Obedience to the Pope: defined by the Ten Commandments and Church Tradition
Alexandra Clark | The Daily Knight
Obedience, the one word used today for everything. Especially and with great sadness, within the Church to make those that question current norms that do not align with what the Church has always taught or always done, to be silent and simply just “obey.” With so many scandals, heresies and lies being told today, Faithful Catholics need to know what true obedience means.
Today, there is true and false obedience. As Faithful Catholics we need to know the difference so that we do not fall into the devil’s trap and displease God.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano had this to say concerning obedience today:
“The Church does not belong to the Pope, and even less does she belong to a clique of heretics and fornicators that has succeeded in coming to power by deception and fraud.
Therefore, we ought to unite our supernatural faith in the constant action of God in the midst of His people with a work of resistance, as counseled by the Fathers of the Church ...
... Catholics have the duty of opposing the infidelity of their Shepherds, because the obedience that they owe them is aimed at the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
We therefore denounce everything that represents a betrayal of the mission of the Shepherds, imploring the Lord to shorten these times of trial. And if one day we are told by Bergoglio that, in order to remain in communion with him, we must perform an act that offends God, we will have further confirmation that he is an impostor, and that as such he has no authority.
Therefore, let us pray. Let us pray very much and with fervor, mindful of the words of the Savior and of His final victory.
We will be judged, not for the scandals of Bergoglio and his accomplices, but for our fidelity to the teaching of Christ.
... a fidelity that begins with living in God’s grace, receiving the Sacraments frequently, and offering sacrifices and penances for the salvation of the Ministers of God...”
His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre said it well and stated that:
“Obedience is a serious matter; to remain united to the Church’s Magisterium and particularly to the Supreme Pontiff is one of the conditions of salvation…
…We are attached to the Pope for as long as he echoes the apostolic traditions and the teachings of all his predecessors. It is the very definition of the successor of Peter that he is the keeper of this deposit. Pius IX teaches us in Pastor Aeternus: ‘The Holy Ghost has not in fact been promised to the successors of Peter to permit them to proclaim new doctrine according to His revelations, but to keep strictly and to expound faithfully, with His help, the revelations transmitted by the Apostles, in other words the Deposit of Faith.’…
…The authority delegated by Our Lord to the Pope, the Bishops and the priesthood in general is for the service of faith. To make use of law, institutions and authority to annihilate the Catholic Faith and no longer to transmit life, is to practice spiritual abortion or contraception…
… We therefore choose to keep it and we cannot be mistaken in clinging to what the Church has taught for two thousand years. The crisis is profound, cleverly organized and directed, and by this token one can truly believe that the master mind is not a man but Satan himself. For it is a master-stroke of Satan to get Catholics to disobey the whole of Tradition in the name of obedience.
St. Paul has warned us: “Even if an angel from Heaven came to tell you anything other than what I have taught you, do not listen to him.”
Such is the secret of true obedience.”
In the effort of delving more deeper into this topic of obedience, this transcribed talk here below is a must read for all Faithful Catholics. It is a talk tilted Obedience and the Pope by Fr. Gregory Hesse, S.T.D., J.C.D., S.T.L., J.C.L., Canon Lawyer, Doctor of Thomistic Theology, Lifelong Friend and Personal Secretary of Cardinal Stickler at the Vatican from 1986-1988 gives a no-nonsense, intelligent, learned, and witty exposition and explanation of relevant topics facing contemporary faithful Catholics. Take note that John Paul II was Pope at the time of this talk. You can find lots of good talks by Fr. Hesse on Youtube. (The red highlights throughout the talk below are my own for emphasis).
Obedience itself can only be defined by the Ten Commandments and Church Tradition. Not by some messed up, perverted philosopher of our century. And just like I mentioned yesterday, in the armed forces the Colonel cannot tell me to shoot my wife, because even if I was happy about that command and did shoot her, I would not get away with it. He does not have the right to tell me “Shoot your wife!” As long as my wife is not attacking the bases I’m stationed at. Commands are, as such, subject to higher rules. If the Pope, in a state of absentmindedness, or being drunk or whatever, would tell you - you have the privilege of dining with him - and he would tell you to jump out of the window on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, you would have to say, “Excuse me, Holy Father, I don’t know why you’re off your rocker but I’m sure not going to do that.” And you do not commit a sin, on the contrary, you would if you were to do that.
