No Papal Mandate in Episcopal Consecrations = No Apostolicity

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(This article is longer than the others so please bear with me here. Also, as is the case in all my blogs and articles, any emphasis within the texts quoted is my own unless otherwise noted.)

Can. 953: “The episcopal consecration is reserved to the Roman Pontiff in such a manner that NO BISHOP IS ALLOWED TO CONFER EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION ON ANYONE UNLESS HE HAS FIRST ASCERTAINED THAT THERE IS A PAPAL MANDATE TO THAT EFFECT.” A papal mandate is permission issued specifically by the Roman Pontiff to those consecrating any bishop confirming the bishop’s nomination or election and assuring his fitness for consecration. As Abp. Cicognani comments in his Canon Law, according to a rule of law, wherever the Church in Her laws does not differentiate, neither should we. So how do Traditionalists and their pet theologians explain away “NO BISHOP” and ANYONE here? Yet those claiming to be bishops in the Traditional movement have attempted to dismiss these papal decrees forbidding their so-called consecrations using every possible loophole they can find. Necessity and epikeia are the excuse most often used for the consecration of these men they call bishops but as will be seen below and in the later article on epikeia, this will not suffice.

It must be remembered that there can be no apostolic succession without an unquestionably canonically elected pope, (and no, lay people and not even so called Traditionalists “clerics” can pose as electors). Validly and licitly consecrated bishops must be approved and appointed by a canonically elected pope and be fully in communion with him to ordain priests and assign them to parishes. Apostolic succession exists only when orders AND jurisdiction both are present, and neither is the case with Traditionalists whose orders are at best questionably valid (see https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/free-content/reference-links/1-what-constitutes-the-papacy/apostolic-succession-are-schismatic-clergy-and-laymen/). Jurisdiction cannot be present because it was never received, it CANNOT come directly from Christ Himself as our last blog demonstrated, and without a canonically elected Roman Pontiff it cannot be supplied, even in danger of death.

Traditionalists are robbers and thieves because they have not come through the door. They have not received their jurisdiction through the competent ecclesiastical authority in harmony with the canons as Can. 147 and Pope Pius XII demands. They have not been rightly ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical and canonical authority, because even in the case of “priests,” the ordination proceeds without the dimissorial letters. Impediments also are removed in those to be ordained by “bishops” who have no jurisdiction whatsoever and whose acts are made null and void under the terms of Pope Pius XII’s papal election constitution Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis.

Pope Pius VI’s Charitas is listed as one of the sources from the old law for Can. 147, which states: “An ecclesiastical office cannot be validly obtained without canonical provision. Canonical provision means the grant of an ecclesiastical office by competent ecclesiastical authority, made according to the sacred canons.” After quoting this teaching from the Council of Trent, (“If anyone says that… those who are neither duly ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical and canonical authority, but who come from elsewhere are legitimate ministers of the word and of the Sacraments, let him be anathema,” DZ 960,) the Sacred Congregation of the Council declared under Can. 147:

“In order to preserve more inviolate these same sacred principles and at the same time forestall abuses in a matter of such great importance, His Holiness Pope Pius XII has deigned to provide,” an ipso facto excommunication especially reserved to the Holy See for: “1) those who contrive against legitimate ecclesiastical authorities or attempt in any way to subvert their authority; 2) anyone who without a canonical investiture or provision made according to the sacred canons occupies an ecclesiastical office, benefice or dignity, or allows anyone to be unlawfully intruded into the same, or who retains the same; 3)  those who have any part directly or indirectly in the crimes mentioned in one (1) and  two (2),” (Canon Law Digest, Vol. 3, under Can. 147. And as Pope Pius IX teaches, Catholics are bound in conscience to obey also any decree issued by the Sacred Congregations.) This proves without a doubt that the section of Trent referring to unlawful pastors is not limited to the Protestants. These censures are very similar in nature to the excommunication found in Can. 2345 and Pope Paul IV’s condemnation in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of those who usurp ecclesiastical offices. The canonists Revs. T. Lincoln Bouscaren and Adam Ellis, editors of the Canon Law Digest, say that Can. 147 applies also to the Holy See.

This excommunication is listed under Can. 2394, which automatically deprives anyone, not just bishops, of an office seized illicitly and recommends them for punishment by the Ordinary. This for taking possession “of an ecclesiastical benefice, office or dignity by his own authority or before he has received the necessary letters of confirmation or institution [from the bodies or individuals electing or nominating clerics for various offices] and has exhibited them to the persons designated by law.” The meaning of offices will be explained below. Pope Pius XII was deadly serious about the confirmation of all offices by the necessary superior; he was guarding here the rights of the hierarchy, i. e. the Church. This is why only a year later he would write Ad Apostolorum Principis. So clearly the mind of the Church in this matter is that expressed here by Pius XII, as well as by the Council of Trent and Pope Pius VI in Charitas.

Offices and those who occupy them

We already know what constitutes canonical appointment; it has to be done by the authority who in the canons is indicated as the one competent to make the appointment and confirm it. In this case those priests and bishops “electing” or choosing candidates for the episcopacy are not certainly even clerics and cannot elect or appoint anyone; they do not constitute competent ecclesiastical authority. In the case of bishops, the Roman Pontiff, even if one existed, could only confirm such an election or appointment if made by competent ecclesiastical authority. The mandate provides proof the appointment has been reviewed and approved and permission given to consecrate, and this would not happen if the electing or appointing body was found to be wanting in any way.

Next must be determined what constitutes an office. By office, according to Can. 145, is meant, “in a broad sense…any employment which is legitimately practiced for a spiritual purpose. In the strict sense, an ecclesiastical office means a stable position created either by the divine or ecclesiastical law, conferred according to the rules of the sacred canons and entailing some participation at least in ecclesiastical power, whether of orders or jurisdiction. In law, the term ecclesiastical office is used in its strict sense…” unless a specific law indicates otherwise. If Traditionalists were qualified to assume an office, they would have to call it an office, but they are not qualified to assume anything.

No matter what kind of bishop is intended here, when they are appointed or elected, they are assigned to a specific office according to this definition. These Trad clerics cannot claim jurisdiction of any kind, because jurisdiction is a grant of authority made by a competent superior in communion with the Roman Pontiff to be exercised over specific subjects. Nor can they claim certainly valid orders. Lefebvre and Thuc may have been validly appointed, but without the papal appointment of the bishops they consecrated, these bishops were never validly created for ANY position. Both Lefebvre and Thuc have huge clouds hanging over their heads where intention, their own validity and fitness are concerned. This cloud would need to be lifted before any question of the validity of their ordinations and consecrations could be decided by a true Roman Pontiff. They certainly could not give to others what they did not receive themselves, (please see website link on Apostolic Succession above).

Those they created, whether priests or bishops, are only doubtfully valid AT BEST; and according to Pope Pius VI in Charitas, the whole affair is null and void. They possess no jurisdiction and cannot use any assumed power of Orders for any purpose. This because we cannot resort to doubtfully valid ministers according to Pope Innocent XI’s declaration that it is not safe to receive sacraments from such persons, (DZ 1151). Furthermore, Can. 154 declares that, “Offices which entail the care of souls cannot be validly conferred upon clerics who are not ordained priests.” Like it or not, Trads all have assumed an office they are not qualified to possess. And if the office of bishop is not validly held, how can such men possibly call and create priests?

The canons say they cannot. A priest cannot create a priest, and in most cases these “bishops” are not even priests themselves! In the consecration rite, these men are specifically called to the office of bishop. If they cannot accept such an office because papal appointment was never made, how can they receive it?! As Rev. Patrick Madgett S. J. teaches in Vol. II of his work Christian Origins (1943) under bishops: “A successor in any office or task is one who is lawfully substituted in place of another to perform the same duties, with the same powers.” And Trad “bishops” present as successors of the Apostles with all the same duties and powers but are not lawful and are at the very least doubtfully valid.

Can. 148 defines appointments as any of the following: (1) free appointment by the legitimate superior; (2) by the so-called “institution” in cases where a patron has the right to nominate or present to the ecclesiastical superior the person who is to obtain the office; (3) confirmation by a superior in the case of elections and (4) In the case of postulation in religious officers, when voters appoint a certain candidate for office the superior accepting the determination of the voters is said to grant admission and (5) an office may be obtained simply by election and acceptance of the elected, but only if the law does not require confirmation of the elected.  Canon 110 states:

“Though the Holy See gives some of the clergy the title of prelate without jurisdiction as a mere honorary title, the term ‘prelates’ properly denotes in law clerics, either secular or religious, who have ordinary jurisdiction in the external forum.” Under Canons 147 and 148, Rev. Augustine comments that: “The competent authority in conferring major ecclesiastical offices (prelacies) is the Roman Pontiff.” A prelate is one who “rules over the clergy and people of a district that is separated from every other diocese,” (Revs. Woywod-Smith, Can. 319). Donald Attwater defines a prelate as, “A dignitary having jurisdiction in the external forum. The principal prelates are the bishops; others are vicars and prefects apostolic.” So regardless of whether Traditionalists claim to be “residential bishops” or not, they are bound to be confirmed by the Roman Pontiff for consecration regardless.

This is demonstrated by what Pope Pius IX taught regarding the Old Catholics in Germany:

Etsi Multa, Pope Pius IX, Nov. 21, 1873

“24. But these men, having progressed more boldly in the ways of wickedness and destruction, as happens to heretical sects from God’s just judgment, have wished to create a hierarchy also for themselves, as we have intimated. They have chosen and set up a pseudo-bishop, a certain notorious apostate from the Catholic faith,Joseph Humbert Reinkens. So that nothing be lacking in their impudence, for his consecration they have had refuge to those very Jansenists of Utrecht, whom they themselves, before they separated from the Church, considered as heretics and schismatics, as do all other Catholics. However, this Joseph Humbert dares to say that he is a bishop, and, what passes belief, he is recognized and named in an explicit decree by the most serene Emperor of Germany and is proposed to all his subjects as a lawful bishop. 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.

“And indeed “the Lord spoke to Peter; to one person therefore, so that He might found unity from one”; to Peter, “the divine dignity granted a great and wonderful consortium of his power, and if He wished anything to be common with him and the rest of the princes, He never gave, except through him, what He did not deny to the others.” Hence it is from this Apostolic See, where blessed Peterlives and presides and grants the truth of faith to those seeking it, that the rights of venerable communion flow to all; and this same See ‘for the Churches spread throughout the whole world is certainly the head, as it were, of their members, from which if one cuts himself off, he becomes an exile from the Christian religion, as soon as he begins not to belong to its structure.

“25. Therefore the holy martyr Cyprian, writing about schism, denied to the pseudo-bishop Novatian even the title of Christian, on the grounds that he was cut off and separated from the Church of Christ. ‘Whoever he is,’ he says, ‘and whatever sort he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ. Let him boast and preach his philosophy and eloquence with a proud voice; he who does not have fraternal charity and does not retain ecclesiastical unity, loses also what he previously had. Since by Christ one Church was founded divided into many members throughout the world, so likewise one episcopate, diffused in the harmonious multiplicity of many bishops. Subsequent to the teaching of God and the conjoined unity of the Catholic Church, he attempts to build a human church. Therefore, he who does not retain unity of spirit nor communion of peace and thus separates himself from the bond of the Church and the college of the priesthood cannot have the power nor the honor of a bishop because he kept the unity or the peace of the episcopacy.’”

Excommunication

“26. We have been undeservingly placed on this supreme seat of Peter to preserve the Catholic faith and the unity of the universal Church. Therefore following the custom and example of Our Predecessors and of holy legislation, by the power granted to Us from heaven, We declare the election of the said Joseph Humbert Reinkens,performed against the sanctions of the holy canons to be illicit, null, and void. We furthermore declare his consecration sacrilegious. Therefore, by the authority of Almighty God, We excommunicate and hold as anathema Joseph Humbert himself and all those who attempted to choose him, and who aided in his sacrilegious consecration. 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.”

Does this even give Traditionalists any pause whatsoever, that something so similar to their own elections and consecrations of bishops results in a sacrilegious act and VITANDUS excommunication for those following said bishop?! And here we see Pope Pius IX holds Reinkens’ election null and void, and this following “custom, the example of Our predecessors and holy legislation.” Likewise Pope Pius VI’s Charitas held France’s appointment of constitutional bishops null and void, so surely Pope Pius IX was referring to Charitas as well as other decrees in Etsi Multa. When such consecrations are performed during an interregnum outside the laws of the Church, Pope Pius XII has decreed they are null and void altogether.

Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, Pope Pius XII, 1945 (paras.1- 3, Ch. 1)

  1. While the Apostolic Seat is vacant, let the Sacred College of Cardinals have no power or jurisdiction at all in those things which pertain to the Pope while he was alive…but let everything be held, reserved for the future Pope. And thus we decree that whatever power or jurisdiction pertaining to the Roman Pontiff, while he is alive (unless in as far as it is expressly permitted in this, Our Constitution) the meeting of Cardinals itself may have taken for exercising, is null and void.
  2. “Likewise we order that the Sacred College of Cardinals is not able to dispose of the laws of the Apostolic Seat and the Roman Church in any manner it wishes, nor may it attempt to detract wheresoever from the laws of the same, either directly or indirectly through a species of connivance, or through dissimulation of crimes perpetrated against the same laws, either after the death of the Pontiff or in time of vacancy, [however] it may seem to be attempted. Indeed, we will that it ought to guard and defend against the same contention of all men.
  3. “Laws given by the Roman Pontiffs are in no way able to be corrected or changed through the meeting of the cardinals of the Roman Church [the See] being vacant; nor is anything able to be taken away or added, nor is there able to be made any dispensation in any manner concerning the laws themselves or some part of them. This is very evident from pontifical Constitutions [on]…the election of the Roman Pontiff. But if anything contrary to this prescript occurs or is by chance attempted, we declare it by Our Supreme authority to be null and void(private translation commissioned by Irene Keast).

In the above papal paragraphs, we find the phrase “null and void” just as it is found as follows in Charitas: “We therefore severely forbid the said Expilly and the other wickedly elected and illicitly consecrated men, under this punishment of suspension, to assume episcopal jurisdiction or any other authority for the guidance of souls since they have never received it. 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. Nor may they otherwise act, decree, or decide, whether separately or united as a council, on matters which relate to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 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…”

And in Ad Apsotolorum Principis: “Bishops who have been neither named nor confirmed by the Apostolic See, but who, on the contrary, have been elected and consecrated in defiance of its express orders, enjoy no powers of teaching or of jurisdiction since jurisdiction passes to bishops only through the Roman Pontiff as We admonished in the Encyclical Letter Mystici Corporis.” This key phrase referencing jurisdiction and teaching is what Traditionalists consistently ignore, which is why they must pretend to receive their jurisdiction directly from Christ.

In Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, no change in the law is allowed even to the cardinals, most of whom were bishops. There can be absolutely no usurpation of papal jurisdiction; all must be left to the future pope. Even any attempt at such things is null and void and this is infallibly decreed in Etsi Multa, Charitas, and is clearly stated in equivalent terms in Ad Apostolorum Principis. And the cardinalate is directed by Pope Pius XII to prevent any such crimes from occurring. We live in an interregnum. Traditionalists have created their own “hierarchy” and yet all is an illusion; their acts were null and void. They will say the law does not apply to them, that they are allowed to function and call the law itself into question. They say this about all these laws and infallible decrees except those they feel serve their purpose. They offer no proofs whatsoever giving them direct permission to proceed; all the proofs are against them. Yet still they continue to offend God, violate the law and refuse to do His will.

And there is something else that to date no one seems to have pointed out. In the episcopal consecration ceremony, any and ALL bishops, whether being consecrated as ordinaries or for other positions are asked to present the “Mandate or Apostolic Letter from the Pope,” which is read aloud. The Bishop-elect then kneels before the consecrator and solemnly swears an oath to submit himself to the Holy See, an oath which in the case of Traditionalists, if indeed it is even made, is as barren and worthless as the episcopal ceremony itself. As we have seen above, all such candidates for the episcopacy must be approved by the Roman Pontiff and present themselves for consecration within three months of such approval. In his Ad Apostolorum Principis as well as in Charitas, no distinction is made between residential bishops, titular bishops, missionary bishops, etc.

In the episcopal rite of consecration, the one being consecrated is consecrated for the OFFICE of bishop. The one being consecrated makes this solemn oath to submit to the Holy See as follows: “I shall render to our Holy Father, Pope N., and to his aforesaid successors an account of my whole pastoral office, and of all things pertaining in any manner whatsoever to the state of my Church, to the discipline of the clergy and the people, and finally to the salvation of the souls which are entrusted to me: and in turn I shall receive humbly the apostolic mandates and execute them as diligently as possible.” (Some Trad bishops have removed all reference to the papal mandate from the rite, something that is strictly forbidden by the Church. Only the pope can attenuate the rites of the Sacraments.) Later in the rite, the consecrator says to the one being consecrated: “Will you teach the people for whom you are ordained, both by words and by example, the things you understand from the divine Scriptures? Will you receive, keep and teach with reverence the traditions of the orthodox fathers and the decretal constitutions of the Holy and Apostolic See?“ If these so-called bishops are not teaching obedience to the Roman Pontiffs and the continual magisterium — and they are not — then this oath is worthless. (See the two rites compared at https://www.academia.edu/646882/Comparison_of_Old_and_New_Catholic_Rites_of_Ordination_to_the_Priesthood).“Bishop” Anthony Cekada and others pretend that only ordinaries or residential bishops can hold an office, but the rite itself contradicts him. As seen above, even a priest or religious can hold an office by appointment of the superior.

The Catholic Encyclopedia under “bishop” elaborates further on the above. In the case of those allowed to make recommendations for candidates to the episcopacy, “this does not juridically bind the sovereign pontiff, who has the power to choose the new bishop from persons not included in the list of recommendations.” In certain countries where bishops are elected, the votes are sent to the Holy See for approval along with a list of “useful information” about each of the candidates. “Whatever the manner of his nomination, the bishop has no power until his nomination has been confirmed by the Holy See…” The request to receive the papal mandate, which is to be read aloud, followed by the oath of the one consecrated, is the first and most important part of the entire rite. This should be obvious to any rational person, because in the wording of the rite, it is implied that without the papal mandate, the man seeking consecration has no right to be consecrated.

Nullity according to Pope Leo XIII’s constitution on Anglican Orders

Then we have yet another problem to address, that of those who challenge the true meaning of null and void in all the above decrees. One person claims it need not be interpreted to mean exactly what it says, according to canonists and theologians, and does not mean that all the acts so declared are invalidly or even illicitly performed before or after the fact. Unfortunately, this is not the teaching of the Holy See and does not provide the out these “bishops” are so desperately seeking. In fact it strengthens the case for invalidity — something surely unintentional in raising this issue on our opponents’ part — but providential for those who believe the Roman Pontiffs enjoy the primacy of jurisdiction and supreme power in the Church and are to be obeyed when defining terms over theologians and canonists. From Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae:

“For to obtain orders nulliter means the same as by act null and void, that is invalid, as the very meaning of the word and as common parlance requires. This is especially clear when the word is used in the same way about Orders as aboutecclesiastical benefices. These, by the undoubted teaching of the sacred canons, were clearly null if given with any vitiating defect. Moreover, when some doubted as to who, according to the mind of the pontiff, could be called and considered bishops validly and lawfully ordained, the said Pope (Pope Paul IV) shortly after, on October 30, issued a further letter in the form of a brief and said:

We, desiring to wholly remove such doubt, and to opportunely provide for the peace of conscience of those who during the aforementioned schism were promoted to Holy Orders, by clearly stating the meaning and intention which we had in our said letters, declare that it is only those bishops and archbishops who were not ordained and consecrated in the form of the Church that cannot be said to be duly and rightly ordained’” Pope Leo XIII continues:

“The authority of Julius III, and of Paul IV, which we have quoted, clearly shows the origin of that practice which has been observed without interruption for more than three centuries, that Ordinations conferred according to the Edwardine rite should be considered null and void. This practice is fully proved by the numerous cases of absolute re-ordination according to the Catholic rite even in Rome.

