Introduction

This is the fourth part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983.

The first part addressed Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels’ conferences.

The second part set out Mgr Guérard’s analogy of the jar, the label and the content, and considered its application to Ratzinger’s “theology” of faith.

The third part applied it to his “theology” of revelation.

This present part, the fourth, applies it to his conception of catechesis, and his general (and destructive) approach to theology. Following this part, we include Mgr Guérard’s brief comments about the address of Cardinal Macharski (then the Archbishop of Kraków) and some brief comments about one of Ratzinger’s several denials of transubstantiation.

And in the next and final part, Mgr Guérard will draw together his observations – and some very interesting comments about certain wider issues. Stay tuned…

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The third ‘Ratzinger operation’: the structure of catechesis

In this third ‘operation’, Ratzinger praises the fourfold structure of the Roman Catechism (Creed, Sacraments, Decalogue and Lord’s Prayer) as an ancient synthesis, going back to the origins of the Church.

He then notes that there are also four senses of Scripture. By means of a third “quaternity” (set of four), what the Christian 1) believes, 2) hopes, 3) does, and 4) the “living space” in which he does it, he welds the previous two together. Thus, according to Ratzinger, we have three connected quaternities that supposedly correspond together:

1. The fourfold structure of the catechism

2. The four senses of Holy Scripture

3. The fourfold ‘topography’ which he presents.

His conclusion is that the four parts of the Catechism are “the fixed points of a topography and a hermeneutic of Scripture”.

Mgr Guérard sets out Ratzinger’s argument as a syllogism, and then takes it apart. The correspondence is an artificial concordism, and the Catechism’s own authors disclaim any such intention.

More importantly, the conclusion inverts the proper order. Revelation is what “norms” the Creed, not the other way round; the Sacraments are sacraments of the faith (sacramenta fidei): they presuppose the faith rather than govern it.

Further, the Dominican bishop adds, Ratzinger’s account is aggravated by the fact that the sacraments he has in view are not the Catholic sacraments, as defined at Trent: they are, instead, the new rites of the Novus Ordo. Here Mgr Guérard draws the parallel that Ratzinger himself invited, by noting that Luther “used this structure… as naturally” as Trent did. Luther kept the catechetical form while substituting false sacraments; Ratzinger does the same, but in the name of Rome, and with a false principle to justify it. For this, and other reasons he explains, Mgr Guérard concludes that Ratzinger is, in fact, “worse than Luther.”

The bishop does grant that Ratzinger is right to lament the neglect of certain elements in post-conciliar catechesis. But he asks the obvious question: if Ratzinger understands the faith in the manner of Teilhard de Chardin, with what does he hope to supply this neglect?

Two additional parts

This part closes with the short comments on Cardinal Franciszek Macharski’s address – which dealt with “the trial of the faith”. Mgr Guérard welcomes his references to Gethsemane and to St John of the Cross. However, he objects that Macharski confuses the “nights” through which God sanctifies souls with the darkness into which the world has fallen through sin.

He also objects that Macharski relies on two conciliar teachings he regards as heretical: that the Son of God “has in a certain manner united himself to every man” (which is one of the key errors of John Paul II’s reign, with long-lasting effects) and religious liberty.

I have also taken the liberty of transferring the short extract from BOC n. 94 (Oct 1984) – titled “‘Cardinal’ J. Ratzinger and Tradition’” – to the end of this piece. This piece is about one of Ratzinger’s several denials of Transubstantiation. Although Mgr Guérard touches on this point in reference to Dom Gérard Calvet in the final part, it seemed fitting to place it here.

With this fourth part, we come to the end of the ‘main course’ – the meat of Mgr Guérard’s article. In the next and final part, we will turn to the conclusion that gave the article its title: the way in which the Conciliar/Synodal Church (which he refers to as ‘Wojtyłan’, given who was the papal claimant at the time) operates like a dictatorship.

I have described this conclusion as the ‘dessert’ of the article. In it, we will find certain reflections and analyses about the Church, which many will find surprising, given the way in which his “Thesis of Cassiciacum” is often presented.

S.D.Wr.

The Wojtyłan Dictatorship: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, nos 79–80, de avril-mai 1983

Originally published as La Dictature Wojtylienne

1. Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Daneels

2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

3. Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

4. ‘Ratzinger is Luther’: The future Benedict XVI’s ‘Tridentine Jar’

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The Apostasy of Assisi

John Paul II’s ‘Finest Hour’

Introduction

October 27 is the 40th Anniversary of John Paul II’s “World Day of Prayer for Peace” at Assisi, Italy. The Community of Sant’Egidio – which has held annual “Spirit of Assisi” events across the world ever since – is marking the occasion with a special celebration in Assisi itself:

A total of 384 representatives of religions, cultures and institutions from 53 countries will take part in the event. There will be 155 speakers participating in 24 thematic forums, addressing subjects including peace, prayer, the economy, conflicts, children and young people, the media, migration, disarmament, humanity, Christian unity, dialogue across the Mediterranean, the poor, and contemporary martyrs.

Leo XIV was scheduled to attend the event on the last day (October 27th), although he has cancelled his appearance on medical advice. Prior to that cancellation, Vatican News had reported the following plan:

He will pray for peace together with the Christian community in the Lower Basilica, during a special prayer for peace in which both he and Patriarch Bartholomew will offer a meditation.

Afterward […] in the piazza outside the Basilica of Saint Francis, Pope Leo XIV “will give the world his message of peace, which is increasingly necessary.

This celebration has attracted a lot of controversy. But what happened at the original event in 1986, and why was it so controversial?

This present piece is an amalgamation of a four-part series which appeared on LifeSiteNews, examining the event and its legacy.

(no relation) praised this study as a “wonderful exegesis” in the following video:

Each part of the series covered the following topics:

1. What actually happened at the 1986 Assisi event?

2. The criticisms of the event raised by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and their role in his 1988 episcopal consecrations

3. What was problematic with the 1986 event – and whether John Paul II’s defences exonerate it

4. The legacy of the 1986 Assisi event

The following streamlines these parts, to avoid some of the repetition necessary in four standalone pieces, and has a few minor developments of certain points.

The result stands at around 12,000 words. This is a bumper piece – and I’m afraid to say it’s going to be a bumper week too, as there is a lot in the pipeline that needs to come out this week. If you only have time for one part, scroll down to Part III.

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Leo XIV ‘apologised’ for the Church’s supposed role in slavery, and failure to end it. This talk considers the accuracy of such claims.

This weekend, I delivered a talk at an event organised by a Catholic men’s group, titled ‘The Catholic Church and the Ending of Slavery.’

On several occasions previously, the Church condemned the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But Pope Leo XIII, referring to slavery as a “gloomy plague”, called for Catholics to align themselves with the abolitionist movement of his time – and was instrumental in achieving the great good of finally ending slavery.

^{Image based on By Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and either William Hackwood or Henry Webber; PBS – British Abolition Movement, Public Domain.}

But the circumstances around this issue present a similar problem to Catholics as that of usury, in that they give superficial grounds for thinking that the Church has changed her teaching. But if this is so, then where does this leave the Church’s claims? And what really is the truth of the matter?

The talk was based on the article published earlier in the year at LifeSiteNews, which considered Leo XIV’s apologies for slavery in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas:

• The Church ended slavery. So why is Leo XIV apologizing?

The talk is available on podcast apps, and on YouTube:

This article was received well at the time. Bishop Sanborn even said of Leo XIV, on one of his regular livestreams:

“Well, he doesn’t know his history, I would say. Let him read Seán Wright’s excellent article, and he’ll find out a lot of things.”

I also followed up the article with some reflections on how the Church approached the comparable issue of gladiatorial blood sports in the Roman Empire, which you can see here:

• ‘Shout-out’ from Bishop Sanborn for slavery article – Plus: gladiatorial blood-sports vs. slavery.

In addition to this article, my colleague Matthew McCusker wrote an overview of the encyclical itself:

• Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas: a blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic Church (Matthew McCusker)

In the past, McCusker and myself have also written other analyses of issues Leo XIV addresses in the encyclical:

• Has Leo XIV contradicted Catholic teaching on just war? (Matthew McCusker)

• Report: Leo XIV says ‘our task is not to build a Christendom’ (Matthew McCusker)

• What does the Catholic Church say about immigration? (S.D. Wright)

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Editor’s Notes

On many occasions, we have set out precisely what is meant by the “Social Kingship of Christ”.

• Top 5 Christ the King articles

• Christ is King: New book (with WM foreword) sets out full doctrine using works of Cardinal Pie

• ‘Total disregard of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ – Declaration against secularism from the French Cardinals and Archbishops, 1925

• Summer of Laïcité: Something Leo XIV (kind of) got right in France

In the following article, we will consider what is opposed to this Kingship, and the errors which prompted Pope Pius XI to promulgate his landmark encyclical Quas Primas.

The subsequent civil unrest in France – worse than usual, it seems – shows how necessary it is that Christ’s Kingship be recognised over all of society. “The peace of Christ in the Kingship of Christ” is the only solution, as Pope Pius XI taught.

Leo XIV’s comments on laïcité

In September 2026, Leo XIV said the following in an address to Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic:

“How can we fail to see such a commitment as an expression of the authentic “secularity” (laïcité) of the earthly city? A Christian engaged in public service and is guided by the light of his or her conscience illumined by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the nation. Indeed, authentic [laïcité] does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.

“That is precisely why Catholic schools have a rightful place in the educational landscape of a country like France. This is part of a broader issue essential to any dialogue, in schools and in society as a whole: learning to know and love ourselves, in order to be able to encounter others with respect and openness.

“An authentic [laïcité], then, consists not in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in striving to ensure that the State and religious institutions maintain dialogue and join forces in the service of the common good, that the world may have life.”1

Laïcité broadly, but inadequately, translates as “secularity”. In the French context, as I have explained elsewhere, it is a fundamentally aggressive term: anti-clerical and anti-Catholic in nature, and ordered towards “protecting” civil life from the Church.

Given the quasi-sacred character of the term in the life of the French Republic, I and others expressed surprise at the idea of Leo XIV presuming to tell Macron what laïcité “really” means, or what an “authentic” form of it looks like. In a Substack note, I wrote:

Leo XIV, high priest of the Cult of Man?

Leo XIV spoke of “aunthentic laïcité [secularism, secularity]” in his talk to President Macron. […]

French laïcité, condemned by the Church, is part of an alternative religion – what Paul VI praised as the “Cult of Man”, dreamed up by Freemasonry, and which rejects the sovereignty of God.

Who, then, is Leo XIV – or anyone else – to say what “authentic laïcité” includes or excludes?

This is like him saying “authentic Islam” or even “authentic Rabbinic Judaism” does not exclude [this, that or the other].”

If you’re not an Imam or a Rabbi, do you have the standing to make such claims?

It’s just silly. It is farcical.

But why should Catholics care what an “authentic” form of these false religions includes or excludes anyway?

… That said, perhaps Leo XIV does indeed “have the standing” to speak about the Cult of Man.

You can read more about the triumph of the Luciferian “Cult of Man” at Vatican II below:

However, certain apologists pointed to a 1958 discourse, in which Pope Pius XII appeared to set the precedent by using the same terms:

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What is laïcité?

What should we make of this apparent precedent?

First, you can read the whole speech here:

• Pope Pius XII’s ‘sana laicità’ speech is not about French ‘laïcité’ – it’s more about ‘blood and soil’

The next point to be made is that the English, French and Italian words secularity, laïcité, and laicità are not simply interchangeable. The French concept of laïcité stands apart, enjoying an enormous and even quasi-sacral significance. It is bound up with the values of the French Revolution, the “guerre scolaire” (a long conflict over the role of the state and the Church in education), the 1905 “Law of Separation”, and – in a certain sense – French identity itself. Laïcité is so foundational, that it is surprising that it is not included with the engravings of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité on municipal buildings.

The Church has condemned the idea of French laïcité on many occasions – as explained in the elsewhere.

It is, in short, a byword for an entire political and philosophical tradition. In this sense, a Pope – a real one, or a false one – telling the French Republic what laïcité “really means” might be rhetorically legitimate, but still somewhat incongruous (to put it mildly). Hence, I stand by my criticism above.

By contrast, the militant, mythical, and totemic character of French laïcité is not so present in the Italian laicità. It has a different history, and refers more to the reality that the civil authority is distinct to the ecclesiastical authority – and while it exists as a constitutional principle, it lacks the aggression of the French concept.

The context of the laïcité/laicità speeches

Further, Pope Pius XII’s context is entirely different to that of Leo XIV.

Immediately before his comments, Leo XIV referred to human dignity, the rights of man, and the French Revolution’s motto of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” as “universal ethical imperatives” fulfilled in the Gospels, and said:

“Nowadays there is a temptation to expect science to eliminate or alleviate every form of suffering. This often brings the risk of self-delusion. For when science and technology are not guided by a deeper wisdom, they can offer immediate solutions that apparently address people’s wishes and their pain, but can seriously divert them from the greater good to which they aspire. I am concerned at times by those trends in society that risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one’s own death. Let us not forget that mutual respect and the protection of every human life is a duty incumbent upon each and every one of us. It is a duty that begins with the conversion of our minds and hearts, and requires a sincere and selfless commitment to the good of our brothers and sisters.”

Immediately after his comments, he praised certain groups promoting dialogue between the Vatican and the French Government, and various temporal groups carried out in France. His explanation of how he saw the relationship between the Church and state referred to “the healthy complementarity described by the Second Vatican Council” – the same Council which “uncrowned” Christ the King and initiated the secularisation of Catholic states in Dignitatis Humanae.

By contrast, Pope Pius XII’s comments were in the context of the Christianisation of the nation, region, city, family and individual. He told the people of the Italian Marches to “be a living part of the Church” in all those groupings, and to subordinate everything to the Church and to Christ. Here is the passage in which his comments appear:

“Let your cities be a living part of the Church. There are in Italy those who are agitated because they fear that Christianity takes from Caesar what is Caesar’s. As if to give to Caesar what belongs to him were not a command of Jesus; as if the legitimate and sound secularity (laicita*) of the State were not one of the principles of Catholic doctrine; as if it were not the tradition of the Church to make a continual effort to keep the two Powers distinct, yet also, always according to right principles, united; as if, on the contrary, the confusion between the sacred and the profane had not been most strongly brought about in history when a portion of the faithful separated themselves from the Church.

“The cities will be a living part of the Church if in them the life of individuals, the life of families, the life of great and small communities, is nourished by the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is love of God and, in God, love of neighbour – all of it.

“Christian individuals, Christian families, Christian cities, Christian Marches.

“Let the Marches become entirely like a great Holy House; and let the Marchigian family be one, great Holy Family!”

So to summarise:

• Leo XIV praised the specifically anti-Catholic, anti-religious concept of French laïcité, whereas Pope Pius XII affirmed the distinction (as opposed to separation) between Church and State.

• Leo XIV’s conception of the relationship between the Church and State is that of Vatican II, whereas Pope Pius XII’s is that of the traditional teaching.

• Leo XIV’s description of the Church’s contribution referred to the rights of man2 and temporal goods, whereas Pope Pius XII’s referred to rights of God and supernatural goods as well as temporal ones.

In short, Leo XIV’s comments are indeed worthy of criticism, and – contrary to these “precedent-chasters”, that criticism does not rebound onto Pope Pius XII.

Leo XIV’s comments on Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité

We have already touched on the Republican motto, Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité.

Here’s what Leo XIV said:

“With the great thinkers of the Renaissance, and later of the Grand Siècle, succeeded by those of the Enlightenment, France was responsible for significant advances in our world, including the recognition of human rights grounded in the nature of the human person, particularly religious freedom.

“This constant focus on the dignity inherent in every person is echoed in your national motto. Liberty, equality and fraternity are not simply words emblazoned on the front of your public buildings; they refer to universal ethical imperatives that also find in the Gospel message an inexhaustible source of inspiration and fulfillment.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed here in Paris – and in the drafting of which the French jurist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate René Cassin played a leading role – sought to foster a broader awareness of the inalienable dignity of the human person.”

Once again, the context is clear: it is that of the French Revolution. For centuries, French Catholics have rejected the triple-motto, as well as its “dignity” and “human rights”, as being both naturalistic in their meaning as used (and thus blasphemous), and hypocritical in their application.

Towards the end of his speech, he also appeared to describe the triple motto as the “traditional values” of France:

“May France, faithful to its traditional values, work for a peace that is unarmed and disarming, and responsibly offer its unique contribution to that goal. May your liberty grow in constant concern for the common good. May your fraternity embrace the entire human family. And may the equality to which you aspire always be built upon the foundations of justice and charity – not by erasing the differences between people, but by allowing them to flourish harmoniously for the benefit of society as a whole.”