The Pope, just like any other human being, is bound to the Ten Commandments. The Pope is bound to the Canon Law that he published and signed. If there’s something in the Canon Law that he published and he doesn’t like it, then he has to change Canon Law as far as possible. But he cannot say, “Yes, well, sure, I signed the Canon Law of 1983, but I’m the Pope and I don’t have to follow it.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Pope has to follow the Ten commandments, the will of Christ, the Tradition of the Church and his own Canon Law.
Pope Pius XI, when he celebrated Mass, did not just choose what Mass he was going to celebrate today. You know there’s quite some differences. You will have one Saint celebrated in one diocese and nowhere else and then you will have another Saint celebrated all over the world, but then in your diocese he’s not celebrated because it’s the dedication of the cathedral or whatever. So there are differences. Now Pius XI as Pope had to choose what calendar he would use. He was sitting up there in the Apostolic Palace which basically speaking is the jurisdiction of Vatican City, sometimes he would celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica which is the jurisdiction of St. Peter’s Basilica; sometimes he was celebrating in some churches in Rome, which is the jurisdiction of Rome. And later on when Popes started to travel they had to face the situation of celebrating somewhere else which was the jurisdiction of so and so. Pope Pius XI who was not foolish enough to fall for all these traps as they do today, celebrated Mass every day strictly according to the calendar of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, because, as Pope, he is the titular priest of that basilica. He is, so to speak, the arch-priest of the basilica of St. John Lateran. That is his church, like a parish priest has his church, Fr. Bolduc has his church. He’s the boss in this church and no one else is. In the same way, Pope Pius XI as a priest celebrating Mass, he was the boss in St. John Lateran so he used the calendar of St. John Lateran. That was a Pope who understood the concept of obedience. The present Pope [John Paul II] grew up in a concept of dictatorship in Poland and obviously hasn’t learned anything from it, because he expects us to do things that we must not do. And here we are at the topic of today. What is the limit of obedience towards the Pope? Aren’t we bound in total obedience to the Pope? The answer is: definitely not.
What are the limits to the Pope’s freedom of decision? Well, the Pope cannot go against the following four things:
First of all, he cannot contradict the gospel.
Second, he cannot contradict the Church Fathers.
Third, he cannot contradict the first four Councils as such. And he cannot contradict any further Council as long as it is dogmatically defined. Dogmatically defined things he cannot contradict. Things that a Council decided forever such as moral decisions, he cannot contradict. If we’re talking about disciplinary regulations which were always issued at Councils and which nobody bothers to put in a collection of Church teaching, yes of course he can. But not dogmatic and moral decisions of a Council.
Four, he cannot contradict what is called the ‘status Ecclesiae.’ The ‘state’ of the Church.
The ‘state’ doesn’t mean the present situation, like the state you find yourself in right now. The ‘state’ is something unchangeable. I am in the status religionis, the status sacerdotalis. The state of my life is being a priest and no matter if I go to heaven, purgatory or hell, I will still be a priest. I am sacerdos in aeternum, a priest in eternity. God Himself cannot take away my priesthood because He has decided to give it to me and He cannot contradict Himself. My good friend, the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi - most of you only know his ‘Four Seasons,’ which is sad, he wrote 450 beautiful concertos and 30 operas - Antonio Vivaldi is dead, ever since 28th July 1741. Antonio Vivaldi is still a priest. Claudio Monteverdi, his predecessor in music, is still a priest today. Once a priest, always a priest. You know, like they say “Once in the army, always in the army,” but that means as long as you live. A priest is in eternity, always, always in the army of God. So I’m in the status sacerdotalis, that doesn’t change, it can’t change. Sister right here, or a bishop, are in the status perfectionis, or the state of perfection. That ‘state of life’ as you call it in English, is basically unchangeable once you’re in it. For a bishop it is perfectly unchangeable, for Sister it is relatively unchangeable. The state of the Church is something the Church finds herself in unchangeably, forever.
