Continuing my response to bloggers who have deemed it their right to attack the sedevacantist position and even me personally, I will delve today further into the official loss of Catholic offices on the part of Pope and most bishops as I intersperse here the entries from a blog with my thoroughly Catholic responses to the attacks against faith that a certain selectively informed author has elected to make:

(2) precisely how, when and why the occupants of the Johannine-Pauline structures lapsed away from the Catholic and divine faith into formal heresy, properly so-called;

    This second part is not asked very precisely. In the manner of a leading question, it seems to imply that the loss of the Catholic and divine faith (and presumably, though it does not say, offices) was due to their heresy. It appears that the chain of reasoning assumed by this blogger is that the answers to the first would be the evident heresies of the Vatican leadership, to which this would be the follow-on as to how their heresies become formal or their lapse from the Faith officially, and (presumably) the third to be about how or where their collective heresies somehow birthed a new church. But as shown in the previous installment addressing the first part, it was the "new church," the Œconomia nova to be exact, which was created first and then which acquired its heretical direction and imparted it to those who preferred it to the first Church.

    While there is plenty of room to believe that heresies internally harbored by Paul VI and many other leading prelates may well have been their own motives for the actions they took at Vatican II and thereafter, since they were (up to a certain and definable point) still all the visible and hierarchical members of the Church, the protections of the Holy Ghost applied to them collectively, and to their leader (as pope) personally. So the picture of one prelate after another, pope among them presumably at some point, just spontaneously becoming heretics and thereby losing the Faith and all right to any Catholic office (and presumably their office itself, thereby) is just too simplistic and runs contrary to the guarantees to the Church. Finally, such a simplistic view raises the question in each case of each and every prelate (pope included) at what point they personally embraced a heretical belief, or most relevant to the question at hand, at what point their heresy became sufficiently serious and formal so as to be capable of depriving them of their office automatically.

    Indeed, to pursue such a means of demonstrating them each and everyone to be out of the Church is way beyond the scope of what could ever be realistically possible. One would need, for each and every one of the thousands of prelates, perhaps from about the time of the death of Pope Pius XII himself until whatever point that not a single Catholic remains among them, proof positive of their own personal and formal adherence to heresy. This would have to be done, despite the fact that there is presently operative no actual court or forum in which this could be done. By virtue of being the accused, each prelate would have the benefit of the doubt and the burden of proof would be on the accuser to prove them to be a formal heretic, which is very difficult to prove even within the forum of such a court. Couple that with the fact that many of them are now dead, and it is impossible to put the dead on trial, for them to have any opportunity to explain themselves (if they really thought they could), or even recant and repent of it all once the need for them to do that is proven to them. So that's not going to happen.

    The true question to pursue here is at what point they each lost their offices, such that being newly bereft of the supports of the Holy Ghost and the Church, they would be at liberty to fall into whatever errors and heresies should happen to strike their fancy. No amount of purely interior heretical thoughts, beliefs, sympathies, or even alliances can deprive any cleric of an office, and correspondingly neither does any office in the Church, even the Papacy, protect the one holding it from any of these interior failings. But in order for any of that interior stuff in their darkened little hearts to be realized and actualized in the exterior form, the forum of the official, the legal, the promulgated, the mandates and directives and laws and teachings, and furthermore allowed to carry the day instead of being put down with rapid condemnation or else sharply ignored in that manner which in a more diplomatic age amounts to the same thing as condemnation, the loss of office has to be effected first.

    The real question here is not "when did they become heretics," but "when did they lose their offices," which is really what needs to be gotten at anyway. Fortunately, the nature and manner of their loss of office is relatively straightforward and amply documented. The manner and timing of any subsequent entry into formal heresy in the public forum can now recede in importance as that is only of relevance to the state of their own individual souls.

