PAPAL INFALLIBILITY AND VATICAN TWO (No. 92)

Shortly after his election to the papal office John XXIII announced that he had had an "inspiration" to call a General Council of the Church.  It turned out that this "inspiration" meant a radical change in Church discipline and doctrine, which Paul VI revealed as "a new economy of the Gospel", a Cult of Man.  John Paul II in his first encyclical laid bare a whole program of Humanity Religion, "a previously unknown Church".  The Church was now to be "ecumenical", searching for the truth with Jews, Protestants and pagans.

   So what of papal infallibility and the immutability of Catholic doctrine?  What of the Papacy?  In Letters 89, 90 and 91 especially, I have given my opinion of the matter, based not on inspiration or intuition but on catholic principles and doctrine.  In this Letter I shall write a bit more on the subject of the Papacy.

   In my "Last Days" booklet, April 1978, a collection of some early Letters, I gave it as my opinion that "however small the number of her earthly members, the Church will again be visibly One, with a true pope at her head."  I based this opinion on St. John's prediction that the "Beast" would rule for only an hour, which in prophetical language means for only a very short time.  I had thought too that the Church's eventual triumph required this.  But I soon changed my mind.  Other considerations led me to the certainty that St. John's "hour" must come at the End, and that we had seen the last of the true popes.  Where I wrote of false popes I did not mean popes not validly elected, an idea that smelled too much of Old Catholic and underworld clergy.  Loaded with the devil's own confusion is the idea that a pope could not be Pope because of wrong interior dispositions.

   I write for Catholics, for those who have not cast off doctrine, who would not knowingly deny articles of the Faith, the truths which as Catholics we must believe.  Of these articles there is one which gives certainty beyond a reasonable doubt.  It is that of papal infallibility, which states that by divine promise Peter and his successors will be protected from teaching error formally, solemnly, from the papal chair.  It was the First Vatican Council which defined this doctrine, its precise and limited meaning.  This Council did not say, and could not say, that never would the Chair be occupied by a deliberate betrayer.  Christ had promised to be always with the popes, but He did not promise that every last pope would be faithful to Him.  Rather, He raises the question whether there will remain faith on earth near the End.  St. Paul predicted a Man of Sin, a Great Apostasy and a revolt to come.  St John foresees an Antichrist.  All this we know, and more.

   The Promise was for all time, "even until the consummation of the world".  I would emphasize the distinction already made:  Christ will remain faithful to His promise, man will not remain faithful to Christ.  Partly as cause and partly as an effect of the coming of the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, the Great Apostasy will take place.  Interpreting St. Paul, it will not be marked by a definite, single heresy, but by a widespread decay of faith.  Or, as St. Pius X saw it coming, "a synthesis of all the heresies".  We see this prophecy fulfilled in our day, its official declaration in Vatican Two ecumenism.

   It might be objected that the Vatican Two popes have not taught error formally, ex cathedra, as we say, and therefore they cannot be the popes of the Great Apostasy, of St. Paul's "revolt".  On the contrary, it is that kind of protection from error, and that only, which by the divine promise is guaranteed.  The popes are preserved from teaching error through their own fault, through moral or intellectual failings.  The promise of infallibility does not mean a rigid divine control.  Popes retain always their God-given free will, even as did Judas.  God has certainly given to the Papacy extraordinary assistance over the centuries, preserving morally bad popes from falling into heresy, at least from teaching it.  But no man is confirmed in Grace, so as not to be able to fall.  In time, God permitting, a deceiver and betrayer can occupy the papal chair.

   I have said that by the divine Promise no Pope will teach error formally, as a doctrine that must be believed.  But this leaves open many other ways of false teaching, of encouragement of error from the papal office.  It is not only that God would not make this impossible by restricting the free will of the Popes; man owes his dignity which includes his freedom to love and serve God to the freedom with which God has endowed him.

