In this spurious age, it is regrettable, but not surprising, that faithful scholars of good will would be misunderstood and vilified. What I continue to find utterly astonishing, however, is that any modern scholars, defy the spirit of the age, turn their backs to the hollow applause of colleagues, risk their livelihoods, and pursue the truth wherever it leads. This is a work of God. Keep up the hard but good work.
Thank you. I’ve been looking for resources on this issue and like FedEx they arrived virtually overnight. Whether or not I ultimately reach your conclusions, I will at least have been informed by someone of much deeper knowledge and integrity.
What I notice is that the sedevacantist literature is actually quite vast and prolix - take, for example, the 50,000-word treatise under way at "The WM Review" against Fr Thomas Crean's short article to see what I mean. It's not that they can't mount arguments; it's that the argument they make for an empty chair and the reality of indefectibility (in spite of every appearance to the contrary) is so elaborate that it begins to look like a form of gnosticism: we have the secret knowledge that explains why you shouldn't trust your lying eyes - the bishops and cardinals and popes are not what they appear to be, but illusory, fantastical, wolves in sheeps' clothing, and the true Church, though theoretically catholic, is found perhaps in a scattered handful of chapels dotted across the world... and so forth.
Here, by the way, is Fr Thomas's original article, which you might find helpful.
Now some pushback: I'm new to this, honestly, but from what I've seen so far I'm not at all convinced the argument is so elaborate. They can certainly expatiate at great length, but one can expatiate on anything at great length (if that argument were taken seriously, it would surely cut both ways!) and the fact remains that the argument seems essentially simple enough.
OTOH, John Paul II's Redemptor hominis teaches: "However, we can and must immediately reach and display to the world our unity in proclaiming the mystery of Christ, in revealing the divine dimension and also the human dimension of the Redemption, and in struggling with unwearying perseverance for the dignity that each human being(!) has reached(!) and can continually reach in Christ, namely the dignity of both the grace of divine adoption and the inner truth of humanity, a truth which -- if in the common awareness of the modern world it has been given such fundamental importance -- for us is still clearer in the light of the reality that is Jesus Christ." Now surely, besides being an absurdly grandiose and impossible exhortation, that's just as gnostical a conception of Church and faith and hidden knowledge -- a 'mysterious' assimilation of the gospel of Christ to an alleged "common awareness of the modern world"!? -- as any of the arguments for an empty chair? And the fact that the bishops and cardinals and popes appear universally blind to the gnostical-heretical nature of this new conception of 'Catholic faith' is an argument *against* sedevacantism?? I don't think it's crazy for a sedevacantist not to see it that way at all!
I agree there's a lot of gobbledygook in JP2. Perhaps there's some gymnastics by which one could rescue that statement, but it's just embarrassing, like so much else from 1962 onwards.
Yes, the sedes have a lot of material to work with.
For me it comes down to prioritizing realities over ideas, a real but sinful Church on earth, with its pope and bishops, over a pure and largely nonexistent true Church. Actually, the most important perspective is to see the Church in heaven as where the Church in her fullness and perfection truly is, right now; the Church on earth is the shadowlands.
That's fine, but I would humbly suggest that there is nothing secret, as you allege, about the scandalous teachings in question -- openly proclaimed in papal encyclicals! -- and it's very much the vast majority, those who pretend to see no evil, hear no evil, who may far more justly be accused of refusing to trust (or to open) their lying eyes -- as opposed to the tiny minority of sedevacantist objectors, who are largely only insisting on pointing out some glaringly obvious defects in the emperor's new clothes. So far as I can see the sedevacantists must be refuted strictly on the basis of faulty doctrinal assumptions. The gnostic charge simply does not hold water.
What I'm saying is that if the sedes are right, then the game's up. There's no Catholic Church as it has been historically understood to exist. There's an absolute new notion of what is possible that is even more outlandish than thinking that a heretic pope (i.e., a heretic who still hangs on to his papal chair because no one can depose him or he won't go away) is possible. Do you see what I'm getting at? It's like debating with a materialist, you have to interrupt him at the first sentence and say, I reject your starting point.