By contrast, here is how Cardinal Louis Billot described the matter, speaking of the “ideologues” of the French Revolution:

“Those ideologues, of course, did not hesitate to proclaim that the sole cause of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments was the ignorance or contempt of the rights of man, the first of which, they said, was liberty, necessarily accompanied by equality and fraternity.⁴

“O levity! O fatuity! O foolishness! And surely…

• … their liberty has ended in despotism, worse than any barbarism, of the powerful over the weak.

• … their equality, in an ever-growing multitude of proletarians on one side, and an ever more prevailing oligarchy of millionaires on the other.

• … their fraternity finally, in the fermenting of internal divisions scattered everywhere, and an inexpiable hatred of class against class.

“Nor are these things hidden from the discerning minds of our times. Indeed, many minds still remain on the surface, not yet perceiving the essential character of the Revolution, which is satanic.”

However, one might object by saying that Catholics do believe in liberty, equality and fraternity, “properly understood”. But here, we face the same problem as with laïcité: the “proper understanding” of these terms would have to mean “in a way completely different to how everyone else understands it, and without regard for the context in which it is normally used.” And if one wishes to make such a rhetorical point, one must spell it out.

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Does Pope Leo XIII provide a precedent?

Further, as with Pope Pius XII and laïcité, it was pointed out that Pope Leo XIII had made a similar point himself:

However, the key point here is that Pope Leo XIII did spell it out in Humanum Genus.

The full context (once again omitted by “precedent-chasers”) was the his “second” means of combatting Freemasonry (whose ideology is that of the French Revolution) – namely, that “by assiduous teaching and exhortation, the multitude must be drawn to learn diligently the precepts of religion”. The specific passage was one praising the Third Order of St Francis as a means of inviting men “to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues”. It is here that Pope Leo XIII provides a full explanation of what “properly understood” really means:

“[T]he Third Order of St. Francis, whose discipline we a little while ago prudently mitigated, should be studiously promoted and sustained; for the whole object of this Order, as constituted by its founder, is to invite men to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues; and therefore it ought to be of great influence in suppressing the contagion of wicked societies.

“Let, therefore, this holy sodality be strengthened by a daily increase. Amongst the many benefits to be expected from it will be the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity, and equality of right; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and St. Francis aspired to:

• The liberty, we mean, of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our passions, both of them most wicked masters

• The fraternity whose origin is in God, the common Creator and Father of all

• The equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties, and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of society.”

As with the previous matter, Leo XIV’s comments are indeed worthy of criticism, and that criticism does not rebound onto Pope Leo XIII.

Conclusion

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre cites a number of liberals specifically stating that Vatican II was the Church’s “Revolution”. For example:

The parallel I have drawn between the crisis in the Church and the French Revolution is not simply a metaphorical one. The influence of the philosophes of the eighteenth century, and of the upheaval that they produced in the world, has continued down to our times. Those who have injected that poison into the Church admit it to themselves.

It was Cardinal Suenens who exclaimed, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church,” and among other unguarded declarations he added “One cannot understand the French or the Russian revolutions unless one knows something of the old regimes which they brought to an end… It is the same in church affairs: a reaction can only be judged in relation to the state of things that preceded it.”3

He also cited Fr Yves Congar OP stating something similar:

“Père Congar, one of the artisans of the reforms, spoke likewise: ‘The Church has had, peacefully, its October Revolution.” Fully aware of what he was saying, he remarked “The Declaration on Religious Liberty states the opposite of the Syllabus.’”

Cardinal Ratzinger himself said the same thing of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes—that it represented a reconciliation with the world as established in the Revolution of 1789:

“[T]he one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789 […]

“Let us be content to say here that the text [Gaudium et Spes] serves as a counter-syllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, its ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of this remarkable meeting of Church and world. Basically, the word “world” means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church’s group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation.”4

Leo XIV’s comments form a part of what Ratzinger called the “official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789”. They are a direct and open embrace of the watchwords and slogans of the French Revolution and its ideological heirs – albeit phrased in a way that might pacify some, by certain parallels with the comments from the previous Popes mentioned.

But those parallels are ultimately illusory; and once the context has been clarified, Leo XIV’s ideological alignment becomes clear.

To understand why this alignment with Revolutionary and “Enlightenment” values is so significant, see here:

• The triumph of Luciferianism at Vatican II

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Introduction

This is the third part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. You can read the first part, on Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels, here.

In the second part, we saw Mgr Guérard’s analogy of the jar, the label and the content. Cardinal Ratzinger displays the Tridentine “jar” under the label “Tradition”, but places something quite different inside.

The second ‘Ratzinger Operation’: Revelation

In this part, Mgr Guérard turns to the second of Ratzinger’s three “operations”: his account of revelation.

Here, Ratzinger draws on his own early research. His Habilitationsschrift (composed in the 1950s) had been on the theology of history in St Bonaventure, who was himself writing in thirteenth century. His thesis attracted controversy, as he was seen as subjectivising the concept of revelation, and Ratzinger was left suspected of modernism. He was required to remove the sections on revelation, which were not published until decades later.

In the address under review, Ratzinger returns to this very subject. He claims that no one thought of calling the Bible “revelation” in the thirteenth century. Revelation was rather the act, “forever inexpressible in human words”, by which God makes Himself known, and its reception by man. On this view, Scripture merely bears witness to revelation. It is “the condensation of a much larger and inexhaustible process of Revelation”, in which the divine “I” and the human “Thou” meet in the “We” of the Church.

Mgr Guérard shows that this is neither the theology of the thirteenth century nor that of the Church. He answers with St Thomas himself, who says that our faith rests on the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books. He also answers with St Pius X, who condemned the propositions that revelation was not completed with the apostles, and that the formulas of faith are inadequate to their object.

What Ratzinger offers instead is a kind of “hyper-revelation”: a created entity lying behind the revealed propositions, which by its nature can never itself be revealed.

Mgr Guérard identifies the same tendency which we now know was suspected in the Habilitationsschrift, being presented three decades later to the faithful of Paris and Lyon – and as no less than a return to tradition. As with faith, Ratzinger’s vocabulary is scholastic and – to use Mgr Guérard’s analogy – is presented in a jar “labelled” as “Tradition”; but the content is the modernism condemned in Pascendi.

In the next part, we shall see the third and most audacious “operation”: his use of the structure of the Roman Catechism as a means of conveying and legitimising the new religion of Vatican II.

I look forward to sharing the parts of this “main course” with readers – but the dessert itself will also be worth the wait…

S.D.Wr.

The Wojtyłan Dictatorship: Mgr Guérard des Lauriers

Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, nos 79–80, de avril-mai 1983

Originally published as La Dictature Wojtylienne

1. Critique of addresses by Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan and Cardinal Godfried Daneels

2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and The Wojtyłan Dictatorship

3. Cardinal Ratzinger and his modernist concept of Revelation

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Introduction

This is the second part of our serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. You can read the first part, on the addresses of Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels, here.

We now come to the main course: Mgr Guérard’s critique of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s address, “Transmission of the faith and the sources of the faith,” delivered with the others at Fourvière and Notre-Dame de Paris in January 1983.

Ratzinger the restorer?

This address is classic Cardinal Ratzinger: on the surface, it looks exactly like what many “traditional Catholics” were hoping for. At the time, Ratzinger had only recently been installed as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the address, he acknowledges a “collapse of classical catechesis”, and attributes it to what Catholics today would recognise as modernist excesses.

Even more strikingly, Cardinal Ratzinger proposes to overcome the crisis by returning to the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

It is easy to see why so many were delighted. As Mgr Guérard puts it, the “average Traditionalist” reading Itinéraires and frequenting the Traditional Latin Mass could tell himself that John Paul II, through the head of the formerly Holy Office, was defending Tradition and even leaning on Trent.

But while Mgr Guérard recognises in this article that some of Ratzinger’s criticisms were “penetrating”, he did not stop there.

The jar, the label and the content

To show the problem with Ratzinger’s approach, Mgr Guérard uses the analogy of a jar and its three components:

• The jar itself, as a container

• The label, stating what is inside

• The content itself, inside the jar.

While the jar is the most visible element, the content is the most important aspect – and the label matters insofar as it truly corresponds to the content.

In Mgr Guérard’s analysis, the “jar” is Ratzinger’s reference to the fourfold structure of the Roman Catechism: the Creed, the Sacraments, the Decalogue and the Lord’s Prayer. The “label” is what Ratzinger says is inside this structure: “Tradition”. But the real question, addressed by Mgr Guérard, is what Cardinal Ratzinger actually puts inside this structure.

His answer is that Ratzinger carries out three “operations,” each displaying a Tridentine jar and label – with a different content inside. The three “operations” are as follows:

1. Faith (addressed in this part). Ratzinger’s understanding of the theological virtue of faith is wholly different to that expressed by Trent, the Roman Catechism, and tradition.

2. Revelation (in the next part). His understanding of revelation is wholly different to that of St Thomas and Pope St Pius X.

3. The structure of catechesis (the subsequent part). Ratzinger arbitrarily maps the four headings of the Catechism onto the four “senses of Scripture”, which Mgr Guérard shows is an inversion of the proper order – and akin to key aspects of Luther’s revolt against the Church.

In each of these steps, we see the classic modernist manoeuvre, as expressed by Cardinal Parente’s definition of modernism:

“A heresy, or rather a group of heresies, which have arisen in the very bosom of the Church at the beginning of [the twentieth century] under the influence of modern philosophy and criticism, with the pretense of elevating and saving the Christian religion and the Catholic Church by means of a radical renovation. […]

“In brief outline, the encyclical [Pascendi] declares modernism to be a hybrid amalgamation of verbal Catholicism with real naturalistic rationalism, based on [agnosticism, immanentism and ‘radical evolutionism’].”1

The extent of Ratzinger’s modernism has been analysed by men such as the late Bishop Tissier de Mallerais and the late James Larson. Such writers have shown that the myth of Ratzinger maturing past the ideas he held as a younger priest and at Vatican II – when his modernist tendencies were already visible – is completely false.

At each step, throughout his career, Ratzinger’s approach was essentially the same: claim that powerful objections to Catholic dogma have arisen, and on that basis “rethink” the meanings of the terms of the dogma, such that it remains tenable. For example, Ratzinger took this approach to the dogma of transubstantiation itself.2

Why this matters now

Many of us came to know Ratzinger as the man of the “hermeneutic of continuity” and Summorum Pontificum, and he retains a remarkable hold even on many supposed “traditionalists”. Only last month, Dr wrote:

“In my home library of several thousand volumes, only a few authors enjoy the privileged status of occupying several shelves exclusively their own. […] Joseph Ratzinger belongs to this limited circle of authors whom I regard so highly that I have acquired nearly everything they wrote.”

He goes on to describe assigning Ratzinger’s works to his students, and his view that no pope since Benedict XIV has equalled him in learning. He also writes:

“At last, we had found a highly literate, sophisticated, rather audacious modern theologian who nonetheless knew and loved the Catholic tradition, explained its meaning, rebuked its assailants, and advanced its recovery. That he was the right-hand man of John Paul II and followed him to the Chair of Peter only added to the momentary elation of recovering territory after a series of brutal annexations.”

However, while such praise is common amongst men like Dr Kwasniewski, the older traditionalists were typically far more cautious about Ratzinger – especially those who understood how his negotiations with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre proceeded. Today, there is little excuse for failing to recognise that Ratzinger was a consummate modernist.

Mgr Guérard was writing at the first moment in which Ratzinger was presented as a restorer. He saw through this pose, and exposed him for what he was: one of the most effective instruments of the Vatican II revolution.

Whatever one makes of Mgr Guérard’s conclusions, or of his “Thesis of Cassiciacum”, his analysis of the address shows the importance of looking past Ratzinger’s traditional jar and label – and considering what is actually inside.

I look forward to sharing the parts of this “main course” with readers – but the dessert itself will also be worth the wait…

S.D.Wr.

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Preface

Dr is doubling-down on his campaign against those whom he has decided are his opponents.

Following our publication of a summary of Zero Marks, with a critique of Dr Kwasniewski’s inflammatory rhetoric, it has been drawn to my attention that the latter has written the following on his site beneath OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden”:

“The moment you decide to be the judge of who is a successor of the apostles (objectively - not in terms of their personal worthiness of the office) and who isn't, you have left far behind anything recognizably Catholic. This is the line that separates reformatory traditionalism from simply schismatic traditionalism. And I say that as one who knows very well the filth and error that inhabits the halls of power.”

This comment was made in response to others by those who aren’t buying what Dr Kwasniewski is selling:

This revealing reply was made to certain commenters who found themselves unimpressed with Kwasniewski and Fr Crean’s “arguments” – or rather, the lack of arguments, and non-engagement with real arguments (as discussed in the previous piece).

In answer to Dr Kwasniewski’s claims about judgment, I am presenting an extract from my article “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”, published at LifeSiteNews in September 2026. This extract shows bankruptcy of such arguments about someone “deciding to be the judge of who is a successor of the apostles”.

This is because Dr Kwasniewski himself has decided to judge that Leo XIV and the bishops subject to him are successors of the apostles, and uses this as the basis for condemning those who disagree with him. One must judge that a particular person is or is not a successor of the Apostles, otherwise one cannot submit to him. To think otherwise, even under the guise of humility or a supposed “lack of authority”, is simply to hide from oneself, one’s God-given intellect, and one’s duty to the truth.

Further, as I wrote in the summary:

“[T]he location of our ‘examination’ is where it should be – i.e., in identifying the Church and the proximate rule of faith and praxis – whereas Fr Crean’s ‘examination’ consists in interposing a new proximate rule of faith and praxis in place of the teaching of the Church.”

The same applies to Dr Kwasniewski, who seeks to replace the teaching of the Church as our proximate rule of faith and praxis with, ultimately, himself and his own private studies and opinions – for instance, about what is and is not traditional. The attempt to hide from oneself leads, in fact, to the very usurped judgments one was trying to avoid – and a blindness to the reality of what one is doing.

That this is so, let us consider the list of judgments made by Dr Kwasniewski, which provided in 2025:

• Pope St. Pius X’s Breviary reform bull Divino Afflatu is partly null and void

• Pope St. Pius X’s revisions to the Roman Breviary were “impious” and “absurd” and “exemplified liturgical modernism”

• Pope St. Pius X’s teaching on devotion and submission to the Pope is a “painful historical embarrassment”

• Giovanni Battista Montini (‘Pope’ Paul VI) need not and should not be considered a saint, even though the man he considers Pope (Francis) solemnly canonized him as one

• Francis’ Apostolic Letter Traditionis Custodes suppressing the use of the 1962 Missal “is absolutely null and utterly void from the first letter to the last punctuation mark”

• Bishops who are removed from the government of their dioceses by the Pope for what they consider to be an unjust motive should refuse to accept this decision by defiantly clinging to power (an exhortation we have refuted here)

• Priests should defy suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, to the point of establishing independent churches if necessary until better conditions prevail

• And, furthermore, he thinks using mostly the magisterial pronouncements from 1870-1958 regarding the Papacy is problematic.

No doubt this list has expanded since 2025.

In light of such judgments, his claim that “sedevacantists” are “schismatic traditionalists” – which would not be true, even if Dr Kwasniewski were correct (as considered here) – is more than a little ironic.

More of Dr Kwasniewski’s accusations

In response to a commenter sharing Zero Marks, Dr Kwasniewski falls back onto the arguments raised by Novus Ordo apologists on One Peter Five, he accuses “sedevacantists” of endangering their salvation, and of making themselves “like all the sects described by Ronald Knox in his famous book ‘Enthusiasm’”:

In the absence of argumentation, adherence to the position Dr Kwasniewski advocates is typically motivated by fear, and typically spread by fear – in this case, an attempt to create the impression that one will be damned for making a mistake on this point. But the truth – the good of the intellect – is obtained through reason and revelation, not through the emotion of fear. Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and the beginning of wisdom – but this fear of one’s own intellect (to which I have already alluded above) is something else entirely. It is a species of moral and intellectual cowardice. There is also something incongruous about Dr Kwasniewski suggesting someone will be damned for being wrong about the Pope, when he also thinks that the Church herself needs to “rethink the papacy”, and that those who disagree with his programme are “hyperpapalists”.

Further, contrary to what Dr Kwasniewski says in these comments, “sedevacantists” are no sect: they are simply those who have formed a certain conclusion. Some of them may organise themselves around this particular conclusion, and may even go to the point of making themselves a sect; others do only the former, or neither.

