Necessary intention in Traditionalist Orders lacking

by T. Stanfill Benns | Aug 16, 2022

Introduction

It has always been the contention of those operating Traditionalist chapels, from their very beginning in the mid-1960s, that they continued all the teachings and Traditions of the Catholic Church just as they existed on the death of Pope Pius XII. If it was not actually stated by anyone, at least in the beginning, it was an implicit belief among the faithful at least, and that is why they followed them in the first place. But were these men truly following Church teaching as they allowed everyone to believe? What exactly did it mean to be a Catholic in good standing in the Church during the reign of Pope Pius XII?

St. Robert Bellarmine’s definition of the Church was adopted as the preferred definition by theologians: “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.) And from Mystici Corporis there is this formal definition: “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… ”

According to Pope Pius XII, four factors alone are necessary in order that a man be counted as a member of the true Church. These are (1) the reception of Baptism, and thus the possession of the baptismal character, (2) the profession of the true faith, which is, of course, the faith of the Catholic Church, (3) the fact that a person has not cut himself away from the structure or the fabric of the ‘Body,’ which is, of course, the Church itself, and (4) the fact that a person has not been expelled from the membership of the Church by competent ecclesiastical authority.

Canon Law determines who is among those who have cut themselves away from the fabric of the body. The law indicates when this has occurred by attaching ipso facto (latae sententiae) penalties to those offenses which automatically result in excommunication. If one’s offense is publicly known or could easily become publicly known it is called notorious, and it takes effect immediately, without any official sentence by a superior (Canons 2197, 2232). Those penalties regarding heresy and schism, (rejection of the Roman Pontiff as head of the Church), are the main type of penalty treated below. Their commission is publicly known and has been for decades, and the penalties, therefore, are binding on the offender. Those presenting as clerics are public figures and are assumed to have incurred the penalty because their actions are more visible to the public eye.

These definitions of the Church and the penalties levied by Canon Law were supposedly commonly known to the pre-Vatican 2 clergy who studied them in seminary courses. They were expected to have been especially internalized by the bishops and other Church officials. The one thing emphasized in both these definitions is the union of the faithful with their common head the Supreme Pontiff. St. Bellarmine emphasizes direction by lawful pastors, Pope Pius XII mentions observance of the same laws. Mystici Corporis, an infallible encyclical binding the faithful to belief, also defines that bishops do not receive their jurisdiction directly from Christ. “Yet in exercising this office they are not altogether independent, but are subordinate to the lawful authority of the Roman Pontiff, although enjoying the ordinary power of jurisdiction which they receive directly from the same Supreme Pontiff.” So in one encyclical we are given a pretty clear idea of how the Church is set up and is supposed to operate.

False analogies misrepresented the situation

Those writing for decades on the crisis in the Church keep comparing it to the time of the Arian heresy, the Western Schism or to different periods in Church history when either antipopes reigned or there was a longish interregnum (the longest one previous to this lasted nearly three years). Yet during the Western Schism, a true pope did reign, but no one was sure who he was. And in in the case of antipopes, there was always a true pope for them to oppose. It hardly needs to be said that a three-year interregnum can scarcely compare to almost 64, so why is it even mentioned? The answer to that question can only be that every excuse and implausible explanation available has been advanced to keep those in Traditionalist groups from questioning their keepers and to make it appear they are justified in conducting their operations. That is the general overview; now we descend to specifics.

Challenges to the validity and liceity of Traditionalist orders have always been met with the response that even those ordained and consecrated by heretics and schismatics are considered valid and can confect valid sacraments. The key word here is “can.” And upon that one word rests a plethora of ifs and maybes, never addressed, often carefully concealed and generally ignored. For there is no real comparison, either, to past situations where there was an extended descent of illicit schismatic clerics issuing from men who were unquestionably validly ordained and consecrated and who unquestionably validly ordained and consecrated others. The Orthodox were allowed to proceed as they always had with the pope supplying jurisdiction for the sake of the faithful, according to Rev. Journet, Can. Mahoney, Rev. Herve and others. The Jansenist consecrations were recognized as valid by the Holy See until questions arose shortly before Pius XII’s death. Pope Leo XIII drew the line for the Anglicans regarding Parker and Barlow. As all know, Lefebvre’s own ordination and consecration are gravely doubtful and the consecrations by Thuc have been called into question for decades, owing to his mental state, affiliation with the Novus Ordo church and previously scandalous behavior.

But most importantly of all, these ordinations and consecrations did not take place during a time such as ours, a grave situation unparalleled in the history of the Church resulting in this extended interregnum. Here we have no assurance the Holy See would ever declare Traditionalist orders valid and every reason to believe that they would at least require their conditional if not absolute ordination before allowing them to function, depending on each specific case. So let us dispense now with all the illogical false analogies, which amount to no argument at all, and look at the facts as they really stand.

Lefebvre was questionably ordained and consecrated himself; Thuc’s consecrations are doubtful owing to his mental state, intentions and what Pontifical was used. An entire book (The Sacred and the Profane, Clarence Kelly) was written proving this and there is evidence in this case that has not even been presented yet.
Both men were notorious heretics and schismatics and incurred infamy of law, and moreover, their personal lives were scandalous.
This is true of Lefebvre on account of his questionable ordination and consecration (and no, we cannot have moral certainty about his orders without an investigation by the Holy Office under a validly elected pope and a decision on these orders. Until then no one may use a probable opinion on the validity of the Sacraments of those ordained and consecrated by him.)
Lefebvre’s personal involvement in Freemasonry is another black mark against him that would need to be investigated, because it could affect his intention in receiving orders, especially from a man reputedly a Freemason.
Thuc is infamous for his bizarre behavior in the Clemente Dominguez affair and numerous ordinations of unworthy men for the priesthood and episcopacy.
Once they consecrated their first bishop post-Vatican 2, men who also incurred censure for heresy, schism and infamy of law for communicating a divinis with them, their future acts as well as the acts of those they have “consecrated” are declared invalid. This will be proven below.
Bishops consecrated by these two men are the first generation. But they could not be considered certainly valid bishops until a true pope decided if they were actually consecrated. And theologians are clear on the fact that mere observance of matter and form (the use of the rite used prior to the reign of John 23) is not sufficient to prove validity.
We are now four to five generations removed from the initial consecrations by Lefebvre and Thuc. This is doubtful validity upon doubtful validity compounded.
This does not even address the men who supposedly were ordained priests by Lefebvre, Thuc and the first set of bishops they are said to have consecrated.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches below in his Summa Theol. II, Q. 82, Art. 7, 9, Pt. III: “The Minister of the Holy Eucharist”:

“I answer that, as was said above (aa 5, 7), heretical, schismatical, excommunicate, or even sinful priests, although they have the power to consecrate the Eucharist, yet they do not make proper use of it; on the contrary they sin by using it. But whoever communicates with another who is in sins, becomes a sharer in his sin. Hence we read in John’s Second Canonical Epistle (11) that ‘He that saith unto him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works.’ Consequently it is not lawful to receive Communion from them, or to assist at their mass.” (Article 9)… “And therefore whoever hears their mass or receives the sacraments from them, commits sin… By refusing to hear the masses of such priests, or to receive Communion from them, we are not shunning God’s sacraments; on the contrary, by so doing we are giving them honor: but what we shun is the sin of unworthy ministers” (reply to objection 1). Furthermore St. Thomas states in reference to heretical, schismatic and excommunicated priests, “Such persons as are separated from the Church by heresy, schism, or excommunication, can indeed consecrate the Eucharist..; but they act wrongly, and sin by doing so; and in consequence they do not receive the fruit of the sacrifice, which is a spiritual sacrifice” (Article 7). And further, “But because he is severed from the unity of the Church, HIS PRAYERS HAVE NO EFFICACY” (reply to objection 3 of article 7).

This, ultimately, is the charter for those who keep the faith at home, in order to honor the Sacraments and avoid cooperation in sin.

In summary, those who dare to assume a jurisdiction not granted to them by the pope, supplied or otherwise, are devoid of even the possibility of obtaining it. Are these idle words, not able to be demonstrated? Hardly. But needless to say no one will point to the papal decrees and canon laws that tell us what these men really are, and when anyone dares point to them they are told that the pope didn’t infallibly declare it, the laws have ceased to exist, that there is some divergence of opinion regarding what it meant, the person pointing it out is not qualified (and they are?!) ad nauseum. Of course these are observations made by self-appointed defenders of the indefensible never approved as theologians by the Holy See, and even approved theologians are not permitted to interpret the documents of the Roman Pontiff. Once a papal document or one issuing from the Holy See is presented as evidence in ecclesiastical court, no other evidence is allowed to be entered against it (Can. 1812 §1; 1816).

Those who minimize papal teaching by claiming it is impossible to know what the popes really mean or how to classify what they teach are working for the Traditionalist cause regardless of how they actually present themselves in public. Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton tells us: “It is, I believe, to be presumed that the Vicar of Christ speaks to the faithful in a way they are able to understand… Our Lord did not teach in any way but authoritatively nor does His Vicar on earth when He teaches in the name and by the authority of his Master. Every doctrine proposed by the Holy Father to the entire Church militant is, by that very fact, imposed upon all the faithful for their firm and sincere acceptance.” And people want to disagree with this statement and still call themselves Catholic?

If you were pastor hunting and searching the Internet for information on an individual, would you still seek him out if he had a rap sheet as long as your arm and was pretending he possessed credentials he could not prove he ever received? Well what is presented below is the equivalent of a rap sheet and according to Canon. 2200, it is up to the accused to prove themselves innocent, not for us to assume they are innocent without such proofs. Has anyone ever seen even an attempt to explain these things? No, because they are dismissed as the work of incompetents and fools not worthy of a response. Sound familiar? Deplorables and Wal-Mart crawlers? Little people? Maybe some people out there are willing to be ruled by a religious elite, but I am not one of them. So take this in the spirit it is written — an attempt to unmask those who are continuing to destroy our Church just as they have done for the past 100 years. I am an investigative reporter by trade, and they didn’t call me the pit bull because I wrote happy news.

A parallel in time

Before presenting proofs, however, the groundwork needs to be laid for the conclusions that will later be drawn. This we take from the articles written for The Homiletic and Pastoral Review by Msgr. Joseph Przudzik, Ph.D., J.C.B., S.T.B., A.M., A.A.S.W. Rev. Przudzik wrote two articles for this clerical publication in 1947, one on “The History of Anglican Orders” and the other on the status of the Polish National Church, entitled “Schism in America.” In this last article Przudzik uses the same principles established in his article on Anglican orders to determine the validity of clergy serving the schismatic Polish National Catholic Church and its various offshoots. His conclusions are the same based on the same basic principles, but he provides us with a rare insight concerning similarities between Polish and present-day schismatics.

Like Traditional sects in America, the Polish National Church in the 1960s had “…divided and subdivided into a number of small organizations…Acting on Protestant principles of private interpretation, as soon as some member of the congregation disagreed on any matter with their priest, they split and formed a new congregation and usually a new sect.” Concerning the bishops and priests founding these sects Przudzik comments: “The breaks were caused essentially by pride rebelling against authority, by malice, by desire for financial gain or by other human weaknesses… worked upon and so presented they gave a semblance of reason to the rebellion… Rationalizations, sophistries, half-truths [were] used by these heresiarchs…to mislead the people.” It was Przudzik’s belief that these men “sought ordination only to persuade deluded followers that they were still Catholics… For no Pole would accept permanently a bishop who had undergone no sacramental consecration…” And these attitudes and behaviors are exactly what we see among Traditionalist sect leaders today.

Przudzik zeroes in on the primary head of the PNCC from whom all other orders flow; Francis Hodur, a validly ordained Catholic priest consecrated a bishop by the Jansenists. He traces Hodur’s line of episcopal orders back through a maze of Old Catholics and Jansenists dating back to the 1700s and whose lines eventually became contaminated by Modernism and other heresies, even apostasy. He emphasizes that while these aberrations do not necessarily invalidate the orders given, “It is not as safe, however, to concede the valid Orders of Stenhoven’s successors [Stenhoven being the initial breakaway Jansenist bishop in the 1770s] as one might grant the original validity of his own Orders… One can only conclude there is some doubt about validity.” Rev. Bernard Leeming S.J. seems to admit the same the same regarding the sacraments of the Arians (Principles of Sacramental Theology, 1957, p. 653).

And today Modernism is so rife it has permeated churches of all kinds. He also points out that the Jansenists (and even the Old Catholics, initially) “…no more thought of questioning the Pope’s primacy of honor than they doubted the validity of their own apostolic line. Not so the attitude of their American offspring, who claim not only equality but even superiority to the Roman position and claims. This is evidenced in their assumption of titles similar to those of the Catholic Church and their setting up of a hierarchical system similar to that of Rome.” It is interesting to note that the Gallicanists at the time of the Western Schism also accepted the pope’s primacy, but not his jurisdiction. Today even the pope’s primacy, the weight of his infallible decrees, is reduced to an expression of opinion. But all of this was foretold by Pope St. Pius X in his Pascendi dominici gregis: “They speak of modern philosophy and show such contempt for scholasticism… [They hold that] ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic parts.”

Minimism, as Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton ably points out in his articles on the topic, is the Modernist tool to relegate the papacy to only the symbol of a power exercised long ago, since Modernism is all about such symbols. But the Modernist variety of Gallicanism has gone a step further — it has eliminated the need for the papacy entirely, just as Pope St. Pius X warned in his Pascendi: “…They propose to remove the ecclesiastical magisterium itself,” and the necessity of a visible head for the Church. This they have done, proffering a million excuses for why they are allowed to do it. They condemn the Novus Ordo church for its Modernist infestation when they are just as infected by Modernism themselves, but in a more insidious way. The Novus Ordo wears its Modernism proudly on its sleeve; the Traditionalists cloak it in pious protestations to preserve the Latin Mass and rescue true Catholics from the Novus Ordo menace — their detestable claim to work for the salvation of souls. But that is not what the Catholic Church teaches they are doing, as will be seen below.

While the PNCC bears certain similarities to Traditionalists, there is one major difference which needs to be emphasized here. The PNCC nor any other sect separating itself from the Catholic Church never claimed to be the valid successor of that Church or that Church itself. It was always understood, as it could easily be when a legitimate Roman Pontiff ruled the Church, that such churches were breakaways and splinter groups not recognized by Rome and were to be avoided as such. But Traditionalists claim to be the genuine continuation of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, not just another sect openly challenging the pope and/or deviating in some fashion from what She teaches and believes. And yet Traditionalism glaringly lacks, and is unable to ever provide, the one thing that would unquestionably make itself Catholic: the Roman Pontiff. The question to be answered below is: Can anyone on this earth officially function in the Church’s name in Her absence, without Her express pardon, permission, delegation and approval?

Intention of Thuc and Lefebvre to continue the Church of Pope Pius XII

If it was truly the intention of Abp. Marcel Lefebvre and Bp. Peter Martin Ngo dinh Thuc to continue the Church Christ established on earth, good friends that they were, they would have refused to sign Vatican 2 documents, gathered like-minded, validly consecrated bishops together and elected a pope. The resources on how to do this existed, the urgent necessity of the obligation was evident even to a blind man and there were bishops who did not attend Vatican 2 who could have responded. Cardinal Zabarella urged it in such cases in the 15^th century and St. Robert Bellarmine sanctioned the calling of an imperfect council to accomplish it. Traditionalists were well aware of this. Until the late 1970s, the Church, as such, was believed to be continued by some priests validly ordained during the reign of Pope Pius XII, men ordained between 1958 and 1968 — before the changes in the rites of the Sacraments — and by others whose status could not always be verified in the Catholic Directory. Lefebvre priests eventually emerged from their seminaries to supplement these men. And then the consecrations began, first by Lefebvre and later by Thuc. There was brief talk of electing a pope following the consecrations, then silence. And that silence has reigned ever since.

So for nearly two decades the Church consisted of Lefebvre, a few sympathetic bishops here and there and these rag-tag priests, several of them later accused of homosexual relations, even pedophilia, who presented themselves as able and willing to care for the faithful. Yet if the clergy and faithful exiting the Novus Ordo church in the 1960s and 1970s truly intended to BE that Church, how is it that they ever thought it could exist without the very element that was its most distinguishing and important part — the Roman Pontiff? Surely having left the Novus Ordo, they tacitly at least were admitting that Paul 6 was a doubtful pope, or they would never have been able to justify their departure. The controversy over his status has raged since the early 1970s. Never in Church history has there been a time when a false pope was not opposed by at least one antipope; a brief glance at Church history could have told them that.

Yet Lefebvre and Thuc were in and out of negotiations with the Novus Ordo even after their first consecration of bishops, and until Thuc released his totally inadequate and contradictory declaration in February 1982, during the reign of Wojtyla, there was no indication that they believed the popes of the Novus Ordo were heretics. Mexican Sedevacantism founder Fr. Joaquin Saenz-Arriaga had declared the Vatican 2 popes heretics since the early 1970s and even heralded Paul 6 as the Antichrist, but no one paid much attention. Thuc did name Pope Paul IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus Officio in his declaration, a possible source for commencing an election, but along came Guerard des Lauriers with his material-formal hypothesis and all talk of ever restoring the papacy came to an end. Sedevacantists gradually separated themselves into little sects just as the rest of their Traditionalist brethren before them and the schism continued.

Lefebvre, Thuc and even Saenz were obligated to know that bishops alone could not rule the Church of Christ. For as Pope Pius VI wrote in condemning Febronianism:

“All the more must be deplored that blind and rash temerity of the man who was eager to renew in his unfortunate book errors which had been condemned by so many decrees; who has said and insinuated indiscriminately by many ambiguities that every Bishop no less than the Pope was called by God to govern the Church and was endowed with no less power; that Christ gave the same power Himself to all the apostles AND THAT WHATEVER SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IS OBTAINED AND GRANTED ONLY BY THE POPE, THAT VERY THING, WHETHER IT DEPENDS ON CONSECRATION OR ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION, CAN BE OBTAINED JUST AS WELL FROM ANY BISHOP …” (DZ 1500).

And there is also the more recent infallible teaching of the Vatican Council: “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” (DZ 1821). But these bishops were going to erect a new and better temple without the pope? Bishops trained in theology and holding positions of authority in the Church? Such men could not plead ignorance of these decrees or exempt themselves from blame. And the laity should have been asking questions instead of practicing blind obedience.

Presumably all Catholics know it is schismatic not to render obedience to the (a) pope. The Anglicans and Methodists are run by bishops only, but it is not schismatic for Catholics to behave as they do? They could plead that the Church was experiencing an interregnum but when did any interregnum in history last over three years? Did they educate themselves about this? And did they not even understand the meaning of the word interregnum, which is given as: 1. the time during which a throne is vacant between two successive reigns or regime; 2. a period during which the normal functions of government or control are suspended; 3. a lapse or pause in a continuous series, all of which apply to the papacy with one exception: in the Church an interregnum is always indicative of an ongoing election. Could a country function for even three years without a king, a president or prime minister? Was there any COMMON sense — far less CATHOLIC sense — left at all in these people exiting the Novus Ordo church?

There is one simple catechism quote that clarifies everything here and will help others understand what follows. In his Manual of Christian Doctrine, written for religious congregations and Catholic institutions of higher learning, seminary professor Rev. John Joseph McVey wrote in 1926:

60: Who after the pope are lawful pastors of the Church?
The bishops who have been canonically instituted, i.e., who have received from the Sovereign Pontiff a diocese to govern.
73: Why is it not sufficient to be a bishop or priest in order to be a lawful pastor?
Because a bishop must also be sent into a diocese by the Pope, and a priest must be sent into a parish by the bishop. In other words, a pastor must have not only the power of order, but also THE POWER OF JURISDICTION, (emph. McVey’s).
77: How is the power of jurisdiction communicated?
Priests receive their jurisdiction from the bishop of the diocese; bishops receive theirs from the pope; and the Pope holds jurisdiction from Jesus Christ. A bishop who did not have his spiritual powers from the Pope, a pastor who did not have his from the lawful bishop, would be AN INTRUDER OR SCHISMATIC,” (emph. McVey’s).

So not only are Traditionalist “priests” and “bishops” questionably ordained and consecrated, without a true pope they are incapable of possessing ANY jurisdiction whatsoever. And this is from the approved catechisms of the Church. (See also the Catholic Encyclopedia articles on Apostolicity and Apostolic Succession.) It is a well-known fact that the laity even in the 1950s were woefully ignorant of their faith and more intent on religious externals than any intellectualization of their faith, although that will not necessarily excuse them. We will leave the question of the culpability of the laity, then, to a future pope, if some miracle provides us with one. What we are concerned about here is the culpability of what passed in the 1970-80s for bishops, the ones who were supposed to be leading the faithful but instead used them to set up their own false church.

In 1944, Rev. Alan McCoy O.F.M., J.C.L. wrote a dissertation, Force and Fear in Relation to Delictual Imputability and Penal Responsibility, (Catholic University of America). Under the general heading of “Delictual Acts Interdicted by Divine Authority,” regarding censures, he writes: “When an act is intrinsically evil, or involves contempt of the faith or of ecclesiastical authority, or works to the detriment of souls… imputability is not taken away in such cases since in these instances the observance of the law still urges under the pain of sin, even though the most severe personal hardship or danger, or also the greatest private harm might come from such observance.” Censures are generally ignored by Traditionalists who tend to regard them as inapplicable in their self-declared state of emergency. Epikeia and necessity cover all. Yet the primary purpose of penalties in Canon Law is not simply to punish and prompt the offender to reform, but to protect the faithful.

In a 1945 article for the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, “The What and Why of Punishment – Part Two,” Msgr. Joseph Przudzik notes regarding the primary purpose for censures: “Ultimately it would seem, that no essential reason for punishment can be assigned other than the common good… ‘The custody of public safety is not only the highest law but is the whole reason why public authority exists’… Canon 2215 …says that the penalty is for the delinquent’s correction and for the penalizing of the crime. This punishment, this juridical correction is also treated elsewhere in the Code as ‘towards the public restoration of injured justice or of scandal.’ Again we note that the public welfare is proposed as intrinsically the ultimate end of punishment.” And it is left to the Church to determine what endangers souls the most and how stringent that punishment must be.

Below we will discover how very far from the vaunted “salvation of souls” and the common good the solution to the crisis in the Church proposed by Traditional bishops and foisted on the faithful really was. And remember when reading below that these many censures levied by the Church are intended to protect the faithful from scandal and mortal son.

Canons governing episcopal consecration

Can. 951: “The bishop is the ordinary minister of sacred ordination.” Woywod-Smith comment on this canon: “A validly consecrated Bishop could validly confer all orders from the minor orders to the episcopate inclusively though he be a heretic, schismatic or deposed or degraded from the episcopal dignity, for he nevertheless retains the episcopal character in virtue of which he can validly ordain provided he observes the essential form of ordination and has the intention to do what the Church does in performing the sacred ordination rites.”

Canon 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.”

Canon 2370: “A Bishop who consecrates another and the assistant bishops or the priests taking their place as well as the one who receives episcopal consecration without having obtained an Apostolic mandate are suspended ipso iure until the Holy See has granted a dispensation.”

Under the above canon, the canonist Rev. Charles Augustine comments: “This suspension ipso iure lasts until the Apostolic See expressly dispenses therefrom.” He then lists the following in his footnotes: “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 as both schismatic both those who ordain and those who are ordained thus INVALIDATING their future actions.” This quote is taken from Pope Pius VI’s Charitas, 1791, issued against three bishops who consecrated another bishop without the papal mandate. Augustine notes it is listed as the Fontes, or old law, for Can. 2370, commenting that this is “…an example of its effective application.”

