Martyrdom or suicide?

[Kreuzritter]

These arguments dissolve into irrelvance from this one simple fact:

Francis, if truly Pope, no more serves to fulfil those functions for which the existence of a pope is necessary than does no pope at all.

For how on God's green Earth have the suppposed popes and hierarchy of the Novus Ordo served to keep the Church of Jesus Christ unified, visible and identifiable by the faithful as one, holy, universal and apostolic? How does Francis embody the Church and symbolise the Faith?

[christulsa]

Either Bergoglio is now a manifest formal heretic, or he was invalidly elected. Either way he is not the pope.  He may actually be the Anti-Christ, tbh.  Someone needs to check under his hair to see if there's a 666. 

Heading now to the pub to join a friend for a Guinness...

[Stubborn]

The theological foundations of the Church have not changed, they never will. You are confusing the Church Christ founded, with the Conciliar church, which is the church that V2 founded, which had it's own Pentecost in 1965. The "New Pentecost" as JXXIII and JP2 called it bore the Conciliar church, *that* church is not the Catholic Church. That church is the church that has all the heresies and is most assuredly not the Church Christ founded, this should actually be self evident.

So the Conciliar Church, that is recognized as the Catholic church worldwide, was founded in 1965 at the closing of the Council.

Where is the Catholic Church since 1965? Can you pinpoint to me her episcopal hierarchy with jurisdiction and her pope? Or if the pope is not alive, the college of cardinals that will elect him?

Afraid so, you can read a bit about the conciliar church replacing the Catholic Church in this weeks edition of +Williamson's Eleison Comments. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has not gone anywhere, her episcopal hierarchy with jurisdiction and her pope are the same as well. Just believe reality and you'll have most of your answers, and forget all the conspiracy theories that leave you with more questions and no answers.

All I can say about this is to repeat what I just said, the theologians are wrong, one does not even need the prediction from Our Lady to verify that Rome has lost the faith - yet, the Church remains present on earth as it must for our salvation. Were it otherwise, no one would be able to attain salvation, which would defeat our purpose for being, defeat God's purpose for creating us and defeat God's purpose for creation and God and the Church He established would be defeated - which is impossible. Forget what the theologians say and just accept the reality you see.

Sure, I can forget what the theologians say but in that case we're not speaking of Traditional Catholicism anymore. The point remains: if Rome has indeed lost the faith, Traditional Catholicism has been empirically proven to be false.

Not so. I say to forget what the theologians say about this particular issue, not everything they ever said. The point being that they are wrong on this issue - and obviously so. We have the benefit of reality which proves them to be wrong on this.

What do we see? We see heretical popes, heresy taught from the Vatican, heresies preached from the pulpits all over the world, a heretical liturgy and on and on - those are the works of the church of the New Pentecost, the Conciliar church, not the work of the Catholic Church - once you clear up that confusion in your head, it should hopefully start to make some sense.

I'm not confused.

I know perfectly well that these things are not compatible with pre-Vatican II teaching. What I'm exploring are the consequences of the reality that we face.

The consequences of the reality, is the continued separation of the sheep from the goats, that's what it's all about, that's what it's always been about for us. For Hell, it's always been about destroying the only means of salvation on this earth by whatever means necessary. As Fr. Wathen puts it:

"And no matter what anyone does, whether from within or without, he will not succeed in destroying the Church. The enemies of Christ's Church do not believe this, which explains why they will never cease to try."

 

[Vetus Ordo]

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has not gone anywhere, her episcopal hierarchy with jurisdiction and her pope are the same as well. Just believe reality and you'll have most of your answers, and forget all the conspiracy theories that leave you with more questions and no answers.

Where is the Catholic Church? Is it the organization headed by Bergoglio?

If so, traditional Catholicism (except for Ecclesia Dei groups) has been proven false. If not, where? A few bishops with no jurisdiction, sedevacantists or otherwise, don't correspond to the fundamental and unchangeable nature of the Church.

