Looking at Sedevacantism Issues Again What with All Our Troubles Breaking Full Upon Us

A Chairde, Amici,

Opening Note: Regarding Bergoglio's official approval of blessing the carnally deviant, this is, of course a "deal breaker". It cannot stand. Already we're seeing battle lines drawn up across the globe, for and against. We, the laity, must not tolerate it. If you have a local priest or bishop who approves of such an "abomination set up in the House of the Lord", break it off with them. Vote with your feet. They've excommunicated themselves from the Lord Jesus Christ. Full stop. Bergoglio has taught a lot of heresy before (death penalty, reality of Hell, etc.) but this is too much. Of course, "Bergi" is just pushing the envelope, seeing how far he can humiliate God, God's Church, you, and me. That in itself is the story of his war against the TLM. It's all of a piece.

Things are dire. People are on edge. Millions are leaving the Church, "voting with their feet". Things seem to be getting ever worse, more insane, more frightening. Now, as noted, "Pope Francis", aka Bergoglio, via his creepy henchman "Tucho" "Kissy" Fernandez, has allowed same-sex blessings in the Church. Taylor Marshall opines here that this is to destory marriage as a sacrament. And exiled Bishop Strickland calls on "his brother bishops" to unite against this Vatican ruling (fat chance). 

What with all this literal filth – spiritual septic tank filth spewing all over us from Bergoglio's volcano – I have been studying the Sedevacantists again. Personally, I think it quite reasonable to deduce that the papal office stands vacant with the so-called "Pope Francis". As with the reports above, every day his "Magisterium" goes from bad to worse. Reading Liz Yore's recent work at Lifesite News reinforces this deduction. However, going beyond that idea, I was perusing the Novus Ordo Watch site, going through their blog posts and Most Frequently Asked questions. They are considered "hard" Sedevacantists; i.e., that there's been no valid pope since Pius XII's death back in October of 1958. As such, they do not consider the Vatican II Church a Catholic avatar of historical Catholicism at all. That has some far-stretching complications, indeed. It certainly explains a lot of the past 60 years' history, but it is the answer to our problems? I will discuss this below.

Now, in August of this year I had written an article about Sedevacantism. My question then embodied the following, in which I wrote back in August regarding the "hard" Sedevacantist thesis that:

Anyway, were these men NOT actual popes, then we don't have a Catholic Church, because the last priest ordained by the last bishop Pope Pius XII assigned a diocese to has probably passed away by now. Invalid, false popes cannot ordain or assign bishops, and invalid bishops cannot ordain valid priests. Therefore, Catholicism is dead.

Remember the priests exist to validly ordain the Sacraments, especially the Most Holy Eucharist. (It's by Baptism and the Holy Eucharist that we participate in all the ancient Covenants. The Covenant system God set up with the First Covenant, when He blessed Creation and established the seventh day for the remembrance of it. The Holy Eucharist, capstone of the system, is required for salvation, as St. John makes clear in the sixth chapter of his Gospel. So it can't come to an end, until The End.) And the bishops exist to ordain valid priests and keep an eye on them. And in their turn, popes exist either to ordain and assign bishops or approve the election of bishops elevated by local cathedral canons, etc., as it was in the Middle Ages and before....   

So, if valid popes have not existed since Pius died on the 9th of October, 1958, (or I suppose since June 3rd,1963, if one assumes Roncalli was a valid pope), then the Church is an illusion, a "maya" as Buddhists say. That cannot be true, either. Not if God actually exists and if Jesus Christ is indeed God. So, how to square this circle? Maybe it is just me, but I've never seen a sedevacantist explanation of this: a clear one, concise, instantly recognizable to one's reason, as are the First Principles of Logic and the Truths of the Faith.

This was it. I wanted a clear, concise, instantly recognizable explanation to how this could work: how could a Catholic Church still exist assuming the "long-march" 60-plus-year sedevacantism? And how could we know/find it?

Remember: No valid popes for so long means no valid bishops. No valid bishops means no valid priests. No valid priests means invalid sacraments and thus no salvation whatsoever. That is, of course unless we want to go Protestant and ditch God's entire Salvic Plan from the First Covenant (Genesis 2:1-3) down to the Seventh Covenant Our Lord Himself made with His Father two thousand years ago, as told in the New Covenant/Testament. 

But would the Lord God abandon thousands of years of Covenant, since Creation itself, in this way? Would he create a "Hidden Church" of true believers? And is that very idea very Protestant, in itself?

Trying to Understand This Thinking, What I Learned Is...

On their page Now What?, NOW helpfully provide a series of Mass directories where one can search for a Mass not hooked up in any way with the infamous "Vatican II sect", as they call it. I.e.

Look for a Mass location that is close to you, and keep in mind that you may have to go across state or country lines for your nearest Mass. The editors of these directories try hard to ensure that all of the Masses listed are sedevacantist, that is, as far as they know, the clergy who offer them profess the true Catholic Faith, are validly ordained, and do not profess communion with any false papal claimant or the Vatican II Sect.  

