by T. Stanfill Benns | Feb 6, 2023
Traditionalists today forget that the Catholic Church cannot exist without a true pope. This also is the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Popes themselves and the theologians.
Pope Pius IX teaches this fact from his own mouth: “May God give you the grace necessary to defend the rights of the Sovereign Pontiff and the Holy See; for without the Pope there is no Church, and there is no Catholic Society without the Holy See,” (Allocution to religious superiors, June 24, 1872; Papal Teachings: The Church, by the Monks of Solesmes, translated by Mother E. O’Gorman, St. Paul Editions, 1962; no. 391, p. 226 ).
St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “In order that the Church exist, there must be one person at the head of the whole Christian people,” (Summa Contra Gentilis, Vol. IV, 76).
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches: “It is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers that this visible head is necessary to establish and preserve unity in the Church,” and this from Christ’s guarantees to St. Peter found in Holy Scripture, (Revs. McHugh and Callan edition, p. 104.).
Revs. Devivier and Sasia, whose work was personally endorsed by Pope St. Pius X, wrote: “As it is to the character of the foundation that a building owes its solidarity, the close union of its parts, and even its very existence, it is likewise from the authority of Peter that the Church derives Her unity, her stability, and even Her existence Herself. The Church, therefore, cannot exist without Peter,” (Christian Apologetics, Vol. II, p. 111).
Traditionalists today may call themselves priests and bishops, but they are doubtfully valid at best, are usurping the powers of the papacy and pretending to perpetuate the Church without a pope contrary to all Church teaching. It is the popes — NOT the bishops and priests, so-called — to whom we must listen. Men not certainly lawful pastors have no power over us whatsoever. The rights of priests are dependent on the bishop, the bishops’ rights and duties are dependent on the pope, and we have no true pope OR bishops. This is evident from what is stated below.
What are the rights and duties of a priest?
“Consequently, it is not easy to say in a way applicable to all cases what are the duties and rights of a priest; both vary considerably in individual cases. By his ordination a priest is invested with powers rather than with rights, the exercise of these powers (to celebrate Mass, remit sins, preach, administer the sacraments, direct and minister to the Christian people) being regulated by the common laws of the church, the jurisdiction of the bishop, and the office or charge of each priest,” (http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/p/priest.html). Canon 108: “Those who have been assigned to the ministry, at least by the first tonsure, are called clerics.” Canon 118: “Only clerics can obtain the power of either orders or ecclesiastical jurisdiction…”
Apostolicity means possessing both orders AND jurisdiction.
“Apostolicity of mission consists in the power of holy orders and the power of jurisdiction derived by legitimate transmission from the Apostles. Any religious organization whose ministers do not possess these two powers is not accredited to preach the Gospel of Christ. For ‘How can they preach,’ asks the Apostle, ‘unless they be sent?’ (Rom. 10:15). It is Apostolicity of mission which is reckoned as a note of the Church.” (http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/c/church.html see “apostolicity” header).
From the Catechism
What does Father Thomas Kinkead tell American Catholics on lawful pastors in the catechism used in Catholic schools in the 1940s and 1950s, before the decline of the Church? In his An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism, #4, Fr. Kinkead writes in Q. 115: “What is the Church? A. The Church is the congregation of all those who profess the faith of Christ, partake of the same sacraments, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible head.” The Baltimore Council’s approved catechism (#3) for adults also written by Rev. Kinkead tells us in the answer to question # 494 that lawful pastors are “those in the Church who have been appointed by lawful authority and who have therefore a right to rule us.” Note that this says nothing of the supposedly “validly” consecrated bishops who have created these priests; it mentions only lawful authority. Valid consecration is not sufficient; if a bishop has not been approved by the pope and consecrated with the papal mandate he cannot function validly, (see Etsi multa and Charitas below).
“Even if valid orders exist, where jurisdiction is lacking there is no real apostolicity. Schism, as well as heresy, destroys apostolic succession,” (Rev. Thomas Cox, Pillar and Ground of Truth, 1900). In his Manual of Christian Doctrine, written for religious congregations and Catholic institutions of higher learning, seminary professor Rev. John Joseph McVey wrote in 1926:
Q. 60: Who after the pope are lawful pastors of the Church?
A. The bishops who have been canonically instituted, i.e., who have received from the Sovereign Pontiff a diocese to govern.
Q. 73: Why is it not sufficient to be a bishop or priest in order to be a lawful pastor?
A. Because a bishop must also be sent into a diocese by the Pope, and a priest must be sent into a parish by the bishop. In other words, a pastor must have not only the power of order, but also THE POWER OF JURISDICTION, (emph. McVey’s).
Q. 77: How is the power of jurisdiction communicated?
A. Priests receive their jurisdiction from the bishop of the diocese; bishops receive theirs from the pope; and the Pope holds jurisdiction from Jesus Christ. A bishop who did not have his spiritual powers from the Pope, a pastor who did not have his from the lawful bishop, would be AN INTRUDER OR SCHISMATIC,” (emph. McVey’s). So not only are Traditionalist “priests” and “bishops” illicitly ordained and consecrated, without a true pope they possess NO jurisdiction whatsoever.
Canonical mission is the conveying of the actual office by the Pope (to bishops) or the bishop (to priests), or the superior (to religious). (Delegated) jurisdiction, the power to execute the duties of that office, is granted to priests only by a validly ordained and consecrated bishop whose consecration was approved by a canonically elected pope (meaning his election was held without any doubts whatsoever about its legitimacy as prescribe by Canon Law and Pope Pius XII’s papal election constitution governing papal elections.) This means only bishops consecrated prior to Pope Pius XII’s death on Oct. 9, 1958 are considered validly consecrated.
Heretics and schismatics lose all jurisdiction
St. Robert Bellarmine says. “There is no basis for that which some respond to this: that these Fathers based themselves on ancient law, while nowadays, by decree of the Council of Constance, they alone lose their jurisdiction who are excommunicated by name or who assault clerics. This argument, I say, has no value at all, for those Fathers, in affirming that heretics lose jurisdiction, did not cite any human law, which furthermore perhaps did not exist in relation to the matter, but argued on the basis of the very nature of heresy. The Council of Constance only deals with the excommunicated, that is, those who have lost jurisdiction by sentence of the Church, while heretics already before being excommunicated are outside the Church and deprived of all jurisdiction.
“For they have already been condemned by their own sentence, as the Apostle teaches (Tit. 3:10-11), that is, they have been cut off from the body of the Church without excommunication, as St. Jerome affirms… All the ancient Fathers…teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction, and outstandingly that of St. Cyprian (lib. 4, epist. 2) who speaks as follows of Novatian, who was Pope [i.e. antipope] in the schism which occurred during the pontificate of St. Cornelius: “He would not be able to retain the episcopate [i.e. of Rome], and, if he was made bishop before, he separated himself from the body of those who were, like him, bishops, and from the unity of the Church.’” (An Extract from St. Robert Bellarmine’s De Romano Pontifice, lib. II, cap. 30, (http://www.cmri.org/02-bellarmine-roman-pontiff.html. This link is placed merely for purposes of attribution; no endorsement of this site is hereby intended.)
St. Robert Bellarmine, (de Romano Pontifice, Bk. 2, Chapter 40) also teaches: “The Holy Fathers teach unanimously not only that heretics are outside of the Church, but also that they are ipso facto deprived of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction and dignity …Saint Nicholas I (epist. Ad Michael) repeats and confirms the same. Finally, Saint Thomas also teaches (II-II, Q39, A3) that schismatics immediately lose all jurisdiction, and that anything they try to do on the basis of any jurisdiction will be null…” Further, St. Robert Bellarmine cites the unanimous teaching of the Fathers in his work “de Romano Pontifice,” where he states: “Heretics who return to the Church must be received as laymen, even though they have been formerly priests or bishops in the Church. St. Optatus (lib. 1 cont. Parmen.).”
Without such jurisdiction priests cannot act validly (confession, marriage, etc.), unless the Church supplies it, (in “emergency” situations). Priests must be assigned an office by a valid bishop in communion with the pope. A valid bishop can only convey an office if he possesses jurisdiction (Pope Paul IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, 1559, still retained in the 1917 code) and no one who has committed heresy possesses jurisdiction. Without this office and valid assignment to it by a valid bishop, priests cannot say Mass publicly.
