by T. Stanfill Benns | Nov 28, 2019 | New Blog
+St. Catherine Laboure+
“And He said also to the multitudes, “When you see a cloud rising from the west, presently you say, ‘A shower is coming, and so it happeneth: and when ye see the south wind blow, you say ‘There will be heat,’ and it cometh to pass. You hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of heaven and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?” (Luke 12: 54-56)
“A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and a sign will not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. And He left them and went away.” (Matt. 16:4)
“And now I have told you before it come to pass; that when it shall come to pass, you may believe.” (John 14: 29)
It is believed by the majority of Traditionalists that despite the devastation we see in Rome and all around us, all is yet well with the remnant, and we can expect the departure of Francis and anticipate the installment of a new pope that will restore the Church to Her former glory. The Scripture quotes above show the folly of such fanciful thinking, promoted by those gurus calling themselves Catholic priests and lay leaders who ignore the reign of the abomination of desolation and delay the Latter Days to some more convenient time. They would have us believe that the successor of “pope” Siri — a heretic cardinal, who according to Giuffre’s own accounts, whimped out when put to the test — is our best hope to save the Catholic Church! Well let us instead heed the fateful words of a true cardinal and champion of the faith, Henry Cardinal Manning, and abandon the counterfeit for the genuine article. Then we will know what to expect from these signs we see, in order to avoid Our Lord’s condemnation as hypocrites. For once Rome apostatized from the faith, there is no happy ever after for the Church until the great and terrible consequences of this apostasy have run their course. Hear what Manning says regarding the fate of Rome in our day:
“The writers of the Church tell us that in the latter days the city of Rome will probably become apostate from the Church and Vicar of Jesus Christ; and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall on the place from ‘which he once reigned over the nations of the world.’ For what is it that makes Rome sacred, but the presence of the Vicar of Jesus Christ? What has it that should be dear in the sight of God, save only the presence of the Vicar of His Son? Let the Church of Christ depart from Rome, and Rome will be no more in the eyes of God than Jerusalem of old. Jerusalem, the Holy City, chosen by God, was cast down and consumed by fire, because it crucified the Lord of Glory; and the city of Rome, which has been the seat of the Vicar of Jesus Christ for eighteen hundred years, if it become apostate, like Jerusalem of old, will suffer a like condemnation. And, therefore, the writers of the Church tell us that the city of Rome has no prerogative except only that the Vicar of Christ is there; and if it become unfaithful, the same judgments which fell on Jerusalem, hallowed though it was by the presence of the Son of God, of the Master, and not the disciple only, shall fall likewise upon Rome.” (The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy, p. 87-88).
Manning does not apologize to his readers for being the bearer of bad news, nor does he sugar coat his predictions, all based on the teachings of the Church, including the approved writers and theologians of his day. He shoots straight from the hip and finds his mark among those Traditionalists who have ignored papal teaching for decades. In his The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ he tells his readers:
“A sorrowful tone, therefore, I readily acknowledge. If it is more so than befits the subject and the time, I acknowledge also the fault, and I trust only that it may be venial. But to desponding I cannot feel guilty… I should indeed be sorry to write a line in a tone to discourage even one simple faithful soul; but I would do even this for a moment, if in so doing I could purify our confidence of the low, human, unreasoning, unilluminated, and almost boastful and defiant tone too commonly heard. Let no one say, then, that these Lectures have a desponding tone. Sorrowful, I admit; but desponding, it could not be… Sorrowful, I am aware they are; and who can be otherwise than sorrowful, when he sees the havoc of infidelity and anarchy… Such a sorrow every Catholic ought to breathe; and if he does not partake of it, he ought carefully to examine himself, to find the reason of his exemption from a sorrow which seems inseparable from a love of the holy Catholic and Roman Church. I do not know how anyone can treat the trials of the Holy See as an abstraction.
“The Catholic Church cannot be silent; it cannot hold its peace; it cannot cease to preach the doctrines of Revelation, not only of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, but likewise of the Seven Sacraments, and of the infallibility of the Church of God, and of the necessity of unity, and of obedience to the Holy See as to a sovereign principle of truth: and because it will not be silent, and cannot compromise, and will not obey in matters that are of its own Divine prerogative, therefore it stands alone in the world; for there is not another Church so called, nor any community professing to be a Church, which does not submit, or obey, or hold its peace, when the civil governors of the world command.
