Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome II: Wherein Bishop Bernard Fellay giveth a homily.

n Octo­ber 13, Protes­tant bish­op Bernard Fel­lay, of the Soci­ety of St. Pius X (SSPX), gave a homi­ly, of sorts, in which he insist­ed that he’s Catholic. (I think that nom­i­nal­ism is a mod­ernist error.) The occa­sion was the Pon­tif­i­cal Mass for the Angelus Press Con­fer­ence, at St. Vin­cent de Paul, in Kansas City.  The whole thing was mean­der­ing and schiz­o­phrenic, and I have not yet decid­ed what was worst about it.  It may have been the many occa­sions Good Bp.Fellay (GBF) took to dis­play his own brand of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome (and Vat­i­can II Derange­ment Syn­drome). Or it may have been a more gen­er­al evil; name­ly, that his sect appro­pri­ates the name of Pius X in its schism from the Church. Mar­tin Luther kept insist­ing he was Catholic too; he had Leo X Derange­ment Syndrome—those who came after, Trent Derange­ment Syn­drome; but at least he did not call his sect the Soci­ety of St. Gre­go­ry the Great. (John Calvin said that Gre­go­ry was the last good pope.)

IN THE INSTANT THAT I PREACH

GBF began well enough, as he often does in this sort of col­lo­quy.  He said, right­ly, that God is infal­li­ble (~4:15).  He asked, Who are we to dis­pute God’s divine prov­i­dence? (~6:50). He said that we must hate what is opposed to God. (~9:35).  Then he went on, blind to irony, to do the very thing he just said we must not do, and to defend the very thing he said we must hate.

For no soon­er had he fin­ished this twelve-minute exordi­um, than he asked—and with a great deal of pathos, too—“What’s going on?” (~12:35). He insist­ed that there is a “cri­sis in the church” (~12:47) and that the SSPX has reached a “zero lev­el with Rome” (~20:27). He told his schis­mat­ic flock of Protes­tant sheep that “We have to say no to the author­i­ties” (~13:00).

Here he stands; he can do no oth­er.

But one must ask—since the ques­tion appears not to have occurred to GBF—whence the author­i­ties derive their author­i­ty. If he would have but con­sid­ered this ques­tion, and from the Catholic point of view (for he is Catholic, as he tells us with flash of rhetor­i­cal thun­der), then he would know the answer.  Their author­i­ty comes from God—the very same God GBF just told us is infal­li­ble and whose divine prov­i­dence is not to be ques­tioned. Hear what Christ tells the apos­tles:

Who­ev­er lis­tens to you lis­tens to me, and who­ev­er rejects you rejects me, and who­ev­er rejects me rejects the one who sent me. (Luke 10:16)

If GBF wants the SSPX to “say no to the author­i­ties,” then he is telling them to say no to Christ and no to God.

But that is not the end of Christ’s words, for Christ promis­es the apos­tles they will have the assis­tance of the Holy Spir­it. “When the spir­it of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:13)

He will guide the Church into all the truth. Not some of the truth. Not a por­tion of the truth mixed with error.  But what GBF does, in his vagabond dis­cur­sion into heresy, is to set mean­ing­less lim­its on the charism of Infal­li­bil­i­ty:

The assis­tance of the Holy Ghost has been promised to the Holy Father, to the suc­ces­sor of St. Peter … only to keep safe­ly and trans­mit faith­ful­ly the deposit that is what the Church has received from God. (~15:35–15:55)

The rea­son the dis­tinc­tion is mean­ing­less is because it relies on a false sup­pos­al that the suc­ces­sor of St. Peter might fail to “keep safe­ly and trans­mit faith­ful­ly” the deposit of faith.  But the whole point of the doc­trine of Infal­li­bil­i­ty is that the assis­tance of the Holy Spir­it pre­vents any such thing in the first place.  Indi­vid­ual Catholics do not sit in judg­ment on the pope and say, This is faith­ful to the deposit of Faith, so I accept it; but that over there is not faith­ful, and so I reject it. Once we start doing that, we are no longer Catholic; we are Protes­tant. Our name is not Pius X but Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox. We have allowed pri­vate judg­ment to influ­ence which Church teach­ings we will accept, which we will not.

