Traditionalists, Infallibility and the Pope (1995, 2006) by Rev. Anthony Cekada The very men who appear to possess authority in the Church teach errors and impose harmful laws. How reconcile this with infallibility? IF YOU NOW assist regularly at the traditional Latin Mass, it is because you concluded at some point that the old Mass and doc- trines were Catholic and good, while the new Mass and modern teachings, somehow, were not. But (like me) you probably had some initial worries: What if the traditional Mass I go to is not approved by the diocese? Am I defying the legitimate authority in the Church? Am I disobeying the pope? This is the “authority issue,” and it seems to present a real dilemma. The Church teaches that the pope is infallible in faith and morals. Good Catholics, moreover, obey the laws of the pope and the hierarchy. Bad Catholics pick and choose what laws they want to obey. Yet at the same time, the very men who would appear to possess authority in the hierarchy command us to accept doctrines and a Mass which harm the faith or have other disastrous effects. What is a Catholic to do? Why Reject the Changes? In order to solve the dilemma, we should begin by con- sidering what drove us out of our Vatican II parishes in the first place. In most cases, it was either contradiction of established Catholic teaching or irreverence in worship. In other words, we instantly recognized some element of the new religion to be ei- ther a doctrinal error or an evil. And we hardly thought that our objections concerned mere changes in minutiae. The new doctrines, rather, struck us as changes in substance — compromises, betrayals, or direct contra- dictions of immemorial Catholic teaching. Or we came to regard the new system of worship as evil — irreverent, a dishonor to the Blessed Sacrament, repugnant to Catholic doctrine, or utterly destructive to the faith of millions of souls. Weighty reasons like these — and not mere trifles — were what moved us to resist and reject the changes. Once we have arrived at this point and recognized (as we do and must) that some official pronouncement or law emanating from post-Vatican II hierarchy contains error or evil, we are, in fact, well on the way to resolving the seemingly thorny issue of authority. Let us examine why. Some Errors and Evils We begin by listing some of the errors and evils officially approved either by Vatican II or by Paul VI and his successors: — 1 — • Vatican II’s teaching (and that of the 1983 Code of Canon Law) that the true Church of Christ “subsists in” (n.b., rather than “is”) the Catholic Church. This implies that the true Church can also “subsist” in other religious bodies. • Abolition in Vatican II and the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the traditional distinction between the primary (procreative) and secondary (unitive) ends of marriage, the placing of those ends on same level, and the reversal of their order. The change provides tacit support for contraception, since the prohibition against birth control was based on the teaching that procrea- tion is marriage’s primary end. • The systematic suppression, in the original Latin version of Paul VI’s new Missal, of the following concepts: hell, divine judgement, God’s wrath, punishment for sin, the wickedness of sin as the greatest evil, detachment from the world, purga- tory, the souls of the departed, Christ’s kingship on earth, the Church Militant, the triumph of the Catholic Faith, the evils of heresy, schism and error, the conversion of non-Catholics, the merits of the saints and miracles. To purge these doctrines from the liturgy is to signal that they are no longer true, or at least sufficiently important, to merit a mention in the Church’s official prayer. • Paul VI’s official approval of communion in the hand. This practice was imposed by 16th-century Protestants in order to deny transubstantiation and the sacramental nature of the priesthood. • The official doctrinal introduction to the New Order of Mass which taught that the Mass is an assembly-supper, co- celebrated by the congregation and its president, during which Christ is present in the people, the Scripture readings, and in the bread and wine. This is a Protestant or modernist under- standing of the Mass, and it provided the theoretical founda- tion upon which so many subsequent “abuses” would rest. Benedict XVI’s Teachings To the foregoing we could add many teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both falsely portrayed as doctrinal “conser- vatives.” Their pronouncements and writings reveal a pervasive theological problem that goes far beyond the issue of traditional Mass vs. New Mass. Benedict XVI, as Joseph Ratzinger, was a leading modernist theologian at Vatican II, and left a long paper trail of his errors. He was the chief architect of a new theology of the Church which posits a “People of God” and a “Church of Christ” not identical with the Roman Catholic Church — a