Since Traditionalist pseudo-clergy deny that these consecrations without the mandate invalidated their future actions, we cite Can. 6 §4: “In case of doubt whether some provision of the canons differs from the old law, one must adhere to the old law.”) Rev. Augustine notes that such consecrations without the mandate are of themselves valid, while confirming above that all further ACTS by the initial consecrator and the one consecrated are invalid (in referencing Charitas). In Rev. Ignatius Szal’s Canon Law dissertation, Communication of Catholics With Schismatics, Szal notes that in the late 12th century when the antipope Victor IV and Paschal III reigned:

“These schismatics had ordained many of their adherents to the episcopate…The Third Lateran Council took action by declaring that the ordinations performed by these schismatic popes were null and void, as also the ordinations conferred by those who had been consecrated by them… The Canon used the word “irritas” in reference to the ordinations conferred by the schismatics. However the term was to be understood in reference to the execution or the EXERCISE of these orders, rather than to their validity… Clement VIII in his Instruction Sanctissimus Aug. 31, 1595 stated that those who had received ordination at the hand of schismatic bishops who apart from their schismatic status were properly consecrated — the necessary form having been observed — did indeed receive orders but not the right to exercise them…” In other words, these men validly but illicitly RECEIVED orders according to Church teaching and that of St. Thomas Aquinas, yes; but all the acts EMANATING from those orders were null and void. They could violate the censure and confer the Sacraments, but they only committed sacrilege, multiplied their censures and caused those seeking them out to commit sacrilege as well.

This is best explained in application by Rev. Bernard Leeming in his Principles of Sacramental Theology, 1957:

“619. Various expressions which seem at first sight to indicate invalidity of orders mean, in fact, a practical legal invalidity in the sense that the church to which the Bishop or priest was consecrated owed him no support or obedience and that his acts had no legal effect. This is true of the expression ordine irritos, ordines irritare, ordines exsufflare or sacramenta exsufflare. Not to be ordained may only mean not to have the right to the title in emoluments and jurisdiction of the office as may the expression ordinationes nullas vires obtinent. There is no force or power in such an ordination.” And even here Leeming seems uncertain about the extent to which these invalidating clauses actually apply, in saying it “may only mean.”

On the other hand, under hierarchy in their Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, Pietro Parente, Piolanti and Garofalo wrote: “The valid use of orders, in most cases, cannot be prevented.” So obviously in some cases they CAN be prevented, but the authors do not specify what such cases might be. We are only left to speculate on the application.

Let us here pause to address the objection that null and void does not necessarily mean invalid despite its use in Canon Law and certain papal documents which seems to indicate that this is precisely what it means (see the full text of Charitas referenced above; also Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio). Pope Leo XIII provides an authoritative definition of this term in his constitution Apostolica Curae, addressing the administration of Holy Orders: “To obtain orders nulliter means the same as by an act null and void — that is invalid — as the very meaning of the word and as common parlance requires.” And invalid is the word used interchangeably with null and void in the documents of Pope Paul IV and Pope Pius VI cited above. Leeming also lists invalid as “synonymous with null or void” (p. 266).

Canon 2370 is intended to apply to bishops who presumably held an office from which they might be suspended. Ironically, however, neither Lefebvre nor Thuc possessed any offices in the first place, having resigned the offices assigned them under Pope Pius XII to accept new offices from the usurpers. They were already considered heretics and schismatics, and also became infamous. They lost their offices and all possibility of obtaining jurisdiction under Can. 188 n. 4. Their acts of communicatio in sacris (Can. 2314 §1, no. 3) were external — public — so there can be no doubt of this. If those leaving and remaining separated from the Novus Ordo church believed that church to be a non-Catholic religion, they cannot excuse men who were bound to know better from continuing to maintain contact.

The obligation to avoid all non-Catholic worship bound them even under grave fear, as Rev. McCoy states above. So in ignoring their censures for heresy and schism by setting up for themselves what appeared to be some form of respectability, though it could never qualify as an office (and Traditionalists deny they possess any offices, at least in the strict sense under Can. 145) they violated Can. 147, which leads us to an entirely new condemnation and set of censures.

Canon 147 states: “An ecclesiastical office is not 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.” An authentic interpretation of this canon was rendered by the Sacred Congregation (AAS 42-601) and gives as its source 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… If anyone says that those who have not been duly [rightly] ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical nor canonical authority BUT COME FROM A DIFFERENT SOURCE are lawful ministers of the word and of the Sacraments, LET THEM BE ANATHEMA.

“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…” (Canon Law Digest, Vol. 3, T. Lincoln Bouscaren, 1953). The excommunications that follow are ipso facto and specially reserved to the Holy See, for allowing oneself to be lawfully intruded into an office. It extends also to those who have any part in it, directly or indirectly. There then follows a brief statement that reads: “Excommunication as vitandus inflicted for accepting office from lay authority, (AAS 42-195). See Can. 2394.” In the same volume, this canon references a priest named as vitandus acting as a diocesan administrator without the proper appointment. Revs. Woywod-Smith state under this canon: “The Congregation of the Council, on June 29, 1950, ruled that those who without canonical provision (cfr. Canons 147 §§ 1-2, 332 §1) SEIZE or allow themselves to be illegitimately thrust into or retain an ecclesiastical office, benefice or dignity, and all who take part in this, incur ipso facto excommunication reserved in a special manner to the Apostolic See.”

Canon 2258: This canon requires that when anyone is named a vitandus it must be publicly proclaimed that such is the case, he must be mentioned by name and ordered to be avoided. The authentic interpretation of Can. 147 satisfies two of these conditions, and it seems here that an entire class of men is intended, not just specific individuals. This happens also when an interdict is declared against an entire community. An authentic interpretation of the law is considered to have the same effect as the law itself, (Can. 17). Not only Can. 147 but the other papal decrees quoted here show such men are considered at least the equivalent of vitandus and the mind of the lawgiver is expressed vehemently in other laws on this same topic by Pope Pius XII. Publication of the FACT that they are so considered and would be considered by the Church as such cannot have the same effect, of course, as an actual papal declaration; but because the other two conditions are in place it can serve as at least a partial fulfillment. This is true because the laity have an obligation to demand that vitandus and anyone operating under a latae sententiae excommunication that is notorious — the one Traditionalists all incur for heresy, apostasy and schism — are obligated to deter them from exercising their orders and may ask that a declaratory sentence be issued against them (Canons 1325, 2259, 2294; 1935, 2223).

Traditionalists can argue that Thuc, Lefebvre and those they “ordained and consecrated” never assigned anyone to an office, but the wide description of an office under Canon 145 does match their functionality as non-clerics. Certainly the laity exercised their “right to demand the sacraments” from them, and so commissioned them under what they believed to be this right. And on their part Traditionalists responded to their demands. Therefore they accepted a sort of office from these laity, whether they call it that or not. And if they have not accepted such an office from the Church, where else could any pretended authority have come from?

Canon 147 also has Pope Pius VI’s Charitas for its footnote (Fontes). These Fontes likewise list Pope Pius IX’s Etsi Multa, which declares the Old Catholic bishop Joseph Humbert Reinkens a vitandus and an apostate. Reinkens was already an excommunicated heretic for denying the definition of papal infallibility prior to ordaining and consecrating priests and bishops in Germany. On February 11, 1911, Pope St. Pius X also declared the Old Roman Catholic Arnold Harris Matthew and two other bishops excommunicated in the bull Cravi Iamdiu Scandalo, denouncing Mathew for “arrogating unto himself the title of Anglo-Catholic Archbishop of London [and] all others who lent aid, council, or consent to this nefarious crime, by the authority of Almighty God, we hereby excommunicate, anathematize and solemnly declare to be separated from the communion of the Church and to be held for schismatics.” This bull called Mathew a pseudo-bishop and condemned him as a vitandus.

Pope Pius IX’s condemnation of Reinkens reads:

“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.’” Calling him a “pseudo-bishop,” Pope Pius IX then states:

“We declare the election of the said Joseph Hubert 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 Hubert 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.” Clearly he considers Reinkens a vitandus. And it appears as though those who followed him may have been excommunicated as vitandus as well.

Canon 2245, April, 1951, AAS 43-217,: “A decree of the Holy Office concerning the consecration of a Bishop without canonical provision is as follows: A Bishop OF WHATSOEVER RITE OR DIGNITY who consecrates to the episcopacy anyone who is neither appointed nor expressly confirmed by the Holy See and the person who receives the consecration, even though they were coerced by great fear, (Can 2229 §3, no. 3), incur ipso facto an excommunication most specially reserved to the Holy See.” Can. 2229 §3, no. 3 states: “Grave fear by no means excuses from penalties latae sententiae if the crime involves contempt of faith or of ecclesiastical authority or public damage to souls.” The canonist Augustine comments under this canon: “Hence no one is excused from the penalty laid down in Canon 2314 or from that established in Canon 2335 which forbids membership in Masonic societies.” And lest some try to wiggle under the canonical fence regarding the different rites, notice Pope Pius XII says here “of whatsoever rite or dignity.”

Can 2314 §1 states: “All apostates from the Christian faith and each and every heretic or schismatic incur the following penalties:

ipso facto
If they have been admonished and do not repent, they shall be deprived of any benefits dignity, pension, office or other position which they may hold in the Church; they shall be declared infamous and if they are clerics they shall, after renewed admonition, be deposed.
If they have joined a non-Catholic sect or publicly adhered to it, they incur infamy ipso facto and if they are clerics and the admonition to repent has been fruitless they shall be degraded. Canon 188 n. 4 provides moreover that the cleric who publicly abandons the Catholic faith loses every ecclesiastical office ipso facto and without any declaration.”

And it must be mentioned here again that when there is doubt about how and when any canon in the Code is to be applied, one must return to the old law as Can. 6, n. 4 instructs. In this case the old law under both Can. 2314 and Can.188 n. 4 is Pope Paul IV’s infallible 1559 bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio.

“We likewise consider it ﬁtting that those who do not refrain from evil through love of virtue should be deterred therefrom through fear of penalties. Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals [etc.]…, who must teach others and give them good example to keep them in the Catholic Faith — WHEN THESE PREVARICATE, THEY SIN MORE GRAVELY THAN OTHERS; for they not only lose themselves, but drag down with them to perdition and the pit of death countless other peoples entrusted to their care and government or otherwise subject to them… all and sundry Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals…WHO, IN THE FUTURE, SHALL STRAY OR FALL INTO HERESY OR SHALL INCUR, INCITE OR COMMIT SCHISM… being less excusable than others in such matters… (all these persons) are also automatically AND WITHOUT ANY RECOURSE TO LAW OR ACTION, completely and entirely, forever deprived of, and furthermore disqualified from and incapacitated for their rank” (para. 3. Notice that this applies to the future as well as to those living in the 1500s.)

“Further, if ever at any time it becomes clear that any Bishop, even one conducting himself as an Archbishop, Patriarch, or primate; or any Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church, even as mentioned, a Legate; or likewise 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. It cannot be declared valid or become valid through his acceptance of the office, his consecration, subsequent possession or seeming possession of government and administration… The persons themselves so promoted and elevated shall, ipso facto and without need for any further declaration, be deprived of any dignity, position, honor, title, authority, office and power…” (para. 6). In paragraph five, Cum ex… declares those consorting with heretics as infamous. This bull’s censures are identical to those levied against vitandus.

Can. 2264: Cum ex… also is listed as a footnote to this canon which states that if a declaratory (latae sententiae) sentence has been issued, which appears to have been issued in way of the vitandus notification listed under Can. 147, all acts of jurisdiction are invalid unless jurisdiction is supplied under Can. 2261 §2. But under Can. 2261 §3, the law states vitandus can be resorted to only in danger of death. Today we lack the supplying power, the Roman Pontiff, so this is not even possible. Can. 219 states that: “The Roman Pontiff, legitimately elected, obtains, from the moment he accepts election, the full power of jurisdiction by divine right.”

The very act of heresy, deposition and infamy itself, then, committed by Lefebvre, Thuc, et al.— before they ever began ordaining Traditionalists — invalidated their acts. The subsequent ordinations and consecrations themselves may or may not have been valid, but the Church has the right and the duty, for the good of the faithful, to nullify the attempted administration of sacrilegious sacraments with the exception of Orders that would result from these acts. For they are divine, having been established by Our Lord Himself, and therefore they and the faithful who might think they are receiving them must be safeguarded from all abuse. Traditionalists may have been ordained and consecrated, they may have received the character, but all their sacramental acts are worthless because they are notorious heretics and schismatics and/or vitandus, and the majority of theologians agree vitandus are no longer members of the Church.

Until they a) abjure and are absolved from their heresies, b) their own orders are examined by a true pope, and c) they are either dispensed from any irregularity or ordered to be conditionally or absolutely ordained, they must be considered as possessing no validity whatsoever. For if a doubtful pope is no pope, then likewise a doubtful bishop or priest is no bishop or priest. The Catholic Encyclopedia recommends the following regarding the resolution of orders:

“Apart from exceptional circumstances, such as arose in 1896, the Holy See does not indulge in purely theoretical pronouncements on questions like that of Anglican Orders, but limits its intervention to cases of practical difficulty that are brought before it — as when persons or classes of persons who wish to minister at the Church’s altars have undergone ceremonies of ordination outside its fold. And even in thus intervening the Holy See is chary of doctrinal decisions, but applies a common-sense rule that can give practical security. Where it judges that the previous orders were certainly valid it permits their use, SUPPOSING THE CANDIDATE TO BE ACCEPTABLE; where it judges the previous orders to be certainly invalid it disregards them altogether, and enjoins a re-ordination according to its own rite; where it judges that the validity of the previous orders is doubtful, EVEN THOUGH THE DOUBT BE SLIGHT, it forbids their use until a conditional ceremony of re-ordination has first been undergone” (Anglican Orders).

All the above is expressed in Pope Pius VI’s 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…” The effects of Charitas are those visited upon vitandus, just as those of Pope Paul IV, Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X above.

Some have said that despite Pius VI’s decision, Pope Pius VII later reinstated all the constitutional bishops. This he could do as he had not impugned their consecration as bishops but only qualified them as illicit, voiding only any of their future acts. Pius VII did however, at one point, complain in a letter to Louis XVIII written in 1816: “of the bad faith of the constitutional bishops, protesting that the old bishops had not only refused to resign, but had, by writing and conduct, assailed the Holy See. ‘We willingly forget the offenses shown to us personally,’ he wrote the French king.

‘But we cannot forget those offered to the authority and dignity of the Church and of its head.

“Now in case any of these bishops are nominated to sees, they cannot obtain canonical institution from us unless they first give the Church and the Holy See suitable satisfaction,’” (Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Popes, 1911). The king suggested these bishops resign, but the pope became ill and the negotiations were delayed. Because of his failing health, “The Pope was more anxious to bring the affairs of the Church of France to a definite form… On May 30, 1819, the bishops, to the number of 40, wrote warmly to the pope. Pius VII replied by a brief, which finally arranged all,” (Ibid.).

Canon 2372: “Those who dare to receive orders from an excommunicated, suspended or interdicted minister, provided he has been declared such or condemned to one of the three aforementioned penalties, or from a notorious apostate, a notorious heretic, or a notorious schismatic, ipso facto incur suspension a divinis reserved to the Apostolic See.” And Rev. Francis Hyland, in his 1928 Catholic University of America dissertation Excommunication, notes: “Tanquerey remarks that the Church is wont to declare as vitandi only notorious heretics and schismatics who have already ceased to be members of the Church…” (pg. 9).

Regarding Can. 2245 and the Holy Office decree, Rev. McCoy, cited above, further discusses on page 92 what the Code considers to be acts involving contempt of the faith. He identifies the titles in the Code containing these acts as XI and XII of the fifth book, concerning “Delicts Against the Faith and Unity of the Church and Delicts Against Religion.” These include HERESY, APOSTASY AND SCHISM; COMMUNICATION IN SACRED RITES WITH HERETICS; USURPATION OF PRIESTLY FUNCTIONS AND SACRILEGE, among other offenses. On page 97, under the heading “Acts that Work to the Detriment of Souls,” McCoy writes: “These are all acts which draw people away from the faith or from the practice of Christian morals and thus expose them to the danger of eternal damnation…”

“Those acts which, by their nature, work to the detriment of souls are listed particularly in Titles XVI and XVII of the fifth book of the Code…bearing the headings: ‘Offenses Committed in the Administration or Reception of Orders or the Other Sacraments’ and ‘Offenses Against the Obligations Proper to the Clerical and Religious State.’” Among the offenses McCoy lists that work to the detriment of souls are: “…the administration of Sacraments to those who are forbidden to receive them…THE CONSECRATION OF A BISHOP WITHOUT A PAPAL MANDATE…THE RECEPTION OF ORDERS FROM UNWORTHY PRELATES… the negligence of a pastor in the care of souls.” It must be noted here however that this particular Holy Office decree was issued against men who at the time were bishops in good standing in the Church, who possessed actual offices; NOT HERETICS WHO POSSESSED NONE. That is a different kettle of fish and is handled differently by the Church. If we consider all that is said above by Rev. McCoy, and all that is forbidden by the canons listed, it begins to appear that far from rushing to save souls, Traditionalists instead have worked to foster contempt of the faith and promote schism. But of course they will always rationalize as follows.

But in this emergency…

Traditionalists argue that necessity knows no law and they can resort to epikeia to justify their ordinations and consecrations. But as has been explained at length in a separate work, Pope Pius XII’s 1945 election constitution, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, (VAS), which infallibly decrees what can and cannot be done during an interregnum, forbids any correction or change in the law during an interregnum. “The laws issued by Roman Pontiffs in no way can be corrected or changed by the assembly of Cardinals of the Roman Church while it is without a Pope, nor can anything be subtracted from them or added or dispensed in any way whatsoever with respect to said laws or any part of them… In truth, if anything adverse to this command should by chance happen to come about or be attempted, We declare it, by Our Supreme Authority, to be null and void.”

Here we are talking both papal laws and Canon Law, which is largely taken from papal and conciliar law. Some may object that Can. 20 advises the use of epikeia, and to invoke it would not be a violation of the law. But Can. 20 specifically states there must be no other provision in the case considered, and such provision was already laid down in VAS. It also recommends consulting the laws given in similar cases and the common and constant teaching of approved authors. Laws given in similar cases point to the summoning of the bishops to elect a pope (Council of Constance) and a good number of authors agree on this, namely St. Robert Bellarmine and those supporting his teaching. St. Bellarmine also recommends the calling of an imperfect council in the absence of a pope if the cardinals cannot elect. Finally, Can. 20 cannot be used in anything involving penalties. And VAS is a document levying several penalties.

The reason why this infallible law nullifies epikeia is explained as follows: “Epikeia may be defined as: A correction or emendation of a law which in its expression is deficient by reason of its universality, a correction made by a subject who deviates from the clear words of the law, basing his action upon the presumption, at least probable, that the legislator intended not to include in his law the case at hand,” (The History, Nature and Use of EPIKEIA in Moral Theology by the Rev. Lawrence Joseph Riley, A.B., S.T.L., a dissertation submitted to the faculty of the School of Sacred Theology of the Catholic University of America, 1948). Abp. Amleto Cicognani also refers to it as a correction of the law. So applying epikeia has done nothing; all is null and void. Not only is a correction to the law forbidden, but the probable presumption that the law should be changed could not be reconciled with VAS itself or the penalties levied by Pope Pius XII above, nor could it be reconciled with other papal decisions rendered by this same pope.

Even aside from their equivalent status as vitandus, Traditionalists could never have been supplied jurisdiction because it is withdrawn from them by VAS and under the canons and their Fontes above. And because we have no Roman Pontiff to supply, no jurisdiction could be supplied to anyone anyway. This is clear from VAS, which insists all be referred to a future pontiff, and no jurisdiction enjoyed by the deceased Roman Pontiff in his lifetime can be exercised after his death, even by the cardinal. If such jurisdiction is exercised, it is null, void and invalid. We also see in Charitas above that Pope Pius VI ordered the same in this matter, decreeing that the bishops he pronounced as schismatics are forbidden to decide any “matters that relate to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.” And if they attempt this, it is null, void and invalid.

Consequences cascading from the Canons

The canons above tell the real story. They say more than it appears. Given the explanation provided by the old law under Canon 2370, we can have no doubt 1) that these men, for their contemptuous acts outside papal law, are considered schismatics, and suffer for this the consequences of Can. 2314 and Can. 188, no. 4; and 2) With the exception of ordination and consecration, anything Lefebvre, Thuc, et al., or those they consecrated have done, is invalid. The orders given are questionably valid until the circumstances of their administration can be investigated by the Holy Office. In the meantime, any acts proceeding from those orders is considered to be invalid. Some may argue that actual schism could exist only if a true pope reigned. But to honestly maintain their position sedevacantists, at least, were obligated to consecrate just enough bishops to call an imperfect council and elect a pope. That might have been possible then and would have eliminated all suspicion of setting up a false church, but it would not be possible today. There was initially talk of doing this prior to the Thuc consecrations, but it soon ceased.

For along came Guerard des Lauriers with his material-formal hypothesis and quite suspiciously, all talk of ever restoring the papacy came to an end. Sedevacantists gradually separated themselves into little sects just as the rest of their Traditionalist brethren before them and the schism continued. All attempts to explore the possibility of an imperfect council, suggested by this author long before participating in an (invalid) conclave as an absolute last resort, was shot down by those who had the money and the influence in Traditionalist circles to do such a thing. The question is why, unless the plan all along was to set up a model of the more “traditional” Catholic church either to keep people quiet long enough to complete the Church’s destruction or until the Church could be refashioned along totally Gallicanist lines. As things stand today, it seems to be the latter. Given the failure of sedevacantism to do what the Church commanded, they must rightly be judged as schismatic, especially since they base their existences on the vacant See.

The language of the Holy Office decree, entered into the AAS under Can. 2245; also the fact that this censure is reserved in a most special manner to the Holy See (a fairly rare occurrence), makes it clear that the Holy Office had no intention, for the good of the faithful, of allowing these men to function in any manner, whether they acted as priests or not. They were declared the equivalent to vitandus under Can. 147 by an authentic interpretation entered into the AAS, which is binding on the faithful for belief. Traditionalists assumed power “on their own authority,” coming from a “different source” (DZ 960); and the laity “called” them and “consented” to their ministrations, (Can. 109). So it cannot be said that they did not accept their office from lay authority exactly as the rescript reads. Those behaving historically in a like manner were condemned as vitandus as well. Therefore it is not unjust to consider them as such.

Canon 2372 applies to both Lefebvre and Thuc who were clearly schismatic regarding their dealings with the Novus Ordo but were not questioned as such until years later. Canon 2370 would apply then to all those men who sought ordination from Lefebvre and Thuc prior to their consecration of bishops. In the exterior forum, all these men were schismatics even before their ordinations, for either they were raised in the Novus Ordo sect or were practicing Traditionalists. Even if they recognized their errors and left the Novus Ordo, it would still have been necessary for them to be dispensed from their irregularities, for heresy and schism are permanent irregularities that bar a man from ever receiving orders. The canonists Revs. Woywod-Smith and Ramstein go into detail regarding the need of readmittance to the Church for such heresy, citing Can. 2200 as proof of this need, and in addition they would also be required to receive a papal dispensation to qualify for ordination. But one more question needs to be addressed: did these men ever even become clerics?

