Editor’s Notes

In the process of researching the difficult topics of jurisdiction and apostolicity during a vacancy, we encountered the following text by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada.

Cardinal Torquemada – sometimes referred to as Turrecremata – was the uncle of the famous inquisitor, Thomas de Torquemada. This medieval Dominican theologian lived between 1388 and 1468, and was the author of what is probably the first major work of ecclesiology, his Summa de Ecclesia.

In popular circles, he is mostly known today for:

• His “resistance quotes”, unjustly marshalled by the “recognise and resist” apologists (addressed here), and

• His adherence to the “second position” on the Pope Question, namely that even an occult heretic Pope falls from office ipso facto.

Those who cite Torquemada for the former do not seem to have considered that the latter undermines their interpretation.

We produce the following texts on subject of the origin of jurisdiction, taken from Lib. II, Ch. LIII (p. 170–171). Of especial interest are Torquemada’s comments on the “sixth authority”, namely Pope Alexander – in which he discusses the way in which the Pope is the source of jurisdiction.

The analogy he uses – the relationship between the sun and the stars – needs to be explained for modern readers. His purpose is to explain that the Pope is not a mere distributor of “jurisdictions”, but rather one who makes others participate in his jurisdiction.

Certain understandings at the time held that the sun received light from God first, and in a greater plenitude than any of the other stars; hence the sun received light “prae omnibus” or “before all.” These understandings also held that the sun received this light “pro omnibus” or “for all”, in the sense that the purpose of this reception was that light could flow down into the other stars.

These two points are intended to establish St Peter’s pre-eminent rank over the other Apostles, and that he was the only source of the jurisdiction. Torquemada reinforces this with another analogy – that of the head and the members. The head is the most noble part of the body, and it is what receives life and sense; it then communicates them to the rest of the body.

These analogies from a “metaphysics of participation” are intended to establish the principle that a perfection which exists in many must exist first and fully in one, from which it flows to the others. As mentioned, St Peter’s role as the source of jurisdiction is not to be understood as him holding a number of domains or regions which he then hands out to others; rather, he received the plenitude of jurisdiction from Christ, and the residential bishops of the world participate in it, and exercise it in their own names and by divine right.

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Jurisdiction during a Vacancy

Cardinal Juan de Torquemada

Summa de Ecclesia
Book II, Ch. LIIII

Chapter LIIII. That the power of jurisdiction of all prelates of the Church is derived from the Pope or the Apostolic See, whether mediately or immediately. The first line of argument, namely from the relation of the other Apostles to Peter.

1. Having explained above, so far as our slight ability allows, that one ruler and head of the whole Christian commonwealth had to be appointed with fullness of power – both for preserving the unity of the Christian faith and for the best government of the Church – and that this ruler is the Roman Pontiff, it now remains to examine the relation he bears to the other, lower prelates of the Church as regards the origin of their power. The question is whether the prelates of the churches receive the power of jurisdiction they hold immediately from the Apostolic See – or whether like the Pope himself, the bishops receive it immediately from Christ.

We hold, with St Thomas – in the second book of the Sentences, in the fourth book of the Sentences, and in the fourth book Against the Gentiles – that among the doctors who treat this subject, St Thomas speaks most reasonably and most in conformity with the sayings of the holy Fathers, and consequently in closest harmony with the reverence due to the faith. His position is that the whole jurisdictional power of other prelates is derived, by the common law, from the Pope. We propose to prove this conclusion by three lines of argument: first, from the relation of the other Apostles to Peter in the power of jurisdiction; secondly, by reasoning; thirdly, from the absurdities that follow from the opposite view.

The relation of the Apostles to St Peter

The first line of argument runs as follows. The other Apostles did not receive the power of jurisdiction immediately from Christ, but through Peter; therefore it follows that the prelates now in the Church likewise receive the power of jurisdiction immediately from the Pope, and not from Christ. The consequence is clear. The antecedent, for its part, is proved and established by many authorities and arguments.

First, by the authority of the blessed Anacletus, who, as recorded in Sacrosancta, dist. 22, says:

“Among the Apostles there was a certain distinction, and although all were Apostles, yet it was granted to Peter by the Lord that he should preside over all the other Apostles and hold the headship and primacy (cephas, that is, caput) of the apostolate.”

Now since the name “head” and “principle” designates the origin of power, it seems impossible to say that blessed Peter held the headship and primacy of the apostolate unless the power of jurisdiction flowed from him to the other Apostles.

The second authority is that of the blessed Cyprian, in the epistle inscribed On the Unity of the Church addressed to Novatian, which is found in Loquitur dominus ad Petrum, 24, q. 1:

“‘I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.’ Upon one he builds the Church; and although after the Resurrection he bestows upon all the Apostles an equal (that is, a common) power – saying, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Ghost’ – nevertheless, in order to display unity, he arranged by his own authority that the origin of that same unity should also begin from one.”

This indeed the other Apostles also were – endowed with an equal share of honour and of power (the Gloss specifies: in the order and dignity of consecration, not in the fullness of administration) – “but the beginning issues from unity, so that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one.” Thus Cyprian. When he says that Christ, to display the unity of the Church, arranged that the origin of power should begin from one, he plainly gives us to understand that one alone – namely Peter, upon whom alone Christ says the Church is founded – received the power of jurisdiction immediately from Christ, while the other Apostles received it through Peter. For if all the Apostles had received the power of jurisdiction immediately from Christ, the origin of power would plainly not have begun in the Church from one Apostle, since it would have been given simultaneously and immediately to all.

The third authority is Augustine, who in his homily 124 on John says:

“Peter the Apostle, by reason of the primacy of his apostolate, bore the figure of the Church in a representative universality. Considered in himself, he was one man by nature, one Christian by grace, and a more abundant grace one and the same first Apostle. But when it was said to him, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ and ‘whatever you bind,’ etc., he signified the universal Church.”

And further on:

“The Church, therefore, which is founded in Christ, received in Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven – that is, the power of binding and loosing sins.”

Now it seems that what is attributed to Peter alone by reason of his primacy would not be true if the other Apostles had received jurisdiction from Christ together with him and immediately, because in that case the Church could be said to have received the keys not in Peter alone but also in the other Apostles.

The fourth authority is that of the most blessed Leo, who, as found in Dominus, dist. 19, says:

“The Lord willed that the sacrament of this office should belong to all the Apostles in such a way that he placed it principally in the most blessed Peter, chief of all the Apostles, so that from him, as from a kind of head, he might pour out his gifts into the whole body, to the end that anyone who dared to withdraw from the solidity of Peter should understand himself an exile from the divine ministry.”

The fifth authority is from the same Leo, in the third sermon of his ordination, saying:

“It is far more fitting to raise the gaze of the mind to contemplate the glory of the most blessed Peter, and to celebrate this day above all in his honour, who has been so abundantly flooded from the very fountain of all graces that, though he alone received much, nothing has passed to anyone without his participation.”

And further on:

“From the whole world one Peter is chosen, who is set over the calling of all nations, over all the Apostles, and over all the Fathers of the Church, so that, although among the people of God there are many priests and many pastors, Peter may properly govern all whom Christ also principally governs. Great and wonderful, beloved, is the share in his own power that the divine favour granted this man, so that if there was anything he willed to be held in common for the other rulers along with Peter – whatever he did not withhold from others – he never gave it except through Peter.”

See how clearly this most blessed Leo, an authority beyond challenge among the Fathers of the Church, declares that whatever Christ willed to be held in common between Peter and the other rulers – namely the Apostles – he gave only through Peter, that is, everything that could be given through a man and that he did not withhold from others. And so it is plainly established that the other Apostles did not receive jurisdiction immediately from Christ, but through Peter, the prince of the Apostles.

The sixth authority is that of Pope Alexander, in Audivimus, 24, q. 1, who says:

“When the Lord gave to all the disciples an equal power of binding and loosing, he promised to give the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter before all others, saying, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ Whoever, therefore, has been cut off from the unity of the Church, which is understood through Peter, can execrate but cannot consecrate; he has no power of excommunication or reconciliation.”

In this authority two things especially deserve notice. First, that the keys were given to blessed Peter before all others. From this we may gather that blessed Peter was superior to, and greater than, all the other Apostles in the power of jurisdiction, even taken together; and consequently Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, is superior to and greater than all prelates, even taken together. Secondly, we should notice what is said there: that blessed Peter the Apostle received the keys of the Church for all, which plainly shows that the other disciples of Christ and their successors did not receive the power of jurisdiction except through Peter, and so not immediately from Christ. Here one must consider that when Peter is said to have received power for all and before all, this is not to be understood as though he received it for all in the manner of a procurator who receives some gift – a castle, say, or a principality – in the name of certain others from a prince. Rather, it is to be understood in the manner in which we say the sun received its light from God before all other stars and for all other stars. Before all, because in greater fullness than the other stars. For all, because in such an order that from it, as from a fountain, light descends into the other stars.

The same comparison holds for the head, which received its power before all and for all the members. Before all, because in the head alone is the fullness of the senses. For all, because from it the other members receive sensation, motion, and governance. So it is with Peter, who was not only endowed with authority above all others, but was also constituted head and prince influencing the others throughout the whole body of the Church, as was shown most clearly above from the teaching of the saints. Hence Innocent, in the epistle he wrote to the Fathers and bishops at the Council of Carthage, says that from blessed Peter the episcopate and the whole authority of this name arose.

Arguments from reason

The same conclusion is now proved by reasoning, and first as follows. No one possesses any power of jurisdiction over a person who is not his subject; but the other Apostles did not have subjects immediately from Christ; therefore they did not have the power of jurisdiction immediately from Christ. The consequence is clear.

The major premiss is likewise evident, since no one can bind or absolve anyone who is not his subject, because no one can be bound or absolved by a judge who is not his own (De poenit. et remiss., cap. Omnis). For the power of jurisdiction, by which someone can absolve and bind, is said to be relative to a subject; and relatives, as Aristotle teaches in the Categories, are posited and destroyed together: where there is no servant, there is no master. Augustine says in De Trinitate that God was not Lord until he had his creation. Likewise, where there is no subject, there is no prelate, nor any judge who could pass judgement, according to Romans 14:

“Who are you to judge another’s servant? Before his own master he stands or falls.”

The minor premiss is proved as follows. If Christ had given subjects to others besides Peter, he would have given either all of them or only some. The first option – that he gave them all – cannot be maintained, because as has been said, a plurality of supreme rulers is not good (as stated in Metaphysics XII), and the conclusion drawn there is: “Therefore one ruler.” Furthermore, in that case the sheepfold of Christ would not be one, nor would there be one shepherd but many, contrary to John 10: “There shall be one fold and one shepherd.” Nor can the second option be maintained, since nowhere do we read that Christ immediately divided the peoples among the Apostles, and it is impossible to conjecture to which Apostle he might have subjected which peoples.

A second argument runs thus. If Christ had given the Apostles the power of jurisdiction immediately, he would have given them either a full and unrestricted power like Peter’s, or a particular, limited, and circumscribed one; but he gave neither; therefore he gave none. The consequence holds; the major premiss stands by sufficient division. As for the minor, concerning its first part: first, because the blessed Cyril says in his Book of Treasures that Christ committed what was his own in its fullness to no one other than Peter, and gave it to him alone. Secondly, because if the other Apostles had been given power in the same fullness as Peter, then Peter would have been neither greater, nor superior, nor prince, nor head of the Apostles; rather, all would have been equal in jurisdictional authority, which is erroneous. For as St Anacletus says in Sacrosancta, dist. 22:

“Among the Apostles there was a certain distinction; for although all were Apostles, yet it was granted to Peter by the Lord that he should preside over all the other Apostles and, as Cephas – that is, head – hold the primacy of the apostolate.”

The second part of the minor – that Christ did not give the Apostles any limited power either – is likewise clear, since it is impossible to conjecture what the terms of such a limitation would be. Concerning claims of this kind that are said to have been made, especially about the Apostles and the keys of the Church, nothing, it seems, should be asserted that does not have explicit or implicit testimony from the holy Scriptures, and in this matter no such testimony exists. Let this suffice on the first point, for the sake of brevity.

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Three French Graves

Having previous written about France and death in the Summer (see below), I would like to share some comments about three French graves which we visited during half term.

Here is the Summer article:

• Summer of Laïcité: Something Leo XIV (kind of) got right in France

Given that The WM Review has published a whopping 16,000 words this week (they were not all written this week…), and on quite intense material, this should be a bit lighter – and it includes pictures.

Here are the other articles from this week, for those who missed them:

• Thoughts on the Thesis of Cassiciacum – From the grave of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

• Spaghetti Bolognese: A Novus Ordo ordination can’t be proved valid with a single video

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Abbé Georges de Nantes

During a recent visit to France, I and my family visited the grave of Abbé Georges de Nantes, at S. Parres-les-Vaudes, France.

Unlike all the other graves around, he and his spiritual children are buried in simple plots without stone monuments.

Abbé de Nantes was a pioneer of the early response to Vatican II, and very influential at the beginning. His “Book of Accusation” against Paul VI are without without compare. It was responsible for convincing a young Donald Sanborn (among others) that Paul VI was not the Pope.

His insights into the “MASDU” (see below) are also extremely valuable:

• ‘The greatest hope of the world’ – Paul VI on the United Nations

Unfortunately Abbé de Nantes drifted into some very strange positions, both practical with regards to the current crisis, and theoretical with regards to doctrine. You can read about them in the article below.

• Abbé de Nantes and his group ‘The Contre-Réforme Catholique’ (CRC)

In spite of this, the community which he founded is still reasonably flourishing in France and elsewhere – with many religious vocations and families attached. (No priests, due to some of those strange positions mentioned.)

Nonetheless, if it were not for Abbé de Nantes, my own family would not exist. So I thank him for that.

May he rest in peace.

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Great-Grandfather shot by National Socialists

This is one of our family graves. Among the bones that rest here are those of my wife’s Great-Grandfather.

On 20 July 1944, he was arrested by the occupying Germans, on suspicion of activities with the French Resistance. This was false, and in fact he was apparently opposed to the Resistance. He was held in the prison on rue Hennequin in Troyes, the nearby city.

Troyes was liberated from German occupation on 25-26 August by American forces, led by General Patton.

In the face of the American advance, Great-Grandfather and 48 others were summarily executed at Creney by the National Socialists on 22 August 1944.

The SS men of the Gestapo, who had fallen back from Rennes in Brittany, sprayed them with sub-machine guns, and any survivors were finished off with revolvers. The unburied bodies were abandoned in three large trenches, and the SS continued their retreat – during which they committed another massacre of 68 persons at Buchères (24 August).

Over the next few days, Abbé Pierlot and the inhabitants of Creney pursued and captured the retreating National Socialists and collaborators, and handed them over to the arrived Allied forces.

The mayor, parish priest and inhabitants of Creney went to the site to try to identify the bodies and return them to the families. The Great-Grandfather's son cycled 23 miles to identify the dead body of his father.

An initial funeral ceremony was held a few days after the Liberation on Sunday 9 September 1944. Several thousand people attended, and Mgr Le Couëdic, Bishop of Troyes, called for a monument to be erected to the 49, as well as four others who were also massacred on 22 February of that year.

This monument to the “martyrs” (as they are commonly called) is in Creney-près-Troyes itself. Other monuments are found in the region to the men taken from each towns to be killed.

Terrible things happen in war. Those currently agitating for war will answer for the many crimes which they have thoughtlessly enabled. In the meantime, Heaven has already given us the means to achieve peace: the First Saturday devotions, and in due course, the consecration of Russia:

• The Rosary and the Immaculate Heart, Fatima’s two last remedies for the world

The grave which we visited is also shared by the Great-Grandfather's parents and their families, as well as his two wives – the second of whom he married after the first died. Funnily enough, they were sisters.

In the picture below, taken shortly before the war, he is the man looking at the camera.

May he rest in peace.

You can read Pope Pius XII’s condemnation of National Socialism over at :

• Pope Pius XII’s 1945 Condemnation of National Socialism

Bishop Sanborn also recently released a newsletter on the subject. That, and and ’s discussion of the matter at Integrity Magazine, are available below:

• Most Holy Trinity Seminary Newsletter: October 2026

• Bishop Sanborn warns young men about non-Catholic politics, radicalism

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Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

As I mentioned in my article earlier in the week, we also took the opportunity to visit the grave of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers OP. He is buried in Raveau, Burgundy – where he also spent the final years of his life.

This was a bit further afield, and so we saw a bit more of the French countryside in the process. To get there, we had to drive through southern Champagne and northern Burgundy – so, naturally, a lot of vineyards.

In a previous life, both Mrs Wright and I worked in the wine trade. She actually worked in Chablis, through which we had to drive. This prestigious region’s wines are made primarily with Chardonnay, and the climate produces wines typified by high acidity and a citrus and “mineral” flavour profile. The winemakers put a lot of store behind the chalky and limestone-rich soil, which is also full of fossilised shells.

Chablis is a Burgundy, but it is quite a different to what you will find further south in the region – there, you’ll find more oak being used, and riper fruit in the flavour profile for the whites.

Both the whites and the reds, which are usually made with Pinot Noir, are among the most popular and prestigious in the world.

Not so for Crémant de Bourgogne, however – which makes it possible to get some really nice stuff as an alternative to Champagne, when on a budget.

We continued south, and saw other nice things – including cranes flying south in formation (which you could hear from the ground), and murmurations:

Eventually we arrived at the cemetery in Raveau.

My eldest daughter found the grave quite quickly. It is located quite near the entrance, on the left, right by the “aisle” going through the cemetery.

The inscription on his grave consists of a text from Holy Scripture (Mark 8.2), and a reference to his theological reflections on the importance of the ever-continuing Mission (MISSIO) of the Church.

His reflections on these two “misereors” can be found in his obituary for Mgr Ngô Đình Thục.1

We also visited the house nearby, where he spent the final years of his life. This large chateau is now operated by the Institute Mater Boni Consilii, the priest was kind enough to show us some of the grounds, and the chapel where Mgr Guérard offered Mass.

May he also rest in peace.

You can read the article I mentioned here:

• Thoughts on the Thesis of Cassiciacum – From the grave of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Sancerre

P.S. I forgot to add that before heading back, we stopped at Sancerre – one the most Eastern parts of the Loire valley region.

White Sancerre is made with the Sauvignon Blanc grape but with – unsurprisingly – more finesse than the “Sauv Plonk” that will be found in the supermarket.

Given the reasonably cool climate, the grapes (and therefore the wines) come out with high acidity and lack that tropical fruit profile that is found in warmer places, and in particular in the “New World” wines. While New Zealand is known for making outstanding varieties Sauvignon Blanc, particularly in the Marlborough regions, Sancerre (and other Loire wines) are different beasts.

Somewhat unusually for the Loire, the reds of Sancerre are made with Pinot Noir. They are less iconic than the whites, making up about a fifth of production, but are very fine. Sancerre Rosé makes up even less – around 1%.

We bought some wine at the cave door of my wife's friend's father – but the less said about the large painting of himself, presumably from the “cheeky calendar” of hos rugby team, the better.

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Conclusion: La végétalisation des cimetières

Until a few years ago, French cemeteries were quite miserable places. While some of the monuments can be impressive, they are were all stone and granite. But in recent years, mainly due to environmental laws, various local authorities have stripped away some of the stone, and allowed greenery to return in the plots between the tombs. This process has been called La végétalisation des cimetières.

(France is a country of contradictions. How could a nation of such beauty allow such ugly cemeteries for so long? How can the global capital of raw cheese live off of UHT milk? I love France. But what is going on?!)

But in spite of the greenery, French cemeteries are still sad. The dead are laid in vaults underneath the stones you can see in the pictures, where they will normally remain between 30 to 50 years.

After the term for the plot runs out (provided someone does not renew it), the remains are exhumed and the bones placed in a public ossuary – a communal grave for bones, where the remains are stored anonymously.

If one wishes the remains to stay there longer, one can purchase a plot in perpetuity – although even then, the plot can be reclaimed if the grave monument is neglected.

Given that it is now very difficult to be buried in a churchyard, or in a specifically Catholic cemetery, I can’t help thinking that the “green burial grounds” might not be the best option. Both of my paternal grandparents chose to be buried in one such place, and almost everything about it was better.

They were buried without the ghastly embalming that can be common today, and in wicker coffins.

Although their monuments were limited to small square stones, the whole area is being progressively transformed into woodland.

Personally, I quite like the idea of becoming one with a tree – especially when compared with my remains being only temporarily stored in a stone vault, before being moved to a public grave.

And on that note, let us remember to pray for the dead this November:

• What the Church really teaches about purgatory

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(WM+) – If a “Novus Ordo priest” (viz. a cleric whose holy orders depend on the validity of the new rites) must have his orders investigated before he can be allowed to minister in a traditionalist group, such an investigation cannot stop with the particular ceremony in which he was ordained. Even if the new rites are assumed to be valid, such an investigation involves much more.