Pas­tor Aeter­nus, the Vat­i­can I doc­u­ment that defined the dog­ma, allows no such dis­tinc­tion and no such lee­way:

We teach and define that it is a dog­ma Divine­ly revealed that the Roman pon­tiff when he speaks ex cathe­dra, that is when in dis­charge of the office of pas­tor and doc­tor of all Chris­tians, by virtue of his supreme Apos­tolic author­i­ty, he defines a doc­trine regard­ing faith or morals to be held by the uni­ver­sal Church, by the Divine assis­tance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is pos­sessed of that infal­li­bil­i­ty with which the Divine Redeemeer held that his Church should be endowed in defin­ing doc­trine regard­ing faith or morals, and that there­fore such def­i­n­i­tions of the Roman pon­tiff are of them­selves and not from the con­sent of the Church irreformable.

PA says noth­ing about “infal­li­bil­i­ty if.”  Vat­i­can II, in Lumen Gen­tium, com­ments:

Bish­ops, teach­ing in com­mu­nion with the Roman Pon­tiff [That is an impor­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tion.] are to be respect­ed by all as wit­ness­es to divine and Catholic truth. In mat­ters of faith and morals, the bish­ops speak in the name of Christ and are faith­ful to accept their teach­ing and adhere to it with reli­gious assent.  This reli­gious sub­mis­sion of mind and will must be shown in a spe­cial way to the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um of [Whom?] the Roman Pon­tiff, even when he is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme mag­is­teri­um is acknowl­edged with rev­er­ence, the judg­ments made by him are sin­cere­ly adhered to, accord­ing to his man­i­fest mind and will.  His mind and will in the mat­ter may be known either from the char­ac­ter of the doc­u­ments, from his fre­quent rep­e­ti­tion of the same doc­trine, or from his man­ner of speak­ing.

Yes. And this would include con­cil­iar doc­u­ments solemn­ly pro­mul­gat­ed by the Holy Father, as all the doc­u­ments of Vat­i­can II were by Pope Paul VI:

Although the indi­vid­ual bish­ops do not enjoy the pre­rog­a­tive of infal­li­bil­i­ty, they nev­er­the­less pro­claim Christ’s doc­trine infal­li­bly when­ev­er, even though dis­persed through­out the world, but still main­tain­ing the bond of com­mu­nion among them­selves and with the suc­ces­sor of Peter, and authen­ti­cal­ly teach­ing mat­ters of faith and morals, they are in agree­ment on one posi­tion which is defin­i­tive­ly to be held. [Now take note here, GBF.] This is even more clear­ly ver­i­fied when, gath­ered togeth­er in an ecu­meni­cal coun­cil, they are teach­ers and judges of faith and morals for the uni­ver­sal Church, whose def­i­n­i­tions must be adhered to with the sub­mis­sion of faith.

Now here’s the key sen­tence where GBF stum­bles in his inter­pre­ta­tion:

And this infal­li­bil­i­ty which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defin­ing faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Rev­e­la­tion extends, which must be reli­gious­ly guard­ed and faith­ful­ly expound­ed. (LG 25)

What that last para­graph means is not that the pope is infal­li­ble only when he is con­sis­tent with the deposit of Rev­e­la­tion; as though it were pos­si­ble for him, when defin­ing doc­trine or teach­ing morals, to be incon­sis­tent.  What it does mean, rather, is that the offi­cial teach­ing of the pope is equal in author­i­ty to “the deposit of Rev­e­la­tion.” For it is through the pope’s teach­ing that the deposit of Rev­e­la­tion is “faith­ful­ly expound­ed.”

