THE CATHOLIC DILEMMA & HOW TO SOLVE IT

 

Download this document as a PDF

     At the time of writing, members of the Catholic faithful throughout the world are confronted with a great dilemma.  The pope, Leo XIV, Vicar of Christ on earth, successor of him to whom Our Blessed Lord said: “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my Church… and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”, conducts himself daily like a modernist heretic.  How, is this possible?  Haven’t the gates of hell prevailed?

 

Let us make it clear in what follows that we are not judging the subjective state of the soul of the Pontiff.  Pius X mentioned the applicable principle in a preliminary note, in n. 3, of his encyclical against the modernists, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8^th, 1907):

“Although they [modernists] express their astonishment that we should number them among the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We do so if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech and their action…”[1]

 

We are confronted with a dilemma.  How does one solve a dilemma?  Are there rules, and if so, what are they?  It will help if we study two dilemmas that presented themselves at the very beginnings of philosophy, and see how they were resolved. 

 

Being and Becoming - Parmenides of Elea (fl. 475 BC) contended that change is impossible.  Whatever exists, exists: it cannot come into existence. Becoming, therefore, is an illusion.  Against this view, Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. 500 BC), said true, being exists, but it is constantly changing.  No thing is fixed; it is always becoming something else.  “We never,” he said, “step twice into the same river”.  Who was right?

 

One and Many - Parmenides said that the many-ness of things is apparent only.  In truth, being is one, not many.  As might be expected from what had he to say, noted above, Heraclitus said reality is pure many-ness.  The only unity in being is its multiplicity.  Who was right?

 

Let the reader note that each of the two philosophers saw the answer to each dilemma in a denial of the information of his senses, namely, (1) that things do come into being, and go out of being, and that once it has come into being, a thing maintains its itself in existence; and, (2) that notwithstanding that they are united in having one exemplar, or image, there are yet many, real, instances of each thing.  True, dogs conform to one type, but there are many real dogs!

 

Plato (428 – 347 BC) attempted to solve the issue of the one and the many with his doctrine of subsisting forms.  He said there exists a real, universal, One, of everything we observe—as that, the many dogs we observe are no more than reflections of the One, Universal, real, Dog—and we are like spectators at the entrance to a cave who observe, on its back wall, the reflections of the reality behind us.[2]

 

His student, Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), accepted the facts presented by both dilemmas.  Things both come into being and remain in being he noted.  Moreover, the unity of things in conforming to one type is not contradicted by the fact that the type is found in many individuals.  He looked for a reason of their becoming and for a reason of their being; he looked for a reason of their one-ness, and a reason of their many-ness.  He accepted both terms of each and sought to solve them by distinctions.  Before proceeding further, then, let us, following Aristotle, formulate the first rule for solving a dilemma.

 

Rule no. 1: accept both terms.

 

Of being and becoming - Aristotle asserted that a distinction is to be made in being.  Close analysis reveals that being is comprised not only of what is, but of what can be.  What is = being in act (actus, literally, ‘does-[be]-ness’).  What can be = being in potency (potentia, literally, ‘can-be-ness’).   An illustration: Sir Isaac Newton does be an astronomer: he is an astronomer in act.  John Patrick, a boy, can be an astronomer: he is an astronomer in potency.  John Pat’s dog, Toby, cannot be an astronomer.  Thus, there is an element of being, potency, in John Patrick not found in his dog.

 

Of the one and the many - Aristotle said Plato’s doctrine of subsisting forms was unnecessary and would not save the validity of human knowledge.  The universal is not a mere fiction, a figment, of the mind.  It is something real which exists in the mind.  It is not necessary that it subsist in its own right apart from the individuals in which it is exemplified: it suffices that it exists in mind.  Plato’s hypothesised material images are no more than duplicates of the sensible world.  In contrast, the immaterial existence of the universal in mind permits the mind to apply it to each individual.  From the manner of Aristotle’s solution to these two dilemmas we have, then, a key for formulating the second, and critical, rule in solving a dilemma.

 

Rule no. 2: look for a distinction in one term, or in the other term, or in both.

 

The Dilemma Concerning the Pope’s Behaviour

Here are the issues laid out in the form of questions: Is Leo XIV the duly constituted successor of St Peter?  Does he conduct himself day by day as a modernist heretic?  There are three possible answers to the questions:

• ‘No’: Leo is not Pope so the question of his engagement in heresy does not arise, save for the scandal it gives to the uninstructed – this is the sedevacantist position.
• ‘No’: Leo does not act like a heretic; whatever he says is Catholic teaching - this is the ultramontanist position, that no matter what the pope does, he cannot err.  The second question is irrelevant.
• ‘Yes’: Leo is the Pope; and yes, he conducts himself like a modernist heretic.  This is the Catholic position.

 To find the solution we must look for a distinction in the one term – that Leo is truly the Pope of the Catholic Church – or in the other, that he conducts himself each day as a modernist heretic, or in both.  Let us look at the first.

 

Is the Pope always infallible?  No: he is not.  The Vatican Council in chapter 4 of its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Pastor Aeternus (July 18^th 1870), laid out the circumstances in which the Pope speaks infallibly, namely,

• when carrying out his duty as pastor and teacher of all Christians,
• in accord with his supreme apostolic authority,
• he explains a doctrine of faith or m0rals,
• to be held by the universal Church.

It is because a pope can err that the Vatican Council laid out precisely when he cannot![3]  It is entirely possible, then, that a pope could indulge in error to the point of uttering words which are not only materially, but formally, heretical.  It has happened in the past: there is no reason why it should not happen again.

