Introduction

In a previous article, we discussed the 2005 study into the validity of the new rite of episcopal consecration, written by Fr Pierre-Marie Kergorlay of the Dominicans of Avrillé. The Avrillé Dominicans are a traditionalist order, now affiliated with Bishop Jean-Michel Faure of “The Resistance.”

In his classic study, Fr Pierre-Marie argues that the new rite of episcopal consecration (NREC) is indeed valid, at least in its Latin form.

It was originally published in their quarterly journal, Le Sel de la terre, under the title ‘Le nouveau rituel de consécration épiscopale est-il valide ?’—which translates into English as ‘Is the new rite of episcopal consecration valid?’1

It was translated and published by the American magazine The Angelus in December 2005 and January 2006.2 Its new title (‘Why the New Rite of Episcopal Consecration is Valid’) was an intriguing reframing of the issue. As we shall see in this piece, the Dominicans themselves have objected to this reframing.

Since 2005, nearly every “validist”—as we might dub those who defend the validity of the new rites—cites Fr Pierre-Marie’s study in defence of their opinion. Because of this, there have also been many rebuttals and refutations of Fr Pierre-Marie’s study over the years.

However, as I said previously, I do not wish to enter the field of controversy in this mini-series on that study. In place of an adversarial approach, I have been highlighting some key points made by this study, which appear to have been forgotten or overlooked today.

For example, in the previous part, we saw that this study explicitly rejects certain faulty ideas which are sometimes used to bolster his own conclusions:

In another part, we saw that it presents rather stronger argumentation and conclusions than are sometimes appreciated:

In a third part, we examined its comments about the position of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre:

In this part, we will see that the Avrillé Dominicans have, in recent years, appeared to distance themselves somewhat from the study in question – or at least from the ideas a) that the study justifies the assumption of validity in every case, and b) that men whose orders depend on the validity of these rites can be approached for the sacraments.

In this part, we are going to consider this “afterlife” of this study amongst the Avrillé Dominicans themselves, by surveying several articles dealing with the same topic.

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‘Reviews: Are episcopal consecrations according to the Paul VI ritual valid?’ (2015)

In 2015, Fr Pierre-Marie himself reviewed the 2014 study of Fr Álvaro Calderón FSSPX on the same issue.

Calderón, professor of theology at the Seminary of La Reja, Argentina, admitted a slight doubt about the validity of the NREC, and stated that as a result, conditional ordination/consecration was necessary for all those whose orders depended on the new rites.

Fr Pierre-Marie takes a slight issue at some aspects of Calderón’s argumentation, but appears to agree with his conclusion:

… the positive and objective defects that this rite suffers, which prevent certainty of its validity, seem to us – until there is a Roman judgment, for which many things would have to change – to justify and make necessary the conditional reordination of priests consecrated by new bishops and, if necessary, the conditional reconsecration of these bishops. Such uncertainties cannot be tolerated at the very root of the sacraments.3

We shall discuss Calderón’s study further in due course.

‘Questionable priestly ordinations in the conciliar Church’ (2017)

In an article titled ‘Questionable priestly ordinations in the conciliar Church,’ the Dominicans cited a 1988 letter from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to Mr Wilson. Here is an extract:

I agree with your desire to reordain conditionnaly these priests, and I have done this reordination many times. All sacraments from the modernists bishops or priests are doubtfull now.

The changes are increasing and their intentions are no more catholics.

We are in the time of great apostasy.4 (Typographical errors in the original.)

This article also refers to the words of Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais in an ordination sermon in 2016 at Econe:

Clearly, we cannot accept this faked new rite of ordination that leaves doubts concerning the validity of numerous ordinations done according to the new rite.

Thus this new rite of ordination is not Catholic. And so we will of course faithfully continue to transmit the real and valid priesthood by the traditional priestly rite of ordination.5

We have discussed Tissier de Mallerais’ views in greater detail elsewhere.

When the article finally mentions Fr Pierre-Marie’s 2005 study, it describes it only as “showing that the rite in itself is probably valid.” (Emphasis added.)

But this is not what Fr Pierre-Marie stated in his study. For example:

Its validity cannot be doubted […]6

It can be concluded that the formula is certainly valid, for it has been utilized from time immemorial in numerous Eastern rites […]7

The utilization of the form that is in use in two certainly valid Eastern rites assures its validity.8

This 2017 article then cites a part of Fr Pierre-Marie’s study that provides grounds for practical doubt of validity:

[B]ecause of the generalized disorder that prevails in matters both of liturgy and dogma, there can be serious reasons for doubting the validity of certain episcopal consecrations.9

It adds the following text from that study, in which Fr Pierre-Marie refers to two specific examples of doubtful ordinations given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – although he does appear to have had the matter of sacramental intention in mind:

For instance, on the occasion of the episcopal consecration of Msgr. Daneels, Auxiliary Bishop of Brussels, Archbishop Lefebvre said:

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. Daneels? (1983)

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.10 (1988)

This article also cites Calderón’s 2014 approvingly:

We also point out that Fr Alvaro Calderon (SSPX), in the Spanish language review Si Si No No (#267, November 2014), speaks of a “slight doubt,” a “shadow” concerning the validity of the new rite of episcopal consecration in itself.11

It concludes, not by claiming that the NREC is valid, but by insisting on the necessity of conditional ordination:

This is why the position of Archbishop Lefebvre in the letter that we have quoted here, appears wise: because of the particular importance of the sacrament of ordination, it is necessary to conditionally re-ordain the priests who come from the conciliar Church to the Traditional one.12

‘Conciliar Bishops in Schools of Tradition’ (2019)

In 2019, Avrillé published an article about two conciliar bishops and their presence at traditionalist schools.

This article states, in relation to the late Vitus Huonder:

He was ordained a priest on September 25, 1971 (thus in the new rite) by Bishop Johannes Vonderach and consecrated bishop of Chur (this diocese includes the cantons of Graubünden and Zurich) on September 8, 2007 by Bishop Amédée Grab. Hence arises the question of the validity of his ordination and consecration. We know that Archbishop Lefebvre did not hesitate to conditionally ordain those of the new rite.

As to the bishops consecrated in the rite of Paul VI, the only known example of a bishop who joined Tradition is Bishop Lazo. This return to Tradition took place after the death of Archbishop Lefebvre, but the SSPX has prudently kept away from ensuring [sic] him about episcopal functions.13

This article makes no reference to Fr Pierre-Marie’s study at all.

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‘Is the pope a bishop?’ (2019)

This anonymous article, available only in French, took up the issue again.

It begins by citing Fr Calderón’s study approvingly, along with its conclusion that conditional ordination/consecration are both necessary steps in the cases in question.

It mentions Fr Pierre-Marie’s study on two occasions.

On the first occasion, it claimed that the study intended to show that “arguments put forward until then against the validity of the rite of episcopal ordination, as promulgated by Rome in 1968, were of no value”—and not that every use of this rite would result in a validly consecrated bishop:

In the article published in Le Sel de la terre 54 (autumn 2005) entitled ‘Le nouveau rituel de consécration épiscopale est-il valide 1 ?’ (Is the new ritual of episcopal consecration valid?), the conclusion was that the arguments put forward until then against the validity of the rite of episcopal ordination, as promulgated by Rome in 1968, were of no value, but with this clarification:

If the new rite ‘in itself’ is valid, it is quite possible that in certain particular cases, as a result of bad translations, or an adaptation of the rite that deviates greatly from the original, or even a lack of intention on the part of the celebrant, we may have an invalid ceremony.

In the same article, we quoted Bishop Lefebvre on the episcopal consecration of Bishop Daneels, auxiliary bishop of Brussels:

It’s frightening... Is this bishop really consecrated? It’s doubtful. If this is the intention of the consecrators, it's unimaginable! The situation is even more serious than we think.

Finally, let us recall the practice of the Society of St Pius X during Archbishop Lefebvre's lifetime and even several years after his death: priests coming from the conciliar Church, ordained with the new rite, were generally conditionally re-ordained.14

While this is a positive presentation of Fr Pierre-Marie’s original study, it is clearly distancing itself from the way in which it has been used in the Anglophone world.

This distancing is even clearer in the second mention of this article, in which they object to the editorialisation of the English title:

[T]he title has been changed to ‘Why the new rite of episcopal consecration is valid’. The deletion of the question mark is regrettable because it gives the impression that the article affirms the validity of the rite without any restrictions, which, as we have said, is not the case.

The deletion of the question mark stems from the English edition of this article in the Society of Saint Pius X newspaper in the United States, The Angelus, in December 2005 and January 2006.15

This article also makes the following powerful points against those who insist that either all putative bishops are validly consecrated as such, or that the hierarchy has disappeared. First, the objection:

So all the bishops currently in office (there may be a few bishops consecrated before 1968 who are still alive, but given their age they've probably retired) would only be doubtful bishops! And all the priests ordained by them would be doubtful priests! It's unthinkable!16

The answer is as follows:

The question is not whether it is ‘thinkable’ or not, but whether it is true or false. Now, as we have just said, the dubious nature of priestly ordinations has been generally accepted for several decades by the best representatives of the Tradition.

It should also be noted that, as far as we know, the reform affects only the Roman rite. Consequently, the question does not arise for bishops consecrated in the other Catholic rites.

Let us add that there are at least eight bishops validly ordained in the Roman rite:

• Mgr Tisser de Mallerais

• Mgr Williamson

• Mgr de Galarreta

• Mgr Fellay

• Mgr Faure

• Mgr Thomas d'Aquin

• Mgr Zendejas

… to whom we can add Mgr Rifan: It is true that the main consecrator was Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who was himself consecrated in 1971 using the new rite, but Bishop Licinio Rangel, consecrated in 1991 by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, was co-consecrator, and the ceremony was performed using the traditional rite.17

(Indeed, there are rather more than eight such bishops.)

The author ends his answer by pointing out the elephant in the room, the importance of which is overlooked by those excessively concerned about the visibility of what is left of the hierarchy:

Finally, it should be pointed out that the doubt about the validity of these ordinations is perhaps not the most serious issue.

The most serious is the certainty that all but a very small number of bishops publicly profess the conciliar errors.18

This article then criticises another organisation’s study of the issue of the NREC:

It also concludes that the new rites are valid:

‘As we have seen, the validity of the new form of bishop's consecration is fundamentally unquestionable’.

The study does admit the possibility of invalidity due to a lack of intention. But this lack of intention seems to be scorned, as it would occur ‘despite the use of liturgical books’. What's more, the study immediately points out that Archbishop Lefebvre…

‘was ordained priest and bishop by Cardinal Lienart, a cardinal at least close to Freemasonry and one of the string-pullers behind Vatican II’.

In other words, if we start to doubt the validity of this new rite because of a lack of intention, we should also doubt the validity of Archbishop Lefebvre's ordination and episcopal consecration. 19

The words of the alternative study are hardly less definitive than that of Fr Pierre-Marie. As such, this 2019 article represents a further distancing for his study.

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‘Validity of the Sacraments Reformed by Paul VI’ (2023)

In Spring 2023, Le Sel de la terre published an article by ‘Dominicus’ titled ‘La validité des sacrements réformés par Paul VI’—in English, ‘Validity of the Sacraments Reformed by Paul VI.’20

In this paper, Dominicus acknowledged several problems with the new rites, and with the intentions of ordaining/consecrating bishops.

To this end, he cited the 1988 letter from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to Mr Wilson which we have already seen. He then referred to the words of Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais on the topic.

Dominicus does not cite Fr Pierre-Marie’s study at all; instead, he refers to Fr Calderón’s. He refers to Calderón’s arguments that the NREC comes to us “without the guarantees of either the ordinary or the extraordinary magisterium,” and cites the following claim from the Argentine seminary professor:

“If we want complete peace of conscience, we must ask the Popes for an infallible declaration for each of the vernacular versions of the sacramental forms.”

Because of this, Dominicus refers to the “necessity of conditional re-ordinations and re-consecrations,” saying that the Fr Calderón’s conclusion “seems self-evident.”

Here is that conclusion again:

“[T]he positive and objective defects that this rite suffers, which prevent certainty of its validity, seem to us – until there is a Roman judgment, for which many things would have to change – to justify and make necessary the conditional reordination of priests consecrated by new bishops and, if necessary, the conditional reconsecration of these bishops. Such uncertainties cannot be tolerated at the very root of the sacraments.”21 (Emphasis in Dominicus’ original)

Conclusion

In our consideration of Fr Pierre-Marie’s study, we have noted the following points:

• The study does not justify assuming that any given man ordained/consecrated in the new rites has validly received orders; nor does it claim to do so.

• It does not justify approaching any such man for the sacraments, or for permitting such a man to be approached; nor does it claim to do so.

• It does not present its conclusions basis for attaining moral certainty as to the validity of such a man’s ordination/consecration

• It does affirm “the usage that seems to prevail” as a “prudential measure” for attaining such moral certainty, namely conditional ordination/consecration of such a man.

• It admits that, if the NREC was not certainly valid, this would not destroy the hierarchy of the Church

• It overstates Archbishop Lefebvre’s position on the new rite.

In addition, we can see from the “afterlife” of Fr Pierre-Marie’s study within his own Dominican community that:

• The Dominicans of Avrillé seem to have progressively favoured Fr Calderón’s study, at the expense of Fr Pierre-Marie’s

• They especially favour his conclusion, that conditional ordination/consecration are necessary in a systematic way for those whose orders depend on the new rites.

To summarise this matter, we can repeat again the words of Fr Peter Scott FSSPX:

“For regardless of the technical question of the validity of a priest’s holy orders, we all recognize the Catholic sense that tells us that there can be no mixing of the illegitimate new rites with the traditional Catholic rites, a principle so simply elucidated by Archbishop Lefebvre on June 29, 1976:

“‘We are not of this religion. We do not accept this new religion. We are of the religion of all time, of the Catholic religion. We are not of that universal religion, as they call it today. It is no longer the Catholic religion. We are not of that liberal, modernist religion that has its worship, its priests, its faith, its catechisms, its Bible….’”22 (Emphasis added)

See the full index on this matter here:

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Editor’s Notes

St Antoninus of Florence OP

St Antoninus was born in 1389, and died in 1459. He joined the Dominican Order at the age of about 16, and made his novitiate with Fra Angelico. During the Great Western Schism, he was an adherent of the “Roman” claimant (Gregory XII), who is commonly considered to have been the true Pope. He assisted as a theologian at the Council of Florence, and was later compelled by Pope Eugene IV to accept episcopal consecration and the See of Florence. The Catholic Encyclopedia also claims that Pope Eugene IV called St Antoninus to assist him at his deathbed. He was consulted by subsequent Popes on other matters of importance, and was canonised by Adrian IV in 1523.

Dom Prosper Guéranger tells us the following about the Saint:

“Heaven blessed that illustrious City with temporal prosperity on account of its saintly Archbishop. Cosmas of Medici was frequently heard to say, that Florence owed more to Antoninus than to any other man. The holy prelate was also celebrated for his great learning. He defended the Papacy against the calumnies of certain seditious Bishops in the Council of Basle: and, at the General Council of Florence, he eloquently asserted the truth of the Catholic Faith, which was assailed by the abettors of the Greek Schism. How beautiful is our holy Mother the Church, that produces such children as Antoninus, and has them in readiness to uphold what is true, and withstand what is false!”

His principal work was Summa Theologica Moralis, which dealt with moral theology, and was an important text in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it is difficult to find copies of it in modern script, without the abbreviations and unusual markings common in scholastic texts of that time.

However, with the help of Mark Escobar, we have located the section relevant to “The Pope Question”, transcribed it and its surrounding context, and have made it available in Latin and English for readers.

In this section, St Antoninus teaches that if a “Pope” is “found” departing from the faith, or “caught” falling into heresy – indicating an external act, rather than a merely internal sin – he is “ipso facto deposed.”

Naturally, he also explains why this is the case.

Resistance

After dealing with the problem of a “heretical pope”, St Antoninus turns to the question of a wicked pope, which he distinguishes from the former. He explains why these two cases should be distinguished – and also specifies the type of wickedness that he has in mind.

As such, his calls for “resistance” have no relevance to our current situation – and the same applies also to what Bellarmine says on the matter, citing the following sections of both Turrecremata and Cajetan:

• Could a Pope destroy the Church? John de Torquemada answers

• How an evil pope could ‘destroy the Church’—Cajetan’s objections

• How to defeat a destroyer pope – Cajetan and prayer

• Final nail in the Bellarmine ‘resistance quote’ coffin? Cajetan’s context

• ‘Resisting the pope?’—Bellarmine on doubtful and tyrannical popes

In discussing Bellarmine’s text, some (such as the late Fr Anthony Cekada) placed a certain emphasis on who was permitted to resist an evil Pope (i.e., kings and prelates, and not individual Catholics).1 However, this seems debatable: it is more straightforward to insist that St Robert Bellarmine and the others were speaking about a certain set of evils that could be resisted (as Fr Cekada did indeed recognise) – in which heretical teaching and harmful universal laws did not feature.2

Final Note

Following the text, we are also reproducing another short extract from St Antoninus on a related topic, cited by Don Francesco Ricossa IMBC and translated by the seminarians of Most Holy Trinity Seminary. Although the extract is discussing the state of affairs after a Pope has died, it has obvious implications for a Pope losing office due to heresy, schism, apostasy, permanent insanity or resignation – or for when a man elected does not accept the office in the first place.

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Whether the Pope can be Deposed for any Crime

St Antoninus of Florence

From Summae Sacrae Theolgiae, Iuris Pontificii, et Caesarei, Pars Tertia.
Titulus Vigesimussecundus – De Statu Summorum Pontificem
Cap. V, De Maxima Potestate Papæ, pp. 393-4
Venetiis, Apud Bernardum Iuntam et Socios, MDLXXI. Available (at the right page) at Google Books. (Latin transcript available here)

§3: Can the Pope be deposed?

The question is asked, whether the pope can be deposed for any notorious crime whatsoever.

It seems that he can. For it is said, Distinction 40:

“If the pope should fall into such faults, no mortal may presume to reprove him, since he who is to judge all men is himself to be judged by none, unless he be found deviating from the faith.”

Therefore, it seems that he may be deposed, at least for heresy.

Indeed, the gloss on the said chapter says that for any other notorious crime – such as adultery, simony, and the like – if he were incorrigible and gave scandal to the Church, he could be deposed.

On the contrary is what Anacletus says, Distinction 79:

“The Lord reserved to himself the election of the supreme pontiffs, although he granted their election to good priests and spiritual peoples.”

And in 9, Question 3, it is said:

“No one shall judge the First See.”

For neither by the emperor, nor by all the clergy, nor by kings, nor by the people, shall the judge – that is, the pope – be judged. Upon which the gloss says that a council cannot judge the pope, as in Extra, De electione,3 chapter Significasti; and this is so unless he should submit himself to the judgment of certain persons, as in Cause 2, Question 7, Nos.

Likewise, Pope Symmachus says in IX, q.3:

“God willed that the causes of other men should be settled by men, but he has without question reserved the presider of this see to his own judgement; he willed that the successors of blessed Peter should owe their innocence to heaven alone, and should have their conscience enclosed within the scrutiny of the most subtle examiner.”

It must be said, according to Augustine of Ancona, in the place cited above, that the pope is not to be deposed for any crime, however notorious, because such deposition or accusation would redound to the harm of the whole Church. For if accusations against him were to be heard, the Church would remain headless.

And this is so, except for the sin of heresy – though even in this case, if he were willing to correct and amend himself, he ought not to be deposed, as Hugo notes in the twenty-first distinction. And therefore the bishops gathered in council did not depose Marcellinus, who had confessed heresy and idolatry, because he was prepared to be corrected and to revoke his sententia, which indeed he did.

Why a heretic pope loses office ipso facto

But for heresy itself he is fittingly deposed ipso facto, because the pope is chosen as the head of the whole Church, according to that saying of Ephesians 1:

“Himself, Christ, he gave as head over all the Church, which is his body.”

Now the pope represents the person of Christ. Hence Christ also called Peter Cephas, that is, head; and the office of the head is to infuse life into all the members. But the principle of spiritual life is faith, for, as the Apostle says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

If therefore the pope is found to have deviated from the faith, he is himself dead to spiritual life, and consequently cannot infuse life into others. Hence, just as a dead man is not a man, so a pope caught in heresy is not pope, because he is deposed ipso facto.

The same is said by Peter Paludanus, in the place cited above, namely, that the pope, so long as he is pope, cannot be deposed for any crime whatsoever – whether by a council, or by the whole Church, or by the whole world. This is not only because he is superior and has no man above him who can judge him, but also because this is for God, who has reserved to himself the judgment of the Roman prelate, so long as he is prelate, as in Cause 9, Question 3, Aliorum.

But when he lapses into heresy, then by that very fact he is cut off from the Church and ceases to be head; and then he is deposed de facto, not de iure, because “he who does not believe is already judged” (de iure); but this is before any judgment, since by the very fact that he is a heretic, he is cut off from the Church. Now the head cut off from the body cannot, while it remains severed, be the head of the body from which it has been cut off. Whence the pope, by this very fact, ceases to be the head of the body of the Church. And thus a heretic cannot be, nor remain, pope, because the keys of the Church cannot be possessed outside of the Church. But by other sins, the pope is a sick head, which does not on that account cease to be head – nor can he therefore be judged by the members.

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An objection: expanding this conclusion to a wicked pope

Peter moreover says that the gloss upon the chapter Si papa, cited above, which says that for any other notorious crime, if the pope be incorrigible, he may be deposed and judged, is false. And he gives the reason for this: the gloss says that, since the pope is incorrigible, he is said to be heretical through contumacy; and since he is contumacious, he is consequently an unbeliever and a heretic.

But it must be said, according to Peter, that when heresy is said to be contumacious, heresy is taken in a broad sense – just as simony also is sometimes called heresy, because of a certain likeness. But when it is said that the pope can be deposed or is deposed on account of heresy, it is taken there in its proper and strict sense – that is, through a fixed error concerning matters of faith. Therefore, not for any other sins, however incorrigible he may be, can he be deposed.

The same is said by Augustine of Ancona, upon that gloss. He adds, however, that the said gloss can be preserved – namely, that when it is said that a man can be deposed on account of the incorrigibility of some vice, it must be understood when he is so incorrigible that the sin which he commits, even though it be mortal, he believes and asserts not to be a sin. For then indeed he would be truly and properly a heretic, and so he can be deposed – but not merely because he does not cease from the act of sin.

How to respond to a wicked Pope

What then is to be done when the pope is so wicked that by his conduct he destroys the Church of God? Peter Paludanus says that there is a twofold remedy.

The first is after the example of Paul, who withstood Peter to his face at Antioch, because he was leading the Gentiles astray, inclining them, as it were, to Judaise, through an excessive condescension towards the converted Jews, lest he should scandalise them, as is found in Galatians 2 and in 2, q. 7. Thus the pope, according to Paul, is not to be obeyed in evil matters, but resisted by honest reproof.

Hence, if the pope wished to give the whole treasure of the Church to his relatives, or to destroy the Church of Saint Peter, or to give to his relatives the patrimony of Peter, or to do anything of this kind which is not lawful, it ought not to be permitted, but he should be resisted – though without recourse to deposition.

The second remedy is after the example of blessed Hilary, who prevailed against Pope Leo by prayer. This Leo was, I believe, the one who by another name is called Pope Liberius, who favoured the Arian heretics. Therefore, for such an incorrigible pope the whole Church ought to pray that God may either correct him or remove him from the world. Nor would God ever so despise his Church that he would not hear her. And a council ought to be convened against him, if he himself were unwilling to convene it, so that by it he might be admonished, or that God might be implored to apply a remedy by resisting the evils which he wished to do, lest the Church should be endangered. Another example of this remedy is found in the case of Pope Anastasius, who, favouring heretics, was struck down by divine judgment, as is read in Cause 19, Anastasius.

Likewise note, according to Augustine of Ancona, that whilst the pope is pope, and a general council cannot be assembled except by his authority (as is clear in distinction 17 throughout), nevertheless because a pope on account of the crime of heresy is not pope, in such a case his authority is not therefore required; the authority of the college of cardinals and of other bishops and doctors would suffice.

He also says that if it is notorious that a pope has died in heresy, and during his life in the Church taught or fostered a perverse doctrine, and did not amend himself, even after his death he may be accused and condemned, as is argued in Cause 24, Question 3, chapter Si vera.

Base text translated with the aid of AI, with each line scrutinised by a human person.

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The Power of the Pope during an Interregnum

St Antoninus of Florence

Translated by seminarians of Most Holy Trinity Seminary (fair use)

From Summae Sacrae Theolgiae, Iuris Pontificii, et Caesarei, Pars Tertia.
Titulus Vigesimussecundus – De Statu Summorum Pontificem
Cap. V, De Maxima Potestate Papæ, pp. 376-7.
Venetiis, Apud Bernardum Iuntam et Socios, MDLXXI. Available (at the right page) at Google Books.

§ 3. Whether the power of the Pope remains in the College of Cardinals after the death of the Pope?

Augustine of Ancona responds in the third Question of the aforesaid book: After his death the power of the Pope remains in the College of Cardinals in two ways. First with respect to the root, for the College is compared to the Pope as the root to the tree or the branch. But just as the power of the tree or the branch, by which it blossoms and produces fruit, remains in the root even after the tree itself or its branch are destroyed, so the papal power remains in the Church or the College after the death of the Pope. It remains in the College as in the proximate root and in the church of the prelates and other faithful as in the remote root. Secondly, such power remains in the Church and in the College with respect to that which is material in the papacy, since after the death of the Pope the College is able, through election, to determine a person to the papacy, that it be such or such a one. Wherefore just as the root produces the tree through which it produces the flowers and fruit, so also the College makes a Pope who has jurisdiction and administration in the Church. Hence, if by the name of papacy we understand the election and determination of the person (which is the material thing in the papacy, as has been said before) then such power remains in the College after the death of the Pope. But if by the name of papal power we understand his authority and jurisdiction (which is the formal thing), then such power never dies, because it always remains in Christ, who rising again from the dead, dieth now no more.

Wherefore St. Augustine, commenting on the words “all power is given to me in heaven and in earth ... and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mat. 28), says that the Apostles, to whom Christ spoke, were not going to remain until the consummation of the world, but He spoke to them in the person of all those that would succeed them, as to a single body of the Church. If, however, by the name of papal power we understand the actual administration, which is the material and formal thing in the papacy, then it is true that this actual administration dies with the death of the Pope, since the actual administration of the papal power does not remain in the College after the death of the Pope (except to the extent that it was entrusted to them by a decree of the predecessor), nor does it remain, in this manner, in Christ, because, according to the common law, Christ has not exercised such power, after His resurrection, except through the mediation of the Pope; for although He Himself is the door, He has nevertheless constituted Peter and his successors as the His porters, by whose mediation the door of access to Him is opened and closed.

The power of the Church therefore with regard to jurisdiction (which is, as it were, the formal thing in the papacy) does not die with the death of the Pope but persists in Christ. Nor does it die with regard to the election and determination of the person, (which is like the material element), but it persists in the College of Cardinals; it dies, however, with respect to its actual administration and jurisdiction, because after the death of the Pope, the Church is vacant and is deprived of the administration of such power. Nor is that conclusion hindered by saying that the priesthood of Christ will endure forever, just as Christ, and that therefore, after the death of the Pope, his power remains, because this is true with regard to what is formal in the priesthood. For just as all priests, as regards the power of consecration, are but one priest, Christ, inasmuch as all consecrate in the person of Christ); so all Popes are but one Pope, Christ, because all Popes receive jurisdiction and the power of ruling immediately from God; and yet the actual administration of the said power dies with the death of this or that Pope.

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Author’s Notes

This is Chapter V of my “book”, ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church – dealing with apostolicity as a property, rather than as a note. The note of apostolicity is addressed in Chapter IV.

Zero Marks is Part II of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden: The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.” Peter Kwasniewski described Fr Crean’s article as “a definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism, at the level of first principles.”

As Zero Marks is very long and detailed (over 30,000 words), we have first published it in full for WM+ members, and have been releasing each of the five chapters separately for all readers.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property

Rupture with apostolic doctrine
Some specific ruptures with apostolic doctrine
Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church apostolic in origin?
Questions asked about the Conciliar/Synodal Church
Conclusions on apostolicity

Other resources

I discussed this chapter with Stephen Kokx over at Kokx News.

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It has repeatedly been alleged that “sedevacantists” – and myself specifically – have been overly focused on apostolicity of doctrine and of origin, and have ignored the issue of apostolic succession. I have already demonstrated the vexatiousness of such an accusation:

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

But as I mentioned at the end of the video with Mr Kokx, the question of the Church’s essential properties is a “zero sum game.” The absence of one property in the Conciliar/Synodal Church – in this case, shown by the rupture with apostolic doctrine – is such that the conclusion necessarily follows: this body is not the Catholic Church. The idea that it can be saved with reference to arguments about apostolicity of succession is false: following such a demonstration, the task is instead to account for succession and government in light of the established facts and received theology.

For Part I of this response, see below:

• ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I

For the rest of Zero Marks, see the full piece here:

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

The other individual chapters are available here:

• Disunited in Faith: Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church (‘Zero Marks’, Introduction and Ch. I)

• ‘Comprehensive Rejection’: Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly holy? (‘Zero Marks’, Ch. II)

• Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church Catholic? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. III)

• Apostolic succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. IV)

Some other relevant articles:

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

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

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

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

Thesis Statement

Before proceeding, I once again restate my definition of the Conciliar/Synodal Church, my thesis, and a necessary clarification:

• 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.

• 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 conclusion and appendix of Zero Marks will be released next week.

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Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property

Rupture with apostolic doctrine

We have seen above that the true Church must be apostolic in doctrine – that is, there must be an objective identity between her doctrine and that received from the Apostles.

The normal course of action would be first to identify the true Church and submit to her authority, because there – with her apostolic hierarchy – we will find the apostolic doctrine.1 This is, again, an example of “the argument from prescription,” and pertains to the very reason for the visibility of the Church.

Some take this argument from prescription as the end of the question, as Fr Crean appears to do – at least for identifying the true Church.

However, this “argument from prescription” is manifestly insufficient, because the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy teaches a variety of different doctrines, some of which are contrary to the Catholic faith. One cannot submit to this hierarchy, taken as such: one is obliged to identify individual members whom one believes to be orthodox – and these are rarely one’s own diocesan bishop. One is also obliged to write (or consult) lengthy studies attempting to reconcile prima facie errors with what is known to be Catholic doctrine. This is thus a self-contradictory solution to the problem: one is left with a visibility which does not achieve the purpose for its existence.

However, our problem is not precisely identifying the true Church. We have already identified her: she is the Roman Catholic Church. Our problem is identifying where the Roman Catholic Church is, and who is and is not a member of her hierarchy. This distinction provides the key to the solution.

All parties to this discussion agree that the society which was headed by St Peter the Apostle, Pope St Pius I (d. 154 AD), Pope St Pius V (d. 1572 AD), Pope St Pius X (d. 1914 AD) and Pope Pius XII (d. 1958) was the true Church of Christ.2

This agreement is very significant for the purpose of this reply to Fr Crean, and the topic in general. As the theologian Mgr Van Noort wrote:

“[I]f the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, it doubtless has in its possession the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied.”3

For this reason, we know that what the Church taught up until the death of Pius XII was “the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied.” We are in possession of a point of data that someone seeking the true Church, without knowing that this is the Roman Catholic Church, does not have.

“The doctrine of the Apostles” is a broad concept, and is not limited to the doctrines we see explicitly stated in Holy Scripture by the Apostles, or written in a text such as the Didache. In fact, it refers to all of Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, as proposed to us by the Magisterium of the Church.4 This Magisterium proposes to us the doctrine of the Apostles: sometimes that which was taught directly, and sometimes that which was contained within it implicitly. This is necessarily true, because otherwise we would have to assert that the Church was able to impose upon the faithful “some new doctrine” – which is expressly rejected by Vatican I.5

As such, rupture with or contradiction of the definitive teaching of the Church of Pius XII and his predecessors is a rupture with apostolic doctrine, in the sense relevant to this question.

