teaching of unquestionable obedience and submission to the Pope?

Your question assumes that the Pope is, in fact, the Pope.  As a matter of divine law, a cleric -- even the Roman Pontiff -- must profess the Faith in order to hold or retain office.

What obedience do we owe to a heretic who claims to be the Successor of St. Peter?

I am sorry. I should have clarified. I do not mean the questions as argumentative toward sedevacantistm. I am open to what you would have to say. I would like to understand.

First of all, please identify precisely what these three people you reference said.  In what docuмents, books, etc., did they teach what you are asking about.  In this way, we can discuss precisely the teaching rather than a paraphrase which may or may not be completely accurate.

Sedevacantists do not attribute to the papacy more than it is due.  We accept the papacy as subjects of a kingdom should accept their king.  All know that the king (pope) is human and can err.  He can be a good king or an evil king.  But he is the king.  The pope, however, being appointed by divine Providence cannot make the Church something she is not.  The king could sign a treaty with its enemies and dissolve his country or incorporate it into a larger confederation of nations within which it would subsist.  The pope cannot make such a declaration on behalf of the Church, though the Conciliar popes have done so and continue to act as if the new teaching is binding on souls.

Loving the pope, as one pope noted, does not consist of sifting his words and taking only what one likes.  Loving the pope consists of accepting whatever he says as one would accept the words of a loving father.  Sedevacantists do this.  They accept the words of all the popes and are disturbed when a man shows up, claims that he is their spiritual father, and begins to deny virtually everything their father taught before.  He looks like their father, but he doesn't talk like him at all.  In fact, everything he says is contrary to what he said before!  

And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. [Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth - 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, "si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit," [if any one love me, he will keep my word - Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.

Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public docuмents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey - that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.

The problem sedevacantists have is that, today, in order to obey the words of Pope St. Pius X in regards to what the Conciliar claimants to the papacy say and do, we must reject virtually everything else he and all his predecessors said.  He must reject their teachings in order to accept the teachings of the new popes.  We must reject their laws in order to accept the laws of the new popes.

It is those who "recognize and resist" who do all the things Pope St. Pius X condemned:  They claimed the pope hasn't spoken clearly; they question his commands and his teachings; they claim that those around him are making the commands, not the pope himself; they limit his authority; and they dissent from anything he teaches that seems bad.

While they are right to reject the teachings because the teachings are against divine truth, they are wrong to declare that those teachings could come from the Catholic Church.

This is all I have to say on the subject.  I do not condemn non-sedevacantists as outside the Church.  I do, however, believe that they have made an error in judgment.  On the other hand, I also believe that anti-sedevacantists, those who declare that sedevacantists are schismatic, are the ones who schismatically refuse communion with true Catholics.

Just because one claims to be a Catholic does not make it so.  When one declares adherance to manifestly heretical doctrines, one cannot be a Catholic.  The heretical doctrines positively proclaimed by the Conciliar popes have been chronicled by too many witnesses (including the SSPX) to question.  I do not believe that anyone can truly say, in good faith, that he has never heard of any heresy taught by them.

TKGS  truly inspired by God.  

Loving the pope, as one pope noted, does not consist of sifting his words and taking only what one likes.  Loving the pope consists of accepting whatever he says as one would accept the words of a loving father.  Sedevacantists do this.  They accept the words of all the popes and are disturbed when a man shows up, claims that he is their spiritual father, and begins to deny virtually everything their father taught before.  He looks like their father, but he doesn't talk like him at all.  In fact, everything he says is contrary to what he said before!  

Quote from: St. Pius X, 1912

And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. [Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth - 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, "si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit," [if any one love me, he will keep my word - Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.

Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public docuмents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey - that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.

Would that all the clerics of the sedevacantist persuasion do as you have written! As the "controversies" regarding the liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII demonstrate, the historicist revisionism whereby some sedevacantist clerics have poisoned the faithful and have encouraged an obscene hyper-criticism of the decrees and acts of the Apostolic See that has practically revived the errors of the Gallicanists and Jansenists of old.