But what GBF has done here is to set up a false dichoto­my, where­by he may jus­ti­fy his own pri­vate judg­ment. Like any Protes­tant, he picks and choos­es and says: These parts of Vat­i­can II are true and faith­ful; these oth­er parts of Vat­i­can II are ambigu­ous and might be inter­pret­ed as either Catholic or mod­ernist; but this third por­tion of Vat­i­can II is clear­ly erro­neous and the SSPX can under no cir­cum­stances accept it. That is no dif­fer­ent from what Mar­tin Luther did.

ABSTRACT THREATS

And from that start­ing point, GBF turns his rhetor­i­cal fire on Pope Fran­cis and declares: “We are about to see some­thing very, very seri­ous.  The way he believes, what he says, is going to divide the Church!” (~22:23–22:27).  Imag­ine the spec­ta­cle of a sect break­ing away from the Church, refus­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for reunion, obsti­nate­ly cast­ing asper­sions on both the Mag­is­teri­um and an entire coun­cil, and then accus­ing the pope of caus­ing divi­sion! Dr. Freud would like to have some words with you now.

GBF even goes so far as to spec­u­late that “maybe” Fran­cis is not the true pope (~23:45). “From the very start,” he says, “we’ve had the impres­sion that there is some­thing wrong with this pope” (~24:15). “What’s his prob­lem with the red shoes?” he won­ders (~24:52). Appeal­ing to an unan­chored sense of cer­tain doom, GBF asks, “What is his vision, his plan? What [does he] want to do?” (~25:20). GBF is “scared to death” of Fran­cis because he says both Catholic and mod­ernist things (~26:02). The pope speaks “rub­bish” (~30:00) and wants to “reread the Coun­cil in the light of mod­ern cul­ture” (~32:31). The SSPX is “in front of a major fight” (~33:52). In Fran­cis it is con­front­ed with “a gen­uine mod­ernist,” who might con­ceiv­ably be capa­ble of liv­ing the Faith, but “is [also] capa­ble of [teach­ing] the con­trary” (~41:00–41:27). Hav­ing opened the vent to all that wind, GBF very sen­si­bly con­cludes by admon­ish­ing his flock to “be pru­dent when you talk about the pope” (~30:54). (His own words, over the pre­vi­ous sev­en min­utes, hav­ing been a mod­el of pru­dence.)

Here are the two spe­cif­ic errors of which GBF accus­es Pope Fran­cis: that he is a rel­a­tivist, and that he “does­n’t care” about Mary and thinks of her as “an obsta­cle to ecu­menism” (~50:50). If you are stumped by the last one, you will be even more stumped when I get to that point and reveal the basis for GBF hav­ing made such a bizarre state­ment.

GOOD AND BAD: I DEFINE THESE TERMS

But first, let’s take up the charge that Fran­cis is a rel­a­tivist. In say­ing this, GBF is think­ing of a state­ment that Fran­cis made—where else?—in an inter­view, this one in Sep­tem­ber with athe­ist and jour­nal­ist Euge­nio Scal­fari. The inter­view gen­er­at­ed the fol­low­ing alarmist, dis­hon­est, and out­ra­geous­ly ver­nac­u­lar head­line: “OH SNAP! Pope says NO Moral Absolutes!” If you are scratch­ing your head as I am, let us go to the pope’s words and see where this odd head­line comes from.

Fran­cis: The world is criscrossed by roads that come clos­er togeth­er and move apart, but the impor­tant thing is that they lead toward the Good.

Scal­fari: Your holi­ness, is there a sin­gle vision of the Good? And who decides what it is?

Fran­cis: Each of us has a vision of good and evil. We have to encour­age peo­ple to move towards what they think is good.

Scal­fari: Your Holi­ness, you wrote that in your let­ter to me. The con­science is autonomous, you said, and every­one must obey his con­science. I think that’s one of the most coura­geous steps tak­en by a pope.

Fran­cis: And I repeat it here. Every­one has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to fol­low the good and fight the evil as he con­ceives them. That would be enough to make the world a bet­ter place.

