Combined Response March 19, 2020 St
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Combined Response March 19, 2020 St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, pray for us! Greetings my friends, Praised be Jesus, Mary, and St. Joseph now and forever. Rather than give the names of some friends who wrote me emails and asked me to correspond with them and answer questions, in this letter on the public website I am only going to refer to them as F1 (as one friend), F2 (as another friend), F3 (as another friend), F4 (as another friend). F1 sent me an email March 5, 2020 and asked “What do you think of the following”; and then he sent information that was mostly taken from the CMRI website. Correspondence went back and forth for a while, and although I have other daily duties to also be taken care of, I will herein provide some information – although it will not be the complete in depth answers to explain about all of the articles accessed from the hyperlinks F1 sent me. Not long after F1 and I exchanged a few emails, another correspondence through email took place with F2. In the meantime, while I have been writing this letter, F3 also sent me an email asking me to comment on information from F4’s website. Because the subject matter for all of these email correspondences are closely related and intertwined; I have decided to see if I can address all of them in this one Combined Response to the questions asked in the emails. One of the articles F1 wanted to know what I think about was: Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments by Rev. Anthony Cekada. Therefore, let us start with Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments by Rev. Anthony Cekada as found on the CMRI website with the statement, “Reprinted by permission of Rev. Anthony Cekada.” In Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments Rev. Anthony Cekada wrote: “In the case of legitimate deputation for confession, divine law requires that for valid absolution of sinners, a priest must also possess the power of jurisdiction in addition to the power of Holy Orders. No traditional Catholic priest I know of disputes this. … Abps. Lefebvre and Thuc — were obliged to confer Holy Orders on worthy candidates who would then continue to provide sacraments for faithful Catholics throughout the world. … Moreover, those of us who derive our orders from Abps. Lefebvre or Thuc obviously have no appointment to the cura animarum (care of souls).” Please send me your answers to all of the questions with numbers between these kinds of brackets {}. {1} Do you agree that in other words, Rev. Anthony Cekada is clearly explaining that every traditional Catholic priest and bishop teaches that every priest and bishop must also possess the power of jurisdiction for the valid absolution of sinners; and because they do not have the cura animarum (care of souls), none of them possess ordinary jurisdiction? Let us recall some other very important truths. I quote from page five of Rev. Anthony Cekada's article, The Validity of the Thuc Consecrations: “Since no one in the Traditional Movement possesses ordinary jurisdiction, no one has the power to rule on the legal evidence that a particular sacrament was performed and then establish it as a fact before Church law.” Rev. Cekada's article has been widely circulated and read by many people in the Traditional Movement. You can still find it on the World Wide Web. Therefore, it cannot be denied that many people know the truth that: “No one in the Traditional Movement possesses ordinary jurisdiction”! There is an article in the Angelus Press, 1997, page 54, titled: Most Asked Questions about the Society of Saint Pius X. The quote can now also be found on the World Wide Web. For over 23 years now, those who read this article know that those in The Society of Saint Pius X do not have jurisdiction: “Only the Pope, who has universal jurisdiction over the whole Church, can appoint a pastor to a flock and empower him to govern it. But Archbishop Lefebvre never presumed to confer anything but the full priestly powers of Orders, and in no way did he grant any jurisdiction (which he himself did not have personally to give).” 1 Next, we recall that Archbishop Lefebvre publicly, freely, and truthfully told the world at the time he consecrated the four bishops that they would not be ordinaries. That is to say, they would not have ordinary jurisdiction. If bishops do not possess ordinary jurisdiction, they will never delegate jurisdiction to priests because they cannot give what they do not have. Consequently, we learn from their own writings that no traditional Catholic priest disputes that he needs jurisdiction for the valid absolution of sinners, and none of them have ordinary jurisdiction. Furthermore, I do not know any of the Traditionalist Movement bishops that claim they receive their Power of Orders from the Bishop Thuc lineage that also claim they receive delegated jurisdiction from a pope. If a bishop does not have delegated jurisdiction from the Pope, he cannot delegate jurisdiction to any priest; because you cannot give what you do not have. Apparently the Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments article by Rev. Anthony Cekada was written to bring about his conclusion that states a brand-new doctrine unheard of before in the Catholic Church, namely: “The jurisdiction we traditional Catholic priests possess has been delegated to us from Christ Himself.” {2} Do you agree therefore that according to their own writings and statements; the Traditionalist Movement bishops do not delegate any jurisdiction to the Traditionalist Movement priests? {3} Do you agree that Traditionalistist Movement bishops coming from Bishop Thuc and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre also teach that they did not receive any jurisdiction from a Catholic Pope? {4} Do you agree that according to their own writings and statements, each Traditionalist Movement bishop and each Traditionalist Movement priest receives any jurisdiction he possesses as delegated DIRECTLY to him from Christ Himself? {5} Do you agree that in the Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments article; Rev. Anthony Cekada did not provide a single quote from sacred Scripture, a Pope, Council of the Church, Father of the Church, Doctor of the Catholic Church, or even a canonized Saint that teaches the same thing as Rev. Anthony Cekada and the Traditionalist Movement clerics; namely, “The jurisdiction we traditional Catholic priests possess has been delegated to us from Christ Himself”? {6} Do you agree that in his article Traditional Priests, Legitimate Sacraments Rev. Anthony Cekada neglects to address that contrary to his conclusion, the teachings of the Catholic Church clearly provide the Catholic doctrine that all jurisdiction comes to the bishops through the successor of St. Peter; and not delegated to bishops or priests directly from Christ Himself? Bishop Sanborn said the following during his video when he was talking to people in London in 2013: Why is this so? Because the authority of the Church is the authority of Christ. Pope Pius XII said it in Mystici Corporis; that the authority, the power of the Pope is the same as the authority of Christ. There are not two heads in the sense of two different authorities. There is the invisible head, Christ, and the visible head, the Pope. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ; they both have the same authority. So the authority of the Pope is the same as the authority of Christ. {7} Do you agree that the statements of Bishop Sanborn, “the power of the Pope is the same as the authority of Christ” and “the authority of the Pope is the same as the authority of Christ”, are the correct teaching according to Catholic doctrine? The following is a partial transcript of some of the things stated by Bishop Pivarunas during a YouTube movie concerning Sedevacantism – starting at about 15 minutes and 20 seconds into the video: You know the issue is; this is for me the absolute bottom line. Christ said to His Apostles: “He who hears you hears me. Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Teach all nations everything I have commanded. I am with you all days. I will send the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth who will teach you all things and abide with you forever. He who does not believe what you teach will be condemned.” Christ founded a teaching Church, that teaching Church is infallible. And if we look at Vatican I, which 2 reiterated, right out of the Vatican, we are talking about this quote right here. Vatican I says very clearly: “For the Fathers of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, following closely the footsteps of their predecessors made the solemn profession: The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith. For it is impossible that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He says, ‘thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church,’ should not be verified. And the truth has been proved by the course of history. In the Apostolic See the Catholic Religion has always been kept unsullied and its teachings kept holy.” ALWAYS! Can we say that now of these modern so-called popes? Absolutely, positively not! And right here on the second page: “Indeed, it was this Apostolic doctrine that all the Fathers held, and all the Orthodox Fathers and Doctors reverenced and followed. For they fully realize that this See of St. Peter always remains untainted by any error. According to the divine promise our Lord and Savior made to the Prince of His disciples: “I have prayed for thee Peter, I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not; and do thou once confirm, strengthen thy brethren.” Now this Charism of truth and never failing faith was conferred upon St.