In two recent pieces, we reported on the grave measures taken regarding Fr Philip Conklin and Fr David Mary Engo for their association with the SSPX, and on indications that both are to join the Society.

1. The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – Survey of opinions

2. ‘Positive doubt’ doesn’t mean ‘particular evidence’: More on conditional ordination and Novus Ordo priests

The first of these two articles – which surveyed the SSPX clerics who have expressed doubts about these rites, and showed that no consensus exists within the Society on the matter – is effectively a fourth part of our earlier series on Archbishop Lefebvre and Novus Ordo Sacraments:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

In the second piece, we considered what is presented as the “official position” of the SSPX on priests ordained in the reformed rites.

We took as our reference point the account given by Fr Paul Robinson on a podcast published by the SSPX’s US District:

Fr Robinson’s position may be summarised as follows:

1. The new rites of priestly ordination (NRPO) and episcopal consecration (NREC) are sufficient for the valid conferral of the respective orders.

2. When a priest ordained with these rites wishes to join the SSPX, an investigation is necessary to make sure that there were no defects in his ordination.

3. If no positive evidence of any substantial defect is found (for example, in a video of the ordination), then the priest’s orders are considered to be valid – just as a video of a baptism, conferred without any such defects, is also sufficient to consider the sacrament as valid.

If the investigation extends beyond the priest’s own ordination, and to the orders of his ordaining bishop, this is not indicated in the video or other related materials.

As we argued previously, the analogy with baptism undermines Fr Robinson’s own position in two ways. First, the Church’s practice with converts traditionally places the burden of proof on those seeking to establish validity: the general state of affairs puts doubt “in possession”, and if validity cannot be established with moral certainty, conditional baptism follows.

Second, while a video of a baptism can indeed establish validity, a video of an ordination cannot. This is because the validity of an ordination also depends on the orders of the ordaining bishop – which may also be subject to the same problems as the priest’s orders.

This second point is the subject of the present article. If an incoming priest’s ordination must be investigated, there is no principle that permits the investigation to stop there. The investigation itself implicitly concedes that moral certainty cannot currently be established by a certificate of ordination alone. But the reasons that prevent us simply accepting the validity of the priest’s ordination apply just as much to the ordination and consecration of the bishop who ordained him, and to those of the bishops who ordained and consecrated that bishop, and so on.

One cannot claim that these previous links in the chain can be left to providence, because they are subject to precisely the same problems that are prompting the investigation into the first link. To investigate only this first link, but not the others, is to both grant and deny the same presumption at once, without any logical reason to do so. But as we are often told:

“Contradiction is a sure sign of error.”

We shall therefore consider in this article:

• How far an investigation would need to extend into the episcopal lineages of the men involved

• What an investigation into a “Novus Ordo priest’s” orders would actually involve

• Whether such investigations are taking place

• Certain objections based around Archbishop Lefebvre’s alleged inability to change position

• The real reasons for doubting the new rites, which no investigation can resolve.

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Introduction

“Lord, my heart is not exalted: nor are my eyes lofty. Neither have I walked in great matters, nor in wonderful things above me.

“If I was not humble-minded, but exalted my soul: as a child that is weaned is towards his mother, so reward in my soul.”

Ps. 130

Last week, I and my family were in France, and we took the opportunity to visit the grave of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers in Raveau, Burgundy.1

My eldest daughter found the grave quite quickly. It is located quite near the entrance, on the left, right by the “aisle” going through the cemetery.

We also visited the house nearby, where he spent the final years of his life.

This large chateau is now operated by the Institute Mater Boni Consilii, and Fr Charbel Madi was kind enough to show us some of the grounds, and the chapel where Mgr Guérard offered Mass.

Before we turn to the subject of this article, let’s recall a few details about Mgr Guérard himself.

Who was Mgr Guérard?

Born on 25 October 1898 near Paris, Mgr Guérard entered the Dominican Order at age twenty-eight after having studied mathematics, eventually earning doctorates in both mathematics and theology. He taught at Saulchoir and the Lateran, contributing to theological debates of the 1950s that preceded Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis.

Following the Second Vatican Council, he became known for his opposition to liturgical reforms and the doctrinal deviations of the Council. He authored the critical study of the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969, which led to his removal from the Lateran faculty. He subsequently developed what became known as the “Thesis of Cassiciacum,” a means of explaining the current crisis in the Church and the status of post-conciliar papal claimants. This isolated him from more mainstream traditionalist circles, including Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X, where he briefly taught.

In 1981, he was consecrated to the episcopate by Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc. He himself passed the episcopate onto Bishop Robert McKenna, as well as Bishops Storck and Munari. Bishops Donald Sanborn (RCI) and Geert Stuyver (IMBC) later received episcopal consecration from Bishop McKenna, as did three others.

Mgr Guérard’s final years were increasingly isolated. However, this period offered him the opportunity to refine his thought and grow in sanctity, if Adrian Loubier’s edifying obituary is to be believed.

• In Memoriam: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ obituary

• The Life of Msgr. Guérard des Lauriers, O.P. by Fr. Giuseppe Murro, I.M.B.C.

What this article is about

Mgr Guérard and his “Thesis of Cassiciacum” have been mentioned in articles on The WM Review on a number of occasions now. These references have been more frequent over the last year or so.

In the past, I have expressed reservations about this “Thesis” on a number of occasions. However, with the help of several priests and fellow laymen, and the reading which they have recommended, I have come to accept that the position I have held for some years is, in substance, the Thesis of Cassiciacum.

Such a conclusion is liable to be misunderstood, and others will strongly disagree with this assessment. In drawing this conclusion, I do not consider myself to have changed my mind or positions on the main points which I have previously argued to be certain. Rather, as I shall explain, I see it as coming to understand my own positions more clearly, and discovering a vocabulary, a set of distinctions and further analyses which I previously lacked.

I have tried to mark clearly where I agree with other advocates of the Thesis, where I still differ or remain “on the fence” for now – subject to further study, discussion and thought.

In what follows, my references to the Cahiers de Cassiciacum will, for now, generally be only to the edition in question. In due course I will provide more accurate page references for the French.

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Part I

Do I ‘adhere to the Thesis of Cassiciacum’?

What was put to me

In the past year, two persons put the matter to me in the following terms:

“The body of the Thesis is the notion of being Pope materialiter and being Pope formaliter, and that the Apostolic See has been vacant formaliter since at least the close of the Council in 1965. If you accept those points, then in principle you adhere to the Thesis.”

I understand that this minimalist “definition” comes with the sanction of a very close collaborator of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers himself. But in fact, Mgr Guérard expressed it in very similar terms in the 1987 interview with Sodalitium.2

It distinguishes the Thesis itself from related arguments that surround it. On this account, it consists of two claims:

1. The distinction between being Pope materialiter and formaliter, and

2. The fact that the See has been vacant formaliter since at least the close of the Second Vatican Council.

It is worth being clear about what the first claim means, since it is easily caricatured.

What does materialiter actually mean?

In his account of the Thesis, Abbé Hervé Belmont wrote about the “reification” of the idea of a “Material Pope”. “Reification” refers to the act of transforming an abstract idea into a concrete “thing”:

“[I]t is important to pause a bit at the materialiter/formaliter distinction, as its interpretation has often been hindered by a kind of ‘reification.’

“It is not at all about affirming that there exists a matter of the Pope or a form of the Pope, and that the Popes of Vatican II are a kind of formless pontifical modelling clay, or a key that has not been filed to fit the lock. This is a simplistic reading, affected by those who keep repeating that ‘there is no matter without form’ and that this distinction is therefore nonsensical.”

For these reasons, the term “Pope (or ‘pope’) materialiter” seems to be clearer than “Material Pope”, which is sometimes used by both friends and foes of the Thesis. Certain foes might reject all such terms, on the basis that they imply that there is something “papal” about the men in question; but on such a basis, the terms “papal claimant”, “papal usurper” and “false pope” might also have to be rejected.

What, then, does the idea of someone “being ‘pope’ materialiter” mean? Mgr Guérard put it in the following terms:

“One may consider the Pope materialiter, in saying that the substance – and even the person! – who is the elected of the Conclave, supposed valid, is apt to receive, by his own consent and by the “being with” [être avec] communicated by Christ, the [metaphysically] accidental form which constitutes (or will constitute) him Pope...

“JUST AS, according to St Thomas, one considers materialiter an accidental change, in affirming that such a substance-subject there plays the role of matter (that is, that such a substantial form plays the role of matter), with regard to the accidental form which it is apt to receive.”3

The recent claimants, from Montini to Prevost, may not have been “apt” or “disposed” to receive the authority of the Papacy in the same way that Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto was in the period between his election and his acceptance, but they are still “apt” or “disposed” in a certain sense, and in a way different to all other men.

In what way are they different to all other men? And in what way can they be said to be “apt” or “disposed”? We could point to the following:

• These men alone were elected in what have appeared to be conclaves of the Catholic Church

• These men alone have been taken to be true Popes by almost the whole world – which could, were it not for the various obstacles to the contrary, be sufficient to constitute a kind of “second election”4

• These men alone, or at least as the supposed superiors over their subordinates, physically occupy the buildings and churches of the Catholic Church.

Fr Piergiorgio Coradello IMBC recently put this matter in alternative terms:

​“The ‘popes’ in question are ‘popes’ only in appearance, they are not Popes: however they have a title, at the least, a colored one. […]

​“In short, even these individuals: A. Luciani, K. Wojtyla, J. Ratzinger, J. M. Bergoglio, R. F. Prevost, are not mere ‘nothings’ in the Church. They have some title to be there – whether true or colored doesn’t matter. Now a title, as we have seen from the beginning of this article, is positioned on the side of the material cause, preparing the basis for a legitimate right, for a legitimate possession; and so, precisely for this reason, the “materialiter-ity” of these individuals cannot be denied. Materialiter describes the ontology of the question, while the “colored title” does so from a canonical point of view.”5

As should be clear, the materialiter does not mean that the occupant has some fraction of papal power, or is partially the Pope, or any such thing. Fr Francesco Ricossa IMBC calls such an idea “an enormity.”6 Abbé Belmont makes the same point, saying:

“[A] Pope materialiter tantum is not Pope; he is devoid of all magisterial and jurisdictional power. From the point of view of authority, he is nothing.

“However, from the point of view of the papacy, he is a nothing, but... although deprived of all that makes a pope a Pope, he ensures a certain continuity on the Apostolic See,7 where he possesses some title, juridical or potential, to be present – which we will examine shortly.”

Elsewhere, Abbé Belmont writes:

“[T]he consistency of materialiter has not remained identical. The materialiter that can be attributed to Francis I (Bergoglio) is quite tenuous: since nothing remains of the juridical order, there is only a public fact (his being-there) which is only a proximate disposition to be recognised by the universal Church in case of a break with the new religion of Vatican II. There is still continuity (which is not without impact on the apostolicity of the Church), but this continuity is a potential continuity.”8

Père Noël Barbara, who had previously been (violently) opposed to the Thesis, went on to adopt Mgr Guérard’s explanation – and he too offered a more “minimalist” view of the Thesis and the materialiter which it posits. Speaking (one hopes) of the public sin of heresy, he wrote in his final edition of Fortes in Fide:

“For the Pope, as for simple priests, even the gravest of sins do not force him out of the Church or in any way impede his ministry. However, if he sins against the faith, he departs from the Church just like any other heretic. If he is separated from the Mystical Body of Christ, if he is not any longer a member of this Body, it is impossible that he should be the head of this Body.

“Because of his sin he is separated from Christ and as a result Christ withdraws His Authority and His assistance from him. From this point forth the only aspect of the papacy that said individual retains is the fact that he occupies the Holy See. He does this until the Church declares that he has fallen from his high estate.” (Vol. 3.12)

The fact that Père Barbara argued that such a one ceases to be Pope because of his heresy, but that he retains something materialiter until he is physically or authoritatively removed, points to another consideration.

According to the definition of the Thesis provided, it seems that exactly how a man came to be “pope” materialiter – both in terms of how he came to be disposed (i.e., was the election valid, or is it simply because he is “there” de facto?), and why he remains merely disposed (i.e., a lack of the objective intention, or some other reason) – is a secondary question, downstream of the central propositions. The same seems to apply to the various other matters associated with the Thesis, such as how the papal claimants might acquire authority, the status of modern cardinals and bishops, the nature of the Conciliar Church; these seem to be developments, adjuncts, or interpretations of the Thesis.

In short, the person who is “pope” materialiter is the one who, like all others, is not the Pope, but unlike all others, is disposed to become Pope if certain conditions are fulfilled (or removed).

But this is what I have held, believed and argued for years – such as in the article I published prior to the May 2025 conclave, Fake conclave, true pope? – even if I may have placed more emphasis on the role of “universal peaceful adherence” and the “second election” in this piece.

Thus, if this is how the Thesis is to be defined, then I hold the Thesis.

I am content to say, with the terms understood as above, and with some of the distinctions and vocabulary provided by the Thesis, that the See is vacant formaliter, whilst continuing to be occupied materialiter.

How I came to this conclusion

Fr Reid Hennick, formerly of the Society of St Pius X and now of the Roman Catholic Institute – which adheres to the Thesis – has been a personal friend for several years. Following his departure and during his “sabbatical”, Fr Hennick had been reading Mgr Guérard directly – particularly the Cahiers de Cassiciacum. He later informed me of his intentions with the RCI, and strongly encouraged me to read the Cahiers – describing them as “some of the best writings on the crisis”, even if one did not accept the Thesis.

I had attempted to read the Cahiers several years before in French, but for various reasons had not been able to give them my full attention. Upon this reading, however, I was struck by the number of occasions at which I came upon passages that expressed, in much more lucid and competent terms, certain under-appreciated topics which I had been struggling to address. For example, I could point to his account of what I have previously called the “epistemology of the crisis” in the first volume (which I addressed here), his explanation of how Paul VI’s lack of authority may be passed to his successors (which I addressed here), or his explanation of the effect of schism on the theological virtue in the third and fourth volumes (which I had addressed here). In each case, I discovered that Mgr Guérard had already arrived before me.9

I also became convinced of his account of the nature of ecclesiastical authority, and its relation to Christ’s promise that “to be with” (être avec) St Peter.10

Around the same time, I started to read accounts of Mgr Guérard’s life, which I found impressive and edifying.

Prior to all this, Fr Aedan Gilchrist RCI had been telling me for a long time that the various positions for which I advocated were compatible with the Thesis, and indeed that my overall position basically was the Thesis. I found this interesting, and while I was not convinced, I continued the conversation with Fr Gilchrist for several months – continuing to read what he recommended and pursuing my own studies at the same time.

Eventually – prompted to think more about it, by a conversation with His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn, and after resolving the objections I am about to discuss – I came to the conclusions discussed above.

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Part II

Objections and Responses

I have already mentioned the “minimalist” account presented by Père Barbara and others, which seemed more acceptable to me than other presentations.

But while I found some of these explanations interesting and increasingly compelling – above all, Mgr Guérard’s own writings – I was still not persuaded, for the following reasons.

1. The Fifth Opinion. The Thesis seemed to entail setting aside adherence to St Robert Bellarmine’s Fifth Opinion, or distorting its meaning: that a manifest heretic either ceases ipso facto to be Pope, or cannot attain office in the first place. Several advocates of the Thesis argued against the certainty of this Fifth Opinion (often in favour of the Fourth Opinion – that such a one should be deposed). But, as Bellarmine said, this opinion is “true”, and based on principles which are “most certain”. Others claimed that it did not really mean what we thought it did, due to certain comments Bellarmine made elsewhere (particularly about declarations).

2. Necessity of a declaration. Related to the former, the Thesis seemed to be premised on the idea that someone remains a Catholic and member of the Church unless and until he is removed by authority. But this seemed contrary to the standard account of the matter in theologians – as well as the connected fact that notoriety in canon law is attained not just by something being notorious in law but also notorious in fact (can. 2197). This points to another general theme, which is that the Thesis seemed to be premised on a need for declarations and certain “legal” eventualities in a way that was not justified (e.g., the requirements for a “public defection from the faith” to be fulfilled, in can. 188.4.)

3. The validity of the elections. The Thesis seemed to be premised on the idea that the conclave was valid, and those whom they elected were eligible – but, at best, this seemed far from certain. It also seemed to be premised on the possibility that an election that is neither accepted nor rejected continues to “hang” in the ether – as if a perduring non-acceptance did not result, after a certain amount of time (this being in the nature of things, and merely regulated in most cases by canon law) in a true rejection of the election.

4. The unity of the Church. The Thesis seemed to me to compromise the unity of the Church, by the insistence of many of its advocates that there was no “new Church”, and the apparent need to posit the existence of more than one religion in the same Church. But if a body lacks a property which is necessary to the Church, then it cannot be the Church. But the body of men commonly called the “Conciliar Church” (or “Conciliar/Synodal Church”) does lack such properties, principally unity. Therefore, it cannot be the Church.

5. Perpetuity of the hierarchy. The Thesis seemed to be premised on the universal defection of the hierarchy, and presented as a solution to this supposed reality. This seemed to entail denying the perpetuity of the hierarchy and an essential property of the Church.

6. The necessity of the Thesis. The Thesis also seemed to be unnecessary in various respects, and to posit an elaborate structure to reach conclusions that could be reached more simply. For example: it was not clear to me that positing a material succession (whether to the Holy See, or to the other diocesan sees) was necessary for the continuity of apostolic succession – or that it could be sufficient for this purpose (such being the case for the Eastern Orthodox or Anglican sects). Similarly, it did not seem clear to me that such an explanation was necessary or capable of explaining how a new Pope could be attained. It was also not clear to me that metaphysical certitude, or the certitude of faith, are necessary for one to conclude with certainty that the Holy See is vacant, or that arguments which might give someone personal certainty were not sufficient.

The objections based on membership (and Bellarmine’s Fifth Opinion) and the unity of the Church weighed most.

No single argument removed these difficulties. Rather, I came across a number of authors or persons who, in different ways, showed how the various points I have mentioned could be held together with the substance of the Thesis. I have come to see that my understanding of the Thesis was incomplete: some of the objections being points expressed by Mgr Guérard himself, and others being opposed merely to interpretations or presentations of the Thesis, rather than the Thesis itself. These resolutions are detailed below.

The effect was cumulative. I found that I did not have to choose between the Thesis and what I already understood to be true. Instead, with particular interpretations placed in the proper context, and with some of my own misconceptions set aside, the Thesis gave a framework into which these points fitted, and allowed me to account for them with greater precision than before.

How the objections are resolved

(Obj. 1–2) The Fifth Opinion and related matters

The resolution of the problems around the compatibility of the Thesis with the Fifth Opinion was probably the final piece in the puzzle. That solution was given to me by Fr Gilchrist, for which I am grateful.

I still hold the Fifth Opinion to be certain: a manifest heretic is not, and cannot become, the head of the Church, and no sentence is needed to bring this about. This is because of the radical incompatibility of public heresy with membership of the Church, with this membership being necessary to hold office.

Not every adherent of the Thesis would put it so. Many argue that the Thesis does not depend on the theological opinions about a heretical Pope, which Abbé Belmont calls “only permitted theses” not taken up by the Church.

Indeed Mgr Guérard stated on several occasions that one neither should nor could assert with due certainty that at least Paul VI was “personally heretical.”11 He also seems to have implied that his Thesis would no longer apply if the “popes” were shown to have lost office due to not being members of the Church.12 I understand that the late bishop also wrote a paper specifically on the question which has never been published.

But with all due respect, I think that his analysis still retains value even if Bellarmine’s Fifth Opinion is taken to apply. While I recognise that the Thesis does not depend on arguments about the Pope Heretic thesis, as Abbé Belmont put it, I do not believe that it excludes it. Nor does a need for a declaration conflict with the Fifth Opinion, depending on how the role of this declaration is understood, and what is meant by “loss of office”.

As the Pope has no superior on earth, the admonitions of which the authors speak cannot be acts of authority over him. However, the authors do acknowledge the role of a merely declaratory sentence in making the vacancy a public fact, and allowing the Church to proceed to a new election. For instance, the Wernz-Vidal commentary reads:

“Thus, it must be said that a heretical Roman Pontiff loses his power ipso facto. However, a declaratory sentence of the crime, which as merely declaratory should not be rejected, does not have the effect that the heretical Pope is judged, but rather is shown to have already been judged, i.e., the General Council declares the fact of the crime by which the Pope, through heresy, has separated himself from the Church and deprived himself of his dignity.”13

In the intervening period between the loss of office (or non-attainment of office) due to public heresy and such a declaration, what is the status of the former or putative “pope”? It seems that his status conforms to what was described above as the pope materialiter. He is not the Pope, not even partially, but he retains a physical occupation and a relationship with the papacy different to every other person. What he has lost is the papacy formaliter, and it is for the Church to remove that “material” relationship that remains. (One could say that he has already ceased to be Pope de jure, but remains “in office”, in this merely physical way, de facto – although I understand certain advocates of the Thesis would reverse those descriptions).

