Assistance at a Mass in which a false pope is named – John S. Daly's 'Letter'
John S. Daly shares his thoughts on one of the most controversial issues of our day – whether one can legitimately attend a Mass in which a false pope is named in the Canon.
John S. Daly shares his thoughts on one of the most controversial issues of our day – whether one can legitimately attend a Mass in which a false pope is named in the Canon.
Editor’s Notes
The following text is a private letter from John S. Daly to a friend. It is about one of the fiercest controversies between those who recognise the illegitimacy of the recent papal claimants – namely, the legitimacy (or otherwise) of attending Masses offered by validly ordained priests, who nonetheless name the current false claimant.
As mentioned in our Editor’s Notes to Mr Michael Hudson’s paper on the same topic, we stated our conviction that the restrictive “non-una cum” (NUC) position is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to more persons recognising the vacancy of the Holy See.
If it is a true representation of reality, then it must be accepted in spite of this, or any personal inconvenience.
But is it actually a true representation of reality?
About John Daly
John S. Daly is well-known amongst those who have recognised this extended vacancy of the Holy See. Readers can hear him discuss the matter in a recording of the 2002 Sede Vacante conference/debate (below), and find out more about him here.
The present Letter has been circulated previously, but this is the first time it has been published with Mr Daly’s permission. We hope that it may help those who read it.
S.D. Wright
A letter to a friend about assistance at Mass in which Francis is named as pope
Copyright ©John Stephen Daly 2024.
Reprinted with permission.
Sub-headings added by The WM Review for ease of reading, along with some line breaks and minor corrections to the text.
Dear XXXX,
I have carefully read the article Disputatio à propos de l’una cum from the Sel de la Terre No 37 that you sent me. I find it serious, solidly argued and in conformity with what I have long believed on this subject.
The two main issues addressed are:
In the first prayer of the Canon of the Mass, when the celebrant says “we offer them for the Church ... una cum pope N.”, should the mention of the pope’s name be taken to specify which church is being referred to, or rather as adding to the intention, so that the Mass is offered (a) for the Church, (b) for the pope, (c) for the bishop, etc.
What theological qualification is appropriate to the conviction that the Church has had no legitimate pope since Vatican II, i.e. what is the status of this judgement, how grave is an error about it and what are the ecclesial consequences of such an error?
What is the meaning of the ‘una cum’ phrase
On the first question, the expression una cum is a two-word expression, to be taken together, often met, known to every Latinist and invariably used to indicate an addition. Thus “graeci colunt sapientiam una cum virtute” means that the Greeks cultivate wisdom together with virtue, at the same time as virtue, in addition to virtue. It most certainly does not mean that the Greeks cultivate wisdom which is united to virtue.
Moreover it is quite clear that “una cum” governs three complements in the same way: the pope, the bishop and the faithful.1 That is how Saint Thomas understands it (S. Th. III, Q. 83, Art. 4) and it is how everyone understands the very similar prayer in the Exsultet.2
Bilingual missals published in French or other languages under the name of Dom Gaspar Lefebvre have at various times offered different translations of this prayer but they have not the slightest authority as to the accuracy of their interpretation. Anyone wanting a philologist’s opinion on the subject may be advised to read F.-X. Lamoureau’s 1992 study Una Quicum ? The author has a doctorate in Latin philology and is a traditional Catholic with no hostility to the sedevacantist thesis. He is directly discussing this question of the meaning of the “una cum” clause currently under discussion.
But that said, this question has never seemed to me of primary interest for it is clear that in this prayer the celebrant solemnly prays for the man he recognizes as pope and that an error on this subject does not cease to be relevant merely because the Te igitur is not setting out to define the Church by naming the pope. This is why the second question arises: the theological status of the “sedevacantist” conclusion.
The theological qualification for the conclusion of a vacant see
On this issue there is no room for doubt. While I am convinced in all certitude and tranquillity of conscience that we have no pope and that only this conclusion allows the events we have observed since the council to be reconciled with Catholic doctrine (indefectibility, infallibility of the Ordinary and universal Magisterium, etc), it remains quite impossible to erect this conclusion into a Catholic truth or to make it an object of faith. In fact, outside what the Church has directly judged, there is no faith — only theology.
In normal times the fact that Pius or Leo or Innocent is the legitimate pope of the Catholic Church, is a truth which falls under faith, and which is known as a dogmatic fact, otherwise it would be impossible to believe de fide the pope’s doctrinal teaching. But as is clearly explained by the theologians who have specifically studied this subject, this status of dogmatic fact is itself due to the Church’s judgement.
