Martyrdom or suicide?

[Gardener]

There cannot be a time where the Church does not have a pope: St. Peter will have successors until the very end of time. This is part of the very nature of the Church which is unchangeable.

Premise 1:  The Church can have a false claimant Pope.
Support:  Paul IV discusses the topic in a Papal Bull.
Support:  Theologians, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Catalan in particular debate how this is resolved.  Bellarmine talks about the Tradition of this as if this is not novel.

Question:  You have this situation arise.  What happens during the period when this is getting sorted out?

My point:  We have that situation.  Bergoglio is not the Pope.  It is possible Benedict is still the Pope, or we don't currently have one.  If the former, that will get declared, and a new Pope will be elected after Pope Benedict dies.  If the latter, then we are in the end times.  I don't know for sure, but suspect that these are the end times.  The state of morality today would shock Sodom.

Bishop Gracida has posted an article claiming that resignation of the ministry of the papacy is not the same as the office, and therefore the resignation of Benedict is invalid and he remains Pope:
https://abyssum.org/2019/01/10/pope-benedict-is-the-pope/

Francis either is or isn't the Pope. If he's not, it can't be because Benedict isn't and was invalidly elected due to heresy, but rather because Benedict remains as such. Otherwise, one has to make the argument from heresy as the causal factor for failure to be elected validly, which, let's be honest, nullifies Benedict, JPII, maybe JP1, Paul VI, and perhaps even J23.

[Xavier]

Shall we try to distinguish these two points: (1) During sede vacante, all Cardinals and Bishops already appointed retain the authority they have already received from the Pope (hence no problem occurs with an interregnum lasting weeks or months - all existing Cardinals and all Ordinaries are not going to die in that time) (2) During sede vacante, no new Cardinals can be incardinated, nor new Bishops appointed to office, as both these depend on a living Pope - therefore, in a long interregnum, first all Cardinals appointed by the last Pope will die, then all Bishops appointed to office by the last Pope will die, and then all Roman Clergy will die. All of which will not ever happen and is precluded by the dogma of Perpetual Successors. Just imagine a good Catholic lad asking his father, "Dad, what does a Successor to St. Peter look like?" "Don't worry, son, we haven't had one for generations and don't expect any for generations to come either ... but Peter still has Perpetual Successors"! The Church will lose Apostolicity, visibility, jurisdiction and much more in an interregnum spanning generations; about 70 to 80 years is the average lifespan per Scripture.

And that's why all Catholics intuitively know Richard Ibranyi is wrong when he is claiming his 1000 odd year sede vacante. Some Eastern Orthodox here, tongue in cheek, have said, "we're sedevacantists since 1054" and the same applies to them. Catholics have a priori certainty, by virtue of the divine promises to St. Peter and the perpetuity of the Supreme Pontificate, that they are mistaken on all those claims. So we should at least agree an interregnum over 100 odd years is impossible.

What we need is a new Holy Pope or a re-converted one. Let our prayers and petitions, our actions and efforts, over the next 10 odd years, be directed toward storming Heaven for one. Let's try to avoid defeatism, despair and despondency. It's not necessarily true the next Pope is going to be worse, or that the current Pope will not be converted. Even Sodom would have been pardoned for 10 souls making reparation. Nineveh actually was pardoned because of penance. At least the chastisement could be minimized, and that is what we should be working toward with great urgency as the days go by. Not waiting or hoping for world wars or more bad Popes or the like to break out.

Eta: There being mystery in the current situation that will be clarified later is ok and even to be expected. What we have to avoid imho is letting "oh, look its all over. Nothing can be done now" becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy for decades.

[Vetus Ordo]

I'm tempted by the thought of a faithful remnant left when anti-christ comes, but it says in the bible that even the elect will fall.. so there will be no one to trust

The elect, by definition, cannot fall and be lost.

No-one can snatch them out of God's hand (John 10:28-30). No-one, not even the Anti-Christ.

As Gardener has already and kindly pointed out, Christ is simply using hyperbole. The end times will be so dire that even the elect, if possible, would be deceived. If possible, but in fact it isn't.

