As I look out each morning on the quiet country landscape where I live, it is hard to believe there is so much insanity assailing us from every side. I would panic perhaps, seeing how it is increasing daily and destroying our way of life if I didn’t know what Christ and his saints and holy people have predicted for the end times.
It has been a long time since I have posted to this blog. Sometimes life intervenes to such an extent it is all one can do to cope from day to day. And yet nothing lasts forever, although it certainly does not get any easier as the “golden years” progress. I am glad to have lived in a time where it was possible to believe just a little that things would soon get better and reverse themselves. It meant for families that there at least was hope for their children.
Today those children face a bleak existence in many cases, with little hope at all of things getting better and a great deal of fear they will only get worse. Almost daily I hear in my email, from my own children, from the suffering elderly, from those newly enlightened, “When will this end; why has God forsaken us?” And indeed Our Lord asked this of His own Father as He hung on the Cross.
And so when I read these words from Henry Cardinal Manning, I knew I must pass them on, to bring at least a little solace to those who are suffering so in this world gone mad. I hope and pray that it brings some peace to troubled hearts.
Help Nearest When Need Greatest
(Excerpts from a sermon preached to the English Synod of Oscott by Rev. Henry Edward Manning, 1852, on the feast of St. Edward the Confessor.)
God was with them in the wilderness: they pressed upon the Divine Presence, though they knew it not. The Omnipotence by which the world was made was with them; and in the hands of the Word made Flesh… What have we here but the shadowing forth of some deeper mysteries? Though the scene lies in the common course of our Lord’s earthly life, yet all His words and works are charged with a profounder meaning. The Son of Man in the wilderness, a fainting multitude, a miracle of compassion on their natural hunger, this we see before us. But there are here greater things than these. The natural order passes into the supernatural, and the whole becomes a symbol and a parable of the Kingdom of Grace. Jesus, the disciples, and the multitude, set forth to us the new creation of God, the Head and the Body; the Church ministering and ministered unto; the whole continuous dispensation of Grace, its fountain and its channels; its sacramental action, its manifold unity of elements, earthly and heavenly, human and divine. This miracle, then, has many lessons for our instruction and encouragement… It is a divine pledge to us that the compassion of the Son of God is ever upon His Church.
From the throne of His glory He watches over the multitude who still follow Him in the wilderness of this evil world. The whole Church throughout all the earth is before His gaze and the sufferings and sorrows of every soul are present to His care. The Sacred Heart of Jesus has not withdrawn its compassion with His visible presence. It is enthroned at the right hand of God; but it is yet with us. “We have not an High Priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but was tempted in all things like as we are, without sin.” There is no depth of human trial which He has not tasted, no suffering in which He has not a share. “It behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest before God, that He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that wherein He Himself hath suffered and been tempted, He is able to succour them also that are tempted.” The compassion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is ever present in every place. It flows throughout the Church. It has poured forth its divine tenderness through all successions of time. It is the fountain of all ministries of consolation in providence and in grace.
And this leads us to another truth taught us by the miracle in the wilderness; namely, that not only is the compassion and the omnipotence of the Son of God always with His Church, but that, when season and time are ripe, He is ever near to interpose in its behalf. It was not on the first, nor on the second day, but on the third, that He fed the hungering- multitude. He interferes, not when man’s expectations demand, but when His own time is full. There seems to be a divine jealousy in the acts of His omnipotence. He alone can do them, and He will do them in such time and way as that all may know the event to be His work. He loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it. “His own hand will work for it, and will not leave the issue of its trials in any other. The whole career of the Church verifies this law. For what is it but a series of conflicts and victories, or straits and deliverances, of last extremities and almighty interpositions?