Super-Church or a Frankenchurch created from “elements” of the true Church that are possessed either fully (by Catholics) or partially (by heretics and schismatics). The bond holding this ecumenical beast together is Ratz- inger’s notion of the Church as “communion.” As a cardinal and John Paul II’s chief doctrinal advisor, he developed this idea in the 1992 CDF Letter on Communion, the 2000 Declaration Dominus Jesus, the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1997 Catechism. Here are some typical propositions from Ratzinger’s teaching: • Schismatic bodies are “particular Churches” united to the Catholic Church by “close bonds.” (Communion 17). • The universal church is the “body of [particular] churches.” (ibid. 8) — 2 — • Schismatic churches have a “wounded” existence. (ibid. 17) • The “universal Church becomes present in them [the particu- lar churches] in all her essential elements.” (ibid. 17). • The Church of Christ is “present and operative” in churches that reject the papacy. (Dominus Jesus 17) • One becomes a member of the “People of God” by baptism. (Catechism 782) • This whole People of God participates in the office of Christ. (ibid. 783) • Christ’s Body, the Church, is “wounded.” (ibid. 817) • Christ’s Spirit uses schismatic and heretical bodies as “means of salvation.” (ibid. 819) • Each “particular Church” is “Catholic,” but some are “fully Catholic.” (ibid. 832, 834) These teachings are contrary to an article of divine and Catholic faith: “I believe in one Church.” “One” in the Creed re- fers to that property of the Church by which she is “undivided in herself and separated from any other” in faith, discipline and worship. Ratzinger’s teachings are also contrary the teaching of the Church Fathers and the universal ordinary magisterium that heretics are “outside Catholic communion and alien to the Church.” (Pope Leo XIII) Church Cannot Give Evil Such lists could probably continue for pages. Our point is that each item can be categorized either as an error (a con- tradiction or change in substance of teachings of the pre-Vatican II magisterium) or as an evil (something offensive to God, harm- ful to the salvation of souls). But the same faith that tells us that the changes are wrong also tells us that the Church cannot defect in her teaching or give evil. One of the essential properties of the Catholic Church is her indefectibility. This means, among other things, that her teach- ing is “immutable and always remaining the same.” (St. Ignatius of Antioch.) It is impossible for her to contradict her own teach- ing. Further, another essential property of Christ’s Church is her infallibility. This does not apply (as some traditional Catholics seem to think) only to rare ex cathedra papal pronouncements like those defining the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Infallibility also extends to the Church’s universal disciplinary laws. The principle, set forth in classic dogmatic theology texts such as Salaverri (I:722), Zubizarreta (I:486), Herrmann (I:258), Schultes (314–7) and Abarzuza (I:447), is typically explained as follows: The Church’s infallibility extends to… ecclesiastical laws passed for the universal Church for the direction of Christian worship and Christian living.… But the Church is infallible in issuing a doctrinal decree as intimated above — and to such an extent that it can never sanction a universal law which would be at odds with faith or morality or would be by its very nature con- ducive to the injury of souls.… If the Church should make a mistake in the manner alleged when it legislated for the general discipline, it would no longer — 3 — be either a loyal guardian of revealed doctrine or a trustworthy teacher of the Christian way of life. It would not be a guardian of revealed doctrine, for the imposition of a vicious law would be, for all practical purposes, tantamount to an erroneous defini- tion of doctrine; everyone would naturally conclude that what the Church had commanded squared with sound doctrine. It would not be a teacher of the Christian way of life, for by its laws it would induce corruption into the practice of religious life. [Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology. 2:91. His emphasis.] It is impossible, then, for the Church to give something evil through her laws — including laws regulating worship. A recognition, on one hand, that the post-Vatican II hier- archy has officially sanctioned errors and evils, and a consid- eration, on the other, of the Church’s essential properties thus lead us to a conclusion about the authority of the post-Vatican II hierarchy: Given the Church’s indefectibility in her teaching (her teaching cannot change) and the Church’s infallibility in her uni- versal disciplinary laws (her liturgical laws cannot compromise doctrine or harm souls), it is impossible that the errors and evils we have catalogued could have proceeded from what is in fact the authority of the Church.