    The first Vatican II document of any real possible juridical consequence, Lumen Gentium, effected the creation of a different, separate (though partially overlapping), and parallel organization to that of the Church. There is nothing about the definition of this new organization that in any way binds it legally or morally to any of the teachings, laws, precedents, practices, Faith, Morals, or worship of the Church, apart from a bare toleration of same in some limited (and ultimately quite small and carefully contained) portions thereof. No previous Vatican II documents count since there were only two, Sacrosanctum concilium and Inter Mirifica, and these only set up committees to go off somewhere and prepare a draft of a liturgy in the case of the first, and to prepare a report of some kind on the "social communications" in the case of the second, neither of which had any direct impact on anyone but the committee members. The subsequent documents of Vatican II, the two promulgated later the same day as Lumen Gentium, and all documents from the final sessions, are all exclusively products of, and referential to, the new parallel organization alone, and as such have no connection to, or relation with, the Catholic Church. Their only value or interest to Catholics would be to demonstrate with their somewhat more explicit declarations the actual intentions and meanings of the quite subtle and implicit declarations contained in Lumen Gentium, the first, last, and only document belonging both to the Church and to the Œconomia nova that it both created and differentiated from the Church.

    It is not fair or right to ascribe a "defection" to the prelates of the Church on account of their having voted for, or signed on to, or accepting, the documents of Vatican II. It is not fair because the vast majority of those doing so were unaware of their true import, as they were written so vaguely and generally, and swimming with pious aphorisms (vacuously added only for effect) that served only to sweeten the food and conceal the taste of the poison. Most returned home after each session wondering "What was THAT all about?" Unlike the subsequent directives they would receive to destroy the Mass or use wildly flawed "catechisms" or smash altars all as part of this new office of theirs diverging from their former Catholic office, the errors and significant damage of Vatican II was couched in such vague flower-talk language that practically no one but the "perpe-traitors" knew what was really being said. They had signed on to documents the import of which had been misrepresented to them. And it is not right to ascribe to them all this "defection" because if voting or signing on to the documents of Vatican II had actually been itself a defection from the Faith on their part, then that would have constituted a total defection of the Church Hierarchy, something doctrinally impossible.

    As members of this new organization, they were each and all given new offices, parallel, but in many ways comparable to their former Catholic offices. In most cases, their assignment to this new office need not (and did not, of itself) remove them from their former offices, at least as lawful jurisdiction-holding bishops of the Church. With two offices now instead of one, many bishops tended, at least at first, to divide their attentions between the two offices, one being the office the Church had already given them which required them to assist the souls in their care to salvation, and the other office being as a functionary of this new organization whose purposes would, as time progressed, come to diverge significantly from the purposes of their Catholic office. Before long, the ever-changing obligations of their second and new office would mandate harm for the souls which by virtue of their first office they were obliged to protect.

    In this manner each bishop was forced to choose between the offices, as reconciling the contradictory duties imposed by each office became progressively more and more difficult. Sadly, far too many opted for their new office. Some did this eagerly from the beginning. They were among the "perpe-traitors." But most others did this much more gradually and reluctantly over the course of the years following. Many dragged their feet in implementing any changes, on the assumption that these were all just passing fads, such that before long, things must either return to normal, or at least be replaced with some different and contrary fad. And how wise and in touch with the eternal verities (but also practical and prudential) those doing such must have rightly seen themselves as being, by not wasting time, effort, and money doing something that would so shortly thereafter have to be undone. But at some point, with the years dragging on and on, the pressure to conform to these evident "fads" only increasing, and no "shortly thereafter" normalcy showing any signs of returning as they had once been so sure that it would, each of these finally abandoned their former office, even if only through prolonged neglect, as their energies would finally come to be devoted solely to the demands of their new office. After the standard canonical period of so many months of total neglect, an abandoned office is regarded as vacated.

    But there were other responses made by some. Several claimed illness or infirmity and resigned (or at least "retired," a Novus Ordo innovation) so as to avoid being put in this unfortunate position. And a very few, Bishop Antonio de Castro-Meyer chief and best known among them, remained loyal to the office originally given to them by the Church, and devoted, at least the most substantial part, their efforts to that office, while giving the new office only the barest and most token attention possible. When Bishop De Castro-Meyer "retired" in 1981, it was only from this new office that he retied, and it is only to this new office alone that another was appointed by the new parallel organization. But Bishop De Castro-Meyer was a true bishop of the Church, and a true bishop is married to his diocese, to his flock, without any retirement. While thankfully at last free of his Novus Ordo office, he retained his Catholic office, and from that point on devoted his every energy to the care of his flock. The stories of the other few truly faithful (and therefore canonical mission-holding) bishops, though differing in particulars, runs the same overall course, that of Faith and stability, and of increasing distance and difference from the ever-changing Vatican apparatus.