Not so. I say to forget what the theologians say about this particular issue, not everything they ever said. The point being that they are wrong on this issue - and obviously so. We have the benefit of reality which proves them to be wrong on this.

Again, I'm afraid you don't seem to fully appreciate the consequences of what you're proposing. If the teaching about the unchangeable nature of the Church is wrong, traditional Catholicism is ipso facto wrong. What sort of Tradition are you maintaining if the rock upon which Christ built His Church is an optional feature?

[christulsa]

I love Fr. Wathen.  If clarity of language is a form of charity, then he was an extraordinarily charitable man. 

[Kreuzritter]

Again, I'm afraid you don't seem to fully appreciate the consequences of what you're proposing. If the teaching about the unchangeable nature of the Church is wrong, traditional Catholicism is ipso facto wrong. What sort of Tradition are you maintaining if the rock upon which Christ built His Church is an optional feature?

It's not an optional feature. The Papacy continues to exist and remains the rock upon which the Church was in fact built. It just wouldn't be embodied in any living person at this point in time, and the result of that is not the ontological disappearance of the Church but the Church having to suffer the very uncertainties we suffer and being unable to do anything about it.

[Kreuzritter]

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has not gone anywhere, her episcopal hierarchy with jurisdiction and her pope are the same as well. Just believe reality and you'll have most of your answers, and forget all the conspiracy theories that leave you with more questions and no answers.

Where is the Catholic Church? Is it the organization headed by Bergoglio?

If so, traditional Catholicism (except for Ecclesia Dei groups) has been proven false. If not, where? A few bishops with no jurisdiction, sedevacantists or otherwise, don't correspond to the fundamental and unchangeable nature of the Church.

That's a question that can't be answered without a pope. But epistemology is not ontology. Our being unable to identify precisely the body of the Church does not mean that the Church does not exist or is not visible.

[Vetus Ordo]

It's not an optional feature. The Papacy continues to exist and remains the rock upon which the Church was in fact built. It just wouldn't be embodied in any living person at this point in time, and the result of that is not the ontological disappearance of the Church but the Church having to suffer the very uncertainties we suffer and being unable to do anything about it.

The papacy can only continue to exist in the absence of a living pope if there remains a body of cardinals able to elect a new one. If all cardinals die and there is no pope, then poof! It's all gone. There is no alternative in Church law. Assuming the Catholic Church isn't the organization headed by the past 5 or 6 popes, there must remain somewhere a body of living cardinals made by the last living pope able to elect a new pontiff. Or, if there aren't any living cardinals around anymore, you have to pray and resort to direct divine intervention to fix things. But even with divine intervention stepping in and creating a new pope out of nowhere, you'd still have a logical problem, namely that there was a time where the Church became effectively headless, a time where her divine and unchangeable constitution given by Christ collapsed, where St. Peter didn't really have perpetual successors until the end, thus violating the promise that the gates of hell would never prevail against her and the teaching of Vatican I.

In order for the current situation to somehow work, for instance, we'd have to have a similar situation to the Great Western Schism where, indeed, the Church was confused about the true identity of her head among two rival claimants, eventually three in the end. However, during this whole process, there was truly only one true pope. There was never an interregnum properly speaking, the Church wasn't without a true visible head during 40 years. Nowadays, there is only one visible claimant to the papacy, though: Jorge Bergoglio. If he isn't the pope, there is no other candidate that we know of. The Church isn't confused between two candidates, there is only one. An invisible candidate hiding somewhere and elected by God knows who, is not a pope. Presumable "shadow-popes" or popes in pectore would be useless because the Church is the "light of the world" whose light must "shine before men" (Matthew 5:14 et seq.) and her head, the rock on which the whole foundation depends, cannot be in hiding for 50 or more years, unable to be identified as such by the faithful, unable to exercise his ministry, with no discernible cardinals and bishops under his authority, while the whole body of Christians is being ravaged by heretics, the chief of which is universally acclaimed as pope. Of course, no such popes in hiding actually exist so it's a moot point.

