I continue today with part three of my response to bloggers who have deemed it their right to attack the sedevacantist position and even me personally. I now address the genesis of Œconomia nova and how it parallels with other apostasies in the past, only on a much larger scale that has created a far longer duration of confusion, collusion, and abdication of their offices and the holy Catholic Faith.

(3) what precisely in the documents of the Johannine-Pauline council can be said to constitute the "Œconomia nova" of the modernists, by identifying the heresies and errors thereof and demonstrating what theological label is to designate these propositions (according to the methodology of the eminent theologians whom Holy Mother Church has proposed to us as our teachers and guides in these matters);

    This seems like several distinct questions. As to the constitution of the "Œconomia nova" of the modernists I think my responses to the first two questions in Part One and Part Two covers that to a sufficient degree. As to the heresies and errors thereof, or theological labels thereof, it really isn't clear to me that the categorization of each known heresy, error, temerarious statement, aberration, irregularity, and overall abnormality is really all that relevant to the matter at hand.

    Suffice to say that the offensiveness of these things was serious and dramatic enough to alert all serious-minded Catholics to the fact that Paul VI and those he led could not have been speaking for the Catholic Church, constituted no valid regula of the faith, and could not be followed. The two named sources I mentioned in the previous installment (the Abbe de Nantes and Atila Sinke Guimarães) and many others like them have cataloged a great many of these things and I see no reason to repeat any of that voluminous list of very serious errors and heresies and all the rest.

    As to methodologies I doubt that there is any single methodology for the eminent theologians to have used for all possible scenarios and problems, and at any rate I doubt there exist any eminent theologians left who are capable of generating, or evaluating, any resolutions to any theological problems or questions that should require such exacting methodologies. What is written by me, here and elsewhere, must stand on its own merits, or if it falls, let it fall only in favor of some other theory, at least as whole and complete and able to address all the questions as well as mine is and does.

    However, the blogger is here to be commended for making a most rare observation, namely the existence and rise of this Œconomia nova in connection with the current Church crisis. Too many Catholics have seen the whole problem merely as the personal defection of a large number of individuals whom they take to be nominally holding offices in the Church. But in fact something far more vast has occurred, and which cannot be accounted for through the mere fall of individuals, no matter how numerous or high ranking, into heresy and error. There really is an Œconomia nova, the genesis and shaping of which I have documented in my responses in answer to the first two objections previously.

    One does get this idea, from the sequence of the questions as provided here, and from what one might expect if a Catholic were to make some first discernment of the existence of this Œconomia nova, and I have to assume what is meant, knowing that this assumption about another's thought processes can easily be mistaken. It appears that the vision is that certain (in fact, many) individual clerics somehow fell into heresy, and their heresy became more and more bold and public. After this trend continued for a time, some point was reached resulting in what can be categorized as a public lapse from the Faith, the Church, and (perhaps or presumably) from their respective offices. And then a little later on, with so many heretics about, they somehow managed to pull together and create among themselves some sort of heretical synergy which eventually coalesced into an Œconomia nova of sorts, which continues to take some sort of shape.

    But that's not how it happened. The Œconomia nova appeared first, and then the heresy (or at least public and official expressions thereof) followed after. This is not unique. The same thing happened with the fall of the Church in England with the English schism and creation of the Anglican church, the "Church of England." For myself, I believe that the numerous similarities and parallels between the fall of the Anglican church and the fall of the Novus Ordo, as documented in such great detail by the likes of Michael Davies in his book Cramner's Godly Order and others, was meant in all Divine Providence to point researchers to a most significant precedent to our own situation.

    But how did that occur? Specifically, what exactly was the sequence of events leading to that state of affairs? We all know of the sad story of King Henry VIII's desire for a son, and his belief that he might be able to get one if only he could be freed from his wife Catherine of Aragon to go and marry another, and how, when that wish could not be granted, he separated from the Pope and decided to start his own schismatic church. What is not so well known is what actions and events happened next.

    In 1534 he had all the bishops and clergy of England sign a paper making him the head of their church. Only the barest handful of priests (and one single bishop) refused. The rest, comprising at least dozens of bishops and hundreds of priests, one and all signed this paper, and then returned to their former locations and duties, perhaps not fully cognizant of what they had just done. The Church already had its own Œconomia, including that Œconomia it had within and throughout that portion of it that subsists in England. But now, with that action, virtually that entire English portion of the Church's Œconomia was removed from the Church into a state of schism, and transferred almost entirely intact to an Œconomia nova of what would soon evolve into the Anglican church as it is known today.

    With this you had virtually all the same bishops and priests still servicing all the same cathedrals and parish churches and religious orders and houses as before, as if nothing had ever changed. And they all still had the same relations with each other, the same apparent offices and functions, the same physical plant, properties, reputations, friends, families, places in society, and so forth. Only one bishop and a small number of priests needed to be replaced, and that was easily done with new ones willing to play along with the new Œconomia. But they no longer comprised any portion of the original Œconomia of the Church, but rather, of a new one, freshly created from the hijacked resources of the old.