Incidentally, Mr. Lane (whilst disagreeing with his distorted view on the expulsion of Bishop Williamson) has made a very important distinction which I deem as imperative for all traditional Catholics to understand:

We really need to get the word out that non-Guerardian sedevacantism is not to be identified with Cekadaism.

A re-post from a long while ago follows:






As it had been foretold unto us, so it has come to pass in the present age: "For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (II Tim. cap. iv., 3-4).

Not only does this warning of St. Paul apply to the modernists who have constructed their anthropocentric "Tower of Babel," which is the Johannine-Pauline anti-Church, but also to Catholics who have committed their own aberrations and errors in a rash reaction against the novelties of the modernists.

There is nothing that illustrates the latter case better than the predicament of certain Catholic polemicists of the sedevacantist persuasion who discuss the question of the liturgical reforms promulgated by authority of the last pope whom they all recognize as such, only to discard and vilify the Decrees of the Apostolic See and even the person of Pope Pius XII.

1) If they would insist in postulating their views regarding the great ecclesiastical question of the present day as cogent theological opinions (stricte dicitur) whilst maintaining moral and intellectual integrity, the Catholic polemicists of the sedevacantist persuasion are to regarding the reforms promulgated by the authority of Pope Pius XII as binding in conscience, according to the principles of the Sacred Canons and the doctrines of the inerrancy of the Apostolic See in matters of general ecclesiastical discipline.

The "recognize-and-resist" traditional Catholics who eschew sedevacantism and follow the typical editions of the Roman Missal and Breviary prior to the promulgation of the liturgical reforms of Pope Pius X are not the object of my critiques because they are informed by a different ecclesiological orientation. I have not studied enough the seminal texts and the present day discourse of their circles to enable me to write anything substantial regarding their stance, but (as I have written before) their liturgical praxis appears to be consistent with their understanding of the ecclesiastical question. I cannot blame them for rejecting the reforms of Pope Pius XII when they recognize Benedict XVI as the Supreme Pontiff and yet act as if he is not at Rome.

Those traditionalists who are domineering and self-proclaimed demagogues with the "mission" (Canonical pun intended) to expose how Benedict XVI cannot be the Roman Pontiff because the Pope can never promulgate anything anti-Catholic --- even to the point of imputing moral culpability to those Catholics who attend Holy Mass wherein he is mentioned in the Sacred Canon --- and continue to vilify the late Pope Pius XII with such rank arrogance and disdain, to the point of positing that he opened the way to the Johannine-Pauline anti-Church: these are the sedevacantists who ought to be corrected, because they are causing scandal amongst the faithful, deluding and seducing them with the aberrant notion that they can be Catholics without an Apostolic hierarchy and yet lend ear to the private opinions of acephalous clerics who are bordering on (if not outright espousing) the Gallicanism of which they accuse the SSPX and others to be culpable.


2) The clerics and layfolk of the sedevacantist persuasion who continue in their pertinacity and obstinacy in disobeying and vilifying the Decrees of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and even the very person of Pope Pius XII, substantiate the claims posited by anti-sedevacantist apologists: that if one were to adopt the sedevacantist stance, then they would expose themselves to proximate perils of pride, and ultimately come to fancy themselves as possessing at the theoretical and practical orders the very magisterial and disciplinary authority that the Apostolic See alone can claim and demand.

The question of the Restored Order of Holy Week amongst the Catholics of the sedevacantist persuasion should not be a controversial topic. Holy Mother Church has promulgated legislation regarding Sacred Liturgy, and a Catholic has no choice but to obey. It would be one thing for a cleric to follow his conscience in purity and simplicity of heart and adhere to those rubrics which he knows he can competently fulfill, but it is quite another for a cleric to adopt a historicist revisionism that does not pay due respect to the Office of the Roman Pontiff or to the Apostolic See. The same principles apply to the laity.

We are not free to do as we please simply because there is no reigning Pontiff (according to the sedevacantists' explanation of the present crisis devastating Holy Mother Church). Yet this seems to be the norm amongst those of the sedevacantist persuasion who "Missal-sift," observing the Offices of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as promulgated by Pope Pius XII, or the Offices of Pope St. Pius X, whilst rejecting and denouncing the Offices of St. Joseph the Workman as a "modernist invention."