Tonsure is a jurisdictional act

Now the first thing that must occur for a man to be admitted to the clerical state is what is known as tonsure. “By divine ordinance, the clergy are distinct from the laity” (Can. 107), and tonsure is the ceremony which marks that distinction. A man cannot be ordained without first tonsure. Few chronicling the change in the rites of the Sacraments by the Novus Ordo in 1968 mention the fact that Paul 6 later abolished the ceremony of tonsure in 1972. He must have realized that this also was essential to finalizing the destruction of the priesthood. It is interesting that the canon following the first mention of tonsure in the Code references DZ 960 and 967 from the Council of Trent on the prohibited institution of ministers by the laity and leads us back to Can. 147. Rev. Charles Augustine comments on this canon:

“This canon is directed against certain innovations which cropped out throughout the history of the Church but were introduced especially by the so-called reformers in the 16th century. The “consent of the people” was the favorite cry of Arnold of Brescia and his followers in the 12th century. It was repeated by Wycliff and Hus, Calvin and Zwingli. Against these the Council of Trent declared IT IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH that the people have no voice in the choice of ministers.” And nothing could be clearer than this.

Tonsure is defined by St. Thomas Aquinas and is unanimously accepted by canonists as an ecclesiastical ceremony or administrative act — not a rite of Sacred Orders conferring an indelible mark — issuing from the office of a bishop. And we know that both Lefebvre and Thuc possessed no offices in the Church. So tonsure could not be given validly by a vitandus or anyone laboring under a vindicative penalty for heresy. Not only could it not be validly given; it could not be validly received by those presenting as candidates for the priesthood without first obtaining a dispensation from the Holy See for the same censure of heresy, schism and infamy of law under Can. 2314. And this presents Traditionalists with a very big problem.

Because, as St. Thomas explains, “The ministers of the Church are severed from the people in order that they may give themselves entirely to the divine worship. Now in the divine worship are certain actions that have to be exercised by virtue of certain definite powers and for this purpose the spiritual power of order is given while other actions are performed by the whole body of ministers in common, for instance the recital of the divine praises. For such things it is not necessary to have the power of Order but only to be deputed to such an office, and this is done by the tonsure. Consequently, it is not an Order but a preamble to Orders… “Reply Obj. 2: Although a man does not receive a character in the tonsure, nevertheless he is appointed to the divine worship; hence the appointment should be made by the supreme minister, namely the bishop.” (Summa Theologica, Vol III, Q. 40, Art. 2, Suppl.).

Commentaries on the Code of Canon Law, with the Latin and Castilian legal text, by Lorenzo Miguelez Dominguez; Arturo Lobo; Sabino Alonso Morán (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 1963 Volume II, page 396) also read:

“The tonsure received produces the incardination in some diocese, not being able to exist in acephalous clerics. And once incardination is produced by means of the prima tonsura, the Bishop of the diocese is the only one who can promote the tonsured to higher orders; he is the only legitimate ordinary minister of his subsequent ordination. In the ordination of the tonsured, the domicile of the tonsured no longer counts, but only his actual incardination, however this may have taken place.

*Ordinarily the tonsure is received in order to dedicate the tonsured to the service of his own diocese. But it can also be received in order to enter into the service of another diocese.

Two cases: that the foreign diocese be determined or indeterminate.

1º If it is determinate:

(a) the tonsure is conferred by one’s own bishop by reason of domicile, according to canon 956;

(b) The tonsured is ipso facto incardinated in the diocese to which he is destined, according to canon 111.2;

2° If the diocese of another is indeterminate:

(a) he is conferred tonsure by his own bishop by reason of domicile, as in the previous case;

(b) he is incardinated in the diocese of the ordaining bishop, who can confer higher orders on him;

(c) in due time, he is to be excardinated from that diocese, incardinated in another diocese, the Bishop of the latter being his proper Bishop, from the moment of incardination, for all

incardination, for all effects and purposes

(S. C. Conc., 10 March 1923: AAS 16 [1024] 51; CPI 17: February 1930: AAS 22 [1930] 195; CPI 24 July 1939, 1 and 1: AAS 31 [1939] 321).

So clearly here, as the Sacred Congregation demonstrates, the only way such a person can be validly tonsured is by a bishop in possession of a validly conferred diocese, which none of those floating bishops, be they Lefebvre, Thuc, Castro de Meyer or anyone else can claim to have possessed. And if the administrative powers of that bishop have been rendered invalid, guess what? It never happens. Why is this important? Because according to the canons, “Those who have been assigned to the divine ministry at least by the first tonsure are called clerics,” (Can. 108), and this is based on Divine law. And from Can. 118: “ONLY CLERICS CAN OBTAIN THE POWER OF EITHER ORDERS OR ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION…”

So if the grantor’s act of conveying tonsure is invalid, and the grantees are unable to even seek ordination without a dispensation from the pope, which is no longer an option, does anyone really believe that these men could possibly have received ordination? Notice that Pope Pius VI in Charitas above classifies as invalid the deputations or confirmations of those consecrated as bishops without papal approval and the one(s) consecrating. So from what is presented below, from the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments by Aloysius Cardinal Masella, Dec. 27, 1955, this appears to be one of those acts.

“The purpose [of this Instruction] is that the unworthy may in due time, even at the last moment, be absolutely held off from joining the sacred ranks lest dishonor and disgrace touch the Church of God…The Bishop must pass final judgment on the priestly vocation of their candidates, most earnestly examining it along with the canonical fitness of the candidates according to the norms given by approved authors of moral, ascetical and mystical theology. This fitness must be supported by positive proofs, especially concerning the virtue of chastity.” So tonsure cannot even be received unless these proofs are provided, and Lefebvre, Thuc, et al. could not provide them; their confirmations of these proofs were invalid.

These pseudo-bishops had no right or power to call anyone to the priesthood, and never possessed the ability to graft them into it. And this goes back as far as we find Lefebvre and later Thuc (and others) first ordaining priests, for their heresy was committed by accepting Vatican 2, the sacramental changes and the Novus Ordo mass as valid before these “ordinations” ever began. Dispensing themselves from the law in this “emergency” will not work, either; Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis declares null and void every dispensation from Canon Law during an interregnum, as explained above.

The Final Blow

As discussed in the first part of this document, the situation among Traditionalists cannot be compared to those sects which openly declare themselves separated from Rome. Traditionalists, rather, claim they ARE the Catholic Church, and as such they must be held to all the standards that Church has established in order to claim to validly confect Her Sacraments. This is an important distinction that has not been previously made but needs to be examined in depth in order to draw out the necessary conclusions. A schismatic bishop separating from Rome and starting his own Church, with branches here and there, does not claim to be the Catholic Church, although he may celebrate the Latin Mass and administer the Sacraments. He can validly ordain priests and consecrate bishops given he uses the proper form and has the right intention. He is judged differently because Rome no longer expects of him what She once did, given his rejection of the papacy.

But the Church would scarcely tolerate in her own ministers what she is forced to tolerate from this schismatic sect and its leader. Either members of Her hierarchy are Catholic and abide by all Her laws and teachings — particularly obedience to the Roman Pontiff in all things, since it is necessary for salvation, (DZ 469), — or they are not. They cannot at one and the same time claim to be the only surviving members of the hierarchy while failing to satisfy all the requirements necessary to belong to that body. These requirements are explained below:

Msgr. G. Van Noort, S.T.D., Christ’s Church, Vol. 2, 119-122, 1959

“Apostolicity of government or mission or authority means the Church is always ruled by pastors who form one, same juridical person with the apostles. In other words, it is always ruled by pastors who are the apostles’ legitimate successors… For on no one but the APOSTOLIC COLLEGE under the headship of Peter did Christ confer the power of teaching, sanctifying and ruling the faithful until the end of the world. This triple power therefore necessarily belongs and can only belong to those who form one moral person with the apostles; their legitimate successors.

“How could a man belong to the College of the successors of the apostles unless he be united to the head of the college and acknowledged by him as belonging to it? A man could hardly be a cabinet member if the president refused to accept him. Any man then who boasts Apostolic Succession but is not united to the Roman Pontiff may indeed actually possess the power of orders; he may even by purely physical succession occupy a chair formerly occupied by an apostle — at least he could do so — but he would not be a genuine successor of the apostles in their pastoral office; he would be a usurper.”

Rev. E. S. Berry, the Church of Christ, (p. 399).” “Christ evidently intended that His Church be governed by bishops — bishops by the power of Orders as well as by the power of jurisdiction… After the Ascension St. Peter and his successors [took] the place of Christ as visible head of the Apostolic body, with full authority to carry out His will: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in heaven.” Consequently the Roman Pontiff, as successor of St. Peter, has sole authority to accept new members into the Apostolic body, i. e., he alone has authority to constitute bishops, since authority to teach and govern the faithful was conferred upon the Apostles as a body and can be obtained only by incorporation into that body.

“Bishops are shepherds for portions of the flock that was committed in its entirety to the pastoral care of St. Peter and his successors; but no one becomes a shepherd of any portion of a flock unless he be made such by the chief pastor of the whole flock. It is also evident that the chief purpose of the primacy — the preservation of unity — could not be realized if the bishops of the Church were not subject in all things to her supreme pastor.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia under the Apostolic College: “As the Church has to endure to the end of time, so has the unifying and preserving office of St. Peter. Without such a principle, without a head, the body of the Bride of Christ would be no better than a disjointed congeries of members, unworthy of the Divine Bridegroom. In fact the connection of the Church with Christ and the Apostles would be loosened and weakened to the breaking point.” Only bishops headed by the pope, a bishop himself, truly govern the Church.

Pope Pius IX: “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.”

Now remember, to be the true successors to Christ’s Church they claim to be, all the ceremonies and rites necessary to Orders must have been received by Traditionalists according to the laws and teachings of the Church. The Catholic Encyclopedia and Rev. Clarence McAuliffe present the Church’s teaching on the priesthood as necessary for valid episcopal consecration. “One Order does not depend on the preceding Order as regards the validity of the sacrament. But the episcopal power depends on the priestly power, since no one can receive the episcopal power unless he have previously the priestly power” (Saint Thomas, Summa Supplement Q. 40 A5). McAuliffe affirms this in his Sacramental Theology, page 370: “However, the more probable teaching is that a baptized male cannot be VALIDLY consecrated a bishop unless he has previously been ordained a priest. This seems to be evident from the form of episcopal consecration: ‘Accomplish in Thy priest the fullness of Thy ministry.’”

So from all we have seen above, we have at best men who were:

excommunicated as heretics for communicatio in sacris and branded infamous presenting as candidates for the priesthood;
never properly examined for fitness and who apparently never received valid tonsure;
“priests” who never even became clerics because they never received tonsure raised to the episcopacy by bishops without the papal mandate whose own orders are in question and who are
under censure for heresy and schism, not to mention all the other censures enumerated above;
“bishops” who were never priests and were not even eligible for the priesthood ordaining and consecrating others without the papal mandate who suffer all the same disabilities and censures mentioned above.

Now would someone please tell me what person in their right mind would ever think that such men, men who are not even Catholic and suffer under the most severe censures the Church can levy, could dare call themselves the true Church of Christ? These men did not just set up a schismatic sect for themselves, they set up an entire Church and called it Catholic! They are no better than their Novus Ordo counterparts who they have never ceased to castigate and constantly point to as the root of all evils.

In his article for The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, “Are Liberal Catholic Orders Valid?” Dr. Leslie Rumble, M.S.C. writes in a footnote: “In his 1956 work ‘Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention’ Rev. Francis Clark, S.J. observes: “To what an extent a visible separation from the true Church of Christ exerts an influence on the external rite itself, that is, whether such a rite does or does not continue the ritual profession of the faith of the Church must be determined by the Church, Herself. It belongs to the true Church to determine whether a rite performed in given circumstances is an “exteriorization” of Her own faith — that is, whether it is her own act — or whether it is, on the contrary, an act expressing the faith of another separated Church, qua separated,” (qua meaning in what manner or how being defined by the Church).

“In this latter case, the rite is not valid,” Dr. Rumble observes. “Thus Pope Leo XIII decreed in the concrete that Anglican ordinations do not remain acts of the true Church; in them ‘ritual contact’ with the faith of Christ’s Church is not maintained” (ibid., Dr. Rumble). And here readers must remember that Pope Leo XIII declared Anglican Orders invalid for lack of intention as well as invalid form. For he also proclaimed in this same document: “The Church does not judge about the mind and intention in so far as it is something by its nature internal; but in so far as it is manifested externally She is bound to judge concerning it.” Surely what has been documented here is enough to prove that all obedience to a Roman Pontiff and the absolutely necessary inclusion of him in the Apostolic College is absent in Traditionalists.

IT IS DE FIDE FROM THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AND HENCE THE UNANIMOUS OPINION OF THEOLOGIANS THAT BOTH ORDERS DULY RECEIVED AND JURISDICTION ARE NECESSARY FOR TRUE APOSTOLICITY TO EXIST, AND THAT PER POPE PIUS XII’S DECISION ON EPISCOPAL ORDERS IN MYSTICI CORPORIS, BISHOPS RECEIVE THEIR JURISDICTION ONLY FROM THE ROMAN PONTIFF. What we are looking at above is a vile imposture where the very Church Herself has been presented as something She is not and could never be. A Church without a pope, and no prospects of obtaining one; bishops possessing no power to forgive sins or confer graces, but offering only curses, in their ministrations; a series of questionable acts repeatedly condemned by the Roman Pontiffs made to appear as inconsequential and even non-existent. All this, they believe, the Church gladly tolerates and even approves in the interest of “saving souls.” But this is far from all.

The substantial nature of the Sacrament

Bernard Leeming, S.J., The Principles of Sacramental Theology, 1957

“It is possible for a minister to have the intention of not doing what the Church does, and if such is the case the Sacrament is invalid. This teaching is universally accepted by modern theologians, who agree that a Sacrament is invalidated even by a secret intention of the minister contrary to the substantial nature of the Sacrament.”

Comment: The substantial nature of the Sacrament includes the intent to induct a man into the Apostolic College to function there in union with his fellow bishops, in obedience to and under the direction of the Roman Pontiff. This is the entire purpose of the episcopacy.

Heretics may not intend to do what the Church really does and yet may have sufficient intention provided their intention is to do what the true Church does or to do what Christ wished. In this case, the object they will may be in fact what the Church does, for their intention of doing what Christ willed prevails over the intention not to do what the Roman Church does. If however there is a prevalent intention not to do what the true Church does, then the intention is not sufficient; because in fact the object they will is not what the true Church does and what Christ willed. These conclusions or explanations follow from the generally accepted principle that it is not enough to intend to do what the Church does.

Comment: The object Traditionalists will is to present themselves as the true Church of Christ on earth and convince their followers it can exist without a pope and bishops in communion with him. The Vatican Council teaches that Christ wished his Church to last until the consummation, and that with Peter at its head the episcopacy be “one and undivided” (DZ 1821). Traditionalists pretend they are preserving the episcopacy, the Apostolic College. But without Peter they destroy the unity of the Church, something not only contrary to Christ’s will but deserving of anathema.

In the case of bishops or priests who fall into heresy the presumption stands that they intend to do what Christ wills unless the nature of their heresy gives ground to suspect that they are so convinced that Christ does not will a particular effect of Sacraments that they absolutely exclude this from their intention” (end of Leeming quotes).

Comment: Now Leeming states that the effect of the Sacrament of the episcopacy is to include the one consecrated into the “united body [of Christ; the Church].” Included in that united body is the head bishop, the Roman Pontiff. If the consecration is performed with the intention NOT to include the Roman Pontiff as head bishop in this Body — which certainly has been and must be the case — and to induct the one “consecrated” instead into a body separated from the Church by heresy and schism, consisting of men who then are presented to others as full successors of the Apostles in the Catholic Church, then this constitutes a prevalent intention not to do what the true Church does. Such acts can only be described as evil and treachery of the worst kind. And not only are these acts evil and treacherous; they cannot be valid.

Oswald J. Reichel, M.A., B.C.L., F.S.A., A Complete Manual of Canon Law, 1896

Valid and Regular Ordination:

Besides the essentials of ordination three things are necessary to make it valid and regular: (1) It must be given by persons properly qualified to give it;

(2) it must be given in a regular manner;

(3) it must be given to those who are fit subjects to receive it. Ordination is called invalid when it conveys no spiritual gift or power of order; irregular when it is valid in itself but conveys no position in the Church. The irregular recipient is capable of performing every function of order, but the exercise of the spiritual gift is either impeded through some fault of his own, or forbidden by the Church.

To bestow orders in a regular manner they must be given:

(1) after examination and probation,

(2) after fasting and prayer, and

(3) unconditionally and gratuitously. A bishop is forbidden to lay hands suddenly on anyone, by which is understood that he may neither ordain without previous examination as to knowledge, nor without previous probation as to character.

Comment: Why is it that we hear only of “matter and form” from these Traditionalists when according to Rev. Reichel three additional requisites appear necessary to validity? We know for a fact many of these “orders” (in the case of priests) were not given after “examination and probation,” nor by those “qualified to give it” or “fit subjects to receive it.” And these are the “priests” who later became “bishops.”

Rev. Jean Marie Herve, Manual of Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 1, Sacraments

“474 c) It is required, and also sufficient, that there be an internal intention, at least implicit, of performing the rite as it is customarily performed in the true Church, with all that this includes, or is thought, even falsely, to include.”

Comment: There is obviously no internal intention on the part of Traditionalists to perform this rite as it is customarily performed by the Church. The absence of the papal mandate and the subterfuge that must be resorted to in order to gloss over the parts of the episcopal consecration ceremony violate this requirement. One observer has commented: “This …does not address the question of whether this is also the case for formal heretics. I believe that it is not, because a formal heretic who intends what he believes, formally holds an intention which is a contradictory of what the Church does.”

“481. b) Any condition concerning the future invalidates a sacrament. For a rite conferred under such a condition is not valid when the matter and form are performed, for at that time the intention of the minister is lacking; nor is it valid when the condition is met, for the matter and form are no longer present.” (P. Pouratt, V.G. in his Theology of the Sacraments, 1910, confirms as follows: “If the intention were dependent on a future, contingent fact, it would not really be existing when the sacrament is conferred, and hence by defect of intention the sacrament would be void” p. 401).

Comment: Any obedience pledged to a pope would necessarily be a future one, if such obedience is declared at all. If Traditionalists consecrate using the entire consecration formula, they must somehow amend the following:

“I …, elected to the Church of…, from this hour henceforward will be obedient to Blessed Peter the Apostle, and to the holy Roman Church, and to our Holy Father, Pope …. and to his successors canonically elected. I will assist them to retain and to defend the Roman Papacy without detriment to my order. I shall take care to preserve, to defend, increase and promote the rights, honors, privileges and authority of the holy Roman Church, of our Lord, the Pope, and of his aforesaid successors.

“Examination Q. 5: Will you exhibit in all things fidelity, submission, obedience, according to canonical authority, to Blessed Peter the Apostle, to whom was given by God the power of binding and of loosing, and to his Vicar our Holy Father, Pope N. and to his successors the Roman Pontiffs?”

The two Traditional consecrations available for viewing online differ from each other. Pivarunas’ consecration by Carmona in 1991 shows Carmona announcing, in place of the papal mandate: “Our Holy Mother the Catholic Church asks you to promote this priest to the high office of bishop.” Pivarunas then reads aloud in Latin the Oath of Obedience to the Holy See, seeming to read it in its entirety but omitting the name of the pope. The examination follows. The recent “consecration” of Charles McGuire omits the oath of obedience entirely, and the consecration begins with an explanation of the examination, which then follows in the ceremony. It is difficult to tell if any fealty to the Roman Pontiff is pledged re Q. 5 above. A traditional priest lists the current rite for consecration here: http://www.traditionalcatholicpriest.com/2014/11/21/traditional-catholic-rite-for-consecrating-bishops-1892/

In a 1993 article for Fr. Francis Fenton’s The Athanasian, John K. Weiskettel gives this evaluation of Daniel Dolan’s subsequent consecration by Mark Pivarunas: “Meanwhile, those questioning the consecration have also been divided as to details. Not only have some declared it invalid, decried it as scandalous, or even expressed doubts about Father Dolan’s qualifications for the office, but Father Clarence Kelly of the Society of Saint Pius V has gone so far as to denounce it as a ‘sacrilege.’” And this from Traditionalists familiar with the scandal and doubt involved in all the Thuc consecrations.

So Traditionalists must have in some way reworked the consecration rite to indicate they render obedience to a future pope, (implied in omitting his name), to some head bishop (or Holy Mother Church, whoever that now is) or omit it entirely. This then would basically exclude any inclusion of the one consecrated in the Apostolic College — a contrary intention as reflected in Msgr. Van Noort’s comments — or relegate it to a future event, as Rev. Herve states above. Since the See is vacant and the only pope one could pledge obedience to would need to be a future one, this would necessarily be the case. Either way, it apparently would be invalid. Also, Pope Pius XII teaches: “It shall be in no way right to understand from what we have declared and ordained above as to matter and form, that it would be lawful to neglect in any way or to omit the other established rites of the Roman Pontifical. Indeed, We ever command that all the prescribed details of that Roman Pontifical be religiously observed and carried out.” (Pope Pius XII, Sacramentum Ordinis); just one more papal command for Traditionalists to ignore.

N. B. a) There is no sacrament even with a condition concerning a necessary future event v.g. “I absolve you, if the sun rises tomorrow,” if the minister wishes that his intention depend on such a condition.

Comment: So if the minister asks the candidate Q. 5 above, regarding obedience to the Roman Pontiff, and it is intended in a future sense, (which if the question is asked at all is the only way it could be intended), then both the minister and the candidate must agree to a future event to both ask and answer the question.

Rev. Adolphe Tanquerey, Manual of Dogmatic Theology, 1959:

Tanquerey requires: “That if the intention be conditional it is necessary that it be equivalent to an absolute intention. If the condition is of the future, for example ‘If you will have made restitution within a month I absolve you,’ that is not equivalent to an absolute intention BECAUSE IT PREVENTS THE SACRAMENTAL FROM PRODUCING ITS EFFECT IN THE PRESENT. Once the condition has been verified the form avails nothing since it is now a part of the past.”

Tanquerey then refers to Can. 1092 and this could be used as a parallel case in law since there is doubt about these ordinations and consecrations. This canon, written for matrimonial cases, states:

If the condition is of the future and either necessary or impossible or sinful but is not contrary to the essence of the sacrament it is considered as not added …
If the condition is of the future and is contrary to the essence of the sacrament, it renders it null and void.
If the condition is of the future and licit, it suspends the validity of the sacrament.

Tanquerey notes that no. 3, however, applies only to contracts. He also cites Can. 732 which states when there is a prudent doubt about the validity of the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation or Holy Orders, they may be repeated conditionally.

The question based on the above is whether a future pledge of obedience to the Roman Pontiff by a bishop is contrary to the essence of the sacrament of (episcopal) Orders. Since consecration makes a bishop a member of the Apostolic College which can function only under the direction and supervision of the Roman Pontiff, and this college as a governing body of the Church cannot exist without its head, the question seems to answer itself. Oddly enough, were the Pontiff’s need to exist simply flat out denied and the other conditions were fulfilled, the Orders could be valid. Given that these men are saying they ARE the Catholic Church, and at least recognize the need to pay lip service to papal obedience of some sort, by doing this they are bound to abide by all Her laws and teachings to the letter, which means no consecrations can be undertaken until a true pope is elected.