These words caused even the nor­mal­ly sen­si­ble Kat­ri­na Fernandez—the “mack­er­el-snap­ping papist” at The Crescat—to declaim thus: “Dear God, what is it now?” and “[I am going to] drink this papa­cy away.” Ms. Fer­nan­dez even gave her approval to a com­ment in which the author (“Quit­tin’ Time at Tara”) called the pope “a crazy uncle chained to [our] legs,” an “insult” to Catholics, and a “pro­gres­sive goof­ball” who must be “[with­stood] … to the face.”  ♪Proud ’neath heat­ed brow … ♫

But look a bit more care­ful­ly at what the pope said. We must keep two things in mind here. The first is that he is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra about faith and morals; he is not defin­ing any dog­ma that Catholics must believe. He is speaking—and this is the sec­ond thing—to an athe­ist jour­nal­ist who writes for an Ital­ian social­ist news­pa­per, la Repub­bli­ca. The inter­view is a fol­low-up to an ear­li­er let­ter Fran­cis had writ­ten to Mr. Scal­fari, in response to the jour­nal­ist’s request for a dis­cus­sion about faith and unbe­lief. The pope’s pri­ma­ry audi­ence, in oth­er words, is not Catholics but athe­ists and social­ists. Some of them, among the news­pa­per’s read­ers, might be open to the pope’s views. Some of them might be open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of faith.

This sec­tion of the inter­view begins with Fran­cis speak­ing about “the Good,” in the singular—with a cap­i­tal G.  He does­n’t speak of “goods,” in the plur­al. He speaks as though “the Good” is an actu­al cat­e­go­ry. That prompts Mr. Scal­fari to ask, “Is there a sin­gle vision of the Good?”

Pope Fran­cis responds, “Each of us has a vision of good and evil.”  But note very care­ful­ly what he does not say; he does not say that good and evil are false cat­e­gories.  In fact, the pope denies that any­one believes that there is no good and no evil; he denies that any­one can be a rel­a­tivist in the first place. If there is only “my good” and “your good,” then by def­i­n­i­tion there is no good.  If there is “my evil” and “your evil,” then by def­i­n­i­tion there is no evil.  There is only pref­er­ence.  But that is not what the pope said. What he said was, “Each of us has a vision of good and evil.”  In oth­er words, each of us believes in absolutes. Far from embrac­ing rel­a­tivism, Fran­cis denies even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rel­a­tivism.

The pope—and this is very, very impor­tant to under­stand, dear read­er, and I want you to under­score it thrice in red ink—begins his dis­cus­sion the exact same way C.S. Lewis begins Mere Chris­tian­i­ty: with the obser­va­tion that every­one believes that good and evil are real things.

Fran­cis goes on to say, “Every­one has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to fol­low the good and fight the evil as he con­ceives them.” Now, that might appear to be rel­a­tivist, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the “as he con­ceives them” part. But the pope has only rein­forced what he has already said. If every­one has his own idea of good and evil, then every­one is a moral abso­lutist.  And if every­one fol­lows his idea of good and fights his idea of evil, he is fight­ing for moral absolutes.  What Fran­cis is say­ing is that every­one has a con­science, and that every­one must fol­low his con­science.

God, after all, has writ­ten the law on our hearts (Rom. 2:15); and that is why—again, as C.S. Lewis understood—there are no sig­nif­i­cant moral dif­fer­ences between peo­ples and cul­tures. Any points of dif­fer­ence, Lewis says in Mere Chris­tian­i­ty (Harp­er Collins paper­back of 2001), “have nev­er amount­ed to any­thing like a total dif­fer­ence.  If any­one will take the trou­ble to com­pare the moral teach­ing of, say, the ancient Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Hin­dus, Chi­nese, Greeks, and Romans, what will real­ly strike him will be how very like they are to each oth­er and to our own.”