This is the great difference between what has transpired before in the history of the Church, such as the great Schism and the Babylonic Captivity or the Arian persecutions, and the predicament of the present day: the Catholics who endured those trials in their respective epochs always remained faithful and docile to the supreme magisterial and disciplinary authority of the Apostolic See. Their very loyalty and obedience was what made their Crosses so difficult to bear and yet so very meritorious.

In the present day, certain Catholics of the sedevacantist persuasion have come to impose themselves as authorities in ecclesiastical matters and categorically insist that their opinions are to be taken as as the "safer course," if not "truth" itself. In doing so, they have essentially arrogated to themselves the authority and privileges of the Ecclesia docens, and have rent themselves from the Ecclesia discens at the practical level. This was never done by Catholics who were assailed and beleaguered by such things as the Babylonic Captivity (when the Supreme Pontiff abandoned Rome for Avignon) and the subsequent Great Schism, or those Catholics who endured the persecutions of the Arian heretics. Never did it occur to them to "make it up" as they went along.

This is dramatically illustrated in the manner in which certain sedevacantist polemicists have treated the question of the reforms promulgated by Pope Pius XII in such wise so as to cast doubt and defame the authority of the Supreme Pontiff in matters of ecclesiastical discipline and to negotiate away their sensus Catholicus regarding this matter for an ecclesial Stockholm Syndrome wherein they blindly follow the acephalous clerics who share their opinions and theories simply because they audaciously claim, "It is either our clergy or the N. O."

Things are much more complicated than that.

In order for Sacred Liturgy to be Catholic the authority of Holy Mother Church is indispensable, otherwise it is all just rubricated theatre, akin to what the Anglo-Catholics have in their Sarum Missals.

The sedevacantist clergy and laity who accept that Pope Pius XII had reigned as Roman Pontiff cannot refuse to obey the liturgical reforms of the Apostolic See by invoking epikeia, appealing to private speculation based on non-authoritative sources as presented and interpreted by acephalous clerici vagi, who have neither Canonical office or mission, nor habitual or delegated jurisdiction.

Since when did conspiracy theories and private speculation suffice to disobey the decrees of Holy Mother Church? And to do so with such air of authority?

The Sacred Canons menace certain serious penalties against such arrogance. One may conclude that Canon 1399, no. 6, and Canon 2334, as well as the Decree issued on 29 June 1950 by the Sacred Congregation of the Council (A.A.S., vol. xlii., pp. 601 seq.) condemn such clerics as Fr. Cekada, Fr. Ricossa, etc,. for undermining the ecclesiastical discipline of the Church in their rants against the reforms of Pope Pius XII, attacking the person of the Supreme Pontiff in writing, and inciting the laity to defy and vilify the authority of the Church. Probably, their writings and missives would be censured by the Holy Office and placed in the Index of Forbidden Books for these reasons alone.

The general ecclesiastical discipline of the Church is to be chosen in preference to the private opinions of any cleric, his learning or personal sanctity notwithstanding. Even if every sedevacantist or traditionalist cleric chooses to disobey the decrees of the Congregation of Sacred Rites, it would still be wrong[/u].


3) Arguments based upon past contingencies absolutely incognoscible to created intellects (such as the question, "What would Pope Pius XII have done if he had lived longer?") are not only inadequate and unsatisfactory, but they expose in a striking fashion the troubling contradiction of those sedevacantists who profess themselves apologists for the indefectibility of the Apostolic See and yet do whatsoever it pleases them, crying forth, "Oh, Pope Pius XII would have done so!"

Equally unbecoming and inadequate are those who in their theories imitate the modernist discourse of "hermeneutic of continuity" and other Hegelian constructs in arguing in favor of a neo-historicist historiography attacks the very nature of the Church of Christ.

Whosoever were the clerics in the Liturgical Commission whose recommendations contributed to the latest liturgical reforms is of no consequence whatsoever. What is of consequence is that the Sacred Congregation of Rites has the authority of the Supreme Pontiff in liturgical matters.