“We are fond of imagining triumphs and glories for the Church on earth, that the Gospel is to be preached to all nations, and the world to be converted, and all enemies subdued, and I know not what, until some ears are impatient of hearing that there is in store for the Church a time of terrible trial: and so we do as the Jews of old, who looked for a conqueror, a king, and for prosperity; and when their Messias came in humility and in passion, they did not know Him. So, I am afraid, many among us intoxicate their minds with the visions of success and victory, and cannot endure the thought that there is a time of persecution yet to come for the Church of God.”
Comment: Well we all know “what” else; without presently obeying the continual magisterium they wish to establish one they believe will be to their liking and exonerate them. They indeed seek a worldly king who will remove the present shame of their existence from them, a living sign that God has not abandoned them. They wear their hatred of the Jews as a badge of honor, scapegoating them for their own sins, contrary to the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs. But ironically, they have fallen into the same errors as the very ones they despise, refusing to understand the ancient Scriptural prophecies as they were intended and longing instead for vindication.
Manning continues from this same work: “The prompting of our natural hearts, when we hear of the sufferings of those we love, is to speak with an impatient sorrow; as Peter, when Jesus took His disciples and told them that the Son of Man ‘must suffer many things, and be rejected by the ancients, by the high-priests, and the Scribes, and be killed ; and after three days rise again. And He spoke the words openly; and Peter, taking Him, began to rebuke Him’ (St. Mark viii. 31). We too are ready to say, ‘This be far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee’ (St. Mark viii. 33). Yet Jesus did not accept this manifestation of a too natural love. His words of rebuke have a divine energy, intended to teach us not to trust our human affections in judging of His supernatural dispensations. ‘Go behind Me, Satan, because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but that are of men’ (St. Matt. xvi. 22).”
Comment: And Traditionalists say: “this shall not be unto us, and to the Church in these times.” They have never divested themselves of the false liberal charity that already prevailed prior to Vatican 2. Their worldly idea of the Church is demonstrated by the Siri conjecture, which has no relation whatsoever to Pope Pius XII’s infallible constitution governing papal elections. They think themselves so favored by God that they will not have to suffer the persecutions of those who gave their lives for the faith behind the Iron Curtain, or during the Protestant Reformation. No, we hear instead that God would never take their Mass from them even though He foretold such an event through His prophet Daniel, as confirmed by the early Church Fathers. He would never leave them without a pope even though his disciple St. Paul warned the faithful of this event and the Church Herself acknowledged it.
In his The Temporal Power…, Manning, quoting Donoso Cortes, then predicts precisely what we are experiencing in these times: “In giving up the empire of faith as dead, and in proclaiming the independence of the reason and of the will of man, society has rendered absolute, universal, and necessary the evil which was only relative, exceptional, and contingent. This period of rapid retrogression commenced in Europe with the restoration of paganism — philosophical, religious, and political. At this day the world is on the eve of the last of its restorations, the restoration of socialist paganism(!) … Society is dying… It is dying because error is killing it, and because society is now founded upon errors. Know, then, that all you hold as incontrovertible is false.” And not recognizing the utter deterioration of the spiritual order, Traditionalists cannot see this as a naturally following consequence of that deterioration.
Manning then proceeds to explain to his readers exactly what to expect during this time of trial. In Lecture One of the just quoted work he writes: “We have here a prophecy of four great facts: first, of a revolt, which shall precede the second coming of our Lord; secondly, of the manifestation of one who is called “the wicked one;”thirdly, of a hindrance, which restrains his manifestation; and lastly, of the period of power and persecution, of which he will be the author.” The revolt had already begun in the days of the Apostles, for St. Paul tells us: “The Mystery of Iniquity already worketh.” Manning traces its progression down through the ages, touching on the many heresies and schisms and culminating in the advent of Rationalism and Pantheism. The wicked one he identifies as Antichrist proper, pointing out that the ancient Fathers teach he is a man, not a system. The hindrance, he says, is who St. Paul refers to as both a person and a thing, the See of Peter and the person who occupies it at that time. The period of power and persecution need not be explained, because we are living it.