Canon 188.4 and tacit renunciation

We see the reality just discussed appear in canons 188.4 and 151. Here they are:

“Can. 188. Any office becomes vacant upon the fact and without any declaration by tacit resignation recognized by the law itself if a cleric […] § 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.

“Can. 151. An office that is vacant by law but that perchance is still held by another illegitimately can be conferred provided that, duly according to the sacred canons, this possession is declared not to be legitimate and that mention of this declaration is made in the letter of conferral.”

In other words, one canon tells us that the office is vacant; the other tells us that the office vacant in law but held in fact (illegitimately) must be “emptied” by the Church before it can be filled (if the person does not actually give over any pretence of holding it). In so far as the principle behind can. 188.4 is applicable to a Pope or a papal claimant, so also is can. 151.

These canons are cited as indications of principles that are “in the nature of things”, rather than as strictly applying to the Pope. Any application to the Pope would necessarily imply that he had been validly elected and validly possessed authority before losing it – which I do not presume to resolve here. Further, it is not clear whether such a canon could be applied to a true Pope, because the Pope is above canon law; however, even if this is so, it does give an indication of the mind of the Church.

Fr Coradello addresses this particular issue in the article below:

• ‘By What Title...?’ Fr Coradello’s essay on ecclesiastical ‘titles’

For these reasons, I continue to hold the position I have previously advocated, which is that the “public defection from the faith” mentioned does not require warnings, a condemnation, or for a person to join a sect, and that the tacit renunciation of office which is attached to the act is “in the nature of things”, rather than a penalty. These points are explained in detail by Mgr Gerald V. McDevitt below:

• ‘Public defection from faith’ does NOT require joining a sect for tacit resignation from office

Further, I continue to acknowledge that can. 188.4 refers to public defection from the faith, rather than notorious; and I continue to recognise that can. 2197 states the following regarding the degrees of publicity:

Can. 2197: A delict is:

1. Public, if it is already known or is in such circumstances that it can be and must be prudently judged that it will easily become known;

2. Notorious by notoriety of law, [if it is] after a sentence by a competent judge that renders the matter an adjudicated thing, or after confession by the offender made in court in accord with Canon 1750;

3. Notorious by notoriety of fact, if it is publicly known and was committed under such circumstances that no clever evasion is possible and no legal opinion could excuse [the act];

4. Occult, if it is not public; materially occult, if the delict is hidden; formally occult, if imputability [is not known].

In addition to the definition of the term “public”, we can also note that the canon states that notoriety is established both by notoriety of law and by notoriety of fact. In other words, something may be notorious without a sentence or a confession made in accordance with can. 1750.

This particular issue was addressed in the following places:

• The human mind’s ability to apprehend reality without the intervention of authority

• What does it mean for something to be “public” or “notorious”?

Membership, and the need for declarations

As stated in the objection, I had supposed that the Thesis required one to hold that the papal claimants – and indeed, everyone who claims to be a Catholic – remain members of the Church until the contrary is declared by authority. Such a proposition has implications both for our understanding of the status of the papal claimants, and for the unity of the Church.

While both Mgr Guérard and several advocates of the Thesis have advocated for such a proposition, Mgr Guérard also made other comments which must be considered.

For example, his article The Church Militant in the Time of Bishop Wojtyła (Bulletin de l’Occident chrétien no. 101) advances the thesis that one cannot have moral certainty about the membership of any individual person who professes to recognise Paul VI and his successors as true Popes. Regarding the papal claimants, he stated specifically of John Paul II:

“It is therefore very precisely in so far as he occupies the Apostolic See, that is to say, in so far as he is Pope ‘materialiter,’ that W. finds himself excluded from present membership of the Church Militant, and therefore cannot be Pope ‘formaliter.’”

Regarding the problem the proposition poses for the unity of the Church, we can note that the general thesis of the article mentioned shows that he recognised that one may cease to be a member of the Church prior to a declaration, with his position being one of nescience rather than insistence that the person remained a member.

As such, my position remains the same as that I have previously articulated: I agree with Mgr Guérard’s “nescience” as a general principle (i.e. with regard to all self-identifying Catholics), but I do believe that one may attain moral certitude in practice (i.e., with regard to particular self-identifying Catholics). In other words, actual knowledge may allow one to attain moral certainty of a particular person’s membership or non-membership of the Church. Such certainty, however, does not amount to making a judgement or a declaration in any authoritative sense: it amounts to private knowledge, sufficient for one to act within one’s own sphere.

Further to the topic of membership, I had already made use of Abbé Bernard Lucien’s treatment as a means of explaining how and why non-“sedevacantists” can continue to be recognised as members of the Catholic Church. That explanation is found in the “Clarification” below:

• The visibility of the Church – WM Review on Kokx News

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(Obj. 3) – The validity of the conclaves

I have long held, as an opinion (and not as a certainty), that the post-conciliar conclaves are invalid. Most advocates of the Thesis hold that they are valid, for a few different reasons, although there are some different positions on the matter.

On the side of the electors, there is a distinction between the right of electing and the power of jurisdiction, and Bishop Sanborn has argued that one may be lost without the other.14 This was recently proposed again by Fr Coradello.15 The same priest has also argued that the post-conciliar cardinals hold at least a coloured title, and that Christ may supply what is needed for an election.

On the other hand, Abbé Belmont holds that the creation of cardinals is an act of the very jurisdiction that is absent, so that by the election of Francis “there were none left” of the true cardinals. This is why he contrasts the “public fact” of the latter’s position with the “juridical fact” of Paul VI’s – and why he says “the consistency of the materialiter has not remained identical.”

Mgr Guérard himself implied that the validity of a conclave depends on the presence of papally-appointed cardinals, when he described John Paul II as “regularly elected [I grant this until certain proof of the contrary], by a conclave that included some ten authentic cardinals [who did not protest].”16 Today, none of the cardinals were appointed by an undoubted Pope.

Mgr Guérard also recognised the possibility that the post-conciliar conclaves were invalid or defective. In the first of the Cahiers, he considers the possibility that Paul VI was never Pope at all, and states explicitly that the validity of his election is an “open question”. However, he also argues in the same place, and on several occasions, that God may supply what is lacking to an inherently invalid conclave under certain circumstances.17 In the 1987 interview, he also referred to the conclaves as “supposedly valid”, rather than “certainly valid”.18

Further, Fr Ricossa writes:

“Mgr Guérard des Lauriers always maintains that even if one were to demonstrate that the election of the Conclave was invalid (due to an obex affecting the electors or the elect), this elect would still be ‘at least provisionally “pope” materialiter’, until the physical or moral person empowered to do so in the Church declares the nullity of this election.”19

Naturally, it would be a mistake to focus on the words “provisionally ‘pope’” without also noticing the further qualifier materialiter; which is to say that even this “provisionally ‘pope’ materialiter’ is still not the Pope.

Fr Ricossa’s comments bring us to the possible invalidity on the side of the elect, on which I maintain my former position: that public heretics (and schismatics and apostates) are not eligible to be elected, as they are non-Catholics. However, for the reasons discussed above, I admit that a non-Catholic illegitimately and even invalidly elected to the papacy is in a position different to everybody else, in that he too has a putative (and invalid) title to the papacy. Theologians have discussed the comparable matter of ineligible persons being elected to the papacy.20

By contrast, a female would not have a putative title, because while there may be debates (even if contrived) over whether or not a given public heretic is indeed such, and what this means for his claim to the papacy, there can be no such debates about a female.

For these reasons, and those discussed in relation to the materialiter, I do not think it is necessary to take a position on the validity or invalidity of the conclave – neither on the side of the electors nor the elect. What matters is that a set of facts give rise to a title, even if such a title be only a putative one. While Fr Coradello considers the papal claimants to have had a coloured title, some may find a putative title more acceptable – which he defines as follows:

“A Putative title. In this case, while there was no grant, there is some reason that leads one to suppose the contrary. There is a presumption that some title exists: but yet in reality there is no real title! This pure presumption, which must be reasonable, and widespread (common), comes to constitute a title, called ‘putative.’”21

How long the designation of an election endures

The Thesis is premised on the enduring designation of the “Pope materialiter”, and this is normally explained by the fact that each claimant has failed to accept the office.

Canon 175, in the section on elections, states the following:

“The election should be communicated quickly to the one elected, who must within at [most] eight useful days from the reception of the information make known whether he consents to the election or whether he refuses it; otherwise he loses all rights acquired from the election.”

Previously, I had considered that this canon indicated and managed something in the nature of things: namely, that an election cannot simply “hang” indefinitely, and that a failure to accept can and should, at some point, be construed as a refusal.

However, Abbé Damien Dutertre raises the following counter example:

“Pope Victor III was elected in 1086, but strongly refused to accept it. The Cardinals and the Roman populace tried to force him into accepting the papacy, and actually made him pontiff by force, until he was able to flee from Rome, after having deposed his pontifical insignia. He returned only one year later, in 1087, convinced at last to accept the papacy, at the sight of so many prayers and tears. This fact is presented by Passerini when discussing the necessity of the consent of the person elected.”22

Further, he presented a text from Bonacina that indicated that, in this interim period, one should indeed consider the elect in a different position to other men:

“Secondly, it does not follow that the Apostolic See is simply (simpliciter) vacant while the election has been made by the Cardinals and the person elected has not yet given his consent, as when the person elected is an absent Cardinal (as happened to Adrian VI who was in Spain in 1521), for even though the election has not yet achieved its full effect and the Apostolic See is not yet said to be occupied, for as long as the consent of the person elected has not followed; but the Apostolic See is not vacant on account of this, because the See is said to be vacant when it does not have a Pontiff in any way, but in our case it does have a Pontiff in a certain way, since a pope has already been elected, and even though he has not yet been created, he nevertheless has been as though conceived and exists, so to speak, in the womb.”23

In my comments on Abbé Belmont’s article, however, I made the following objection:

“I do concede that if these non-popes were to ‘accept the election’ in the relevant sense, then it is possible that he would accede to the office – but by other means (by some form of acclamation, and/or peaceful and universal adherence), and not by virtue of an unaccepted election.”24

But this objection is answered by the definition of materialiter and previous discussions already given. Even if we were to say a) that the election was in itself invalid, or b) that it had lapsed due to lack of acceptance, the materialiter would have remained, and is what would have given those alternative means of accession their force.

(Obj. 4) The unity of the Church, and the non-identity of the Conciliar/Synodal Church and the Catholic Church

The claim that one must accept the Conciliar/Synodal Church as the Catholic Church – and that it contains more than one religion – was, for me, one of the most insuperable problems with the Thesis.

On the contrary, I have long argued a) that the “Conciliar/Synodal Church” is not the Catholic Church; it is not, however, a sect, but rather an accidental aggregation of men of different religions and “faiths”; and b) that this division in faith is itself proof that the body in question is not the Catholic Church. This was one line of argument in my long “book” Zero Marks:

• ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

However, once again, I discovered that Mgr Guérard had already made the same point decades earlier. In his article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship, he sharply criticised men such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Abbé Georges de Nantes and Dom Gérard Calvet for adopting ideas that entailed such a multiplicity of religions in the Church. He called this a “false and subversive principle”, and wrote:

“When Archbishop Lefebvre, in his letter to the ‘pope’ dated 24 December 1978, asks that there be the Mass and the said ‘new mass,’ on an equal footing, under the control of the local bishop, this amounts to asking, and therefore to admitting, that there be two religions in the same Church. […]

“The Church thus becomes a sort of cage for religion. There is first the religion of Wojtyła, which is supposed to guarantee continuity with the past, and thus authenticity. And then, in this same cage, which would be the Church – Christian, because it is Wojtyłan – there is, according to each person’s choice, a second religion: for some, that of Écône and the “priories”; for others, that of St-Parres and the CRC; for others still, that of Le Barroux and of ‘beauty.’

“And it is this second religion – extremely anxious to secure for itself, AT ANY PRICE, the most solid foundations for the near future – which is ipso facto [!] the only one to possess the promises of eternal life.

“Now, to profess such a doctrine in act presupposes that one admits as valid, in the very bosom of the Church, a principle of peaceful coexistence! […]

“Two religions, whose radical divergence makes it impossible for them to be WITH one another, and which nevertheless are in the same ‘Church,’ because they are supposed to be FOR the same God.

“This doctrine – professed and lived, imposed and spread, by the “priories” and by the CRC, by “Le Barroux” and by Itinéraires – this doctrine is practically the negation of the Church, of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, of that Church whose unity is catholic [kath’holon: unity of an organic whole] by NATURE, whose ordered splendour excludes all duality.

“Will the satanically skilful remarks of “Cardinal” Ratzinger make all the ‘shamefaced’ Wojtyłans – but Wojtyłans all the same! – understand that, by claiming to be in a Church where there would in reality be two religions, they are CERTAINLY outside the Church of Jesus Christ; and that, if they wish to be IN the Church of Jesus Christ, they must say NO in words and in deeds, to the Wojtyłan dictatorship.”

• The Novus Ordo Dictatorship and the ‘Cage for Religion’

Now, if anyone understood the Thesis of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers, it is surely Mgr Guérard des Lauriers himself. It also seems unreasonable to accuse him of contradicting himself without evidence of such a contradiction – and the expressions of those who themselves adhere to the Thesis do not seem to be sufficient.

Thus, if he asserts the opposite of the claim “the Conciliar Church is the Catholic Church”, then we can be confident in assuming that this controversial claim does not form part of the Thesis, as is alleged. How any further difficulties that might be raised can be resolved or harmonised is a separate issue.

Thus, in my view, falls away another of the chief objections to the Thesis.

(Obj. 5) The perpetuity of the hierarchy

Most advocates of the Thesis consider it to be an established fact that the hierarchy of the Church no longer exists in act, and present the Thesis as a solution to this problem. Implicit in this is the proposition that the hierarchy of the Church can cease to exist in act.

However, in his declaration – published in 1983, and recently cited by Fr Piergiorgio Coradello in The Way We Sit – Mgr Guérard spoke of attempts to “sound the tocsin” of alarm with putative diocesan bishops:

“May God make resound the melody so carefully prepared by Fr. de Blignières in the ears of some residential bishop… imprisoned, or delayed, or retarded… sufficiently conditioned so that this bishop may not yet have been able to posit the human act which alone would change into sin the at least tacit acquiescence to the ‘sessio-W.’ All hope is not lost.

“And this simple glimmer absolutely forbids envisaging, even as a simple eventuality, the reconstitution of a pseudo-sessio from Bishops who have no ordinary jurisdiction [though they do have jurisdiction per modum actus, by virtue of the MISSIO, to validly confect whatever Sacrament it may be, in favour of whatever faithful it may be].”25

In other words, he recognised the possibility that legitimate members of the hierarchy remained. As mentioned above, it seems reasonable to assume that Mgr Guérard understood his own Thesis, and that actual evidence should be provided if he is to be accused of contradicting himself.

Although the situation has changed since he wrote those words, in that there do not seem to be any reigning ordinaries appointed by true Popes, such a comment shows that the Thesis does not exclude the continuity of the hierarchy in act, if it were possible for men to attain office without a papal act (which is debated). Thus a further objection falls away.

For my part, I remain of the opinion that the hierarchy continues in act, and that there may be means by which men may legitimately attain office even under our current circumstances. However, I recognise the force of arguments attempting to prove that, under our circumstances, an absence of actual living successors of the Apostles may constitute only a per accidens interruption in the moral continuity of this hierarchy.

This is the one point on which my views have somewhat shifted, as I expressed in April of this year. I had previously written:

“[A] merely material succession is no succession in the relevant sense, just as a mere potential to reclaim jurisdiction is not jurisdiction itself. The continuing existence of the hierarchy is not safeguarded by saying that it can cease to exist in act whilst lapsing into mere potency.”

I now find it hard to dismiss the fact that the succession of the Conciliar/Synodal officers took place at least apparently according to law, resulting in at least putative titles to the various Sees – and that under our circumstances, this has a significance which is distinct from the merely material succession of the Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox. The “material succession” of Paul VI and his successors has indeed been similar to that of those other groups, but not identical – not least because their succession has been to the indefectible Roman See, while Canterbury and Constantinople have been cut off legally.

This is addressed in the updated version of the following article:

• The Apostolicity of the Church – Who are the Successors of the Apostles?

(6) Whether the Thesis is necessary

My reasons for writing this article, and for concluding that my views have already substantially been those of the Thesis, have been because I think that the points stated are true. For example, I think that the account of authority given by Mgr Guérard, and in a more popular form by Abbé Bernard Lucien, is correct; I also think that it is correct to say that Paul VI and his successors have been “popes” materialiter, in the sense defined above.

However, the Thesis of Cassiciacum is sometimes presented as being necessary as a solution to other problems – such as that of the Apostolicity of the Church. About this, I am less sure. For example, I think that the materialiter occupation of the Holy See is a fact, but at present I am not convinced that this kind of occupation is so necessary that the Holy See would have defected, if it had not continued. The same seems to apply to the succession materialiter to diocesan sees, with the caveats made above and elsewhere.

I think that the Thesis provides an explanation as to how the Church may attain a new Pope, and that given the occupation materialiter certain means are not available; nonetheless, I continue to recognise that other means might be available under different circumstances.

I also do not yet agree with some of the sharp distinctions made by writers such as Abbé Lucien between the Thesis and “totalism” (a term I have never accepted for myself) – as if the latter based its conclusion of the vacancy wholly on arguments from heresy and membership, to the exclusion of arguments from indefectibility, and so on. Various forms of “deductive”26 and “inductive”27 arguments have indeed been used by so-called “totalists” to demonstrate the absence of Authority.

Nor am I yet convinced that metaphysical or infallible certitude is necessary to conclude that the See is vacant, or that arguments which give personal certainty are insufficient for private persons (as if the only arguments that could have value for private persons are ones which could compel the community). On the contrary, moral certainty of the vacancy seems to me to be sufficient for this. I further note that Mgr Guérard himself presented his “inductive argument” as achieving moral certainty:

“Well-conducted inductive reasoning thus produces certainty in the intellect.

“However, it must be noted that the epistemological quality of the certainty attained by induction depends on the domain of reality in which this type of reasoning is applied. […] Let us limit ourselves to observing that our object here is human action. Consequently, the certainty we must expect from the induction we are undertaking is that which is commonly considered sufficient in the order of human action. It is usually designated as ‘moral certainty.’”28

Given that the “inductive argument” is, in a certain sense, the heart of the Thesis, it seems reasonable to say that Mgr Guérard is thereby qualifying the Thesis of Cassiciacum itself as morally certain. This is, I have been informed, how his sometime collaborator Fr Louis Marie de Blignières understood the matter.

In brief, I am not enthusiastic about arguments that treat the Thesis as a necessary solution to problems, principally because I do not think the arguments to that effect are conclusive. Some of these problems may also be solved in different ways – even if only under different circumstances. The reason for concluding that I “adhere to the Thesis” is because I think that the Thesis, as defined above, is correct.

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Part III

Final Considerations

Some final points on the following related topics:

The value of the Thesis of Cassiciacum. I said in the previous section that I am not enthusiastic about arguments that treat the Thesis as a necessary solution. This is because the primary consideration is truth rather than utility. However, I cannot deny that I have come to appreciate the “uses” of the Thesis and Mgr Guérard’s writings. Its principal “use”, to my mind, is supplying greater precision in the expression of various points, and a greater insight into their significance. I have already mentioned the sensation of completing challenging work, and finding that Mgr Guérard had already covered the same ground, and in a more comprehensive way. It provides a framework and terminology for expressing the status of the post-conciliar claimants, recognising that “they are not nothing”, and explaining how this is so.

“The inductive argument”. I continue to prefer arguments for our current situation based on what Mgr Guérard called the “deductive arguments”, as has been the case for many years. After such arguments, I continue to prefer those based on the Fifth Opinion of St Robert Bellarmine, and (as stated) I do not believe that they nullify the Thesis. However, I do believe the “inductive argument” of Mgr Guérard is sound, useful, and attains moral certainty.

The term “sedevacantism”. Some adherents of the Thesis eschew the term “sedevacantism”. I already expressed my dislike of this term, and agree with Père Barbara on the topic:

“Some have cleverly invented the term ‘sedevacantist’ and apply it to us in a derogatory sense; but we are no more ‘sedevacantists’ than we are ‘traditionalists’. We are Catholics, and it is precisely for that reason that we must insist so strongly on the urgent need to submit to the magisterium of the popes and of the councils.”29

Another veteran priest, Abbé Guépin, also wrote:

“Stop calling us ‘sedevacantists’ in the manner of journalists who used the qualifier ‘integristes.’ We are simply faithful Catholics, consistent in the present combat, and refusing all compromise with the Modernists – especially with their chief, JP2.”

However, for the same reasons expressed, I do not intend to adopt the similarly ugly and misleading term of “sedeprivationism” either.

