Posted on 05/03/2025 9:37:49 PM PDT by ebb tide
Some sincere Catholics therefore find themselves resigned to the possibility of a pope who thinks that the Church can bless same-sex unions, allow Communion for the divorced and remarried, and tell non-Catholics that they are saved by their false religions; they retain at least a slim hope, though, that the white smoke will herald the selection of a man who is at least Christian and might permit the Traditional Latin Mass.
How did this surreal nightmare materialize? Do we really think it is God’s positive will that serious Catholics accept the possibility of a pope who has already made it clear (while a cardinal) that he rejects settled Catholic teaching? To help approach an answer to these questions, it is necessary to first review the Church’s teachings on the distinctions between different categories of heretics. We can then see how the Church’s enemies have exploited mistaken views of those categories to essentially guarantee another heretical claimant to the papacy.
In his The Church of Christ, Professor E. Sylvester Berry set forth the key distinctions between the different categories of heretics:
“A heretic is usually defined as a Christian, i.e., a baptized person who holds a doctrine contrary to revealed truth; but this definition is inaccurate, since it would make heretics of a large portion of the faithful. A doctrine contrary to revealed truth is usually stigmatized as heretical, but a person who professes an heretical doctrine is not necessarily a heretic. Heresy, from the Greek hairesis, signifies a choosing; therefore a heretic is one who chooses for himself in matters of faith, thereby rejecting the authority of the Church established by Christ to teach all men the truths of revelation. He rejects the authority of the Church by following his own judgment or by submitting to an authority other than that established by Christ. A person who submits to the authority of the Church and wishes to accept all her teachings, is not a heretic, even though he profess heretical doctrines through ignorance of what the Church really teaches; he implicitly accepts the true doctrine in his general intention to accept all that the Church teaches. A person may reject the teaching authority of the Church knowingly and willingly, or he may do it through ignorance. In the first case he is a formal heretic, guilty of grievous sin; in the second case, he is a material heretic, free from guilt. Both formal and material heresy may be manifest or occult. Heresy is manifest when publicly known to such an extent that its existence could be proved in a court of law; it is occult if not externally manifested by word or act or if not sufficiently public to allow proof of its existence in court.” (p. 128)
To understand how the Church’s enemies have promoted their heresies since Vatican II without being censured, we need to focus on a few concepts from this description: the desire to accept what the Church actually teaches, and the question of whether we can “prove” the existence of formal heresy. The diabolical genius of the Church’s enemies has been to spread as much heresy as possible without going so far as to provoke an adverse reaction from those who should be safeguarding the Church from their errors. Because the gatekeepers grow weaker with every heresy they tacitly permit, the enemies have progressively more room to spread increasingly egregious errors. We will remain completely impotent against these enemies until we realize this.
In his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote of the need to make proper distinctions to avoid hasty conclusions in confronting heresy:
“To be a heretic it is necessary to be pertinacious in adhering to error; it is not enough to have uttered an heretical phrase. For example, on the subject of the Blessed Trinity — a very difficult subject — we might make a mistake or blunder in speech and say something that is not very orthodox. If someone points it out to us we retract; but if they accuse us of heresy, or excommunicate us . . . how frightful.” (p. 16)
This of course aligns with Professor Berry’s discussion above and it highlights some useful distinctions. First, we can see that Archbishop Lefebvre provided the example of a truly difficult subject, the Blessed Trinity. One may truly wish to follow what the Church teaches on this subject, or others that are similarly difficult, but may nonetheless adhere to an erroneous belief through ignorance. However, if a self-professed Catholic with the use of reason denies the existence of the Blessed Trinity, for example, it is much more difficult to attribute that to ignorance. This would be even more the case in proportion to the rank of the person holding a heretical belief — when it is a cardinal with such mistaken beliefs about simple matters, we cannot possibly attribute it to ignorance of what the Church teaches.
Even non-Catholic periodicals around the world understood immediately that Fiducia Supplicans constituted a revolutionary change that would have been considered heretical at any other time in Church history.
Second, we can see that Archbishop Lefebvre emphasizes that a person would be pertinacious in their errors if they refuse to retract the error when confronted with how their belief differs from what the Church truly teaches. This is the way in which the Church has always thought about mercy toward the heretic. But it is obviously a far different matter when the heretic tells us that he thinks that the Church’s settled teaching is wrong and he wants to change it. Already in this desire to change a well-known, settled teaching of the Church there is a mindset that goes well beyond pertinacity.
Finally, it is clear that Archbishop Lefebvre was speaking in terms of the protections for the heretic rather than protections for the Church. Of course the heretic needs to be protected against unjust penalties, but the principles behind the Church’s teaching would never support a situation in which an enemy of the Faith intentionally exploited these protections in order to inflict maximum damage to the Church. The Church must be able to defend itself against such treachery, and therefore we must be able to evaluate plainly observable realities to determine when an enemy of the Church is a formal heretic even though he protests otherwise.
Archbishop Lefebvre continued by applying these lessons to Vatican II’s Decree on Religious Liberty:
“So it is very dangerous to let oneself be drawn into hasty conclusions. Sometimes it is said about the pope: He signed the Decree on Religious Liberty; but this decree is heretical, therefore the pope is a heretic, therefore the pope isn’t pope . . . Firstly, one must study in a very precise way to see if the decree is heretical. Then, one must ask whether the pope, when he signed it, was quite aware of what he signed. It is known that he himself obliged certain expressions to be added which say, ‘The Decree on Religious Liberty is in conformity with Tradition.’ Of course, this isn’t true, but in his mind the pope saw it that way. Hence one cannot conclude too rapidly, the consequences would be too grave.” (p. 17)
The first thing to notice here is that the potential heresies of the Decree on Religious Liberty are relatively subtle, especially for those who have not studied the encyclicals of the pre-Vatican II popes.
