Skojec’s tweets proof that Traditionalism ends in Modernism. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, Vol. XXXI.

r. Steve Sko­jec, for­mer­ly of One Luther Five, is no longer both­er­ing to hide his dis­sent from the dog­ma of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. He’s not try­ing to nuance out a dis­tinc­tion between the rare occa­sions when an infal­li­ble state­ment is made and every­thing else a pope says. Any­one who tried to do that would need to explain why they wor­ry them­selves over what Pope Fran­cis says at all, since he’s not exer­cised that charism as far as I can tell. But Mr. Sko­jec has integri­ty, casts nuance to the winds, and says that the dog­ma itself is a sham. Let’s peer—briefly, for it is painful—into his Twit­ter feed:

LIVING CLOSE TO YOUR FEARS

• On Octo­ber 13, wail­ing about Tra­di­tiones Cus­todes, Sko­jec tweets: “Hon­est­ly, my chil­dren and their chil­dren, if any of them man­age to keep the faith in this apoc­a­lyp­tic waste­land excuse of a Church, are going to be deal­ing with this.”
• On Octo­ber 17, in response to a dis­cus­sion of what might hap­pen were a pope to teach heresy, Sko­jec tweets: “Imag­ine these being the options to pro­tect the pre­tense of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty.”
• On Octo­ber 20, Sko­jec tweets: “Every day [Pope Fran­cis] dri­ves home the point that no amount of flow­ery 19th cen­tu­ry the­ol­o­gy about the papa­cy being immune from error can dress up the fact that it’s an insti­tu­tion com­plete­ly capa­ble of falling into the hands of some­one who will do what­ev­er the hell he wants with it.”
• On Octo­ber 20, Sko­jec tweets: “If this is a reli­gion that can change and there’s no divine inter­ven­tion to stop it, might as well change in a way that makes it eas­i­er. Not like it can be tak­en seri­ous­ly any­more any­way.”

YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF SIGHT

It’s prob­a­bly time for an extend­ed defense, in its own right, of the dog­ma of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. It’s time for a long and thor­ough defense of how Pope Fran­cis’s teach­ings do not call the dog­ma into ques­tion.

But that will be in upcom­ing posts, not in this one. All I want to show here is that what starts as Tra­di­tion­al­ism ends in Mod­ernism. Mr. Sko­jec has integri­ty in that he’s not try­ing to hide that. He has fol­lowed his premis­es through to their log­i­cal con­clu­sion. Ulti­mate­ly, that log­i­cal con­clu­sion may very well lead him out of the Church—into a con­ser­v­a­tive brand of Protes­tantism, maybe; or per­haps Ortho­doxy. I don’t know.

But the fact is this, that in 1864, Pope Pius IX pro­mul­gat­ed a long con­dem­na­tion of Mod­ernism called the Syl­labus of Errors. It’s a list of con­demned here­sies. Here’s num­ber 23 on that list:

Roman pon­tif­fs and ecu­meni­cal coun­cils have wan­dered out­side the lim­its of their pow­ers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defin­ing mat­ters of faith and morals.

Accord­ing to Pius IX, when you call papal infal­li­bil­i­ty a “pre­tense,” when you say that popes can will­ful­ly “do what­ev­er the hell they want with [the papa­cy],” you have spo­ken a Mod­ernist heresy.

But nei­ther can a per­son try to nuance the ques­tion and say, “Well, but infal­li­ble state­ments only hap­pen now and then, and so it’s per­fect­ly lic­it to accept the dog­ma while ignor­ing the vast bulk of a pope’s teach­ings.” Not at all. Because just one item ear­li­er on the Syl­labus, Pius IX con­demns this:

The oblig­a­tion by which Catholic teach­ers and authors are strict­ly bound is con­fined to those things only which are pro­posed to uni­ver­sal belief as dog­mas of faith by the infal­li­ble judg­ment of the Church.

Say­ing “I can dis­re­gard that because it’s not infal­li­ble” is also a mod­ernist error.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

Dear read­er, I was say­ing at least as ear­ly as four years ago that Tra­di­tion­al­ism leads to Mod­ernism. It leads one, if you fol­low it to its log­i­cal conclusion—as Mr. Sko­jec in his integri­ty has—to reject­ing dog­mas defined well before Vat­i­can II. The doc­trine of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty was defined in 1869.

By try­ing to be more Catholic than the pope, you end up being not Catholic at all. (I’m aware that Mr. Sko­jec is Catholic by bap­tism; I am using the word here in terms of Catholic belief.)

I get that Mr. Sko­jec is in a spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al cri­sis, and I sym­pa­thize and pray that he finds the peace he’s look­ing for. But take this is a warn­ing about where Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome leads.