“Wherefore, strictly adhering, in this matter, to the decrees of the pontiffs, our predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own initiative and certain knowledge, we pronounce and declare that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void” (end of Pope Leo XIII quote).

Commenting on Canon 11 (invalidating and disqualifying laws), Abp. Cicognani wrote: “Invalidating and disqualifying laws certainly bind in conscience… Certain acts are not to be upheld as valid, nor are they considered to be a source of rights or emoluments. However, it should be noted that if the laws forbid and at the same time nullify an act…they oblige in conscience to omit the act…” Hence what is stated in Canon 11: “Laws only are to be considered invalidating or disqualifying which explicitly or equivalently state that an act is null and void or that a person is incapable of acting” (Canon Law, 1935). But the real key to everything Traditionalists have attempted to do is found under Can. 15, and will be examined in the article on epikeia.

This clarifies the true definition of null and void, and it was likewise made clear by Pope Paul IV in his Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, where he states: ”If ever at any time it becomes clear that any Bishop…Archbishop, Patriarch, or primate; or any Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church…or likewise if any Roman Pontiff before his promotion or elevation as a Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, [has strayed from the Catholic Faith or] fallen into some heresy, [or has incurred schism], then his promotion or elevation shall be null, invalid and void.” But it raises yet another issue: If the presentation of the papal mandate is omitted from the form quoted above, is not this an alteration of the form calling it into question, just as the Anglican form was called into question and declared null and void?

Pope Leo XIII in his constitution on Anglican Orders quotes this from Pope Paul IV’s Praeclara carissima as follows: ‘“Those who have been promoted to Ecclesiastical Orders by anyone but a bishop validly and lawfully ordained [see the Council of Trent, DZ 960, 967] are bound to receive those orders again.’” And those bishops not validly and lawfully ordained were, Leo XIII continues, those promoted to the episcopate and other orders not according to the accustomed form of the Church… the form and intention of the Church.” Was Lefebvre validly and lawfully ordained and consecrated? We have grave doubts. Thuc was apparently validly and lawfully ordained and consecrated, but neither he nor Lefebvre could ordain and consecrate “priests and bishops” without the jurisdiction they lost by affiliating with the Novus Ordo church and minus the papal mandate. At that point they were outside the Church and their actions were nullified by Pius XII’s law governing interregnums.

Here several things must be addressed. Despite any alleged validity of the consecrators, the papal mandate is an essential part of the consecration ceremony. Secondly, no one whatsoever may tamper with the rite of consecration in its essentials. According to Pope Pius XII in the first paragraph of Sacramentum Ordinis: “As the Council of Trent teaches, … the seven Sacraments of the New Law were all instituted by Jesus Christ Our Lord, and the Church has no power over the substance of the Sacraments…” The omission of this part of the consecration ceremony is essential to its validity, since the bishop receives no power without it as the Catholic Encyclopedia observes above.

It also is essential to the profession of the one consecrated that he is in communion with the Roman Pontiff, also his predecessors, and recognizes him as the supreme head of the Church. The Chinese bishops were not denying Pope Pius XII was their pope, they were simply disobeying him; pertinaciously continuing in such disobedience after a rebuke would constitute rejecting papal authority, which automatically results in incurring the censure for heresy. So to omit this ceremony also calls into question the orthodoxy of the subject seeking to be consecrated as well as the intention of the one consecrating. Do they intend to carry on the mission of the Church as it was constituted by Christ? Obviously not, or they would have recourse to a true pope for the mandate, and in his absence would abide by his laws. Without the mandate, all their machinations are null and void for want of the proper form and intention.

CMRI attempts to justify their consecrations by stating on their website: “The strict observance of Pope Pius XII’s decree on the prohibition of the consecration of bishops without papal mandate would become injurious to the salvation of souls.” This is the same rationalization used by conclavists to justify various attempts at election: “The Church has to have a pope because she cannot exist without one.” But the danger of a lay election and even one posited by doubtful clergy is actually a greater danger, given the possibility of electing an unfit candidate, as was later proven in all these cases. Moreover, lay elections are condemned by papal election law and other binding papal and conciliar documents. Pope Pius VI’s Charitas would have Catholics stay at home rather than resort to the Constitutional bishops; Etsi Multa issues similar warnings and declares null and void the old Catholic bishop(s) and Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis forbids anyone to act outside papal laws during an interregnum under the pain of nullity (invalidity). These and all other papal teachings are what the faithful are bound to obey.

The proofs provided above demonstrate the collective minds of the Roman Pontiffs regarding the function of bishops who are not approved by him or his canonically elected successors and declare those so proceeding excommunicated. Traditionalists posing as clergy falsely claim that even though they may be excommunicated they still possess jurisdiction, supplied or provided by Christ, demonstrated earlier to be A COMPLETE LIE. There is NO Church teaching to support this conjecture, forbidden by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, that in this emergency Christ would supply such jurisdiction. Nor would the pope supply it to doubtful clergy in any event. To possess true apostolicity, one must possess both valid and licit Holy Orders AND jurisdiction (see the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this topic), something none of these pretenders can lay claim to. And what of the oaths they took in their phony consecration ceremonies to uphold the teachings of the Holy See? Such oaths, if they were even taken, were as phony as the consecrations themselves, invalidated by the lack of the indispensable papal mandate and the (at least implicit) denial by Traditionalists of the necessity of the papacy.

There is no shame or blame in keeping the faith at home in light of such compelling evidence that these men are not providing true Mass and Sacraments and are involving their followers instead in sacrilege and cooperation in sin, both mortal sins. In fact, as we will see in the blog on epikeia, Catholics are bound to avoid these pretenders and their “sacraments” whenever such serious doubt becomes known to them. The real issue at stake is your immortal soul and whether Our Lord will acquire an accounting from you for choosing to follow these men and ignoring the Vicars He sent to speak for Him. Are you willing to take that risk? Are you willing to continue to cooperate in sin and incur communicatio in sacris for participating in false worship, placing you outside the Church and unable to save your soul?

 

 

2-11-2015: The Church Has Not Failed and Cannot Fail

2-11-2015: The Church Has Not Failed and Cannot Fail

© Copyright 2013, revised 2015; T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author. All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

Introduction

It has been a matter of debate since before the convening of the Vatican Council what precisely the Church’s definition of itself would be. Unfortunately, however, the council ended before officially determining many of those things about the Church’s true existence, although a draft on the Constitution of the Church gives a preview of what the council fathers taught on this doctrine at that time. A quick read of this draft will show that it does NOT say what Traditionalists claim it says and does not even address the situation in which we find ourselves today. Nor could it possibly have anticipated all the teachings on the Church that would issue after the council’s closing. Commentators on the draft note that many of the topics it addresses can be found in “later papal pronouncements on the nature and properties of the Church,” (“The Church Teaches,” various editors, 1955, p. 87).   What these editors fail to point out is that while the draft is not official Church teaching, the papal pronouncements are binding documents of the ordinary magisterium, and these documents would supersede anything said in the draft. A draft document drawn up by bishops and theologians but never formally debated or approved by the pope and promulgated cannot be considered official Church teaching,

In postponing the definition of the Church and focusing on the primacy, we have from Henry Cardinal Manning the reasoning of the council fathers: “The doctrine of [concerning] the Church does not determine the doctrine of the Primacy, but the doctrine of the Primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church,” (“The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance,” 1875).  In other words, the tail does not get to wag the dog. Christ Himself, not the apostles (with or without the laity, “the Church”), conferred the primacy on St. Peter, who was, personally and in his successors, the Vicar of Christ. The entire purpose of the Vatican Council, according to Manning, was to define infallibility in order to stamp out once and for all the pernicious error of Gallicanism in all its many forms. This was stated in the official document released in 1869 just prior to the convening of the Vatican Council. It begins: “Those who maintain that the time is ripe and that such a definition [of infallibility] is opportune justify their opinions on the following reasons: …15.  Because the full and final declaration of the Divine authority of the Head of the Church is needed to exclude from the minds of pastors and faithful the political influences which have generated Gallicanism, Imperialism, Regalism and Nationalism, the perennial sources of error, contention and schism,” (Ibid.) But unfortunately these errors did not die with the Council.

Gallicanism still very much alive

The Catholic Encyclopedia under Gallicanism tells us this error was diametrically opposed to the teaching of the “Ultramontanes,” and Cardinal Manning was the quintessential example of this position.  Gallicanist teaching “tended chiefly to a restraint of the pope’s authority in the Church in favour of that of the bishops and the temporal ruler…According to the Gallican theory, then, the papal primacy was limited, first, by the temporal power of princes, which, by the Divine will, was inviolable; secondly by the authority of the general council and that of the bishops, who alone could, by their assent, give to his decrees that infallible authority which, of themselves, they lacked; lastly, by the canons and customs of particular Churches, which the pope was bound to take into account when he exercised his authority…When the Vatican Council opened, in 1869, it had in France [its point of origin] only timid defenders. When that council declared that the pope has in the Church the plenitude of jurisdiction in matters of faith, morals discipline, and administration that his decisions, ex cathedra, are of themselves, and without the assent of the Church, infallible and irreformable, it dealt Gallicanism a mortal blow.” The Vatican Council clearly taught that “Peter alone” received his jurisdiction directly from Christ, (DZ 1822). And further, it taught, the “unity of faith and communion” can be preserved ONLY when the successor of St. Peter rules the others in Christ’s stead.

“So in the Church, He wished pastors and doctors to be ‘even to the consummation of the world,’ (Matt. 28:20). But that the episcopacy itself might be one and undivided, and that the entire multitude of the faithful through priests closely connected with one another might be preserved in the unity of faith and communion, placing the blessed Peter over the other apostles, he established in him the perpetual principle and visible foundation of both unities upon whose strength the eternal temple might be erected…The apostolic primacy [is] the strength and solidarity in which the whole Church consists,” (DZ 1821). Here is where the tenet held by most Traditionalists — that the Church constituted by Christ with the full complement of its hierarchy, at all times, must last unto the consummation — crumbles to the ground. To promote this teaching they wrench its wording directly from a draft of the Constitution of the Church submitted to the Vatican Council by the Council fathers, but never debated or approved. It reads: “The Church of Christ is an everlasting and indefectible society…Consequently His Church, the only society of salvation, will last until the end of the world ever unchangeable and unchanged in…the constitution it received from Christ, Therefore Christ’s Church can never lose its properties and its qualities, its sacred teaching authority, priestly office and governing body…”

The Catholic Encyclopedia teaching is basically identical, and is most likely taken from this same document: “The Church can never undergo any constitutional change, which will make it, as a social organism, something different from what it was originally. It can never become corrupt in faith or in morals; nor can it ever lose the Apostolic hierarchy, or the Sacraments through which Christ communicates grace to men.” It must be remembered that mere men elect the pope, and mere men can err or can become evil, intent on disobeying God. Man ignores and frustrates God’s will on a daily basis. Why would it not be possible that even though Christ “willed” or “wished” that the “episcopacy be one and undivided” and the primacy the “entire strength and solidarity of the Church,” that evil men might not deliberately frustrate His will or wish? God gave man free will, and He will not withdraw it. The bishops and the cardinals betrayed the Church, and this fact cannot be denied. The Church that Christ intended to last until the consummations was the SAME Church He established on earth, not a cheap imitation. We know the Church cannot change her doctrines, and that they must forever be understood in the same sense as they have always been taught, (Pope St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism). The canons of the Church governing papal elections must always be followed in electing a pope, and this did not happen after Pope Pius XII’ death, (see—) And here is the part that foils Traditionalism.

So how can the bishops be one and undivided?

Now, can it possibly be, in light of the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council above, that the Church can be said to exist; to maintain “the Apostolic hierarchy” and “its sacred teaching authority, priestly office and governing body,” without a canonically elected pope?! That was the entire purpose of calling the Vatican Council — to define the very fact that all these properties and qualities, its sacred authority and governing body, first in the Roman Pontiff and only then, through him, in the others. It is not that what the draft constitution on the Church or the Catholic Encyclopedia says is untrue, but that it has been taken out of context and craftily redirected by Traditionalists. The “Apostolic hierarchy” cannot exist without its head bishop, the pope. The “sacred teaching authority …and governing body” exists first and primarily in the Roman Pontiff, NOT in the body of bishops.  At the time the Vatican Council was held and the Catholic Encyclopedia was written, Pope Pius XII had not yet issued his encyclicals Mystici Corporis Christi and Ad Sinarum Gentum, which teaches:

“12. By virtue of God’s Will, the faithful are divided into two classes: the clergy and the laity. By virtue of the same Will is established the twofold sacred hierarchy, namely, of orders and jurisdiction. Besides – as has also been divinely established – the power of orders (through which the ecclesiastical hierarchy is composed of Bishops, priests, and ministers) comes from receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders. But the power of jurisdiction, which is conferred upon the Supreme Pontiff directly by divine right, flows to the Bishops by the same right, but only through the Successor of St. Peter, to whom not only the simple faithful, but even all the Bishops must be constantly subject, and to whom they must be bound by obedience and with the bond of unity.Because they did not observe Pope Pius XII’s election law, the cardinals did not validly elect. This is proven in the link listed above regarding John 23rd. A pope not canonically elected is not valid.  And no pope whose electors went on to destroy the Church and allow Her doctrine to be interpreted in a different sense could ever be considered valid.

Once the above-mentioned encyclicals were issued, and they both teach the same doctrine, the bishops could no longer maintain, according to the Gallican contention, that they also rule directly by divine right. No; their authority comes only through the Roman Pontiff, and Pope Pius IX taught that “without the Pope there is no Church, and there is no Catholic Society without the Holy See,” (Allocution to religious superiors, June 24, 1872). This is why Msgr. J. C. Fenton, in his commentary on the definition of epsicopal power in Mystici Coproris wrote: [Pius XII’s decision] signifies that any bishop not in union with the Holy Father has no authority over the faithful,” (“Episcopal Jurisdiction and the Roman See, American Ecclesiastical Review, January-June, 1949). All the bishops following the election of John 23 accepted him as pope, did not protest the changes, signed documents from the false Vatican 2 council and thereby abandoned any jurisdiction they once possessed by embracing a new, schismatic sect. It was no different than following Henry VIII versus the true pope of that day. Lefebvre and Thuc were no exceptions to this rule as many pretend; they also followed these false popes and signed Vatican 2 documents. They followed the beast in wonder, just as all the rest.

Christ’s promise to St. Peter

It is necessary to explore the source of the confusion on the power of the bishops. First, many do not understand that Christ promised the power of the papacy to St. Peter when He said “Thou are Peter…,” but that the actual grant of this power would not come until after His Resurrection, when the Ascension was near. The Church could not have two heads; Peter could become head only after Christ’s death, even though He was yet with His Apostles in glorified form. Christ predicted that Peter would fall from this promised dignity by denying Him three times (Luke 22: 31-32) and also predicted his restoration. The verse reads: “And the Lord said: ‘Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou being once converted, confirm they brethren.’”  Rev. Leo Haydock comments: “That the disciple might not lose courage, He promises him pardon before he has committed the crime, and restores him again to his apostolic dignity, saying ‘confirm thy brethren.’” As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches in his catechism, what Christ prays for is always granted; Christ’s promise to Peter alone, that his faith would never failed, must ever be seen as unfailing itself.  By virtue of this promise and pardon when he received the keys, following the Resurrection, Peter then was to confirm his brethren, the Apostles. He was to grant them a share in the jurisdiction imparted to him by Christ. Thus must the very words of Christ be seen to confirm pope Pius XII’s decision on the bishops.

Traditionalists are saying, by the very fact that they maintain it to be so, that the Church can indeed exist as promised without Peter, but in this they deny the very faith they pretend to profess. In saying that the governing body of the Church could never cease to exist, they excluded the pope when it is Catholic doctrine that the Church cannot exist without HIM, not the bishops.  Whatever bishops exist cannot possess any authority unless they are in union with him and were created in union with him. What Traditionalists must realize, especially sedevacantists, is that by claiming the See is vacant they are admitting that at present the Church cannot function hierarchically. They hesitate to mention the arrival of Antichrist, even though clearly the Antichrist has most likely come and gone in Paul 6, although the system of the beast remains. But the end of the world has not been reached yet, and Holy Scripture tells us that there will definitely be a disastrous disruption in the Church at the time of Antichrist.

Antichrist will crush the saints

“The event may come to pass that as our Divine Lord, after His three years of public ministry were ended, delivered Himself of His own free will into the hands of men, and thereby permitted them to do that which before was impossible, so in His inscrutable wisdom He may deliver over His Vicar upon earth, as He delivered Himself, and that the providential support of the temporal power of the Holy See may be withdrawn when its work is done…when the whole number of those whom He hath chosen to eternal life is filled up. It may be that when that is done, and when the times of Antichrist are come, that He will give over His Vicar upon earth, and His Mystical Body at large, [for a time]…The Church would, as in the beginning, again be made up of members voluntarily uniting themselves together throughout the whole world, having indeed a legal recognition here and there, but wandering up and down the earth, without any contact with the nations of the world as such. The state of the world before Constantine would be reproduced; the Church would descend again, if I may say so, into the Catacombs, and would be hidden from society; it would cease to take its place with the powers of the world, having an existence beside and above them. It would cease to be seen in the council of princes, in the legislatures of states, to have a status in the world; it would no place in the public legislature except to be prohibited,” (p. 55-57).

“The gates of Hell may war against [the Church]; they may strive and wrestle, as they struggle now, with the Vicar of Our Lord; but no one has the power to move Him one step until the hour shall come when the Son of God shall permit, for a time, the powers of evil to prevail. That He will permit it for a time stands in the book of prophecy. But the imperishable Church of God…will live on still through the fires of the times of Antichrist,” (p. 139; Henry Cardinal Manning, “The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ,” 1861).

Louis-Edouard Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, a contemporary of Cardinal Manning’s and a crafter of the Vatican Council proclamation on infallibility wrote: “The Church, though of course still a visible society, will be increasingly reduced to individual and domestic proportions.  She who in Her young days cried out: “the place is strait: give me room wherein to dwell,” will see every inch of Her territory under attack.  Surrounded on all sides, as the other centuries have made Her great, so the last will strive to crush Her.  And finally the Church on earth will undergo a true defeat: ‘…and it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.’” (Apocalypse 13:7)  The insolence of evil will be at its peak.”

Hilaire Belloc says the same in his, “The Great Heresies”: “The Church will not disappear, for the Church is not of mortal stuff; it is the only institution among men not subject to the universal law of mortality. Therefore we say, not that the Church may be wiped out, but that it may be reduced to a small band almost forgotten amid the vast numbers of its opponents and their contempt of the defeated thing. One of the most intelligent of French Catholics, a converted Jew, has written a work to prove (or suggest) that the first of these two possible issues will be our fate. He envisages the last years of the Church on this earth as lived apart. He sees a Church of the future reduced to very few in numbers and left on one side in the general current of the new Paganism,” (Pope Pius XII calls this resurgence of former errors “the current of Black Paganism”). “He sees a Church of the future within which there will be intensity of devotion, indeed, but that devotion practised by one small body, isolated and forgotten in the midst of its fellowmen.”