Ludovic Cardinal Billot, S.J. On the Sacraments of the Church: A Commentary on the Third Part of St. Thomas, Vol. 1.

Thesis XVIII (q. 64, a. 8): “I respond, that an internal intention is certainly in itself invisible, but is made visible through the external action with which it is connected, if not with metaphysical or physical necessity, then certainly with moral certitude…”

Comment: That external action is one repeated countless times by Traditionalists, despite objections, warnings and theological demonstrations, belittled and ignored for decades. It consists of repeated defiance of all that has been taught by the popes and councils on episcopal consecration and jurisdictional matters. It is reflected in the repeated violation of Canon Law and the utter disregard for the penalties inflicted. The manifest contrary intention is to continue what many believe to be the true Church of Christ against His will with only bishops minus a true pope at its head. Rev. Billot states later in his treatise that:

“Ordinary occult heresy or theological dissidence will pose little danger of hidden invalidity… What does pose such a danger — almost the only thing that poses it — is something vastly rarer and perhaps infinitely more malicious, namely, the conviction that this Sacrament, validly performed, could confer grace, coupled with the determined intention that it not do so. Such a combination would characterize the mind of a demon.” But here we are NOT speaking of occult heresy but heresy that is public and notorious! And in functioning as priests and bishops without any assurance of validity, in confecting the Sacraments when expressly forbidden to do so even though they know they do not transmit grace but involve themselves and the one receiving in mortal sin, THE EFFECTS BILLOT DESCRIBES AS ISSUING FROM THE DEMONIC MIND ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

Therefore, it is:

this BENIGN AND HIDDEN SORT OF MALICE, characterized as demonic by Cardinal Billot,
described above by Rev. McCoy as “INTRINSICALLY EVIL, WORKING TO THE DETRIMENT OF SOULS [and involving] CONTEMPT OF THE FAITH,”
coupled with a CONTRADICTORY INTENTION OR ONE “CONCERNING THE FUTURE,”
THAT INVALIDATES THE SACRAMENTS CONFERRED BY TRADITIONALISTS.

Their absolute contempt for the papacy, veiled cleverly by only deferring to the Roman Pontiffs in certain instances that benefit themselves — accompanied by their complete refusal to observe the penalties inflicted and refrain from scandalizing the faithful — is further proof of their intransigence. And poor Billot, who fortunately passed away before the final curtain came down on the Church, would not live to see the heights to which these demons would ascend.

The magic show

Simon Magus or Simon the Magician first appears in Acts 8: 9-29, and also is mentioned by St. Justin Martyr in his works. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “By his magic arts, because of which he was called ‘Magus’, and by his teachings in which he announced himself as the ‘great power of God’, he had made a name for himself and had won adherents… [Following his conversion] Simon offered [the Apostles] money, desiring them to grant him what he regarded as magical power, so that he also by the laying on of hands could bestow the Holy Ghost, and thereby produce such miraculous results… He appeared as an opponent of Christian doctrine and of the Apostles, and as a heretic or rather as a false Messias of the Apostolic age.” The Church derives the word simony from this heretic, but the better takeaway from his story is his title as magician.

Simon envied the apostles. It wasn’t their inner spiritual life and conviction he wished to obtain but their power, and that to awe others with its miraculous results. He coveted the episcopacy. He was so enamored with the thought of this power and what it could do for his reputation and career that he offered to buy it from the Apostles. It is believed that after initially repenting he returned to his career as a magician. Had Traditionalists existed then, they would have been happy to provide him with orders. Today they have managed to create an empire Simon would have been proud to claim for his own. Appealing to the ignorance of their followers, they have managed to convince them that they are the actual Catholic Church, the continuation of the line of apostolic successors that existed following the death of Pope Pius XII. But as seen above they lie; they can never constitute that succession. To be an apostolic successor, one could possess jurisdiction without orders, but one cannot possess Orders without jurisdiction.

No one will question that Traditionalists present as the only true Church, and definitions found on the Internet confirm this.

1.“We traditional Catholics believe in the 2000 years of Catholic teachings, practices and tradition.”

“A Traditional Catholic does all in his power to preserve the Holy Faith in a manner consistent with how it has always been understood, and who strives to preserve all of the liturgical rites and customs of the Church as they were before the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ revolution. Traditionalists are not some ‘branch of the Church,’ or (necessarily) some ‘splinter group’; they are usually and quite simply Catholics.”
“Traditionalist Catholics believe that they are preserving Catholic orthodoxy by not accepting all changes introduced since the Second Vatican Council.”

So based on the above, can we say that Traditionalists are magicians? Do they do what magicians do? Magic is defined as “the art of influencing or predicting events and producing marvels… the art of controlling the actions of spiritual or superhuman beings…” It can also mean “one of the members of the learned and priestly class,” taken from the cult of the Magi. Magicians perform magic tricks and illusions with the help of props, making the impossible appear to be possible to the audiences they entertain. Now an illusion is defined by Merriam-Webster as: (1) “A misleading image presented to the vision: optical illusion. (2) something that deceives or misleads intellectually.” And we find it mentioned by St. Paul in 2 Thess. 2:9, where he tells us the Mystery of Iniquity will appear “in all power, signs and lying wonders” to deceive, if possible, even the elect.

Traditionalists to all appearances present as valid priests and bishops able to operate as such, when in fact the Church forbids them to function. They refuse to answer questions regarding their validity and ability to function. They insist they uphold the teachings of the Church, but they tacitly deny the necessity of the Roman Pontiff for the Church’s existence and fail to abide by the infallible teachings of the continual magisterium They use theological-sounding arguments to attempt to prop up their position, arguments that appear to be learned but can be, and have been, proven to be actual heresies, errors and logical fallacies. And according to the teachings of the Church, arguments based on logical fallacies are invalid.

They also act as entertainers, actors celebrating the Church’s Latin Mass and “sacraments” with all due pomp and splendor, to produce optical wonders and effect magical graces. Only we know from all the above that this cannot happen when they are forbidden to celebrate Mass, administer the “sacraments” and commit mortal sin by doing so, involving those who receive them in mortal sin as well. This is not grace; this is evil perpetrated as good. And it is evil they are well rewarded for; witness the fruits of their labors reflected in the grand church buildings and rectories many of them have built. Were they truly confecting the sacraments, it might be called simony, since they could not exist without their well-heeled followers.

Over time this impersonation of the Church has resulted in a lessening of the horror that it once had, or should have had, when the scarce few “woke” Catholics first realized what was actually happening and disowned them. Those now exiting this sect often do so almost reluctantly, on principle and faith alone, rather than with any sense of horror or urgency. There is no real appreciation of the enormity of the offenses committed against Our Lord, which are seen by those departing this group in a light filtered through an emotional attachment to what they thought was the Mass, the Eucharist and other religious externals. There is a general forgetfulness that these men act only in Christ’s stead and are His ambassadors, that they do not and cannot act in any other way, and that anything anyone once thought they received from them acted to their damnation, not their salvation.

The best way to describe this reaction is desensitization, a mental process that works to lessen genuine responsiveness to something negative or aversive after repeated exposure to it. One of the key reasons it is difficult to completely dismiss these men as offensive to Our Lord and useless, even possibly as agents of the devil, is their claim to possess validity, something they cannot be at all certain they possess and have no right to exercise without that certainty. It is this dilution of evil, based on the propaganda instilled by Traditionalist sects, that causes so many to return to them eventually.

All that Traditionalists do is designed to create illusion and deceive. They practice a sleight of hand with the faith, literally, in imposing hands to ordain “priests” and consecrate “bishops,” who because they are not validly consecrated wear only the mitres common to wizards. Epikeia is the magic wand they wave to make all their acts virtuous and valid. They somehow presume the magical lifting of all their censures in this “emergency,” penalties still on the books in the 1917 Code and binding. In this way they circumvent the scrutiny of the Holy Office, sidestepping the necessary reconciliation of any Orders they may be judged to have received, the lifting of any irregularities and vindicative penalties, the public adjuration of their errors and the performance of any penance assigned. Without this no one has any assurance they are even priests, far less bishops. All this is far more than a contradictory intention or one based on a future event. It is the sort of malice envisioned by Cardinal Billot, only on a much grander scale.

The science of illusion

Pope St. Pius X explains the dual personality of a Modernist in his encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, where he describes such a heretic as “…proclaiming publicly his profound respect for authority, while continuing to follow his own bent.” This is how Traditionalists dismiss the papacy and is followed by a contempt for dogma and discipline, which the pope also notes. St. Pius X further condemns Modernists for their rejection of logic in the scholastic method of philosophy and theology, and for using sentiment and emotion to hijack the intelligence. What he says about this is very revealing, for he explains that faith is to be reduced to a “religious sentiment” and dogmatic formulas “sanctioned by the heart.” Sacraments are only “symbols and signs, although not devoid of a certain efficacy… [They are] the result of a double need, for everything in their system is to be explained by INNER IMPULSES OR NECESSITIES,” and this describes Traditional pseudo-clergy’s quest for power and adulation as superheroes with magical powers, swooping in to save the Church.

Everything about the methods of the Modernists speaks of Traditionalism. But those who identify only the Novus Ordo church with the introduction and practice of Modernism would never believe it existed or could exist in their own “true” church. They fail to heed Pope St. Pius X’s warning that “They are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in Her very bosom and heart and are the more mischievous the less conspicuously they appear… They put their desires for Her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain the more intimate is their knowledge of Her.” St. Pius X also observes that there were among the Modernists those who were not necessarily for reform in worship; he calls them “admirers of symbolism,” (the retention of the Latin Mass). Today this is all Traditionalists have left: SYMBOLS of what were once the REALITIES of the Catholic faith — the “magic” peddled by Traditionalist pseudo-clergy.

Conclusion

Traditionalists claim to be the true Church on earth, yet by defying all Her laws, commanded by Pope Pius XII to be kept in place unchanged, they demonstrate their contempt for the faith and thus make manifest their true intentions. Although unable to claim any type of jurisdiction, they cite as their “mission” the salvation of souls, although they could never have received such a mission, which is conveyed only by the grant of jurisdiction. The attenuation of the episcopal rite of consecration to exclude obedience to the Roman Pontiff, or postpone it to the future, makes it very clear that a) they are not the continuation of Christ’s Church on earth and b) cannot possibly possess the intention to function as bishops who will continue that Church as Christ Himself established it. Rev. Leeming states above that: “In the case of bishops or priests who fall into heresy the presumption stands that they intend to do what Christ wills unless THE NATURE OF THEIR HERESY gives ground to suspect that they are so convinced that Christ does not will a particular effect of Sacraments that they absolutely exclude this from their intention.”

The presumption in this case cannot stand and must therefore yield to truth: claiming existence as THE true Church, they are bound to obey and be in communion with a visible Roman Pontiff. Pietro Parente et al state under the subject of Intention in their Dogmatic Dictionary: “The Church, moreover, is a well-organized Body in which every vital movement, linked to an external rite must depend in some way on the visible head. It is necessary therefore that every infusion of new, vital energies, caused by the Sacraments be in some way dependent on the visible head of the Church and on Her hierarchy…” It is this very necessary dependence they absolutely deny; they are convinced that bishops alone can rule the Church indefinitely and are never required to elect a Roman Pontiff. And this is diametrically opposed to Christ’s expressed will and intention for His Church.

The destruction of the Church was planned long ago, and the methods devised; Modernism was one of these specifically developed to infiltrate the Catholic clergy, seeding the evolution of dogmas and false philosophy. The Hegelian method used to move the process forward can be seen to apply to what we see unfolding today; the evolution of dogma and worship, accomplished by the philosopher Hegel’s pagan formula, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Thesis is a statement or theory put forward as a premise to be defended or proved; Antithesis is the opposite or contradiction of the thesis and Synthesis is the compromise that results in resolving the conflict between thesis and antithesis. It can be seen at work easily in Communism.

The object is a final composite of two sides or philosophies, not admitting any one thing as absolute truth. The creation of the Novus Ordo church was only the first step in the Church’s destruction; the dragon cast down to earth. The second step was the creation of the antagonist church, the dragon pursuing the woman, to make it appear there was an alternative to the NO and better deceive the elect. The constant struggle between the two churches would then result in a new church, or the absorption of the antagonist church into the first church, which to some extent has already occurred. Agents of destruction were active on both sides, owing to the successful infiltration of Modernists beginning in the 19^th century. The new church in Rome was Modernism proper; Traditionalism was the Gallicanist version of the same error.

Both churches were devoid of any sort of authority or power to confer the sacraments, only in different ways. The Novus Ordo openly, with its false popes, revision of the rites of the Sacraments, and finally the desecration of the Mass. Traditionalists secretly, hidden in a maze of Church laws and teachings they consistently misrepresent, deny and dismiss; topics the average layperson, barely educated in the basic catechism, can scarcely grasp. What would the faithful do if they discovered their true plight? Then there could be an actual return to the faith, and this Satan wished to prevent at all costs. Traditionalism is the holding cell, until their plans for the new super church are accomplished. As demonstrated in previous articles, Traditionalists are really only the creatures of the Old Catholics and Gnostic-infiltrated sects existing prior to Pope Pius XII’s death. We can speculate about their origins and the source of the infiltration, but that is about all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.

We began this article by referring to Msgr. Joseph Przudzik’s assessment of the orders conferred by the Polish Catholic National Church. We wish to repeat here his preface to the final assessment of those Orders, although it does not specifically apply to the case at hand above. In Part 2 of Schism in America he writes:

“In view of the paucity of material and the difficulties in getting at it, it is understandable that this article does not consider itself an authoritative interpretation of the validity of the orders of the various… Polish sects. The conclusions… enumerated are therefore private opinions of the present writer which are offered in all humility and with the consciousness that there is a possibility they may not represent the mind of the Church. For that reason, the author puts them forth only tentatively. He freely and willingly submits his opinions to any future decision that may eventually be rendered by the infallible authority of the Catholic Church. AT THE SAME TIME, THE PRESENT WRITER BELIEVES THE SUBJECT OF SUFFICIENT CURRENT INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE TO MERIT PRESENT CONSIDERATION… As far as can be gathered from the present available documents, according to the rules of logic and orthodox theology, ALL THE EVIDENCE POINTS TO THE HIGHLY PROBABLE INVALIDITY OF [THESE] ORDERS.”

To this I would add that I believe there is a very low degree of possibility that what is presented here, if it is weighed in its entirety, is mistaken. And today it is of the utmost importance to end this ungodly imposture foisted on those who think they are members of the Church Christ established on earth. It should also be noted here that I have compiled a great deal more information and theological proofs to back up my conclusions than Msgr. Przudzik was able to present. That being said, only the Roman Pontiff could make a decision regarding these orders, and I have always sworn to abide by his judgement. But this does not mean that until that time these men are valid and can function in any way whatsoever. This is forbidden by Pope Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, Can. 2200 and all the papal excommunications and censures cited above.

The evidence shows that Traditionalist pseudo-clergy cannot be CONSIDERED AS VALID until a decision is forthcoming from the Holy See. Until then, the faithful cannot without grave sin consult or attend their services or receive the “sacraments” or any such thing from any of these men. Not only do they themselves commit sin in doing so, they commit a second sin by cooperating with the person who administers the sacrament requested. I would like to close with the following from Msgr. Przudzik, commenting on the inroads made by the Polish schismatics:

“Such is the result of 40 years of tunneling under the Church of God. It cannot be said that from the schismatics’ point of view it is certainly unsuccessful. Indeed it urges upon all faithful members of the Catholic Church the necessity of realizing just how grave the situation is. Too frequently and too long has the importance of the break been minimized. Perhaps the realization of how many souls are being led astray frequently without even realizing they are being led out of the Catholic Church will start some large-scale, concentrated effort to bring them back.” And this is far truer in our situation than it could ever have been during a time when a true Roman Pontiff reigned. May God have mercy on us all.

Material-formal Hypothesis a Trojan Horse

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 27, 2022

CMRI’s papal authority kerfuffle

© Copyright 2022, 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.)

The current buzz going across social media platforms reveals a bit of a war going on over the material-formal thesis. The “Bp.” Dolan crowd does not accept it and “Bp.” Donald Sanborn is defending it. I first exposed this hypothesis as untenable in 1990 and subsequent articles have appeared on the site below ever since. The latest article provides a history of the heresies that fuel it and also traces it to a series of errors taught since the close of the Vatican Council regarding infallibility. (https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/material-formal-hypothesis-condemned-as-heresy/)

Guerard des Lauriers had access to Pope Paul IV’s 1559 bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio in Latin and quotes it in his article on the material-formal thesis, dismissing it as having been abrogated by the issuance of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. From the late 1970’s to the present, St. Pius X Society “theologians” also insisted the bull was abrogated with the issuance of the 1917 Code. Everyone believed des Lauriers was a learned theologian and so accepted this pronouncement on the bull, without bothering to investigate its truthfulness for themselves. This even though des Lauriers advanced material-formal against the wishes of the very bishop who “consecrated” him, promising first to promote it as a condition of his consecration, and later reneging on this promise. Sedevacantists could ill afford to contradict the thesis without also questioning des Laurier’s Cum ex… stance as well, or at least presenting some other explanation for their position regarding the Roman usurpers. When English translations of Cum ex… began to appear in the mid-1980s, so did renewed discussion of the bull’s authority. But again, Traditionalists reneged on doing any in-depth investigation into its history and its doctrinal value.

My 1990 book Will the Catholic Church Survive… was the first to explain at length that Cum ex… is a binding papal document and how it uniquely applies to our situation today. The bull declares all those who are heretics, schismatics or apostates prior to their election ipso facto deprived of all offices, without any declaration, or any possibility of regaining their offices. And in Can. 6 n. 4 the 1917 Code directs anyone with doubts regarding excommunications for heresy, apostasy and schism to the sources for the law, the old law, which then is to be used as the law itself to govern the situation. That such doubts have existed for decades is clear. The book and later articles prove Cum ex… is the source for nearly every law regarding heresy in the Code and its explanation of the bull also made people aware that Paul IV had pegged the Vatican 2 antipopes as Antichrist and his system. But stay away from that crazy “papal election” lady, even if she long ago recanted her errors and is telling the truth! Updated proofs that Cum ex… is indeed retained in the Code and is the old law now prevailing under Can. 6 no. 4, are now available on my site here: https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/canonical-proofs-cum-ex-apostolatus-officio-is-retained-in-the-1917-code-of-canon-law/ Had Cum ex… been upheld as the binding and relevant document that it most certainly remains, des Lauriers could not have imposed his ridiculous theory, for Cum ex… declares that no such pre-election heretic raised to the papacy could ever be considered even quasi-legitimate.

The prejudices arising from this anti-Scholastic attitude have obscured the truth regarding the 1958 papal election ever since. Solidly grounded evidence based on papal decrees — not theological opinions — clearly show there was a way out of the invalid 1958 election had any of the bishops certainly validly consecrated under Pope Pius XII chosen to take it. Just because my 1990 book was used to help document a false election, held in good faith at the time, does NOT destroy the validity of the documents presented or the reasoning behind the presentation. Not one soul has ever taken this information and used it to verify John 23rd’s certainly invalid election, detailed in my most recent work, The Phantom Church in Rome, even though that information is the most conclusive proof available. And because of this prejudice, they have gone to unnecessary and extraordinary lengths to cite primarily pre-1959 theologians — not the laws and teachings of the popes as Pope Pius XII commands them to do in his encyclical Humani Generis below. And then they are only willing to admit des Lauriers ”thesis” was possibly “savoring heresy,” a minimalistic statement if there ever was one.

“God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, NOT EVEN TO THEOLOGIANS, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. But if the Church does exercise this function of teaching, as she often has through the centuries, either in the ordinary or in the extraordinary way, it is clear how false is a procedure which would attempt to explain what is clear by means of what is obscure. Indeed, the very opposite procedure must be used. Hence Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, teaching that the most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, added these words, and with very good reason: “in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church.”

The doubtful pope rule

There is an old axiom and actual practice of the Church, first put forward by St. Robert Bellarmine, that a doubtful pope is no pope, just as in Canon Law a certainly doubtful law is no law. The latter principle has been used extensively by Traditionalists who, in erroneously invoking epikeia, have wiped out many of the Canon Laws which in reality still apply to them. And yet they shrink from invoking the very same principle when it comes to disputing a questionably valid papal election. But it is this author’s experience that such hypocrisy is simply the modus operandi they have always resorted to. An explanation of the doubtful pope teaching is provided below.

“When there is a prudent doubt about the validity of an election to any official position, there is also a similar doubt whether the person so elected really has authority or not. In such a case no one is bound to obey him for it is an axiom that a doubtful law begets no obligation — lex dubia non obligat.” But a superior whom no one is bound to obey is in reality no superior at all. Hence the saying of Bellarmine: a doubtful pope is no pope. “Therefore,” continues the Cardinal, “if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason, the one elected should resign so that a new election may be held. But if he refuses to resign it becomes the duty of the bishops to adjust the matter. For although the bishops without the Pope cannot define dogma nor make laws for the universal Church, they can and ought to decide when occasion demands who is the legitimate Pope; and if the matter be doubtful they should provide for the Church by having a legitimate and undoubted pastor elected. That is what the council of Constance rightly did” (Bellarmine’s De concilio, Chapter 2:19; taken from Rev. E. S. Berry’s The Church of Christ, B. Herder Book Co., 1927, p. 402).

St. Robert Bellarmine is a Doctor of the Church. His opinion alone, theologians admit, coupled with Cum ex…, could have been used to justify any uncompromised bishops consecrated under Pius XII in proceeding to a new election. While this doubtful pope phrase was bandied about in different circles for years, its true source was never revealed, and we do not think this was simply a casual omission. For then it would have been given more credence, coming from a great Doctor, and that was not something that those comfortably ruling without a pope, given all the many problems such a venture would entail, had in mind. And there were other reasons that hit much closer to home that explain why neither Cum ex Apostolatus Officio nor St. Bellarmine’s teachings were invoked to at least attempt to end the painful crisis in the Church. These reasons are:

1.) If a doubtful pope is no pope, and they adopt this position, then a doubtful bishop also is no bishop, and plenty of doubt has been established regarding the consecration of Traditionalist “bishops” and ordination of “priests” by the schismatics Thuc and Lefebvre.

2.) If it once can be established with certainty that John 23 was never validly elected, (and it has been), and they admit this, then the next step would require them — rather than hang onto their titles and rule as “bishops” — to elect a true pope. And to be quite honest, that really is not something they are prepared to do; otherwise they would have done it long ago.

3.) They could not risk the possibility that in vetting such bishops for election using Cum ex…, in order to elect “a legitimate and undoubted pastor,” they would be disqualified as bishops. For all these men were at the very least supporters of the schismatic, heretical men who ordained and consecrated them and therefore, Cum ex… says, are to be held just as guilty as those they defend and cooperated with in the course of the offense. Ironically, Canons 2209 and 2316 regarding accomplices and their guilt in offenses have for their sources Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. Referring to the the Codicis Juris Canonici Fontes in nine volumes, by Cardinal Peter Gasparri, Rev. Nicholas J. Neuberger, in his work on Canon 6 (Catholic University of America, 1927) writes on page 70: “These old laws have juridical force only inasmuch as they are embodied in the Canons. They are the interpretive norms of the new law whenever the new and the old law coincide… [These old laws] are destitute of legal value unless the Code has embodied it in Canons… Thanks to the eminent Canonist Gasparri, not a little chaotic interpretation has been averted through the alignment of the SOURCES under each Canon.”