By contrast, the previous comment – in which Dr Kwasniewski refers to his party as that of “reformatory traditionalism” – is an acceptance of the un-Catholic position of the “high church” wing of the Conciliar/Synodal Church.

He says in the second comment above that he believes “the Catholic Church is a lot more durable” than what “sedevacantists” believe – but the durability that he proposes is that of the Anglican Church. The Anglican Communion is so “durable” that it continues to “exist” in spite of multiple warring factions which disagree, not about practical questions for a contingent crisis, but the most basic questions of the faith. For example, the disagreements in that “broad church” of Anglicanism include how to worship God, whether to baptise one’s children, how one receives revelation, and so on.

• The Anglicanisation of Catholics – are we the ‘high-church wing’?

• A side-chapel in the Conciliar/Synodal Church - Fr de Blignières’ proposal

This “durability” is purely naturalistic, human, and “legal”.

The true durability of the Catholic Church, by contrast, is supernatural. She is endowed with certain necessary properties which she cannot lose; any portion of her which departs from or divests itself of these properties does not harm her, but itself loses any part in her. This is the very subject of Zero Marks and the associated articles.

But Dr Kwasniewski cannot adhere to these truths about the Church, because the thread that he pulls in “rethinking the papacy” leads to the complete unravelling of these other areas of Catholic doctrine too.

In short, accusing those whom he has decided are his opponents of being a “sect” is simply desperation.

But I think many of us “sedevacantists” would much rather be accused of being a sect, than actually be a party or wing in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. We would rather “stake our salvation” on the traditional teaching of the Church, rather than on Dr Kwasniewski’s programme of “rethinking the papacy” – presupposing as it does an unappetising mélange of Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Old Catholicism.

A final note: the below engagement with Archbishop Viganò’s comments answer Dr Kwasniewski’s “objections”. Dr Kwasniewski has not made fewer declarations and judgments than Archbishop Viganò – as we have seen above. It should be simple enough to see the direct application of what follows to Dr Kwasniewski himself.

Update: Dr Kwasniewski responds

Following the publication of this article, Dr Kwasniewski offered another non-response, which can only be described “gaslighting”:

On reflection, however, such a response is not surprising. Dr Kwasniewski, I am sure, does not really consider those accusations to be light. He knows perfectly well that they are among the gravest that can be levelled at anyone.

The reality is precisely as I have been saying in these recent articles: Dr Kwasniewski and his set are entirely unable to argue their positions on rational grounds, and the above response was a quick-fire attempt to deflect from that reality.

In the meantime, I repeat what I wrote at the end of the summary of Zero Marks:

“I once again invite Dr Kwasniewski – as well as Fr Crean, and anyone else who wishes to speak or write publicly on this topic – to desist from ignoring serious responses, and to engage with the arguments at hand.”

The extract from the article regarding Archbishop Viganò follows.

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On Declarations and Judgements

From “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”

‘To resist: not to depose’

Archbishop Viganò writes:

To resist: not to depose.

Because this is precisely the point. To depose a pope, or to declare the See vacant, is an act of jurisdiction, and no private individual – whether bishop or layman – possesses the jurisdiction to perform it.

On the contrary, this is precisely not the point.

Sedevacantists agree that they have no power to “depose” a Pope, or to “declare the See vacant” as private individuals.

First, sedevacantists typically claim either that these men have deposed themselves by positing public acts incompatible with retaining office (which is the essence of Bellarmine’s “fifth opinion”), or that they never attained the papacy at all. There is absolutely no sense in which any sedevacantist is engaged in deposing a Pope; therefore, there is no pretense to possess jurisdiction to do so.

As for “declaring” the See to be vacant: the word “declare” can be used in different senses. On the one hand, it may be understood in the strict sense in which Viganò presents it: as an act of jurisdiction, creating obligations on one’s subjects. It is possible that a diocesan ordinary might have such a power; but it is certainly not the case for any layman, priest, auxiliary bishop, or traditionalist clergyman.

On the other hand, the word may be understood in a broader sense, merely as a clear announcement of one’s views on a given topic, controversial or otherwise. It is solely in this latter sense that sedevacantists might “declare” that the See is vacant.

We may also note that the Archbishop’s interview and various statements are full of “declarations” in this second sense, and we have already seen several such examples:

• That “sedevacantism and papolatry are two mirror-image errors, born from the same premise”

• That Leo XIV “exercises (the office of the papacy) against the end for which it exists”

Elsewhere in the interview, Viganò “declares” that:

• “Bergoglio dismantled the Papacy violently; Prevost gives that dismantling an institutional, ‘orderly,’ almost reassuring form.”

But such “declarations” need not be limited solely to the Papacy. The same can be said of Viganò’s comments about the liturgical reform:

• “(The Vatican authorities) persecute (the traditional Mass) because they know perfectly well that they do not express the same faith, and that as long as a single altar safeguards the ancient lex orandi, the new one cannot claim victory.”

These comments are all “declarations” in the second, broad sense – and, if a Catholic considers himself justified in making such “declarations” about a sitting Pontiff, or about apparently “papally-approved” liturgical rites, then he cannot reasonably object to other Catholics “declaring,” based on serious theological arguments, that they have concluded the man is not a sitting Pontiff. In fact, I would argue that one is more justified in making the latter claim than the former.

‘Private judgments’

What we have just discussed may also be applied to the Archbishop’s claim that a “declaration” of the vacancy is a “private judgment,” as he proceeds to say:

Whoever arrogates such power to himself commits, in reversed form, the same abuse that he reproaches Rome for: he makes himself the measure of that of which he is only the guardian. And he suffers the consequence: a Church without a visible See, without the possibility of a future pope through the ordinary means, without any other criterion than the private judgment of those who have declared it vacant.

This passage raises both the question of “private judgment” and of the attaining of a future Pope. Before first addressing the former, let us recall that:

• No sedevacantist “arrogates” jurisdiction to himself.

• The “abuse” for which sedevacantists reproach the Vatican is not that the Pope “makes himself the measure of that of which he is only the guardian”, but rather that these men propose and impose a “new form” of religion, teach error and heresy, and promulgate evil laws.

• Viganò earlier suggested that sedevacantists were unable to distinguish between the See and the “seated”; it is ironic that he himself now conflates them by asserting that having no person “seated” means being deprived of a visible See. The truth is precisely the opposite.

By referring to the sedevacantist conclusion as a “private judgment,” Archbishop Viganò may be overlooking the nature of the judgment in question as a cognitive judgment, rather than an authoritative one.

In broad, colloquial terms, a cognitive judgment is simply drawing a conclusion. One concludes that something is true or false; good or bad; verified or unverified; long or short; and so on.1 Such judgments are an essential operation of the mind, and without them, reasoning is impossible.

An authoritative declaration makes known and imposes an authoritative judgment, whereas a declaration in the broad sense merely makes known a cognitive judgment, without any pretense to impose it on others. Just as Viganò himself has made many declarations in the broad sense, so too has he made the many cognitive judgments which his declarations make known. These cognitive judgments are indeed judgments made by him as a private person, as are the following:

• That it is legitimate for Archbishop Viganò to continue operating as a bishop and running a seminary after being declared excommunicate by the Vatican

• That the SSPX episcopal consecrations in 1988 and 2026 were legitimate

• That the penalties and rulings following the SSPX consecrations are to be disregarded.

These are all significant examples, because they are judgments made against an apparent public judgment of authority. This is not to say that the Archbishop is mistaken in his judgments – it is simply to recognize them for what they are.

Further, one also makes a private and cognitive judgment that the Catholic faith is true,2 and, on a different level, that a given public judgment by authority is indeed legitimate, and such that we must accept it. There is, in essence, no way to avoid making private judgments – except to stop thinking altogether.

This also applies to the Pope question. The identity of the Pope is not a fact that is infused directly into our brain: There are objective criteria by which we recognize a man is the Pope. At the minimum, these include a valid election and acceptance, and the person being eligible for the office (viz., he is a baptized male Catholic with the use of reason).

But, as Aristotle said:

Where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa.3

Applied to this topic, if it is in our power to judge that a man is the Pope because the criteria are fulfilled, it is also in our power to recognize that a man is not the Pope if the criteria are not fulfilled. In fact, we make such a judgment habitually, in that we all recognize that neither Archbishop Viganò nor President Donald Trump are the Pope. To think otherwise, even under the guise of humility or a supposed “lack of authority”, is simply to hide from oneself, one’s God-given intellect, and one’s duty to the truth.

We are thus faced with a legitimate question, and an understandable but ultimately unfounded scruple. The question is: What are the true criteria; the scruple is that One cannot arrive at a conclusion rejected by the cardinals and the vast majority of the world.

Regarding the scruple, basically every controversial position adopted by traditional Catholics (and, increasingly, even “conservative Catholics”) is rejected by the cardinals and the vast majority of the world. There is no clear reason for judging (!) those judgments to be legitimate, but then judging (!) the cognitive judgment that the See is vacant to be illegitimate. Thus, to say that one does not have the authority to make a “private judgment” about the Pope question is simply to misunderstand the terms.

Many Catholics see “private judgment” as the hallmark of the Protestant, and try to act in a way that avoids making such judgments. We have seen that this is based on a misconception of the notion of a judgment; it is also based on a misconception of the “private judgment” of the Protestants. Their “private judgment” refers to the idea that Christians can and should interpret the sources of revelation according to their own lights and accept only those truths which he himself has decided are true or revealed – without regard for any kind of ecclesiastical authority. This has nothing to do with the case at hand, as the earlier texts from Bellarmine demonstrated.4

From “Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply”

Response to Fr Thomas Crean OP:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean)

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Some other relevant articles:

• ‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed

• Polish theologian predicted Conciliar/Synodal Church and ‘puppet’ hierarchy in 1916

• The enemies of the Church and the note of holiness – Cardinal Billot

• How do you tell the true Church after a rupture? Journet’s answer

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

• Have we ignored apostolicity of government/succession and over-focused on that of doctrine?

• How long can the Holy See be vacant? Fr Louis Coache (and context)

• ‘Sedevacantism’ as a ‘pestiferous heresy’? Fr Ripperger’s accusation analysed

• Does a long vacancy interrupt perpetual succession? Fr Raphel Cercia SJ

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Preface

With the supposed beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen this year, his comments about the “Ape of the Church” have received more exposure than ever.

But – leaving aside the significant problems with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, comprehensively demonstrated by – what did he mean by this term, “Ape of the Church”? Here’s what he said in his 1948 book, Communism and the Conscience of the West:

“The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion – one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.

“In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counter-church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”1

Now, Sheen was speaking very specifically about Communism, and describing the Communist system as a counter-church. However, the idea of an "Ape of the Church" or "counter-church" as a possible deceit of the devil has by no means limited to Sheen. Several other writers, from Fr E. Sylvester Berry, Fr Bernard Krammer, Fr Owen Francis Dudley, Padre Pio and Fr Gabriele Amorth have all spoken in such terms.

What is more, a great number of notable churchmen since Vatican II have either raised or acknowledged the question of whether the Ape of the Church is already with us. In 1988, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – later Benedict XVI — posed this very question in the aftermath of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s 1988 episcopal consecrations for the Society of St Pius X:

“All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people.”

Cardinal Ratzinger, 13 July 1988

In this conference, delivered to the bishops of Chile, Ratzinger argued that what Lefebvre had called the “Conciliar Church” was indeed the same Catholic Church which had preceded Vatican II.

However, that Ratzinger needed to make such a case is revealing – as is his recognition that “a great number of people” were not sure that the post-conciliar body was the same as the Catholic Church.

The “great number of people”, who either denied, publicly questioned, or recognised the difficulty that some have had in seeing the identity between the Catholic Church and the “Conciliar Church”, include:

• Cardinal Leo Burke2

• Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre3

• Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais SSPX4

• Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer5

• Cardinal Léon Joseph Suenens6

• Mgr Brunero Gherardini7

• Fr Roger Calmel OP8

But why did such men recognize or comment on the idea that a “new church” had appeared after Vatican II? And how might we be able to discern the truth or falsity of such a claim – that is to say, how might we recognize the a false church claiming to be the Catholic Church?

The answer lies in a proper understanding of the four marks of the Church.

Zero Marks: An Enquiry in to the Four Marks of the Church

In March 2026, I published a short “book” on this very topic, titled ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church. While it was well received, the length – over 42,000 words including footnotes – meant that it was not exactly accessible.

It is for this reason that I prepared a summary version, which provides the core of the argumentation without getting to into the nuts and bolts of the affair. It is structured in the same way, with links to the relevant parts of the original throughout.

Also in the interests of accessibility, I discussed each chapter of the Zero Marks with Stephen Kokx on Kokx News, and then Integrity Magazine’s podcast:

• Video: Visibility

• Video: Unity

• Video: Holiness

• Video: Catholicity

• Video: Apostolicity as a Mark

• Video: Apostolicity as a Property

• Video: Conclusion

Zero Marks was the second part of a long engagement (which is not quite finished) with an article by Fr Thomas Crean OP. Here are the articles so far:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Fr Crean’s short and popular article, originally published at Pelican+, was lauded by Dr as a “definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism”:

As my articles have shown, this is very much not the case.

For the particular reason that prompted publishing this summary, see the editorial here.

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‘ZERO MARKS’

Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

A Summary

Full Series:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Introduction

In his article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden“, the English Dominican Fr Thomas Crean OP affirms that the Church of Christ must be perpetually visible and identifiable as the Church of Christ. He alleges that this principally achieved through the papacy:

The criterion by which we may identify the Catholic Church is the papacy; she is the society governed by the man who succeeds to St Peter, according to the norms in force at the time of the succession.

The consequence of this, in Fr Crean’s mind, is that Leo XIV and his recent predecessors have all been legitimate Popes: in other words, that the position of the so-called “sedevacantists“ is false.

However, Fr Crean’s treatment of this issue is insufficient.

In the first part of my response, Radically Insufficient, I explained that Fr Crean’s article fails to take account of what it means for the Church to be visible – namely, that she be “distinctly visible” as the true Church of Christ. While he does refer to the need for the true Church to be identifiable as such, his reduction of this distinct visibility to the papacy is, as the title suggests, insufficient.

This is because the Church is also rendered visible through her necessary properties of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity, which the four notes (or marks) of the Church, insofar as they are manifested externally.

I also explained that this visibility may indeed be reduced or obscured in ways that make the notes of the Church difficult to verify. In the same article, I provided authorities, such as St Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Dom Prosper Guéranger and more, in support of this truth.

The “sedevacantist” argument posits that the visibility of the Church – and the four notes – has indeed been diminished or obscured; but that her distinct visibility, properties and even her notes are intact, even if they may be difficult to verify in the concrete.

Zero Marks examines these four notes in considerably more detail, considering a) how the four properties mentioned are manifested externally as notes, and b) what would constitute their obscuration, and what would constitute or their absence. It also demonstrates, that the Conciliar/Synodal Church lacks this distinct visibility, due to the absence of these four properties.

The subsequent part, Spotless and Unsullied, engaged with Fr Crean’s presentation of the doctrine of the Church’s indefectibility, and how it interacts with the thesis of an extended vacancy.

Thesis Statement

Before proceeding to the summary, let me be clear about the parameters of my claims.

• Definition: By “Conciliar/Synodal Church,” I mean the body of men who recognise Leo XIV as their Pope and spiritual leader, claim to be subject to him, and whom he (and his officers) recognise as being in good standing with him.

The term “Conciliar Church” was coined Paul VI himself, and he seems to have been the first to use this term.9 Since then, Cardinal Koch has referred to the “Conciliar/Synodal Church” in the 2024 document The Bishop of Rome – a usage which we have adopted.10

• Thesis: The Conciliar/Synodal Church, considered as such, is not the Roman Catholic Church.

• Clarification: By “not the Roman Catholic Church”, I mean that this body of men, considered as such, is not identical with the Roman Catholic Church. Taken as defined, it is a body composed of both Catholics and non-Catholics, and lacks certain essential properties of the Roman Catholic Church; for this reason, it cannot be identified with that Church. The thesis therefore concerns the identity and nature of the body itself, considered as a social reality or accidental aggregation, rather than the status of the individuals within it. It does not deny the continued visibility of the Catholic Church; rather, it denies that this visibility, and membership of the Church, are determined by the boundaries of the Conciliar/Synodal Church as defined. Accordingly, it does not imply a) that this body constitutes a false sect (since it is an accidental aggregation of Catholics and non-Catholics, rather than a true society); b) that no Catholics exist within it; or c) that a man ceases to be a Catholic simply by being included in this body. Some of these points are clarified in Zero Marks, or will be clarified further elsewhere.

The visibility of the Church

The true Church of Christ is distinctly visible as such through the four necessary properties mentioned in the Creed – unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. These properties are notes or marks in so far as they are external, visible, and easily verifiable to an inquirer.

