Introduction

Gerry Matatics is someone I consider a friend. He invited me to my first speaking engagement (the second conference of Catholics Defending Biblical Inerrancy), and he was a most gracious host. A generous gentleman, to use one of his favorite literary devices. I left the conference quite impressed with Gerry, eager to learn from his luminous lectures on the dark depredations of Freemasonry, and to hear Gerry stomp Harry Klomp, and best the man that called the Mass the beast's abomination. So, I was saddened to learn, in 2005, that Gerry had become a sedevacantist.¹ I offer the following article in much belated fulfillment of my duty to fraternally correct his errors. It is based on my understanding of Gerry's position as gained from his website, a long phone conversation,² attending one of his talks, and listening to his case for consistent Catholicism on cassette.

Mr. Matatics and Mr. Blue

To begin with, I should note that Mr. Matatics has a great deal in common with Myles Connolly's Mr. Blue.³ Both are tall, skinny, eat little, talk much, travel widely, and are full of vigor and ideas. Both are very devoted to Our Lady and the Martyrs of the English Reformation. I do not know whether Gerry flies a kite, but if he doesn't, he could stand to.

Anyway, in addition to all these, there is one similarity between Matatics and Blue which I find especially apposite to the present discussion. That is, he can paint a picture so vividly, so passionately and convincingly, that one almost believes it in spite of one's better judgement. For in his presentation, Gerry weaves together Scripture, prophecy, theology, conspiracy theories, and history to create an end-times tapestry which is truly a work of art. It is a grim, dire, yet beautiful picture. Having listened to Gerry's presentation, I have to empathize with Myles Connolly, who thought that Blue was wrong about many things, yet found it "difficult to argue with a man when he is talking in a sort of blank verse."⁴

Aesthetic merits aside, however, Gerry's presentation, as I hope to demonstrate, does not describe reality. I must respond to Mr. Matatics with the same words with which Connolly responded to Mr. Blue, when Blue painted his riveting portrait of the eschaton (which, incidentally, is quite conformable to Gerry's⁵): Your theology is wrong. Isn't the Church to endure to the end of time?⁶

To begin the task of exposing the dissonance between reality and Matatics Eschatological Sedevacantism, I offer the following thirteen facts for Gerry Matatics to face up to. I dedicate these thirteen facts to John XXIII and Paul VI.

Thirteen Facts for Gerry Matatics to Face up to

Fact 1. If a fielder catches a line drive, there is no need to tag the batter out at first base; he is already out.

Fact 2. There are good grounds to believe that St. Nicholas of Flue never uttered the words attributed to him by Yves Dupont⁷: "The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters." The Catholic University of America library has several works about St. Nicholas of Flue which either heavily quote from or provide full texts of his visions.⁸ I searched these sources for the words Peter, Apostel, and kirche, (or, in the case of Journet, the French equivalent) and found no text which could possibly be the source for Dupont's quotation.

Of course, it is conceivable that the authors of these books simply neglected to mention such a frightening vision. Perhpas St. Nicholas of Flue did in fact utter these words, and perhaps one would be able to find the text of this prophecy in a more comprehensive source, say, Robert Durrer's two large volumes of primary documents.⁹ Durrer's work is available in the Swiss National Library, if Gerry is up for a trip. However, I must warn him that it could very well be a waste of time, a wild goose chase. I contacted Mr. Pierre Perroulaz of the Bruder Klaus pilgrimage office in Sachseln, Switzerland, and inquired about the authenticity of this alleged prophecy. His response was as follows:

My son has translated your inquiry for me and I have discussed it with Fr. Josef Banz, our priest responsible for pilgrimages. Br. Klaus (Niklaus von Flue) has never made prophecies, therefore, the text from Mr. Dupont in the book Catholic Prophecy cannot be from Br. Klaus. But it must be admitted, that there is and have always been men and also authors, who simply put "such texts" "in the mouth", and advance false facts with them!¹⁰

Clearly, since we have so many good reasons to doubt the authenticity of this prophecy, Gerry cannot morally attribute it to St. Nicholas of Flue unless he or someone else first confirms it.