Revs. Woywod-Smith, A Practical Commentary on Canon Law, (under Can. 804) write:
“699. A priest who desires to say Holy Mass in a church other than that to which he is attached must show authentic and still valid letters of recommendation (commonly called ‘Celebret’) to the priest in charge of the church. A secular priest must obtain these letters from his Ordinary, a religious priest from his superior, and a priest of an Oriental Rite from the Sacred Congregation of the Oriental Church. A priest who has a proper ‘‘Celebret’’ shall be admitted to say Mass, unless it is known that in the meantime he has done something for reason of which he must be kept from saying Holy Mass…
“If the priest has no ‘Celebret,’ but the rector of the church knows well that he is a priest in good standing, he may be allowed to say Mass. If, however, he is unknown to the rector, he may nevertheless be permitted to say Mass once or twice,” provided he fulfill certain conditions.
“700. The Council of Chalcedon (451) ruled that no strange cleric or lector should be permitted to minister outside his own town without letters of recommendation from his own bishop. Pope Innocent III issued the same prohibition but said that the priest who did not have his letters of recommendation might be admitted to say Mass if he desired to do so out of devotion: he might not, however, say Mass before the people, but privately. The Council of Trent again made the rule absolute—as the Council of Chalcedon had it—that no priest should be permitted to celebrate Mass and administer the Sacraments without letters of recommendation from his own bishop.”
As St. Pius X taught in Acerbo nimis (1905): “Pastors…are obliged by the precept of Christ to know and to nourish the sheep confided to them; now to nourish is first of all to teach… (a) And so the Apostle said, ‘Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel, (b) indicating thus that the first office of those who are set up in any way for the government of the Church is to instruct the faithful in sacred doctrine.” So how is it that Traditionalists violate this teaching by rushing to provide Mass and Sacraments and failing entirely to instruct the faithful in sacred doctrine? How is it that despite Pope Boniface VIII’s teaching that unless all the faithful are subject to the Roman Pontiff, they cannot save their souls, Traditionalists fail to require strict obedience to papal law and teaching?
Canon 147 teaches: “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,” and this canon has been officially interpreted by Pope Pius XII to mean exactly what Pope Pius IX taught in the paragraph from Graves diurturnae quoted below, and the Council of Trent taught in the 1500s.
“This Holy Synod teaches that, in the ordination of bishops, priests and other orders…those who are called and instituted only by the people, or by the civil power…and proceed to exercise these offices, and…those who take these offices upon themselves, are not ministers of the Church, but are to be regarded as ‘thieves, robbers and those who have not entered by the door,’” (DZ 960; Canons 108-109; Can. 147.) “”If anyone says that … those who have neither been rightly ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical authority, but come from a different source, are the lawful ministers of the Word and of the Sacraments, let him be anathema.” (The Council of Trent, Sess. 23, July 15, 1563; DZ 967, 424). Having taught this infallibly, would “the Church” really be willing to supply jurisdiction for them?
When Can. 209 says the “Church” supplies, that term is interpreted to mean the Roman Pontiff, who is the only one throughout history who has EVER supplied jurisdiction. The Pope is the ONLY one who holds primacy of jurisdiction in the Church. All this is according to the Vatican Council decrees and is further explained in Rev. Francis Miaskiewicz’s Canon Law dissertation Supplied Jurisdiction According to Canon 209, (1948, Catholic University of America). And when Canon 2261 §2 says priests may act in emergency situations to administer the Sacraments, it is assumed that the Church (the Pope) will supply jurisdiction. But we have no true pope to supply it, so priests cannot now receive this jurisdiction. Without it they cannot act, as NO ONE may usurp papal jurisdiction during an interregnum. This Pope Pius XII infallibly teaches in his papal election constitution, (Vacantis Apostolica Sedis, 1945):
“We declare invalid and void any power or jurisdiction pertaining to the Roman Pontiff in his lifetime, which the assembly of Cardinals might decide to exercise (while the Church is without a Pope)… If anything contrary to this prescript occurs or is by chance attempted, we declare it by Our Supreme authority to be null and void.” And if even the cardinals (some of whom are also bishops) cannot exercise it, and they are superior in rank to bishops, certainly bishops could not presume to do so. Only the pope can supply the papal mandate; this is an act of papal jurisdiction.
Validly consecrated bishops such as Lefebvre and Thuc long ago incurred heresy and communicatio in sacris by celebrating the Novus Ordo Missae. They publicly admitted they celebrated this false liturgy in communion with a false church and Lefebvre never left that church. (Thuc vacillated back and forth between Traditionalism and the Novus Ordo throughout his life.) Therefore they incurred the penalty for notorious heresy, (Can. 2314 §1). Canon 2314 §3 further provides that if they commit communicatio in sacris (Can. 1258) they also incur a vindicative penalty, which only the pope is able to lift, (Can. 2295). Canon 2294 (Revs. Woywod-Smith commentary) classifies any act performed under the imposition of a vindicative penalty invalid. Furthermore, in his papal election law, Pius XII declares any act usurping papal jurisdiction during an interregnum null and void. One cannot presume to act validly and licitly without a papal dispensation from this penalty while the Church is without Her head.
So first of all, Lefebvre and Thuc are notorious heretics and schismatics (notorious by fact, meaning Catholics know what they did was an act of treason against the Church, they know that they did it because they have confessed it or otherwise confirmed it publicly and they know what they did was wrong; Can. 2197 no. 3). These two men automatically lost their offices and all jurisdiction. They cannot plead ignorance; for as Pope Celestine I taught: “No priest may be ignorant of the canons,” far less a bishop! These men were forbidden to function by papal decree, interregnum or no, (see Etsi multa and Charitas below). So even when not operating during an interregnum, past papal laws have declared the operations of such schismatics/heretics null and void in similar cases. During an interregnum, the acts of those who violate papal laws or usurp papal jurisdiction are infallibly declared null and void by Pius XII above.
Schismatic bishops can validly consecrate when a canonically elected pope is reigning, because then the reigning pope can judge and rectify such consecrations. But during an interregnum, such consecrations are null ab initio, (from the outset) because the pope infallibly forbids it. All affairs are to be referred to the future pope in advance of their accomplishment. Any attempted these consecrations are considered as though they never happened. Traditionalists cannot presume to consecrate bishops without a papal mandate, as Pope Pius IX unequivocally demonstrates in Etsi Multa. If a priest is not consecrated a bishop, he cannot validly ordain priests because technically he is still a priest himself. And since Traditionalist consecrations of bishops never happen, ordinations cannot happen either.
All comes back to Can. 147, explained above. In order to function as a valid and lawful pastor, one must be assigned an office. All must be done in accordance with the canons. All offices are lost on the commission of heresy, (Can. 188 no. 4 and Can. 2314 §2; also St. Bellarmine above).
Pope Pius IX, Etsi Multa (November 1873)
“24. But these men [the Old Catholics], 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. 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!] (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9etsimu.htm).
Pope Pius IX, Graves Diurturnae (March 1875):
“We have already reproved and condemned this deplorable sect [the Old Catholics] which has produced from the old store of the heretics so many errors opposed to the principal tenets of the Catholic faith. This sect overthrows the foundations of the Catholic religion, shamelessly rejects the dogmatic definitions of the Ecumenical Vatican Council, and devotes itself to the ruin of souls in so many ways… [The faithful] 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.”
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9graves.htm
Pope Pius IX, Quartus Supra (January 1873)
“As Our predecessor Pius VI warned in his Apostolic letter condemning the civil constitution of the clergy in France, discipline is often so closely related to doctrine and has such a great influence on its preservation and its purity, that the sacred councils have not hesitated to cut off from the Church by their anathema those who have infringed its discipline.” www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quartu.htm
Pope Pius VI, Charitas (April, 1791)
“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… For We declare and proclaim publicly that all their dimissorial letters and deputations or confirmations, past and future, as well as all their rash proceedings and their consequences, are utterly void and without force…” www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius06/p6charit.htm
It is a sin of presumption to think Christ would supply jurisdiction in the pope’s absence as some teach today. There is no law in the Church anywhere that says in the present “emergency” situation Our Lord would supply jurisdiction; Charitas above says no “pretext of necessity” would justify such a belief. Pope Pius XII’s infallible papal election constitution says it does not/cannot occur. Even Our Lord cannot supersede a pope’s infallible decree, for He promises to bind in Heaven whatever His Vicar binds on earth, and He is ever true to His promises. The Church’s teachings must be taken as a whole, as a flawless composite of integral truth. One truth cannot contradict the other. If the Traditionalist scenario is true then the popes quoted above are liars. We are to obey God not men, and God speaks to us only through his VICARS and those in communion with them. The choice is and has always been our own. The Church infallibly commands us to be subject to the Roman Pontiff if we wish to be saved (Boniface VIII). And we cannot be subject to them by following men who refuse to observe the teachings of the continual magisterium and insist on functioning outside communion with a canonically elected pope.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Nov 13, 2022 | New Blog
+St. Josaphat+
The last blog touched briefly on the dangers of secular education, dangers most Catholics today, even Traditionalists homeschooling their children, well understand. But what they don’t understand is the deficits they themselves are saddled with if they were educated in public schools or even so-called “Traditionalist” schools, many of which have been racked with controversy, scandal and frequent changes in staff, providing an unstable learning environment for young children. Those educated in secular colleges or universities will have the greatest obstacles to overcome in successfully operating a home school. For unless they do their best to deprogram themselves successfully from the indoctrination they received, much of which is so deeply lodged in the intellect it escapes identification and correction, they will not be able to competently instruct their own children. Understanding the deviant nature of such indoctrination and how to combat it is key to ridding themselves of its effects.