   It is difficult to understand how the angels could have fallen, perfect intellectually and free of carnal temptations.  It is not difficult to understand how man can fall.  If the doctrine of the divine assistance (Grace) were not revealed to us, the mystery would be how any man could rise above his own inclination to evil.  It is certainly due to a miracle of grace that none of the long line of Popes from the time of St. Peter, until Vatican Two, were ever guilty of any but a brief, personal error.

   The Popes, then, are preserved from teaching error formally, from the papal chair, errors arising from an unclear understanding, or from other personal deficiency.  But it is not Catholic doctrine that the Popes are preserved from error absolutely.  The promise of protection from error was to hold until the end of time.  Therefore, when Pope and Council together announce a New Order, make radical changes in the Mass and sacraments, and say that they are searching for the truth with other religions, we are at the end of time.

   Pope and other bishops having ceased to act as Catholics, bring to an end Catholic teaching and practice.  By refusing to teach and govern as Catholics, merely making a show of doing so, they throw off that Authority without which the Church cannot exist.

   The First Vatican Council defined St. Paul's "not even if an angel from heaven", as regards the papacy.  So that if even a pope were to announce a New Economy of the Gospel, a Cult of Man, "revelation only at the beginning", as Paul VI did, we are not to hear him.

   What about the few priests and other Catholics who have remained faithful to the Church's teachings and discipline?  They, or we simply, are not the Church.  Members, yes, but without a Catholic hierarchy, which ended when Paul VI signed the articles of Vatican Two, putting into effect his New Order of instruction and liturgy.

   Why do I say the officiating, juridical Church ended precisely then?  Because Paul was Pope; he had the Power of the Keys, by which he could bind or loose.  Here is what Fr. Fernand Prat, S.J. in the first volume of his book Jesus Christ has to say about that.

   "To Peter are entrusted 'the keys to the kingdom of heaven.'  He that possesses the keys of a house opens and closes it as he wills.  As master her disposes of all that it contains.  The keys of a conquered city are delivered to the conqueror in token of allegiance and submission.  Peter does not receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven as if he were a mere guardian whose office it is to shut out the unworthy and admit those who have been invited.  All the keys belong to him; nothing escapes his control.

   "To Peter is also given, without restriction and without exception, the power of 'binding and loosing'.  This expression is very often used in Rabbinical writings to signify 'to inflict or lift a penalty', 'to forbid or permit'.  Obviously the Rabbis could not claim for themselves the power to make or abolish laws; they were interpreters and not legislators.  But the right given to Peter has no such limitation.  Everything he decides is sanctioned in heaven.  Armed with the universal power of binding and loosing, he will exercise in the Church a triple power: legislative, judicial, and administrative.  The collective power given later on to all the Apostles and to their successors, far from limiting Peter's privilege, is itself limited by it."

   To St. Peter alone then, was given this fullness of the power to bind and to loose, which passes on undiminished to each one of his successors.

   A little reflection, then, using our Catholic common sense, should lead to the certainty that Christ will not uphold for any time at all, a pretended new order of the Gospel.

  All this is straightforward enough -- if we keep our eyes on the Church and its Hierarchy.  Pope and bishops constitute the teaching and the governing Body, as it has been acknowledged and obeyed by Catholics from the time of Christ.  These are the recognized successors of the Apostles.  But during our century and even before it, as several Popes had warned, faith was weakening, and corrupting influences were into publishing houses and even seminaries.  Bishops too became infected with the disease of the mind which Pius X called Modernism, which is updated Gnosticism.  Nevertheless these men had the Orders, official positions and that Authority which goes with their office.

   As said above, the Church is founded on authority, that Authority conferred upon it by Christ himself, with which He had always taught.  So, then, we must say that when a Pope (or popes) and Council deny that they have authority, a divine commission to teach and govern, that this is the end of the officiating Church, as I've expressed it.

   I have examined carefully the radically changed forms of the sacraments, especially that of baptism, and with others, the New Order rite of the Mass.  Essential prayers have been omitted or distorted in the Mass rite, and the Act of Consecration has been changed to a mere narrative recital.  The whole of the baptismal rite had been changed to a welcoming into an undefined community.  What kind of community you may find out by reading John Paul's Redemptor Hominis.  I commented on that in my Letter No. 39, The First Wojtyla Encyclical.

