Ruptures with apostolic doctrine and origin shows the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church ('Zero Marks', Ch. V)
Having considered apostolicity of succession, let us consider the devastating implications of breaking with apostolic doctrine and continuity.
Having considered apostolicity of succession, let us consider the devastating implications of breaking with apostolic doctrine and continuity.
Author’s Notes
This is Chapter V of my “book”, ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church – dealing with apostolicity as a property, rather than as a note. The note of apostolicity is addressed in Chapter IV.
Zero Marks is Part II of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden: The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.” Peter Kwasniewski described Fr Crean’s article as “a definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism, at the level of first principles.”
As Zero Marks is very long and detailed (over 30,000 words), we have first published it in full for WM+ members, and have been releasing each of the five chapters separately for all readers.
This chapter covers the following topics:
Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property
Rupture with apostolic doctrine
Some specific ruptures with apostolic doctrine
Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church apostolic in origin?
Questions asked about the Conciliar/Synodal Church
Conclusions on apostolicity
Other resources
I discussed this chapter with Stephen Kokx over at Kokx News.
It has repeatedly been alleged that “sedevacantists” – and myself specifically – have been overly focused on apostolicity of doctrine and of origin, and have ignored the issue of apostolic succession. I have already demonstrated the vexatiousness of such an accusation:
But as I mentioned at the end of the video with Mr Kokx, the question of the Church’s essential properties is a “zero sum game.” The absence of one property in the Conciliar/Synodal Church – in this case, shown by the rupture with apostolic doctrine – is such that the conclusion necessarily follows: this body is not the Catholic Church. The idea that it can be saved with reference to arguments about apostolicity of succession is false: following such a demonstration, the task is instead to account for succession and government in light of the established facts and received theology.
For Part I of this response, see below:
For the rest of Zero Marks, see the full piece here:
The other individual chapters are available here:
Disunited in Faith: Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church (‘Zero Marks’, Introduction and Ch. I)
‘Comprehensive Rejection’: Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church visibly holy? (‘Zero Marks’, Ch. II)
Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church Catholic? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. III)
Apostolic succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church? (’Zero Marks’, Ch. IV)
Some other relevant articles:
‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed
How do you tell the true Church after a rupture? Journet’s answer
Have we ignored apostolicity of government/succession and over-focused on that of doctrine?
Thesis Statement
Before proceeding, I once again restate my definition of the Conciliar/Synodal Church, my thesis, and a necessary clarification:
Definition: By “Conciliar/Synodal Church,” I mean the body of men who recognise Leo XIV as their Pope and spiritual leader, claim to be subject to him, and whom he (and his officers) recognise as being in good standing with him.
Thesis: The Conciliar/Synodal Church, considered as such, is not the Roman Catholic Church.
Clarification: By “not the Roman Catholic Church”, I mean that this body of men, considered as such, is not identical with the Roman Catholic Church. Taken as defined, it is a body composed of both Catholics and non-Catholics and lacks certain essential properties of the Roman Catholic Church; for this reason, it cannot be identified with that Church. The thesis therefore concerns the identity and nature of the body itself, considered as a social reality or accidental aggregation, rather than the status of the individuals within it. It does not deny the continued visibility of the Catholic Church; rather, it denies that this visibility, and membership of the Church, are determined by the boundaries of the Conciliar/Synodal Church as defined. Accordingly, it does not imply a) that this body constitutes a false sect (since it is an accidental aggregation of Catholics and non-Catholics, rather than a true society); b) that no Catholics exist within it; or c) that a man ceases to be a Catholic simply by being included in this body. Some of these points are clarified in Zero Marks, or will be clarified further elsewhere.
The conclusion and appendix of Zero Marks will be released next week.
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Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property
Rupture with apostolic doctrine
We have seen above that the true Church must be apostolic in doctrine – that is, there must be an objective identity between her doctrine and that received from the Apostles.
The normal course of action would be first to identify the true Church and submit to her authority, because there – with her apostolic hierarchy – we will find the apostolic doctrine.1 This is, again, an example of “the argument from prescription,” and pertains to the very reason for the visibility of the Church.
Some take this argument from prescription as the end of the question, as Fr Crean appears to do – at least for identifying the true Church.