Even Pope Pius XII said that, “History gives clear evidence of one thing: the gates of Hell will not prevail,” (Matt. 16: 18). But there is some evidence on the other side too; the gates of hell have had partial successes,” (“Preaching the Word of God,” address given during the Sixth National Week on New Pastoral Methods, Sept. 14, 1956). In an allocution to the cardinals given Dec. 4, 1943, he reminded Catholics that it is true “the Church’s indefectibility is visible, inasmuch as it is demonstrable;” and that this indefectibility evidenced from the past is “the gauge of Her future.” Nevertheless, he cautions, “But if this indefectibility is a matter of experience, it remains, nonetheless, a mystery (emph. the Pope’s); for it cannot be explained naturally, but only by reason of the fact, which is known to us by divine revelation, that Christ who founded the Church is with Her in every trial until the end of the world.” Now if the pope was supposed to exist till the end of time, why did Pius XII not indicate this? And if indefectibility is a mystery, doesn’t this leave some room for its interpretation that we mere mortals cannot fathom?

“The Marian Church remains inviolable and indestructible till the very end of time, for the gates of hell shall not prevail against HER [Mother of Christ and her spouse, the Holy Ghost, united to His Mystical Body, the Church]. God will intervene to sustain her, both with angelic assistance and divine judgments on the Satanic hordes. In her special place prepared by God [in the wilderness] Satan will not enter, nor shall he overcome her…In the greatest sufferings, the Mother of Christ is most fruitful in Christ. It was in the wilderness that Israel as a nation first became the people of God, (Ex. 19: 6). Here in the wilderness, perhaps, Israel shall be readmitted to the people of God and born anew in Christ, to be sustained in life miraculously by God,” (Bernard J. Le Frois, S.V.D., in his “The Woman Clothed with the Sun,” 1954).

“Again, the infallibility of the Church is proved from the necessity of divine faith for salvation. “He that believeth not shall be condemned.” An act of faith is a supernatural act; its certainty is absolute and unconditional. Faith precludes doubt. You may have an opinion, an inclination, a disposition, but can have no faith unless you have absolute certainty. Has God given us any authority upon which to base our belief as certain? If He has, we have an infallible Church. If He has not, we have no saving faith. How could we become perfect, if the Church were liable to teach us untruth, and if we were bound to believe it? How could our Lord say, as He does, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church, if it could be conquered by error? If the Church could teach the world a lie, if it could teach us error, the Devil would laugh: for then he would have gotten God’s instrument of salvation to do his work of damnation. The Church is infallible because the Spirit of truth is with it,” (Father Thomas E. Cox: The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 1900).

“Belief in the Holy Catholic Church is a solemnly-defined article of the Creed, without which no one can be saved.  One, holy, universal, and apostolic, the Church is indefectible because she is the Mystical Body of Christ, against whom the gates of hell have no power whatever to prevail.  Her soul is the Spirit of Christ, which is the Holy

Ghost.  For the Church to defect, God himself would have to defect,” (Solange Hertz, The Wanderer. This is no endorsement of Hertz or the Wanderer, but her words are true.)

St. Francis de Sales wrote: “That which was written in the Apocalypse, (12:6) that the woman fled into solitude…prove and certify, loudly and clearly, that the Church shall never be in the desert thus hidden until that extremity and for that short time; that she will be seen to flee thither and be seen thence to come forth,” (“The Catholic Controversy,” p. 63-64).  And the ante-Nicene Fathers taught in their commentary on Apoc. 6: 14: “…the Church shall be taken away;” and also, on Apoc 15: 1: “…when the Church shall have gone out of the midst.” Only at this time will the Church seem to have disappeared; to be overcome by the enemy. Yet in reality she can never be overcome as we well know, and we believe with the common opinion of theologians and holy people that She will rise again more gloriously than before. This is one of the most onerous of the false miracles performed by Antichrist; that the Church as she always existed should seem to have been destroyed. Yet it is not whether the Church remains alive and visible, but how. It is otherwise than many believe.

For always, as Fr. Le Frois says above, She will be with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost, as foretold by St. John in his Apocalypse, comprising the Mystical Body. This was foreshadowed by Jesus turning over the care of His Mother to St. John on Calvary. It was the Beloved Disciple who would chronicle Our Lady’s flight to the desert, accompanied by the Holy Ghost. Remnant Catholics today are left to cling blindly to the very essence of faith itself; the belief in things unseen, spoken of by St. Paul. Christ consoles them, however, with the words spoken to the apostle St. Thomas the Doubter, who He told following His Resurrection: “Because thou hast seen me Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen and have believed,” (John 20:29).

The Church will be restored

As Rev. Edmund O’Reilly S. J. pointed out in his, “The Relations of the Church to Society — Theological Essays,” there is no assigned theological limit to the length of an interregnum. “That the Church should remain thirty or forty years without a thoroughly ascertained Head and representative of Christ on earth, this would not be [Catholics reason]. Yet it has been, and we have no guarantee that it will not be again…We must not be too ready to pronounce on what God will permit…We, or our successors in future generations, may see stranger evils than have yet been experienced…contingencies regarding the Church, not excluded by the Divine promises, cannot be regarded as practically impossible, just because they would be terrible and distressing.”

Rev. E. S. Berry says the same in his “The Church of Christ”: “It is evident that the Apostolic Succession cannot fail in the Apostolic See so long as the Church Herself continues to exist. For although the See be vacant for many years the Church always retains the right to elect a legitimate successor, who then obtains supreme authority according to the institution of Christ.”

“The pious and learned author, [Fr.] Edward Healy Thompson, says: ‘In respect to the great calamities which [Bd]. Anna Maria Taigi announced as impending over mankind, as well as the splendid triumph which will follow for the Pope and the Church, together with the renovation of the entire world, one may say that such is the general object and the common end of all the prophecies, whether ancient or modern, which bear upon these latter times. Each seer, it is true, has added or dwelt more at large on some special circumstances, but they all agree in two leading features.

‘I. First, they all point to some terrible convulsion, to a revolution springing from most deep-rooted impiety, consisting in a formal opposition to God and His truth, and resulting in the most formidable persecution to which the Church has ever been subject.

‘II. Secondly, they all promise for the same Church a victory more splendid and complete than she has ever achieved here below.

“III. We may add another point in which there is a remarkable agreement in the catena of modern prophecies, and that is the peculiar connection between the fortunes of France and those of the Church and Holy See, and also the large part which that country has still to play in the history of the Church and of the world, and will continue to play to the end of time.’” (“The Christian Trumpet,” compiled by Pellegrino [Gaudentius Rossi], 1800s).

And Mother Mary Potter, in her “To Jesus Through Mary,” (1952) writes: “It is the general opinion of saintly people that after the Church has passed a time of trial and persecutions, there will be a glorious time when infidelity, schism, errors, etc., will have passed away, when ‘all will be good.’ As, unknown to one another, so many holy people concur in this prophetic view of the future, it is useful to think about it and likewise to ask ourselves, is it not probable that this happy time will be in ‘that great age of the Church which is to be the age of Mary’?…Since Mary was the instrument God used to begin His regeneration of the world, it is by the same means He will complete it.” Mother Potter was a nursing sister born in London who died in Rome in 1913. Her cause for Beatification was pending at the death of Pope Pius XII.

We have saints, saintly seers, a pope, the Church Fathers, saintly cardinals and Catholic theologians approved by the Church telling us this. The Church will appear to have been overcome, just as our Lord died on the cross. Then the period in the tomb, roughly corresponding to the present time, followed by the glorious Resurrection. It is the Mystical Body of Christ living out the passion of its Savior, filling up in sufferings what is wanting to Christ’s own Passion. Even if it requires a miracle, Christ will be true to His promises. Either true bishops and priests exist in hiding and He will see that they are released, or Christ will supply them Himself to elect a pope. It is not for us to puzzle out HOW He will fulfill His promises; it is only for us to believe He will do so. This is our dark night of faith: “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken Me?”  If the Mass is predicted to cease, as it is by none other than the unanimous opinion of the Church Fathers, then how else was this to occur than that the priests offering it were either all killed and/or imprisoned or fell from grace? Most have assumed the former but why, when the latter is every bit as possible and even predicted by Our Lady, at La Salette and elsewhere?

Conclusion

Holy Scripture tells us: “Strike the shepherd, and the flock will be dispersed.” This prophecy appears in Zach. 13:7 and Matt. 24. The shepherd has been struck and we see the results. The remaining clergy who wished a different outcome should have obeyed Canon Law and Church teaching and rushed to elect a pope as soon as they realized we did not have one, although only bishops could have done this. Where were the shepherds? All abandoned the flock. If any remain they are prevented from acting by their failure to defend the Church and in signing the heretical documents of the false V2 council. If the Church is left during Antichrist’s reign with only the assistance of Our Lady and the Holy Ghost, as indicated in Apoc. 12, then how is it that She still has Traditionalist “priests and bishops”? If you read this ENTIRE site, and I realize that is a difficult task, it becomes clear that these “clergy” have no connection whatsoever to the true Church, and actually deny the necessity of the papacy. They violate many Canon Laws of Divine institution, namely jurisdiction. They are doubtfully valid at best and as such can never be approached for the Sacraments. They are hirelings and wolves in sheep’s clothing, however “holy” they may appear to be. For as Cardinal Pie notes, holiness consists in orthodoxy, not a pious exterior. Orthodox they are not and probably will never be.

As long as the hierarchy is restored to the Church after these terrible times, and immediately proceeds to elect a pope, or a pope comes with the hierarchy, the Church has not failed; the gates of hell have not prevailed. There are prophecies that predict a holy pope in the latter days after a great upheaval. As Christ and His apostles warned us, false christs and antichrists would abound in these days, and they do. As Scripture tells us, the Church will undergo a true defeat; Antichrist will overcome the saints. The fact that sedevacantists refuse to accept this is proof that they have succumbed to the operation of error and believe lies. How did the faithful Jews survive their captivity during the Babylonian exile without the Temple and the Ark? How did they keep their faith? Was their priesthood destroyed? As we read from Scripture: “You are in error because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God,” (Matt. 22:29). The Old Testament prefigured our own time.

The laws are clear concerning the jurisdiction and validity of Traditionalist priests. They do not possess apostolicity because they do not come from the same apostolic line, but from schismatic lines declared by Pope Pius VI and other popes unable to produce priests and bishops who could validly confer the Sacraments. Even if their orders were certainly valid, which they are not, they could not claim apostolicity without jurisdiction. And without a true pope there is no one to supply this jurisdiction. If they claim Christ supplies it they are no better than Protestants, for this was their contention. St. Francis de Sales (The Catholic Controversy) says that only if they proved their mission with miracles could Catholics accept them.

God will not leave us orphans but will restore His Church. In the meantime She remains under the protection of Our Lady and the Holy Ghost; the Mystical Body can never perish. As Pope Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis Christi: “Our Lord is the Head, the Founder, the Support and the Savior of this Mystical Body….” Christ rules His Church visibly through the Pope, but no one can say he abandons it during an interregnum. Nor can they say that he operates outside the normal channels without the hierarchy to sustain His Church. Pius XII continues: “No act conducive to salvation can be performed unless it proceeds from Him as from its supernatural source. ‘Without Me,”’ He says, ‘you can do nothing.’…When the Sacraments of the Church are administered by external rite, it is He who produces their effect in souls. He nourishes the redeemed with His own flesh and blood…gives increase of grace and prepares future glory for souls and bodies…For in virtue of the juridical mission by which our Divine Redeemer sent His Apostles into the world, as He had been sent by His Father, it is He who through the Church baptizes, teaches, rules looses, binds, offers, sacrifices.” Traditionalists pretend that Christ cannot act without them, when in truth He will not act among those not descended from His Apostles. He has established jurisdiction and tells us through the Vatican Council He will not act outside of it. Instead He will nourish us Himself but only during this short time of persecution until a true Pope rules again, when, for that space of time, “he who withholdeth” is taken out of the way, as St. Paul predicted.

Christ and the pope are one head, but just because the visible body of the Church is temporarily missing does not mean Her soul, the Holy Ghost and Christ Her invisible Head, have departed. This IS denying the teaching that the gates of hell will not prevail, and in essence Traditionalists are asking us to deny it by accepting them as true priests and bishops when all that the Church Christ established on earth teaches says they are not. Mystici Corporis condemns many of their errors. It is up to us to pray for the gift of discernment in order to avoid their contagion and save our souls.

12-2-14: Frequently asked questions on Sedevacantism

12-2-14: Frequently asked questions on Sedevacantism

© Copyright 2014, T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author. All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

1. Q. What IS sedevacantism?

Sede vacante means “vacant see.” Those who believe the see is vacant are saying, without saying it, that the man claiming to occupy the Roman See as a true pope is a usurper, or antipope.

2. Q. Has the Papal See been vacant in the past for long periods of time?

In the past, sede vacante(s) (interregnums) have lasted only three to four years. Some believe that during the Western Schism the Holy See was vacant the entire time but this is not true. Pope Benedict XIV later ruled that the line of Urban VI – Gregory XII was the true line of popes in that time. The Roman See was never intended to remain vacant any longer than papal election law allowed for the election of a new pope. As the councils have taught, the absence of a true pope is a grave danger to the faith and is to be sedulously avoided.

3. Q. So sedevacantism is the movement based on recognizing that the Holy Roman See of St. Peter is now vacant?

Yes; sedevacantist theory first began surfacing in the mid-1970s when Rev. Joaquin Saenz-Arriaga, a Mexican priest, printed his book, Sede vacante. The book has never been translated into English.

4. Q. When did this group first come into being?

A. Formally, in about 1981, when French bishop Peter Ngo dinh Thuc made his infamous declaration that the See was vacant, and used this declaration to justify consecrating bishops.

5. Q. So what do sedevacantists believe?

They believe that the “popes” following Pope Pius XII are manifest heretics. Based on their vacant See belief, they also believe that in the absence of a true and valid pope, a bishop consecrated under the reign of Pope Pius XII can validly and licitly consecrate bishops because they are promised by Christ to continue the Church “unto the consummation.”

6. Q. But isn’t the pope supposed to rule the Church until the consummation too?

This is what Christ promised St. Peter; that the gates of hell will not prevail against the rock on which the Church is founded — the faith of St. Peter. He alone is infallible. This is the teaching of the early Fathers and the Vatican Council.

7. Q. So what do these sedevacantist bishops do?

They ordain priests, consecrate other bishops and make available Mass and Sacraments for those who also believe the See is vacant.

8. Q. Some have accused them of starting up their own church, only without a head. Is this what they have done?  

Basically yes; they claim to preserve the Church of Christ on earth, the Catholic Church, but without the benefit of the pope.

9. Q. Are you saying we have no Church now since we have no pope and if so, how does the Church continue to exist in an interregnum?  Can you refer me to one of your articles that can explain this to me?

As theologians explain, during an interregnum, it is as though the Church is asleep or in a coma. She is unable to function is hidden from view. But that does not mean She will not emerge from the coma at any time and resume Her duties. As Rev. E.S. Berry teaches, “Although the See be vacant for many years, the Church always retains the right to elect a legitimate successor,” (“The Church of Christ”). And in the meantime, The Mystical Body of Christ itself never ceases to exist, for as we learned in our Catechism, “Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church,” the pope being only the juridical or visible head of the earthly Church. In their “The Catholic Dictionary,” Addis and Arnold offer us a surprising definition of the word “hierarchy.” After giving the usual definition offered by the Church, that the hierarchy consists of bishops, priests, and the pope, they state: “In a wide and loose sense, when the whole Catholic Church is considered as existing among heretics, schismatic’s and the heathen, even the laity may be considered as forming a portion of the hierarchy. “With this agrees the expression of St. Peter, calling the general body of Christians in the country to which he is sending his epistles, ‘a kingly priesthood’ and a ‘holy nation.’” This statement is confirmed by Pope Pius XII in his address on “The Mission of the Catholic Woman,” (Sept. 29, 1957). In this address he tells lay Catholics that, in the situation Addis and Arnold describe, they “must, with God’s grace, assume all [the hierarchy’s] responsibilities.”

For further reading, see /free-content/reference-links/7-recent-articles/binding-power-of-papacy-voids-traditionalist-acts/, /free-content/reference-links/2-the-church/the-doctrine-of-the-mystical-body-pt-i/  and /free-content/reference-links/2-the-church/the-doctrine-of-the-mystical-body-pt-ii/

10. Q. So can’t Traditionalist priests do just that?

No, because in this same address the pope also says: “Evens so, nothing can be undertaken against the explicit and implicit will of the Church, or contrary in any way to the rules of faith or morals or ecclesiastical discipline.” They must follow the will of the Church which is found in Pope Pius XII’s “Vacantis Apostolica Sedis,” concerning what can be done during an interregnum. Traditionalists may try to confect the Sacraments and say Mass and to many they may appear to do it. But The Catechism of the Council of Trent, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII all teach that without the pope the Church cannot exist. Pope Pius IX: “Without the Pope there is no Church, and there is no Catholic Society without the Holy See,” (Allocution to religious superiors, June 24, 1872). Therefore Church teaching contradicts this notion, and Church teaching trumps whatever may be believed on this topic. Vacantis Apostolica Seds infallibly declares that the acts of those violating papal laws and usurping papal jurisdiction during an interregnum are null and void. Canon Law is based primarily on papal law and the decisions of the General Councils. Traditionalists repeatedly violate these laws, ergo, their acts are null and void. Their bishops cannot function either because they are usurping papal jurisdiction.

11. Q. But I thought that bishops had the power to ordain and consecrate from Christ?

They do have this power, but only if the power to exercise it (jurisdiction) is granted to them by a true pope. You can own a car, have gas in it, have the plates and registration, but without the keys you aren’t going anywhere. Christ gave the keys directly to St. Peter following the Ascension; he did not give the keys personally to any of the other Apostles. They receive their power only through St. Peter. Pope Pius XII defined this as issuing from Divine revelation in “Mystici Corporis Christi,” so it is an infallible teaching.

12. Q.  So without a true pope, they don’t have the permission to act?

Exactly. And without this permission, nothing they do is valid, even if they were validly and licitly ordained or consecrated.

13. Q. But how can you say that if they still have their orders?

Do they? Certain papal documents state that they are doubtfully valid at best. The documents Charitas by Pope Pius VI and Etsi Multa by Pope Pius IX clearly decree that outside the approval of the Holy See, bishops cannot be created. These documents are available on the Internet. Pope Pius IX even goes so far in Etsi multa as to declare that such consecrations conducted by heretics and/or schismatics render not only the priest attempting the consecration, but also those adhering to him, and any rendering him aid, help or consent excommunicatus vitandus, the most severe form of excommunication the Church pronounces, meaning such people are to be avoided by all Catholics. This is a clear invocation and appeal to the teachings found in both Charitas and Pope Paul IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. From Pope Pius IX’s Etsi Multa: “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…”

14. Q. So if they never become bishops, what about the priests Traditionalist bishops have ordained?

Those men would not be considered priests because the one ordaining is still only a priest himself and priests cannot create other priests; only a “visible and perceptible bishop” (Innocent III) can create priests.

15. Q. But surely this does not apply to those priests and bishops created by Thuc and Lefebvre, who were consecrated during the reign of Pope Pius XII.

Why not? Don’t you recognize the Novus Ordo as a non-Catholic sect? Did not both Lefebvre and Thuc belong to the new order of Rome by their quasi-affiliation with it, their approval of it at various times when it served their purposes, and by their refusal to reject the very masterminds behind it, despite their pretensions to Traditionalism? Then they also qualify as schsimatics who are not able to ordain or consecrate.

