So, November 22, 1964, the day after Lumen Gentium was promulgated, where is the Church? It is with all of those few faithful bishops who continued in their former Apostolic offices, and not with those many who abandoned their former offices. What does that make the Vatican institution on that day and ever since? Just another human-made organization, one that humans made and humans can destroy, and which humans can modify to their twisted little heart's content. And thus we have seen over the past 40 years or so since the promulgating of Lumen Gentium in 1964.
The more it thus changed, the less welcome any authentic Catholic clergy have been tolerated therein. At first, many bishops could easily do double-duty as the duties of both offices old and new largely overlapped. But with the second office (and its concomitant duties) free to change in whatever manner mere worldly man desires, the two sets of duties naturally diverged, increasingly forcing each bishopto make a choice.
However, recalling (again) what Lumen Gentium said, some portion of the Church must nevertheless continue to subsist in their institution as well as the other portions outside of it. And so again we also find. In the beginning, it was through the fact that things had not changed so much, and rather easily a bishop could "drag his feet" as to going to the new forms and purposes.
Bishop de Castro-Meyer managed to do this clear to his retirement in 1981. Up to that point his whole diocese had been safe, quite properly "the Last Catholic Diocese," as Dr. White calls it. And after that the priests of his diocese were tolerated for a time, until one-by-one they were chewed up and spat out, the last of which was none other than (then) Fr. Rifan in 1986. And although Bishop Van Zuylen had not furnished his diocese in Belguim with all the same protections as Bishop de Castro-Meyer (most of it went modernist), he did nevertheless leave faithful Fr. Schoonbroodt unmolested as Father faithfully continued the Catholic religion in his parish, and this continued clear until his Excellency's retirement in 1988. And of course at this point in time the Eastern Rites were as yet largely unaffected.
But one could see that excuses to continue authentic religion in the Vatican institution were fading fast. The 1990's would see the beginning in earnest to corrupt the Eastern Rites as well, as iconostases were pulled out, pews installed, local vernaculars substituted for the original languages for these Rites, and the horrific Balamand pact. Before long, the Church would not subsist in the Vatican institution at all, unless something else intervened.
That "something else" here turned out to be an "Indult," a localized permission for an individual cleric here and there to continue faithful and authentic Catholic worship (to go along nicely with Catholic Faith and teaching as well). It had to exist; it just had to. There have been several attempts to shut it down, and having failed that there are now attempts to corrupt it. But so long as it exists and priests avail themselves of it there will be those who do so, fully upholding the authentic teaching. In such men as these, the Mystical Body of Christ also continues indeed to subsist in the new Vatican institution that Lumen Gentium created, exactly as it decreed. In an ironic bit of Providence, the Vatican commission appointed to negotiate with the few authentic Catholics within that institution has come to be named "Ecclesia Dei", the "Church of God." And the Indult is the only portion of today's Vatican institition that even qualifies as any part of God's Church.
But these Indult clerics cannot account for the entirety of the Church. For one thing, the Indult is a localized accommodation to a strong Catholic Faith being present in the people of some area. While adequately represented here in the US and also in Europe, most other parts of the world have at best (if at all) a mere token Indult presence, perhaps a single Mass in a single city once a month for their entire nation. That is not Catholic.
To be Catholic means to be universal, not only in accepting the whole counsel of God, but also in applying to all locations, geographically. The Indultarian diocese of Campos is (contrary to original agreements and promises) confined to a ministry in Campos. Furthermore, many Indult Masses go unpublished and unadvertised. When I was in London in 2003, I had the privilege of assisting at a beautiful Indult Mass in no less than Westminster Cathedral. But it was difficult to discover the time of the Mass. There was no mention of it in the parish bulletin, none of the staff seemed to know anything about it, even the lady at the information desk had to pull out from under her desk this giant appointment book listing all reservations of all facilities associated with the Cathedral in order to find any reference to it, and even then one was not sure.
The Indult is therefore confined, caged in many ways. Many localities lack it altogether, and in others it is kept secret, apparently being advertised in local non-Indult traditional chapels only. Obviously it is not meant to spread out far and wide, no "wide and generous" application of it (as originally requested by John Paul II himself in the controversial 1988 Ecclesia Dei motu proprio). I would estimate that the Indult consists of about one tenth of one percent of all (clergy and laity each) the Vatican institution, and even there I am being generous.