To show you what I mean: there are three major steps in the Sacrament of priesthood, the Diaconate, the Priesthood and Episcopal Consecration. But there are the so-called minor orders. The highest of the minor orders is the subdiaconate. When Paul VI transgressed his faculties by making the subdiaconate optional - another interesting thing by the way. Do you remember yesterday when I said that the New Mass was never really published and that Vatican II never really became obligatory? It’s the same thing here again, the Holy Spirit is not dead, the Holy Spirit works within the Church. Where Paul VI said that we don’t need the subdiaconate, he still left it up to the individual bishop to confer it or not. That’s interesting. However, he went far beyond what he’s allowed to do when he said we don’t need the subdiaconate any more. The subdiaconate goes back to the earliest Apostolic times of the Church, therefore it is part of the status Ecclesiae, the state of the Church.
Yesterday I hope I made it sufficiently and abundantly clear to you, that Holy Mass the way we know it in this chapel is part of the Church Tradition and that it is perfectly illegal and impossible to change that. So Holy Mass the way you and I know it, is part of the state of the Church, status Ecclesiae. If the Pope tries to change that, you say: “Sorry, Holy Father, but we can’t follow that. Too bad!” If the Pope tries to change anything that is part of the status Ecclesiae and you follow him, and you should know better, then you’re in the state of mortal sin, unless you don’t know better.
But to follow the Pope into error means not obedience but sin. Remember what St. Paul says: if an angel out of heaven was to bring you another Gospel, don’t accept it. Even an Angel himself. So those of you who understand poetry, what Chesterton means when he says: “If an angel out of heaven brings you other things to drink, thank him for his kind attentions, go and pour them down the sink.” - this is what he really means. Chesterton himself drank beer and barrels of it, so what he says in this poem means: don’t allow anything to creep into the Gospel in its purity as is was preserved by the Church. You see this in a way is the Gospel, because Father and I, up there on the altar - we’re not allowed to do that, but Father and I up there on the altar can turn this innocent looking glass of wine into the Blood of Christ, if we used it for Mass. We’d be committing a sin, because we’re not allowed to use a glass chalice and we’re not allowed to use this type of wine, we have to use Mass wine. The point is, we can do it. So this is representing the purity of the Gospel, and that’s what Chesterton meant. Anybody who dares to interfere with the purity of Church teaching, to interfere with the purity of Church tradition, to interfere with the purity of the Gospel, is a messenger of the devil, not an angel. Even if it is the Pope himself.
And believe me, this idea of the Pope being a traitor to Church teaching is not new. Not at all. I could show you in a different context a document that was issued by Pope Pius II in the year 1460, talking about the appeal to a Council. In those days some people thought that if you don’t like the Pope, you can go to the Emperor and ask the Emperor to call a Council. And so, calling a Council, you can either get rid of the Pope or get rid of his last decision. So Pope Pius II said “No way!” And he wrote the famous Papal Bull, ‘Execrabilis,’ because he found that it was an execrable idea to call a Council against a Pope. And he said: ‘Whosoever dares to call a Council against a Pope is automatically in a state of excommunication reserved to the Holy See’
- that means only the Pope personally can absolve you from that excommunication. And then Pope Pius II in the same document says - and be careful what I’m about to say, because it will explain a lot of other things I will say today - he says, ‘No matter who does it, be it an Emperor or a Pope, he still incurs excommunication.’ Pope Pius II in 1460 realized that it was possible for a Pope himself to be excommunicated.
And of course it is. In the new Code of Canon Law there are very few excommunications left. One of the excommunications left in the new Code of Canon Law is, if you take a consecrated host, the Blessed Sacrament, for example, and you use it to make those - what do you call them, with the egg white on top in the oven, kind of cookie, you know? - you use a consecrated host, Our Lord Jesus Christ to prepare dessert for your guests, an unbelievable and outrageous sacrilege. Now I hope that none of you believe even for an instant that a Pope is incapable of doing that. Of course he’s capable of doing that! He’s a human being and he can sin like you and me. He can do things wrong. Pope Alexander VI, while he was Pope, had children. Is that the right thing to do? I don’t think so! The guy was enjoying himself and he was not supposed to, and he had children and he said “So what?!” And Popes did other things too. There are stories about Popes murdering other people. I don’t see why a Pope couldn’t do it, he should not do it, he must not do it, but I don’t see why he would not be able to do it.