We read from Can. 2316: “A person who of his own accord and knowingly helps in any manner to propagate heresy OR who communicates in sacred rites (in divinas) with heretics in violation of the prohibition of Can. 1258 incurs suspicion of heresy,” and after six months falls under the prescriptions of Can. 2315 (Revs. Woywod-Smith). Canon 2315 states that if those communicating in the sacraments of heretics do not amend within six months, they are liable to the penalties for heresy. Any cooperation must be committed knowingly, yet Woywod-Smith comment under Can. 2200: “The authorities presume the subject knows the law and if he violates it he is considered to have broken it willfully. If he claims to be free from liability, the burden of proof rests with him.” Please tell me how those educated in these “erudite” Traditionalist seminaries, where students are supposed to complete the requisite courses in Canon Law, could have failed to apply these important canons to those ordaining and consecrating them?!! Not to mention Canons 2370 and 2372, suspending all these so-called clerics from acts of jurisdiction of any kind, even if received in good faith, until the Roman Pontiff lifts the suspension! Until it is lifted, they are forbidden to exercise the orders received.

But Traditionalists dismiss all these excommunications above to claim they act under the umbrella of Can. 2261 §2, a profoundly absurd conclusion. To begin with, they cannot even prove that they ever possessed any jurisdiction, which could issue only from certainly valid bishops commissioned by the Roman Pontiff they say does not exist. They freely admit they possessed no papal mandate to provide this ordinary (and delegated) jurisdiction. Their consecrators have even either publicly stated they DON’T possess such jurisdiction, or have insisted that Christ Himself provides it, a statement that contradicts the papal pronouncement by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis and Ad Sinarum Gentum (that bishops can exercise their jurisdiction only through the Roman Pontiff). So please explain how they can invoke a Canon that presumes that either the clerics it refers to already possess it, and may then exercise it, or that the Church will supply it, the Church meaning the Roman Pontiff, who no longer exists! Some pretend that epikeia allows them to act in this present emergency, but again: epikeia, a shaky legal principle at best, can scarcely provide them with the necessary canonical mission. These are the fairy tales Traditionalists expect their followers to believe.

Can. 2261 §2 also does not apply here simply because it is not addressing those excommunicated as heretics and schismatics as a result of communicatio in sacris and the subsequent penalties for heresy under Can. 2314. This is cooperating and communicating with heretics or with those who belong to a schismatic sect, so is a separate issue. Rev. Francis E. Hyland, in his 1928 Canon Law dissertation, Excommunication, comments on Can. 2261: “The question of whether excommunicates cease to be members of the Church has given rise to quite a controversy among theologians. Suarez is under the opinion that persons under ban of excommunication continue to be members of the Church…Bellarmine maintains that excommunicates cease to be members of the Church… According to the more common opinion of most of the recent dogmatic theologians the tolerati do not cease to be members of the Church, [but] with regard to the vitandi, the more commonly accepted opinion is that, at least temporarily, they are cut off from all external communion with the Church… Tanquerey remarks that the question has little practical bearing since the Church is wont to declare as vitandi only notorious heretics and schismatics.” SO FROM THESE REMARKS IT IS CLEAR: THOSE EXCOMMUNICATES UNDER CONSIDERATION IN THIS CANON ARE NOT THOSE EXCOMMUNICATED FOR HERESY AND SCHISM, FOR THESE ARE ALREADY OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, AS REV. TANQUEREY OBSERVES.

Tanquerey teaches in his Dogmatic Theology, Vol I, p. 160: “All theologians teach that publicly known heretics, that is those who belong to a heterodox sect through public profession or those who refuse the infallible teaching authority of the Church are excluded from the body of the Church even if their heresy is only material heresy.” This amounts to the unanimous opinion of theologians, which binds Catholics under pain of mortal sin. And as Msgr. J.C. Fenton reminds liberal-leaning theologians in his article “The Teaching Authority of the Theological Manuals,” to question Tanquerey’s theological works would be to insinuate he had misled the thousands of seminarians who trained from these works in the 20th century. Only the Roman Pontiff or a bishop or confessor authorized by him can lift these censures and none exist. Seminarians involved in the Novus Ordo or Traditionalist sects, all of which heretically teach that the Church can be constituted by bishops alone without the Roman Pontiff being one of those bishops, cannot receive valid tonsure according to Hyland. The web of lies, misinformation and deliberate confusion spun to entrap the uneducated is truly something tragic to witness.

All of this results from incurring the penalties listed under Can. 2314. The Code says those receiving orders from a heretic and/or schismatic are suspect of heresy under Can. 2315. If they do not amend after six months, they then incur all the penalties listed under Can. 2314, including infamy of law and tacit resignation of any offices, benefices etc. under Canon 188 no. 4, and also may be degraded. Yet many will have already incurred the penalty of Can. 2314 immediately, with their first public utterance of heresy or participation in schism. Everyone knew Lefebvre and Thuc both celebrated the Novus Ordo and signed documents at Vatican 2 — this is a matter of public record. They never really left the Novus Ordo church. So how is this not heresy given the change of Christ’s very words in the Consecration and the endorsement at Vatican 2 of John Murray’s religious liberty heresy?? Furthermore, Lefebvre’s contradiction of the Incarnation was well circulated in the early 1980s. Could anyone, then, possibly be exempt from these censures, given their supposed super Catholicity and “seminary training”?

Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis invalidations ignored

What is stated above should be more than enough to convince any rational person that Traditionalists are simply not the continuation of the Catholic Church. But the material-formal theory needs to be fully explained here and the final blow delivered to all its pretensions. For the reason that CMRI apologists could never properly evaluate the material-formal theory is key to why it was allowed to stand unchallenged as long as it did: They could not use the strongest condemnation available to debunk this theory because it blows ALL of their operations clean out of the water, and they know it. They may mention Pope Pius XII’s 1945 election law Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis in referring to papal elections, but when they do so, a very strange thing occurs. They omit the very paragraphs that prove this document infallible because it then would condemn all their actions.

1. “…We declare invalid and void any power or jurisdiction pertaining to the Roman Pontiff in his lifetime, which the assembly of Cardinals might decide to exercise (while the Church is without a Pope)…”

Comment: And if the assembly of cardinals, primarily bishops, didn’t possess it, then bishops such as Lefebvre, Thuc, and others are certainly meant here and even more so: for these men did not possess universal jurisdiction as did the cardinals. No worries, then, about the validity, intention or the jurisdiction Lefebvre, Thuc, et al exercised: all their ordinations and consecrations were null and void; for they usurped papal jurisdiction in dispensing from the papal mandate, and therefore never operated under the required jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff as they were bound to do. The Roman Pontiff alone has the exclusive right to establish a diocese and approve the establishment of seminaries (Canon 215).

3. The laws issued by Roman Pontiffs in no way can be corrected or changed by the assembly of Cardinals of the Roman Church while it is without a Pope, nor can anything be subtracted from them or added or dispensed in any way whatsoever with respect to said laws or any part of them. This prohibition is especially applicable in the case of Pontifical Constitutions issued to regulate the business of the election of the Roman Pontiff. In truth, if anything adverse to this command should by chance happen to come about or be attempted, We declare it, by Our Supreme Authority, to be null and void.

108. “…This present document and whatever is contained in it can by no means be challenged… and we command those individuals to whom it pertains and will pertain for the time being to vote, that the ordinances must be respectively and inviolably observed by them, and if anyone should happen to try otherwise relative to these things, by whatever authority, knowingly or unknowingly, the attempt is null and void.

Comment: This means all papal laws (no. 3), and that includes the laws governing jurisdiction which largely emanate from the Council of Trent and were approved by the popes. The footnotes to the laws on jurisdiction show numerous papal documents listed regarding their origin. These are not simply human laws; many are dogmatic, as is jurisdiction itself. Traditionalists cannot and do not possess any title to jurisdiction, which they attempt to dispense themselves from by invoking epikeia, or various other subterfuges. This also applies to Can.147, to which Pope Pius XII attached excommunications specially reserved to the Holy See regarding those who “allow anyone to be unlawfully intruded… into an ecclesiastical office” or “have any part directly or indirectly” in the same (Canon Law Digest, Vol. 3, under Can. 147).

We must also mention here their ridiculous moral/legal person principle, based on Canons 100, 101, that they have now invented to make it appear they have power and may yet rule over us for at least the next 35 years. They claim, using a “legal fiction,” which falls in the same category, from a legal standpoint, as epikeia, that this perpetuates the Church indefinitely. But no, Christ alone as the Head of His Mystical Body is what perpetuates the Church indefinitely whether it be a visible Church at this present moment or not. Canon Law clearly states that the perpetuation of the Roman Pontificate is accomplished only by his election, which “…is governed exclusively by the Constitution of Pope St. Pius X …, amended and completely revised by the Constitution Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis of Dec. 18, 1945” (Woywod-Smith). Both Pope St. Pius X’s law, in equivalent language, and that of Pope Pius XII, as follows, read: “…These… documents are manifestly and will be always and perpetually true, valid, and effective… Therefore, let it be permitted to no man to weaken this… Our constitution, ordinance, abrogation, commandment, binding order, warning, prohibition, precept, and will, or to go against it by a rash undertaking. Moreover, if anyone presumes to attempt this, let him know that he will incur for it the anger of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

Obviously this warning, which also appears in Cum ex… and Quo Primum, does not phase Traditionalists, for they refuse to concede that Vacantis Apostolocae Sedis is the governing document for this interregnum. They will use the warning in Quo Primum to defend their rights regarding the Mass, then ignore it to avoid casting any doubt on their authority.

Material-formal thesis is actually heretical

And so we come to the grand finale. In his The True Story of the Vatican Council, Henry Cardinal Manning notes it was the Western Schism and the rise of Gallicanism that first brought up the question of infallibility. It was during this time-period the Gallicanists began to distinguish between the infallibility of the person occupying the See and the See itself. Manning then goes into greater depth regarding the line of popes versus the individual occupant of the See, writing as follows: “They distinguished between …the See and him that sat in it… [They] denied the infallibility of the person while they affirmed the infallibility of the See…The doctrine affirmed by the schools and by the Holy See was that infallibility attaches to the office, and that the office is held not by many, as if in commission, but by one… Peter’s office, with all its prerogatives, is perpetual and his office is borne by the person who succeeds to his place” (p. 59-61).

On page 130 of his Dogmatic Theology, Vol. I, quoted above, Tanquerey explains: “This distinction” (that the Gallicanists held between the chair and him who occupies it) “is entirely foreign to the minds of the Fathers. for they gave their obedience to the ruling Pontiff himself. Too, this distinction would take away from the pontiff all authority since each one could then declare that he was adhering to the infallible chair of Peter but not to the pontiff who at that particular time was occupying it and who was guilty of error.” So the material-formal hypothesis is only a regurgitated version of this heresy. It assigns jurisdiction to the office and not to the man, separating the two, when they cannot be separated. This denies the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council: “If anyone thus speaks, that the Roman Pontiff has only the office of inspection or direction, but not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church… let him be anathema” (DZ 1831).

It also implicates des Lauriers in the following heresies:

• DZ 570d: “Whether you have believed, have held or are prepared to believe that…all the Roman Pontiffs… succeeding Blessed Peter have entered canonically and will enter canonically, [and] have [actually] succeeded Blessed Peter the Roman Pontiff…” (proposed for belief to the Armenians).
• Also DZ 674: “Likewise whether he believes that the pope canonically elected, who lived for a time after having expressed his own name is the successor of the blessed Peter, having supreme authority in the Church of God” (proposed for belief to the Wycliffites and Hussites at Constance).
Des Lauriers obviously believed that the cardinals, (who all later showed themselves to be the traitors they really were), were not deposed as a result of heresy and therefore conducted a legitimate election. But then he refuses to accept the result of that same election as fully legitimate. Therefore he denies, per the first proposition, that a truly canonical election has its inevitable full effect and per the second proposition he denies that such effect bestowed on the one elected grants full and supreme authority to rule.

Q. What is canonical election?
A. Election held according to the Sacred Canons (Canon Law).

Q. What canons govern a papal election?
A. Primarily Canon 160; papal election law is special law, so no other law really governs it. It is to be used primarily as its own interpretation. This is especially true since Pope Pius XII’s election law, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis is clearly infallible.

Q. Can any other canons be used?
A. Those listed in Pius XII’s election law itself, including Can. 188 no. 4, para. 36, which has as its footnoted source Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. (See Latin Version of the Code). In cases of doubt, parallel passages of the Code also can be used under Can. 18 regarding ecclesiastical elections, since these, Rev. Anscar Parsons tells us in his work Canonical Elections, (CUA Canon Law dissertation, 1939) were used as the basis for papal election law. One other very important Canon also can be used and that is Can 2391 §1, which states under election offences: “A college which knowingly elects an unworthy person is automatically deprived, for that particular election, of the right to hold a new election.”

Can there still be a certainly valid papal election?

So what happens once it is realized there is an actual vacancy and an urgent need to elect a Roman Pontiff? Today, nothing. It takes certainly valid bishops, acting in place of the cardinals, to elect a true pope, and none today exist who could be confirmed as valid. Determining such validity would require a canonically elected pope, and the restoration of the papacy is a problem only God alone, in His infinite wisdom, can resolve. Evil men orchestrated the protracted vacancy we see today and attempting to fill the Papal See by electing another unworthy candidate will only set the Church on an even more dangerous course. In fact, it would make even less sense, and could be considered no different — since all potential electors could be considered only laymen — than the 1990 “election” of Michael in Kansas. At least in 1990 there was yet hope that bishops would rally who were consecrated by Pope Pius XII, but today they have all passed away. And the validity of any claiming to have received valid consecration, but who perhaps have been hidden or unknown, would need to be confirmed by truly unexplainable miracles, as St. Francis de Sales teaches in his The Catholic Controversy, echoing Pope Benedict XIV.

All of the above is solidly grounded on papal teaching and Canon Law, which in large part contains the laws of councils and the Roman Pontiffs. What is presented by CMRI “clergy” regarding the material/formal issue relies on the opinions of theologians, with a few papal quotes here and there, not all of them relevant. Their arguments are presented as though they follow scholastic form, but we are not dealing here with scholastic philosophy, which treats of opinions which must be proven, but with dogmatic theology, which must simply be believed! Canon Law is negatively infallibly, regardless of whether Traditionalists brush it off as mere “human law.” Even papal opinions are binding in many cases and are certainly more authoritative by far than those of the theologians. But what is cited above are not opinions but binding papal teachings that have been ignored for decades. Traditionalists need to decide if they want a CATHOLIC Church with at least obedience to all the papal decrees we have today or a PROTESTANT church with bishops and no pope — like the Old Catholics, the Anglicans, or even the Methodists — because that is what they have at the moment. And it was all by design, conceived long ago, as Our Lady warned at La Salette.

What des Lauriers did was not done just to keep Sedes “under the Novus Ordo umbrella.” It was done to make it impossible for even the educated laity to figure out how to determine with any certainty that the usurpers could never be considered even quasi-legitimate, that they were not popes at least materially and that a papal election was not only necessary but the only thing bishops could do to perpetuate the Church. And here we are speaking ONLY of bishops consecrated under Pope Pius XII who were not mentally or canonically compromised as was Thuc. To the best of my knowledge, the only one suggesting an imperfect council or conclave at that time was myself and a few others who later disappeared from the scene. It was general knowledge in the late 1980s — when many of those Traditionalists now talking trash on social media were only youngsters — that such an election was not only possible but necessary and gravely urgent to preserve apostolicity. But not only was des Lauriers working against it but others as well, as can be seen in the Ramirez letter here (scroll down to the last several paragraphs) https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/intention-undeniably-lacking-in-trad-episcopal-consecrations-and-an-important-update/. This link also provides the rest of the documentation proving that bishops consecrated under Pope Pius XII were obligated to elect a pope and shows how those now calling themselves Traditional bishops can in no way be considered certainly valid, according to papal teaching.

With a lot of prayer and hard work such a valid election might even have been possible. That it was not possible is because those claiming to be Catholic theologians and clergy suppressed and dismissed papal documents that should have led us out of this horrible nightmare. But they had their own plans: A Church without a pope, without doctrinal limitations, without scholastic theology, without the papal discipline that kept all the bishops and cardinals in line. In other words, the democratic church of the Gallicanists and the Modernists, hatched long ago. Read the chronicles of the heretic Marsilius of Padua in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia and Lemius’ Catechism of Modernism, if there are any doubts. Basically what des Lauriers and Sedes did was to allow all the bishops consecrated under Pope Pius XII to slowly die while the controversies about “true papal restoration” raged and confusion reigned. They knew at some point the usurper situation would come to a head, as it has now done. This allowed them to ultimately monopolize the playing field as the only possible alternative.

Traditionalists have made pray-at-home Catholics out to be a bunch of lazy losers who prefer to neglect the graces offered by their “Sacraments” and can’t be bothered to attend a Latin “mass.” They ignore all their doctrinal objections to Traditionalism and do not even give them credit for following their conscience. They treat them as a threat to the membership of their churches, as if the adherents to this position are even organized or capable of organizing. They must see them as a real threat, if they felt compelled to ridicule and denigrate them as they have done. But why?

Silence and suppression signal danger

The suppression of Cum ex Apostolatus Officio has been treated on my site at length. It can be traced to the very Masonic influences at play in the founding of the early Traditionalist organizations (see https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/?s=Masonic+Origins) and this answers the question posed above in large part. The absolute silence surrounding Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis is more ominous. For this is an indisputably infallible document that makes it crystal clear that no one may presume to pretend to possess any authority during an interregnum whatsoever; the only thing that can be done is to elect a true pope. And if they do so presume, it is null and void. It is the one document that provides a blueprint, in addition to Cum ex…, for restoring the Church. To the best of my knowledge, my site is the only place where these and other pertinent documents can be found. Is this not proof of suppression? As a community news reporter, I dealt with this sort of thing for many years while fighting government corruption and election fraud. I know suppression and concealment when I see it. It has been rampant in Traditional circles from the beginning, and I have observed it at work in both print as well as online Traditional publications for decades. It is no different than the dishonesty and corruption we see in media circles today. And it has deprived those seeking Catholic truth of the information they desperately need to make informed decisions about their faith.

Catholic restoration could have taken place long ago and the Francis dilemma is only a final culmination of the destruction wrought in the Church because Traditionalists fouled the waters. There was an answer to all this, one we were bound to follow, once it became clear there was no longer any way to elect a pope. But no one wished to hear it, least of all those parading as bishops. And no one has exposed the consequences of failing to acknowledge it and follow it. I am talking about following the safer course regarding the validity of the Sacraments. According to Canon Law, the theologians Revs. McHugh and Callan, Rev. H.J. Davis, Rev. Dominic Prummer and other theologians consulted, it is the unanimous opinion of all theologians that one is never allowed to use a probable opinion when administering or receiving the Sacraments. A probable opinion consists in finding at least six authors who will agree that the Sacraments can be received in a prolonged emergency from those who are not certainly validly ordained and consecrated. And all of us who were deceived by Traditionalists paid a very dear price for their failure to equip us for the very trying times that face us today. Now it is clear why they see homealone as such a threat. But they will never tell their followers that failing to form their consciences correctly can involve them in grave sin.

Failing to follow the safer course and its consequences

Traditionalists have never presented such an array of opinions as they are required to at least try to do to justify their actions because they will not even countenance the possibility that they are not certainly valid. This despite the penalties decreed by Canon Law, the irrefutable evidence in Mystici Corporis and Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, also a host of other papal documents and those issuing from the Sacred Congregations. All of these binding documents teach that without the Roman Pontiff Traditionalists cannot function and that if they do so function, during an interregnum, all their actions are null and void. We are talking here about infallible documents so how could any true Catholic possible object that these do not apply to us today? But even if they could produce a probable opinion, it would be worthless in this situation because we cannot use probable opinions regarding the validity of the Sacraments. This is based on the condemnation of the following by Bd. Pope Innocent XI:

“It is not illicit in conferring the Sacraments to follow a probable opinion regarding the value of the Sacrament, the safer opinion being abandoned…” (DZ 1151). This is condemned as scandalous and pernicious, but we must remember what Pope Pius IX has said in this regard: “But since it is not sufficient to shun heretical iniquity unless these errors also are shunned which come more or less close to it, we remind all of the duty of observing also the constitutions and decrees by which base opinions of this sort, which are not enumerated explicitly here, have been prescribed and prohibited by this Holy See” (DZ 1820, The Vatican Council).

Is there a penalty for ignoring something held by the unanimous opinion of theologians? Yes there is, and it is described as a mortal sin of temerity in Fr. Sixtus Cartechini’s On the Value of Theological Notes and the Criteria for Discerning Them (1951). So by ignoring the obligation of acknowledging doubt regarding such validity, one is voluntarily committing mortal sin. But there is more involved here than just this. Refusing to accept an infallible papal decree forbidding the usurpation of papal jurisdiction and the attenuation of papal laws under penalty of nullity is an implicit denial of the supremacy of papal jurisdiction, defined by the Vatican Council. That is heresy and in fact, accepting bishops as the continuation of the Catholic Church without one of those bishops being the Roman Pontiff is also heresy, given the need for all bishops to be subject to the Roman Pontiff, particularly in receiving the papal mandate. All Traditionalists including CMRI choose to argue this in a fashion that excludes a host of papal decrees and focuses on only one papal document, Ad Apostolorum Principis, when this document does not in any way address the circumstances existing during an interregnum.

There was a solution to all this, one that those praying at home have practiced all these years. But this private existence gave no one any status, or pride of membership, or a hook to hang their hat on as Traditionalism offered its adherents. It is what the Apocalypse describes as the Church being swept away into the wilderness (Apoc. 12:6) following the death of Pius XII; and then again, being carried into the desert on the wings of a great eagle (Apoc. 12:14), which Fr. E.S. Berry interprets as prayer and contemplation. Rev. Leo Haydock says this means Catholics will worship God in a private manner. And this, I believe, is where we are today. Such a time was anticipated by the priest quoted below, an article kindly brought to the author’s attention by a regular reader. It is an excerpt from a column on Communism written by author Solange Hertz for The Wanderer in the 1980s, (followed by my comments).

“Fr. François Dufay, who witnessed the battle at close quarters in China [in the 1940s], says to lose no time in preparing the Church of the Catacombs: “Take as principle that normal exterior life – liturgy, teaching, apostolate – should continue as far as possible [but only when certainly valid clergy are available — Ed.]. But, at the same time, prepare Christians to preserve their essential religious life in the absence of priests, worship and Sacraments… Prepare memory aids on the dogmas of necessary means, marriage without clergy, perfect contrition, assistance to the dying, Baptism, child education, etc., and place these leaflets in safe places…”
Comment: This is what the Jesuits did for the Japanese, which allowed them to continue the practice of their faith for 200 years. Why have Traditionalists done nothing but teach their followers that they cannot possibly keep the faith without priests, when so many have been forced to do this in the past? Where is their real love for their flocks and the Church?

“It would be good if trustworthy priests of high caliber were to set themselves to living the life of the people. They need profound dogmatic and spiritual formation, especially on the theology of the Church, the meaning and value of persecution and suffering, and should be steeped in the remembrance of the great saints and martyrs of the past. Thus armed, the Christian faith will use its bad times for growth in charity,” making the most of the service Communism will render it by purifying and detaching it from all that is not God here below. And again, “Actually it’s solitaries who must be found and trained, in other words, Christians capable of living their faith all alone, amid the strongest pressures, the most painful happenings and the most forbidding of deserts.”