Then Manning notes: “This leads on plainly to the marks which the prophet [Daniel] gives of the persecution of the last days. Now there are three things which he has recorded. The first, that the continual sacrifice shall be taken away; the next, that the sanctuary shall be occupied by the abomination which maketh desolate; the third, that ‘the strength’ and, ‘the stars,’ as he described it, shall be cast down. And these are the only three I will notice.” Regarding the cessation of the Continual Sacrifice, Manning comments: “The Holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of Antichrist, and have interpreted these prophecies of Daniel, say that about the end of the world, during the reign of Antichrist, the public offering of the Holy Sacrifice, for a little time, will cease” (and a “little time” by God’s reckoning is not the equivalent of human time).
Comment: And so we have two sets of prophecies — one from St. Paul, the other from Daniel — which leave no room for doubt about what to expect in these times. We have the great revolt, which started with the early heresies in the times of the Apostles, culminating in the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution and the exodus of Catholics from the Novus Ordo church in the 1960s-1970s. We have the arrival of the wicked one, who Manning says is Antichrist, during the reign of he who withholdeth. The wicked one helps move he who withholdeth out of the way, to eventually take his place (Montini’s betrayal of Pope Pius XII). Roncalli begins the gradual taking away of the Continual Sacrifice with his additions to the liturgy and the use of “for all” in the missalettes for the faithful. Then there is Montini’s rise to power, the official cessation of the Continual Sacrifice and the abominable desolation of everything Catholic. The strength, which is the papacy, and the stars which are the bishops and other hierarchy are simultaneously struck down. Those wishing to remain faithful are harangued and persecuted, and their attempts to save the Mass and Sacraments are futile.
The occupation of the sanctuary by the abomination of desolation is described by Manning as he witnessed it in his day. “What is the great flood of infidelity,
revolution, and anarchy, which is now sapping the foundations of Christian society, not only in France, but in Italy, and encompassing Rome, the centre and sanctuary of the Catholic Church, but the abomination which desolates the sanctuary, and takes away the continual sacrifice? The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the centre of all Christian order in the world… [This is] the casting down of ‘the Prince of Strength;’ that is, the Divine authority of the Church,
and especially of him in whose person it is embodied, the Vicar of Jesus Christ. God has invested him with sovereignty, and given to him a home and a patrimony on earth. The world is in arms to depose him, and to leave him no place to lay his head. Rome and the Roman States are the inheritance of the Incarnation. The world is resolved to drive the Incarnation off the earth. It will not suffer it to possess much as to set the sole of its foot upon. This is the true interpretation of the anticatholic movement of Italy and England: “Tolle hunc de terra.” The dethronement of the Vicar of Christ is the dethronement of the hierarchy of the universal Church, and the public rejection of the Presence and Reign of Jesus.”
Comment: Notice that the abomination must come first, as the order of Holy Scripture dictates, before the Sacrifice is taken away. And yet Traditionalists, vocal as they are about the taking away of the Latin Mass, which has never happened universally in the history of the Church, do not and will not recognize its ultimate cause: the reign of Antichrist as the abomination! They pretend this monstrosity can be quasi-legitimate in direct contradiction of papal teaching and can even “convert”! To satisfy their own wants and needs, they are willing, unbelievably, to even ignore the clear signs provided to the faithful by Our Lord, thus earning His well-deserved epithet of hypocrites. Moreover, they refuse to recognize that to overthrow the papacy is to likewise overthrow the entire hierarchy — cardinals, bishops and priests. They reject the reign of Christ’s Vicars in His stead as King while promoting the Kingship of Christ.