The whole history of the Church is one endless struggle: heresy against truth, schism against unity, the world against God’s kingdom. From age to age we see the finger of His special providence interposing at the last hour of need. When men have thought all hope gone, when all human help has been in vain, and all earthly foresight baffled, when looking on each other they have said, “From whence can anyone fill them here with bread in the wilderness?” then, and not till then, His destined time is come… When our divine Lord promised to the head whom He had chosen for His earthly kingdom, that the gates of hell should not prevail against it, did He not thereby prophesy that they should storm upon His Church? When He said,” Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,” did He not foretell the trial and the victory? And are they not perpetual both, the prophecy and the promise, fulfilled and fulfilling through all the course of the Church even to this day?…
With schisms through three weary centuries came every form of error and with error contradictions, doubts, and controversies; and now the minds of men seem to have lost perception and earnestness for truth as truth. Each claims his own view and is content. No matter who may err, or how deeply, so that each be free to choose. Not this or that doctrine of Christian intelligence, the food of the soul, has suffered this dishonour; not this or that article of the Creed, but the principle of faith, the divine foundation of belief,
has been uprooted. The great wound of England is loss of faith in the divine reality of objective truth.
It is the head and the heart that have suffered. Indifferentism has stunted and impoverished both. When the Church ceased to teach, men began to opine. Opinion became the ultimate rule of faith. I am not speaking only of freethinkers and sceptics, whose light philosophy derides the belief that Revelation is an object definite and positive, spread before the reason as the firmament before the eye. Such speculators, indeed, know no truth but the veering shadows and states of their own mind. In them a carelessness for truth is no wonder, and less cause of fear. But there is a wound which has struck deeper into our people. It is the forfeiture of faith, even among the better and the truer; a disbelief in any divine tradition which alone has objective certainty and therefore in the perpetual presence of a Teacher sent from God … thousands wander benighted without a guide. They have been taught to believe that no such Teacher or tradition now exists; that God has not provided for man a certain knowledge of His truth…
But was it Protestantism that gained what faith lost? Far from it… Sin, worldliness, indifference, unbelief, practical atheism, all alike were gainers, but little else. As the Church grew weak … the powers of truth and right, the influences of the unseen world, were weakened too. So ran on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, till the Catholics of England were numbered only by thousands, all but absorbed in the mass in which they lay concealed. Then was the crisis full, and the hour to work was come. The Lord came; He stood in the wilderness. Once more the creative power of grace passes from His hands, multiplying the little that remained; reproducing what was once destroyed, covering again with His presence the land so long wasted and bare; pastors and flocks, sanctuaries and altars, families of religious, men and women…
Nothing shall be lacking in the hour of need; for the Multiplier is there. All things do Him service; even those that resist Him, in resistance do His will. For three hundred years the empire of old Borne strove to put out the Truth; for three hundred years, in every city and province of its mighty sway, the praetor and the lector, the axes and the rods, wreaked their worst upon the Faith. For three hundred years all the conscious influence of Koine was bent in one aim to destroy the Church of God, but all the while its unconscious influence, even without its knowledge and against its will, wrought for the Name of Jesus. It confirmed His kingdom upon earth. Through all the Church still stood, expanding in calmness and in power, molding to itself the framework and the substance of the empire. It had united all nations, that the Church might penetrate mankind; it had proclaimed silence in the earth, that the infallible voice might be heard; its fleets and armies opened land and sea for the passage of evangelists; its roads and commerce laid the world together ; its laws protected the faithful, its cities were Apostles’ thrones. So shall it be again. Let us fear nothing but mistrust.
We need but faith, and faith too is a gift of God. He is with us in His compassion and His omnipotence. The Lord is come into our wilderness, and the hour to interpose is nigh. Though the line of St. Augustine be broken, and his See without a name; though the saints of our Saxon land seem left without offspring or inheritance, St. Alban and St. Bede, St. Edmund and St. Thomas, shall yet have sons as princes in all lands. The land that was desert and impassable shall be glad, and the wilderness shall rejoice and shall flourish like the lily. It shall bud forth and blossom, and shall rejoice with joy and praise; the glory of Libanus is given to it the beauty of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord and the beauty of our God. Strengthen ye the feeble hands and confirm the weak knees. Say to the faint-hearted: “Take courage and fear not: behold your God will bring the revenge of recompense; God Himself will come and save you.”
Dear Readers,
Some may be wearying of this thread, but it is important for those who might yet believe the falsehoods of others to fully understand just how twisted their theology is and how far it is from the beliefs of true Catholics throughout the ages.