16. Q. I will concede that they could not consecrate in light of these papal documents, if they read as you say they do, but surely they could still ordain. The documents you mention only apply to consecration.

Nearly all those who received ordination from these two men either attended Novus Ordo services or Traditionalist services before their ordinations. Because both Lefebvre and Thuc lost any jurisdiction they once had by adhering to the Novus Ordo themselves, they automatically lost the ability to absolve these men from their heresy prior to ordination. In addition, those guilty of communicatio in sacris, or communicating with non-Catholics in sacred things, occur what is called an irregularity: infamy of law. This is a major impediment to receiving Holy Orders that can be lifted only by the pope. We have no pope, and such men cannot be ordained validly until it is lifted, if a future pope decides they should be ordained at all.

17. Q. What makes you so sure of this?

Canon 2294 (1917 Code) and Pope Pius XII’s papal election constitution Vacantis Apostolica Sedis.

18. Q. What could a papal election law have to do with ordinations?

This law does not just deal with papal elections; it also deals with what can be done during an interregnum.

19. Q. So why hasn’t anyone consulted this law before so we would know what to do?

Good question, but then why do Traditionalists fail to consult so many papal laws in determining what they are bound to do? Many of them do not even believe they are bound to accept the documents of the ordinary magisterium as infallible, so how would they even know what they are bound to believe in way of faith?

20. Q. Alright then, so what should I know about this law?

In this law, Vacantis Apostolica Sedis, Pope Pius XII teaches that the cardinals (and nearly all the cardinals were bishops) cannot exercise any jurisdiction exercised by the pope in his lifetime. In other words, they can do nothing jurisdiction-wise which the pope did while alive now that he is dead; all decisions must be left to the future pontiff. The pope’s jurisdiction is supreme and comes only from God.  The jurisdiction of the bishops is ordinary and comes to them only through the pope.

21. Q. Precisely what jurisdiction belongs to the pope?

Well as stated above, only the pope can lift certain censures and dispense from certain impediments. Only the pope can grant the papal mandate necessary for episcopal consecration. So if a man is consecrated during an interregnum without this mandate, Pope Pius XII declares this act null and void. Therefore none of these Traditionalists ever became bishops. Some will argue Thuc had special missionary faculties, but even if he had been granted this, Thuc incurred infamy of law afterward which invalidated all his actions and jurisdiction.  In his “The Holy See at Work,” canon lawyer Rev. Edward Heston, commenting on Pope Pius XII’s 1945 election constitution,Vacantis Apostolica Sedis notes that during an interregnum, special faculties granted to the Sacred Rota during the Pope’s lifetime are suspended: “Nor may they use during the interregnum any special faculties conferred on them by the deceased Pontiff.” So this may well be a moot point.

22. Q. Well there again that applies to bishops, but what about priests?

Traditional priests claim that they possess jurisdiction supplied either by the law itself or directly from Christ. They need this jurisdiction to validly hear confessions, if, that is, we can consider them validly ordained. Yet history shows that no one ever supplied such jurisdiction except the Roman Pontiff; Rev. Francis Miaskiewicz in his work on jurisdiction tells us that the “Church” in Can. 209 means the pope and Rev. John Bancroft tells us the same in his dissertation on relations with non-Catholics. Both wrote in the 1940s. So during an interregnum, there is no one to supply jurisdiction, and therefore no one can pretend to usurp this papal function.

23. Q. So what this pope is saying basically shuts down Traditionalist operations, correct?

Yes, because what Pius XII also teaches is that no one can correct, change, dispense from or modify papal law during an interregnum, and that if they do, it is null and void. Most importantly, he seals all of this with the following: “But if anything contrary to this prescript occurs or is by chance attempted, we declare it by Our Supreme authority to be null and void. So all the acts during an interregnum of even those who are validly ordained or consecrated, if such men dare presume to usurp papal jurisdiction, are as though they never happened — Mass, Sacraments, blessings, everything. The Supreme Pontiff alone has the fullness of jurisdiction and can regulate the use of Holy Orders as he sees fit.

24. Q. But aren’t these admonitions addressed mainly to the cardinals, not bishops or priests?

If they are “only” addressed to the cardinals, who would likely be the next highest body to act in the pope’s stead after his death, don’t you think it would apply even more to someone of lesser rank, such as a bishop? In the matter of papal election, the election of the pope devolves to the lower ranking clergy from the highest on down. This is the teaching of the theologians and Pope Pius XII was certainly aware of it.  Since the bishops and senior clergy would act as electors in the absence of the cardinals, just as they did at the time of Constance, the same restrictions would apply.

25. Q. So the gist of all this is that we have no true pope, we have at best doubtfully valid priests and bishops, so a pope cannot be elected because there is no one to elect?

That is pretty much it. It would take at least two valid and licit bishops created under Pope Pius XII or by those with special faculties delegated by Pope Pius XII (very difficult to authenticate) who had never said the Novus Ordo Missae or signed Vatican 2 documents. They would need to engage a senior clergy member (monsignor or abbot or religious superior) with the same credentials and the three  (or more, if available) could then elect a pope. It is possible of course that such clergy exist unknown to us, but not likely.

26. Q. But if the Church is to last until the consummation, and the Church cannot exist without a true pope, doesn’t this mean because Christ has not yet come in the clouds we must at some point have a true pope again?

It does, but this could happen in more than one way. Bishops formerly in hiding could suddenly appear and we could authenticate their credentials. Or, such bishops could suddenly appear and work miracles so that would believe them, (the only alternative to proof of jurisdiction: St. Francis de Sales). Christ also could work a miracle and present us with a true pope Himself. It does not matter how His promise is fulfilled, we know only that it must be fulfilled.

27. Q. Is there a possibility that we are nearing the Final Judgment?

I know many who believe we are and think there will not be another pope. We must keep our lamps lit and prepare for any eventuality. I personally believe that it is more likely there will be a brief revival, we will see a miraculously elected pope following some sort of chastisement and the prophecy of one flock, one shepherd will be fulfilled, because once again, everyone will be either Catholic or pagan.  That a brief restoration will follow the reign of Antichrist is the common opinion of saints and holy people, also some theologians. But God’s mind is a great deep and we do not know it.  Faith is belief in things unseen, and all we can do is hang on to Christ’s promise — that He will fulfill His promises and shorten the times.

The Doctrine of the Mystical Body, Pt. II

How Catholics praying at home can cooperate as members of Christ’s Body

© Copyright 2013, T. Stanfill Benns (All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

Preface

Because Traditionalists and others entertain false ideas concerning the Church’s teaching on Christ’s Mystical Body, they have carried these false ideas into their peculiar theories of Christ’s constitution of the Church, resulting in a perverted idea of the Church’s true teaching concerning both her visible and mystical nature. The juridic, external nature of the Church has been overstressed to the injury of interior religion; its (invisible) mystical  nature has been assigned to those who do not believe such a thing exists and grace has been attributed primarily as conveyed by Traditionalist versions of the Sacraments. Church membership in the Mystical Body has been restricted in these times to those practicing only external religion, the true efficacy of private prayer has been denied and the role of Catholics in practicing Catholic Action has been erroneously limited to its direction under the false authority of Traditionalist “priests” and “bishops,” (that is the few who even advocate that their followers engage in this papal directive).

Worse yet, the heresy of quietism condemned by the Church has been rampant among Traditionalists for decades, for it is the anesthetic used by Traditional clergy and lay leaders to lull their followers into spiritual lethargy, a state akin to the addiction states, in many cases, experienced by alcohol and drug abusers and their relatives. But sadder still, the true nature of mysticism and the interior life have been so effectively obscured and demeaned that Catholics scarcely think of their faith in any but external terms. These errors, as found in Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, will be outlined below.  And the true nature of the Mystical Body as taught by this pope will be examined in full.

Introduction

As noted in Part I, Traditionalists have falsely accused  Catholics praying at home of denying the doctrine of indefectibility when this has never been the case, as proven in the article on this site, /articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/the-church/what-catacomb-catholics-believe-on-indefectibility/  Yet they refuse to recognize that the doctrines they teach concerning the papacy and the constitution of the Church are in direct contradiction to Mystici Corporis, which in its day was generally recognized by  theologians as an infallible encyclical. Of course this is only one of many sets of papal teachings they ignore or dismiss as non-binding, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in different articles here. But to save their souls — and Traditionalists do everything they do, according to them, to make sure they have they graces necessary to save their souls — they must be members of this Body and they must at least accept and obey the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs. For when a canonically elected pontiff rules the Church, he constitutes one head of the Church with Christ, with Christ as the invisible Head and the pope as its visible, juridical head. In our case that would be the last true pontiff, Pope Pius XII, according to his own Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis. For Pius XII taught in this constitution that during an interregnum, until a true pope is elected, all the laws and teachings of the Church must be strictly obeyed and that not even the cardinals could dispense from them. It is mystifying, indeed, to understand how Traditionalists believe their Church exists despite the clear teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, St. Thomas Aquinas and others, that the Church cannot exist without Her visible head.

St. Thomas wrote: “In order that the Church exist, there must be one person at the head of the whole Christian people. “ (Summa Contra Gentiles, Vol. IV, pg. 76). And from the Council of Trent Catechism: “It is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers that this visible head [the pope] is necessary to establish peace and unity in the Church…’A visible Church requires a visible head,’ (St. Ambrose; see section under “The Creed,” unity in spirit, etc,). We also read from Pope Leo: “For this reason the Church is so often called in Holy Writ a body, and even the body of Christ – ‘Now you are the body of Christ,’ (I Cor. xii., 27) – and precisely because it is a body is the Church visible…And to set forth more clearly the unity of the Church, [St. Cyprian] makes use of the illustration of a living body, the members of which cannot possibly live unless united to the head and drawing from it their vital force. Separated from the head they must of necessity die,” (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum). But this, of course refers to voluntary, not involuntary separation, such as we have today.

Likewise in his definition of the three attributes, Rev. Thomas Kinkaid teaches in his Baltimore Catechism # 3 that the four marks can exist only if the three attributes — authority, infallibility and indefectibility — first exist, i.e., the papacy. “We know the Church must have the four marks and three attributes usually ascribed or given to it from the words of Christ given in the Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church from its beginning. The Church cannot have the four marks without the three attributes because the three attributes necessarily come with the marks and without them the marks could not exist,” (Q. & A # 519-520). But visible canonically elected/appointed hierarchy  (authority and infallibility) are no longer available to guide the Church although we presume that somewhere they exist, and that Christ will re-establish them at some point. In this regard we are no different than those living during the time of the Great Schism. They did not reject or doubt the papacy or hierarchy; they simply did not know which man, commanding which set of cardinals and bishops, was truly pope. Indefectibility will always exist in the sense that the Mystical Body will never cease to exist and the juridic Church can never reach a point at which She could no longer be restored. Dormant for now, She will rise again, even if it requires a miracle; either that or we will experience the consummation. For we know without a shadow of a doubt that Christ will always be true to His promises.

In the meantime, Holy Scripture itself tells us what Our Lord will do when the shepherd is struck. “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand to the little ones,” (Zach. 13:7). The first part of this prophecy is repeated again in Matt. 26:31, but in this passage Christ says, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed.” Rev. Leo Haydock comments that this passage in Zacharias means that, “Christ takes care of his little flock, and always is one with the Father.” In the Matt. 26:31 version, he notes that “I will strike” means that Christ’s death (and the vacancy of the Holy See) are trials and sufferings “directed by God.” He quotes from Luke 12:32 which reads: “Fear not little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you a kingdom.” Citing St. Bede, Haydock writes on this verse: “In order to console us in our labors, he commands us to seek only the kingdom of Heaven, and promises that the Father will bestow it as a reward upon us.”

How did the faithful Jews survive their 70-year captivity during the Babylonian exile without the Temple and the Ark? How did they keep their faith? Was their priesthood destroyed? As we read from Scripture: “You are in error because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God,” (Matt. 22:29). The Old Testament prefigured our own time. The historian Rev. Henri Daniel-Rops ably demonstrates this, relating in his Israel and the Ancient World, (1964 translation, Image Books, p. 285-86): “The Chosen People accomplished, during their exile, a remarkable effort of fidelity. The rites proper to Jahweh’s worship were strictly observed: Circumcision, rest on the Sabbath, commemoration of the Passover. The priests, who had no longer a Temple, as their cult could only be practiced on holy ground, were held in high respect. The faithful grouped themselves about them and their places of meeting became synagogues, (a principle not in opposition to the Temple. There was, however, no cult in the synagogues; they merely read the Law and the Prophets, p. 365). A veritable caste of jurists and scribes was constituted, for the purpose of tending the law — arduous upholders of the more rigorous observance…In their exile the Chosen People had recognized the punishment of their faults and resolved to expiate them. The ‘return’ so greatly desired was in the first place a return to God.”

It was under Cyrus, the Great King, that the Babylonians finally returned to Palestine from their exile and it was Cyrus whom God told to rebuild the Temple, (Isaias 44:28 and 45:1). Daniel-Rops writes: “To rebuild the Temple — what did that mean? In the religious conception that the Prophets had introduced, the real Temple of God is interior; its sanctuary is situated in the hearts of the saints…’This is the one whom I approve: the lowly and afflicted man who trembles at my word,’ (Isaias 66: 1-2).” Could Daniel-Rops say of us today what he said of the Jews — that we “Accomplished…a remarkable effort of fidelity”? That we are “arduous upholders” of the Law? That we have “recognized our faults” and expiated them? Yes, the Jews had their priests; no analogy or prefiguration is perfect. But notice what they did: They taught the people in the synagogues; they did not dare offer sacrifices. They observed the Law. And it is certain that these priests were descended from the Levitic line, so carefully documented and preserved. Those validly ordained priests who never celebrated the Novus Ordo could have done the very same — they could have offered Mass alone privately and taught and prayed with the people publicly. Instead they chose to contravene the Law; they failed to recognize the “signs of the times,” — the advent of Antichrist — and neglected to implore the faithful to expiate their sins and make reparation. While it may gall Catholics to hear it, the Israelites were more faithful to God by far in their day of trial than Traditionalists are today.

The same Christ who gave us the popes as supreme rulers on earth and the bishops as their delegates can certainly take them away from us for a time, for “the good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.” It happened to His Chosen People and we are guilty of worse crimes than they were. It is for the faithful to now determine precisely how, as little ones — lambs without shepherds, captives in the desert — they reside in the Temple of the Mystical Body during the remainder of this terrible and protracted interregnum.

Excerpts from Mystici Corporis Christi

 (All numbered paragraphs below are quotes from this encyclical unless noted otherwise.)
Inaccurate and false ideas about the Mystical Body

“8….“We must confess that grave errors with regard to this doctrine are being spread among those outside the true Church, and that among the faithful, also, inaccurate or thoroughly false ideas are being disseminated which turn minds aside from the straight path of truth.

“9. For while there still survives a false rationalism, which ridicules anything that transcends and defies the power of human genius, and which is accompanied by a cognate error, the so-called popular naturalism, which sees and wills to see in the Church nothing but a juridical and social union, there is on the other hand a false mysticism creeping in, which, in its attempt to eliminate the immovable frontier that separates creatures from their Creator, falsifies the Sacred Scriptures.

“10. As a result of these conflicting and mutually antagonistic schools of thought, some through vain fear, look upon so profound a doctrine as something dangerous, and so they shrink from it as from the beautiful but forbidden fruit of paradise. But this is not so. Mysteries revealed by God cannot be harmful to men, nor should they remain as treasures hidden in a field, useless. They have been given from on high precisely to help the spiritual progress of those who study them in a spirit of piety. For, as the Vatican Council teaches, “reason illumined by faith, if it seeks earnestly, piously and wisely, does attain under God, to a certain and most helpful knowledge of mysteries, by considering their analogy with what it knows naturally, and their mutual relations, and their common relations with man’s last end,” although, as the same holy Synod observes, reason, even thus illumined, “is never capable of understanding those mysteries as it does those truths which forms its proper object.”

“12….As He hung upon the Cross, Christ Jesus not only appeased the justice of the Eternal Father which had been violated, but He also won for us, His brethren, an ineffable flow of graces. It was possible for Him of Himself to impart these graces to mankind directly; but He willed to do so only through a visible Church made up of men, so that through her all might cooperate with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption. As the Word of God willed to make use of our nature, when in excruciating agony He would redeem mankind, so in the same way throughout the centuries He makes use of the Church that the work begun might endure.

“13. If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church  — we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression “the Mystical Body of Christ” — an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Fathers.

“14. That the Church is a body is frequently asserted in the Sacred Scriptures. ‘Christ,’ says the Apostle, ‘is the Head of the Body of the Church…’ Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Satis Cognitum asserts: ‘The Church is visible because she is a body.’ Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, something merely ‘pneumatological’ as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond.”

Traditionalists are not members of the juridic Church

We have Traditionalists claiming two separate things: 1) that Christ Himself heads the Church in these times and in an extraordinary manner has given their “priests” the jurisdiction necessary to provide them with the Sacraments, so the juridic Church yet exists and: 2) those who say that the Traditionalist “church” possesses the four marks. But this is impossible without possessing the attributes — true canonical mission authority and infallibility, i.e. the papacy. This claim is patently ridiculous when even their own clergy admit they have no sort of office or actual jurisdiction, necessary to complete the attribute of apostolicity. Yet they pretend to represent the juridical Church on earth, when without the pope, without ALL the attributes, they have no Church. For Pope Pius IX says that even if one of the marks is missing, especially apostolicity, the Church Herself teaches that She could not exist in Her juridic capacity. So this is a false idea of how the juridical Church was established by Christ, one unknown in Pope Pius XII’s time.

Those holding the right conception of the Mystical Body, however, do what they must do and accept the Church’s teaching on Her own constitution.  They are aware of the fact that it is something they don’t fully understand, even though they are members of this Body, but to be members they must accept on faith all the teachings of the Church. However unsure they may be about how such a relationship works without the hierarchical components of the juridic Church, one thing is clear from Pope Leo XIII’s Satis Cognitum and from Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis: those who reject even one article of faith lose their membership. One of those articles is clearly stated in the Vatican Council documents, quoted above by Pope Pius XII: Contrary to what Traditionalist leaders would have their followers believe, the mysteries can be understood by study and meditation; and the Mystical Body is one of these mysteries. From that understanding “the little flock” can better evaluate its present standing as dispossessed Catholics.

Pray-at-home Catholics do not claim membership in an “invisible” Church

Some have accused pray-at-home Catholics of holding to the “invisible” or “pneumatological” idea of the Mystical Body condemned above by both Pope Leo XIII and Pius XII. But we have never maintained that we as the catacomb Church are invisible, per se; rather we are visible and known to each other; we are hidden only in the sense that for the most part, Traditionalists pretend we are not members of “their” church and for that matter, act as though we don’t even exist. They condemn us for our beliefs, but we all worship the same at home and believe the same truths of faith; we observe the same Sacraments of private Baptism, the extraordinary form of Matrimony, (also Spiritual Communion and the Perfect Act of Contrition in lieu of Penance and reception of the Holy Eucharist). We all follow the same laws of the Church, as Pope Pius XII bids us to do in Mystici Corporis. And being excused from those Sacraments we cannot receive, owing to moral impossibility, we thus fulfill whatever we can of the marks of the Church, although admittedly it is not the juridic Church, because it cannot exist without all three attributes.