For example, unity of belief is an aspect of the property of unity, but it is invisible; we do not know what is hidden in men’s minds. Therefore, it is not part of the mark. By contrast, both teaching and what men profess externally are visible, and it is easy to verify whether a body of men share a united teaching and profession of faith. For this reason, unity of teaching and of external profession of faith pertain to the mark of unity.

While those other aspects of the properties may not serve as marks establishing the identity of the true Church, the verifiable absence of these necessary properties serves as a kind of “anti-mark”, establishing that a body or society is not the true Church. For example, apostolicity of doctrine is not an aspect of the mark of apostolicity; but absence of this aspect indicates the absence of the property, and shows that the body or society in question is not the Catholic Church.

This is because any society or body lacking a single one of these necessary properties cannot be the Church of Christ. As the scholastic axiom holds:

“Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.

(“Something is good when it is good in every respect, and it is bad when it is wrong in any respect.”)

Let us consider each mark/property in turn.

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Chapter I: Unity

The Church’s unity is a fruit of Christ’s prayer at the Last Supper, as the Church and her theologians have recognised. Cardinal Billot states that this unity is “the principal property with which [Our Lord] wished to clothe his Church forever.”

The Church is united in three ways: faith, government and worship.

She exists as a society which is ordered by an authority to the end of a) the glory of God, and b) the salvation of souls.

This unity of government is ordered towards the establishing the unity of faith and “social” charity.

She is united in worship by the shared use of the same sacrifice, sacraments and liturgical acts – notwithstanding certain accidental variations in how these rites are conducted.

But as a mark, Billot says, the Church’s unity consists principally in “the common profession of the same faith, taught by a social magisterium”.

This unity may be obscured by those who a) err in good faith, provided they remain visibly subject to the Church’s authority; b) debates over unsettled questions; c) multiple papal claimants or other such crises; d) extended vacancies of the Holy See or of diocesan sees. The Church’s hierarchy exists as an efficient cause of this unity; to the extent that the hierarchy is negligent or absent, this visible unity suffers.

This unity is absent in a body which does not enjoy a united teaching or profession of faith – i.e., when both the truths of revelation and heresy are taught or professed with impunity. Unlike the note of holiness, which is tolerant of both sinners and saints, unity pertains to the collective body itself. Cardinal Billot writes:

“Unity, however, deals immediately with the collectivity itself, from which it removes division in the profession of faith. Furthermore, the wicked in the Church do not prevent it from containing saints as well, who show it to be true. But if heretics were in the Church, they would formally remove the indivisibility of the society which is of the very definition of unity.”

This is the case with the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is visibly disunited in faith.

Multiple surveys – both American and global – reveal that large percentages of its adherents openly reject what they know to be Church teaching on matters ranging from transubstantiation to contraception, from abortion to same-sex unions. (These are presented in the full article.)

Romano Amerio, the author of the classic work Iota Unum, states that this disunity is principally caused by “the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”

This disunity dates from the Second Vatican Council, and is particularly evident in the various open letters and petitions of Francis’ reign, which rebuked him for heresy. It is also evident in the responses to Humanae Vitae (e.g., “The Winnipeg Statement”) and the German Bishop’s Conference’s “Synodal Way.” This disunity has been noted by men such as Professor Roberto de Mattei,11 Fr Linus Clovis12 and others.

The objection that orthodox groups elsewhere maintain unity is without worth; as unity of faith pertains to the collective, the radical disunity of one or more parts is sufficient to indicate the disunity of the whole. These “more orthodox” groups and prelates simply demonstrate the disunity with even greater clarity. There is no visible unity of faith between men like Bishop Tomash Peta of Astana, Kazakhstan, and men like Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky.

It is simply not credible to suggest that the Conciliar/Synodal Church – the body of men who currently recognise Leo XIV as their leader, and are in good standing with him – enjoys either the property of unity, willed for it by God, or its external manifestation in the note of unity.

But, as Frank Sheed wrote before the doctrinal disunity became as clear as it is today:

“[I]f [the Church] accepts the presence within her of men who deny teachings to which she has committed herself, she will not [be the same Church].”

Incidentally, Sheed set out a number of other “red lines” at which point, he said, we have to conclude that “it would no longer be the same Church.” These “red lines” have been crossed.

We are, therefore, not faced with a difficulty of verifying the mark of unity, but the verification of the absence of the property of unity. This radical disunity alone – the lack of a necessary property – is sufficient to conclude that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Nonetheless, we continue our examination for the sake of completeness.

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Chapter II: Holiness

“Holiness” may be defined in various ways. God is holiness itself, and a created thing is holy by participation with God. This may be through being dedicated to him, or by being united to him.

The Church of Christ is holy by reason of her Head, Christ himself, and her soul, the Holy Ghost. Her end or raison d’être is holy too, namely the glory of God and the sanctification of souls. Her means (doctrine, discipline, worship) and her fruits (virtues, heroic lives) are also holy.

As a mark or note, holiness is manifested in the members of the Church and her good works.

But a society is not shown to be holy simply because it has holy members: they must be holy because of the society; they must be “formed” by the society’s principles – e.g., its doctrine, sacraments, laws, disciplinary standards.

This holiness may be obscured by a decreasing number of men notable for their holiness, or through widespread laxity in applying the means of achieving holiness; nonetheless, the holiness of the society remains a question of those who do apply these means.

This holiness of a society’s members may be demonstrated by our own observation of those who are living, or by those of history.

A society which has a process, recognised by all as being stringent and serious, of identifying such past members is in a powerful position to demonstrate the latter. However, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has abandoned the stringent process of canonisation used by the Catholic Church, and replaced it with a procedure of much lower standards. This process has been used indifferently to “canonise” holy men on the one hand, and on the other those either unremarkable for holiness, or of positively unholy life. This is a voluntary abandonment of a key means by which the Church’s holiness was rendered visible.

Another means of demonstrating the holiness of a society’s members is the existence of “institutions of perfection”, in which men are actually led to high standards of holiness. This was the case for the institutions of religious life, as well as the secular clergy. But the previously high standards of such institutions have been relaxed, and in many cases replaced with moral degradation. Once again, this is a setting aside of a means by which the Church’s holiness is made manifest.

So much for the note of holiness. The property of holiness would be shown to be absent in a society in different ways. For instance:

• The official promotion or promulgation of false, dangerous and immoral teachings and practices

• The toleration of such teaching and practices over a sufficiently long period of time

• The neglect of the active means of holiness over a similarly long period of time

• The treatment of what is evidently holy with neglect or contempt – or even attempts to suppress it.

But the Conciliar/Synodal Church minimises the positive means of holiness discussed above, and has promulgated doctrines and disciplines which are, as Cardinal Billot put it, “repugnant to holiness.”

The 2019 Open Letter, signed by Fr Crean and several others, accused Francis of a series of heresies, which amounted to “a comprehensive rejection of Catholic teaching on marriage and sexual activity, Catholic teaching on the nature of the moral law, and Catholic teaching on grace and justification.” This is incompatible with the holiness of a society or body of men. Since 2019, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has added Fiducia Supplicans to its roster of unholiness.

The authorities of the Conciliar/Synodal Church also routinely treat that which is holy with contempt – giving the sacraments to non-Catholics and to persons publicly living in sin, suppressing the traditional Roman Liturgy, and tolerating liturgical abuses which have, at times, resulted in the invalid or doubtful administration of the sacraments.

To conclude, the mark of holiness is difficult to verify in the Conciliar/Synodal Church. But this mark is a chief means by which the Church is made distinctly visible – thus making the supposed “perpetual visibility” of the Conciliar/Synodal Church similarly difficult to verify.

But further, the property of holiness is shown to be absent, through the promotion and toleration of unholy doctrines, laws, practices and rites, and the negative treatment of holy doctrines, laws and rites.

Thus, the Conciliar/Synodal Church is both not visible as the Catholic Church; and also visibly not the Catholic Church.

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Chapter III: Catholicity

“Catholicity” means “universality”. Theologians distinguish this into catholicity “de jure” (of right) and “de facto” (of fact).

The Church is catholic de jure in that she is, as Fr Berry wrote, “destined for the salvation of all men, and therefore endowed with the ability to spread to all parts of the world to fulfil that mission.” But this “destiny” and “ability” are internal aspects that are difficult (or impossible) to observe, and as such they do not constitute the mark of catholicity.

Catholicity is a mark insofar as it is catholicity of fact. This catholicity of fact refers to the actual diffusion of a society throughout many nations. It is this aspect that constitutes the mark of catholicity because it is easily knowable.

Catholicity of fact may be obscured by a) a significant reduction in the number of a society’s members in the world; b) a reduction of the number of nations in which these members are spread; or c) difficulty in locating officers of a society. Indeed, theologians recognise that it does not refer to being the largest religious society in the world, and that towards the end of the world, the Church’s spread may be restricted, diminished, and difficult to see.

It is undeniable that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is diffused very widely throughout the world. But a mark is a property manifested, and as we saw above, the manifest absence of a property nullifies what the mark would appear to be establishing, viz. the claim of a society to be the true Church.

Catholicity as a property would be manifestly absent in a society which does not enjoy catholicity de jure.

If a society does not even claim to have the right to spread to all nations, and that all men have a duty to be incorporated into it – or worse, if evangelisation is rejected as a sin and certain groups are told that they need not enter the Church – it cannot claim to be catholic.

But this is the case for the Conciliar/Synodal Church. This body has disclaimed de jure catholicity: its officers have repeatedly dismissed or rejected evangelisation under the name of “proselytism,” and the idea that all men and societies must submit to her authority. As a result, its missionary orders and impetus have also collapsed.

Eastern Orthodox

Consider The Balamand Declaration of 1993, which speaks of “passing beyond the outdated ecclesiology of return to the Catholic Church” and treats the Eastern sects as “Sister Churches.” Its “practical rules” forbid “proselytism”, which it twice insinuates was based on a “desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church.” It explicitly claims that the Eastern Orthodox “hierarchy” have received authority and responsibility for the faithful from the Holy Ghost, and states that the Catholic Church will refrain from engaging in activities without the agreement of the Eastern Orthodox bishops.

Most shocking is its rejection of the “conversion of people from one Church to the other in order to ensure their salvation.”

This document was explicitly praised by John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, and its ideas have been propounded other official documents of the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy.

The Jewish People

Let us now consider the situation with regard to the Jewish people.

The Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews states that “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.”

While its document The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable contains certain phrases that indicate the unicity of Christ as Redeemer, it equates the Church’s missionary activity with a quasi-pelagian attempt to save souls without God. In its place, it promotes “dialogue”, and the stated purposes of this dialogue are wholly naturalistic, without any reference of the need for Jews to convert.

The ideas of this document are prevalent throughout the Conciliar/Synodal milieu, with notable examples being John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline and Bishop Robert Barron. The key message is that Jews do not strictly need to enter the Catholic Church.

Treating whole classes of men as if the Catholic Church is not necessary for them is a denial of the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation, and equally a denial of catholicity itself.

But, as stated above, when catholicity de jure is visibly absent, the wide diffusion of the Conciliar/Synodal Church is just a façade. And even if this is not taken as the absence of the property of catholicity, it certainly represents a significant obscuration of the property. But if the defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal Church admit this, then they cannot deny our explanation on the basis that it posits the obscuration of the marks of the Church.

As such, the claim that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the “perpetually visible” Catholic Church is either refuted or significantly undermined.

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Chapter IV: Apostolicity as a Note

Apostolicity refers, as Salaverri explains, to “the perennial identity in the Church of the mission, which Christ gave the Apostles when he instituted the Church.”

This identity pertains to origin, succession and doctrine. The true Church must be the same Church founded upon the Apostles; its officers must enjoy a legitimate succession from them, with their “ordinary power” of teaching, ruling and sanctifying the Church; and it must teach and profess the same doctrine as them.

However, an identity between a society’s doctrine and that of the Apostles is difficult to verify with certainty, and so does not form a part of the mark of apostolicity. But as with the previous properties, we can say that manifest rupture with apostolic doctrine – much easier to verify than integral continuity – is a kind of “anti-mark” indicating that a body is not the true Church.

The true mark of apostolicity, however, is established by apostolicity of succession.

But even with succession, legitimate succession is difficult to verify. At the outset, we are met with the problem of identifying which law governs succession: that of Rome, or Canterbury, or Constantinople, or somewhere else?

This is why material succession, as opposed to formal succession, constitutes the note of apostolicity. Material succession is the continuation of one man after another in an office, without regard for legitimacy. Formal succession is such continuation according to law, in which the successors enjoy the authority of their office. The fact of a material succession from the apostles is more knowable than the legal conditions for formal succession.

Here, another problem arises: several societies claim to enjoy at least a material succession from the Apostles – including the Anglicans, and the various Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox sects. This is why material succession is a negative note: its presence does not identify the Church, but its absence identifies a false claimant. A body which does not even claim to enjoy apostolic succession shows that it enjoys neither the property nor the mark of apostolicity.

The Conciliar/Synodal Church has a strong claim to the note of apostolicity through material succession. But Fr Crean’s argument treats Leo XIV’s material succession to the papacy as a positive note, in that he makes his claim without proper regard for what would make this succession legitimate; he also begs the question, in using a kind of “argument from prescription.” This is a legitimate argument, and holds that long-standing possession, with no credible counter-claims, gives rise to a presumption of legitimacy. But it cannot be used when there are credible doubts about the legitimacy of a man claiming to be the Roman Pontiff – as, for example, when there are more than one claimants, or when there are credible arguments against a single claimant’s legitimacy.

Further, apostolic succession does not exist in a vacuum: it exists for the transmission of apostolic authority. This is a significant problem for defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy, which habitually renounces that authority, and fails to exercise it. In place of authority, it advises and cajoles on the one hand, and wields raw power on the other – issuing commands which cannot be laws, because they are manifestly contrary to the common good and the faith. This simulacrum of apostolic authority does not achieve the end for which ecclesiastical authority is ordered – for example, the unity of the Church in faith and charity, and the correction of doctrinal errors.

Thus, while defenders of the Conciliar/Synodal Church may point to men who enjoy a material succession from the Apostles – and who appear to exercise the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church (although what they promulgate are “acts of violence,”13 rather than laws), these “material successors” are not visibly successors in the relevant sense. As far as visibility is concerned, their refusal to be successors of the Apostles leaves them without the very raison d’être of apostolic succession itself.

As already mentioned, Romano Amerio referred to this as “the renunciation” or “non-functioning” of papal authority, and noted that “the renunciation of all other authority” is derived from it. There are many such examples, from Paul VI’s response to the rejection of Humanae Vitae, to Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s comments on excommunication to William F. Buckley. The recent pushes for a “Synodal Church” illustrate this further, with the 2024 document The Bishop of Rome setting out a model for a synodal papacy acceptable to the various anti-papal sects, and the Pope as a “first among equals.”

Apostolic authority was thus renounced in favour of both non-authoritative exhortation and administrative tyranny; later, a simulacrum of apostolic authority was resurrected to be used in a selective way, and which is visibly illegitimate through the object of its acts. It is in this sense that we may say that the renunciation of apostolic authority continues today.

In brief, the scholastic axiom holds that “agere sequitur esse” (“the operation of anything follows the mode of its being”). It is wholly unclear why we should believe that the Conciliar/Synodal hierarchy enjoys formal apostolic succession and apostolic authority under these circumstances.

In 1911, the Polish professor of Dogmatic Theology Fr Maciej Sieniatycki, wrote a series of anti-modernist articles, in which he explained how a “church” ordered along modernist principles would function. He states that if this occurred to the Catholic Church, “the old Church would be demolished”, and “would make it an invisible Church.”

The “church” which Fr Sieniatycki describes is very similar to that envisaged by the proponents of “synodality”, and even of the ideals of Vatican II.

Fr Mauro Cappellari, later Pope Gregory XVI, presented a similar line of argument about other changes to the Church’s constitution, stating:

“[I]f the government of the Church had been established by God as monarchical: once changed into aristocratic, it would no longer be the identical Church.”

Although these scenarios are hypothetical, because the Church cannot be “demolished” or rendered invisible, we can see that those who try to order a society in the ways described separate themselves from the Church; she would remain intact, but obscured to the extent that such men make use of her institutions in a way antithetical to her own principles.

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Chapter V: Apostolicity as a Property

Regarding apostolicity of doctrine, all parties agree that the society headed by Pope Pius XII and his predecessors was the true Church, and that what this Church taught was “the religion of Christ, genuine and unsullied” (Van Noort). This is the shared basis upon which this debate is possible.

