Quote from: Matthew

Quote from: TheKnightVigilant

I have a question concerning sedevacantism:

It seems to me that if we cannot judge this man, Francis, who repudiates fundamental Catholic dogmas, to be outside of the Church as a consequence, we cannot judge ANYBODY who professes to be a Catholic to be outside of the Church. If we admit that Francis is a member of the Church, then we must also admit that ALL people who deny the truth of a Catholic religion are members of the Church, that people who deny the need to convert non-Catholics are members of the Church, that people who believe that all religions lead to God are members of the Church. Doesn't this mean, as a consequence, that we must accept everybody who professes to be a Catholic as true Catholics and members of the Church? Doesn't this mean that even those who deny the Trinity, deny the Resurrection, deny the existence of the soul etc are also members of the Church?

As far as I can see, to accept that Francis is a Catholic is to accept that the Church can hold contradictory beliefs. What, then, is the Catholic Church?

Sure, if you confuse "The Pope" with "Joe Heretic on the street" then you might have a point. Call me a nit-picker, but I don't think they're equivalent.

Of course we can say this or that person is a heretic, and outside the Church because he doesn't have the Faith. But even in the case of unimportant individuals we laymen don't have the authority to formally excommunicate them, nevermind declare them vitandi (to be shunned). We can't bind this obligation to shun them on the conscience of any other. We can only avoid this or that apostate because it seems to us he's dangerous. We might even recommend this course of action to others. But we're still toothless sheep when it comes to having real power.

But the highest office in the land, the Papacy? That's a different matter. We only have ONE pope. It's no big deal if this or that individual isn't a Catholic. The pope, however?

Hopefully you can see there's a difference between the one and only Vicar of Christ and Joe Schmoe on the street.

I guess this is the typical simplistic thinking to be expected of sedevacantists...

Seriously, everyone seems to want to make everything so simple. But it's not simple. If people would get that thought into their thick heads, maybe we wouldn't have so much Dimond Bros-style schism and cult mentality going around. As well as rash judgment of our fellow Catholics.

If it were as simple as you think, everyone would have become Sedevacantist long ago. What you think is the matter with Abp. Lefebvre, Bishop Williamson, and even myself? Hard core diabolical malice? Ignorance? No, and no.

I don't think every Sedevacantist is malicious or ignorant either. It's one solution to the Crisis -- it's just not the only one (and to get into the realm of opinion, it's not the best one either)

There obviously is more to it than any of you understand. Maybe it's just the feebleness of your intellect, in which case I should overlook it.

But it is simple, isn't it? To be a Catholic one must profess the Catholic faith, not a false faith. That's one of the fundamental teachings of the Church. The man who cannot grasp that is the man of feeble intellect. The one who accepts it, one the other hand, far from being a simpleton, is simply assenting to the teaching of the Church.

We need not formally excommunicate them, that is obviously ridiculous. We need simply recognise that heretics place themselves outside of the Church, as Catholics have always recognised. This is necessary in order to maintain the unity of the faith . If heretics are not outside of the Church, then the Church teaches contradiction.

I'm not a dogmatic sedevacantist, and I support Williamson, Lefebvre, and many others who adhere to the recognise/resist position. That said, none of them have provided convincing arguments against the sedevacantist position - indeed they cannot do so, because in practical terms they are sedevacantists, since they ignore the authority of the current papal claimant.

Quote

Would you mind looking at and responding to this if you have a second.

Thanks! :)

(4th post down sir)
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=29765&min=45&num=5

Hi [s2srea],

Thank you for bringing up this issue. I was wondering if and when it would come to light that I was now expressing an opinion contrary to my earlier one. As it turns out, the answer is, it didn't take very long at all. I'm sorry about this delayed response but I want you to know I haven't been blowing you off. I've actually been thinking very carefully about how to answer you since you first sent me this message. The conclusion I've come to is this.

There was nothing wrong with my earlier argument about papal infallibility. That argument remains both valid and sound and perfectly orthodox, so there is no need to abandon it or correct it. The problem is, that argument doesn't apply to the subject matter in the way I used to think it did. It would have been the correct argument to raise if we were talking about a morally debauched pope, a pope who was greedy or licentious, or who waged war against the princes of Europe to take their lands, or any of the other immoral things popes have been known to do. But it is not the correct argument to make when a putative pope manifestly departs from the faith. In fact, the very same argument from papal infallibility now seems to me to prove the Sedevacantist position correct.

If we begin with the premise that true popes are infallible when the necessary conditions for infallibility are enjoined (which is certainly true), then there are only four possible explanations of the Conciliar Reforms, especially the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae.

1. The Conciliar Popes are true popes; the Vatican II reforms engaged the conditions of papal infallibility; therefore the reforms are true teachings of the Church and must be obeyed. (Hard Conciliarism, e.g. ecuмenism and everything we've come to expect from the Church of Nice.)