Just as no one seems to care about the fact the reformed Roman Psalter of Pope St. Pius X was not actually his, but the schema of the forgotten and unsung Rev. Father Paschal Brugnani, so Catholics should not pay mind to the fact that the above-mentioned Roman Congregation availed itself of the services of certain clerics who later were found to be modernists and who worked to establish a pseudo-liturgy antithetically opposed to the divine Offices of Holy Mother Church.

To believe that a band of covert heretics can be so successful in implementing their novelties in the Sacred Liturgy of the Roman Rite to the detriment of faith, morals and the spiritual welfare of the faithful, is essentially to deny the moral inerrancy of the Apostolic See in matters of ecclesiastical discipline.

This is why the supposed evolutionary continuity between the liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII and the anti-liturgy consequent upon the Johannine-Pauline Council is merely accidental and peripheral at best: a revisionist historiography that seeks to explain the activity of the modernists as if the Church herself were "conquered" by them is not right, as the Church can never be overcome by modernists.

The Roman Liturgy is pure and unadulterated as Pope Pius XII has left it, whereas resorting to conspiracy theories and private opinions leads to an egocentric antiquarianism. If it were otherwise, then an individual may be led to believe that the Church can err in matters of general ecclesiastical discipline, making a sense of loyalty and love for the Apostolic See absurd and even noxious, as one sedevacantist polemicist seems to inadvertently admit when he wrote a while ago:

If it wasn't for the obedience factor, which Satan used to lure us into the V2 Church, all would agree that the liturgy before the changes under Pius XII was certainly the most Catholic, even if some take humbrage to that statement since they claim nothing imprudent can happen to the liturgy under the watchful eyes of a severely ill Pope. [emphases mine]

Holy Mother Church has spoken, the matter is settled. It does not matter what Msgr. Bugnini had published in private or public missives: the Apostolic See has declared the Restored Order of Holy Week must be followed by all those who are bound to the Roman Missal and Breviary by the Bulls Quo primum and Quod a nobis.

Fr. Cekada's arguments, for example, (e.g., "Is Rejecting the Pius XII Liturgical Reforms 'Illegal'?") are ultimately based on the publications of Msgr. Bugnini, and the conclusions he derives therefrom. He cannot apply the principles of perpetuity and cessation of law based only on these non-authoritative sources and private speculations of their own making, much less on past contingencies as he himself imagines and interprets them.

Such polemicists as Fr. Cekada, Fr. Ricossa, etc., together with their lay disciples, have yet to prove that the rites and rubrics of the Restored Order of Holy Week or the Simplification of the Rubrics promulgated by authority of Pope Pius XII present an occasion of scandal or are noxious to faith and morals. Even presuming to do so is perilous, for the Church cannot err against faith and morals in her general ecclesiastical discipline.

Whatever Msgr. Bugnini and other modernist clerics wrote or did is tangential and peripheral, because the Apostolic See cannot promulgate ecclesiastical discipline that leads to errors against faith or moral, or could ultimately result in the conquest of the Church, as Bugnini himself had boasted and as these sedevacantist historicists seem to imply in their polemical missives against the reforms of Pope Pius XII.


4) Here is an example of the sort of confusion and absurdity the mentality of the Missal-sifting sedevacantist polemicists engenders.

The modernized Missal promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 and 1962 was meant of its nature to be transitory, and that it is precisely what it turned out to be, a transitional bridge between the Missal of 1958 that been approved, so we are told, by the dying Pope Pius XIII on October 3, 1958, six days before his death [...]. [emphasis mine]

An editio typica of the Missale Romanum issued by the Apostolic See in 1958? I have not seen or heard of such a thing. An edition "juxta typicam," yes. But to speak of a "1958 Missal" as if it were a new typical edition of the Roman Missal, incorporating the rubrics as reformed by the General Decree of the Congregation of Sacred Rites De rubricis ad simpliciorem formam redigendis (23 March 1955; A. A. S., vol. xlvii., pp. 218 sqq.), is just absurd if no docuмented support is put forth. It was in 1959 that some local Printing Presses and Religious Orders were given special permission to publish liturgical books which incorporated the rubrics simplified according to the aforementioned Decree.