However, this “argument from prescription” is manifestly insufficient, because the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy teaches a variety of different doctrines, some of which are contrary to the Catholic faith. One cannot submit to this hierarchy, taken as such: one is obliged to identify individual members whom one believes to be orthodox – and these are rarely one’s own diocesan bishop. One is also obliged to write (or consult) lengthy studies attempting to reconcile prima facie errors with what is known to be Catholic doctrine. This is thus a self-contradictory solution to the problem: one is left with a visibility which does not achieve the purpose for its existence.
However, our problem is not precisely identifying the true Church. We have already identified her: she is the Roman Catholic Church. Our problem is identifying where the Roman Catholic Church is, and who is and is not a member of her hierarchy. This distinction provides the key to the solution.
All parties to this discussion agree that the society which was headed by St Peter the Apostle, Pope St Pius I (d. 154 AD), Pope St Pius V (d. 1572 AD), Pope St Pius X (d. 1914 AD) and Pope Pius XII (d. 1958) was the true Church of Christ.2
This agreement is very significant for the purpose of this reply to Fr Crean, and the topic in general. As the theologian Mgr Van Noort wrote:
“[I]f the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, it doubtless has in its possession the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied.”3
For this reason, we know that what the Church taught up until the death of Pius XII was “the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied.” We are in possession of a point of data that someone seeking the true Church, without knowing that this is the Roman Catholic Church, does not have.
“The doctrine of the Apostles” is a broad concept, and is not limited to the doctrines we see explicitly stated in Holy Scripture by the Apostles, or written in a text such as the Didache. In fact, it refers to all of Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, as proposed to us by the Magisterium of the Church.4 This Magisterium proposes to us the doctrine of the Apostles: sometimes that which was taught directly, and sometimes that which was contained within it implicitly. This is necessarily true, because otherwise we would have to assert that the Church was able to impose upon the faithful “some new doctrine” – which is expressly rejected by Vatican I.5
As such, rupture with or contradiction of the definitive teaching of the Church of Pius XII and his predecessors is a rupture with apostolic doctrine, in the sense relevant to this question.
Some specific ruptures with apostolic doctrine
We have already seen that the Conciliar/Synodal Church has committed itself to a variety of doctrines which are in contradiction with what was taught by the Church of Pius XII and his predecessors. We detailed some of these in each of the previous sections, and we could add to them the following, drawn from John S. Daly’s The Principal Heresies and Errors of Vatican II:
The supposed right to religious liberty (as taught by Dignitatis Humanae – condemned on multiple occasions by the pre-conciliar Church, based on the teaching of Holy Scripture)
That revelation was completed “when [Christ] accomplished on the Cross the work of redemption” (Dignitatis Humanae n. 11, directly contradicting “the traditional and definite Catholic teaching that many truths proposed by the Church as Divinely revealed were not revealed by Our Lord until after His Resurrection”,6 and what is implicit in the statement of revelation closing at the death of the last Apostle).
That heretical/schismatic sects are “means of salvation” (Unitatis Redintegratio n. 3, contradicting, for example, the Council of Florence)
That prayers in common with non-Catholics are “desirable” and “very effective means for petitioning the grace of unity” (Unitatis Redintegratio n. 8 – contradicting what Fr Crean himself states is divine law, whilst denying the contradiction)7
That Catholic missionaries can cooperate “with the missionary undertakings of other Christian communities, so that as far as possible the scandal of division may be removed” (Ad Gentes, n. 29, contrary to the constant practice and teaching of the Church)
That the Jews are faithful to God’s covenant (as is implicit in the Good Friday Prayer that they “may grow/continue in faithfulness to His Covenant” – contrary to the constant teaching of the Church).
When combined with the other doctrinal errors we have considered, it is clear: the Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly not apostolic in doctrine, and is therefore visibly not the Catholic Church.
Even Fr Crean cannot deny the appearance of such rupture, given that he has written studies attempting to reconcile some of these very points with Catholic doctrine. Thus, even if he cannot accept that it is visibly not the Catholic Church, his own work shows that it is not visibly the Catholic Church.
While I have no doubt that Fr Crean and others have the best of intentions here, such “close reading” harmonisations are scarcely plausible, given that they run contrary to the interpretations and implementations of the alleged authorities, who have little-to-no interest in reconciling their novel doctrines with those of the Catholic Church.