Did the Nazis real­ly not know, Lewis asks, that what they did was evil? Like­wise, did the 9/11 ter­ror­ists real­ly not know that fly­ing a plane into a build­ing was objec­tive­ly wrong? If the Nazis did not know that mur­der­ing six mil­lion Jews was evil, Lewis asks, then how could we have blamed them for that? (5–6).

In a clever act of the­o­log­i­cal jujit­su, Fran­cis has recalled Mr. Scal­fari to moral basics.  A true rel­a­tivist would deny that good and evil exist. But Fran­cis does not say that. There might be points of dif­fer­ence, or points of weak­ness, in the moral under­stand­ing of an athe­ist when com­pared to the moral under­stand­ing of a Catholic; the moral con­science does need to be formed. But when talk­ing to an athe­ist, one has to start some­where; and Fran­cis starts with a most basic truth:  that good and evil are real.

It is a wicked myth that human beings walk about the world with dif­fer­ent notions of fun­da­men­tal good and evil. How could God blame us if we did­n’t think that mur­der was wrong? But no one who com­mits murder—no one, unless he is clin­i­cal­ly insane—thinks that mur­der is okay. No one believes that, by killing some­one, he is pur­su­ing The Good. Peo­ple who mur­der oth­ers do so because they are defy­ing what they know to be right. If adul­ter­ers thought that adul­tery was “the good,” why do they sneak around guilti­ly when they’re hav­ing an affair? If shoplifters thought that theft was okay, why do they skulk around stores and keep a sharp eye out?

Pope Fran­cis is right: The world would be a bet­ter place if peo­ple would pur­sue even “their own idea” of good and fought even “their own idea” of evil. Every­one has a con­science; who would deny the world would be bet­ter if peo­ple would just fol­low it? Fran­cis did not say a per­fect place. But our basic sense of right and wrong do come from God, even when we deny Him. To be sure, many con­sciences are mal­formed. To be sure, there is a lot of cul­tur­al detri­tis to be cleared away. But the moral sense is there, and all Pope Fran­cis is doing is remind­ing us of that. To be remind­ed is the first step.

Now, per­haps Fran­cis’s words were poor­ly cho­sen and lacked nuance. But this was an oral inter­view, and Fran­cis spoke off the cuff. If I recall cor­rect­ly, Bene­dict XVI raised eye­brows with some remarks about con­doms, in this inter­view. How soon we for­get. If you are look­ing for unam­bigu­ous words and nuanced pre­ci­sion in an inter­view, that’s non­sense. If you are wor­ried that the media will mis­in­ter­pret Fran­cis, get over that.

It is unre­mark­able to me that Fran­cis said that every­one has “his own idea” of good and evil. What is remark­able, by con­trast, is that, in talk­ing to an athe­ist, Fran­cis said that good and evil are real, and no one denied it.  No one came out and said, “Oh, no, the pope’s wrong, good and evil don’t real­ly exist, you know.”  What they did do was to take the state­ment that every­one believes in good and evil and treat it as though it were a denial of good and evil.  And GBF fell for that one. (So did oth­er­wise good and sen­si­ble souls, like Ms. Fer­nan­dez.)

We must think about this ques­tion log­i­cal­ly. (Get those red mark­ers out.) Is it log­i­cal to believe that the same pope who said that Jesus can not be found out­side the Church would be a rel­a­tivist? Is it log­i­cal to believe that the same pope who said that you can­not pick and choose what you believe as a Catholic would be a rel­a­tivist? To believe that, I would have to believe that Fran­cis is incon­sis­tent or con­fused in his beliefs, and that he says what­ev­er comes into his mind at the moment.

That is a huge assump­tion to make. Occam’s razor will be of help here. Occam’s razor is the prin­ci­ple, in phi­los­o­phy, that says that the truth, between com­pet­ing hypothe­ses, is usu­al­ly what­ev­er requires the fewest, or least com­plex, assump­tions. (That is why con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are almost always false. The Da Vin­ci Code receives a neg­a­tive score on the Occam’s razor test.)