If de facto and de jure is able to be applied to anything it is this concept, since in fact we still possess at least some of the qualifications to satisfy the marks, yet by law we have no hierarchy to guide us. But is it possible that pray-at-home Catholics could possess the attributes in a mystical manner? For if we long for the return of true authority, obeying all the laws and teachings of the Church in the meantime; if we firmly hold and believe all the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs in their continual magisterium, and if we wholeheartedly profess the belief that Christ will always be true to His promises, then we have fulfilled all we can of the requirements necessary for the juridic Church to exist by our desire to be ruled by a true pope in the future and our intention to submit to his authority.

Reverend Stanislaus Grabowski, in his examination of St. Augustine’s idea of the Church, gives the term Mystical Body in its fullest definition, according to the teachings of the Saint. He summarizes that definition as follows:

“1. In the widest sense, as encompassing all who attain salvation…The body of Christ embraces… the just of the Old Testament [as well as those of the New], since…they were already united to Him who was to come.

“2. In a narrower sense, the Church of the future or the celestial body of Christ may be identified with His body here on earth, since the Church upon earth has as its aim the attainment of the heavenly Church.

“3. In the strictest sense, the body of Christ in the works of St. Augustine is coincident with the visible Catholics or juridical Church. It is only in the latter that the body of Christ is fully realized, according to all of the constituent elements,” (The Church, pp. 69-70.)

We may not satisfy the strictest and fullest realization of the Mystical Body, but we fall somewhere between 2 and 3 in satisfying Grabowski’s requirements. This is why, as so many Traditionalists keep repeating, the Church today is “eclipsed.”

This “outward legal side” of the Church is presented in the well-known definition of St. Robert Bellarmine: “The Church is a union of men who are united by the profession of the same Christian faith and by participation in the same sacraments, under the direction of their lawful pastors, especially of the one representative of Christ on earth, the Pope of Rome,” (De eccl. mil. 2.) But the best definition of the Church, encompassing all aspects of Her existence is presented by Dr. Ludwig Ott from the pen of the theolo­gian, Reverend Johan Mohler. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. X, calls Mohler a “gifted youth,” an “ideal priest,” “deeply pious,” “…kindly intelligent,” and of a “childlike modesty.” The author of the article concerning him, Reverend Schlager, says of Mohler: “…he gave new life to the science of theology … he reawakened the religious spirit of the age,” (late 18th, early 19th century). On his tomb, Schlager reports that his epitaph reads: “Defender of the Faith, ornament of letters, consolation of the Church.”

Reverend Mohler, in his Symbolik, offers us this definition of the Church: “By the Church on earth, Catholics understand the visible community of all the faithful, founded by Christ, in which are continued the activities developed by Him, during His earthly life for the remission of sins and for the salvation of mankind, under the direction of His Spirit, until the end of the world, by means of a con­tinuous, uninterrupted apostolate ordained by Him, and by which, in the course of time, all peoples will be brought back to God.” (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp. 271-72.) And here we must remind readers that this apostolate is not just assigned to the hierarchy; it is committed also to the laity, for Catholic Action has long been called by the Church, “the apostolate of the laity.” Pius XII reiterates the gist of Mohler’s definition in his Mystici Corporis with these words: “This social body of Christ has been de­signed by its founder to be visible; this cooperation of all its members must be externally manifest….”

And these definitions do not exclude pray-at-home Catholics, except where the literal application of the attributes are concerned. Mystically, even if not in its fullest sense, stay-at-home Catholics possess all the requirements of membership in Christ’s Mystical Body. As Pius XII states above, the restriction of the Mystical Body to  “popular naturalism, which sees and wills to see in the Church nothing but a juridical and social union,” is as much an error in thinking as belief in an invisible, pneumatological Church. This is expressed more clearly below by Right Rev. Msgr. Can. Edward Myers, M.A., found in The Teaching of the Catholic Church by Can. George D. Smith, D.D., Ph.D., Vol. II; 1959, as presented in Part I of this work:

The negation of the visible character of the Church of Christ, and of its hierarchical constitution, has led to such stress being laid upon the visible, tangible aspects of the Church that those who are not Catholics have come to think of it in terms of its external organization and of its recent dogmatic definitions, and not a few Catholics, concentrating their attention upon the argumentative, apologetical, and controversial side of the doctrine concerning the Church, have been in danger of overlooking theoretically – though practically it is impossible for them to do so – the supernatural, the mysterious, the vital, the overwhelmingly important character of the Church as the divinely established and only means of grace in the world, as the Mystical Body of Christ.”  The Mystical Body of Christ is the “only means of grace in the world… The stress laid by St. Paul on the edification of the body of Christ, on the benefit the whole [which] derives from the perfection of the members, has tended to be passed over where the social value of the contemplative life is not appreciated.” And whether Christ heads it in conjunction with His Vicar or in our case, rules alone, this is nonetheless true. External religion, social religion is what ruined the Church, and the neglect of the interior life is the sin of omission that allowed the faithful to become lost in the errors of ecumenism and liturgical renewal. Christ closed the door, then, so to speak on the juridic Church and led those remaining into the desert to join Him and His Blessed Mother in praying, watching and contemplation.  This, as mentioned before, is what is suggested in Apocalypse, Chapter 12.

Graces and their origin: where Traditionalists err

Notice how Pope Pius XII states above that had He willed it, Christ could have imparted grace directly to us, bypassing the juridic Church. God tells us in Zach. 13:7 that when the shepherd is struck, this is exactly what He will do: turn His hand to us. He will personally be the font of all graces without the Mass and Sacraments available. Yet Traditionalists deny He could possibly act of His own accord — will such a thing — without the juridic Church, when Christ Himself is the Head of His own Church! He also is the One who has taken Mass and Sacraments away, just as Holy Scripture said He would do; and just as the ancient Fathers of the Church unanimously foretold. In Chapter 11 of Zacharias, God is portrayed as breaking His covenant with His people, for the prophet writes: “And I took my rod that was called beauty and cut it asunder to make void my covenant…And I cut off my second rod that was called a Cord, that I might break the brotherhood between Juda and Israel,” (11:10, 14.) Here then is proof positive that God can withdraw His guarantees and favors if He chooses. The footnote under “two rods” in the Douay-Rheims explains that the rods are broken “…by the obstinacy of sinners … and such sinners are given up to the reprobate sense, as the Jews were.” This same chapter of Zacharias refers to the “two shepherds,” one just and one foolish. St. Jerome tells us the foolish shepherd Zacharias describes as forsaking the flock is Antichrist, and that it is foretold by this prophet that only a remnant of the flock shall remain standing. Yet Christ remains with the remnant in His Mystical Body.

“For it was through His triumph on the Cross,’ according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, ‘that He won power and dominion over the gentiles;’ by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members; it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God’s anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body through the waters of Baptism except by the salutary virtue of the Cross, by which they had been already brought under the complete sway of Christ,” (Mystici Corporis, para. 30). In the absence of the juridic Church, Christ will not fail to dispense the graces won for us by His death on the Cross. Traditionalists, who constantly preach that these graces cannot be obtained in any complete and significant manner unless received in sacraments from their hands dare to usurp the place of Christ. For these graces were meant to issue from Christ through the hands of lawful priests, validly and licitly ordained, descended from the line of bishops Christ began with His designation of the Apostles; NOT those consecrated at the hands of schismatics and worse, who have no claim to that descent.

“From Heaven Christ never ceases to look down with especial love on His spotless Spouse so sorely tried in her earthly exile; and when He sees her in danger, saves her from the tempestuous sea either Himself or through the ministry of His angels, or through her whom we invoke as Help of Christians, or through other heavenly advocates, and in calm and tranquil waters comforts her with the peace ‘which surpasseth all understanding,’” (Mystici Corporis, para. 40). Christ does carry us in these times, just as He carried the lambs in His arms as the Good Shepherd. He is as true to these promises to the faithful as He is to the promise that His Church will last as He established it “unto the consummation.”

Who belong to the unity and faith of the Body?

“22. Actually, only those are to be in included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed…As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord and One Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered — so the Lord commands — as a heathen and a publicanThose divided in faith and government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its Divine Spirit.

“23. [But] not every sin, how grave it may be, is such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism, heresy or apostasy

“24. But if anyone unhappily falls and his obstinacy has not made him unworthy of the communion with the faithful, let him be received with great love…and eager charity…For as the Bishop of Hippo [St. Augustine] remarks. ‘As long as a member still forms part of the body there is no reason to despair of its cure; once it has been cut off, it can be neither cured nor healed.’”

Who is and is not a member of the Mystical Body was debated at length over the centuries. In his The Church (1957), Rev. Stanley Grabowski tells us: “With regard to heretics and schismatics, [St. Augustine] allows for cases in which individuals are outside the Church in good faith.” Mortal or “death-bringing” sins, “deprive the soul of its spiritual life…Through the commission of such sins, one is deprived of grace, of charity and the Holy Ghost…Venial sins, on the other hand, do not…kill the spiritual life of the soul, ” and this is in line with what Pope Pius XII says above. “Augustine views the habitation of the Holy Spirit in a two-fold way: first, as a personal inhabitation of each just individual; and, secondly, as a personal inhabitation of the corporate Church, composed of all individuals who form the Mystical Body of Christ…If this two-fold habitation of the Holy Ghost, viz., that of the individual and that of the mystical body is ignored, the sinful person who is without the individual indwelling of the Holy Ghost will be removed from the corporate indwelling of the Holy Ghost [and] detached from the mystical Body of Christ.”

However to lose either the individual OR the corporate indwelling singly results only in  retaining a nominal attachment to the Mystical Body, but an attachment nevertheless. As Grabowski observes, “It is more advantageous to be attached to the body of Christ as a distorted or dead member than to be severed completely as heretics and schismatic’s are.” Grabowski notes that while St. Augustine hold as inculpable those who are outside the Church in good faith, “they must be somehow associated with the Holy Ghost and the Church.” But he also states that, “There is no explicit statement of St. Augustine to the effect that individuals outside the Church possess the Holy Ghost as an inhabiting Divine Person.” Treating of the same subject, St. Robert Bellarmine stresses the juridic Church as the best expression of the Mystical Body, yet both Msgr. Myers and Grabowski agree that this strong reaction to the errors of the Reformation unfairly obscured the idea of the mystical inner life of the Church and Her intimate relationship with Christ, the Head. Concerning membership, St. Robert writes: “The body is the external profession of faith and the communion of Sacraments. From this it follows that some are of the soul and body of the Church, and consequently are united to Christ internally and externally; these belong most fully to the Church…Others are of the soul and not the body, as the catechumens or excommunicated, if they have faith and charity. Finally, some are of the body and not the soul, as he who has no internal virtue, and nevertheless they profess faith by hope or some temporal fear and communicate in Sacraments under the leader of [legitimate] pastors…”

But St. Bellarmine distinguishes between those merely excommunicated for other crimes and those excommunicated for heresy, apostasy and schism in De Romano Pontifice, Bk. II, Chap. 30: “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 [receiving an official sentence] 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,” https://www.cmri.org/02-bellarmine-roman-pontiff.html (this is for attribution only; this is a Traditionalist website). And he writes in his De Romano Pontifice, (Bk. II), Chapter 40: “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.”

Where are Traditionalists in all this? They are not of the soul because they are not just simple excommunicates. They are not of the Body because they receive sacrilegious sacraments from the hands of those who not only are not lawful pastors, but who are not certainly valid pastors at all. While St. Augustine in the fifth century seems to anticipate the argument for material heretics as actual members of the Church, hence Christ’s Mystical Body, later Church teaching does not confirm his opinion. But a distinction needs to be made. While in the external forum we are bound to regard pertinacious individuals as heretics and schismatic’s until the Church rules otherwise. While the Church does teach that such heretics and schismatics are outside Her pale, and Canon Law says we may regard them as such and treat them accordingly, this is not to say that some may not be innocent of heresy or schism in reality. Again, St. Bellarmine explains: “For although Liberius was not a heretic, nevertheless he was considered one, on account of the peace he made with the Arians, and by that presumption the pontificate could rightly [merito] be taken from him: for men are not bound, or able to read hearts; but when they see that someone is a heretic by his external works, they judge him to be a heretic pure and simple [simpliciter], and condemn him as a heretic.” It is up to the Church to make the final decision, and until then we are not wrong in condemning them as heretics. Still, some may be guiltless. Unknown to us, Christ still may secretly consider them as members of His Mystical Body.

More from Mystici Corporis on sources of grace

“41. “They, therefore, walk in the path of dangerous error who believe that they can accept Christ as the Head of the Church, while not adhering loyally to His Vicar on earth.”

We know that at present this is an impossibility. But as we have noted time and time again in other articles on this site, Traditionalists do not follow the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs throughout history; they do not practice what these popes taught or believe what they command us to believe. They pay them lip service, while their hearts are far from any obedience to them whatsoever. This despite the fact that the sole distinguishing factor of the true Church on earth, as defined by the Vatican Council, is her infallible head — supreme in his magistracy and jurisdiction. Some Traditionalists even are so perverse as to question the authority of Popes Pius IX through Pope Pius XII, without citing any credible evidence for why they consider them suspect popes. Or they criticize the popes while accepting them as pope, something they are forbidden by the Church to do. But without such obedience, which is the least one owes the Church in the absence of Her true head, one cannot be a member of the Mystical Body. And if not a member, one is not a sharer in the many graces that Christ showers on the faithful.

“44. Because Christ the Head holds such an eminent position, one must not think that he does not require the help of the Body… Moreover as our Savior does not rule the Church directly in a visible manner, He wills to be helped by the members of His Body in carrying out the work of redemption. Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action. This is a deep mystery, and an inexhaustible subject of meditation, that the salvation of many depends on the prayers and voluntary penances which the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ offer for this intention and on the cooperation of pastors of souls and of the faithful, especially of fathers and mothers of families, a cooperation which they must offer to our Divine Savior as though they were His associates.

“49. These words of the disciple whom Jesus loved lead us to the last reason why Christ our Lord should be declared in a very particular way Head of His Mystical Body. As the nerves extend from the head to all parts of the human body and give them power to feel and to move, in like manner our Savior communicates strength and power to His Church so that the things of God are understood more clearly and are more eagerly desired by the faithful. From Him streams into the body of the Church all the light with which those who believe are divinely illumined, and all the grace by which they are made holy as He is holy.

“50. It is He who imparts the light of faith to believers; it is He who enriches pastors and teachers and above all His Vicar on earth with the supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom, so that they may loyally preserve the treasury of faith, defend it vigorously, and explain it and confirm it with reverence and devotion. Finally, it is He who, though unseen, presides at the Councils of the Church and guides them.

“51. All these treasures of His divine goodness He is said to bestow on the members of His Mystical Body, not merely because He, as the Eucharistic Victim on earth and the glorified Victim in heaven, through His wounds and His prayers pleads our cause before the Eternal Father, but because He selects, He determines, He distributes every single grace to every single person ‘according to the measure of the giving of Christ.’… It is He who through the Church baptizes, teaches, rules, looses, binds, offers, sacrifices.”

In the strict sense, Christ needs no one to effect the work of His salvation; He chose to establish His Church in such a way that the hierarchy acted as intermediaries to dispense His graces. They are the ones who to a man, following the death of Pope Pius XII, abandoned Him (or so it appears), just as his own Apostles slept at Gesthemane and hid when He was arrested. Somewhere true members of the hierarchy, more than likely, have been preserved; but He has shut up their hiding places. He has pulled the faithful to Himself, and though they are not an invisible Church — for there are those who yet profess Him publicly — neither are they meant to know the exact number, location, and identities of all those He counts as members of His Body, either by water Baptism or desire. By insisting that only their clergy can convey graces through their mass and sacraments, Traditionalists are denying that Christ can dispense His graces when and where — and to whom — He wishes without their “assistance.” They use this hook to reel in those who fear they will lose their souls if they cannot procure these graces. They pretend to represent the juridic Church without office, jurisdiction or obedience to a true pope, or even the popes of the past. Those following them ought to know better, but they have never studied their faith. And once they choose to follow some “priest” or “bishop,” they often are discouraged from studying it.

It is as Henry Cardinal Manning says: “Whensoever the light comes within the reach of our sight, or the voice within the reach of our ear, we are bound to follow it, to inquire and to learn; for we are answerable, not only for what we can do, by absolute power now, but for what we might do if we used all the means we have; and therefore, whensoever the Church of God comes into the midst of us, it lays all men under responsibility; and woe to that man who says, ‘ I will not read; I will not hear; I will not listen; I will not learn; ‘ and woe to those teachers who shall say, ‘ Don’t listen, don’t read, don’t hear; and therefore, don’t learn.’”

In discussing the teaching of St. Augustine on the subject of illicit Baptism, Rev. Grabowski notes: “Without the Holy Ghost are such as have been baptized in heretical and schismatic factions…Baptism so administered produces in the soul of the recipient an effect which Augustine calls a form or ‘forma,’ [the indelible mark?]. However, since it is produced outside the Church, it is irregular and illicit and consequently it does not convey a life of grace, it does not bring a rebirth of the soul, it does not effect a participation in the Holy Ghost.” Grabowski says such a sacrament from heretics and schismatics “is not worthless. Because it is valid it impinges a ‘form’ on the recipient…On account of the sacramental ‘form’ impressed on the baptized one, when such a person returns from heresy and schism…to the fold of the Church,” he becomes a member of the Mystical Body, returns to grace and receives the Holy Ghost. “The sinner administering it in the Church does not hinder the Sacrament from producing that life which he himself does not have, for it is Christ who is the principal minister. The sacrament is not affected by the sinfulness of the dispenser,” and this is the entire thrust of the Donatist heresy fought by St. Augustine and mistakenly applied by Traditionalists to the situation today. Sinfulness is one thing; lack of membership in the Church quite another. “…The sacrament, however, does not produce the supernatural life it is intended to convey…[when] administered or received outside the pale of the Church of Christ. This Church is the sole legitimate possessor of the sacraments. Just as they are said to be the sacraments of Christ they are the sacraments of the Church.”

This argument is very familiar because it explains why the Church will not recognize as licit the Holy Orders and episcopal consecrations administered by heretics and schismatics, particularly during an interregnum, and why She nullifies and voids their effects. The activating force of the mark works to good effect in Baptism, also Confirmation, for it means that those who received this Sacrament at the hands of valid but illicit bishops issuing from Pope Pius XII and later converted actually received the graces of the Sacrament. But regarding Holy Orders, which Rev. Jean-Marie Herve says is to be treated more stringently than all the other Sacraments, this is not the case. Some Traditionalist clergy claim that Christ Himself supplies jurisdiction for their acts, even as heretics and schismatics, and yet St. Augustine, Grabowski, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bellarmine and many others flatly deny this could ever be the case. The dogma at stake here is apostolicity and “forma” or no, nothing could provide them the necessary apostolicity, which must be coupled with jurisdiction to assure apostolic succession.

Canon Law and Church teaching clearly demonstrate that those who receive this sacrament from the hands of heretics and schismatics, whether or not they are ordained or consecrated by a bishop issuing from Pope Pius XII, receive no sacrament or mark whatsoever. If no mark was ever received, then it cannot be reactivated; and should they function as if they have so received it, Pope Pius VI and Pope Pius XII teach that they convey nothing, (Charitas; Vacantis Apostolica Sedis; Canons 108, 109, 118, 147, 154, 453). For they are not called by the proper bishop; do not possess dimissorial letters; were never properly examined or dispensed from impediments; were only doubtfully tonsured and were never properly trained or apprenticed following “ordination,” so could never possibly have received an office, far less jurisdiction. These “priests” and “bishops,” even as laymen, incur numerous censures and vindicative penalties that make it impossible for them to ever “reactivate” any so-called graces received to carry out their duties, because these are nullified by law and the censures incurred can be lifted only by a canonically elected Roman Pontiff.