Some specific ruptures with apostolic doctrine

We have already seen that the Conciliar/Synodal Church has committed itself to a variety of doctrines which are in contradiction with what was taught by the Church of Pius XII and his predecessors. We detailed some of these in each of the previous sections, and we could add to them the following, drawn from John S. Daly’s The Principal Heresies and Errors of Vatican II:

• The supposed right to religious liberty (as taught by Dignitatis Humanae – condemned on multiple occasions by the pre-conciliar Church, based on the teaching of Holy Scripture)

• That revelation was completed “when [Christ] accomplished on the Cross the work of redemption” (Dignitatis Humanae n. 11, directly contradicting “the traditional and definite Catholic teaching that many truths proposed by the Church as Divinely revealed were not revealed by Our Lord until after His Resurrection”,6 and what is implicit in the statement of revelation closing at the death of the last Apostle).

• That heretical/schismatic sects are “means of salvation” (Unitatis Redintegratio n. 3, contradicting, for example, the Council of Florence)

• That prayers in common with non-Catholics are “desirable” and “very effective means for petitioning the grace of unity” (Unitatis Redintegratio n. 8 – contradicting what Fr Crean himself states is divine law, whilst denying the contradiction)7

• That Catholic missionaries can cooperate “with the missionary undertakings of other Christian communities, so that as far as possible the scandal of division may be removed” (Ad Gentes, n. 29, contrary to the constant practice and teaching of the Church)

• That the Jews are faithful to God’s covenant (as is implicit in the Good Friday Prayer that they “may grow/continue in faithfulness to His Covenant” – contrary to the constant teaching of the Church).

When combined with the other doctrinal errors we have considered, it is clear: the Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly not apostolic in doctrine, and is therefore visibly not the Catholic Church.

Even Fr Crean cannot deny the appearance of such rupture, given that he has written studies attempting to reconcile some of these very points with Catholic doctrine. Thus, even if he cannot accept that it is visibly not the Catholic Church, his own work shows that it is not visibly the Catholic Church.

While I have no doubt that Fr Crean and others have the best of intentions here, such “close reading” harmonisations are scarcely plausible, given that they run contrary to the interpretations and implementations of the alleged authorities, who have little-to-no interest in reconciling their novel doctrines with those of the Catholic Church.

Further, the multiplicity of such “merely apparent contradictions” is itself a phenomenon in need of explanation. And the sufficient and true explanation is that the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is responsible for them, is not the Catholic Church.

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Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church apostolic in origin?

The radical disunity, unholiness, and non-catholicity of the Conciliar/Synodal Church demonstrate that it lacks identity with the Church of the Apostles. As such, it is a visibly new body, and not apostolic in origin.

Again, even if Fr Crean cannot accept that it is visibly not apostolic in origin, it is still certain that it is not visibly so.

The idea that people could be deceived into accepting a new and different body or society as the Church is by no means new. Prior to Vatican II, Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote the following – applying it to Communism, but with much analogical value:

“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.”8

Elsewhere, in the same work, he wrote the following – which is especially instructive, given what we have already discussed regarding the disunity of faith and the renunciation of authority (and its replacement by voluntarism):

“The third reason for the appeal of the passion of totalitarianism is the need of social unity. When a civilization loses a unifying philosophy of life and a common purpose, like a body without a soul, it begins to break up into a thousand discordant and warring elements.

“For a while – and this is the present tactic – an attempt is made to balance opposing forces and keep them in equilibrium. Men then begin to recognize the need of unity and authority. Having surrendered a spiritual bond of unity, like to that which the soul gives to the body, or morality to the state, they seek to compensate for the loss by a compulsory organization from without in the form of a dictatorship.

“The unity now comes not from within – but from without like a whip. Thus does a society which lost its faith in the authority of a Church sneak authority back into society through the door of the counter-church, as Kant who exiled God through pure reason sneaked him back through practical reason. Inner authority based on the truth of God revealing gives way to external authority based on the party line of the dictator dictating. Once inner faith is lost, a dictatorship becomes imperative to re-establish some kind of order by force.”9

The Catholic Church is governed by law (with teaching as a kind of doctrinal law, as discussed in the previous chapter). It is not goverened by raw power, administrative tyranny, or the mere will of the “Pope” – as is the Conciliar/Synodal Church.

The idea of an “ape of the Church” is not limited to Archbishop Sheen. Fr Berry, to whom we have referred throughout this piece, also wrote the following:

“The prophecies of the Apocalypse show that Satan will imitate the Church of Christ to deceive mankind; he will set up a church of Satan in opposition to the Church of Christ. Antichrist will assume the role of Messias; his prophet will act the part of Pope; and there will be imitations of the Sacraments of the Church. There will also be lying wonders in imitation of the miracles wrought in the Church.”10 (Emphases added)

He refers to his other work, The Apocalypse of St John, in which he writes:

“Our divine Saviour has a representative on earth in the person of the Pope upon whom He has conferred full powers to teach and govern. Likewise Antichrist will have his representative in the false prophet who will be endowed with the plenitude of satanic powers to deceive the nations.

“If Antichrist be of Jewish extraction, as he probably will, the sea from which he arises signifies Judaism. Then the earth whence comes the second beast is a symbol of the Gentile nations in revolt against the Church. The two horns denote a twofold authority – spiritual and temporal. As indicated by the resemblance to a lamb, the prophet will probably set himself up in Rome as a sort of antipope during the vacancy of the papal throne mentioned above.”11 (Emphases added)

Another commentator on the Apocalypse, Fr Bernard Kramer, wrote the following:

“The Church having fled from Rome after the murder of the pope leaves the papal chair vacant. This false prophet possibly at the behest of Antichrist usurps the papal supremacy and proposes himself as emperor of Rome. His assumed spiritual authority and supremacy over the Church would make him resemble the Bishop of Rome, and his temporal regency over the re-established empire would make him emperor of Rome.

“He would be Pontifex Maximus, a title of pagan Roman emperors, having supreme spiritual and temporal authority. Assuming authority without possessing it makes him the False Prophet.”12 (Empasis added)

Fr Owen Francis Dudley wrote the following in a short tract on the Church:

“We speak of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, a framework, a supernatural organism living by the life of Christ. Is it beyond the genius of Satan to build to himself a parallel kind of framework, an antithesis to the Mystical Body of Christ?

“There is a carefully planned framework to be found in freemasonry – a supreme pontiff, a hierarchy, a temple, ceremonial worship, degrees of initiation, festivals, a creed. This planned framework is an antithesis to God’s plan for His Church. It is a deliberate plan of worship. It is naturalism as opposed to supernaturalism.”13

Finally, Padre Pio allegedly gave Fr Gabriele Amorth the following warning:

“You know, Gabriele? It is Satan who has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false Church.”

The conversation itself touched on the possibility of a false pope.14

These examples, whether they are more or less accurate descriptions of our current situation, show that sober writers have considered such a scenario to be possible. As discussed in the previous part, it is certain that the Church is to shrink and undergo a great deception at some point in her history; it is neither absurd nor even apocalyptic to consider that many Catholics may be deceived by the existence of a distinct body posing as the Catholic Church.

Questions asked about the Conciliar/Synodal Church

Similarly, the idea that the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself is a different body to the society of the Catholic Church is by no means a new idea either. The persistence of the questions raised about the continuity between the two seriously undermines the idea that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the “city on a hill that cannot be hidden”, and easily recognisable as the true Church.

The thesis statement for this study has not specified a “date of birth” for the body denoted as the Conciliar/Synodal Church. Nonetheless, it is clear that the distinction between the society of the Catholic Church and the body of the Conciliar/Synodal Church started becoming visible from about 1965, with the promulgation of the documents of Vatican II.

This is also when the term “Conciliar Church” entered common parlance. In 1966, Paul VI said in an address to lay leaders:

“For it is not a matter merely of collecting and spreading the council’s teachings, but of transforming oneself into the image of the conciliar Church.”15

The question as to a “new Church” became so common after Vatican II that in 1968, Frank Sheed was prompted to write a book titled Is it the Same Church? In this work, Sheed recognised the legitimacy of the question, and affirmed that it was the same Church – but set out a number of “red lines”, the crossing of which would mean that it was a new and different body. All these “red lines” have been crossed, as we indicated in an article annexed to this response:

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

In 1971, the Jesuit theologian Fr Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga wrote a book titled The New Montinian Church, in which he raised the question of Paul VI’s legitimacy, and claimed that he was turning the Church into a new “homocentric [anthropocentric] religion of universal brotherhood.”16 In a classic case of “weaponized orthodoxy”, Fr Sáenz y Arriaga was subsequently suspended and then excommunicated – while the propagators of doctrinal error ran rampant.

In the same year, Fr Roger Calmel OP wrote the following, in an essay included in Brief Apologia for the Church of the Ages, and cited in Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ essay Is There a Conciliar Church? on the same subject:

“The false church which is showing itself amongst us since the curious Vatican II is diverging tangibly year after year, from the Church founded by Jesus Christ. The false post-conciliar church is splitting away more and more from the holy Church which has saved souls for twenty centuries (not to mention the support and enlightenment lent to civil society). The pseudo-church in construction splits away more and more from the true Church, the only Church of Jesus Christ, by the most strange innovations in the hierarchical constitution as well as in its teachings and morals.”17

(This book has just been republished by Arouca Press, with a foreword by Fr Crean himself. For more on Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ essay, see the Appendix below.)

In April 1972, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer – who later joined Archbishop Lefebvre as co-consecrator at the 1988 episcopal consecrations – wrote an article titled ‘Since the Council there has been a new Church’ in his diocesan bulletin, stating:

“In the implementation of the plan outlined by Vatican II, in most of the Catholic world, the attempt to adapt has gone beyond simply a means of expression more in conformity with the mentality of the day.

“It has even touched the essence of Revelation itself. They do not preoccupy themselves with explaining revealed Truth in such a way as to enable man to understand it more easily; rather their goal, by using ambiguous and flowery language, is to put forward a new Church to man’s tastes formed according to the maxims of the modern world. […]

“With that, they now spread, more or less everywhere, the idea that the Church must undergo a radical change in its morality, in its liturgy, and even in its doctrine. In what has been written and done in Catholic milieu since the [Vatican II] Council, the thesis has been spread that the Traditional Church, such as it existed until Vatican II, is no longer adequate for the needs of modern times, so that it must be completely transformed.

“A profound observation on what has taken place in Catholic circles leads to the conviction that, truly, since the Council there is a new Church that is essentially distinct from the one we knew prior to the Council, as the unique Church of Christ. Indeed, human dignity is now exalted as an absolute and untouchable principle to whose rights truth and good must submit.”18

In 1975, the modernist Cardinal Léon Joseph Suenens, in the preface of his book A New Pentecost?, recognised that many Catholics were unable to see an identity between the emergent Conciliar Church and “the Church of their childhood or even that of yesterday”:

“To those who at this moment are distressed because they cannot recognize – in the confusion and the changes of today – the Church of their childhood or even that of yesterday, this book offers a message: be of courage, the power of the Holy Spirit is at work deep within the heart of his Church, breathing into it a fresh youthfulness. It is the Spirit who is our living hope for the future.”19

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre asserted that the Conciliar Church was a distinct society on numerous occasions. In 1976, he said:

“This Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church of all time. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship—already condemned by the Church in many official and definitive documents. […]

“The Church which affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is therefore not Catholic. Insofar as the Pope, bishops, priests, and faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church.”20

He affirmed the same on many occasions in the following years, as documented elsewhere:

• What did Archbishop Lefebvre really think about the ‘Conciliar Church’? (John Lane)

More recently, Mgr Brunero Gherardini recognised this reality in his 2009 book The Ecumenical Vatican Council: A Much Needed Discussion:

“There is a question which lies latent within the pages of this long treatise. It is a burning question, which manages to make itself heard as an everlasting act of love – a question which has been pronounced by the ever more distant and feeble voices which were silenced or drowned out by the Poltergeist [the “Spirit of Vatican II”]: Where is the Church?

“Granted that she is still present in the Vatican II documents, in spite of the fact that the documents themselves may have partially clouded her identity, is she still – I am asking – overlooking the implications of the post-conciliar period, or is this only one of her unrecognisable counterfeits?”21 (Emphasis in original)

Cardinal Leo Burke also recognised it in 2012, in a now-unavailable22 video interview with Raymond Arroyo:

“Sadly, what happened after the Second Vatican Council was – an idea developed that we were forming a new Church and that everything that had gone on since the time of the first Christians was all retrograde and in some way a defection from what was supposedly this Church of freedom and truth and joy.”23

Finally, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, responding to the 1988 episcopal consecrations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, also recognised what Vatican II and its religious revolution had conveyed, and voiced the same idea:

“It is a necessary task to defend the Second Vatican Council against Msgr. Lefebvre, as valid, and as binding upon the Church. Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.

“The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.

“This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy – the form in which the liturgy was handed down – suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have been taken since the council; on the other hand, if men make question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the faith – for instance, the corporal virginity of Mary, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, etc. – nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation. I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith.

“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. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.”24 (Emphasis added)

Fr Crean himself may believe that something like Ratzinger’s analysis is the correct one, and that he should work towards the programme suggested at the end of this text – although we should note that Ratzinger himself here witnesses to the “external fact” of the radical disunity of faith in the Conciliar/Synodal Church.

But the point here is not whether Ratzinger, Lefebvre, or anyone else cited is correct about whether there was a “new Church”. The point, rather, is that they all 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 we are wrong in asserting that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly not apostolic in origin, it is once again not visibly so. The attempt to prove its identity with the true Church is something that requires explanation, nuance and argument; and this is a reality overlooked in the claim that, as the Church is the “city on a hill” and easily recognisable by all, the sedeplenist explanation must be true.

However, Lefebvre and those of a similar mind were correct. As we have demonstrated throughout this response, it was indeed (and is) a “new Church” – beginning not with Leo XIV or Francis but with Vatican II.

Conclusions on apostolicity

At the heart of apostolicity is the concept of continuity. It might be alleged that the various ruptures in apostolicity we have considered are “merely accidental”, and that the substance of the Church continues nonetheless. In response, let us turn once more to Romano Amerio, who considers this very point:

“The whole question of the present condition of the Church can be summed up as follows: is the essence of Catholicism preserved? Do the changes that have occurred allow the same essence to continue in existence amidst changing circumstances, or do they turn it into something else?”25

In fact, he had already answered this question earlier in Iota Unum:

“This raises the difficult question of the relation between the essence of a thing and its accidental parts, between the essence of the Church and its accidents. Is it not possible that all the things we have listed pertaining to the Church, whether individually or generically, could be reformed and yet leave the Church unchanged?

“Yes, but three points must be noted. First: there are those things that the scholastics called absolute accidents, that is, accidents which are not indeed identical with the substance of something, but without which it does not exist. These are such things as quantity in corporeal substances, and in the case of the Church, faith.

“Second: although there are accidental parts to the life of the Church, she cannot assume and abandon any and every accidental quality indifferently, because, just as every entity has certain accidents and not others (a ship one hundred stades long, as Aristotle remarked, is no longer a ship) and as, for example, the body has extension but lacks consciousness, so the Church too has certain accidents and not others, and there are such things as accidents which are incompatible with the Church’s essence, and which destroy it. […]

“Third: the things we have listed as being affected by the post-conciliar change are indeed accidents in the life of the Church, but accidents should not be regarded as matters of indifference, which can be or not be, be in one way or be in another, without thereby changing the nature of the Church. This is not the place to conduct a full metaphysical debate or to appeal to St. Thomas’s De ente et essentia. It is, however, essential to remember that the substance of the Church exists only in her accidents, and that an unexpressed substance, that is, one without any accidents, is a nullity, a non-existent.

“The entire existence of an individual across time is, furthermore, contained in his acts of intellect and will: and what are intellection and volition but accidental realities which occur, come and go, emerge and disappear? Yet one’s moral destiny, salvation or damnation, depends on just those accidents.

“So too the whole life of the Church in time is her life as it exists in accidentalities and contingencies. How then can one fail to recognize her accidentals as important, and indeed substantially important? Are not changes in accidental forms accidental and historical changes, occurring within the unchangeable nature of the Church?

“And if all the accidents were to change, how would we be able to tell that the substance of the Church had not changed?”26

This is why conceding to Fr Crean the appearance of a material succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church establishes nothing contrary to our previous demonstration. A claim to be the true Church, based on Conciliar/Synodal Church’s apparent possession of the note of apostolicity, is nullified by this body’s evident lack of the property of apostolicity. It certainly does not establish the Conciliar/Synodal Church as the Roman Catholic Church: the apparent presence of a note does not remedy the absence of even one property (let alone the others). “Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.27

So much for the apostolicity of the “perpetually visible” Conciliar/Synodal Church.

Next week we will release the conclusion and appendix to Zero Marks to the general public. If you want to read it now, see below:

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(WM Round-Up) – On Wednesday 6 May 2026 – after nearly a month-long pause for Holy Week, Easter and the holidays – I appeared on ’s podcast Church and State with .

The conversation focused on the apostolicity of the Church, and the fifth and final chapter of my long article ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church. Zero Marks is the second part of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.”

In Zero Marks, I spend two chapters discussing apostolicity and how it relates to the visibility of the Church. In the part, I discussed apostolicity of succession, examining the claim that this note and property are found in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. This chapter – upon which this interview was based – deals with those aspects which pertain more to apostolicity as a property, namely that of doctrine and of origin.

Topics in this interview included:

• The recent announcement from the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Transalpine Redemptorists)

• Taylor Marshall’s comments on why he is not a “sedevacantist”

• Defence of the term “Conciliar/Synodal Church” and clarity on what it means

• Rupture with apostolic doctrine

• Some specific ruptures with apostolic doctrine

• The Conciliar/Synodal Church is not apostolic in origin

  • The possibility of a widespread deception by a false “church”

  • Questions asked about the Conciliar/Synodal Church

• Conclusions on apostolicity

For reasons attributable only to ignorance or inadequate reading comprehension, The WM Review has been accused of ignoring or overlooking the importance of formal apostolic succession, and placing an exaggerated importance on apostolicity of doctrine and of government. The previous interview should demonstrate the injustice of such an accusation; however, I also directly engaged the accusation here:

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

We will be releasing Chapter V of Zero Marks for all readers on Saturday. But you can read it NOW in the full book-length article discussed here:

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

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Articles mentioned:

• BREAKING: Transalpine Redemptorists declare ‘sede vacante’

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

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

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

Other parts in the Zero Marks series:

• ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I

• ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean) (All chapters and conclusion)

  • Disunited in Faith: Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church (‘Zero Marks’, Introduction and Ch. I)

  • ‘Comprehensive Rejection’: Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly holy? (‘Zero Marks’, Ch. II)

  • Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church Catholic? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. III)

  • Apostolic succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. IV)

This interview was a follow up to a previous conversation on the first part, ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I’. Here is the first interview:

Here is the second, on the property of unity:

Here is the third, on the property of holiness:

Here is the fourth, on the property of catholicity:

Here is the fifth, on the note of apostolicity:

Thank you to Stephen for having me on again. I hope readers of The WM Review enjoy it – and give a follow too.

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You can see what readers are saying over at our Testimonials page.

And you can visit The WM Review Shop for our ‘Lovely Mugs’ and more.

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Editor’s Notes

One of the chief arguments against the conclusion that the Holy See has been vacant since at least 1965 is that it is impossible for a vacancy to last so long.

Many have addressed this issue already: we have done so here:

• We shouldn’t be afraid of concluding that the See is vacant: here’s why

However, the text which follows considers the issue from a different perspective – that of Canon Law.

The text is by the early French traditionalist pioneer, Abbé Louis Coache (1920–94) – and in it, he addresses the principles of moral persons and their perpetuity, and applies them to the topic at hand.

Who was Fr Coache?

Fr Coache was ordained in 1943, and received a doctorate in Canon Law. From 1955, he was already active in fighting against the progressive currents, and sent an open letter of alarm to his diocesan confrères in 1964. In 1966, he wrote an article critiquing “The New Religion”, which resulted in the contempt of his bishop, and the condemnation of the review which published it.

In 1968, he invited his bishop to preside over a Corpus Christi procession. This gave rise to conflict, and this ended in the bishop ordering him to cease all writings and publications, and cancel his procession. In response, Fr Coache appealed to the Vatican, which eventually ruled against him in 1975. Fr Coache left his parish and retreated to his property of Maison Lacordaire in Flavigny, which later became a seminary of the Society of St Pius X (for first year seminarians).

In the interim, Fr Coache had founded the monthly bulletin Combat de la Foi, and he collaborated, for a time, with Fr Noël Barbara. These two men were among the four signatories of the Open Letter and Profession (along with Fr Peter Morgan and Mgr François Ducaud-Bourget) which was published in the first English edition of Fr Baraba’s Fortes in Fide journal. He was also involved in significant events in the 1970s, including the seizure of the church of S. Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.

We find these details, along with other praise of Fr Coache, in the February 2008 issue of Cor Unum, an internal bulletin of the SSPX.

What this bulletin does not mention is Fr Coache’s views on the legitimacy of the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy. Don Francesco Ricossa IMBC’s response to an extended critique of “sedevacantism” in La Tradizione Cattolica (later published by Angelus Press as Sedevacantism: A False Solution to a Real Problem), includes a brief history demonstrating how quickly Catholics concluded that Paul VI was not a true Pope.

Fr Ricossa notes that Fr Coache had already concluded that the Holy See was vacant in 1969,1 and describes him in the following terms:

“Abbé Coache is a case (and not the only one), of a “sedevacantist” (in private) always faithful to Archbishop Lefebvre.”

Abbé Henri Mouraux is another notable example.

Other texts which mention and commemorate the priest (as well as of Fr Mouraux) do not mention this matter.2 We must also acknowledge that Fr Coache’s views were unclear, and that Fr Barbara later castigated him for not holding that the See is vacant. However, the very fact that this matter is not mentioned emphasises the esteem in which he is held by non-“sedevacantists”, even today.

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The text itself

The WM Review generally does not get into matters of Canon Law. However, the text which we are reproducing here attracted our interest through a French-language video published by Abbé Damien Dutertre RCI, in response to criticisms by Abbé Jean-Michel Gleize SSPX. Fr Dutertre presents part of the text as an argument ad hominem, against Fr Gleize’s claim that it is “formal heresy” to conclude that the Holy See could be vacant for sixty years.

The ad hominem aspect of the argument is not, of course, meant in the sense of an insult to Fr Gleize, but rather in the sense of pointing to the witness of a man who is held in high esteem by him.

Fr Dutertre gave the follwoing context to his presentation of the text:

Abbé Gleize perhaps also knows another important declaration by Abbé Coache. Abbé Coache was one of the first pioneers, we coud say, of the resistance to Vatican II, to the new Mass, and so forth. Abbé Gleize knows Abbé Coache very well, I am sure of it.

Abbé Coache was a canonist, who therefore knew canon law well. And he was asked precisely the question of the permanence of the Holy See in time of vacancy: whether, according to him, there would have been a time limit; whether there would have been, let us say, a certain number of years that one could not exceed in the vacancy of the see.

So in fact, he makes the distinction – to give a little context – between a moral person of ecclesiastical law, which has been instituted by the Church, for example a parish, and a moral person of divine right, and this is the case of the Church and this is the case of the papacy.

In short, Fr Coache argues that the Apostolic See, as a moral person of divine right, remains perpetually in existence even when it is vacant. It is not, he argues, subject to the time limit of 100 years in Can. 102, because of this divine right. There would seem to be, by Fr Coache's reckoning, no limit on the length of such a vacancy. (One presumes, however, that such a conclusion could only be considered on the basis that the Church always retains the power to elect a new Pope, as the theologians teach.)

Even if Fr Coache is wrong about his point of perpetuity, we might add that Fr Coache could make an argument on the same principles so as to conclude that it could remain vacant for that time period.

Even during such a vacancy, he argues, “the authority of Peter endures in all that authentically expresses it (in the past and the present)” – and as examples, he points to the acts of the magisterium, as well as the other institutions of the Holy See. Through our submission to these various “expressions”, we remain subject to the authority of the Holy See and united to it.

A further question which this topic raises is whether and how these principles apply to the episcopate, which is not directly mentioned in the relevant canons – although Bouscaren et al. hold “churches” in the relevant canon to mean “particular churches”. If Fr Coache's principles hold for the Holy See, what implications would they have for the diocesan sees which are not of divine right? Would it mean that they could indeed all be without legitimate occupants, within the time limits specified? What are the implications of their material occupation by those without authority? But this important topic is outside the scope of these notes.

Following his presentation of the text, Fr Dutertre concludes:

Now, Abbé Gleize may not share what Abbé Coache says, but here again I cite Abbé Coache as an argument ad hominem, that is to say, in response to what Abbé Gleize says. Abbé Coache, then, who had studied canon law, is not at all as categorical on the question as Abbé Gleize is.

He is far from saying that it is a formal heresy to consider that the Apostolic See could be vacant for more than 60 years. So, according to Abbé Coache, it is entirely possible. And I do not think that Abbé Gleize will accuse Abbé Coache of formal heresy.

Fr Dutertre kindly provided me with a scan of the text in question, which we reproduce below in translation.

Following the text, we are also providing the context of a limited survey of pre-conciliar canonists who address the canons in question.

S.D.Wr.

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From

The Powers of the Priest: A Short Essay

Abbé Louis Coache

Supplement to no. 27 of Forts dans la foi, 3 September 1972, pp. 26–28.
Translated by The WM Review, with some headings and line breaks added for ease of reading.

Consequence of This Theological Doctrine

The acknowledgement of the error, the defection (or, as the case may be, the non-legitimacy) of the supreme head of the Church does not suffice to constitute schism. To recognise the failure of a Pope, to refuse to obey him on the point where he fails, does not constitute schism either, since what is required for schism is a rupture with the unity of the true Church.

The Modernists will object: “The Church is where the legitimate pastors are.” The objection is easy to refute: the Church is the authentic Church from which they derive their legitimacy. She is not to be found in the error or the heresy that these pastors may spread, however legitimate they be!

A material or formal disobedience, even a grave one, does not in itself suffice to constitute schism, since what is required for that is an obstinate revolt against the Sovereign Pontiff insofar as he embodies the unity of the Church through his doctrinal and moral teaching, or teaching in conformity with Tradition.

A Difficulty

If it is evident that one can remain attached to the unity of the Church — and therefore within the Church — in the case of a serious disagreement with the Pope or of a refusal of obedience, then how is it to be explained, theologically and canonically, that one can, in the same circumstances, still claim to be attached to the Holy See and, by that very fact, remain truly attached to it?

Here is the solution:

The Holy See — or Apostolic See — is a moral person of divine law (Can. 100). It is therefore an institution willed in itself by Our Lord.

This moral person is distinct from the Catholic Church. It is also distinct, in se, from the person of the Pope, although often, in praxis, the two are identified, since the Pope embodies the Holy See — e.g. Can. 61 or 2317 —; but Can. 7 specifies clearly that the name “Holy See” encompasses the organs of the government of the Church.

The Apostolic See, distinct from the universal Church and juridically distinct from the person of the Pope, represents the permanence of Roman pontifical Authority. It is “the permanence of the central authority in the Church, whatever changes may occur in the persons who exercise it. Authority, indeed, is attached to the OFFICE, not to the individuality of the office-holder. Whence it follows that sovereign authority is attached to the pontifical dignity and outlives the disappearance of the persons who are invested with it. This is what Jean d’André noted: ‘Tenens papatum vel dignitatem est corruptibilis, papatus tamen dignitas vel imperium semper est,’ that is, ‘he who holds the papacy is corruptible [i.e. subject to decay], but the dignity and authority of the papacy endure always.’” (Dictionnaire de droit canonique, VII, col. 837–838, R. Naz.)

Thus the Holy See is a (moral) person of divine institution: autonomous, independent, permanent, and infallible. It is the permanence of the authority of the Roman Church — sovereign authority over the universal Church.

Let us be clear: the Holy See is embodied (in practice and at its summit) by the Sovereign Pontiff who, normally, in his physical person, is superior to it. One may appeal from the Holy See (the Roman Congregations) to the person of the Pope; the reverse is not admissible. On the other hand, the Holy See — by reason of the very tradition made concrete through the succession of Popes — appears as the guarantor of the orthodoxy of the Church of Rome, of the diocese of Rome, and therefore of its Head. If the latter departs from this tradition, the Holy See “judges” him — not as an authority, but as expressing the intangible truth assured by the previous Popes.

A moral person of ecclesiastical law is perpetual by nature (can. 102), meaning that it cannot disappear except by the explicit and legitimate will of the competent authority; it even possesses a survival of one hundred years if it ceases de facto to be in exercise.

[Note: That is to say, if it ceases in fact for ninety-nine years, its rights endure in its members, its goods, and its capacities; it can therefore be revived without the superior authority opposing it a priori.]

A moral person of divine law cannot die; the Church can therefore remain for a very long time without a Pope — the Holy See is always alive with the permanence of papal authority. To be less abstract and more easily understood by the reader, let us say that the authority of Peter endures in all that authentically expresses it (in the past and the present), through the Documents of Holy Church, her tradition, through the Roman Congregations, the College of Cardinals…

The Pope, for his part — also of divine law — can die (264 of them have died!) or die morally (resignation, madness, heresy). The authority of the Holy See does not die.

The Roman Pontiff, incarnating the Holy See with his monarchical, discretionary,* personal, universal, and immediate power, is bound, like every head of a moral person, by the “statutes” of that person — in casu, divine Law and the Faith; he is limited by them; if he departs from them, he fails in his office.

[Note: “Discretionary” is a juridical term denoting the initiative of government… and not its caprice!]

One can therefore be separated from the physical person without being separated from the moral person (on 9 October 1958, we were separated from the person of Pope Pius XII, but we remained united to the Holy See). Let us understand well: “separated from the physical person” because that person fails, or disappears physically or canonically. But if one separates oneself by rebellion, by a wilful breach, from the physical person who is still united to the Church insofar as he embodies unity, on a question of Faith or Morals, then in that case there is necessarily separation from the moral person and therefore from the whole Church. There is [in that case,] schism.

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What follows, for WM+ members, are excerpts from the following canonical commentaries, which deal with the points discussed by Fr Coache:

• Woywood

• Bouscaren & Ellis

• Wernz & Vidal

• Dom Charles Augustine

The WM Review is free for readers. This is because we believe these ideas must reach as many people as possible.

However, we also provide WM+ articles – additional material for those who choose to support this work financially.

This helps us continue producing serious Catholic research, while ensuring that the main body of material remains accessible for all.

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(WM Reports) – The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer – commonly known as the “Transalpine Redemptorists” – have issued a declaration stating that “we cannot accept the current pretenders to the papacy from the time of the Second Vatican Council.”

The Transalpine Redemptorists were founded in 1987 with the blessing of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The founder, Fr Michael Mary, derives his holy orders from Lefebvre. The community operated on good terms with the SSPX for many years, until the majority of the community reconciled with the Vatican in 2008.

A community of nearly 30 members, “The Sons” have had operations in Scotland, USA and New Zealand. In recent years, they have experienced acrimonious relations with the bishop of Christchurch Diocese, NZ, who evicted them from the diocese in 2024.

In October 2025, the community issued a forceful open letter repudiating “the Synodal Church” and the reforms of Vatican II. While aspects of the October letter pointed towards the conclusion of a vacant See, it was not stated directly.

Since then, the community suffered the loss of a 24 year old brother from New Zealand, who is presumed to have drowned, although police are still treating the matter as a missing person case. Brother Ignatius went missing on 12 April. Police are not treating his disappearance as suspicious.

The May 2026 Declaration

The declaration, dated “2 May 2026, First Saturday, St Athanasius”, is accompanied by a letter and a set of notes.

The letter sets out in a more discursive form the situation in the Church following Vatican II, as well as its roots in previous decades. It sets out the doctrine of the pre-conciliar magisterium on “the deadly heresy of indifferentism” and other controverted points, as well as the facts of the last sixty years. It concludes from all this:

The First Vatican Council gave us a piercing light by which to see clearly in this darkness. It defined not only the infallibility of the Pope in his solemn magisterium but declared: “This See of St Peter always remains unimpaired by any error.”

Think carefully about what this means. God, Who is infallible Truth, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has revealed to the Church that the See of St Peter always remains unimpaired by any error. This is an article of faith. If the See of Peter were to teach error, then beyond any possible doubt, the person teaching that error is not a Catholic Pope. And if he is not a Catholic Pope, he is no Pope at all.

This is not a conclusion we have reached lightly. Already it is years too late in coming. It is a conclusion forced upon us by the Faith itself. It is God’s Providence that the Church has declared that: “This See of St. Peter always remains unimpaired by any error.” One sentence. A shaft of light for discernment through this darkness: the preVatican II Popes taught the truth. The post-Vatican II claimants teach error. No fudging. If Indifference is heresy and error all they who teach it cannot be legitimate successors of Peter.