Remember that a group calling themselves catacomb Catholics separated themselves from other true Catholics last month by condemning as a heresy this statement, taken from an imprimatured work written in the 1950s: “The cult of the Blessed Virgin is necessary for salvation and therefore seriously required. Whoever refuses to have a minimum of Marian devotion would be put in serious danger of compromising their eternal destiny…” Why anyone would question this statement when every right-minded Catholic I know is devoted to the Blessed Virgin? This work does not teach that one loses his/her soul if such devotion is not practiced; only that Catholics would be in danger of doing so. The reason for this minimum of devotion should be recognized as necessary precisely because Our Lady was co-redemptrix. As such she could scarcely be dispensed with, being the very one whose fiat made it possible for Christ to be born, to establish His Church on earth and to suffer and die for our sins so we could reach Heaven. Had Mary not obeyed the will of God and “conceived of the Holy Ghost,” there would be no Jesus, no Church, and no redemption.
There have been those who question whether the belief in this title of Our Lady’s was actually a permitted opinion in the 1940s-50s. A friend and site patron was kind enough to bring our attention to the fact that proof of this exists in an article written for The American Ecclesiastical Review by Rev. J. B. Carol. O.F.M. (July, 1949 issue; “The Problem of Our Lady’s Co-Redemption”). Happily this issue is one I have access to in my own library. In his article, Rev. Carol begins by referencing “the lively discussions on the nature and extent of Mary’s share in the Savior’s redemptive work” noting that such “theological discussions, if conducted with calmness and sobriety, should have a healthy effect upon the human mind, helping to elucidate obscure issues and thus enrich the treasury of our knowledge.” He goes on to explain that the word co-redemptrix was known to Franciscan theologians writing in the 1300s, and one of these theologians observes that other writers referred to this term prior to his own writings.
So the term is ancient, and scarcely a novelty, which is one of the things Rev. Carol sets out to demonstrate in his article. He rightly upbraids those who call this term “ambiguous and an equivocation,” reminding them: “It is not the task of any private theologian to check up on the terminology used in Papal documents. These are always meticulously worded and deserve our utmost respect.” He then goes on to cite several instances of the use of this word by the popes themselves, as we did in our last post on this subject. He also notes that Henry Cardinal Manning was an avid promoter of the use of this title. “These titles…co-redemptrix, co-operatrix, reparatrix and mediatrix…are not metaphors, but truths,” he quotes from Manning’s letter recommending a book on the co-redemption.
To illustrate the fact that the popes understand our Lady’s co-redemption as we today understand it, Rev. Carol quotes Pope Pius XII, who as a cardinal wrote in 1937: “The application of the merits of Christ constitutes, together with their acquisition, a single complete work: that of salvation. It was fitting that Mary should cooperate equally in the two phases of the same work; the unity of the divine plan demands it.” And from Pope Benedict XV’s Inter Sodalicia, March 22, 1918: “The Blessed Virgin…suffered and almost died together with her suffering and dying Son, she abdicated her maternal rights over her Son for the salvation of men and, in so far as was within her power, she immolated her Son in order to appease the justice of God, in such a manner that we may rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ.”
In concluding his article, Rev. Carol notes that while there are eminent theologians who oppose the use of the title, there also were eminent theologians, “the Giants of Scholasticism,” who opposed the definition of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. He points out that the term co-redemptrix is accepted and endorsed by the majority of the theologians and this gives them better footing in the argument. Given the term’s endorsement by the popes, it seems it could hardly be any other way. While perhaps no formal decision has been made in this argument, the minds of the Roman Pontiffs have certainly been made known. We can hope and pray that further clarification on this topic at some point in time will help Catholics better understand its application and avoid any dangers that may accompany a wrong understanding of its intended meaning. In the meantime, we can only continue to offer prayers for those who refuse to obey the decrees of the popes and, not content with dragging themselves off to hell by disobeying Christ’s Vicars, attempt to drag with them any who remain willfully ignorant of papal teaching.