2. The Conciliar Popes are true popes; the Vatican II reforms did not engage the conditions of papal infallibility, but they are permissible because there is nothing inherently wrong with them; and even though they appear to lead to various abuses and distortions of faith, that cannot be blamed on the Pope. (Soft Conciliarism, e.g. Fellayism and Michael Voris.)

3. The Conciliar Popes are true popes; the Vatican II reforms are not to be obeyed because there is something intrinsically wrong with them; but the conditions of papal infallibility were never engaged so this does not impact the legitimacy of the conciliar pontiffs. (Recognize and Resist, classic SSPX position, e.g. Bishop Williamsom.)

4. The Conciliar reforms are intrinsically wrong and are not to be obeyed; a true pope cannot bind intrinsically disordered reforms upon the Church, yet this however was done by a putative pope; therefore the Conciliar Popes are not true popes. (Sedevacantism, e.g. Fr. Cekada.)

It is clear from the parsing above that the concept of papal infallibility is going to act as reductio in this argument. The question however is, which side of the argument is going to get reduced, which "direction" does the entailment run in; or in other words, who's going to end up biting the bullet?

Now to begin with, all Trads quite sensibly agree with the commonsense notion that the Conciliar reforms are intrinsically wrong. If there was any doubt about that, a reading of the loathsome docuмent Nostra Aetate should clear it up. This is what separates true Trads from the "but the docuмents are beautiful" crowd. But if the reforms are wrong then we can already toss out (1) and (2), because they contain the contradictory premise. That leaves us with (3) and (4).

Option (3) may seem like a plausible alternative at first blush, but in the light of additional information it leads to a fatal flaw. For it can now no longer be disputed that the Conciliar Popes and the Conciliar docuмents teach heresy, not merely "error." That is to say, they contradict previously defined and fully clarified doctrinal teachings of the Church, or they at least conduce to heretical beliefs or scandalous breakdowns of morals and discipline. There are numerous ways one could try to argue around this and preserve the legitimacy of the Conciliar pontificates, not all of which I will examine in great detail because some of them are patently absurd, but in general the arguments are these.

3A. Deny that there is a crisis at all. "These are not the droids you're looking for." Timothy Dolan actually said the exact words, "It's not like, God forbid, we're in a crisis." This option is degenerate because we can assume that no Trad actually believes there is no crisis. He would have no justification for being a Trad if he believed that.

3B. Distort the nature or downplay the severity of the crisis. "It's all the liberal bishops' fault," is an argument Michael Voris often makes. This is usually employed in conjunction with:

3C. A thought-stopping bromide. "Oh well, Christ promised that His Church would never fail, so it can't be that horrible."

3D. The reforms themselves are okay, the abuses are somebody elses fault, and the pope is too ignorant/powerless/busy to fix things. (Malachi Martin, Prisoner of the Vatican.)

3E. The Hermeneutic of Continuity. (Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificuм.)

3F. "Popes can teach heresy, they just can't define heresy." (Another argument Michael Voris has made.)

3G. "Submission to the Roman Pontiff is a necessary condition of remaining in the Catholic Church." (Or alternatively, the Pope is judged by no one, etc.)

Without going any further with the examples (which might be multiplied and distinguished endlessly), I would like to draw your attention to the emerging pattern. Option (3) is what I would call a "decaying" position. It is a position with a short half-life that cannot remain stable for very long. 3A-3F all contain elements that push them toward Option (2) which we have already rejected, while 3G, when honestly expressed, morphs into a doctored version of Option (3) which we might call 3-prime.

3'. The Conciliar reforms are intrinsically disordered, so we must resist them; but obedience to the Roman Pontiff is law of the faith which trumps all others, so we must recognize him.

Option (3'), which is the only logical way of maintaining (3) while rejecting (2), simply begs the question on papal infallibility. It assumes that which needs to be proven, viz. that the Conciliar Popes are true popes, but doesn't prove it. Furthermore, it makes obedience to any putative pontiff into the sine qua non of Catholic identity (something even Archbishop Lefebvre himself never did). In fact, there is no way of maintaining (whether proven or unproven) that the Conciliar Popes are true popes without having (3) reduce to (2) or (1). But we've already rejected (2) and (1), so that leaves us with Option (4). The argument from papal infallibility, then, entails that Sedevacantism is correct.

At this point I would be willing to say that 'Recognize and Resist' is nothing but a word salad which doesn't express any coherent idea. This is not, of course, meant to insult, impugn, or damn anybody who holds that position, but hopefully to contrast it with the clarity of Sedevacantism.

-Man of the West

....There is no logical way around this situation now. Something needed to be done immediately after the Council but it was not.  To quote Saint Francis DeSales:

"That which would have been easily remedied at first, becomes incurable by time and habit"

God Bless