[Vetus Ordo]

Reality proves this idea to be false because; 1) the Church exists and will until the end of time (unchangeable foundational truth) and 2) by all accounts, this pope and the previous 5 popes have all been heretics - and the expectation for the foreseeable future is more heretical popes.

The Church may very well exist today but it does no longer exist with the same theological foundations. If we have 5 heretical popes in a row, a heretical Ecumenical Council, a heretical liturgy, a heretical catechism, a heretical code of canon law and a heretical ordinary Magisterium, including the dozens of papal encyclicals since 1962, then the Church as it was thought of before, has for all purposes ceased to exist and morphed into something else.

With or without the revelation from Our Lady, reality itself proves; 1) Rome has indeed lost the faith and 2) per the promise of Our Lord, the Church lives on regardless.

The simple answer is, reality proves the [alleged] revelation from Our Lady of La Salette to be true, and that same reality proves Suarez's speculations to be wrong.

It would be interesting to see, if Suarez lived in these days, what he would say. We can be pretty certain that his speculations would say something altogether different.

Suárez operated under the traditional theological premises that vindicated the indefectibility of the Church, La Salette's musings notwithstanding. If Rome has indeed lost the faith, then Traditional Catholicism is a moot point as we know it. There's no other way around.

For the sake of argument however, *if* the Church cannot exist without the pope (having only provided a theological speculation, this is something which you have not proven to be true yet), then it can only mean the pope is still the pope -  because the Church exists.

I have not provided "theological speculation," I have provided theological proofs from Suárez and Ott. The pope is not an option but a fundamental constituent of the immutable nature of the Church: "The structure of the Church cannot continue without the foundation which supports it (Mt. 16, 18)" (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma).

[Vetus Ordo]

It makes no sense for the Church herself to defect, even in the end times. The Church can be attacked, heavily reduced in numbers, infiltrated by masons, etc., but cannot defect as such. Popes and Ecumenical Councils can't teach heresy even if the Antichrist is running the show. The Ordinary Magisterium of the Church can't go bonkers and have every sound Catholic second-guess what they teach. Unless, of course, we ditch all traditional catechisms.

This is a straw man argument.  Fr. Kramer (not the modern one) wrote his book about the Apocalypse circa 1930.  He discusses various interpretations which were ancient, including the Church "fleeing into the wilderness" and hiding out.  That the anti-Christ, or his prophet would be a pope claimant who would rule the institutional organization.

Is it "straw man" to point out that the Church must possess a visible head until the end of times?

She can flee into the wilderness all she wants, hide in the catacombs, etc., but not without a Pope. Where is he?

You and others repeat this over and over, and it contradicts reality. You insist popes must exist "in perpetuity", but it's an historical fact that this "perpetuity" is not a continuity in which the Church never exists without a pope: it is indisputable that the Church can and every so often does exist without any pope, and therefore it is indisputable that the existence of the Church is not ontologically dependent upon the existence of a pope. In a world in which logic ruled, this would mark the end of any discussion over whether Sedevacantism is a possibility, and weasly questions by those who cannot accept logic, about how long a Sedevacantist expects an interregnum can reasonably last, or how they expect we can get a new pope, demonstrate nothing at all except that the Church, rightly since it is not a matter of revelation, has made no pronouncement on this.

Yes, the lengthy absence of a pope presents several epistemological problems, but some of these same ones existed in the Great Schism and others exist anyway with Jorge Bergoglio sitting in the chair of Peter even if he is truly Pope, so it's apparent that God doesn't disallow such a state of affairs.

I do agree that God allows this state of affairs. That much is certain. He's rocking our boat and challenging our assumptions. However, I'm afraid the appeal to an interregnum does nothing to explain the present situation. The longest interregnum in Church history lasted about 3 years, if I'm not mistaken, and it was an embarrassment.

Interregna of 40 or 50 years are unthinkable because they would signal that God would not provide the necessary means for the Church to continue to have a functional visible head. The papacy survives the death of any given pope but cannot survive decades of empty chairs and dead cardinals without rendering the office itself moot.

Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that the world does end in 2109, a hundred years from now. The last recognizable Catholic Pope would have been Pius XII or John XXIII. In what sense could we then affirm that St. Peter would have had perpetual successors until the end of time, if no such successor existed for 144 or 151 years?

[Vetus Ordo]

The Church has been without a pope since 2013.  That doesn't violate VI's teaching on perpetual successors. 

When has Ratzinger become an orthodox pope in the eyes of Traditional Catholics?

I wasn't aware of this development.

[Vetus Ordo]

What we need is a new Holy Pope or a re-converted one.

The new Holy Pope cannot simply sweep under the rug the last 50 years as if nothing happened. Things don't work that way.

The Church, whether we like it or not, has already fundamentally changed. God alone knows what will come out of this mess.

[Stubborn]

Reality proves this idea to be false because; 1) the Church exists and will until the end of time (unchangeable foundational truth) and 2) by all accounts, this pope and the previous 5 popes have all been heretics - and the expectation for the foreseeable future is more heretical popes.

The Church may very well exist today but it does no longer exist with the same theological foundations. If we have 5 heretical popes in a row, a heretical Ecumenical Council, a heretical liturgy, a heretical catechism, a heretical code of canon law and a heretical ordinary Magisterium, including the dozens of papal encyclicals since 1962, then the Church as it was thought of before, has for all purposes ceased to exist and morphed into something else.

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.

With or without the revelation from Our Lady, reality itself proves; 1) Rome has indeed lost the faith and 2) per the promise of Our Lord, the Church lives on regardless.

The simple answer is, reality proves the [alleged] revelation from Our Lady of La Salette to be true, and that same reality proves Suarez's speculations to be wrong.

It would be interesting to see, if Suarez lived in these days, what he would say. We can be pretty certain that his speculations would say something altogether different.

Suárez operated under the traditional theological premises that vindicated the indefectibility of the Church, La Salette's musings notwithstanding. If Rome has indeed lost the faith, then Traditional Catholicism is a moot point as we know it. There's no other way around.

For the sake of argument however, *if* the Church cannot exist without the pope (having only provided a theological speculation, this is something which you have not proven to be true yet), then it can only mean the pope is still the pope -  because the Church exists.

I have not provided "theological speculation," I have provided theological proofs from Suárez and Ott. The pope is not an option but a fundamental constituent of the immutable nature of the Church: "The structure of the Church cannot continue without the foundation which supports it (Mt. 16, 18)" (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma).

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.

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.

[james03]

Francis either is or isn't the Pope. If he's not, it can't be because Benedict isn't and was invalidly elected due to heresy, but rather because Benedict remains as such. Otherwise, one has to make the argument from heresy as the causal factor for failure to be elected validly, which, let's be honest, nullifies Benedict, JPII, maybe JP1, Paul VI, and perhaps even J23.

I've been on record for opposing the classic sede position due to the fact that formal heresy means publicly manifest, and I agree that public manifestation is accomplished by 2 warnings from at least a bishop (in public).  You could argue that it is a cardinal.  I also agree that you don't call a council and put the Pope on trial.  The mechanism is 2 public condemnations and the refusal of the Catholic to recant.  At that point he is not Catholic.

So I observe this happening with Bergoglio.  2 warnings from a cardinal and his crew in public.  A third warning from a group of theologians and a retired bishop.  Bergoglio refused to recant.  If I have integrity, I have to hold to my previous position and consider Bergoglio to be a formal heretic.

We did not see this with previous Popes.  Most if not all were material heretics.  JPII wrote that ever person, each and everyone, is predestined to union with the Father.  That's material heresy.  However none were warned, so it was not formal.

On your other points, I highly suspect that Benedict is still the Pope.  I am focused on what he said to Bishop Fellay and also what went down when Bishop Fellay flew to Rome.  Pope Benedict "resigned" shortly thereafter.  That we have a criminal cabal running the Vatican can not be disputed, from homosexual coke orgies, pedophilia rings, and heroin money laundering.  If I were to bet I'd put my money on over half of them being fags.  So I think there is a strong possibility that Benedict was coerced, perhaps some old pictures were shown to him.

