Thank you to Mr. Wright for editing and publishing the article.
I would describe the Indefectibility of the Roman See as a suit of armor and shield that the Pope always wears, and Infallibility as the sword that he takes out of its scabbard, when necessary, and wields to lead the Church Militant in spiritual combat, to confirm his brethren and to condemn error.
Our Sedeplenist brothers should reflect especially on that quote from Pope Pius XII at the end of the article. If they try to apply it to the Conciliar-Synodal Church, they will necessarily conclude that it does not "maintain and transmit whole and inviolate, through centuries and tens of centuries, even to the end of time, the whole body of truth and grace", which means that it does not have "the assurance, guaranteed by Divine promises" of doing this. This means that it is not the Catholic Church but a counterfeit, and that the head of this counterfeit Church, the leader of the Revolution against the True Church, is not the head of the Catholic Church.
I write in this article: "what SOME of them [sedeplenists] end up believing in and confessing is not just a defected Roman Pontiff, but a defected Church... the way to recover true faith in the Church, as we profess in the Creed..."
Talk about reading comprehension. BTW, you still haven't read or understood Billot, otherwise you wouldn't be summarizing the doctrine like this:
"...no Catholics can be material heretics, because they HAVE THE CORRECT RULE of..."
I agree with Van Noort that material heretics (e.g. Protestants, Eastern Schismatics etc.) are outside the body of the Church. Just as other heretics, they reject the Church as their rule of faith. The problem is that you do not want to learn the difference between material heretics and Catholics in error. Van Noort says nothing about that so you take his silence to mean that he supports your extreme position.
Billot explains it explicitly and in detail so you reject him, in order to have the justification to kick out of the Church all those souls unknowingly in error but adhering to the Catholic Church, as if the Loving Mother could kick her child, clinging to her skirt, out of her House for making an innocent mistake. Along with the rest of your comment, it shows which type of spirit moves you.
P.S. To show that what Billot teaches is not some new doctrine, but taught by the Church since ancient times, I quote St. Thomas Aquinas, quoting St. Augustine:
"As Augustine says (Ep. xliii) and we find it stated in the Decretals (xxiv, qu. 3, can. Dixit Apostolus): 'By no means should we accuse of heresy those who, however false and perverse their opinion may be, defend it without obstinate fervor, and seek the truth with careful anxiety, ready to mend their opinion, when they have found the truth,' because, to wit, they do not make a choice in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church" (Summa Theol., II-II, q. 11, art. 2, reply to objection 3).
This should be taken as pure speculation, but I think it's the best argument that could square the metaphorical circle.
One of the only weaknesses of scholastic thought is that it concerns itself very much with what God will do rather than what he might choose to do. With that in mind... What If the Petrine protection normally functions in a sort of "Petrine maximalist" mode, preserving the Pope and the See from all error... but. In this period of great disobedience, what if all the 'legitimate'* popes after VII were operating only on a 'minimalist' Petrine protection?
We know that God handed over the Church to be tried by the Adversary for one or two periods of time, amounting to around a century.
*by 'legitimate' I mean 'not formally heretical or apostates', so disqualifying Bergoglio, Prevost, and maybe JPII, though the Church should probably hold a cadaver synod to determine if Assisi et al constituted formal defection from the faith and / or loss of office.
The metaphorical circle doesn't need squaring. The Holy See is vacant.
Personally, I find very dangerous the attitude that treats "scholastic thought" in that way, and yet treats the alleged vision of Pope Leo XIII as an axiomatic certainty.
The see is currently empty. Scholastic philosophy is the best, most exact, and safest method of Theology ever developed. I certainly have never had Our Lord appear and tell me I have done Him good service.
With that being said. Scholastic thought has the bad habit of treating Our Lord as a principle rather than a person, in virtue of His divine attributes.
Scholasticism, at least as it is popularized, is fond of saying God will do X rather than God will do X but may do Y.
Regarding the alleged vision of Leo XIII, I find it curious to note that the time between the indefinite end of Vatican I (Postquam Dei munere, Oct 20, 1870) and the introduction of the Novus Ordo (promulgated in 1969) was 99 years.
