An even Seven,

More snippets! You insult me if you are presuming that I have not read these before.

The citation attributed to Saint Athanasius has been proven to be inauthentic, I should mention. Take a look at the Collectio selecta of Caillau and Guillon to which it is attributed, if you do not believe me. It is not in the actual letter.

Well put Myrna !

You might find it in his Syriac Aramaic writings.  

The Church is called the Ecclesia Magna, the Great Church, by the Psalmist. You are falsely ascribing things to Saint Athanasius, a Church Father, who was in his teachings in complete accordance with Sacred Scripture. A particular Church can be reduced to a handful, but not the universal Church. Learn to make necessary distinctions.

You cannot use theologians, canonists, Church Fathers, or Popes to make the Teaching Church vanish. Where was the sedevacantist episcopate before Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga founded the sedevacantist church? Those first Sedevacantists who had themselves ordained to the episcopate were acting on the false premise that the Catholic hierarchy had been destroyed by heresy, and that they had to restore an episcopate by their reception of episcopal orders. They still speak this way today. Mr. Pivarunas, for example, has claimed that they must somehow be Successors to the Apostles because the Succession cannot be extinguished, thereby affirming that he considered the old hierarchy to have disappeared.

Aside from the fact alone that not occupying an episcopal see renders formal Apostolic Succession impossible, they are irreversibly stuck with a historical vacuum in their pretended succession, because there was no sedevacantist episcopate between the beginning of their alleged papal sedisvacancy until the first sedevacantist episcopal consecrations took place.

BTW, I read latin too and I agree with Exilenomore that the sentence is not in the letter of St. Athanasius. So he is right. However, the inference is justified from the letter that it can be a small church.

In your opinion, how do you want me to correct the article?
http://traditionalcatholic.net/Tradition/Information/Letter_to_his_Flock.html
I can add a note to the page with your observations.

the magisterium hasn't vanished.

Tell me, o self-appointed Inquisitor of the Two Americas and the vassal states of Europe; where was your sedevacantist magisterium before the first episcopal orders were received by Sedevacantists? Go ahead, fill the historical vacuum with the irresistable floods of your wisdom.

First, I am not ignoring anything. Second, most of my citations come from non Sede sites and a lot from the Vatican sites. Third, I doesn't matter how small they are if they prove the point.

1. You are ignoring most of what I have written in this thread.
2. These citations have been circulating on sedevacantist websites and more or less related forums for years. If you are relatively new to Sedevacantism, then I have probably read most of the citations that you have stored up even before you became a Sedevacantist.
3. Copy-and-pasting snippets from books, docuмents etc. without being able to construct arguments based on a more or less vast knowledge acquired either through public or private study, is a very unscientific method. Citation should accompany the latter, not replace it. And, while the theologians and Popes, whom you cite, prove many points, they are most certainly not your pretended points. Read the life of Saint Bellarmine to see how very far he was from the spirit of Sedevacantism. He was not anywhere close to concede a possibility of the Ecclesia docens vanishing into thin air, and he would have preferred death rather than to separate himself from it through schism.

First, prove that these citations were taken out of context. Second, the dogmas are defined in plain language so that all can understand. You don't need formal training to understand that a heretic is not in the Church, and when someone says something that is clearly contrary to dogma (even ambiguously) you must consider that person to be non-Catholic, no matter who that person is.

As I have already mentioned, the Blessed Apostle Paul stated that a heretic must be avoided after they have spurned canonical admonitions. One does not receive a canonical status as a public heretic with the Church by merely uttering a heresy, even if the person is obviously of bad faith and does not look in any way as if he is going to mend himself. Even the worst heretics have been tried by legitimate authorities before they were delivered to the secular arm. Why do you think the Inquisition was founded? To you, all of that is not important. Seminary training? Oh, who needs that! Everyone is a canonist and a theologian! Ecclesiastical trials? Who needs that when we have qeddeq and An even Seven? You do not think according to the spirit of the Church.

Allow me to cite from a very reputed theologian myself now. From Scavini's "Theologia Moralis Universa" (Tractatus de Fide.): "cuм hæresis sit crimen contra Religionem, judex legitimus in eo esse non potest, nisi Ecclesia : et jure definitum est. Sunt nempe : - 1. Pontifex pro toto orbe, et S. Congregatio Cardinalium generalium Inquisitorum ideo instituta; - 2. Episcopus pro sua Diœcesi, cui demandatum est gregem suum a venenatis pascuis avertere : imo ei facta est delegatio a Pontifice etiam contra Regulares exemptos, si opus sit. Ut tamen de hæresi cognoscat, Episcopi Vicarius, commissionem ab eo accipere debet; - 3. Vicarius capitularis, Sede vacante : huic tamen probabilius negant auctoritatem procedendi contra exemptos sine speciali apostolicæ Sedis delegatione; quia ipse non succedit Episcopo, nisi in iis, quæ sunt de jure ordinario : non autem in potestatem jurisdictionis delegatam, uti est præsertim quæ a Tridentino tribuitur Episcopis, tamquam Sedis Apostolicæ delegatis."

While this was written in the 19th century, and some of these jurisdictions can change over time, what is essential and immutable in the above citation is that it belongs only to the Church to judge heresy, with the Pope possessing the jurisdiction to do so in the whole Church, and the Bishops in their Dioceses. "Since heresy is a crime against Religion, its legitimate judge can be no other than the Church".

First, the sedevacantist position is not based on Jurisdictional law. It is based on Divine Law that a heretic is not in the Church. Second, there's much evidence out there that shows Apostolic Succession for Sedes.

"Episcopi sunt Apostolorum successores atque ex divina institutione peculiaribus ecclesiis praeficiuntur quas cuм potestate ordinaria regunt sub auctoritate Romani Pontificis." [Canon 329, § 1, from the pio-benedictine Codex]

Jurisdiction resides in the Church by divine institution. In the above Canon, formal Bishops, that is, Apostolic Successors are defined by divine law as being in possession of episcopal sees under the authority of the Holy Father. No episcopal see means no actual Apostolic Succession.

These Apostolic Successors must exist in the Church in an unbroken way from the days of the Apostles unto our days. The sedevacantist world is not only bereft of an episcopate that even claims to possess episcopal sees, but in their mutilated view on Apostolic Succession, there has been a historical void where they had no bishops at all from the beginning of their imaginary vacancy until the first sedevacantist episcopal consecrations.

Why do you not give me five names or so of sedevacantist 'apostolic successors' before the aforementioned sedevacantist episcopal consecrations took place? You cannot give me an answer, because these names do not exist. It has been a primary matter of discussion among yourselves for years, and it is known among you as "the question of apostolicity". You have a huge gap in your pretended recent history of Apostolic Succession, and you will never be able to fill it up. It is one of the indelible marks of schism and breach from the historical Church of Christ, deeply impressed on the forehead of your new anarchist church, constructed by human hand.

I will add some more to this. In the small world of Sedevacantism, every person is required to be a master in the principle of equity (epikeia), where everyone must decide for himself whether this or that law is still binding, whether this or that bishop may be approached for the Sacraments, whether the Index librorum prohibitorum still binds under pain of excommunication, and so forth. This is not at all practically equal to resisting condradictions with the spirit of the Church while recognising the legitimate authorities, because this means resisting what is clearly irreconcilable with the past. When the authorities command something which is not clearly detrimental to the good of the Church, the presumption is on the side of the legitimacy of the command, and so we are able to put our consciences at rest. But for you there is no rest, as you have called a weight and responsability upon your shoulders that is unreal and insupportable for men.