So the Pope himself could do a sacrilege that puts himself in a state of excommunication reserved to the Holy See. How is that possible? Can he give absolution to himself? No. A Pope has a confessor, just like you and me. So if a Pope commits a sin that is under excommunication strictly reserved to the Holy See, he has to seek his confessor and say: “Bless me Father for I have sinned, I’ve done this and this…” His confessor will say: “What?! I can’t give you absolution for that!” And the Pope, if he knows what he’s talking about, will say: “I know you can’t give me absolution for that, but you just go the regular way.” So the priest, without mentioning who his penitent was, will approach the office in the Vatican which is called the Poenitentiaria Apostolica, the Apostolic Penitentiary, and there he will anonymously denounce that sin and say: “Listen, yesterday a guy confessed to me who said he did this and this and this.” And then they will examine the case, the confessor might have to ask questions about this again, and then, without naming who it is, he will talk to the Cardinal in the Poenitentiaria Apostolica, and then the Cardinal will, most probably, if it’s the first time, say: “OK, you can give absolution to this guy.” So in that case, this Cardinal decides in the name of the Pope. And that’s how a Pope could get absolution for a sin that is punished with a reserved absolution.
So the concept of a Pope being outside the Church is old. Many Popes talked about it. Pope Innocent III said, to all of his successors and all bishops, “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that because you have the graces, the power and the dignity of the office, it doesn’t matter if you commit a sin like this.” And he reminded his successors, saying, “Who cannot be judged by men will be judged all the more by God!”
With God there is only justice, in no contradiction to mercy, and the most culpable person on the earth is always the Pope, no matter what happens, because he’s the highest person on earth. He’s not the head of the Church, he’s only the highest person in the Church. He’s the highest bishop in the Church, the highest priest in the Church. He is the Summus Pontifex, like in ancient Rome, the peacekeeper who built the bridge between the two hills in Rome that fought each other, the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill. He was the one who guarded the bridge which was the symbol of peace between two tribes that fought each other almost to extinction. And then they found that a religious solution might be a wise one, and they found the guy that built the bridge which was the symbol of peace, where they could say “Hi!” to each other instead of wiping each other out. And that was the Pontifex, the priest. And the Summus Pontifex was the highest of them all. That is what the Pope is. He’s not Christ. He’s not the founder of the Church. He’s not even the head of the Church. He’s the vicar of Christ. And ever since St. Gregory the Great, the highest title of the Pope is Servus Servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God. The Pope does a very bad service to you if he does not represent the Church doctrine in its entirety. And he does a very bad service to you if he lies to you about Church doctrine or the Gospel.
I mentioned to you yesterday that, in the Constitutio Dogmatica ‘Pastor Aeternus’ of 18th July, 1870, of the First Vatican Council in the fourth chapter, it says:
‘The Holy Spirit has not been given to the successors of Peter so in order that with His revelation they can publish a new doctrine, but that with His assistance, they will saintly safeguard and faithfully interpret the Tradition handed down from the Apostles, the Deposit of Faith.’
That is the Pope’s duty. If he does not stick to this duty, you do not obey him. Pope Pius IX, the servant of God Pius IX, in a letter to the Bishop of Brixen, in Northern Italy, although in those days it was part of Austria, in this letter, which you can find under number five-thousand, five-hundred and something, I forgot the rest, in the famous collection of Papal letters and documents ‘Mansi’, you find a letter written by Pope Pius IX which explains to the bishop of Brixen: if a future Pope were pronounce heresy, ‘you simply disregard it and don’t obey.’ So much for Pope Pius IX on the topic.