Comment: High Caliber priests? Living in with the people? This is dream stuff. And oh, please, don’t torment Traditionalists with the scary thought that they might be ISOLATED !! Hasn’t anyone read the Imitation of Christ on the value of shutting oneself away from the world? That’s what happens when spiritual formation is neglected; when “devout Catholics” are allowed to gossip and calumniate people on social media sites while the dance band on the Titanic is playing its last tune. Here we are, facing untold dangers, and these people have been given absolutely no tangible tools to help them save their souls.

“The Counter-revolution began in Eden with the Revolution itself, for there on the spot God told the serpent, “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15). Centuries later, when the battle was approaching a climax in Russia in 1917, this “woman” appeared on earth at Fatima to warn that “the errors of Russia” would overflow the whole world unless supernatural means were marshalled against them.

“Of necessity the “errors of Russia” can be overcome only by supernatural force because there are no natural means superior to them. Given the impairment of nature by original sin, there are no natural means which are even proportioned to these “errors”. Certainly no material weapons can destroy Communism’s battlements, let alone shoot down its ideas. No political position can withstand it. No mere strategy can outwit it that is not rooted in grace. The defeat of Communism will be effected by prayer and penance, in the name of Him who before His Passion said, “In the world you will have affliction. But take courage, I have overcome the world!” (John 16:33). It is not the dictatorship of the proletariat which is “inevitable,” but the triumph of the Church!”

Comment: The primary error of Russia, schism, has already devastated the Church. Obviously not enough people fulfilled Our Lady’s request for prayer and sacrifice. We now live in the times of Antichrist and Traditionalists need to accept this fact and prepare themselves accordingly. The Sacrifice ceased under Roncalli and Montini and will be seen no more, unless Our Lord in His goodness restores it to us. We see Antichrist’s system rushing to its inevitable grand finale as we speak. Those who prefer lies to truth will perish with him and his system, rather than acknowledge the truth. Hugo Maria Kellner was right when he went against the St. Pius X Society and its Masonic founder, Marcel Lefebvre, in the 1970s: those who cannot face the terrible fact that we indeed live in these times will never believe that Antichrist has come, no more than the Jews believed Christ was their Messiah. Henry Cardinal Manning also commented that Catholics would be incredulous when the time of Antichrist approached. If Traditionalists of every stripe wish to finish their days as the very enemies of Christ ended theirs, they can continue hiding behind the skirts of their “pastors.” Or, as Fr. Dufay urges above, they can unite, educate themselves, and finally become the Soldiers of Christ they were called to become and were always meant to be.

Conclusion

A Trojan horse refers to an ancient Greek strategy once used to fool an enemy. It is an idiom writers sometimes employ to indicate the secret penetration of a place previously believed to be secure. The material-formal thesis was just such a Trojan horse, a hollow proposition that allowed those not certainly validly consecrated or ordained to creep in and pose as the clerical heirs of the true Catholic Church. It enabled them to appear to reign over their non-assigned subjects with the illusion that they were operating either under an allowable emergency clause (epikeia, a quasi-legal principle employed by Gallicanist heretics) and/or a quasi-authority which might someday be restored. This is why Cum ex…, reaffirmed by Pope St. Pius V, had to be relegated to the garbage heap.

For it clearly stated that NO ONE could ever be restored to their offices in this case after committing heresy, apostasy or schism and that none of them could ever be considered even “quasi-legitimate.” If ever anyone set out to overthrow the papacy, as CMRI has accused pray-at-home Catholics of doing, it was Traditionalists. They had a plan and they executed it, running roughshod over canon law, the existing infallible law on papal elections, and a clearly infallible papal bull to rule unopposed as the mini-popes they pretend to be. They simply bided their time until all those bishops consecrated by Pope Pius XII expired, allowing them to move ahead for whatever they have planned regarding the papacy.

Truth has never been an easy thing to accept or practice. Catholicism was never intended to be a personality cult where bishops and priests were set on lofty pedestals and adored as idols, reverenced as gurus of a personality cult, never corrected, never questioned or held to account. Even St. Paul resisted St. Peter “to his face.” Such adulation is even more crass when it is offered to those who are grossly unworthy of such honors — men who were never vetted by the required ecclesiastical authorities to determine their fitness for the priesthood, never properly trained and who are only questionably valid; men who act as though they are both impeccable and infallible and answer to no one except the craven will of their followers, if that.

Rev. Aloysius Biskupek, S.T.D wrote in his 1941 work Priesthood that according to Can. 1371, “Disorderly, incorrigible, or seditious [rebellious] students, and those who because of their character or temperament do not seem suitable candidates for the clerical state, shall be dismissed from the seminary… If a seminarian should be guilty of an offense against good morals or the faith he shall be summarily discharged.” And many were the reports in these seminaries of such misconduct during the days of Sanborn and Cekada. But who was keeping score? Certainly not Traditionalists!

Biskupek defines incorrigible as those who: “know [their] faults and [do] not correct them despite repeated warnings…This indicates either lack of will power or pride or failure to grasp the import of priestly responsibility…As a very young man he is too proud to correct his faults. He has been warned, he has been shown that his conduct does not agree with the spirit of the seminary and is out of harmony with the ideals of the priestly life; yet he did not change. To do so would have been an admission that he was wrong, he would have had to submit to someone else’s will; this he could not bring himself to do.” It was precisely these sort of priestly candidates that Pope St. Pius X wished to root out from Catholic seminaries.

In his encyclical condemning the Modernists, Pope St. Pius X wrote: “It is owing to their pride that they seek to be the reformers of others while they forget to reform themselves, and that they are found to be utterly wanting in respect for authority, EVEN FOR THE SUPREME AUTHORITY. … For this reason, Venerable Brethren, it will be your first duty to resist such victims of pride… Examine most carefully your young clerics by yourselves and by the directors of your seminaries, and when you find the spirit of pride among them reject them without compunction from the priesthood. Would to God that this had always been done with the vigilance and constancy which were required!” (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

This utter want of respect for the Supreme Authority — the papacy, and ultimately Our Lord Himself — is certainly the manifestation of an almost Satanic pride. This is especially evidenced in the absolute refusal of these men to cease functioning until their status is determined by a canonically elected Pope. Rev. F. McElhone, in his Particular Examen, 1951, asked penitents the following questions to determine the existence of pride of authority: “Have I a superior, know-it-all attitude in arguments? Do I refuse to give consideration to what they state? Do I try to see both sides of a question? Have I tried to argue reasonably? Is it hard for me to yield a point? Do I argue in my own defense, even when I know I am wrong? Have I lied about others? Am I prone to belittle persons, places or things? Do I argue with anger, personal animus (ad hominem attacks), uncharitableness?” And a quick glance through these questions easily shows that Traditionalist pseudo-clergy have consistently violated every one of them. They have not even hesitated to lie in order to defend their validity (Cekada’s falsification of the wording in DZ 960 and 967 from the Council of Trent).

They have refused for decades to answer serious charges in the manner demanded by scholastic theologians, using ad hominem attacks and belittling techniques to shame opponents instead (Cekada and the homealone tag). No consideration whatsoever has been given to valid points made and the demands for proofs that these pseudo-clerics are indeed worthy of the lofty status accorded them, proofs they strictly owe their followers, have been met with absolute silence. There has been no rational argumentation whatsoever and no consideration in the least of anyone’s objections that might interfere with the Traditionalist/ Sedevacantist agenda. So where is the REAL dedication given their much-vaunted “obligation” to effect the “salvation of souls?

As McElhone notes, “Pride is an excessive love of self [that] places one in opposition to God, since it makes one work for one’s own glory… [it] is a complete or a partial forgetfulness of God… [God] commands those following a vocation to help others. That obligation of leading others to holiness and salvation is ever present.” If any of these men truly believed they had a vocation and were really dedicated to saving souls, they would have the humility to admit they cannot function as clerics and resign. That is true humility — for as St. Vincent de Paul says: “The reason why God is such a great Lover of humility is that He is a great Lover of truth. Humility is in fact truth, while pride is nothing but lying.” The entire Traditionalist trap was a lie from the beginning, as Catholic writer Mary Lejeune warned in the 1970s. Traditionalists would rather remain in mortal sin and lose their very souls, defending their deceivers to the very end, rather than admit that there are, at the very least, grave doubts regarding their validity. Such doubts (those regarding the Thuc consecrations) have even been documented by those of their own ilk, such as “Bp.” Clarence Kelly in his The Sacred and the Profane.

These men belittle every layman who crosses them, simply because they can point to their pretended elevated status as bishops or priests to dismiss their objections. They hang on to their claim to the episcopacy for dear life, for then they can point to the very Canon Laws they misinterpret and summarily dismiss and triumphantly (but falsely) pronounce they are immune from censure. Clearly it is Satanic pride that causes them to remain in their self-appointed positions, primarily to appear to have the authority to condemn, instruct and direct others, when this is in direct contradiction to God’s will and the teachings of His Vicar on earth. Is it not the earthly equivalent of the very same sin, committed by the wicked angels, with Lucifer at their head, who refused to believe God was not Lucifer’s equal and who then spat at Him, “I will not serve”? But people forget, Christ and His earthly vicar rule as one Head. Therefore these Luciferian men and those defending them have refused to serve both, by failing to follow papal teachings. And Lucifer’s new angels are following their lead.

It was Christ who entrusted St. Peter with the keys to rule in His stead and the power to bind and loose. The pope is Christ on earth; the popes have told us this themselves. Deny Christ’s Vicar and deny the Incarnation; this matter of sorting out what the Church truly expects Catholics to believe in order to be saved is a deadly serious business. This is not a childish game to gain likes and followers; it is not a cutesy debate forum; it is not a hotly contested high school football team rivalry. This is a life and death struggle for souls and spiritual survival, and as seen above, Traditionalists are the ones who are losing.

Pride earned Hell for Lucifer. Traditionalists alone can decide if it will be their downfall as well.

We are the church

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 18, 2022

The True Definition of the Priesthood of the Laity

There are many negative connotations attached to the title of this subsection. But for all the negativity surrounding this term, it is firmly based in Scripture and expounded upon sublimely by Pope Pius XII. First, we shall examine the occurrence of this phrase in the Old and New Testament: Old Testament – “And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5, 6.)

“You shall be called priests of the Lord; to you it shall be said: Ye ministers of our God.” (Isaias, as quoted by Leeming.)

New Testament – “…You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people God has purchased.” (I Peter 2:9.)

“He has …made us a royal race of priests, to serve God, his Father.” (Apoc. 1:5-6.) “…they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Apoc. 20:6.)

St. Augustine comments on the above as follows: “Now this is not meant only of those whom the Church specifically calls bishops and priests, but as we are all called Christians because of our mystical Chrism, our unction, so are we all priests in being the members of one priest.” (I St. Peter 2:9, City of God, Book 20, Chapter 10.)

What do the Fathers say concerning this royal priesthood of the laity?

St. Justin – “We, who … believe as one man in God… have put off … our sins … and are set on fire by the world of his calling and are the true high priestly race of God. God therefore testifies that all who, through His name, offer the sacrifices which Jesus the Christ commanded … are acceptable to Him.”

St. Hilary – “Let not nobility of birth make anyone disdainful of others; let them remember that it was said of those who are born anew in Christ: ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.’”

St. Leo the Great (Pope) – “…for by baptism, according to the teaching of St. Peter, the royal dignity of the priesthood is common to you all. The anointing of the Holy Spirit has consecrated all of you as priests … Even if the mysterious grace of Him who holds it, descends with greater abundance upon members who hold high peace, it flows with no sparing generosity upon those of lesser degree.”

St. Jerome – In summarizing the arguments of St. Jerome with the Luciferan, Helladius, we must observe that Jerome denied the necessity of reconsecration/ordination when receiving a bishop back from heresy on the following grounds: “…If a laymen confesses that he has erred, how can he remain a layman in the Church? Let him put aside his lay priesthood … his baptism … and I will grant [him] … repentance. For it is written: ‘He has made us a kingdom and priests to God, his Father’ ”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem – (The author who presents these opinions of the Fathers, notes that St. Cyril identifies the anointing in solemn baptism as that specific initiation into the royal nation and priesthood of Christ.) “…This Chrism had its symbol in the Old Testament. For when Moses… anointed Aaron, [he] …was called Christ or anointed, from…’Chrism’… . To them these things happened in figure, but to you. in truth; because you were truly anointed by the Holy Ghost.”

St. Augustine – “… For now we are all anointed, something that was done formerly only for kings and priests … when St. Peter proclaimed … the Christian people… ‘a royal priesthood; he meant that both names belong to the people to whom the anointing belongs.”

St. Maximus of Turin – “In the Old Law, this anointing conferred a temporal royalty, a temporal priesthood. But this anointing conferred upon you, has given you the dignity of a priesthood which does not pass away once it has been received …you have received through…Chrism, the kingship of the glory to come, and the priesthood.”

St. Gregory of Nazianzus – (Summing up the teachings of the fathers on Baptism) “By the gift of Christ we understand… baptism, because sin is taken away in the water; anointing, because it confers something sacred and royal, priesthood and kingship. ”

Pius XII, in his encyclical Mediator Dei, writes: “By reason of their baptism, Christians are in the Mystical Body and become by a common title members of Christ, the Priest; by the ‘character’ which is graven upon their souls, they are appointed to the worship of God therefore, according to their condition, they share in the priesthood of Christ Himself.” (The above quotes from the fathers and Pius XII were taken from Principles of Sacramental Theology, Bernard Leeming, S.J.; Chapter 7, Sect. II, principle V.)

Reverend Leeming further observes that confirmation perfects this seal of Baptism and quotes from St. Thomas as follows: “In Baptism [man] receives power to do those things which pertain to his own salvation. whereas in confirmation, he receives power to do those things which pertain to the spiritual combat with the enemies of the faith. This is evident from the example of the Apostles who, before they received the fullness of the Holy Ghost, were ‘in the upper room… persevering in prayer; whereas, afterward they feared not to confess their faith in public, even in the face of enemies of the Christian faith.” (Summa III; Q-72, A-5.) Leeming comments: “Christ’s priesthood consists, not exclusively in offering the sacrifice of mankind to God, but includes also the bringing of the truth of God to mankind.” (p. 237.)

To clarify the role of the laity as ‘priests and kings’ further we offer the distinction made by the Catechism of the Council of Trent between an internal and an external priesthood. “ Sacred Scripture describes a twofold priesthood, one internal and the other external… . Regarding the internal priesthood, all the faithful are said to be priests, once they have been washed in the saving waters of baptism … The just… have been made living members of the great High Priest, Jesus Christ; for enlightened by faith which is inflamed by charity, they offer up spiritual sacrifices to God on the altar of their hearts… . The external priesthood … does not pertain to the faithful at large, but only to certain men … devoted to a particular sacred ministry … everyone knows the many and various precepts given by the Lord to Moses and Aaron regarding the external priesthood.” McHugh and Callan, p. 330-331.)

The Catechism then goes on to warn the faithful against confusing the two forms of priesthood and usurping priestly functions. Pius XII makes this distinction clear in Mediator Dei: “The fact, however, that the faithful participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice does not mean that they also have the power of a priest. It is very necessary that you make this clear to your flocks.” (DZ 2300.) Already, Pius XII envisioned those errors which were to become reality in the Novus Ordo, for he specifically condemns the notion that “…the priest acts only in virtue of an office delegated to him by the community,” and also the idea that “…it is more proper that priests should ‘concelebrate’ with people present, rather than offer the sacrifice privately with no people present.” (Also DZ 2300.)

In his The Role of the Laity in the Church, Msgr. Gerard Philips writes: “…the laity before God enjoys a royal and priestly privilege. In the past, some have sadly misinterpreted this truth, and more than one heretic has used it to restrict or suppress the hierarchical priesthood. Whenever this happens, the Church shifts her emphasis to the contested point, and the doctrine of the universal vocation is relegated to the background. And so, error causes unfortunate results in both directions.” (p. 58.) Certainly we have been witnesses of this phenomena. Once the “lay ministers” and “concelebrants” of the Novus Ordo appeared on the scene, Traditionalists entrenched themselves so firmly on the opposite wide of this question, that all possibility of active and licit lay involvement in the Church was excluded. Now, we must bring this doctrine once again to the fore, but taking care at the same time to guard against any abuses.

While we cannot participate in the Holy Sacrifice at this time we can be a part of Christ’s earthly sacrifice by offering ourselves as a living holocaust in the absence of the Mass. As Pope Pius XII teaches, “[the faithful] unite their prayers of praise, petition, expiation, and thanksgiving to the prayers and intention of the priest, and the High Priest Himself… It is by reason of this participation that the offering made by the people is a part of liturgical worship.” (Mediator Dei.)

Today, the Catholic Church lies at death’s door, Her sacraments violated, a usurper occupying the Holy See and Her priesthood and episcopacy extinguished. False shepherds now lead souls along the paths to perdition, who were once destined to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. In the past, there were always to be found hierarchy and laity to champion the Church’s rights. Today, the successors of the Apostles have fled for fear of the Jews, and all that remains is the laity. There is a saying that runs: “Work as if everything depended on you, and pray as if everything depended on God.” God expects us to do our part. Faith without works is dead. The Church lies in ruins; the Mystical Body of Christ lies unconscious and bleeding in the gutter where the enemy has left Him to die again. Can we be penalized for wishing to bathe and restore this bruised and battered body by obeying God, doing penance and praying at home?

Vox Populi, Vox Dei

The voice of the people is the voice of God. Since the earliest centuries, this has been said of the laity, even up to the reign of Pius XII himself. In the cause of canonization, in the definition of dogma, and even in the day to day administration of the Church, the popes have always taken into consideration the desires and opinions of the faithful. The theologians Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo observe that. “The faithful, in so far as they are the recipients of this teaching (of their bishops and the Pope) …and assimilate the doctrines without error, enjoy a sort of reflex infallibility called by theologians, passive infallibility.” (Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, p. 83.) This lay infallibility has been commended by the popes themselves. In his book, The Catholic Church in Action, Michael Williams tells us:

“Pius IX, in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus (1854), promulgating the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, said that the masses of the faithful had contributed greatly to keeping this dogma alive through the centuries. The same fact was stated by Pius XII in his encyclical, Munifittissimus Deus (1954), proclaiming the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, when he stressed the “unique agreement between the Catholic bishops and the faithful concerning this article of faith.” (p. 311. Notice that Pius XII mentioned only bishops, not priests, because priests only teach by virtue of delegated jurisdiction.) This is not to say that both in the past, as well as in the present era, the laity has not gravely overstepped the bounds set for them by the Church to prevent their interference in ecclesiastical affairs. It seems that in the early days of the Church, however, Christians possessed loyalty, obedience, and charity in a much higher degree, and this prevented them from taking advantage of some of the special privileges granted them by the Pope and bishops.

Undoubtedly this was true, partly, because of the people to bishop ratio; Church elders could keep closer watch on the activities of the faithful. But it should more readily be credited to the fact that the indwelling of the Holy Ghost was exhibited in a greater degree in early Christians; (a) because of their chronological proximity to the coming of Christ, and (b) because Our Lord knew they would need this assistance if they were to prepare the ground from which His Church would bloom in profusion, having been richly fertilized by the bloody sacrifices of the early martyrs. After the persecutions abated, abuses began to creep in, and many of the customs and privileges common to the early laity, either fell into desuetude or were abrogated, owing to their abuse by certain individuals. (Leave it to a few bad apples to ruin the whole barrel!)

We observed earlier that in danger of death, where no priest could be obtained and the penitent must be absolved from a censure, medieval canonists believed laymen could absolve from such censures. St. Thomas also taught that when no priest was available, one could confess to a prudent layman (although we advise caution in this area.) But gradually, the understanding of the layman in this light was lost as Christendom edged closer and closer to the disorders and persecutions which ensued following the Protestant Reformation. Finally, lay involvement had to be downplayed, simply because laymen had crossed over to Cranmer and Luther for the express purpose of greater freedom to “understand” and “participate” in the liturgy of these sects. For that reason, the juridic status of the layman was not much discussed until some 300 years later.

Catholic Action

Originally, Catholic Action began as a sort of national reaction of Catholics in Italy to the disintegrating political situation, which prevailed there in the 19th century. Pius IX endorsed this mobilization of the laity there to fight the antiChristian forces. This movement progressed in fits and starts until a general sorting out of negative elements occurred in the early part of this century. Following this occurrence, Pope Leo XIII issued a cry for unity, when he stated in 1902: “The action of Catholics, of whatever sort, will proceed with a larger effectiveness if all their associations … have one and the same directing and moving force at their head.” This head he referred to was the Opera dei Congressi, at that time the association directing the action of the laity. It was later to fail during the pontificate of his successor. Pius X took further measures to organize Catholic Action and remove from it any taint of political affiliation and partisanship and reorganized its various members into five separate groups.

This lasted for nine years, until the next Pope, Benedict XV, once again reorganized the various groups under the name Unione Popolare. The amazing growth of Catholic Action during the years of the first World War made it necessary for Pius XI to, once again, entirely restructure the movement. This he did in his encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei. Although directed to the Italian Catholics, the norms of this encyclical were used to establish Catholic Action groups throughout the world. In laying down these guidelines, the Pope was careful to establish the fact that Catholic Action must be carried out under the supervision of the bishop and with the assistance and guidance of parish priests.

Pius XII continued to promote Catholic Action and, in his encyclical, Mediator Dei, he defined the meaning of lay priesthood and commended those active in this movement for their effective propagation of the faith. Thus did the role of the layman come full circle in the Church. But was this wonderful maturity realized by the faithful to wither prematurely on the vine with the abuses of the usurper popes? Were the laity intended to stand idle in the vineyards during the worst crises of the Church’s sojourn on earth simply because there were no priests, no bishops to guide them in this work? All we have read to this point would be rendered void if we could be led to believe such a thing. Yet, the forces of evil would like nothing better than to be able to convince us that this is indeed the case.

In the preface to Rt. Reverend Wm. C. McGrath’s little work, Fatima Or World Suicide, Reverend James M. Gilles writes: “It seems to be the will of the Lord that movements of reform should commence with the poor, the simple, the unsophisticated …the reconstruction of our shattered civilization is to come, if at all, not from the maneuvering of diplomats, still less from a series of world wars, and what are sardonically called ‘victories,’ but from some great religious movement starting with the people.” (p. viii.)

The laity must now assume the duties of the hierarchy

In The Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold offer us a surprising observation concerning the meaning of the term “hierarchy.” After observing that the hierarchy ordinarily means the organization of ranks and orders in the Christian Church, they write: “In a wide and loose sense, when the whole Catholic Church is considered as existing in the midst of heretics, schismatics, 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 countries to which he is sending his epistle ‘a kingly priesthood” and a “holy nation.’” (p. 409.) (This identical quote can also be found in the volume A Cabinet of Catholic Information, p. 131, under Catholic Church History.)

Pope Pius XII agrees with Addis and Arnold’s definition, for he writes: “The initiative of the lay apostolate is perfectly justified even without a prior explicit ‘mission’ from the hierarchy… Personal initiative plays a great part in protecting the faith and Catholic life, especially in countries where contacts with the hierarchy are difficult or practically impossible. In such circumstances, the Christians upon whom this task falls, must, with God’s grace, assume all their responsibilities… 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.” (From the address: The Mission of the Catholic Woman, Sept. 29, 1957; entered into the AAS and therefore binding on Catholics.) Pius XII could not have made his intentions on this subject any clearer than he does in the words above.