It has been argued by some defenders of the Guérardian or Cassiciacum thesis in our days that Catholics are obliged to recognise the conclave’s electee as pope in virtue of this “dogmatic fact” in the absence of a counter-proof itself known by the light of faith, but this argument begins with confusion and ends with an impossibility. In reality it is not just the election which creates the dogmatic fact that the electee is pope, but a whole set of circumstances bearing witness to the Church’s faith that he is pope.
Now if these circumstances are all in place, the electee’s legitimacy is indeed a dogmatic fact and any alleged counter-proof would be vain, for nothing at all can ever outweigh or refute a dogmatic faith presented as such by the Church. But if, on the other hand, these conditions are not, or not all, united, there is no dogmatic fact in place, and reason, acting theologically, with no claim to go beyond its proper domain by reaching an object of faith by its own powers, may conclude that the electee does not in fact unite the conditions needed to be a true pope. Thus there is not the slightest need to see the non-papacy of recent claimants by light of faith3 which is just as well for it is quite impossible to do so and must remain so as long as there is no true and certain pope.4
Surely it is self-evident that without a pope we have no pope to teach us that there is no pope; thus the truth that there is no pope cannot be elevated to the domain of the Church’s faith until it is no longer the case.5
Now the faith of the Church is necessarily constitutive of the Church herself, the communio fidelium. This is why no statement, no matter how true, can be a criterion of Catholicism, whether of a man or of a Mass, until the Church has confirmed it.
Hence if a traditional Catholic priest declares in the Canon of the Mass or elsewhere that Francis is pope, he is mistaken, but his mistake belongs to the domain of theology, not of faith.6 His error does not of itself separate him from the Church and cannot separate his Mass from her either.
The Pope as the living rule of faith
Now let us look at a slightly different argument. It is claimed that as the pope is the living rule of faith, the priest who names a given claimant as pope in the Canon thereby unites his person and his Mass to this false head and false faith. To this I answer that if man were an angel, seeing the conclusions in the premises without any step-by-step reasoning process and without the darkness due to original sin, this argument would be valid, but that is far from being our situation.
In fact it is precisely because we do not see with infallible certitude the conclusions implicit in the data of faith that we need an infallible pope to guide us and that in his absence we cannot claim to replace him by attributing to this or that conclusion the status which it can only obtain by virtue of magisterial confirmation.
It is quite clear that traditional priests who already explicitly refuse the false faith of Vatican II do not accept it by naming Francis in their Mass. It’s no good saying that the one implies the other, for in fact the ignorance or error which prevents this priest from reaching the right conclusion may bear on either the facts or on the doctrine or may be due to his having reasoned wrongly or not enough. Once more, the Church is not multitudo ratiocinantium, she is the communio fidelium. And even if the priest does in fact err as to the extent of the duty of believing the teaching of a pope or council7 this error may perfectly well be held in good faith, for the habitus fidei which constitutes the Church is above all a disposition to believe the Church’s doctrine rather than an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of its material object. And in fact this same sophistry seems to be found whenever anyone undertakes to demonstrate that a Mass una cum Francisco is not a Catholic Mass.8
What is attributed to the celebrant is not what he says but what ought logically to flow from it, even if the celebrant explicitly rejects this conclusion. This is completely inadmissible.
The habit of faith
In the same way we see those who disallow assistance at such Masses quote authors who speak of the case in which a celebrant names in the Canon of his Mass a “pope” or bishop already rejected by the Roman Church in such a way that a Catholic celebrant could not possibly believe him to be legitimate Catholic authority. Always the same unjustifiable transition between the domain of faith and the domain of reason.
Crucial here is the doctrine explained by Fr Marín-Sola O.P in his masterly Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma (Section III, n° 139, note 38,) summarising Saint Thomas. The following paragraphs are part of the quotation from Marín-Sola, including the original texts of the Thomistic quotations:
“Two things must concur for faith: first the habitus of the intellect by which it is disposed to obey the will tending towards divine truth..., and secondly it is required for faith that the things that are to be believed should be proposed to the believer, and this is done by a man.”9
“Two things are needed for faith, of which one is that the things to be believed should be proposed to a man ... and the other... is the believer’s consent to what is proposed.”10
“And every proposal made by men is fallible unless it is made with divine assistance. ‘Just as the created being is in itself vain and defectible unless it is maintained by the uncreated being, so every truth is defectible except insofar as it is rectified by the divine Truth.’”11
“Needless to say whenever I speak of proposal of faith by the Church I am referring to proposal by the authentic infallible organs of the Church’s faith, such as the definitions of popes or œcumenical councils (solemn magisterium) or the universal teaching of the pastors (ordinary magisterium).”12
This is why, in the error of naming a conciliar “pope” in the Canon, there is no adherence to a false church or profession of a false rule of faith, but, on the contrary, an error in identifying the head of the true, Catholic and Roman Church — an error which is readily understandable for we live amid a mysterious crisis of which the full and ultimate explanation has not been vouchsafed to us by the sole infallible authority.