Novelty. It is sometimes alleged that the Thesis of Cassiciacum is a novelty, or that aspects of it (such as the concept of papal authority as Christ's “being with” the Pope) are. Catholics are rightly suspicious of novelty. But there are other established matters of theology which, at one point, may have had the appearance of novelty – such as the very Thomistic synthesis itself. Different events in ecclesiastical history have also compelled theologians to think more deeply about what they had received: for example, it seems unlikely that theologians before the Great Western Schism would have been ready to provide the principles and distinctions on which later theologians rely to explain that period. Finally, it is well known that crises and heresies have prompted Catholic theologians to “sharpen” their argumenrs, to similar effect. As a result, the issue is not one of novelty but of truth.

My co-editor. Matthew McCusker, my co-editor, has his own views on various topics discussed at The WM Review. This article pertains to my understanding of my own views. It does not presume to commit him to the Thesis of Cassiciacum.

Part IV

Conclusion

In this article I have explained why I have concluded that the views I have held for years are, in substance, the Thesis – or at least compatible with it. These include the unique position held by each of the papal claimants since Vatican II, dating at least to the close of the Council. I have not given up the Fifth Opinion of St Robert Bellarmine, my reading of canon 188.4, my understanding of the unity of the Church, or the non-identity between the Catholic Church and the Conciliar/Synodal Church – although on the significance of a material succession, my view has somewhat shifted.

In reading Mgr Guérard, I did not find an incomprehensible dreamer, as portrayed in the article “Concerning a sedevacantist thesis”30 (recently promoted by Eric Sammons31) – nor did I find that understanding the Cahiers required knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, as I had been told as a younger man. His works require effort: but so does understanding the “codified common sense” of St Thomas. On the contrary, I found myself returning to the address of Bishop Robert McKenna, given immediately after his consecration by Mgr Guérard in 1986:

“In [Mgr Guérard], we find one of the Founding Fathers of the traditional resistance against the revolution! It is already surprising that priests with lesser competence hasten so boldly to challenge him, but that laity also act in this way exceeds all bounds!

“If one is inclined to let oneself be guided by the weight of authority alone in this dark night of the Church, where – I ask – will one find a traditional priest more qualified than him, by reason of his age, his high competence and academic experience, than Mgr Guérard des Lauriers?”

Some readers of The WM Review have previously expressed strong opposition to the Thesis of Cassiciacum, and they may be dismayed by this article. I would ask them to consider that if they agreed with the positions advocated at The WM Review prior to reading this article, then either a) they themselves are not as opposed to the Thesis as they may have believed; or b) I am mistaken, as a matter of fact, in concluding that these positions are substantially those of the Thesis, or compatible with it. In either case, there is no need for any serious disagreement between us.

On the other hand, if such persons already disagreed with the positions advocated here, then they now have an extra title under which to disagree.32

In the meantime, I am grateful to the authors on whose work I have leaned, and to the clergy and laymen who took the trouble to help me – including His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn and Mr Stephen Heiner, who pushed me to think seriously about this matter.

If I have misrepresented any of the men mentioned, or misunderstood any point I would be grateful to be corrected. In the meantime, reading and study continues.

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Postscript

Unsurprisingly, this piece has proved to be controversial. Such is life.

Mr elected to publish a comment from this article’s combox at . The commen was from (whose work we have published). I also responded to this comment, which Mr Johnson added. That article may be found here:

• Bridging the Gap Between Sedevacantism and Sedeprivationism?

Since then Bishop Donald Sanborn was asked about my article on his regular livestream. Asked whether he had read it, he responded in the affirmative and said:

“I was very pleased with it […] He did his homework, and I complimented him on that. He took it all in, and thought about it, and I’m very happy to see where he is on that. Yes.”

Later in the same video, His Excellency was – in a question naming WM Review, Integrity Magazine and – for his opinion on “lay apostolates” and the role of the layman today. In response to this, he said:

“Well, I think it’s praiseworthy that laypeople are getting involved in the battle. But they have to be careful to be directed by clergy, because theology is a very difficult science, you know, and the these seminarians go for seven years learning theology. So you can’t just say things off the top of your head, or read 1something in a book and that’s it. They should be under the direction of clergy at all times, and make sure that what they’re saying is in conformity with the Catholic faith, because they could mislead people easily.

“But I’m impressed by the intellectual acumen of these people – especially the ones that they mentioned. And I think they’re doing a good job.”

We think His Excellency for these kind words and encouragement. Regarding the particular point, The WM Review does not have a formal relationship with any group of clergy, but (in addition to our careful approach to texts) we do also regularly seek advice and input from priests – particularly when the topic at hand calls for an even greater degree of care than usual. We are in touch with several of the many priests who read the website: they tell us what they think about what we have published, and are generous with their time in talking through ideas and principles prior to publication. For that, we are most grateful.

Appendix

Suggested Reading

Below are some of the works which have helped me in coming to this conclusion.

The Cahiers de Cassiciacum

The Cahiers are still in copyright, which is why they have not been published in English.

An unofficial translation of Vol. I is available here:

• Cahiers de Cassiciacum, Vol. I.

Other material from Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

• Interview with Bishop Guérard des Lauriers OP on the Thesis of Cassiciacum

• The Wojtyłan Dictatorship:

  • Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Danneels

  • Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

  • Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

  • ‘Ratzinger is Luther’: The future Benedict XVI’s ‘Tridentine Jar’

  • The Novus Ordo Dictatorship and the ‘Cage for Religion’

• Consacrer des Évêques ? (To Consecrate Bishops?)

• L’Église militante au temps de Mgr Wojtyła (The Church Militant in the Time of Mgr Wojtyła – Coming Soon)

• Varia. Ad Usum Stolidorum

Other material

• ‘By What Title...?’ (Fr Piergiorgio Coradello)

• Response to the special edition of “La Tradizione Cattolica” on sedevacantism (Fr Francesco Ricossa)

• Pope, Papacy & the Vacant See (Fr Francesco Ricossa)

• Une consécration épiscopale valide est-elle nécessaire pour être Pape ? (Fr Francesco Ricossa)

• The Problem of Authority in the Post-Conciliar Church: The Cassiciacum Thesis (Abbé Bernard Lucien)

• The Cassiciacum Thesis (Abbé Hervé Belmont)

• Other Problems that the Popes of Vatican II Present to the Catholic Conscience (Père Noël Barbara)

• Many other articles featured in the IMBC’s Sodalitium over the years.

• TheThesis.us (Most Holy Trinity Seminary / Roman Catholic Institute)

• Foi Intégrale (Fr Damien Dutertre’s YouTube channel)

As an alternative view on the matter, I recommend the following article by Mr John Daly – and I believe some of the points he raises are addressed in this present article:

• A Few Comments on the Thesis of Fr. Guérard de Lauriers (John Daly)

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Introduction

This is the fifth and final part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983.

The first part addressed Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels’ conferences.

The second part set out Mgr Guérard’s analogy of the jar, the label and the content, and considered its application to Ratzinger’s “theology” of faith.

The third part applied it to Ratzinger’s “theology” of revelation.

The fourth part, applied it to Ratzinger’s conception of catechesis, and his general (and destructive) approach to theology. Following that, we included Mgr Guérard’s brief comments about the address of Cardinal Macharski (then the Archbishop of Kraków) and some brief comments about one of Ratzinger’s several denials of transubstantiation.

And in this fifth and final part, we will see Mgr Guérard draw together his observations – and some very interesting comments about certain wider issues.

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A faith in Man, imposed by force

Each of the speakers, in the conferences Mgr Guérard critiques, shows his allegiance to John Paul II. The “faith” that the conferences set out to “transmit” is a faith in Man, the faith of Vatican II and Redemptor hominis, in which God and Christ are retained – but subordinated to man.

Such a “faith” cannot be the theological virtue, which is a gift of God and cannot be passed on by human means. Since it does not come from Heaven, Mgr Guérard argues, it can only survive by being imposed. Every revolution must end in dictatorship if it is to perpetuate itself. In the conciliar Church, this is a dictatorship of faith, over which Cardinal Ratzinger “masterfully presides”.

The true Faith is also imposed, but with true authority. She imposes nothing but what she has received, and the believer’s assent rests on God revealing, moved interiorly by grace – with the proposition of the Church merely as the necessary condition. One the other hand, a “faith” of human origin has no such support, and so it can only be held in place from outside, by the exercise of power. This is why Mgr Guérard speaks of dictatorship rather than authority: in his view, those imposing this faith possess no authority in the Church at all – and what is imposed without authority, against what was always believed, is imposed by raw power alone.

But the supreme skill of a dictator is to recruit his opponents as partisans. On the one hand, we can see the extraordinary “Rock Star” cult of personality that surrounded John Paul II, and from which his successors have continued to benefit in greater or lesser degrees. One effect of this was that the “conservatives”, who remained opposed to various aspects of the Novus Ordo revolution, nonetheless accepted many of the errors and innovations on the strength of the man whom they adored as “pope”.

However, there remained a set of men who opposed all (or almost all) of the revolution, and indeed John Paul II and his successors – and yet continued to claim that they were “in communion” with him, without being “for” him. In this regard, Mgr Guérard names certain leading figures of the traditionalist resistance: the Abbé de Nantes and the CRC, Dom Gérard Calvet of Le Barroux, Jean Madiran’s Itinéraires, and Archbishop Lefebvre himself.

His charge is that all of them, however different, apply the same false principle on which the dictatorship rests – being “with” John Paul II while refusing to be “for” him.

‘Cage for Religion’

However, the grounds of Mgr Guérard’s objection to this is extremely interesting: he says that each of the men mentioned, in different ways, assume and accept “that there be two religions in the same Church”.

He condemns them specifically for this idea, stating that it would make the Church “a sort of cage for religion” – and would practically result in “the negation of the Church, of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ – of that Church whose unity is catholic by NATURE, and whose ordered splendour excludes all duality.”

This is precisely the point which I have been arguing for years: both a) that the “Conciliar/Synodal Church” is not the Catholic Church, and b) that one reason for this is that it is, indeed, a “cage” for multiple religions (or an accidental aggregation of men of different religions and “faiths”), and thus divided in faith. This was the thesis of my long “book” Zero Marks:

• ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

But it is not only what I have long held and argued to be the case. It is also the opposite of what I considered to be one of the most insuperable objections to the Thesis itself, which is often presented as entailing the idea that at least two religions can coexist within the one Church – which I understood to be excluded by the Church’s property of unity. It is thus very striking to see Mgr Guérard making these same arguments himself.

Readers may find the bishop's language about the early traditionalist “pioneers” – particularly Archbishop Lefebvre – very hard. Certainly in sharing these writings, I do not intend to endorse each and every aspect of what is written.

But it is worth considering how events unfolded. The arrangement Archbishop Lefebvre asked for in 1978 was eventually granted, after a fashion, by Ratzinger himself. As Benedict XVI, he declared in Summorum Pontificum that the old and new rites were two “forms” of the one Roman rite. The “cage” that Mgr Guérard described in 1983 – a divided “Church” made up of many wings – became official policy, and has come to be accepted by nearly all “traditionalists”. This mistaken belief has, in fact, become one of the chief obstacles to the advance of the true analysis of the situation:

That the Holy See has been vacant since at least 1965.

S.D.Wr.

The Wojtyłan Dictatorship: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, nos 79–80, de avril-mai 1983

Originally published as La Dictature Wojtylienne

1. Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Danneels

2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

3. Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

4. ‘Ratzinger is Luther’: The future Benedict XVI’s ‘Tridentine Jar’

5. The Novus Ordo Dictatorship and the ‘Cage for Religion’

This translation is for WM subscribers. Subscribe now for FREE!

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Introduction

This is the fourth part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983.

The first part addressed Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels’ conferences.

The second part set out Mgr Guérard’s analogy of the jar, the label and the content, and considered its application to Ratzinger’s “theology” of faith.

The third part applied it to his “theology” of revelation.

This present part, the fourth, applies it to his conception of catechesis, and his general (and destructive) approach to theology. Following this part, we include Mgr Guérard’s brief comments about the address of Cardinal Macharski (then the Archbishop of Kraków) and some brief comments about one of Ratzinger’s several denials of transubstantiation.

And in the next and final part, Mgr Guérard will draw together his observations – and some very interesting comments about certain wider issues. Stay tuned…

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The third ‘Ratzinger operation’: the structure of catechesis

In this third ‘operation’, Ratzinger praises the fourfold structure of the Roman Catechism (Creed, Sacraments, Decalogue and Lord’s Prayer) as an ancient synthesis, going back to the origins of the Church.

He then notes that there are also four senses of Scripture. By means of a third “quaternity” (set of four), what the Christian 1) believes, 2) hopes, 3) does, and 4) the “living space” in which he does it, he welds the previous two together. Thus, according to Ratzinger, we have three connected quaternities that supposedly correspond together:

1. The fourfold structure of the catechism

2. The four senses of Holy Scripture

3. The fourfold ‘topography’ which he presents.

His conclusion is that the four parts of the Catechism are “the fixed points of a topography and a hermeneutic of Scripture”.

Mgr Guérard sets out Ratzinger’s argument as a syllogism, and then takes it apart. The correspondence is an artificial concordism, and the Catechism’s own authors disclaim any such intention.

More importantly, the conclusion inverts the proper order. Revelation is what “norms” the Creed, not the other way round; the Sacraments are sacraments of the faith (sacramenta fidei): they presuppose the faith rather than govern it.

Further, the Dominican bishop adds, Ratzinger’s account is aggravated by the fact that the sacraments he has in view are not the Catholic sacraments, as defined at Trent: they are, instead, the new rites of the Novus Ordo. Here Mgr Guérard draws the parallel that Ratzinger himself invited, by noting that Luther “used this structure… as naturally” as Trent did. Luther kept the catechetical form while substituting false sacraments; Ratzinger does the same, but in the name of Rome, and with a false principle to justify it. For this, and other reasons he explains, Mgr Guérard concludes that Ratzinger is, in fact, “worse than Luther.”

The bishop does grant that Ratzinger is right to lament the neglect of certain elements in post-conciliar catechesis. But he asks the obvious question: if Ratzinger understands the faith in the manner of Teilhard de Chardin, with what does he hope to supply this neglect?

Two additional parts

This part closes with the short comments on Cardinal Franciszek Macharski’s address – which dealt with “the trial of the faith”. Mgr Guérard welcomes his references to Gethsemane and to St John of the Cross. However, he objects that Macharski confuses the “nights” through which God sanctifies souls with the darkness into which the world has fallen through sin.

He also objects that Macharski relies on two conciliar teachings he regards as heretical: that the Son of God “has in a certain manner united himself to every man” (which is one of the key errors of John Paul II’s reign, with long-lasting effects) and religious liberty.

I have also taken the liberty of transferring the short extract from BOC n. 94 (Oct 1984) – titled “‘Cardinal’ J. Ratzinger and Tradition’” – to the end of this piece. This piece is about one of Ratzinger’s several denials of Transubstantiation. Although Mgr Guérard touches on this point in reference to Dom Gérard Calvet in the final part, it seemed fitting to place it here.

With this fourth part, we come to the end of the ‘main course’ – the meat of Mgr Guérard’s article. In the next and final part, we will turn to the conclusion that gave the article its title: the way in which the Conciliar/Synodal Church (which he refers to as ‘Wojtyłan’, given who was the papal claimant at the time) operates like a dictatorship.

I have described this conclusion as the ‘dessert’ of the article. In it, we will find certain reflections and analyses about the Church, which many will find surprising, given the way in which his “Thesis of Cassiciacum” is often presented.

S.D.Wr.

The Wojtyłan Dictatorship: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, nos 79–80, de avril-mai 1983

Originally published as La Dictature Wojtylienne

1. Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Danneels

2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

3. Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

4. ‘Ratzinger is Luther’: The future Benedict XVI’s ‘Tridentine Jar’

5. The Novus Ordo Dictatorship and the ‘Cage for Religion’

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The Apostasy of Assisi

John Paul II’s ‘Finest Hour’

Introduction

October 27 is the 40th Anniversary of John Paul II’s “World Day of Prayer for Peace” at Assisi, Italy. The Community of Sant’Egidio – which has held annual “Spirit of Assisi” events across the world ever since – is marking the occasion with a special celebration in Assisi itself:

A total of 384 representatives of religions, cultures and institutions from 53 countries will take part in the event. There will be 155 speakers participating in 24 thematic forums, addressing subjects including peace, prayer, the economy, conflicts, children and young people, the media, migration, disarmament, humanity, Christian unity, dialogue across the Mediterranean, the poor, and contemporary martyrs.

Leo XIV was scheduled to attend the event on the last day (October 27th), although he has cancelled his appearance on medical advice. Prior to that cancellation, Vatican News had reported the following plan:

He will pray for peace together with the Christian community in the Lower Basilica, during a special prayer for peace in which both he and Patriarch Bartholomew will offer a meditation.

Afterward […] in the piazza outside the Basilica of Saint Francis, Pope Leo XIV “will give the world his message of peace, which is increasingly necessary.

This celebration has attracted a lot of controversy. But what happened at the original event in 1986, and why was it so controversial?

This present piece is an amalgamation of a four-part series which appeared on LifeSiteNews, examining the event and its legacy.

(no relation) praised this study as a “wonderful exegesis” in the following video:

Each part of the series covered the following topics:

1. What actually happened at the 1986 Assisi event?

2. The criticisms of the event raised by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and their role in his 1988 episcopal consecrations

3. What was problematic with the 1986 event – and whether John Paul II’s defences exonerate it

4. The legacy of the 1986 Assisi event

The following streamlines these parts, to avoid some of the repetition necessary in four standalone pieces, and has a few minor developments of certain points.

The result stands at around 12,000 words. This is a bumper piece – and I’m afraid to say it’s going to be a bumper week too, as there is a lot in the pipeline that needs to come out this week. If you only have time for one part, scroll down to Part III.

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Leo XIV ‘apologised’ for the Church’s supposed role in slavery, and failure to end it. This talk considers the accuracy of such claims.

This weekend, I delivered a talk at an event organised by a Catholic men’s group, titled ‘The Catholic Church and the Ending of Slavery.’

On several occasions previously, the Church condemned the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But Pope Leo XIII, referring to slavery as a “gloomy plague”, called for Catholics to align themselves with the abolitionist movement of his time – and was instrumental in achieving the great good of finally ending slavery.

^{Image based on By Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and either William Hackwood or Henry Webber; PBS – British Abolition Movement, Public Domain.}

But the circumstances around this issue present a similar problem to Catholics as that of usury, in that they give superficial grounds for thinking that the Church has changed her teaching. But if this is so, then where does this leave the Church’s claims? And what really is the truth of the matter?

The talk was based on the article published earlier in the year at LifeSiteNews, which considered Leo XIV’s apologies for slavery in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas:

• The Church ended slavery. So why is Leo XIV apologizing?

The talk is available on podcast apps, and on YouTube:

This article was received well at the time. Bishop Sanborn even said of Leo XIV, on one of his regular livestreams:

“Well, he doesn’t know his history, I would say. Let him read Seán Wright’s excellent article, and he’ll find out a lot of things.”

I also followed up the article with some reflections on how the Church approached the comparable issue of gladiatorial blood sports in the Roman Empire, which you can see here:

• ‘Shout-out’ from Bishop Sanborn for slavery article – Plus: gladiatorial blood-sports vs. slavery.

In addition to this article, my colleague Matthew McCusker wrote an overview of the encyclical itself:

• Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas: a blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic Church (Matthew McCusker)

In the past, McCusker and myself have also written other analyses of issues Leo XIV addresses in the encyclical:

• Has Leo XIV contradicted Catholic teaching on just war? (Matthew McCusker)

• Report: Leo XIV says ‘our task is not to build a Christendom’ (Matthew McCusker)

• What does the Catholic Church say about immigration? (S.D. Wright)

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Editor’s Notes

On many occasions, we have set out precisely what is meant by the “Social Kingship of Christ”.

• Top 5 Christ the King articles

• Christ is King: New book (with WM foreword) sets out full doctrine using works of Cardinal Pie

• ‘Total disregard of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ – Declaration against secularism from the French Cardinals and Archbishops, 1925

• Summer of Laïcité: Something Leo XIV (kind of) got right in France

In the following article, we will consider what is opposed to this Kingship, and the errors which prompted Pope Pius XI to promulgate his landmark encyclical Quas Primas.

The subsequent civil unrest in France – worse than usual, it seems – shows how necessary it is that Christ’s Kingship be recognised over all of society. “The peace of Christ in the Kingship of Christ” is the only solution, as Pope Pius XI taught.

Leo XIV’s comments on laïcité

In September 2026, Leo XIV said the following in an address to Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic:

“How can we fail to see such a commitment as an expression of the authentic “secularity” (laïcité) of the earthly city? A Christian engaged in public service and is guided by the light of his or her conscience illumined by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the nation. Indeed, authentic [laïcité] does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.

“That is precisely why Catholic schools have a rightful place in the educational landscape of a country like France. This is part of a broader issue essential to any dialogue, in schools and in society as a whole: learning to know and love ourselves, in order to be able to encounter others with respect and openness.

