The Catholic Church essentially teaches we must always morally follow the Law of Non-Contradictions, because we are taught we are always absolutely bound to adhere to objective Truth. If the Church has always taught that 1 + 1 = 2, a Catholic can never believe 1 + 1 does not equal 2, or that say 1 + 1 = 3.
This is true even if a Pope or Ecumenical Council should insert a new false position into a paragraph of a document. The Magisterium is subordinate to and for the purpose of Truth, whereas Truth is not subordinate to the Magisterium.
What else are we suppose to do when, after exhaustive study, we see a conciliar or post-conciliar document contradicting the Law of Non-Contradiction and the Constant Teaching of the Catholic Church? Whether about religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical reform, whether or not Catholics and Muslims “adore” the same God, the proper ordering of ends of marriage, whether or not one can participate in non Catholic rites, what are good reasons to justify war, whether or not the Jews are still governed in some way by the Old Law, which is primary—the propitiatory sacrifice or memorial aspect of the Mass, the minimum requirements in Church discipline throughout the liturgical year for fasting and abstinence to have any real spiritual, habitual effect, the role of women in Church leadership, communion for unrepentant public sinners, the suitability of practicing homosexuals in serving as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, or Sunday school teachers, the right of the State to use the death penalty for just reasons, or the immemorial right of Roman rite Catholics to Mass using the perpetual Missal of St. Pope Pius V.
Several principles guide us in what choice to make, when this paradox presents itself, either to embrace a hermeneutic of continuity vs. discontinuity, obedience especially to the Pope, but also fidelity to Scripture and Tradition (divine and ecclesial), and to the Magisterium from 33 A.D. until 1962 A.D. when Vatican II began.
Are we required to doubt our five senses, our reading comprehension, our internal power of perception, or our common sense contextual reading of texts? Are we required to doubt our own mental faculties? To endlessly try and square the circle? To obey the conciliar Popes even if our conscience tells us not to only on certain points, remaining faithful instead to the constant Tradition and basic logic?
Doctrine does develop. But a new teaching must be a development, not a contradiction.
For example, according to Pope Pius XII, it is divinely revealed that the matter of priestly ordination is the laying on of hands, not the handing of the chalice to the man being ordained, as was non-definitively and erroneously taught in a document of the Ecumenical Council of Florence. Therefore, the teaching of Florence was a doctrinal error, not a doctrinal development.
We go by what the Church says, especially in writing. When the Popes have always upheld the right of the State to uphold the true religion, and not only the temporal common good, and therefore may use legal coercion to limit the public expression or spread of a false religion, then if the Church authorities suddenly then essentially say through Vatican II that the State cannot do this, without violating the nature of man, then the Catholic is compelled to make a choice. To first obey all the past popes and constant teaching, and therefore refuse this novel error of Pope Paul VI and the Council Fathers. That is in that singular statement. This is because adhering to Truth is absolute, whereas obedience is not.
The Pope and Bishops need to stop gaslighting us. We’re not idiots. And we’re not insane. We might be traumatized with clinical neurosis, but that does not mean our intellectual observations are dubious, or mental faculties are not intact. To think that is a form of gaslighting.
No Catholic is required to do mental gymnastics to square the circle. We have every right to just go by our observations of what is plain and obvious in certain contentious documents, and rely on theologians, priests, and bishops well formed in and dedicated to Catholic Tradition.
Amoris Laetiteae includes the infamous Footnote 51, later the Argentinian bishops ask Francis to clarify if that literally means priests can give Communion to Catholics who are divorced, remarried, who have not received an annulment, yet persist in public adultery with no sign of repentance, and Francis says “Yes, you’ve got the right interpretation,” and then he adds that response to the Acts of the Apostolic See making it Magisterial. Every Catholic and their dog has a right to call that out as a substantial mutation of doctrine, contradicting the constant Catholic teaching of 2000 years.
You cannot square that circle. AND, Leo and Tucho can’t justly make the SSPX assent to it as true, as they are requiring of them for all conciliar and post-conciliar doctrinal errors, before consecrations are permitted.
In essence, the constant teaching of the Catholic Church is that absolutely under no circumstances is giving Communion in that situation ever morally permissible.
But according to Francis, it is. And according to Leo and Tucho, the SSPX must accept this heretical error or else no permission to consecrate, and therefore if you do, kaboom, you’re now officially outside of communion with the Catholic Church. Even if hypothetically they accepted the Council’s errors, which is impossible, they still have to accept A.L., otherwise the practical result is “schism.”
It’s the same for the death penalty now being always “impermissible.” Don’t accept that as true, then no permissions to consecrate for you, and if you do, EXCOMMUNICATION!
Sacred Tradition is a higher authority than any singular Pope or Ecumenical Council.
There is nothing Catholic or normal about being put in this extremely difficult position, morally speaking, between choosing to A) believe the traditional doctrine contrary to the conciliar or post-conciliar teaching, vs. B) allowing yourself to be illogical, violating the Law of Non-Contradiction and falling into cognitive dissonance pretending to believe both that 1 + 1 = 2, and 1 + 1 = 3, simply because the pope or ecumenical council says so.
That is blind obedience and a state of absurdity. Both are not true. You cannot believe both to be true at the same time or in the same sense in any sincere or meaningful way. That is foolishness.
I have yet to see any rational, well thought out and presented explanation by any Prelate, or by anybody, how any of these novelties are in continuity with what the Church was teaching since the Enlightenment philosophers spread their modern errors. Because they know it’s impossible. When some try to, it’s a very thin stretch of the imagination at best, more like P.R. talking points, but always revealing the requirement and mindset of blind obedience.