Notice they mean, of course, by "true Catholic Faith" the one defined for millennia, not its more recent iterations. And that they thereby totally discount ALL of the Vatican II Church, entirely. One has to find a Mass location (not a parish because those cannot be set up, things being as dire as the are) where the priest was ordained by a bishop who himself was NOT ordained by any Vatican II bishop – but would have been ordained by someone who "passes", someone somehow ordained in a line not connected with Vatican II.

So, that would be either some sort of SSPX bishop or priest who left the SSPX because the SSPX prays for Pope Francis, and the Society has not been cast off by the official Church. (Horrors!) Who fits such a description, though? Aye, there's the rub. Well, there were "The Nine" who left the Society at some point, and some of those (or maybe just one guy?) founded the SSPV, and was consecrated to the episcopacy by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục (I guess it was) at some point. (Thuc died in 1984.) One of these ordinands just died, a "founder of Congregation of St. Pius V... Sedevacantist Bishop Clarence Kelly (1941-2023)". But then in the Novus Ordo Watch comments on an obituary regarding the late Bishop Kelly, debate arises whether the entire SSPV (not the SSPX, mind you) is Sedevacantist at all. Some say yes, some no, chaos reigns. Fascinating, but a bit like getting into the details of ancient Gnosticism, that or Japanese mythology. Bewildering, in a word.

Another of The Nine, was, I believe, one Father Anthony Cekada. Though dead (in 2020), he has a large Youtube presence. Look him up. You shall thereby find links to articles about some of the issues the guys commenting on Kelly's death brought up.

Another fly in the ointment is that, if nothing else, Pacelli (Pius XII) made it plain that a pope would have to approve new bishop consecrations. Things have changed since then; i.e. the mode and words of bishop consecrations have changed, the words of ordaining priests and deacons have changed, too, for that matter. Changes galore. But not only that. If I recall correctly, from at least Pius' day, the pope has to approve a bishop's consecration, and if there's no pope...er...well, you see the problem. 

Bishops are now not just consecrated as bishop of a certain town, region, or ruin, either; regardless whether they are a titular bishop of an actual place, ancient or modern, or not; they're ascended to a higher rank of clergy and are in direct Apostolic succession of the Apostles! Bishop Strickland is still a bishop fully gunned, victualed and manned, as the old Navy would say. He just doesn't have a ship, a diocese,  not even a titular one, but he still has all the power that being a bishop entails. Therefore, even "dry-docked", he has episcopal power to fire on Bergoglio, as Lifesite reports above. This, thanks to Vatican II. But not in the pre-Vatican II Church. 

Practical Considerations

• As regards changes in the consecration/ordination rites, I personally think that too much scrutiny on that makes it into more magic than grace. A spell won't work unless the words are quite right. Just ask Gandalf.
  
• But in Church sacraments, it is not magic, but grace ("grace" means Divine gift, freely given: i.e. God does this); thus, some verbal variation might be tolerable. It depends on the sacrament, and so on. Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rites, i.e. non "Roman"-Catholic Churches, have different words for ordination and consecration than the Western Church had. They've always been valid. It's the intent that mattered. (I'm just making this notation to save folk from losing their marbles about their local clergy's ability to confect the sacraments.)
  

Bottom Line

Assuming – and I think it is a valid assumption – that Novus Ordo Watch in their research, their articles, their links, are solid for "sedes", that they're well-intentioned but that their zeal puts them on a very tall cliff, basically; i.e. they solve some problems but create new ones. Perhaps even bigger ones. What can we deduce?

I'm Not Joking

That you'd rather be Orthodox. Not a joke. (Well, sarcasm.) And I do mean one of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, "the 14". Consider, my friends: 

1. These Churches A: have existed for centuries, 
2. B: you know that since they're not "fly-by-night" you don't have to dig around to verify whether they've Apostolic Succession, and...
   
3. C: your problem is how to adapt to a foreign national culture in your religious life: i.e.: We're Western Christians. The Orthos are Russian, Greek, Syrian, whatever. Can you deal with that? Myself, I could not. (But I love icons in general and Russian Church architecture in particular!)
   

As for the search recommendations the Novus Ordo Watch suggests, I've only one word: headache.

1. A; whatever Sede "Mass community" or "church" you found would NOT have existed for very long, and thus been proven by that cruel, exacting "Test of Time"; 
2. B: therefore you would have to spend a lot of time, energy and patience trying to ferret out whether they have Apostolic Succession.
3. And C: With the Orthodox, of course, they're national Churches. So, if you are not Russian, or Serbian, or Romanian, or Greek, or Bulgarian, or Syrian, or...well, you really think some generic Orthodox Western Church is a real thing? But with these tiny Sede break-aways that are insisting they're really Roman Catholic, does that sit well with you in your craw? Maybe your gut says yes. Maybe not. And we have to live with our gut.
   