"We know that God handed over the Church to be tried by the Adversary for one or two periods of time, amounting to around a century."
But keep in mind, that like Job, God knew his adversary would not prevail.
The Papacy/Peter is the rock in which the Church is built on, and the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. Saying God could/would/might/may allow the Holy Ghost, the soul of the Church, to teach error to the universal flock is akin to saying God is the maker and author of evil. "Squaring" the circle that does not need squaring only creates bigger circles that could never be squared.
This scholarly yet genuinely pastoral approach to the age-old Catholic teaching on the indefectibility of the Roman See being intimately connected with the indefectibility of the Church brought for me a clarity in this unprecedented crisis that I have long sought but did not know. Indeed, the truth does set you free. By acknowledging the hesitations and fears of those Catholics seeking to be as authentic as possible about tackling this elephant in the room, this article lays out what is not promised in the statement the truth will set you free. Nowhere is it promised that coming to know the truth will make you feel good; nowhere is it promised that coming to know the truth will not jarring. But the truth is still there, it is still the reality of the situation, acknowledged by the individual or not.
The statements connected with the Society of St. Pius X's consecration of four priests as bishops without papal mandate are what jarred my thought process to dive deeper into the indefectibility of the Church. I began to find it perplexing that the SSPX leadership could speak so forcefully and even correctly of the True Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ and a conciliar church, a modernist church, AND, at the same time, plead for permission to proceed from those who are promulgating heresies from the conciliar church, the modernist church. As well-intentioned as they may be in trying to continuing navigating as authentic Catholics in the context of decades of confusion, it hit me (perhaps a jolt from the Holy Ghost) that there cannot exist the two churches -- the True Church and the conciliar church -- in one entity. Or to put it more plainly, the man generally acknowledged as occupying the Seat of St. Peter cannot be head of both the True Church and the head of the conciliar church at the same time. In short, the step the SSPX does not yet seem willing to take is to admit its seeming acts of disobedience are to protect the flock from the Pope. And that is the thing that is so scary. Yet think of the possibilities if the SSPX ever comes, officially, to embrace the truth of the indefectibility of the See of St. Peter.
Pope St. Gelasius I makes the best point for me: When heretics say the Church is wrong we, who are sure she cannot be wrong, show no hesitation in defending her teachings. (Otherwise all is doubtful).
Also, showing how things like Pastor Aeternus would mean differently under the flawed premise of an erring Church is a useful perspective. It might even penetrate the fog for some.
Firstly, the doctrine of the possibility of an ipso facto deposition of a heretical Pope from the Papal office seems, while likewise maintaining that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals, would undermine the utility of the office altogether for the good of the faithful. It reminds me of the a section from Torquemada's Summa de Ecclesia, where, after showing that only one who is 'pertinacious' in his error should be properly called a heretic, he says that the Pope can be called pertinacious in his error, and thus properly a heretic, if 'he solemnly defines an error, and assert it to be held as Catholic by Christians' (Book IV, Part II, Ch. XVI). The fact that Torquemada and the Decretalists of his age did not identify the indefectibility of the Roman Church in the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is precisely the reason that such a statement could be coherently made. Yet, in light of Vatican I, the sedevacantist claim seems to go something like this: that the Roman Pontiff is completely unable to err on matters of faith and morals, such that if he should err on matters of faith and morals, it should be revealed that he is no longer the Roman Pontiff.
Secondly, even if it were to be posited that the formulation of Papal infallibility in Vatican I were to allow for the case of a manifestly heretical Pope, it seems to be rather implausible to further claim that the same formulation in Vatican I could allow for a situation where the Pope would be a heretic, and the rest of the hierarchy would likewise refuse or be unable to carry out a sentence against him that would declare him to have been ipso facto deposed from the Papal office.
You speculate that a heretical Pope losing office (it is not a deposition, it is a tacit resignation) "would undermine the utility of the office altogether for the good of the faithful", yet maintaining possession of said office would actually lead the faithful to spiritual ruin, and that is no speculation because it is a manifest current fact - many faithful, misled into thinking that the Modernist heretics were/are popes, have followed them into heresy, even apostasy.