The best expose of public (and private) schools was written in 2001 by John Taylor Gatto, who before his retirement in the 1990s was declared Teacher of the Year by both New York City and New York State. The book is based on his 30 years of teaching experience in the public school system and his many frustrations with uncooperative school administrations who failed to put children first. His book, which is heavily documented and goes into great detail, can be downloaded at https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758 Some may be familiar with Gatto’s first book Dumbing Us Down, a bestseller ever since it was released in 1992. In this work, Gatto presents the bare outline of his 2001 book, which was the result of 10-years-worth of research. Promotional material for Dumbing Us Down reads:
“John Taylor Gatto has found that independent study, community service, large doses of solitude and 1,000 different apprenticeships with adults of all walks of life are the keys to helping children break the thrall of our conforming society. For the sake of our children in our communities, John Taylor Gatto urges all of us to get schools out of the way and find ways to re-engage children and families in actively controlling our culture, economy and society.” While Gatto, who describes himself as a lapsed Catholic, is perhaps too quick to question some Catholic educational practices and leans towards personalism, an excessive freedom of individual behavior and expression, with emphasis on love of the person as an individual. (Personalism is an error emanating from ecumenism popularized by the leftist Dorothy Day and advocated by John Paul 2.) Such leanings, however, must be understood in the light of its contrary — the total eradication of the personality and the individual talents and excellences of students in public education. In his 2001 work, Gatto is insistent that the moral and faith-based principles of education are indispensable to its success.
Public schools and colleges founded on German military principles
These criticisms aside, Gatto’s work is otherwise brilliant and thought-provoking. Some of the quotes from The Underground History of Education will give the reader an idea of what to expect from his research and observations. The major premise of his work is as follows:
“It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the 19th century. Nearly 100 years later on April 11,1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that the comprehensive national program was underway to allow in Mason’s words: ‘The control of human behavior…” In 1935 at the University of Chicago’s experimental school where John Dewey had once held sway, Howard C. Hill, head of the social science department, published an inspirational textbook called The Life and Work of the Citizen. The title page clearly shows four cartoon hands symbolizing law, order, science and the trades interlocked to form a near swastika. By 1935, Prussian pattern and Prussian goals had embedded themselves so deeply into the vitals of institutional schooling the heartless soul noticed the traditional purposes of the enterprise were being abandoned…” Gatto demonstrates just how the Prussian system of education was introduced in the 1800s, a system of compulsory education intended to create: “Obedient soldiers to the army; obedient workers for mines, factories and farms; well subordinated civil servants; well subordinated clerks for industry; citizens who thought alike on most issues; national uniformity in thought, word and deed.
“Traditional American school purpose — piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc. — was scrapped to make way for something different… the compulsion school institution was assigned the task of fixing the social order into place… Society was to reflect the needs of modern corporate organizations and the requirements of rational evolution. The best breeding stock had to be protected and displayed; the supreme challenge was to specify who was who in the new hierarchical order… At the heart of the durability of mass schooling is a brilliantly designed power fragmentation system which distributes decision making so widely among so many warring interests that large scale change is impossible without a guidebook. Few insiders understand how to steer this ship and the few who do may have lost the will to control it.”
“The great destructive myth of the 20th century was the aggressive contention that a child could not grow up correctly in the unique circumstances of his own family; forced schooling was the principal agency broadcasting this attitude… God was pitched out of our schooling on his ear after World War II and this wasn’t because of any constitutional prescription (there was none that anyone had been able to find in over a century and a half), but because the political state and corporate economy considered the western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor… I lived through the great transformation which turns schools from often useful places into laboratories of state experimentation with the lives of children, a form of pornography masquerading as pedagogical science… The evidence of your own eyes and ears tells you that average men and women don’t really exist except as a statistical conceit… What has happened in our schools was foreseen long ago by [Thomas] Jefferson. We have been recolonized silently in a second American Revolution. Time to take our script from the country’s revolutionary start; time to renew traditional hostility toward hierarchy and tutelage.”
Fabian socialism and Hegelianism
Gatto’s keen insights predicted long ago the exact situation in which we find ourselves today: “The direction of modern schooling for the bottom 90% of our society has followed a largely Fabian design and the puzzling security and prestige enjoyed at the moment by those who speak of globalism and multiculturalism is a direct result of heed paid earlier to Fabian prophecies that a welfare state followed by an intense focus on internationalism would be the mechanism elevating corporate society over political society and is a necessary precursor to utopia… Fabian practitioners developed principles which they taught alongside Morgan bankers and other important financial allies over the first half of the 20th century. One insightful Hegelianism was that to push ideas efficiently, it was necessary first to co-opt both political left and political right. Adversarial politics competition was a losers’ game.
“By infiltrating all major media, by continual low-intensity propaganda, by massive changes in group orientations (accomplished through principles developed in the psychological warfare bureaus of the military) and with the ability, using government intelligence agents and press contacts to induce a succession of crises, they accomplished that astonishing feat… Thus the deliberate creation of crises is an important tool of evolutionary Socialists. Does that let you understand the government school drama a little better or the well-publicized doomsday scenarios of environmentalists?” And Gatto links Darwinism and its principles to the Fabians. But it doesn’t stop there. For those who want to crow about being highly educated, consider what Gatto says here:
Schools Masonic, Rockefeller funded, and psychopathic
“The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the theological idea that human value is a scarce thing represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid. That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its scientific presentation in the Bell Curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of Biology. It’s a religious notion [and ]school is its church. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid. School is a religion [and] without understanding the holy mission aspect you’re certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation… [John] Dewey’s pedagogic creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist:
“’Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.’ and John Dewey’s patron was John D. Rockefeller. Gatto explains: “The Rockefeller foundation has been instrumental through the century just passed along with a few others in giving us the schools we have. It imported the German research model into college life, elevated service to business and government as the goal of higher education, not teaching. And Rockefeller financed University of Chicago and Columbia Teachers College have been among the most energetic actors in the lower school tragedy.”
Gatto further describes public schools, even the less offensive ones, as peddlers of psychopathology. Their bewildered and confused graduates, he claims, come away from their school experience having learned emotional and intellectual dependency, indifference, memory loss, lack of self-respect and self-confidence, lack of empathy, inability to experience true intimacy, materialistic, purposeless, shallow, superficial, indecisive, entitled and perpetually fixed in adolescent mode. Perhaps this explains Traditionalists’ insane fixation with exterior religion and dependence on Traditionalist pseudo-clergy. Seldom in touch with self, always fixated on the outside world. One wonders if perhaps the some 40 or 50 percent who left the Church following Vatican 2 were those who at least had received some Catholic schooling, while the others remaining with new church had been sent to public school and CCD classes. Many of those children who are now adults in Traditionalist groups, if they were not homeschooled, doubtlessly were forced to resort to public school once Catholic schools no longer existed. (And attendance at dysfunctional Traditional schools does not count as a Catholic school education.) This accounts for their unreachability.
So given all the above, exactly why would anyone striving to be truly Catholic attend such obviously Masonic, anti-Catholic institutions or behave as though such institutions could possibly educate them in anything other than error and immorality? Why would they brag about credentials they have received from them? It is beyond belief that those homeschooling their children, Traditionalists among them, stop at the 8th or 12th grade of schooling to send their children to so-called ”conservative” high schools and colleges, even public high schools and secular colleges. That they pay to send them to such perverse academies is communicatio in sacris, cooperation in a false religion, as Gatto so well illustrates. We are to be in this world but not of it, and even if it means we might make less money or appear to be less desirable in the world’s eyes as an employee, our faith demands we spurn such institutions as inimical to our beliefs and a clear and present danger to both Church AND state.
