The visibility of the Church – WM Review on Kokx News
We discussed the visibility of the Church and our response to Fr Thomas Crean OP with Stephen Kokx from Kokx News.
We discussed the visibility of the Church and our response to Fr Thomas Crean OP with Stephen Kokx from Kokx News.
(WM Round-Up) – On Wednesday 25 February 2026, I appeared on Kokx News’s podcast with Stephen Kokx.
(Scroll down for clarificatory notes)
The conversation focused on the visibility of the Church, and the first part of my reply to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.”
Topics included:
Why the Church is visible
How visibility must be distinguished in order to discuss the Church’s visibility
Why the claims of “sedevacantists” can only be superficially compared with those of Protestants
The importance of the four notes of the Church
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s comments about the four notes, and “the visible Church”
What great Catholic writers have written about the possibility of these notes being obscured
The difference between the obscuration of these notes and their absence
The Conciliar/Synodal Church – what it is, what we can assert about it, and what this means for its members.
You can find some of the articles discussed here:
‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility, Part I
‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: ‘The visibility of the Church and the current situation’
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: ‘One Year after the Consecrations’
It was a good discussion, and I hope readers of The WM Review enjoy it – and give Kokx News a follow.
A clarification
In the course of the final topic, I made a comment which is very liable to be misleading. I stated something like the following: In my view, it is possible for someone to profess the faith integrally within the Conciliar/Synodal Church.
My comment needs to be clarified as follows:
“In the Conciliar/Synodal Church”
Terms such as “The Conciliar Church”, “The Synodal Church”, etc., are sometimes criticised as being misleading or having multiple meanings – as well as multiple interpretations.
In spite of this, I believe that these terms are useful and legitimate to use (not least because the “officers” of this body use them1) – providing that they are clearly defined. I have been clear in my definition, particularly in the thesis statement of Zero Marks:
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. This body of men is taken by many to be the Roman Catholic Church, and it is this body which Fr Crean seeks to defend.
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.
I would further clarify that I do not consider “The Conciliar/Synodal Church” to be a true society, because it lacks the unity of a common end to which it is directed by an authority, as discussed in Zero Marks, Chapter IV.
The authorities of the Conciliar/Synodal Church has historically tolerated a range of beliefs are tolerable amongst the laity and even the clergy, “permitting” its members to profess the Catholic faith under its auspices, whilst manifestly failing to oblige them to do so. Vatican II certainly inaugurated a new and false religion, but not everyone in that milieu professes it or its errors, or with visible pertinacity; hence the disunity of faith within its borders.
These men are in a wholly different situation to those in false sects. The men of whom we are speaking – that subsection whom I say profess the faith “within” the Conciliar/Synodal Church – mistakenly believe the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy to be that of the specifically Roman Catholic Church, rather than some vague notion of “the true Church.” They profess what they profess because they submit themselves to the teaching of the succession of true pontiffs; they mistakenly hold the post-conciliar claimants to be true popes because they believe that this is what is required of them by the Church, and because they specifically intend to submit to the Roman Pontiff.
Their mistake is different in kind to those whose rule of faith is Canterbury, Moscow, Pastor Bob, or themselves. This is addressed and defended in more detail below.
“Profess the faith” – i.e., in the sense which is relevant for the question of membership of the Church.
While it is useful to talk about the “new religion of Vatican II” (and I do talk in these terms), when dealing with the context of membership of the Church, I believe it is important to use the standard terms of theology. For example, the classical criterion of membership in question is external profession of the faith, rather than profession of the true religion.
This is a wholly external criterion, without regard for the interior virtue of faith. Nonetheless, the profession of faith is reducible to external submission to the Roman Pontiff as the proximate rule of faith. This submission is the formal principle of what is professed externally, and can be verified externally even while the material object of what is professed is deficient.