Now, we’ve talked about God, we’ve talked about the highest principle in the Church, because this is what you have to understand. The question is: are we not in disobedience to the Pope? Because the Pope would tell Fr. Bolduc and he would tell me that we have to celebrate the New Mass, and we don’t do it - and we will never do it! Over our dead bodies! Amen! So are we not in disobedience to the Pope? Well, we are in disobedience to Cardinal Wojtyla, not to the Pope, not to the highest principle in the Church. The Pope is only the vicar of Christ, he’s only the servant of the servants of God. He’s really nothing else but that. If he fails to do his duty in this, I will not listen to him. I will not listen to a Pope who proclaims heresy. The present Pope - and before anybody walks out on me now, you’d better hear and wait for my proof of what I say! - the present Pope [John Paul II] is the most heretical Pope in history. No Pope ever in history was such a heretic. However, there were heretical Popes before the present one. There were heretical Popes before John XXIII even. There was that funny little old Pope Liberius. When you look at the list of Popes, for the first two centuries all the Popes became Saints. All of them. It is Saint Peter, “Sanctus Petrus,” “Sanctus Linus,” “Sanctus Cletus,” “Sanctus Clemens,” and so on. And then, at a certain point, you will find, instead of “Sanctus…” so-and-so, just simply, “Liberius”. That guy was a heretic. He joined in with a multitude of people and a vast majority of bishops at the time - sounds familiar! - with the heresy that Jesus Christ was not really God Himself. I hate heresy! I have to have a glass of wine! The Church has never said that Liberius was not Pope.
Then there was Honorius, another abominable creature on the throne of Peter, who said that Christ had only one will. If you really put your common sense to it, then you don’t even need dogma to understand what I’m talking about and why he was wrong because, you remember in Holy Week when it says: “Christ was obedient, obedient unto death…” Obedient? With one will? Submitting one will to what? Impossible. Christ was and is the second person of God, Divine Will. And He is a full human being. There is no such thing as a full human being without a will, a free will. That’s the difference with an intelligent animal: the most intelligent animal does not have a soul, therefore not a will, and it doesn’t have an intellect. It can’t reflect upon its own recognitions. It does not have a will. […] And Christ as a human being therefore had to have a human will, which is the only explanation for the otherwise absurd statement that Christ submitted to the will of God. How could Christ, not having a will, submit to the will of God? Perfectly impossible. But that didn’t keep Pope Honorius from saying that Christ has only one will. That heresy was called Monothelitism, meaning “only one will” in Greek.
As if we didn’t have enough heretics in Church history already, along came Pope John XXII, a Frenchman, who said: The souls of the dead cannot go to heaven before the Last Judgement.
What he was saying was, the moment a person kicks the bucket, the soul is suspended somewhere, who knows where, and he cannot go to hell and he can’t go to heaven before the Last Judgement. That’s against the explicit and dogmatic definition of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, which said: The moment a human being dies, that human being will get a personal judgement from God and his soul will go to heaven or hell or purgatory. So now we’ve got St. Pius X in heaven, we’ve got a lot of people in purgatory, and we’ve got the Democratic presidents - oh sorry, I’m not allowed to mention individuals! - we’ve got a lot of people in hell.
But John XXII until the day of his death insisted that the souls of the dead could not go to heaven before the Last Judgement. The University of Paris, which at the time was a good university (now, let’s not talk about it!) told him, they said: Are you crazy? You can’t say that! He said: Of course I can say that, I’m the Pope! He even wrote it down. He wrote letters in which he says: Well, we all know that the souls of the dead cannot go to heaven before the Last Judgement. The man was a heretic in writing and in speech, until the day of his death! Yes, but when you look up the Annuario Pontificio, which is the yearbook of the Popes and Cardinals and bishops in the Church, it’s a whole list of all the Popes there ever were, a close description of the present Pope, of all the Cardinals, and then you get a list of all the real bishops and the auxiliary bishops and then of all the Roman Curia. And in there you will find John XXII listed among the Popes and another guy (I forgot his name, who cares!) listed as anti-Pope. So the heretic is listed among the Popes and the other one was maybe not even a heretic. It goes to show that heresy alone does not make a Pope cease to be a Pope. [...]