Rupture with or contradiction of the definitive teaching of this Church is a rupture with apostolic doctrine, in the sense relevant to the question, as the “argument from prescription” demonstrates.

But the Conciliar/Synodal Church has committed itself to doctrines contradicting the teaching of the pre-conciliar Church – for example, the supposed right to religious liberty, and heretical sects as “means of salvation.” Thus, the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

Even if this conclusion is denied, no-one can deny the appearance of such rupture. This is proved by the number of studies attempting to reconcile such points with Catholic doctrine, in spite of the authoritative interpretation of the points of rupture by the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself. Further, even if these contrivances were accepted, the need for such a multiplicity of explanations is itself a phenomenon in need of explanation. And the sufficient and true explanation is that the Conciliar/Synodal Church, which is responsible for these contradictions, is not the Catholic Church.

Regarding apostolicity of origin, the previous chapters already established that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is a new body, distinct from the society founded by Christ on the Apostles. However, we can add that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not visibly the same society.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Catholics began asking whether the body that emerged from Vatican II was the same Catholic Church as before. This questioning has continued ever since, even by those who are unsure of the answer. Even many who insist that it is the same Church recognise the fact that enormous changes took place, and the fact that many people believed, suspected or worried that it was a new Church.

Thus, even if the Conciliar/Synodal Church was apostolic in origin, it would not be so visibly. The attempt to prove this identity between the pre-conciliar Church and the Conciliar/Synodal Church requires explanation, nuance and argument – which is overlooked in a simplistic claim that the latter is the “perpetually visible city on a hill”, easily recognisable by all.

In short, the attempt to reduce the question to the papacy, and the Conciliar/Synodal Church’s claim to “have” it, is to reduce apostolicity to material succession alone, without regard for these other aspects of the property of apostolicity.

But the material succession of this body as a note is nullified by its evident lack of the property of apostolicity.

And even if we conceded the note of apostolicity to the Conciliar/Synodal Church, this would do nothing to remedy the absence of even one of the other three notes/properties – let alone all three of them. As noted several times already, “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”.

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Conclusion

In this summary, we have seen that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is both not distinctly visible as the Catholic Church, and visibly not the Catholic Church.

• Unity: The Conciliar/Synodal Church is visibly divided in faith, teaching, worship, and discipline; its officers teach different and opposing doctrine, and open rejection of divinely revealed doctrine is treated as compatible with membership. This is incompatible with the Church’s necessary unity.

• Holiness: Unholy doctrines and practices are tolerated or promoted. This goes beyond obscuration, to a failure of the property itself. Further, the chief means by which the property of holiness is made manifest have been set aside, undermining any claim to it being visible.

• Catholicity: Though widely diffused, the Conciliar/Synodal Church has renounced catholicity of right by a programme towards certain sects which repudiates the need for conversion, implying that whole classes of men need not enter the Church for salvation. A society that abandons this mandate may be diffused, but this diffusion does not manifest the property of catholicity.

• Apostolicity: The current crisis and the state of the question mean that material succession to the Papacy cannot resolve the question as it might at other times. Apostolicity exists for apostolic authority and doctrinal continuity; yet authority is habitually set aside, and apostolic doctrine has been contradicted. Naturally this, and the absence of the previous three properties, also entails the absence of apostolic origin. Under these circumstances, material succession – which is also present in false sects – cannot manifest the property of apostolicity.

Precisely how and when this distinction between the society of the Church and the body of the Conciliar/Synodal Church arose is outside the scope of this summary. But in short, the answer is Vatican II, Paul VI’s attempt to impose a new religion on the faithful, and his successors’ continuity in his programme – which entails their lack of papal authority. They are, in other words, false popes. The result of these factors has been a radical obscuration of the Church by many who have ceased to be Catholics, and yet have not been expelled by authority.

And yet beneath those obscuring her, the Catholic Church remains, whole and intact. Indeed, the virtue of faith requires us to believe this: the idea that the Church has ceased to be is simply unthinkable.

The faith is of a different order of certainty to the legitimacy of particular papal claimants. As Archbishop Lefebvre said: “if it appears certain to us that the faith which was taught by the Church for twenty centuries cannot contain error, we have much less of an absolute certitude that the Pope be truly Pope.”

Fr Crean, however, presents us with a rhetorical dilemma: either Leo XIV is the Pope and the Conciliar/Synodal Church is the Catholic Church, or there is no Church at all.

But the dilemma is false, and extremely dangerous: the very idea that the claims of the Roman Catholic Church could be falsified is simply monstrous. Further, his own image – “the ruins of a city, from which men had taken bricks and stones to fashion for themselves a hovel in the valley” – in fact applies to the Conciliar/Synodal Church itself.

The discovery that the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church should not give rise to doubt, but merely to a renewal of the act of faith, and a proceeding to the next question: Where, then, is the Catholic Church?

The location of the Roman Catholic Church today is somewhat harder to verify than it was a century ago; but this is the very nature of an obscuration or eclipse.

The question itself – Where is the Church? – is easy to answer. She remains, as Pius XII taught, the body of men who have been baptised, profess the true faith, and have not separated themselves from the unity of the Body or been excluded by legitimate authority. At least in the Western world, this body of men is the body of traditionalists, along with some conservatives who remain materially entangled with the Novus Ordo structure. The Roman Catholic Church continues to exist, visibly, with her necessary properties intact. She is obscured by the non-Catholics that make up a large component of the Conciliar/Synodal Church, particularly in its hierarchy.

The more challenging question – and what many mean by the previous question – is this: Where is the hierarchy of the Church? We are compelled by the facts discussed in Zero Marks to conclude that the hierarchy is obscured.

In spite of any problems and obscurity with identifying one or other part of the Church, there is no need or reason to conclude she has ceased to be, or that she is what is called the Conciliar/Synodal Church. That this obscuration is possible was established beyond all doubt in Radically Insufficient. After all, as Salaverri says, the Church is inadequately visible, in the sense that “only some of its elements are visible.”

But the nature of obscurity is that a definitive explanation may not be possible; and we should not feel it necessary to have one prior to making an act of faith.

On the contrary, it seems best to us to rest in the act of faith, that what God has revealed continues to be true today, whether we can verify it on intrinsic or empirical grounds or not. We rest in the obscurity of faith, in which we have all the light which we need. As T.S. Eliot wrote:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. […]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Psalm 26

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? […]

I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.

Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.

Response to Fr Thomas Crean OP:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church (Reply to Fr Thomas Crean)

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Some other relevant articles:

• ‘No longer the same Church, if...’ – Frank Sheed’s red lines have all been crossed

• Polish theologian predicted Conciliar/Synodal Church and ‘puppet’ hierarchy in 1916

• The enemies of the Church and the note of holiness – Cardinal Billot

• How do you tell the true Church after a rupture? Journet’s answer

• The status of the Church’s hierarchy today

• Have we ignored apostolicity of government/succession and over-focused on that of doctrine?

• How long can the Holy See be vacant? Fr Louis Coache (and context)

• ‘Sedevacantism’ as a ‘pestiferous heresy’? Fr Ripperger’s accusation analysed

• Does a long vacancy interrupt perpetual succession? Fr Raphel Cercia SJ

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Preface

The following article is a summary of my long and detailed piece ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church.

While this work has been very well received, its length (over 42,000 words including footnotes) means that it is not exactly “accessible”. In the interests of accessibility, and myself discussed each of the five chapters of Zero Marks on , and then Integrity Magazine.

• Video: Visibility

• Video: Unity

• Video: Holiness

• Video: Catholicity

• Video: Apostolicity as a Mark

• Video: Apostolicity as a Property

• Video: Conclusion

With the same end of accessibility in mind, I am pleased to publish a summary version of Zero Marks, running at around 6,000 words. It is structured in the same way as the original, with direct links throughout.

Although at 6,000 words, it is not exactly the “executive” summary mentioned in the title, it is certainly easier for those who do not necessarily wish to get into the nuts and bolts of the affair.

What is Zero Marks all about?

Zero Marks was Part II of a long engagement (which is not quite finished) with an article by OP. Here are the articles so far:

1. ‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility

2. ‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church

3. ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy

Fr Crean’s short and popular article, originally published at Pelican+, was lauded by Dr as a “definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism”:

As my articles have shown, this is very much not the case.

While I have no doubt that Fr Crean wrote this article in good faith, intending to defend the Church, it was objectively an assault on the traditional understanding of her authority. For this reason, the enthusiasm of Dr Kwasniewski’s praise recalls a certain passage of Pope St Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

“Finally, the Modernists try in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To all the band of Modernists may be applied those words which Our Predecessor wrote with such pain:

“‘To bring contempt and odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light, science, and progress.’ (Motu proprio, Ut mysticum, 14 March, 1891) […]

“[T]hey load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with choruses of applause; for them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium […]”

Trying “in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium” is, in fact, the very essence of Dr Kwasniewki’s long-term project of “rethinking the papacy” – which also served as the subtitle of his two volumes The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism.

But there is a particular reason for publishing this summary now – and that is the “responses” the original has received from Dr Kwasniewski and Fr Crean himself.

The following analysis of these responses, and the summary itself, are for subscribers to The WM Review. It is FREE to subscribe:

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Introduction

This is the beginning of a serialisation of Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ long article The Wojtyłan Dictatorship (La Dictature Wojtylienne), published in Bulletin de l’Occident Chrétien, n^os 79 – 80 of April-May 1983. In it, he critiques addresses made at a conference by:

• Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan of Dublin

• Cardinal Godfried Danneels

• Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

• Cardinal Franciszek Macharski

The first part consists of his analysis of the addresses by Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal Danneels. These are relatively short engagements compared to what follows.

Mgr Guérard objects to what he calls Ryan’s phenomenological and humanistic account of catechesis, and then proceeds to Cardinal Danneels conflation of the fallen state of human nature with human nature as God made it – along with what he calls the heretical “prétérition” (passing over) of original sin.

Cardinal Danneels

Danneels is particularly interesting for two reasons. The first is that Archbishop Lefebvre pointed to his consecration as a quintessential example of why we must ask, “Are they priests at all […] are their ordinations valid?”

“They published booklets for this consecration. For the public prayers, here is what was said and then repeated by the crowd: ‘Be an apostle like Peter and Paul, be an apostle like the patron saint of this parish, be an apostle like Gandhi, be an apostle like Luther, be an apostle like Martin Luther King, be an apostle like Helder Camara, be an apostle like Romero....’ An apostle like Luther?! What intention did those bishops have when they consecrated this bishop, Msgr. Danneels?

“It’s frightening... Has this bishop really been consecrated? It can be doubted, all the same. If that was the intention of the consecrators, then it is unimaginable! The situation is even more serious than we had thought.”1

You can see our recent writing on this matter here:

• Priests punished for associating with SSPX – PLUS A survey of SSPX views on the validity of Novus Ordo orders

• ‘Positive doubt’ doesn’t mean ‘particular evidence’: More on conditional ordination and Novus Ordo priests

The other reason that Danneels is so infamous is that he appeared with Francis on the loggia after the 2013 conclave, and was a part of the so-called “Sankt Gallen Mafia” that reportedly had Bergoglio elected.

Entrée before the main course

We provide this first part for its own interest, but principally as the introduction for the rest of the article: Mgr Guérard’s incisive critique of Cardinal Ratzinger’s theology of “tradition”. This present part is, in some ways, an entrée for what follows.

In addition to that, we shall see that this paper contains some aspects of Mgr Guérard’s thought which have fallen into obscurity, in the course of debates about the “Thesis of Cassiciacum” and the vacancy of the Holy See.

Leaving aside the question of the Thesis, it is our hope that readers will see the truth of what Fr Reid Hennick said to us some time ago: that Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was indeed responsible for “some of the best writings on the crisis” that are available.

S.D.Wr.

This translation is for WM subscribers. Subscribe now for FREE!

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(WM Q&A) – We receive a lot of questions by email, and it can be difficult to keep on top of them. I’m going to try something new here by replying to these questions all at once in an article. Hope this helps!

Contents

• Can you be an integralist and a republican?

• Archbishop Viganò, capital schism and a recent interview

• Explaining the Sacred Heart

• Time after Pentecost vs. Ordinary Time

• Which ‘sedevacantist’ group should I listen to?

• How will you know the vacancy is over?

• I’ve never heard a ‘sede conversion story’, and you lot are all miserable

• What does “WM” stand for?

• Is the Catholic Church following Anglicanism into liberalism/modernism?

• Shouldn’t I attend my local parish?

This article for WM subscribers. Subscribe now for free!

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(WM+) – In the previous piece, we reported on the penalties inflicted on two priests – Fr Philip Conklin and Fr David Mary – for their association with the SSPX.

Since publication, FSSPX Actualités has affirmed that these two priests will be joining the Society:

In light of this, we published an advance copy of the fourth and final part of our series on Archbishop Lefebvre and the reformed rites of the sacraments:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

4. The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – Survey of opinions

That fourth part began addressing the question of an “official position” in the SSPX on priests ordained in the new rites, by considering whether such a thing can even be said to exist.

It surveyed those clerical members of the SSPX who have expressed doubts about the reformed rites of the sacraments or their use – showing first, that it is unjust to dismiss those who nurture such doubt as “sedevacantists” or as enemies of the Society, and second, that it cannot be said that there is a consensus within the SSPX on the matter.

In this piece, following on from the previous whilst marking the start of a new series, we will consider

• Why the issue is important

• The “state of the question” on an “official” position of the SSPX

• What this “official” position entails

• Whether video footage of an ordination can secure moral certainty

• Why analogies made with baptism contradict the arguments for the “official” position itself.

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(WM+) – In the space of a single week, two Novus Ordo priests have left or been removed from their respective dioceses, due to associating with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) – prompting swift canonical reprisals from their bishops.

Although they have widely been reported as having joined the SSPX as priestly members, it is not yet clear that this is the case.

UPDATE: FSSPX Actualités has affirmed these two priests to be joining the Society:

Father Philip Conklin

Father Philip Conklin was ordained with the new rite of priestly ordination by Archbishop Bernard Hebda just two years ago (25 May 2024), for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Before entering the Novus Ordo seminary, he joined the Air Force, with a view to a future career in air traffic control.

Following a sabbatical earlier this year to discern his vocation, Conklin informed his archbishop that he had decided to be “affiliated” with the SSPX.

Hebda announced the move in a letter to the parishioners of St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater, where Conklin had served since his ordination in 2024. Hebda stated that, because of this “affiliation” with the Society and Conklin’s refusal to end it, he has opened a canonical process to “clarify the situation and his status.”

“At the same time, I have also informed Father Conklin that he is not to exercise any public priestly ministry,” the archbishop wrote.

As of this writing, neither Conklin nor the SSPX has released a public statement confirming the nature of his “affiliation”.

Father David Mary of Our Lady of Sorrows

Days later, Bishop James Beckman of Knoxville, Tennessee revoked all faculties, permissions, and authorizations previously granted to one Father David Mary of Our Lady of Sorrows – a Franciscan living and operating in his diocese.1

A statement, dated 2 October 2026, said that the diocese had “become aware of ministerial activity associated with and supportive of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) being organized within the territory of the Diocese by Rev. David Mary Engo and other members of the laity.”

“He is not authorized to exercise public priestly ministry anywhere within the Diocese of Knoxville,” the diocese declared.

Beckman went further than Hebda, actively discouraging the faithful from contact with Fr David Mary:

“[T]he Bishop of Knoxville has not authorized, condoned, or approved the establishment within the Diocese of any priory, mission, chapel, foundation, or other apostolate intended to advance the purposes or ministry of the Society of Saint Pius X.

“The faithful are therefore strongly urged not to attend Masses, sacramental celebrations, retreats, conferences, or other religious activities organized or conducted by Fr. David Mary or in connection with this unauthorized ministry, and not to provide material or organizational support for his ministry or the establishment or maintenance of an SSPX apostolate within the Diocese.”

The Diocese of Knoxville had already suppressed all diocesan Traditional Latin Masses on January 1 of this year, in accordance with Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes.

It is unclear what exactly prompted these measures. In July 2026, he broadly expressed support for their positions in his “Friar Side Chats” podcast on the Franciscan Hermitage Foundation website.

It does not seem certain from the statement that Fr David Mary is about to join the SSPX as a priestly member, although it does suggest that there has been a certain amount of cooperation the Franciscan and the Society. At present, there are only internet rumours about his activities:

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But what should we make of the moves against these priests, and the possibility that they may become “affiliated” with the SSPX in the near future?

