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JonandDebbie,

Thank you for your comments, which have prompted some more thinking on my part.

Schism is indeed a vital issue, and may help clarify things. The Vatican I Council stated:


Atwater in his Catholic Dictionary is very succinct in his definition of "schism":


And what if there is no pope? Not only no pope, but a state of affairs where perhaps God has indicated that He is done with a hierarchical Church in traditional terms forever, as I for one read the signs of the times since the early 60s? Note I said, "in traditionial terms." That is, with a hiearachy perpetuating the presence of Christ on earth as King, Prophet and Priest, a full Apostolic authority with the powers of jurisdiction, meaning having, like a King, real authority of command . . . whether you volunteer to submit or not. There are true bishops of the Catholic Church to whom one may yield this submission to voluntarily, such as one of the bishops Bishop Williamson ordained, or Bishop Sanborn (to bring one close to my home). These may have the continuing power of Christ as priest, as sanctifier, through legitimate sacraments that continue through them and those they have ordained - I identified that as THE ISSUE above regarding the cessaation of the sacrifice - but they do not continue His authority as King and Prophet. Regarding the latter, they may speak truth, but do not have the divine authority of the prophet to declare it.

As I think I said, the "indefectible" Church as understood in relation to a hierarchy (and that is how it was understood) is gone. The "indefectible" Church in terms of the Catholic faith among those still holding it is, and will allows be, here in the elect remnant of God, which God always and everyone preserves on this earth. But a body with the power to rule authoritatively with a real power of jurisdiction - a hierarchy continuing Christ's presence on earth in "bodies" with His complete three fold power of King, Prophet and Priest - is gone.

Have they also lost the power to sanctify? Or, stated differently, has the sacrifice ceased everyone on the earth? I think not at the moment, after reflecting on schism. How can one be acting contrary to God by offering the sacrifice of Christ as prescribed by the Church when one cannot do so in schism from the "pope" and/or those in "communion with the pope" because there is no pope? How could "pastors" ordained by Catholic bishops who were ordained by Catholic bishops who were ordained by Catholic bishops (stopping at some point in the line where the ordainer being a Catholic bishop could not be disputed and his ordaination could not be contrary or schismatic) be offering the sacrifice outside the Church when there is no hierarchical Church to be subject to?

I think, as I go on searching and seeking truth on this, that the cessation of the holy sacrifice has ceased in the "temple" of Rome, in the Conciliar Church - in the hiearchical church that "sat in Moses's seat" (Matthew 23:2) - but that it has not ceased on the earth. Just as a priest or bishop offereing the Mass during a sedevacante prior to Vatican II would not be in schism, neither I think are those who offer it with the Catholic faith and with legitimate indicia of true ordanination as Catholic priests are in schism now. How could they be, there is no pope to be schismatical to?

As to an "imperfect council," to be consistent, I think not. God, it appears to me, wiped out the "indefectible" hierarchical Church of the pre-Vatican II world. That appears to me to be His will as we enter this time of the Great Apostasy, when Christ will return to gather His sheep and settle the "issue" for Himself. As Cardinal Manning stated even back then when things were starting to lurch toward these days:



Cardinal Manning is just repeating what is in Scripture as to Christ returning to settle the "Great Apostasy" Himself:


Of course, the hiearchical authority not only being gone but not having asserted itself on this, we can differ.

God bless.

DR


Hello Decem Rationis,

You state: "As to an "imperfect council," to be consistent, I think not.

But have we not brought forth enough evidence to support this movement for union/imperfect council? Perhaps we should review the evidence in this thread, because Christ has not yet returned to gather His sheep and settle this "issue" for Himself. And meanwhile, we need the sacraments from a "duly authorized priest." So, as St. Ignatius said: "although we know that all depends upon God, we should nevertheless act as if everything depended upon us."  

You ask: "How can one be acting contrary to God by offering the sacrifice of Christ as prescribed by the Church when one cannot do so in schism from the "pope" and/or those in "communion with the pope" because there is no pope? How could "pastors", ordained by Catholic bishops who were ordained by Catholic bishops who were ordained by Catholic bishops (stopping at some point in the line where the ordainer being a Catholic bishop could not be disputed and his ordination could not be contrary or schismatic) be offering the sacrifice outside the Church when there is no hierarchical Church to be subject to?