This is the problem with the present Pope, except that the present Pope is obviously not satisfied with one heresy like Liberius, Honorius and John XXII. No, for the present Pope that’s not good enough, he has to dwell in at least half-a-dozen heresies. […] Objectively he’s a schismatic, he’s not in unity with the Church because he rejects what unites the Church, namely liturgy and Faith. He doesn’t celebrate the Mass, he celebrates a crummy new rite that belongs in the trash can, and he doesn’t uphold the Faith because he pronounces heresy. But at the same time he doesn’t know what he’s talking about quite obviously. That doesn’t make him cease to be Pope. That only makes the poor guy a heretic and a schismatic, but God will judge, not you. And not I. We do not judge the Pope. But we have to clarify our state in the Church.
When we say we do not obey him, we have to add the more important and vital distinction. We do not obey him as long as he’s a heretic and schismatic. If we were to say “We do not obey him, period,” then we are the schismatics. No! We must be precise on that. I do not obey the Pope as long as he’s a heretic and schismatic. As long as the Pope does not take his heresies back publicly, I will not listen to him. As long as the Pope does not take back the Novus Ordo Missae, which is against the will of Christ, I will not obey his commands on that subject. No way. I do not obey illegal commands. If I was an officer in the United States Army, I would follow army regulations. I would follow, even if it hurts, and believe me today it hurts more than ever, I would follow what my superior legally commands me to do. But if my superior were to tell me: You will go to the Novus Ordo Mass celebrated by our chaplain next Sunday, I would say: “No Sir!” In the army he can’t do anything about it, that’s the difference! In the conciliar church you’re finished the moment you say that! Obedience is subject to dogma, not the other way around. Obedience is never more important than faith. And if anybody says to you: “You’re a schismatic!” you say: “Ah, ah! Not me! You! You go to a Mass that is against the will of Christ, I don’t. I go to Fr. Bolduc’s Mass, he doesn’t do anything against the will of Christ!” Of course there are the personal sins of Fr. Bolduc and the personal sins that I commit, we have to go to confession like anybody else. But what he does, not being Hector Bolduc but being “Father,” what he does here [i.e. on the altar] is what the Church wants.
Very often people ask me about the visibility of the Church. About the indefectibility of the Church. How come, with all this mess we’ve got, we can still talk about the Church being visible and indefectible? Next Sunday I’m going to celebrate the High Mass and Fr. Bolduc will celebrate the Low Mass. The Sunday after, Fr. Bolduc will celebrate both Masses. Whatever you see, it is of not the slightest importance if it is Dr. Hesse or Fr. Bolduc celebrating up there. Who cares! The important thing is what we do up there, is the Church visible? You see the Church because you see that in a pretty much similar way, not altogether identical but in a pretty much similar way: we come out with the chalice, we genuflect, we go up to the altar, we start: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Introibo ad altare Dei… It’s the same, basically. What you see, you find in your Sunday missal, your Sunday missal doesn’t say “Latest edition, Spring 1998” or something like that. Your Sunday missal says 1962 and earlier. So your Sunday missal dates back to the old days. There is no such thing as a Spring 1998 missal. [laughter] Well, in ‘the Church of the New Advent’ out there, you have a Spring 1998 edition, a Summer 1998 edition, a Fall 1998 edition and so on, it’s like you get it with a quarterly newspaper or magazine. If I want the writing “Spring, 1998” on something, then I prefer the Veranda magazine, which by the way is beautiful, but not a missal. A missal represents the Church Eternal, the Church here. And in a way, even though the Church will cease to be, as such, at the Last Judgement, there is such a thing as the Church Eternal, the Bride of Christ that cannot die.
In St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with the loudspeakers on the pillars and the T.V. monitors so you can follow the happenings up front: that is not the Church visible, that is heresy visible, that is neo-Protestantism visible. That is ‘the Church of the New Advent’ visible. Who said it’s ‘the Church of the New Advent’? Pope John Paul II in his first encyclical. That is the conciliar church visible. Who calls it that? Pope John Paul II in his first encyclical. Who does not speak about ‘the Roman Catholic Church’ or ‘the Catholic Church’ in his first encyclical? John Paul II, in Redemptor Hominis. But here in this Church, and later on if you are good enough to help in the church over there, you will see the Church visible. And there you will see the indefectibility of the Church much better than you could see it in the 1950s. Do you know all the trouble, all the battles, all the fights the priests like Fr. Bolduc and I had to go through? In order to be able to sit here and teach you about what the Church teaches? That is the indefectibility of the Church visible. See, even that vast majority of bums, even that North American Episcopal Conference, those criminals out there could not keep us from teaching what the Church teaches. If that is not indefectibility, then I don’t know what is.