In the same way, what you label as "implausible" is actual manifest fact.
Contra factum not valet argumentum.
In addition, the claim that we hold "that the Roman Pontiff is completely unable to err on matters of faith and morals" is not true, and you have not read such a thing on this site.
The interpretation was given by Vatican I itself. The Pope is infallible "when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church." Also, "by divine and catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium." The OUM can be universal either in time (e.g. a line of popes teaching a doctrine) or in space (the Pope and the episcopate each in their own diocese teaching the same doctrine).
This article is about indefectibility, not infallibility.
I suppose that the interpretation of the circumstances of infallibility do not really pertain to my original point.
My original point was that the divine protection from error really does nothing to the benefit of the faithful if it can be said to have been revoked upon teaching error.
Let's say one observes that that the Roman Pontiff, who has been peacefully and universally accepted as being the Pope upon a canonical election, has taught something that under the conditions of infallibility. Should the teaching be given religious assent?
The sedevacantist standard seems to be: if the Pope has taught something in the UOM, AND it is not heretical, then it should be piously believed. But then the office of the pope is superfluous, and there is no unique authority in the successor of Peter that should be heeded to. If one can only assent to the doctrines of one that is believed to be the Pope so long as it is first judged that the teaching is not heretical, then the teaching is always going to be subject to one's own judgment first. But this is exactly the same standard that the teachings of any other bishop, or any other se, should be held to, and therefore the Roman See and the Roman Pontiff would not be unique in the divine protection against error that has been afforded to them.
Very well done, and given on my birthday. Thank you for the birthday gift. I have always read that the pope is infallible only in matters of faith and morals, and only when speaking Ex Cathedra. With regard to the contents offered above, is the Pope obligated to teach the truth in his ordinary teachings? I am particularly thinking about Francis and Traditiones Custodes. Francis deliberately lied when he sent out his cover letter claiming that he sent out a survey to all bishops (he never provided the survey questions, nor did he provide the actual answers) in which he said the bishops favored suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass. We learned later that the majority of the bishops actually favored retaining the TLM. He used this lie to justify issuing Traditiones Custodes. In Traditiones Custodes, Francis lied again when he claimed the Novus Ordo was the Mass of Vatican II. This was a deliberate lie, since he knew the Novus Ordo violated every provision of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II document issued by the Council Fathers detailing their direction for updating the Liturgy of the Mass organically. The Novus Ordo is the Mass of Paul VI since he signed off on it, but it is not, and never has been, the Mass of Vatican II.
Did these lies constitute a violation of the doctrine of indefectibility and, if so, did this mean Francis was no longer Pope, and thus nullifying all his acts following the issuance of Traditiones Custodes?
Please note the difference between infallibility and indefectibility.
The theoretical presence of error in the teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium is not excluded by theologians, but the Pope teaching the Universal Church grave error and heresy most certainly is.
The NO can certainly be called the Mass of Vatican II because "Sacrosanctum Concilium" was written precisely to seek to legitimize future changes to the liturgy and to open the door for the creation of the NO rite (which was probably prepared long before in the Masonic lodges). The presence of some conservative language was there to fool the many bishops attached to the Roman rite, and it was mingled with the poison to change their attitudes and prepare them to accept the Protestantized rite.
Thank you to Mr. Wright for editing and publishing the article.
I would describe the Indefectibility of the Roman See as a suit of armor and shield that the Pope always wears, and Infallibility as the sword that he takes out of its scabbard, when necessary, and wields to lead the Church Militant in spiritual combat, to confirm his brethren and to condemn error.
Our Sedeplenist brothers should reflect especially on that quote from Pope Pius XII at the end of the article. If they try to apply it to the Conciliar-Synodal Church, they will necessarily conclude that it does not "maintain and transmit whole and inviolate, through centuries and tens of centuries, even to the end of time, the whole body of truth and grace", which means that it does not have "the assurance, guaranteed by Divine promises" of doing this. This means that it is not the Catholic Church but a counterfeit, and that the head of this counterfeit Church, the leader of the Revolution against the True Church, is not the head of the Catholic Church.
