Replies

Try answering the objections I raise

1. Canon 333.3 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law (Canon 228.2 of the 1917 Code) which states: "There is no recourse or appeal from a decision of the Roman Pontiff."
2. The Pope writes: (Ecclesia Dei): "In performing such an act, notwithstanding the formal canonical warning sent to them by the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for Bishops last June 17, Archbishop Lefebvre and the priests Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta have incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law."
And furthermore, he writes:
"Everyone should be aware that formal adherence to the schism is a grave offense against God and carries the penalty of excommunication decreed by the Church's law."
3. "Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God." St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, 105 A.D.

You lose. Good bye!

Not at all. Reread my post. Canon Law is papal law. When Canon Law allows for an exception, it is an exception prescribed by the pope himself. He can't then turn around and say--oops! it doesn't exist--at least not in a mere letter. He must change the law first--which he didn't do.

So you are right there is no appeal from a papal decision. But in this case there was no decision. The pope's Canon Law made the penalty for disobedience an automatic one, latae sententiae, unless the exception applied. It most certainly did apply. Hence no excommunication.

In fact, the Pope himself never excommunicated the Archbishop--though this is falsely asserted by many. His letter merely announced what he believed had happened since the excommunication, if it took place, would have been automatic. He failed to take into consideration his own provision in his own Canon Law for the right to disobedience in a state of necessity.

Sorry, you lose. Try again.

One more point: the charge of schism was always phony. Disobedience is not schism. The Archbishop never denied the Pope's legitimacy or authority. He simply disobeyed--for good reason, to protect the traditional faith. Nor did the Archbishop set up a parallel church or usurp anyone's jurisdiction. He taught no new doctrines nor instituted any new practices. In fact, it was the other way around. It was the Pope who pushed for novelty and revolution and who assaulted Catholic Tradition.

Once again, the Pope erred--as mortals often do, even popes. None of this involved any degree of papal infallibility. The self-contradictory letter (self-contradictory since it opposed his own Canon Law), Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, issued by the Pontiff announcing the latae sententia judgment was a simple matter of discipline only. As such, it was subject to error. Indeed, history has proved the Archbishop right to have disobeyed to protect Catholic tradition from the modernist assault posed by the liberal pontiff. Had he obeyed, Catholic tradition would have never survived, the Indult would never have been granted, and the future would have been even bleaker than it now is.