They can return to the Mystical Body, however, through prayer, study, penance, renunciation of their errors and reparation. And as laymen, they could eventually function in some capacity such as simple catechesis. Pope Pius XII, in an address to Catholic women in 1957, told the laity that they MUST pick up the duties of the hierarchy whenever, owing to impossibility or persecution they cannot perform these duties. In his Feb. 20, 1946 address to Cardinals, Pope Pius XII reminded us that under our bishops, who are in communion with the Roman Pontiff, “[We] are the Church…” However in his 1957 work he taught that, “The initiative of a lay apostolate is perfectly justified even without a prior explicit ‘mission’ from the hierarchy…In countries where contacts with the hierarchy are difficult or practically impossible,…Christians…must, with God’s grace, assume all their responsibilities,” (“Mission of the Catholic Woman,” Sept. 29, 1957, The Pope Speaks). He added, however, that, “Even so, nothing can be undertaken against the explicit and implicit will of the Church, or contrary in any way to the rules of faith or morals, or ecclesiastical discipline.” But we have his permission, even his command to take the place of the hierarchy in times of emergency. This could be delegated to us only by virtue of the shared nature of Christ’s Mystical Body, which joins all Catholics, lay or clerical into one united entity until the consummation. We may not know where the hierarchy is, but we must act on its behalf, as best we can, until that fact is known to us.

Christ hears our private prayers

“87. There are others who deny any impetratory power to our prayers, or who endeavor to insinuate into men’s minds the idea that prayers offered to God in private should be considered of little worth, whereas public prayers which are made in the Name of the Church are those which really matter, since they proceed from the Mystical Body of Christ… [for] no prayer, even the most private, is lacking in dignity or power, and all prayer is of the greatest help to the Mystical Body in which, through the Communion of Saints, no good can be done, no virtue practiced by the individual members, which does not redound also to the salvation of all.” (Mystici Corporis).

This is precisely what Traditionalists do by jeering at those who pray at home and rely on their Spiritual Communions and Perfect Acts of Contrition. Why would anyone condemn these practices, given to us by the Church Herself, when pray-at-home Catholics are only following their consciences? The answer to this question is that Traditionalists are engaging in bullying because they have no legitimate way to defend their defenseless position.  If they were truly solicitous of Christ’s Mystical Body and the salvation of souls as they repeatedly boast, then they would heed the following from Mystici Corporis:

“92. For as the Apostle with good reason admonishes us: ‘Those that seem the more feeble members of the Body are more necessary; and those that we think the less honorable members of the Body, we surround with more abundant honor.’”

Obligation of Catholics to engage in Catholic Action

“87. No less far from the truth is the dangerous error of those who endeavor to deduce from the mysterious union of us all with Christ a certain unhealthy quietism. They would attribute the whole spiritual life of Christians and their progress in virtue exclusively to the action of the Divine Spirit, setting aside and neglecting the collaboration which is due from us…’For divine favors are conferred not on those who sleep, but on those who watch,’ as St. Ambrose says. For if in our mortal body the members are strengthened and grow through continued exercise, much more truly can this be said of the social Body of Jesus Christ in which each individual member retains his own personal freedom, responsibility, and principles of conduct.

“96. And so We desire that all who claim the Church as their mother, should seriously consider that not only the clergy and those who have consecrated themselves to God in the religious life, but the other members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ as well have, each in his degree, the obligation of working hard and constantly for the building up and increase of this Body.”

“103. For although our Savior’s cruel passion and death merited for His Church an infinite treasure of graces, God’s inscrutable providence has decreed that these graces should not be granted to us all at once; but their greater or lesser abundance will depend in no small part on our own good works, which draw down on the souls of men a rain of heavenly gifts freely bestowed by God.”

And again from Right Rev. Msgr. Can. Edward Myers, M.A., quoted above: “All who are justified should think and act as members of the Body of Christ, having the closest possible relations as individuals with Christ their Redeemer, and through him and in him, with their fellow Christians.  Relations so close that the merits of Christ become theirs in proportion to the degree of their identification with him, and the merits of all avail unto all for the achieving of Christ’s purpose, the application of his merits to the salvation of mankind. This great Mystery of the identification of Christ and the faithful in the mystical body of which he is the head and they are members dominates the mind of St. Paul.  Christ is the head, the Source of its corporate unity; the indwelling of his Spirit is the source of its spiritual activity.” Pope Pius XII assigns us a task, in the absence of the hierarchy, that is truly daunting; for he says we must take upon ourselves “all their duties.” In a sense then we also become the juridic Church, although we can never possess any sort of jurisdiction. But still we must continue that which we can, the spreading of the faith, insofar as our talents and our resources allow.

And yet the Traditionalist clergy have not evangelized and catechized to create this Army for Christ; they have not encouraged and organized Catholic Action, or any other apostolate of any importance or significance that has championed the cause of Christ the King and His Church. Rather than gather they have scattered the faithful, with their constant wrangling with one another, their divergence in doctrine, scandals in their personal lives and their love of notoriety and money. Their greatest sin of omission was committed when they neglected to secure the rights and continuation of the juridic Church by not electing a pope in the early days of this crisis, when it still might have been accomplished; and this, we believe, was by design. They also have consistently refused to do the one thing most necessary to belong to Christ’s Mystical Body as members — participate in the upbuilding of His Body by study and meditation, abandoning their errors and doing penance and reparation for the scandal they have given to others and the injury done to their own souls.

Rev. Grabowski quotes St. Augustine as requiring such penance before these men can be rehabilitated and return to the Church. The sainted bishop describes these individuals as “’…ficti or simulati…’ They seem to have been those who because of the commission of certain grave sins incurred ecclesiastical penance, which they failed to do,” and Traditionalists have racked up a goodly number of these penances for heresy and other delicts they have committed. “Because of their special grievous sin they have severed themselves from the Church to the extent of losing membership in it which they have not regained…These members behave externally as all other members do…and appear to participate in the inner life of the Church. It is not so, however. The ‘ficti’ or simulati’ have not the Holy Ghost…They are in the Church but merely according to appearance. ‘They do not belong to the Church and to that society of the Spirit,’” St. Augustine says, (p. 174-75). Sadly what they have perpetrated is the degradation of Christ’s sacred Mystical Body, and this has prevented them from sharing in its many fruits and benefits.

Mystici Corporis and the true mystical nature of Christ’s Body

“62. Hence, this word [mystical], in its correct signification gives us to understand that the Church, a perfect society of its kind, is not made up of merely moral and juridical elements and principles. It is far superior to all other human societies;[117] it surpasses them as grace surpasses nature, as things immortal are above all those that perish.[118] Such human societies, and in the first place civil Society, are by no means to be despised or belittled; but the Church in its entirety is not found within this natural order, any more than the whole man is encompassed within the organism of our mortal body.[119] Although the juridical principles, on which the Church rests and is established, derive from the divine constitution given to it by Christ and contribute to the attaining of its supernatural end, nevertheless that which lifts the Society of Christians far above the whole natural order is the Spirit of our Redeemer who penetrates and fills every part of the Church’s being and is active within it until the end of time as the source of every grace and every gift and every miraculous power. Just as our composite mortal body, although it is a marvelous work of the Creator, falls far short of the eminent dignity of our soul, so the social structure of the Christian community, though it proclaims the wisdom of its divine Architect, still remains something inferior when compared to the spiritual gifts which give it beauty and life, and to the divine source whence they flow.

“68. Now since its Founder willed this social body of Christ to be visible, the cooperation of all its members must also be externally manifest through their profession of the same faith and their sharing the same sacred rites, through participation in the same Sacrifice, and the practical observance of the same laws. Above all, it is absolutely necessary that the Supreme Head, that is, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, be visible to the eyes of all, since it is He who gives effective direction to the work which all do in common in a mutually helpful way towards the attainment of the proposed end. As the Divine Redeemer sent the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, who in His name [138] should govern the Church in an invisible way, so, in the same manner, He commissioned Peter and his successors to be His personal representatives on earth and to assume the visible government of the Christian community.”

The Mystical Body is bound by Canon Law

In his Our Greatest Treasure (1942), Rev. John Kearney tells us how key our obedience to the laws of the Church truly is if we wish to retain our faith.

“A Catholic obeys all the laws of the Church because God has given Her the power to rule and govern her subjects. A Catholic honors God by believing His word, and he honors God by obeying His laws — the Ten Commandments. The laws of the Church are God’s laws also in the sense that He gave Her the power to make laws — to make laws in His name: ‘Whatsoever you (the Apostles) shall bind on earth shall be bound also in Heaven,’ (Matt. 18:18)…The Church, then, has a twofold power regarding laws; She has the power to teach and explain the Divine law and to make laws Herself. A good Catholic…is obedient to a law laid down by the Church; he is not concerned whether it be an explanation of a divine law or a law laid down by Herself…The Church was founded by Christ…Her end is to glorify God by the salvation of souls…Hence every law the Church makes has as final object to facilitate the salvation of Her children. Her children may not see clearly how this or that law is a help to salvation, but once they believe the Church is God’s representative and speaks in His name they are conscious of their obligations and are thankful that they can honor God by obedience to the laws of His representatives…Obedience is not merely doing what you are told but being cheerfully willing to be told what to do…To obey the Church, therefore, is to obey God, for She commands in His name. And to obey God, to submit to God’s Will, is to offer Him the most perfect worship…It is important to emphasize and explain the authority of the Church in teaching and ruling [because]…this power should be associated with the doctrine that She is the Mystic Body of Christ

“The Catholic believes that the Church is a society and has power to teach and govern (including the power to make laws). This is part of the doctrine She teaches. For a Catholic to (a) refuse to believe what the Church teaches is a mortal sin which forfeits God’s friendship; (b) to refuse to submit to one of the laws of the Church in a serious matter is a mortal sin and means the loss of God’s friendship. Such a refusal is a resistance to God Himself; for the Church speaks in His name…The priceless gift of the true faith which God in His goodness has given to us can be lost, and if lost, it may perhaps never be regained. One of the first steps in this loss of the gift of faith is the imprudence (arising from pride) of questioning the wisdom of the laws of the Church.”

And we hear the following from Cardinal Manning: “The sacred Canon Law against which the rebellious wills and shallow intellects of men have ever clamoured is the noblest, highest, purest legislation that mankind has ever known. The jurisprudence of the Church is the perfection of wisdom and justice. And here the difference between the Church and the world comes out into light. The doctors and legislators of the world may be unsanctified men. The doctors and law-givers of the Church are created by the Holy Ghost,” (The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost, 1875).

If we listen to Traditionalists we would believe that the only way of saving ours souls is to partake of the sacraments they offer and attend their masses.  Never does anyone hear of the necessity under pain of mortal sin, even excommunication, of obeying Her laws, especially in a matter as serious as the lack of necessary jurisdiction and participation in communicatio in sacris. According to Rev. Kearney, those who obey God’s laws (in order to abstain from such sacrilege), offer Him a sacrifice more noble and pleasing than any Traditionalists could imagine. But this they would never concede, even though it is contained in Holy Writ: “And Samuel said: Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices: and to hearken rather than to offer the fat of rams. Because it is like the sin of witchcraft, to rebel: and like the crime of idolatry, to refuse to obey,” (1 Kings 15: 22-23). And, “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up,” (Psalm 50: 19-20). Here we have in a nutshell the reason why the crisis in the Church continues, and the remedy God desires in order that the Church be restored.

Filling up what is wanting to Christ’s Passion

“77…Thus the Church becomes, as it were, the filling out and the complement of the Redeemer, while Christ in a sense attains through the Church a fullness in all things

“78. …”This profound truth  — of our union with the Divine Redeemer and in particular of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our souls — is shrouded in darkness by many a veil that impedes our power to understand and explain it, both because of the hidden nature of the doctrine itself, and of the limitations of our human intellect. But We know, too, that from well-directed and earnest study of this doctrine, and from the clash of diverse opinions and the discussion thereof, provided that these are regulated by the love of truth and by due submission to the Church, much light will be gained, which, in its turn will help to progress in kindred sacred sciences. Hence, We do not censure those who in various ways, and with diverse reasonings make every effort to understand and to clarify the mystery of this our wonderful union with Christ. But let all agree uncompromisingly on this, if they would not err from truth and from the orthodox teaching of the Church: to reject every kind of mystic union by which the faithful of Christ should in any way pass beyond the sphere of creatures and wrongly enter the divine…”

“107…She, truly the Queen of Martyrs, more than all the faithful ‘filled up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ…for His Body, which is the Church;’ and she continues to have for the Mystical Body of Christ, born of the pierced Heart of the Savior, the same motherly care and ardent love with which she cherished and fed the Infant Jesus in the crib.

“108. May she, then, the most holy Mother of all the members of Christ, to whose Immaculate Heart We have trustfully consecrated all mankind, and who now reigns in heaven with her Son, her body and soul refulgent with heavenly glory — may she never cease to beg from Him that copious streams of grace may flow from its exalted Head into all the members of the Mystical Body. May she throw about the Church today, as in times gone by, the mantle of her protection and obtain from God that now at least the Church and all mankind may enjoy more peaceful days.”

Probably one of the most beautiful accounts of Our Lady’s interaction with the Mystical Body is found in Mother Mary Potter’s Path of Mary. There Mother Potter writes:

“If Jesus Christ, the Head of men is born in her, the predestinate, who are members of that Head, ought also to be born in her by a necessary consequence. One and the same mother does not bring forth into the world the head without the necessary members, nor the members without the head: for this would be a monster of nature; so in like manner, in the order of grace, the Head and the members are born of one and the same Mother; and if a member of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is to say, one of the predestinate, was born of any other Mother than Mary, who has produced the Head, he simply would be a monster in the order of grace.

“St. Augustine confirms that all the predestinate, in order to be conformed to the image of the Son of God, are in the world hidden in the womb of the most holy Virgin, where they are guarded, nourished, brought up and made to grow by that great Mother until she has brought them forth to glory after death. God the Son wishes to form Himself, and, so to speak, to incarnate Himself every day, by His dear Mother, in His members.” Here we are reminded of two sets of imagery. First, St. John’s portrayal of Our Lady and also the Church in Apoc. 12 where she is in labor to give birth, first to her Son, then, some commentators say, to His Vicar (Rev. E. Sylvester Berry), and finally to the faithful. In his commentary on this chapter Rev. Leo Haydock writes: “By this woman [clothed with the sun] interpreters commonly understand the Church of Christ, shining with the light of faith…It may also, by allusion, be applied to Our Lady…in labor and pain whilst she brings forth her children [the faithful] and Christ in them, in the midst of afflictions and persecutions…[For] the Church, even in the time of persecution, brought forth children to Christ…” In verse 5 Haydock sees “the man child” as “a masculine race of Christians, willing to confess the name of the Lord and to fight His battles…guarded by the special favor of God.” On verse 6, describing the Church’s flight into the desert, Haydock comments: “The Church, in the times of persecutions, must be content to serve God in a private manner.” The two wings of the eagle Haydock sees as a “special protection and assistance…from the Almighty.”

Secondly, we are reminded here of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in labor to give birth to the millions of Mexico’s people converted to the faith in the 1500s. At La Salette Our Lady announced that a “little flock” of the faithful would be hidden and unknown in the latter days, and Guadalupe means hidden. Did she not tell Juan Diego that her children were in the folds of her garments, and that she would carry them in her arms? This last phrase was repeated at La Salette. Considering the other particulars revealed to the children there, it seems that Our Lady was trying to point out that the Church would be hidden from view in those days; eclipsed. This is the teaching of some of the Church Fathers and St. Francis de Sales on the Church in the desert during the time of Antichrist. Other commentators on the Apocalypse also allude to the Church’s nourishment in the desert or wilderness at this time, (Apoc. 12:6,14). Certainly it cannot be denied today that the papacy and Christ’s juridic Church on earth have been almost entirely blotted out. Yet the Mystical Body lives on.

If we wish to suffer with Our Lady and her Beloved Son, that we too may fill up some of what is “wanting” to Christ’s Passion, Mother Potter has this advice to offer:

“The Church appears to have entered upon the time when she mystically represents the Passion of Our Lord, and her members are unusually afflicted and tried; therefore the thought cannot be too often in your mind of the priceless value of suffering, of the short time the severest suffering can last, if it lasted without intermission through your whole life which it does not. Meditate again and again, in union with the Mother of Sorrows, upon the value (we might almost say infinite value) of suffering, since it will procure an infinite reward. It will be well to remember, likewise, that suffering not only procures a closer union with God, and therefore greater happiness in Heaven, but it likewise begets a greater happiness even on earth. You will taste a joy — you who suffer till your soul seems sorrowful even unto death — not conceived by those who pass through life with but its ordinary cares. Suffering is the one thing we may glory in. Suffering borne patiently, borne as God wills, is a present we may offer in some way back to God, and be sure it will be a gift most pleasing to Him. All that we suffer we of course, in our fallen state, deserve; but if God sees that in our hearts we are willing to suffer even undeserved suffering to please Him, to save our souls, He accepts that will, and our suffering is beautified to some resemblance to Our Lady’s.”

And on this note, we conclude the comments on Pope Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis.

Conclusion

“If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church — we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression, ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’ — an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers,” Mystici Corporis teaches. And how is this to be fulfilled by the members of Christ’s Body? The cooperation of all its members must also be externally manifest through their profession of the same faith and their sharing the same sacred rites, through participation in the same Sacrifice, and the practical observance of the same laws.” Both pray-at-home Catholics and Traditionalists alike agree that the Church, as Christ constituted it shall last unto the consummation, as the Vatican Council infallibly teaches. It is HOW it shall last, however, on which they disagree. But let us dissect the teachings of the Church on this matter to discover how Traditionalists err in believing that the Church exists primarily in its exterior or juridic capacity, while paradoxically maintaining that a) either the juridic Church can exist without a true pope, which St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Pope Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum and Pope Pius XII above emphatically deny; or b) it exists with a (potentially) true pope because materially the Roman usurpers hold the See. The heresies inherent in both these contentions have been demonstrated numerous times on this site, most recently in the article /articles/bombshell-basis-for-the-material-pope-theory-why-traditionalists-never-left-the-novus-ordo-church/

By way of contrast, pray-at-home Catholics maintain that the juridic Church for a time has been taken out of the way by the will of God Himself, in fulfillment of Scripture prophecy. They believe the juridic Church will be restored eventually, and that the “3 ½ years” of its absence can be interpreted as merely symbolic, an opinion held by various commentators, that this verse refers to an indefinite period of time. During this time period they believe that the Mystical Body of Christ — defined by Pope Pius XII as the Church on earth — is very much alive and exists in the mystical manner described in Apoc. 12. In so maintaining, and in assuming in the meantime the duties incumbent on Catholics to preserve the faith insofar as they are able, pray-at-home  Catholics follow the laws and teachings of the Church by:

• proclaiming a firm and irrevocable assent to all the teachings of the Church and observance of Canon Law;

• refusing to receive doubtful sacraments;

• administering Baptism and Matrimony to each other and utilizing the Perfect Act of Contrition and Spiritual Communion in lieu of Penance and Holy Communion;

• reading either the entire Mass or the Mass of St. John from their missals, the appropriate Gospels and Epistles for the season and the sermons and instructions found in Goffines and elsewhere, keeping Sundays and holydays of obligation with prayers at home;

• in following only lawful pastors (including the avoidance of any so-called and falsely styled “material” popes, also the conclavist imposters);

• in catechizing both children and adults;

• in professing their faith by defending it and

• by performing acts of reparation and penance as required by any censures they have incurred, according to Canon Law.