You can read about this topic here:
Profession of Faith, Heresy and Separating Oneself from the Church – Canonist Fr Augustine OSB
Short essay: “Idolatry Passports” and objections on the profession of faith and membership
“Integrally” – i.e., it is possible for someone to “profess the faith” in a way that is sufficient for them to remain a member of the Church, and which is sufficient for them not to cease to be members of the Church – even if their profession may, in good faith, include errors or omissions.
By analogy, a confession is “integral” if all mortal sins of which one is conscious, and which can be confessed, are so confessed. The moral theologians McHugh and Callan explain:
2740. Integral Confession.—The completeness or integrity of confession is twofold.
(a) Material completeness consists in the declaration of all mortal sins committed and not yet confessed and absolved. This kind of completeness is sometimes impossible, and therefore unnecessary. For completeness is obligatory in virtue of a positive law of Christ, and positive laws do not bind in case of impossibility (361).
(b) Formal completeness consists in the declaration of all the mortal sins which here and now, all things considered, one can and should mention. This kind of completeness is necessary for a valid and fruitful confession, because the law of Christ calls for a complete confession, as far as possible, and formal completeness is possible. Since he who is obliged by a law is also obliged to use the means to keep the law, those who are going to confession should examine their consciences beforehand, unless this is impossible or unnecessary. The time and diligence to be given this examination depends on the person and his circumstances; but all should be careful about it, while avoiding scrupulosity, and should also remember that contrition is even more important than confession.
This is so even if the person is not conscious of some mortal sins which he needs to confess, or confesses something which is not a sin.
In an similar way, a quite imperfect profession of faith can be formally integral, and thus sufficient for membership, provided one is not professing any doctrine in evident defiance of the Catholic Church. One can profess the faith in a formally integral way without it being materially integral, in that the material object is incomplete, or even contains errors in good faith, potentially even against revelation.
Perhaps no one professes the faith in a completely materially integral way, as some level of the assent is always implicit; but a formally integral profession of faith is sufficient for membership, and not necessarily destroyed by grave deficiencies of material integrity.
Let us apply this to those who are involved in the Conciliar/Synodal Church.
Four categories of ‘members’ of the Conciliar/Synodal Church
Visibly pertinacious heretics who know they are rejecting the teaching of the Church
Those who embrace the whole Vatican II religion in an unconditional way (e.g., embracing Fiducia Supplicans, Amoris Laetitia, Dignitatus Humanae, etc., on their own terms, rather than with some contrived way to square them with traditional doctrine), thinking it to be the Catholic religion.
Those who embrace aspects of Vatican II in a conditional way (i.e., rejecting as many errors as they are aware of, consciously aligning themselves with the traditional Catholic practice, even if in a contrived way), specifically because they mistakenly believe that Vatican II came from the Roman Pontiff, and that the conditionality of their praxis is compatible with proper submission to ecclesiastical authority.
“Traditionalists” involved with what is commonly referred to as “the Indult” – namely, those who more or less profess the traditional Catholic faith and practice the traditional Catholic religion whilst remaining in good standing with the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy
The first category does not profess the Catholic faith in a way sufficient for the membership of the Church; they are non-Catholics. The same applies to the second category, at least probably and for the majority.
However, I do not believe that it applies to everyone who falls in the third and fourth categories, and thus is not destructive of their membership of the Church.
Many of these men do profess the the Catholic faith, and are visibly in good faith, accepting “the pope” as the proximate rule of faith – whilst being misled about the legitimacy of the recent papal claimants, and about the material object of their profession.
The formal reason for many of their errors is that they believe such points to come from the Pope; they are mistaken about the legitimacy of the recent claimants, and so adopt errors as a result of this formal reason. But as St Thomas wrote:
“[I]n the moral, as in the physical order, the species is not constituted by that which is accidental. Now, in the moral order, the essential is that which is intended, and that which results beside the intention, is, as it were, accidental.”
These men intend to submit to the Roman Pontiff. Reference to intention has nothing to do with whether they have the interior virtue of faith, as we are here dealing exclusively with the external profession of faith.