Self-education the only option today
Gatto sums up his observations as follows: “My purpose is only to show that the wisdom tradition of American Christianity has something huge to say about where we’ve mis-stepped in mass compulsion schooling… Americans have been substantially broken away from their own wisdom tradition by forces hostile to its continuance. No mechanism employed to do this has been more important than the agency we call public schooling. In neglecting this wisdom tie, we have gradually forgotten a powerful doctrine assembled over thousands of years by countless millions of minds hearts and spirits which addresses the important common problems of life which experience has shown to be impervious to riches intellect charm science or powerful connections.” In his Dumbing Us Down, Gatto writes: “We need to trust children from a very early age with independent study… We need to invent curricula where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and reliance… As they gain self-knowledge, they also will become self-teachers, and only self-teaching has any lasting value.”
In this world today, the only kind of education available to true Catholics is self-education. This is not by choice, but by necessity. What we wouldn’t give for true bishops, priests and Catholic nuns to teach us! Traditionalists, had they followed the laws of the Church, could have helped establish Catholic communities centered not on the Mass and sacraments, which they could not convey, but on catechetics, Catholic dogma and the spiritual life, which all can attain to according to their ability. They could have used the old Catholic teachings and methods to train catechists and baptizers, to instruct those aspiring to the married state and to assist parents with training in child-rearing and home-schooling. In this way strong, largely rural Catholic communities could have been built comparable to those maintained for nearly two centuries by the Amish and Mennonites.
Regarding such teaching, Pope St. Pius X taught in Acerbo Nimis, his encyclical on catechetical instruction, in 1905:
“Now we must inquire who has the duty to safeguard minds from this pernicious ignorance and impart to them the necessary knowledge on this point. Venerable brothers, there can be no doubt this very grave obligation is incumbent on all those who are pastors of souls. They are certainly obliged by the precept of Christ to know and to nourish the sheep confided to them. NOW TO NOURISH IS FIRST OF ALL TO TEACH. ‘I will give you,’ God promises by the mouth of the prophet Jeremias, ‘pastors according to my own heart and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine.’ And so the apostle said: ‘Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel,’ indicating thus that the first office of those who are set up in any way for the government of the church is to instruct the faithful in sacred doctrine.”
This tells us volumes. First of all, had Traditionalists truly been lawful “pastors of souls,” they would have nourished the sheep by teaching them, not setting up chapels and simulating Mass and Sacraments. Secondly, they must not have been “pastors according to My own heart,” for they did not impart to the faithful “knowledge and doctrine.” And finally, we see that such knowledge must proceed the administration of the Sacraments, as Christ himself modeled to the Apostles in establishing the Church. For only after three years of preaching and educating them did he bestow on them the power to confer the Sacraments and celebrate the Holy Sacrifice. Traditionalists calling themselves clerics were never set up in any way for “the government of the Church,” or they would have nourished the flock, not thrown them to the wolves.
Conclusion
Low on priests and religious to teach the faithful, the popes, beginning with the Vatican Council in 1870, did their utmost to engage Catholics in Catholic Action to fill the gap, with little success. No one rose up to bear the standard handed them by Pope Pius XII to assume the responsibilities of the hierarchy once they had all apostatized. In a column on Communism written by author Solange Hertz for The Wanderer in the 1980s, sent by a reader, we read the following:
“Fr. François Dufay, who witnessed the battle at close quarters in China [in the 1940s], says to lose no time in preparing the Church of the Catacombs: “Take as principle that normal exterior life – liturgy, teaching, apostolate – should continue as far as possible [but only when certainly valid clergy are available — Ed.]. But, at the same time, prepare Christians to preserve their essential religious life in the absence of priests, worship and Sacraments… Prepare memory aids on the dogmas of necessary means, marriage without clergy, perfect contrition, assistance to the dying, Baptism, child education, etc., and place these leaflets in safe places…”
“It would be good if trustworthy priests of high caliber were to set themselves to living the life of the people. They need profound dogmatic and spiritual formation, especially on the theology of the Church, the meaning and value of persecution and suffering, and should be steeped in the remembrance of the great saints and martyrs of the past. Thus armed, the Christian faith will use its bad times for growth in charity,” making the most of the service Communism will render it by purifying and detaching it from all that is not God here below. And again, “Actually it’s solitaries who must be found and trained, in other words, Christians capable of living their faith all alone, amid the strongest pressures, the most painful happenings and the most forbidding of deserts.”
Gatto was looking to build those strong solitaries among his students. He knew that atheistic materialism — Communism and its forerunner Fabian socialism — had infiltrated the schools. He knew that, as we learn fromthe Catholic Encyclopedia:
“• Intellectual education must not be separated from moral and religious education. To impart knowledge or to develop mental efficiency without building up moral character is not only contrary to psychological law, which requires that all the faculties should be trained but is also fatal both to the individual and to society. No amount of intellectual attainment or culture can serve as a substitute for virtue; on the contrary, the more thorough intellectual education becomes, the greater is the need for sound moral training.
“• Religion should be an essential part of education; it should form not merely an adjunct to instruction in other subjects, but the centre about which these are grouped and the spirit by which they are permeated. The study of nature without any reference to God, or of human ideal with no mention of Jesus Christ, or of human legislation without Divine law is at best a one-sided education. The fact that religious truth finds no place in the curriculum is, of itself, and apart from any open negation of that truth, sufficient to warp the pupil’s mind in such a way and to such an extent that he will feel little concern in his school-days or later for religion in any form; and this result is the more likely to ensue when the curriculum is made to include everything that is worth knowing except the one subject which is of chief importance.
“• Sound moral instruction is impossible apart from religious education. An education which unites the intellectual, moral and religious elements is the best safeguard for the home, since it places on a secure basis the various relations which the family implies.” https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05295b.htm
Tell that to those who would have us revere credentials received from these halls of “higher learning.” And when these same people advise us to give Traditionalists credit for their alleged accomplishments, when all that these “accomplishments” amount to is decades of skewing the truth, remind them of what Fr. Dufay said above. Ask them how it is that they have secured the salvation of souls and prepared their followers for these times with their perpetual bad example, infighting, immorality, and denial of the necessity of the papacy. They must answer to God for their sins. We are to avoid them, warn others against them and through prayer, penance and self-education, do our best to persevere until the very end.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 21, 2022 | New Blog
+St. Lawrence of Brindisi+
I am not willing to devote any more time to these baseless allegations that are floating around about my last blog on immediate jurisdiction. Nor do I believe any of my readers are really interested in hearing more about them either, since several of them say they fully understand the point I was trying to make. However, there is an issue that does need to be addressed and it is no trifling matter. It is something very difficult to pin down but yet it is essential for all to understand it in order to protect themselves from its stealthy penetration into their thought processes. Because it is so subtle, it is an error many will deny they advance, and that is why it must be nipped in the bud if at all possible.
In the 19th century an error was condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus; its name was liberalism. It took many forms and wore various masks. One of these was the mask of the liberal Catholic, which in its extreme form manifested in the 20th century as the Novus Ordo church. In its most diluted variation, it presented as a seemingly attractive and Catholic attempt to practice charity, but the reality was far different. For this variety of Liberals excused the inexcusable, gave the benefit of the doubt where it was not due, tolerated the intolerable, questioned the unquestionable, and essentially made it possible to live comfortably and in peace with its very enemies. That this is something the Church not only condemned as a heresy but looked at in horror was explained by Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany, in a little book written in 1886, Liberalism is a Sin. This book was specifically approved and recommended by the Sacred Congregation of the Index. We will comment from this book at length and recommend that all purchase a copy.
The appearance of good can be deceiving
In his opening pages, Fr. Sarda explains how “…Appearances may be fair and the devil may present himself as an angel of light. The danger is the greater as the outward show is more seductive. Heresy has never been so insidious as under its present form of liberalism. Its most fatal shaft is its plea for liberality of mind. This in its own eyes is its cardinal virtue. Intellectual freedom from dogmatism is its boast, a boast in reality the mask of IGNORANCE AND PRIDE… Foes in the midst of battle cannot well be friends. Where the pressure of conflicting forces is most intense, there is little opportunity of reconciliation. Yet this absurdity and contradiction we find in the odious and repulsive attempt to unite liberalism with Catholicism.” And here attention must be paid especially to the word seductive. Because Liberalism can present itself as a tendency or a simple “difference of opinion” in matters where no such thing is allowed to the Catholic. And this is especially true when it comes to accepting the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs precisely for what they are.