Many who read what is available on this site comment that while they do not agree with the position held by Michael and Peter Dimond, operators of what is known as Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), they often visit their site because these purported “monks” have good information. A “position,” i.e., an allowable opinion by Church standards would be one thing. But here we are dealing with heresy, and heresy condemned as such by Pope Pius XII, (Feeneyism). It is not “okay” to visit the sites of known heretics, even if they present some things that are interesting or even unique, lest we cooperate in their heresy. While sometimes it is necessary to the truth to include some of these sites in research pieces, they should always be disavowed (and are on this site) and never recommended.
Belloc’s formula for establishing the existence of heresy
Heretics are very clever. They disguise their errors by carefully weaving them into a fabric consisting mainly of truthful statements, the better to lure them in, and this is how they deceive the unwary. In the Introduction to his work, The Great Heresies, (1920s) the respected Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc provides the following components of heretical perversity. “Heresy means…the warping of a system by ‘exception’: by ‘picking out’ one part of the structure and implies that the scheme is marred by taking away one part of it, denying one part of it, and either leaving the void unfilled or filling it with some new affirmation.
“The denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of a heresy. It is of the essence of heresy that it leaves standing a great part of the structure it attacks. It is the taking away from the moral scheme by which we have lived of a particular part, the denial of that part and the attempt to replace it by an innovation.”
It is very tempting, when one sees that “a great part of it” is right, to then be convinced that a few little errors may not matter and these folks are not so bad after all, just misguided. But that would be a grave error in judgment. Like all Traditionalists, MHFM has “plucked” the papacy from their midst and have denied not only the papacy but also the dogma of baptism of blood and desire, following the heretic Leonard Feeney. They then pose the innovation by setting themselves up as the true authority. According to Wikipedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Holy_Family_Monastery):
“Most Holy Family Monastery was founded in 1967, in Berlin, New Jersey, by a self-proclaimed Benedictine monk named Joseph Natale (1933-1995), originally as a community for handicapped men. Natale entered the Benedictine Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1960 as a lay postulant, but left less than a year later to start his own Holy Family Monastery. According to an archivist of the Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Natale left before taking vows; he never actually became a Benedictine monk.
“Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Natale denounced the Second Vatican Council and the New Mass, and by the mid-1970s the community had separated from the Vatican. By mid-1980s, there were ten monks in it, but by 1994 the number declined to three. Shortly after a conference in 1994, John Vennari left to work for Fr. Nicholas Gruner.
“Natale died in 1995, whereupon Michael Dimond (born Frederick Dimond), who joined in 1992 at the age of 19 after converting to Catholicism four years earlier was elected the Superior. Soon after, he relocated to Granger, New York (close to Fillmore, New York), where Natale owned more than 90 acres (36 ha) of donated land.”
Canon Law contradicts MHFM and their followers
• Canon 147: “An ecclesiastical office cannot be validly obtained without canonical provision. Canonical provision means the grant of an ecclesiastical office by competent ecclesiastical authority, made according to the sacred canons.” In the Canon Law Digest, Vol. 3, under Can. 147, we find the following comment: “Excommunication as vitandus is inflicted for accepting office from lay authority,” (pg. 71). We are not allowed to associate in any fashion with vitandus heretics, and certainly we are never allowed to read their writings.
• Canon 492 §1: “The bishop, but not the vicar-capitular or administrator, can create religious congregations. He shall not establish them, nor allow their foundation, without first consulting the Holy See…”
• Can. 492 §§2-3: The title and religious habit of an established religious organization cannot be assumed by those not legitimately belonging to it or by a new organization.
• Canon 499: “All religious are subject to the Roman Pontiff as their highest superior who they are bound to obey also in virtue of the vow of obedience…
• Canon 542§1 (1): Admission into the novitiate is invalid in the case of…Persons who have lapsed from the Catholic Faith into a non-Catholic sect (Traditionalism is a non-Catholic sect).
• Canon 572: “For the validity of any religious profession the following is required: (2) He must be admitted to profession by the legitimate superior… (per Can. 147; see above).