   Man, once again, rejects a Divine Order, as did the Jews.  I see it as due to the Majesty and Perfection of Almighty God (as also to Christ's humility, paradoxical as this might seem) that God must accept immediately this rejection.

   All this is simple enough, as I say, if we see the Church as established by Christ in its Hierarchy.  But here a certain confusion enters in.  A few priests especially, laymen also, explain the present state of the Papacy by saying that the Vatican Two popes were not validly elected.  What is wrong with this argument?  Well, it is not in accordance with Catholic doctrine.  It implies that contrary to the divine promise of protection from error the papal office has become a very fountainhead of error.  It is the devil's own special Vatican Two confusion.

   For those Catholics who have concerned themselves about the extraordinary directions coming from the Vatican since Vatican Two, there can be no question about the falsity and bad intentions of the Vatican Two popes.  But to try to explain this by simply saying they are not really popes, that they have stolen into the office, is to imply that the divine promise of protection from error did not foresee this possibility, or that the majority of Catholics would be able to see through the hoax.  The Catholic religion is not only for the experts, gnostics left or right.

   The "popes invalid" argument implies that, contrary to the essential message of St. John's Apocalypse, Christ does not remain entirely in control.  It leaves aside the only possible Catholic explanation of the present extraordinary state of the Papacy, St. Paul's prediction of an Operation of Error, which God himself will send.  And it ignores a dozen other major signs of the End, not the least of which is that nearly all the clergy and laity have welcomed "the changes".

   The Promise was for all days, even to the end of the world; and, as noted above, the Vatican Two popes have not taught error formally.  With regard to Mass and sacraments it need not mean to the last day.  Obviously it does not.  But it has to mean that the Promise will hold without interruption until the end.

   There is some mystery in all this.  It is not my intention to explain mystery, but to expose false notions of self-styled Traditionalists who have appointed themselves our Hierarchy.  The state of those who accept this 'solution' of our present difficulties becomes worse than that of those who in foolish obedience follow the New Order bishops.  It is worse because it admits into their thinking and their actions deliberate disobedience of divine law.  And it is seldom done without dishonest mind bending, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

   The "invalidists", or "vacant chair" people do not explain the Great Apostasy, but explain it away.  Or they pass it over lightly, misapplying scraps of canon law by which they pretend to carry on in place of Pope and bishops.

   The deception has been deliberate, as I say, for a long time prepared and well organized, as one ambitions priest after another became willing to compromise for a bishop's miter.  There had always been this great temptation to acquire the honors of high office, and not all the popes remained above using it for political and other reasons.  But it has been left to our time that the price demanded by Rome is compromise of the Faith.  Rome had become, as the Virgin foretold at La Salette, seat of the Antichrist.

   When in 1903 Pope Pius X in a public address said that the Son of Perdition might have already been born, we can be sure that he spoke with extraordinary knowledge and with sound reason.  He well knew how the forces of evil were shaping up within the Church itself, so that it could not have escaped his notice that an evil successor might soon occupy the papal chair.

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I had written most of the foregoing and set it aside.  A few days later, 15 July, at five in the morning another bronchial attack, lungs filling with fluid and a hurried trip to the local hospital emergency room.  Three days in intensive care, nine in all.  I am extremely weak and don't know when, if at all, I might be able to write another Letter.  In any case we thank our friends for their support through many years in the past.

   I have tried to give a Catholic explanation of how Vatican Two could have happened, based only on the soundest authorities I could find, starting with Pope St. Pius X.  It hardly needs mentioning that as a layman I am not an authority myself.  On the other hand, I am not a visionary in any sense but hold closely to Catholic doctrine.  What I write I have studied carefully, and firmly believe it to be true.

   I have not misled anyone but have advised strict obedience to the Divine Law, and patient resignation to the Divine Will.