Droleskey fails in providing docuмentary support, or citing any authoritative text in favor of this novel view. This sort of sloppy scholarship diminishes all the more the credibility of those demagogues who, despite the lack of training and competence requisite to categorically judge these matters, insist inciting the faithful to disobey the General Decrees duly promulgated by the Congregation of Sacred Rites by authority of a legitimate Roman Pontiff.


5) Furthermore, this already problematic predicament has been made all the more labyrinthine and perilous by certain polemicists who ascribe to the acephalous clergy the formal Apostolicity and the possession and exercise of habitual or delegated jurisdiction that can only be found in a cleric endowed with a Canonical mission and office by authority of the Supreme Pontiff (directly in the case of Episcopal consecrations, and through the duly appointed local Ordinaries or Religious Superiors in the case of Sacerdotal ordinations and ordinations to the Diaconate and the ecclesiastical Minor Orders).

A consistent sedevacantist would admit that it is precisely because the Apostolic See is vacant (according to their understanding) that no traditionalist Bishop can claim both formal and material apostolicity: only the latter can be ascribed to them [1] without infringing the ecclesiological doctrines taught by the theologians and manualists of past ages and enshrined in the Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope Benedict XV in the Apostolic Constitution Providentissima Mater (27 May 1917; A.A.S., vol. IX, pars II.).

The reality is that the clerici acephali, the episcopi vagantes, of our day may have ostensibly imperiled their salvation in risking the possibility of incurring serious censures and scandal, as well as committing sacrilege and mortal sin in having attained to the sacred Episcopacy contrary to the norms of Canon Law (cf. Can. 953: “Consecratio episcopalis reservatur Romano Pontifice ita ut nulli Episcopo liceat quemquam consecrare in Episcopum, nisi prius constet de pontificio mandato;” Can. 2370: “Episcopus aliquem consecrans in Episcopum, Episcopi vel, loco Episcoporum, pres-byteri assistentes, et qui consecrationem recipit sine apostolico mandato contra praescriptum Can. 953, ipso iure suspensi sunt, donec Sedes Apostolica eos dispensaverit"), for they have been consecrated as Bishops, and have themselves consecrated other Bishops, without Apostolic mandate.

Although, because of a salutary and necessary application of the principles of epikeia, there is no moral culpability to be imputed to them in this regard, the fact remains that these Bishops and the clerics they have elevated to Sacred Orders have, strictly speaking, no proper ecclesiastical office nor ordinary jurisdiction (habitual or delegated) since they lack the requisite Canonical mission (cf. Can. 147: § 1. Officium ecclesiasticuм nequit sine provisione canonica valide obtineri. § 2. Nomine canonicae provisionis venit concessio officii ecclesiastici a competente auctoritate ecclesiastica ad normam sacrorum canonum facta).

It must be emphasized that the sacred Episcopate is subordinated unto the Supreme Pontiff in the order of jurisdiction (cf. 108, § 3: “Ex divina institutione sacra hierarchia  ratione ordinis constat Episcopis, pres-byteris et ministris; ratione iurisdictionis, pontificatu supremo et episcopatu subordinato; ex Ecclesiae autem institutione alii quoque gradus accesere” [emphasis mine]; Can. 109: “Qui in ecclesiasticam hierarchiam cooptantur, non ex populi vel potestatis saecularis consensu aut vocatione adleguntur; sed in gradibus potestatis ordinis constituuntur sacra ordinatione; in supremo pontificatu, ipsomet iure divino, adimpleta conditione legitimae electionis eiusdemque acceptationis; in reliquis gradibus iurisdictionis, canonica missione” [emphasis mine]).

Although the Bishops are truly doctors and teachers for those souls whose pastoral care they have undertaken or have been given, this is only so by reason of the authority of the Pope since the magisterial authority of the Bishops, whether collectively or singly, is dependent upon the jurisdictional and magisterial primacy of the Sovereign Pontiff (cf. Can. 1326: "Episcopi quoque, licet singuli vel etiam in Conciliis particularibus congregati infabillitate docendi non polleant, fidelium tamen suis curis commissorum, sub auctoritate Romani Pontificis, veri doctores seu magistri sunt” [emphasis mine]).