We are not making a canonical judgement — only the Church can do that. But we are making a judgement of faith and practical necessity. We must choose whom we will follow. Will we follow the Popes who taught the faith without compromise, or will we follow those who have led the flock into the abyss of indifferentism?

The declaration includes a preamble of five short Articles on:

1. The Infiltration of the Church

2. Freemasonry and the Heresy of Indifferentism

3. The Second Vatican Council and Its Consequences

4. The Dogma (of Vatican II) as a Light of Discernment

5. The Present Crisis.

The conclusion itself is as follows:

1. The Church has been infiltrated by enemies from at least the time of Pope Gregory XVI.

2. The Freemasonic heresy of Indifferentism, combatted by Popes for over 200 years before Vatican II, was clearly taught at Vatican II by the false authority of false churchmen.

3. The papal pretenders from Paul VI through Leo XIV have taught and acted in flagrant contradiction to the undoubtedly Catholic pre-Vatican II Popes.

4. Since the Second Vatican Council, the apparent Popes have caused a spiritual catastrophe of the greatest imaginable proportions.

5. The new doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary decisions since Vatican II cannot be accepted because they contradict what came before.

6. Accepting the false teaching of Vatican II separates us from the Catholic Church.

7. A Catholic cannot recognise a man as the Vicar of Christ and resist his teachings in matters of Faith and Morals, nor can he resist his commands in matters of discipline and liturgy

It concludes with a call for an Imperfect General Council:

Therefore, we call for an Imperfect General Council, a meeting of all Catholic bishops of the world who have kept the true faith, to pronounce on the status of the present papal pretender, Leo XIV, and on the status of his Conciliar Church predecessors.

And until such Imperfect General Council is convoked and its investigations are concluded, and until papal clarifications are issued, we cannot accept the current pretenders to the papacy from the time of the Second Vatican Council.

It also laments the community’s own history of “cooperation and compromise”:

We repeat what we have said in our Open Letter, namely that there has been a great mistake on our part to think that the hierarchy of the Novus Ordo was sufficiently Catholic for us to operate under its command. That mistake was the fruit of nearly 20 years of living the non-Catholic stance of recognising but resisting those whom we thought were the authorities of the Church. At an earlier date we should have seen that it was impossible to recognise these men who preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of Our Lord passed on to us from the Apostles unchanged. For, in making our “reconciliation” in 2008, we found ourselves in a situation where even though reconciling and recognising them, we were still forced by faith to resist the Conciliar authorities, although in a different manner. Recognition of the destroyers of the Faith and any submission to them at all is both impossible and endangering one’s Faith.

Our statement is new. Our perspective has changed. But our Faith has not changed. Holding the True Faith of our Fathers, we will continue to offer the True Mass. We will worship the True God. And we will work for an Imperfect General Council to bring about the triumph of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The declaration is signed by 28 members of the community, including 6 priests.

The notes that follow provide substantiation for the various claims made throughout the letter and declaration itself.

The WM Review reached out to Fr Michael Mary F.SS.R. for comment. He kindly provided the following:

“Since March 2025, we have been substantially supported by S.D. Wright of The WM Review, following our reading of Mr. Matthew McCusker’s articles. Mr Wright gave his time to explain my initial questions, to counter the false information propagated by the Salza‑Siscoe camp, and to direct me to scholarly articles by a German priest that answered them in depth. I later encountered Bishop Roy in Canada. What Messrs Wright and McCusker, and Bishop Roy share is unfeigned charity—caritate non ficta. Our community has patiently awaited and sincerely hoped for this letter and declaration.”

The declaration is available here.

Post-script: As I have been asked for my own views on the matter of the “Imperfect General Council” mentioned by the Redemptorists, along with Mgr Roy and others, here are a few comments:

• Meetings between traditional clergy could be helpful for them, but that is really none of my business.

• I am not wholly opposed to the idea that traditionalist bishops could hold an “Imperfect General Council”, but it seems to me to be subject to serious difficulties both in principle and in practice.

• Some further thoughts are set out here.

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Editors’ Notes

What follows is the second part of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers OP’s 1986 essay, St Joseph: Saint Par Excellence, Saint of Silence.

We are publishing this text on 1 May, the modern feast of St Joseph the Worker.

In 1955, Pope Pius XII established the feast of “St Joseph the Worker” to be held on 1st May, which took the place of the Eastertide feast in his honour. 1st May had long been treated as “International Workers’ Day”, with significant connections to Marxist politics.1

This feast, along with other aspects of Pope Pius XII’s liturgical reforms, has been criticised by some.

This is not without controversy, and Mgr Guérard des Lauriers spoke of this feast in 1987, saying:

“Although it was Pius XII who made this transformation, I believe that on this occasion he was not exactly well inspired.

“He allowed the solemnity of the Wednesday of the third week after Easter to be supplanted by the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker; so that the title of Patron of the Universal Church, which was celebrated the third week after Easter, was transferred back to today’s feast [19 March].”

Mgr Guérard des Lauriers did not make any further comment on the feast in the 1987 sermon – although the first part of this present text did contain some interesting remarks on John XXIII’s inclusion of St Joseph in the Roman Canon.2

Some critics of this change to the calendar point out that it displaces the received date of the feast of Ss Philip and James the Apostles, and that its proper chants (which use the Bea Psalter) have been judged to be sub-standard. Another criticism is that it is too “sociological”, and attempts to use the liturgy to effect social ends – although it is difficult to see how the feast of Christ the King is not subject to the latter criticism as well, at least in part.

Others defend the feast as being a positive development, its establishment being within the power of the Roman Pontiff, and having nothing to do with being a “bridge” to the Novus Ordo reforms following Vatican II (as, perhaps, other “Pian” liturgical reforms might be seen).

Without taking a position, or going further into the discussion, let us proceed to Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ text.

The text from Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

This is the second part of a longer text, published in the July–August 1986 edition of Sous la bannière. We have separated the text into two parts to be published separately.

In this second part, Mgr Guérard des Lauriers focuses on why St Joseph is “Saint of Silence”, returning to a theme which he discusses in the first of the Cahiers de Cassiciacum – St Joseph’s refusal to judge Our Lady, between realising that she was pregnant and receiving his own message from the angel. But whereas in the Cahier this reflection is ordered towards his explanation of the “Thesis of Cassiciacum”, here it is an instruction on our own moral duties towards each other and to God. And we can certainly benefit from this, whether we follow his “Thesis” or not.

Following this instruction, the bishop considers how it is that St Joseph finds himself associated with the Blessed Trinity in the person of Our Lord, his adoptive Son.

Parts of this text may seem very dense, but it is worth making the effort to persevere with it. The footnotes are lengthy, and contain a lot of interesting material that explain in detail some of points the bishop makes in the text.

Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was a very significant figure in post-Vatican II theological controversies. For more on his life and legacy, see HERE.

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St Joseph: Saint of Silence

Mgr Guérard des Lauriers OP

Part II of St Joseph: Saint Par Excellence, Saint of Silence
In Sous la Bannière, n. 6, July–August, 1986
Text separated into two parts by The WM Review for ease of reading. Headings and some line breaks added for the same reason.

We believe that our translation of this text is covered by fair use; if there is an existing copyright holder who would like us to remove it, they can reach us in the comments to this article.

Introduction

Holiness in God is ineffable, as He Himself is. The “thrice Holy” surpasses every determination arising from the created, which implies limitation; He cannot, therefore, be adequately named by us.

The same holds for the Holiness of the Incarnate Word and for that of Mary His Mother, Mother of God. No aspect can be singled out as dominant over the rest, whether in the order of the virtues or in that of the gifts; all aspects belong to the same “degree,” convertible with the mysterious Equality that is the seal of absolute perfection.

Saint Joseph is less far from us: he condescends within his transcendence! He shows forth, through virtue, through heroism, the proper character of his holiness. He is, as one may observe, the Saint of Silence in the created order; and because he is that first of all, we are drawn to adore its Mystery in the Uncreated Order.

Saint Joseph, Saint of Silence in the Created Order

This silence consists in the fact that Saint Joseph did not judge Holy Mary.

Here is the proof. Saint Joseph is confronted with a fact: Mary is with child.3 He resolves upon a practical course of action: “To send Mary away in secret.”4 What was the inference by which Saint Joseph “passed” from premises to conclusion? Did this inference involve passing judgement on Mary – yes, or no? That is the question. It can be resolved from the expression Saint Matthew employs. We shall draw out the two truths implicitly contained there: Joseph “passes over” any question of Mary’s guilt; Joseph refers himself to the Law of Israel.

Recall that under Jewish law, the adulterous wife was to be denounced and stoned: “Thus shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee, or of Israel.”5 Mary is only a betrothed bride, but Joseph already bears responsibility for her to the degree that he already has rights over her.

Let us suppose, then, that Joseph judged Mary unfaithful, and let us show that this hypothesis is ruled out by the “mode of signifying” Saint Matthew employs.

If Joseph had judged Mary unfaithful, he would have been bound, “being a just man” in Israel, to denounce her had she been his wife; at the very least, since she is his betrothed, he must “put away the evil from his house” and send Mary away. To send her away publicly would amount to denouncing her. Because Mary is only his betrothed, Joseph can satisfy the demands of justice by sending Mary away in secret.

If Mary had been judged guilty by Joseph, then the text of Saint Matthew would have to be read as follows: “Joseph, being just, was consequently bound to send Mary away, whether publicly or in secret. BUT, not wishing to expose her to public disgrace, he resolved to send her away in secret.”

Now, the BUT that the initial hypothesis makes indispensable for the text to be intelligible – this BUT is precisely what is not in the text. Saint Matthew writes: “Joseph, being just and not wishing...”; he does not write: “Joseph, being just but not wishing...” Not BUT, but AND.

It is necessary to conclude that the alleged hypothesis is false: that is to say, Joseph did not judge Mary guilty. And since, had he judged her so, there would apparently have been evidence of guilt, it follows that Saint Joseph did not judge Holy Mary in any way whatsoever.

Let us express the same thing more broadly.

Had Saint Matthew written but, the meaning would have been: “Joseph, being just [according to the Law] and judging Mary guilty, was therefore bound to denounce her. But, since Mary was only his betrothed and not yet his wife, Joseph was sufficiently just – that is, he satisfied the Law of Israel sufficiently – by sending Mary away in secret.”

Since Saint Matthew wrote and, the true meaning is: “Joseph, not judging Mary guilty [that is, suspending his judgement regarding Mary] and being just – it is by virtue of this perfect justice, and with regard to the scandal, that, firstly, Joseph decides to send Mary away, for to keep her would have allowed the supposition that the child was his; and that, secondly, he sends her away in secret, for a public dismissal would have been to defame Mary.”

Such is the fact. Let each measure its significance.

What St Joseph teaches us about judgment

By comparison with oneself, first. We are so quick to judge, especially when our self-love is wounded. The ungoverned spontaneity that then erupts in condemnations – supposedly the protest of offended justice – is too often nothing but an instinct of vengeance no longer ruled by love of the Truth.

Judgement is, like the tongue, the best and the worst of things. There is a time for judging, in order to bear witness usque ad mortem to the Truth.6 But ordinarily we must practise the counsel Jesus Himself gave: “Judge not, and you shall not be judged.”7 Do we not sin through judgement?8 “If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.”9 May Jesus help us, in the vigilant Watch that kept watch even over Him; and may we, through our very weakness, come to sense the silence of Joseph who did not judge Mary.

To show the good… by observing the evil: this is well enough, by way of manuductio [leading by the hand]; but it belongs to the good itself to manifest itself for what it is. That our mental dissipation should lead us back to Saint Joseph is not, for his silence, a sufficient homage. This silence must be considered in itself. It consists in not judging.

Judging is the proper act of the intelligence. And since created intelligence is not naturally in act, judging requires, for man no less than for the Angel, the conception and prolation of a word. This interior word, the verbum mentis,10 has two functions: one of actuation, as just stated; the other of representation – one judges concerning the thing of which the word is the expression. This second function demands meticulous preparation,11 so that the first may be exercised in a simple act, which is ultimately: THIS [that is, the reality expressed by and in the word] IS; or: THIS IS NOT.

This being so, there are at least three reasons why one might not posit the act of judging:

1. One has not elaborated, or not sufficiently, the conditions on which the second function of the verbum mentis depends.12

2. Having carried out this elaboration as far as possible, one nevertheless refrains from judging because one fears facing the consequences that will very probably follow from the judgement. This is the crime – latent, yet all too common – of high treason against Truth. It is the opposite of Testimony, which is the radiance of Truth in the transparency of the sense connaturally ordered to it.

3. Having carried out the elaboration required by the second function of the verbum mentis, one may refrain from judging through an infused discretion13 that inclines one to remit the judgement to God Himself: one wills to judge only in His judgement. So did Jesus habitually act, according to His human will;14 so did Saint Joseph, not judging Holy Mary.

Saint John the Baptist was precursor through the word;15 Saint Joseph, through silence. Joseph, at the very instant when he discovers Jesus living in Mary, is divinely moved not to judge her. He thus manifests, in his own state, that which the Agony will reveal for Jesus.16 Saint Joseph, Saint of Silence, radiates the Silence of the Word incarnating Himself in Mary. WISDOM, ORDER, PEACE, JOY... leading back to the Uncreated Order.

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Saint Joseph, Saint of Silence in the Uncreated Order

“Every creature is created in the Word.”17 Each, however, is created in a manner proper to itself – a manner that encompasses and grounds, for that creature, the decree of predestination, and that will be revealed to it precisely in Verbo, in the universe of Glory.18 What relation does the Saint of Silence bear to the Word who creates him? The same question arises, prompted by the same curiosity of Love, first of all for Mary, She who is first in the created order. Nothing on this point is explicitly revealed. We confine ourselves to a discreet and respectful suggestion.19

The Word of God,20 being That in Whom all is created, it is fitting that what concerns Him should be manifested in those creatures closest to Him. Now the Word is the Son begotten by the Father,21 Himself subsisting in the Triune Essence that is Love. And by virtue of this eternal Generation, the Word is, of Himself, subsisting in the same Triune Essence that is Love, the Word of God. Here, then, are three things that are one, and that precision nevertheless requires us to distinguish:

a) The Word in the eternal Generation, which is Communication of the divine Nature [Being, Life, Light, Love...]22 – comparable to the prolation of the mental word.

b) The Word in Himself, subsisting in the Triune Essence that is Love – comparable to the mental word as proferred, not to the prolation, but to the TERM that terminates it.

c) The Word insofar as He is the Word of God – that is, the subsistent expression of the Whole of the Most Holy Trinity. And Mary is comparable, in this regard, to the mental word expressing the reality which is grasped by the intellect, in the word that it proffers.

With this recalled, the analogy of the mental word yields the following triple import.

1. The third modality – the word-expression (c) – is the only one implying no imperfection. For the very existence of the word, and the prolation that created intelligence MUST make of it in order to understand, belong to a congenital imperfection – namely, not being Pure Act, and consequently requiring actuation.

The third modality [word-expression] is therefore, one might say, within the analogy of the mental word, the proper portion of the Word Himself. He proceeds not from a necessity inherent in the imperfection of nature, but in life and in freedom; His name is WORD OF GOD – the subsequent and perfect expression of ALL GOD WHO IS LOVE. In this respect, no created word is comparable to the WORD OF GOD.

2. The first two modalities of the mental word, to which is inherent the radical imperfection affecting all creation – so as to proclaim the Glory of God – these, since the third is (as just observed) “reserved,” are to be shared between the two creatures who are, of all, the most privileged.

The Word is begotten; “He is in the Bosom of the Father.”23 To Her who begets Him humanly, He gives as her portion what His own Generation implies. Her Name is CONCEPTION.24

The Word is Word SPOKEN, Word proferred, TERM of the Dictio – and not “dictio”; in this sense, He is Silence. To him who on earth received Him in the heroism of mental silence, the Word gives as his portion what His own mode of subsisting implies. His Name – Joseph’s name – is SILENCE.

Saint Joseph, the Saint par Excellence, is the Saint of Silence.

M.L. GUÉRARD DES LAURIERS

Base text translated with AI and thoroughly checked by The WM Review.

We believe that our translation of this text is covered by fair use; if there is an existing copyright holder who would like us to remove it, they can reach us in the comments to this article.

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Introduction

We recently published a short and informal article about Leo XIV’s comments about “communion between Christians and Muslims.”

• ‘Communion between Muslims and Christians’, according to Leo XIV

In this article, I wrote the following in passing:

“Charity is the supernatural love of God as the highest good, and of all other men for his sake. But supernatural charity itself is dependent on supernatural faith – the acceptance of God’s revelation, as proposed by the Church. […]

“But Muslims do not accept God’s revelation: they reject it. Similarly, we could add, Protestants and Orthodox don’t accept God’s revelation as proposed by the Church. They base what they believe on their own private judgment of what Scripture teaches, or what tradition teaches. Basically, they don’t have the supernatural virtue of faith: they have private opinions about religion, even when many of these opinions are true.”

“This is why non-Catholics can’t be said to be in communion with the Church.”

I was asked to explain what I meant by saying “Orthodox don’t accept God’s revelation as proposed by the Church.”

Building on the private response I gave to this question, let us consider the topic a bit further here. But before doing so, I must point readers to the more technical and rigorous explanation of the matter by Fr Marín-Sola, from which the below is drawn:

1. Can non-Catholics have the theological virtue of faith?

2. The Church’s authority is indispensable for every act of divine faith

3. The great Thomists on the Church as a necessary condition for faith

Everything written below should be understood in the terms of Fr Marín-Sola’s explanation: any accidental departure from his explanation should be disregarded.

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The necessity of the theological virtue of faith

The dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) is a controversial topic. Its exact meaning is a popular question, and often it is answered in a “popular” way. In Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII noted:

“Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.”1

One reason for this is that the dogma cannot be understood apart from the nature and role of supernatural faith.

No one is saved without charity—that is, the love of God above all things, and of one’s neighbor for God’s sake. Implicit in this charity is contrition for one’s sins.

However, these terms do not refer to natural sentiments of philanthropy or remorse. They are supernatural realities; and in turn, they depend absolutely on the presence of supernatural faith.2 Holy Scripture is clear: “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6). While supernatural faith is insufficient for salvation on its own, supernatural charity and contrition are impossible without it. As such, it is absolutely necessary for salvation.

Pope Gregory XVI affirmed that this is itself a dogma of the Catholic faith:

You know how zealously Our predecessors taught that very article of faith which these dare to deny, namely the necessity of the Catholic faith and of unity for salvation.3

But what is this supernatural faith?

What is supernatural faith?

Faith is often understood as, in Martin Luther’s words, “a living, bold trust in God’s grace.”4 This definition—common even among misguided Catholics—is more akin to the theological virtue of hope. St. Paul, by contrast, distinguishes faith from hope, and defines the former as “the substance of things to be hoped for” (Heb. 11:1). In other words, it is not hope itself.

In the broad sense, faith means assenting to a proposition on the authority of another. When I assent to what someone tells me about their family, or I believe the doctor that this lump is nothing to worry about, I assent with human faith, or faith in the “broad sense”. It is based on the reliability or authority of the person revealing.

However, a merely natural faith is not sufficient: under Pope Bl. Innocent XI, Rome condemned the idea that faith “in the broad sense […] is sufficient for justification.”5

By contrast, the faith required for justification and salvation is supernatural—it is the “supernatural gift of God, which enables us to believe, without doubting, whatever God has revealed.”6 This supernatural faith is the virtue which enables us to give:

• A certain assent to divinely revealed truths

• Inspired and assisted by grace

• Founded on God’s authority, rather than our own perception of the truth of the propositions or natural reason

• As proposed and explained by the Church, either through definitions of popes or councils, or through the exercise of the ordinary and universal magisterium.

God’s authority, “The First Truth”, is the formal object of the assent of faith. It is a response to his revelation, and the motive is that God is the supreme good and truth who can neither deceive nor be deceived. The nature of such faith means that the assent is absolutely certain, and irrevocable. As Vatican I teaches:

“[T]he situation of those, who by the heavenly gift of faith have embraced the Catholic truth, is by no means the same as that of those who, led by human opinions, follow a false religion; for those who have accepted the faith under the guidance of the Church can never have any just cause for changing this faith or for calling it into question.”7

Further, the assent of faith is to everything which the Church proposes as revealed by God – explicitly to that which is explicitly proposed to us, and implicitly to everything else.

As the formal object of faith is God himself, one cannot pick and choose from what he has revealed and which is proposed by the Church: this “picking and choosing” is the root of the word heresy, and is destructive of the virtue of faith itself. This is why St Thomas writes:

“The species of any habit depends on the formal reason of the object, and if this is removed, the species of the habit cannot remain. Therefore, whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and divine rule, to the doctrine of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth as manifested in the Holy Scriptures, does not have the habit of faith. Instead, he holds by another means what pertains to faith, but in a manner other than by faith”.8

“In various conclusions of one science, there are different means by which they are proven, and one can be known without the other… but faith adheres to all the articles through one means, namely, through the First Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures according to the doctrine of the Church who has the right understanding of them. Therefore, anyone who rejects this means totally lacks faith.”9

The Church is necessary for supernatural faith

Divine revelation reaches individuals in two ways:

• Indirectly (mediately), through the Church, which transmits divine truth via the magisterium.

• Directly (immediately), as in the case of the Apostles, who received revelation straight from Christ.

Outside of such cases of direct private revelation, the Church’s proposition and explanation are a condition sine qua non for the virtue of faith for us (quoad nos – see Fr Marín-Sola’s explanation of this in the articles already cited).

Those who do not submit to the Magisterium of the Church cannot have supernatural faith, unless they receive a direct supernatural revelation from God – an extraordinary case, which is not to be presumed. Without the Church (whose credentials are established on independent grounds) or immediate revelation, there is no certainty that what is believed has been divinely revealed – only opinion, however sincere.10

This is the fundamental purpose of the Church: she is the authorised means, established by Christ, for proposing his revelation to the world in an authoritative and certain sense. There is a distinction here: her proposition and explanation are a necessary condition for the assent of faith, but not its formal reason. The formal reason remains the authority of God, and she is the means of achieving certainty that this or that point is indeed what God has revealed.

Fr W.G. Penny’s explanation

It is not sufficient to hold true opinions about the Christian religion, or to pick up the Bible and “believe” (viz., come to the opinion or natural certainty) that what it contains is true, or revealed.

Fr W.G. Penny, in his 1846 work The Exercise of Faith Impossible Except in the Catholic Church, recounted a work of fiction popular among Anglicans, in which a boy was cast on a desert island with his anti-Christian father, and grew up with religious instruction – or religious “prejudice”. In time, the father died and the boy was rescued, and came across a single page of Holy Scripture. “He read on,” Fr Penny tells us, “and was highly pleased with the account, and assented to what he read.”11

Fr Penny then asks:

“Now, can we possibly call this faith? Can we, by any stretch of meaning, say that faith ran result from the reading of a chance leaf which he found by accident in the road, and which he had no means of knowing that it was ever meant as a true relation, and not as an allegory, or even as a mere work of fiction? There is not a person in existence who would say that a mere piece of printed paper, found by accident, was an authority! However true its contents may be, yet something is needed for making it an authority – some voucher for its genuineness is wanted, otherwise no opinion that we may form upon its contents can be anything more than an opinion, in that it is not built on authority.”12

He continues:

“In order, then, that a printed paper may be an authority to us, there must be some second authority upon which we receive it – some one who is strictly and properly an authority, some one, that is, whom we are bound to listen to, and accept what we are told by him, and are held guilty if we do not – some one from whom we are bound to accept the whole message that he brings us; otherwise we are not bound to accept that particular part in which he says that the Bible is the word of God, and which, if we are not bound to accept it, is not an authority.

“To speak of the Bible, then, as being strictly the sole authority in matters of faith, is in reality to deny that it is an authority, for there can be no sole printed authority. [To assert that there is, would be to fall into the absurdity above mentioned, of supposing that a savage would be bound under penalty to obey a book which he met with accidentally, and without any one to vouch for it.]

“Without recognizing, therefore, the authority of the Church, which delivers the Scriptures to us, and vouches for their truth, they are themselves no authority. We should not be held to obey them, unless there were persons appointed to deliver them to us, whom we were bound to listen to. When a savage rejects the Scriptures, and sins in so doing, his real and immediate sin consists in the rejection of the living word of the missionary who offers them, and it is for this that he will be accountable; but, as I have said before, he would by no means be accountable for rejecting the volume, if he found it anywhere, untestified, and unvouched for.

“I hope from this it will be clear that the Holy Scriptures, though every sentence and every word of them is true, are yet not an authority to those who reject the authority upon which they come to us — that of the Church, for if there was no Church, the Scriptures would not be binding.”13

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Working towards the act of faith

There are two ways of establishing the Church’s position in the act of faith. They are dealt with here:

• A Note for Confused Catholics: Apologetics and Dogmatic Theology

We can have natural moral certainty through treating the Gospels as mere historical records, which show that the man Jesus did this or that action, taught this or that truth, was crucified and that his Apostles taught he rose from the dead and saw him, etc. Naturally speaking, the Gospels are no less reliable witnesses of what they relate than many other ancient texts, which recount events no one would question. It is begging the question to say that this could not be so, because they include miracles and so on.

The sufficient reason for these texts including such events – as well as the later events of the conversion of the Roman Empire, the spread of the Church, and so on – is that what the Gospels recount did indeed happen.

This is a claim which can be defended in more detail on another occasion – let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that this is correct.

There is, then, no explanation for the facts than that Jesus of Nazareth is who he said he was: divine, and so on. The miracles he did testify to his claims, as does the fulfilment of very ancient prophecies which even his enemies (the Jews) admit are legitimate prophecies.

But at this stage, this assent is still a merely human faith. Our assent is based on our own private study and opinion.

The Gospel texts also tell us that Christ established an institution which he promised would be indefectible, i.e., remaining in existence and substantially unchanged until the end of time; with which Christ would remain until the end of the world; which would speak with his authority; and which would be the only place in which this authority would be found.

We then proceed to look for this institution, seeking to identify it by certain distinguishing marks of continuity with what we find in the texts. These marks are found only in the Catholic Church, as has been indirectly the topic of the interviews I’ve been doing with Stephen Kokx.

What are these marks? Vatican I, in the nineteenth century, taught specifically that the true Church is identified by four supernatural signs:

10. So that we could fulfill our duty of embracing the true faith and of persevering unwaveringly in it, God, through his only begotten Son, founded the Church, and he endowed his institution with clear notes to the end that she might be recognized by all as the guardian and teacher of the revealed word.

11. To the Catholic Church alone belong all those things, so many and so marvelous, which have been divinely ordained to make for the manifest credibility of the christian faith.

12. What is more, the Church herself by reason of her astonishing propagation, her outstanding holiness and her inexhaustible fertility in every kind of goodness, by her Catholic unity and her unconquerable stability, is a kind of great and perpetual motive of credibility and an incontrovertible evidence of her own divine mission.

13. So it comes about that, like a standard lifted up for the nations, she both invites to herself those who have not yet believed, and likewise assures her sons and daughters that the faith they profess rests on the firmest of foundations.14

These four qualities correspond to the four marks if the creed: one, holy, Catholic, apostolic, etc. These marks are obscure today, although not impossible to find, as has been the subject of the interviews already mentioned.

In addition to these marks, the Church herself is attested by miracles and by the prophecies that are fulfilled by her existence and history, etc.

Through this, and through other lines of consideration, we arrive at the conclusion, again a natural moral certainty, that the Church of the New Testament is the Roman Catholic Church.

Thus we have found the supernatural, infallibly certain means, the source of the divinely appointed condition, by which we know what God has revealed, and can assent to it as his revelation.

Only now we can make the act of faith in what has been revealed to us mediately/indirectly: we can say “I believe all this that God has revealed, because God has revealed it and the Church teaches it.”

Direct revelation

The possibility of direct revelation is important because it can explain how a man who has no access to the Church of Christ may nonetheless make a true and salvific act of supernatural faith.

For such a direct revelation, the proposition of the Church is not necessary for the person to make an act of faith – at least, not in the same way, nor for the points which have been directly revealed. However, for all other truths of revelation, the Church’s proposition remains as necessary as for everyone else who has not received a direct revelation.

Further, as stated, direct and private revelation is extraordinary and not to be presumed. There are many delusional madmen in the world, who are convinced they have received divine revelations, when they have not. But this does not undermine the fact that when God can reveal himself directly, and that when he does so, the recipient knows that it is indeed God revealing, and assents to what is revealed on his authority. Such person can make an absolutely certain act of supernatural faith on the basis of that direct revelation; the problem of madmen simply makes it hard for other people to know that another person has really received direct revelation.

This is why direct revelation is not the basis for the assent of faith for the human race in general. While immediate divine revelation remains possible, certain principles must be upheld:

• The public and mediate revelation proposed by the Church enjoys an objective certainty; any supposed private or direct revelation which contradicts it is shown, per se, to be false.

• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A person who claims private revelation must have solid, certain, and indubitable grounds; otherwise, the alleged revelation lacks the certainty necessary for faith.

• Revelation is not a matter of personal experience. Feelings, intuitions, or subjective convictions - even strong ones - are not divine revelation and cannot constitute the object of supernatural faith.

• Direct revelation points towards the Church. Saul, despite encountering Christ directly, was sent to the Church for instruction. Similarly, accounts of Christ appearing to Muslims immediately (e.g., Joseph Fadelle) point them toward the Church for the fullness of revelation to be given in the ordinary, mediate way. As such, one who assents to a true direct revelation shortly before death, dies subject to the Church and to the Roman Pontiff (whether the Holy See be legitimately occupied or temporarily vacant – as is presently the case).

This means that without either…

1. The Church’s teaching as the proximate rule of faith, or

2. An extraordinary private revelation directly from God

… a person’s belief in revealed truths – such as Christ’s divinity – is not, and cannot be, an act of supernatural faith. Instead, such “belief” remains a matter of personal opinion or private conviction, neither of which are sufficient for justification or salvation. It is not faith.

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Applied to the Eastern Orthodox and others outside the Church

The Eastern Orthodox groups are usually treated as schismatics, in that they have separated themselves from the true Church of Christ. Sometimes we are even told that they are just schismatics and not heretics.

Let us remain focused on the assent of faith and see why this is not the case.

There are many good and interesting things which the Eastern Orthodox groups have retained from before the schism, and so is understandable that these groups are attractive to some Catholics. That said, we already have everything we need in the Catholic Church. For example: although an attraction towards certain parts of Orthodox mysticism is understandable, the first three of the five volumes of the Philokalia are made up of writings from Catholic saints.

But what is not in the Eastern Orthodox groups is supernatural faith.

The Eastern Orthodox do not even claim to have received direct revelation. Like us, they claim to have received indirect or mediate revelation. But their assent to revelation is not conditioned or determined by the proposition of Christ’s Church. It is based on either a) the authority of a body which separated itself from Christ’s Church, or b) their own human study or understanding of what was taught by the first set of ecumenical councils or in tradition.

Their proximate rule of faith is not the proposition and explanation of revelation by Christ’s Church, but something else: something not supernaturally certain, or supernatural at all.

They thus lack a necessary condition of the act of faith. For this reason, they can make only an act of human faith, which is not sufficient to attain supernatural charity, a state of grace or salvation.

The Orthodox face a further problem. They not only fail to assent to revelation as proposed by the Church with regards to the truths which they accept; they also reject certain revealed truths (e.g., the procession of the Holy Ghost from both the Father and the Son, the Primacy of St Peter and his successors, the Immaculate Conception, and so on). But as we have already seen, a man who rejects even one dogma rejects divine revelation itself, and so only holds what truths he retains as opinions or based on human faith.

“Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.”15

Therefore, these men are heretics as well as schismatics; they do not have supernatural faith.16

But “without faith, it is impossible to please God”.

I have addressed these topics with regard to certain comments made by Leo XIV here:

• Leo XIV’s three serious errors in Eastern Orthodox address

• Leo XIV: ‘We are one! We already are!’ Correct – but not as intended

To return to the article which prompted this response, the foregoing shows why there can be no communion without the external unity of faith.

Conclusion: Why is faith necessary for salvation?

To conclude, let us consider why that is, and why supernatural faith is necessary “to please God”, and why it is absolutely necessary for salvation.

The Athanasian Creed reinforces the necessity of supernatural Catholic faith for salvation:

“Whoever willeth to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish eternally.”