Fact 3. Bl. Anna Maria Taigi's prophecy, in which Sts. Peter and Paul return to earth and restore the papacy, is also questionable. Since Dupont does not provide references, I do not know for certain where he obtained this text. However, I strongly suspect he took it from P. Calixte de la Providence. An English language life of Taigi, written by a contemporary of Calixte, references him as being its source:

We have not included in the Life of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi any prophecies regarding future events except such as can be attributed to her on unquestionable authority... This omission we will here supply, premising that we give them under all reserve. The following fragments were collected by P. Calixte, and he says that he had them from the lips of persons worthy of credit.¹¹

The prophecy of Sts. Peter and Paul returning to choose the new Pope immediately follows. So, once again, a prophecy which Gerry has used in support of sedevacantism is shown to rest on a very shaky foundation. Calixte is not a primary source, and he relates this prophecy on the authority of unknown persons. Again, the prophecy might be genuine, but it cannot be quoted as such until it can be confirmed from a reliable source such as the archives of the process of Bl. Anna Maria Taigi's beatification. In the mean time, Gerry, like Thompson, must offer this prophecy with reserve.

As an aside, Bl. Anna Maria Taigi's prophecy of the three days' darkness, in which only blessed candles will give light, is very well attested.¹² While it is quite possible that Dupont exaggerated certain details of the prophecy (e.g., all the enemies of religion will perish, anyone who goes outside or looks out the window will be struck dead), nevertheless, the fact of the three days' darkness may be attributed to Bl. Anna Maria with confidence. I thank Gerry for introducing me to Bl. Anna Maria; should the darkness spread over the earth in my lifetime, I will be better prepared on account of him.

Fact 4. Ven. Anne Catherine Emmerich's alleged prophecy of the invalid New Mass is a complete and utter fabrication. The quote, as it appears in, you guessed it, Yves Dupont¹³, is as follows:

Anna-Katarina Emmerick (19th century). "I saw again the new and odd-looking Church which they were trying to build. There was nothing holy about it... People were kneading bread in the crypt below... but it would not rise, nor did they receive the body of Our Lord, but only bread. Those who were in error, through no fault of their own, and who piously and ardently longed for the Body of Jesus were spiritually consoled, but not by their communion. Then, my Guide [Jesus] said: 'THIS IS BABEL.' [The Mass in many languages]." (This prophecy was made circa 1820 by Anna Katarina Emmerick, a stigmatized Augustinian nun and is recorded in The Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich by Rev. Carl E. Schmoeger, C.SS.R, first published in English in 1870 and reprinted in 1968 by Maria Regina Guild, Los Angeles, California.)

F. John Loughnan has completely exploded this forgery, and his exposé is available online.¹⁴ He obtained a copy of Rev. Schmoeger's book (reprinted by TAN), and discovered that Dupont (or whoever he got the quote from) had fabricated it by culling the first portion from page 283, paragraph 2, then a portion from page 283, paragraph 1, then a portion page 85, and finally a portion from page 132! Furthermore, Dupont manifestly wrenched these individual texts from their original context. The passage about the pious, invincibly ignorant souls receiving invalid communions, for example, is quite clearly about Protestants. Ven. Sr. Emmerich states¹⁵:

I saw several churches, or rather meeting-houses surmounted by weather-cocks, the congregations, disunited from the Church, running here and there like beggars hurrying to places where bread is distributed, having no connection with either the Church Triumphant or the Church Suffering. They were not in a regularly founded, living Church, one with the Church Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant, nor did they receive the Body of the Lord, but only bread. They who were in error through no fault of their own and who piously and ardently longed for the Body of Jesus Christ, were spiritually consoled, but not by their communion.

What more iconic symbol of Protestantism than a meeting-house surmounted by a weather-cock!

Similarly, when Jesus says, "This is Babel", he is not talking about the vernacular Mass. He is talking about the political situation in Spain, with various secret societies such as Freemasonry plotting wars of revolution and the destruction of the Church. Finally, the prophecy on p. 283, which describes a pseudo-church and states that in that church, "some people kneaded bread, but nothing came of it; it would not rise"¹⁶, seems to describe the schemes of Masonry which do not come to fruition. This prophecy has nothing to do with communion bread. Dupont has only made it appear to refer to communion bread by disingenuously attaching to it, without ellipses, the text about Protestants from page 85: "nor did they receive the Body of the Lord, but only bread." This is a travesty of honest scholarship. Frankly, after learning that he did this, I cannot trust anything I find in Dupont's book without independent verification. This casts double suspicion on the "prophecy" of St. Nicholas of Flue. In sum, if Gerry wishes to continue to adduce arguments for sedevacantism from private revelation, it would behoove him to find more primary sources and cease to rely so heavily on Dupont.