Before continuing with Rev. Sarda’s comments, it needs to be pointed out that the entire purpose of praying at home is not to create yet another sect, but to honor the Sacraments by abstaining from them and diametrically oppose Traditionalism in all its many forms. We pray at home to escape the evil of mortal sin, the mortal sin committed by those daring to offer the Latin Mass and confer the Sacraments despite excommunications for schism, heresy, communicatio in sacris and infamy of law; excommunications that render Traditionalist pseudo-clergy the equivalent of vitandus. We are not simply “sheltering in place,” resigning ourselves to the Quietistic existence Traditionalists would love to assign us so they may continue their mission of deceiving souls — not saving them — undisturbed. No; we are not allowed to stand by idly and watch while those we love and who should be our brethren labor under such an intolerable deception. Nor are we allowed, in this day and age where such deception continues to present daily in new forms, to fail to condemn it every time it opens its mouth.
Some would have us believe that if there could just be a little bit of compromise and a little more respect for the enemy; a little less insistence on absolute obedience to papal decrees and a little more cooperation; also the abandonment of the idea that we need to study hard to know our faith which discourages so many, souls could be won over to the pray-at-home position. Well that is all fine and good, but this attitude was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his dogmatic letter to Cardinal Gibbons and Americans in general, Testem Benevolentiae. There he wrote:
“On account of our apostolic office, having to guard the integrity of the faith and the security of the faithful, [We] are desirous of writing to you … [regarding the errors of Isaac Hecker]. The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them.
“It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: ‘For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them.’” (end of Pope Leo quote). This is clearly the condemnation of all the Novus Ordo ever was and is, so it is undeniably dogmatic. Msgr. J.C. Fenton notes that Pope Pius XII condemned it as doctrinal minimism in Humani Generis. But it doesn’t apply to us today? Listen to what Rev. Sarda has to tell us on this topic:
“The liberal subjects God’s authority to the scrutiny of his reason and not his reason to God’s authority. He accepts revelation not on account of the infallible revealer but because of the infallible receiver. With him the individual judgment is the rule of faith; he believes in the independence of reason. It is true he accepts the magisterium of the Church, but he does not accept it as the sole authorized expounder of divine truth. He reserves as a coefficient factor in the determination of that truth his own private judgment. The true sense of revealed doctrine is not always certain, he thinks, and human reason has something to say in the matter, as for instance the limits of the Church’s infallibility, which may be determined by human science. He is intellectually free to accept or reject, but he is intellectually bound to no one. Liberal Catholics are deluded into the notion that incredulity is a virtue rather than a vice. Any chastisement of errors shocks their tender susceptibilities, and they detest any Catholic legislation in the direction of what they are pleased to call intolerance. The Ultramontane interpretation is violent and extreme and does much more harm than good by driving back the well-disposed at such a show of ill-liberality. Thus they erect into a dogma what is called the principle of toleration.” So if these shoes fit on certain feet, then wear them.
All the above succinctly describes Traditionalists and all who sympathize with them. They may be considered ultra-conservatives politically, but they are Catholic liberals of the moderate and tainted variety, as Rev. Sarda describes them. An Ultramontane my entire life, a totally unabashed defender of the papacy, of course I can expect only attacks from such people. But try as they might, they cannot change the FACT that when Pope Pius XII defined as certain that bishops can only receive their jurisdiction through the pope, those dissenting from that decision discreetly began to organize. Following the false Vatican 2 council, these men established a series of groups called Traditionalists who claimed, through various subterfuges, that they received jurisdiction directly from Christ. So from the release of Mystici Corporis in 1943 to the first establishment of these groups, the only ones claiming and practicing immediate jurisdiction were the Protestants, an undeniable fact.
What is stated above is the conclusion Traditionalists wish no one to fully understand, and will go to any lengths to suppress. So much so that Anthony Cekada even misstated the wording of the Council of Trent to deny this was the case. I don’t think it is too outrageous to claim that they do not want anyone to connect the dots and especially want to keep any possible affiliations with Gallicanism under wraps. This at least until it is time for their “great king and holy pope” of prophecy fame to appear and “unite the clans.” But try as they might, they cannot hide the fact that what they are doing contradicts Church teaching on so many levels.
Employing a condemned error to condemn an “error”
The irony is that what these critics are peddling as erroneous involves an error itself. The real objection to the original statement made by this author, that immediate jurisdiction is a Protestant heresy, is that it could not be said to proceed as a logical conclusion from the other facts provided. Yet the only way this statement could be true is if it is somehow believed that Pope Pius XII’s decision was not binding, (and that observation was made by a reader, not me). Yet it certainly IS binding, since Mystici Corporis is entered into the Acta Apostolica Sedis. Actually the implication that such a conclusion cannot be made is a philosophical error condemned by the Church. ‘Ah, but it is only an error, not a heresy, so that is OK; we still remain within the Church.’ And that is exactly what liberals, the anti-infallbilists and the Modernists who followed them were condemned for teaching.
The errors advanced by Nicholas d’Autrecourt regarding conclusions and evidence, condemned by Pope Clement VI, reads: “…From one matter another matter cannot be inferred or concluded; or from the non-existence of one, the non-existence of another” (DZ 554).; “That the certainty of evidence does not have degrees” (DZ 556); “That it cannot be shown clearly that in truth all things which are apparent are true” (DZ 567). These teachings were condemned as erroneous, false and presumptuous. Now the interesting part here is that if one looks up Nicholas of Autrecourt on the Internet, it refers you to a Catholic Encyclopedia article on Fideism, a topic we have touched on many times in various articles. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains under this head:
“It is not surprising, therefore, that the Church has condemned such doctrines. In 1348, the Holy See proscribed certain fideistic propositions of Nicholas d’Autrecourt (cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, 10th ed., nn. 553-570). In his two Encyclicals, one of September, 1832, and the other of July, 1834, Gregory XVI condemned the political and philosophical ideas of Lamenais. On 8 September, 1840, Bautain was required to subscribe to several propositions directly opposed to Fideism, the first and the fifth of which read as follows: “Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God”; and “The use of reason precedes faith and, with the help of revelation and grace, leads to it.” The same proposition were subscribed to by Bonnetty on 11 June, 1855.”
Lammenais and de Bonald were the main propagators of Fideism’s sister system Traditionalism. Their errors were condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1832 and 1834. This pope also condemned Bautain, who was made to correct one of his errors by stating: “We do not have the right to expect from an unbeliever that he admit the resurrection of our divine Savior before we shall have proposed definite proofs to him and these proofs are deduced by reason from the same tradition” (DZ 1623). So in other words, proofs from Revelation, also Christ’s vicars, must be presented before one can expect anyone to believe. (Lammenais is mentioned repeatedly by Rev. Sarda in his work on Liberalism.)
The Catholic Encyclopedia defines Traditionalism as: “A philosophical system which makes TRADITION the supreme criterion and rule of certitude.” Fideism is a bit more complicated but is very similar in its tenets. “Fideism (Lat. fides, faith), [is] a philosophical term meaning a system of philosophy or an attitude of mind, which, denying the power of unaided human reason to reach certitude, affirms that the fundamental act of human knowledge consists in an act of faith, and the supreme criterion of certitude is authority.” And it is precisely erroneous thinking regarding the understanding of certitude that Traditionalists have spread all these years.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on certitude, “Many truths, indeed, have to be accepted on authority; but then it has to be made evident that SUCH AUTHORITY IS LEGITIMATE, is capable of knowing the truth, and is qualified to teach in the particular department in which it is accepted.” And surrounded on all sides as we are today, only the Roman Pontiffs and those approved pre-1959 theologians respectfully commenting on what they teach can be trusted. As Rev. A.C. Cotter S.J. teaches in his The ABC of Scholastic Philosophy, (p. 284): “Authority clothed with the necessary conditions is true authority. False authority makes the same claims although it lacks these conditions.” Cotter comments that those following self-styled teachers of any philosophic system have the “duty to investigate for themselves. Authority is not the last criterion of truth or motive of certitude.”