Moreover, Holy Mother Church, since the Sacred Council of Trent (Session XXIII, De reformatione, caps. 11, 13, 16), has ordained that all clergy are to be incardinated into a diocese or ingress unto Holy Religion (cf. Can. 111, § 1: “Quemlibet clericuм oportet esse vel alicui dioecesi vel alicui religioni adscriptum, ita ut clerici vagi nullatenus admittantur” [emphasis mine]).

One must therefore conclude that all the present day traditionalist clerics are clerici vagi. Supplied jurisdiction given by the Church in the various individual instances wherein acts that are necessary for the spiritual welfare of the faithful need to be performed in both the internal and external fora are all that the present-day clerics can claim solely relying on the prudent application of the principles of epikeia. In going any further than this, they risk transgressing the limitations of their limited competence (in order of ecclesiastical authority) and exacerbate their problematic Canonical predicament all the more. It is precisely because the present day clerics do not have a Canonical mission that they cannot publicly bind individual consciences to their private opinions or practical judgments, save insofar as they conform with the doctrines and customs sanctioned by Holy Mother Church. Nor can they ascribe to themselves the dignities and prerogatives of the Bishops and Priests that ruled over the faithful in ages past by authority of the Supreme Pontiff.

Normally, the Bishops and Priests would be given unquestionable credibility and authority, but, precisely because the Roman Pontiff is presently out of the equation in the practical order (according to the sedevacantists), such can no longer be the case. In doing otherwise, one would perhaps substantiate the anti-sedevacantists' claims that the sedevacantist faithful discard the reverence and veneration due to the Papacy alone, whilst adhering to the vagrant clerics in an irony that is absurdly  bereft of the sensus Catholicus.


6) To assert the contrary would be erroneous and obscene. Just because the Johannine-Pauline structures cannot be identified with the Ecclesia Christi, does not necessitate resorting to historicist and revisionist interpretations of what the theologians have taught in order to assuage those doubts that continue to haunt us.

Yet this too is a phenomenon amongst certain sedevacantist polemicists that seems concomitant with the vilification and slander of the authority of Holy Mother Church.

The blitzkrieg of liturgical changes that took place from 1955 and thereafter institutionalized impermanence and instability in the lives of those Catholics who still bother to go to the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service, accustoming many of them to believe that doctrine can change just as easily and just as regularly as the liturgy. If we pray in novel ways then we are going to believe in novel things--and to be more readily disposed to accept novelties as being part of the normal life of the Catholic Church, which they are not.
It is not for us to revise and reformat the doctrines of the Church to suit our times.

It is bitterly ironic that Droleskey has just described what is happening now the "movement" of those particular sedevacantist polemicists who are pertinacious in their errors regarding the authority of the Apostolic See on matters of ecclesiastical discipline. To argue that what the Church has promulgated as binding ecclesiastical discipline (i.e., the simplification of the rubrics of the Roman Missal and Breviary, the Restored Order of Holy Week, the mitigation of the Eucharistic fast, all promulgated by authority of Pope Pius XII) can be noxious to faith and morals because of the times is something that no Catholic would have argued in ages past. To cite historicist historiography -- seemingly bereft of the indispensable orientation given by the divine revelation as proposed by the Catholic Church and taught by the Fathers, the Popes, and approved theologians, -- and invoke the principles of Canon Law to justify arbitrary and egocentrically antiquarian liturgical praxes, is simply disheartening to say the very least.

Curiously, such process of cognition and reasoning is akin to what the modernists wrote regarding the "organic evolution" of dogma and the "hermeneutic of continuity" that is so often cited nowadays by conservative circles within the Johannine-Pauline construct.

The nova œconomia brought forth by the Johannine-Pauline modernists and implemented by the structures they have usurped cannot at all be construed as warranting the creation of another nova œconomia: redefining and re-interpreting what the magisterium of Holy Mother Church proposes for our assent, particularly regarding the Apostolicity and Unity of the one and true Church of Christ, can only bring about error and confusion. Instead of defending Holy Mother Church in the pristine integrity of her doctrines, some Catholics, in a rash reaction to the novelties of modernists, have (inadvertently, and in some cases with full deliberation) concocted further novelties whereby they humiliate and vilify these same doctrines in a most lamentable manner.