Traditionalists, sadly,

• deny many points of infallible Church teaching and attenuate, ignore, dispense from and misinterpret the laws of the Church to their own advantage, contrary to the teachings of Pope Pius XII;

• sacrilegiously assist at “mass” and receive the “sacraments” from the hands of men whose ordinations are doubtfully valid at best, who possess no jurisdiction, supplied or otherwise and who, in reality, are probably only laymen;

• commit communicatio in sacris by attending Traditionalist services held by ”clerics” who admit they are not lawful pastors and are not in communion with a true pope;

• refuse to acknowledge Canon Law, so deny the effects of excommunication for heresy and schism and any need for doing penance or making reparation for their delicts.

Traditionalists claim God would never be so cruel as to deprive them of their clergy, even though these men reign only in violation of infallible decrees and Canon Law, as demonstrated repeatedly on this site. They have no canonical and infallible proofs of their own to offer that show they are justified in what they are doing, and they routinely decline to offer such proofs. Their primary proof exists in pointing out that Christ’s Church, as He constituted it, must last until the consummation, and they are the hierarchy of that Church. They have no direct-line descent from Pius XII, no proofs they possess jurisdiction, no appointed office — in short they lack all the elements required by law for validity, (Canons 147, 153, 453). They flout the law but yet call themselves members of the Church, while pray-at-home Catholics do their best to observe the law. When reminded that it is the unanimous opinion of the Fathers that the Holy Sacrifice will cease and that all the other signs predicted for the time of Antichrist’s coming are apparent, they assign his advent to the distant future, while maintaining Montini (Paul 6) abrogated the celebration of the Latin Mass by introducing the Novus Ordo Missae. As long as this denial of the true state of affairs exists, the same faith is not professed, the valid sacramental rites are not shared, the Holy Sacrifice is yet profaned in the Novus Ordo and on Traditionalist altars and the laws and teachings of the Church are ignored, Christ will not restore His Church.

For some at least, the resolution of the entire disconnect may hinge on the interpretation of St. Paul’s prophecy concerning “he who withholdeth.” If this verse is understood to mean the papacy, than many difficulties can be resolved. First of all, it would resolve the problem of the “material papacy,” for if the pope be taken out of the way and can no longer impede the reign of Antichrist, and Antichrist indeed arrives, then the papacy could scarcely be said to exist even materially. Secondly it would apply specifically to our own times, since never in the history of the Church has a series of usurpers ruled for decades (Antichrist and his system) unopposed by a true pope. Finally, it would be understood by all that without a canonically elected pope, the juridic Church cannot exist at all, for once the shepherd is struck, the sheep will scatter, (Zach. 13:7; Matt. 26: 31).  In determining what is meant by St. Paul in his withholding comment, we turn to the Latin Vulgate and the comments made in the original by its translators, as described in the Catholic Encyclopedia under the topic, “Douay Bible.”

“The original Douay Version, which is the foundation on which nearly all English Catholic versions are still based, owed its existence to the religious controversies of the sixteenth century. Many Protestant versions of the Scriptures had been issued and were used largely by the Reformers for polemical purposes. The renderings of some of the texts showed evident signs of controversial bias, and it became of the first importance for the English Catholics of the day to be furnished with a translation of their own, on the accuracy of which they could depend and to which they could appeal in the course of argument. The work of preparing such a version was undertaken by the members of the English College at Douai, in Flanders, founded by William Allen (afterwards cardinal) in 1568. The chief share of the translating was borne by Dr. Gregory Martin, formerly of St. John’s College, Oxford. His text was revised by Thomas Worthington, Richard Bristowe, John Reynolds, and Allen himself — all of them Oxford men. A series of notes was added, designed to answer the theological arguments of the Reformers; these were prepared by Allen, assisted by Bristowe and Worthington.

The editor of this article also comments: “Although the Bibles in use at the present day by the Catholics of England and Ireland are popularly styled the Douay Version, they are most improperly so called; they are founded, with more or less alteration, on a series of revisions undertaken by Bishop Challoner in 1749-52…The changes introduced by him were so considerable that, according to Cardinal Newman, they almost amounted to a new translation. So, also, Cardinal Wiseman wrote, ‘To call it any longer the Douay or Rheimish Version is an abuse of terms. It has been altered and modified until scarcely any verse remains as it was originally published.’ In nearly every case Challoner’s changes took the form of approximating to the Authorized Version [King James]…” Overall, the editor notes, the translation made in Rheims is “scholarly and accurate.” It is the comments of these men on the Vulgate, which seem to be more reliable than certain other authorities and commentaries, (at least according to the Encyclopedia editor), to which we will refer below.

In the Rheims commentary on St. Paul’s “withholding” power, the commentators only state that St. Augustine does not know what St. Paul is referring to by his allusion. But in their commentary on 2 Thess. 2: vs. 3, they say concerning the time of Antichrist’s reign: “The external state of the Roman Church and public intercourse with the same may cease, yet the due honor and obedience of the Christians toward it and communion in heart with it, and practice in secret, and open confessing of it if occasion require, shall not cease, no more than it doth now…” No scandal or any other endeavor “could yet prevail against the See of Rome, nor is it ever like to prevail until the end of the world draws near… Heretics feign to make the Pope Antichrist…[and] a member of the Church…the great Antichrist himself…of the Church and in the Church, and should continue in the same…[But] Antichrist, if he ever were of or in the Church shall be an apostate and a renegade out of the Church. And he shall usurp upon it by tyranny, and by challenging worship, religion and government thereof, so that himself shall be adored in all the churches of the world [which he leaves standing]…And this is to sit in the Temple of God [2 Thess. 2: 4], as some interpret. If any Pope ever did this, or shall do, then let the Adversaries call him Antichrist…Heretics of these days do more properly prepare the way to Antichrist and to extreme desolation than ever before, their special heresy being against the spiritual primacy of Popes and Bishops and against the Sacrifice of the Altar, in which two the sovereignty of Christ on earth exists.”  In 1582, when the Rheims New Testament was published, it had been only 23 years since the promulgation of Pope Paul IV’s Bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. It was clear even then that if Antichrist ever sat in the Chair of Peter, he would sit only as a usurper, and never as a member of the Church. These commentators clearly separate out that time when Antichrist reigns as an exception to the gates of Hell prevailing against the Church. Then and only then will it prevail and not before, as they explain against the Protestants at length in their commentary.

It was Henry Cardinal Manning who would devote an entire discourse to the question of “He who witholdeth” in his work, “The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.” After assaying the teachings of the ancient fathers on this question and distilling their thoughts, then adapting them to historical developments in the Church over the centuries, Manning arrives at the conclusion that “he who withholdeth and [that] which withholdeth” is “both a system and a person”; that in its broadest sense it includes the entire Church and those temporal governments professing Catholicism. Already the demise of that system was well underway in the 19th century, Manning noted. In the narrower sense, the system is the papacy and the faithful and in the narrowest sense, the hierarchy, including the papacy. Manning points out that this withholding is according to the “will of the Incarnate Son of God Himself.” In summary: “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…The Divine Power [is] first in Providence, and then in His Church and then both fused together, continuing until the time shall come…to remove the barrier in order to let in a new dispensation of his wisdom on earth…” And Manning says there is an analogy to this: “the history of the Church, and the history of Our Lord on earth, run as it were in parallel.” In other words, the Church will endure Christ’s own Passion in Her Mystical Body.

“The event may come to pass that as our Divine Lord, after His three years of public ministry were ended, delivered Himself of His own free will into the hands of men, and thereby permitted them to do that which before was impossible, so in His inscrutable wisdom He may deliver over His Vicar upon earth, as He delivered Himself, and that the providential support of the temporal power of the Holy See may be withdrawn when its work is done…when the whole number of those whom He hath chosen to eternal life is filled up. It may be that when that is done, and when the times of Antichrist are come, that He will give over His Vicar upon earth, and His Mystical Body at large, [for a time, but]…the imperishable Church will live on still through the fires of the times of Antichrist…All this will be a persecution which I will not attempt to describe…a persecution in which no man shall spare his neighbor. But there is One Person…who will break down and smite all the enemies of he Church…who will consume [them] ‘with the  Spirit of His mouth’ and [finally] destroy them ‘with the brightness of His coming.’…But there is in store for the Church of God a resurrection and an ascension, a royalty and a dominion, a recompense of glory for all it has endured.”

This we hear not from the mouth of a mystic, or some obscure seer, but from a theologian of the most irreproachable reputation; that champion of the papacy who almost singlehandedly engineered the Vatican Council as Pope Pius IX’s right-hand man and saw it through to its conclusion. This also is the opinion of “The pious and learned author,” [Fr.] Edward Healy Thompson, who wrote also in the 19th century: “In respect to the great calamities which [Bd]. Anna Maria Taigi announced as impending over mankind, as well as the splendid triumph which will follow for the Pope and the Church, together with the renovation of the entire world, one may say that such is the general object and the common end of all the prophecies, whether ancient or modern, which bear upon these latter times. Each seer, it is true, has added or dwelt more at large on some special circumstances, but they all agree in two leading features: ‘First, they all point to some terrible convulsion, to a revolution springing from most deep-rooted impiety, consisting in a formal opposition to God and His truth, and resulting in the most formidable persecution to which the Church has ever been subject. ‘Secondly, they all promise for the same Church a victory more splendid and complete than she has ever achieved here below. (“The Christian Trumpet,” compiled by Pellegrino [Gaudentius Rossi], 1800s).

And Mother Mary Potter, quoted above, wrote in her little book as well that: “It is the general opinion of saintly people that after the Church has passed a time of trial and persecutions, there will be a glorious time when infidelity, schism, errors, etc., will have passed away, when ‘all will be good.’ As, unknown to one another, so many holy people concur in this prophetic view of the future, it is useful to think about it and likewise to ask ourselves, is it not probable that this happy time will be in ‘that great age of the Church which is to be the age of Mary’?…Since Mary was the instrument God used to begin His regeneration of the world, it is by the same means He will complete it.”

But are Catholics bound to accept these opinions, or may they believe as they choose, even if they believe that the end of the world proper is at our doors? Now Catholics are bound to be prudent. Rev. Dominic Prummer, in his “Handbbook of Moral Theology,” (1957) tells us: “St. Thomas and Aristotle define prudence as correct knowledge concerning things to be done. Others define prudence as the knowledge of things which ought to be desired and of those things which ought to be avoided…Acts of the virtue of prudence are three in number: to take counsel carefully, to judge correctly, to direct.” St. Thomas lists eight prerequisites which must exist in order for an act of prudence to be perfect. They can be summarized as follows: a clear knowledge of past and present, readiness to learn, quickness in comprehending the means to be used, ability to infer one thing from another, careful consideration of circumstances and future events and care in avoiding evil and obstacles.

So where does the need for prudence come in concerning the present situation? When it comes to the common opinions of saints, theologians and holy people, Catholics should take their opinions and conclusions more seriously and adjust their thinking accordingly if they wish to exercise prudence. In J. S. Daly’s translation of Fr. Sixtus Cartechini S.J.’s “On the Value of Theological Notes and the Criteria for Discerning Them,” Fr. Cartechini gives as example of a “very common” opinions, that “Antichrist will be of the tribe of Dan.” Because the above opinion on the Church’s restoration seems to be a general one, we feel this is the closest comparison to it. Cartechini notes that “[These] opinions can be mistaken and there is no obligation to follow them, though prudence inclines us to favor them as a general policy.” Why?  Because our Lord instructed us to pay attention to the fig tree, to pray and watch, to gauge the signs of the times. These are just the prerequisites of prudence and if we cultivate them, then we are able to see how the past relates inevitably to the present, and to better evaluate our circumstances and future events. Only in this way can we hope to avoid evil and overcome obstacles in the path to our salvation.

It is true; the end could be just around the corner. A common opinion on a disputed subject is just that and opinions are like noses; everyone has one. As Cartechini states, it is not completely impossible for all the theological schools to err on a matter touching things proximate to faith. But unless we have serious reasons, it seems that the opinions of a vast number of saintly individuals throughout the centuries, including Fathers and Doctors of the Church, religious, clergy, theologians and pious lay people, are far more reliable than our own. And in these times, when nothing whatsoever seems certain, such opinions make a certain sort of sense. It seems unlikely that Christ would bring His Church to this pass and allow these circumstances it to continue even to the end, knowing that so many would see this as confirmation that the gates of Hell prevailed against the Church when it appears that many biblical prophecies have not yet been fulfilled. Could it happen? Of course; Gods thoughts and ways are not ours and His mind is a great deep.

But regardless of the outcome, pray-at-home Catholics have every reason to believe that the Church cannot and has not truly perished. They are intent on being part of the solution, not part of the problem. If they are scourged by the pens of Traditionalists, all the better. They have been deserted by their fellows as is it is the wont of those in schism to do. They live in the desert place prepared for them by Our Lady and Her spouse the Holy Ghost and offer up sacrifices, “better than are offered now, just as truth is better than the shadow of truth.” As Fr. Kearney wrote above, “to obey God, to submit to God’s Will, is to offer Him the most perfect worship,and this we believe with all our heart, mind and soul. Our sheltering abode is Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church as defined by Pope Pius XII above. And this Church shall never be taken away. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Christ’s promises — His Words — shall never pass. He has “turned His hand” to us in this His very own “secret garden”: He has “not left [us] orphans.” He will do the same for any who renounce their errors and do penance, make reparation for their sins. Many spiritual writers state that He will not punish His enemies until all the elect are gathered safely into His barn. Is He waiting for you?

Cekada’s false justification for acting without papal mandate

Cekada’s justification of acting without papal mandate refuted

© Copyright 2012, T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author. All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

Introduction

Below is a commentary on remarks made by Anthony Cekada concerning the citation of Pope Pius XII’s Ad Apostolorum Principis to prove that a papal mandate is required by law to consecrate bishops. This response is made at the request of an inquirer who wondered if what Cekada said had any basis in fact. What is interesting here is that Cekada intimates that bishops made heads of dioceses do not receive papal appointment; that only the three other types of bishops he mentions receive actual papal appointment, so do not need the mandate. However he argues that the mandate is for bishops serving “in any capacity” and therefore from the outset seems to contradict himself. While he claims that those demanding the mandate are confused, it is Cekada himself who is confused about the nature of the mandate. Rev. J. Tixeront, in his “Holy Orders and Ordination” (1928) tells us that the mandatum signifies much more than just permission to consecrate. “The Apostolic mandatum has replaced the official report furnished to the metropolitan concerning the election made, at first, by the clergy and people, then, at a later period, by the bishops, the king and the chapter.” This infers that when the Pontiff issues the permission, he has in hand the reports concerning the qualifications of the candidate and all necessary information needed to makes such an appointment. And indeed this will be demonstrated below.

(From Anthony Cekada)

Those who have attempted to invoke this decree in our own circumstances seem to have confused two things:

1.   The mandatum: the papal document granting permission for the consecration of a bishop who will serve as a bishop in any capacity, including as an auxiliary or titular bishop, and

2.   The canonical appointment: a papal decree designating a bishop as Ordinary (or “residential bishop”) of a duly constituted diocese, which appointment auxiliary and titular bishops did not receive.

The canonist Fr. Eduardo Regatillo, in his Institutiones Juris Canonici (Santander: Sal Terrae 1956), 2:600, states that the 1951 decree affects only bishops consecrated without papal appointment to be heads of dioceses.

“Anyone who is to be promoted to the episcopacy needs the canonical appointment by which he is constituted Bishop of a such a vacant diocese.

“In practice, it may be doubted whether only those who are to be consecrated residential Bishops are affected – that is, those who are consecrated for a diocese now in existence – or also titular bishops (who are created for an extinct see or diocese), or bishops who are consecrated for no diocese.

“From the purpose intended by the Holy Office, the decree appears to cover only those who are consecrated as residential bishops, for this is the actual case which the Holy See intends to condemn.

“This new type [of offense] differs from the one mentioned in Canon 2370, where the canon refers to consecrations performed without apostolic mandate (described in canon 953). The new decree, on the other hand, punishes consecrations performed without pontifical appointment.

“An appointment designates the person and bestows the title [to an office]. A mandate grants the permission to confer the consecration.”

Regatillo’s interpretation is confirmed a reading of Pius XII’s encyclical (reproduced below), especially paragraphs 45-48.

No traditional Catholic bishop – at least none of our acquaintance – has been consecrated to the episcopacy and then received illegal designation and title to a diocese established by the Roman Pontiff.

Traditional Catholic bishops are consecrated for no diocese. One cannot claim, therefore, that the 1951 Decree applies to them.

Response to Cekada

Cekada is basically ignoring the vast forest to focus on a few scraggly trees, possibly in part because he feels the need to defend his partner “Bp.” Dolan. You can find the explanation for this on my site at /articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/canon-law/trad-pseudo-clerics-only-simulating-mass-and-sacraments-pdf/ although it is rather long. But it does explain why, if we follow all the reasoning out concerning the crisis in the Church to the very end, these Trad priests created after John 23 was elected are most likely nothing more than mere laymen.

Since Traditionalism first came into existence in the late 1960s, it has been all about the Mass. This was a deliberate ploy to take people’s mind off the real issue — the papacy. The Council of Trent, St. Thomas Aquinas, the popes — all teach that without the pope the Church cannot exist. The pope is the center of all unity and if the Church loses Her center and Her unity, then there is no visible Church. Well this has happened, just as Holy Scripture foretold that someday it would happen during the reign of Antichrist. He who withholdeth, the Pope, was taken out of the way. The Great Apostasy finished with V2 and then the Mass was officially abrogated in 1969. This is exactly the order given by St. Paul, who said that unless the revolt come first, and he who withholdeth is taken out of the way, then the Man of Sin will not appear. And it is the Man of Sin, Antichrist, who causes the Holy Sacrifice to cease. Trads talk about these things; they even believe in them, but they do not follow this through to its logical consequences. They know we have no pope, they admit Paul 6 or the entire line of NO antipopes is Antichrist, they know that the exodus from the V2 Church was unprecedented, but they must still have the Mass, regardless of “the signs of the times.”

It was the duty of any remaining bishops and cardinals, once seeing what V2 was, to immediately withdraw themselves from the antipope and begin preparations to elect a true pope, but they didn’t. No faithful bishops withdrew and the ones who passed as Traditionalists, Lefebvre and Thuc, acted entirely outside Church law and teaching. Even though bishops swear to uphold Canon Law and to obey the pope during their episcopal consecration, these oaths they took were obviously meaningless. The issue here is NOT what kind of bishops those consecrated by Thuc. Lefebvre, etc. THINK they became. The issue is that they cannot become any kind of bishops at all during an interregnum, as my article above will show; and those “consecrated” by Lefebvre and Thuc certainly cannot be validly advanced to the episcopate if one cannot prove unquestionably that they ever became priests. If there is an effort to interfere with the rights of the Church or if someone attempts to usurp papal jurisdiction (to appoint or nominate bishops) during an interregnum, then these attempts are null and void. This is the infallible teaching advanced by Pope Pius XII in his 1945 constitution on papal election, Vacantis Apostolica Sedis, and Pope Pius VI in Charitas.