What follows is essentially Part IV of our series on Archbishop Lefebvre and the Novus Ordo Sacramental rites. The first three parts address the following topics:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

As Part IV rounds the series off by considering how the views expressed by Archbishop Lefebvre were continued within the Society which he founded, this part could be titled:

4. The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – Survey of opinions

As this piece will show, the grave concerns which many have about the validity of Novus Ordo holy orders can by no means be dismissed as “sedevacantism” or even “opposition” to the SSPX.

Following this part, we will consider the following in further articles:

• Why moral certainty is necessary when it comes to conferring, receiving or facilitating the conferral of the sacraments

• Current praxis with regard to this question

• The continuity of this praxis

• The role of videos and investigations

• Investigations into baptismal validity as an analogy

• What an investigation would need to involve

• The varying circumstances in which conditional repetition is justified

• The faithful and their rights

• Conclusion: The true reason to doubt

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The SSPX and Conciliar Ordinations – A Survey of opinions

The question of holy orders

As mentioned, it is not presently clear that either of these men will be joining the SSPX as priestly members. For Fr Conklin, the only data available is Hebda’s statement; for Fr David Mary, Beckman’s statement is vague,

However, the reception of priests ordained in the reformed rites raises a question which has been a source of persistent unease within the Society’s chapels for decades:

Can such priests be presumed to be validly ordained? Should they be conditionally “re-ordained” before being deployed in ministry? Upon what basis or principle should such a course of action be considered?

Speaking of one such priest being received into the SSPX without conditional ordination, Fr Robinson acknowledged that “a certain number of people who were not so happy… they were worried about Father’s ordination.”

Although those concerned by such issues are a minority in SSPX circles, the issue is evidently serious enough to warrant podcasts and articles on it from time to time. For instance:

• In 2021, Fr John McFarland appeared on the Crisis Series to address the question “Are Novus Ordo Priests & Bishops Validly Ordained?”

• In July 2025, Fr Paul Robinson’s Questions with Father #51 podcast addressed the question “Why the SSPX Doesn’t Always Conditionally Ordain”.

• In August 2025, Fr McFarland also condemned those who “pronounce” about such matters as being “sedevacantists” and “false mystics”, and condemned those who “whisper” about such matters as being “false prophets”.

Related aspects of the subject have also been raised in recent discussions about the SSPX’s previously longstanding policy of conditionally confirming anyone who had been putatively confirmed in the Novus Ordo rite.

However, three key points must be acknowledged on this topic:

• The “certain number of people” mentioned by Fr Robinson is not limited to “sedevacantists” or “false mystics”.

• The “certain number of people” is not limited to a few cranky lay people, but includes clerical members of the SSPX.

• The “certain number of people” almost all learned to doubt the validity of the new rites of ordination and consecration (and to affirm the corresponding necessity of conditional ordination) from Archbishop Lefebvre and bishops and priests of the SSPX.

Men of the SSPX teaching this opinion

Throughout the post-conciliar period, figures within the SSPX have expressed serious reservations about the validity of the reformed rites of holy orders, or have acknowledged the legitimacy of such doubt.

There is so much material to discuss regarding Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s statements on the topic, that a three-part study was necessary:

1. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

2. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

3. Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

We returned to the topic in the following articles:

• ‘I do not hesitate to administer conditional confirmation when asked’

• Classic study radically overstates Lefebvre’s position on holy orders

As I have already addressed his interventions in comprehensive detail, I will focus instead on what the clerical members of the SSPX have said on the matter.2

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais

In addition, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais expressed doubts about the new rites for conferring holy orders.

In 1998, the retired Filipino diocesan bishop Salvador Lazo y Lazo formalised his long-standing association with the SSPX with a powerful declaration of faith. In the same year, Fr Pierre-Marie Kergorlay sent Bishop Tissier de Mallerais a copy of Rama Coomaraswamy’s critique of the new rite of episcopal consecration, which called its validity into question.

Lazo had been ordained in the traditional rite in 1947, but he had been consecrated in 1970. This being after 1968, the rite used had been the reformed, Novus Ordo “new rite of episcopal consecration.”

Tissier’s reply, signed and with a handwritten postscript, was initially private but was published in 2000 after Lazo’s death. It read as follows:

“Thank you for sending me a copy of Dr. Rama Coomarawamy’s pamphlet ‘Le Drame Anglican.’

“After reading it quickly, I concluded there was a doubt about the validity of episcopal consecration conferred according to the rite of Paul VI.

“The [phrase] ‘spiritum principalem’ in the form introduced by Paul VI is not sufficiently clear in itself and the accessory rites do not specify its meaning in a Catholic sense.

“As regards Mgr Lazo, it would be difficult for us to explain these things to him; the only solution is not to ask him to confirm or ordain.”3

In the handwritten postscript, Tissier mentioned that Lazo had already confirmed several of the faithful, and he adds:

“Another thought: Mgr Lazo has already confirmed “quite a few” [people] with us. Obviously, this is valid because “the Church supplies” (canon 209), because a simple priest can confirm with jurisdiction.4 And it is difficult to see how to make our doubt known to Mgr Lazo. So silence and discretion about this, please!”5

There are some obvious similarities between Lazo’s situation and that of the late Vitus Huonder.6

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais never released a study on this issue, or engaged with the debate in great detail in the intervening years. Nonetheless, he took a surprisingly public position on the question of the validity of the new rite of priestly ordination in his ordination sermon of 29 June 2016.

During the sermon, he referred to the anointing of the ordinand’s hands, saying:

“Now, dear faithful, this marvelous anointing of the priest’s hands has been falsified (truquée) by the conciliar Church for the past 46 years. Paul VI instituted other words, which speak neither of consecration nor sanctification. That is why we carefully preserve this treasure of the ordination prayers.”7

He continues, discussing the prayer said by the ordaining bishop when he presents the chalice and paten to the ordinand, which was removed in the new rite of ordination:

“Now, this beautiful prayer has been falsified (truquée), once again, by the conciliar Church, in the new rite of ordination where the bishop presents the chalice and the paten, with the wine and the host, yes, simply saying: ‘Receive the gifts of the faithful to offer them to God.’

“So what is that? You receive the gifts of the faithful to offer them to God? That’s it? We do not receive the gift of the faithful, we receive the gift of God, which is Our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed on the cross, to offer Him again to God His Father. That is the truth!

“We obviously cannot accept this falsified (truqué) new ordination rite, which casts doubts on the validity of many ordinations performed according to the new rite.”8

He then discusses the prayer in which the ordaining bishop signifies the power to forgive sins, which was also removed in the new rite of ordination:

“Now, dear faithful, this prayer, this rite of transmitting the power to forgive sins, has simply been removed from the new rite of ordination. It is no longer mentioned.

“Therefore, this new ordination rite is not Catholic. And so we will, of course, continue faithfully to transmit the real and valid priesthood, truly valid, through the traditional rite of priestly ordination.”9

Stating that “this new ordination rite is not Catholic” is very striking, and has striking implications, but this is not all. Throughout this section, Tissier uses words related to truquer, which is a strong word which could be translated as to falsify, to fake, to tamper with, to trick – in all cases, implying more than a simple change or alteration.10

It is also remarkable that he used the word “valid” twice at the end, the second time with emphasis. The features of this text clearly indicate that Tissier doubted the validity of the reformed rite of ordination. It is true that he was discussing prayers which did not make up the sacramental form for either the traditional or the Novus Ordo rites; nonetheless, his concerns pertained to the effect that such changes might have had on the validity of the separate sacramental form (perhaps via obviating the sacramental intention of the ministers, as expressed by Lefebvre and argued by Fr Álvaro Calderón).

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Bishop Richard Williamson

Although he was expelled from the SSPX in 2012, we cannot refrain from commenting on the views of Bishop Richard Williamson; as one of the four bishops of 1988, and rector of SSPX seminaries for many years, his influence is too great to ignore.

Bishop Williamson’s position on the present question was somewhat ambiguous: he was famously enthusiastic about Eucharistic miracles that took place at Novus Ordo Masses, but he was also very generous in bestowing conditional ordination (and, we are told, consecration) on those who sought it.

It has been alleged that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre told the four bishops consecrated in 1988 that they should not pursue a systematic programme of conditional ordination. However, this claim is false. Shortly before Bishop Williamson’s death, Fr Reid Hennick (formerly of the SSPX) visited Broadstairs, and asked the bishop about the truth of this claim.

Hennick has relayed to this author that Williamson had “firmly” rejected the claim. He stated that Lefebvre had advised caution about ordaining unsuitable men – not that he had advised a general presumption of validity, or that he had presumed the intrinsic validity of the new rite of episcopal consecration (NREC). Hennick said:

“He rejected such an interpretation of Archbishop’s admonition not to ordain conditionally. He is convinced Abp Lefebvre wanted people conditionally ordained, especially after 1988.”

He continued:

“Bishop Williamson stressed the importance of referring to the Archbishop at the height of his maturity, after the 1988 consecrations. At that point, he said, the Archbishop’s thinking was clear. He even cited the now-famous post-1988 note Lefebvre wrote in English to an American layman, declaring that ‘all their sacraments are doubtful.’”

It may be objected that Bishop Williamson was mistaken about what Archbishop Lefebvre said, or was even lying about it. Without engaging with such desperate objections, let us note that the point here is what Bishop Williamson thought, not whether Bishop Williamson was right to think what he thought.

In addition to this, Bishop Williamson was an enthusiastic advocate of Fr Álvaro Calderón’s analysis of the question – to whom we shall turn after a brief consideration of Fr Pierre-Marie’s study.

Fr Pierre-Marie Kergorlay

In 2005, Fr Pierre-Marie Kergorlay of the Dominicans of Avrillé published a study purporting to refute that of Rama Coomaraswamy (which had already convinced Bishop Tissier de Mallerais), and to establish the validity of the new rite of episcopal consecration.11 In 2006, Fr Anthony Cekada responded to Fr Pierre-Marie with his own study, arguing instead for the intrinsic invalidity of this rite.12 This prompted a further exchange of studies in the following years.13

This is still the standard, foundational study to which many refer. However, while many treat it as establishing that there is essentially “nothing to worry about”, Fr Pierre-Marie actually states the following:

“Given the difficulty of the thing, the usage that seems to prevail among traditionalists is to conditionally re-ordain priests ordained by the conciliar Church and returning to Tradition. This prudential measure obviously does not weaken the conclusion of our study on the validity of the new rite in itself.”

He also acknowledges that, while he holds it to be valid “in itself”, there are many circumstances that could render a particular ordination doubtful or invalid, and as such:

“It would be necessary to examine each case.”

(Note that he says “each case”, and not “only the present case before us.”)

Despite being responsible for the most commonly-cited study in favour of validity, the Dominicans of Avrillé publicly accepted Calderón’s practical conclusions in 2023.14 We have addressed his study in the following articles:

• Classic study admits invalid rites would NOT destroy hierarchy

• Classic study calls conditional ordination a ‘measure of prudence’

• Classic study radically overstates Lefebvre’s position on holy orders

• Have the Avrillé Dominicans move beyond their new rite of episcopal consecration study?

Fr Álvaro Calderón

The debate on validity did not seem to progress further in the time from Fr Cekada’s response to Fr Pierre-Marie (with most holding that one or the other had definitively settled the question), until Fr Álvaro Calderón released his 2014 study.

A respected theologian in SSPX circles, and based in the Argentine seminary, Fr Calderón took a more nuanced approach than either Fr Pierre-Marie or Fr Cekada. While he believed the new rite was probably valid, he recognized that moral certainty is required for the conferral and reception of the sacraments. In the absence of this, conditional repetition is necessary. As such, he concluded that conditional ordination/consecration was necessary in all cases for clerics joining the SSPX:

“If we consider the matter, form and intention of the new rite of episcopal consecration in the context of the rite and in the circumstances of its institution, it seems to us that it is most probably valid, because it not only means what it should mean, but most of its elements are taken from rites received­ by the Church.

“But we believe that there is no certainty of its validity, because it suffers from two important defects, one canonical and the other theological […]

“But the positive and objective defects that this rite suffers, which prevent certainty of its validity, seem to us—until there is a Roman judgment, for which many things would have to change—to justify and make necessary the conditional reordination of priests consecrated by new bishops and, if necessary, the conditional reconsecration of these bishops.

“Such uncertainties cannot be tolerated at the very root of the sacraments.”

• Is Paul VI’s New Rite of Episcopal Consecration valid? (Fr Álvaro Calderón)

Fr Peter Scott

Fr Peter Scott wrote another foundational paper about the validity of the new rite of ordination. His position is somewhat contradictory in places,15 but he concludes with the following:

“For regardless of the technical question of the validity of a priest’s holy orders, we all recognize the Catholic sense that tells us that there can be no mixing of the illegitimate new rites with the traditional Catholic rites, a principle so simply elucidated by Archbishop Lefebvre on June 29, 1976:

“‘We are not of this religion. We do not accept this new religion. We are of the religion of all time, of the Catholic religion. We are not of that universal religion, as they call it today. It is no longer the Catholic religion. We are not of that liberal, modernist religion that has its worship, its priests, its faith, its catechisms, its Bible….’”

Fr Scott emphasises the need for both priests and laymen to follow the SSPX’s leadership in whatever they decide on the matter – but they can hardly be blamed for taking the paragraphs above seriously.

Fr Nicolas Portail

Fr Peter Scott also refers to a comment made by Fr Nicolas Portail, in Le Chardonnet n. 224, Jan. 2007. Although Fr Portail also considers the rite to be valid per se, he is less sure that it can be relied on in practice. He states:

“Faced with this perplexing situation, the sacramental rules are explicit: leave nothing to chance. One doubt, a simple probability of invalidity, and the sacrament must be given again, whatever it may be. This may explain the reordinations made here and there in Tradition and denounced by the sedevacantists. It is not a question of a refusal in principle of the validity of the sacraments of the conciliar Church, but of a prudential attitude, similar, for example, to that which can be found in the case of the conditional baptisms of Protestants converted to Catholicism.

“It is therefore to be feared that priests and bishops of the official Catholic Church are not endowed with the sacramental powers corresponding to their identity.

“It is also very likely that when truly ordained conciliar prelates use the traditional rite for the ordinations of the rallies, they retain the intention that is usually transmitted to them by the use of the conciliar sacraments. This made certain young priests of the Fraternity of St. Peter, ordained on June 29, 1993 by Archbishop Decourtray of Lyon, say that ‘you [in St. Pius X] are more sure of your ordination than we are!’

“It is nevertheless true that the Paul VI rite is valid in itself and, when used normally, does confer the grace of the episcopate on the consecrand.” (Emphases in the original)

• À propos du rite d’ordinations reforme par Paul VI (Abbé Nicolas Portail)

Fr Gérard Mura

In 1993, Fr Gérard Mura wrote a “theological study” on the episcopal consecrations of 1988, in which he pointed out several ways in which the “Ecclesia Dei” groups were compromised, including by their dependence on conciliar bishops in general, and on Cardinal Ratzinger in particular.

Before setting out three ways in which these groups were sacramentally dependent on bishops such as Ratzinger, he says the following:

“Finally, let us consider the sacramental aspect. The bishop’s actions regarding ‘Ecclesia Dei Catholics’ in this area touch upon three main points: the holy oils of Holy Thursday, confirmations, and the conferral of Holy Orders.

“But before that, there are the orders of the bishop himself. It should be remembered that Cardinal Ratzinger was consecrated in 1977, therefore with the new rite. However, there are doubts about this new rite, on the one hand in its Latin formula, on the other hand in its vernacular translations, but above all in the concrete ceremonies of ordination and consecration, which are too often seriously fanciful or accompanied by declarations by the consecrator or the consecrand, which give rise to legitimate concerns about the intention necessary for validity.”16

After this, he adds – somewhat contradictorily:

“Let us clarify our point well: it is in no way polemical. […] We do not wish to cast suspicion on the validity of his episcopal consecration, nor do we wish to claim that the confirmations he confers according to the new rite are systematically invalid, nor do we wish to affirm that the holy oils used by the Barroux, the Fraternity of St. Peter or the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrier are devoid of sacramental value.

“What we wanted to emphasise, through the example of Cardinal Ratzinger, is that the ‘Ecclesia Dei Catholics’ do not have a bishop who, on the doctrinal level, on the pastoral level and on the sacramental level, is absolutely sure and absolutely traditional. They have therefore not really obtained on this point what Archbishop Lefebvre legitimately demanded and are therefore in a very precarious situation.”17

In this section, Mura also states Novus Ordo confirmations and extreme unction are doubtful, not only because of the use of oils other than olive oil, but also because the form of confirmation is itself doubtful:

“There exist, finally, grave doubts concerning confirmation conferred according to the new rite, both with regard to the form, since the proper grace of confirmation is not clearly expressed, and with regard to the matter, since the oil of confirmation is precisely one of those blessed on Holy Thursday.”18 (Emphasis added)

• “Les sacres épiscopaux e 1988: Étude théologique (II)” (Abbé Gérard Mura)

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Fr Michael Johnson

In 2023, Fr Michael Johnson preached a sermon in which he stated clearly:

“Personally, my conviction is that Novus Ordo priests are not validly ordained. And I could go into a long, deep discussion of this, but I won’t here – maybe some other time. They’re not. I don’t believe they’re priests, because the sacrament which supposedly ordains them priests – and really they’re only ordained as ‘celebrants’ and ‘facilitators’, not as priests (they don’t even like the word ‘priests’) – is so lacking that it is not capable of effecting that miracle, making that man into a priest.”