Fact 5. There are good grounds to believe that Our Lady of La Salette never uttered the words attributed to her by Melanie Calvat in 1879: "In the last days, Rome itself will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist... The Church will be in eclipse." Catholics have long suspected that Melanie Calvat, who saw Our Lady in 1846, let her status as a seeress get to her head, and significantly embellished the secret, which Our Lady had confided to her, when she published it in 1879.¹⁷ And in confirmation of this suspicion, Fr. Michel Corteville claims to have found, in the Vatican archives, the original texts of the secret which Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud sent to Pope Pius IX in 1851. He has published them in a book co-authored with Fr. Rene Laurentin, entitled Découverte du secret de La Salette. These texts contain nothing about Rome losing the faith and becoming the seat of the Antichrist.

When I presented Gerry with this information, he responded that he had Fr. Laurentin's book, but that he doesn't trust Fr. Laurentin because he has an agenda to subvert the dire message of La Salette and promote the contrary messages of modern apparitions such as Medjugorje. In that case, we are left with the say-so of Melanie Calvat against the say-so of Fr. Laurentin and Fr. Corteville. Whatever is the case, someone committed forgery. We do not know who, and we probably won't know until the last judgment. In the mean time, however, moral theology cannot justify the unswavering confidence with which Gerry attributes these words to Our Lady in his powerful pontifications on popelessness:

Our Lady said, "In the last days, Rome itself will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist. And the Church," she said, "will be in eclipse." ...[Rome] will cease to be the seat of the Vicar of Christ, and become instead the seat of the Antichrist. That is what Mary herself, the Mother of God, solemnly stated, as a fact. Now I've got to deal with that and you've got to deal with that. If we have a problem with this, we don't have a problem with Gerry Matatics, or this or that person. You can forget me, you can discard everything that I say that is my idea. I have no authority. I am a nobody. But do not despise or discard what the Mother of God herself was sent to earth to tell us was going to happen.

Fact 6. The long version of the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel is not a prophecy of the Novus Ordo commandeering of the Catholic Church. And on this point, my authority will be none other than the sedevacantist luminary Rev. Anthony Cekada.

In a recent article on his blog Quidlibet¹⁸, Fr. Cekada refutes the mythical traditionalist narrative surrounding the St. Michael Prayer, which is substantially the same story that Gerry tells so well in his tapes. That is, Pope Leo XIII, having received a premonition of the diabolical/Masonic/Novus Ordo infiltration and subversion of the Catholic Church, composed the long version of the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel in order to warn the faithful against it and push its completion as far into the future as he could: "These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions... In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of the abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered." After Leo XIII promulgated this prayer, Masonic infiltrators within the Church managed to truncate it, removing the parts which directly exposed their plot to sieze the papal throne, and leaving the much shorter prayer which is familiar to Catholics today.

Fr. Cekada dissects this myth with his typical rigor. First, he notes that the short prayer to St. Michael is actually older than the long prayer: Pope Leo XIII promulgated it in 1886.¹⁹ It was not until 1888 that the Pope promulgated the long prayer which contains the statements, so often quoted by sedevacantists, concerning the enemies of the Church raising the throne of their abominable impiety in the Holy Place. Further, Fr. Cekada draws our attention to the fact that these statements are written in the past tense; they refer to events which have already transpired. Specifically, they refer to the King of Italy, the excommunicated Victor Emmanuel, who in 1870 had seized the papal palace, the Quirinale. And as for the prayer later being truncated, that has a comparatively mundane explanation as well. In 1902, because Leo XIII was engaged in negotiations with the new King Umberto, he had the Sacred Congregation of Rites revise the prayer and remove the disparaging references to the King of Italy. It was an act of diplomatic prudence of which Leo XIII was in full knowledge and to which he gave deliberate consent. So much for Pope Leo's prophecy of Vatican II.

Fact 7. As Gerry himself has admitted, the Church has, in times past, permitted the faithful to cremate the dead. The Church has permitted cremation in times of plague, when burying all the dead would be physically impossible. Therefore Gerry admits that cremation is not intrinsically evil. For if cremation were intrinsically evil, the immaculate bride of Christ could never permit her children to practice it under any circumstance whatsoever. Catholics must shun every intrinsically evil act no matter how much it appears from a human perspective that it is the prudent, the merciful, or the expedient thing to do, and the Church must infallibly command them to do so. Otherwise, as Gerry rightly points out, she is not the Church. And if cremation is not intrinsically evil, then Gerry cannot argue, on the basis that the new Code of Canon Law liberalizes Catholic strictures against cremation, that the Church which promulgated that Code is an anti-Church.