The other hypothesis, and probably the most likely to be true as per Occam's razor, is that the organization headed by Bergoglio and the past 5 popes is still the Catholic Church but what we thought and believed about her, and what she herself taught about her, was challenged on many levels since Vatican II, a change for which there isn't still an adequate answer.

That's a question that can't be answered without a pope. But epistemology is not ontology. Our being unable to identify precisely the body of the Church does not mean that the Church does not exist or is not visible.

If we weren't able to epistemologically discern and identify the Church, her divine mission would be hindered and become pointless. She would be somewhere but we couldn't know it for certain. Where to hear Mass? Where to baptize our kids? Where to receive salutary doctrine? Where to bury our dead? We wouldn't know. Somewhere, sure, but we couldn't know for certain. Yes, epistemology is not ontology but a church that exists but cannot be identified as such by anyone is not the true Church. Her divine mission requires visibility. The Church needs to be visible and identifiable. If the Church is not the organization headed by Bergoglio, then she must be elsewhere. There must be bishops and a pope. A hierarchical structure with jurisdiction and apostolic succession. If they are out there hiding in caves, they're useless as far as the divine mission of the Church is concerned. If they're not, then the answer must be sought elsewhere.

[Gardener]

I've been looking for a thread to post this, and this seems good as any:

Modern Ecumenism:

[gifv]https://i.imgur.com/VWTvA4B.mp4[/gifv]

[TheReturnofLive]

I've been looking for a thread to post this, and this seems good as any:

Modern Ecumenism:

What was the "Ancient" Ecumenism that distinguishes it from the "Modern" Ecumenism?

Anything Francis has done has already been done worse by Pope John Paul II, and has been done at the same level as Pope Paul VI, Pope John XXIII - both of whom are role models you ought to look up to - as well as Pope Benedict XVI.

Putting a prayer in the Wailing Wall is nothing compared to kissing the Quran. The idea of Ecumenism which is promoted now is exactly the same kind that the "Saintly" Pope Paul VI promoted.

In fact, Francis has been way less indifferent than Pope John Paul II - he's about the same level as Pope Benedict XVI was.


If anything, it's you who aren't following the Saints of the Church and being obedient to your own hierarchy. By claiming that Ecumenism is a snake that is being fed water, you are just waging war against the pure and blameless John Paul II, whose suffering now is worse than the physical torments he had to suffer on Earth - the poor little lamb!

[TheReturnofLive]

I'm sorry for the harshness of such a post, but Christ said let your yes yes no no - anymore comes from the evil one, and you have to at some point address the Truth of Reality.

[Kreuzritter]

The papacy can only continue to exist in the absence of a living pope if there remains a body of cardinals able to elect a new one. If all cardinals die and there is no pope, then poof! It's all gone.

No. The Papacy, created by Jesus Christ, exists, objectively, as a reality. I'm sorry that anti-realists, which includes the inheritors of St. Thomas's Aristotelianism who have moulded the language of post-Tridentine Roman doctrine, have excluded themselves from being able to grasp this.

Furthermore, there were no cardinals for the first millennium of the Church's existence. You really have turned the Roman system of the modern age into a false image of the essential Church if you're claiming the Church's and Papacy's existence are ontologically dependent upon that group of spiritual and literal harlots, and in a similar vein I can sympathise with the rage of someone like Maximillian against what he calls "Ultramontanism".

There is no alternative in Church law.

It is merely accidental positive law, and if that law, in its human shortsightedness, fails to account for the situation in which the college of cardinals disappears during an interregnum, then I fail to see in what way the Church and the faithful would be bound to it if that were to occur, because it wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on. As far as I'm concerned, as long as successors to the Apostles exist, faithful to tradition and the Papacy, we have succession and the possibility of electing a Roman patriarch whom I would acknowledge as such.