The Church as such is indefectible. But the indefectibility of the Church does not mean that all of the members are alright. A certain Dr. Martin Luther got quite confused in the 16th Century, when he found out that the Pope who reigned between 1490 and 1503 had children. He was scandalised. I’m talking about Pope Alexander VI, who had children while he was Pope. And Martin Luther made a terrible mistake, he said: the Church is not indefectible, the Papacy therefore does not represent the Church, the Papacy is not infallible because an infallible Pope could never, ever have children. I don’t see the logic. The fact that I would have the Holy Spirit guaranteed to me if I were Pope does not make me impotent, excuse me if I name in those terms. And it certainly does not make me cease being a sinner. The Holy Spirit does not lock the doors to the Papal apartments. The Holy Spirit does not keep a morally degraded woman from approaching the Pope. There’s no logic in that. It has nothing to do with the indefectibility of the Church, nothing to do with the fact that the Church is a perfect Society.
The Church has never said: ‘We have only perfect members.’ Do you know that there were priests and bishops who said: “Only the perfect members are members of the Church.” Do you know that that was condemned as a heresy? Jansenism. And Donatism. Two heresies. In the old days, when the understanding of the Church was much better than now, whoever said that the Church can only have perfect members was a heretic. The church is composed of an awful lot of sinners. But as such it is indefectible and a perfect society.
Now this brings us to some of the questions that were asked today, one of the first ones being: Michael Davies - you know Michael Davies I guess? - Michael Davies says that since the Church is indefectible, it could not come up with such an abomination as the Novus Ordo. The Church never came up with the Novus Ordo. The Church didn’t. A traitorous, nonbelieving, schismatic Pope came up with the New Mass, namely Paul VI of most infelicitous memory. He had the New Mass written-up by a Freemason named Bugnini. He published the New Mass against the will of the Church, but not even he managed to give his signature to a document that would oblige you or me to use it. The Church’s indefectibility has never been touched in the least by the fact that that abomination of the Novus Ordo was published. Michael Davies suffers from a partial new heresy that we were warned about in the 1920s, when a certain Abbé LaRoche, a French priest, said, “Now that Pius X has effectively dealt with the heresy of Modernism, we are going to face the worst of all heresies, and that is the heresy that says that the Pope can do anything.”
One of the most common heresies in the United States of America. […] Americans have been taught to obey the law. And that is the cause for a lot of Papalism in this country. Many people in this country are not capable of distinguishing between the lawful authority of the Pope and his dictatorial omnipotence. There is no such thing as a dictatorial omnipotence with the Pope. If the Pope tells you to dye your hair green, you will say: “Ah ha ha! Good one!” So the Pope does not have the power to tell you things that are not backed by the Church government, by the Church tradition and by the Church teaching, on morals especially. And Papalism in this country is one of the major causes for so many people attending that boring, stupid, idiotic and imbecile rite called the New Mass. This does not change the indefectibility of the Mass. Therefore, when Michael Davies fights the District Superior of the Society of St Pius X in Australia, publicly, in that abominable paper The Remnant, then Michael Davies is wrong and the district Superior of Australia is right. The New Mass is bad in itself, as I explained to you in my last session.
“If we have a new faith and religion since Vatican II, can we have one Pope over both?” That is a very good question. Yes.
Who keeps the Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church from being the president of a stupid club? I mean think about it in logical and realistic terms. Does the Papacy exclude automatically, infallibly, membership in a stupid club? No. Where does it say so? No dogma says that. No Pope ever said that. In the old days, you might have the bishop of the diocese of so-and-so, was it impossible for him to be at the same time the president of the Democratic Communist Veterans Club of the local place? No. What would keep him from doing so, except a good conscience? Nothing. He doesn’t cease to be bishop because he belongs to some idiotic institution at the same time. Right?