Also, this subtlety was aggravated somewhat by the statement to which Archbishop Lefebvre alluded — that the Decree on Religious Liberty was in conformity with Tradition. As such, ignorance of the heretical nature of the document was somewhat understandable. Moreover, the fact that Paul VI directed the statement to be added to the decree certainly implied that he did not wish to break with Church teaching on the topic.
When one thinks about the topics Archbishop Lefebvre mentioned — the Blessed Trinity and religious liberty — it is easy to understand how Catholics could unwittingly hold erroneous beliefs. But what about the blessing of same-sex unions? Even non-Catholic periodicals around the world understood immediately that Fiducia Supplicans constituted a revolutionary change that would have been considered heretical at any other time in Church history.
In addition, as soon as the document was released, sincere Catholics (and even Protestants) around the world pointed out that it is heretical. Accordingly, those members of the hierarchy who defended the document were most certainly pertinacious in their heresy because they not only realized that it was a complete innovation contrary to Catholic teaching but also saw the near-universal condemnation from those who pointed out the egregiously heretical aspects of Fiducia Supplicans.
It is completely irrelevant that Fiducia Supplicans did not change the Church’s teaching on marriage because the document’s heresy resides primarily in authorizing the blessing of a sinful activity — it is just made profoundly worse by the fact that it involves a mockery of marriage and promotion of homosexuality.
Even the text from Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández presenting the document makes it clear that (a) conservative cardinals had issued their oppositions before the document was promulgated and (b) the document attempted to change what the Church had always taught:
“While the subject matter of this document was being studied, the Holy Father’s response to the Dubia of some Cardinals was made known. That response provided important clarifications for this reflection and represents a decisive element for the work of the Dicastery. Since ‘the Roman Curia is primarily an instrument at the service of the successor of Peter’ (Ap. Const. Praedicate Evangelium, II, 1), our work must foster, along with an understanding of the Church’s perennial doctrine, the reception of the Holy Father’s teaching. As with the Holy Father’s above-mentioned response to the Dubia of two Cardinals, this Declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion. The value of this document, however, is that it offers a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings, which is closely linked to a liturgical perspective. . . . It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”
The last sentence shows Tucho’s delight in mocking his Catholic opponents: it is completely irrelevant that Fiducia Supplicans did not change the Church’s teaching on marriage because the document’s heresy resides primarily in authorizing the blessing of a sinful activity — it is just made profoundly worse by the fact that it involves a mockery of marriage and promotion of homosexuality. All things considered, it appears as though God permitted the unfathomable blasphemy of Fiducia Supplicans to wake souls up to the fact that the hierarchy is populated with formal heretics.
The test for formal heresy is whether the heretic pertinaciously chooses to hold a doctrine contrary to what the Church actually teaches. It is irrelevant that the heretic would like the Church to change its teaching to accommodate the heretical belief. An uneducated Catholic may be so confused as to imagine that Church teaching can change to contradict what it once was, but it is completely untenable to imagine that a bishop or cardinal would have this excuse. Although clerics are no longer required to take St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism, they are all responsible for knowing that it is heretical to believe that “dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously”:
“I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously.”
Thus, one cannot defend a heretic against the charge of formal heresy on grounds that they think Church teaching can evolve because that mistaken belief is itself a heresy. Again, one can certainly excuse the uninformed laity, especially after sixty years of unopposed heresies, but the defense cannot apply to bishops. Otherwise the teaching authority of the Church would be irremediably destroyed.
Unfortunately, a mistaken view of mercy toward heretics has contributed to the failure to condemn those who pertinaciously seek to advance errors that were unambiguously condemned by the pre-Vatican II popes. But this false mercy toward the enemies of the Catholic Faith has been catastrophic for the Church: those who adhere to Tradition are now denounced as heterodox by those who seek to radically overturn the foundations of the Catholic Faith. All of this will be made far worse if the conclave elects a manifest formal heretic.
We know with certainty that God will never permit His Church to fail. But if the conclave illegitimately elects a formal heretic, it seems that serious Catholics will have entirely reasonable grounds to take to heart the words of Cardinal Thomas Cajetan:
“If someone, for a reasonable motive, holds the person of the pope in suspicion and refuses his presence and even his jurisdiction, he does not commit the delict of schism, nor any other whatsoever, provided that he be ready to accept the pope were he not held in suspicion. It goes without saying that one has the right to avoid what is harmful and to ward off dangers. In fact, it may happen that the pope could govern tyrannically, and that is all the easier as he is the more powerful and does not fear any punishment from anyone on earth.” (quoted in Fr. Matthias Gaudron’s The Catechism of the Crisis in the Church, p. 217)
May God grant us a Catholic pope or the grace to do His will in resisting one that we must hold in suspicion. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
Ping
“and tell non-Catholics that they are saved by their false religions” I reckon it depends on their actions here. If someone holds the door open for someone else that’s a good deed. Somebody trying to tell me that if they live their lives in that manner if they’re not Catholic they are damned to hell?
Catholics ought to be the best Christians they can be until the next “pope” tells them to stop.
Yep - too many Catholics think Christ walked among us and shed His blood for us just so he could anoint Peter as the first Pope and then build the Church into a governing body instead of a purveyor of the Good News of the Gospels...
Christians know they are saved by a person, Jesus Christ, not a religion or denominational affiliation.
Religion saves no one.
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