“An authentic [laïcité], then, consists not in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in striving to ensure that the State and religious institutions maintain dialogue and join forces in the service of the common good, that the world may have life.”1

Laïcité broadly, but inadequately, translates as “secularity”. In the French context, as I have explained elsewhere, it is a fundamentally aggressive term: anti-clerical and anti-Catholic in nature, and ordered towards “protecting” civil life from the Church.

Given the quasi-sacred character of the term in the life of the French Republic, I and others expressed surprise at the idea of Leo XIV presuming to tell Macron what laïcité “really” means, or what an “authentic” form of it looks like. In a Substack note, I wrote:

Leo XIV, high priest of the Cult of Man?

Leo XIV spoke of “aunthentic laïcité [secularism, secularity]” in his talk to President Macron. […]

French laïcité, condemned by the Church, is part of an alternative religion – what Paul VI praised as the “Cult of Man”, dreamed up by Freemasonry, and which rejects the sovereignty of God.

Who, then, is Leo XIV – or anyone else – to say what “authentic laïcité” includes or excludes?

This is like him saying “authentic Islam” or even “authentic Rabbinic Judaism” does not exclude [this, that or the other].”

If you’re not an Imam or a Rabbi, do you have the standing to make such claims?

It’s just silly. It is farcical.

But why should Catholics care what an “authentic” form of these false religions includes or excludes anyway?

… That said, perhaps Leo XIV does indeed “have the standing” to speak about the Cult of Man.

You can read more about the triumph of the Luciferian “Cult of Man” at Vatican II below:

However, certain apologists pointed to a 1958 discourse, in which Pope Pius XII appeared to set the precedent by using the same terms:

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What is laïcité?

What should we make of this apparent precedent?

First, you can read the whole speech here:

• Pope Pius XII’s ‘sana laicità’ speech is not about French ‘laïcité’ – it’s more about ‘blood and soil’

The next point to be made is that the English, French and Italian words secularity, laïcité, and laicità are not simply interchangeable. The French concept of laïcité stands apart, enjoying an enormous and even quasi-sacral significance. It is bound up with the values of the French Revolution, the “guerre scolaire” (a long conflict over the role of the state and the Church in education), the 1905 “Law of Separation”, and – in a certain sense – French identity itself. Laïcité is so foundational, that it is surprising that it is not included with the engravings of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité on municipal buildings.

The Church has condemned the idea of French laïcité on many occasions – as explained in the elsewhere.

It is, in short, a byword for an entire political and philosophical tradition. In this sense, a Pope – a real one, or a false one – telling the French Republic what laïcité “really means” might be rhetorically legitimate, but still somewhat incongruous (to put it mildly). Hence, I stand by my criticism above.

By contrast, the militant, mythical, and totemic character of French laïcité is not so present in the Italian laicità. It has a different history, and refers more to the reality that the civil authority is distinct to the ecclesiastical authority – and while it exists as a constitutional principle, it lacks the aggression of the French concept.

The context of the laïcité/laicità speeches

Further, Pope Pius XII’s context is entirely different to that of Leo XIV.

Immediately before his comments, Leo XIV referred to human dignity, the rights of man, and the French Revolution’s motto of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” as “universal ethical imperatives” fulfilled in the Gospels, and said:

“Nowadays there is a temptation to expect science to eliminate or alleviate every form of suffering. This often brings the risk of self-delusion. For when science and technology are not guided by a deeper wisdom, they can offer immediate solutions that apparently address people’s wishes and their pain, but can seriously divert them from the greater good to which they aspire. I am concerned at times by those trends in society that risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one’s own death. Let us not forget that mutual respect and the protection of every human life is a duty incumbent upon each and every one of us. It is a duty that begins with the conversion of our minds and hearts, and requires a sincere and selfless commitment to the good of our brothers and sisters.”

Immediately after his comments, he praised certain groups promoting dialogue between the Vatican and the French Government, and various temporal groups carried out in France. His explanation of how he saw the relationship between the Church and state referred to “the healthy complementarity described by the Second Vatican Council” – the same Council which “uncrowned” Christ the King and initiated the secularisation of Catholic states in Dignitatis Humanae.

By contrast, Pope Pius XII’s comments were in the context of the Christianisation of the nation, region, city, family and individual. He told the people of the Italian Marches to “be a living part of the Church” in all those groupings, and to subordinate everything to the Church and to Christ. Here is the passage in which his comments appear:

“Let your cities be a living part of the Church. There are in Italy those who are agitated because they fear that Christianity takes from Caesar what is Caesar’s. As if to give to Caesar what belongs to him were not a command of Jesus; as if the legitimate and sound secularity (laicita*) of the State were not one of the principles of Catholic doctrine; as if it were not the tradition of the Church to make a continual effort to keep the two Powers distinct, yet also, always according to right principles, united; as if, on the contrary, the confusion between the sacred and the profane had not been most strongly brought about in history when a portion of the faithful separated themselves from the Church.

“The cities will be a living part of the Church if in them the life of individuals, the life of families, the life of great and small communities, is nourished by the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is love of God and, in God, love of neighbour – all of it.

“Christian individuals, Christian families, Christian cities, Christian Marches.

“Let the Marches become entirely like a great Holy House; and let the Marchigian family be one, great Holy Family!”

So to summarise:

• Leo XIV praised the specifically anti-Catholic, anti-religious concept of French laïcité, whereas Pope Pius XII affirmed the distinction (as opposed to separation) between Church and State.

• Leo XIV’s conception of the relationship between the Church and State is that of Vatican II, whereas Pope Pius XII’s is that of the traditional teaching.

• Leo XIV’s description of the Church’s contribution referred to the rights of man2 and temporal goods, whereas Pope Pius XII’s referred to rights of God and supernatural goods as well as temporal ones.

In short, Leo XIV’s comments are indeed worthy of criticism, and – contrary to these “precedent-chasters”, that criticism does not rebound onto Pope Pius XII.

Leo XIV’s comments on Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité

We have already touched on the Republican motto, Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité.

Here’s what Leo XIV said:

“With the great thinkers of the Renaissance, and later of the Grand Siècle, succeeded by those of the Enlightenment, France was responsible for significant advances in our world, including the recognition of human rights grounded in the nature of the human person, particularly religious freedom.

“This constant focus on the dignity inherent in every person is echoed in your national motto. Liberty, equality and fraternity are not simply words emblazoned on the front of your public buildings; they refer to universal ethical imperatives that also find in the Gospel message an inexhaustible source of inspiration and fulfillment.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed here in Paris – and in the drafting of which the French jurist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate René Cassin played a leading role – sought to foster a broader awareness of the inalienable dignity of the human person.”

Once again, the context is clear: it is that of the French Revolution. For centuries, French Catholics have rejected the triple-motto, as well as its “dignity” and “human rights”, as being both naturalistic in their meaning as used (and thus blasphemous), and hypocritical in their application.

Towards the end of his speech, he also appeared to describe the triple motto as the “traditional values” of France:

“May France, faithful to its traditional values, work for a peace that is unarmed and disarming, and responsibly offer its unique contribution to that goal. May your liberty grow in constant concern for the common good. May your fraternity embrace the entire human family. And may the equality to which you aspire always be built upon the foundations of justice and charity – not by erasing the differences between people, but by allowing them to flourish harmoniously for the benefit of society as a whole.”

By contrast, here is how Cardinal Louis Billot described the matter, speaking of the “ideologues” of the French Revolution:

“Those ideologues, of course, did not hesitate to proclaim that the sole cause of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments was the ignorance or contempt of the rights of man, the first of which, they said, was liberty, necessarily accompanied by equality and fraternity.⁴

“O levity! O fatuity! O foolishness! And surely…

• … their liberty has ended in despotism, worse than any barbarism, of the powerful over the weak.

• … their equality, in an ever-growing multitude of proletarians on one side, and an ever more prevailing oligarchy of millionaires on the other.

• … their fraternity finally, in the fermenting of internal divisions scattered everywhere, and an inexpiable hatred of class against class.

“Nor are these things hidden from the discerning minds of our times. Indeed, many minds still remain on the surface, not yet perceiving the essential character of the Revolution, which is satanic.”

However, one might object by saying that Catholics do believe in liberty, equality and fraternity, “properly understood”. But here, we face the same problem as with laïcité: the “proper understanding” of these terms would have to mean “in a way completely different to how everyone else understands it, and without regard for the context in which it is normally used.” And if one wishes to make such a rhetorical point, one must spell it out.

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Does Pope Leo XIII provide a precedent?

Further, as with Pope Pius XII and laïcité, it was pointed out that Pope Leo XIII had made a similar point himself:

However, the key point here is that Pope Leo XIII did spell it out in Humanum Genus.

The full context (once again omitted by “precedent-chasers”) was the his “second” means of combatting Freemasonry (whose ideology is that of the French Revolution) – namely, that “by assiduous teaching and exhortation, the multitude must be drawn to learn diligently the precepts of religion”. The specific passage was one praising the Third Order of St Francis as a means of inviting men “to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues”. It is here that Pope Leo XIII provides a full explanation of what “properly understood” really means:

“[T]he Third Order of St. Francis, whose discipline we a little while ago prudently mitigated, should be studiously promoted and sustained; for the whole object of this Order, as constituted by its founder, is to invite men to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues; and therefore it ought to be of great influence in suppressing the contagion of wicked societies.

“Let, therefore, this holy sodality be strengthened by a daily increase. Amongst the many benefits to be expected from it will be the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity, and equality of right; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and St. Francis aspired to:

• The liberty, we mean, of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our passions, both of them most wicked masters

• The fraternity whose origin is in God, the common Creator and Father of all

• The equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties, and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of society.”

As with the previous matter, Leo XIV’s comments are indeed worthy of criticism, and that criticism does not rebound onto Pope Leo XIII.

Conclusion

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre cites a number of liberals specifically stating that Vatican II was the Church’s “Revolution”. For example:

The parallel I have drawn between the crisis in the Church and the French Revolution is not simply a metaphorical one. The influence of the philosophes of the eighteenth century, and of the upheaval that they produced in the world, has continued down to our times. Those who have injected that poison into the Church admit it to themselves.

It was Cardinal Suenens who exclaimed, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church,” and among other unguarded declarations he added “One cannot understand the French or the Russian revolutions unless one knows something of the old regimes which they brought to an end… It is the same in church affairs: a reaction can only be judged in relation to the state of things that preceded it.”3

He also cited Fr Yves Congar OP stating something similar:

“Père Congar, one of the artisans of the reforms, spoke likewise: ‘The Church has had, peacefully, its October Revolution.” Fully aware of what he was saying, he remarked “The Declaration on Religious Liberty states the opposite of the Syllabus.’”

Cardinal Ratzinger himself said the same thing of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes—that it represented a reconciliation with the world as established in the Revolution of 1789:

“[T]he one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789 […]

“Let us be content to say here that the text [Gaudium et Spes] serves as a counter-syllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, its ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of this remarkable meeting of Church and world. Basically, the word “world” means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church’s group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation.”4

Leo XIV’s comments form a part of what Ratzinger called the “official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789”. They are a direct and open embrace of the watchwords and slogans of the French Revolution and its ideological heirs – albeit phrased in a way that might pacify some, by certain parallels with the comments from the previous Popes mentioned.

But those parallels are ultimately illusory; and once the context has been clarified, Leo XIV’s ideological alignment becomes clear.

To understand why this alignment with Revolutionary and “Enlightenment” values is so significant, see here:

• The triumph of Luciferianism at Vatican II

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Introduction

This is the third part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. You can read the first part, on Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels, here.

In the second part, we saw Mgr Guérard’s analogy of the jar, the label and the content. Cardinal Ratzinger displays the Tridentine “jar” under the label “Tradition”, but places something quite different inside.

The second ‘Ratzinger Operation’: Revelation

In this part, Mgr Guérard turns to the second of Ratzinger’s three “operations”: his account of revelation.

Here, Ratzinger draws on his own early research. His Habilitationsschrift (composed in the 1950s) had been on the theology of history in St Bonaventure, who was himself writing in thirteenth century. His thesis attracted controversy, as he was seen as subjectivising the concept of revelation, and Ratzinger was left suspected of modernism. He was required to remove the sections on revelation, which were not published until decades later.

In the address under review, Ratzinger returns to this very subject. He claims that no one thought of calling the Bible “revelation” in the thirteenth century. Revelation was rather the act, “forever inexpressible in human words”, by which God makes Himself known, and its reception by man. On this view, Scripture merely bears witness to revelation. It is “the condensation of a much larger and inexhaustible process of Revelation”, in which the divine “I” and the human “Thou” meet in the “We” of the Church.

Mgr Guérard shows that this is neither the theology of the thirteenth century nor that of the Church. He answers with St Thomas himself, who says that our faith rests on the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books. He also answers with St Pius X, who condemned the propositions that revelation was not completed with the apostles, and that the formulas of faith are inadequate to their object.

What Ratzinger offers instead is a kind of “hyper-revelation”: a created entity lying behind the revealed propositions, which by its nature can never itself be revealed.

Mgr Guérard identifies the same tendency which we now know was suspected in the Habilitationsschrift, being presented three decades later to the faithful of Paris and Lyon – and as no less than a return to tradition. As with faith, Ratzinger’s vocabulary is scholastic and – to use Mgr Guérard’s analogy – is presented in a jar “labelled” as “Tradition”; but the content is the modernism condemned in Pascendi.

In the next part, we shall see the third and most audacious “operation”: his use of the structure of the Roman Catechism as a means of conveying and legitimising the new religion of Vatican II.

I look forward to sharing the parts of this “main course” with readers – but the dessert itself will also be worth the wait…

S.D.Wr.

The Wojtyłan Dictatorship: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, nos 79–80, de avril-mai 1983

Originally published as La Dictature Wojtylienne

1. Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Danneels

2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

3. Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

4. ‘Ratzinger is Luther’: The future Benedict XVI’s ‘Tridentine Jar’

5. The Novus Ordo Dictatorship and the ‘Cage for Religion’

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Introduction

This is the second part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. You can read the first part, on the addresses of Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels, here.

We now come to the main course: Mgr Guérard’s critique of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s address, “Transmission of the faith and the sources of the faith,” delivered with the others at Fourvière and Notre-Dame de Paris in January 1983.

Ratzinger the restorer?

This address is classic Cardinal Ratzinger: on the surface, it looks exactly like what many “traditional Catholics” were hoping for. At the time, Ratzinger had only recently been installed as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the address, he acknowledges a “collapse of classical catechesis”, and attributes it to what Catholics today would recognise as modernist excesses.

Even more strikingly, Cardinal Ratzinger proposes to overcome the crisis by returning to the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

It is easy to see why so many were delighted. As Mgr Guérard puts it, the “average Traditionalist” reading Itinéraires and frequenting the Traditional Latin Mass could tell himself that John Paul II, through the head of the formerly Holy Office, was defending Tradition and even leaning on Trent.

But while Mgr Guérard recognises in this article that some of Ratzinger’s criticisms were “penetrating”, he did not stop there.

The jar, the label and the content

To show the problem with Ratzinger’s approach, Mgr Guérard uses the analogy of a jar and its three components:

• The jar itself, as a container

• The label, stating what is inside

• The content itself, inside the jar.

While the jar is the most visible element, the content is the most important aspect – and the label matters insofar as it truly corresponds to the content.

In Mgr Guérard’s analysis, the “jar” is Ratzinger’s reference to the fourfold structure of the Roman Catechism: the Creed, the Sacraments, the Decalogue and the Lord’s Prayer. The “label” is what Ratzinger says is inside this structure: “Tradition”. But the real question, addressed by Mgr Guérard, is what Cardinal Ratzinger actually puts inside this structure.

His answer is that Ratzinger carries out three “operations,” each displaying a Tridentine jar and label – with a different content inside. The three “operations” are as follows:

1. Faith (addressed in this part). Ratzinger’s understanding of the theological virtue of faith is wholly different to that expressed by Trent, the Roman Catechism, and tradition.

2. Revelation (in the next part). His understanding of revelation is wholly different to that of St Thomas and Pope St Pius X.

3. The structure of catechesis (the subsequent part). Ratzinger arbitrarily maps the four headings of the Catechism onto the four “senses of Scripture”, which Mgr Guérard shows is an inversion of the proper order – and akin to key aspects of Luther’s revolt against the Church.

In each of these steps, we see the classic modernist manoeuvre, as expressed by Cardinal Parente’s definition of modernism:

“A heresy, or rather a group of heresies, which have arisen in the very bosom of the Church at the beginning of [the twentieth century] under the influence of modern philosophy and criticism, with the pretense of elevating and saving the Christian religion and the Catholic Church by means of a radical renovation. […]

“In brief outline, the encyclical [Pascendi] declares modernism to be a hybrid amalgamation of verbal Catholicism with real naturalistic rationalism, based on [agnosticism, immanentism and ‘radical evolutionism’].”1

The extent of Ratzinger’s modernism has been analysed by men such as the late Bishop Tissier de Mallerais and the late James Larson. Such writers have shown that the myth of Ratzinger maturing past the ideas he held as a younger priest and at Vatican II – when his modernist tendencies were already visible – is completely false.

At each step, throughout his career, Ratzinger’s approach was essentially the same: claim that powerful objections to Catholic dogma have arisen, and on that basis “rethink” the meanings of the terms of the dogma, such that it remains tenable. For example, Ratzinger took this approach to the dogma of transubstantiation itself.2

Why this matters now

Many of us came to know Ratzinger as the man of the “hermeneutic of continuity” and Summorum Pontificum, and he retains a remarkable hold even on many supposed “traditionalists”. Only last month, Dr wrote:

“In my home library of several thousand volumes, only a few authors enjoy the privileged status of occupying several shelves exclusively their own. […] Joseph Ratzinger belongs to this limited circle of authors whom I regard so highly that I have acquired nearly everything they wrote.”

He goes on to describe assigning Ratzinger’s works to his students, and his view that no pope since Benedict XIV has equalled him in learning. He also writes:

“At last, we had found a highly literate, sophisticated, rather audacious modern theologian who nonetheless knew and loved the Catholic tradition, explained its meaning, rebuked its assailants, and advanced its recovery. That he was the right-hand man of John Paul II and followed him to the Chair of Peter only added to the momentary elation of recovering territory after a series of brutal annexations.”

However, while such praise is common amongst men like Dr Kwasniewski, the older traditionalists were typically far more cautious about Ratzinger – especially those who understood how his negotiations with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre proceeded. Today, there is little excuse for failing to recognise that Ratzinger was a consummate modernist.

Mgr Guérard was writing at the first moment in which Ratzinger was presented as a restorer. He saw through this pose, and exposed him for what he was: one of the most effective instruments of the Vatican II revolution.

Whatever one makes of Mgr Guérard’s conclusions, or of his “Thesis of Cassiciacum”, his analysis of the address shows the importance of looking past Ratzinger’s traditional jar and label – and considering what is actually inside.

I look forward to sharing the parts of this “main course” with readers – but the dessert itself will also be worth the wait…

S.D.Wr.

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Preface

Dr is doubling-down on his campaign against those whom he has decided are his opponents.

Following our publication of a summary of Zero Marks, with a critique of Dr Kwasniewski’s inflammatory rhetoric, it has been drawn to my attention that the latter has written the following on his site beneath OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden”:

“The moment you decide to be the judge of who is a successor of the apostles (objectively - not in terms of their personal worthiness of the office) and who isn't, you have left far behind anything recognizably Catholic. This is the line that separates reformatory traditionalism from simply schismatic traditionalism. And I say that as one who knows very well the filth and error that inhabits the halls of power.”

This comment was made in response to others by those who aren’t buying what Dr Kwasniewski is selling:

This revealing reply was made to certain commenters who found themselves unimpressed with Kwasniewski and Fr Crean’s “arguments” – or rather, the lack of arguments, and non-engagement with real arguments (as discussed in the previous piece).

In answer to Dr Kwasniewski’s claims about judgment, I am presenting an extract from my article “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”, published at LifeSiteNews in September 2026. This extract shows bankruptcy of such arguments about someone “deciding to be the judge of who is a successor of the apostles”.

This is because Dr Kwasniewski himself has decided to judge that Leo XIV and the bishops subject to him are successors of the apostles, and uses this as the basis for condemning those who disagree with him. One must judge that a particular person is or is not a successor of the Apostles, otherwise one cannot submit to him. To think otherwise, even under the guise of humility or a supposed “lack of authority”, is simply to hide from oneself, one’s God-given intellect, and one’s duty to the truth.

Further, as I wrote in the summary:

“[T]he location of our ‘examination’ is where it should be – i.e., in identifying the Church and the proximate rule of faith and praxis – whereas Fr Crean’s ‘examination’ consists in interposing a new proximate rule of faith and praxis in place of the teaching of the Church.”

The same applies to Dr Kwasniewski, who seeks to replace the teaching of the Church as our proximate rule of faith and praxis with, ultimately, himself and his own private studies and opinions – for instance, about what is and is not traditional. The attempt to hide from oneself leads, in fact, to the very usurped judgments one was trying to avoid – and a blindness to the reality of what one is doing.

