Bishop Athanasius Schneider on Pope Francis' Validity, and the Lesson of Humanae Vitae

Friends,

Once an eagle, pierced by the bow-sped shaft, looked

At the feathered device and said, “Thus, not by others,

But by means of our own plumage are we slain”.

- Aeschylus

Adventures in Cognitive Dissonance

I rant and rave about Tio Jorge, a.k.a. Pope Francis, and I know I sound extreme, shrill, unhinged. Not very "Christian" of me, and I apologize for that, but I think the stakes are horrifically high. One of my brothers long ago got involved with a con-artist, and I've had friends in such situations. Another brother was in Vietnam, and the military situation was nuts. Look at our "woke" military today! They lost an F-35 – not at sea or in some remote jungle, but in South Carolina! – and had to advertise on social media, "Has anyone seen our $80 million airplane? Call...." After a decade of observing him, one can honestly say Bergoglio has all the traits exhibited by con-artists and incompetent woke hierarchies, alas, and we need to practice solid common sense about him, and certainly not cognitive dissonance.

So, to balance my ravings a bit, and to give the other side of things, here's Bishop Athanasius Schneider's article: Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Validity of Pope Francis.

Bishop Schneider makes a number of points, such as despite speculations in previous centuries by some weighty saint-philosophers, such as St. Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621), no mechanism exists to remove a bad pope. Bishop Schneider also explains how the 1917 Code of Canon Law excised legislation that offered a way to depose bad popes – i.e. a pope who deviates from orthodox Catholicism. It is astounding and shocking to read that they once had such a law, but deleted it! "The Church has no power over the pope formally or judicially," he writes. The only option is to "...in the case of a heretical pope, the members of the Church can avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him, all of which can be done without requiring a theory or opinion that says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed consequently."

Oh, really? But how does that follow? And therein is the problem.

All this is no doubt in answer to the "cancelled" priest Fr. James Altman, who made an impassioned oration that Bergoglio is not pope because he's manifestly not Catholic, an opinion I obviously share, though neither Altman nor I have any sort of standing whatsoever to make that argument for other people than perhaps ourselves. (At least our position is one of cognitive consonance.)

Alright. Fair enough, Bishop Schneider. 

But here's the problem with your program. It is illogical. And potentially catastrophic. Why? Because if the pope is validly pope, he has tremendous authority to wield as he sees fit. It's been built in to the office for centuries, patiently, intentionally. Clearly, too much authority of the wrong kind, as it turns out in this peculiar case. But there's nothing legal to do about it. We're hamstrung. The power comes with the job. And if we criticize him, still more, disobey him, then we're actually the ones illegal resisting valid authority. See the "Catch-22"?

It's what they call a "bitter irony."

And it fits the eagle's lament as Aeschylus recorded it. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. Or one could argue it's a classic example of cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict that occurs when one's beliefs do not correspond to one's actions. 

So, see the problem? How can one "resist" orders from a valid authority? We look like knaves! It's an ecclesiastical version of the Führerprinzip. If the Führer insists on issuing immoral orders, sure, you can resist him, true, but a majority will think we're rogues and rebels. And he also has the power of the state behind him to simply shoot you. (After all, we're rebelling against valid authority, remember.) He can replace you with someone more malleable. Why? Well, he's the Führer, remember? You insist he is, right? As such, he demands allegiance, as Bergoglio does. We saw this play out in the U.S. and Canada and the Western World with the civilian police forces. Every day "valid authorities" ordered the police to do immoral things to force people to isolate for Covid, and no remedy existed. Occasionally a sheriff or police chief, or even one or two governors, "resisted" but so what? Minor speed bumps to a legal – if immoral – juggernaut.

Francis/Bergoglio walks clearly on an obvious path to utterly gut and hamstring the Roman Catholic Church. He conspicuously, indubitably, wants its carcass nailed to his office door in Santa Marta. After ten years of the man, let's please give the Argentine his due: he clearly wants to trash the remnants of the pre-Vatican II Church (the only form of the Church that's growing via the TLM) and replace it NOT with the usual insipid Vatican II simulacrum of a Church (by which its response to Covid it basically committed suicide), but replace even that milquetoast "Church" with something quite different. If this statement is not patently obvious to you, then write me off as a crank and go happily "Synodaling".

Now, Bishop Schneider, as quoted above, says we "can avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him". But how is that going to work if we also, simultaneously, assert and declare him to be a valid pope? Just a few pitiful examples:

1. If he is a valid pope, what's to stop him from removing Bishop Joseph Strickland (whom Bishop Schneider supports) – which will happen any day now? 
2. What's to stop Bergoglio from relieving Bishop Schneider himself? Would Bishop Schneider "resist" an order by a "valid" pope? What sort of precedent would THAT set? 
3. After all, "Pope Francis" took over the Order of Malta and round-filed its chaplain, Cardinal Burke, and its properly elected grand knight – nothing came of that. All gave in. Bergoglio triumphant.
   
4. And he also sacked Burke from his position in the Vatican court system. (Burke is now somewhere about the orbit of Pluto, truly "on the outside looking in".)
   
5. Bergoglio dumped Cardinal Müller out of the Holy Office (or CDF or "dicastery" or whatever they call it now). Müller is now on the outside, looking in.
   