(3) A valid novitiate must have proceeded…
• Canon 575: (Revs. Woywod-Smith commentary) “The Church wants the novices to be absolutely free to return to the world or to take vows and she guarantees the same freedom to those who take temporary vows.” (All canons taken form Rev. Woywod-Smith’s A Practical Commentary on the [1917] Code of Canon Law.)
So to summarize the above:
1.) Joseph Natale was never a professed religious, far less a legitimately appointed superior.
2.) Only a bishop could create a new religious congregation (Can. 492), and Natale was no bishop; therefore his founding of the monastery under the auspices of the Benedictines was null and void.
3.) Even had he been a true bishop, he would need to have obtained permission of the Roman Pontiff before founding the monastery (Can. 492).
4.) The Canon Laws at the time bound him to obey the Roman Pontiff in all things, even under temporary vows of obedience. In all likelihood such vows were not legitimate in the first place, since nearly all jurisdiction ceased shortly after the death of Pope Pius XII, (Can. 572). But Pope Boniface VIII infallibly taught: “We declare, say, define and proclaim to every human creature that by necessity for salvation they are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff,” (DZ 469).
5.) Natale, throughout this whole process, remained a layman, (Can. 575). As a layman he could scarcely have assumed superiorship of the monastery (by appointing himself). According to Can. 147 and the decision rendered on this canon by Pope Pius XII, he was a vitandus heretic. (See also DZ 960, 967.)
6.) Being only a layman himself, he could scarcely have admitted the Dimonds to the monastery validly or licitly. Michael Dimond accepted his own superiorship as the successor of Natale, a layman, therefore also making himself a vitandus.
7.) The Dimonds entered the “novitiate” under a layperson who had no office or jurisdiction and therefore could not admit them into any monastery (Can. 572).
8.) And at any rate, the Dimonds by then professed Traditionalism, and this disqualified them under Can. 543 §1 (1) from entering any religious house.
9.) No emergency of any kind justified what Natale or the Dimonds did. They were bound to obey Pope Pius XII when he infallibly proclaimed, in his papal election constitution:
“1. While the Apostolic Seat is vacant, let the Sacred College of Cardinals have no power or jurisdiction at all in those things which pertain to the Pope while he was alive…but let everything be held, reserved for the future Pope. And thus we decree that whatever power or jurisdiction pertaining to the Roman Pontiff, while he is alive (unless in as far as it is expressly permitted in this, Our Constitution) the meeting of Cardinals itself may have taken for exercising, is null and void.
“2. “Likewise we order that the Sacred College of Cardinals is not able to dispose of the laws of the Apostolic Seat and the Roman Church in any manner it wishes, nor may it attempt to detract wheresoever from the laws of the same, either directly or indirectly through a species of connivance, or through dissimulation of crimes perpetrated against the same laws, either after the death of the Pontiff or in time of vacancy, [however] it may seem to be attempted. Indeed, we will that it ought to guard and defend against the same contention of all men.
“3. “Laws given by the Roman Pontiffs are in no way able to be corrected or changed through the meeting of the cardinals of the Roman Church [the See] being vacant; nor is anything able to be taken away or added, nor is there able to be made any dispensation in any manner concerning the laws themselves or some part of them. This is very evident from pontifical Constitutions [on]…the election of the Roman Pontiff. But if anything contrary to this prescript occurs or is by chance attempted, we declare it by Our Supreme authority to be null and void,” (Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, paras.1- 3, Ch. 1; Pope Pius XII, 1945.)
We are not answerable to bishops consecrated without any papal mandate, or those not in communion with a true Roman Pontiff, however “orthodox” they may appear to be. We are living during an interregnum and must obey the papal laws that govern such a circumstance. So if the Dimonds or anyone else want to argue whether Canon Law applies during an interregnum, or whether an “emergency” situation overrides present circumstances, let them read this constitution and shake their fists at the pope. It is very clear why some wish to declare Pope Pius XII an antipope, for then they can follow their own Satanic wills straight into hell and ignore the Divine will, conveyed to us by Christ through His Vicars.
Dear Readers,
Finally back on the site and hope to be posting these regularly. My apologies to all.