In his encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei, Pius XI wrote: “Catholic Action is the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.” Reverend Joseph Cavanaugh writes concerning this pronouncement of Pius XI: “…a large part of the astounding growth of the primitive Church was due to the magistrates, soldiers, working men, housewives, and students who made the truth known in every walk of life. Because the world has almost fallen back into paganism, recent popes have urged all Catholics to take part in Catholic Action.” (Evidence For Our Faith, p. 323.) Cavanaugh continues: “As the popes have outlined it, the work of members of Catholic Action is to Christianize their environments… this is a tremendous task for the Catholic laity. But it is no greater than the first Christians undertook. In the past, too many Catholics in America had the mentality of a persecuted minority. They felt that they were deserving of praise if they merely kept the faith.

Obviously, this is the least one can possibly do and still hope to be saved.” Catholics must “…appreciate the value of their faith and … share it with others. Above all, the world needs Catholic Action leaders who are willing to work out their salvation by working for the salvation of the world… All Christians… are obliged to be apostles Pius XI wrote: ‘All have the obligation of assisting in the restoration of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, because all are the favored subjects of this merciful King… .’ To dispense oneself from doing at least something is a sin of omission, which in certain circumstances, could be serious.’” (Evidence For Our Faith, pp. 322, 324, 326.) In his A Study of the Juridic Status of Laymen in the Writing of the Medieval Canonists, Reverend Ronald Cox informs us on page 27: “The most important instance of a broadening of the concept of clericus in the Code of Canon Law is found in Canon 614, which extends to religious, even novices and lay religious, the four privileges of clerics mentioned in Canon 119-123.”

Basically, these privilege amount to; (a) protection against irreverence and personal injury, under pain of sacrilege, (b) protection against civil law suits and ecclesiastical suits without permission of the ordinary, (c) exemption from military service and all civil offices and duties not compatible with the clerical state, (d) provision for the cleric outside of any obligations to creditors.) “When the word clericus is used in these canons then, it can be said to have in law, a wider meaning than that found in Canon 108, No. 1; and this narrows the extension of laicus in a similar context.” How many of us today would become lay religious if the opportunity presented itself once again? Are those of us who fight to reestablish the rights of Christ’s Church not lay religious at least by desire?

In his address The Lay Apostolate, Pius XII lists three main responsibilities of those engaged in Catholic Action: “The first of these is the formation of lay apostles to compensate for the shortage of priests engaged in pastoral work. In certain countries where Communism is in power, it is reported that religious life has been able to continue underground, thanks to the work of lay apostles, even after the arrests of the priests.” The laity in these countries operated out of necessity without the assistance of bishops or priests! Yet, we have failed to organize ourselves under anything even vaguely resembling the formation of groups as described by Pius XII. How different we are from those in previous times! Cardinal John Henry Newman offers evidence that during the Arian heresy, the faithful were in much the same straits as we find ourselves today. Writing in the periodical The Rambler, Newman points out, about the time of the Arian heresy: “ In those days the divine tradition, entrusted to the infallible Church, was propagated and maintained more by the faithful than by the episcopate ” To support this claim, he cites the following examples:

St. Gregory of Nazianzus – (around 360): “Surely the shepherds have acted like fools … with a few exceptions ”
St. Hilary – (in 361): “The ears of the people are holier than the hearts of its priests.”
St. Gregory – (about 382): “1 would rather avoid any conference of bishops because I have never seen a Synod resulting in a satisfactory end and which would have remedied an existing evil instead of making it worse.”
St. Basil – (372): “Those laymen who profess the true faith avoid the places of Church services as schools of Godlessness and, in their loneliness, they raise their hands to the Father in heaven, in sighs and tears Nowadays, there is only one offense to be severely punished; it is the exact observance of the tradition of our fathers.”

Describing the Synod of Milan, Newman writes: “…Eusebius of Vercellae presented the Nicaean Creed to all fathers and said he would be prepared to follow all their requests as soon as they signed this profession of faith. At once, Bishop Dionysius of Milan took the sheet of paper and started to give his consent in writing. But Valens (the Arian) tore the paper and pen out of his hand and screamed, ‘Such a procedure is impossible!’ …The matter was brought to the people and the affliction was great ” (Taken from: “The Arianism,” by Eugene Golla and Gladys Resch, Francinta Messenger, May, 1983.)

And finally, we end with this quote from Pope Pius XII that seems to sum up all that has been said above:

“The faithful, and more precisely the laity are stationed in the front ranks of the life of the church and through them the church is the living principle of human society. Consequently they must have an ever clear consciousness not only of belonging to the Church but of being the Church; that is of being the community of the faithful on earth under the guidance of their common leader the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church and therefore even from the beginning the faithful with the consent of their bishops have united in associations directed to the most diverse types of human activity and the Holy See has never ceased to approve and praise them.” And we have the pope’s assurance above that this mission continues indefinitely, even in the absence of the hierarchy.

Traditionalism’s true orientation explained

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 18, 2022

What is most maddening about the current state of the Church today is the compelling need to correct so many dangerous errors in order to defend the faith. But what is sometimes lost in correcting these errors, as necessary as this is, is the simplicity of the faith itself. Heresies and broken laws take a lot of demonstration and explaining to understand, and if these laws were not being broken, and the faith was not being denied, it wouldn’t be necessary. But of course they are, and it is, and lest someone falls into the yawning chasms of disbelief they create, they must be exposed.

That being said, quite a few are understandably wearied by the constant need to deal with it all. Traditionalists and their pseudo-clergy grow more irrational and argumentative with each passing day. Witness some of the obviously nonsensical and contradictory statements posted by these sects on the Internet. The delusions they labor under are so entrenched and so strong I really do not believe it is possible to reach them. It is almost as though they function under some sort of satanic spell, and they do — the operation of error foretold by St. Paul. They have traded the true faith for a mess of Protestant pottage (thick soup or porridge) and not only do they deny it is Protestant, they think they are dining on steak and caviar, not pottage!

Generational disconnect

It would be one thing if we were dealing with the first generation of Catholics to depart following Vatican 2, but most of those who knew the Church as She once existed are no longer with us, or soon will be gone. They are the ones who initially embraced Traditionalism and refused to abandon their “priests” and now we are dealing with their children and grandchildren. They became caught up in the drama of Traditionalist life with its many scandals, dissensions and frequent hopping around from group to group, and this is now normal for these family members who went through it with them. They accept it as Catholic in these “emergency times” and with their parents’ support, continue to live the only “Catholic” life they know. Herd animals that they are, products largely of the world in which we live, they avoid at all costs anything that would separate them from their “pack” and cause them to actually think on their own. If many of them were home-schooled and this is the result, then the critical thinking homeschooling is intended to encourage certainly was lacking in their regard.

And so the initial mission to reach those who might yet understand no longer has any purpose and therefore must come to an end. Troubled Traditionalists reassessing their situation or newly-woken Novus Ordo departees are so consumed with the idea of participation and groupthink they are unable to consider any truly viable alternatives. The idea of the Latin Mass and the pageantry that always accompanied liturgical functions attracts newcomers and remains the guidepost for Traditionalists considering a different group. In a normal world this would be understandable in departing from what one considers a destructive or non-Catholic sect. But surely no one today can pretend the world we live in is anything close to normal.

Traditionalism is nothing new

Those weighing their options must understand that the Traditionalist movement is nothing new or even traditional. It is the continuation of the Jansenist, Gallicanist, Anglican, Orthodox, Theosophist and Gnostic ”tradition,” but that is certainly not Catholic tradition! One book all should read if they wish to see a mirror image of Traditionalist practice and belief is Peter Anson’s Bishops At Large. Written in 1964, it provides an amazing preview of what would soon become the Traditionalist movements and their many offspring. It is appropriate here to quote from the Introduction to Anson’s book written by Henry St. John, O.P. which aptly sums up everything we know as Traditionalism today.

“[Anson’s] story is one of the strangest and most fantastic religious movements to be found in the whole range of what may be described in general terms as the erratic ‘goings-on’ of the underworld. The use of the word underworld in this context must be taken as connoting an ecclesiastical eccentricity rather than roguery or crime, though neither of the latter is wholly absent from its records. The story is closely though not exclusively connected with movements of a Catholic type, mainly arriving from dissatisfied and unstable elements in Catholicism or Anglo-Catholicism. They stand as a rule for Catholicism without the Pope but their preoccupation amounting to obsession is the recovery of Christian unity by the widespread and in effect indiscriminate propagation of valid episcopacy and priesthood.

“In almost every case, the leaders of these multiple movements have been at pains to obtain episcopal consecration from sources often remote and seldom wholly unquestionable which they hoped would be indisputable. Having obtained an episcopal character, they proceeded to found a church based upon it and their own particular version of what true Catholic orthodoxy is. In this way, so the visionary hope takes shape in the minds of these dreamers, that their church will become the center and foundation upon which the unity of Christ’s Church could be rebuilt…

“Mr. Anson’s story shows us a reductio ad absurdum of the divinely ordained hierarchical structure of the Church constituted by Apostolic succession when divorced from almost every consideration but a mechanical conception of validity… The obsession of the bishops at large and their followers with the validity of orders has brought them to the belief that such validity is a sole hallmark of the nature of the Church and its authority. Ubi ordines validi ecclesia is the principle upon which they, all of them, consistently act with a determined conviction,” (valid orders make a strong Church).

“The result of this action is that they are in effect reduced to saying ‘get valid orders and you can choose what you believe.’ They are unaware that they are saying this and consequently lay great stress on the supreme importance of an orthodoxy which turns out to be no more than their own particular and sometimes variable “doxy.” What they have forgotten in their often wild and eccentric way is that even a valid Apostolic succession is of small value unless it is possessed by a believing community that is a visible organic society divinely preserved from the loss of its structural unity. This unity preserves and is preserved by its sensus fidelium and by the teaching authority of its united episcopate. This is the essential nature of the Church as taught by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in common, in accordance with historic tradition from the earliest times” but in the Catholic Church, of course, the Roman Pontiff alone is the guarantee of this undivided unity as the head member of that “united episcopate.”

The disturbing truth

And so we see that Traditionalists are no different than those schismatic sects who preceded them in pretending that one can have a Church without a pope. The underworld has now become their norm, and far from striving for any sort of Catholic unity, which necessarily requires a true pope, they seem to glory in their diversity. Anson goes into great detail to describe the occult connections of these groups, also their interests in ancient heresies, which so many have now resurrected and even perfected. Catholic writer Mary Lejeune warned those joining Traditionalist sects that they were occult-based and Masonic in origin in the 1970s, but to no avail.

Author Craig Heimbichner, in his Blood on the Altar (2005) notes that many of those initially singing the praises of the Latin Tridentine Mass in the late 1960s, early 1970s were practicing theosophists, who succeeded in luring traditionalists into “Latin Mass” groups. He links the awe for the old Mass to C.W. Leadbetter, founder of the Liberal Catholic (Theosophical) church in Sydney, Australia in 1917, citing several quotes proving theosophic occultism later was introduced into Traditional circles.

Heimbichner quotes Wasserman as stating that “Persons of Gnostic-hermetic interests have more in common with traditionalist Catholics than with either modernist Vatican II Catholics or with Protestants…The Right-wing exploits a superstition among some Catholics who hold to a kind of unspoken “magic sacramentalism,” [condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis against Modernism], i.e, the notion that being present at the Holy Mass itself, with its awe-inspiring solemnity and its bells, incense and candles — not one’s state of grace, fidelity to the Commandments of God or relationship with Jesus Christ — becomes the individual’s guarantor of sanctity.” Heimbichner calls this a “Satanic perversion” of Catholicism, mixing pagan elements with the true, much as is done in the Satanic rituals connected to Voodoo and Santeria. And if this is what those investigating Traditionalism really wish to expose themselves to, they definitely are not looking for the true faith as taught by St. Peter through Pius XII.

Traditionalists’ intense focus on perpetuating their shady lineages and defending their legitimacy occupies the time that, were they anything but pseudo-clerics, should be devoted to developing a true understanding of the entirety of Catholic existence, not just its exterior aspect. They all have developed their own ideas of orthodoxy, as St. John notes above, and this is illustrated by the recent controversies among themselves regarding una cum and the material-formal hypothesis. Also as noted above, their theory regarding the episcopacy reduces the Church’s establishment of a hierarchy based on true apostolic succession headed by a canonically elected pope to an absurdity. The only difference between those sects described above and Traditionalists is that Traditionalists have succeeded in convincing their ignorant followers that they are the true Church, and the “True Restoration” crowd pretends to be able to unite all these scraggly sects to present the appearance of a unity they can never possess without a true pope.

Anson’s book is filled with photos of incredible pseudo-Catholic pageantry, clerical ostentation and simulated piety, found reproduced on nearly every Traditional “Catholic” website in existence. These sites feature full-color photos of alleged consecrations and ordinations, wide-eyed “seminarians” being ordained as “priests,” and pious congregations attending ”high masses” offered in vain. Such pretension is an insult to any true Catholic and should be recognized by all for what it truly is — the continuation of a long line of heretics and schismatics who wish to dethrone the pope forever and usurp his authority. Apostolicity of origin, doctrine and mission must all be one, and they have none of these, as has been proven by the Church herself on the pages of this site and elsewhere time and time again. But the followers of these imposters are concerned only with appearances, not reality. And here we must leave them in their fantasy world to fend for themselves as best they can.

What Happened to the Church

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 18, 2022

Many people want a short and sweet explanation of what happened to the Church that caused the disappearance of everything it was for nearly 2,000 years. I provide the long version of that explanation in my work The Phantom Church in Rome, available in the book section. While I am not sure a short version is possible to do justice to what happened to the Church, I will try to provide a brief summary here.

Poison imbibed over time in small doses is just as effective in most cases as a massive dose administered all at once; it simply takes a little longer to achieve the desired result. Parading as various “isms” over many centuries, this is how the Church was finally brought to her knees – small doses of poison, secretly doled out over time to those in seminaries, Catholic universities and parochial schools. Gallicanism and Protestantism are the two “isms” most liable in all this, for both shared a common denominator that appeared to be an outside entity but in reality was also the driving force behind all the “isms” generated after the Reformation. This includes but is not limited to Naturalism, Jansenism, Quietism, Illuminism, Regalism, Rationalism, Fideism (also called Traditionalism), Humanism, Nationalism, Socialism, Communism and Modernism. This force was itself fed by ancient heresies that can be traced back as far as pre-Christian times. For even St. Jude warns of “certain men secretly entered in.” This driving force is, of course, Freemasonry.

Gnosticism

The Church has battled heresies from the beginning. As Holy Scripture tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. Numerous offshoots of the first major heresy combatted by the Church, (Gnosticism, manifested in the various sects of Freemasonry and related secret societies), is what plagues the Church today. Modernism is often cited as the primary heresy, even in my own book, which finally toppled the juridic Church, but Gnosticism is part and parcel of it. Modernism is described by Pope St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies.” Gnosticism, then, emerges from Modernism’s core to serve as its polar or guiding star. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines Gnosticism as:

“The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were ‘people who knew,’ and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings.” Because they despised matter, they reduced Christ to a mere phantasm, denying the Incarnation.

Sound familiar? Not only does it describe the ruling elite today, but the “mysteries” and Satanic teachings of Freemasonry and its upper echelons to whom those elite belong. They just “know” what is best for us; they “know” things we cannot and do not (nor ever want) to know. On the religious spectrum, “They possessed what may be called ‘theosophic’ treatises and revelations of a highly mystical character,” and placed “unshakable trust in astrology, the persuasion that the planetary system had a fatalistic influence on this world’s affairs,” so the science of the day was an important part of their belief system (M.L. Cozens, in his 1928 A Handbook of Heresies).

Cozens also says of Gnosticism: “The Gnostics taught salvation not by faith and love but by speculative knowledge and in more degraded development, by magic rites…” Like Freemasonry, Gnosticism “was but a large conglomeration of sects,” among them Manichaenism, and the Catholic Encyclopedia demonstrates the diverse teachings and beliefs of several of these. Cozens explains that trying “…to describe it is like trying to describe the ever-changing pattern within a revolving kaleidoscope. Each teacher reforms it or adds some startling revelation of his own.”

Modernism

The similarities to or affinity with Modernism lie in its elusive nature, “its ever-changing pattern” as Cozens characterizes Gnosticism above. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as follows: “Etymologically, modernism means an exaggerated love of what is modern, an infatuation for modern ideas, ‘the abuse of what is modern,’ as the Abbé Gaudaud explains (La Foi catholique, I, 1908, p. 248).’ …The spirit of this plan of reform may be summarized under the following heads:

a spirit of complete emancipation, tending to weaken ecclesiastical authority;
the emancipation of science, which must traverse every field of investigation without fear of conflict with the Church;
the emancipation of the State, which should never be hampered by religious authority;
the emancipation of the private conscience whose inspirations must not be overridden by papal definitions or anathemas;
the emancipation of the universal conscience, with which the Church should be ever in agreement;
A spirit of reconciliation among all men through the feelings of the heart. Many and varied also are the modernist dreams of an understanding between the different Christian religions, nay, even between religion and a species of atheism, and all on a basis of agreement that must be superior to mere doctrinal differences.”
And to this we must add Pope St. Pius X’s teaching in Pascendi that “…sentiment and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by reason, do not lead to the knowledge of God…”

According to the New Catholic Dictionary (Conde Pallen and Wynne, editors; 1929) the teaching and belief of secret societies is nothing more than Positivism. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that Positivism “…denies the validity of metaphysical speculations, and maintains that the data of sense experience are the only object and the supreme criterion of human knowledge; as a religious system, it denies the existence of a personal God.” This is identical to what Pope St. Pius said above in Pascendi.

We also see on the list above the same superiority of the Gnostic, the reverence for science, the disparagement of any authority other than their own (superiority) and a different interpretation of reality, placing feelings over intellect. The ever-evolving nature of Modernism, to remain “current” with technology and the ongoing doctrinal revision they prescribe is like the ever-changing pattern Cozens describes above. Like Gnosticism, Modernism leads to Pantheism, and this is the teaching of Pope St. Pius X. “That every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man… is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism” (A Catechism of Modernism, p. 118). And both Gnosticism and Freemasonry have the hidden meanings behind their symbolism in common. Also, Gnosticism and Modernism both reduce belief to religious sentiment, or “quasi-intuitive knowledge” and falsify Catholic reality. There are amazing correlations between the properties of Modernism listed above and the teachings of the various interconnecting heresies as found in the Catholic Encyclopedia below:

So Jewish Kabbalism is “theosophy mixed with various forms of magic and occultism.” It can be traced to “the Oriental or Egyptian Pantheists, and the Gnostics of the earliest Christian ages.
Theosophy is “the knowledge of God supposed to be obtained by the direct intuition of the Divine essence… In method it differs from theology, which is the knowledge of God obtained by revelation, and from philosophy, which is the knowledge of Divine things acquired by human reasoning… It receives its knowledge by intuition or illumination.
Theosophy is inherent in Gnosticism: “The Gnostic systems reveal more theosophy than theology.” The professed objectives of the Theosophical Society in New York City founded by Madame Blavatsky in 1875 are to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science; to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. This last clause gives occasion to include magic, the occult, the uncanny, and the marvelous in any and every form.
Madame Blavatsky was the founder of a branch of Freemasonry known as Co-Masonry.

Scholasticism

As Michael J. Mahoney, S.J. tells us in his 1918 work Formal Logic, “Untrained reason is liable to err, especially in the solution of more difficult problems… The laws of thought put us in touch with reality…” And the Church for this reason prescribes the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Scholastic method, to keep us grounded in reality. Pope St. Pius X said of the Modernists’ aversion to Scholastic philosophy in his Pascendi dominici gregis:

Do dislike and hatred of scholasticism go hand-in-hand with Modernism?
“Certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method.”
Hasn’t their ignorance of scholastic philosophy given birth to Modernism itself?
“The whole system, with all its errors, has been born of the alliance between faith and

Modernism teaches that dogma must be adapted to the times, that it can change, that reality can change. But as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

“Assuredly Catholic truth is not a lifeless thing. Rather is it a living tree that breaks forth into green leaves, flowers, and fruits. There is a development, or gradual unfolding, and a clearer statement of its dogmas. Besides the primary truths, such as the Divinity of Christ and His mission as Messias, there are others which, one by one, become better understood and defined, e.g. the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and that of the Infallibility of the Pope. Such unfolding takes place not only in the study of the tradition of the dogma but also in showing its origin in Jesus Christ and the Apostles, in the understanding of the terms expressing it and in the historical or rational proofs adduced in support of it. Truth consists in the conformity of the idea with its object. Now, in the Catholic concept, a dogmatic formula supplies us with at least an analogical knowledge of a given object. For the modernist, the essential nature of dogma consists in its correspondence with and its capacity to satisfy a certain momentary need of the religious feeling.”

The author of the Encyclopedia article then goes onto explain how Modernism took hold in Catholic universities and seminaries.

“The insufficient cultivation of Catholic philosophy and science is the second deep explanation of the origin of modernist errors. Both have too long confined themselves to answers which, though fundamentally correct, are but little suited to the mentality of our adversaries, and are formulated in a language which they do not understand and which is no longer to the point. Instead of utilizing what is quite legitimate in their positive and critical tendencies, they have only considered them as so many abnormal leanings that must be opposed . . .” (Gaudeau, “La Foi Catholique”, I, pp. 62-65). Another point is that the intrinsic nature of the movement of contemporary philosophy has been too much despised or ignored in Catholic schools. They have not given it that partial recognition which is quite consonant with the best scholastic tradition: “In this way, we have failed to secure a real point of contact between Catholic and modern thought” (Gaudeau, ibid.). For lack of professors who knew how to mark out the actual path of religious science, many cultured minds, especially among the young clergy, found themselves defenseless against an error which seduced them by its speciousness and by any element of truth contained in its reproaches against the Catholic schools. It is scholasticism ill-understood and calumniated that has incurred this disdain.”

This is nothing more than the result of a continuous infusion of poison into the veins of Catholic intellectuals.

Cozens explains how this happened as follows: “Among the clergy ordained during the past quarter of the century were some who, finding it impossible to reconcile the dogmas of certain modern scientists with the dogmas of the faith, despaired not of modern science but of the faith. Instead of holding firmly that God’s revelation is infallibly true, and that all other truth must eventually be found in harmony with it, they decided that whatever in Christian doctrine was out of harmony with the spirit of the age must go — or, as they would say, be so reinterpreted as to harmonize with it. It would seem simpler having decided that the Church’s creed was untrue to leave the Church — this these worshippers of the age refused to do, claiming a right to remain within the visible Church and form therein an esoteric body who instead of molding their beliefs to her creed, should mold her creed to their beliefs.”

Gnostic technocracy and Modernism

The Gnostic heresy seemed to die out, although it was reborn with the establishment of Freemasonry in 1717. That Modernism as described above, with its ideas of complete emancipation from all religious authority, subservience to the state, superiority of science to religion, total freedom of conscience and ecumenism surely corresponds with every goal ever expressed by Freemasonry is beyond any doubt. And now we also have technocracy, which the Internet author Douglas Beaumont links to both Modernism and Gnosticism as follows:

“The modern infatuation with technology is implicitly Gnostic. Technology replaces physical reality with mere images (representations / simulations) of reality – removing us, by degree, from the reality we are meant to live in. When we allow ourselves to accept technology’s replacement of reality (the simulacrum) as our reality – confusing information with matter – we are essentially embracing Gnosticism.” To emphasize the unreality of today’s Modernism with its technical gimmicks, he quotes a dialogue with Plato from The Sophist below:

“Theaetetus: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as something fashioned in the likeness of the true?