Can such persons be said to “profess a false religion” by their involvement in this body, as well as their adoption of certain errors (even against faith)? Bearing in mind the need to refer to profession of faith, rather than to that of religion let us consider this point for the sake of argument.
If we take “a religion” to be a system of doctrines, practices and rituals, then the problem with professing a false religion is ultimately either a) one of some form of infidelity and/or non-acceptance of the Pope as proximate rule of faith (heresy or apostasy) or b) withdrawal from the Pope as the supreme head of the Church (schism).
But the persons in view are neither heretics nor schismatics. I agree that Vatican II resulted in a new (and false) religion), but I deny that the latter categories of men mentioned above can justly be said to practice it, at least as a universal claim. Such men – particularly the fourth (“traditionalists in good standing”) – practice the Catholic religion, accompanied by distortions which they have adopted precisely because they believe them to have been imposed by the Roman Pontiff. This formal reason shields them from the charge of heresy or professing a false religion.
Their profession of errors (viz. certain elements of “Novus Ordoism”, professed in a conditional way) obscures the integrity of their profession of faith (and thus the Church’s unity of faith), but does not destroy it; they retain membership of the Church; they are Catholics; their involvement in the Conciliar/Synodal Church could be described as merely material or accidental.
Acceptance of Vatican II
It might also be alleged that all those who nominally recognise the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy – including even the fourth category of men – are presumed to accept Vatican II, and the Novus Ordo system, and that on this basis they are non-Catholics.
On the contrary, what would follow might be that they are to be presumed to be non-Catholics, due to a failure to profess the faith. But the flagrant disunity of faith in the Conciliar/Synodal Church (cf. Chapter I of Zero Marks), the variety of different forms of “acceptance” of Vatican II, and the absence or inconsistency of ideological enforcement of doctrines of Vatican II (cf. Chapter IV of Zero Marks), mean that this is a rebuttable presumption. Such rebuttable presumptions turn on the facts, and are to be judged on a case by case basis.
Nor can it be assumed that those who nominally accept the post-conciliar claimants are in communion with them. On the contrary, they nominally recognise them and claim to be in communion with them, but they are mistaken – because the post-conciliar claimants are not in communion with them.
Nor does it follow that one defects from the profession of faith by claiming to be in communion with someone who is a heretic or schismatic, prior to an authoritative judgment from the Church: again, a presumption may be legitimate here, but can be rebutted by the facts. An analogous situation can be drawn from the life of St Hypatius. Following Nestorius’ preaching of heresy, St Hypatius removed Nestorius’ name from the diptychs. He was rebuked by his bishop, Eulalius of Chalcedon, who appears to have continued naming Nestorius until he was authoritatively deposed. There is no implication from St Hypatius’ biographer Callinicus that either St Hypatius or Eulalius considered the other to have broken communion with each other by their respective habitual acts.
There are other examples from the history of the Church which stand against the idea that nominally claiming to recognise or be in communion with heretics or schismatics rendered one a non-Catholic. For example, Bl Noël Pinot in revolutionary France, and various saints during the Arian crisis. It does not seem sound to conflate such nominal recognition/communion with actual communicatio in sacris.
Fr Bernard Lucien’s explanation
Fr Bernard Lucien, sometime disciple of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers, wrote about this in Appendix III of his classic explanation of the Thesis of Cassiciacum, The Problem of Authority in the Post-Conciliar Church. I believe that the same (or similar) principles and conclusions apply, even if one does not recognise the papacy materialiter of the post-conciliar claimants:
“The absence of divinely assisted Authority at the summit of the Church since the promulgation of the false doctrine on religious liberty by Vatican II is a certainty that we believe with the certitude that arises from the Faith: we have shown this in our first chapter.
“Under these conditions, should one not state that those who recognize John-Paul II (and Paul VI) as formally pope(s) are effectively no longer members of the Church, which is to say that they find themselves no longer visibly belonging to the Church?