This, again, is inexorably connected with the Gallicanistic liturgical praxes of the sedevacantist polemicists of whom I have been writing:

Clinging onto a missal that was itself meant to be but one phase of the liturgical revolution while ignoring the evidence presented above is an exercise in nothing than than willful, deliberate self-delusion. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not possess the Catholic Faith. He is a Modernist to the core of his apostate being, and that particular "expression" of the "one" Roman Rite is now to be "improved." This is simply a logical "evolution" in the trap that went snap a long time ago that goes by the name of Summorum Pontificuм

The matter in question is not about sedevacantism in itself, but, rather, how such polemicist interpret and publicize it.

Leaving for now the oblique attack upon those sedevacantists who obey what they admit to be the most recent liturgical legislation of the Apostolic (note: Droleskey's grudge against the CMRI is not a secret), the question raised in reading this is: exactly who has the competence and authority to determine exactly what liturgical rites ought to be followed by those who would avoid the modernists' "tinkering." The Saint Lawrence Press, Ltd., seems to think the answer would be 1939, since their Ordines are based on the typical editions of the liturgical books that were in force that year. At Saint Gertrude the Great's Chapel, the Feast of St. Pius X is observed, but not that of St. Joseph the Workman. So at what year, at what typical edition of the Roman Missal and Breviary, do we stop?

According to this revisionist historiography, what is to stop another polemicist from asserting that the unfinished reforms of Pope St. Pius X were also a step in the supposed "evolution" towards the Johannine-Pauline "liturgy"? After all, St. Pius X was the Pope who promulgated the most radical and dramatic reform of the Roman Breviary: the entire re-structuring of the Roman Psalter. The present day clerics and layfolk cannot understand what a novelty the reformed Roman Psalter of Pope St. Pius X really was to the Priests and Religious of that age. Priests and Religious were reciting or chanting Psalms that had rarely occurred in the old Office, reformed up until the end of Pope Leo XIII's reign (the exceptions were those Monastic Orders who adhered to the Psalter as arranged in the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, which is now the most ancient Psalter in the Latin Occident). Yet they did not hesitate to accept it with docility and jubilation, for it was truly a reform that was necessary.


7) That sedevacantist polemcists who present themselves as apologists for Holy Mother Church would vilify the liturgical reforms promulgated by Pope Pius XII, and actually publish such rash errors, is utterly disedifying and disgusting to me. Although he is criticizing the Motu proprio of Benedict XVI in the above-cited article, Droleskey is attacking one whom he regards as having been a true Supreme Pontiff and shows an utter irreverence for the august office of the Supreme Pontiff.

I reiterate: in order for the practice and profession of any given Catholic to be Catholic, obedience and docility to the Apostolic See is indispensable. Otherwise, what would differentiate the anti-Johannine-Pauline conglomerate from such schismatic movements as the Oxfordists or Anglo-Catholics, who with their Sarum Missals and ornate vestments have all the trappings of Catholic liturgical praxis but not the sensus Catholicus that is necessarily and inexorably concomitant with such praxis?

The question is: who exactly gets to be the one to determine what rubrics and what decrees are to be observed, and by what criterion can this person arrive at his conclusion? Could it be that what the anti-sedevacantist polemicist is true: that these people make Popes of themselves citing for the justification of that endeavor the supposed vacancy or usurpation of the Apostolic See?

If the Church is where Peter is, and the sedevacantists assert that St. Peter does not now have a successor because the Apostolic See is vacant or usurped, then does not that necessarily lead one to conclude that the sedevacantist clergy and layfolk are to be docile and obedient to the Decrees promulgated by whom they regard as the most recent successor of St. Peter in the Supreme Pontificate, even to the point of scrupulosity?

