Gladius said:He is the contrary of dogmatic about his understanding of the present crisis, which is not true of many on both sides of the proverbial fence (including some on this site).
Where did you and SJB pick up this line? You make it sound very reasonable and compassionate but it rings some alarm bells for me.
Do you think both sedevacantists and SSPX can be right? I will answer that for you: No. So if only one side is right, doesn't that mean it should try to convince the other side? Why should truth be accomodating towards error?
You criticize Caminus for saying over and over that we can't judge the VII Popes to be heretics without a formal decision, yet you are saying the same thing -- we can't be "dogmatic" sedevacantists until we have a formal decision. Yet the reality is that the sedevacantist position is the only one that is theologically possible. Do you really think even for a second, gladius, that SSPX might be right? I know you don't, so why do you rail against "dogmatic" sedes? Just because your nemesis in Ohio tried to stop people from going to the SSPX? Isn't it possible Father Cekada is right about certain things, or is everything he does and says wrong? If so, he is a good guide, because you can just reverse all of his decisions to know the truth 100% of the time! Sedes should not be going to una cuм Masses when they have non-una-cuм Masses available -- simple as that. In an emergency, whatever, okay.
You say you're not a sedevacantist in the strict sense of the term. But sedeprivationists are sedevacantists, as you know. The sedeprivationists contribute the idea that some of these VII non-Popes might have valid elections ( even if Ratzinger was not a real bishop, a layman can be elected Pope ). It seems reasonable enough, but the big problem is it contradicts cuм Ex Apostolatus which says the election of a Pope who was a heretic before election is null and void. Lo and behold, I know a sedeprivationist monk in France who claimed cuм Ex Apostolatus was abrogated by the 1917 Code.
Sedeprivationism may work for John-Paul II or Paul VI, depending on whether or not they were public heretics before their elections, but it doesn't work at all for Ratzinger who was a raging heretic. In any event, they / you are sedevacantists. Saying that a Pope is out of the Church and not formally Pope, but has a valid election that could be activated if he renounced his heresies, is not to say he is Pope, hence they don't include his name in the Canon. If your problem with the sedevacantist position involves jurisdiction, the same problem remains for you as a sedeprivationist.
Of course, there are those who want to build the apparent lack of jurisdiction into a huge thorn in the sede's side. Luckily for those who want the truth, we already have the example of the Great Western Schism. None of the bishops in that time who were given mandates by FALSE POPES ( the French line as opposed to the Urban VI ) were ever said to be illicit bishops. Therefore, with a little logic, it holds that the sedes are also provided by God with supplied jurisdiction that will one day retroactively be considered licit, if the subject is even broached at all -- because it never has been with the Schism, to my knowledge. It is common sense that the sede and trad bishops are keeping the Church alive and consecrations done without mandates will not be held against them.
It is crystal-clear to me that epikeia can be invoked here, as well as canon law that states that when the law is harmful to souls, it can be abrogated. I have heard the retort that the necessity of a papal mandate for jurisdiction is not human law but divine law, but they can't back it up. How can it be divine law when there are so many ways around it, such as when the Pope gives someone like Abp. Thuc permission to consecrate other bishops precisely WITHOUT a mandate ( and this really was a privilege given to him by Pius XI )? It's a divine law the Pope can break, I suppose?
The sedevacantist argument is airtight. There are no flaws whatsoever. As with the looming economic crisis, the only reason that people don't believe it is because the consequences of believing it are too big. Certain people just can't believe that the Church would be without a Pope for half a century, just like they can't believe the entire world is on the verge of mega-collapse. Too big to fail! So they stick their heads in the sand. That is why Caminus calls it chimerical. It takes a certain grace to see the big picture here, the connections between the corrupt ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic Republics and Vatican II, and how they must go down together so that the MONARCHY and the TRUE CHURCH can rise up out of the ashes together. I will spare the site a tour through the Apocalypse but the various multi-horned beasts come into play. People are uncomfortable since there is no precedent for what we're going through, nothing really even comes close. However, there was no precedent for the Arian crisis when it was happening either, and I'd say this is true of all crises, each time the devil goes about his business from another angle. Those who want some kind of cookie-cutter tried-and-true solution they can mimic from the past will be sorely disappointed, but they can apply true Catholic principles to a novel situation, and that is what always must be done.
So it's not surprising to me that someone like Caminus, who denies cօռspιʀαcιҽs, who thinks that the Vatican II Popes are just innocent blunderers who are teaching what they really think is Catholicism ( a master stroke of irony, since he often tells us we can't judge who's a formal heretic and can't read hearts, yet he just knows that the anti-Popes sincerely desire to be Catholic even when they directly contradict basic Catholic teaching ), doesn't have a clue what's really going on.