And again from Manning’s The Temporal Power…“The Prophet Daniel, in the twelfth chapter, says that in the time of the end ‘many shall be chosen and made white, and shall be tried as fire; and the wicked shall deal wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the learned shall understand;’ that is, many who have known the faith shall abandon it, by apostasy. ‘Some of the learned shall fall,’ that is, they shall fall from their fidelity to God. And how shall this come to pass? Partly by fear, partly by deception, partly by cowardice; partly because they cannot stand for unpopular truth in the face of popular falsehood; partly because the overruling contemptuous public opinion… so subdues and frightens Catholics, that they dare not avow their principles, and, at last dare not hold them.”
Comment: In other words, Traditionalists — who cannot bear to contemplate the possibility that they have lost their Mass and live in the times of Antichrist because they are ridiculed for these beliefs — will pay for their cowardice by losing the faith. They will accept and have accepted the all-so-popular opinions based on pragmatism (which they call common or even Catholic sense), a system of philosophy condemned by the Church, and abandoned the principles of Scholasticism. They embrace whatever they believe makes “sense” to them, because “all that complicated doctrinal language is so hard to understand.” (Forget that many of them have no problem understanding computer coding or complicated scientific theories.) But the language of Pope St. Pius X in his Oath Against the Errors of Modernism is not at all difficult to decipher: “The external arguments of revelation, that is divine facts, and especially miracles and prophecies… have been especially accommodated to the intelligence of all ages and men, even of these times” (DZ 2145). Yet no one can read the signs of these times and discern the prophecies regarding Antichrist.
Cardinal Manning concludes Lecture 2 of his The Temporal Power… with the following:
“…The Antichrist, and the antichristian movement, has these marks: first, schism from the Church of God; secondly, denial of its Divine and infallible voice; and thirdly, denial of the Incarnation. It is, therefore, the direct and mortal enemy of the One Holy Catholic and Roman Church the unity from which all schism is made; the sole organ of the Divine voice of the Spirit of God; the shrine and sanctuary of the Incarnation and of the continual sacrifice.”
Comment: Schism, yes; for Traditionalists do not follow lawful pastors, who can be considered lawful only if ordained by bishops in communion with and personally approved for consecration by the Roman Pontiff. They have set up their own church much as the Old Catholics before them and up to now, have been quite happy to exist without a pope. It has been pointed out for many years, on this site and by others, that Traditionalists refuse to obey the teachings of past Roman Pontiffs and the Sacred Canons. They thereby deny the Incarnation by denying Christ’s divinity, for they implicitly deny that the Church cannot err in the teachings delivered to Her by Our Lord through the Vicar of Christ, His divinely appointed, living voice on earth.
In Lecture 3 of his The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ Manning writes:
“Some thirty Pontiffs fell upon the field. By their blood they purchased the city of Rome and held it as their own. All the power of ten persecutions, and all the legions of Rome, and all the emperors of the world, could not drive out the Pontiffs from the city which they held for the Son of God. It is theirs by conquest, and by the laws of warfare. It belongs to them by right of endurance, and of patience, and of inflexible courage, to which the world has no equal… [T]hirty popes were compelled to leave Rome; four were imprisoned; four were unable to set foot in Rome; seven reigned in exile in Avignon; making in all forty-five, or one-fifth in the line of the Sovereign Pontiffs. …Nine times the city, in which is the throne of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, has been in the hands of usurpers; yet it has been held with such invincible tenacity of endurance, and such perpetual power of recovery, as to establish as a moral certainty that God, who chose it for the throne of the Vicar of His Son, has done so by a definitive act of His power, which He alone can rescind, and which He never will.”
Comment: And yet we are to believe that Siri, a coward who refused to shed his blood for Christ and His Church, could be numbered among the true popes and credited with “inflexible courage.” Preposterous. Let us draw out the conclusions of Traditionalists’ refusal to recognize the Antichrist and his times, because it will give the lie to their pretensions and demonstrate the absurdity of their position. They recognize that the Mass has been abolished by the Novus Ordo. No matter that the NO consecration formula for the wine was “restored” to their liturgy by Benedict 16; one cannot put socks on a pig. No matter, either, that Traditionalists believe that the Mass has not ended because it is celebrated by their “priests.” As Manning and the Roman Pontiffs teach, there can be no Church — no functioning hierarchy — without the Roman Pontiff. Traditionalists merely create an illusion akin to that foisted upon members of the Novus Ordo church they love to revile.