In this case, Occam’s razor tells me that Pope Fran­cis’s remarks to Scal­fari have been mis­un­der­stood. Far more assump­tions, and a lot of unan­chored fear, must be accept­ed in order to reach the con­clu­sion that Pope Fran­cis is wild­ly incon­sis­tent, and does not know what he believes, and might be a dan­ger­ous mod­ernist who’s out to destroy the Church, and may not even be the real pope because some­one in the Col­lege of Car­di­nals MURDERED! Car­di­nal Burke (who was real­ly elect­ed and took the name Pius XIII) and sent a dou­ble out to pose as Car­di­nal Burke so no one would be the wis­er.

But it is worth point­ing out (under­score this thrice in red too, dear read­er) that Pope Fran­cis has said noth­ing that the Church has not already told us. Here are the words of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, in Lumen Gen­tium 16:

Those also can attain to sal­va­tion who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel or Christ or His Church, yet sin­cere­ly seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dic­tates of con­science. … What­ev­er good or Truth is found by them is looked upon by the Church as a prepa­ra­tion for the Gospel.

And here is John Paul II, in his Gen­er­al Audi­ence on Sep­tem­ber 9, 1998:

It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spir­it for truth and good­ness, and in the last analy­sis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spir­it. The var­i­ous reli­gions arose pre­cise­ly from this pri­mor­dial open­ness to God. … [E]very authen­tic prayer is is called forth by the Holy Spir­it, who is mys­te­ri­ous­ly present in the heart of every per­son.

And here is Bene­dict XVI (anoth­er “pro­gres­sive goof­ball” and “crazy uncle,” I guess), in his Gen­er­al Audi­ence of Novem­ber 30, 2005, cit­ing no less an author­i­ty than St. Augus­tine of Hip­po for this same sen­ti­ment:

Let us entrust our­selves to St. Augus­tine for a fur­ther med­i­ta­tion on [Psalm 137].  The great Father of the Church intro­duces a sur­pris­ing and very time­ly note:  he knows that there are also peo­ple among the inhab­i­tants of Baby­lon who are com­mit­ted to peace and to the good of the com­mu­ni­ty, although they do not share the bib­li­cal faith; the hope of the Eter­nal City to which we aspire is unknown to them. With­in them they have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greater, for the tran­scen­dent: for true redemp­tion.

And Augus­tine says that even among the per­se­cu­tors, among non-believ­ers, there are peo­ple who pos­sess this spark, with a sort of faith or hope, as far as is pos­si­ble for them in the cir­cum­stances in which they live. With this faith, even in an unknown real­i­ty, they are tru­ly on their way towards the true Jerusalem, towards Christ.

In fact, it is anti-Catholics (like this one) who ’plain that such state­ments amount to “inclu­sivism.” By “inclu­sivism,” what the anti-Catholic means is the belief that every­one will end up in Heav­en.  But that is not how Catholics should under­stand the words of Vat­i­can II and the last three popes.  They should under­stand them as no more than an exe­ge­sis of 1 Tim­o­thy 2:4, which tells us that God “desires every­one to be saved and to come to the knowl­edge of the truth.” Thus God can inspire a long­ing for the Good even in those who under­stand it poor­ly. Those who reject such long­ings, writ­ten in all hearts, and com­mit what they know to be evil, are in dan­ger of Hell, and they do exist. But they are not con­fused about the Good; rather, they reject it and sup­press any desire for it.

Catholi­cism is “inclu­sivist,” in Dr.* White’s view, because it has a “defec­tive view of the atone­ment.” In oth­er words, Catholics do not believe, as Calvin­ists do, in a lim­it­ed atone­ment. “There seems lit­tle chance the trend in Rome will ever turn back to its for­mer beliefs,” Dr.* White ’plains—as though St. Augus­tine is not to be includ­ed among our “for­mer beliefs”; as though Catholi­cism once did teach lim­it­ed atone­ment; as though we are to believe that, if only Rome would embrace its “for­mer beliefs,” Dr.* White would sign up for the near­est RCIA pro­gram before the Phoenix sun rose anew. But no.