No, the Indult can only be a PART of the solution, and PART of the Church, not the entire thing. Think of that llunoo (mentioned last installment) but still sticking to a part of the animal. The animal has largely vacated it, but a small part of the animal is still in a small part of the llunoo. The rest is that which subsists outside the Vatican institution, just as most of the animal is outside its llunoo.
What of the future? Animals that leave a llunoo never return to it once it is fully shed. On the other hand, even our own body can be like a kind of llunoo when we shed it at death, only to be reunited to it (or some sort of glorified version thereof) at our physical resurrection. Will the Church and the llunoo be reunited? That depends on whether it is ever welcomed back, or rather whether the llunoo will return to the animal.
Will they one day repent, embrace the Catholic Faith, see to the valid ordinations and consecrations of their clergy (?) as needed, and repeal Vatican II in full? At this time they seem more willing to walk knowingly with their eyes open directly into the eternal fires of Hell rather than give up their "precious" Vatican II. One has to wonder if even God can put the "fear of God" in them.
Either that must one day happen, or else the axe must fall. There does come a point (as yet unseen as of this writing) where the Spirit of God ceases to continue striving with Man and gives up on a man, delivering him over to Satan to be buffeted or even condemned. We were all so impressed by those tidal waves in the Far East, or by what a few stupid vandals with box-cutter knives could do to the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon a few years previous. Might not such a judgment of similar scale await today's fallen, heretical, child-molesting Vatican?
Do we need them? I must admit that if, IF, per impossible, the folks there were to repent and return corporately to the Faith, the healing and reconstituting of the Church could then proceed with relative speed and ease. But ultimately, this depends upon the will of Man, and Man far more often than not has a stubborn hard heart and a stiff neck. If Man does not repent, if there never is any Vatican repentance, can the Church continue?
Most certainly it can and will. In such a case, things could be much more difficult and dicey, but as the prophecy says, the Immaculate Heart will triumph. We really would like them to fully and truly repent, for then we are stronger than not, but in the final analysis, it is not we who need them, but they who need us. It is we alone who have the legitimate, valid, orthodox, and divinely sent bishops and priests. If the Vatican ever does repent, who will receive them back into the Church, except those among us who ARE still the Church hierarchical.
For otherwise, it is perfectly obvious that the day could come when the judgment falls, it would be so serious as to render moot all those questions that divide us Catholics today: is there a Pope? Who is or is not "approved"? Why don't they repent? What abomination will they come up with next? When that happens, those who continue to mistake the Vatican of today with being any part of the Church will have to cry out in despair, "the Church is destroyed; there can never be any Church anymore!"
Because Christ promised "the gates of hell will never prevail against it", we know that we who are the True Church can never be destroyed. Ergo, should that judgment fall and the modernist institution that most mistake for the Church today would be destroyed many will just have to trust God that His Church has somehow survived. In time it would have to emerge and become publicly known what has happened with the promulgation of Lument Gentium and where the Church has been since then.
But those of us who already know the truth about what happened at Vatican II with Lumen Gentium and its "subsistence in" and "elements of Grace and Sanctification outside the Vatican's confines" will realize at once that God has once again preserved His Church. Just because "King" Herod was merely a Roman puppet (and an Idumean at that), Israel was not left without a King. As Israel had its true King in Jesus Christ who was both legally (through His foster father Joseph, a direct male-line heir of King David) and biologically (through His Immaculately conceived and ever sinless mother Mary) the "Son of David," so we too today traditional Catholics have our faithful, valid, lawful, and Apostolically-sent bishops and priests who alone can truly point to who sent them all the way back to Jesus Christ at the Great Commission.
What is your picture?
If the Church is universal why are the "Indult Masses" so sparse throughout the world? Why are most of the hierarchy from the top on down so squeamish about permitting a Mass set in stone for 1800 years? What frees them to be so disobedient to the perpetual celebret of St. Pius V and the Dogmatic Council of Trent? In those questions rest the fate of the Modern Vatican institution...all traceable back to Lumen Gentium wherein the visible unity of the Church was distributed only partially to the Vatican institution and partially elsewhere, and what the Vatican institution must do to regain its former claim as being the True Church.