^{Video courtesy of Novus Ordo Watch}

Fr Matthias Gaudron

Although he is known to be strongly in favour of the validity of the new rites, Fr Matthias Gaudron did write in his Catechism on the Crisis in the Church:

“Because of the defects presented above, one should not receive the sacraments in the new rites, but only in the traditional rites, which alone are worthy and certainly valid.

“Receiving the sacraments under a form that is even slightly doubtful is not allowed.”19

Abbé Henri Mouraux

Abbé Henri Mouraux, while not a member of the SSPX himself, was a close collaborator of the Society. At his golden jubilee of priestly ordination, Archbishop Lefebvre praised him effusively; and yet Mouraux was not only a “sedevacantist”, but also had written at least four issues of his bulletin Bonum Certamen on the issue of the new rites of ordination and consecration:

• ‘Are men ordained since 1968 priests?’

• ‘How long will we still have valid bishops?’

• ‘Paul VI’s rite of ordination is invalid, copies Anglican rites’

• ‘Paul VI’s rite of episcopal consecration is invalid’

The old edition of Frequently Asked Questions about the Society of Saint Pius X

Finally, the FAQs on the old and archived pages of the American SSPX website contain the following comments on why Catholics could not legitimately attend what was then called “the Indult Mass”:

“If we have to agree to the doctrinal and juridical value of the Novus Ordo Missae, then NO, for we cannot do evil that good may ensue.

“This condition may not be presented explicitly, but by implication, such as:

• by a priest who celebrates the Novus Ordo Missae on other days of the week or at other times,

• using Hosts consecrated at a Novus Ordo Missae,

• or with communion in the hand;

• new lectionaries, Mass facing the people, etc.,

• by a priest who was ordained in the New Rite, [Emphasis added]

• by sermons that are modernist in inspiration (much to be feared if the celebrant habitually says the Novus Ordo Missae); or

• by offering only the revised forms of the other sacraments, e.g., penance.”

In other words, association with “a priest who was ordained in the New Rite” was presented as implicitly accepting “the doctrinal and juridical value of the Novus Ordo Missae.”

Conclusion

In this overview of SSPX figures expressing this position, I have avoided mentioning those who have left (or were ejected from) the SSPX, and yet who nurtured such concerns before their departures – with the exception of Bishop Williamson.

However, I could mention in passing:

• Fr William Jenkins, who left the SSPX in 1983 and joined the Society of St Pius V. In 1981, he wrote an article for the SSPX-affiliated publication The Roman Catholic on the doubtfulness of the reformed rite of priestly ordination.

• The “Naughty Nine” – the nine priests (Frs Clarence Kelly, Donald Sanborn, Daniel Dolan, Anthony Cekada, William Jenkins, Eugene Berry, Martin Skierka, Joseph Collins and Thomas Zapp) who broke with the SSPX in 1983 listed this issue as the first of their six main concerns. (Incidentally, it is not correct that this break was over “sedevacantism”: not all of the nine held to this position,20 and it was only lightly touched upon in their fourth concern – “Magisterial Authority”.)

• Fr Fábio Calixto, who left the SSPX in 2025 specifically over the issue of Novus Ordo priests being deployed in the SSPX milieu without conditional ordination.21

For obvious reasons, I have also avoided mentioning those who have not made their concerns public knowledge – and yet they certainly exist.

What is the point of this survey? I am not suggesting that those mentioned all share exactly the same position, or that their concerns are of the same nature and degree. But it does demonstrate that concerns about the validity of ordinations in the Novus Ordo do not pertain solely to “sedevacantists”,22 nor to supposedly ignorant laymen – and that the presentation of a “consensus” within the SSPX is misleading.

These concerns have been expressed by actual clerical members of the SSPX, and it is from them that many others came to hold their views – including those which locate the problems in the rites themselves, rather than just their administration. Neither these clerical members, nor those who have been persuaded by their arguments, can justly be dismissed as “sedevacantists”, or as diverging from “the position of the SSPX”.

On the contrary, it does not seem right for those who hold to the view that conditional ordination is not systematically necessary should impose their view on the minority. To adopt such a position, even if only in practice (through deploying such priests into ministry) is an implicit claim to have settled this disputed question – which is beyond the competence of any party except the Holy See itself. This overreach can lead to serious problems of conscience for those holding what cannot be a legitimate position on an open question.

Having considered this survey, the rest of this mini-series will address the following questions:

• Why moral certainty is necessary when it comes to conferring, receiving or facilitating the conferral of the sacraments

• Current praxis with regard to this question

• The continuity of this praxis

• The role of videos and investigations

• Investigations into baptismal validity as an analogy

• What an investigation would need to involve

• The varying circumstances in which conditional repetition is justified

• The faithful and their rights

• Conclusion: The true reason to doubt

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Read Next:

• Archbishop Lefebvre & Conditional Confirmations—His pastoral practice explained

• Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Sacraments—Do they ‘come from the Church?’

• Archbishop Lefebvre & Conciliar Ordinations—Practical Doubt

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2026 was the summer of laïcité for me and my family.

Item I: The Fort of Brittany

During our summer vacation, we found ourselves on the beach in Brittany, France, where about a dozen of my nieces and nephews were building a massive pyramid fort with a moat.

The pictures won’t do it justice, but it was the biggest beach construction I’ve ever seen.

This is the kind of thing this family of French kids do for fun, and between the big labour force they had, and the garden spades they were using, they made something really impressive.

At the top of the pyramid, as you will have seen, they had planted a red and gold flag of the Sacred Heart – also the sign of the Vendean resistance to the French Revolution several centuries ago

Most people who wandered by stood and admired it, and some congratulated them on their work.

However…

One older couple came over. They weren’t happy. They objected to the kids having a “religious symbol” in a public place. They angrily said it was contrary to “laïcité”.

One of my nephews responded, “It’s the symbol of the Vendée”. The argument continued, until the couple walked towards the path away from the beach. The woman stayed there for a while, talking to people angrily about the construction. Then she made a phone call about it.

Not having good enough conversational French to get into an argument with a member of the public, and conscious of being a visitor, I decided to loiter near the rocks and see if she was calling the police or not. She ranted for a little while – before wandering off. No police arrived.

But this wasn’t my first brush with laïcité of the vacation.

Item II: The Funeral Home

Aside from visiting family, this summer vacation also included the funeral of my wife’s late aunt. (Please pray for the repose of her soul.)

She was a much loved figure, and lost her fight with cancer just before we left. We hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and had been led to think she’d hang on a bit longer.

After her death, the family commissioned the town pompes funèbres (funeral home and undertakers) that they’d used for several other loved ones.

For every other death in recent years, these chaps provided a good service. The bodies of the deceased have been laid out in a spacious enough room, and we’ve been able to go and keep vigil and pray the Rosary with them in the lead-up to the funeral. The undertakers even join in with the prayers at the graveside (something you wouldn’t see in England).

But this time, we were told that they wouldn’t be able to provide the standing crucifix that they had installed for the previous family members.

Why? “Par souci de laïcité” – because of concern for this quasi-sacred notion of laïcité.

Just to labour the point: They wouldn’t provide the same standing crucifix they’d always provided before, to be put in a private room to which the family had the key, and no members of the public would have seen it. “Because of concern for laïcité.”

Item III : The Speedos

The third summer incident was recounted to me by a friend and colleague, who also spent the summer in France.

He took his little girl to the swimming pool, and was wearing a pair of swimming shorts – upon which were emblazoned the name and logo of the swimming brand, Speedo.

In spite of this, a member of staff informed him that he wasn’t allowed to wear those shorts in the swimming pool.

The reason? Well, the reason stated was that it was because they were a bit “puffy” and were “street clothes” – even though they were made by Speedo.

My friend was directed to a vending machine, where he was able to purchase a pair of lycra-style swimming shorts. Not wanting to disappoint his little girl, he complied. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

He was also told that he was not allowed to wear a shirt specifically designed for swimming – for the same reason.

He found himself back at the pool later in the vacation: in spite of the humiliation of having to wear such grotesque shorts, the children cannot be disappointed. But it was on this second occasion that the humiliation was consummated: a Frenchman informed him that he had a hole in the seat of his swimming shorts.

What does any of this have to do with laïcité? And what is laïcité anyway?

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What is laïcité?

Laïcité is a word which doesn’t have a direct translation in English. It is a principle of the French constitution which sums up the ideas of secularism, and the separation of Church and state. It appears in the first article of the French Constitution. But – as the examples above show – it is nothing like what Americans would think of by those terms.

Americans and other western nations generally hold that the civil authority should not establish any one religion as the official state religion, should protect “freedom of religion”, and avoid involving itself in the administration or life of any religion.

However, laïcité goes further than that. It enjoys an enormous and quasi-sacred character, being bound up with the French Revolution, the “guerre scolaire” (a long conflict over the role of the state and the Church in education), the 1905 “Law of Separation”, and – for many – French identity itself. Frankly, it is surprising that the word is not engraved on municipal buildings underneath Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.

It enshrines a default separation between religion and civil life as the rule: events like processions and so on are permitted at times, but the general idea is that religion is a private matter, and so remains in the private sphere; and that the public sphere should be kept free from any one religious group. This inevitably means that it should be kept free from all religious groups.

Similarly, the principle tends towards the idea that individuals are to avoid emphasising their own religious differences in public.

The pedigree of this idea is the French Revolution. After a period of bloody persecution of the Church, laïcité came to be a kind of compromise position. But the real meaning of this doctrine is that civil society must be “protected” against the Catholic Church – which is to say, it must be “protected” against God.

The Church has condemned the idea on many occasions. It is a violation of the First Commandment, which enjoins the worship of the true God, according to the way in which he has revealed he is to be worshipped. Each individual is bound to obey this commandment, and this is so whether he is on his own, or with his family, or organised as civil society. This is why the Popes referred to the growth of laïcité as a principle – both in France and elsewhere – as a “deliramentum”, or as “legal apostasy”. The doctrine of Christ’s “Social Kingship” is diametrically opposed to it too.

The Church’s teaching on these matters is explained here:

• Separation of Church and State is a sin: here’s why

• Nobody has the ‘right’ to be wrong

• Does the state have the right to restrict non-Catholic religions?

In 1925, the French Cardinals and Archbishops released a Declaration which expressed this openly and clearly:

“The laws of laïcité are unjust, first of all, because they are contrary to the formal rights of God. They proceed from atheism and lead to it in the individual, familial, social, political, national, and international order. They presuppose the total disregard of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Gospel. They tend to substitute for the true God mere idols (liberty, solidarity, humanity, science, etc.); to de-Christianise all lives and all institutions.”

Only after this fundamental injustice do they state the temporal problems caused by this ideology:

“They are unjust, moreover, because they are contrary to our temporal and spiritual interests. Let them be examined: there is not one among them that does not strike us at once in our earthly goods and in our supernatural goods.”

They list the following:

• The education laws

• The law of separation

• The law of divorce

• The laïcisation of hospitals.

By contrast, as Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas, the proper relationship between Church and State – one in which the State recognises the true religion, and offers corporate worship to God – is one which brings both spiritual and temporal blessings.

“He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. ‘For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?’ If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ.”

This is a non-negotiable part of the Catholic faith, enshrined in the First Commandment, and sadly denied by the Second Vatican Council’s Dignitatis Humanae.

Laïcité and Islam

As is clear, laïcité is fundamentally an aggressive concept. However, over time, it has become particularly directed at Muslims.

Certain measures – such as the public-space bans on the hijab, the abaya and the “burkini” – have been “paid for” with laïcité – resulting in corresponding bans on Christian symbols and basic modesty as well.

These bans – and the principle of laïcité – have been supported even by the “Far Right”, in the form of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (formerly Front Nationale). This party’s support for laïcité is why a certain number of Catholics are less than enthusiastic about Jean-Marie's daughter.

Here we can illustrate the point, with the incident described above in Item III (The Speedos).

Some say that French laws about swimwear at swimming pools date from the early twentieth century, and they are ostensibly about hygiene, dirt, and the wearing of street clothes in the pool. For similar grounds, several local authorities in France have banned the “burkini” – a full-body swimsuit commonly used by Muslims, out of concern for modesty.

The same hygiene rules against streetwear in pools are cited for this – but so are the “concerns for laïcité.” Back in 2016 – shortly after a terrorist attack, and the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel – newspapers reported that a woman on a beach in Nice was ordered by police to remove her “burkini”. Another woman was also fined for wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf on a bean in Cannes. This was followed by several bans – one of which stated that accessing beaches and swimming locations were prohibited…

“[T]o any person not wearing appropriate attire, respectful of good morals and laïcité, respecting the hygiene and safety rules for swimming adapted to the public maritime domain.”

What did the French “right wing” have to say about this?

It is often said that the terms “right wing” and “left wing” are essentially liberal, in that they refer historically to the two wings of the post-revolutionary epoch. Nowhere is this clearer than in France – even though the cordon sanitaire serves to exclude the the “far right” from getting in. (As shown by the Catholic favourite François Fillon giving his support to Emmanuel Macron in 2017, as a means of avoiding the Front National from winning.)

At the time of the ban, Marine Le Pen referred to the “burkini” as a “fundamentalist uniform”, and called it an “absolutely extraordinary regression”, and stated that “Nobody can say that it is an act of freedom for women.”

“We want to live in a laïc political system,” she said. “If people have a problem with that, it’s their problem.”

While she claimed that her opposition was a reaction to “the rise of Fundamentalist Islam in France”, rather than to Catholics or Jews – and that the ban did not extend to the garb of clerics or religious – she nonetheless condemned those who wish to “dress differently”.

Naturally, we have no sympathy for Islam qua Islam; but we do have sympathy for Muslims (and anyone else) qua people who want to dress modestly – even if some might consider the “burkini” to be unnecessary or excessive.

The conclusion is clear: concern for modesty in swimwear is forbidden, being understood as disrespectful to “good morals” and the untouchable value of laïcité – even according to the “great right hope”, Marine Le Pen.

Conclusion: Leo XIV’s comments in France

In light of all this, we can see that – despite not being a true Pope, or even a Catholic – Leo XIV raised a point well worth discussing when he visited France in September 2026. French laïcité is completely out of hand, and is fundamentally and aggressively anti-Catholic in nature.

He said:

“A Christian engaged in public service and is guided by the light of his or her conscience illumined by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the nation. Indeed, authentic secularity [laïcité] does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.

“That is precisely why Catholic schools have a rightful place in the educational landscape of a country like France. This is part of a broader issue essential to any dialogue, in schools and in society as a whole: learning to know and love ourselves, in order to be able to encounter others with respect and openness.

“An authentic secularity, then, consists not in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education, but in striving to ensure that the State and religious institutions maintain dialogue and join forces in the service of the common good, that the world may have life. […]

“Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like once again to thank you for this meeting. Indeed, to echo the words spoken by Your Excellency to the Bishops of France in 2018, it serves to show how ‘a Church that claims to be uninterested in temporal matters would not be fulfilling her vocation; and that a President of the Republic who claims to be uninterested in the Church and in Catholics would be failing in his duty.’ Be assured of my fervent prayers for your great nation.”

But while Leo XIV appears to critique this notion of laïcité, and even the separation of Church and State, what exactly are we looking at here? What is an “authentic laïcité”, in this context, and who is Leo XIV to tell the French Republic what it is?

These questions – and the supposed “precedents” found in the teaching of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII – will be the subject of another article.

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Editor’s Notes

In the process of preparing some further material on laïcité and Leo XIV’s recent comments in France, I made a translation of the following discourse of Pope Pius XII, delivered on 23 March 1958 – just a few months before his death.

In this speech, delivered to the men of the Italian Marches living in Rome, Pope Pius XII appears to use a phrase very similar to that of Leo XIV – that of a “legitimate and sound secularity” (legittima sana laicità). The word laicità is, of course, very similar to laïcité – but as we shall see in due course, this is a case of linguistic “false friends” (when words in two languages look or sound the same, but have different meanings or nuances).