Further, the multiplicity of such “merely apparent contradictions” is itself a phenomenon in need of explanation. And the sufficient and true explanation is that the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is responsible for them, is not the Catholic Church.
Is the Conciliar/Synodal Church apostolic in origin?
The radical disunity, unholiness, and non-catholicity of the Conciliar/Synodal Church demonstrate that it lacks identity with the Church of the Apostles. As such, it is a visibly new body, and not apostolic in origin.
Again, even if Fr Crean cannot accept that it is visibly not apostolic in origin, it is still certain that it is not visibly so.
The idea that people could be deceived into accepting a new and different body or society as the Church is by no means new. Prior to Vatican II, Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote the following – applying it to Communism, but with much analogical value:
“The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion – one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.
“In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counter-church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”8
Elsewhere, in the same work, he wrote the following – which is especially instructive, given what we have already discussed regarding the disunity of faith and the renunciation of authority (and its replacement by voluntarism):
“The third reason for the appeal of the passion of totalitarianism is the need of social unity. When a civilization loses a unifying philosophy of life and a common purpose, like a body without a soul, it begins to break up into a thousand discordant and warring elements.
“For a while – and this is the present tactic – an attempt is made to balance opposing forces and keep them in equilibrium. Men then begin to recognize the need of unity and authority. Having surrendered a spiritual bond of unity, like to that which the soul gives to the body, or morality to the state, they seek to compensate for the loss by a compulsory organization from without in the form of a dictatorship.
“The unity now comes not from within – but from without like a whip. Thus does a society which lost its faith in the authority of a Church sneak authority back into society through the door of the counter-church, as Kant who exiled God through pure reason sneaked him back through practical reason. Inner authority based on the truth of God revealing gives way to external authority based on the party line of the dictator dictating. Once inner faith is lost, a dictatorship becomes imperative to re-establish some kind of order by force.”9
The Catholic Church is governed by law (with teaching as a kind of doctrinal law, as discussed in the previous chapter). It is not goverened by raw power, administrative tyranny, or the mere will of the “Pope” – as is the Conciliar/Synodal Church.
The idea of an “ape of the Church” is not limited to Archbishop Sheen. Fr Berry, to whom we have referred throughout this piece, also wrote the following:
“The prophecies of the Apocalypse show that Satan will imitate the Church of Christ to deceive mankind; he will set up a church of Satan in opposition to the Church of Christ. Antichrist will assume the role of Messias; his prophet will act the part of Pope; and there will be imitations of the Sacraments of the Church. There will also be lying wonders in imitation of the miracles wrought in the Church.”10 (Emphases added)
He refers to his other work, The Apocalypse of St John, in which he writes:
“Our divine Saviour has a representative on earth in the person of the Pope upon whom He has conferred full powers to teach and govern. Likewise Antichrist will have his representative in the false prophet who will be endowed with the plenitude of satanic powers to deceive the nations.
“If Antichrist be of Jewish extraction, as he probably will, the sea from which he arises signifies Judaism. Then the earth whence comes the second beast is a symbol of the Gentile nations in revolt against the Church. The two horns denote a twofold authority – spiritual and temporal. As indicated by the resemblance to a lamb, the prophet will probably set himself up in Rome as a sort of antipope during the vacancy of the papal throne mentioned above.”11 (Emphases added)
Another commentator on the Apocalypse, Fr Bernard Kramer, wrote the following:
“The Church having fled from Rome after the murder of the pope leaves the papal chair vacant. This false prophet possibly at the behest of Antichrist usurps the papal supremacy and proposes himself as emperor of Rome. His assumed spiritual authority and supremacy over the Church would make him resemble the Bishop of Rome, and his temporal regency over the re-established empire would make him emperor of Rome.
“He would be Pontifex Maximus, a title of pagan Roman emperors, having supreme spiritual and temporal authority. Assuming authority without possessing it makes him the False Prophet.”12 (Empasis added)
Fr Owen Francis Dudley wrote the following in a short tract on the Church:
“We speak of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, a framework, a supernatural organism living by the life of Christ. Is it beyond the genius of Satan to build to himself a parallel kind of framework, an antithesis to the Mystical Body of Christ?