We have already noted that faith is necessary for salvation because charity is necessary for salvation.

But we could consider the intrinsic reasons for this further. First, our supernatural destiny is to see God in the beatific vision; that is, to know and love God for all eternity. Knowledge and love correspond to our intellect and will; and these faculties must be elevated and ordered towards this utterly supernatural end. This is the role of supernatural faith and charity, which perfect our intellect and will respectively.

Second, it is through Christ’s mediation that we may attain this supernatural end. In order to benefit from this mediation, we must be united to or associated with Christ. This is why we speak of the Church as his mystical body: it is as members of the body that we are united to the head, and can benefit from his atoning and redemptive sacrifice on the Cross. But being united to Christ in the Church is not a matter of appearing in a parish register; it is a matter of being united to him by faith and charity. We must be living members of his body; that is, in a state of grace and with charity (and therefore faith) in our souls.

Third, charity is dependent on faith because we cannot love what we do not know, and faith is the means by which we attain certainty of the supernatural truths which God has revealed. Conversely, we cannot be said to love God if we refuse to believe what he has taught us. Both faith and charity represent the beginning of eternal life, here and now, and are utterly indispensable for attaining this supernatural end.

A failure to account for supernatural faith as the foundation for man’s union with God is at the heart leads to a naturalisation of the concept of faith itself – rendering supernatural faith unnecessary. It is a functional denial of the truth that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6), and a redefinition of faith from an assent of the intellect to the “living, bold trust in God’s grace” mentioned by Luther.

This is why so many modern writers talk freely of “faith” amongst non-Catholics. As an example, Cardinal Aveline – a frontrunner in the 2025 conclave – writes:

• “… the attitude that believers, in the name of their faith…”17

• [Quoting Christian de Chergé] “… by the sign of their respective faiths…”18

• “… our respective fidelities to different faith standards…”19

• “… Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all seeking new formulations of their faiths…”20

This loose way of talking is impossible for one recognises the clear distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, particularly in relation to faith. As such, it is unsurprising that these ideas lead away from Catholic orthodoxy. The dogma of outside the Church there is no salvation becomes a “problem” to be explained away, so as to account for the “new reality” (which is not at all new) of religious pluralism. But even if it were a new reality, it would not justify a radical rethinking of the Church’s understanding of herself or of the nature of faith.

In short, the proposition and explanation of divine revelation by the Church is an essential condition, sine qua non, of the assent of faith “for us” (quoad nos). The redefinition of faith, without this condition, results in the redefinition (or functional denial) of the dogma – its reduction “to a meaningless formula” – and is the first step towards the complete dissolution of the Catholic religion.

It is, therefore, necessary to enter the Roman Catholic Church and submit to her threefold power of teaching, governing and sanctifying, in order to be saved. As Pope Boniface VIII infallibly taught:

“We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”21

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1. Can non-Catholics have the theological virtue of faith?

2. The Church’s authority is indispensable for every act of divine faith

3. The great Thomists on the Church as a necessary condition for faith

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(WM Review Round-Up) – Delayed news, and in a less formal style than usual, but here we are:

“Communion between Christians and Muslims takes shape under the mantle of Our Lady of Africa.”

This is what Leo XIV said in Algeria on Monday, 13 April. His address was delivered in French, and can be found below:

He also tweeted excerpts of this address:

He spoke of the idea of “communion” more than once in the address, saying to his audience:

“Together, you spread fraternity and inspire a deep longing for communion and reconciliation with a powerful and clear message that is borne in simplicity and humility.”

This talk was delivered to Catholics, and so we will be told that this is whom he means by “Together, you spread fraternity,” etc.

But what does “communion between Christians and Muslims” even mean?

In this article, we will consider:

• What is communion?

• Communion depends on faith

• Naturalistic fraternity

• John Paul II and Islam

The WM Review is free for readers. This is because we believe these ideas must reach as many people as possible.

However, we also provide WM+ articles – additional material for those who choose to support this work financially.

This helps us continue producing serious Catholic research, while ensuring that the main body of material remains accessible for all.

If you want to ensure that this continues, join WM+ today.

(Clergy and seminarians can contact us for free membership.)

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Editor’s Notes

Fr Reid Hennick has kindly given us permission to publish the outstanding sermon which he preached on the Third Sunday after Easter, 2026.

Ordained by Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta in 2016, he spent much of his priesthood as a member of the Society of St Pius X, based in the United Kingdom. He left the SSPX on 12th February 2025; after a brief sabbatical began working publicly with the Roman Catholic Institute in December 2025, and became a member of the RCI in March 2026.

He has since been appointed as the priest in charge of Sacred Heart Church, Lawrence, Massachusetts. This is where he preached the sermon in question, and the video (above) is from the chapel’s YouTube channel.

Drawing on the Epistle and Gospel for the day, Fr Hennick’s sermon gives timely and very necessary perspective to Catholics trying to keep the faith in the post-conciliar wasteland.

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‘I Beseech You as Strangers and Pilgrims’

Fr Reid Hennick ICR

Third Sunday of Easter
Headings added by The WM Review for ease of reading.

St. Peter’s Word of Address

“I Beseech You as Strangers and Pilgrims.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

St. Peter opens today’s epistle with a word of address. “Dearly beloved,” and then immediately “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.”

He greets us and then names us. Strangers and pilgrims.

There are two pictures here. A stranger is a resident foreigner. A man who lives among others, but is not of them. A pilgrim, however, is not a resident. A pilgrim is a traveler passing through. His home lies elsewhere. St. Peter tells us Catholics that we are both. We are both. We reside in the world, and at the same time are passing beyond it.

Of course, St. Peter is speaking directly to our relation to the pagan world. But something true of us among the pagans turns out to be true of us in another way, among ourselves, among one another.

Often enough, we Catholics feel as strangers to one another, even while on the same road. And this is the case especially these days.

This Congregation as Proof

For proof of this, consider this church. Consider this congregation. Many of you have traveled an hour or more to be here today. Perhaps you’ve told an uncomprehending family member or friend, maybe with an awkward laugh, that yes, you do this every Sunday and no, there’s nowhere closer.

Now, in this excursion, we know that we are doing our duty before God. But do we ever consider how odd these circumstances really are?

Because this is not how a parish worked in the Catholic past. Catholics would walk to church. They would walk to the village church. The priest knew the grandmother’s maiden name. He knew the child’s temperament, the father’s trade. The church was a web of familiarity, a thick web woven over generations. It was the locale’s place of worship.

Our church is not that. Our church cannot be that. Not during today’s crisis of faith. Our congregation is a gathering drawn from many places, which means it is a gathering of strangers, naturally speaking. The differences among us are not those simple variations we might expect to see in a family, an extended family, a village.

No, there are here marked differences in ethnicity, temperament, aptitudes, inclinations, education, socialization, and catechesis. Some of you come from families that never lost the true Mass, and others found it months ago, maybe even today. And the culture that we might share outside these walls is only that of an empire. It is thin. It is consumerist. It’s distracted.

And in this respect, we are not unlike the congregation that St. Peter writes to today. Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freemen gathered in the cities of a Roman Empire that gave them roads and commerce, but no bond beyond that.

Strangers to One Another

So we come to Mass as strangers. Not to Christ, never to Christ; but strangers to one another. We come with our own affections and fears that others in the pew cannot even venture to guess. We come with our habits of thinking and judging that they can’t appreciate.

Now on the essentials, those grand overarching questions of the faith, the sacraments, the moral law, we are in sync. Thanks be to God.

But on questions, for instance, of how this church ought to be run, what ought to be done here and now, in these circumstances, for this end, good men will differ. Good men will differ.

And such friction should scandalize no one. It comes quite simply from being a creature, not God. Honest disagreement over practical matters is not only possible, it’s unavoidable for us.

The Angels in the Book of Daniel

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches something remarkable about this fact. He says that even the good angels – pure spirits of flawless intellect confirmed in grace – even the good angels can disagree over practical matters. And we see as much in the tenth chapter in the book of Daniel.

The prophet Daniel has been mourning. He’s been in mourning for three weeks straight. He has seen the afflictions coming upon his people, and he fasts in sackcloth. An angel at last comes and speaks to him.

“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou did set thy heart to understand, thy words have been heard. But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me one and twenty days. And behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.”

Now, what’s being said here? We have two angels, both good, both holy, and they have been in contest for three full weeks over what is to be done with God’s people.

The angel that is speaking with Daniel is the guardian angel of the Jews. He wants the Jews delivered from Persia so that they might escape the danger of idolatry. However, the guardian angel of the Persians, of the pagan kingdom, he resists. He begs that the Jews remain so that his own charges, the Persians, might be converted to the true religion by the example of the holy Jews living among them.

So in short, both angels are pursuing a real good. They are both right about something – and they contend.

What resolves this? It’s not the cleverness of one. It’s not the force of argument. It is St. Michael the Archangel who comes bearing the ordination of God. That’s what solves it.

But here is the point. If even the good angels can see a practical matter differently, how much more we ourselves?

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The Devil’s Exploitation of Disappointment

When we overlook this fact, we are bound to be disappointed. And the devil is ready to exploit that disappointment.

He will tempt us to see this parishioner-stranger of ours with whom we disagree as an enemy, and we begin to fixate on our divergence of opinion.

We let this disagreement take on absurd proportions in our head, and soon enough we are dividing the entire congregation into camps.

We find a little circle that happens to agree with us and feel relief at last. Finally, a kind of fellowship.

But we’re only united in a shared contempt. There’s nothing positive here. In a way, it’s the stranger to my stranger is my friend.

Now, this is not a new problem in the Church, the Church at large. St. Paul had to deal with it. He spent chapters trying to pull the Corinthians out of it. And he would give voice to their factionalism. “I am of Paul. I am of Apollo. I am of Cephas.” And this he calls carnal. Carnal. It’s the same word used by St. Peter today.

Charity as the First Answer

The answer to this temptation is to refuse the narrative, because our differences need not vanish. The answer is that we love, that we exercise our charity through these differences. Remember the mandate of charity does not depend on our feelings of compatibility or mutual merit.

St. Bernard, he once made a vow of charity to his community, which is worth hearing in full.

“Whatever you do to me, I have resolved to love you always, even if you do not love me. I will conquer by my kindness. I will come to the aid of those who refuse my care. I will do good to the ungrateful. I will honor those who despise me.

“For we are members of one another.”

That is the standard. It’s not a feeling. It’s a resolution.

We must not miss what charity is all about. St. Paul calls it '“the bond of perfection.” Charity is the tendon that unites every member of the Mystical Body both to the head and to one another. Without it, without charity, though we might preserve every doctrine and keep every fast, we become, in that terrible phrase of St. Paul, “as sounding brass.”

And then everything will have been for nothing.

Authority as the Second Answer

Now, thankfully, there is a second answer to our disagreements, but it is as much a matter of the will as the first. Again, the story of the angels in Daniel is our reminder.

The only thing that can truly terminate a practical disagreement and promote common action, the only thing is authority. The exercise of clearly delineated authority.

Authority changes everything. Authority’s sanction is what solves the stalemate.

And this, even if below the surface, some might still be a little attached to their own proposal. And in human affairs, that’s fine. A quiet reservation held without passion, without insistence, that is one thing.

But when this reservation is nurtured, rehearsed, whispered into the ear of others, that’s another thing. That is the subversion of peace.

And this peace is at the very heart of the common good to which we are all called. This project of sanctification. St. Thomas teaches in fact that this peace, this ordered submission, this social harmony, it’s better than any one man taken by himself.

Why? Because without peace, the community and every member in it individually can attain nothing, least of all God.

A Little While

So our coordination, this sign of heaven, even if frustrating at times, it is all in view of our one day seeing Christ.

“A little while and you shall not see me, and again a little while and you shall see me.”

Our Lord is speaking these words at the last supper. The Apostles as usual don’t understand. But he encourages them nevertheless. He tells them that their present sorrow will be turned into joy.

“So also you now indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man shall take from you.”

St. Augustine, he comments on these words of our Lord.

“The whole space which the present age of the world passes through is but a little while. This little while seems long to us because it is yet going on. But when it is ended, we shall feel how short it has been.”

And St. Bede the Venerable, he comments in this way.

“These words of our Lord apply to all the faithful who strive amid the tears and pains of the present life to reach eternal joy.

“With good reason they weep in this present life, for they are not yet able to see him whom they love, they know that as long as they are in this mortal body, wanderers from their true country, they must be.”

“Wanderers from their true country.” Again, the idea returns. Strangers and pilgrims.

Our Conversation Is in Heaven

To put it in perspective, the hour-long drive, the unfamiliar faces, the disagreements over matters that seem so clear to us. “A little while.”

Our strangeness to one another need not scandalize. In fact, it’s the heartening reminder that our present sorrow, if we endure, will be turned into joy. Our estrangement from God need not be endless.

And for all that, however, our virtues of faith and charity, they should make us peer a bit harder. Before the canon of the mass, the priest turns and prays, Orate fratres:

“Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God.”

“Pray, brethren”, not “Pray strangers”. The Mass is the moment in our week in which our natural strangeness is overcome. It’s overcome by the Sacrifice we share in.

The Council of Trent calls this sacrament “the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the symbol of peace”.

And the fathers have their favorite illustration. As the many grains of wheat are pressed into one bread, so the many who receive our Lord’s body are made one body with him and with one another.

That’s what’s happening at the altar, at the communion rail. By the Sacrifice offered, by the flesh we receive, we are made into something we could not make ourselves: one body.

Our Manner of Life

So to close, St. Peter tells us that our manner of life, “our conversation” is how he puts it, it must be:

“… good among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by the good works which they shall behold in you glorify God in the day of visitation.”

It’s the very word St. Paul uses elsewhere. Conversatio, conversation, to the Philippians. He writes, “Our conversation is in Heaven”. He’s saying that our way of life is ordered to another city. We’re pilgrims. Our way of life is ordered to another city. So the manners of that city ought to be visible in how we live in this one.

So as the world outside us looks at this glorious church of ours, they likely every Sunday see an odd lot driving in from every which direction. But let them see something that they can’t account for by nature: a charity among real strangers.

Let them say of us what the pagans said of the first Christians. See how they love one another.

And indeed, what is the alternative? What is the alternative for us? Providence has seen fit to put us all closely together during this pilgrimage.

This company is the means our Lord has chosen to train our hearts along the way.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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Post-script

S.D. Wright

Fr Hennick is a personal friend, and I am very glad to be publishing one of his sermons.

A further point: his involvement with the RCI provided me with the opportunity to make the following remarks on Twitter, which I include here for posterity.

First, on 15th December 2025:

The WM Review has had disagreements with the RCI and some of its members over the years. We’ve generally tried to keep it respectful – but others will be the judges of how well we’ve succeeded with that over the past couple of years.

We still have some disagreements on some issues, and that isn’t going to change.

But Fr Hennick’s involvement with the RCI seems like an opportunity to state, for the very little that it’s worth:

• We agree with many of the RCI’s theological and practical positions, including on some topics where they diverge from other groups (with no disrespect intended to any other groups either).

• We are grateful for the work of the RCI, its priests and its Superior General, Bishop Sanborn.

• We wish them the best in this work.

• We would prefer to be on good terms than bad terms.

Who cares what we think about the above? No-one, of course – but given the disagreements, there it is.

Best of luck to Fr Hennick in this new environment.

S.D.Wr.

Then, on 28 March 2026:

Fr Reid Hennick’s official reception into the Roman Catholic Institute is a good occasion to make some more points in a similar vein to the quoted tweet below.

Although I personally do not hold the Cassiciacum Thesis...

• Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was probably a saint. See here.

• Mgr Guérard des Lauriers is generally underrated and underappreciated by those who do not hold the Cassiciacum Thesis. That is to say nothing of those who positively denigrate him.

• The Cahiers de Cassiciacum have a wealth of insight into the current crisis of the Church, and are extremely interesting and valuable reading.

• If “totalism” (a term I do not accept) were proved to be false – perhaps by proving that our arguments about public heresy etc were not sound – this would not mean that Paul VI etc were true Popes. I do not believe that the arguments typically raised against the vacancy are sound, but if they were, they do not adequately answer the arguments raised by the Thesis.

• In any case, many of those arguments raised by the Thesis are already held and used by those who do not accept it – and arguments about public heresy are downstream of them.

• Work such as Fr Coradello’s Sodalitium essay on Titles – and older articles like Fr Barbara’s explanation of why he came to accept the Cassiciacum Thesis after years of opposition – show that there can be a lot more common ground than people think.

The revival of “The Thesis Wars” of a few years ago, interesting though they were, does not seem to be a good thing.

Best of luck to Fr Hennick and the RCI.

S.D.Wr.

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Author’s Notes

Returning from a hiatus for Holy Week and Easter, we resume publishing the individual chapters of my “book”, ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Zero Marks is Part II of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden: The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.” Peter Kwasniewski described Fr Crean’s article as “a definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism, at the level of first principles.”

As Zero Marks is very long and detailed (over 30,000 words), we have first published it in full for WM+ members, and have been releasing each of the five chapters separately for all readers.

This fourth chapter deals with the property and note of apostolicity. It focuses specifically on the note, which is manifested in material succession, and its relation to formal succession.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Chapter IV: Apostolicity as a Note

What is apostolicity?
Apostolic Succession
Formal and material succession
Fr Crean’s reduction of visibility to a claim to material succession
The exercise of apostolic authority
Renunciation of apostolic authority
The renunciation of authority continues
What are the consequences for this renunciation of authority?
Conclusions on the note of apostolicity

I am especially pleased to have reached this stage, it has repeatedly been alleged that “sedevacantists” – and myself specifically – have been overly focused on apostolicity of doctrine and of origin, and have ignored the issue of apostolic succession. This article is about that very topic.

Further, in a recent article, I demonstrated the vexatiousness of such an accusation:

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

Other resources

I discussed this chapter with Stephen Kokx over at Kokx News:

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For Part I of this response, see below:

• ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I

For the Introduction to Zero Marks, and the other chapters, see the full piece here:

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

Before proceeding, I once again restate my definition of the Conciliar/Synodal Church, my thesis, and a necessary clarification:

• 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.

• 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.

Chapter V – the second of two parts on apostolicity, will be released next week.

If you want to make sure you receive these instalments, hit subscribe now – and if you can’t wait until after Holy Week, sign up as a WM+ member and get it all today:

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Chapter IV: Apostolicity as a Note

What is apostolicity?

We now turn to the fourth mark, for which stronger arguments can perhaps be made for the Conciliar/Synodal Church. However, even this is not sufficient to prove Fr Crean’s claim that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the “perpetually visible Church.”

Given the importance of apostolicity, we will address this note and property in two chapters. But first, let us consider the concept in general.

In its fundamental sense, the property of apostolicity refers to “the perennial identity in the Church of the mission, which Christ gave the Apostles when he instituted the Church.”1

The true Church must be apostolic in doctrine (by the objective identity of her doctrine with that received from the Apostles) and in origin (by her essential identity with the Church of the Apostles).2

She must also be apostolic in succession – enjoying a “juridical identity” between her current power of teaching, sanctifying and ruling; and “the ordinary power of the Apostles.”3

The property of apostolicity would be shown to be absent in a society which does not even claim to enjoy apostolic succession (as, for example, in certain Protestant groups). A society established at a later date, independent of the Church of the Apostles, would also lack apostolicity of origin.

It would also be shown to be absent in a society which teaches a doctrine different to that of the Apostles – or which contradicts its own prior teaching.4

Apostolic Succession

However, the apostolicity of doctrine is difficult (if not impossible) to verify with certainty without the testimony of the Church, and so cannot serve as a note of the Church.5 This is why apostolicity of succession is considered to be the note (and is only “inadequately distinguished” from apostolicity of origin).6

The “juridical identity” is “handed on by a legitimate succession” in the officers of the society.7

What makes a succession legitimate? The answer is whether or not it takes place according to law. This, of course, means more than being authorised by someone in authority – as if those in authority are unable to violate the rules of such a process.

One must also ask: Which law? The law of the Roman Church – or those of Canterbury, Constantinople, Moscow, or elsewhere? One cannot answer this question without assuming what one is trying to prove. This is why formal succession, while a property of the true Church, cannot properly serve as a note: it is not more known than the identity of the Church.

However, the fact of a material succession from the apostles is more knowable than the legal conditions for formal succession.

This is why apostolicity of succession is manifested as a note insofar as there is a material succession.

Formal and material succession

Berry explains the distinction between formal and material succession:

“Succession, as used in this connection, is the following of one person after another in an official position, and may be either legitimate or illegitimate. Theologians call the one formal succession; the other material.”8

Salaverri calls material succession, “the pure continuation of one person after another in the performance of some office,” without regard for the law.9

Material succession is not necessarily just illegitimate succession; as stated, it is succession considered without regard for legitimacy. A merely material succession is equivalent to illegitimate succession; and formal succession just is “material succession” taking place according to the law of the society.10 (Some would distinguish this by arguing that a succession could take place according to law, but be impeded by a defect or obstacle; they would thus call this “legal material succession.” This is outside the scope of this work.)

This is not to say that a material succession alone will establish a society as the true Church: several false sects can and do enjoy such a succession. Rather, it is to say that a society without even a material succession cannot, in itself, be the true Church, which is hierarchical by constitution.11 Thus, groups of heretics which do not claim to enjoy apostolic succession (such as Evangelical denominations) demonstrate by that fact alone that they are not the true Church.

Anyone making the claims we are making must have some kind of explanation as to how one has (or remains united to a body with) some form of apostolic succession. This is addressed in detail in our comments to a text by Cardinal Journet below:

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

However, the purpose of this article is not to present our own position on this question, but to examine the Conciliar/Synodal Church’s claim to apostolicity.

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Fr Crean’s reduction of visibility to a claim to material succession

We have no reticence in conceding that the Conciliar/Synodal Church has a strong claim on this note of material succession – as well as on the property of formal succession, given that it is governed by a man who is taken to be the Roman Pontiff by almost all the world. This is the basis of Fr Crean’s central defence of the Conciliar/Synodal Church. He writes:

“[T]he Catholic Church is an empirically identifiable organisation, by which I mean that it can be distinguished from other societies by the application of criteria accessible to the senses, even by a person without faith. From this point of view, the Catholic Church is no different from the Southern Baptist Convention, FIFA, or the Locomotive Club of Great Britain.

“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.”12

In essence, Fr Crean treats the papacy as a positive note. In principle, I agree that this is legitimate, with certain qualifications. According to the “argument from prescription”,13 the papacy may indeed serve as a kind of positive mark of the true Church, but on the independent grounds of having studied Holy Scripture, history and the monuments of tradition, and having concluded that the papacy was instituted by Christ and that the contrary arguments are false. But this runs contrary to the definition of a note, which must be “more known to us than the identity of the true Church herself”, and “easily knowable”; therefore, it is note a note, properly speaking.

Even though this does not conform to the definition of a note, a prima facie consideration of this could result in one concluding that the Conciliar/Synodal Church manifests the note of apostolicity. But the papacy only can serve as a kind of positive note in ordinary times, when only one society in the world claims to “have” the papacy. As Fr Gustave Thils writes:

“… the via primatus is a mere simplification of [the via apostolicitatis], since, neglecting the other types of historical continuity, it would establish the truth of the Roman Church simply by proving that her head is the only bishop who can legitimately call himself the successor of Peter.”14 (Emphasis added)

But when there are multiple groups which credibly claim to “have” the papacy (i.e. the Great Western Schism), or when there are reasonable arguments against the legitimacy of a certain claimant to the papacy, it cannot serve as a positive mark without begging the question.

Under circumstances of contested legitimacy for the See itself, the papacy has the status of a negative note: a society which does not even claim to “have” the papacy (whether through a living papal claimant, or through unity with the vacant See) cannot possibly be the true Church. Independent arguments would then be needed to sift through the competing accounts of where the Roman Catholic Church exists, and who is the true Roman Pontiff – if there is indeed a legitimate claimant.

This is precisely what we have done in our response. But Fr Crean, unfortunately, is simply begging the question. He passes over all the factors which we have discussed, and appears to reduce the question to legal structures, observance of positive law, and a claim to material succession to the papacy.

I say that he reduces his “via primatus” to material succession, because he takes insufficient cognisance of the requirements for formal succession. While he recognises that the election must be conducted according to law, he does not take adequate account of real necessities:

• That he is elected according to the law in force

• That the person elected to the papacy is eligible; namely, baptised, male, of sound mind, and a Catholic

• That he accepted the office to which he is elected

• That he has retained the office to which he is elected, and has not lost it through one of the various means recognised (death, resignation, insanity, or ceasing to be a Catholic).

But Fr Crean’s reduction is a problem: as already stated, merely material apostolic succession is a negative note; its absence establishes a false church (or that a particular group is not the Church in a taxative sense), but its presence does not prove the true Church. It will not avail him to demonstrate that the Conciliar/Synodal Church enjoys material apostolic succession, if it visibly lacks the properties of unity, holiness and catholicity – or if it lacks the property of apostolicity, through a rupture with the Church’s apostolic doctrine and origin.

Under the current circumstances, Fr Crean has proven no more than that the Conciliar/Synodal Church possesses a mark shared also by the Anglican church and the Eastern schismatics.

Let us turn to the purpose for which apostolic succession exists – and the problems which this raises for the Conciliar/Synodal Church.

The exercise of apostolic authority

Apostolic succession does not exist in a vacuum or for its own sake: it exists for the purpose of apostolic authority.

St Matthew tells us that Our Lord “was teaching them as one having power” – sometimes rendered as having authority. The Church, which in a real sense is Christ, continuing his life on earth, is no different. As Mgr Robert Hugh Benson wrote:

“She is authoritative. Yes, because her Master was. She despises mere conventions, contradicts human laws, divides families. Yes, because her Master did. She turns the accusation of supplanting Christ into a claim to possess him in her heart, mind, and mouth. She welcomes the distrust of the world; because he said that she would be so distrusted.

“She is not afraid to gather up sinners and keep them, even though they pervert her policy and misrepresent her spirit; because it is her function to sweep humanity – dregs and all – into her net. She is not ashamed to count miracles among her jewels, because he said that his Bride should wear them.

“She rejoices in her self-control, the rigidity of her attitude, the subordination of every member of her being to her supreme will, because it is at his wish that it is so, that the world whom he loves, and for whom he gave Himself, may recognise her as Queen, and Himself as King.”15

This authority is why formal succession is an essential property of the Church. Vatican I teaches:

“The eternal shepherd and guardian of our souls, in order to render permanent the saving work of redemption, determined to build a church in which, as in the house of the living God, all the faithful should be linked by the bond of one faith and charity.

“Therefore, before he was glorified, he besought his Father, not for the apostles only, but also for those who were to believe in him through their word, that they all might be one as the Son himself and the Father are one.

“So then, just as he sent apostles, whom he chose out of the world, even as he had been sent by the Father, in like manner it was his will that in his church there should be shepherds and teachers until the end of time.

“In order, then, that the episcopal office should be one and undivided and that, by the union of the clergy, the whole multitude of believers should be held together in the unity of faith and communion, he set blessed Peter over the rest of the apostles and instituted in him the permanent principle of both unities and their visible foundation.”16

Christ established the apostolic hierarchy in order to perpetuate his religion until the end of time, and so that the Apostles and their successors would secure, with Christ’s own authority, the unity of the Church in both faith and communion (social charity). Wilhelm and Scannell, in their translation of Scheeben’s Dogmatik, wrote:

“The heirs of the Apostles have the right and duty to prescribe, promulgate, and maintain at all times and on behalf of the whole Church the teaching of the Apostles and of the Church in former ages; to impose and to enforce it as a doctrinal law binding upon all; and to give authoritative decisions on points obscure, controverted, or denied.

“In this capacity the Church acts as regulator of the Faith, and these doctrinal laws, together with the act of imposing them, are called the Rule of Faith. All the members of the Church are bound to submit their judgment in matters of Faith to this rule, and thus by practising the ‘obedience of Faith’ to prove themselves living members of the one kingdom of Divine truth.”17

This is precisely what the Conciliar/Synodal Church’s “successors of the Apostles” fail to do – as is evident in the effect of the manifest disunity of faith, and by the fact many of those who do continue to profess the faith allegedly being “outside of communion”.

As we have already seen in reference to the property of unity, Romano Amerio takes this disunity as a primary “external fact” in need of explanation. To return to what he said:

“The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing [this disunity] is the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”

Let us now consider his analysis of this “internal fact.”

Renunciation of apostolic authority

Amerio writes:

“In whatever social setting it is exercised, authority has a necessary and some would say a constitutive function in society, because a society is always a collection of free wills that needs to be unified. The role of authority is to effect this unification, which is not a reduction of all wills ad unum, but a coordination of their freedom by a united intent. It must direct men’s freedom towards a social goal, by laying down the means, that is the order, in which it will be reached.

“Authority thus has a double function: it is merely rational in as far as it discovers and promulgates the order by which a society will operate; but it is practical in as far as it commands that order, by arranging the parts of the social organization in accordance with it. This second act of authority is governing.”18

He then explains how this has manifested itself since the reign of Paul VI:

“Now, the peculiar feature of the pontificate of Paul VI was the tendency to shift the papacy from governing to admonishing or, in scholastic terminology, to restrict the field of preceptive law, which imposes an obligation, and to enlarge the field of directive law, which formulates a rule without imposing any obligation to observe it. The government of the Church thus loses half its scope, or to put it biblically, ‘the hand of the Lord is foreshortened.’”19

In fact, it is arguable that this “foreshortening” began not with Paul VI, but with John XXIII.20

Amerio then provides the evidence for this “foreshortening” claim (which we will omit here), before proceeding to a very perceptive analysis of what it means: it is, we allege, effectively a refusal to be the Pope. In other words, Paul VI was at least functionally not the Pope – whatever further conclusions are to be drawn from this. The effect of this is as follows, part of which we have already cited:

“The Pope laments and denounces and defends and accuses, but in the very act of defending authority he reduces it to a warning: as if merely a party in the case rather than the judge, he makes the accusation but will not pass sentence.

“The general effect of a renunciation of authority is to bring authority into disrepute and to lead it to be ignored by those who are subject to it, since a subject cannot hold a higher view of authority than authority holds of itself. One French archbishop has said:

‘Today the Church no longer has to teach, command and condemn, but to help men to live and develop.’ [Courrier de Rome, No.137, 5 December 1974, p.7.]

“And to descend from the Palatine to the Suburra, at a round table of priests, organized by the newspaper L’Espresso in 1969, it was maintained that the Pope was like a layman, or to be precise, that he was like a policeman set on a stand higher than other people so that he can direct the traffic.

“It is alleged that the ever present disputes which make the Church today so different from the historical and preconciliar Church, are the distinctive feature of authentic religion and a symptom of the Church’s vitality, rather than an abnormal or pathological phenomenon.

“There is never a papal document on which the episcopates of the world fail to take up their own position, and in their train, but independently of them, theologians and the laity do the same, contradicting each other in their turn. A host of documents is thus churned out, displaying a disorderly variety in which authority is multiplied and so nullified.”21

This renunciation is powerfully exemplified in Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s interview with William F. Buckley Jr. in 1971. Buckley pressed Sheen on whether Paul VI should “affirm Catholic dogma by excluding people from the Church, by excommunicating them, who in fact plainly refused to subscribe to the basic articles of faith.”22 Sheen attempted to frame the matter as solely tolerating sinners, and

“… the Church has become much more related to the world. Being related to the world, I think, has become much more compassionate of sinners. And I would say that perhaps that is the spirit that has changed us, from the rigidity of excommunication, to the patient bearing of offenses.”23

Upon being pressed by Buckley, all Sheen could suggest – after a difficult period of reflection – was desecration of the Blessed Sacrament or breaking the seal of confession. Buckley pressed further:

Buckley: “If an individual says ‘I cannot believe in the divinity of Christ,’ is that an excommunicable statement?”

Sheen: “No. The Church would not excommunicate a man for saying that. It would not be a true statement, but it would not be excommunicable.”24

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The renunciation of authority continues

Although Amerio opines that John Paul II “began to restore the full ambit of papal government”,25 the past sixty years have been characterised by the phenomenon that he described above.

The chief exception to this is the treatment of those who seek to teach and profess the Catholic faith in its integrity. We have elsewhere referred to this phenomenon as “weaponised orthodoxy” – the tendency to apply Catholic principles almost exclusively to those who recognise them, whilst generally allowing those who deny and undermine the faith to run riot. But even then, this is not universal, and such persons are called to a voluntaristic notion of obedience, rather than to abjuration of supposedly erroneous propositions.

