Quick word on this 'cause I think I understand it better.
When the example of St. Paul was used as some sort of parallel for this priest's actions, what crossed my mind shortly after was that this priest was no St. Paul in terms of postion, expertise and all the other.
And I see now that Pope St. Pius X pretty much spells out what my first instincts latched on to.
What the now dying Fr. Heidt did was simply point out the objective actions of his bishop.
St. Pius X admitted after that encyclical that there were enemies in the ranks of the priesthood itself. Many of those priests became bishops. And their pupils have continued in the Church to this day. Now as Paul VI said, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church and is in the HIGHEST levels of the heirarchy.
During the course of his pontificate Pius X came to know that many of the safeguards that were tried and true were no longer reliable. He felt in 1907 that the bishops were trustworthy. There is no way on earth or in Heaven above that he would have endorsed of been happy with the modernist push at Vatican II that led to the disaster of the contemporary Church. Fr. Heidt is the one who is loyal to the religion that Pius X was safeguarding. Fr. Heidt certainly was not inventing doctrines or engaging in bizarre rituals with Lutherans in some kind of Frankenstein experiment "Mass". Had Pius X been Pope, bishop Levada would be picking figs at a monastery.
Just read the first two paragraph of Pascendi and you'll see what I'm talking about.
1. One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking "men speaking perverse things,"[1] "vain talkers and seducers,"[2] "erring and driving into error."[3] It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of Our office.
2. That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary mall.
And referring to the imprimatur:
Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a book has obtained elsewhere the permission which is commonly called the Imprimatur, both because this may be merely simulated, and because it may have been granted through carelessness or too much indulgence or excessive trust placed in the author, which last has perhaps sometimes happened in the religious orders.