It seems that the argument of validity versus liciety of Traditional “priests” ordained personally by Lefevbre and Thuc will not go away, despite irrefutable proofs offered to the contrary. To begin with a distinction must be made between those ordained as priests by these men and those consecrated as bishops. Not many if any Traditional priests, to my knowledge, can any longer claim direct descent from Thuc and Lefebvre. (While some believe Lefebvre was validly ordained and consecrated, questions concerning the Masonic affiliations of Lefebvre’s ordaining bishop and consecrator Achille Lienart clearly bring his own ordination, hence later consecration, into serious doubt). Some of the priests created by these two men subsequently have been “consecrated” bishops, and as such are vitandus-level heretics. Others may still be functioning as priests, yet their ordinations were never verified as certainly valid, nor can they be at this late date. And papal documents cited only later in the Traditional game prove they are not just illicit but doubtfully valid, and cannot function unless dispensed by the pope himself. This is because all those who followed Lefebvre and Thuc engaged in heresy and schism, and could not be abjured and absolved because no one possessed the necessary faculties to accomplish this. And Can. 2314 adds to heresy — and it has been proven without a doubt that that both Lefebvre and Thuc were heretics — the vindicative penalty of infamy of law, which requires a dispensation only the pope can grant, (Can. 2295). We have no true pope, ergo…
Therefore Lefebvre’s priests’ ordinations, also Thuc’s, are doubtfully valid AT BEST. Why is it important to make this distinction? First of all, because the truth matters. Secondly, because Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII have infallibly decreed that this is the case. And thirdly, some believe that because these priests are only “illicit” they may be called to give last rites in danger or death, and there are a (rare) few validly ordained priests left to call. Some canon lawyers and theologians have opined, however, that when summoning a heretic for Extreme Unction under Can. 2261§ 2, there is always a danger of perversion so one is better to simply make a perfect Act of Contrition and Spiritual Communion, or if unable have others pray for and with the person who is dying. Most are in a compromised mental when close to death, and certainly this is not time to try and ward off dangers to the faith. But when the person in question is doubtfully valid, there is actually serious doubt that one is even receiving the Sacrament. The Church teaches that this risk cannot be taken without endangering one’s soul, and so those priests whose ordinations were performed by Lefebvre or Thuc or any other schismatic or heretic bishop cannot be summoned in danger of death.
In his decision that schismatic bishops can never appoint or elect Catholic bishops to an office, Pope Pius IX taught in Etsi multa:
“24. But these men, having progressed more boldly in the ways of wickedness and destruction, as happens to heretical sects from God’s just judgment, have wished to create a hierarchy also for themselves, as we have intimated. They have chosen and set up a pseudo-bishop, a certain notorious apostate from the Catholic faith…
“25. But as even the rudiments of Catholic faith declare, no one can be considered a bishop who is not linked in communion of faith and love with Peter, upon whom is built the Church of Christ; who does not adhere to the supreme Pastor to whom the sheep of Christ are committed to be pastured; and who is not bound to the confirmer of fraternity which is in the world. 26. Therefore following the custom and example of Our Predecessors and of holy legislation, BY THE POWER GRANTED TO US FROM HEAVEN, We declare the election of the said [Old Catholic bishop], performed against the sanctions of the holy canons to be illicit, null, and void. We furthermore declare his consecration sacrilegious. We additionally excommunicate whoever has adhered to them and belonging to their party has furnished help, favor, aid, or consent. We declare, proclaim, and COMMAND that they are separated from the communion of the Church. They are to be considered among those with whom all faithful Christians are forbidden by the Apostle to associate and have social exchange to such an extent that, as he plainly states, they may not even be greeted,” [VITANDUS!] (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9etsimu.htm). In Quartus Supra, Pope Pius IX clearly states that even without a formal declaration, the Armenians resisting the authority of the papal see were considered schismatics. Likewise all who “avoid carrying out their orders” (those of the Roman Pontiffs) are reckoned as schismatics.