We could contrast this again to its treatment of those who hold politically incorrect views about historical matters (like, for example, the late Bishop Richard Williamson); such views are indeed treated as errors and punished as such.

But this withdrawal from enforcement in matters of doctrine is one reason why it is difficult to say that those who are involved with the Conciliar/Synodal Church cease to be members of the Church on the grounds of a defective profession of faith: by and large, the Conciliar/Synodal Church permits them to profess the Catholic Faith.

What are the consequences for this renunciation of authority?

Fr Maciej Sieniatycki, a professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, wrote a series of anti-modernist articles. He concludes with a penetrating analysis of what a “Church” based on modernist principles – including this renunciation of authority – would be like:

“A Church that would arise on modernist principles – if indeed those principles can create a concrete religious community at all, which is a very doubtful matter – would no longer be the Church of Christ, but a creation of the twentieth century, based partly on Protestant principles and chiefly on the worldviews of agnosticism and positivism prevalent today among many, with an admixture of mystical dreams.

“This new Church could have both a Pope and bishops, but they would be mere puppets; it could speak of dogmas, revelations, of a supernatural religion, but these would be names from which the old content had fled – rather, they would be words without content. So how could one truthfully maintain that the old Church had not been changed, but merely perfected?

“No, never – the old Church would be demolished, and on its ruins there would arise a religious assembly of the twentieth century, beginning the era of its existence from the appearance of the modernists. […]

“Leaving aside the fact that Christ established the Pope as the head of the entire Church and its supreme, infallible teacher in matters of faith, to whose governance therefore even the Saints are obliged to submit and whose dogmatic pronouncements they are to accept as truth – leaving that aside, I say, this principle of the modernists would bring about complete anarchy in the Church, would pulverize the Church, would make it an invisible Church. […]

“But what is to be done with the Pope, with the bishops, with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in general? It cannot be abolished, for that would look too radical, and no one would then believe that the church of the modernists is the Catholic Church; so the old authority must be retained in name, but without the attributes of authority.

“However, some occupation must be devised for them. Well then, they are only to track the revelations of the Saints, to correct nothing, to restrict nothing, to give no directives, but to organize those revelations, to sort them, to create a terminology for them, to formulate them into dogmas – of course only provisional ones. They are to be merely the court historians and philosophers of the church of the modernists, but not rulers or teachers of the faith, for that belongs to the Saints!”26

The principles which he condemns in these articles are startlingly similar to the ideals of the “Synodal Church” expressed in documents like The Bishop of Rome, and the “Synod on Synodality.” For more on this, see the following:

• ‘The Bishop of Rome’: Francis’ plan, continued by Leo XIV, for a grotesque parody of the papacy

• How the Synod on Synodality exemplifies the heresy of Modernism warned of by Pope St. Pius X

In fact, these ideals have long been manifested in the Conciliar/Synodal Church, ever since Vatican II; the Synod documents mentioned do nothing more than put them into words.

Before he was elected to the papacy, Pope Gregory XVI refuted those who alleged that the Church’s constitution could cease to be monarchical, and become instead aristocratic (i.e., with the supreme authority not in the Pope but in the body of bishops). In the course of this refutation, he considered a hypothetical counter-example suited to the antiquarian presuppositions of his opponents, in which the Church had been founded as an aristocratic society, which had allowed itself to function monarchically, but could return to an aristocratic form. Even the first stage, he said, was impossible and absurd:

“It is impossible that the Church founded by Christ, and founded in such a way as to express perpetually her identity, should cease to be the Church; therefore it is impossible that she should strip herself of her authority – as impossible as that God should lie. He indeed conferred upon her His own authority; but the object of this authority is the actual ministry itself, as Christ immediately explains: ‘Go, teach, baptise,’ etc. – never the destruction of government.

“The same reasoning applies if the government of the Church had been established by God as monarchical [as indeed it was, as was his point]: once changed into aristocratic, it would no longer be the identical Church.”27

What would he say of a situation in which both “Pope” and bishops seek to renounce authority altogether – as we see exacerbated even further in the concept of “Synodality”? He rightly says that this is impossible for the Church to suffer a substantial change in her constitution – but also adds the following explanation, which is most instructive for our time:

“Nor does the argument end here: another consequence, no less evidently deduced, is that that body of pastors which, amid the most subtle conflicts, the most groundless claims, the most illegitimate usurpations – in short, amid the densest darknesses of fanaticism, violence, and ambition – resists invincibly and alone does not allow itself to be seduced, would exclusively constitute the true Church, and would therefore possess the notes and properties of the true Church inseparable from her, such as the theoretical and practical recognition of her government.

“This can evidently be proved by this concise syllogism. The Church must always subsist such as Christ instituted her, and therefore must always maintain insuperably the essential form of her government; but this is not verified in the part which does not resist innovations; therefore it is verified in the part alone which resists them, which alone will consequently be the true Church.”28

For these reasons, the conclusion for Fr Crean’s argument is the same: he may be able to point to men who can make a claim to material succession from the Apostles, or a man who can make a claim to material succession from St Peter. But are these men visibly successors of the Apostles and St Peter 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.

Conclusions on the note of apostolicity

Although it may have what is necessary for the note of apostolicity (i.e., a material succession), the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly undermines its own claim to the property of apostolicity by its mode of acting. The scholastic axiom holds that “agere sequitur esse” (“the operation of anything follows the mode of its being”29). It is wholly unclear why we should believe that the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy enjoys formal apostolic succession and apostolic authority under these circumstances.

However, when we consider the other aspects of the property of apostolicity, we can see that what appears to be the note of apostolicity is not manifesting the property of apostolicity at all – because the latter is demonstrably absent.

This is especially clear when we consider apostolicity of doctrine and of origin.

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Editors’ Notes

In 1847, Pope Pius IX instituted a feast to celebrate St Joseph as the protector and patron of the Church. This was observed in Eastertide; Pope St Pius X later fixed it on the Wednesday between the Second and Third Sundays of Easter. Pope Pius XII later replaced it with the feast of St Joseph the Worker (1st May).

Earlier in the year, on the Feast of St Joseph on March 19, we published a 1987 sermon Mgr Guérard des Lauriers. That sermon was on the relationship between St Joseph and the Church.

• St Joseph and the Church – Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

In honour of the day on which the Eastertide feast historically fell, we are publishing another text from the same bishop on St Joseph.

This is the first part of a longer text, published in the July–August 1986 edition of Sous la bannière. We have separated the text into two parts to be published separately.

In this first part, Mgr Guérard des Lauriers focuses on why St Joseph is “Saint Par Excellence”, grounding his exposition on the teaching of Pope Leo XIII and the saint’s relation Our Lady, and communication of goods entailed in marriage. Given that the feast of March 19th is more focused on St Joseph as the spouse of the Blessed Virgin, and this feast is more focused on St Joseph as the protector of the Church, we could have more fittingly published the two texts the other way around.

The footnotes themselves are lengthy: at 1,700, they are longer than the text itself (1,500 words). They contain a lot of interesting material that explain in detail some of points he makes in the text.

Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was a very significant figure in post-Vatican II theological controversies. For more on his life and legacy, see HERE.

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St Joseph: Saint Par Excellence

Mgr Guérard des Lauriers OP

Part I of St Joseph: Saint Par Excellence, Saint of Silence
In Sous la Bannière, n. 6, July–August, 1986
Text separated into two parts by The WM Review for ease of reading. Headings and some line breaks added for the same reason.

We believe that our translation of this text is covered by fair use; if there is an existing copyright holder who would like us to remove it, they can reach us in the comments to this article.

The unfolding of truth

The unfolding of the Truth is a fruit that the SPIRIT ripens within the Church. And in reality, this unfolding is what gives structure to the flow of time. The Word was made flesh,1 and this was “the fullness of time”2 – the fullness, that is, of Truth manifesting itself in time. Since then, for each of the Truths revealed from the very beginning, there has been a “time of fullness” marking its definitive assimilation by the divinely taught Church militant.

In this sense, there was in the Church a time of the most Holy TRINITY, a time of the INCARNATE WORD, a time of the REDEMPTION and of the SACRAMENT truly containing the CHRIST IMMOLATED, RISEN, GLORIFIED. Each of these Realities was, let us say it again, known and lived from the very origin; but it was in the fullness of its own time that each began to command the attention of Christendom.

Now, in the Church militant, it is the fullness of time for Joseph, the hidden Saint.3 He showed himself at Fatima; through the “humble Brother André,” he worked very many miracles at “Saint Joseph’s of Mount Royal” in Canada. And since he took no part on earth in the Passion of Jesus, is it not fitting that he should stand, with Him and with Mary, at the bedside of the Church in her agony? Let us come to know his presence better, discerning in the silence that prepared the hour of Saint Joseph the providentially fitting sign of his eminent holiness.

A Saint is a [human] creature who, through the patient exercise of the virtues grounded in grace, has first made it possible, and then conformable to the divine Wisdom, that God should fill him with His own Holiness. Here there are two things to consider, for it is fitting, at least “quoad nos,” to distinguish them.4 On the one hand, the degree of holiness: the “thrice Holy” God is “more or less” participated5; and this “more or less,” ex se, already pertains to quality. On the other hand, the modality, or type, or quality – if not of Holiness itself, at least of the path that leads to it and of the finition in which it flowers. The Saints are each themselves, irreducibly... virginally6; yet all are holy, substantially, with the same Holiness.

What, in the case of Saint Joseph, is the degree of holiness, and what its quality? To contemplate these, let us decipher, in the words and in the facts, what the revealed message is.

Saint Joseph, Saint Par Excellence

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph form that Family which is holy. Jesus is the Holy One of God,7 Holy because He is God. Mary is invested with the grace whose very substance is God Himself, because She is immaculate.8 What, then, of Saint Joseph?

Leo XIII gave precious teaching on this point. Having recalled that “dignity, grace, holiness, and glory have their fulfilment [profectæ] in Joseph, by virtue of the twofold relation he bears: to Mary, whose husband he is, and to Jesus, whose father he is putatively,”9 the Pope goes on:

“It is certain that the dignity of Mother of God is so exalted that nothing surpassing it could have been created. But since the bond of marriage has joined Joseph to the blessed Virgin, there is no doubt that Joseph himself drew near, as no one else has done more [UT NEMO MAGIS], to that supereminent dignity by which the Mother of God towers over all created natures. For marriage is in effect a society, the closest of all bonds, carrying with it by its very nature the communication [or sharing] of goods between the two spouses.

“Now, concerning this point, if God gave Joseph to the Virgin as her husband, it is certain [profecto] that He gave her not merely a companion of life, a witness of her virginity, and a guardian of her honour, but also, through the conjugal bond itself, a participant in her supereminent dignity.”10

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Three Data Points

From this magisterial teaching, then, three certain data points emerge, each presupposing and specifying those that precede it.

a. The fulfilment, the state of completion, with respect to holiness [and to dignity, grace, and glory] comes to Saint Joseph from the relation he bears to Mary and to Jesus.

b. The nature of the relation Joseph bears to Mary has two valences, one human, the other theological, whose unity is at once analogical and ontological.11

The relation between Joseph and Mary is the matrimonial bond: that is the human valence. Now this bond, so intimate, involves as its primary content12 the communication of goods. And Leo XIII dares to affirm that this communication, inherent in the nature of marriage, extended from Mary to Joseph to include even the most excellent good Mary possessed – namely, being Mother of God. Such is the theological valence, in Mary and in Joseph, of their conjugal relation.

That there is analogy between the two valences – an objective analogy, in reality – is easy to see. The communication of human nature could not have been more perfectly realised than in the act whereby that nature is assumed by and in the Word who created it. And since this communication was originally and purely to take place in marriage, it was fitting that the supreme realisation of this communication should subsist in such an excellent marriage. Finally, since the communication proper to marriage flows, between the spouses, from the communication of nature itself, the same excellence had to belong unitedly and analogically both to the [physical] communication of [human] nature and to the theological communication between the [persons] of the spouses. If, per impossibile, the very act of Mary at the Incarnation had not been shared by Joseph in some way, it would have been the very essence of marriage as divinely instituted that suffered violation. Joseph is not merely a companion of life for Mary; he “participates in the supereminent dignity of his Spouse.” This is what the Vicar of Jesus Christ affirms with a discrete but inexorable rigour.

With this comes a second precision. We know that the fulfilment of holiness comes to Joseph from the relation he bears to Mary [and to Jesus].^(a) We must further understand that, in the relation Joseph bears to her, Mary does not figure merely as the Immaculate Virgin radiating the Uncreated in the transparency of her virtues; she figures expressly in that prerogative “so exalted that nothing surpassing it could have been created.” The fulfilment of holiness comes to Saint Joseph from the fact that he is constituted a participat [“Deus Josephum dedit... participem...”] in “the supereminent dignity” proper to his Spouse: that of being Mother of God – that is, being wholly relative to the Word of God incarnating Himself in her.13

The ‘maximal’ holiness

c. The relation Saint Joseph bears to the Blessed Virgin is, with respect to the entire created order and in its theological valence, maximal.

This is [already] implicitly affirmed by the analogy just discussed. The bond of marriage, Leo XIII recalls, is indeed “the closest of all”; and the communication that by nature results from it extends, between Mary and Joseph, to the theological order itself – and more than that, to the supereminent dignity of Mother of God. In Leo XIII’s view, the very essence of the matrimonial bond serves as a paradigm for unveiling the nature of the Communication–participation by which Mary imparts to Joseph her own privilege: being Mother of God. This Communication, made to Saint Joseph, therefore surpasses any that can be made to other persons, just as the bond of marriage surpasses, by its essence, every other bond [humanum dico].

What is thus explained and justified in the latter part of the cited text is first stated categorically: UT NEMO MAGIS. “It is beyond doubt that Joseph drew near, as no one else has done more, to that supereminent dignity by which the Mother of God towers over all created natures.”

Such is the third precision, adding to the first two. The fulfilment of holiness comes about in Saint Joseph: a) from the conjugal relation he bears to Mary; b) from the fact that this relation involves, for Saint Joseph, participating in the supereminent dignity constituted by the divine Maternity; c) from the fact that this sharing is maximal – that no one has realised it to a greater degree: UT NEMO MAGIS.14

From these considerations it follows, evidently, that Saint Joseph is a Saint par excellence. UT NEMO MAGIS – in such wise that no one can be holier than he, save Jesus and Mary.

The realisation of Holiness is grounded, for every person, in conformity to the crucified Love; this is the sign that the fulfilment of holiness comes through relation to Him who, “lifted up,” draws each of His members into Himself,15 into His own Glory.16 It is therefore, so to speak, the “intensity” of this relation that formally measures holiness. Now, this relation of the human creature to the Word in whom she is created is ABSOLUTELY maximal in Mary, at the instant when the Word incarnates Himself in Her,17 given that “nothing surpassing it could have been created.” And Saint Joseph, compared with every other human, shares maximally in this ABSOLUTELY maximal relation. It follows, then, that Saint Joseph is the holiest of all human beings, in sub-ordination to Jesus the Holy One of God18 and to his Spouse, Holy Mary, Mother of God.19

Base text translated with AI and thoroughly checked by The WM Review.

We believe that our translation of this text is covered by fair use; if there is an existing copyright holder who would like us to remove it, they can reach us in the comments to this article.

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(WM Round-Up) – On Monday 20 April 2026 – after nearly a month-long pause for Holy Week, Easter and the holidays – I appeared on ’s podcast Church and State with .

The conversation focused on the apostolicity of the Church, and the fourth chapter of my long article ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church. Zero Marks is the second part of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.”

In Zero Marks, I spend two chapters discussing apostolicity and how it relates to the visibility of the Church. In the first part – covered in this interview – I discuss apostolicity of succession, examining the claim that this note and property are found in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. The following chapter deals with apostolicity of doctrine and of origin.

Topics in this interview included:

• What is apostolicity?

• Apostolic Succession

• Formal and material succession

• Fr Crean’s reduction of visibility to a claim to material succession

• The exercise of apostolic authority

• Renunciation of apostolic authority

• The renunciation of authority continues

• What are the consequences for this renunciation of authority?

• Conclusions on the note of apostolicity

For reasons attributable only to ignorance or inadequate reading comprehension, The WM Review has been accused of ignoring or overlooking the importance of formal apostolic succession, and placing an exaggerated importance on apostolicity of doctrine and of government. Chapter IV and this interview should demonstrate the injustice of such an accusation; however, I have also directly engaged the accusation here:

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

We will be releasing Chapter IV of Zero Marks for all readers on Friday. But you can read it NOW in the full book-length article discussed here:

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

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Articles mentioned:

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

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

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

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

• We must tell the full truth about the Pope Question: here’s why (Matthew McCusker’s excoriating article on misunderstandings of the clergy/laity relationship.

Other parts in the Zero Marks series:

• ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I

• ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean) (All chapters and conclusion)

  • Disunited in Faith: Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church (‘Zero Marks’ Ch. I)

  • ‘Comprehensive Rejection’: Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly holy? (‘Zero Marks’, Ch. II)

  • Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church Catholic? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. III)

This interview was a follow up to a previous conversation on the first part, ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I’. Here is the first interview:

Here is the second, on the property of unity:

Here is the third, on the property of holiness:

Here is the fourth, on the property of catholicity:

Thank you to Stephen for having me on again. I hope readers of The WM Review enjoy it – and give a follow too.

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Introduction

This is a short post responding to an accusation against “sedevacantists” and myself personally.

It has been alleged that “sedevacantists” in general place a significantly exaggerated focus on apostolicity of doctrine, whilst overlooking apostolicity of government/succession. While I have typically referred to this aspect of apostolicity as that of succession, both terms refer to the same reality (although “government” is often addressed in the context of the note/property of unity).

It has further been alleged that, in my article ‘Radically insufficient’ I am an example of this, referring to Van Noort on the apostolicity of doctrine, whilst “ignoring” his teaching on the latter.

Unfortunately there seem to be problems of both insufficient reading and of reading comprehension behind this allegation.

The article in question

First, the article in question was not about apostolicity, but rather about the visibility of the Church in general. It was setting the ground for the subsequent article ‘Zero Marks’; this article addresses apostolicity of succession/government, doctrine, and origin in detail in Chapters IV and V. I have just recorded an interview with about Chapter IV. You can find Zero Marks here.

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

Returning to ‘Radically Insufficient’, the article in question. The article referred to apostolicty in my presentation of criteria by which the four properties of the Creed – by which the Church is rendered “distinctly visible” – are to be considered as notes or marks. The fourth criterion of a note is that it is “easily knowable”, and the reference to apostolicity was an illustration of this point. I wrote:

“For example, ‘teaching the same doctrine as the apostles’ is not easily knowable, as it requires study and cannot be verified without the testimony of the Church. Therefore this real aspect of apostolicity as a property is not usually treated as part of apostolicity as a mark.”

Further, fn. 20 of the same article deals directly with the question of formal apostolic succession.

In an interview with on this same article, I said the following:

“[Notes] have to be more known to us than the Church herself. What this is saying is we can’t beg the question. We argue from from what’s more certain in order to establish what’s less [certain]. So with Catholicity, for example, one aspect of Catholicity is a widespread diffusion. It’s easier for a person to look around and see a organisation that is diffused widely, or is diffused in the way that’s relevant for the question, than it is to know that it has the right to be diffused widely. And that’s the opposition between Catholicity of fact and Catholicity of law.

“Closely related to this is [that a note has] to be easily knowable […]

So in order to know that the Primacy is a necessary part of the Church’s constitution, you have to have done some study. You have to have weaved through some of the the arguments and so on; and it’s definitely possible to do, but it’s not necessarily available for the “simplest” people. And this is the point of it: it has to be – as Fr Crean says – “the city on the hill”; it’s the place where “fools won’t err.” That’s the point of it.

“Similar things that wouldn’t work in that way [include] the continuity with the doctrine of the apostles; if you can establish that, you’ve got some some proof that you can work with, but it’s not a note per se.”

In other words, the article ‘Radically Insufficient’ (and its associated interview) which has been used as the basis for alleging an excessive focus on apostolicity of doctrine, to the detriment of that of government/succession, specifically states that apostolicity of doctrine (and, I may add, of origin) does not properly form a part of the note of apostolicity – and that that of succession/government does.

So much for that.

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Beyond the article in question

Many “sedevacantist”, including myself, have written a great deal on this topic in other places. For example, in addition to ‘Zero Marks’, these set out my current thoughts on the matter:

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

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

These below articles, written at earlier stages, set out similar ideas – albeit with more certainty than I currently enjoy:

• The duty for laymen to study and spread the faith—Pope Leo XIII (Apr 2022)

• The Apostolicity of the Church – Who are the Successors of the Apostles? (Apr 2023)

• The Apostolicity of the Church – What is ordinary jurisdiction? (Apr 2023)

• The Apostolicity of the Church – The source of ordinary jurisdiction (Jun 2023)

• The Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church—it lacks the necessary marks (Apr 2024)

• Setting the record straight with Avoiding Babylon (Sep 2025)

• Bishop Sanborn was asked about The WM Review’s position – our answer to his comments (Oct 2025)

We have also published material from other authors touching on the same subject, and/or with our own comments relating to it:

• A Note for Confused Catholics: Apologetics and Dogmatic Theology (Sep 2022 – contributor)

• How is the pope the source of jurisdiction? Mgr Fenton explains (Oct 2024 – commentary)

• Who can elect a Pope? (Fr Ricossa) (Mar 2026 – a few comments made in the endnotes)

I also sourced, translated and published the very difficult to find comments from Archbishop Lefebvre on the four marks, including that of apostolicity:

• Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: ‘The visibility of the Church and the current situation’ (Oct 2025)

The text from Archbishop Lefebvre is very interesting; nonetheless, my comments noted the very deficiency for which I have been reproached:

“While Lefebvre’s treatment of the four marks is powerful and instructive, some aspects are wanting: as with many Catholics after Vatican II, he under-appreciates the importance of apostolicity of government – speaking as if it can be compensated by apostolicity of doctrine. This is not the case, as we have discussed elsewhere.”

Further, Lefebvre himself is quoted by his biographer, the late Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, as having stated:

“The current state of the papacy renders insignificant the difficulties over jurisdiction, disobedience and apostolicity, because these notions suppose the reign of a Pope [who is] Catholic in his faith and government.”1

While understanding what Lefebvre means, and to a degree being sympathetic to it, it remains a fact that “sedevacantists” have not considered these “difficulties” to be insignificant, and have grappled with them from the earliest days after the Vatican II. Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ “Thesis of Cassiciacum” exists, in significant part, to engage with them. From a different perspective, Fr Gabriel Lavery has addressed the topic in a 2024 conference – albeit one which he described as “still very far from being a completed talk”. Even if one disagrees with such theses, one can hardly say that “sedevacantists” ignore the issue.

Conclusion: Counter-allegations

In short, the allegation in question is false, unfounded, and vexatious. But to close, I offer some counter-allegations.

1. There are those who place too much emphasis on what they understand of apostolicity of government/succession, to the exclusion of apostolicity of doctrine and origin, as discussed in ‘Zero Marks’ Ch. V.

2. They place too much emphasis on material succession, in that they do not give an adequate account of what would render this succession formal, or prevent it from being such, as discussed in ‘Zero Marks’ Ch. IV and other articles linked above.

3. They place too much emphasis on apostolicity (understood in their reductive way) at the expense of the other three marks/properties, as discussed in ‘Zero Marks’ Ch. I-III.

4. They ignore the implications of the radical rupture in apostolicity of doctrine and origin, as well as the absence of the other marks/properties of the Church, and fail to draw the necessary conclusions, as discussed in ‘Zero Marks’ throughout.

5. The result of the above points is that they also place too much emphasis on formal visibility, at the expense of distinct visibility; in other words, they reduce the visibility of the Church to that of a mere legal structure without regard to the essential properties of the Church, as discussed in ‘Radically Insufficient’.

6. Another result is that they underestimate the scale of the problem that both apostolicity and visibility pose to their own positions; they take refuge in “rethought” conceptions of both, presenting them as existing for their own sake, and stripped of their inherent teleology – which is a denial of Catholic doctrine and theology.

The argument that the Conciliar/Synodal Church lacks apostolicity of doctrine and origin, as well as key aspects of the other three properties/notes, cannot be indirectly rebutted by a claim that the Conciliar/Synodal Church enjoys apostolic succession, or by a complaint that “sedevacantists” have ignored a single aspect of one of the properties/notes – even if this latter complaint was not simply false.

It is difficult to understand how anyone could think otherwise.

Read Next:

• ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I

• ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean) (All chapters and conclusion)

  • Disunited in Faith: Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church (‘Zero Marks’ Ch. I)

  • ‘Comprehensive Rejection’: Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly holy? (‘Zero Marks’, Ch. II)

  • Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church Catholic? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. III)

Supplementary material to Zero Marks:

• ‘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

• Ted Cruz, Cardinal Billot and the Conciliar/Synodal Church

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

Ongoing interviews with at on Zero Marks:

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

• The Unity of the Church and ‘Zero Marks’ – WM Review on Kokx News

• WATCH: The Holiness of the Church and ‘Zero Marks’ – WM Review on Kokx News

• WATCH: The Catholicity of the Church and ‘Zero Marks’ – WM Review on Kokx News

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Introduction

The following are comments on my current state of mind with regard to the perpetuity of the hierarchy, in response to a number of requests for them. For reasons which will become clear, it is not intended as any kind of rigorous argument.

In April 2023, I published three articles on the Apostolicity of the Church, intended as preliminary material to another article by a writer named Pacelli, known from the Trad + Cath + Forum.

1. The Apostolicity of the Church – Who are the Successors of the Apostles?

2. The Apostolicity of the Church – What is ordinary jurisdiction?

3. The Apostolicity of the Church – The source of ordinary jurisdiction

In these articles I set out what theologians had taught on who constitutes a “Successor of the Apostles” in a full sense (viz. residential bishops, or their equivalents); the nature of ordinary jurisdiction and ecclesiastical offices; and the source of ordinary jurisdiction. From this foundation, I intended to proceed to a further discussion of whether, and how, a person might accede to an ecclesiastical office – and thus assume the ordinary jurisdiction attached to it – in the absence of a true Pope.

Various factors prevented me from completing this series, setting out my ideas in a formal way, and publishing Pacelli’s articles – although I hope to do so at some point in the future.

In the interim, I published the aforementioned article by Mgr Joseph Clifford Fenton, along with some comments in note form setting out (a) how such an accession to office could take place during a vacancy of the Holy See; and (b) that this might occur in a manner so obscure and difficult that it would be impossible for many of us to verify.

• How is the pope the source of jurisdiction? Mgr Fenton explains

This latter point has been the focus of my long article Zero Marks. Some of these articles have been accessible only to WM+ members – either permanently, due to their incomplete form, or temporarily, as in the case of Zero Marks. (WM+ material is always available to clergy, religious or seminarians who request the complimentary access which we offer.)

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

These earlier articles have been criticised due to the absence of the resolution which their conclusion would provide. I do not accept this as a legitimate criticism. The doctrinal points expressed in those articles are, as far as I can see, true. They stand independently of any practical difficulties they may raise, or of any attempted resolutions that might be offered. The establishment of theological principles does not depend upon the immediate ability to resolve every contingent problem to which they give rise: if nothing else, they serve as a bulwark against the acceptance of false solutions.

The present article is not intended as a rigorous or definitive theological demonstration. Rather, it is a brief and less formal statement of my current state of mind on these questions, offered in response to a number of requests for clarification. My views are not important in themselves; nevertheless, setting them out may help to clarify the state of the question and the assumptions involved in ongoing discussions.

‘Bishop in the Woods’

In the past, I have held very firmly that the Church requires us to believe that there will always exist living successors of the Apostles in the full sense, and therefore that such bishops must in fact be present in the world.

If this is indeed what the Church requires us to believe, then it is not necessary to prove how or where such men exist today; it is especially unnecessary (and indeed illegitimate) to make such proof a condition of belief. As Pope Pius XI taught in Casti Conubii:

“[L]et the faithful also be on their guard against the overrated independence of private judgment and that false autonomy of human reason. For it is quite foreign to everyone bearing the name of a Christian to trust his own mental powers with such pride as to agree only with those things which he can examine from their inner nature […]”1

With the teaching of the Church, we believe first in order to understand (credo ut intelligam) – and not the other way around; and any difficulties that might arise from what we are to believe can be despised in the words of Cardinal Newman: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

But is it what the Church requires us to believe? And in what sense are we required to understand it? I will return to this latter question below.

This idea has been satirically labelled the “Bishop in the Woods” theory. Such claims often rest on the underlying assumptions that (a) the visibility of the Church’s hierarchy and notes cannot be obscured, and (b) that something can only be said to exist or to be visible if it is known to a large majority. (Incidentally, such claims themselves entail the obscuration of the hierarchy and the notes of the Church.)

My first reply to this is that “Bishop in the Woods” is a term, possibly coined by the late Fr Cekada, which satirises the ideas in question, rather than describing them – let alone refuting them. Nobody speaking about the continuity of the hierarchy in this way is thinking of bishops hiding in the woods.

My second reply is that at least some of those who employ this term are themselves open to a similar criticism. Some of them hold that bishops consecrated in emergency situations without a Roman mandate now constitute the Church’s hierarchy. Such a position could equally be caricatured as a theory of “Bishops in the Garage,” another term coined by Fr Cekada prior to his acceptance of the legitimacy of Archbishop Thuc’s episcopal consecrations – consecrations which I also accept.

Whether this satirical moniker is used to describe this theory or not, I do not see how its proponents can deny that it itself constitutes a significant obscuration of the Church’s hierarchy and four notes – even while these proponents insist that there can no longer be living residential bishops (or their equivalents) of whom we are unaware, due to the supposed impossibility of the Church’s visibility being obscured.

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Attaining office during an interregnum

I am not ready to set out the arguments which I have found compelling in a formal way at present. Nonetheless, here are some brief comments.

All parties to this discussion profess to agree that jurisdiction passes through the Roman Pontiff; Pope Pius XII taught this doctrine on three occasions. However, Mgr Joseph Clifford Fenton made the following point on the topic:

“Victoria, outstanding theologian though he was, seems to have misconstrued the question at issue, and to have imagined that in some way the traditional teaching involved the implication that all bishops had been placed in their sees by appointment from Rome. […]

“The teaching of Pope Pius XII on the origin of the episcopal jurisdiction is not a claim that St. Peter and his successors in the Roman See have always appointed directly every other bishop within the Church of Jesus Christ. It does mean, however, that every other bishop who is the ordinary of a diocese holds his position by the consent and at least the tacit approval of the Holy See. Furthermore, it means that the Bishop of Rome can, according to the divine constitution of the Church itself, remove particular cases from the jurisdiction of the bishops and transfer them to his own jurisdiction. Finally it signifies that any bishop not in union with the Holy Father has no authority over the faithful.”

The person soliciting my views on the topic appears to hold that traditionalist bishops constitute what is left of the hierarchy of the Church by the “tacit will” of past popes. But as is clear above, a man may attain to a diocesan see (and thus the jurisdiction which is attached to it) by the tacit will of a living Pope, without his explicit involvement – at least under some circumstances. Such a man would be a Successor of the Apostles in the full sense. Fr Diego Lainez SJ (d. 1565) – an authority on whom my critic relies – cites the following patristic examples:

“For persecution itself, in which it is not permitted for bishops to exercise their proper [ministry] grants jurisdiction, by tacit consent of superiors, who do not want souls to perish. Hence, it is said in the Tripartite History, from Eusebius: ‘Meanwhile, Eusebius, bishop of Samosata, while being deported into exile, worked strenuously at apostolic labors. Seeing that many churches were despoiled of their shepherds, he put on military garb, and covering his head with a helmet, traveled around Syria, along with Phoenicia and Palestine, ordaining priests and deacons, and filling other offices of the church. But wherever he found bishops who agreed with him, he constituted them the heads of churches who were lacking in them.’

“And again it is said, in the same place: ‘Therefore, Athanasius proceeded through Pelusium towards Alexandria. Passing through the cities, he taught that all should avoid the Arians, and embrace the dogma of consubstantiality. In certain churches, however, he performed ordinations. And this was the beginning of another quarrel against him; because he presumed to ordain in the churches of others [other bishops].’ From this it is concluded that it is permitted even to extend jurisdiction on account of necessity; and because they did not consider this, they unjustly reprehended Athanasius.’