“There is a carefully planned framework to be found in freemasonry – a supreme pontiff, a hierarchy, a temple, ceremonial worship, degrees of initiation, festivals, a creed. This planned framework is an antithesis to God’s plan for His Church. It is a deliberate plan of worship. It is naturalism as opposed to supernaturalism.”13
Finally, Padre Pio allegedly gave Fr Gabriele Amorth the following warning:
“You know, Gabriele? It is Satan who has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false Church.”
The conversation itself touched on the possibility of a false pope.14
These examples, whether they are more or less accurate descriptions of our current situation, show that sober writers have considered such a scenario to be possible. As discussed in the previous part, it is certain that the Church is to shrink and undergo a great deception at some point in her history; it is neither absurd nor even apocalyptic to consider that many Catholics may be deceived by the existence of a distinct body posing as the Catholic Church.
Questions asked about the Conciliar/Synodal Church
Similarly, the idea that the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself is a different body to the society of the Catholic Church is by no means a new idea either. The persistence of the questions raised about the continuity between the two seriously undermines the idea that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the “city on a hill that cannot be hidden”, and easily recognisable as the true Church.
The thesis statement for this study has not specified a “date of birth” for the body denoted as the Conciliar/Synodal Church. Nonetheless, it is clear that the distinction between the society of the Catholic Church and the body of the Conciliar/Synodal Church started becoming visible from about 1965, with the promulgation of the documents of Vatican II.
This is also when the term “Conciliar Church” entered common parlance. In 1966, Paul VI said in an address to lay leaders:
“For it is not a matter merely of collecting and spreading the council’s teachings, but of transforming oneself into the image of the conciliar Church.”15
The question as to a “new Church” became so common after Vatican II that in 1968, Frank Sheed was prompted to write a book titled Is it the Same Church? In this work, Sheed recognised the legitimacy of the question, and affirmed that it was the same Church – but set out a number of “red lines”, the crossing of which would mean that it was a new and different body. All these “red lines” have been crossed, as we indicated in an article annexed to this response:
In 1971, the Jesuit theologian Fr Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga wrote a book titled The New Montinian Church, in which he raised the question of Paul VI’s legitimacy, and claimed that he was turning the Church into a new “homocentric [anthropocentric] religion of universal brotherhood.”16 In a classic case of “weaponized orthodoxy”, Fr Sáenz y Arriaga was subsequently suspended and then excommunicated – while the propagators of doctrinal error ran rampant.
In the same year, Fr Roger Calmel OP wrote the following, in an essay included in Brief Apologia for the Church of the Ages, and cited in Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ essay Is There a Conciliar Church? on the same subject:
“The false church which is showing itself amongst us since the curious Vatican II is diverging tangibly year after year, from the Church founded by Jesus Christ. The false post-conciliar church is splitting away more and more from the holy Church which has saved souls for twenty centuries (not to mention the support and enlightenment lent to civil society). The pseudo-church in construction splits away more and more from the true Church, the only Church of Jesus Christ, by the most strange innovations in the hierarchical constitution as well as in its teachings and morals.”17
(This book has just been republished by Arouca Press, with a foreword by Fr Crean himself. For more on Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ essay, see the Appendix below.)
In April 1972, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer – who later joined Archbishop Lefebvre as co-consecrator at the 1988 episcopal consecrations – wrote an article titled ‘Since the Council there has been a new Church’ in his diocesan bulletin, stating:
“In the implementation of the plan outlined by Vatican II, in most of the Catholic world, the attempt to adapt has gone beyond simply a means of expression more in conformity with the mentality of the day.
“It has even touched the essence of Revelation itself. They do not preoccupy themselves with explaining revealed Truth in such a way as to enable man to understand it more easily; rather their goal, by using ambiguous and flowery language, is to put forward a new Church to man’s tastes formed according to the maxims of the modern world. […]
“With that, they now spread, more or less everywhere, the idea that the Church must undergo a radical change in its morality, in its liturgy, and even in its doctrine. In what has been written and done in Catholic milieu since the [Vatican II] Council, the thesis has been spread that the Traditional Church, such as it existed until Vatican II, is no longer adequate for the needs of modern times, so that it must be completely transformed.