Fact 8. Communion in the hand is not intrinsically evil either. Indeed, it was practiced widely within the early Church. I will bring forth two witnesses, both doctors of the Church named John:

Tell me, wouldest thou choose to come to the Sacrifice with unwashen hands? No, I suppose, not. But thou wouldest rather choose not to come at all, than come with soiled hands. And then, thus scrupulous as thou art in this little matter, dost thou come with soiled soul, and thus dare to touch it? And yet the hands hold it but for a time, whereas into the soul it is dissolved entirely.²⁰

Let us approach it with burning desire, and with our hands folded in the form of a cross let us receive the body of the Crucified. With eyes, lips, and faces turned toward it let us receive the divine burning coal, so that the fire of the coal may be added to the desire within us to consume our sins and enlighten our hearts, and so that by this communion of the divine fire we may be set afire and deified.²¹

Further references are provided in my article, available on this website, entitled "I Make a Terrible Radtrad (On Communion in the Hand)."

Fact 9. The provisions concerning mixed marriage in the old and new codes of Canon Law are quite similar. First, both codes classify disparity of cult as an impediment which invalidates the marriage. Second, both codes require a religiously mixed couple seeking marriage in the Catholic Church to obtain a dispensation from the local bishop. Third, both codes list similar criteria whereby the bishop is to decide whether to grant the dispensation. In the old Code, there must be just and grave causes (iustae ac graves causae)²²; in the new there must be just and reasonable causes (iusta et rationabilis causa)²³.

There is only one substantial difference between the two codes. The old Code requires the non-Catholic party to promise "to remove the danger of perversion [of faith] from the Catholic spouse"²⁴, and requires both parties to promise to baptize and raise the children as Catholics. The new Code, on the other hand, places all the onus on the Catholic party to ensure that she is not in danger of defecting from the faith and that her children will be baptized and raised as Catholics. The non-Catholic spouse need only be informed of her promises, not make them himself. If Gerry wishes to argue that the old law is superior to the new law, that this change was unwise, imprudent, not beneficial to the Church, etc., he has my full agreement. However, he has a very flimsy basis for arguing that the new law is intrinsically evil.

Fact 10. For the past 450 years, the Catholic Church has permitted approved theologians to teach that explicit faith in Christ is not absolutely necessary for salvation. So, Gerry is clearly out of sync with the mind of the Church when he anathematizes this position, and rejects the past several Popes as heretics because they held to it, given that Popes for the past several centuries at least have tolerated it.

Indeed, in an unpublished paper, which Gerry has read, Fr. Brian Harrison mentions Albert Pigge, Domingo Soto, Juan de Lugo, and Giovanni Perrone as teaching that implicit faith in Christ can suffice for salvation.²⁵ Perrone, in fact, went so far as to reduce the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation from a necessity of means to a mere necessity of precept. Yet, he had an illustrious career as a prestigious Roman theologian during the pontificate of Bl. Pope Pius IX. And so far from being censured by the Church for his liberal views on the salvation of non-Christians, Perrone even had a hand in drafting Pius IX's statements on this issue (so Fr. Francis A. Sullivan argues,²⁶ based close similarities between Perrone's language and Pius IX's language in Singulari Quadam). Similarly, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, in his treatment of the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation,²⁷ mentions Richard of Mediavilla, Turianus, Diana, and Vasquez as holding the "necessity of precept" position. He never so much as suggests that these theologians are outside of the pale of Catholic orthodoxy.

Garrigou-Lagrange himself, following Reginald Schultes, Pere Hugueny, and the Carmelites of Salmanca, maintains that explicit faith in Christ is necessary as a general principle, but that this principle admits of exceptions. He thus preserves the medial necessity of explicit faith in Christ, but acknowledges that in extraordinary circumstances God may save an invincibly ignorant soul through the instrumentality of his more rudimentary faith in God who exists and rewards those who seek Him (Heb 11:6).²⁸ Garrigou-Lagrange vacillates, and declares his sympathy for the view that the rule admits of no exceptions.²⁹ However, he ultimately holds to the position that some people may be saved without explicit faith in Christ, even marshaling the following text of St. Thomas in support:

Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally, for through not doing that which is in his power to do.³⁰

So, it is difficult to fathom how Gerry can seriously state on his website³¹ that he has not "for a single moment ever considered to be a Catholic anyone holding to this heresy" that people can be saved "in other religions." If he intends to call anyone who holds that implicit faith in Christ can suffice for salvation a heretic, he is showing utter disregard for the bounds of legitimate theological discourse set by, among others, Pius XII.