But even with divine intervention stepping in and creating a new pope out of nowhere, you'd still have a logical problem, namely that there was a time where the Church became effectively headless, a time where her divine and unchangeable constitution given by Christ collapsed, where St. Peter didn't really have perpetual successors until the end, thus violating the promise that the gates of hell would never prevail against her and the teaching of Vatican I.

No, you just contradicted yourself. If she in fact has perpetual successors until the end, then there can't have been a time at which she didn't. That's absurd. The Pope doesn't receive his office from men, but through the Papacy, from Jesus Christ. And the Church's divine and unchangeable constitution given by Christ has never included the existence of cardinals and their having to choose the Pope.

The other hypothesis, and probably the most likely to be true as per Occam's razor, is that the organization headed by Bergoglio and the past 5 popes is still the Catholic Church but what we thought and believed about her, and what she herself taught about her, was challenged on many levels since Vatican II, a change for which there isn't still an adequate answer.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but I don't accept inferences from "Occam's razor" as valid in claiming to determine likelihood. There is no logical reason for that or statistical evidence to support it.

I will stick with Galatians 1:8. And if the Roman Catholic Church genuinely teaches the religion of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo, as understood by Jorge Bergoglio, then the Roman Catholic Church is not the church of Jesus Christ, and, having contradicted her own self, is even on the merely rational level a joke and an irrelevance to me. It's as simple as that. If she is mutable in her doctrine, so as to contradict her infallibility, then I really don't care, much less about being a "heretic" in rejecting her teaching.

If we weren't able to epistemologically discern and identify the Church, her divine mission would be hindered and become pointless.

Non sequitur. This epistemological problem was the situation during the Great Western Schism and the actual reason I brought it up. It didn't render the divine mission of the Church pointless. She still existed, and she still carried out her mission, whether or not a pope could be identified, just as she continues to do today, whether or not a pope exists.

She would be somewhere but we couldn't know it for certain. Where to hear Mass? Where to baptize our kids? Where to receive salutary doctrine? Where to bury our dead? We wouldn't know. Somewhere, sure, but we couldn't know for certain.

That problem actually exists today whether or not the Vatican II claimants are real popes, because they provide no certainty to the faithful as to liturgy and doctrine. What we do about these is what we do anyway: by faith, trust in God's grace and the sensus fidelium.

Yes, epistemology is not ontology but a church that exists but cannot be identified as such by anyone is not the true Church.

Non sequitur.

Her divine mission requires visibility. The Church needs to be visible and identifiable.

I haven't claimed she is not visible. And don't just throw in identifiability as though it were the same thing.

If the Church is not the organization headed by Bergoglio, then she must be elsewhere.

The more correct thing to say would be that Bergoglio does not head the Church. There is a distinct difference.

There must be bishops and a pope.

There must be bishops but it does not follow that there must be a pope. Repeating this ad nauseam does not make it so.

A hierarchical structure with jurisdiction and apostolic succession.

Doesn't require the existence of a pope to exist.

If they are out there hiding in caves, they're useless as far as the divine mission of the Church is concerned. If they're not, then the answer must be sought elsewhere.

Firstly, it wouldn't make them useless, as the history of secret and persecuted Christians shows, and secondly, this is a straw man. I haven't claimed or implied that they are hiding in caves or are not visible, only that, with Bergoglio where he is, they are as a group not certainly identifiable.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Well, you can't proclaim that the Pope has supreme jurisdiction and then implicitly deny this when things get uncomfortable.

Supreme jurisdiction includes with it the power to determine how the next Pope will be selected.  It could be via direct selection, or via selection of electors.  But however the Pope determines it, that is the only way the next Pope can be selected.  If any other way were even possible, the Pope's jurisdiction would not be supreme.

Moreover, the Church would lack legal continuity from one Pope to the next if Popes would be selected via extra-legal means.

[Michael Wilson]

But theologians have pondered what if the College of Cardinals would all be wiped out at once (which in past times was easier as they all lived in Europe), by a plague or war; would the Church then not be able to elect a new Pope? They have responded that the election of a new Pontiff would then devolve unto the residential bishops.