“Therefore elsewhere in the Tripartite History, it is said of Theodosius’s activity in the Constantinopolitan synod: ‘But he, gravely concerned that a division was again coming about, begged everyone to search for a praiseworthy man, in order to ordain him bishop. Then, agreeing with these words, they appointed Nectarius, a man of a family distinguished by nobility, bishop of the city of Constantinople. Maximus, however, who was tainted with the contagion of Apollinaris, was stripped of his pontifical dignity and ejected. Then also they passed a law, that the bishop of Constantinople should have the privileges of honor after the Roman pontiff, because it is the new Rome. They also reaffirmed the faith of Nicea, and established patriarchs, distributing provinces, so that the bishops of each diocese should not go to outside churches; for this used to be done at one time indifferently on account of the time of persecution.’”2 (Emphases in the document as provided)

Although Fr Lainez is cited in evidence of the thesis that traditionalist bishops constitute the hierarchy of the Church, I understand these examples to show the legitimacy, not merely of consecrating bishops on the basis of the tacit will of the Pope, but also of appointing them to offices, and on the same basis. The jurisdiction extended in Fr Lainez’s examples seems to refer to that of appointments to offices, the validity of which results in the attainment of the jurisdiction which is attached to them.

Elsewhere, Fr Lainez defends the idea that the salvation of souls could be adequately achieved through means other than dioceses having “their own proper and particular bishop”, but this obviously does not exclude the possibility of a man attaining office by virtue of the “tacit will of the Popes.”3 Indeed, the theologian Dieckmann – cited in the same document which was provided to me – states:

“For even if an explicit confirmation and acknowledgment of the election of some bishop by the bishop of Rome should be lacking, the very communion of the brotherhood and ordination by bishops of the Catholic Church could be considered as a tacit acknowledgment and communication of episcopal jurisdiction.”4

The theologian Fr William Wilmers SJ wrote the following, about appointments to offices made by antipopes during the Great Western Schism:

“[T]he same principles apply as those which apply in supplying jurisdiction when it is a question of a colored title, and of invincible or common error of the faithful. See above p. 257. A priest who is proclaimed as parish priest by simony lacks jurisdiction, according to the canons. But because he is thought to be the parish priest, the simony being unknown, and he has some title, although invalid, therefore he has jurisdiction, because the Church supplies for the defect. The same is to be said of a bishop chosen simoniacally and consequently, according to the canons, lacking jurisdiction; the Church here equally supplies the defect, and thus such a bishop, for the sake of the common good, obtains jurisdiction.

“This is to be applied to the three doubtful Pontiffs, supposing all of them to be doubtful; but with this difference, that it is not the Church but God Himself who supplies for the defect and grants jurisdiction. Indeed, each of the obediences thought and said that its own Pontiff was legitimate, and that the two others were schismatic; and each Pontiff possessed some colored title, and in such manner that for many people it was very difficult, and is so even now, to discern which of them was truly legitimate. Hence, just as God Himself confers jurisdiction to govern the Church on the legitimately elected Pontiff, in the same way He also went on granting jurisdiction on a doubtful Pontiff on account of the invincible error of those adhering to him, to the extent necessary; he himself therefore could confer jurisdiction on the bishops adhering to him. We said "to the extent necessary," that is, for the government of the faithful who adhered to them. But it was not necessary for this purpose that, if they pronounced an anathema on the opposing side and excluded it from the Church, this exclusion should take effect. Hence it does not follow from the fact that their other acts were valid, that the act by which they excommunicated the other side was also valid.”5

Other theologians hold differing interpretations of what took place at this time. However, as I explain below, the relevant point is explaining possibilities that rebut an objection, rather than presenting a full theory. Whether what Wilmers says applies to a false pope making appointments during a vacancy, it is arguing that the appointments of an antipope can be validated by supplied jurisdiction – and thus the full and true attainment of the office, jurisdiction, and formal apostolic succession.

It does not seem clear to me why this should be impossible during an extended vacancy, based on the continuity of the Church’s laws during an interregnum and even the “tacit will of the past popes” who enshrined these laws (although one could perhaps see this as their explicit will), including those which supply jurisdiction under certain circumstances. I have discussed the “virtual continuity” of the Church’s authority in her laws elsewhere, and the implication of this continuity (in reference to St Antoninus, Cardinal Billot, Fr Goupil and others) .6

Returning to the subject, Bishop Mark Pivarunas, in an article titled ‘Episcopal Consecration During Interregnums’ (1996) also provides a list of men consecrated during papal interregna, and provides the following commentary from a Dr Stephano Filiberto:

“On November 29, 1268, Pope Clement IV died, and there began one of the longest periods of interregnum or vacancy of the papal office in the history of the Catholic Church. The cardinals at that time were to assemble in conclave in the city of Viterbo, but through the intrigues of Carlo d’Anglio, King of Naples, discord was sown among the members of the Sacred College and the prospect of any election grew more and more remote.

“After almost three years, the mayor of Viterbo enclosed the cardinals in a palace, allowing them only strict living rations, until a decision would be made which would give to the Church its visible Head. At last, on September 1, 1271, Pope Gregory X was elected to the Chair of Peter.

“During this long period of vacancy of the Apostolic See, vacancies also occurred in many dioceses throughout the world. In order that the priests and faithful might not be left without shepherds, bishops were elected and consecrated to fill the vacant sees. There were accomplished during this time twenty-one known elections and consecrations in various countries. The most important aspect of this historical precedent is that all of these consecrations of bishops were ratified by Pope Gregory X, who consequently affirmed the lawfulness of such consecrations.” (Emphasis added)

Bishop Pivarunas’ article is principally focused on the legitimacy of episcopal consecrations during papal interregna; but once again, the examples cited prove (or at least suggest) that men may attain diocesan sees, and thus the ordinary jurisdiction attached to them, during a vacancy of the Holy See. Whether this is achieved through the “tacit will of past popes”, or through an otherwise invalid appointment being validated by supplied jurisdiction (and thus resulting in the attainment of ordinary jurisdiction), I have found it difficult to see why anyone would consider this impossible, or even implausible – especially if they consider the “tacit will of past popes” capable of providing other forms of jurisdiction.

Current thoughts

Such are some of the arguments I have found compelling in the past.

Over time, however, I have become less certain that the Church strictly requires us to hold that such residential bishops (or their equivalents) must always be exist in act. Certain arguments concerning the significance of a moral continuity – whether established by the Thesis of Cassiciacum’s understanding of a material succession, or not – have given me pause, as have other considerations (such as the implications of Pope Pius XII’s teaching on the Roman Pontiff as the source of jurisdiction). In short, while I retain a very strong inclination towards the thesis that residential bishops (or their equivalents) must continue to exist in the world (viz., this is my opinion), I am presently unsure about what the Church would have us believe on this matter – at least in its implications for our day – and about the force of the arguments above.

In this context, Fr Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s description of St Thomas Aquinas’ development of thought regarding the Immaculate Conception is instructive – although I do not, of course, wish to compare myself to St Thomas:

“While writing it I have noticed more than once how often it has happened that a theologian admitted some prerogative of Our Lady in his earlier years under the influence of piety and admiration of her dignity.

“A second period then followed when the doctrinal difficulties came home to him more forcefully, and he was much more reserved in his judgement.

“Finally there was the third period, when, having had time to study the question in its positive and speculative aspects, he returned to his first position, not now because of his sentiment of piety and admiration, but because his more profound understanding of Tradition and theology revealed to him that the measure of the things of God – and in a special way those things of God which affect Mary – is more overflowing than is commonly understood.”7

As I have been asked: I may, perhaps, be said to be in this second stage with regard to the question of the continuity of the hierarchy. Whether I shall return to my earlier certainty, or arrive at a different conclusion, remains to be seen. In any case, my desire is simply to believe whatever it is that the Church proposes for our belief, as expressed in the Act of Faith.

This section has focused much more on what “I think” than The WM Review’s material usually does. It has done so because “my thoughts” are what have been solicited, and I offer them with the protest about the significance attributed to them, especially on a matter of which I do not enjoy certainty.

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Apologetic Point

In spite of my current uncertainty on exactly what we are to believe about the continuity of the hierarchy, there is an important aspect of which it is easy to lose sight – namely the apologetic point to be made by the so-called “Bishop in the Woods” theory.

One of the chief objections raised by “sedeplenists” to the thesis of a vacancy of the Holy See is that, they say, such a vacancy would necessarily entail the disappearance of the Church’s hierarchy. Without yet determining (a) whether a such a disappearance is in fact possible simpliciter (as I understand Fr Cekada to have believed), (b) whether a merely material succession would suffice for the continuity of the hierarchy (as is held by adherents of the Cassiciacum Thesis), or (c) whether traditionalist bishops themselves constitute the true successors of the Apostles, I believe that it remains both possible and useful to demonstrate that a papal vacancy does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that there are no longer any residential bishops (or their equivalents).

In other words, there is a value in showing that residential bishops (or their equivalents) could continue to exist in act, and that Catholic men could accede to ecclesiastical offices, even during a vacancy of the Holy See. But this argument is directed not primarily at establishing that such a situation actually obtains, but rather to rebutting the claim that it is impossible by showing that it is possible.

I may be mistaken in thinking it possible, or in thinking that this apologetic point is of particular importance. Nevertheless, framing the issue in this way – as a response to an objection, rather than the setting out of a theory – may provide greater clarity as to the state of the question, and the status of competing solutions. At the very least, it should dispel the dismissiveness with which the “Bishop in the Woods theory” has sometimes been treated, and illustrate why the demand that surviving residential bishops be concretely identified is an inadequate response. There are several layers of hypotheticals involved which such a demand fails to appreciate.

One implication of the possibility that the hierarchy may remain in a diminished and obscured form in the world is that it undermines – though it does not exclude – the claim that traditionalist bishops must necessarily have become true successors of the Apostles by an equivalence to residential bishops (at least in so far as this argument has been based on claim of a universal negative). Such traditionalist bishops may indeed possess this status (and I remain unconvinced of this), but the necessity of the conclusion, insofar as it is based on the supposed impossibility of residential bishops existing in act, is weakened. On the other hand, the attainment of this status by traditionalist bishops would not exclude the survival of true residential bishops who continue to hold and exercise authority.

(In passing, it may also be noted that the materialiter posited by the Cassiciacum Thesis with regard to “Novus Ordo bishops” does not appear to exclude the possibility that true residential bishops might still survive either. In other words, such a conclusion is independent of and compatible with both with the Thesis and the idea that traditionalist bishops are members of the hierarchy.)

Even if traditionalist bishops are indeed part of the Church’s visible hierarchy, I believe that it would remain apologetically important to demonstrate that (a) the questions of a vacant Holy See and of apostolic succession are distinct, and (b) that the former does not necessitate the latter. Since this objection is among the principal arguments raised against our conclusions, it is beneficial to place as many legitimate responses as possible on the table. Similarly, even if one were not personally inclined to hold that residential bishops (or their equivalents) survive, such arguments would retain their value in dialogue with sedeplenists, as they undermine the force of their objection.

Concluding Note

This note is offered not as a solution to the complex questions surrounding apostolicity and the continuity of the hierarchy, but as an account of my present understanding and leanings – in answer to those who have solicited them, and (for whatever reason) consider them to be important.

Further study and thought may confirm, modify, or even overturn these views. For the moment, however, it seems both prudent and useful to keep open the range of theological possibilities consistent with the Church’s doctrine, while continuing to seek greater clarity on the matter.

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Post-Script: On Papal Elections and a ‘solution’ to the crisis

As mentioned, the critic, to whom these notes have principally addressed, made the manifestation of my state of mind on these complex questions a condition for answering a rather simple question which I had addressed to him. In the course of those discussions, this person also levelled the following criticisms and demands against me:

“We are still waiting for you to tell us what you think your solution is since you don't hold the Thesis.”

“From now on, anytime you ask me a question or anytime you criticize the theological solutions of others, I will respond by asking you once again to tell us what you think is the solution. I will do this until you finally tell us, and then you and I can discuss answers to other questions. Otherwise, you are like the annoying person criticizing everyone's technique at baseball and saying that everyone is wrong yet never telling us what is supposedly the correct way to play baseball. That isn’t helpful to anyone.”

“How are we going to get the next pope according to the solution which you seem to think you have and which no one else has?

“You have literally offered nothing to this discussion. All you have done is criticize anyone with whom you disagree while you pretend to take the high road.”

In order to forestall further conditions for engagement and attempts to evade my questions (as well as to refute the calumnious insinuations of evasiveness on my part from this person, in the messages above and elsewhere), I am adding some final comments on what I believe to be the “solution to the crisis.”

My answer to this is very simple: I do not know. I have never claimed to know; I consider it unnecessary to know. I have long been open to a range of possible solutions, and The WM Review has published several texts explaining some of them:

• Papal elections without the cardinals? – St Robert Bellarmine

• Papal elections without the cardinals? – Journet & Cajetan

• What is the Church like during a period of sede vacante? Journet & Cajetan tell us

• Papal elections without the cardinals? – Gaspar Hurtado SJ

• Papal elections without the cardinals? – Cardinal Billot

• Papal elections without the cardinals? – Francisco de Victoria OP

• The Church could elect a pope even after a long vacancy: here’s how – M.J. McCusker

• Fake conclave, true pope? – S.D. Wright

• 2 weeks or 60 years: Which fits Franzelin’s account of sede vacante?

My chief crimes, according to my critic, appear to be (a) my failure to accept his solution, and (b) my failure to have decided which, among many possibilities, is the true solution to a problem which baffles nearly everyone.

The one thing I do know is that there either is a solution (whether it be one of the options currently on the table, or something else), or that we are at the end of the world, or both.

I am mystified as to why this person believes it is necessary to throw one’s hat in with one particular solution. I am even more mystified as to why he believes this is a legitimate condition for engagement, or that someone not having a specific solution to offer renders his criticism and observation comparable to “the annoying person criticizing everyone’s technique at baseball and saying that everyone is wrong yet never telling us what is supposedly the correct way to play baseball.”

The attitude reminds me of certain managers in the professional world, who say they “want solutions rather than problems”. But sometimes solutions aren’t available yet, and may never be. Sometimes solutions will not appear unless the problems are properly recognised. Sometimes the closet thing to a solution is simply to stop what one is doing, to avoid making things worse.

This attitude also reminds me of what we saw in 2020-2021. During that time, there were many who believed that masks, mandatory experimental medication, social distancing and so on, were the solution to the supposed health crisis. It was obviously legitimate to object to these measures, to criticise them, and to point out the problems in adopting them, even without having an alternative solution to the situation (assuming, that is, that a solution was even needed). My critic himself would surely not have accepted the arguments of those who could have said said, “If you don’t have an alternative solution, then stay totally silent, take your injection, and comply with my solution.”

Such an attitude is also based on faulty presuppositions. It starts from the premise that “We cannot do nothing.” But if we cannot do “Nothing,” then “We have to do something.” Then “Something” becomes either

1. “Anything” (because if “We cannot do nothing”, then “Anything” is better than “Nothing”),;or

2. “The idea upon which we have alighted” – the legitimacy of which is taken to be proved by the absence of any better alternative (as judged, of course, by the advocates of the line of conduct in question).

Another attitude pertains to the question of the hierarchy. “We function as if the traditionalist bishops are the hierarchy”, we are told; “Therefore they are the hierarchy.” The hidden minor premise here is this: “The way in which we function determines reality.” But aside from being obviously gratuitous, this is putting a lot of weight on the rectitude of our own actions, and ignoring the possibility of other explanations that are in keeping with the facts. For example, it might be true that we act in this way, but that the reason for this is that we are doing our best to conform ourselves, in a conditional way, to how things function normally – whilst being deprived of the actual legitimate hierarchy.

Behind both these attitudes, I believe, lie tendencies towards a latent “Americanism”, condemned by Pope Leo XIII. One aspect of the Americanist presuppositions is as follows:

“This overesteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active.”8

Such presuppositions, I believe, are present in some of the condemnations of those who do not believe that traditionalist bishops can elect a Pope – especially when the critics assert that this lack of belief is based on comfort, complacency, or presumption on God’s grace – or on passivity or “doing nothing”. Against such presuppositions, Leo XIII continued:

“That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent—for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue. ‘Virtue,’ says St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘designates the perfection of some faculty, but end of such faculty is an act, and an act of virtue is naught else than the good use of free will,’ acting, that is to say, under the grace of God if the act be one of supernatural virtue.”9

Sometimes “Nothing” – what appears to be “passivity” – is indeed the right thing to do. But in any case, what is done – keeping the faith, raising our children, evangelising, and in the case of the clergy teaching, administering the sacraments, and so on – is far from “passivity” or “doing nothing.” On the contrary, it is doing what is clearly our duty.

Further, sometimes “Something” is the wrong thing to do. The sons of Aaron did wrong in offering strange fire before the Lord; Saul did wrong in offering sacrifice to God, rather than waiting for Samuel; and Oza did wrong in putting his hand forth to stop the Ark falling. By contrast, the Psalms and the rest of the Scriptures contain many injunctions to “wait” for the Lord, with Psalm 26 telling us directly:

“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.”

Will my answer here be sufficient for my critic? Or will my answer of nescience be made the basis of ridicule and dismissal – as if any solution is better than nescience?

Will the questions which I have posed to him remain unanswered, or be made subject to further conditions?

We will see. In any case, I hope the incomplete and tentative considerations in this article will be of use to someone.

Read Next:

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

• The Apostolicity of the Church – What is ordinary jurisdiction?

• The Apostolicity of the Church – The source of ordinary jurisdiction

• How is the pope the source of jurisdiction? Mgr Fenton explains

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

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Editor’s Notes

The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection can appear, to a superficial glance, difficult to order or harmonise. One result of this is that sceptical or “critical” scholars have adopted explanations which are incompatible with Catholic doctrine – such as accepting that the accounts contradict each other, or worse. Others have attempted to harmonise the accounts, but in ways that do not seem wholly satisfactory.

As we have been seeing over at Father Coleridge Reader, Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ’s work was not simply a commentary on the life of Our Lord, but also a harmonisation. His account of the Resurrection narratives resolves the difficulties with ingenuity and clarity.

After spending two chapters explaining his method, he presents – as he does throughout his two Life of Our Life volumes – the texts from the four Gospels in parallel columns. However, someone reading these four columns without the preceding chapters might not be able to make sense of his ordering; and even with those chapters, four columns do not lend themselves to a single clear narrative.

For these reasons, we are publishing the following single narrative based on his harmonisation, up until the Ascension. We have supplemented it with a few passages from Acts and St Paul. Where some of his choices are surprising or might need commentary, we have included the relevant parts of his text in the footnotes (which therefore include a lot of interesting detail).

Some may disagree with Fr Coleridge’s ordering, or with the judgement we have had to make when his ordering left open a few questions (i.e., particularly around the final appearances of Our Lord). Those who wish to disagree are, of course, entitled to do so. But we hope that this single, clear account of what the Gospels tell us is an aid to the faith of our readers in this joyous time. He is risen indeed!

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord

Based on the Harmony of Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ

The Life of our Life, Vol. II, Chapter XII
Burns and Oates, London, 1876

The Burying of Our Lord

Behold, a certain rich man by name Joseph, who was a senator, a noble councillor, a good and just man, this man had not consented to their counsel and doings; he was of Arimathæa, a city of Judæa, who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. This man, (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but in private, for fear of the Jews), besought that he might take away the body of Jesus.

And when evening was now come (because it was the Parasceve, that is, the day before the Sabbath), [he] came, and went in boldly to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. But Pilate wondered that he should be already dead. And sending for the centurion, he asked him if He were already dead. And when he had understood it by the centurion, Pilate permitted him, [and] he gave the body to Joseph. He came, therefore, and took away the body of Jesus.

And Nicodemus also came, he who at first came to Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound. And Joseph, buying fine linen, and taking Him down and taking the body, he wrapped Him up in the fine linen with the spices, as it is the custom with the Jews to bury.

And there was in the place where He was crucified a garden, and in the garden his own new sepulchre, which he had hewed out in a rock, wherein never yet any man has been laid. There, therefore, by reason of the Parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

And the Sabbath drew near. And the women that were come with Him from Galilee, following after, saw the sepulchre, and, how His body was laid. And, returning, they prepared spices and ointments, and on the Sabbath day they rested, according to the commandment.

And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, the mother of Joseph, sitting over against the sepulchre, [and] beheld where he was laid.

The Sepulchre Guarded

And the next day, which followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees came together to Pilate, saying, Sir, we have remembered that that seducer said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day, lest His disciples come, and steal Him away, and say to the people, He is risen from the dead, so the last error shall be worse than the first.

Pilate said to them, You have a guard, go, guard it as you know. And they, departing, made the sepulchre sure, with guards, sealing the stone.

And in the end of the Sabbath, when it began to [draw on towards1] the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.

And when the Sabbath was past,2 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought sweet spices, that coming they might anoint Jesus.

Continues below:

HELP KEEP THE WM REVIEW ONLINE WITH WM+!

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Our work takes a lot of time and effort to produce. If you have benefitted from it please do consider supporting us financially.

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You can see what readers are saying over at our Testimonials page.

And you can visit The WM Review Shop for our ‘Lovely Mugs’ and more.

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Editor’s Notes

To mark Easter Sunday, we are reproducing the reflections on the moment of the Resurrection from Fr Peter Gallwey SJ’s Watches of the Sacred Passion.

For more information about Fr Gallwey and this work, see the previous part.

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume I

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume II

See also our audio recording od Fr Aloysius Ambruzzi's meditation on the Resurrection here:

And see Fr Coleridge in the same subject:

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Christ Rises from the Grave

Fr Peter Gallwey SJ

The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Vol. II, pp 603-616
Art and Book Co., London, 1896

SCENE XXIV.

THE TOMB.

Station I.

The third day He shall rise again (St. Matt. xvii. 22).

And now His will Who stilled the winds on the lake, and lulled the waves to rest, in an instant hushes the jubilant anthem. There is silence, a holy happy silence, throughout the host of Heaven, and all that vast assemblage, and the prisoners of hope gaze in rapture on the Most Blessed Soul of Christ, as it enters into the Sacred Tomb, and in an instant is united once more, indissolubly now and for ever, with its faithful partner, the sinless, and most obedient helpmate which rendered to His Soul good, and not evil, through all the days of (its) life. Thus, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as the Apostle afterwards wrote (1 Cor. xv.), Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, and the Son of the Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary, He Who is Master of power (Wisdom xii.), and reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly (Wisdom viii.), and with tranquillity (Wisdom xii.), awakes from the sleep of death, and on His new birthday is once more made Man – Jesus Christ, God and Man.

“O God, O My Father, to Thee do I wake at the dawning of the new Sabbath-day. I give Thee thanks, My Father, because Thou (hast) not left My Soul in Hell; nor given Thy Holy One to see corruption.”

No hand does He need to unbind Him, and let Him go. With tranquillity He lays aside the grave-clothes. No angel comes to roll away for Him the stone, though it is great. In silence and with tranquillity He rises, and passes in His glorified Body noiselessly through the stone vaulting of the Sepulchre. The Body sown in dishonour rises in glory; sown in weakness, it rises in power; sown a natural Body, it rises a spiritual Body (1 Cor. xv.). O death, where is (now) thy victory?

Silence, deep silence still reigns throughout the great company of angels and of blessed souls gathered from Heaven and from Limbo to witness the glorious Resurrection. All are waiting and watching for what the Lord will do and say.

Station II.

He is risen, as He said (St. Matt. xxviii. 6).

A. And what does the Lord do or say as He rises from the Tomb? Of the strong man, Samson, we read, that when he found the honeycomb in the dead lion’s mouth, he ate of it, and coming to his father and his mother, he gave them of it, and they ate (Judges xiv.).

A stronger and a better and a more loving Son is here. From the jaws of death He has taken back the honeycomb, the sweetness and the joy of life. Whither shall He go but to share it quickly with the same Mother who has shared all His sorrow? The first Adam, as he woke out of the deep sleep cast on him by God, saw coming towards him the woman that God had formed to be his helpmate. So now the waking eyes of the second Adam, as He rises through the rock, are resting on His Blessed Mother. He sees her draw irresistibly towards Him, and He makes haste to meet her, and most reverently and lovingly embraces her, saying: “My Mother, ‘Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum’ – I am risen, and am with thee still” (Psalm cxxxviii.).

Then it is that an alleluia loud and full and perfectly becoming, bursts from the delighted choirs. Alleluia! alleluia! For hope is changed into ineffable fulfilment.

Sit laus plena, sit sonora,
Sit jucunda, sit decora,
Mentis jubilatio.

Oh, full and loud the song shall be,
Seemly and sweet the minstrelsy,
The anthems of the soul.

And as the Ever-Blessed Mother sinks down to adore, saying once again, “Ecce ancilla Domini!” He adds: “Arise, My Mother, arise; make haste, My love, My dove, My beautiful one, and come. For the winter is now past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers have appeared in our land” (Cant. ii.).

Louder and fuller and more jubilantly bursts out again the response of the entranced spirits, Amen, amen, alleluia, alleluia!

And as the Lord goes on: (She) is My dove! My perfect one is but one! (Cant. vi.); thou art all fair, My loved one, My faithful one, Mother ever Blessed; thou art all fair, and no spot is in thee” (Cant. iv.); their irrepressible gladness breaks forth once more: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Worthy is our Queen, the Mother of the Lamb that was slain, to receive with her Son benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever (Apoc. v.). For God has joined them, and parted they must not be.”

And Holy Mary, overflowing with perfect love, which drives out all fear and all sorrow, responds in that same hour, as she gazes on the beauty of her glorified Son: It is enough for me if my Son and my Lord be living (Genesis xlv.). My God, my Lord, my Son, already in this hour, according to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy consolations have given joy to my soul (Psalm xciii.). My spirit exulteth in God my Saviour.

B. He is risen, as He said.

Our Blessed Lord will be well pleased, and His Holy Mother will be well pleased, and the rejoicing saints and angels will be well pleased, if we also try to take part in this great gladness for the Resurrection and glorification of Christ Jesus crucified.

Gratias agimus Tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam – “We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory.”

St. Ignatius teaches us in his Exercises, when he comes to this mystery, to pray earnestly that we may rejoice intensely on account of the great joy and glory of our Master.

This is not at all a selfish prayer. For if it is love to weep with those who weep, so is it love to rejoice with those who rejoice. Loving compassion does both.

“Cantate Domino,” the Holy Ghost says to us, “canticum novum.”

This scene at the Sepulchre calls for a new canticle. But if we sing with a new heart the old songs, they become a new canticle.

Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Every word is new, and has to-day a new meaning. The Lord is with her now in quite a new way.

And we can practise our souls too in learning how to say better and better her canticle, My soul magnifieth the Lord, blessing God for what He has done for Holy Mary. For thus we can give her a help which she needs; since there is one thing that she never can do as much as she wishes. She cannot bless and thank her God sufficiently.

Regina cœli, lætare, alleluia.
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.
Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia,
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

Rejoice, O Queen of Heaven and earth, alleluia.
For He to Whom thou gavest birth, alleluia,
Is risen as He said, alleluia,
This third day from the dead, alleluia.
Oh, pray for us for whom He bled, alleluia.

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C. He is risen, as He said.

Look attentively at Jesus risen: the same Jesus, as on the Good Friday; and yet how changed! Death is swallowed up in victory. And not only death, but all that went before death. For we remember, there was no beauty in Him then; nor comeliness, nor sightliness. We were not drawn to Him. We could not be desirous of Him. Now He is beautiful above (all) the sons of men; and the angels and blessed saints are desiring to look on Him: and, in quite a new sense, are crying out, O God, look on the Face of Thy Christ, the beautiful Face of Thy Christ, and out of love for Him, be propitious to His poor sinful brethren – the children of His Mother.

D. He is risen, as He said.

St. Ignatius counsels us to note well the great change wrought in Him.

When we see a martyr mangled and tortured, or a holy servant of God suffering on a death-bed, it is hard to believe that they are soon, very soon, to be blessed in Heaven.

Is this calm and beautiful and majestic Lord Jesus the same that on Friday was writhing on the ground in His Blood, a worm and no Man?

He was crucified through weakness, St. Paul writes, yet He liveth by the power of God (2 Cor. xiii.). And while looking on His beauty, and strength, and majesty to-day, we understand better that the weakness of Good Friday was all voluntary. He loved me and delivered Himself up for me.

E. He is risen.

He was dead, truly dead: but it was He Himself Who said of Lazarus: (He) is not dead, but sleepeth. And what to Him now is His Passion, His Death, nay, His whole weary Life, but a short dream? As the dream of them that awake, O Lord (Psalm lxxii.). The things that are seen are temporal: but the things that are not seen are eternal (2 Cor. iv.).

St. Chrysostom writes: “The glory of the Resurrection has buried in oblivion all the bitterness of death.”

F. He is risen.

We have to believe by faith that He is the same Jesus; the scourged Jesus; the crowned Jesus; the crucified Jesus of Good Friday. “Ecce Homo!” He is the same Man; God made Man; the Son of God and the Son of Holy Mary.

St. Leo writes: “The Resurrection did not put an end to the former Body, but only changed its condition. The substance is not destroyed. Some qualities have passed away; but its nature is not gone. That which could then be crucified is now a Body impassible. That which could then be slain is now become immortal. That which could be wounded is made invulnerable.”

And St. Paul writes: If we knew Christ according to the flesh: but now, we know Him no longer. St. Leo, to explain these words, adds: “With reason it is said: that the flesh of Christ is no longer recognised as what it used to be. Because now there is nothing left passible, and nothing that is weak. So that in nature and essence it is the same; but in its glorious condition not at all the same.”

G. He is risen.

St. Paul, the Apostle of the Resurrection, suggests many holy thoughts to entertain our souls while we contemplate our Lord Jesus risen, and His Holy Mother’s consolation.

(a) We are buried with Him by baptism unto death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life (Romans vi.).

The old man of sin was buried in the waters of Baptism. This was more clearly signified in the Baptism by immersion. The Christian rises out of the water regenerated, and a new man. All through my life, then, I ought to have been walking in newness of life. Have I lived the life of a risen man, such as Lazarus lived after coming to life? Has my heart been clean? Has a right spirit been renewed in my bowels?

H. He is risen.

(b) But not to stand alone and exceptional. Christ is risen from the dead, the FIRST FRUITS OF THEM THAT SLEEP. For by a man came death, and by a Man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, SO ALSO IN CHRIST ALL SHALL BE MADE ALIVE (1 Cor. xv.).

One cause, then, of the great joy to-day of Christ our Lord and of His Holy Mother is that we are all, through His Death and Resurrection, to rise again.

They are rejoicing for our joy. Is it much if we rejoice at their joy?

Our poor sinful bodies are to rise. Let us not be slaves to them in their corruption, now; but reverence and cherish them as they will be when risen.

I. He is risen.

(c) And therefore our bodies shall rise. If the dead rise not again, neither is Christ risen again (1 Cor. xv.). Credis hoc? Credo Domine.

(d) But what boots it that our bodies rise, if our souls be not risen?

Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. Why not? Because flesh and blood cannot possess the Kingdom of Heaven; neither shall corruption possess incorruption (1 Cor. xv.).

Alas! alas! Are we to rise with our bodies still quite capable of suffering and of corruption; immortal indeed, but suffering such everlasting misery, that better had it been for him if that man had not been born? (St. Matt. xxvi.).

Is that to be the outcome of Christ’s Death and Resurrection? Absit! Domine. Absit! Mater Dei. Tantus labor non sit cassus. – “Not so, O Lord, not so, Holy Mother. May the Passion of thy Son and thy compassion not be made void.”

J. He is risen.

(e) Christ our Pasch is sacrificed (1 Cor. v.). Our Pasch, our Passover. The name was to remind Israel of the crossing over the Red Sea from slavery into freedom. Christ is our Pasch: because He has made it possible for our souls through His plentiful redemption and all the provision He has earned for His Church to pass from death to life.

St. Bernard writes that if we go back to sin, “We rob the Resurrection of Christ of its name of Pasch, since we do not pass over, but go back.” To each of us He says most compassionately: Arise, make haste, My beautiful one, and come. For winter is now past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land. For each one of us is His Bride, built up out of the water and the blood from His Side; and, though perchance disfigured now, yet He sees us as we are to be: Make haste, My beautiful one, and come.

K. He is risen.

(f) Christ rising from the dead, dieth now no more.

Therefore, under either kind in the Holy Eucharist Christ must be living. Men sometimes say that Holy Church only gives half the Sacrament to the faithful. As long as this heresy prevails, Holy Church fears to countenance it by giving the Blessed Sacrament to the faithful under both kinds. For if Christ is divided, and he who receives the Sacred Body does not receive also the Precious Blood, then Christ is still dead, for His Body and His Blood are separated.

Christ rising from the dead, dieth now no more. Death has no more dominion over Him. The Blessed Mother has obtained for many of her children to rise from sin and die no more. They persevere till death, walking in the newness of life. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life have no more dominion over them. Thanks be to God, Who gave us the victory through Christ our Lord.

“O Holy Mother of God, thy power is still the same. Thy Mother’s heart, too, is unchanged. Pray for us sinners, that we may die no more.”

L. He is risen.

(g) Who was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification (Romans iv.).

The sense is not that Christ by His Death merited forgiveness for us, and by His Resurrection merited an infusion of sanctifying grace. For after His Death our Lord no longer merited. But St. Paul teaches us that His Death and His Resurrection are both to be useful to us; both teach us; both are our models.

His Death teaches us to die to sin, to destroy sin. His Resurrection, to walk in newness of life.

M. He is risen.

If you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above: mind the things that are above, not the things that are on the earth (Coloss. iii.).

Our good Angel is ever whispering: Sursum corda.

Where is wisdom to be found? Job asks. Where are peace and happiness and hope and love to be found?

And where is the place of understanding? If I go down into the rich mine, the depth says: it is not in me. If I look for it on the sea-shore, the sea saith: it is not with me. If I try to buy it, the finest gold will not purchase it, neither shall silver be weighed in exchange for it. Gold or crystal cannot equal it: neither shall any vessels of gold be changed for it.

Whence, then, cometh wisdom?

Sursum corda! Our Angel whispers, God understandeth the way of it: and He knoweth the place thereof (Job xxviii.).

N. He is risen.

(h) Christ our Pasch is sacrificed: therefore let us feast: not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. v.).

That is, let us in our Paschal time use unleavened bread: not the bread seasoned with the old leaven palatable to our nature. Let us not indulge in conversations leavened with malice and wickedness; but let us feast our minds and hearts with innocence and truth.

O. He is risen.

An early Father, Minucius Felix, writes: “Observe how, for our consolation, all creation is ever contemplating (and imitating) the future resurrection. The sun sets in the sea, sets to rise again. Stars disappear and return. Flowers droop and die, to come to life again. Shrubs are withered by age, but blossom again. Seeds must die in the ground before they spring up in beauty. It is with our bodies in this world as with those trees which in the winter season hide all their vigour under a feigned decrepitude. Why wish impatiently that the tree come back to life and bourgeon while the winter is still bleak? Even so, must we wait for the spring-time of our bodies.”

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SCENE XXV.

THE TOMB. THE EARTHQUAKE.

Station I.

And behold there was a great earthquake (St. Matt. xxviii. 2).

A. A great earthquake.

Very loud, but perhaps not of long continuance. Holy Church applies to it the words of the 75th Psalm: The earth trembled and was still, when God arose in judgment, to save all the meek of the earth.

To save all the meek of the earth. The earthquake is not a chastisement sent in anger to destroy; but a voice announcing that the kingdom of this world is no longer under Satan’s power: that Christ the King has conquered all His enemies; and, to-day, the last of them, death – and the enemy death shall be destroyed last (1 Cor. xv.). He is risen now to continue His work of saving all the meek of the earth.

B. A great earthquake.

1. The loud earthquake awakes the drowsy guards and tells them the tidings, and fills them with terror.

2. The loud earthquake, coming unexpectedly, awakens the attention of the disciples, and prepares their minds to believe.

3. The earthquake, short, loud, and without preparation, speaks to the sleeping city. He who hath ears, let him hear, our Lord used to say.

C. A great earthquake.

At the ancient Pasch, the deliverance out of Egypt, nature spoke more loudly: The sea saw and fled: Jordan was turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like the lambs of the flock. At the presence of the Lord, the earth was moved (Psalm cxiii.). O God, when Thou didst go forth in the sight of Thy people the earth was moved, and the heavens dropped at the presence of the God of Sinai (Psalm lxvii.). Why is there less demonstration now? Perchance, because less is wanted now. Christ has wrought better wonders and quite sufficient wonders on Calvary. He, on His cross, with His Blessed Mother by His side, is the wonder that will awaken and attract the hearts of men. I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself (St. John xii.). He is the Fruit hanging on the tree of knowledge and of life, that will lure us all.

The Psalmist speaks of the God of the first Pasch as the God of Sinai. He spoke in the thunder and lightning of Sinai. Our Lord Jesus, the God of Calvary, says: I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bands of love; and I will be to them as one that taketh off the yoke on their jaws; and I put his meat to him that he might eat (Osee xi.).

“By Thy glorious Resurrection, deliver us, O Lord. Do not, on account of graces abused and our hardness of heart, cease to speak; do not be silent.”

Alas! after having loved us with an everlasting love, and drawn us to Calvary to witness His Death and Resurrection, and to know Him and His Blessed Mother, shall our Lord be obliged to say to us in the end: The Lord thy God hath carried thee, as a man is wont to carry his little son, all the way that you have come, until you came to this place. And yet for all this you did not believe the Lord your God? (Deut. i.).

Station II.

For an Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and coming rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. And his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow. And for fear of him the guards were struck with terror and became as dead men (vv. 2–4).

A. An Angel of the Lord descended.

The context is: There was a great earthquake. For an Angel descended.

Hence commentators conclude that the earthquake is produced by the action of God’s Angel. Some men, deluded by the father of lies and by their own pride, deify the laws of nature. Nature is with them supreme. We believe firmly that our God is the Creator and Lord of nature and nature’s laws. He commandeth both the winds and the sea, and they obey Him. So does the earth: The world is Mine, and the fulness thereof (Psalm xlix.); and the firmament above: And all things serve Thee (Psalm cxviii.). For great power always belonged to Thee alone; and who shall resist the strength of Thy arm? For the whole world before Thee is as the least grain of the balance, and as a drop of the morning dew, that falleth down upon the earth. But Thou hast mercy upon all, because Thou canst do all things (Wisdom xi.).

B. The guards became as dead men.

Our Lord is risen: to save all the meek of the earth. The voice of the earthquake is really a message of peace. The guards, indeed, were filled with terror; but this fear will to many be the beginning of wisdom, and perchance afterwards to themselves.

The shock of the earthquake and the aspect of the Angel leave no room for doubt in their souls, whatever bribes the Priests may offer. “Great is the truth, and it gains the day.” These guards set by the Priests and Ancients will be most useful apostles of the truth. Unjust witnesses have risen up against Me, and iniquity hath lied to itself (Psalm xxvi.), that is, against itself, to its own confusion. There is no wisdom, there is no prudence, there is no counsel against the Lord (Prov. xxi.).

C. An Angel of the Lord descended, and coming rolled back the stone.

Some commentators think that the earthquake caused by the Angel rolled back the stone. But perhaps this may have been a distinct effort of the Angel’s power.

D. The guards became as dead men.

See the guards, at the sound of the earthquake, starting to their feet and grasping their swords; but at the sight of the Angel, all their courage and strength is gone, they sink down to the earth and swoon away through excessive fear. The Resurrection is intended to bring life to the dead, but here we see the living fall down as if dead men. This is Simeon’s prophecy concerning Jesus Christ: This Child is set for the fall and the resurrection of many.

Mors est malis, vita bonis – “Death to the wicked; Life to the good.”

“Mother of God, show us the blessed fruit of thy womb, that to us He may be Life.”

E. The guards became as dead men.

If the earthquake and the aspect of the Angel can cause fear like to death, what wonder that when the great day of the Lord shall come, and men shall see the sign of the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and majesty, they shall be withering away with fear?

To-day He rises in mercy, only to save all the meek of the earth. But then He will come to judge justly.

Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando Judex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus.

Oh! what trembling then shall be,
When the Lord in majesty,
Comes to judge the sins of men.

“O Lord, my God, pierce Thou my flesh with Thy fear” (Psalm cxviii.).

NB: We must not forget that the Angel does not roll away the large round stone in order that the Lord may come forth. The Resurrection is already accomplished. The Body that was a natural Body has risen a spiritual Body, and can pass through walls and rocks and bolted doors.

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• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume I

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume II

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Editor’s Notes

To mark Holy Saturday, we are reproducing the reflections on the Harrowing of Hell from Fr Peter Gallwey SJ’s Watches of the Sacred Passion.

John S. Daly has said of this wonderful two-volume work:

“What a gem! Here is a book which I did not wait thirty years to read and which I warmly recommend everyone else to read as soon as possible. Admittedly these two thick volumes cover only the closing days of Our Lord’s timer on earth, but of course there is no period of His life which more richly repays study and meditation than His Passion. Fr. Gallwey has set out the book to facilitate regular meditation, but the reader can use it as he pleases. He cannot fail to acquire not only a profound knowledge of Our Lord’s sufferings and death in their minutest circumstances, but also an invaluable understanding of the lessons they must teach us. If you are ever condemned to prison and allowed only a handful of books, this would be one to insist on having! There is not a page of this book but will make every reader a better person.”

Fr Gallwey was an Irishman, and a contemporary of Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ – both men lived and worked at the Jesuit Church of Farm Street, London. The Catholic Encycopaedia says of him:

Born at Killarney, 13 Nov., 1820; d. in London, 23 Sept., 1906; one of the best-known London priests of his time. He was educated at Stonyhurst, joined the Society of Jesus at Hodder, 7 Sept., 1836, was ordained priest in 1852, and professed of four vows in 1854. As prefect of studies at Stonyhurst, 1855-1857, he made important improvements in the method of study. In 1857 he was sent to the Jesuit church in London, where — except for an interval of eight years during which he held the provincialate and other offices — he spent the rest of his life. He was a man of deep spirituality, much venerated as a preacher, spiritual director, and giver of retreats; he was also noted for his love of the poor and his earnest advocacy of almsdeeds. So great were his energy and enterprise that he set his stamp on all he undertook. Several London convents and Catholic institutions owe largely to his zeal and encouragement both their first foundation and their successful subsequent development. His writings comprise among others: “Salvage from the Wreck”, sermons preached at the funerals of some notable Catholics (1890); “Watchers of the Passion”, (1894), a series of meditations on the Passion, embodying the substance of his retreats; a number of sermons, tracts and other small publications, mostly of a topical kind.

Tomorrow, we will present his reflections on the moment of the Resurrection.

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume I

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume II

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Christ in Limbo

Fr Peter Gallwey SJ

The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Vol. II, pp 590-603
Art and Book Co., London, 1896

SCENE XXI.

NEAR THE TOMB.

Station I.

He descended into Hell.

A. At the ninth hour yesterday our Lord died loving, loving to the end; giving alms by word, by incessant prayers with tears, and by every extremity of suffering. No sooner is His Blessed Soul separated from His Sacred Body than, without any break, He continues at once His work of loving and giving alms; for with infinite love He gives His angels a command concerning His Blessed Mother; and then on an errand of love long desired by His Heart, He descends into Hell, to the Limbo of the Fathers, where He has been for ages the desire of the everlasting hills (Genesis xlix.). This name given by the dying Patriarch Jacob to Jesus Christ, according to some learned commentators signifies that Christ would be the desire of the holy Patriarchs who in their sanctity out-topped the people, like hills upon the plain.

B. He descended into Hell.

He goes down then to the place called Limbo, where all the ancient saints are detained. But He is not to remain there. Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hell, nor wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption (Psalm xv.).

If there are also Holy Souls in Purgatory, doubtless to them also Jesus crucified brings indulgence and eternal rest.

The Prophet Zachary, who foretold the humble triumph of Palm Sunday – Behold the King will come to thee, the just and Saviour. He is poor and riding on an ass – and who also bequeathed to us the precious promise – They shall look on Me Whom they have pierced – seems also to tell us something of our Saviour’s visit to His patient servants in Limbo: Thou also by the blood of Thy Testament hast sent forth Thy prisoners out of the pit, wherein is no water. Return to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. I will render thee double, as I declare to-day (c. ix.). How justly may these blessed souls, who have so patiently waited for the desire of the everlasting hills, be called prisoners of hope!

They have been exiled from God’s home and their home; and now our Saviour is coming to say to them: Return to the stronghold. Come out of the land of oblivion, and take your place in the Church of Christ; not now to suffer in the Church militant, but to enter into the joy of your Lord in the Church triumphant. There I will render thee double. Yes, the long, long delay will seem but a short dream, when they are once in the house of their eternity.

C. He descended into Hell.

The words of Ecclesiasticus also may be a prophecy of this visit. I will penetrate to all the lower parts of the earth, and will behold all that sleep, and will enlighten all that hope in the Lord (c. xxiv.).

All that sleep: because the Holy Souls in Limbo are not tormented, but “sleep the sleep of peace”. But still, they are not in possession; they are only hoping and desiring. And assuredly, here on earth at least, hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul (Prov. xiii.).

The inspired writer adds: Desire when it cometh is a tree of life.

The coming of our Lord Jesus is the tree of life to these saints. Hence Jesus said to St. Dismas: This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise. He knew that Limbo as soon as He entered there would become Paradise. For what have I in Heaven (Psalm lxxii.) better than the Lord Jesus? The Lamb is the lamp thereof (Apoc. xxi.). The Lord shall be to thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory (Isaias lx.).

D. He descended into Hell.

St. Peter also writes: Christ died once for our sins, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the Spirit; in which He preached to those spirits who were in prison, which had been some time incredulous (1 St. Peter iii.).

He preached to those (who) had been some time incredulous.

From these words some ancient writers inferred that certain more exemplary heathens who died without faith received the gift of faith at this visit of our Lord, and were saved. One of these writers relates that when a certain Christian had been reviling Plato, that philosopher appeared to him by night and said: “Do not revile me; for no one embraced the faith, when Christ preached to the dead, more readily than I did.”

But this opinion and this story are not accepted by our holy Doctors. St. Gregory writes: “Christ going down to Limbo only delivered those by His grace who had believed in Him to come, and in their lives adhered to His precepts.” A more common interpretation is that those some time incredulous were those who would not believe Noe’s warning that the Deluge was coming; but afterwards when it came became penitent and were saved.

He preached to those spirits: explaining to them the mystery of the Redemption.

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SCENE XXII.

LIMBO.

Station I.

And Jesus having cried out with a loud voice, gave up the ghost (St. Mark xv. 37).

It is the ninth hour, the hour of the evening sacrifice, and in that same hour His Blessed Soul descends into Hell.

Of a sudden is heard the loud cry of the angels of the Lord who attend upon Him from Calvary, as knocking at the long-closed gates they say with unspeakable jubilation: Lift up your gates, O ye princes; and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter in (Psalm xxiii.).

From inside, the bright spirits who have charge of the prisoners of hope, make their thrilling answer that resounds through the prison and is heard by all there: Who is the King of glory? Promptly from the outside comes the reply: The Lord Who is strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle (Psalm xxiii.). For the blessed legions have been watching with glad amazement how the strength, the virtus, the manliness, the ineffable power of Christ’s suffering meekness, and His Blessed Mother’s untiring compassion, baffled and conquered and crushed under foot Satan and all his rebellious spirits. Once more, therefore, they repeat their exulting challenge: Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter in. And once again with increasing delight the angels of the prisoners cry out: Who is the King of glory? in order that all may hear the grand response: The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory! Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God and the Son of the Virgin Mary, at Whose name every knee shall bow, in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth – He is the King of glory.

The devout women will be asking, at daybreak: Who will roll away the stone? for it was very great. Year by year, and age by age, the blessed angels, in their charity for the prisoners of hope, have been looking wistfully on these huge everlasting doors, and saying: Who can ever roll these barriers away? But now, no word shall be impossible with God. Instantly, in the twinkling of an eye, they are lifted up, and the King of glory, Jesus crucified, is in the midst of His prisoners of hope. And as they sink down overwhelmed with the excess of the unexpected joy, He says to them, as holy Joseph to his brethren: Be not afraid: come nearer to Me (Gen. xlv.). I am Jesus, your Brother. My Mother is your Mother. My brethren, see that it is My mouth that speaketh to you.

But, alas, alas! these are but foolish words. What can we do but again and again make use of the words St. Paul borrowed from a Prophet before him? The manner of that meeting between Jesus crucified and His prisoners, eye hath not seen. The tones of His greeting, and the music of their response, no ear on earth hath ever heard. And how the gladness crowded into that moment obliterated all remembrance of the ages of their exile and imprisonment, no heart in this world can conceive!

Station II.

He descended into Hell.

A. He that (sowed) in tears is now come to reap with infinite gladness and contentment the beginnings of His harvest.

B. He descended into Hell.

Great as is the gladness of these prisoners now that hope long delayed is changed into fulfilment, yet the gladness in the Heart of our Lord is greater inconceivably, as He says to these holy captives: “Come, ye blessed of My Father: Come, ye faithful and prudent servants: Come, ye well-tried friends, come and share the joy of your Lord and your Brother.”

C. He descended into Hell.

And now, helped by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we may in contemplation try to conjecture what manner of special greeting He has for each of those who had been most faithful and devoted. With what words of love, for instance, does He now in one moment give back to St. Joseph a thousand-fold for all the fidelity with which he guarded the family of God committed to him, and acted as the proxy of the Eternal Father!

D. He descended into Hell.

Star differeth from star, St. Paul writes (1 Cor. xv.). So now, also, no two saints in all this company have the same joy poured into them. In each one our Lord creates a new heart; and the gladness of one heart, though like, is still different from the gladness of another.

The martyred Precursor has his own full outpouring of love. Abraham and Isaac and the chaste Patriarch Joseph, and each of the Prophets slain in Jerusalem, all become at once wonderful images and counterparts of Christ Jesus, yet each with his own individual glory. What word of special welcome has our Saviour for the faithful mother of the seven martyrs, for Judith, and for Esther, the types of Holy Mary? for His own St. Anne, and for Elizabeth, the holy mother of His Precursor? And what manner of tenderness has He ready for the patient suffering of holy Job and the faithful charity of Tobias?

E. He descended into Hell.

Then, a little while, and suddenly into the prison of hope, now changed into a Paradise, is ushered by the crowd of blessed angels, their new companion, the first-born on Calvary, the first child of the new family of the second Eve, the penitent and purified and sanctified soul of Dismas, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Oh, wonder! Our Blessed Lord’s gratitude to Dismas for having pleaded for Him is greater beyond measure than the redeemed Saint’s thanksgiving to his Redeemer.

F. He descended into Hell.

But among all the vast gathering of the Blessed here to-day, there are two on whom all eyes are fixed: our first father, Adam, and our mother, Eve. They have a reason beyond all the rest to lie absorbed in grateful adoration, saying: “We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee; because by Thy Death Thou hast undone the evil wrought by us, and hast redeemed the world.”

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SCENE XXIII.

PARADISE ON CALVARY.

Station I.

Thou hast sent forth the prisoners out of the pit (Zach. ix. 11).

How long does the Soul of Christ tarry in Limbo? Some commentators answer, only an instant, and straightway leads out the prisoners of hope. Others argue from the words: So shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights (St. Matt. xii.), that the Most Holy Soul remains in Limbo till near the moment of the Resurrection. But the argument does not seem weighty, as these words may be sufficiently verified by the fact that the Sacred Body remained buried till the third day. We are therefore free, in contemplation, to assume that it is at the Sacred Tomb that our Blessed Saviour, in part at least, preaches to the Holy Spirits, explaining to them as they gaze on the crucified Body, and also on the second Eve, the desolate Mother, the Admirable Mother, the Mother of God, and Mother of men, how grace and salvation has been won for the fallen race.

Station II.

Thou hast sent forth the prisoners out of the pit (v. 11).

A. The third day then is come, and the prophecy must be fulfilled: Three days and three nights the Son of Man shall be in the heart of the earth.

Three days and three nights! If this be so, our cold-hearted human wisdom will calculate, not till the ninth hour of the second day of the week can the Resurrection take place. But there is a power at work strong enough to upset all human calculations.

To Daniel, the Blessed Virgin’s Archangel, Gabriel, said of old: I am come to show it to thee, because thou art a man of desires, (that) seventy weeks are shortened upon thy (captive) people (Daniel ix.). The soul of this man of desires is present now, yearning with a longing that he never felt on earth, that the Resurrection may come speedily. But Daniel is only one of the gathering of Holy Souls from Limbo; and the blessed angels from Heaven who are gazing on the Body of the second Adam and the bruised heart of the second Eve, are all consumed with a longing that justice may be done quickly to the Sacred Body and to the separated Soul which are awaiting their reunion. God joined these two together, and no other power had right to sever them. Love alone, Infinite love, above all law, broke the sacred bonds, and in death they are divided.

B. Thou hast sent forth the prisoners.

And then, too, all the immense choir of Blessed Spirits are pleading with an irresistible concord for justice to the bruised heart of the Immaculate Mother, who, with the Eternal Father, so loved the world that she gave her only Son for man’s redemption.

C. Thou hast sent forth the prisoners.

Add to this longing for justice to their King their own bereavement. They cannot be at rest till they possess Him; and, if they may not yet have their Queen also, till at least they see her consoled ineffably. Thou wilt arise (O God), is their cry, and have mercy on Sion; for it is time to have mercy on it, for the time is come (Psalm ci.). “If we may not yet possess our Queen, it is time that we be allowed to look on the face of Thy Christ, our Lord, our Redeemer, our King, our God.”

Station III.

There stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother (St. John xix. 25).

But there is a cry going up to the throne of the Eternal Trinity more powerful than this stupendous supplication of all the choirs of angels and all the liberated just. Ever since that ninth hour, wherever she bent her steps, the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of Sorrows has been, with groanings unspeakable, pleading that the Holy Soul and Sacred Body, which had paid a debt they did not owe, and been afflicted by a parting so cruel and so undeserved, may be most speedily brought together again.

Once before, the Lord Jesus said to the Blessed Woman of desires: Woman, My hour is not come (St. John ii.): and yet her will prevailed, and it was done according to her wish, for her grateful God never forgets the hour when she said: Be it done unto me according to Thy word. Now, therefore, when her heart cries out: “O God, O Lord, O my Son Jesus, incline unto my aid, make haste to help me; O Lord, hearken, and do; delay not for Thy own sake,” He answers: Mother, My hour is not come; but all the while He does not forget His promise: No word shall be impossible with God, now that the second Eve is become My Mother. And the adorable Trinity, in their wisdom and loving charity, see how the hours can be abbreviated and truth remain undamaged.

Now, therefore, as has been said, for His own sake, for the sake of His Divine Son made Man, for the sake of the Blessed Mother of God, for the sake of the expecting saints and angels, for the sake of the afflicted Church on earth, the days are shortened, as far as may be consistently with the due fulfilment of prophecy. The Vesper hours of Good Friday, from the ninth hour to sundown, are accepted as one day. The Great Sabbath is the second. And now the hours from the end of the Sabbath to the beginning of the early twilight of the first day after the Sabbath, are admitted as the third day.

Station IV.

Return to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. I will render thee double (Zach. ix. 12).

A. Ye prisoners of hope.

The Holy Souls, then, released from Limbo, and all the choirs of angels, are now around their Queen, near the glorious Sepulchre. We have a saying that “coming events cast their shadows before.” In this hour, it is not a shadow that is the harbinger, but a growing hope, and a joy becoming every moment more intense. The hour of suspense is a heavenly day-dawn such as this world has never seen, preparing the way for a glorious sunburst such as angels or men have never conceived.

To the soul of Holy Mary her Archangel is sent to whisper the message: Yet a little and a very little while, and He that is to come will come, and will not delay (Hebrews x.). Meanwhile we may in our poor way contemplate these hoping and expecting and desiring saints and angels, whose eyes are ever turning to the Mother of God, to learn of her what they are to wish, and what to do. If we may use a human word, she is the leader, and ruler, and precentor of this vast and glorious choir which the Eternal God has prepared for Himself and His own home.

Holy writers assume that at the Resurrection, angels and the liberated souls are visible to our Lady.

B. Prisoners of hope.

What, then, are the thoughts of this expecting company which no man can number?

As we have already seen, one dominant thought is an intense longing that the hours be abbreviated.

But besides this, we know enough from revelation to be able to penetrate a little more behind the veil that hides these blessed choirs from the eyes of this world. The recording angels have, without failing for one moment, kept most diligently an exact register of every deed, every word, every thought of Jesus, God made Man, from His conception to the ninth hour, when He bowed His head and died. Not for one moment have they slumbered or slept over this task of love and joy. Now all the blessed spirits know, and they remind one another of it, that His own teaching was that not even one cup of cold water given as an alms shall lose its reward.

What manner of reward, then, they ask, in transport of reverent wonder and delight, will the adorable Trinity create for all the works of the Lord Jesus? For all His words and thoughts while on earth are, not only an almsgiving, and an almsgiving of that kind which is most precious, the almsgiving that costs much, but also an almsgiving raised to an infinite value by the love that burns in the Heart of Jesus, God made Man, And God, Who is the true Father, the good Father, the most loving Father of all this large family of His children, is not displeased at their holding happy counsel together on this question. Let the just feast and rejoice before God, and be delighted with gladness (Psalm lxvii.). And so they consider in detail what shape and form of recompense will have been planned in the eternal counsels of their God, for the Son of Man, Christ Jesus.

We read how King Assuerus, when he was enduring a night without sleep, commanded the chronicles of his reign to be brought to him, that they might help to pass the weary hours. There, on a page long overlooked, they read for him how Mardochai, the Jew, had saved his life from traitors. What honour and reward, he asked, hath Mardochai received for this fidelity? His servants answered: He hath received no reward at all. He called therefore his chancellor, Aman, and put this question to him: What ought to be done to the man whom the King is desirous to honour? (Esther vi.).

This is precisely the question that occupies this vast assembly of the blessed now, and the question which the Eternal Trinity wish them to meditate.

We too are permitted, in our poor contemplation, to consider in our hearts the same question: What ought to be done to our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus crucified, Whom our God is desirous to honour? What reward do we wish Him to have?

C. Prisoners of hope.

Leaving aside, then, that immense record of His thirty-three years on earth, which the whole world could not contain: “What manner of recompense,” the blessed saints and angels are wondering, “will be given to our King even for His last night and His last day on earth?”

The Eternal Father has, if we may use our human language, through ages that had no beginning, been meditating on this same question: What shall I give (My Son) for all He hath given to Me? (Psalm cxv.).

“If the cup of cold water is to have a lavish reward,” the Cherubim and Seraphim argue, “what shall be given for each drop of His own life-blood?” “We have numbered,” the recording angels say, “most faithfully, all these wounds upon His Body; in what way, think you, will each of them be made good and compensated with ample measure, flowing over?”

“And all those times when He fell down helpless!”

Perhaps even we here on earth know already something of the way in which this weary exhaustion is to be made right. For we see in the great mystery of His existence in the Blessed Eucharist, how His Sacred Body which was on the Way of Sorrow so powerless, henceforth can be in every corner of the world at the same moment.

“Blessed be the Holy and Undivided Trinity, that has planned this recompense for this lifeless and motionless Body.”

“What,” asks one, “shall be the joy and delight given to His eyes for every tear they shed?” “Yes,” another adds, “and for the charity of His eyes? and for the reverence also of His eyes when closed in prayer?”

“And can any one conjecture what can be done to glorify His sacred mouth for every word He spoke, and for His admirable silence? For not one word spoken nor one word meekly held back can pass away without its eternal recompense.”

“And what kind of delight will be created to make compensation for His thirst?”

“And His sacred feet that were so weary, and yet so untiring! and His hands, ever open to bless and to give! Even if the nails had never passed through these feet or hands, what can be thought of to pay all that they have earned?”

“But above all, His Sacred Heart that loved with a boundless love from the moment of His conception till He expired! What new kind of honour have the adorable Trinity planned to make up to It for all Its sorrows and the sorrows of His Ever-Blessed Mother?”

“Then besides, what think you will be done as a recompense for the gratitude of His Heart? for the meekness of His Heart? for the humility of His Heart? and for the never-ceasing obedience of His loving Heart?”

What can be done? “O Lord, our God, Thou knowest. It is well: for we know not.” And then, that last wrench of separation which parted the Sacred Body and the Holy Soul! O mystery! How shall that parting ever be made up to both?

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D. Prisoners of hope.

So do they wonder and contemplate, and they turn their eyes to the Blessed Mother.

But here, instead of finding help, they have to begin again a new range of wonder and calculation. For is it not written: According to the multitude of My sorrows, Thy comforts have given joy to My Soul (Psalm xciii.). If her sorrows have been great as the ocean, how will her heart be enlarged to hold the joy in store for her? O Lord our God, Thou knowest. Blessed be our God. He is faithful in all His words and holy in all His works. The eyes of all hope in Thee, O Lord (Psalm cxliv.).

Thus do the blessed spirits muse in boundless gladness in presence of their God; and the Blessed Mother, united with them, is from the depths of her heart crying out: Come, Lord Jesus (Apoc. xxii.); and her cry prevails.

E. Prisoners of hope.

But first, the Holy Spirit breathing where He wills, sweetly whispers into her soul, as to the precentor of the heavenly choir, the answer to all their musings, and at the same moment inclines them too to take up from her the new anthem which answers their own manifold questions. Beginning, then, with the Ever-Blessed Mother of God, and rising sweetly and solemnly, and “full and loud, and most becoming,” from this vast choir, the new canticle is on a sudden heard: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction (Apoc. v.). And in that hour, with a full comprehension, they grasp the special reasons for every word in that glorious and unanimous verdict.

Power He shall have, because He was so helpless and so subject.

Divinity must burst forth in a perfect revelation, because His aspect was so hidden, and He was known only as a Man, and as a Man of Sorrows – a worm and no Man.

Wisdom must shine as the sunlight, because He was mocked as a fool.

Strength shall beyond measure be multiplied, because He lay down powerless upon the ground, and became as a Man without help.

Honour shall be His, because He was glutted with reproaches; and glory He shall have, because as the sinner He endured all shame.

Yes, and Benediction! Blessing be for ever to His Name above all names, for He was hooted by His people whom He loved.

F. Prisoners of hope.

And now the heart of the Blessed Mother with supreme earnestness cries out: Arise, O my glory. O Lord, make haste to help me. Arise, my Son, and have mercy on Sion, for the time is come to have mercy on it.

With one heart they respond, “Amen, amen.”

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Read Next:

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume I

• The Watches of the Sacred Passion, Volume II

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Editor’s Notes

We conclude here our translation of Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ’s treatment of the practice of the Quartodecimans – a group which fell out of the Church following the Council of Nicaea. (For more information about the Quartodecimans, and Fr Daniel, see Part I.)

This treatment was originally published by Fr Daniel as a companion piece to his translation of Fray Luis de León’s “system” for calculating the dates of Holy Week, and harmonising the four Gospels with each other and with the Roman liturgy.

In this part, we reproduce Fr Daniel’s Sixth to Eight Propositions:

• Sixth Proposition: The Council of Nicæa did not have in view preventing the day of Our Lord’s Passion from coinciding with the Jewish Passover.

• Seventh Proposition: It merely sought to ensure that the Church’s Easter did not depend on the Jewish Passover, their calculations, or their cycles – assuming they had any.

• Eighth Proposition: Some scholars have misunderstood the Greek texts of Eusebius and Socrates regarding the Quartodecimans, and have corrupted those of Sozomen and Nicephorus by attempting to correct them according to their own biases. Evidence for this last proposition will be scattered throughout various parts of this work.

What emerges from the final part of the study is a reality which has been staring us in the face, but to which few have adverted. We tend to think of Our Lord holding the Last Supper the day before he suffered; this is what the Roman Canon says, and – and by our reckoning of days – so he did. But by the Jewish reckoning of days, the institution of the Blessed Eucharist – taking place after nightfall – was on the same day as the Crucifixion, as Our Lord and the Apostles would have understood it.

This way of looking at the two events may provide further food for thought and reflection in relation to the Catholic doctrine that the Sacrifice of Calvary and the Sacrifice of the Mass are one and the same, as the Roman Catechism teaches:

“We therefore confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same Sacrifice as that of the cross, for the victim is one and the same, namely, Christ our Lord, who offered Himself, once only, a bloody Sacrifice on the altar of the cross. The bloody and unbloody victim are not two, but one victim only, whose Sacrifice is daily renewed in the Eucharist, in obedience to the command of our Lord: Do this for a commemoration of me.

“The priest is also one and the same, Christ the Lord; for the ministers who offer Sacrifice, consecrate the holy mysteries, not in their own person, but in that of Christ, as the words of consecration itself show, for the priest does not say: This is the body of Christ, but, This is my body; and thus, acting in the Person of Christ the Lord, he changes the substance of the bread and wine into the true substance of His body and blood.”

Without entering into controversies over the Pian reform of Holy Week, we can see that there is indeed a certain sense in the Mass of Maundy Thursday being celebrated in the evening, and there being no sacrifice on Good Friday (which would have been a “second” sacrifice on the same day, according to this way of reckoning).

While an extended essay on a very early group of heretics may seem like a strange choice for Holy Week reading, it is directly related to the Church’s celebration of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ – and, if Fr Daniel is correct, it not only makes sense of some apparent discrepancies in the Gospels, but also sheds further light on how the Resurrection fulfils the Mosaic Law, as we shall see in due course.

This is an important text – but it is long and theological, rather than devotional. For a more devotional piece about Good Friday, see the below:

Note on the text

• The text contains a number of marginal notes, which I have omitted.

• Fr Daniel’s argument is that confusion has arisen through the use of terms for various feasts. In French, he uses Pâques to denote the Passover, Easter and the Quartodeciman observation of the Passion on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. As such, the author’s own usage can be quite confusing itself. In order to bring more clarity, I have used Passover to denote the Jewish festival, Easter to denote the celebration of the Resurrection, and Pascha to indicate either the period of the Triduum or earlier uses in which the meaning was less clear.

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The Discipline of the Quartodecimans for the Celebration of Pascha

Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ

Articles VIII-X
Taken from Recueil de divers ouvrages philosophiques, théologiques, historiques, Apologetiques et de Critique, Vol. III, MDCCXXIV, pp 473-508

• The real timeline of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion (Fray Luis de León)

• How an ancient controversy unlocks the Gospels’ Holy Week timeline (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the Quartodecimans celebrated ‘Pascha’ (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the early Easter disputes are misunderstood by historians (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• The Last Supper and the Crucifixion were on the same day – by Jewish reckoning (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

Article VIII

Fifth Proposition: The Council of Nicaea did not aim to prevent what we now call the Feast of Easter from falling on the day of the Jewish Passover.

My reasons are:

1. That this is not seen in Eusebius, Socrates, nor in what we have of the Council of Nicaea.

2. That the Quartodecimans, on whose account the Paschal decree was made in the Council, never celebrated what we call the Easter feast on the day the Jews celebrated theirs. This I have proven irrefutably in the second article of this dissertation.

3. Finally, in the letter that Constantine wrote to the Churches about the Council’s decree, where he says that everyone agreed to celebrate the Paschal feast at the same time and not to base it on Jewish customs, Constantine, I say, does not speak of the feast of the Resurrection but of the Passion [Good Friday], as seen from the two passages of that letter I have quoted and repeat here.

“First of all,” he says, “it seemed to everyone unworthy to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy feast... it is appropriate to follow the way we have followed from the day the Passion of the Savior was first celebrated, until now.”

“Moreover,” he adds, “one must reflect that it is against all reason not to agree on a matter of such importance, and in the celebration of so great a feast. Our Savior has left us but one feast, which is the day of our Redemption, that is, of His most holy Passion. He wanted there to be only one Catholic Church, whose members, though dispersed in various places, should be animated by the same spirit.”

Thus, if the Council of Nicaea intended to prevent some Christian feasts from being solemnized on the day the Jews celebrated their Passover, it was not what we now call the feast of Easter, but what we call the Passion [Good Friday].

But I further say that the Council did not intend to prohibit either. That is my sixth proposition.

Article IX

Proofs of the Sixth Proposition

I take the proofs for this proposition from the ordinary practices of the Catholic Churches since the Council of Nicaea, after they received the decree. First, when the full moon of the equinox fell on Thursday, the Passion was always celebrated on Friday, to observe the feast of the Resurrection on Sunday. But to celebrate the Passion on Friday in this case is to celebrate it on the fifteenth of the moon, which is the day the Jews hold their Passover feast. Therefore, the Church’s practice shows that the Council of Nicaea did not intend to prevent Christians from celebrating the feast of the Passion [Good Friday] on the day of the Jewish Passover.

Likewise, when the fourteenth of the moon fell on Saturday, 21^st March, the feast of the Resurrection was observed the next day; that is, the fifteenth of the moon and therefore the day of the Jewish Passover. Therefore, the Church does not believe that celebrating our Pascha on the day of the Jewish feast is acting against the decree of Nicaea.

It is true that the Jews at the time of the Council of Nicaea, both before and after the Council of Nicæa, sometimes mistakenly celebrated their Passover before the equinox: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Saint Epiphanius, and the testimony of various Councils leave no doubt about this; but it is also true that they sometimes celebrated this feast after the equinox, and in this case, the Christians could coincide with them, either for the day of the Passion or the day of the Resurrection. But it was never the point, nor ever believed in Rome or in Egypt, that by following the two rules for celebrating Easter, they were acting against the intention of the Council of Nicaea when the days fell in such a manner.

It is according to this principle and custom that Saint Epiphanius says, disputing against the Audians, that the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Easter on the Sunday following the fourteenth of the moon, whether that fourteenth falls on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday as long as it is not before the equinox. But, as I just said, if it fell on Thursday, we would celebrate the Passion when the Jews celebrate their Passover feast, that is, the fifteenth of the moon; if it falls on Saturday, the Easter feast will be celebrated among us on the same day they celebrate theirs, as long as they celebrate their Passover after the equinox.

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ARTICLE X

Seventh Proposition: All that the Council sought to regulate among Christians in relation to the Jews is that the Christian Pascha be completely independent of their Passover, and that the former do not take into account the time when the latter celebrate it, their calculations, or their cycles, assuming that they had any.

This is all that Constantine said and meant in his letter to the Churches, in which he speaks in this manner:

“It is something unworthy,” he says, “to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy feast. It is contrary to all reason to give them a place to boast that without their help and direction we do not know how to celebrate this feast, etc.”

This is all, I say, that the Council intended to prescribe to the churches concerning the Jews.

But its main intention was to ensure uniformity in everything. Therefore, it ordered that the Resurrection be celebrated only on Sunday, while the Quartodecimans sometimes celebrated it on one day, and sometimes on another, depending on the day their Pascha or the fourteenth of the moon fell. Additionally, it ordered that it not be celebrated before the equinox and, finally, that the Paschal fast not end before the night of Resurrection Sunday – for concerning the hour of ending the fast, the practice since the Council of Nicaea has varied according to the various churches.

Article XI

The causes and consequences of the false prejudices that have existed until now on this matter

I believe that the causes can be reduced to the little care that has been taken until now to clarify this point of ecclesiastical history, and to the ambiguous manner in which the ancients expressed themselves when dealing with this topic.

Since the Council of Nicaea, the error of the Quartodecimans did not cause much noise in the church, and the schism of those who continued it was not very widespread. Many centuries after that great Council, some vestiges were still seen, especially in Scotland, as narrated by the Venerable Bede; but they reached an agreement, and the group of those who remained obstinate dissipated. Thus, nothing compelled the wise to pay extraordinary attention to the subject of these ancient disputes.

But the main origin of the false prejudices we have reached until now has been the ambiguity of the name Pascha, which the historians who have spoken about the Quartodecimans have used without explaining, given that in their time it was understood in the sense given to it.

The name Pascha feast meant to the first Christians what we now call the day of the Passion [Good Friday]; I believe I have provided undeniable evidence in this regard. Just as the Christians sacrificed the mystical Lamb in the sacred mysteries on the night between Holy Saturday and Resurrection Sunday, and even held a feast that had some similarity to the Jewish Passover, they also gave the name Pascha to this solemnity. And since then, the name Pascha had different meanings: the Quartodecimans gave it only to the day of the Passion, and the others to Resurrection Sunday; or rather, these latter, without ceasing to use it for the day of the Passion, understood and also gave it to the day of the Resurrection – for Tertullian, among others, sometimes took it with one meaning and sometimes with another. The author of the Chronicle of Alexandria speaks of certain people (undoubtedly the Quartodecimans) “who were scandalized that the Church gave the name Pascha to the holy day of the Resurrection.”

“They are ignorant,” he adds, “of the meaning of this word. What in Greek is called diabasis, exbasis, hyperbasis, passage, exit, is called Phase or Passover [Pesach] in Hebrew. The Church, therefore, calls with the name Pascha not only the death of Our Lord but also his return to life, for the death and Resurrection have been, for humanity, a passage, a liberation, an exit, etc.”

We have seen from the passages of Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose that the name Pascha was given to the period of the three days in which Our Lord was crucified, remained in the tomb, and rose again. Saint Epiphanius even applies it to the entire Holy Week. But as the Council of Nicaea spoke about the Quartodecimans, it took that word as the day of the Passion, as I have proven by the letter from Constantine to the churches about the decisions of the Council – although there was always some relation to the feast of the Resurrection on which it depended.

Finally, as the customs of the Quartodecimans were abolished almost everywhere, the name Pascha became in a very short time almost exclusively for the day of the Resurrection, and for several centuries now it has only been given to that day. This ancient usage, therefore, is what caused the error of many scholars, who, when reading in the historians of the early centuries that the Quartodecimans celebrated Pascha on the fourteenth of the moon, believed that on that day they celebrated the feast of the Resurrection, although they actually celebrated the Passion [Good Friday].

What also caused the misunderstanding and led to the belief that the Quartodecimans celebrated the feast on the day of the Resurrection on the fourteenth of the moon, is that Eusebius, speaking of the custom of the Quartodecimans, opposed to them the decree of the Councils that met during the time of Pope Victor, which ordered that the feast of the Resurrection be celebrated only on Sunday; however, this decree was not made because the Quartodecimans celebrated this feast on the fourteenth, but because they celebrated their Passover on the fourteenth regardless of what day of the week it fell, and therefore celebrated the Resurrection three days later; thus that fourteenth, which they took as their only rule, was the cause that they often celebrated the feast of the Resurrection on a day other than Sunday. That is the reason for the decree that ordered the Resurrection to be celebrated only on Sunday, as I have explained before.

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Conclusion

What can be concluded from the tradition of the Quartodecimans in favor of the system of the Spanish theologian [Fray Luis de León] and against other systems.

1. I assume, after having clearly proven it, that the tradition of the Quartodecimans was a true tradition, meaning that they followed for Pascha the practice of Saint John and Saint Philip.

2. This tradition implies or encompasses three things: first, that Our Lord celebrated the Passover of the Law, which is why the Quartodecimans were so attached to this observance; second, that they celebrated the Passover feast on the fourteenth of the moon; third, that this Passover feast was the feast of the Passion of Our Lord.

The first article destroys the System of R.P. Lami of the Oratory, who claims that Our Lord did not celebrate the Passover of the Law the year of his death.

That same article, as well as the second, clearly implies that Our Lord was slain on the fourteenth of the moon, since the Asians celebrated the feast of the Passion on that day.

By the same principle, it seems clear that they held the Paschal feast on the night that began on the fourteenth before celebrating the feast of Pascha, that is, the Passion [Good Friday]; and since they did so only because their tradition had taught them that Our Lord did the same according to the Law, it follows that Our Lord held the Passover feast on the first night of the fourteenth, and that the Jews did the same according to the Law. This is the proposition of the Spanish doctor [Fray Luis].

Now, can there be any doubt that this was the practice of the Quartodecimans? Does not the name itself indicate it? If they had held the Paschal feast only on the night following the fourteenth of the moon, and celebrated the Paschal feast – that is, the Passion [Good Friday] – on the fifteenth, they would have been called quintodecimans, and not quartodecimans. They would have celebrated it on the fifteenth of the moon and not the fourteenth.

Is not the manner in which Bishop Polycarp expresses himself on this point decisive? He says that he and his confreres, the bishops of Asia, and their holy predecessors celebrated the Paschal feast when the Jews purged their houses of leaven: “They celebrate Pascha when the Jews threw the leaven out of their houses.” But they did not throw the leaven out of their houses on the fifteenth of the moon, as their houses had to be completely purged at the beginning of that day according to the Law – that is, from the first night of the fifteenth when the Passover feast and the seven days of Unleavened Bread began; they took care of this on the fourteenth of the moon. Therefore, on the fourteenth of the moon, the Quartodecimans celebrated the Passion of Jesus Christ, which had been preceded the night before by the Paschal feast and the celebration of the sacred mysteries.

Finally, the idea has always been held in the Catholic Church, founded on the testimony of the ancients, that the Council of Nicaea intended not only that Christians should not follow either the custom or the calendar of the Jews regarding the Passover feast, but also that they should never coincide with them on that date; but this cannot be understood to mean that Christians never celebrated the feast of the Resurrection or the Passion on the same day that the Jews celebrated their Passover feast. For the Jews celebrate this feast on the fifteenth of the moon according to the law: “On the fourteenth day of the first month shall be the Lord’s Passover. On the fifteenth day of this month shall be a feast” (Num. 28:16). And assuming they celebrate it after the equinox (as they do and did at times in the early centuries of the Church), it is impossible for Christians not to coincide with them, since when the fourteenth of the moon falls on Thursday, we celebrate the feast of the Passion the following Friday – and thus, on the day of the Jewish Passover feast. When the fourteenth is on Saturday, we celebrate the feast of the Resurrection the following day – and thus, on the day of the Jewish Passover feast, as I said before.

What, then, could have been the meaning and intention attributed to the Council? It is that Christians were not t0 celebrate the Christian Pascha at the same time that the Jews celebrated the Passover of the Law; that on the same night that the Jews ate the Passover Lamb, the Christians were not to immolate nor eat the Mystical Lamb or celebrate the holy Mysteries of the Christian Pascha. But assuming that the Jews ate the Passover Lamb on the second night of the fourteenth – that is, at the beginning of the fifteenth – the Christians of Nicaea could and did in fact coincide with them in the circumstances I have indicated. On the contrary, assuming that the Jews ate the Lamb on the first night of the fourteenth, Christians could never coincide with them, because according to the Council, the fourteenth had to have passed in order to celebrate the mystery of the Resurrection. To reconcile the Council’s decree with the practice of the Church, it must be concluded that the Council believed that, according to the Law, the Jews ate the Passover Lamb at the beginning of the fourteenth or on the first night of that day, and not at the end or on the second night.

I leave it to the wise to decide on the solidity of my conjectures and reasoning, as well as on the solidity of the Spanish theologian’s System.

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Read Next:

• The real timeline of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion (Fray Luis de León)

• How an ancient controversy unlocks the Gospels’ Holy Week timeline (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the Quartodecimans celebrated ‘Pascha’ (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the early Easter disputes are misunderstood by historians (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• The Last Supper and the Crucifixion were on the same day – by Jewish reckoning (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

HELP KEEP THE WM REVIEW ONLINE WITH WM+!

As we expand The WM Review we would like to keep providing free articles for everyone.

Our work takes a lot of time and effort to produce. If you have benefitted from it please do consider supporting us financially.

A subscription gets you access to our exclusive WM+ material, and helps ensure that we can keep writing and sharing free material for all.

You can see what readers are saying over at our Testimonials page.

And you can visit The WM Review Shop for our ‘Lovely Mugs’ and more.

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Based text of translation made with the assistance of AI and each line scrutinised and checked against the French text.

Editor’s Notes

We continue here our translation of Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ’s treatment of the practice of the Quartodecimans – a group which fell out of the Church following the Council of Nicaea. (For more information about the Quartodecimans, and Fr Daniel, see Part I.)

This treatment was originally published by Fr Daniel as a companion piece to his translation of Fray Luis de León’s “system” for calculating the dates of Holy Week, and harmonising the four Gospels with each other and with the Roman liturgy.

In this part, we reproduce Fr Daniel’s Fourth Proposition – which runs contrary to how this early controversy is reported in history books:

“The Quartodecimans celebrated the Resurrection on the third day after the fourteenth of the moon.”

Although they were wrong to persist in their practice after the Church had adopted a uniform method of dating Easter, their tradition and its apostolic roots helps resolve an apparent difficulty in the Gospels.

While an extended essay on a very early group of heretics may seem like a strange choice for Holy Week reading, it is directly related to the Church’s celebration of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ – and, if Fr Daniel is correct, it not only makes sense of some apparent discrepancies in the Gospels, but also sheds further light on how the Resurrection fulfils the Mosaic Law, as we shall see in due course.

This is an important text – but it is long and theological, rather than devotional. For a more devotional piece about Maundy Thursday, see the below:

Note on the text

• The text contains a number of marginal notes, which I have omitted.

• Fr Daniel’s argument is that confusion has arisen through the use of terms for various feasts. In French, he uses Pâques to denote the Passover, Easter and the Quartodeciman observation of the Passion on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. As such, the author’s own usage can be quite confusing itself. In order to bring more clarity, I have used Passover to denote the Jewish festival, Easter to denote the celebration of the Resurrection, and Pascha to indicate either the period of the Triduum or earlier uses in which the meaning was less clear.

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The Discipline of the Quartodecimans for the Celebration of Pascha

Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ

Articles VI-VII
Taken from Recueil de divers ouvrages philosophiques, théologiques, historiques, Apologetiques et de Critique, Vol. III, MDCCXXIV, pp 473-508

• The real timeline of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion (Fray Luis de León)

• How an ancient controversy unlocks the Gospels’ Holy Week timeline (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the Quartodecimans celebrated ‘Pascha’ (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the early Easter disputes are misunderstood by historians (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

Article VI

Fourth Proposition: The Quartodecimans celebrated the Resurrection on the third day after the fourteenth of the moon

This proposition is a conclusion of all that I have said so far. According to the protest of Bishop Polycarp on behalf of the bishops of Asia, the discipline of the Quartodecimans in this matter followed exactly the order of the evangelical history for the ceremonies of the Paschal period and the celebration of the mysteries. However, the Resurrection of the Savior occurred on the third day after the fourteenth of the moon, and therefore, they celebrated the Resurrection on the third day after the fourteenth; unless it is said that they did not observe this feast at all – of which they were never accused, and would never have failed to be accused, considering that the mystery of the Resurrection was always celebrated everywhere, since the birth of the Church.

But I prove this conclusion not only by such an evident reasoning as that which I have just made; I also have two proofs taken from history. The first is what Saint Epiphanius says in the tenth chapter on the heresy of the Audians, of which I spoke of in the previous article. He says that the so-called Apostolic Constitutions followed by these heretics ordained that Christians keep a vigil in the middle of the days of unleavened bread. We know that Christians held these vigils in the Church on the nights of great feasts, and they are still held today in the Churches of the East. None of those ancient writers who spoke of the devotions practiced by Christians to prepare for the day of the Resurrection failed to mention this; it is unnecessary to bring in testimonies, as it is so well established. Now, what was this vigil that the Apostolic Constitutions ordained Christians to observe in the middle of the days of unleavened bread, if not the one by which the Quartodeciman Christians prepared for the feast of the Resurrection, according to the ceremonies used for this occasion by all Christians?

The days of unleavened bread began on the fourteenth of the moon and ended on the twenty-first. This vigil of the feast of the Resurrection was held on the third day after the fourteenth [viz., the evening before by our reckoning]; hence it was the vigil of the Resurrection.

My other proof is taken from the decree of Pope Victor, along with all the particular Councils that were convened at that time on the celebration of Easter, which were later confirmed by the Council of Nicaea. It was resolved, Eusebius says, that the feast of the Resurrection was not solemnized on any day other than Sunday. Therefore, the Quartodecimans, against whom the decree was directed, were in fact celebrating this feast on days other than Sunday. This often happened, because they based the feast of the Resurrection on the day of their Pascha, which varied every year and sometimes fell on a Monday, other times on a Tuesday, etc.; and therefore, on this basis, they celebrated the feast of the Resurrection sometimes on Thursday, sometimes on Friday, etc. The reason for that decree and the custom of the Churches was that Our Lord rose on the day after the Sabbath, that is, Sunday. The reason for the Quartodecimans and their custom was that Our Lord rose on the third day after Pascha, that is, after the fourteenth of the moon. Thus, each had, in the Gospel, the foundation of tradition and their custom, and that was what always made concord on this subject difficult until the Council of Nicaea.

What I am about to add concerning the practices of the Novatians and of certain others in this regard will shed further light on all that I have said up to now.

Article VII

On the customs of the Novatians and some other sects, regarding the celebration of Pascha and the Resurrection of Our Lord

Since the Quartodeciman practice had something plausible about it, and seemed founded on good tradition and the Gospel, a part of the Novatian sect judged it appropriate to accommodate themselves to it. Recounting how Socrates and Sozomen narrate the subject, I will interpret the Greek text in my own way, and I believe in accordance with the truth; then I shall make some reflections on that to which other interpreters have deemed necessary to attend.

When Novatian separated from the Roman Church, he did not fail to follow the rite of this church in the celebration of Pascha, and his followers imitated him until the time of Emperor Valentinian I. Under this emperor, some Novatian bishops from Phrygia, who held a council in a village called Pazo near the source of the Sangarius River, met and decided that the time when the Jews celebrated their unleavened bread should be considered, and Pascha should be celebrated at the same time as them. The bishops who made this decree were few and not very notable.

Some years later, a certain Sabbatius, who had converted from Judaism to Christianity and then to Novatianism, and who had been elevated to priesthood, desired to become a bishop. A continuing inclination towards Jewish ceremonies, combined with his ambition, made him consider renewing the canon of the Synod of Pazo, and he made petitions to that effect. When the Novatian bishops learned of his intentions, they gathered a council in Angar in Bithynia and summoned him there. They asked him what kind of displeasure he had against the Novatian church and what he intended by a kind of faction he seemed to be forming. He replied that he was scandalized by the diversity he saw among them regarding the celebration of Pascha and that it should be observed as the Jews did and as resolved in the Synod of Pazo.

The bishops of the council presumed, regardless of what he said, that he aimed for the Episcopate, and proposed that he take an oath never to aspire to this dignity; he did not dare refuse this oath and took it immediately. At the same time, the bishops issued a decree which they called the decree of indifference, declaring that observing the feast of Pascha at one time or another was indifferent; that this diversity was not a sufficient reason to cause a schism in the Church; and that everyone could, without prejudice to concord, act as they saw fit.

From that moment, Sabbatius followed a completely unique method for celebrating the Easter feasts.

“In truth, he continued to follow the Jews regarding the timing of Pascha, and therefore always anticipated the time of the Paschal fast, except when the Jews and Christians celebrated Passover and Pascha at the same time. Thus, he fasted and secretly celebrated Pascha according to the Law, but on Saturday, when the common faithful were preparing for the feast of the Resurrection, he kept vigil and engaged in other pious exercises from the night, and the next day he attended church along with the others and participated in the holy mysteries. At first, no one noticed everything he was doing, but over time it became known, and he had several imitators, especially in Phrygia and Galatia, who maintained this custom from then on. Finally, despite his oath, he consented to be elected Bishop by those who had followed his example.”

Mr. Vallois, in his notes on this passage, draws this conclusion:

“It follows from all this,” he says, “that Sabbatius celebrated two Paschas each year: one with the Jews, and another with the Christians.”

The conclusion is evident, but not in the sense that this learned critic understands it, for he did not celebrate twice the feast we now call Easter or the Resurrection, but performed twice and at two different times what the other Quartodecimans did all at once. First, he observed the Paschal fast, and ended it by celebrating Pascha, that is, holding the Paschal feast on the night of the fourteenth of the moon. This is what Socrates and Sozomen explicitly point out. Then, finally, on Saturday night of the week when the other Novatians who followed the custom of the Roman Church, he began to solemnize the feast of the Resurrection; and, as I said, he attended the services with them, and the next day participated in the sacred mysteries. This was the strange way he devised to somehow conform to both parties, and this was Sabbatius’ unique method mentioned by Socrates and Sozomen.

Anyone who reads the above-cited texts of Socrates, Nicephorus Callistus, and the Epiphanius the Scholastic with this idea in mind will see that all three agree perfectly with Sozomen, and that the corrections Mr. Vallois wants to make to the text of these three authors are not only unnecessary but even contrary to their intent. They say very clearly what they mean, and the difficulties he raises come only from ordinary prejudice.

Let us continue reading the texts of Socrates and Sozomen:

“Some, in Asia Minor,” says Socrates, “observe Pascha on the fourteenth; others, further east, observe it on the Sabbath of the feast.”

That is to say, those opposed to the Quartodecimans wanted the Sabbath to be part of the days that made up the Paschal feast, according to the style of the Roman Church and most other churches. For, as Saint Augustine says in his letter to Januarius:

“Pay attention to this sacred interval of three days in which the Lord was crucified, buried, and resurrected; this is what the authority of the divine Scriptures and the consensus of the Church dispersed throughout the earth teach us; this is what we celebrate every year at the Paschal feast. And see, there is a great mystery in it. It is true that in the Old Testament Scriptures, the precept of Pascha specifies only the month of the first fruits from the fourteenth of the moon to the twenty-first; however, since we know from the Gospel the days on which the Lord was crucified, remained in the tomb, and rose again, the Councils of the Fathers ordered that those days also be taken into account, and all agreed that this is how the Paschal feast should be solemnized.”

We can observe the same in the epistle that Saint Ambrose wrote to the bishops of Emilia about the celebration of Easter. The essential difference between the Quartodecimans and the other Christians was this: the latter celebrated Pascha on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, culminating this feast with the joy of the Resurrection; the former only considered the fourteenth of the moon, regardless of the day it fell on, and used the name Pascha only to signify the fourteenth of the moon, linking this name exclusively to that day. This is what Saint Epiphanius says of the Quartodeciman Cataphrygians:

“They celebrate Pascha on one day.”

And, he says that the Catholics, on the contrary, celebrated this feast for seven days, that is, all of Holy Week.

“Except for them (the followers of Sabbatius),” says Sozomen, “as well as the Asians called Quartodecimans, all other sects celebrate Pascha like Rome and Alexandria. But regarding the Novatians, they observe Resurrection Sunday, but still follow the Jews and fall into the same practice as the Quartodecimans unless Sunday is the fourteenth of the moon.”

“The Montanists,” he continues “who are called Pepuzians and Phrygians, have another very extraordinary way of celebrating Pascha. They count the days of the first month designated by Scripture for observing the Passover from March 23, the day they believe the sun and moon were created, and fix the fourteenth on April 5, always celebrating Pascha on that day. If the fourteenth falls on a Sunday, then they celebrate this feast the following Sunday, because they say it is written that Passover is to be observed from the fourteenth to the twenty-first.”

Mr. Vallois, after using Sozomen’s text, made some changes to this passage without making it much more intelligible. But no changes were necessary, and this is Sozomen’s thought:

1. That the Novatians he speaks of followed the Jews and observed their Pascha on the fourteenth of the moon, celebrating the Passion of Christ [Good Friday] at that time, thus falling into the same practice as the Quartodecimans; but they also observed Resurrection Sunday – that is, they only celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday, the day the Lord rose, in agreement with other Christians.

2. That if the fourteenth of the moon fell on a Sunday, they did not observe Pascha that day, even though the Jews did, but postponed it; the reason they gave was that the fourteenth of the moon was one of fasting until nightfall, in all churches; but that Christians were prohibited from fasting on Sunday. Thus, they celebrated Pascha, that is, the Resurrection, the following Sunday, and the Pascha of the Passion accordingly, undoubtedly on Friday.

“In this way,” says Sozomen, “there was as much difference between their Pascha and the one the Jews had celebrated the previous Sunday, as there was between the fourteenth of the moon and the following Sunday.”

The difficulty of this passage is that Sozomen sometimes uses the name Pascha to signify the day of the Passion [Good Friday], and other times the day of the Resurrection, speaking sometimes according to the use of the Quartodecimans and other times according to the use of other churches.

The Montanists, according to the same Sozomen, postponed their Pascha in the same way and for the same reason. The right they claimed to postpone it was based on these words of Scripture (“From the fourteenth day until the twenty-first”), taking these two days as the terms within which they could vary for the celebration of Pascha.

All this is confirmed by a very similar reasoning made by Saint Ambrose in his letter to the Bishops of Emilia, about the celebration of Pacha, where, following the doctrine and customs of the Catholics, he reasons entirely like the heretics:

“We must follow this rule,” he said, “that the fourteenth day should not be the day of the Resurrection but rather the day of the Passion or one of the preceding days, because the solemnity of the Resurrection must be observed on Sunday; but we cannot fast on Sunday, as we condemn the Manicheans who fast on that day.

“To fast on the day of the Resurrection implies not believing in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. As the Law says, the Passover must be eaten with bitterness, meaning with sorrow – due to the sacrilege committed in the death of the Author of Salvation. Conversely, the prophet teaches us that we must rejoice on Sunday when he says: ‘This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it’ (Psalm 118:24). Therefore, we must observe both the day of the Passion and the day of the Resurrection; let one be a day of bitterness and the other a day of joy; let us fast on one and regain our strength on the other. So that if it happens, as it sometimes will, that the fourteenth day of the moon falls on a Sunday – a day on which it is not permitted either to fast or to break one’s fast – when the thirteenth day of the moon falls on a Saturday (for one must fast throughout the whole day of the Passion), then, I say, the solemnity of Easter must be deferred to the following week.”

And further down:

“It was declared… that the Passion could not be observed on Sunday, and that if the fourteenth of the moon fell on that day, it was necessary to let a week pass, etc.; thus we celebrate Pascha on the twenty-first of the moon – that is, the day to which it is permitted to defer it.”

It seems to me that this passage from Saint Ambrose helps us greatly to understand the discipline of the Novatians and Montanists, who, concerning Pascha, partly followed the Quartodecimans and the Jews, and partly the Catholics. Sozomen distinguishes them from the Quartodecimans in that they celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday, and says that they fall into the same practice as those schismatics because they followed the Jews by maintaining the fourteenth of the moon – which they nevertheless disregarded if the fourteenth fell on a Sunday, and postponed the feast of the Resurrection to the following Sunday. The Chronicle of Alexandria expresses itself in the same manner as Saint Ambrose and the Novatians I have just mentioned:

“If the fourteenth of the moon,” says the author of the Chronicle, “falls on a Sunday, then we, disciples of the Catholic Church, postpone the feast to the following Sunday.”

Now I will make a reflection on the translation Mr. Vallois and the other interpreters made of this passage. They translate the Greek as “Novatiani celebrant diem Resurrectionis” and then “si in eundem diem inciderit Resurrectionis dies.” My reflection is that in both passages they translated diem Resurrectionis instead of translating as they should: Diem Dominicam, as every Sunday was called the “day of the Resurrection” – because Our Lord rose on that day. Hence, Epiphanius the Scholastic, who translated Sozomen into Latin eleven centuries ago at the request of Cassiodorus, translated the second passage with the words Dies Resurrectionis, adding as an explanation Dominicam Diem.

What I am saying, then, is that the circumstances of the matter should have led modern translators to use the word Dies Dominica, for in the first passage, Sozomen contrasts the Novatians with the Quartodecimans in that they always included a Sunday in the Easter celebration, which the Quartodecimans did not do; just as Socrates told us earlier, opposing the Asians to Christians further east, that the latter always included a Saturday in the Paschal solemnity (and the Saturday and Sunday are the same here, as Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Epiphanius have told us); while the Quartodecimans celebrated Pascha on any day upon which the fourteenth of the moon fell; and while they had only one day of Pascha, the rest of the Church always included Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Pascha.

The same applies to the second passage of Sozomen. The Montanists of which he spoke celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday like the Novatians, although they had fixed their Pascha, that is, the feast of the Passion [Good Friday], on April 5 – which was, according to them, the fourteenth of the first month. They always celebrated it on that day, except when it fell on Sunday, and not only when it fell on the day of the Resurrection, as the new interpreters of Sozomen translate. They had no special reason not to celebrate their Pascha on the day other Christians celebrated the Resurrection, but they had a reason common to all Sundays; namely that they fasted on that day until nightfall, like the Quartodecimans, which was not permitted on Sunday. Therefore, it should not have been translated: “if it falls on the day of the Resurrection”, which distorts the meaning, but “on Sunday,” which is the true meaning.

To be continued.

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Read Next:

• The real timeline of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion (Fray Luis de León)

• How an ancient controversy unlocks the Gospels’ Holy Week timeline (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the Quartodecimans celebrated ‘Pascha’ (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

• How the early Easter disputes are misunderstood by historians (Fr Gabriel Daniel SJ)

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Based text of translation made with the assistance of AI and each line scrutinised and checked against the French text.