Saint Thomas also applies this principle when he observes, following Saint Hilary, that, in case of doubt as to the right interpretation of someone’s words, intention should trump the words themselves, i.e. what is said should be understood in the light of the motive for saying it, for reality must take precedence over speech, not speech over reality.13
Now traditional priests who think it right to name Francis in the Canon do so precisely by fear of schism, fear of separation from the one true Church of Jesus Christ which they well know to be the Catholic, Roman Church. They manifestly have not the slightest intention of adhering in its place to the conciliar church insofar as it is a different organisation from the Catholic Church.
Having written the above as a comment on the “NUC” position, it is impossible not to note that Fr Guérard des Lauriers’s entire Cassiciacum thesis is built on the same error as to certitude. I have not got the original Cahiers de Cassiacum to hand as I write but very early on the Bellarmine solution to the crisis of “papa haereticus est depositus” is discussed and rejected precisely on the grounds that it is not possible to have the requisite degree of certitude as to whether Montini is truly pertinacious in his heresies. NUC is by nature and origin a Guérardian position and the refutation of either entails the collapse of the other.
Other arguments sometimes raised
Are there other arguments against the lawfulness of assisting at Masses abusively referred to as una cum? Well, yes, over the years I have encountered several others. For instance it has sometimes been claimed that the Catholic Church does not offer a Mass in which the celebrant names the head of a false Church instead of the head of the true one. But this argument tends to prove not merely that such Masses are unlawful but also that they are invalid, for there is no such thing as a Mass which is not offered: we are on the brink of Donatism!
In any event this argument has been abundantly refuted in advance by Fr Maurice de la Taille S.J in his Mysterium Fidei for what he says on the subject of the offering of the Mass of a priest cut off from the Church or deprived of her authorisation14 applies a fortiori to a priest whose only error relates to the recognition of a fact.
Another argument again is that assisting at such a Mass necessarily involves formal cooperation with the objective evil of the erroneous affirmation that Francis is pope. But the theology of cooperation with materially unlawful actions has not been waiting to be discovered for the last ten centuries: it already exists. Suffice it to say that the cooperation argument, if valid, would certainly apply even more to assistance at the Mass of an excommunicated celebrant or a public sinner, whereas Canon Law15 and approved theologians hold the opposite.
For any reasonable cause [“... ex qualibet justa causa... ”] the faithful may receive the sacraments from an excommunicated priest provided he is not vitandus, yet we are to be forbidden to receive them at the hands of a priest who, amid an unheard-of crisis has not yet reached a conclusion which can in fact only be reached as a result of complex theological reasoning? The very idea is unimaginable!
Certain priests and laity have also insisted again and again on the importance of “professing the faith” by abstaining from assistance at the Masses of priests who have not yet understood. But the error of such priests is precisely not an object of faith and those who endeavour by voluntarism to convince themselves that it is one because their factitious theology of the crisis needs it to be one, far from professing the faith are corrupting it by introducing an error quite as pernicious as the one they want to combat. Indeed the faith is properly professed by the very fact of assisting at Mass except in case of real impossibility, for by obstinately not insisting that every celebrant understand that the Johns, Pauls, Benedicts and Francises are usurpers we proclaim that the simple faithful receive their faith necessarily and exclusively in the form of an infallible judgement of the Church and not otherwise.
The ‘threefold catholicity of the Mass’ argument
Let me mention one final theological bogeyman to which recourse is sometimes had to declare assistance at “UC” Masses illicit. This is the “threefold catholicity of the Mass”. According to this theory a Mass is Catholic only insofar as it combines three factors: (i) the rite is Catholic, (ii) its celebrant is Catholic, (iii) its affiliation is Catholic, as manifested by the name of the pope mentioned in the Te igitur.
But Catholic theologians follow Canon Law (Canons 1257-8) in recognizing only the first two conditions. The third is seldom mentioned for an obvious reason: if a priest were to name as pope in the Canon of his Mass one whom the Church had directly judged not to be her head, he would thereby separate not only his Mass from the Church but also himself. I.e. Condition (ii) would also be absent. By contrast when, for good reasons or ill, Catholics are not agreed and the Church has not directly pronounced, it is plain that de facto error is not enough to breach the Catholic affiliation intended by the celebrant16 and no Catholic authority I am aware of has ever claimed the contrary.
There is no way around this except to claim that all those who nominally recognize the false Vatican II popes are themselves excluded ipso facto from the Church as heretics or schismatics. I shall not address this grotesque17 error here as I refuted it in a series of articles which appeared both in English and French from 1999 onwards and my arguments remain in place.