We keep hearing “1 + 1 = 3 does not violate 1 + 1 = 2 because the Church says so. Because the Church says so. Because the Church says so….”
The presupposition in this hermeneutic of continuity, trying to square the circle, is itself a doctrinal error that contradicts the First Vatican Council. It says “every official, universal document promulgated by the pope, or by an ecumenical council in unity with the pope, is infallible, and therefore cannot contain doctrinal errors, or be open to correction.”
Yet, Vatican I only taught strict infallibility belongs to the pope only, and only when solemnly defining a matter of faith or morals. All other teachings are still infallible only if they have been constantly taught by everyone and always since the Apostles, if not defined or expressed in a definitive way.
For example, there has never been an extraordinary solemn papal definition of the all male priesthood, yet that has always been the constant teaching “always and everywhere,” and John Paul II did present it in an encyclical as “definitive” dogmatic teaching. It is infallible because it is the constant teaching of the Church.
The doctrinal novelties in question are in non-infallible documents, and not made in a definitive way. They can be corrected if there is objective error.
This therefore means it is legitimate for the SSPX and other traditional Catholics to sincerely publicly point out doctrinal errors, to be corrected. This is not rebellion against Church authority or the pope, or the Magisterium, like the heretics or schismatics have done in the past.
What this is, is making sincere observations, backed up as being reasonable by legitimate theological opinions, especially of bishops and priests, and then saying “With all due respect, I don’t know who actually wrote this document, or their private intentions, but while I do accept all of it from the Vicar of Christ that is clearly Catholic, or if only ambiguous giving it assent by interpreting it in the orthodox sense, even if that requires bending my imagination, these few statements over here clearly, as I read them, contradict on some level what the Church has always taught. Until they might be clarified to show continuity, or rather corrected in its language, my fidelity to the constant teaching of the Catholic Church requires me and mine to temporarily suspend giving any assent to those very specific statements, and to reject any doctrinal error that clearly appears in the text. “
We actually do this with precedence! For example, there are all those Catholics such as the Doctors of the Church AFTER the Council of Florence, such as St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Francis de Lasalle, who taught differently than that Ecumenical Council on what is the matter for priestly ordination. To be definitively corrected later by Pope Pius XII, the true matter being the laying on of hands. Bishop Athanasius Schneider makes this point, to defend the orthodoxy of the SSPX’s positions.
It is therefore not a rebellion or actual formal dissent from the Magisterium as such, still recognizing the validity of Vatican II, the conciliar popes, and their Magisterial documents, while publicly observing what common sense, well informed by the traditional teaching, says is at least an error in language that tends to substantially contradict the previous teaching on some level. At least in the use of a particular paragraph, sentence, or phrase, in such a way to lead others into error about the doctrine.
That is it! Not a rebellion. Not true disobedience.
And not schism.
The authorities in Rome, and generally those who currently occupy the diocesan Sees, generally speaking, DO NOT GET ANY OF THIS! THEY AREN’T EVEN TRYING TO UNDERSTAND! THEY ARE NOT LISTENING TO US, BUT ONLY FALSELY CONDEMNING US AS SCHISMATICS!!! STILL TO THIS DAY IN 2026!!!!
That is, as a general rule, every general rule of course admitting of exceptions, Bishop Schneider being one rare exception.
I put this into colloquial, non-technical language because this injustice against us is at the HUMAN, EVERY DAY level. This reality harshly and constantly affects us at the local, concrete level in our dioceses. Everywhere.
Except maybe in certain Eastern Catholic dioceses or eparchies.
Christ did not found the Catholic Church only as a divine and supernatural institution. If that were the case, these recent popes and bishops would be angelic, impeccable, and beyond grievances by the laity.
But Christ also founded the Church to be in part natural and human. Its nature is dual, supernatural and natural, as well as divine and human.
So when you force the SSPX, for example, to accept the blessing of homosexual couples, Fernandez himself having already clarified that Fiducia Supplicans does authorize the blessing the couple AS SUCH, in their relationship (just somehow not in their “union”), or that Catholics and Muslims “adore” the same God, etc etc etc, in order to receive permission to consecrate a few auxiliary bishops for ordinations and confirmations, then it is a grave injustice to threaten them with excommunication for doing so, or to excommunicate.
Gravely unjust punishments from Church authority are null and void. They lack the force of law since, as St. Thomas says, “an unjust law is no law at all.” That includes any legal ruling and punishment.
The SSPX, as it endlessly states, IS NOT consecrating bishops as an act of denial of the pope’s authority, which would be required to make it a schismatic act, not only the act itself, but only to have bishops to ordain and confirm, their two remaining bishops approaching seventy years of age. That is it!!!!!
The likes of Leo, Tucho, Muller, Fr. Murray, or George Weigel are being INHUMAN in their blind judgment, not only theologically ill-informed. It is spiritual and psychological persecution and spiritual martyrdom of those Catholics today remaining faithful to Catholic Tradition.
In conclusion, the forthcoming “excommunications” of July 1st will be gravely unjust acts fundamentally against the traditional doctrine, heroic fidelity to that doctrine, intellectual honesty, and basic human justice and charity. It comes from a camp hell bent on destroying the traditional Church once and for all, and therefore eventually bringing us and all of Catholic Tradition and orthodoxy to an end.
As St. Athanasius says, “they may have the churches, but we have the apostolic Faith.”
Leo will do his evil deed. And we will rejoice at least that the movement of Tradition continues strong with four new, young bishops. And that we are not part of the “Ape of the Church” which “excommunicates” us.
We will not compromise. We will keep the Faith. And pray for the conversion of the modernists, and for the restoration of the Church one day.
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