    But back to the other bishops who abandoned their former Catholic offices in favor of their new offices in this new and parallel organization, as I said, its directives increasingly came to diverge from the purposes and goals of the Church. New beliefs, reflected by their new liturgies (law of prayer being the law of belief), their distorted new "catechisms," their new "programs" and so forth, came down to them from the leaders of this new organization, and at each and every point that they gave priority to these new directions over their former Catholic duties to their flocks, they demonstrated their abandonment of their former Catholic office, and perhaps even a lapse into formal heresy, properly so-called. Whenever they start talking about being "pastoral" you can be certain that they are about to engage in yet another act of wanton pastoral malpractice. They didn't get to be bishops without being deeply trained and most eminent in their learning. They knew this new stuff coming down the pike wasn't Catholic, yet they went along with it anyway.

    The creation of this new and parallel organization and its parallel offices had a far greater impact on the role of the supreme leader, formerly, Pope. By affirming a new and previously non-existent right for there to exist ecclesial "sources" (or "elements") of grace and sanctification that are "outside the confines," which is to say, de jure not answerable to the supreme Vatican leader while yet possessing Catholic jurisdiction, that Vatican leader has thereby explicitly deprived himself of the universal jurisdiction that is an essential component of the office of the papacy. While making no claim that East Orthodox, Protestants, etc. are, would be, or ever have been, in any way under his authority or jurisdiction, he was nevertheless attempting to ascribe to them the Catholic authority and jurisdiction needed for them to become for their followers the ecclesial means of their salvation, and also to impart to them an absolute right to spread their incomplete and flawed, or even twisted and distorted "gospels" throughout the whole world.

    So, unlike the bishops, who simply acquired a new office alongside their previous office (the incompatibilities of the two only developing later on), the Pope (at least legally or materially or canonically or nominally, etc., as the man Montini evidently had no (formal) intention to function as a real Roman Catholic Pope) wholly transferred out of whatever vestigial claim he could have made to the Roman Catholic Papacy, and entirely into this new office of his own making, as leader of this Œconomia nova. This same loss of universal jurisdiction was echoed in a corresponding loss to the jurisdiction of each bishop of his own diocese, but as their jurisdiction was already not universal, neither would any adjustment to their jurisdiction, contracting it here, expanding it there, deprive any of them of their office as bishop.

    And for that matter, this change decreed by Lumen Gentium would not, of itself, have barred Montini from serving in some lesser office of the Church, one without the universal jurisdiction exclusively proper to a pope, say that of an Archbishop or even Patriarch of some particular Rite. It's just that there is no evidence of his ever having asserted such a claim, nor of his ever being recognized by himself or anyone else as having any such office. His new office was intrinsically incompatible to the office of the papacy from the get-go, and he served exclusively within that capacity for the remainder of his days. When the Caesarian prerogatives were stripped from the office of Peter, Paul VI threw himself exclusively into the exercise of those Caesarian prerogatives, and entirely abandoned the office of Peter. Canonically speaking, on November 21, 1964, Paul VI resigned from the Roman Catholic Papacy through transfer to a new and incompatible office (Canon 188 §3), and peaceful acceptance of same by all.

    Now, no longer as pope, no longer does the Holy Ghost guide him and protect him from error in that manner that the Holy Ghost has vowed to guide and protect all popes from error. Doctrinally speaking, as of that moment he became fully as capable of teaching error as any other non-pope, which is to say, all of the rest of us. But as so many of these men, including Montini himself, had already filled their darkened little hearts with many heretical ideas, or even outright rejection of all Faith itself, their public descent into heresy was actually quite prompt. The actual errors and heresies of these persons have already been documented quite profusely by others, the Abbe de Nantes and Atila Sinke Guimarães to name two of the most thorough, these will have to serve as the evidence to discern the nature of the lives of the former Church prelates and pope, now having (for the most part) vacated their offices.

    In part three, I will 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. Hence, not only is the Chair of Peter vacant, but all offices appointed by apostates past and present, making all that proceeded from Vatican II absolutely null and completely void.

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