Not to mention that Gerry is being completely inconsistent. Obviously, Gerry believes that Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange is a Catholic; in a phone conversation with me he described himself as a Garrigou-Lagrangian. If Garrigou-Lagrange is a heretic, Gerry needs to stop calling himself that! God knows I certainly wouldn't call myself a Calvinist or a Lutheran. Similarly, if Fr. Denis Fahey, by Gerry's own admission, taught that Jews can be saved in Judaism, Gerry needs to stop lauding Fr. Fahey as a Catholic hero. The two propositions (a) Fr. Denis Fahey is a Catholic hero and (b) no one who holds that Jews can be saved in Judaism is a Catholic, are formally contradictory. In the interest of being a "consistent Catholic," then, Gerry needs to reject at least one of these positions.

Of course, I pray that he will reject (b), and he should have no problem in so doing. Gerry has already modified his former Feeneyite position, such that he now acknowledges the possibility that the effect of water baptism (a necessary means of salvation) may in extraordinary circumstances be supplied by baptism by desire or by blood. Why, then, will he not admit the possibility, or at least the orthodoxy of the opinion, that the effect of explicit faith in Christ (another necessary means of salvation) may in extraordinary circumstances be supplied by simple faith in God? That after the promulgation of the Gospel the invincibly ignorant can be justified in exactly the same manner as before?

Let me conclude by qualifying that I do not begrudge Gerry his right to hold his conservative position, that explicit faith in Christ is absolutely necessary for salvation. As a matter of fact, I heavily lean in that direction myself. I only begrudge Gerry's vigilante exclusion of other legitimate views from the pale of Catholic orthodoxy. For in this, Gerry is clearly promoting a position which is alien to the mind of the Church: not only the Church of today, but the Church under Pius XII. If Gerry wishes to fulfil his stated intention of being an ultramontane, papal loyalist Catholic who lives by the rules as they stood under the last valid Pope, it would behoove him to admit the same boundaries of legitimate theological discourse as were admitted under the last valid Pope.

Fact 11. Contra Gerry's claims, as stated in his seminal seminar on sedevacantism:

And as Cardinal Walter Kasper said, in an official statement put out by the Pontifical Council for... Interreligious Dialogue, "Since the Second Vatican Council," he said, "any program that seeks to convert Jews to Christianity is no longer theologically acceptable to the Catholic Church." That is the official teaching... of the Vatican II Church. The Vatican II faith.

Cardinal Walter Kasper is not and never has been the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; he is the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Moreover, the statement which Gerry is quoting here is no official statement from any Vatican dicastery. It is from Reflections on Covenant and Mission, a document published on August 12, 2002 by the USCCB's Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Granted, Cardinal Walter Kasper, I'm sure, would agree with this statement. However, he has not succeeding in getting his view published in anything remotely resembling a magisterial document of the Catholic Church. Indeed, no official magisterial document of the "Vatican II Church" has ever rejected Our Lord's commission to evangelize all nations (Matt 28:19), which includes, a fortiori, the Jews. On the contrary, an actual magisterial document of the Catholic Church, Dominus Iesus, teaches the contrary position that salvation is by means of Christ and Catholicism alone and that no other religions have salvific efficacy in themselves.

Fact 12. Communicatio in sacris, or communicatio in divinis (worship in common) with non-Catholics is not intrinsically evil. Now, as Matatics tells the story, any sound pre-Vatican II moral theologian would teach you that communicatio in sacris is intrinsically evil, and Vatican II and the new Code of Canon Law³² utterly reverse true Catholic morality on this point. However, the state of the question prior to Vatican II was much less cut and dry than he would have it.

That communicatio in sacris is intrinsically evil certainly was the opinion of large numbers of moral theologians in the pre-conciliar Church. However, it was not the opinion of all of them. Canon E. J. Mahoney, in a passage from his 1957 book Priest's Problems transcribed by the John Lane³³, mentions Cardinal d'Annibale as the best representative of the view that, provided that there is no scandal, no danger of perversion (of faith), and that an orthodox prayer formula is being recited in common, communicatio in sacris is not wrong in itself, but merely prohibited by ecclesiastical positive law (which the Church could change if she saw fit, and she indeed has changed since Vatican II). Mahoney himself, though he had previously maintained the strict view that it is intrinsically evil, sides with d'Annibale. He does so on account of the December 20, 1949 instruction on the Ecumenical Movement from the Holy Office under Pius XII, which permitted Catholics and non-Catholics to jointly recite the Pater Noster or other orthodox prayer to open and close ecumenical congresses.