They cannot deny that Paul 6 abolished the Continual Sacrifice, not only by introducing the NO but by reigning as a false pope whose actions are null and void. His election has been proven invalid now for decades, and all the actions of past papal usurpers have been nullified by the Church. His destruction of the Mass and Sacraments and modernization of the churches, the changing of the calendar and extending the hand of friendship to Freemasons and the Communists alone should have alerted others to the fact he could not be a valid pope. For no one could ever present as a heretic and sit in the Chair of Peter. But that does not matter to Traditionalists. Nor do they consider who they will call Antichrist if Paul 6 is not the Man of Sin. Who is left in the universal Church to revolt and leave her? Them? That has already occurred. What bishops are left to abandon Her — theirs? No teaching of the Church can ever support their claim they became valid priests, far less bishops. What true pope could be taken out of the way now to admit the Wicked One? And what future abomination in Rome could desolate the Church more than has already been done?
What Traditionalists seek to do is to acknowledge their own “pope” in order to escape the fulfillment of prophecy; to claim that Siri has continued the line of popes in unbroken succession. This despite any compromise they are forced to make regarding his affiliation with the church of Rome or any departure from papal teaching and law they see fit to justify. If they succeed, and they are persecuted by apostate Rome, they will claim that they are fulfilling all the prophecies of the Church’s destruction. But they were never the Church. They are trying to do what they so often have accused others of doing – rescuing the Church, playing the hero, riding in on the white horse which Cardinal Manning says is reserved for Christ alone. Manning writes in his The Present Crisis of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy:
“But there is One Power which will destroy all antagonists; there is One Person who will (Dan. 11: 35) break down and smite small as the dust of the summer threshing-floor all the enemies of the Church, for it is He who will consume His enemies ‘with the Spirit of His mouth,’ and destroy them ‘with the brightness of His coming.’ It seems as if the Son of God were jealous lest anyone should vindicate His authority. He has claimed the battle to Himself; He has taken up the gage which has been cast down against Him; and prophecy is plain and explicit that the last overthrow of evil will be His; that it will be wrought by no man, but by the Son of God; that all the nations of the world may know that He, and He alone, is King, and that He, and He alone, is God.
“The events of every day are carrying men further and further in the career on which they have entered. Every day men are becoming more and more divided. These are times of sifting. Our Divine Lord is standing in the Church, ‘His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His floor, and He will gather the grain into His barn, and will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’ It is a time of trial, when ‘some of the learned shall fall,’ and those only shall be saved who are steadfast to the end.”
Comment: This is the trial Traditionalists fail to acknowledge. They are the learned who fall. Even those who patiently wait Our Lord’s resolution of these terrible times wait in fear and trembling, praying they do not slip and fall into these same errors. They have no guarantee of their salvation as some have accused; any Catholic claiming this would be a liar. But by abstaining from those things the Church condemns and Traditionalist’s indulge in, they hope at least to preserve Her as She always was, according to the Christ’s teachings safeguarded by the Roman Pontiffs.
We have no part in this save to pray and watch; this is what Our Lord instructed us to do. We cannot interfere with God’s will; it is for us to be crucified with Him and suffer without complaint until the bitter the end, just as He suffered on the Cross. Then and only then, after our time in the darkness of the tomb, shall we see His Church rise once again; or, by the mercy of God, be escorted to Heaven.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Nov 17, 2019 | New Blog
+ St. Gregory the Wonderworker +
The Khoat business may be making a little more sense now that a few other shoes have dropped. Those on Trad forums are commenting that the videos issuing from the Catholic Identity Conference (CIC) two weekends ago are creating new interest in the plausibility of the Siri theory advanced for the past 35 years by Texan Gary Giuffre. The CIC was held for the fourth year in a row to unify Traditionalists (an impossibility), in the midst of the Francis controversy over pachamama and other heresies. I suspect the enthusiasm being generated for this foolishness is mainly among the younger generation who have no personal knowledge of what really went on in the 1970s, 1980s. But whatever was discussed at this conference or decided by it, the underlying reason it was held was to begin to rally Traditionalists in support of a papal restoration, the true reason behind Khoat’s exposure as a shyster.