I don't think you need to approach a materialist, or anyone else, like that -- and I don't believe you actually think that either. What about a Socratic approach? What about a Lockean ad hominem, a reductio ad absurdum? What about honestly acknowledging the possibility of an aporetic situation, the necessity of a difficult prudential judgment? I think you're falling prey here to the same anxious but false insistence on absolute certainty (now!) of which you accuse the 'Descartian' hyperpapalists.
As to your particular claim about the dire consequence of the sede position, they certainly would not accept that. Indeed, they would surely retort, "tu quoque": a series of heretical (but true!) popes who lead astray the great mass of the faithful and who are virtually unopposed by any orthodox bishops and cardinals is also an outlandish and impossible historical hapax. (And yet, here we are! At the moment it seems to me that an ineluctably prudential judgment is necessary here.) And they have ample Biblical and orthodox historical material from which to draw to make the case that before the end there will come a time -- perhaps such as ours? -- when very few will remain who will endure sound doctrine. If we have come to such a time, that fact certainly does not simply negate the past reality of the historical Church, any more than will the literal historical second coming of Christ to make all things new.
What a fantastically helpful essay. I'd have to say "I didn't know THAT" to most of it.
Mr. K (I almost called you Father Peter - ooops - but your earnest concern for clarity does feel very priestly) - are you doing to do an Audible for Close the Workshop? I find I sometimes do better listening to as well as reading dense texts.
Alas, no audio book for Close the Workshop. It's very time-consuming and costly to do an audio book and really only bestsellers can ever make up the investment. My books, however important they may be, are not bestsellers in the worldly sense!
Great clarity as always Dr. K. Thank you
In this spurious age, it is regrettable, but not surprising, that faithful scholars of good will would be misunderstood and vilified. What I continue to find utterly astonishing, however, is that any modern scholars, defy the spirit of the age, turn their backs to the hollow applause of colleagues, risk their livelihoods, and pursue the truth wherever it leads. This is a work of God. Keep up the hard but good work.
Thank you, Bruce! Please pray for me. May Sts. Peter & Paul pray for you & yours.
Thank you. I’ve been looking for resources on this issue and like FedEx they arrived virtually overnight. Whether or not I ultimately reach your conclusions, I will at least have been informed by someone of much deeper knowledge and integrity.
Thanks, Tony.
What I notice is that the sedevacantist literature is actually quite vast and prolix - take, for example, the 50,000-word treatise under way at "The WM Review" against Fr Thomas Crean's short article to see what I mean. It's not that they can't mount arguments; it's that the argument they make for an empty chair and the reality of indefectibility (in spite of every appearance to the contrary) is so elaborate that it begins to look like a form of gnosticism: we have the secret knowledge that explains why you shouldn't trust your lying eyes - the bishops and cardinals and popes are not what they appear to be, but illusory, fantastical, wolves in sheeps' clothing, and the true Church, though theoretically catholic, is found perhaps in a scattered handful of chapels dotted across the world... and so forth.
Here, by the way, is Fr Thomas's original article, which you might find helpful.
https://www.traditionsanity.com/p/a-city-set-on-a-hill-cannot-be-hidden
Excellent set of resources, Peter, thank you.
Now some pushback: I'm new to this, honestly, but from what I've seen so far I'm not at all convinced the argument is so elaborate. They can certainly expatiate at great length, but one can expatiate on anything at great length (if that argument were taken seriously, it would surely cut both ways!) and the fact remains that the argument seems essentially simple enough.