For those confused, this is JMatha continuing the discussion from here: https://www.wmreview.org/p/savonarola-vs-alexander-vi-an-historical/comments
I write in this article: "what SOME of them [sedeplenists] end up believing in and confessing is not just a defected Roman Pontiff, but a defected Church... the way to recover true faith in the Church, as we profess in the Creed..."
Talk about reading comprehension. BTW, you still haven't read or understood Billot, otherwise you wouldn't be summarizing the doctrine like this:
"...no Catholics can be material heretics, because they HAVE THE CORRECT RULE of..."
You actually believe that a Catholic can become a heretic without pertinacity. If you ever want to actually learn something, start with this article by Mr. John Daly: https://web.archive.org/web/20210110135236/http://strobertbellarmine.net/pertinacity.html
The rest of your rant deserves no response and reflects very poorly on you.
Our discussion is over.
I agree with Van Noort that material heretics (e.g. Protestants, Eastern Schismatics etc.) are outside the body of the Church. Just as other heretics, they reject the Church as their rule of faith. The problem is that you do not want to learn the difference between material heretics and Catholics in error. Van Noort says nothing about that so you take his silence to mean that he supports your extreme position.
Billot explains it explicitly and in detail so you reject him, in order to have the justification to kick out of the Church all those souls unknowingly in error but adhering to the Catholic Church, as if the Loving Mother could kick her child, clinging to her skirt, out of her House for making an innocent mistake. Along with the rest of your comment, it shows which type of spirit moves you.
P.S. To show that what Billot teaches is not some new doctrine, but taught by the Church since ancient times, I quote St. Thomas Aquinas, quoting St. Augustine:
"As Augustine says (Ep. xliii) and we find it stated in the Decretals (xxiv, qu. 3, can. Dixit Apostolus): 'By no means should we accuse of heresy those who, however false and perverse their opinion may be, defend it without obstinate fervor, and seek the truth with careful anxiety, ready to mend their opinion, when they have found the truth,' because, to wit, they do not make a choice in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church" (Summa Theol., II-II, q. 11, art. 2, reply to objection 3).
This should be taken as pure speculation, but I think it's the best argument that could square the metaphorical circle.
One of the only weaknesses of scholastic thought is that it concerns itself very much with what God will do rather than what he might choose to do. With that in mind... What If the Petrine protection normally functions in a sort of "Petrine maximalist" mode, preserving the Pope and the See from all error... but. In this period of great disobedience, what if all the 'legitimate'* popes after VII were operating only on a 'minimalist' Petrine protection?
We know that God handed over the Church to be tried by the Adversary for one or two periods of time, amounting to around a century.
*by 'legitimate' I mean 'not formally heretical or apostates', so disqualifying Bergoglio, Prevost, and maybe JPII, though the Church should probably hold a cadaver synod to determine if Assisi et al constituted formal defection from the faith and / or loss of office.
The metaphorical circle doesn't need squaring. The Holy See is vacant.
Personally, I find very dangerous the attitude that treats "scholastic thought" in that way, and yet treats the alleged vision of Pope Leo XIII as an axiomatic certainty.
The see is currently empty. Scholastic philosophy is the best, most exact, and safest method of Theology ever developed. I certainly have never had Our Lord appear and tell me I have done Him good service.
With that being said. Scholastic thought has the bad habit of treating Our Lord as a principle rather than a person, in virtue of His divine attributes.
Scholasticism, at least as it is popularized, is fond of saying God will do X rather than God will do X but may do Y.
Regarding the alleged vision of Leo XIII, I find it curious to note that the time between the indefinite end of Vatican I (Postquam Dei munere, Oct 20, 1870) and the introduction of the Novus Ordo (promulgated in 1969) was 99 years.
"We know that God handed over the Church to be tried by the Adversary for one or two periods of time, amounting to around a century."