“In other words, should we not consider them, as regards BELONGING to the Church, like the Orthodox or the Protestants?
“Such a conclusion would be illegitimate.
“One should not forget that the PRESENT living Magisterium and that alone, which is divinely instituted in order to authentically present everything which is the object of the Faith is PRESENTLY involved.
“As a result, those who are opposed to our presentation of the Revelation of the doctrine of the Church, are not in law necessarily and formally opposed to the Magisterium of the Church itself.
“The formal opposition to the Magisterium of the Church, apart from a possible admitting of culpability, is certainly not manifest in a manner that has official force in the Church unless one is effectively opposed to the living present Magisterium. The deprivation of Authority which currently affects the entire Church makes such a manifestation quite impossible.
“Thus one CANNOT state that those who recognize John-Paul II as formally Pope are because of this, personally guilty of the sin of heresy or of schism and that they thus place themselves outside the Church.
“Moreover, one cannot state that those persons who adhere to the ‘Conciliar Church’ are outside the Church because they adhere to a non-Catholic sect. We have already pointed this out, but will add further provisions here.
“Belonging to the Orthodox Church immediately involves the adherence to a formal principle of rupture with the Church’s Magisterial institution. This is why belonging to the Orthodox Church places one outside the visible Church.
“To return to the present situation, following John-Paul II does not necessarily and formally constitute a direct rupture with the authentic Magisterium of the Church: and this quite simply because John-Paul II actually remains in material possession of this institution.
“Such an adherence leads to participating in a capital schism (which is to say, a schism which is a rupture with the head – caput – with authority as such). But this capital schism is not (because of the material permanence of “authority”) equivalent to a complete rupture with the visible Church. This capital schism includes, as we have seen, the adhesion to ‘irregular propositions’ (propositions already condemned by the Church; Cf. “Cahiers de Cassiciacum,” No. 3-4, p. 43).
“This is why one can say that it places one in a condition of precarious adherence to the Church. And this is a secondary motive for publicly denouncing this capital schism, perilous in the extreme for all the faithful who adhere to it. But as following John-Paul II is not adherence to a complete and formal principle of rupture with the real institution of Authority in the Church, one cannot say that those who follow him are outside the visible Church.”2
But if those in the third and fourth category above are not adhering to “a complete formal principle of rupture with the Church’s Magisterial institution”, and are members of the Church (albeit in a “precarious” and “perilous” state), then their profession of faith is formally integral, even if it is not materially so.
However, while I agree that Fr Lucien exonerates those who profess to recognise the post-conciliar claimants and embrace some degree of error, and defends their status as Catholics, I would disagree with him on one point. There are those who openly reject the teaching of the Church, knowing that it is the definitive teaching of the (true) Popes.
Similarly, there are others who openly fail to submit to the Church’s teaching (present or past) as their proximate rule of faith.3
It is harder to defend such persons (to put it mildly) on the grounds that “the PRESENT living Magisterium and that alone” is authoritative, and that the “[t]he deprivation of Authority which currently affects the entire Church makes such a manifestation [of non-submission to the magisterium] quite impossible.” Some of these men do indeed manifest their non-submission to the magisterium.
Conclusion
Let us conclude with the following points about the four categories of men mentioned:
While those in the fourth category (and also the third) may be tolerated by the Conciliar/Synodal Church, due to errors which undermine the material integrity of their profession of faith, they may no longer be tolerated when such errors are corrected.
The Conciliar/Synodal Church is not a safe environment for anyone. Everything about it is ordered towards the perversion of the faith, and as such everyone should flee from it as from an occasion of sin.
A “formally integral” profession of faith may be sufficient for membership; however, the person who is professing errors in good faith may become attached to his errors, whether through convenience, habit, human respect, or something else; when he becomes aware that his cherished doctrine is in fact erroneous, he may well choose to persevere in error over the truth.