Were one to think that these Missal-sifters represent the sedevacantist stance, then one would have to conclude that there is no unicity of ecclesiastical discipline in the sedevacantist movement, and this just leads to more grave questions regarding Apostolicity and how this indispensable note of the Church can be reconciled with the phenomenon of acephalous clerics, the factual lack of habitual and delegated jurisdiction, the present identity and locality of the Ecclesia docens, etc.

The problem with the sedevacantism, as interpreted and set forth by the Missal-sifting sedevacantists, is that in some places it has practically ceased to be an endeavor to preserve the profession and practice of the Catholic faith, as it has become a cult of personality: an autolatrous implementation of cult propaganda; ignoring, defying and even vilifying the decrees duly promulgated by the Apostolic See.

Yes, "cult propaganda," because either you obey Holy Mother Church or are part of a cult, just like a soul cannot be simultaneously in the state of sanctifying grace and in the state of mortal sin: for the question is whether or not the clerics who seem to be doing as they please are striving to preserve the Church of Christ, or are they endeavoring to propagate their own ideas. None of the present day clerics in the sedevacantist movement can say that they form part of the Ecclesia docens, so what is to guide the clerics themselves in their apostolates if not filial and reverent obedience to the decrees of the Roman Congregations, duly promulgated by authority of the Supreme Pontiff?[/size]

There is a right and duty to resist a wayward Pope, to disobey manifestly unlawful commands, to prevent the execution of his will, and if necessary for subjects to rebuke superiors even in public when there is a danger to the Faith, with all charity and humility. The Pope cannot be deposed for such matters and the Church is indeed at his mercy, while prayer is the proper recourse for the Church at large, recognizing in the evil Pope the means of divine judgment on His people. This is the teaching of the Saints, the Fathers, the Doctors and of Sacred Scripture.

For the question of whether a Pope who appears to certainly have fallen into heresy should necessarily be adjudged as having done so, especially when there are other important factors to take into consideration, the case of Savonarola, history's closest parallel to a sedevacantist, is instructive, in his judgment of Pope Alexander VI.

For I bear witness in the name of God that this Alexander VI is in no way Pope and cannot be ... I declare in the first place and affirm it with all certitude, that the man is not a Christian, he does not even believe any longer that there is a God; he goes beyond the final limits of infidelity and impiety

Now Savonarola who agitated for a Council was undoubtedly guiltless in this matter, but as later ecclesiastical writers tell us, he equally undoubtedly was entirely wrong. Hence the reason it is entirely prudent to altogether refrain from passing judgment.

Four eminent Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church from different time periods - St.Robert, Turrecremata, Cajetan and Billot - bear eloquent witness to the relevant principles outlined above.

As for the mystery, now the mystery of Christ on the Cross was not the mystery of a disappearing Christ who was not on the Cross or of a Christ who ceased to be where men saw He was - therefore, it is fitting that neither should the mystery of the Church, His spotless Spouse, be such.

Rather, the mystery was of how beautiful, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom could be so entirely disfigured, marred almost beyond recognition, and overrun by His enemies, how He who had once seemed so obviously divine could now seem so very human, though He always had been both - and it is the very same thing that has happened to the Holy Roman Church, Mother and Mistress of Churches, in our own day.

The mystery is not meant to be entirely understood, it is rather meant to be patiently endured, with prayer and penance at the foot of the Cross, as did St.John, the few holy women and above all the Blessed Mother.

It is one thing to resist an evil command of a bad pope, but it is another matter entirely to resist the universal disciplinary laws of a Pope or sacramental rites approved by the Pope.  The theologians taught the former, as for the latter, they are protected infallible acts of the Church and there would never be any reason to resist them.  

There has been too much confusion on this point since the 1970's.  It is possible, although unlikely to have a bad pope who commands bad things, but a command is not a law for the universal Church.  The theologians never taught that Catholics could resist the Church's universal laws.  These laws are binding on the flock, as they are bound by the power given by Our Lord to St. Peter and his successors, to bind and loosen the laws of the Church.  

It is impossible for the Church to give evil.  The sacramental rites of the Church can only be good, holy, and pleasing to God.  The canons of the Church can only be good, there can never be any taint of evil or sin in them.  The Pope cannot teach heresy to the universal Church. The Church is always from its beginning until now, spotless and holy.