 

We are conscious that there are Doctors of the Church who claim that teaching formal heresy would put a pope outside the Church.  None of them were confronted with the problems that the modernist heresy has thrown up and, consistent with St Augustine’s principle that heresies provide the Church with the opportunity of refining her teachings, we leave resolution of the issue to the Church in due course.  The claim presents problems, the first of which is the maxim long held by the Church, set forth in canon 1404 of the 1983 CIC, Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur—“The first see is judged by no one”.  The second problem is a practical one.  Any action to remove an heretical pope from the Church could only be taken by a competent body of the cardinals.  In the present situation, where a majority of the cardinals are infected with the modernist virus, solution to this problem is unlikely in the extreme.

 

 

Let us look at the other term.  Is there a distinction which would isolate Papa Prevost’s general behaviour so as to remove it from the sphere of Papal authority completely?  Yes, there is.

 

Does the Pope always act as Pope?  No.  He does not.  Pope Leo is not only the Vicar of Christ, earthly head of the Catholic Church, he is head of the secular, and diabolical, entity invented by the popes and bishops of ‘Vatican II’, the Church of Vatican II.  He may think as he goes about his affairs each day that he always acts as Pope.  But the reality is that, most of the time, Papa Prevost conducts himself as head of this modernist entity.

 

His heresy is grounded in modern philosophy which eschews all acknowledgement of the formal in human, contents itself with merely material explanations.  It rejects the need for distinction, essential to rational thought, which entails acceptance of the reality of the different formalities in a thing, or action, so as to permit its identification.  As with the philosophy which underlies it, the modernist heresy rejects distinction, contents itself with materialism’s facile analyses and explanations.

 

What, the reader might ask himself, would happen if it was suggested to Pope Leo that he is head not only of the Catholic Church but also of this other Church, the Church of Vatican II?  It is highly likely he would shake his head in disbelief, and insist that there is only one Church, the Catholic Church, of which he is the earthly head.  He would doubtless say, that what the Church referred to in the past as ‘a modernist heresy’ is now part and parcel of Catholic ethos.  “Why,” he might reasonably respond, “look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church!  Look at the Code of Canon Law!  Where in either of them, is there any criticism of modernism?”

 

He might go on: “Whatever the Church and her doctors may have thought in the past about the faith being an objective reality grounded in existence of an objective God on Whom all men are utterly dependent, since the revelations of Vatican II we know that this explanation was no more than a delusion!  All religion comes from within man: no religion, not even Catholicism, is superior to another, as Vatican II made clear.”

 

How else could one explain why the Pope would so abandon Catholic principle as to welcome in the Vatican King Charles, the head of the Anglican Church, the institution that martyred hundreds of Catholics in the sixteenth century?  How else explain why he would welcome in the Vatican, and invite to pray with him, the female ersatz-archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally?  It simply does not concern him that he had, in these two insouciant acts, contravened the Church’s formal teaching against Anglican orders of his predecessor, Leo XIII, in Apostolicae Curae (September 13^th, 1896), and (by implication) of John Paul II’s doctrinal apostolic letter against the possibility that a woman aspiring to the priesthood in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (May 22^nd, 1994).

 

Pope Leo is a progressive modernist, within the meaning accorded that term by Pius X in Pascendi n. 27, and sees no difficulty in departing from Church teaching in faith or morals.  For the modernist, doctrine is mutable.  It must adapt to ‘the faith’ of the believer, and Pope Leo is laying out for his fellow modernists how that ‘faith’ is shifting in its focus.  In the instances cited, as in innumerable of his other words and actions, Pope Leo has not acted as a Catholic at all.

 

He has threatened, through the head of the ersatz ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’, to apply his modernist principles to the proposed Catholic action of the bishops of the Society of St Pius X on July 1^st, Feast of the Precious Blood, to consecrate bishops to ensure the future ordination of Catholic priests, that is, priests who will not bear the incubus of the modernist synod, ‘the Second Vatican Council’.

 

Let us note it carefully.  When he does that, he will not be acting as Pope but as head of that counterfeit, human and diabolical, ‘Church’ invented by that synod identified, successively, as the Conciliar Church (by Paul VI in an address to lay leaders in 1966), as the Church of the New Advent (by John Paul II in Redemptor Hominis, and elsewhere), but is most accurately identified (from its source) as the Church of Vatican II.

By their fruits you shall know them; do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?

Even so, good trees bring forth good fruit and the evil tree brings forth evil fruit.[4]

 

The Effect of a Decree of Suspension or Excommunication

With these considerations in mind, we are able to gauge the weight and effect of any decree of suspension or excommunication issued Pope Leo may issue, or authorise, against those persons intent on adhering to Catholic, as opposed to modernist, principle.

 

When context, or reasoning advanced, demonstrates that the Pope is moved not by Catholic principles but by modernist ones, the penalty can safely be ignored.  For it will be clear that the Pope is acting not as Vicar of Christ, but head of the counterfeit, Church of Vatican II. 

 

It is instructive to recall the comment made by Archbishop Lefebvre on July 29^th, 1976 after he had been advised by the Vatican that he had incurred the penalty of suspension a divinis for ordaining priests in the Society of St Pius X:

“In reality, in what does [the suspension] consist?  It deprives me of the right inherent in the priest, and all the more in the bishop, to celebrate the holy Mass, to confer the sacraments, and to preach in consecrated places. That is to say, I am forbidden to celebrate the new Mass, to confer the new sacraments, and to preach the new doctrine.

     “Thus, precisely because I have refused these novelties since their institution, I am now officially forbidden to use them.  It is because I refuse the new Mass that I am prevented from saying it.  One may thereby perceive how little harm this suspension causes me…”

 

Precisely!  What Catholic would care if he woke to the news that he had been excommunicated from the Church of Vatican II?  He has never been a member of that ghastly institution in the first place!

 

 

Michael Baker

Mary 24^th, 2026—Pentecost Sunday