But keep in mind, that like Job, God knew his adversary would not prevail.
The Papacy/Peter is the rock in which the Church is built on, and the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. Saying God could/would/might/may allow the Holy Ghost, the soul of the Church, to teach error to the universal flock is akin to saying God is the maker and author of evil. "Squaring" the circle that does not need squaring only creates bigger circles that could never be squared.
This scholarly yet genuinely pastoral approach to the age-old Catholic teaching on the indefectibility of the Roman See being intimately connected with the indefectibility of the Church brought for me a clarity in this unprecedented crisis that I have long sought but did not know. Indeed, the truth does set you free. By acknowledging the hesitations and fears of those Catholics seeking to be as authentic as possible about tackling this elephant in the room, this article lays out what is not promised in the statement the truth will set you free. Nowhere is it promised that coming to know the truth will make you feel good; nowhere is it promised that coming to know the truth will not jarring. But the truth is still there, it is still the reality of the situation, acknowledged by the individual or not.
The statements connected with the Society of St. Pius X's consecration of four priests as bishops without papal mandate are what jarred my thought process to dive deeper into the indefectibility of the Church. I began to find it perplexing that the SSPX leadership could speak so forcefully and even correctly of the True Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ and a conciliar church, a modernist church, AND, at the same time, plead for permission to proceed from those who are promulgating heresies from the conciliar church, the modernist church. As well-intentioned as they may be in trying to continuing navigating as authentic Catholics in the context of decades of confusion, it hit me (perhaps a jolt from the Holy Ghost) that there cannot exist the two churches -- the True Church and the conciliar church -- in one entity. Or to put it more plainly, the man generally acknowledged as occupying the Seat of St. Peter cannot be head of both the True Church and the head of the conciliar church at the same time. In short, the step the SSPX does not yet seem willing to take is to admit its seeming acts of disobedience are to protect the flock from the Pope. And that is the thing that is so scary. Yet think of the possibilities if the SSPX ever comes, officially, to embrace the truth of the indefectibility of the See of St. Peter.
Pope St. Gelasius I makes the best point for me: When heretics say the Church is wrong we, who are sure she cannot be wrong, show no hesitation in defending her teachings. (Otherwise all is doubtful).
Also, showing how things like Pastor Aeternus would mean differently under the flawed premise of an erring Church is a useful perspective. It might even penetrate the fog for some.
There is only one conclusion: Sede vacante est.
Firstly, the doctrine of the possibility of an ipso facto deposition of a heretical Pope from the Papal office seems, while likewise maintaining that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals, would undermine the utility of the office altogether for the good of the faithful. It reminds me of the a section from Torquemada's Summa de Ecclesia, where, after showing that only one who is 'pertinacious' in his error should be properly called a heretic, he says that the Pope can be called pertinacious in his error, and thus properly a heretic, if 'he solemnly defines an error, and assert it to be held as Catholic by Christians' (Book IV, Part II, Ch. XVI). The fact that Torquemada and the Decretalists of his age did not identify the indefectibility of the Roman Church in the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is precisely the reason that such a statement could be coherently made. Yet, in light of Vatican I, the sedevacantist claim seems to go something like this: that the Roman Pontiff is completely unable to err on matters of faith and morals, such that if he should err on matters of faith and morals, it should be revealed that he is no longer the Roman Pontiff.
Secondly, even if it were to be posited that the formulation of Papal infallibility in Vatican I were to allow for the case of a manifestly heretical Pope, it seems to be rather implausible to further claim that the same formulation in Vatican I could allow for a situation where the Pope would be a heretic, and the rest of the hierarchy would likewise refuse or be unable to carry out a sentence against him that would declare him to have been ipso facto deposed from the Papal office.
You speculate that a heretical Pope losing office (it is not a deposition, it is a tacit resignation) "would undermine the utility of the office altogether for the good of the faithful", yet maintaining possession of said office would actually lead the faithful to spiritual ruin, and that is no speculation because it is a manifest current fact - many faithful, misled into thinking that the Modernist heretics were/are popes, have followed them into heresy, even apostasy.