Conclusion
But it does not seem necessary to me to address in detail every new argument on this subject for they are every day more numerous according to the old adage “If you can’t make good knots, make plenty of ’em.” The Church’s judgement is already in place in the form of the bull Ad evitanda scandala of Pope Martin V (1417), still in force and substantially restated by the 1917 Code of Canon Law. This decree explicitly sets out to calm consciences troubled by exaggerated claims made during the Great Western Schisms to the effect that the faithful must abstain from Masses offered by priests of the wrong affiliation.
It insists that no one can be obliged to avoid the Mass of any priest on the pretext that it involves illicit communion unless and until the direct judgement of the Church has pronounced.
It is curious indeed to see good priests measuring their fervour by their zeal in stopping people from going to Mass on grounds which are open to powerful objections and are at the very best subject to ongoing serious debate.
Copyright ©John Stephen Daly 2024.
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See also l’Ami du Clergé de 1902, p. 118, on how this prayer is to be modified when there is no pope.
« Precamur ergo te, Domine: ut nos famulos tuos, omnemque clerum, et devotissimum populum: una cum beatissimo Papa nostro N. et Antistite nostro N., quiete temporum concessa, in his paschalibus gaudiis, assidua protectione regere, gubernare, et conservare digneris. »
This idea is strictly incompatible with the common teaching that papa haereticus est depositus, for no authority can make the necessary judgement that the claimant is a heretic as long as he is still in place. It is also incompatible with a part of Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex apostolatus.
This tendency to want impossible degrees of certitude may be related to the exaggerated role attributed to mathematical reasoning in our days. We have become so used to the kind of certitude proper to quantitative calculations that people find it hard to recognise as real the kind of certitude generated by ponderation, or weighing up.
Note too that a true and certain pope is the living principle of the Church’s unity, but a vacant see is not, and indeed still would not be such a principle even if the vacancy were a truth of faith.
Granted this truth may one day be defined and for this to be possible it must already belong virtually to faith, having been implicitly revealed, for otherwise the Church would have no power to define it, but the ordinary Catholic can at present attain this truth exclusively by reasoning, and this reasoning process, while it starts from truths of faith, relies for its validity on truths known by natural observation and on step-by-step ratiocination.
Which is by no means certain in the hypothesis considered.
Other things being equal of course, for there may other impediments entirely unconnected with the una cum question.
“… ad fidem duo concurrunt. Primo quidem habitus intellectus, quo disponitur ad obediendum voluntati tendenti in divinam veritatem,… Secundo requiritur ad fidem, quod credibilia proponantur credenti et hoc quidem fit per hominem.”
S. Th. Ia, q. 111 a. 1
“… ad fidem duo requiruntur. Quorum unum est ut homini credibilia proponantur… Aliud autem quod ad fidem requiritur est assensus credentis ad ea quae proponuntur.”
S. Th. IIª-IIae, q. 6 a. 1
“Sicut esse creatum, quantum est de se, vanum est, et defectibile nisi contineatur ab ente increato, ita omnis veritas est defectibilis, nisi quatenus per Veritatem divinam rectificatur.”
D. Thomas, De veritate q. 14 a. 8
Editor’s Note: Daly’s original did not include a reference for this text. It is found in the English translation of Marín-Sola’s work n p 292.
S. Th. Ia-IIae q. 96 a. 6:
“Intelligentia dictorum ex causis est assumenda dicendi, quia non sermoni res, sed rei debet esse sermo subiectus. Ergo magis est attendendum ad causam quae movit legislatorem, quam ad ipsa verba legis.”
Elucidatio XXXIII
See Canon 2261§2 and its approved commentators.
Saint Thomas writes:
“If doubt as to whether someone is excommunicated precedes the sentence of the judges, for instance when it has not yet been declared by the consensus of the judges that such and such persons are excommunicated, there is no duty to avoid them until the question has been closed by a definitive judgement.”
Quodlibet IV, Art XIV
“… the heresies that men do leave, Are hated most of those they did deceive.” — Shakespeare.
A wink to those who know something of my own background...
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Thanks for sharing this, nice to see John on substack.
John Daly said:
“In fact it is precisely because we do not see with infallible certitude the conclusions implicit in the data of faith that we need an infallible pope to guide us and that in his absence we cannot claim to replace him by attributing to this or that conclusion the status which it can only obtain by virtue of magisterial confirmation.”
That’s a point which is continuously overlooked amidst the warring polemics of the various crisis orientations, but it ought instead become an operative principle governing all such debates. If it were, the mutual anathemas would decrease, and charity would increase, and the result would be better disposition to the reception of truth for everyone.
NB: As an aside, it occurs to me that the same argument could be adduced in favor of my sede-doubtism (howsoever much the doubt seems to be dissipating).