Bishop D'Ailly (1351- 1420) one of the key figures in bring to an end the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) answers your questions when he stated: "I know no schismatics save those who stubbornly refuse to learn the truth, or who after discovering it refuse to submit to it, or who still formally declare that they do not want to follow the movement for union". For years the traditional clergy have not been subject to a Pontiff and at the same time they have stubbornly refused to assemble in council to discuss and rectify this issue of the Papacy.  Refusal to receive authorization from a Pope or to be willing to assemble and restore the Papacy when it has failed is the schism that Bishop D'Ailly has identified. It follows then, that those that who work toward restoring the papacy are not schismatics. 

To answer your question further, the annotation at Gal.2:9 in the original Rheims New Testament, "Gave the right hand of society", has: "There is and always ought to be, a common fellowship and fraternity of all Pastors and preachers of the Church. Into which society who soever entereth not, but standeth in Schism and separation from Peter and the chief apostolic Pastors, what pretense so ever he hath, or whence so ever he challengeth authority, he is a wolf, and no true Pastor."
The fact that the Vatican II "popes' were/are false popes does not make this annotation inapplicable.  

The annotation speaks of "a common fellowship and fraternity of all Pastors and preachers of the Church," in a word, charity.  The tone of the website: UnamSanctam.org. is one of charity. What a good topic for today's feast!

We hope that you all had a blessed Feast of Pentecost!

But here, to this general reason there is added another very particular one, namely that the oracle itself bears within it the most explicit testimony of its own obscurity. Everywhere there is only talk of sealed words, of sealed predictions (vers. 4, 9); Daniel himself declares that he does not understand: *audivi et non intellexi*, and if he asks for further information, the angel replies that the seal of the mystery cannot be lifted until the time of fulfillment, *usque ad praefinitum tempus*. 


Moreover, even at the time of fulfillment, the ungodly will not understand, *neque intelligent omnes impii*; only the learned will understand, *porro docti intelligent*: the learned, that is, the faithful instructed in the science of piety, who will then find in this understanding, amid their trials, encouragement and hope. And all this is to be retained, all this is to be carefully noted, in view of the comparison we will soon have to make of Daniel’s oracle with the passage of the Gospel, the subject of our study. 

However, whatever veil of mystery the said oracle must remain wrapped in until the time of the end, there are certain general truths that the text itself brings to light, or that are moreover revealed by the analogy of parallel passages. Thus, for example, we know that the crisis announced in this twelfth chapter of Daniel will be specially arranged by God as a means of purification for the last Christian generation: this generation which must see all the harbingers of the immense catastrophe, and perceive the first sounds of the trumpet awakening the dead from the depths of their tombs; so that, tried as gold in the furnace, cleansed of all attachment to a world about to collapse, it may find itself ready to go forth to meet the Lord returning to seek his own in order to lead them into his eternal kingdom. And this is what is meant by these words of verse ten: *Eligentur et dealbabuntur, et quasi ignis probabuntur multi*. 

We further know that at the time of the terrible persecution, every exercise of the true religion will be proscribed, and consequently the worship of God will cease to be celebrated, at least publicly and openly in the light of day, before the face of the sun. “A tempore cuм ablatum fuerit juge sacrificium,” we read in verse eleven: “from the time when the perpetual sacrifice shall have been taken away.” This is the repetition of what was previously read (viii, 13 and xx, 31) concerning the persecution of Antiochus, with this notable difference, however, that there is now no mention of the temple, nor of the sanctuary, nor of anything that could recall a past long since and forever gone. The perpetual sacrifice in question is therefore the sacrifice of the new covenant, which has succeeded that which, according to the law of Moses, was offered morning and evening in the temple of Jerusalem, and to which, with a thousand times more reason, belongs the name *jugis sacrificium*, since it is offered in accordance with the law of its institution, without any interruption either by day or by night, from east to west, in all lands and under all skies. It is, in a word, the sacrifice of our altars, which then, in those terrible days, will be everywhere proscribed, everywhere forbidden, and, except for what can be done and will be done in the underground shadow of the catacombs, everywhere interrupted.

