CAN the Catholic Church be found in the buildings — the churches, schools, colleges, social services agencies — that go today by the Catholic name and profess allegiance to Rome?
No, the Catholic Church cannot be found today in these buildings, no matter how beautiful or ancient, because they do not profess the Catholic religion, but a syncretistic, modernist faith and all their priests, bishops and popes since Vatican II have lost their offices because of heresy and apostasy. (See the bull issued by Pope Paul IV in 1559, Cum ex apostolatus officio).
Can the Catholic Church be found in churches, such as those run by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, that offer the Traditional Latin Mass and appear to accept all of Church doctrine while professing allegiance to apostate Rome?
No, the Catholic Church cannot be found in diocesan churches that offer the Traditional Latin Mass because they are in communion with heresy and apostasy and all of their priests are either laymen or clerics who have fallen from office. These alleged clerics profess by the fact of their position a syncretistic creed, not the Catholic faith.
Can the Catholic Church be found in the Society of St. Pius X, which acts in opposition to Rome while at the same time recognizes the authority of the Vatican II hierarchy?
No, the Catholic Church most definitely cannot be found in the Society of St. Pius X because its founder Marcel Lefebvre lost his office when he signed the Vatican II decrees (thereby losing his authority to ordain priests or consecrate bishops) and because the entire society represents a schismatic spirit by defying men it believes to be true popes.
Can the Catholic Church be found in “sedevacantist” or “independent” chapels run by supposed clergy who reject the legitimacy of the Vatican II popes, the modernist religion and its new worship, claiming to offer the faith in all its purity?
No, the Catholic Church cannot be found in these renegade chapels because they operate outside the authority of the Catholic Church, defiantly rejecting the government of the Church, its divine laws and the teaching of the last true pope, Pope Pius XII, who explicitly forbade such novelties during a papal interregnum. (See his apostolic constitution, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis.)
Where then can the Catholic Church be found?
The Catholic Church can be found among those who profess the Catholic faith and refuse all of the above, retaining the remaining practices available to them by Church teaching and participating in all the sacraments, except Holy Orders, by fact (Baptism and Matrimony) or desire (Spiritual Communion and Perfect Contrition), as explicitly approved by the Council of Trent and constant Church tradition.
Isn’t it absurd to claim that the Catholic Church has been reduced to such a few without any clergy at all?
No more “absurd” than to claim that God joined His omnipotent, divine nature with human nature and permitted Himself to be killed in a brutal, bloody manner despite His obvious perfection. This situation today, known as the great apostasy, was foretold by Christ Himself, the apostles and all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Three signs of the great apostasy would be a general disregard for truth, false shepherds devouring their flocks and deception even of the elect. What is absurd about it?
But how can all this be true given that Christ promised to remain with his Church forever?
He has kept his promise and his true Vicars reign in perpetuity.
Why would anyone listen to an uppity layperson like you — a raving nutcase, in fact — who has no authority and no great learning?
I suggest people with a sincere love of truth listen to the true popes of the Catholic Church instead, as well as the Bible, theologians and saints.
For a wealth of helpful information on these matters from infallible Church sources, see here. (Use a translation program to read in English.)
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Because at the consummation of the Jewish nation, Jerusalem was destroyed, which was still perceived as Jerusalem but in reality was not. At the consummation of the world, the Church will be desolate or will be desolate: that is, what is perceived as the Church, not what the Church truly was and is.
—– St. Jerome
… Rome will be the capital of the Antichrist and of his empire, the universal Babylon, cursed, but more completely so than under Nero and the pagan Caesars. Suárez, Bellarmine, Cornelius a Lapide, assure us that this is the common tradition of the Holy Fathers, and that this tradition has an apostolic origin. One of the most serious reasons that leads us to believe that we are definitively approaching these nefarious times is that no one believes it.
—– Monsignor Louis Gaston de Ségur, 1882
I warn you of one thing only: beware of the Antichrist; for you have been unjustly ensnared by the love of walls, unjustly venerating the Church of God in rooftops and buildings, unjustly introducing the name of peace beneath them. Is it doubtful that the Antichrist will sit in them? The mountains, the forests, the lakes, the prisons, and the abysses are safer to me; for in them the prophets, whether standing or submerged in them, prophesied by the Spirit of God.