OTOH, John Paul II's Redemptor hominis teaches: "However, we can and must immediately reach and display to the world our unity in proclaiming the mystery of Christ, in revealing the divine dimension and also the human dimension of the Redemption, and in struggling with unwearying perseverance for the dignity that each human being(!) has reached(!) and can continually reach in Christ, namely the dignity of both the grace of divine adoption and the inner truth of humanity, a truth which -- if in the common awareness of the modern world it has been given such fundamental importance -- for us is still clearer in the light of the reality that is Jesus Christ." Now surely, besides being an absurdly grandiose and impossible exhortation, that's just as gnostical a conception of Church and faith and hidden knowledge -- a 'mysterious' assimilation of the gospel of Christ to an alleged "common awareness of the modern world"!? -- as any of the arguments for an empty chair? And the fact that the bishops and cardinals and popes appear universally blind to the gnostical-heretical nature of this new conception of 'Catholic faith' is an argument *against* sedevacantism?? I don't think it's crazy for a sedevacantist not to see it that way at all!
I agree there's a lot of gobbledygook in JP2. Perhaps there's some gymnastics by which one could rescue that statement, but it's just embarrassing, like so much else from 1962 onwards.
Yes, the sedes have a lot of material to work with.
For me it comes down to prioritizing realities over ideas, a real but sinful Church on earth, with its pope and bishops, over a pure and largely nonexistent true Church. Actually, the most important perspective is to see the Church in heaven as where the Church in her fullness and perfection truly is, right now; the Church on earth is the shadowlands.
That's fine, but I would humbly suggest that there is nothing secret, as you allege, about the scandalous teachings in question -- openly proclaimed in papal encyclicals! -- and it's very much the vast majority, those who pretend to see no evil, hear no evil, who may far more justly be accused of refusing to trust (or to open) their lying eyes -- as opposed to the tiny minority of sedevacantist objectors, who are largely only insisting on pointing out some glaringly obvious defects in the emperor's new clothes. So far as I can see the sedevacantists must be refuted strictly on the basis of faulty doctrinal assumptions. The gnostic charge simply does not hold water.
What I'm saying is that if the sedes are right, then the game's up. There's no Catholic Church as it has been historically understood to exist. There's an absolute new notion of what is possible that is even more outlandish than thinking that a heretic pope (i.e., a heretic who still hangs on to his papal chair because no one can depose him or he won't go away) is possible. Do you see what I'm getting at? It's like debating with a materialist, you have to interrupt him at the first sentence and say, I reject your starting point.
I don't think you need to approach a materialist, or anyone else, like that -- and I don't believe you actually think that either. What about a Socratic approach? What about a Lockean ad hominem, a reductio ad absurdum? What about honestly acknowledging the possibility of an aporetic situation, the necessity of a difficult prudential judgment? I think you're falling prey here to the same anxious but false insistence on absolute certainty (now!) of which you accuse the 'Descartian' hyperpapalists.
As to your particular claim about the dire consequence of the sede position, they certainly would not accept that. Indeed, they would surely retort, "tu quoque": a series of heretical (but true!) popes who lead astray the great mass of the faithful and who are virtually unopposed by any orthodox bishops and cardinals is also an outlandish and impossible historical hapax. (And yet, here we are! At the moment it seems to me that an ineluctably prudential judgment is necessary here.) And they have ample Biblical and orthodox historical material from which to draw to make the case that before the end there will come a time -- perhaps such as ours? -- when very few will remain who will endure sound doctrine. If we have come to such a time, that fact certainly does not simply negate the past reality of the historical Church, any more than will the literal historical second coming of Christ to make all things new.
What a fantastically helpful essay. I'd have to say "I didn't know THAT" to most of it.
Mr. K (I almost called you Father Peter - ooops - but your earnest concern for clarity does feel very priestly) - are you doing to do an Audible for Close the Workshop? I find I sometimes do better listening to as well as reading dense texts.
Thanks for your kind words.
Alas, no audio book for Close the Workshop. It's very time-consuming and costly to do an audio book and really only bestsellers can ever make up the investment. My books, however important they may be, are not bestsellers in the worldly sense!