Recognize and Resist

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A Breath of Fresh Air

Bishop Schneider’s statement. On the feast of Pentecost Bishop Schneider issued a lengthy statement in which he rightly criticized Vatican II for having errors, concentrating particularly on Dignitatis Humanæ, which proclaims the moral right to embrace false religions. In this he was correct, of course. However, his solution was very seriously erroneous, namely that the Church’s councils can err, and are in need of correction occasionally. He then went on to point out “errors” in past councils.

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The Great Western Schism

Pope Urban VI (1378 – 1389)

There are many traditional Catholics who, in an effort to find a precedent to our current problem in the Church, look to the Great Western Schism as this precedent. The Great Western Schism was a split among Catholics which took place from 1378 to 1417. It was caused by the election of two different popes simultaneously.

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Indefectibility and Una Cum

A response to Father Ludger Grün. In my last newsletter [blog post version here], I reviewed the motives and reasons why we must avoid the una cum Mass. In most cases this applies to the traditional Masses offered by the SSPX, both mainstream and “resistance.” A Father Grün of the SSPX made a response to my newsletter, and consequently here I would like to make more clear just what our position is.

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Fatal flaw?

On the Fatima Center website, Mr. Ferrara attacked the sedevacantists for what he calls self-contradiction, a “fatal flaw” in their thinking. He first accurately sums up the sedevacantist position:

So, according to sedevacantist thinking, one cannot legitimately recognize yet resist a true Pope because while not every papal magisterial act is infallible, every papal magisterial act is (1) authoritative, (2) binding on consciences, (3) safe to follow, and (4) free from pernicious error. [emphasis added]

He then proceeds to attack this position as containing a contradiction.

What the sedevacantists are really saying, then, is that a Pope who errs in his teaching on a matter of faith and morals, even once, ceases to be Pope (or never was Pope) because every exercise of the papal magisterium must be free from error.

Notice that the word pernicious has disappeared. In leaving this word out, Mr. Ferrara has manifested that he does not understand the whole point of the sedevacantist argument.

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Suspended magisterium?

Recently the camp of the Novus Ordo conservatives, or neocons, as they are commonly called, seems to have descended into a panic.

Up to now they have bent over backwards to maintain the principle that Vatican II did not change anything substantial in the Catholic Faith. While they may prefer pre-Vatican II rites and ceremonies, they refuse to call what has come out of Vatican II a new and false religion, as we call it.

Consequently we have seen over the years mostly an ostrich approach to anything that seems to contradict this thesis of theirs.

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