“A profound observation on what has taken place in Catholic circles leads to the conviction that, truly, since the Council there is a new Church that is essentially distinct from the one we knew prior to the Council, as the unique Church of Christ. Indeed, human dignity is now exalted as an absolute and untouchable principle to whose rights truth and good must submit.”18
In 1975, the modernist Cardinal Léon Joseph Suenens, in the preface of his book A New Pentecost?, recognised that many Catholics were unable to see an identity between the emergent Conciliar Church and “the Church of their childhood or even that of yesterday”:
“To those who at this moment are distressed because they cannot recognize – in the confusion and the changes of today – the Church of their childhood or even that of yesterday, this book offers a message: be of courage, the power of the Holy Spirit is at work deep within the heart of his Church, breathing into it a fresh youthfulness. It is the Spirit who is our living hope for the future.”19
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre asserted that the Conciliar Church was a distinct society on numerous occasions. In 1976, he said:
“This Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church of all time. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship—already condemned by the Church in many official and definitive documents. […]
“The Church which affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is therefore not Catholic. Insofar as the Pope, bishops, priests, and faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church.”20
He affirmed the same on many occasions in the following years, as documented elsewhere:
More recently, Mgr Brunero Gherardini recognised this reality in his 2009 book The Ecumenical Vatican Council: A Much Needed Discussion:
“There is a question which lies latent within the pages of this long treatise. It is a burning question, which manages to make itself heard as an everlasting act of love – a question which has been pronounced by the ever more distant and feeble voices which were silenced or drowned out by the Poltergeist [the “Spirit of Vatican II”]: Where is the Church?
“Granted that she is still present in the Vatican II documents, in spite of the fact that the documents themselves may have partially clouded her identity, is she still – I am asking – overlooking the implications of the post-conciliar period, or is this only one of her unrecognisable counterfeits?”21 (Emphasis in original)
Cardinal Leo Burke also recognised it in 2012, in a now-unavailable22 video interview with Raymond Arroyo:
“Sadly, what happened after the Second Vatican Council was – an idea developed that we were forming a new Church and that everything that had gone on since the time of the first Christians was all retrograde and in some way a defection from what was supposedly this Church of freedom and truth and joy.”23
Finally, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, responding to the 1988 episcopal consecrations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, also recognised what Vatican II and its religious revolution had conveyed, and voiced the same idea:
“It is a necessary task to defend the Second Vatican Council against Msgr. Lefebvre, as valid, and as binding upon the Church. Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.
“The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.
“This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy – the form in which the liturgy was handed down – suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have been taken since the council; on the other hand, if men make question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the faith – for instance, the corporal virginity of Mary, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, etc. – nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation. I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith.
“All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.”24 (Emphasis added)
Fr Crean himself may believe that something like Ratzinger’s analysis is the correct one, and that he should work towards the programme suggested at the end of this text – although we should note that Ratzinger himself here witnesses to the “external fact” of the radical disunity of faith in the Conciliar/Synodal Church.
But the point here is not whether Ratzinger, Lefebvre, or anyone else cited is correct about whether there was a “new Church”. The point, rather, is that they all recognise the fact that enormous changes took place, and the fact that many people believed, suspected or worried that it was a new Church.
Thus, even if we are wrong in asserting that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly not apostolic in origin, it is once again not visibly so. The attempt to prove its identity with the true Church is something that requires explanation, nuance and argument; and this is a reality overlooked in the claim that, as the Church is the “city on a hill” and easily recognisable by all, the sedeplenist explanation must be true.
However, Lefebvre and those of a similar mind were correct. As we have demonstrated throughout this response, it was indeed (and is) a “new Church” – beginning not with Leo XIV or Francis but with Vatican II.
Conclusions on apostolicity
At the heart of apostolicity is the concept of continuity. It might be alleged that the various ruptures in apostolicity we have considered are “merely accidental”, and that the substance of the Church continues nonetheless. In response, let us turn once more to Romano Amerio, who considers this very point:
“The whole question of the present condition of the Church can be summed up as follows: is the essence of Catholicism preserved? Do the changes that have occurred allow the same essence to continue in existence amidst changing circumstances, or do they turn it into something else?”25
In fact, he had already answered this question earlier in Iota Unum:
“This raises the difficult question of the relation between the essence of a thing and its accidental parts, between the essence of the Church and its accidents. Is it not possible that all the things we have listed pertaining to the Church, whether individually or generically, could be reformed and yet leave the Church unchanged?