That this is so, let us consider the list of judgments made by Dr Kwasniewski, which provided in 2025:

• Pope St. Pius X’s Breviary reform bull Divino Afflatu is partly null and void

• Pope St. Pius X’s revisions to the Roman Breviary were “impious” and “absurd” and “exemplified liturgical modernism”

• Pope St. Pius X’s teaching on devotion and submission to the Pope is a “painful historical embarrassment”

• Giovanni Battista Montini (‘Pope’ Paul VI) need not and should not be considered a saint, even though the man he considers Pope (Francis) solemnly canonized him as one

• Francis’ Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes suppressing the use of the 1962 Missal “is absolutely null and utterly void from the first letter to the last punctuation mark”

• Bishops who are removed from the government of their dioceses by the Pope for what they consider to be an unjust motive should refuse to accept this decision by defiantly clinging to power (an exhortation we have refuted here)

• Priests should defy suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, to the point of establishing independent churches if necessary until better conditions prevail

• And, furthermore, he thinks using mostly the magisterial pronouncements from 1870-1958 regarding the Papacy is problematic.

No doubt this list has expanded since 2025.

In light of such judgments, his claim that “sedevacantists” are “schismatic traditionalists” – which would not be true, even if Dr Kwasniewski were correct (as considered here) – is more than a little ironic.

More of Dr Kwasniewski’s accusations

In response to a commenter sharing Zero Marks, Dr Kwasniewski falls back onto the arguments raised by Novus Ordo apologists on One Peter Five, he accuses “sedevacantists” of endangering their salvation, and of making themselves “like all the sects described by Ronald Knox in his famous book ‘Enthusiasm’”:

In the absence of argumentation, adherence to the position Dr Kwasniewski advocates is typically motivated by fear, and typically spread by fear – in this case, an attempt to create the impression that one will be damned for making a mistake on this point. But the truth – the good of the intellect – is obtained through reason and revelation, not through the emotion of fear. Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and the beginning of wisdom – but this fear of one’s own intellect (to which I have already alluded above) is something else entirely. It is a species of moral and intellectual cowardice. There is also something incongruous about Dr Kwasniewski suggesting someone will be damned for being wrong about the Pope, when he also thinks that the Church herself needs to “rethink the papacy”, and that those who disagree with his programme are “hyperpapalists”.

Further, contrary to what Dr Kwasniewski says in these comments, “sedevacantists” are no sect: they are simply those who have formed a certain conclusion. Some of them may organise themselves around this particular conclusion, and may even go to the point of making themselves a sect; others do only the former, or neither.

By contrast, the previous comment – in which Dr Kwasniewski refers to his party as that of “reformatory traditionalism” – is an acceptance of the un-Catholic position of the “high church” wing of the Conciliar/Synodal Church.

He says in the second comment above that he believes “the Catholic Church is a lot more durable” than what “sedevacantists” believe – but the durability that he proposes is that of the Anglican Church. The Anglican Communion is so “durable” that it continues to “exist” in spite of multiple warring factions which disagree, not about practical questions for a contingent crisis, but the most basic questions of the faith. For example, the disagreements in that “broad church” of Anglicanism include how to worship God, whether to baptise one’s children, how one receives revelation, and so on.

• The Anglicanisation of Catholics – are we the ‘high-church wing’?

• A side-chapel in the Conciliar/Synodal Church - Fr de Blignières’ proposal

This “durability” is purely naturalistic, human, and “legal”.

The true durability of the Catholic Church, by contrast, is supernatural. She is endowed with certain necessary properties which she cannot lose; any portion of her which departs from or divests itself of these properties does not harm her, but itself loses any part in her. This is the very subject of Zero Marks and the associated articles.

But Dr Kwasniewski cannot adhere to these truths about the Church, because the thread that he pulls in “rethinking the papacy” leads to the complete unravelling of these other areas of Catholic doctrine too.

In short, accusing those whom he has decided are his opponents of being a “sect” is simply desperation.

But I think many of us “sedevacantists” would much rather be accused of being a sect, than actually be a party or wing in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. We would rather “stake our salvation” on the traditional teaching of the Church, rather than on Dr Kwasniewski’s programme of “rethinking the papacy” – presupposing as it does an unappetising mélange of Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Old Catholicism.

A final note: the below engagement with Archbishop Viganò’s comments answer Dr Kwasniewski’s “objections”. Dr Kwasniewski has not made fewer declarations and judgments than Archbishop Viganò – as we have seen above. It should be simple enough to see the direct application of what follows to Dr Kwasniewski himself.

Update: Dr Kwasniewski responds

Following the publication of this article, Dr Kwasniewski offered another non-response, which can only be described “gaslighting”:

On reflection, however, such a response is not surprising. Dr Kwasniewski, I am sure, does not really consider those accusations to be light. He knows perfectly well that they are among the gravest that can be levelled at anyone.

The reality is precisely as I have been saying in these recent articles: Dr Kwasniewski and his set are entirely unable to argue their positions on rational grounds, and the above response was a quick-fire attempt to deflect from that reality.

In the meantime, I repeat what I wrote at the end of the summary of Zero Marks:

“I once again invite Dr Kwasniewski – as well as Fr Crean, and anyone else who wishes to speak or write publicly on this topic – to desist from ignoring serious responses, and to engage with the arguments at hand.”

The extract from the article regarding Archbishop Viganò follows.

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On Declarations and Judgements

From “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”

‘To resist: not to depose’

Archbishop Viganò writes:

To resist: not to depose.

Because this is precisely the point. To depose a pope, or to declare the See vacant, is an act of jurisdiction, and no private individual – whether bishop or layman – possesses the jurisdiction to perform it.

On the contrary, this is precisely not the point.

Sedevacantists agree that they have no power to “depose” a Pope, or to “declare the See vacant” as private individuals.

First, sedevacantists typically claim either that these men have deposed themselves by positing public acts incompatible with retaining office (which is the essence of Bellarmine’s “fifth opinion”), or that they never attained the papacy at all. There is absolutely no sense in which any sedevacantist is engaged in deposing a Pope; therefore, there is no pretense to possess jurisdiction to do so.

As for “declaring” the See to be vacant: the word “declare” can be used in different senses. On the one hand, it may be understood in the strict sense in which Viganò presents it: as an act of jurisdiction, creating obligations on one’s subjects. It is possible that a diocesan ordinary might have such a power; but it is certainly not the case for any layman, priest, auxiliary bishop, or traditionalist clergyman.

On the other hand, the word may be understood in a broader sense, merely as a clear announcement of one’s views on a given topic, controversial or otherwise. It is solely in this latter sense that sedevacantists might “declare” that the See is vacant.

We may also note that the Archbishop’s interview and various statements are full of “declarations” in this second sense, and we have already seen several such examples:

• That “sedevacantism and papolatry are two mirror-image errors, born from the same premise”

• That Leo XIV “exercises (the office of the papacy) against the end for which it exists”

Elsewhere in the interview, Viganò “declares” that:

• “Bergoglio dismantled the Papacy violently; Prevost gives that dismantling an institutional, ‘orderly,’ almost reassuring form.”

But such “declarations” need not be limited solely to the Papacy. The same can be said of Viganò’s comments about the liturgical reform:

• “(The Vatican authorities) persecute (the traditional Mass) because they know perfectly well that they do not express the same faith, and that as long as a single altar safeguards the ancient lex orandi, the new one cannot claim victory.”

These comments are all “declarations” in the second, broad sense – and, if a Catholic considers himself justified in making such “declarations” about a sitting Pontiff, or about apparently “papally-approved” liturgical rites, then he cannot reasonably object to other Catholics “declaring,” based on serious theological arguments, that they have concluded the man is not a sitting Pontiff. In fact, I would argue that one is more justified in making the latter claim than the former.

‘Private judgments’

What we have just discussed may also be applied to the Archbishop’s claim that a “declaration” of the vacancy is a “private judgment,” as he proceeds to say:

Whoever arrogates such power to himself commits, in reversed form, the same abuse that he reproaches Rome for: he makes himself the measure of that of which he is only the guardian. And he suffers the consequence: a Church without a visible See, without the possibility of a future pope through the ordinary means, without any other criterion than the private judgment of those who have declared it vacant.

This passage raises both the question of “private judgment” and of the attaining of a future Pope. Before first addressing the former, let us recall that:

• No sedevacantist “arrogates” jurisdiction to himself.

• The “abuse” for which sedevacantists reproach the Vatican is not that the Pope “makes himself the measure of that of which he is only the guardian”, but rather that these men propose and impose a “new form” of religion, teach error and heresy, and promulgate evil laws.

• Viganò earlier suggested that sedevacantists were unable to distinguish between the See and the “seated”; it is ironic that he himself now conflates them by asserting that having no person “seated” means being deprived of a visible See. The truth is precisely the opposite.

By referring to the sedevacantist conclusion as a “private judgment,” Archbishop Viganò may be overlooking the nature of the judgment in question as a cognitive judgment, rather than an authoritative one.

In broad, colloquial terms, a cognitive judgment is simply drawing a conclusion. One concludes that something is true or false; good or bad; verified or unverified; long or short; and so on.1 Such judgments are an essential operation of the mind, and without them, reasoning is impossible.

An authoritative declaration makes known and imposes an authoritative judgment, whereas a declaration in the broad sense merely makes known a cognitive judgment, without any pretense to impose it on others. Just as Viganò himself has made many declarations in the broad sense, so too has he made the many cognitive judgments which his declarations make known. These cognitive judgments are indeed judgments made by him as a private person, as are the following:

• That it is legitimate for Archbishop Viganò to continue operating as a bishop and running a seminary after being declared excommunicate by the Vatican

• That the SSPX episcopal consecrations in 1988 and 2026 were legitimate

• That the penalties and rulings following the SSPX consecrations are to be disregarded.

These are all significant examples, because they are judgments made against an apparent public judgment of authority. This is not to say that the Archbishop is mistaken in his judgments – it is simply to recognize them for what they are.

Further, one also makes a private and cognitive judgment that the Catholic faith is true,2 and, on a different level, that a given public judgment by authority is indeed legitimate, and such that we must accept it. There is, in essence, no way to avoid making private judgments – except to stop thinking altogether.

This also applies to the Pope question. The identity of the Pope is not a fact that is infused directly into our brain: There are objective criteria by which we recognize a man is the Pope. At the minimum, these include a valid election and acceptance, and the person being eligible for the office (viz., he is a baptized male Catholic with the use of reason).

But, as Aristotle said:

Where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa.3

Applied to this topic, if it is in our power to judge that a man is the Pope because the criteria are fulfilled, it is also in our power to recognize that a man is not the Pope if the criteria are not fulfilled. In fact, we make such a judgment habitually, in that we all recognize that neither Archbishop Viganò nor President Donald Trump are the Pope. To think otherwise, even under the guise of humility or a supposed “lack of authority”, is simply to hide from oneself, one’s God-given intellect, and one’s duty to the truth.

We are thus faced with a legitimate question, and an understandable but ultimately unfounded scruple. The question is: What are the true criteria; the scruple is that One cannot arrive at a conclusion rejected by the cardinals and the vast majority of the world.

Regarding the scruple, basically every controversial position adopted by traditional Catholics (and, increasingly, even “conservative Catholics”) is rejected by the cardinals and the vast majority of the world. There is no clear reason for judging (!) those judgments to be legitimate, but then judging (!) the cognitive judgment that the See is vacant to be illegitimate. Thus, to say that one does not have the authority to make a “private judgment” about the Pope question is simply to misunderstand the terms.

Many Catholics see “private judgment” as the hallmark of the Protestant, and try to act in a way that avoids making such judgments. We have seen that this is based on a misconception of the notion of a judgment; it is also based on a misconception of the “private judgment” of the Protestants. Their “private judgment” refers to the idea that Christians can and should interpret the sources of revelation according to their own lights and accept only those truths which he himself has decided are true or revealed – without regard for any kind of ecclesiastical authority. This has nothing to do with the case at hand, as the earlier texts from Bellarmine demonstrated.4

From “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”

Response to Fr Thomas Crean OP:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean)

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Some other relevant articles:

• ‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed

• Polish theologian predicted Conciliar/Synodal Church and ‘puppet’ hierarchy in 1916

• The enemies of the Church and the note of holiness – Cardinal Billot

• How do you tell the true Church after a rupture? Journet’s answer

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

• Have we ignored apostolicity of government/succession and over-focused on that of doctrine?

• How long can the Holy See be vacant? Fr Louis Coache (and context)

• ‘Sedevacantism’ as a ‘pestiferous heresy’? Fr Ripperger’s accusation analysed

• Does a long vacancy interrupt perpetual succession? Fr Raphel Cercia SJ

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Preface

With the supposed beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen this year, his comments about the “Ape of the Church” have received more exposure than ever.

But – leaving aside the significant problems with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, comprehensively demonstrated by – what did he mean by this term, “Ape of the Church”? Here’s what he said in his 1948 book, Communism and the Conscience of the West:

“The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion – one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.

“In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counter-church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”1

Now, Sheen was speaking very specifically about Communism, and describing the Communist system as a counter-church. However, the idea of an "Ape of the Church" or "counter-church" as a possible deceit of the devil has by no means limited to Sheen. Several other writers, from Fr E. Sylvester Berry, Fr Bernard Krammer, Fr Owen Francis Dudley, Padre Pio and Fr Gabriele Amorth have all spoken in such terms.

What is more, a great number of notable churchmen since Vatican II have either raised or acknowledged the question of whether the Ape of the Church is already with us. In 1988, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – later Benedict XVI — posed this very question in the aftermath of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s 1988 episcopal consecrations for the Society of St Pius X:

“All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people.”

Cardinal Ratzinger, 13 July 1988

In this conference, delivered to the bishops of Chile, Ratzinger argued that what Lefebvre had called the “Conciliar Church” was indeed the same Catholic Church which had preceded Vatican II.

However, that Ratzinger needed to make such a case is revealing – as is his recognition that “a great number of people” were not sure that the post-conciliar body was the same as the Catholic Church.

The “great number of people”, who either denied, publicly questioned, or recognised the difficulty that some have had in seeing the identity between the Catholic Church and the “Conciliar Church”, include:

• Cardinal Leo Burke2

• Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre3

• Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais SSPX4

• Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer5

• Cardinal Léon Joseph Suenens6

• Mgr Brunero Gherardini7

• Fr Roger Calmel OP8

But why did such men recognize or comment on the idea that a “new church” had appeared after Vatican II? And how might we be able to discern the truth or falsity of such a claim – that is to say, how might we recognize the a false church claiming to be the Catholic Church?

The answer lies in a proper understanding of the four marks of the Church.

Zero Marks: An Enquiry in to the Four Marks of the Church

In March 2026, I published a short “book” on this very topic, titled ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church. While it was well received, the length – over 42,000 words including footnotes – meant that it was not exactly accessible.

It is for this reason that I prepared a summary version, which provides the core of the argumentation without getting to into the nuts and bolts of the affair. It is structured in the same way, with links to the relevant parts of the original throughout.

Also in the interests of accessibility, I discussed each chapter of the Zero Marks with Stephen Kokx on Kokx News, and then Integrity Magazine’s podcast:

• Video: Visibility

• Video: Unity

• Video: Holiness

• Video: Catholicity

• Video: Apostolicity as a Mark

• Video: Apostolicity as a Property

• Video: Conclusion

Zero Marks was the second part of a long engagement (which is not quite finished) with an article by Fr Thomas Crean OP. Here are the articles so far:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Fr Crean’s short and popular article, originally published at Pelican+, was lauded by Dr as a “definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism”:

As my articles have shown, this is very much not the case.

For the particular reason that prompted publishing this summary, see the editorial here.

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‘ZERO MARKS’

Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

A Summary

Full Series:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Introduction

In his article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden“, the English Dominican Fr Thomas Crean OP affirms that the Church of Christ must be perpetually visible and identifiable as the Church of Christ. He alleges that this principally achieved through the papacy:

The criterion by which we may identify the Catholic Church is the papacy; she is the society governed by the man who succeeds to St Peter, according to the norms in force at the time of the succession.

The consequence of this, in Fr Crean’s mind, is that Leo XIV and his recent predecessors have all been legitimate Popes: in other words, that the position of the so-called “sedevacantists“ is false.

However, Fr Crean’s treatment of this issue is insufficient.

In the first part of my response, Radically Insufficient, I explained that Fr Crean’s article fails to take account of what it means for the Church to be visible – namely, that she be “distinctly visible” as the true Church of Christ. While he does refer to the need for the true Church to be identifiable as such, his reduction of this distinct visibility to the papacy is, as the title suggests, insufficient.

This is because the Church is also rendered visible through her necessary properties of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity, which the four notes (or marks) of the Church, insofar as they are manifested externally.

I also explained that this visibility may indeed be reduced or obscured in ways that make the notes of the Church difficult to verify. In the same article, I provided authorities, such as St Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Dom Prosper Guéranger and more, in support of this truth.

The “sedevacantist” argument posits that the visibility of the Church – and the four notes – has indeed been diminished or obscured; but that her distinct visibility, properties and even her notes are intact, even if they may be difficult to verify in the concrete.

Zero Marks examines these four notes in considerably more detail, considering a) how the four properties mentioned are manifested externally as notes, and b) what would constitute their obscuration, and what would constitute or their absence. It also demonstrates, that the Conciliar/Synodal Church lacks this distinct visibility, due to the absence of these four properties.

The subsequent part, Spotless and Unsullied, engaged with Fr Crean’s presentation of the doctrine of the Church’s indefectibility, and how it interacts with the thesis of an extended vacancy.

Thesis Statement

Before proceeding to the summary, let me be clear about the parameters of my claims.

• Definition: By “Conciliar/Synodal Church,” I mean the body of men who recognise Leo XIV as their Pope and spiritual leader, claim to be subject to him, and whom he (and his officers) recognise as being in good standing with him.

The term “Conciliar Church” was coined Paul VI himself, and he seems to have been the first to use this term.9 Since then, Cardinal Koch has referred to the “Conciliar/Synodal Church” in the 2024 document The Bishop of Rome – a usage which we have adopted.10

• Thesis: The Conciliar/Synodal Church, considered as such, is not the Roman Catholic Church.

• Clarification: By “not the Roman Catholic Church”, I mean that this body of men, considered as such, is not identical with the Roman Catholic Church. Taken as defined, it is a body composed of both Catholics and non-Catholics, and lacks certain essential properties of the Roman Catholic Church; for this reason, it cannot be identified with that Church. The thesis therefore concerns the identity and nature of the body itself, considered as a social reality or accidental aggregation, rather than the status of the individuals within it. It does not deny the continued visibility of the Catholic Church; rather, it denies that this visibility, and membership of the Church, are determined by the boundaries of the Conciliar/Synodal Church as defined. Accordingly, it does not imply a) that this body constitutes a false sect (since it is an accidental aggregation of Catholics and non-Catholics, rather than a true society); b) that no Catholics exist within it; or c) that a man ceases to be a Catholic simply by being included in this body. Some of these points are clarified in Zero Marks, or will be clarified further elsewhere.

The visibility of the Church

The true Church of Christ is distinctly visible as such through the four necessary properties mentioned in the Creed – unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. These properties are notes or marks in so far as they are external, visible, and easily verifiable to an inquirer.

For example, unity of belief is an aspect of the property of unity, but it is invisible; we do not know what is hidden in men’s minds. Therefore, it is not part of the mark. By contrast, both teaching and what men profess externally are visible, and it is easy to verify whether a body of men share a united teaching and profession of faith. For this reason, unity of teaching and of external profession of faith pertain to the mark of unity.

While those other aspects of the properties may not serve as marks establishing the identity of the true Church, the verifiable absence of these necessary properties serves as a kind of “anti-mark”, establishing that a body or society is not the true Church. For example, apostolicity of doctrine is not an aspect of the mark of apostolicity; but absence of this aspect indicates the absence of the property, and shows that the body or society in question is not the Catholic Church.

This is because any society or body lacking a single one of these necessary properties cannot be the Church of Christ. As the scholastic axiom holds:

“Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.

(“Something is good when it is good in every respect, and it is bad when it is wrong in any respect.”)

Let us consider each mark/property in turn.

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Chapter I: Unity

The Church’s unity is a fruit of Christ’s prayer at the Last Supper, as the Church and her theologians have recognised. Cardinal Billot states that this unity is “the principal property with which [Our Lord] wished to clothe his Church forever.”

The Church is united in three ways: faith, government and worship.

She exists as a society which is ordered by an authority to the end of a) the glory of God, and b) the salvation of souls.

This unity of government is ordered towards the establishing the unity of faith and “social” charity.

She is united in worship by the shared use of the same sacrifice, sacraments and liturgical acts – notwithstanding certain accidental variations in how these rites are conducted.

But as a mark, Billot says, the Church’s unity consists principally in “the common profession of the same faith, taught by a social magisterium”.