In other words, faith or intuition in itself is some kind of proof or evidence without any need for external evidence; it is in fact even superior to external evidence. It is no coincidence that these errors emphasize Tradition in a non-Catholic sense. And it is no coincidence, either, that what passes as the continuation of the Church following the death of Pope Pius XII calls itself Traditionalist. Material-formal alone teaches that arriving at formal certitude is an impossibility because human reason cannot fully know the truth; “Catholics are not to seek things above themselves,” and on whose all-knowing judgment is this statement made? But these are words we have heard for decades. They want us to believe evidence is useless in attempting to arrive at the true; truths cannot be deduced by resorting to the reasoning process but by obedience to “authority,” legitimate or not. Isn’t that what has kept Traditionalists in business all these years?
Rules of Engagement: Give the enemy no quarter
My mentor, teacher and father, God rest his soul, instilled in me the operating principle that you never insult your readers by talking down to them, or fail to challenge them with things they can test for themselves. I have always tried to follow his advice. While the Baltimore Catechism is a starting point intended for children and teens and should be studied by all of us for starters, Pope St. Pius X expected priests and bishops to instruct the faithful from the Catechism of the Council of Trent, a much more advanced work (see Acerbo Nimis). And Catholics today will find much in these lesser catechisms dedicated to Mass and Sacraments, taking up fully half of the 1943 Baltimore memorial edition of the Kinkead version I consulted. Baptism and Marriage, of course, should be studied, and one should have a general knowledge of the Mass and all the other Sacraments. But we are ADULTS here, at least I hope so, and capable of learning so much more. Consider what one author had to say about this:
“Good will is not held in a vacuum and ignorance is often culpably sinful. If all Catholics have a moral duty to understand their faith AT THEIR LEVEL OF SECULAR EDUCATION, few of us are going to be saved… Pope Pius XI said: ‘In our day and age, unenlightened heroism is not enough.’ How much longer are we Catholics going to pretend that if our hearts are in the right place, we can safely continue to live in an intellectual void?” Peter Michaels, This Perverse Generation, (Sheed and Ward, 1949).
And from Pope St. Pius X: “I admit and recognize the external arguments of revelation that is divine facts and especially miracles and prophecies as very certain signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that the same arguments have been especially accommodated to the intelligence of all ages and men, even of these times” (Oath Against Modernism, DZ 2145). This same pope also wrote: “A Christian… should humbly seek the reason, insofar as he can, of how [what the Church teaches] is so. If he can understand, let him give thanks to God; if he cannot, let him not push his horns to the struggle but submit in all veneration” (1 Mach. 7:4-6; DZ 2120). In other words, some must simply believe and obey whatever they cannot understand.
I have subtitled this section the rules of engagement because Rev. Sarda very pointedly lays out these rules. I have always cited them and adhered to them. First of all, this entire issue really arose when I denied the actual validity of Traditionalist orders; then the objections began. Secondly, it was insinuated that it would not be possible to prove such invalidity and until then Trads retain the title to it because no one can disprove they cannot use epikeia to claim it, but that is a falsehood. Thirdly, the infallibility of Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis has been challenged on the basis that “null and void” in this constitution should not be taken literally. And on whose venerated authority is this advanced? We can believe only the pre-October 1958 Church, Her popes and councils and Her approved theologians. Rev. Sarda explains that:
“It is a rule of sound exegesis that any passage in Holy Scripture should always be interpreted according to the letter unless such meaning be in opposition to the context. We can only have recourse to a free or figurative interpretation when this opposition is obvious. This rule applies also to the interpretation of Pontifical documents.” Please demonstrate, then, why Pope Pius XII’s infallible document nullifying Traditionalist acts should not be taken literally. And do not speciously object that null and void does not mean invalid when Pope Leo XIII and Pope Clement VI both teach that these words mean just that. Every excuse is being made to regard these Traditionalist pseudo-clerics in a more sympathetic light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Rev. Sarda puts the kabosh to that.
“To treat as a liar the man who propagates false ideas, in the eyes of the [liberal theologian], is to sin against the Holy Ghost. To him the falsifier is simply misguided; it is not the poor fellow’s fault. He has, simple soul, been misled. We ought neither to resist nor combat him. We must strive, [instead], to attract him by soft words and pretty compliments. How the devil must chuckle over the mushy charity held out as bait to abet his own cause!” And there we have it all. I owe NOTHING to traditore Traditionalists; no use of “Fr.” before their name, no publicly expressed RIP when they pass (although we may pray for them privately); no “respect” for the garbage they spew out as theological discourse and weekly tales about their cats. And most emphatically, no lip service to their great work for the “salvation of souls” when such work can truly be termed only the damnation of souls. They are the sworn enemies of my Lord Jesus Christ, my Church and my beloved popes and here they will always be treated as such. “Give the enemy no quarter!” Rev. Sarda shouts, and this I have always practiced.
Traditionalist followers deceived by these men I leave for God to sort out, but many of them fall into the category of tainted Liberals as well, and that is heresy. I cannot fail to say what the Congregation of the Sacred Index has confirmed. I pray for them to see the truth and try to provide it for them, but only God can grant them the grace to accept it. God alone knows the consciences of men and tainted liberals may not realize that their approach is the administration of a deadly poison offensive to God. That unfortunately cannot be taken into consideration when the error is disseminated publicly, no matter what personal feelings may dictate.
I end with more of Fr. Sarda’s pithy statements, which I adopt for my own.
“By use of their reason the faithful are enabled to suspect and measure the orthodoxy of any new doctrine presented to them by comparing it with a doctrine already defined. If it be not in accord they can combat it as bad and justly stigmatize as bad the book or journal which sustains it. They cannot of course define it as ex cathedra but they can lawfully hold it as perverse and declare it such, warn others against it, raise the cry of alarm and strike the first blow against it. The faithful layman can do all this and has done it at all times with the applause of the Church; it behooves watch dogs to bark. Faith possesses a power of its own which it communicates to its friends and defenders. It is not they who give the truth power, but truth which charges them with its own vigor. This on the condition that they use that power in its defense…
“Instead of augmenting our forces, it would paralyze and nullify the vigor of those who would be able, if alone, to do something for the defense of the truth… The kind of soldiers we need go into the deadly breach and never flinch. No compromising, no minimizing with them. They plant their banner on the topmost height and form a solid, invincible phalanx around it that not all the legions of earth and hell combined can budge a single inch. They make no alliance, no compromise with a foe whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the truth. They know the enemy by nature is implacable, and his flag of truce but a cunning device of treachery… There is then no sin against charity in calling evil, EVIL, its authors, abettors and disciples, BAD; all its acts, words and writings INIQUITOUS, WICKED, MALICIOUS. In short, the wolf has always been called the wolf, and in so calling it no one ever believed that wrong was done to the flock and to the shepherd.”
“Better that only a few Catholics should be left, staunch and sincere in their religion, than that they should, remaining many, desire as it were, to be in collusion with the Church’s enemies and in conformity with the open foes of our faith.” ~ St. Peter Canisius
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 11, 2022
© Copyright 2013, T. Stanfill Benns (All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)
Introduction
No one starts a journey without having in mind a destination. No one investigates an organization to discover its history and purpose without expecting at some point to find what they were looking for. Many of the dissident Catholic groups which have originated since the close of the false Vatican 2 council in the 1960s, however, don’t seem to know where they are going, or what they are hoping to find. They are not even sure, it often appears, that they are required to have a destination, although they fully expect to reach heaven one day. As one friend commented recently, Traditional chapel groups seem to exist in order to provide a much welcome pacifier or placebo for dissident Catholics, desperate to relieve themselves of the pain and confusion of the times rather than to provide any productive way to address the real problems facing the Church today.
But in beginning this website, it was my intent to move readers ever forward in an understanding of their faith and to actually get to the root of the problems that plague us by providing some insight. I have listened to many readers for years who complain that it is just too complicated to try and figure out what has happened to the Church and continues to happen to us today and to make sense of it all, and I sympathize with them. This is why I have struggled for decades to successfully wrap my arms around what precipitated the current situation so I could better explain to others what I have learned from the Church’s own perspective.
I think the value of this site is that it does not simply present previous Catholic documents as something to guide readers through this dark night that now has lasted 55 years. Instead it attempts to explain the relation to what went before and what is today, with an emphasis on papal teaching and Canon Law as our guide in these times. Hopefully what has been written will help Catholics see why the current circumstances demand that we behave in a certain way, in order to follow the laws and teachings of the Church. Like all of you, I have taken many wrong turns, been forced to detour countless times and have run into several dead-ends. The journey to here has cost me dearly in many ways and has been an arduous one. But I am no different than others; we all have our own compelling stories to tell.