Now, at the talk I attended, Gerry mentioned the prominent pre-conciliar moralist Heribert Jone, so I was curious to see where Jone stood on this controversy. It turns out that he refuses to take sides. He states: "The natural law forbids participation in services that are heretical. If the service is one that heretics have in common with us, even though no scandal comes from such participation, it is at least forbidden by Church law."³⁴ Notice he says that communicatio in sacris is at least forbidden by Church law. He is well aware that some moralists are of the opinion that it is forbidden only by Church law (which could be and indeed has been changed), and that others are of the opinion that it is forbidden also by divine law. Jone explicitly endorses neither position. He offers Gerry no support.³⁵

What is even worse for Gerry's position is the witness of Church history. In fact, it is difficult to see how anyone could maintain the strict view after seeing all the historical evidence marshaled by Wilhelm De Vries, S.J.³⁶ to the effect that the Church has permitted communicatio in sacris in the past:

In 1244, for example, Innocent IV allowed the Dominicans whom he was sending to separated Eastern Christians such as the Jacobites and Nestorians to share with them "in verbis, officio et cibo".10 The next year he gave the same permission to Franciscans.11 It is altogether clear from the context that "in officio" is equivalent to "in sacris". The passage deals with excommunicated priests who "divina celebrarunt officia", and who must, because of this, be freed from irregularity. Nicholas IV (1288 ), John XXII (1316-34), and Benedict XII (1334-42) gave the missionaries the same permission.12

However, it was often emphasized that this required special permission, and that the missionaries must not go beyond the limits set by this permission. Urban V (1362-70) permitted the Dominican superiors working in the East to free their subordinates from the excommunications they had unwittingly incurred because they had too freely interpreted the permission granted them earlier by John XXII to share "in officio" with the excommunicated.13 The same pope gave his legate in the East, Peter, Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, permission to share with non-Catholics "in divinis", with this limitation, that the permission did not extend to those excommunicated by name. 14

The popes were thus well aware that liturgical services in common with non-Catholics were in themselves not proper, and that special permission was required for them. Within certain limits, however, they were prepared to give this permission if it would help toward the salvation of souls. Clement VI (1342-1352), for example, gave a very general permission to Armenian priests who had returned to the Catholic Church: these he permitted to administer the sacraments among the schismatics, not in approval of their schism, - this is stated - but to lead them back to obedience to the true Church.15

10 Codificazione Canonica Orientale, Fonti, Serie III (Vatican, 1943), Vol. IV, 1, p. 11, nn. 25- 27.
11 Ibid., p. 37, n. 72.
12 Ibid., Vol. V, 2, p. 142, n. 300; VII, 1, p. 26, n. 69; VII, 2, p. 22, n. 27, p. 95, n. 155, p. 151, n. 252, p. 173, n. 289; VIII, p. 62, n. 154; and elsewhere.
13 Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 113, nn. 246- 247.
14 Ibid., p. 106, n. 234.
15 Ibid., Vol., IX, p. 150, n. 309.

I will try to post the Latin sources which De Vries references, with English translations, in the near future.

Thus, Vatican II did not abandon traditional Catholic morality with its decree on ecumenism. Rather, in permitting communicatio in sacris under certain circumstances (thus teaching by implication that it is not intrinsically evil), Vatican II was simply exercising its legitimate prerogative as an ecumenical council to resolve what had heretofore been an open question of theological dispute. That many orthodox moral theologians prior to Vatican II thought that communicatio in sacris was intrinsically evil does not make Vatican II wrong, any more than Ineffabilis Deus is wrong because St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard of Clairvaux denied the Immaculate Conception. Fallible theologians, however learned or holy, must give way to the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

As an aside, if Gerry wants to find an issue concerning which there was true unanimity among pre-Vatican II moral theologians, he ought to study what they said about Catholic laymen, without deputation from their bishops, engaging in public religious disputations with heretics.