“Stranger: And do you mean this something to be some other true thing, or what do you mean?

“Theaetetus: Certainly not another true thing, but only a resemblance.

“Stranger: And you mean by true that which really is?

“Theaetetus: Yes.

“Stranger: And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?

“Theaetetus: Exactly.”

This, uncomfortably, reminds us of two things. First the Novus Ordo church, which bears only an outer resemblance of the “true” Church. And second, Traditionalism, which also bears only a certain resemblance to the true Church, yet is not that Church. People do not realize that by accepting such diabolical substitutions, not only have they become practicing Gnostics, but they have lost all touch with reality. If we understand only these two heresies, throughout the entire history of the Church, we have the answer to what caused Her destruction, without needing to understand much more. And yet there is one other heresy that brewed for centuries just beneath the surface, a heresy with Gnostic origins that eventually contributed to Modernism. This is addressed below.

The origin and rise of Gallicanism

The definition of infallibility, as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, was intended to wipe out all traces of Gallicanism in the Church. But what appears to have happened instead is its early migration to schismatics and heretics with Gnostic tendencies (the Old Catholics and their offshoots) and its later manifestation among Modernists, with their hatred of dogma and papal authority. It appears to this author that this could not have happened without there being some hidden, longstanding effort to infiltrate the clergy and destroy the Church. Masonic documents clearly state this was always their intention, and the Alta Vendita detailed their plans to achieve it. While Henry Cardinal Manning clearly perceived the Gallicanist heresy as the primary reason for calling the Vatican Council to define infallibility and stamp out this error, he could not have seen the ultimate success of the Modernists and the extent of the inroads made by the Masonic element, which came only after his death.

What exactly is Gallicanism? Cozens, cited above, writes: “The Gallican school held 1) that the Pope’s definitions were not infallible in themselves but only after acceptance by the Universal Church and 2) that a general council’s authority was above that of a Pope. Some French ecclesiastics also claimed that the king had the right to forbid the publication in France of papal bulls that no act done by the king’s agent on his authority could involve excommunication and that the king could prevent any bishops recourse to Rome even if the Pope commanded his presence.” To this should be added the errors of Febronianism, first advocated by the German bishop of Trier, Johann Nickolaus von Hontheim, (using the pseudonym Febronius), in 1763. Hontheim taught that Christ did not give “…the power of the keys to Peter but to the whole Church; that the pope’s power, as head of the whole Church… is of an administrative and unifying character, rather than a power of jurisdiction;” that the appointment of bishops and the establishment of dioceses should be left to provincial synods and metropolitans and even the determination of matters of faith should be left to these same authorities. “Hontheim advanced along the same lines, in spite of many inconsistencies, to a radicalism far outstripping traditional Gallicanism” (Catholic Encyclopedia). This proposed expansion of Gallicanism, condemned by Clement XIII, is interesting because of its place in time. This will be discussed further below.

Manning on Gallicanism

Writing in his The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, 1875, Cardinal Manning explains the origins and nature of Gallicanism:

“It has been acknowledged by the adversaries of the doctrine [of infallibility] that from the Council of Constance in 1414 to this day the doctrine [of infallibility] has been the predominant belief of the Church. I gave evidence of its existence from the Council of Constance upwards to the Council of Chalcedon in 445. Next, I trace the history of the growth of the opinions adverse to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff from the council of Constance to the year 1682, when it was for the first time reduced to formula by an assembly of French ecclesiastics under the influence of Louis XIV. Lastly, I showed how this formula was no sooner published than it was condemned in every Catholic country by bishops and universities and by the Holy See. Gallicanism has no warrant in the doctrinal practice or tradition of the Church either in France or at large in the 1000 years preceding the Council of Constance. The first traces of Gallicanism are to be found about the time of that council. After the council of Constance they were rapidly and almost all together effaced from the theology of the Church in France until their revival in 1682. In another work Privilegium Petri, written in 1867, Manning writes:

“The main principle of Ultramontanism [unflagging loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the papacy] was distinctly recognised and put in act by the Council of Constance. Does anyone imagine that in this the Council of Constance differs from the Councils of Chalcedon or of Trent, or that its acts embody any other principles than those of the universal tradition of Christianity namely, the supreme authority of the successor of St. Peter ruling and teaching the whole Church on earth?

“It would seem that some suppose the Catholic Church to be a system, like the Austrian or the British empire, in which nationalities are to play their part, balanced by constitutional checks. This Judaic notion began to rise when the idea of Catholic unity began to decline. The assimilation of all national distinctions to a higher type — the extinction, that is, of nationalities in Christ Jesus — eliminated Jew and Greek, Teuton and Latin, from the sphere of faith. It was the rise of modern nationalities which caused the great Western Schism, for the termination of which the Council of Constance was assembled. The schism was healed, though the Council of Basle for a while re-opened it. The national spirit continued still to work, and in a part of Germany and England grew to a head, which in the sixteenth century issued in the Protestant schism… It was not the infallibility of the Pope, ex cathedra, which drove Protestants into schism. It was the denial of the infallibility of the Church which made them heretics.

“Gallicanism is nationalism: that which the Gospel casts out; that which grew up again in medieval Christendom. It is the Christian Judaism which strove to elect its own High Priest; the national factions which rent the Sacred College; the nationalism which set up two or three uncanonical Popes, and two or three national obediences; the spirit of egotism, worldliness, and avarice, which caused whole nations of Europe to apostasize from the Divine will, from the unity of the Church, and to erect Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism on the schismatical basis of national Churches.

“Gallicanism is no more than a transient and modern opinion which arose in France, without warrant or antecedents in the ancient theological schools of the great French Church: a royal theology, as suddenly developed and as parenthetical as the Thirty-nine Articles; affirmed only by a small number out of the numerous episcopate of France, indignantly rejected by many of them; condemned in succession by three Pontiffs; declared by the Universities of Louvain and Douai to be erroneous; retracted by the Bishops of France; condemned by Spain, Hungary, and other countries, and condemned over again in the bull Auctorem Fidei… They had no antecedent traditions, no roots in the theology of the great Church of France. Cardinal Aguirre has abundantly shown that the Saints, doctors, episcopate, and schools of France taught one uniform doctrine with the Church of all other countries, as to the supremacy and infallibility of the Chair and successor of Peter. The Gallicanism of 1682 was a feeble imitation of the preamble of the 24th of Henry VIII, by which the schism of England was accomplished.”

Some 20 years after Manning’s death, the Catholic Encyclopedia had a somewhat different view of Gallicanism’s transient nature. “But, if its provisions disappeared from the laws of France, the principles it embodied for a time none the less continued to inspire the schools of theology and parliamentary jurisprudence. Those principles even appeared at the Council of Trent, where the ambassadors, theologians, and bishops of France repeatedly championed them, notably when the questions for decision were as to whether episcopal jurisdiction comes immediately from God or through the pope, whether or not the council ought to ask confirmation of its decrees from the sovereign pontiff, etc. Then again, it was in the name of the Liberties of the Gallican Church that a part of the clergy and the Parlementaires opposed the publication of that same council; and the crown decided to detach from it and publish what seemed good, in the form of ordinances emanating from the royal authority.” Yet later in the same article, they declared that Gallicanism could survive only as a heresy. True, but as experience has shown it certainly was not a “lesser” heresy; it became a driving force behind the “synthesis of all heresies” — Modernism.

Secret societies

And standing where we are today, Manning’s hope that Gallicanism was entirely quashed was a hope not realized; far from it. His underestimation of what Cozen’s classifies as only a “lesser” heresy can be attributed to the Masonic forces that appear to have wormed their way into this religious and political movement, possibly from the very beginning, but definitely following the Reformation. Here we are speaking of what merely began as an underground current following the disbanding of the Templars in 1312, during the reign of the Avignon popes. Supposedly some of those disbanded, perhaps bearing grudges against the Church, continued under other names and in secret. In his Freemasonry and the Vatican, quoting from several sources, Comte Leon de Poncins states that “In reality, there was an ancient Catholic Masonry, about which little is known, which gradually fell into abeyance” (p. 115). He here seems to refer to a Catholic Masonry in existence that was centered around the masonry, or brick and stone laying guilds. But he also quotes another source that claims the Stuarts and Irish/Scottish aristocracy also belonged to a type of Catholic Masonry, in the 1600-1700s, which was later infiltrated by Protestant Freemasons.

Quoting from what he claims to be the most comprehensive and well-documented history of Freemasonry ever written, by one N. Deschamps, de Poncins relates that: “In the Middle Ages and at the time of the Renaissance, the Freemasons in Germany and Italy were overwhelmed with favors by the sovereign pontiffs and there is not a trace of heresy or hostility against the Church in the statutes of Stroudsburg of 1462 or as revised in 1563. However, in 1535 we come across a document which reveals the existence of an order under the name of Freemasons whose anti-Christian principles are absolutely in harmony with those of modern Masonry, and this time it is no longer a question of builders protecting their arts… The oldest and most authentic document of the Masonic Lodge, known as the charter of Cologne, dates back to the year 1535. It reveals the existence already going back sometime perhaps even two centuries of one or several secret societies which eked out a clandestine existence throughout the various states of Europe in direct antagonism with the religious and civil principles that formed the basis of their constitutions.

Deschamps then goes on to quote from Michelet regarding the hotbed of Jewish influence and heresies existing in the Languedoc region of southern France. De Poncins concludes his quotes from this author with the following: “Sixteenth century Freemasonry arose out of the ruins of the Knights Templar…” This leads us directly back to the Avignon papacy and the advent of the Gallicanist heresy. Disbanded and frustrated, it appears they managed somehow to influence those in positions of authority in the Church, men who most likely took them for good Catholics and trusted them, and it is into their ears they began to whisper doubts regarding papal supremacy and early ideas of democracy such as Marsilius of Padua taught. In short they began the campaign to democratize and modernize the Church, to align Her with the state once they had toppled the monarchies, to strip the Church of Her rightful power. If their efforts are viewed over time with the hindsight afforded by history, it can easily be seen that this is what they did gradually over the centuries until the time of the Vatican Council.

Hiéron du Val d’Or

According to Wikipedia and other sources, “The Hiéron du Val d’Or (English: “Sanctuary of the Golden Valley”) was a Catholic esoteric secret society in France, which existed from 1873 until 1926. It was founded by a Jesuit Victor Drevon and the half-Basque, half-Russian Alexis de Sarachaga. It was allied to concepts of royalism and was culturally conservative; it sought to erect a Catholic hermetic Freemasonry, contrary to the anti-clerical Freemasonry of Grand Orient de France and was particularly devoted to Christ the King.”

According to authors Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent, in their work Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Hieron du Val d’Or admitted the existence of a hidden pope and his entourage, which of course would include bishops, waiting in the wings to act either as a replacement for or an alternative to the current church in Rome: “The Hiéron’s agenda was the creation of a new Habsburg and Catholic Holy Roman Empire with a French temporal and spiritual head in the manner of the Grand Monarch, an association of Europeans bound by common law and dedicated to advancing the mission of Christ the King.” (Here they cite sources linked to the “Catholic” secret society Marcel Lefebvre reportedly belonged to, the Priory of Sion.) “They [the Hieron] claim the existence of a secret parallel Catholic tradition called l’Eglise d’Avignon (Church of Avignon), which they trace to the medieval Papacy installed in Avignon from 1309 to 1378. The claim is that it continued in secret with a Pope who represents the esoteric aspects of the Catholic Church. L’Eglise d’Avignon is said to serve as an intermediary between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox tradition.”

“The Templars, like all other secret orders and associations, had two doctrines,” the Mason Pike says in his Morals and Dogma, “one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was Johannism; the other public, which was the Roman Catholic.” So what was Johannism? Eliphas Levi informs us that although outwardly Catholics the secret cult of the Templars was Johannism… The Johannites, who were Kabalists and Gnostics adopted part of the Jewish traditions and talmudic accounts. They regarded the fact of the gospels as allegories of which Saint John had the key. Their grand pontiffs assumed the title of Christ” (Trail of the Serpent, 1936). Pike explained that the Templar founders “…took an oath between the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to that of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars was to protect the Christians who came to the Holy Places: their secret aim was the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by Ezekiel. “This rebuilding… had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs of the Orient. The Temple of Solomon, rebuilt and consecrated to the Catholic worship would become, in effect, the Metropolis of the universe. THE EAST WOULD PREVAIL OVER THE WEST AND THE PATRIARCHS OF CONSTANTINOPLE WOULD POSSESS THEMSELVES OF THE PAPAL POWER.”

Neo-Modernism equals Freemasonry’s triumph

The timing of the emergence of this organization is important, because it occurs only seven years after the close of the Vatican Council. I say emergence because that it existed secretly for centuries is proven by what is said above by de Poncins. Undoubtedly Modernist tendencies were already secretly at work in the Church, but this is an indication that far more was going on than was initially realized. “Catholic” Freemasons no doubt went to ground following the condemnations against Freemasonry that began in the late 1700s and continued in earnest through the reign of Pope Leo XIII. When they briefly came up from underground, it was only under the guise of renouncing “anti-clerical Freemasonry” while retaining all of the esoteric symbols of Freemasonry. Wikipedia claims the The Hiéron du Val d’Or gradually disappeared after 1925, but as we know, it only went to ground once again. Did it re-emerge in the 1940s?

The following 1950 instruction from the Holy Office seems to indicate that it did:

“Among the things which are springing up again with renewed vigor and not only in Italy is Freemasonry with its ever-recurring hostility to religion and to the Church. What appears to be a new feature in this Masonic renaissance is the rumors circulating in various social classes that a particular rite of Masonry might no longer be in opposition to the Church whereby even Catholics can enroll at their ease in the sect without fear of excommunication and reproach. Those responsible for propagating these rumors must surely know that nothing has been modified in the Church’s legislation relative to Freemasonry and if they continue this campaign it can only be in order to profit from the naivete of simple folk. The bishops know that Canon 684 and especially Canon 2335 which excommunicates those who have given their names to Masonry without any distinction between rights or as full in force today as they always have been; all Catholics ought to know this and remember it so as not to fall into this snare and also so as to know how to pass do judgment on the fact that certain simpletons believe they can call themselves both Catholics and Freemasons with impunity. This, I repeat, applies to all Masonic rites, EVEN IF SOME OF THEM IN VARYING CIRCUMSTANCES DECLARED THAT THEY ARE NOT HOSTILE TO THE CHURCH” (Most Reverend Mario Cordovani, Master of the Sacred Palace; printed in Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1950, as quoted by de Poncins).

So was this revived Modernism, neo-modernism, only a resurfacing of that “ancient Catholic Masonry,” meaning that it did not remain in abeyance? It surely is no coincidence that only six years later, in 1956, an organization surfaced in France appearing to be a Catholic form of Masonry. Fascist and royalist in nature, documents show, it has been linked to Marcel Lefebvre and Abbe Ducaud-Bourget, even Angelo Roncalli himself. This is the Prieure de Sion or Priory of Sion; its subtitle is Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union. (To read more on this subject visit https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/?s=Masonic+origins). Does the papal document above not also condemn the founders of Traditionalism who belonged to the Shickshinny Knights of Jerusalem? This Masonic sect appears to be an organization founded at the same time as the Priory of Sion. John Wathen, who wrote a book defending the non-Masonic orientation of the Shickshinny Knights, obviously was ignoring this pronouncement from Rome. And how do those upholding the Gallicanist heresy fit into the Gnostic/Modernist framework?

Following the definition of infallibility, those already lodged as “serpents in the bosom of the Church,” undoubtedly opposed to the definition of infallibility, launched a retaliatory attack from within Her own ranks where many of them were already lodged — a carefully calculated, pervasive infiltration of Catholic thought processes, later identified as Modernism. It was the final, less diluted dose of the poison that had been circulating in the veins of certain Catholic “intellectuals” for centuries. And by the time the source of the poisoning was discovered, it was too late to save the patient. Modernism had already so weakened the Church She was unable to recover, and the extent of the internal damage done and the two World Wars prevented the popes from taking the drastic measures necessary to successfully treat and cure it. The Catholic Encyclopedia terms Modernism as a tendency, a proposed remodeling and reforming of the Church according to 20^th century ideas and ideals.

But in reality, it was much more than it appeared to be, otherwise it would never have been successful. Even Pope St. Pius X in his Pascendi noted that “…the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has, in these last days, increased exceedingly” and that their ultimate plan was to “overthrow utterly Christ’s kingdom itself.” And that goal has now been achieved. But who are those most dedicated to overthrowing the Church if not Freemasonry and its numerous satellite organizations? In giving Modernism an actual name, was Pope St. Pius X possibly only acknowledging the existence of an anti-dogmatic, anticlerical “Catholic Freemasonry” within the Church? Could this Freemasonry have consisted in opposing sides so to speak, or perhaps methods — each just as dangerous, but one more subtle — that bore a greater sympathy for “Tradition” — as in Traditionalists?! As de Poncins and other authors explain, Freemasonry plays both sides — the left AND the right — and tolerates division even within its own ranks.

Author Craig Heimbichner, in his Blood on the Altar (2005) notes that many of those initially singing the praises of the Latin Tridentine Mass in the late 1960s, early 1970s were practicing theosophists, who succeeded in luring traditionalists into “Latin Mass” groups. He links the awe for the old Mass to C.W. Leadbetter, founder of the Liberal Catholic (Theosophical) church in Sydney, Australia in 1917, citing several quotes proving theosophic occultism later was introduced into Traditional circles. He quotes Wasserman as stating that “Persons of Gnostic-hermetic interests have more in common with traditionalist Catholics than with either modernist Vatican II Catholics or with Protestants…The Right-wing exploits a superstition among some Catholics who hold to a kind of unspoken “magic sacramentalism,” [condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis against Modernism], i.e, the notion that being present at the Holy Mass itself, with its awe-inspiring solemnity and its bells, incense and candles — not one’s state of grace, fidelity to the Commandments of God or relationship with Jesus Christ — becomes the individual’s guarantor of sanctity.” Heimbichner calls this a “Satanic perversion” of Catholicism, mixing Gnostic/pagan elements with the true, much as is done in the Satanic rituals connected to Voodoo and Santeria. And if this is what those investigating Traditionalism really wish to expose themselves to, they definitely are not looking for the true faith as taught by St. Peter through Pius XII.

Traditionalism and Gallicanism

Let us surmise here that “traditionalists” represent the “Catholic” side of Freemasonry, as expressed in the subtitle of the Priory of Sion. This would mean that what the Hieron du Val d’Or expresses was a correct assessment of its ultimate aims and can be interpreted as a reflection of Gallicanism. That this tendency still existed among the episcopacy, after the Gallicanist contingent put forward the question at the Council of Trent some 400 years prior: “…whether episcopal jurisdiction comes immediately from God or through the pope, whether or not the council ought to ask confirmation of its decrees from the sovereign pontiff, etc. is proven in Pope Pius XII’s answer to this longstanding question in Mystici Corporis. The pope decided that the bishops’ jurisdiction is transmitted to them only through the pope, and this was not a decision well-received in some quarters. Had he not seen danger ahead on this score, would he have defined it? If Gallicanism was not still alive after the 1869 Vatican Council, it would scarcely have been necessary.

We know from above that there is a link between the descendants of the disbanded Templars and the Hieron du Val d’Or because the latter mentions itself as an envoy of sorts between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox, and Pike links the Templars to the Orthodox. In the same breath they mention the Avignon papacy. So was that “papacy” united to or absorbed by the Eastern Patriarchate? The last of its claimants was Clement VIII, made cardinal by Avignon pope later antipope Pedro de Luna and elected pope by three remaining “cardinals” on his death. Clement VIII eventually gave his allegiance to the true Pope Martin V, but what happened to his “cardinals”? Much of this can never be known and is only a matter of speculation, but there are four things we do know today.

Since the 1980s, bishops calling themselves Traditionalists have “consecrated” bishops without the necessary papal mandate. The consecrations of these men were null and void according to Pope Pius XII’s 1945 election law, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis and as indicated in the consecration rite itself. These bishop claim to possess their jurisdiction directly from God and behave in every way according to the principles espoused by the Gallicanists.
There are those calling themselves Traditional Catholics who maintain an air of secrecy, claim allegiance to a hidden pope and who are in touch with a French “Great Monarch.” Some belonging to this sect even say they have met him.
There are others, constituting a much larger group, who are working in tandem with the group above to restore the Church and the papacy. Among them are those posing as valid Catholic clergy (which they definitely are not).
There are even those not affiliated with Traditionalism who insist that bishops (not bishops and a true pope, only bishops) yet exist somewhere in the world, and even demand that others believe this as an article of faith. This is yet another manifestation of Gallicanism, for the Church clearly teaches that during an interregnum especially, unless bishops are in communion with a true pope, they cannot validly function nor do they constitute Christ’s Church on earth.

If the Gnostic, Gallicanist, Modernist connection does not exist, why do we see so many parallels today among the three? And why do these three heresies all lead us down the path of Freemasonry? Isn’t this really the most logical explanation of what happened to the Church?

Conclusion

Many years ago, I read somewhere that the Vatican in the 1800s made a deal of some sort with the Freemasons of Italy to protect Catholics in other lands from destruction: they would not mention the sect by name anymore but would only allude to them. I dismissed it because there was no source for the report and it could not be verified. But I have often wondered since if such a secret deal might explain why Pope St. Pius X tagged these heresies appearing in the late 1800s, early 1900s as Modernism. We will never know. We only know what we see today and everything we see tells us that Freemasonry has triumphed and only an act of God will save the Church at this point. As de Poncins points out, the full acceptance of Freemasonry by the usurper Roncalli took place in the early 1960s. The false Vatican 2 council fully embraced ecumenism — the liberty, equality and fraternity touted by Masonry.

I have tried to explain here how Freemasonry under the guise of Modernism has triumphed and what groups have contributed to that triumph. On splitting the Church into Liberal, Conservative and Traditional camps, we see the old Communist tactic of perpetual class struggle used to create the desired melding of all three — thesis (true Church) antithesis (the NO, NO conservatives, Traditionalists) synthesis, . All seem to be heading in the same direction. It is not the whole story but hopefully it will answer some questions about what happened to the Church, how it happened and why, once the enemy was detected, it was too late to save the Church we love.

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Next Entries »

Necessary intention in Traditionalist Orders lacking

Material-formal Hypothesis a Trojan Horse

CMRI’s papal authority kerfuffle

The doubtful pope rule

Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis invalidations ignored

Material-formal thesis is actually heretical

It also implicates des Lauriers in the following heresies:

Can there still be a certainly valid papal election?

Silence and suppression signal danger

Failing to follow the safer course and its consequences

Conclusion

We are the church

The True Definition of the Priesthood of the Laity

Vox Populi, Vox Dei

Catholic Action

The laity must now assume the duties of the hierarchy

Traditionalism’s true orientation explained

Generational disconnect

Traditionalism is nothing new

The disturbing truth

What Happened to the Church

Gnosticism

Modernism

Scholasticism

Gnostic technocracy and Modernism

The origin and rise of Gallicanism

Manning on Gallicanism

Secret societies

Hiéron du Val d’Or

Neo-Modernism equals Freemasonry’s triumph

Traditionalism and Gallicanism

Conclusion

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