One thing, however, has never changed for me. Since the election of John 23, I was never certain that the popes following Pope Pius XII were Catholic. After formally acknowledging the sede vacante in 1982, I have always firmly believed that the answer to our problems is the papacy. For many years I was stuck in the unfortunate mindset that the laity could and actually had elected a true pope. I believed with all my heart and mind at that time that this is what God wanted, but I was misinformed and misled, not to mention sadly deluded. Once I realized that what I had done was not only contrary to God’s will but opposed to Catholic belief, I began re-evaluating my thinking and renewed my study of the faith. I started with the appointment of St. Peter by Christ to head the Church — the Vatican Council definitions. I never tire of this subject and for this reason papal documents will continue to constitute a large part of my studies.
Divine faith
It’s not that the emphasis on Divine faith and the papacy has not always been apparent in what I write — it has. It is that these references have been scattered throughout different articles on this site when they should be in the forefront. The primary focus of betrayedcatholics should be to promote an understanding of the Church from a truly Christological and papal perspective, because unless that can be done then it will not be possible to explain what really happened to the Church and how it came to pass. In order to understand the importance of Divine faith, which must be first and foremost in our minds even before we begin an examination of the papacy, please see the site article on this subject at Current Articles. This is a must read.
Once divine faith’s pre-eminence concerning belief is fully understood, we must then focus on the necessity of relying entirely on the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs that officially explain and define Christ’s teachings, also those papal teachings which bind us in disciplinary and moral matters. Nearly 150 years ago, Henry Cardinal Manning, in his “The Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance” described in detail the method I intend to use here. He wrote:
“To Peter alone first was given the plenitude of jurisdiction and infallible authority. Afterwards the gift of the Holy Ghost was shared with him by all the Apostles. From him and through him, therefore, all began. For which cause a clear and precise conception of His Primacy and privilege is necessary to a clear and precise conception of the Church. Unless it be first distinctly apprehended, the doctrine of the Church will always be proportionately obscure. The doctrine of the Church does not determine the doctrine of the Primacy, but the doctrine of the primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church. In beginning, therefore, with the Head, the Council has followed our Lord’s example, both in teaching and in fact; and in this will be found one of the causes of the singular and luminous precision with which the Council of the Vatican has, in one brief Constitution, excluded the well-known errors on the Primacy and Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.” Notice that it is Christ who gave Peter his infallibility and supreme jurisdiction, as recorded in the Gospels and defined by the Church.
Papal teaching
If the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council is rightly studied and understood, many Traditionalist errors will be exposed. For these errors deny the truth of Holy Scripture as defined by the Church. They are:
• Ex cathedra pronouncements, as explained by the Council in plain words and reaffirmed by Pope Pius XIII in Humani Generis, are a common, not a rare event. The Vatican Council never said, as so many Traditionalists intimate, that only solemn proclamations rendered infrequently, with pomp and splendor, are infallible. Instead the definition of infallibility, if read dispassionately and considered honestly, could cover almost any statement issued by the popes in any medium. To believe only rare ex cathedra statements are binding for belief by the faithful indirectly contradicts Christ’s placement of Peter over all the other Apostles and the faithful as possessing infallibility and supreme jurisdiction. The misunderstanding of this phrase has led to the skewing of the entire subject of infallibility and it must be stopped dead in its tracks. Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, a theologian personally approved by Pope Pius XII, explains how ex cathedra can cover everything from a radio address up to the definition of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven in the PDFs on Doctrinal Authority listed in the references section.
• The infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, which Pope Pius XII teaches in Humani Generis, is anything entered into the Acta Apostolica Sedis, including constitutions, encyclicals, addresses and allocutions. This exercise of his infallible authority in Humani Generis ¬defines the nature of the ordinary magisterium, (See Vatican Council, DZ 1792). See also Rev. Fenton’s article, “Infallibility in the Encyclicals.”
• The binding nature of documents issued by the popes CAN concern things that are not matters of faith or morals, (DZ 1820).
• In issuing disciplinary decrees such as those contained in the Code of Canon Law the Church is infallible, and we must accept such laws with a firm assent, (DZ 326; 1831).
• The primacy of jurisdiction is supreme, and without a true pope the existence of canonical mission jurisdiction is a moot point, (entire gist of the Vatican Council documents).
• The doctrines of the Church can never be understood in a way different from that manner in which they were first stated and believed, (DZ 1800; DZ 2145)
• No further definition of the teaching of the Vatican Council is necessary, as Pope Pius IX himself proclaimed. He wrote in 1871: “Some would have me interpret and explain even more fully the Definition of the Council. I will not do it. It is clear in itself and has no need of other comments and explanations. Whoever reads that decree with a dispassionate mind has its true sense easily and obviously before him,” (from Card. Manning’s, The Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance).
No pope, no Church
So any specious plea by Traditionalists that we must wait for a future pope to clarify these definitions before we know what they really mean is both disingenuous and disturbing, not to mention contradictory to the teaching of Pope Pius IX. It a ruse intended to continue the minimization of these doctrines and the obfuscation of the fact that the juridic Church possessing the four marks cannot exist without a true pope.
In short, if Catholics first understand that they need only accept what the popes teach, and that firmly and with irrevocable assent or (in some matters) with at least a firm assent (see Rev. Fenton’s “Religious Assent Owed Papal Teachings”), then the need to study lengthy documents not necessary to an understanding of the issues at hand is greatly decreased. Using a limited number of infallible papal decrees, Catholics can believe what true popes, not Traditionalists teach, and can thereby be certain they believe what they believe on Christ-directed authority and need no other leaders or “clergy” until a true pope once again sits in St. Peter’s Chair.
As Cardinal Manning has explained, the idea of a Church not defined by the papacy itself is absurd; there can be no such Church. And in defining the Church’s role during an interregnum, Pope Pius XII told us in Vacantis Apostolica Sedis that those who would violate the rights of the Church, usurp papal jurisdiction or disobey papal and Canon Law during a vacancy of the Apostolic See do so in vain; their acts have no effect and are null and void the moment they are attempted. There is either a Church obedient to the Continual Magisterium in all things or there is no Church at all.
Conclusion
It is glaringly obvious that always the enemies of the Church have crusaded to first erode by degrees then destroy the authority of the papacy. That they have succeeded almost entirely was proven during the false Vatican 2 council when half the existing church accepted the changes in Mass and Sacraments, also the Church in general and the other half left the anti-Church. Those who left proved they had no concept of the papacy and the obligations of the hierarchy when they joined up with Traditionalists. And those who stayed pledged allegiance to men who overturned the unchangeable doctrines of the Church.
The world is growing more evil by the minute. At any time Christ could decide that He has put up with us long enough. But preoccupation with modern conspiracy theories, wars and rumors of wars will not save our souls. Only a true understanding and wholehearted acceptance of the Catholic faith built on the rock established by Christ will allow us to finally understand the faith as the Church Herself would have us understand it — from the mouths of St. Peter and his successors, Christ’s Vicars on earth. For “He who heareth you, heareth Me.”
Catholics should remember well what Pope Benedict XIV pronounced over 250 years ago: “We declare that the greater part of those who are damned have brought the calamity on themselves by ignorance of the mysteries of the faith, which they should have known and believed, in order to be united with the elect,” (from Pope St. Pius X’s Acerbo Nimis, dated April l5, 1905). And the Vatican Council teaches infallibly that knowledge of these mysteries can only begin with a correct and precise knowledge of the primacy. This we have tried our best to present. But before one can determine the need for obedience, they must first decide who is worthy of such obedience and who is truly pope. This will be the topic of the next section.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 5, 2022
Divine and Catholic truth alone will set us free
© Copyright 2013, T. Stanfill Benns (All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)
No one starts a journey without having in mind a destination. No one investigates an organization to discover its history and purpose without expecting at some point to find what they were looking for. Many of the dissident Catholic groups which have originated since the close of the false Vatican 2 council in the 1960s, however, don’t seem to know where they are going, or what they are hoping to find. They are not even sure, it often appears, that they are required to have a destination, although they fully expect to reach heaven one day. As one friend commented recently, Traditional chapel groups seem to exist in order to provide a much welcome pacifier or placebo for dissident Catholics, desperate to relieve themselves of the pain and confusion of the times rather than to provide any productive way to address the real problems facing the Church today.