Fact 13. Subjection to the Roman Pontiff is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature.³⁷ Supposing, for the sake of argument, that Gerry is wrong, and that Benedict XVI is the legitimate Roman Pontiff: what is Gerry doing? Objectively, he is attempting to convince Catholics to withdraw subjection from the Roman Pontiff. In that case, he is staking his soul and the souls of all who follow him on his current position. Therefore, before he preaches it, he had better be able to establish its veracity with the utmost certainty. That I have been able to, quite easily, poke holes in several elements of his case for sedevacantism, is a good indication that he has not done so. Indeed, he cannot do so, because his position isn't true.

Ben Douglass
December 11, Anno Domini MMVII

[1] For those heretofore uninitiated into traditionalist Catholic discourse, sedevacantism is the ideology which holds that the past several putative Popes of the Catholic Church have been illegitimate usurpers of their office, and that either the Catholic Church is currently without a true Pope or the true Pope is somewhere in hiding.

[2] Funny thing is, he was eating at the time, but if he hadn't told me, I never would have guessed.

[3] Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue (Chicago, IL: Loyola Classics, 2004) 115pp.

[4] Ibid., p. 102. To give the reader an idea of the kinds of literary heights Matatics is capable of reaching when he really ratchets it up, I quote from an old exchange of his, in the defunct Calvinist journal Antithesis. His Protestant interlocutor had compared him to a big hairy animal. Matatics responds: "But what 'habitual patterns of behavior' made me 'miss out on the finer points of life,' and what are those finer points of life -- the subtleties of Reformed theology? What 'suspicions' does this amateur psychoanalysis suspect? And what does the impenetrable murk of this mumbo-jumbo mean by 'matters' which are 'rather obvious' (not obvious enough, it seems)? The 'big and hairy animal' analogy might more correctly characterize the cryptic code Jones speaks on this speculative safari. His simian simile, like some scatological Sasquatch, has left such an 'unmanageable mess' that it has utterly obscured his meaning, at least for me. Being no hermeneutical Hercules, I feel unable to unmuck these Augean stables" ("Matatics Responds," Antithesis, September/October 1990 - Volume 1, Number 5).

[5] Connolly, op. cit., pp. 43-56. Blue proclaims his vision, not seriously, but simply as an idea for a motion picture. Nevertheless, it is uncannily similar to the vision which Gerry is currently touring the country and proclaiming in earnest. A totalitarian ideology, similar to Communism, has conquered the world and, so it thinks, exterminated every Christian. People live like soulless machines in their giant industrial complexes. All ground outside the complexes has been poisoned. Yet, there is still one Christian, laying low in the kingdom of Antichrist. He finds one patch of healthy earth, and plants some grain. Later, he harvests it, makes bread, and takes it with the rest of his Mass kit to the top of a giant statue of a totalitarian despot in the city's center. He begins saying a Tridentine Mass. He is discovered, and the armies of evil swarm on him with demonic fury. Just as a plane is about to drop a bomb at point blank and kill him, he pronounces the words Hoc est enim corpus meum. Immediately there is a great flash of light: the Second Coming.

[6] Ibid., p. 57. I use "Church" here in the same sense as Connolly, viz., of the visible hierarchy. Gerry affirms the indefectibility of the Church in the sense that there will always be Catholics who profess the traditional Catholic faith, live by true Catholic morality, and worship God through legitimate sacraments.

[7] Catholic Prophecy (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1973) p. 30.

[8] E.g., Walter Nigg, Niklaus von Flüe: Berichte der Zeitgenossen (Patmos-Verlag Düsseldorf, 1962) pp. 162-167; A. Andrey, Heilige unter uns: das Leben des Seligen Niklaus von Flue nach den geschichtlichen Quellen (Rex-Verlag Luzern, 1942) pp. 119-136; Charles Journet, Saint Nicholas de Flue (Neuchatel Paris, 1947) pp. 125-136.

[9] Robert Durrer, Bruder Klaus: Die ältesten Quellen über den seligen Niklaus von Flüe, sein Leben und seinen Einfluss (Regierungsdruckerei, Sarnen, 1981; Repr. d. Ausg. 1917). Nigg, Andrey, and Journet, among other authors, rely on this source quite heavily.

[10] "Mein Sohn hat mir Ihre Anfrage übersetzt und ich habe ihn mit Herrn Pater Josef Banz unserem zuständigen Wallfahrtspriester besprochen. Bruder Klaus (Niklaus von Flüe) hat nie Prophezeiungen gemacht, daher kann auch der Text von Herr Dupont im Buch Catholic Prophecy nicht von Bruder Klaus sein. Es ist uns aber bekannt, dass es immer wieder Menschen und auch Buchautoren gibt und gegeben hat, die ihm 'solche Texte' einfach 'in den Mund' legen, und damit falsche Tatsachen verbreiten!" (Pierre Perroulaz, e-mail of October 23, 2007)

[11] The Life of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi, edited by Edward Healy Thompson (London: Burnes and Oates, 1874) p. 397.