As such, my comment should not be taken as any kind of encouragement for Catholics to remain in the orbit of the Conciliar/Synodal Church.
This topic is addressed further here:
Where is the Church today? Archbishop Lefebvre and the Conciliar Church
What is the state of a Catholic who submits to a “false magisterium”?
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For example, the term “Conciliar Church” was used by Paul VI and Cardinal Bennelli; and one of the first things said by Leo XIV after the conclave was “We want a Synodal Church.” The 2024 Bishop of Rome document referred specifically to a “conciliar/synodal church”.
pp. 71-2.
To cite my colleague M. J. McCusker:
I have seen it suggested that someone who publicly professes that they are a Catholic could not be invincibly ignorant in this regard, and therefore never become a material public heretic but only a formal public heretic or remain a Catholic who was sincerely mistaken. This view would restrict the category of material public heretic to those who were raised in heresy.
However, it seems clear that we must uphold, at least theoretically, the possibility that someone might in good conscience refuse to submit to the magisterium, or be invincibly unaware of their obligation to submit, while maintaining a semblance of outward communion with the Catholic Church.
Today, as result of the decades-long crisis in the Church, there are many putative Catholic who are in fact separated from the unity of the Catholic faith because they have no intention of accepting “the rule of what must be believed from the magisterium of the Church.” They choose for themselves what to believe without regard to ecclesiastical authority. Their religious beliefs are a collection of opinions which they personally find acceptable; they do not give assent to a body of revealed truths received by faith, on the basis of them having been proposed by the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
Indeed, the very nature of the crisis in the Church is fundamentally a crisis of the heresy of Modernism, whose adherents are able to make a verbal profession of Catholic dogmas while holding that these are religious ideas which arise from within man, rather than being revealed by God and proposed for belief by the Church. The Modernist does not take his rule of faith from the Church, even while he repeats formulae which sound Catholic, and attempts to do so within putative Catholic structures. (I have explained the Modernist underpinnings of Francis’s doctrine here and here.)
A person invincibly ignorant of the obligation to submit to the magisterium would be material heretic. He does not look to the magisterium for his rule of faith; therefore, he is a heretic, and not a mistaken Catholic. On the other hand, if he is invincibly ignorant and in good faith, he cannot be a formal heretic.
According to the more common opinion of theologians, public material heretics, as we have seen above, are not members of the Catholic Church. Therefore, men and women in the above category, if their heresy is sufficiently public, will not be members of the Catholic Church. Their sincerity in refusing to take the magisterium as their rule of faith is immaterial here – members of the Orthodox churches, Protestants, etc may also be sincere.
Under ordinary circumstances, in the presence of the Catholic hierarchy, it would be impossible to conceive of invincible ignorance on this scale, and the existence of a large number of non-Catholics claiming the Catholic name unchallenged would also be unthinkable. The fact that so many non-Catholics consider themselves to be Catholics, and are taken as such by others, arises from the nature of the crisis in the Church, namely the mass defection of much of the putative hierarchy from the Catholic Church.
His full account of this matter is here.
In the article, it was noted that “moral diligence” is required to find the Church, especially so when its visibility is partially obscured in some elements, and/or to some degree, as today.
Holding that thought, this morning I’m reading through Jeremias, and came across this verse which recalled this fact to me:
“You shall seek me, and shall find me: when you shall seek me with all your heart.” (Ch. 29, v. 13).
Two thoughts on this passage:
1. God wants us to search for him. It shows our love for Him.
2. The diligence is commensurate with the object: The prize is so August that justice requires (de congruo) not just effort in the quest, but a dedication of life to the pursuit of Him.
In any case, I perceived a harmonization between this passage and what was said regarding moral diligence in seeking His Church, particularly as Jeremias was also speaking in a time of desolation, when the Jews had fallen into idolatry and away from the (then) true faith en masse, and were being punished for it, same as today.