“Yes, but three points must be noted. First: there are those things that the scholastics called absolute accidents, that is, accidents which are not indeed identical with the substance of something, but without which it does not exist. These are such things as quantity in corporeal substances, and in the case of the Church, faith.
“Second: although there are accidental parts to the life of the Church, she cannot assume and abandon any and every accidental quality indifferently, because, just as every entity has certain accidents and not others (a ship one hundred stades long, as Aristotle remarked, is no longer a ship) and as, for example, the body has extension but lacks consciousness, so the Church too has certain accidents and not others, and there are such things as accidents which are incompatible with the Church’s essence, and which destroy it. […]
“Third: the things we have listed as being affected by the post-conciliar change are indeed accidents in the life of the Church, but accidents should not be regarded as matters of indifference, which can be or not be, be in one way or be in another, without thereby changing the nature of the Church. This is not the place to conduct a full metaphysical debate or to appeal to St. Thomas’s De ente et essentia. It is, however, essential to remember that the substance of the Church exists only in her accidents, and that an unexpressed substance, that is, one without any accidents, is a nullity, a non-existent.
“The entire existence of an individual across time is, furthermore, contained in his acts of intellect and will: and what are intellection and volition but accidental realities which occur, come and go, emerge and disappear? Yet one’s moral destiny, salvation or damnation, depends on just those accidents.
“So too the whole life of the Church in time is her life as it exists in accidentalities and contingencies. How then can one fail to recognize her accidentals as important, and indeed substantially important? Are not changes in accidental forms accidental and historical changes, occurring within the unchangeable nature of the Church?
“And if all the accidents were to change, how would we be able to tell that the substance of the Church had not changed?”26
This is why conceding to Fr Crean the appearance of a material succession in the Conciliar/Synodal Church establishes nothing contrary to our previous demonstration. A claim to be the true Church, based on Conciliar/Synodal Church’s apparent possession of the note of apostolicity, is nullified by this body’s evident lack of the property of apostolicity. It certainly does not establish the Conciliar/Synodal Church as the Roman Catholic Church: the apparent presence of a note does not remedy the absence of even one property (let alone the others). “Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.27
So much for the apostolicity of the “perpetually visible” Conciliar/Synodal Church.
Next week we will release the conclusion and appendix to Zero Marks to the general public. If you want to read it now, see below:
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As Fr Franceso Faà di Bruno wrote:
“Her Apostolic doctrine has never changed; it has from time to time been unfolded and made more clear, especially when heresy or some other necessity has called for a solemn and precise definition; but there is no case of the Roman Catholic Church holding a doctrine which was previously declared heretical, or declaring heretical what was formerly defined by the Church as a dogma of faith; so much so that it is a proverbial saying, even among Protestants, that the Roman Church est semper eadem, is always the same.”
Similarly, M.J. Rhodes wrote:
“There is a necessary succession of doctrine as well as of orders, and apart from the Apostolic communion we have no guarantee for the Apostolic faith. The Apostles alone received from Christ that great depositum, with the assistance of His Spirit to keep it uncorrupt for all time.”
Fr Francesco Faà di Bruno, Catholic Belief. London: Burns & Oates, 1884. pp. 162. https://books.google.vg/books?id=ZbYCAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q&f=false As cited in Eric Hoyle, Questions on Apostolicity.
M.J. Rhodes, The Visible Unity of the Catholic Church. Vol. I, p. 44. London: Longmans, 1870. https://archive.org/details/visibleunityofca01rhod/page/44/mode/1up As cited by Hoyle, ibid.
As we have stated on several occasions, The WM Review does not have a position on the legitimacy of John XXIII, and as such the above statement does not intend to exclude him.
Van Noort, p. 85.
Fr de Zulueta writes, regarding what must be believed with divine faith, and heresy:
The error must concern a doctrine contained or revealed in the Scriptures, and also proposed as such by the Church to our belief. But, be it carefully observed, it is not necessary for the guilt of heresy that the doctrine should have been solemnly defined by supreme authority; it is quite sufficient that it should form part of the ordinary daily teaching of the Church throughout the world, which is infallible. To say, ‘It is not heresy to deny this doctrine: for the Church has never defined it,’ is utterly unsound. Hence it would be heresy to deny any truth clearly contained in the Scriptures, because the Church teaches all that the Scriptures do.”