So maybe we need to look at the Khoat situation from the standpoint of the attempts to “de-pope” Francis. The Siri theory has been encumbered by Khoat and his antics since the 1980s. Those backing Giuffre (Hutton Gibson and son Mel) eventually jettisoned him for failure to prove the case despite hundreds of thousands spent funding his efforts over a 15-year period. Khoat split with Giuffre for a new manager before the Gibsons cut Giuffre loose, muddying the water over the years with his papal restoration campaign. So In the end, he needed to go as well. But he also needed to go for another reason. The Gibsons and others already had their doubts about Khoat and they so informed Giuffre. Giuffre also had been warned by the Gibsons about other “priests” he recruited to say Mass at St. Jude’s Shrine in Stafford, Texas. An excerpt below from Hutton Gibson’s The War is Now, (no. 64, p. 7-8) sums up the situation.
“Gary is a great priest-finder. He tracks them down and brings them to St. Jude’s Shrine, so that Catholics in the area need never do without the traditional Mass. So he has maintained such jewels as Hector (the collector) Bolduc, Mario Blanco [ordered out of the Sacramento, Calif. diocese in 1973; later accused of alleged sexual misconduct with young boys-Ed.] and Vincent (novus ordo) Le Moine, all up to his strict standards. You may have read about our trials with Le Moine in The Enemy Is Still Here!, pages 342 to 353, in which he is called ‘Father X.’” Gibson further relates that these priests remained in their positions even despite numerous complaints to Giuffre regarding their behavior. (This is a great case in point, regarding only one of many Trad operations. Why should it surprise anyone that they would wind up with only NO flotsam as priest material?! Another great reason to keep the faith at home.)
But Giuffre managed to recover from the sound and well merited public trouncing delivered by his funders, and this recovery was not surprising. Giuffre was marketing a commodity Traditionalist organizers desperately needed, and they patiently waited for the right time to use it for their own purposes. They knew the dam would eventually break where Khoat was concerned (and possibly even facilitated the break?), and that this would free them up so they could move forward. Papal restoration could then be entirely their game. Others would be freed to join the cause without Khoat’s embarrassing baggage. And this speculation is based on similar dynamics at work in past Traditionalist splits.
Some believed Khoat was the pope in exile or perhaps a cardinal. (Khoat stated he and others worldwide had been appointed cardinals.) Others did not buy Khoat’s cardinal story while believing in the existence of a Siri successor — somewhere. Khoat was a major player in obtaining “confirmation” that Siri was elected in 1958, but only after flipping his initial story in 1988 — that Siri denied he was elected three times — to a new version in 1989. This was relayed to Jim Condit, alleging that that Siri later told Khoat he was elected pope in 1958. This turnaround happened not long after Siri’s death. To the best of my knowledge, Khoat’s is the only (firsthand) testimony available on this topic, (although it appears that one other person has also changed his story to now report Siri was elected). Yet after what has been revealed regarding Khoat, who could possibly trust anything he says, now or then?! And that being set aside, where is the documentation either of these statements were ever made to Khoat?
The tantalizing details of Siri’s “papacy” are being released piece by piece in interviews with Giuffre on the CIC website. But the details of this story are nothing new; it has changed very little since 1989 when I viewed it as a slideshow. Only those promoting it and the method of delivery has changed. It is new and exciting only to the younger set who don’t realize the implications of this tale and its dubious background. And much of the information on that background has yet to be revealed.
The question begs to be answered — how would Trads benefit from embracing the Siri theory? Well it could be the universal cure all for their nagging ills. With Siri’s successor identified and secured, they might successfully challenge and unseat Francis. They could claim to restore the Church to Her former state of existence. But most importantly, they could rerun the Western Schism scenario and claim the pope in exile and his successor had reigned all along, secretly, guaranteeing jurisdiction for all Trad clerics. It is a problem they have struggled with from the beginning and never successfully resolved. Jurisdiction has been a thorn in their side since the 1980s, when various lay people pointed out Traditionalists did not and could not possess it, neither from Christ Himself nor some other (hidden?) source. And certain validity, while they will not even discuss it as a possibility, also has been lacking from the beginning. The “Siri thesis,” as Giuffre calls it, is the one solution that would tie up every loose end and legitimize their existence. There is just one problem: it’s not a thesis, and IT’S NOT CATHOLIC.