This unity may be obscured by those who a) err in good faith, provided they remain visibly subject to the Church’s authority; b) debates over unsettled questions; c) multiple papal claimants or other such crises; d) extended vacancies of the Holy See or of diocesan sees. The Church’s hierarchy exists as an efficient cause of this unity; to the extent that the hierarchy is negligent or absent, this visible unity suffers.

This unity is absent in a body which does not enjoy a united teaching or profession of faith – i.e., when both the truths of revelation and heresy are taught or professed with impunity. Unlike the note of holiness, which is tolerant of both sinners and saints, unity pertains to the collective body itself. Cardinal Billot writes:

“Unity, however, deals immediately with the collectivity itself, from which it removes division in the profession of faith. Furthermore, the wicked in the Church do not prevent it from containing saints as well, who show it to be true. But if heretics were in the Church, they would formally remove the indivisibility of the society which is of the very definition of unity.”

This is the case with the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is visibly disunited in faith.

Multiple surveys – both American and global – reveal that large percentages of its adherents openly reject what they know to be Church teaching on matters ranging from transubstantiation to contraception, from abortion to same-sex unions. (These are presented in the full article.)

Romano Amerio, the author of the classic work Iota Unum, states that this disunity is principally caused by “the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”

This disunity dates from the Second Vatican Council, and is particularly evident in the various open letters and petitions of Francis’ reign, which rebuked him for heresy. It is also evident in the responses to Humanae Vitae (e.g., “The Winnipeg Statement”) and the German Bishop’s Conference’s “Synodal Way.” This disunity has been noted by men such as Professor Roberto de Mattei,11 Fr Linus Clovis12 and others.

The objection that orthodox groups elsewhere maintain unity is without worth; as unity of faith pertains to the collective, the radical disunity of one or more parts is sufficient to indicate the disunity of the whole. These “more orthodox” groups and prelates simply demonstrate the disunity with even greater clarity. There is no visible unity of faith between men like Bishop Tomash Peta of Astana, Kazakhstan, and men like Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky.

It is simply not credible to suggest that the Conciliar/Synodal Church – the body of men who currently recognise Leo XIV as their leader, and are in good standing with him – enjoys either the property of unity, willed for it by God, or its external manifestation in the note of unity.

But, as Frank Sheed wrote before the doctrinal disunity became as clear as it is today:

“[I]f [the Church] accepts the presence within her of men who deny teachings to which she has committed herself, she will not [be the same Church].”

Incidentally, Sheed set out a number of other “red lines” at which point, he said, we have to conclude that “it would no longer be the same Church.” These “red lines” have been crossed.

We are, therefore, not faced with a difficulty of verifying the mark of unity, but the verification of the absence of the property of unity. This radical disunity alone – the lack of a necessary property – is sufficient to conclude that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Nonetheless, we continue our examination for the sake of completeness.

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Chapter II: Holiness

“Holiness” may be defined in various ways. God is holiness itself, and a created thing is holy by participation with God. This may be through being dedicated to him, or by being united to him.

The Church of Christ is holy by reason of her Head, Christ himself, and her soul, the Holy Ghost. Her end or raison d’être is holy too, namely the glory of God and the sanctification of souls. Her means (doctrine, discipline, worship) and her fruits (virtues, heroic lives) are also holy.

As a mark or note, holiness is manifested in the members of the Church and her good works.

But a society is not shown to be holy simply because it has holy members: they must be holy because of the society; they must be “formed” by the society’s principles – e.g., its doctrine, sacraments, laws, disciplinary standards.

This holiness may be obscured by a decreasing number of men notable for their holiness, or through widespread laxity in applying the means of achieving holiness; nonetheless, the holiness of the society remains a question of those who do apply these means.

This holiness of a society’s members may be demonstrated by our own observation of those who are living, or by those of history.

A society which has a process, recognised by all as being stringent and serious, of identifying such past members is in a powerful position to demonstrate the latter. However, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has abandoned the stringent process of canonisation used by the Catholic Church, and replaced it with a procedure of much lower standards. This process has been used indifferently to “canonise” holy men on the one hand, and on the other those either unremarkable for holiness, or of positively unholy life. This is a voluntary abandonment of a key means by which the Church’s holiness was rendered visible.

Another means of demonstrating the holiness of a society’s members is the existence of “institutions of perfection”, in which men are actually led to high standards of holiness. This was the case for the institutions of religious life, as well as the secular clergy. But the previously high standards of such institutions have been relaxed, and in many cases replaced with moral degradation. Once again, this is a setting aside of a means by which the Church’s holiness is made manifest.

So much for the note of holiness. The property of holiness would be shown to be absent in a society in different ways. For instance:

• The official promotion or promulgation of false, dangerous and immoral teachings and practices

• The toleration of such teaching and practices over a sufficiently long period of time

• The neglect of the active means of holiness over a similarly long period of time

• The treatment of what is evidently holy with neglect or contempt – or even attempts to suppress it.

But the Conciliar/Synodal Church minimises the positive means of holiness discussed above, and has promulgated doctrines and disciplines which are, as Cardinal Billot put it, “repugnant to holiness.”

The 2019 Open Letter, signed by Fr Crean and several others, accused Francis of a series of heresies, which amounted to “a comprehensive rejection of Catholic teaching on marriage and sexual activity, Catholic teaching on the nature of the moral law, and Catholic teaching on grace and justification.” This is incompatible with the holiness of a society or body of men. Since 2019, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has added Fiducia Supplicans to its roster of unholiness.

The authorities of the Conciliar/Synodal Church also routinely treat that which is holy with contempt – giving the sacraments to non-Catholics and to persons publicly living in sin, suppressing the traditional Roman Liturgy, and tolerating liturgical abuses which have, at times, resulted in the invalid or doubtful administration of the sacraments.

To conclude, the mark of holiness is difficult to verify in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. But this mark is a chief means by which the Church is made distinctly visible – thus making the supposed “perpetual visibility” of the Conciliar/Synodal Church similarly difficult to verify.

But further, the property of holiness is shown to be absent, through the promotion and toleration of unholy doctrines, laws, practices and rites, and the negative treatment of holy doctrines, laws and rites.

Thus, the Conciliar/Synodal Church is both not visible as the Catholic Church; and also visibly not the Catholic Church.

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Chapter III: Catholicity

“Catholicity” means “universality”. Theologians distinguish this into catholicity “de jure” (of right) and “de facto” (of fact).

The Church is catholic de jure in that she is, as Fr Berry wrote, “destined for the salvation of all men, and therefore endowed with the ability to spread to all parts of the world to fulfil that mission.” But this “destiny” and “ability” are internal aspects that are difficult (or impossible) to observe, and as such they do not constitute the mark of catholicity.

Catholicity is a mark insofar as it is catholicity of fact. This catholicity of fact refers to the actual diffusion of a society throughout many nations. It is this aspect that constitutes the mark of catholicity because it is easily knowable.

Catholicity of fact may be obscured by a) a significant reduction in the number of a society’s members in the world; b) a reduction of the number of nations in which these members are spread; or c) difficulty in locating officers of a society. Indeed, theologians recognise that it does not refer to being the largest religious society in the world, and that towards the end of the world, the Church’s spread may be restricted, diminished, and difficult to see.

It is undeniable that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is diffused very widely throughout the world. But a mark is a property manifested, and as we saw above, the manifest absence of a property nullifies what the mark would appear to be establishing, viz. the claim of a society to be the true Church.

Catholicity as a property would be manifestly absent in a society which does not enjoy catholicity de jure.

If a society does not even claim to have the right to spread to all nations, and that all men have a duty to be incorporated into it – or worse, if evangelisation is rejected as a sin and certain groups are told that they need not enter the Church – it cannot claim to be catholic.

But this is the case for the Conciliar/Synodal Church. This body has disclaimed de jure catholicity: its officers have repeatedly dismissed or rejected evangelisation under the name of “proselytism,” and the idea that all men and societies must submit to her authority. As a result, its missionary orders and impetus have also collapsed.

Eastern Orthodox

Consider The Balamand Declaration of 1993, which speaks of “passing beyond the outdated ecclesiology of return to the Catholic Church” and treats the Eastern sects as “Sister Churches.” Its “practical rules” forbid “proselytism”, which it twice insinuates was based on a “desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church.” It explicitly claims that the Eastern Orthodox “hierarchy” have received authority and responsibility for the faithful from the Holy Ghost, and states that the Catholic Church will refrain from engaging in activities without the agreement of the Eastern Orthodox bishops.

Most shocking is its rejection of the “conversion of people from one Church to the other in order to ensure their salvation.”

This document was explicitly praised by John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, and its ideas have been propounded other official documents of the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy.

The Jewish People

Let us now consider the situation with regard to the Jewish people.

The Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews states that “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.”

While its document The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable contains certain phrases that indicate the unicity of Christ as Redeemer, it equates the Church’s missionary activity with a quasi-pelagian attempt to save souls without God. In its place, it promotes “dialogue”, and the stated purposes of this dialogue are wholly naturalistic, without any reference of the need for Jews to convert.

The ideas of this document are prevalent throughout the Conciliar/Synodal milieu, with notable examples being John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline and Bishop Robert Barron. The key message is that Jews do not strictly need to enter the Catholic Church.

Treating whole classes of men as if the Catholic Church is not necessary for them is a denial of the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation, and equally a denial of catholicity itself.

But, as stated above, when catholicity de jure is visibly absent, the wide diffusion of the Conciliar/Synodal Church is just a façade. And even if this is not taken as the absence of the property of catholicity, it certainly represents a significant obscuration of the property. But if the defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal Church admit this, then they cannot deny our explanation on the basis that it posits the obscuration of the marks of the Church.

As such, the claim that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the “perpetually visible” Catholic Church is either refuted or significantly undermined.

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Chapter IV: Apostolicity as a Note

Apostolicity refers, as Salaverri explains, to “the perennial identity in the Church of the mission, which Christ gave the Apostles when he instituted the Church.”

This identity pertains to origin, succession and doctrine. The true Church must be the same Church founded upon the Apostles; its officers must enjoy a legitimate succession from them, with their “ordinary power” of teaching, ruling and sanctifying the Church; and it must teach and profess the same doctrine as them.

However, an identity between a society’s doctrine and that of the Apostles is difficult to verify with certainty, and so does not form a part of the mark of apostolicity. But as with the previous properties, we can say that manifest rupture with apostolic doctrine – much easier to verify than integral continuity – is a kind of “anti-mark” indicating that a body is not the true Church.

The true mark of apostolicity, however, is established by apostolicity of succession.

But even with succession, legitimate succession is difficult to verify. At the outset, we are met with the problem of identifying which law governs succession: that of Rome, or Canterbury, or Constantinople, or somewhere else?

This is why material succession, as opposed to formal succession, constitutes the note of apostolicity. Material succession is the continuation of one man after another in an office, without regard for legitimacy. Formal succession is such continuation according to law, in which the successors enjoy the authority of their office. The fact of a material succession from the apostles is more knowable than the legal conditions for formal succession.

Here, another problem arises: several societies claim to enjoy at least a material succession from the Apostles – including the Anglicans, and the various Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox sects. This is why material succession is a negative note: its presence does not identify the Church, but its absence identifies a false claimant. A body which does not even claim to enjoy apostolic succession shows that it enjoys neither the property nor the mark of apostolicity.

The Conciliar/Synodal Church has a strong claim to the note of apostolicity through material succession. But Fr Crean’s argument treats Leo XIV’s material succession to the papacy as a positive note, in that he makes his claim without proper regard for what would make this succession legitimate; he also begs the question, in using a kind of “argument from prescription.” This is a legitimate argument, and holds that long-standing possession, with no credible counter-claims, gives rise to a presumption of legitimacy. But it cannot be used when there are credible doubts about the legitimacy of a man claiming to be the Roman Pontiff – as, for example, when there are more than one claimants, or when there are credible arguments against a single claimant’s legitimacy.

Further, apostolic succession does not exist in a vacuum: it exists for the transmission of apostolic authority. This is a significant problem for defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy, which habitually renounces that authority, and fails to exercise it. In place of authority, it advises and cajoles on the one hand, and wields raw power on the other – issuing commands which cannot be laws, because they are manifestly contrary to the common good and the faith. This simulacrum of apostolic authority does not achieve the end for which ecclesiastical authority is ordered – for example, the unity of the Church in faith and charity, and the correction of doctrinal errors.

Thus, while defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal Church may point to men who enjoy a material succession from the Apostles – and who appear to exercise the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church (although what they promulgate are “acts of violence,”13 rather than laws), these “material successors” are not visibly successors in the relevant sense. As far as visibility is concerned, their refusal to be successors of the Apostles leaves them without the very raison d’être of apostolic succession itself.

As already mentioned, Romano Amerio referred to this as “the renunciation” or “non-functioning” of papal authority, and noted that “the renunciation of all other authority” is derived from it. There are many such examples, from Paul VI’s response to the rejection of Humanae Vitae, to Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s comments on excommunication to William F. Buckley. The recent pushes for a “Synodal Church” illustrate this further, with the 2024 document The Bishop of Rome setting out a model for a synodal papacy acceptable to the various anti-papal sects, and the Pope as a “first among equals.”

Apostolic authority was thus renounced in favour of both non-authoritative exhortation and administrative tyranny; later, a simulacrum of apostolic authority was resurrected to be used in a selective way, and which is visibly illegitimate through the object of its acts. It is in this sense that we may say that the renunciation of apostolic authority continues today.

In brief, the scholastic axiom holds that “agere sequitur esse” (“the operation of anything follows the mode of its being”). It is wholly unclear why we should believe that the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy enjoys formal apostolic succession and apostolic authority under these circumstances.

In 1911, the Polish professor of Dogmatic Theology Fr Maciej Sieniatycki, wrote a series of anti-modernist articles, in which he explained how a “church” ordered along modernist principles would function. He states that if this occurred to the Catholic Church, “the old Church would be demolished”, and “would make it an invisible Church.”

The “church” which Fr Sieniatycki describes is very similar to that envisaged by the proponents of “synodality”, and even of the ideals of Vatican II.

Fr Mauro Cappellari, later Pope Gregory XVI, presented a similar line of argument about other changes to the Church’s constitution, stating:

“[I]f the government of the Church had been established by God as monarchical: once changed into aristocratic, it would no longer be the identical Church.”

Although these scenarios are hypothetical, because the Church cannot be “demolished” or rendered invisible, we can see that those who try to order a society in the ways described separate themselves from the Church; she would remain intact, but obscured to the extent that such men make use of her institutions in a way antithetical to her own principles.

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Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property

Regarding apostolicity of doctrine, all parties agree that the society headed by Pope Pius XII and his predecessors was the true Church, and that what this Church taught was “the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied” (Van Noort). This is the shared basis upon which this debate is possible.

Rupture with or contradiction of the definitive teaching of this Church is a rupture with apostolic doctrine, in the sense relevant to the question, as the “argument from prescription” demonstrates.

But the Conciliar/Synodal Church has committed itself to doctrines contradicting the teaching of the pre-conciliar Church – for example, the supposed right to religious liberty, and heretical sects as “means of salvation.” Thus, the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Even if this conclusion is denied, no-one can deny the appearance of such rupture. This is proved by the number of studies attempting to reconcile such points with Catholic doctrine, in spite of the authoritative interpretation of the points of rupture by the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself. Further, even if these contrivances were accepted, the need for such a multiplicity of explanations is itself a phenomenon in need of explanation. And the sufficient and true explanation is that the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is responsible for these contradictions, is not the Catholic Church.

Regarding apostolicity of origin, the previous chapters already established that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is a new body, distinct from the society founded by Christ on the Apostles. However, we can add that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not visibly the same society.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Catholics began asking whether the body that emerged from Vatican II was the same Catholic Church as before. This questioning has continued ever since, even by those who are unsure of the answer. Even many who insist that it is the same Church recognise the fact that enormous changes took place, and the fact that many people believed, suspected or worried that it was a new Church.

Thus, even if the Conciliar/Synodal Church was apostolic in origin, it would not be so visibly. The attempt to prove this identity between the pre-conciliar Church and the Conciliar/Synodal Church requires explanation, nuance and argument – which is overlooked in a simplistic claim that the latter is the “perpetually visible city on a hill”, easily recognisable by all.

In short, the attempt to reduce the question to the papacy, and the Conciliar/Synodal Church’s claim to “have” it, is to reduce apostolicity to material succession alone, without regard for these other aspects of the property of apostolicity.

But the material succession of this body as a note is nullified by its evident lack of the property of apostolicity.

And even if we conceded the note of apostolicity to the Conciliar/Synodal Church, this would do nothing to remedy the absence of even one of the other three notes/properties – let alone all three of them. As noted several times already, “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.

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Conclusion

In this summary, we have seen that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is both not distinctly visible as the Catholic Church, and visibly not the Catholic Church.

• Unity: The Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly divided in faith, teaching, worship, and discipline; its officers teach different and opposing doctrine, and open rejection of divinely revealed doctrine is treated as compatible with membership. This is incompatible with the Church’s necessary unity.

• Holiness: Unholy doctrines and practices are tolerated or promoted. This goes beyond obscuration, to a failure of the property itself. Further, the chief means by which the property of holiness is made manifest have been set aside, undermining any claim to it being visible.

• Catholicity: Though widely diffused, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has renounced catholicity of right by a programme towards certain sects which repudiates the need for conversion, implying that whole classes of men need not enter the Church for salvation. A society that abandons this mandate may be diffused, but this diffusion does not manifest the property of catholicity.

• Apostolicity: The current crisis and the state of the question mean that material succession to the Papacy cannot resolve the question as it might at other times. Apostolicity exists for apostolic authority and doctrinal continuity; yet authority is habitually set aside, and apostolic doctrine has been contradicted. Naturally this, and the absence of the previous three properties, also entails the absence of apostolic origin. Under these circumstances, material succession – which is also present in false sects – cannot manifest the property of apostolicity.

Precisely how and when this distinction between the society of the Church and the body of the Conciliar/Synodal Church arose is outside the scope of this summary. But in short, the answer is Vatican II, Paul VI’s attempt to impose a new religion on the faithful, and his successors’ continuity in his programme – which entails their lack of papal authority. They are, in other words, false popes. The result of these factors has been a radical obscuration of the Church by many who have ceased to be Catholics, and yet have not been expelled by authority.

And yet beneath those obscuring her, the Catholic Church remains, whole and intact. Indeed, the virtue of faith requires us to believe this: the idea that the Church has ceased to be is simply unthinkable.

The faith is of a different order of certainty to the legitimacy of particular papal claimants. As Archbishop Lefebvre said: “if it appears certain to us that the faith which was taught by the Church for twenty centuries cannot contain error, we have much less of an absolute certitude that the Pope be truly Pope.”

Fr Crean, however, presents us with a rhetorical dilemma: either Leo XIV is the Pope and the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the Catholic Church, or there is no Church at all.

But the dilemma is false, and extremely dangerous: the very idea that the claims of the Roman Catholic Church could be falsified is simply monstrous. Further, his own image – “the ruins of a city, from which men had taken bricks and stones to fashion for themselves a hovel in the valley” – in fact applies to the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself.

The discovery that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church should not give rise to doubt, but merely to a renewal of the act of faith, and a proceeding to the next question: Where, then, is the Catholic Church?

The location of the Roman Catholic Church today is somewhat harder to verify than it was a century ago; but this is the very nature of an obscuration or eclipse.

The question itself – Where is the Church? – is easy to answer. She remains, as Pius XII taught, the body of men who have been baptised, profess the true faith, and have not separated themselves from the unity of the Body or been excluded by legitimate authority. At least in the Western world, this body of men is the body of traditionalists, along with some conservatives who remain materially entangled with the Novus Ordo structure. The Roman Catholic Church continues to exist, visibly, with her necessary properties intact. She is obscured by the non-Catholics that make up a large component of the Conciliar/Synodal Church, particularly in its hierarchy.

The more challenging question – and what many mean by the previous question – is this: Where is the hierarchy of the Church? We are compelled by the facts discussed in Zero Marks to conclude that the hierarchy is obscured.

In spite of any problems and obscurity with identifying one or other part of the Church, there is no need or reason to conclude she has ceased to be, or that she is what is called the Conciliar/Synodal Church. That this obscuration is possible was established beyond all doubt in Radically Insufficient. After all, as Salaverri says, the Church is inadequately visible, in the sense that “only some of its elements are visible.”

But the nature of obscurity is that a definitive explanation may not be possible; and we should not feel it necessary to have one prior to making an act of faith.

On the contrary, it seems best to us to rest in the act of faith, that what God has revealed continues to be true today, whether we can verify it on intrinsic or empirical grounds or not. We rest in the obscurity of faith, in which we have all the light which we need. As T.S. Eliot wrote:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. […]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Psalm 26

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? […]

I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.

Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.