[Xavier]

The elect, by definition, cannot fall and be lost. No-one can snatch them out of God's hand (John 10:28-30). No-one, not even the Anti-Christ.

And so much more can the elected Church of God, the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church never fall and be lost. So to discuss a Catholic response to the crisis in more detail, we must first have the firm and unswerving conviction that Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and all the many other sects of centuries gone by are false. As for elected souls - not to go into much detail - but certainly, those whom God has efficaciously predestined for salvation will be saved. And God gives sufficient grace to all in such a way that, if they correspond to His grace and do what is in their power, His sufficient grace flowers into efficacious grace, and He effectually saves them. Even during these times, for which God has given us much grace through the warnings and prophesies of His Saints and mystics, beside other means.

We see the prophesies of Sr. Emmerich, Ven. Fr. Bartholomew, Our Lady of Quito, where the 20th century is named, fulfilled to the letter. The means out of this crisis is (1) Catholics learning to be consecrated souls dedicated to making reparation (2) the promised Holy Pope.

When has Ratzinger become an orthodox pope in the eyes of Traditional Catholics?

Catholics could and should have prayed for, worked with and publicly supported Pope Benedict XVI much more than we did. Then maybe Summorum Pontificum and Universae Ecclesiae would have wider application and thousands more parishes would have had TLM's. Instead, we took a defeatist approach. Trads deemed him merely conservative, conservatives considered him too traditional, liberals considered him rigid.

The Holy Father said "One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. "Feed my sheep", says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well. Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God's truth, of God's word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament. My dear friends – at this moment I can only say: pray for me, that I may learn to love the Lord more and more. Pray for me, that I may learn to love his flock more and more – in other words, you, the holy Church, each one of you and all of you together. Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves. Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that we will learn to carry one another."

http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html We did not sufficiently do that duty the Pope entrusted to us, the faithful of the Church, to pray much for the Supreme Pastor, and in the end, he fled for fear of the wolves. At least SP took off, and 10 years later, has produced some good.

The new Holy Pope cannot simply sweep under the rug the last 50 years as if nothing happened.

"Pray insistently without tiring and weep with bitter tears in the secrecy of your heart, imploring our Celestial Father that, for love of the Eucharistic Heart of my Most Holy Son and His Precious Blood shed with such generosity, and by the profound bitterness and sufferings of His cruel Passion and Death, He might take pity on His ministers and quickly bring to an end those ominous times, sending to this Church the Prelate that will restore the spirit of Her priests. My Most Holy Son and I will love this most favored son with a love of predilection, and We shall gift him with a rare capacity, a humility of heart, a docility to divine inspiration, the strength to defend the rights of the Church, and a tender and compassionate heart, so that, like another Christ, he will assist the great and the small, without despising the more unfortunate souls who ask him for light and counsel in their doubts and hardships. With divine suavity, he will guide souls consecrated to the service of God in the cloisters, making light the yoke of the Lord, Who said, 'My yoke is sweet, and My burden light'. Into his hand the scales of the sanctuary will be placed so that everything is weighed with due measure and God will be glorified."

For this not to happen, the Devil and his followers will incite "every type of vice", thus provoking "all sorts of chastisements: plagues, famines, internal fighting and external disputes with other nations, and apostasy, the cause of loss of so many souls so dear to Jesus Christ and to Me..."

"This, then, will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under My feet and fettering him into the infernal abyss. Thus the Church and country will be finally free of his cruel tyranny."

https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/roman-catholic-church/item/our-lady-of-good-success

[Vetus Ordo]

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?

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.

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.

[Vetus Ordo]

And so much more can the elected Church of God, the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church never fall and be lost.

I agree.

But apparently she will be preserved until the end of times on quite different terms than those we traditionally expected.

Catholics could and should have prayed for, worked with and publicly supported Pope Benedict XVI much more than we did.

