Little children have no authority to formally declare the pope a heretic. Our Lord simply hasn’t given them the authority to do so.
Oh, I didn’t mean it so literally. What I mean is that the issue as not quite as complicated as people want to make it. “I feel the garment of the priest, but I hear the voice of the parson”—indeed, we know the voice of the shepherd as intuitively as a little child knows the voice of his parent. One need not be familiar with the fully-annotated commentary of Canon 138 in the 1917 Code of Canon Law in order to conclude that the fruits of Vatican II are evil and that the post-conciliar popes have forfeited the papacy. Indeed, the bad fruits are evident enough on their own, judged simply by the lights of our faith.
If there is no end to what the hierarchy can teach and promulgate without us ever recognizing it as heterodox or heretical, then we would be hopeless automatons believing
anything at the whim of the ecclesiastics of our day (and you & I might agree that, unfortunately, such a thing has happened to a great extent since Vatican II, with many bishops exploiting the obedience of the laity). When the virtue of obedience trumps the virtue of faith,
blind obedience prevails and the faith becomes
provisional.
I think you’re mistaken about Bp. Williamson. He’s not a sedevacantist.
I’m fully aware that he isn’t, and I’m sorry I didn’t convey that better. Please note that I qualified it with “
if John Paul II is canonized,” and supposed that Bp. Williamson “
might eventually realize” the incongruity of his position regards Rome. If John Paul II is canonized (which seems likely), the SSPX will be in a big bit of a pickle. Sainthood implies full orthodoxy, and the SSPX spent the entire span of John Paul II’s pontificate trying to convince us that he was anything but orthodox. Placing the world’s most visible supporter of Vatican II in the Church Triumphant would be nothing short of the Holy Spirit’s stamp of approval on the Council and its fruits, and the Lefebvrists would have to admit themselves plainly overruled by God. If that happens, then I do wonder if Bishop Williamson (and perhaps other bishops currently in communion) would rethink their stance.
Yggs, when you get a chance, would you please read what John Salza has to say here?
Done. Although it was difficult getting past the first paragraph, wherein he refers to sedevacantists as “empty heads” and quickly follows it by saying “I don’t mean to denigrate these people.” Lovely. “I don’t mean to insult anyone, but you’re a bunch of morons.” The Red Forman school of tact!
And I am so very tired of the accusation of Protestantism. But in the end I did read it. Interestingly, someone left a single provocative comment to Mr. Salza’s essay in June of 2009, which remains unanswered as of today. It’s a good (and subtly made) point, too: lay “Charismatic Catholics,” whose movement began in 1967, claim that the Holy Spirit speaks to them personally, inspiring all manner of Pentecostal gesticulations and lurchings, not to mention “speaking in tongues,” and they get the ringing endorsement of the Church. Meanwhile, sedevacantists, who appeal to two millennia of tradition and doctrine, are either ignored or summarily dismissed.
Space forbids my replying to every point in that essay, but one passage bothers me particularly:
The Sedevacantists would have us believe that this determination can be made in an unofficial, informal capacity by a .00001 percent of the Catholic population in factious, grass roots efforts made up primarily of lay people. Not only is this illogical, but no where in the Church’s 2,000 year history is there any precedent for such a position.
I find it strange that he demands a “precedent” for sedevacantism when sedevacantists fully concede that the gravity and scope of the current crisis renders it
without precedent. And besides, nowhere in the Church’s 2,000 history is there any precedent for a pope and a hierarchy destroying the Mass and invalidating the sacramental forms of the Eucharistic and Episcopal Ordination rites, so I wonder where the precedent is for Mr. Salza’s own position of accepting such works of darkness. His description of a “liturgical crisis in the Church” is a criminal understatement, since “the Church” requires the visible signs of the sacraments and Apostolic succession in order to
be the Catholic Church in which a liturgical crisis can occur in the first place. He later boasts that “Catholics are free to practice the faith as they always had before 1958.” Well:
pssh. Here’s just an anecdotal comparison: in 1958, my grandparents could walk down the block to their parish church for any of the Sunday Masses and be treated to the ancient Roman Rite, thoroughly uncorrupted, and with nary a Protestant or modernist trapping in sight. I’m sure you can guess what
I get if I walk down the block to my local Catholic church for any of the Sunday services!
(And, just to be nitpicky about it, the Missal approved for use these days is the 1962 Missal of John XXIII, with even more recent changes made to the traditional Good Friday office. In 1958, the Jews were still “perfidious.” But apparently they aren’t any longer, because John Paul II has told us that “the Old Covenant has never been revoked.”)
uch:
