Sedevacantism – Pros and Cons

 Friends,

With Bergoglio, commonly called "Pope Francis", it is hard not to be a Sedevacantist. I, for one (and what's my opinion worth as a layman, whatever my background and experience, to the Catholic Powers-that-Be?) am certain that "Bergi" is not a valid pope. He's so much the heretic that there's not much left for him to do except declare a "Holy Duality" and nix the Holy Trinity, or add Muhammad to the Catholic calendar of saints. 

At this point, I think that even were his "election" incontestable, he has abandoned the office of the Papacy (he's never let himself be called "Vicar of Christ" anyway). Actually, except to those who refuse to see, Bergoglio's "election" was an installment – an imposition – by the Vatican II "Deep State" (the Freemasons in the Church, the Communists – Chinese and otherwise – the Saint Gallen Mafia, the Lavender Mafia, but I repeat myself, and so on). Yet as I say, even were his election uncontested, he's abandoned the job. Or closer to the truth, he's burned down the job and is sowing salt on the ruins. Much as Joe Biden is doing with the U.S. presidency.

But then is sedevacantism the answer? Is the papacy vacant? I think it clearly is since Benedict XVI died. But was Benedict himself a proper pope? Louie Verrecchio at AKA Catholic is a true sedevacantist. His columns are excellent, and his criticisms cogent. True "Sedes" like him usually consider Pope Pius XII to be the last valid pope, and Verrecchio can make, and does make, an excellent case about the various popes after Pope Pius being anti-popes. Some of the crazy things John Paul II occasionally did and said were very bad and unCatholic, like kissing the Koran and so much else. And of course, JP II is considered VERY orthodox by the majority of Catholics.

Most damaging of all, of course, was the insurmountable stupidity of Paul VI and JP II about the Traditional Latin Mass. Paul hated it and John Paul "just didn't get it", and how could a true pope not comprehend what the Novus Ordo represented? Or why Catholics began the wholesale abandonment of the Church after the 1960s? Their obdurateness is incredible, as the TLM was so ancient, so uplifting, so essentially Catholic; if one didn't understand its centrality to the Faith, what else did one not understand? 

Benedict did, indeed, seem to "get it" to some degree, yet then he didn't celebrate the TLM himself (that I am aware of). But we can't forgive him for running away. He should have suffered outright "red" martyrdom (as most early popes did, in fact), rather than betraying us to the eccelesial "Deep State."

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. Actually, popes would send the pallium, a special ribbon-cloth, to a local bishop to create him as an archbishop, and the archbishop (or Metropolitan") would then manage the bishops in his ecclesiastical province. Medieval England had two such ecclesiastical provinces, while Ireland had four.   

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.

For my own sanity, I accept Ann Barnhardt's position that Benedict XVI was indeed pope, despite his many non-orthodox Catholic ideas (not least of which is that he could resign the governing aspect of the papacy and yet keep the position spiritually, and remain a pope, though retired – that's Bubulum Stercus to me; a true manifestation of Sterculius).

One thing is certain, my friends, what with the absolute horror of the World Youth Day (see the first half of this discussion at Lifesite News about how bad that is), we're in the most desperate times the Church has ever entered, bar none. (Yes, the Arians were bad, but the Modernists are ridiculous.) 

          AnP

We need to replace Bergoglio with Viganò this Christmas...

 Amici,

Jorge Mario Bergoglio's birthday, December 17, (born 1936) is almost upon us, so, here's a reflection. 

As Satan gets himself enthroned at the UN Visitor's Plaza (at the UN, he's more of a resident that a visitor!) and the Democrats try to get us in a war with Russia over the Ukraine...

• N.B. In February 2014, the Obama administration fomented a coup d'état in the Ukraine and re-started the Cold War. At the moment, it looks like the Deep State is fomenting more trouble in the same area, namely, a war with Russia. Just peachy.
  

... and as Big Pharma and its bootlickers in North America, Australasia, and Europe refuse Ivermectin to treat Covid (see this great article by Jack Cashill on Robert F. Kennedy Jr's new book The Real Anthony Fauci, and thus needlessly perpetuate this now nearly incoherent Covid drivel, as all this Deep State sludge flows slowly on like molten lava, consuming everything in its path, the only real power in the world that could thwart this dismal Western Civilization death denouement is the Catholic Church. 

Unfortunately for Western Civilization, the Church remains under the heel of that Modernist anti-pope puppet, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and his merry gay cadre of perverts who join in or encourage the moral and cultural rot, and seem only to show energy in doing their very best to destroy the Traditional Latin Mass. As has been manifestly evident since The Ogre's installment into his current usurped office, the only people the Argentine Destructor doesn't like are faithful conservative Catholics – and especially all the Traditional Catholics. Traditionis Custodes (correctly translated as "Jailers of Tradition") is all the evidence you need of that; but as it is, it's merely icing on the cake of Bergoglian loathing.

Yet we have Archbishop Viganò speaking out clearly, like the Church should, on all this madness, generally called "The Great Reset'. We have Bishop Athanasius Schneider, as well. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, is an American – one of the few – who is worthy of the ecclesiastical office he holds. And when I say, "one of the few", I mean that most of the bishops would correctly toe the orthodox Catholic line were we to have an orthodox pope; when we don't, as now, they hedge. They're the exact kind of men who sat of the English bench of bishops when Fat 'Arry the Eighth broke with with Rome in 1534.

We didn't need bishops like those then, and we don't need them now. Gutless bishops, wind-sniffers, C.S. Lewis' "Men Without Chests" are the curse of the Church, nearly its bane. As the End closes in, some of them might find their courage. Big deal. That happened with what they called Recusant Bishops back in the 16th century when Queen Mary came to power after the death of her father and her half-brother. But being "recusant" seems historically to translate, basically, "Too damned late to prevent disaster."

The Catholic Church's is bereft of bishops. The Vatican seems to loathe the orthodox ones; consider how it (under JPII, supposedly a conservative) treated the SSPX for ordaining bishops, a necessary step for the Society's survival. Then the pressure was brought to bear on the Society when one of those bishops, Richard Williamson, called into question the standard party line about the Holocaust. Doing that in Germany can get you thrown in jail, and Williamson was convicted in a German court of being a Holocaust denier. (Many Germans seem to relish "Holocaust Guilt" and the Jews will never let them off the hook, but the problem is the Germans run the EU and they make everyone else in that Deep State fraternity feel guilt about the Holocaust, too.) But all this means is the Jews have power to sack a bishop, and few indeed are the bishops who will mention the Jews today at all. The Jews – citing the Church's Holocaust Guilt – has the Church in effect teaching a new gospel; i.e., unlike in the pre-Vat2 days, when the Vatican had a office for this, the Catholic Church today has no evangelical outreach to Jews at all, and if one cannot be saved without Christ, which is the basic Church teaching, all these souls are lost. Or on the other hand, if one can be saved without Christ – something I know many rabbis believe the Church has changed its teaching on – rabbis, imams, Buddhists, you name it – then that's definitely not Christianity has it has been taught for 2,000 years.

And if this is the case, why hold back? Why not ask the learned professors at Cairo's Al-Azhar University to write up Christian doctrine? (Al-Azar is Islam's chief theological authority and the second oldest degree-granting higher education institution in the world – were I to have PhDs in any discipline from both Harvard and Al-Azhar, I could teach anything in the world to anyone anywhere!) Or why not appoint the Dalai Llama, by all accounts a great guy, to be the next pope? I mean, if you're  going to be ecumenical, don't be half-hearted about it! Ecumania!

So, our Catholic reality is, we of the laity and lower clergy, we have to attach ourselves to Viganò and the few like him, before it is too late. Anyone have any personal contact with their bishop? No? I thought not. Dioceses in the U.S. and much of the world are too large for bishops to have ANY contact with their flocks. A necessary Church reform would to treble or quadruple the bishoprics in every nation, and treble or quadruple the archbishops, then make the latter responsible for their suffragan bishops, and move the pope up from Wojtyłan rock-star or Bergoglian fathead heresiarch to be what a pope is supposed to be, Christ's Vicar, His ultimate servant in the Earthly Church, the supreme court and supreme theologian and supreme pontiff, the guy who deals with a profound issue only after it works its way through the Church's hierarchy of authority and thus narrowed down for one man to make his decisions on based upon Holy Writ and Holy Tradition.

Bergoglio has done none of that. Flashing his classic grimace (watching him perform a Novus Ordo Mass has to be depressing!), the man casts opinions off of his cuff whenever he has an itch: on planes, in asides to gay activists, in tête-à-tête comments with Communist reporters, you name it. He inserts himself into whatever he has a notion to: international boundaries and petty politics, the glories of socialism and the evils of capitalism, Global Warming, Covid. "Bergi" even had pagan Pachamama worship in churches in Rome! (And I read where he's encouraging a Pachamama shrine in Argentina now.) And the world bench of prelates "grin and bear it".

Blame John Paul II. Karol Wojtyła made the Bishop of Rome every Catholic's personal bishop, indeed, his personal clergyman. Now we have Bergoglio, everyone's personal heresiarch and headache.

Anyway, on and on the sorry spectacle goes, like Caligula or Nero debasing the job of emperor. On and on. But one is saved through participation the Sacraments, the chief of which is the Most Holy Eucharist, the New Covenant, the New Testament, the Transfigured Paschal Sacrifice, and for that, we need validly ordained priests and bishops who aren't just CEOs or feudal lords or bench warmers, but bishops. Viganò is such a one.

This Christmas season, we need to pray and sacrifice, and be prepared for whatever comes.

An Préachán