And also from Graves ac diuturnae, Pope Pius IX teaches on such Old Catholics: “They repeatedly state openly that they do not in the least reject the Catholic Church and its visible head but rather that they are zealous for the purity of Catholic doctrine declaring that they are the heirs of the ancient faith and the only true Catholics. But in fact they refuse to acknowledge all the divine prerogatives of the vicar of Christ on earth and do not submit to His supreme magisterium…You should remind them to beware of these treacherous enemies of the flock of Christ and their poisoned foods. They should totally shun their religious celebrations, their buildings, and their chairs of pestilence which they have with impunity established to transmit the sacred teachings. They should shun their writings and all contact with them. They should not have any dealings or meetings with usurping priests and apostates from the faith who dare to exercise the duties of an ecclesiastical minister without possessing a legitimate mission or any jurisdiction. They should avoid them as strangers and thieves who come only to steal, slay, and destroy…”
The Old Catholics were the model for ALL Traditional organizations. It is clear from these teachings that no one without committing mortal sin can associate with or receive doubtfully valid Sacraments from such persons without also becoming heretics and schismatics. Pope Pius VI further taught in Charitas: “10. “For the right of ordaining bishops belongs only to the Apostolic See, as the Council of Trent declares; it cannot be assumed by any bishop or metropolitan without obliging Us to declare schismatic both those who ordain and those who are ordained, thus invalidating their future actions…24. They must not grant dimissorial letters for ordinations. Nor must they appoint, depute, or confirm pastors, vicars, missionaries, helpers, functionaries, ministers, or others, whatever their title, for the care of souls and the administration of the Sacraments UNDER ANY PRETEXT OF NECESSITY WHATSOEVER… 26. “We command those who have been or are to be elected, to behave in no way as archbishops, bishops, parish priests, or vicars nor to call themselves by the name of any cathedral or parochial church, nor to assume any jurisdiction, authority, or faculty for the care of souls under the penalty of suspension and invalidity.”
These men cannot function in the capacity of bishops whether elected or self-appointed, (DZ 967). They may have received orders but not jurisdiction, and the pope is declaring the acts they perform null and void for want of an office approved by him and the subsequent jurisdiction that goes with it. Pope Pius XII, in Vacantis Apostolica Sedis, only reiterates the teachings above, applying them specifically to an interregnum such as we have experienced for the past 58 years come this October.
“1. “We decree that whatever power or jurisdiction pertaining to the Roman Pontiff, while he is alive (unless in as far as it is expressly permitted in this, Our Constitution) the meeting of Cardinals itself may have taken for exercising, is null and void. 3. “Laws given by the Roman Pontiffs are in no way able to be corrected or changed through the meeting of the cardinals of the Roman Church [the See] being vacant; nor is anything able to be taken away or added, nor is there able to be made any dispensation in any manner concerning the laws themselves or some part of them. This is very evident from pontifical Constitutions [on]…the election of the Roman Pontiff. But if anything contrary to this prescript occurs or is by chance attempted, we declare it BY OUR SUPREME AUTHORITY to be null and void,” (Vacantis Apostolica Sedis, paras.1- 3, Ch. 1; Pope Pius XII, 1945.)
The laws of the Church concerning dimissorial letters and assignments to a diocese were violated and these priests never received an office, as Pope Pius VI teaches above. This was a law, “…given by the Roman Pontiff(s).” According to Can. 147, “An ecclesiastical office cannot be validly obtained without canonical appointment. By canonical appointment is understood the conferring of an ecclesiastical office by the competent ecclesiastical authority in harmony with the sacred canons,” (Can. 147). In addition, “Those who have been assigned to the divine ministry at least by the first tonsure are called clerics,” (Can. 108). Can. 118: “Only clerics can obtain the power of either orders or ecclesiastical jurisdiction…” Rev. Charles Augustine, commenting on Can. 118 explains that the nature of first tonsure clearly indicates that it arises from the Ordinary’s office as an act issuing from his jurisdictional faculties granted by the Pope and not specifically the power of Orders, since tonsure is not an order but a ceremony or rite. These men are ordered by Pope Pius VI to assume no “jurisdiction, authority, or faculty.” And Thuc and Lefebvre lost their jurisdiction through their many heresies.