But in beginning this website it has always been my intent to move readers ever forward in an understanding of their faith and to actually get to the root of the problems that plague us by providing some insight. I have listened to many readers for years who complain that it is just too complicated to try and figure out what has happened to the Church and continues to happen to us today and to make sense of it all, and I sympathize with them. This is why I have struggled for decades to successfully wrap my arms around what precipitated the current situation so I could better explain to others what I have learned from the Church’s own perspective.
I think the value of this site is that it does not simply present previous Catholic documents as something to guide readers through this dark night that now has lasted 55 years. Instead it attempts to explain the relation to what went before and what is today, with an emphasis on Canon Law and papal teaching as our guide in these times. Hopefully what has been written will help Catholics see why the current circumstances demand that we behave in a certain way, in order to follow the laws and teachings of the Church.
The Journey to Divine Faith
Like all of you, I have taken many wrong turns, been forced to detour countless times and have run into several dead-ends. The journey to here has cost me dearly in many ways and has been an arduous one. But I am no different than others; we all have our own compelling stories to tell. One thing, however, has never changed for me. Since the election of John 23, I was never certain that the popes following Pope Pius XII were Catholic. After formally acknowledging the sede vacante in 1982, I have always firmly believed that the answer to our problems is the papacy. For many years I was stuck in the unfortunate mindset that the laity could and actually had elected a true pope. I believed with all my heart and mind at that time that this is what God wanted, but I was misinformed and misled, not to mention sadly deluded. Once I realized that what I had done was not only contrary to God’s will but opposed to Catholic belief, I began re-evaluating my thinking and renewed my study of the faith. I started with the appointment of St. Peter by Christ to head the Church — the Vatican Council definitions. I never tire of this subject and until we once again are blessed with a true pope, should that be in my lifetime, papal documents will continue to constitute a large part of my studies.
It’s not that the emphasis on Divine faith and the papacy has not always been apparent in what I write — it has. It is that these references have been scattered throughout different articles on this site when they should be in the forefront. The primary focus of betrayedcatholics should be to promote an understanding of the Church from a truly Christological and papal perspective, because unless that can be done then it will not be possible to explain what really happened to the Church and how it came to pass.
Once divine faith’s pre-eminence concerning belief is fully understood, we must then focus on the necessity of relying entirely on the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs that officially explain and define Christ’s teachings, also those papal teachings which bind us in disciplinary and moral matters. Nearly 150 years ago, Henry Cardinal Manning, in his “The Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance” described in detail the method I intend to use here. He wrote: “To Peter alone first was given the plenitude of jurisdiction and infallible authority. Afterwards the gift of the Holy Ghost was shared with him by all the Apostles. From him and through him, therefore, all began. For which cause a clear and precise conception of His Primacy and privilege is necessary to a clear and precise conception of the Church.
“Unless it be first distinctly apprehended, the doctrine of the Church will always be proportionately obscure. The doctrine of the Church does not determine the doctrine of the Primacy, but the doctrine of the primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church. In beginning, therefore, with the Head, the Council has followed our Lord’s example, both in teaching and in fact; and in this will be found one of the causes of the singular and luminous precision with which the Council of the Vatican has, in one brief Constitution, excluded the well-known errors on the Primacy and Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.” Notice that it is Christ who gave Peter his infallibility and supreme jurisdiction, as recorded in the Gospels and defined by the Church.
Vatican Council study would dispel many errors
If the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council is rightly studied and understood, many Traditionalist errors will be exposed. For these errors deny the truth of Holy Scripture as defined by the Church. They are:
• Ex cathedra pronouncements, as explained by the Council in plain words, are a common, not a rare event. The Vatican Council never said, as so many Traditionalists intimate, that only solemn proclamations rendered infrequently, with pomp and splendor, are infallible. Instead the definition of infallibility, if read dispassionately and considered honestly, could cover almost any statement issued by the popes in any medium. This indirectly contradicts Christ’s placement of Peter over all the other Apostles and the faithful as possessing infallibility and supreme jurisdiction. The misunderstanding of this phrase has led to the skewing of the entire subject of infallibility and it must be stopped dead in its tracks. Rev. Joseph Clifford Fenton, a theologian personally approved by Pope Pius XII, explains how ex cathedra can cover everything from a radio address up to the definition of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven in the PDFs on Doctrinal Authority listed in the references section.
• The infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, which Pope Pius XII teaches in Humani Generis, is anything entered into the Acta Apostolica Sedis, including constitutions, encyclicals, addresses and allocutions. This exercise of his infallible authority in Humani Generis defines the nature of the ordinary magisterium, (See Vatican Council, DZ 1792). See also Rev. Fenton’s article, “Infallibility in the Encyclicals.”
• The binding nature of documents issued by the popes CAN concern things that are not matters of faith or morals, (DZ 1820).
• In issuing disciplinary decrees such as those contained in the Code of Canon Law the Church is infallible, and we must accept such laws with a firm assent, (DZ 326; 1831).
• The primacy of jurisdiction is supreme, and without a true pope the existence of canonical mission jurisdiction is a moot point, (entire gist of the Vatican Council documents).
•The doctrines of the Church can never be understood in a way different from that manner in which they were first stated and believed, (DZ 1800; DZ 2145).
No further definition of the teaching of the Vatican Council is necessary, as Pope Pius IX himself proclaimed. He wrote in 1871: “Some would have me interpret and explain even more fully the Definition of the Council. I will not do it. It is clear in itself and has no need of other comments and explanations. Whoever reads that decree with a dispassionate mind has its true sense easily and obviously before him,” (from Card. Manning’s, “The Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance,”). So any specious plea by Traditionalists that we must wait for a future pope to clarify these definitions before we know what they really mean is both disingenuous and disturbing, not to mention contradictory to the teaching of Pope Pius IX. It a ruse intended to continue the minimization of these doctrines and the obfuscation of the fact that the juridic Church possessing the four marks cannot exist without a true pope.
In short, if Catholics first understand that they need only accept what the popes teach, and that firmly and with irrevocable assent or (in some matters) with at least a firm assent (see Rev. Fenton’s “Religious Assent Owed Papal Teachings”), then the need to study lengthy documents not necessary to an understanding of the issues at hand is greatly decreased. Using a limited number of infallible papal decrees, Catholics can believe what true popes, not Traditionalists teach, and can thereby be certain they believe what they believe on Christ-directed authority and need no other leaders or “clergy” until a true pope once again sits in St. Peter’s Chair. As Cardinal Manning has explained, the idea of a Church not defined by the papacy itself is absurd; there can be no such Church. And in defining the Church’s role during an interregnum, Pope Pius XII told us in Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis that those who would violate the rights of the Church, usurp papal jurisdiction or disobey papal and Canon Law during a vacancy of the Apostolic See do so in vain; their acts have no effect and are null and void the moment they are attempted. There is either a Church obedient to the Continual Magisterium in all things or there is no Church at all.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is glaringly obvious that always the enemies of the Church have crusaded to first erode by degrees then destroy the authority of the papacy. That they have succeeded almost entirely was proven during the false Vatican 2 council when half the existing church accepted the changes in Mass and Sacraments, also the Church in general and the other half left the anti-Church. Those who left proved they had no concept of the papacy and the obligations of the hierarchy when they joined up with Traditionalists. And those who stayed pledged allegiance to men who overturned the unchangeable doctrines of the Church. The world is growing increasingly evil by the minute. At any time Christ could decide that He has put up with us long enough. But preoccupation with modern conspiracy theories, wars and rumors of wars will not save our souls. Only a true understanding and wholehearted acceptance of the Catholic faith built on the rock established by Christ will allow us to finally understand the faith as the Church Herself would have us understand it — from the mouths of St. Peter and his successors, Christ’s Vicars on earth. For “He who heareth you, heareth Me.”
Catholics should remember well what Pope Benedict XIV pronounced over 250 years ago: “We declare that the greater part of those who are damned have brought the calamity on themselves by ignorance of the mysteries of the faith, which they should have known and believed, in order to be united with the elect,” (from Pope St. Pius X’s “Acerbo Nimis,” dated April l5, 1905).And the Vatican Council teaches infallibly that knowledge of these mysteries can only begin with a correct and precise knowledge of the primacy. This we have tried our best to present. But before one can determine the need for obedience, they must first decide who is worthy of such obedience and who is truly pope. Please the section. On this page headed false popes.