That does not change the fact that Ratzinger subscribed to and believed the new theology canonized by Vatican II all his life. He was the man who authored Dominus Iesus, still as head of the CDF, among other novelties. He was the same man that said to Abp. Lefebvre's face that the days of Quanta Cura were gone and those teachings were no longer applicable. He was the same man that gave his blessing to the travesties of Assisi I and II. The fact that Ratzinger has apparently become a valid pope in the eyes of so many Traditional Catholics speaks volumes about the development of Traditional Catholicism itself.

[TheReturnofLive]

The Church has been without a pope since 2013.  That doesn't violate VI's teaching on perpetual successors. 

When has Ratzinger become an orthodox pope in the eyes of Traditional Catholics?

I wasn't aware of this development.

With the exception of how he viewed Ecumenism - that is, being more indifferent at points making JP2 seem conservative at points - going so far as to say that Jews have not lost their salvation and that there are countless Pagan Saints - Benedict at least promoted traditional liturgy by generously allowing the 1962 missal and rescinding the excommunications of the SSPX, has made some broad-stroke statements with Fatima, and was at least conservative as it pertains to 7 of the 10 commandments (ignoring the first two or three).

Francis, on the other hand, in addition to having the problems of Pope Benedict, has actively waged war against the Natural Law and has gone out of his way to try to discredit the Traditional Catholic movement.

It's like being stabbed with a knife in the eye, but then being stabbed in the other eye with a different knife later. You are given the impression that having only one knife in the eye isn't so bad anymore.

[TheReturnofLive]

And so much more can the elected Church of God, the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church never fall and be lost.

I agree.

But apparently she will be preserved until the end of times on quite different terms than those we traditionally expected.

Which makes you a Protestant based on Traditional Catholic standards, because you have lost any source of quote on quote "epistemological certainty."

[Kreuzritter]

Shall we try to distinguish these two points: (1) During sede vacante, all Cardinals and Bishops already appointed retain the authority they have already received from the Pope (hence no problem occurs with an interregnum lasting weeks or months - all existing Cardinals and all Ordinaries are not going to die in that time) (2) During sede vacante, no new Cardinals can be incardinated, nor new Bishops appointed to office, as both these depend on a living Pope - therefore, in a long interregnum, first all Cardinals appointed by the last Pope will die, then all Bishops appointed to office by the last Pope will die, and then all Roman Clergy will die.

No. I cannot accept this argument. Appointment by the Pope himself  of all bishops is a matter of human positive law, nothing more, and this is certainly not how it was generally done or could have been done in the patristic Church. That's just a fact of history, and it demolishes any claim that the existence of a pope is needed, absolutely, for the creation of new bishops with jurisdiction.

The same can be said about the existence of cardinals and their role in electing a bishop of Rome.

All of which will not ever happen and is precluded by the dogma of Perpetual Successors.

It isn't. You're making inferences dependent on other premises to pass from the dogma to the preclusion.

Just imagine a good Catholic lad asking his father, "Dad, what does a Successor to St. Peter look like?" "Don't worry, son, we haven't had one for generations and don't expect any for generations to come either ... but Peter still has Perpetual Successors"!

That's not an argument.

The Church will lose Apostolicity, visibility, jurisdiction and much more in an interregnum spanning generations; about 70 to 80 years is the average lifespan per Scripture.

That doesn't follow logically, and the worst likelihood is a "loss of visibility" in a mere epistemological sense in which the Church already found itself during the Great Western Schism. Visibility clearly cannot mean that people are perpetually guaranteed to be able to identify the hierarchy of bishops in formal union with the Pope.

And that's why all Catholics intuitively know Richard Ibranyi is wrong when he is claiming his 1000 odd year sede vacante. Some Eastern Orthodox here, tongue in cheek, have said, "we're sedevacantists since 1054" and the same applies to them. Catholics have a priori certainty, by virtue of the divine promises to St. Peter and the perpetuity of the Supreme Pontificate, that they are mistaken on all those claims. So we should at least agree an interregnum over 100 odd years is impossible.

No, would I know this by doctrinal continuity and the witness of the work of the Catholic Church, and she alone, in fulfilling Christ's Great Commission. Even if Ibranyi weren't a lone weirdo from America with weak arguments.