6. And nothing and no one has stopped Francis from inserting his wretched sidekick "Kissy" Tucho Fernádez into that crucial spot. Anyone see any "resistance" about that? (A few howls, a few groans; otherwise, crickets.)
   
7. Manifestly, nothing and no one has stopped "Bergi" from trashing the Traditional Latin Mass. (Pilgrimages are held, to be sure, and letters written; but the bigshots Bergoglio has installed could care less. They hold us all in profound contempt.) How can we "avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him" in that? Any priest who ignores his bishop about the TLM will be relieved of his faculties, and any bishop – supposedly, according to Vatican II, a direct successor of the Apostles, no less! – who ignores Bergoglio will be relieved of his episcopacy. It's already happened. See Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres; Diocese of Arecibo; Puerto Rico. (Summarily Führer-ed out the door, and now on the outside looking in.)

Bishop Schneider also brings up the fact that God will decide Bergoglio's fate, whenever it befalls him. True. Popes come and go, yes. Although Bergoglio clearly has his possible successors hand-picked. But it remains true our "sins of omission" that will damn us.

Especially if we "wait him out." Why would that be? Let's take a short, succinct lesson from history, shall we, about the dangers of dithering?

Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae

In 1930 the formidable Pius XI ("Achilles" Ratti; he lived up to his baptismal name) issued Casti Connubii ("of chaste wedlock" in Latin), an encyclical promulgated after the 1930 Anglican Lambeth Conference in which it relaxed its stance on birth control – it proffered a boatload of caveats, of course, which Anglicans of course promptly ignored. Casti Connubii, however, asserted the unchanged Catholic Church laws on artificial birth control: it is absolutely prohibited it in any and all situations. Pius XII reaffirmed it in 1951.

A mere 11 years later, however, Vatican II began (October 1962) and was seized by the "Young Turk" Modernists, who threw out all but one of the documents John XXIII had prepared for it. Apparently, they wanted to recast Casti Connubii, as well, calling marriage a "community of love" (as opposed to a sacrament to help spouses gain salvation and to bring new servants of God into the world). The new pope, Paul VI, knew which way the wind was blowing, so he removed this issue from their claws. Why? We can speculate, but he said he'd issue a new such document soon enough. The Council ended in December 1965, but Paul (Giovanni Battista Montini), a classic effeminate, "weak sister" type of bureaucrat, dithered around and didn't issue a new Casti Connubii till 1968. It was titled Humanae Vitae.

Humanae Vitae reaffirmed, rather clumsily, with a lot of sociological claptrap, classic Church teaching, BUT SO MUCH TIME HAD PASSED that many Catholic laity and clergy thought sure it would give them permission to practice artificial birth control. (Satan had made his plans, see, and he wasn't going to be gainsaid.) When published, the Bubulum Stercus hit the rotary air circulation device; i.e.

• "Six hundred Roman Catholic scholars signed a statement challenging Humanae Vitae, many episcopates attempted to soften the harsher aspects of the encyclical, a flood of priests left the church, and the number of U.S. Catholics attending mass weekly fell from 70 percent before the issuing of the encyclical to 44 percent a few years afterward. The total marital fertility (the number of children in a completed family) of U.S. Catholics (2.27 in 1975) became virtually the same as that of non-Catholics (2.17)." (From Britannica; boldface mine)
• Now, of course, 1968 (a bad year, indeed) saw the first public offering of the new "Novus Ordo" Mass. It was held in the Sistine Chapel for a synod of bishops, of whom one-third rejected it outright and another third voted to accept it ONLY if changes were implemented (they weren't). Paul 6 suffered a crying fit. He had given up the papal tiara crown, symbol of Christ's Sovereignty on Earth, but alas, the dunce cap he had assumed instead must have pinched. Anyway, the Catholic world was saddled with the Novus Ordo liturgy starting in Advent, 1970, so we can't say if "Mass attendance" fell solely because of Humanae Vitae or because the new Mass was so lame. Either way, the blow-back was such that the "weak sister" never issued another encyclical. He died in August 1978, after a full ten years in a sort of "internal exile in Gorky". (He was in effect a prisoner on the inside looking out.)
  

Now, how does this all relate to Bishop Schneider's advice? I would maintain that his planned "resistance" is a type of, or will be seen by most as, a type of dithering. And what's more, it will be seen as a type of cognitive dissonance, a dithering by "extremist cranks." But it gets worse. By the time anything truly big happens, like a new pope, the Church will be prostrate. Absolutely prostrate. A total wreck. Too many people, waiting for years, will have just given up. Vote "with their feet" as they've been doing for 50 years now. The Reconquista of the Church would be like taking Spain back from Muslim devastation, an endeavor lasting hundreds of years, or more like taking half the world back from simply unimaginable Mongol slaughter of one-third of the human race.

And who could trust the Church not to do it all over again? Once burned, twice shy. If orthodox prelates let us down for 50 years, especially in the last decade, how can we trust them to not let us down yet again? To not "blow with the wind"?

"Need brooks no delay, but late is better than never." True. And that seems all we can pray for at the moment, barring something truly titanic, like a nuclear war or a large asteroid. Or the Second Coming. God's will be done. Prayer can change things, of course, even from the cataombs. Deus vult!

           AnP