And I told you that we have a Pope who pronounces one heresy after the other and he doesn’t cease to be Pope. Why would he cease to be Pope if he heads a Novus Ordo, United Nations, B’nai B’rith Jewish Masonry club called the Church of the New Advent, a neo-Gnostic sect? He can be the elected Vicar of Christ and at the same time the guy in charge of some members of a rascal organization. Does the number mean anything? See, this is another one of those arguments that tell me: [sarcastic tone] “O, Fr. Hesse! No, Fr. Hesse! Yes, Fr. Hesse! You are right, and 2,800 bishops are wrong!” - Yes! That’s exactly what it is! That’s exactly what it is! 3,500 bishops, I don’t even know how many we’ve got right now, 3,500 bishops are wrong and I’m right. So what?
At the time of Pope Liberius, a couple of hundred bishops were wrong and Athanasius was right. Who got the “S” in front of his name? Athanasius became “Saint Athanasius.” Liberius and his crony bishops didn’t. Now, I never pretend that there will be a “Saint Gregory the Wine-Drinker,” that’s not the issue. The issue is not which of us is a Saint, the issue is who’s right. See, I’ve got a bumper sticker that says: “I’d rather be right than politically correct” and that’s exactly my life motto. I’d rather be right than politically correct. And I’d rather be one of the last few hundred members of the Catholic Church that one of the one billion members of the ‘Church of the New Advent’.
If numbers decide who is right, then I can tell you who is right: the Muslims are. They have the most members. Right? One-and-a half billion people can’t be wrong! So our god is Allah! And Mohammad is his prophet! Numbers do not count before God. God said few will make it: many are called, few are chosen. I’m not saying I’m a chosen one, I’m just giving you the truth here. If I make it to heaven, you’ll find out after the Last Judgement if I made it, but you can definitely rest assured about the fact that I will try my very best to give you what I have received. Traddidi vobis quod et accepi, as Archbishop Lefebvre said all of his lifetime. […]
“We are told that we’re in schism since we’re not under the local bishop. Would that not put us in the same position as the Russian Orthodox: valid but illicit?” It would if it were true, sure. It would if it were true. We are under the local bishop, we just have to refuse his commands because they come from the wrong corner. They do not have the authority necessary. Not because he’s the local bishop, but because he’s not a Catholic and does not follow Catholic doctrine and Catholic Tradition. Just as I said before: why is it that Fr. Bolduc and I are not exactly in perfect harmony with the present Pope? Well because the present Pope is not exactly in perfect harmony with Church teaching, tradition and even the tradition of Canon Law.
A Pope who speaks heresy, commits schismatic acts and knows nothing about canon law is not exactly the man to issue an order to me. And this is the same and in a worse way, even for the local diocesan bishop. See, you could even be for some reason a personal friend of the local bishop but you surely hopefully will not do what he says. And even less what he does. So, schism needs the rejection of the authority as such. If anybody says to you: “You are in schism, you’re not under the local bishop!” you give him the right answer, which starts with the letters B-U-L-L, and then you tell him “The one who is in schism here is you, because you attend a Mass which is against divine will and law, while I follow the Church tradition and therefore follow the will of Christ. And your bishop, the bishop you just mentioned, does not follow the will of Christ and does not heed Christ’s wishes. So the one who is in schism is you, not me!” “Bye!” - if he doesn’t want to listen. But please, be always kind, always charitable, and always nice and infinitely patient with those who want to listen.
One of the problems of Traditionalists in this country is that very often they are real die-hard arrogant people! I hate that! If someone comes, the usual innocent way, “Excuse me Father, but the way I see it you’re really in schism…” and then I say: “No madam, that is not the case!” and she says: “Why?” - then she will get my attention and patience, and patience and patience and patience! And please, be patient with them. And if you can’t answer the question, then say: “I’ll talk to you later, I’ll look it up, I don’t know everything, only God does.” And then you look it up. […]
"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them." – Pope St. Felix III
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