    In the beginning, there really wasn't any heretical intent. King Henry "Defender of the Faith" VIII had, apart from his sole personal wish to dissolve an indissoluble marriage, no desire to change any other particle of the Faith, had even gone admirably on record for his opposition of the Protestant heresies that were by then already chewing up Germany and Switzerland and other places. And even the one thing he wanted was only intended to be some single unique instance, applicable to his own case, just this once. So clearly it is the English ecclesial Œconomia nova which arose first, and the heresies thereof which followed after. But with that separation and the creation of an Œconomia nova built from the stolen resources of the Church, the power and protection of the Holy Ghost ceased to apply to it, and as royal whims changed from monarch to monarch, or even within a single monarch's own changing fancy, and others began to assert their own selfish desires, pulling things this way and that, the disintegration and fall into heresy was inevitable. Heresies rapidly sprouted up, expressing themselves as a change of both prayer and belief, exactly like the Novus Ordo.

    Certainly, there might have been many people, even (perhaps) many clerics, prior to the creation of that Œconomia nova, who harbored heretical tendencies and leanings, but such interior weaknesses on their part pretty much went nowhere until the Œconomia nova was actually created, and then that's when all hell broke loose. Remember, heretics tend to pull apart in all different directions. There really is little to no way they could ever have pulled together to create their own Œconomia from scratch. But they didn't have to. The original Œconomia of the Church there in England was simply hijacked intact and provided their framework of seeming unity, which they exploited in order to give them a kind of strength through a unity which they do not deserve, and could not have built up themselves. Even so, heretic pulled from heretic in various directions until there came to be a High church and a Low church, and as there came to be many different Low churches, they came to be collectively grouped together as a Broad church. And with the passing of many years, things continued to decline and decay until how things are today, complete with officially "homosexual bishops." Need I say more about them?

    So, putting this in the term introduced here, Lumen Gentium decreed the Œconomia nova into existence (as previously explained in other terms here), and also hijacked the resources of the Church transferring them almost entirely intact into this Œconomia nova, and it is only that which has provided a framework of seeming unity while the individual heretics pull in all directions, as before, and with stunningly similar results, right down to virtually the same changes in both prayer and belief. As before, the creation of such a separation and of an Œconomia nova built from the stolen resources of the Church meant that the power and protection of the Holy Ghost ceased to apply to it.

    Now perhaps one might say, "If the heretics tend to pull in all directions at once, how long can it be before Œconomia nova of the Modernists breaks into smithereens and scatters in all directions, or conversely, since they haven't, might that not mean that the Holy Ghost is still holding them together?" But in the precedent of the English Anglican church, we have exactly the response to that. After many centuries, and despite the rise of High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, conservatives, liberals, and so forth we still have only the one Anglican church. And we know that doesn't have the blessing of the Holy Ghost. But obviously one should be able to see why I don't expect the Novus Ordo organization to split apart, but also why that seeming unity cannot be construed as being any sort of evidence of any divine promise or help.

    The one real difference between 1534 and 1964 is this: Signing the decree of royal supremacy would not only remove one promptly from both whatever ecclesial office in the Church they formerly held, but also remove them from the Church itself, at least exteriorly. (Perhaps some may well have remained interiorly attached to the Church, at least for some season, as they may not have fully comprehended the full ramifications of what they had just signed.) But the signing of Lumen Gentium did not of itself effect the removal of anyone from the Church, but only the pope from his papal office. All others were simply assigned a new office, parallel to the first, and it is only their subsequent focus on the demands of the new office, at the expense of their service to their old office, thus treating it with total and most criminal neglect, which constituted their departure from their Catholic office. Their heresy (if and when taken to heart) would subsequently consummate their departure from the Church, but their departure from their former Catholic office was already complete.

    The difference is because of this: Because the signing of the declaration of royal supremacy marked a total departure from Faith, Church, and any and all Church offices, for the worldwide event (including pope) of Vatican II to have done the same thing in the same or similar single step, would have constituted a total defection of the Church, something which is doctrinally impossible. So for this time around, it had to be at least these two steps in the process, the first one which set up the Œconomia nova as an initially benign but unprotected organization, and separate and parallel to that of the Church, and the second, which achieved the removal of the unworthy from the Church by their complete transfer to this new office and out of their former Catholic office and Church. These two steps would then set the basis for a third step, namely using the official channels of "authority" within the Œconomia nova to mandate and enforce a descent into heresy.

    The key distinction between the present circumstance and the envisioned scenario of individual clerics, however numerous and high ranking, simply defecting, is that most of those who so defect today do so in response (in fact gravely misplaced obedience) to "official policies" that of their nature could never come from Holy Mother Church, but which clearly and undeniably DO come from the Œconomia nova which the present day Vatican apparatus and its leader comprises. Many clerics of the Anglican church became heretics over time for the same reason, and not out of any specific heretical intent on their own personal part.

    In part four, I will turn my attention to the moral and canonical consequences of following the non-Catholic directives emanating from the Œconomia nova and what that means with regards to those who remain part of the Œconomia nova, whether as conservatives, Catholics, or apostates, again using certain parallels between the Œconomia nova of the Church of England and that of the Novus Ordo organization. God holds each one of us responsible to seek the truth and not be content with mediocre approximations or with any compromise with those who have no alliance with the Holy Ghost.

Griff's book is available from iUniverse.com Books for $26.95 or can be read on-line at www.the-pope.com We at the DailyCatholic strongly urge you to share it with all you can for that could be the gentle shove that moves your friends back to where the True Faith resides forever, rooted in the Truths and Traditions of Holy Mother Church as Christ intended and promised.

For Griff's previous articles, see ARCHIVES of Griff Ruby's STRAIGHT STUFF