Response to Fr Thomas Crean OP:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean)

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Some other relevant articles:

• ‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed

• Polish theologian predicted Conciliar/Synodal Church and ‘puppet’ hierarchy in 1916

• The enemies of the Church and the note of holiness – Cardinal Billot

• How do you tell the true Church after a rupture? Journet’s answer

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

• Have we ignored apostolicity of government/succession and over-focused on that of doctrine?

• How long can the Holy See be vacant? Fr Louis Coache (and context)

• ‘Sedevacantism’ as a ‘pestiferous heresy’? Fr Ripperger’s accusation analysed

• Does a long vacancy interrupt perpetual succession? Fr Raphel Cercia SJ

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Preface

The following article is a summary of my long and detailed piece ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

While this work has been very well received, its length (over 42,000 words including footnotes) means that it is not exactly “accessible”. In the interests of accessibility, and myself discussed each of the five chapters of Zero Marks on , and then Integrity Magazine.

• Video: Visibility

• Video: Unity

• Video: Holiness

• Video: Catholicity

• Video: Apostolicity as a Mark

• Video: Apostolicity as a Property

• Video: Conclusion

With the same end of accessibility in mind, I am pleased to publish a summary version of Zero Marks, running at around 6,000 words. It is structured in the same way as the original, with direct links throughout.

Although at 6,000 words, it is not exactly the “executive” summary mentioned in the title, it is certainly easier for those who do not necessarily wish to get into the nuts and bolts of the affair.

What is Zero Marks all about?

Zero Marks was Part II of a long engagement (which is not quite finished) with an article by OP. Here are the articles so far:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Fr Crean’s short and popular article, originally published at Pelican+, was lauded by Dr as a “definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism”:

As my articles have shown, this is very much not the case.

While I have no doubt that Fr Crean wrote this article in good faith, intending to defend the Church, it was objectively an assault on the traditional understanding of her authority. For this reason, the enthusiasm of Dr Kwasniewski’s praise recalls a certain passage of Pope St Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

“Finally, the Modernists try in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To all the band of Modernists may be applied those words which Our Predecessor wrote with such pain:

“‘To bring contempt and odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light, science, and progress.’ (Motu proprio, Ut mysticum, 14 March, 1891) […]

“[T]hey load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with choruses of applause; for them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium […]”

Trying “in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium” is, in fact, the very essence of Dr Kwasniewki’s long-term project of “rethinking the papacy” – which also served as the subtitle of his two volumes The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism.

But there is a particular reason for publishing this summary now – and that is the “responses” the original has received from Dr Kwasniewski and Fr Crean himself.

The following analysis of these responses, and the summary itself, are for subscribers to The WM Review. It is FREE to subscribe:

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Introduction

This is the beginning of a serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ long article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. In it, he critiques addresses made at a conference by:

• Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan of Dublin

• Cardinal Godfried Danneels

• Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

• Cardinal Franciszek Macharski

The first part consists of his analysis of the addresses by Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels. These are relatively short engagements compared to what follows.

Mgr Guérard objects to what he calls Ryan’s phenomenological and humanistic account of catechesis, and then proceeds to Cardinal Danneels conflation of the fallen state of human nature with human nature as God made it – along with what he calls the heretical “prétérition” (passing over) of original sin.

Cardinal Danneels

Danneels is particularly interesting for two reasons. The first is that Archbishop Lefebvre pointed to his consecration as a quintessential example of why we must ask, “Are they priests at all […] are their ordinations valid?”

“They published booklets for this consecration. For the public prayers, here is what was said and then repeated by the crowd: ‘Be an apostle like Peter and Paul, be an apostle like the patron saint of this parish, be an apostle like Gandhi, be an apostle like Luther, be an apostle like Martin Luther King, be an apostle like Helder Camara, be an apostle like Romero....’ An apostle like Luther?! What intention did those bishops have when they consecrated this bishop, Msgr. Danneels?

“It’s frightening... Has this bishop really been consecrated? It can be doubted, all the same. If that was the intention of the consecrators, then it is unimaginable! The situation is even more serious than we had thought.”1

You can see our recent writing on this matter here:

• Priests punished for associating with SSPX – PLUS A survey of SSPX views on the validity of Novus Ordo orders

• ‘Positive doubt’ doesn’t mean ‘particular evidence’: More on conditional ordination and Novus Ordo priests

The other reason that Danneels is so infamous is that he appeared with Francis on the loggia after the 2013 conclave, and was a part of the so-called “Sankt Gallen Mafia” that reportedly had Bergoglio elected.

Entrée before the main course

We provide this first part for its own interest, but principally as the introduction for the rest of the article: Mgr Guérard’s incisive critique of Cardinal Ratzinger’s theology of “tradition”. This present part is, in some ways, an entrée for what follows.

In addition to that, we shall see that this paper contains some aspects of Mgr Guérard’s thought which have fallen into obscurity, in the course of debates about the “Thesis of Cassiciacum” and the vacancy of the Holy See.

Leaving aside the question of the Thesis, it is our hope that readers will see the truth of what Fr Reid Hennick said to us some time ago: that Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was indeed responsible for “some of the best writings on the crisis” that are available.

S.D.Wr.

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(WM Q&A) – We receive a lot of questions by email, and it can be difficult to keep on top of them. I’m going to try something new here by replying to these questions all at once in an article. Hope this helps!

Contents

• Can you be an integralist and a republican?

• Archbishop Viganò, capital schism and a recent interview

• Explaining the Sacred Heart

• Time after Pentecost vs. Ordinary Time

• Which ‘sedevacantist’ group should I listen to?

• How will you know the vacancy is over?

• I’ve never heard a ‘sede conversion story’, and you lot are all miserable

• What does “WM” stand for?

• Is the Catholic Church following Anglicanism into liberalism/modernism?

• Shouldn’t I attend my local parish?

This article for WM subscribers. Subscribe now for free!

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(WM+) – In the previous piece, we reported on the measures taken against two priests – Fr Philip Conklin and Fr David Mary – for their association with the SSPX.

Since publication, FSSPX Actualités has affirmed that these two priests will be joining the Society:

In light of this, we published an advance copy of the fourth and final part of our series on Archbishop Lefebvre and the reformed rites of the sacraments:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

4. The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – Survey of opinions

That fourth part began addressing the question of an “official position” in the SSPX on priests ordained in the new rites, by considering whether such a thing can even be said to exist.

It surveyed those clerical members of the SSPX who have expressed doubts about the reformed rites of the sacraments or their use – showing first, that it is unjust to dismiss those who nurture such doubt as “sedevacantists” or as enemies of the Society, and second, that it cannot be said that there is a consensus within the SSPX on the matter.

In this piece, following on from the previous whilst marking the start of a new series, we will consider

• Why the issue is important

• The “state of the question” on an “official” position of the SSPX

• What this “official” position entails

• Whether video footage of an ordination can secure moral certainty

• Why analogies made with baptism contradict the arguments for the “official” position itself.

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(WM+) – In the space of a single week, two dioceses have taken harsh measures against two “Novus Ordo priests” due to associating with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) – prompting swift measures from their bishops.

Although they have widely been reported as having joined the SSPX as priestly members, it is not yet clear that this is the case.

UPDATE: FSSPX Actualités has affirmed these two priests to be joining the Society:

Father Philip Conklin

Father Philip Conklin was ordained with the new rite of priestly ordination by Archbishop Bernard Hebda just two years ago (25 May 2024), for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Before entering the Novus Ordo seminary, he joined the Air Force, with a view to a future career in air traffic control.

Following a sabbatical earlier this year to discern his vocation, Conklin informed his archbishop that he had decided to be “affiliated” with the SSPX.

Hebda announced the move in a letter to the parishioners of St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater, where Conklin had served since his ordination in 2024. Hebda stated that, because of this “affiliation” with the Society and Conklin’s refusal to end it, he has opened a canonical process to “clarify the situation and his status.”

“At the same time, I have also informed Father Conklin that he is not to exercise any public priestly ministry,” the archbishop wrote.

As of this writing, neither Conklin nor the SSPX has released a public statement confirming the nature of his “affiliation”.

Father David Mary of Our Lady of Sorrows

Days later, Bishop James Beckman of Knoxville, Tennessee revoked all faculties, permissions, and authorizations previously granted to one Father David Mary of Our Lady of Sorrows – a Franciscan living and operating in his diocese.1

A statement, dated 2 October 2026, said that the diocese had “become aware of ministerial activity associated with and supportive of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) being organized within the territory of the Diocese by Rev. David Mary Engo and other members of the laity.”

“He is not authorized to exercise public priestly ministry anywhere within the Diocese of Knoxville,” the diocese declared.

Beckman went further than Hebda, actively discouraging the faithful from contact with Fr David Mary:

“[T]he Bishop of Knoxville has not authorized, condoned, or approved the establishment within the Diocese of any priory, mission, chapel, foundation, or other apostolate intended to advance the purposes or ministry of the Society of Saint Pius X.

“The faithful are therefore strongly urged not to attend Masses, sacramental celebrations, retreats, conferences, or other religious activities organized or conducted by Fr. David Mary or in connection with this unauthorized ministry, and not to provide material or organizational support for his ministry or the establishment or maintenance of an SSPX apostolate within the Diocese.”

The Diocese of Knoxville had already suppressed all diocesan Traditional Latin Masses on January 1 of this year, in accordance with Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes.

It is unclear what exactly prompted these measures. In July 2026, he broadly expressed support for their positions in his “Friar Side Chats” podcast on the Franciscan Hermitage Foundation website.

It does not seem certain from the statement that Fr David Mary is about to join the SSPX as a priestly member, although it does suggest that there has been a certain amount of cooperation the Franciscan and the Society. At present, there are only internet rumours about his activities:

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But what should we make of the moves against these priests, and the possibility that they may become “affiliated” with the SSPX in the near future?

What follows is essentially Part IV of our series on Archbishop Lefebvre and the Novus Ordo Sacramental rites. The first three parts address the following topics:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

As Part IV rounds the series off by considering how the views expressed by Archbishop Lefebvre were continued within the Society which he founded, this part could be titled:

4. The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – Survey of opinions

As this piece will show, the grave concerns which many have about the validity of Novus Ordo holy orders can by no means be dismissed as “sedevacantism” or even “opposition” to the SSPX.

Following this part, we will consider the following in further articles:

• Why moral certainty is necessary when it comes to conferring, receiving or facilitating the conferral of the sacraments

• Current praxis with regard to this question

• The continuity of this praxis

• The role of videos and investigations

• Investigations into baptismal validity as an analogy

• What an investigation would need to involve

• The varying circumstances in which conditional repetition is justified

• The faithful and their rights

• Conclusion: The true reason to doubt

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2026 was the summer of laïcité for me and my family.

Item I: The Fort of Brittany

During our summer vacation, we found ourselves on the beach in Brittany, France, where about a dozen of my nieces and nephews were building a massive pyramid fort with a moat.

The pictures won’t do it justice, but it was the biggest beach construction I’ve ever seen.

This is the kind of thing this family of French kids do for fun, and between the big labour force they had, and the garden spades they were using, they made something really impressive.

At the top of the pyramid, as you will have seen, they had planted a red and gold flag of the Sacred Heart – also the sign of the Vendean resistance to the French Revolution several centuries ago

Most people who wandered by stood and admired it, and some congratulated them on their work.

However…

One older couple came over. They weren’t happy. They objected to the kids having a “religious symbol” in a public place. They angrily said it was contrary to “laïcité”.

One of my nephews responded, “It’s the symbol of the Vendée”. The argument continued, until the couple walked towards the path away from the beach. The woman stayed there for a while, talking to people angrily about the construction. Then she made a phone call about it.

Not having good enough conversational French to get into an argument with a member of the public, and conscious of being a visitor, I decided to loiter near the rocks and see if she was calling the police or not. She ranted for a little while – before wandering off. No police arrived.

But this wasn’t my first brush with laïcité of the vacation.

Item II: The Funeral Home

Aside from visiting family, this summer vacation also included the funeral of my wife’s late aunt. (Please pray for the repose of her soul.)

She was a much loved figure, and lost her fight with cancer just before we left. We hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and had been led to think she’d hang on a bit longer.

After her death, the family commissioned the town pompes funèbres (funeral home and undertakers) that they’d used for several other loved ones.

For every other death in recent years, these chaps provided a good service. The bodies of the deceased have been laid out in a spacious enough room, and we’ve been able to go and keep vigil and pray the Rosary with them in the lead-up to the funeral. The undertakers even join in with the prayers at the graveside (something you wouldn’t see in England).

But this time, we were told that they wouldn’t be able to provide the standing crucifix that they had installed for the previous family members.

Why? “Par souci de laïcité” – because of concern for this quasi-sacred notion of laïcité.

Just to labour the point: They wouldn’t provide the same standing crucifix they’d always provided before, to be put in a private room to which the family had the key, and no members of the public would have seen it. “Because of concern for laïcité.”

Item III : The Speedos

The third summer incident was recounted to me by a friend and colleague, who also spent the summer in France.

He took his little girl to the swimming pool, and was wearing a pair of swimming shorts – upon which were emblazoned the name and logo of the swimming brand, Speedo.

In spite of this, a member of staff informed him that he wasn’t allowed to wear those shorts in the swimming pool.

The reason? Well, the reason stated was that it was because they were a bit “puffy” and were “street clothes” – even though they were made by Speedo.

My friend was directed to a vending machine, where he was able to purchase a pair of lycra-style swimming shorts. Not wanting to disappoint his little girl, he complied. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

He was also told that he was not allowed to wear a shirt specifically designed for swimming – for the same reason.

He found himself back at the pool later in the vacation: in spite of the humiliation of having to wear such grotesque shorts, the children cannot be disappointed. But it was on this second occasion that the humiliation was consummated: a Frenchman informed him that he had a hole in the seat of his swimming shorts.

What does any of this have to do with laïcité? And what is laïcité anyway?

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What is laïcité?

Laïcité is a word which doesn’t have a direct translation in English. It is a principle of the French constitution which sums up the ideas of secularism, and the separation of Church and state. It appears in the first article of the French Constitution. But – as the examples above show – it is nothing like what Americans would think of by those terms.

Americans and other western nations generally hold that the civil authority should not establish any one religion as the official state religion, should protect “freedom of religion”, and avoid involving itself in the administration or life of any religion.

However, laïcité goes further than that. It enjoys an enormous and quasi-sacred character, being bound up with the French Revolution, the “guerre scolaire” (a long conflict over the role of the state and the Church in education), the 1905 “Law of Separation”, and – for many – French identity itself. Frankly, it is surprising that the word is not engraved on municipal buildings underneath Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.

It enshrines a default separation between religion and civil life as the rule: events like processions and so on are permitted at times, but the general idea is that religion is a private matter, and so remains in the private sphere; and that the public sphere should be kept free from any one religious group. This inevitably means that it should be kept free from all religious groups.

Similarly, the principle tends towards the idea that individuals are to avoid emphasising their own religious differences in public.

The pedigree of this idea is the French Revolution. After a period of bloody persecution of the Church, laïcité came to be a kind of compromise position. But the real meaning of this doctrine is that civil society must be “protected” against the Catholic Church – which is to say, it must be “protected” against God.

The Church has condemned the idea on many occasions. It is a violation of the First Commandment, which enjoins the worship of the true God, according to the way in which he has revealed he is to be worshipped. Each individual is bound to obey this commandment, and this is so whether he is on his own, or with his family, or organised as civil society. This is why the Popes referred to the growth of laïcité as a principle – both in France and elsewhere – as a “deliramentum”, or as “legal apostasy”. The doctrine of Christ’s “Social Kingship” is diametrically opposed to it too.

The Church’s teaching on these matters is explained here:

• Separation of Church and State is a sin: here’s why

• Nobody has the ‘right’ to be wrong

• Does the state have the right to restrict non-Catholic religions?

In 1925, the French Cardinals and Archbishops released a Declaration which expressed this openly and clearly:

“The laws of laïcité are unjust, first of all, because they are contrary to the formal rights of God. They proceed from atheism and lead to it in the individual, familial, social, political, national, and international order. They presuppose the total disregard of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Gospel. They tend to substitute for the true God mere idols (liberty, solidarity, humanity, science, etc.); to de-Christianise all lives and all institutions.”

Only after this fundamental injustice do they state the temporal problems caused by this ideology:

“They are unjust, moreover, because they are contrary to our temporal and spiritual interests. Let them be examined: there is not one among them that does not strike us at once in our earthly goods and in our supernatural goods.”

They list the following:

• The education laws

• The law of separation

• The law of divorce

• The laïcisation of hospitals.

By contrast, as Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas, the proper relationship between Church and State – one in which the State recognises the true religion, and offers corporate worship to God – is one which brings both spiritual and temporal blessings.

“He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. ‘For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?’ If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ.”

This is a non-negotiable part of the Catholic faith, enshrined in the First Commandment, and sadly denied by the Second Vatican Council’s Dignitatis Humanae.

Laïcité and Islam

As is clear, laïcité is fundamentally an aggressive concept. However, over time, it has become particularly directed at Muslims.

Certain measures – such as the public-space bans on the hijab, the abaya and the “burkini” – have been “paid for” with laïcité – resulting in corresponding bans on Christian symbols and basic modesty as well.

These bans – and the principle of laïcité – have been supported even by the “Far Right”, in the form of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (formerly Front Nationale). This party’s support for laïcité is why a certain number of Catholics are less than enthusiastic about Jean-Marie's daughter.

Here we can illustrate the point, with the incident described above in Item III (The Speedos).

Some say that French laws about swimwear at swimming pools date from the early twentieth century, and they are ostensibly about hygiene, dirt, and the wearing of street clothes in the pool. For similar grounds, several local authorities in France have banned the “burkini” – a full-body swimsuit commonly used by Muslims, out of concern for modesty.

The same hygiene rules against streetwear in pools are cited for this – but so are the “concerns for laïcité.” Back in 2016 – shortly after a terrorist attack, and the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel – newspapers reported that a woman on a beach in Nice was ordered by police to remove her “burkini”. Another woman was also fined for wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf on a bean in Cannes. This was followed by several bans – one of which stated that accessing beaches and swimming locations were prohibited…

“[T]o any person not wearing appropriate attire, respectful of good morals and laïcité, respecting the hygiene and safety rules for swimming adapted to the public maritime domain.”

What did the French “right wing” have to say about this?

It is often said that the terms “right wing” and “left wing” are essentially liberal, in that they refer historically to the two wings of the post-revolutionary epoch. Nowhere is this clearer than in France – even though the cordon sanitaire serves to exclude the the “far right” from getting in. (As shown by the Catholic favourite François Fillon giving his support to Emmanuel Macron in 2017, as a means of avoiding the Front National from winning.)

At the time of the ban, Marine Le Pen referred to the “burkini” as a “fundamentalist uniform”, and called it an “absolutely extraordinary regression”, and stated that “Nobody can say that it is an act of freedom for women.”

“We want to live in a laïc political system,” she said. “If people have a problem with that, it’s their problem.”

Is a “laïc political system” what French Catholics want?

While she claimed that her opposition was a reaction to “the rise of Fundamentalist Islam in France”, rather than to Catholics or Jews – and that the ban did not extend to the garb of clerics or religious – she nonetheless condemned those who wish to “dress differently”.

Naturally, we have no sympathy for Islam qua Islam; but we do have sympathy for Muslims (and anyone else) qua people who want to dress modestly – even if some might consider the “burkini” to be unnecessary or excessive.

But the conclusion here is clear: concern for modesty in swimwear is forbidden, and is understood as disrespectful to “good morals” and the untouchable value of laïcité – even according to the “great right hope”, Marine Le Pen.

Conclusion: Leo XIV’s comments in France

In light of all this, we can see that – despite not being a true Pope, or even a Catholic – Leo XIV raised a point well worth discussing when he visited France in September 2026. French laïcité is completely out of hand, and is fundamentally and aggressively anti-Catholic in nature.

He said:

“A Christian engaged in public service and is guided by the light of his or her conscience illumined by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the nation. Indeed, authentic secularity [laïcité] does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.

“That is precisely why Catholic schools have a rightful place in the educational landscape of a country like France. This is part of a broader issue essential to any dialogue, in schools and in society as a whole: learning to know and love ourselves, in order to be able to encounter others with respect and openness.

“An authentic secularity, then, consists not in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in striving to ensure that the State and religious institutions maintain dialogue and join forces in the service of the common good, that the world may have life. […]

“Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like once again to thank you for this meeting. Indeed, to echo the words spoken by Your Excellency to the Bishops of France in 2018, it serves to show how ‘a Church that claims to be uninterested in temporal matters would not be fulfilling her vocation; and that a President of the Republic who claims to be uninterested in the Church and in Catholics would be failing in his duty.’ Be assured of my fervent prayers for your great nation.”

But while Leo XIV appears to critique this notion of laïcité, and even the separation of Church and State, what exactly are we looking at here? What is an “authentic laïcité”, in this context, and who is Leo XIV to tell the French Republic what it is?

These questions – and the supposed “precedents” found in the teaching of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII – will be the subject of another article:

• Fighting THIS is why the Feast of Christ the King was established

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