We know, in the third place, that at the same time the abomination of desolation will be set up: “A tempore cuм ablatum fuerit juge sacrificium, et posita fuerit abominatio in desolationem.” But what will in this case be the abomination of desolation? Evidently something analogous to what appeared in the persecution of Antiochus, when the temple of Jerusalem was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius and defiled by all kinds of impurities and profanations, as has been reported above. Something analogous, we say, all things considered moreover in view of the difference of times and places, and the disproportion between a local persecution, such as that of the time of the Maccabees, and the worldwide persecution that will be that of Antichrist. But still, what? Some new monster of idolatry established in our temples, become the temples of the god-humanity, of the god-reason, of the god immanent in the world, finally triumphing, after so many efforts of free thought, over the transcendent God of Christian revelation? Some Luciferian mystery drawn from the dark caverns of Masonic conventicles and installed in broad daylight, in place of the tabernacles overturned of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Some impure worship rendered to idols of flesh and blood, after the manner of what was already seen in the worst days of our great revolution? So many hypotheses that an easy imagination, building upon the data of the past, may suggest to us.

But what is the value of data from the past for conjectures about the future? It was with great insight that Bossuet wrote: “I tremble when I put my hands on the future (1).” The safest course, then, will be to set aside any specific determination and to adhere purely and simply to the word of Scripture, where it announces the manifestation of the great Antichrist, the Antichrist par excellence, who will rise up against everything that is called God and honored with worship, even to the point of sitting in the sanctuary of God and presenting himself as if he were God (2). This is what can be said with the greatest authority about the abominatio desolationis of the last days, without it being appropriate to worry further about the how of the matter. And all that it is permitted to add with certainty is that in his appearance, the impious one, the man of sin, the son of perdition, “will be by the power of Satan, accompanied by all kinds of signs and deceptive wonders, with all the seductions of iniquity,” which, moreover, are only too much promised to us by the increasingly alarming progress of magic, necromancy, spiritualism, Luciferianism, theosophy, and, in a word, all so-called occult sciences, whatever name they bear and whatever mask they hide behind (1). As for the rest, let us repeat once again, it is a secret of the future, in which, willingly or unwillingly, we are obliged to admit that we see nothing.

But what even deeper obscurity in the final part of the Danielic oracle, where, after mention is made of the one thousand two hundred and ninety days counted from the interruption of the continual sacrifice and the establishment of the abominatio desolationis, it is said: Blessed is he who waits and reaches the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days! It is not, without doubt, that even here everything is darkness and obscurity, for it appears quite clearly that it is a matter of the expectation so often recommended thereafter in the Scriptures of the New Testament, “of the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (2)”: consequently, as Saint Jerome expressly says in his commentary on the present verse of Daniel, the term of the 1335 days clearly marks the hour of the parousia, “when the Lord and Savior will return in his majesty.” That, I say, seems sufficiently clear, provided one refers to what the angel said a little earlier about the resurrection of the dead and the eternal rewards of the righteous. But how many shadows now, mingled with this light! What, in particular, are the aforementioned 1290 days? What above all are the 45 that are added to them to complete the sum of 1335, and what is the reason for distinguishing them from the others? Would they mark the interval that will separate the defeat of the Antichrist from the coming of the judge of the living and the dead? And in that case, would this number of 45, like that of 1290 with which it is added, be an exact number, to be taken in the proper and natural sense of the letter, or rather one of those mystical numbers of which the books of the prophets offer so many examples? So many mysteries that remain impenetrable until events provide something to decipher the enigma; so many seals that will only be lifted at the time of the end, and will be lifted only for the good, for the faithful servants of Jesus Christ, for those who, according to the very beautiful expression of the apostle, “love his appearing,” who diligunt adventum ejus. For as for the others, as has already been said, they will not understand; but, rebellious to all warnings as were those of Noah’s generation, they will be surprised by the catastrophe that will suddenly fall upon them at the very moment when they say: peace and security. *cuм dixerint pax et securitas, tunc repentinus eis superveniet interitus, sicut dolor in utero habenti, et non effugient* (4).

So far, we have therefore highlighted, and, as far as our means allowed, commented on and explained the different oracles of Daniel concerning the abomination of desolation. This was the preliminary investigation, motivated by the difficulties presented by the passage in Saint Matthew 24:15 and following, and in particular by the question of what exactly the Gospel prophecy referred to, where it says: “When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place—let the reader understand,” etc. Now, however, after the preceding explanations, the answer on which the desired solution depends will be very easy; we will present it as a conclusion, in a simple and brief exposition.