To be a Catholic, one must think and act like a Catholic. The dictates of Catholic thought and belief are set out by the Popes, decisions of the Holy See, the Ecumenical Councils, Canon Law and the unanimous opinion of scholastic theologians. When one sets out to prove a case, especially something as important as who is the lawful successor of the Roman Pontiff, it is a theological necessity to demonstrate the veracity of the proofs presented in the form prescribed by the Church, according to the most reliable sources available. Before embarking on such a daunting task, one must first make absolutely certain that all preliminary investigation has been duly conducted. If one is proposing that a man be considered as the possessor or potential possessor of a clerical office of any kind, it must first be proven that man is beyond any doubt a baptized Catholic who has not in any way been suspected of or excommunicated for heresy, apostasy or schism. Baptism is proven by church records, but Canon Law determines if someone has abandoned the Catholic faith.
Let us pretend we just heard a rumor Siri was elected pope in 1958. Our first impulse should not be to dive into the middle of the story, but to ask the question, “Who is this Siri?” and proceed from there. With only a little research on the Internet, it is easy to see that Siri was a man who became a cardinal under Pope Pius XII, served in his capacity as cardinal until his death in 1989, celebrated the Novus Ordo Missae, participated in the elections of John 23, Paul 6, John Paul I and John Paul 2 and otherwise endorsed and accepted everything that was the V2 church. Now, if one is a true Catholic who rejects the Novus Ordo as just another non-Catholic sect, s/he should know that Catholics who participate in non-Catholic services and functions are no longer considered members of the Church, especially if they are high-ranking prelates and even if they are not. The hierarchy, however, is held accountable to a higher degree because they are presumed to know better. This sin, resulting in ipso facto excommunication (automatic, with no need of a declaration from a superior), is called communicatio in sacris. It is incurred by anyone assisting at Novus Ordo (or Traditionalist) services in any way.
Had Siri truly been elected with the intent to preserve the Church as She existed under Pope Pius XII, he would have made this fact known. He would not have addressed John 23 as Holy Father, continued his activities as a Novus Ordo cardinal, or participated in subsequent elections of false popes. He would at the very least have resigned as cardinal and retired to some Italian hamlet or left the country. This is only common sense. Was he kept a prisoner and not allowed to function? Shades of the crazy Paul 6 in chains confabulation that circulated in the 1970s! No, the devil made him do it alright, and no one can prove otherwise. Given Siri’s behavior following the election of John 23, could he possibly have been considered a Catholic? There is no way he could have received absolution, since all those who defected from the Church in accepting John 23 automatically resigned their offices and lost all jurisdiction to absolve from censures and forgive sins. Oh, and by the way; only a true pope can absolve from sins involving heresy, apostasy and schism, which Siri committed in accepting the Novus Ordo church. So was Siri even a candidate for consideration as the successor to Pope Pius XII? Not hardly.
Because Siri’s fitness to be considered a papal candidate was never considered, we have the “Siri thesis.” And those pretending to reject the Novus Ordo and all it stands for are actually willing to accept this man — and possibly some trumped up successor — as a true pope! They trash Giuffre’s funders for collaborating with a Novus Ordo publication (Inside the Vatican) to expose the Siri theory as groundless, but think nothing of absolving Siri from all guilt in actively collaborating with the church in Rome. Anything to validate themselves, no matter how flimsy the evidence might be. They believe Giuffre when he trots out his learned “thesis,” not even knowing or understanding the obligation on Giuffre’s part to faithfully fact check his own work. But then what Giuffre has presented is not really a thesis at all. A thesis is defined in Catholic terms by Rev. A. C. Cotter, S.J. (The ABC of Scholastic Philosophy) as a statement devoid of any ambiguity, obscurity or superfluity, worded with the utmost care. Proofs must be presented and the meaning of the thesis as a whole laid down. The work Giuffre calls a thesis, rather than being free of the flaws just described, is riddled with them. This is not an idle statement, but has been documented over the years by myself and others. Visit the site to read this article: (https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/traditionalist-heresies-and-errors/errors-in-matters-of-faith-and-morals/why-guiseppe-siri-was-never-pope/).