[Vetus Ordo]

Furthermore, there were no cardinals for the first millennium of the Church's existence. You really have turned the Roman system of the modern age into a false image of the essential Church if you're claiming the Church's and Papacy's existence are ontologically dependent upon that group of spiritual and literal harlots, and in a similar vein I can sympathise with the rage of someone like Maximillian against what he calls "Ultramontanism".

I haven't made the Papacy's existence to be ontologically dependent upon the College of Cardinals. The Popes did. Not ontologically, per se, but legally as supreme lawgivers.

I'm simply describing the situation as it stands.

No, you just contradicted yourself. If she in fact has perpetual successors until the end, then there can't have been a time at which she didn't. That's absurd. The Pope doesn't receive his office from men, but through the Papacy, from Jesus Christ. And the Church's divine and unchangeable constitution given by Christ has never included the existence of cardinals and their having to choose the Pope.

Absurd?

I suggested that if we haven't had any valid pope since, say, Pius XII and then 10 years from now, God would directly crown another pope, there would still be a gap of 71 years where the Church was effectively without one and without any legal means to elect a new one. If St. Peter is to have successors in his primacy of the whole Church and for all time, as the dogma affirms, the Church can't be left in a permanent state of interregnum where her legals means to elect a new pope are extinguished. As per current Church law, there is no solution. Another solution to this problem, as you already hinted at, would be for a new pope to be elected by other means, say by a a few living faithful bishops. But this might be a denial of the supreme jurisdiction of the pope, which is another dogma. And another problem.

I will stick with Galatians 1:8. And if the Roman Catholic Church genuinely teaches the religion of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo, as understood by Jorge Bergoglio, then the Roman Catholic Church is not the church of Jesus Christ, and, having contradicted her own self, is even on the merely rational level a joke and an irrelevance to me. It's as simple as that. If she is mutable in her doctrine, so as to contradict her infallibility, then I really don't care, much less about being a "heretic" in rejecting her teaching.

I genuinely sympathize.

I haven't claimed she is not visible. And don't just throw in identifiability as though it were the same thing.

They're intimately related, though. The Church's visibility also entails that she is easily identifiable from everything else.

As Ott puts it, "The Fathers teach that the Church of Christ is easily recognised and distinguished as such from heretical communions. St. Irenaeus holds against the Gnostics that the adherents of the Church throughout the whole world confess the same faith, observe the same commandments and preserve the same form of Church constitution. He compares the Church, which preaches the same truth everywhere, to a seven-branched candlestick, which, visible to all, bears the light of Christ (Adv. haer. V 20, I). St. Augustine compares the Church to a city on a mountain (Mt. S, 14) : "The Church stands clear and visible before all men; for she is the city on the mountain which cannot be hidden" (Contra Cresconium, II, 36, 45)." (Funtamentals of Catholic Dogma).

The more correct thing to say would be that Bergoglio does not head the Church. There is a distinct difference.

I understand.

In your opinion, who are the bishops and cardinals, if any, that comprise the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church today?

There must be bishops but it does not follow that there must be a pope. Repeating this ad nauseam does not make it so.

A living pope is not necessary, yes. An interregnum could exist. But there must be the legal means to elect one in the surviving hierarchy because there can be no Church without the papacy, as I've quoted from Ott a few pages back, "the structure of the Church cannot continue without the foundation which supports it." However, since you've already stated that in your opinion the absence of a valid college of cardinals is not a true impediment, I understand your position and won't press it further.

Firstly, it wouldn't make them useless, as the history of secret and persecuted Christians shows, and secondly, this is a straw man. I haven't claimed or implied that they are hiding in caves or are not visible, only that, with Bergoglio where he is, they are as a group not certainly identifiable.

It would be a straw man if I suggested that such was your claim. I didn't. I was providing a rhetorical example that a true hierarchy living in caves, so to speak, unknown to the real world and to faithful Catholics, would be useless.