Canonical proofs

Notice that Cekada does not quote anything from Canon Law on this subject. Because if he did, it would soon become apparent that he has no real idea of what constitutes an ecclesiastical office, the implications of receiving such an office, and the necessity of the Pope himself to create such episcopal offices under penalty of invalidity. He totally misrepresents the meaning of canonical appointment, the very basis for his argument, which becomes clear from what is presented below. But we must not lose sight of the fact that it is not the valid consecration of these bishops sans any mandate that is really the issue here. It is the necessity of the papacy — the supreme jurisdiction accorded the Roman Pontiff by Divine right and the position of the pope as Head bishop of the Church with final say in everything — that is really the point here. In all their actions, from the beginning, Traditionalists, in the spirit of the Gallicanists and the Old Catholics, have deliberately circumvented the Supreme Authority of the Roman Pontiff and in so doing long ago became a non-Catholic sect. We proceed now to the relevant Canons:

Can. 293: “Territories which are not erected into dioceses are governed by vicars and prefects Apostolic, whose nomination is reserved exclusively to the Holy See.” The canonist Rev. Charles Augustine notes that: “Apostolic vicars and prefects enjoy the same rights and faculties in their respective territories as residential bishops in their dioceses…”

Can. 320: “Prelates nullius (of no diocese) are nominated and instituted by the Roman Pontiff…” Rev. Augustine comments on this canon: “Abbots and prelates nullius are nominated and invested by the Roman Pontiff, with due regard to the right of election or presentation lawfully belonging to another person; in which latter case they are confirmed and invested by the Roman Pontiff.”

Can. 323: “Abbots or prelates nullius have the same ordinary powers and the same obligations under the same penalties as a residential bishop in his diocese…”

Can. 331 §2 and §3: “The Holy See has the exclusive rite to pass judgment on the suitability of any candidate for the episcopate,”  (and this to exclude unworthy candidates who cannot be validly consecrated. No candidate who has separated himself from the Church by communicating in the religious ceremonies of non-Catholics [Traditionalists], nor a priest whose ordination is not absolutely certain could ever be a worthy candidate. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia under “bishop,” the qualifications for valid consecration from the Council of Trent include “freedom from censure and irregularity or any defect of mind.” This also is reflected in Can. 2265 §2, §3.)

Can. 350: “The Roman Pontiff only can assign [appoint directly] to a bishop a co-adjutor,” (or auxiliary bishop).

And here I must disagree with Cekada’s theologian, because Canon Law does not support his statement.

Can. 953: “The episcopal consecration is reserved to the Roman Pontiff in such a manner that no bishop is allowed to confer episcopal consecration on anyone unless he has first ascertained that there is a papal mandate to that effect.” As Abp. Cicognani comments in his “Canon Law,” wherever the Church in Her laws does not differentiate, neither should we. So how does Cekada and his theologian miss “NO BISHOP” and “ANYONE” here?

Can. 2370: “A bishop who consecrates another bishop, the assistant bishops, or the priests who in place of the assistant bishops assist the consecrator, and the newly consecrated bishop who receives consecration without an apostolic mandate in violation of the precept of Can. 953, are all automatically suspended until the Apostolic See has relieved them from the penalty.”

So why does Cekada neglect to mention that Can. 953 is specifically referred to in Can. 2370? It would be the bishop receiving consecration who would need to produce the Apostolic Mandate; bishops-elect are generally allowed to choose their own consecrators. In Rev. Woywod-Smith’s note to this canon, they explain that the consecrator and his assistants are “further punished” with excommunication ipso facto under Can. 2370 (per Ad Apostolorum Principis) for consecrating “one not nominated or expressly confirmed by the Holy See.” This excommunication is most specially reserved to the Holy See. If this canon and Pope Pius XII’s excommunications are not interrelated, why is it entered under this canon by Woywod-Smith? Rev. Augustine says the suspension in Can. 2370 already has “the character of a vindicative penalty,” and he links it back to Pope Pius VI’s Charitas. This constitution decrees: “For the right of ordaining bishops belongs only to the Apostolic See, as the Council of Trent declares; it cannot be assumed by any bishop or metropolitan without obliging Us to declare schismatic both those who ordain and those who are ordained, thus invalidating their future actions.” And Pope Pius VI did not limit his scope of application to dioceses or diocesan bishops only, writing that any further illicit elections or appointments to offices by the rebel bishops and those following them, “whether old-established or recently and unlawfully created…have been, are, and will be void, unlawful, sacrilegious, and utterly null, and We hereby rescind, efface, and revoke them.”

Cekada’s focus is the canon’s application only to ordinaries or residential bishops; the actual subject matter of these canons is the absolute rights of the Roman Pontiff only to nominate, confirm or appoint bishops. He claims that the paragraphs (below) from Pope Pius XII’s encyclical confirm what Regatillo says, but they do nothing of the sort.

45. “Well known are the terms of the Vatican Council’s solemn definition: ‘Relying on the open testimony of the Scriptures and abiding by the wise and clear decrees both of our predecessors, the Roman Pontiffs, and the general Councils, We renew the definition of the Ecumenical Council of Florence, by virtue of which all the faithful must believe that ‘the Holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold primacy over the whole world, and the Roman Pontiff himself is the Successor of the blessed Peter and continues to be the true Vicar of Christ and head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians, and to him is the blessed Peter our Lord Jesus Christ committed the full power of caring for, ruling and governing the Universal Church….’

46. “’We teach, . . . We declare that the Roman Church by the Providence of God holds the primacy of ordinary power over all others, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate. Toward it, the pastors and the faithful of whatever rite and dignity, both individually and collectively, are bound by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, not only in matters which pertain to faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the whole world, in such a way that once the unity of communion and the profession of the same Faith has been preserved with the Roman Pontiff, there is one flock of the Church of Christ under one supreme shepherd. This is the teaching of the Catholic truth from which no one can depart without loss of faith and salvation.’

47. “From what We have said, it follows that no authority whatsoever, save that which is proper to the Supreme Pastor, can render void the canonical appointment granted to any bishop; that no person or group, whether of priests or of laymen, can claim the right of nominating bishops; that no one can lawfully confer episcopal consecration unless he has received the mandate of the Apostolic See.

48. “Consequently, if consecration of this kind is being done contrary to all right and law, and by this crime the unity of the Church is being seriously attacked, an excommunication reserved specialissimo modo to the Apostolic See has been established which is automatically incurred by the consecrator and by anyone who has received consecration irresponsibly conferred.” Not one word appears in this excerpt from pope Pius XII’s encyclical that even comes close to mentioning residential bishops, or ordinaries only as receiving papal appointment.

Returning to Can. 953 for a moment, Revs. Woywod-Smith write on this canon: “In the United States, all bishops are nominated by the Supreme Pontiff…In all cases, the Holy See reserves to itself the canonical institution and consecration of bishops.” What is meant by canonical institution? Another set of canons must be referred to here, ones that Mr. Cekada does not like to hear about.

The special case of Canon 147

Can. 147: “An ecclesiastical office cannot be validly obtained without canonical appointment. By canonical appointment is understood the conferring of an ecclesiastical office by the competent ecclesiastical authority in harmony with the sacred canons.” (Even vicars and prefects Apostolic, also prelates nullius, occupy an office.) And then Can. 148 defines appointments as any of the following: (1) free appointment by the legitimate superior; (2) by the so-called “institution” in cases where a patron has the right to nominate or present to the ecclesiastical superior the person who is to obtain the office; (3) confirmation by a superior in the case of elections and (4) In the case of postulation in religious orders, by the “admission” of the candidate by the superior to the religious order. Canon 110 states: “Though the Holy See gives some of the clergy the title of prelate without jurisdiction as a mere honorary title, the term ‘prelates’ properly denotes in law clerics, either secular or religious, who have ordinary jurisdiction in the external forum.” Under Canons 147 and 148, Rev. Augustine comments that: “The competent authority in conferring major ecclesiastical offices (prelacies) is the Roman Pontiff.” A prelate is one who “rules over the clergy and people of a district that is separated from every other diocese,” (Revs. Woywod-Smith, Can. 319). Donald Attwater defines a prelate as, “A dignitary having jurisdiction in the external forum. The principal prelates are the bishops; others are vicars and prefects apostolic.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia under “bishop” elaborates further on the above. In the case of those allowed to make recommendations for candidates to the episcopacy, “this does not juridically bind the sovereign pontiff, who has the power to choose the new bishop from persons not included in the list of recommendations.” In certain countries where bishops are elected, the votes are sent to the Holy See for approval along with a list of “useful information” about each of the candidates. “Whatever the manner of his nomination, the bishops has no power until his nomination has been confirmed by the Holy See…”

Can. 147, which according to the Sacred Congregation and Pope Pius XII is based on “sacred principles” is no ordinary canon. And because it is an invalidating and inhabilitating law, (meaning that unless it is done precisely as the law itself prescribes, it is invalid), any attempt to intrude oneself into a position of any kind without canonical appointment or provision is null and void; it simply never takes place. This decision is based on the following anathema issued by the Council of Trent: “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 960, 967, 424).

The following decision of the Sacred Congregation issued June 29, 1950 (AAS 42-601, part of the ordinary magisterium per Pius XII’s Humani Generis) gives the text of DZ 967 and yet another version of DZ 960, varying slightly from the Denzinger translation: “Those who undertake to exercise these offices merely at the behest of and upon appointment by the people or secular power and authority, and those who assume the same upon their own authority, are all to be regarded not as ministers of the Church but as thieves and robbers who have entered not by the door…His holiness Pope Pius XII…in order to preserve more inviolate these same sacred principles and at the same time forestall abuses in a matter of such great importance…deigned to provide as follows…” And here the censures incurred by Traditionalists, specially reserved to the Holy See are mentioned. The ipso facto excommunications are incurred by the ones occupying or holding an ecclesiastical office contrary to the canons and without any provision and those who allow anyone to be placed in these offices. Also excommunicated are those who have any direct or indirect part in such crimes.

This excommunication is listed under Can. 2394, which automatically deprives anyone, not just bishops, of an office seized illicitly and recommends them for punishment by the Ordinary. This for taking possession “of an ecclesiastical benefice, office or dignity by his own authority or before he has received the necessary letters of confirmation or institution [from the bodies or individuals electing or nominating clerics for various offices] and has exhibited them to the persons designated by law.” The meaning of offices will be explained below. Pope Pius XII was serious about the confirmation of all offices by the necessary superior; he was guarding here the rights of the hierarchy, i. e. the Church. This is why only a year later he would write Ad Apostolorum Principis. So clearly the mind of the Church in this matter is that expressed here by Pius XII, as well as by Pope Pius VI in Charitas.

Offices and those who occupy them

So we need to define terms here in order to prove Cekada has no idea what he is talking about. First of all, we already know what constitutes canonical appointment; it has to be done by the authority who in the canons is indicated as the one competent to make the appointment. In the case of bishops, that can only be the Roman Pontiff, regardless of the mandate. The mandate only provides proof the appointment has been reviewed and approved and permission to consecrate. Next we must determine what constitutes an office. By office, according to Can. 145, is meant, “in a broad sense…any employment which is legitimately practiced for a spiritual purpose. In the strict sense, an ecclesiastical office means a stable position created either by the divine or ecclesiastical law, conferred according to the rules of the sacred canons and entailing some participation at least in ecclesiastical power, whether of orders or jurisdiction. In law, the term ecclesiastical office is used in its strict sense…” unless a specific law indicates otherwise. So no matter what kind of bishop we are talking about, when they are appointed they are assigned to a specific office according to this definition. These Trad clerics cannot claim jurisdiction of any kind, because jurisdiction is a grant of authority made by a competent superior in communion with the Roman Pontiff to be exercised over specific subjects. Nor can they claim orders. Lefebvre and Thuc may have been validly appointed, but without the papal appointment of the bishops they consecrated, these bishops were never validly created for ANY position. Both Lefebvre and Thuc have huge clouds hanging over their heads where intention, their own validity and fitness are concerned. They certainly could not give to others what they did not have themselves, (please see website link above).

So those they created, whether priests or bishops, are only doubtfully valid AT BEST. They possess no jurisdiction and cannot use any assumed power of Orders for any purpose. This by virtue of Charitas above and because we cannot resort to doubtfully valid ministers according to Pope Innocent XI’s declaration that it is not safe to receive sacraments from such persons, (DZ 1151). Furthermore, Can. 154 declares that, “Offices which entail the care of souls cannot be validly conferred upon clerics who are not ordained priests.” Like it or not, Trads all have assumed an office. And if the office of bishop is not validly held, how can such men possible call and create priests? The canons say they cannot. A priest cannot create a priest, and in most cases these men are not even priests themselves! (See the article linked above.) In the consecration rite, these men are specifically called to the office of bishop. If they cannot accept such an office because papal appointment was never made, how can they receive it?! As Rev. Patrick Madgett S. J. teaches in Vol. II of his work “Christian Origins” (1943) under bishops: “A successor in any office or task is one who is lawfully substituted in place of another to perform the same duties, with the same powers.” And Trad “bishops” present as successors of the Apostles with all the same duties and powers, but are not lawful and are doubtfully valid.

In the episcopal rite of consecration, the one being consecrated is consecrated for the OFFICE of bishop. The one being consecrated reads, from the traditional episcopal rite: “I shall render to our Holy Father, Pope N., and to his aforesaid successors an account of my whole pastoral office, and of all things pertaining in any manner whatsoever to the state of my Church, to the discipline of the clergy and the people, and finally to the salvation of the souls which are entrusted to me: and in turn I shall receive humbly the apostolic mandates and execute them as diligently as possible. (Some Trad bishops have removed all reference to the papal mandates from the rite, something that is strictly forbidden by the Church. Only the pope can attenuate the rites of the Sacraments.) Later in the rite, the consecrator says to the one being consecrated: “Receive the staff of the pastoral office, so that in the correction of vices you may be lovingly severe, giving judgment without wrath, softening the minds of your hearers whilst fostering virtues, not neglecting strictness of discipline through love of tranquility. R. Amen.”  Cekada and others pretend that only ordinaries or residential bishops can hold an office. But even a priest or religious can hold an office by appointment of the superior.

What is Cekada really objecting to in his article above? It seems that he is trying to accomplish three things: 1) He is attempting to confuse people’s understanding of canonical appointment so that they disconnect it from the idea of any office received. Why? Because Cekada knows that if these “bishops” laid claim to an actual office, especially one, say, that existed in the past and to which they were claiming to possess over the NO, that this would make them subject to various excommunications. This is why he makes it clear that the “consecration” of Trad bishops does not convey a spiritual office because they are not attached to any diocese. But here he is wrong. By definition, Trads DO possess a sort of “missionary” office of their own making, because they go to great lengths to convince their followers that their ministrations fit the Church’s definitions of an office:  “…a stable position created either by the divine or ecclesiastical law, conferred according to the rules of the sacred canons and entailing some participation at least in ecclesiastical power,” whether of orders or jurisdiction. The reformers did not possess offices which were considered such by Church definition either, but this did not prevent the Council of Trent, and later Pope Pius XII, from condemning those “who come from a different source…who assume the same upon their own authority,” (DZ 960, 967).

And 2): He is saying either that there is more than one episcopal consecration ceremony, or that the one and only episcopal consecration ceremony is hopelessly flawed. Because in this ceremony any and ALL bishops, whether being consecrated as ordinaries or for other positions are asked to present the “Mandate or Apostolic Letter from the Pope,” which is read aloud. The Bishop-elect then kneels before the consecrator and solemnly swears an oath to submit himself to the Holy See, an oath which in the case of Traditionalists, if indeed it is even made, is as barren and worthless as the episcopal ceremony itself. As we have seen above, all such candidates for the episcopacy must be approved by the Roman Pontiff and present themselves for consecration within three months of such approval. Finally: 3) He is attempting to prove that Trad bishops do not incur the excommunication for not presenting the papal mandate, but that is the least of their worries. Let them first explain how they can become clerics without:

• First tonsure, which according to Can. 108 is necessary to become a cleric is an act of jurisdiction on behalf of the bishop (Rev. Charles Augustine), such jurisdiction being conveyed with the office. Even those appointed to an office without consecration (Can. 957 §2) may confer consecration “in the territory of their jurisdiction,” which Trads do not possess, a fact some Trad bishops even admit. And Cekada states that Trad bishops do not occupy an office.

• Dimissorial letters, which can be issued by several sorts of bishops under Can. 958 and even those not consecrated as bishops. But such bishops cannot ordain candidates not residing in their domicile (Can. 956); who have been rejected by the bishop (Can. 958 §4), or those who have not had their testimonial letters issued by the proper bishop and duly examined. (Can. 960). Dimissorial letters are issued only after the bishop has examined the testimonial letters and issued the dimissorial letters based on that candidate’s worthiness. Ordinations cannot be performed without them, just as in the case of the papal mandate. What Trad bishop, rightly consecrated and lawfully installed in an office, has issued such letters?

• Freedom from diriment impediments and vindicative penalties. No true bishop or pope exists to dispense from such impediments. And every Trad priest and bishop out there has either attended or assisted at non-Catholic Novus Ordo or Traditionalist services, and therefore has incurred communicatio in sacris, (Can. 1258, 2314, 2315, 2316). Can. 2314 states that those incurring this penalty for communication with non-Catholics also incurs infamy of law (Can. 2294) which can be lifted only by a legitimately and canonically elected Roman Pontiff.

So given all this, Cekada has far more to worry about than just the papal mandate.

Strange priests and the celebration of Mass

Even if men such as Cekada really were priests, they would not be permitted to say Mass or confer the Sacraments under the existing Code. Priests can’t say Mass outside their own parish, the place to which they are attached or have been assigned an office. Canon 111 states that: “Every cleric must belong to some diocese or religious organization and no recognition may be extended to vagrant clerics.” We read the following from Rev. Woywod’s “A Practical Commentary on Canon Law,” paragraphs 699-702, concerning the admission of strange priests to say Mass:

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.

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.” So where are the letters of recommendation Cekada needs to say Mass and administer Sacraments? Where is his proof of jurisdiction, demanded under Can. 200? To what legitimate Church or territory is he attached? Cekada’s church is not functioning according to the Sacred Canons because it is not Catholic. There is no competent ecclesiastical authority to grant any kind of office in the Catholic Church. And even if such authority did exist, only certainly ordained priests could receive these offices.

Conclusion

Christ placed the Roman Pontiff over all other bishops; jurisdiction comes to them only through the Roman Pontiff. This is defined by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis and Ad Sinarum Gentum. Without this specific approval for consecration and subsequent grant of authority, bishops may have the power to consecrate and ordain, but they are forbidden under pain of nullity to use it. Rev. Madgett says: “Vicars apostolic, (titular bishops) who rule mission territories, exercise their jurisdiction by delegation and not in virtue of their office, as does the ordinary…[Only] the resident bishop or ordinary (possessing both the powers of order and jurisdiction)…[and] exercising them by virtue of his office, is successor of the Apostles in the full sense of the word.” And yet Canon Law states that they have the same powers, although their powers do not always issue directly from the Roman Pontiff. There is no different rite of consecration for the different kinds of bishops. All receive an office in the Church as long as the Pope makes or approves their appointment by nomination or institution, yet not all are ordinaries. The Church’s center of unity is the pope. Without him, the cardinals and bishops are forbidden by Pope Pius XII’s election constitution Vacantis Apostolica Sedis to ruin the Church and usurp the rights of the papacy, yet this is what they are doing. That constitution states that whenever the Church’s laws and rights are violated, the cardinals must defend them and in the absence of the hierarchy this mantle falls upon the laity, just as Pope Pius XII indicated in his 1957 address to Catholic midwives. As he told his newly made cardinals in February 1946: “The laity are stationed in the front ranks of the life of the Church, and through them the Church is the living principle of society. They are the Church…the community of the faithful on earth under the guidance of their common leader, the Pope, and the bishops in communion with him,” (emph. Pius XII’s). Therefore it is the duty of the laity to rebuke those who today brazenly dare to transgress these sacred rights.