IN A SOLDIER’S STANCE I AIMED MY HAND AT THE MONGREL DOGS WHO TEACH

Much hard­er to believe is GBF’s wild accu­sa­tion that Pope Fran­cis “does­n’t respect” Our Lady and views her as an “obsta­cle” to ecu­menism. The basis for this bit of rhetor­i­cal brava­do is the fact that Pope Fran­cis did not con­se­crate Rus­sia to Mary, as Mary request­ed at Fati­ma. Instead, Fran­cis entrust­ed “the world” to Mary. (As though Rus­sia did not belong to the world.) This is an old plaint of tra­di­tion­al­ists, and I often find it on sites that are oth­er­wise sound.

But the fact is, Pope Fran­cis fol­lowed the exact same form of con­se­cra­tion used by every one of his pre­de­ces­sors, begin­ning with Pius XII. (Did you hear that, GBF?)

Now, am I to believe that Pius XII was a dan­ger­ous mod­ernist? Did Pius XII, who defined the dog­ma of the Assump­tion, hate Our Lady? Did John Paul II think that Mary was an “obsta­cle”? Did he go to bed at night, say­ing, “Hail Mary, full of grace, would you please get out of my way”?

Occam’s Razor might be of help again.

GBF is in a mud­dle of his own mak­ing. If he is right that Vat­i­can II con­tains errors, and if he is right that all popes since John XXIII have taught error, then he con­cedes the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Church can teach error—even the cer­tain­ty that it has. That is not the Catholic point of view. The Catholic point of view was taught at Vat­i­can I. But sup­pose that Pope Fran­cis were to wake up tomor­row and issue the fol­low­ing state­ment:

By the author­i­ty of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apos­tles Peter and Paul, and by my own author­i­ty, I pro­nounce, declare, and define it to be a divine­ly revealed dog­ma that the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, and all popes from John XXIII to Bene­dict XVI, taught the hereti­cal mod­ernist errors I have laid out in the present apos­tolic Con­sti­tu­tion.

That would also be a con­ces­sion that the Church can, and indeed has, taught error; and that the Church can reverse or change its teach­ings. That is not the Catholic posi­tion either.

The only con­sis­tent Catholic posi­tion is this: If I believe that Vat­i­can II taught error, or that all popes begin­ning with John XXIII taught error, then the error is not with the Church but with myself.  My duty is to solve my own error, not to form my own sect.

Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome is the anti-Catholic Protes­tant’s best friend.

UPDATES

1. Fr. Dwight Lon­ge­neck­er has an inter­est­ing arti­cle here com­par­ing Bish­op Fel­lay’s homi­ly to the end-times preach­ing of Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ism.

2. Catholic in Brook­lyn has post­ed this very well-done arti­cle on why Vat­i­can II is “a mes­sage for our time.”

3. Here is the weird­est exam­ple yet of why Occam need­ed a razor and why “mes­mer­ized sleepy Catholics” such as myself need the term Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome. This site [now delet­ed, apparently—SEA 9/1/19] is beyond rea­son mad. I would need to invent a whole new lan­guage to describe derange­ment this far gone. Suf­fice it to say my point was not—as the blog author says—to rede­fine rel­a­tivism as “what­ev­er a per­son believes is a moral absolute is a moral absolute.” I defy any­one to point out where I said any such thing in this arti­cle. Of course moral absolutes exist inde­pen­dent­ly of what peo­ple think. I have no dis­pute with that. What I did say was that, what­ev­er a per­son might say to the con­trary, every­one believes that moral absolutes exist, and there­fore no one is a rel­a­tivist. Whether their own beliefs line up with those moral absolutes is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion; to attack this arti­cle, “Rem­nant Cler­gy” false­ly con­flates the two.