— Comments —
Sally writes:
I wanted to read what Pope Pius XII said about a time when there would be no pope, and clicked on the link you provided, which came up in Latin. When I then clicked on the top right of that page to have it translated to English, I tried three times, and each time it sent me over to a page with the new “pope” and news from the Vatican.
I would love to read the writing of Pope Pius XII, if you could advise me on how to pull it up in English. It’s particularly relevant to me after the alienation I felt yesterday, as I just went to a two-hour Latin funeral mass for a good friend who passed away from cancer. It was a traditional Catholic Church run by CMRI. I have visited it a number of times before with my friend and also with family. Yesterday I kneeled on the kneelers until my knees hurt, thinking that it would probably be the last time I entered into a church ceremony of this kind. I was truly only there to pay respects to my good friend’s family, after disappointing her during her life by not joining her in that community that she believed in so whole-heartedly. On her deathbed she managed, according to the priest’s rather impersonal eulogy, to have a priest bring her communion every other day, but she would not allow visits or phone calls from her friends or siblings. It seems like such a betrayal of our friendship, and almost like she was caught up in a cult. She never allowed for goodbyes to friends or siblings, but allowed a counterfeit priest access to her on her deathbed, in order to have the proper and holy death he admonished us all to aspire to. I don’t even know how to grieve this loss, and the requiem mass yesterday did nothing to help, probably because it wasn’t actually a mass, if it’s not actually the Catholic church my friend believed it was. I can’t imagine that most of her kids (who don’t attend that church) felt any relief or comfort from what seemed very cold. … But maybe I am missing something.
Laura writes:
The link to the translation from the Vatican of Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis doesn’t seem to work in all browsers. I’ve been able to get it in Chrome with no problem.
Here is a translation with some commentary by Teresa Stanfill Benns.
Here is a good summary of what Vacantis says and why it is relevant to sects like CMRI. (Use a translation program to read it in English.) Pope Pius XII shut the door on these kinds of novelties in the event of an interregnum, i.e., a period with no pope.
The coldness you experienced is, I think, caused by their general distrust of outsiders who may pose questions they cannot comfortably answer (such as, where do they get the authority to run chapels and ordain priests?)
I’m sorry about the death of your friend. May God have mercy on her soul. I am sure she was well-intentioned. Unfortunately, these groups throw some difficult terminology around to justify their operations and many are deceived. They tell people that they must have their sacraments in order to be saved, never mentioning that Catholics are forbidden to approach even doubtful sacraments and that it is possible to save one’s soul without the actual Mass in the event that it is not available.
The thankless mission of these unfortunate false prophets is to confuse many with the trappings and false pomp of cassocks, incense, Latin, Gregorian chant, and other pomp and traditions once Catholic, but today completely out of place and forbidden, being sacrilegious and sinful when done without the permission and jurisdiction over the Flock of Jesus Christ that only a Pope can grant; consequently, it is extremely necessary for readers to understand the enormous danger of granting any nonexistent authority and competence to these pretentious and deceitful individuals, since their sole purpose is to deceive and mislead even the elect, if this were possible. It follows that everyone should avoid these rebels and those who disobey the Magisterium of St. Pius XII, for they have become veritable lepers of schism and heresy, and they are infecting with the same evil all who approach them and give credence to their absurd fables of Anomie, which are nothing but pathetic excuses to justify their guilty conscience for having disobeyed the last Vicar of Christ, St. Pius XII. These false prophets are wolves in sheep’s clothing who can only tear apart and annihilate the poor, terrified, and confused little sheep; Our Lord also calls them blind men leading the blind, bad trees that cannot produce any good fruit, and plants that have not been planted by the Heavenly Father, hence their destiny is to be uprooted and thrown into the fire. (Source)
Good, well-intentioned people are part of all the groups mentioned above. It is not for us to judge their interior dispositions before God or whether they are culpably ignorant. We can only assess their objective state and whether they are truly in the Catholic Church.