In the same way, what you label as "implausible" is actual manifest fact.
Contra factum not valet argumentum.
In addition, the claim that we hold "that the Roman Pontiff is completely unable to err on matters of faith and morals" is not true, and you have not read such a thing on this site.
I would then simply ask, what is the correct interpretation of the infallibility of the Pope, as it is defined according to Vatican I?
The interpretation was given by Vatican I itself. The Pope is infallible "when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church." Also, "by divine and catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium." The OUM can be universal either in time (e.g. a line of popes teaching a doctrine) or in space (the Pope and the episcopate each in their own diocese teaching the same doctrine).
This article is about indefectibility, not infallibility.
I suppose that the interpretation of the circumstances of infallibility do not really pertain to my original point.
My original point was that the divine protection from error really does nothing to the benefit of the faithful if it can be said to have been revoked upon teaching error.
Let's say one observes that that the Roman Pontiff, who has been peacefully and universally accepted as being the Pope upon a canonical election, has taught something that under the conditions of infallibility. Should the teaching be given religious assent?
The sedevacantist standard seems to be: if the Pope has taught something in the UOM, AND it is not heretical, then it should be piously believed. But then the office of the pope is superfluous, and there is no unique authority in the successor of Peter that should be heeded to. If one can only assent to the doctrines of one that is believed to be the Pope so long as it is first judged that the teaching is not heretical, then the teaching is always going to be subject to one's own judgment first. But this is exactly the same standard that the teachings of any other bishop, or any other se, should be held to, and therefore the Roman See and the Roman Pontiff would not be unique in the divine protection against error that has been afforded to them.
Very well done, and given on my birthday. Thank you for the birthday gift. I have always read that the pope is infallible only in matters of faith and morals, and only when speaking Ex Cathedra. With regard to the contents offered above, is the Pope obligated to teach the truth in his ordinary teachings? I am particularly thinking about Francis and Traditiones Custodes. Francis deliberately lied when he sent out his cover letter claiming that he sent out a survey to all bishops (he never provided the survey questions, nor did he provide the actual answers) in which he said the bishops favored suppressing the Traditional Latin Mass. We learned later that the majority of the bishops actually favored retaining the TLM. He used this lie to justify issuing Traditiones Custodes. In Traditiones Custodes, Francis lied again when he claimed the Novus Ordo was the Mass of Vatican II. This was a deliberate lie, since he knew the Novus Ordo violated every provision of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II document issued by the Council Fathers detailing their direction for updating the Liturgy of the Mass organically. The Novus Ordo is the Mass of Paul VI since he signed off on it, but it is not, and never has been, the Mass of Vatican II.
Did these lies constitute a violation of the doctrine of indefectibility and, if so, did this mean Francis was no longer Pope, and thus nullifying all his acts following the issuance of Traditiones Custodes?
Please note the difference between infallibility and indefectibility.
The theoretical presence of error in the teachings of the Ordinary Magisterium is not excluded by theologians, but the Pope teaching the Universal Church grave error and heresy most certainly is.
The NO can certainly be called the Mass of Vatican II because "Sacrosanctum Concilium" was written precisely to seek to legitimize future changes to the liturgy and to open the door for the creation of the NO rite (which was probably prepared long before in the Masonic lodges). The presence of some conservative language was there to fool the many bishops attached to the Roman rite, and it was mingled with the poison to change their attitudes and prepare them to accept the Protestantized rite.
Here is an analysis of SC by Louie Verrecchio:
https://akacatholic.com/liturgical-devastation-is-it-due-to-vatican-ii/
Jorge Bergoglio was never Pope of the Catholic Church because he defected into public heresy long before his election.
Then does that mean that Traditionis Custodes was not legitimately promulgated and may therefore be ignored by any priest who chooses to do so?
A person who is not the Pope and who is not even a member of the Church, but a public heretic, cannot promulgate anything at all.
"Our duty as Catholics is to keep the Faith of the Apostles ". Remember the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.