[12] Ibid., pp. 314ff.

[13] Op. cit., p. 116.

[14] VADEMECUM PRINTS A RETRACTION - THEN DELETES IT FROM ITS WEBSITE!; PAGES SELECTED FROM THE LIFE OF ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH.

[15] Page 85 of Schmoeger. Emphasis mine.

[16] Page 283 of Schmoeger.

[17] "Mélanie's [secret] was inserted in its entirety in brochure which she herself had printed in 1879 at Lecce, Italy, with the approval of the bishop of that town. A lively controversy followed as to whether the secret published in 1879 was identical with that communicated to Pius IX in 1851, or whether in its second form it was not merely a work of the imagination. The latter was the opinion of wise and prudent persons, who were persuaded that a distinction must be made between the two Mélanies, between the innocent and simple voyante of 1846 and the visionary of 1879, whose mind had been disturbed by reading apocalyptic books and the lives of illuminati. As Rome uttered no decision the strife was prolonged between the disputants. Most of the defenders of the text of 1879 suffered censure from their bishops" ("La Salette," in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX (New York, NY: The Gilmary Society, 1913) p. 8).

[18] Rev. Anthony Cekada, "The St. Michael Prayer: A 'Falsified' Text?," Quidlibet, November 12, 2007.

[19] Fr. Cekada cites the Irish Ecclesiastical Review 7 [1886], p. 1050. It should read Irish Ecclesiastical Record. This document is available online at archive.org.

[20] St. John Chrysostom, Homily III on Ephesians, in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 13, edited by Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994) p. 63.

[21] The Orthodox Faith, Book Four, Chapter 13, in Saint John of Damascus: Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (New York, NY: The Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1958) p. 359.

[22] 1917 CIC 1061.

[23] 1983 CIC 1125.

[24] 1917 CIC 1061, The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, trans. Dr. Edward N. Peters (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2001.

[25] Fr. Harrison's paper argues that these theologians are wrong, and that explicit faith in Christ is absolutely necessary for salvation. In this present essay, I do not intend to affirm or deny either position, but merely to demonstrate that the liberal position is not formally heretical.

[26] Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002) p. 116.

[27] Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Theological Virtues, I: On Faith, trans. Thomas a Kempis Reilly, O.P. (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co.) pp. 221-241.

[28] It may seem contradictory to affirm, on the one hand, that explicit faith in Christ is a necessary means of salvation, and on the other hand that some other means may take its place. But there is no contradiction. It is akin to saying that a helicopter is a necessary means for me to get over the Grand Canyon, but supposing extremely favorable winds, a glider might suffice in its place.

[29] Ibid., p. 238.

[30] Summa Theologica, Ia IIae, q. 89, art. 6.

[31] "Is Gerry Matatics a 'sedevacantist'?" November 21, 2007.

[32] Cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 8; 1983 CIC 844.

[33] Bellarmine Forums, "Communicatio in sacris" September 10, 2007.

[34] Rev. Heribert Jone, O.F.M. Cap., Moral Theology (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1959) p. 70.

[35] Jone also says several other things which I find less than amenable to Gerry's rigorism. "In danger of death it is lawful to ask a non-Catholic to administer a Sacrament, provided there is no Catholic present who can do so, and if there is no scandal. --So, too, it is lawful with the required dispensation for a mixed marriage to allow a non-Catholic partner to administer the Sacrament of Matrimony to oneself and vice versa; but never before a non-Catholic minister... For special reasons the Holy Office has allowed schismatic girls to sing with Catholic girls at liturgical functions... In danger of death a heretic or schismatic may be absolved conditionally if he is in good faith and cannot be convinced of his error. As far as possible scandal must always be avoided" (pp. 70, 71, 394, respectively).

[36] Excerpt from THE CHURCH AND ECUMENISM: CONCILIUM / Volume 4, “Communicatio in Sacris” by Wilhem de Vries, S.J., Translated by James F. McCue, pages 18-40, Copyright © 1965 by Paulist Fathers, Inc. and Stichting Concilium, Paulist Press, Inc., NY/Mahwah, N.J.

[37] Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam.