Apostolic succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church? ('Zero Marks', Ch. IV)
Does the Conciliar/Synodal Church of Vatican II enjoy formal apostolic succession?
Does the Conciliar/Synodal Church of Vatican II enjoy formal apostolic succession?
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:
Other resources
I discussed this chapter with Stephen Kokx over at Kokx News:
For Part I of this response, see below:
For the Introduction to Zero Marks, and the other chapters, see the full piece here:
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:
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:
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.
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
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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Salaverri, n. 1176
Salaverri, n. 1176.
Salaverri, n. 1176
It is particularly ironic that such a rupture with apostolic doctrine occurs with regard to apostolicity itself. The Church previously rejected idea that the Orthodox enjoy apostolic succession and are “true particular Churches.” The Church considered them to have only material succession, and to be sects of heretical schismatics. In the Conciliar/Synodal Church, the material/formal distinction has faded into the background, and they seem to be treated as having apostolic succession simpliciter.
Van Noort, n. 131.
Van Noort, n. 131.
Salaverri, n. 1176
Berry, p. 139.
Salaverri, n. 1222.
Cf. also Salaverri:
“The apostolicity of succession is distinguished in two ways: 1) material, is the mere continuation of one person after another in the same office, without a necessary permanence of the same law; 2) formal, is the replacement of one person in the rights and obligations of another in some office, without any change in the law.” N. 1178
It is clear that, if my contention is correct, this issue also poses a question to be considered carefully by those of my position.
However, the focus of this piece is to demonstrate that contention, namely that the Conciliar/Synodal Church (as defined) is not the Catholic Church, and that this is not the place to develop my answer to this difficulty in full. I will limit myself to noting that my contention is only that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church as such – not that it is a false sect, and that all those involved are non-Catholics. The answer to the objection lies in this distinction.
We note that “the norms in force” include divine law and the nature of things – something which Fr Crean seems to be overlooking here.
Salaverri explains the argument from prescription with reference to doctrine, but the same principles apply here. He states that it can be difficult, long and even morally impossible to produce documents or monuments, in proof of a point of doctrine, which go back to the apostles. “When this direct proof is impossible or very difficult,” Salaverri says, “one can then make use of Prescription.” (n. 803. 1). He defines this as follows:
“The argument of Prescription is that whereby from the monuments of Tradition indirectly one deduces that the doctrine of faith or morals has been handed down from the Apostles.
“The principle on which the argument of prescription is founded is this: The doctrine of the Apostles is a legitimate possession proper to the Church alone, to which Christ committed his doctrine as a deposit to be entirely protected and faithfully transmitted.
“Indeed the legitimacy of possession legally can be proved in two ways, either by positive documents that are reliable or by Prescription. Since the positive documents are lacking, recourse can be made to Prescription, which is a legal title based on a longstanding possession, by which the legitimacy of the ownership of the thing is proved and by which others are excluded from action concerning the same thing.” (ibid.)
Fr Gustave Thils, Les notes de l’Église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la Réforme, Gembloux 1937, p. x. Cited in Journet, available here.
Mgr Robert Hugh Benson, The Religion of the Plain Man, p. 44-5. Burns and Oates, London, 1907. Available at https://ia600500.us.archive.org/19/items/TheReligionOfThePlainMan/TheReligionOfThePlainMan.pdf
Pastor Aeternus, 1-4. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm
Amerio, p. 143.
Amerio, p. 144.
In the Opening Address to the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII set out the charter of the new papacy:
“There has never been a time when the Church has not opposed these errors; often she has also condemned them, and sometimes with the greatest severity. As for the present time, the Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than to take up the weapons of rigour; she thinks it necessary to meet today’s needs by setting forth more clearly the value of her teaching rather than by condemning. Not because false doctrines, opinions, and dangers to be guarded against and opposed are lacking; but because all these things so openly contradict the sound principles of honesty, and have produced fruits so deadly, that today men seem to be beginning spontaneously to reject them—especially those forms of life which ignore God and his laws, place excessive trust in technological progress, and found well-being solely upon the comforts of life. They are becoming ever more aware that the dignity of the human person and his natural perfection are matters of great importance and most difficult to realise. What matters above all is that they have learned from experience that external violence exercised upon others, the power of arms, and political domination are absolutely insufficient to resolve in a satisfactory way the very grave problems that trouble them.”
As is typical, the exercise of authority is caricatured as referring to “external violence”, “the power of arms”, etc.
Solemn Opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Speech by the John XXIII, Thursday 11 October 1962, 7.2. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/it/speeches/1962/documents/hf_j-xxiii_spe_19621011_opening-council.html
Amerio, p. 147.
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., Episode 186, 31min 40. Recorded on January 6, 1970. Available here.
Ibid., 37min 16.
Ibid., 38min. 24
Amerio, p. 146.
Fr Dr Maciej Sieniatycki, ‘The Church in the Conception of the Modernists’, Part III of Modernism in the Polish Book, in Przegląd Powszechny, Oct-Dec 1916, pp. 73-82. Krakow. Available at https://www.wmreview.org/p/sieniatycki-iii
Fr Mauro Cappellari (Later Pope Gregory XVI), II Trionfo della Santa Sede, Preliminaries, § IX. Venice, Vella Casa del Tipgrafe Editore, 1832. Available at https://books.google.fr/books?id=O5opAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Ibid., Preliminaries, § XIII
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 75, A. 3.
Welcome back. I’ve actually been looking forward to this follow-up, so I’m glad you wrote it. You’re clearly taking the crisis seriously, and I think you did a good job showing that this isn’t just surface-level confusion—it’s something deeper.
The one thing I’d just nudge a bit is where the explanation starts leaning on private revelations or historical reconstruction to fill in the gaps. That can get tricky fast.
For me, it keeps coming back to a simpler question: how do we actually identify real authority in the Church today—not just who seems right, but who can show they were truly sent?
That part still feels unresolved.
"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."
But does it really permit that?
I am not quite sure I entirely grasp your contention that the Conciliar/Synodal church is not a false sect. For it seems to have its own constitutive element, namely adherence to the documents of Vatican II. Refusal to do so by a Catholic professing the actual Catholic faith has lead to excommunication from that Conciliar group, such refusal being at the root of their "enforcement in matters of doctrine", designated as acts of schism or disobedience.
The Conciliar church seems most akin to a freesmasonic lodge, namely all are welcome so long as one agrees that no religion is superior to another. If one professes the actual Catholic faith and its superiority, one is essentially expelled, e.g. deprived of the sacraments as the SSPX despite the claim of canonical irregularity and variable allowances. Therefore it seems as more than just an aggregate.