Letters on Christian Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 51. R&R Washbourne, London, 1914.
Vatican I taught:
“For the holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”
In addition, we should consider “the argument from prescription” (see above). Continuing on from his explanation of the argument in general, he distinguishes historical/apologetic prescription and theological/dogmatic prescription:
“The first is reduced to this: The whole Church has this doctrine, received from the Apostles, with a possession of long duration. But what is found as one among many is not an error, but handed on” (Tertullian, De praescr. n.28). Therefore this doctrine really was handed down from the Apostles.
“The other argument of theological Prescription also has two forms: a) The positive form can be reduced to this: The whole Church has this doctrine, received from the Apostles, with a possession of long duration. But the whole Church in virtue of her own infallibility cannot have for a long time in her possession a doctrine as apostolic, which really was not handed down by the Apostles. Therefore this doctrine really was handed down by the Apostles, b) The negative form of the argument goes like this: This doctrine was discovered later and it contradicts what the whole Church held previously with a possession of long duration, having received it from the Apostles. Therefore such doctrine cannot have been handed down by the Apostles.” (n. 804)
For the reasons mentioned above, the traditional doctrine of religious liberty can be said to be “the doctrine of the Apostles” on the basis of positive theological prescription; the new doctrine, based on it is on a novel notion of human dignity, “cannot have been handed down by the Apostles” by virtue of negative theological prescription. The same applies, due to the same novel principle, to the new doctrine on the death penalty and other such matters.
John Daly, The Principal Heresies and Other Errors of Vatican II, ed. John Lane.
Crean, Praying With Non-Catholics — Is it Possible? Apropos, February 2009. Available at http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/thomas-crean/praying-with-non-catholics.htm
Sheen continues:
“In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity. Then will be verified a paradox – the very objections with which men in the last century rejected the Church will be the reasons why they will now accept the counter-church.
“The last century rejected the Church because it was infallible; it refused to believe that the Vicar of Christ would be immune from error when he spoke on matters of faith and morals as chief shepherd of Christendom. But the twentieth century will join the counter-church because it claims to be infallible when its visible head speaks ex cathedra from Moscow on the subject of economics and politics, and as chief shepherd of world Communism.
“The Church was critically spurned in the last few centuries because it claimed that it was Catholic and universal, uniting all men on the basis of one Lord, one faith, and one Baptism. No man, the nineteenth century claimed, could be a good American, a good Frenchman, or a good German if he accepted shepherding, albeit spiritual, from a spiritual head. But in the new era, what the modern lost soul will like particularly about the counter-church is that it is catholic or international. It breaks down all national boundaries, laughs down patriotism, dispenses men from piety to country which the Christ enjoined, makes men proud that they are not Americans, French or British, but members of a revolutionary class under the rule of its vicar who rules from the Kremlin.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, pp. 9–11. Cluny, Providence, RI, 2021.
Ibid., p. 157.
Berry, p. 66.
Berry, The Apocalypse of St. John, p. 135. John W. Winterich, Columbus, OH, 1921. Taken from Novus Ordo Watch.
Fr Bernard Krame, The Book of Destiny, p. 150 of this online edition: https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfDestinyAnOpenSKramerFr.HermanBernardF.4418_201903/page/n149/mode/1up
Fr Owen Francis Dudley, The Church Unconquerable, 1932. Available at https://www.ecatholic2000.com/cts/untitled-516.shtml
My article Private Revelations, Theology and the Crisis – What should be their relationship? (25th March 2022) contained the following:
Zavala’s conversation with Amorth proceeded as follows:
“Indeed,” [Amorth] states, “One day Padre Pio said to me very sorrowfully: ‘You know, Gabriele? It is Satan who has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false church.’”
“Oh my God! Some kind of Antichrist! When did he prophesy this to you?” [Zavala asks].
“It must have been about 1960, since I was already a priest then.”
“Was that why John XXIII had such a panic about publishing the Third Secret of Fatima, so that the people wouldn’t think that he was the anti-pope or whatever it was …?”
A slight but knowing smile curls the lips of Father Amorth.
“Did Padre Pio say anything else to you about future catastrophes: earthquakes, floods, wars, epidemics, hunger …? Did he allude to the same plagues prophesied in the Holy Scriptures?” [asks Mr. Zavala]
“Nothing of the sort mattered to him, however terrifying they proved to be, except for the great apostasy within the Church. This was the issue that really tormented him and for which he prayed and offered a great part of his suffering, crucified out of love.” [says Fr. Amorth]
“The Third Secret of Fatima?”
“Exactly.” (Zavala 231)
Unterhalt also says the following:
Padre Pio’s special connection with the message of Fatima was also revealed in 2017 in an enormously enlightening dimension: It was disclosed that he even knew the Third Secret – it had already been revealed to him four years before the shepherd children. The renowned journalist José María Zavala testifies to this in his book El secreto mejor guardado de Fátima, which he published to mark the 100th anniversary of the apparitions. In this investigative work, the Spanish author refers to his extensive interview with Don Gabriele Amorth, a spiritual son of Padre Pio. In it, the famous exorcist reveals what the stigmatized saint, struck to the core and shocked, confided to him about the Third Secret: “It is Satan who has entered the womb of the Church, and within a while he will rule over a false church.”
Zavala questioned Don Gabriele Amorth about this in more detail and, as the conclusion of the dialogue, states the following: “There were two recurring and interrelated themes: the great apostasy in the Church from its apex – in accordance with the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi – and the introduction of the devil to the head of the Church by means of the ‘Pope under the control of Satan.’”
José María Zavala, El secreto mejor guardado de Fátima, Spanish edition, Planeta Publishing 2017, quoted in Fr Frank Unterhalt’s essay on the Third Secret of Fatima.
Paul VI, Address to Members of the Permanent Committee of the International Congresses for the Apostolate of the Laity, Mar. 8, 1966; underlining added. Translation taken from The Messenger, Mar. 18, 1966, p. 3.)
Fr Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga, The New Montinian Church, p. 480.
Fr. Roger Thomas Calmel, O.P. “Authority and Sanctity in the Church”, Itineraires 149 (January 1971), p 13-19; reproduced in the Sel de la Terre 40, p. 77 and 85-87. Cited in Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Is There a Conciliar Church? Le Sel de la Terre, n. 85, Summer 2013. Available at https://dominicansavrille.us/is-there-a-conciliar-church/#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1759
At the time of writing, Arouca Press have just published a new translation of Brief Apologia for the Church of the Ages. The edition features a foreword by Fr Crean himself, in which he describes the book as “a work of prophecy”, suggesting that Fr Calmel “seems to have received some of portion of [the prophets’] spirit. Although he expresses some reservations about one of Fr Calmel’s ideas, Fr Crean nonetheless states that “the words of Roger-Thomas Calmel still shine a penetrating light.”
Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, The Religion of Man – Since the Council there has been a new Church, Diocesan Bulletin, April 1972. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20260119132906/https://dominicansavrille.us/the-religion-of-man/
Mgr Brunero Gherardini, The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion, p. 296. Trans Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, Casa Mariana Editrice, Frigento, Italy, 2009.
Cf. the New Liturgical Movement article here: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2012/08/cardinal-burke-on-of-and-ef.html
Monday, August 13, 2012, Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, speaks with Raymond Arroyo about the revised English translations of the OF Missal as well as the usus antiquior. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20121029111150/https://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/08/card-burke-on-summorum-pontificum-and-worship-as-the-key-to-reform-fr-z-rants-and-agrees/
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Address given July 13, 1988, in Santiago, Chile, to the Chilean bishops. Published as ‘Cardinal Ratzinger’s Remarks Regarding the Lefebvre Schism’, published in The Wanderer, The Wanderer Printing Company, June 22, 2000. Available at https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3032&repos=1&subrepos=&searchid=292734
Amerio, p. 712
Amerio, p. 109–110.
Something is good when it is good in every respect, and it is bad when it is wrong in any respect.
It makes me chuckle when Dr K calls anything a ‘definitive rebuttal’. This is a bloke who ‘rethinks’ absolutes like Paris rethinks fashion.
One thing I appreciate about this piece is that it at least attempts to argue from publicly demonstrable continuity and contradiction rather than mere sentiment or aesthetics.
A lot of people instinctively know something broke after Vatican II, but few try to lay out a structured case for why the rupture can be objectively identified. Even where readers may disagree with some conclusions, the effort to ground the discussion in visible doctrinal continuity rather than emotion is highly worthwhile.