And first of all, we will have no difficulty in acknowledging that Jesus, in referring to the prophecy of Daniel, was indeed alluding to the oracle of the ninth chapter, concerning the time and events of the siege. This is demonstrated decisively by the warnings about fleeing into the mountains, given to those who would be in Judea, as soon as the abomination of desolation is seen in the temple: which, according to the comparison of the different texts of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, was to begin to appear at the same time as the investment of Jerusalem by the Roman armies would begin. All of this is established in exegesis as well as in history, accepted without dispute by the universality of interpreters, and we will be careful not to contradict it.

But what seems more evident, if it may be so, and even more certain, is that the oracle of Daniel chiefly referred to was that of the twelfth chapter, the very one we last interpreted, concerning the time of the Antichrist and the great persecution that will come under his reign. And here I could observe first of all that there is nothing in the Gospel text that restricts the scope of this expression, *abominationem desolationis quae dicta est a Daniele propheta*, to the sole abomination foretold for the time of the siege; nothing whatsoever that determines its scope to Daniel ix, 27, to the exclusion of Daniel xiii, 11. I could then remark that Our Lord does not say: When you see the abomination foretold by Daniel established in the temple, established in a holy place, in loco sancto, which is a more general expression that goes beyond the Jєωιѕн horizon and carries the thought beyond the Temple of Jerusalem and the events of which it was to be the setting. I could, I say, bring forward these considerations, which are not without value and would be usefully set out, in the absence of other evidence; but I do not insist on them, and prefer to rely on two much more decisive arguments.

The first is drawn from the parenthetical remark: “Let the reader understand! Qui legit, intelligat,”immediately attached to the words: « When you see the abomination foretold by the prophet Daniel ». Indeed, this parenthetical remark contains an obvious allusion to what was noted above, regarding the obscurity of the oracle of the twelfth chapter. Moreover, it responds directly to the passage where it is said that the impious would not understand it, that only the faithful would receive its understanding: Neque intelligent omnes mp porro docti intelligent. Therefore, let the one who reads understand! It is a tacit indication, but all the more significant, of the precise place of the prophet to which we are being referred.

That is for the first argument. But the second will be even more decisive. It is drawn from the words that are read a little further below in the text of Saint Matthew: There will then be such great distress, that there has been nothing of the similar since the beginning of the world, and there will never be any. This is word for word what is said, Dan., xii, 1: *Et veniet tempus quale non fuit ex quo gentes esse coeperunt usque ad illud.*

From all this, it follows that, in the passage of Saint Matthew which has been the subject of the present study, Our Lord aimed at both of the two oracles of Daniel mentioned above, and joined in a single prophetic tableau the corresponding events, those of the siege, and those of the persecution of the antichrist. It is because, in fact, these events, however distant they were
to be from one another in the order of time, represented entirely analogous situations, which by themselves lent themselves to being presented and arranged in a single perspective
of near and distant future. On the one hand, the crisis signaling the end of the Jєωιѕн religion, which gave way to that of the New Testament; on the other, the crisis signaling the end of the religion of the earth, which will be abolished to make way for that of eternity. On the one hand as on the other, days such as had never been seen, such as would never again be seen in this world: but, days of vengeance at the time of the siege, ἡμέραι ἐκδικήσεως (Luke, xx, 22), for never was there seen, never will there be seen vengeance similar to that which was then carried out against Jerusalem; days of persecution at the time of the antichrist, θλῖψις ἡμερῶν ἐκείνων (Matt., xxiv, 29), for never has one seen, never will one see a persecution comparable to that in which Satan, more unleashed than ever, will exercise without limit his seduction through means unheard of until then. Finally, on one side as on the other, the finimondo at the end of the days of tribulation, statim post tribulationem dierum illorum. But after the tribulation of the days of the siege, the finimondo in image and figure, of which we spoke in a previous article. After the tribulation of the days of the antichrist, the real finimondo, where the sign of the Son of Man will appear in all truth, whom all the tribes of the earth will see coming in great power and majesty.

With these simple observations, the reasonings of the modernists once again go up in smoke, though they do not hold on to it not for said. They still have the most invincible of all the arguments, or at least the one they consider such, and which we must examine before leaving the eschatological discourse that has occupied us up to this point, and moving on to the other passages of Scripture that they distort, according to the word of Saint Peter (II Petr., 1171, 16), for their own destruction, and also, alas! for that of those who listen to them.