To Finish Up

The Hard Sedevacantist situation, my friends, is nearly impossible. Honestly. On the one hand, sure, they describe well and thoroughly the very falleness of the mainstream Church. (NO doubt as to the N.O. Church.) And Bergoglio is so obviously a wild boar of an enemy of Christ that he has usurped the throne (a lot like Biden and his swamping the USA with military-aged men from China, etc.). But on the other hand, their long march attempt at a solution just doesn't work for long. 

• Spiritually, who are we to ascertain that Bishop Strickland – to take an example – is not only not a bishop, but not even a priest? That he, and Bishop Schneider and so many others are what we used to say of Anglican/Episcopalian clergy: just laymen in fancy dress.
• Morally and legally, oddly but truly, we have no right to judge these others in that way. We can judge moral action, definitely; for example, Bergoglio's sell-out of the Chinese Catholics and other Christians is a horrific evil no pope could allow. Yes. See Liz Yore here. So also his "Kissy" up to the Gays.
  
• But regarding your local bishop or priest? Unless they excommunicate themselves, as in the Opening Note, can we excommunicate them?
• And what do demons judge? They are THE hyper-legalists of all hyber-legalists. If a local bishop isn't valid, he cant appoint a valid exorcist. However, I believe Fr. Ripperger has said he can cause a demon great pain by just showing him the photograph of a local bishop. And for that matter, Fr Ripperger himself, how's he casting out demons if he's just a confused layman in fancy dress?
• And finally: Practicality. Practicality hangs over Hard Sedevacantism like Damocles' Sword. What in Heaven's name is the practicality of a layman having to do tons of research, not to mention serious travel, prayer, and simple reflecting, on whether some local off-shoot outfit is really Catholic at all? Does that sound like something we can practically engage in, time and again? 
• Yes, sometimes "the less must lead" as with confronting Bergoglio, who affects us all. We can all see his immorality and judge that. We can judge those who openly embrace his apostasy. But locally, in judging whether Fr. So-and-So is a Catholic in the first place? God set up the spiritual hierarchy of human beings for a reason, and we all agree Luther went too far with his priesthood of all believers (he himself clearly thought so after seeing its consequences). 
  

Summation

Who among the laity – except for the "hard core", whoever they might be – could stand the trouble? All this searching NOW recommends, and for what? So much would depend on our money and time as well as our will, and then our mental state rather than our rational state, and wouldn't so much depend on the charisma – or lack thereof – of the priests involved? Father Anthony Cekada exhibited a great and winning personality. It is said Father Leonard Feeney (died 1978) could be mesmerizing, too. Doesn't make them wrong – or right.

1. It's obvious the Vatican II Church has troubles, and that it has been moving further and further away from the Deposit of Faith. 
2. But that's been a process, my friends. A PROCESS. It is an arc. 
3. This latest fiasco about blessing homosexuals shows it is reaching its apogee, its culmination, its denouement. Maybe the majority of bishops in the world will submit to Bergoglo and "Kissy", thus separating themselves from the Lord Jesus. We'll all be scrambling, then. But there will remain 7,000 who have not bent the knee to Ba'al. (First Kings 19:18)
   
4. I recently watched that enemy of Tradition (and hence the Deposit of Faith and hence a Ba'al knee-bender) Cardinal Wilton Gregory, say his piece about Tradition dying a bloody death. It's stomach-churning to watch. The man parodied an actor back in a '60s "Rat-Pack" movie playing a homosexual man. Gregory is very "faggoty". He's just a parody entirely. So many of Bernadine and McCarrick's highly placed "sons" are. 
5. And besides that, it's equally obvious to EVER more people that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not a valid pope. Whether invalidly elected or fraudulently elected (or post a valid election he abandoned his post argument) we can set aside for this discussion we're on. 

My argument is long-march Sedevacantism like this – that the entire Catholic Church except for a few eccentrics (apologies to everyone at N.O. Watch), is very valuable in a great many ways, but ultimately, I'm sorry: arguing over whether the SSPV is really and truly a Sedevacantist or just a seemingly merely Sedevacatist church, is nuts. I can't reduce Catholicism to that. I really don't think they want to, either.

Right now, we have to weather the storm that's on us as best we can. Pray. As I wrote above, the battle lines are being drawn. Fundamentally: Schism, True Schism, is now upon us all.

• Pray to St. Patrick. He went to Ireland without the approval of his bishops back in Britannia. They didn't consecrate him a bishop. They might not even have ordained him a priest. But he went regardless, and the Lord God rewarded his sacrifice pretty handsomely in the test of time. 
• There's a delightful Russian story about three monks on an island in a lake who spent their days and nights chanting, "We three below adore You Three above." So the local bishop got a boat and went out to enlighten them about the Faith. As he was boating homeward, he saw one of the monks running across the water. He ran to the boat and stood on the lake to ask the bishop a child-like question. I'd rather be one of those monks than the bishop, wouldn't you?
  

   An Préachán