No one is denying that men fit for ordination become priests when unquestionably validly ordained by validly ordained and consecrated bishops, (and I do believe that Lefebvre’s ordination AND consecration were doubtfully valid). But those asserting their validity must prove:
1. Their fitness for ordination under the 1917 Code, (Canons 973-974, also Canons 983-988);
2. Absolution from the proper bishop, abjuration made for such heresy and schism;
3. Dispensation from infamy of law by a true pope;
4. Possession of dimissorial letters, (Can. 955).
And without such proofs, which they cannot provide, there can be no certitude of their validity! In 1347, the Holy See condemned the heresy that certainty cannot be obtained by resorting to the Thomistic method, (DZ 553-54; 556). All these teachings come to us from the very decrees of Christ’s vicars whose decisions we are bound to abide by, regardless of our “opinions” or the teachings of self-appointed “experts.” We are certain these men are invalid because they are proclaimed to be such from the mouth of infallible formal certitude. The Vatican Council teaches that where papal teaching is concerned, “It is not sufficient to shun heretical iniquity, unless those errors are also shunned which come more or less close to it,” (DZ 1820). Language matters; liciety is lawfulness, and without it one cannot function as a legitimate pastor according to DZ 967. But validity means such men are conducting ceremonies which amount to idol worship, simulating Mass and Sacraments and worshipping a piece of bread as the Body of Christ. For even those who justify their attendance at Traditional “masses” by claiming their actions are only “illicit” believe they are receiving Christ in the Eucharist, (although gravely sinning in the process). This reduces Traditionalism to nothing more than paganism.
As St. Robert Bellarmine taught, a doubtful pope is no pope. Therefore a doubtful priest is no priest, just as a (truly) doubtful law is no law. Yes, Trads have cited the canon saying that orders have the presumption of validity, but presumption must yield to infallible truth under the law itself (Can. 1827) and the teachings of Trent echoed in the Sacred Canons. Infallible papal laws and teachings cannot help but prevail over presumptions which hold for the usual, not the extraordinary case. In the 1347 errors of Nicholas Autrecort, one error stands out as particularly applicable to the situation today. Autrecort falsely held that evidence from one matter could not be used to draw inferences from or arrive at conclusions regarding another matter. This is precisely how the rules governing doubtful laws read in Canon Law. One is to use parallel passages in the Code, the purpose and circumstances of the law and determine the intent of the legislator to resolve a doubtful law. Here the legislator is assumed to be the pope (in most cases) and the councils, as commentators on the Code have affirmed.
The footnotes to the Canons, recommended for use in Can. 6 §4 in cases of doubt where one must follow the old law, also are a fruitful source of remedies. Traditionalists, in citing the laws and practices of the Church in the past to justify the absence of a papal mandate regarding episcopal consecrations totally ignore Canon Law. For while it was true that in the past there were bishops chosen without papal mandate in certain cases, recent laws issued by Pope Pius XII make it clear that such practices are no longer tolerated, (Ad Apostolorum Principis and Mediator Dei). Canon 22 states: “A more recent law given by the competent authority abolishes a former law…if it is directly contrary to the old law.” Also no evidence is admissible, Rev. Amleto Cicognani says, against documents signed by the Roman Pontiffs. This was precisely the reason for the Vatican Council definition of the jurisdictional supremacy of the Roman Pontiff; once Rome has spoken, the cause is finished.
Maintaining that bishops may validly exercise orders received from heretics and schismatics outside the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is a subterfuge which qualifies as heresy on two different counts. First of all, it contradicts the infallible decision of Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corpus and Ad Sinarum Gentum that bishops receive their jurisdiction only through the Roman Pontiff who has the right to regulate such jurisdiction; not directly from Christ Himself. Secondly, it denies that the Pope has the power to exercise this right over bishops and limit such jurisdiction, when the Vatican Council has decreed that “The Roman Pontiff has the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which pertain to faith and morals but also in those things which pertain to the discipline and government of the Church,” (DZ 1831). Those who count as only illicit the ministrations of Traditionalists must ask themselves: Do I accept papal teaching in its entirety, believing all the popes, St. Peter through Pius XII, have taught concerning divine revelation, without reservation? Because THAT is the true measure of a Catholic.