In fact, Giuffre’s ramblings do not even qualify as an hypothesis. Bernard Wuellner, S.J., in his Summary of Scholastic Principles, states that: “An hypothesis must be probable (not in conflict with other truths and not leading to consequences against the facts), useful (as guiding and suggesting further research and experiment) and capable of being further tested” (no. 261, p. 268). Giuffre’s entire presentation on Siri is shot through with factual errors and flies in the face of all the papal documents laying down the procedures for papal elections, as well as the canons regarding ecclesiastical elections. Rather than facilitate further research, it handicaps the researcher, who is forced to wade through a sea of might haves and maybes to get to the bottom of what Giuffre is really trying to say. At best, Giuffre’s observations and conclusions qualify as a conjecture, “An inference formed without proof or sufficient evidence” (Merriam-Webster). Pope Pius XII condemned the use of conjectural opinions in Humani Generis:
“17. Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy… is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning…. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted.”
Scholastic theology has been demeaned by Traditionalists for decades, an error proscribed by Pope St. Pius X in his condemnation of modernism. There is no reason to believe that now, all of a sudden, it will be esteemed and used as the proper method to evaluate the truth. Likewise Canon Law, consistently misrepresented, misconstrued and misinterpreted by Traditionalists since the 1970s. Pope Pius XII’s infallible constitution on papal election, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, is not difficult to follow; the actions of anyone contravening his constitution by usurping papal jurisdiction or violating papal or Church law are declared null and void. The Phantom Church in Rome explains in detail how many of these laws were violated. The book also outlines St. Robert Bellarmine’s teaching on what to do in the case of a doubtful pope. Although Bellarmine has been quoted many times in support of various Traditional propositions, this teaching of his is never cited.
Both Pope St. Pius X and Pope Pius XII taught in their papal election laws that if there was any lay interference whatsoever in the election, it was null and void. If Giuffre has proven anything, he has proven there was interference. Ergo, the entire election was null and void. Could we say there was doubt regarding who was elected pope? That is an understatement. Yes there certainly was doubt, meaning any men issuing as supposed popes from that conclave were no popes at all. The legitimacy of the Roman Pontiff is a dogmatic fact, which cannot be denied because it is so closely connected to the dogma of unbroken succession to the papacy. This fact must be certainly established and when there is positive doubt regarding a papal election, this cannot happen. Serious, positive doubt has been documented regarding Roncalli’s election as well as Siri’s purported election. These very serious doubts, in and of themselves, are sufficient to consider both men out of the running; nothing else needs to be proven. This we have from popes, councils and a Doctor of the Church. But Gary Giuffre and his suspense-laden tale of intrigue and skullduggery is so much more appealing! Obedience to the Roman Pontiffs and the rule of law is so old hat, so boring. Not to mention necessary for the salvation of souls.
And so we leave this as a record, knowing that sooner or later this misguided attempt to recreate the Church will come unglued like all the others. It reminds me of the statue described in the book of Daniel: “And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest the iron mixt with miry clay, they shall be mingled indeed together with the seed of man, but they shall not stick fast one to another, as iron cannot be mixed with clay. But in the days of those kingdoms, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed…and it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and. Itself shall stand forever.” (Dan. Ch. 2, vs. 42-44). Here, of course Daniel speaks of the Catholic Church, which can never be destroyed, not by the likes of the Siri crowd or any other false sect. Iron and clay, the ideologies of different sectarian parties struggling for control, do not mix.
These Traditionalist sects could not accept the teaching of the continual magisterium of the past and if they elect yet another false pope, they will not be able to accept his rule over them either. Christ will destroy all with the spirit of His mouth and the brightness of His coming (2 Thess. 2:9), be it during a visitation of His justice or the Second Coming. Lift up your heads… for the time is at hand.