In the meantime, however, this discourse – delivered to the Marchigiani (people of the Italian region of the Marches) living in Rome – is of a markedly different character than was expected, given the way that it was presented this weekend.

First, “secularity” plays a very minimal role in the speech. It’s just a passing comment towards the end.

Secondly – and which was a surprise – the speech contains a strong emphasis on the importance of pride in one’s region, nation and even one’s blood – subordinated, of course, to the Church.

For example, Pope Pius XII speaks to the Marchigiani of their region:

“It therefore has a value of its own, which must be preserved and, insofar as is possible, increased. The region signifies, in the first place, a certain homogeneity of blood, because populations are generally accustomed to form their families in the place where they habitually live.

“And since man inherits, through his material part, a whole complex of inclinations, which the soul may freely transform but which nevertheless remain permanent in so many aspects, it follows that the virtues of your ancestors live again in you – that is to say, in certain of your inclinations.”

He tells the Marchigiani:

“[Y]ou should have a just pride in belonging to your region; that you should recall with satisfaction your glories and your memories; that you should cultivate with modesty and tenacity your traditional virtues […]”

He then tells them to take pride in being a region of Italy, in the following terms:

“[I]n order that this pride of yours and this legitimate love of predilection for the Marche may not degenerate into a form of inferior regionalism, it is necessary that you aim higher, that you look to the common fatherland, to Italy.”

He even critiques those who seek to eschew the language of “fatherland” [patria]:

“One encounters today at times citizens seized almost by a fear of showing themselves particularly devoted to their fatherland. It is as if love towards one’s own land could necessarily signify contempt for the lands of others; it is as if the natural desire to see one’s own fatherland beautiful, prosperous within, esteemed and respected without, must inevitably be a cause of aversion against other peoples. Nor are there lacking those who avoid even pronouncing the word ‘fatherland’, and attempt to substitute other names thought more suited, it is believed, to our times.”

What he says of pride in Italy is really quite striking.

We have previously published material on the proper ordering of patriotism and love of one’s nation, which must always remain subordinate to the law of God and supernatural charity:

• Love of nation must be subject to the laws of God – Pope Pius XI

• What does the Catholic Church say about immigration?

All in all, however, what Pope Pius XII says of the Church makes perfectly clear that his comments about laicità have nothing to do with Leo XIV’s praise for the distinct French notion of laïcité – as we shall explain in a future article.

S.D.Wr.

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Discourse of His Holiness Pius XII to the Residents of the Marche living in Rome

Vatican Basilica – Sunday, 23 March 1958

Available in Italian

Greetings and praise for the Marchigian people

We could no longer delay in responding to your filial request for a meeting with the common Father, beloved sons and daughters. The Pious Sodality of the Picenes, which carries out its own beneficent activity in the City and which gathers around itself the memberships and the support of the Marchigian colony in Rome, has wished to make itself the interpreter of all of you; reminding us with a courteous thought of the beginning of particular bonds between Our family and the Marchigian land of Sant’Angelo in Vado, it has requested this meeting which, while it gladdens Our spirit, brings joy to you as well.

Rome was indeed for a long time the almost exclusive destination of your internal migration; today, you are one of the largest communities here (as has been authoritatively noted), and to this community belong predominantly citizens who do honour to your land by the uprightness of their lives, the dedication of their work, and the conspicuous role that they not infrequently exercise. Whoever contemplates this solemn gathering can appreciate this, because he has the opportunity to observe the fervour of your faith, as well as the diversity and the merits of those present.

We therefore give you Our paternal welcome, and We congratulate you on the spirit of legitimate attachment to your land, to its values, to its traditions.

Praise for the Marches themselves

Your region presents itself with the enchantment of its sea, of its sky, with the richness and variety of its lands: in general, with its natural aspects, gentle to the sight as they slope down from the mountain ridges to the shores of the sea. On your hills, especially, there is an entirely varied and smiling vegetation; on the pleasant slopes the vine and the olive tree flourish everywhere, while in the southern plains, which Mount Conero shelters from the northern winds, the air is perfumed by orange blossoms.

In your cities (whether they lie on the plain, like Fano, Senigallia, Ascoli; or on a plateau, like Jesi; or in a valley, like Fabriano; or on a hill, like Osimo, Recanati, Fermo, Macerata; on the mountain, like Cingoli and Urbino, and, even higher still, Camerino; whether they lie between plain and mountain, like Tolentino and San Severino; or whether they stretch, finally, almost upon the slope of two mountains, like Ancona and Pesaro), all are built with taste and propriety, all appear clean and polished and full of serenity and peace to the eyes of those who visit them.

The Marches are called a “young land” by geologists, because they include some of the most recent formations of the peninsula. But whoever wishes to study your region in its geographical, geological, and historical aspect needs to consider the millennia, to encounter them. For your life – and therefore your history – is a life and a history of millennia; it suffices to look at the evident signs of the civilisation of stone, in the Palaeolithic and Eneolithic phases, and the signs of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

The populations of the Marches, who were once warlike – as vast findings of weapons in burial grounds attest – today appear sober, discreet, industrious; nor do they lack the merit of an innate gentleness and of a great, even if ordinarily composed, cordiality. There are today in the Marches, as in truth there always were, men who knew and know how to excel in the sciences and the arts in various ways; many have carried their fame throughout the entire world.

Pope Pius XII’s instruction to the Marchigians

Here We are, then, in your midst as Father of your souls; here We are to bless you with all the effusion of our heart; here We are to say to you a word of comfort and of instruction. Your presence, beloved sons, makes our thought turn to the problem of the Regional Authority, around which there is still division of opinions and an abundance of disputes. We leave to those whose duty it is (and therefore to many among those present, who have the qualities and the capacity to do so) the framing and the resolution of this problem. We should like instead to set before you some of Our reflections, which We hope may help you to be good Marchigians, good Italians, good Christians.

Be good sons of your region

1. The region is without doubt one of the many units which the force of circumstances, even more than the free will of men, has constituted within the various States. It therefore has a value of its own, which must be preserved and, insofar as is possible, increased. The region signifies, in the first place, a certain homogeneity of blood, because populations are generally accustomed to form their families in the place where they habitually live. And since man inherits, through his material part, a whole complex of inclinations, which the soul may freely transform but which nevertheless remain permanent in so many aspects, it follows that the virtues of your ancestors live again in you – that is to say, in certain of your inclinations. If these, let us suppose, are more easily subordinated to the spirit, it may be said that your fathers have been effective in creating in you a favourable inclination toward probity, toward uprightness of conduct, toward a sense of industriousness.

But there exists in the region a whole complex of strictly spiritual values, and these are the glories of the people: military glories, literary glories, scientific glories, artistic glories. There are moreover the specific graces bestowed upon it by God: graces of salvation, of sanctification, of apostolate.

The Marchigian population, perhaps favoured also by its geographical situation, has been able to preserve a homogeneous patrimony of its own and certain traditional virtues that are not easily found elsewhere. There is in you a sense of personal reserve and of modesty joined to frugality, which does not, however, make you averse to succour those most in need, and to succour them effectively, radically, as the beneficent activity of the Pious Sodality of the Picenes also attests. You have not felt so strongly as other regions the intermingling with universal history; but this has favoured in you a recollection which is without doubt also a richness. As for spiritual values distinctively your own, it suffices to think of the Holy House of Loreto, in order to see there a most special blessing of Mary, who has caused you to be visited (and continues to cause you to be visited) by innumerable souls who come to you bearing an attitude of sincere piety, of ardent faith, of profound humility, as well as a spirit of mortification proper to every truly devout pilgrimage.

That you should have a just pride in belonging to your region; that you should recall with satisfaction your glories and your memories; that you should cultivate with modesty and tenacity your traditional virtues; that you should maintain yourselves in noble competition with the other regions for the purpose of reaching certain goals alone – or, if that is not possible, first; that you should feel yourselves Marchigians even while living in Rome – this is what makes us say our first word to you, a word of affectionate paternal satisfaction.

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Be good sons of your ‘fatherland’

2. But in order that this pride of yours and this legitimate love of predilection for the Marche may not degenerate into a form of inferior regionalism, it is necessary that you aim higher, that you look to the common fatherland, to Italy.

One encounters today at times citizens seized almost by a fear of showing themselves particularly devoted to their fatherland. It is as if love towards one’s own land could necessarily signify contempt for the lands of others; it is as if the natural desire to see one’s own fatherland beautiful, prosperous within, esteemed and respected without, must inevitably be a cause of aversion against other peoples. Nor are there lacking those who avoid even pronouncing the word “fatherland”, and attempt to substitute other names thought more suited, it is believed, to our times.

Certainly, beloved sons: it must be said that not the least among the signs of a disorientation of spirits is this diminished love of the fatherland, of this greater family given to you by God. When, moreover, the fatherland is called Italy, there is no one who does not see what special reasons there are for feeling oneself bound to it with the bonds of affectionate devotion. Situated in the midst of the sea which sees the crossroads of the world’s routes and joins the three greatest landmasses, Italy is, in a certain sense, the geographical centre of the globe; so that all peoples have passed and repassed through it, contributing to endow it with a universal, comprehensive, and open character such as is not easily found in other nations. It can indeed be said that Italy does not belong to the Italians alone, because it belongs to all peoples. So it was in past history; so it shall be in the future.

Roman Law is the patrimony of humanity; Thomistic Philosophy, which was born in Italy, is among all philosophies the most universal, because it presents and illustrates the hierarchy of being; the Divine Comedy is at once a national poem and a poem of the universe, just as humanity gathered in the anxious expectation of the judgement of God is the supreme expression of the art of Michelangelo. To this should be added that Greco-Italian culture is the initiator of the culture of Europe, and therefore of modern culture.

Italy, conceived and willed by God as the land in which the centre of His Church has its seat, was the object, as of a special love of His, so of a most special action of His. For no people has, like the Italian people, its destinies joined with the work of Christ.

Happy to be members of the great Marchigian family, be therefore no less solicitous of your belonging to Italy. Do generously all that you can to transform it or confirm it as a nation that lives and works in tranquillity and order. Some of your best men are in the front rank of this peaceful battle. But precisely because the heart of the Church is in Italy, it is easy to foresee that the enemies of God will work in every way to sow in it the tares of subversion, the poison of hatred. To place obstacles before the universal (and therefore Christian) mission of Italy is to betray Italy itself, because it is as though one wished to diminish and even destroy its true greatness.

Be good sons of the Church

3. But love of fatherland too can degenerate and become excessive and harmful nationalism. In order that this may not happen, you must aim far beyond even the fatherland itself; you must look to the world. But there is only one way to look at the world while continuing to love the region and to love the fatherland: one must become conscious of a supreme reality – the Church. One must be a living part of her.

Let individuals be a living part of the Church; let them subordinate everything to the divine grace that is to be preserved and increased; ready to overcome every obstacle, to face even death rather than lose the faith, rather than lose grace. So did a young girl born among you in the Marchigian land: Maria Goretti.

Let your families be a living part of the Church. In the most celebrated Sanctuary, the Holy House of Loreto, there shines forth the memory of the holiest of families: the Holy Family. Look to it as your model and imitate it: make Jesus the centre of your homes, the absolute ruler of your minds and of your hearts.

Let your cities be a living part of the Church. There are in Italy those who are agitated because they fear that Christianity takes from Caesar what is Caesar’s. As if to give to Caesar what belongs to him were not a command of Jesus; as if the legitimate and sound secularity (laicita*) of the State were not one of the principles of Catholic doctrine; as if it were not the tradition of the Church to make a continual effort to keep the two Powers distinct, yet also, always according to right principles, united; as if, on the contrary, the confusion between the sacred and the profane had not been most strongly brought about in history when a portion of the faithful separated themselves from the Church.

The cities will be a living part of the Church if in them the life of individuals, the life of families, the life of great and small communities, is nourished by the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is love of God and, in God, love of neighbour – all of it.

Christian individuals, Christian families, Christian cities, Christian Marches.

Let the Marches become entirely like a great Holy House; and let the Marchigian family be one, great Holy Family!

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Editor’s Notes

In a moment I will tell you about four great conferences from a Women’s Day of Recollection a few months ago – the first of which is already linked above. But before getting into that, let me tell you what’s prompted sharing these conferences.

Last week, the organisation Restore Tradition held their 5th annual Women’s Conference, which was about how “to learn the meaning of true femininity through our speakers’ dynamic talks”.

It featured an array of popular speakers from the conservative / “recognise and resist” wing of the Conciliar/Synodal Church:

• Michael Matt: Christ or Chaos (Keynote Address)

• Fr Chad Ripperger: “The Sins of Eve, Feminism and Our Lady.”

• Abby Johnson: “Why I became a Catholic” (A moving story of conversion)

• Rachel Mastrogiacomo: “Out of The Darkness and into the Light” (How one woman overcame priestly abuse and found healing in the Traditional Latin Mass.)

• Matt Gaspers: “Fatima and the Final Battle” (Sister Lucia spoke of the Final Battle which will be about Marriage and the family)

• Fr Joseph Dalimata FSSP

• Jodi Lacroix: Finding Order out of Chaos with Christ (Breakout Session)

• Fran Pierson: Freemasonry – Lucifer’s useful Henchmen (Breakout Session)

However, this conference became mired in drama and controversy.

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Michael Matt’s cringeworthy (and possibly blasphemous) comments

First, videos surfaced of The Remnant Newspaper’s Michael Matt ludicrously telling his female audience that it was their responsibility to “lead us back to sanity”, and (probably blasphemously) referring to Our Lady as “the ultimate feminist”:

^{Video clipped by Sede Picante (fair use).}

There is little to be said about the potentially blasphemous quality of these words – and it’s already been addressed elsewhere.

• Michael Matt rebuked for claiming Mary was a feminist, telling women they ‘need to lead us back to sanity’

We could note, however, the dissonance between Fr Chad Ripperger giving a talk which condemns feminism as “the curse of Eve on steroids” – and Matt attributing it to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a superlative degree.

A digression on AI, prompted by a slop defence of Matt’s comments

Matt’s critics were later referred to an essay defending his comments, by “₿enedict Schweizer” – a “Passionate and aspiring entrepreneur” based in Zürich, whose interests are listed as “#Fintech #Swiss #Bitcoin #MEGA.”

Schweizer’s X article (Mary, the “Strong Woman” — Why Michael Matt’s Point Is More Catholic Than His Critics Admit) counts in at around 3,000 words, and has all the style hallmarks of AI-generated slop. Take a skim of it yourself and see.

And indeed, when I copy/pasted it into Substack to run Pangram’s AI detector analysis on it, it produced the following result:

(I often find myself longing for opponents of greater credibility. What honour is there in being opposed to persons who publish such material, or who promote it, or who are responsible for speaking the nonsense that it defends?)

In my opinion, the problem is not strictly AI-generated content, but slop – which humans can produce without the assistance of AI. That said, I do object to the inequality imposed by those who expend no energy in writing their material, and yet expect readers to engage and refute what their chatbot has produced for them – as I said earlier in the year to someone whose essays reeked of slop, and yielded the same results:

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Subversiveness of Matt’s topsy-turvy philosophy

What Matt expresses is completely topsy-turvy. Consider the following:

• Archbishop Fulton Sheen is widely praised for claiming that the laity will save the Church, by making sure that the clergy and religious do their job properly.

• Fr Chad Ripperger claims that “you get the leaders you deserve”, and that the crisis in the Church is caused and perpetuated by because “a vast majority of the Catholics in the Church are leading habitual lives of grave sin.” The way to fix that, he says, is to become “holy ourselves, so that we merit having leaders that we’re worthy of.”

• Michael Matt claims that women will lead men through their “feminine power”

Subjects are made responsible for the actions of their superiors, victims are blamed, and impossible burdens are imposed. What next?

• Will children be made responsible for women being good mothers?

• Is the dog called to make sure the children are good?

• Perhaps a bone or a rubber ball in the back garden is actually the ultimate “McGuffin” that will solve the crisis in the Church.

There is a truth to the idea that “we get the leaders we deserve.” But this is a perversion of it. The reality is that the problem is at the top. That’s what Romano Amerio said:

“The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing [this disunity] is the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”1

The Holy See is vacant, suffering a crisis of authority and it has its effect all down the chain, in every aspect of life.

Until that is recognised, everything else is pedalling a bike with no chain – and punching down, blaming those who are deprived of the exercise of authority.

Women have qualities, skills and influence that are uniquely theirs, and they can be used for great good or for great evil. But Catholic women do not be fed the “purple pill” (or even outright “blue pill”) nonsense of it being their responsibility to lead and save men.

You can read more about this bizarre set of comments, if you so wish, over at Integrity Magazine:

• Michael Matt rebuked for claiming Mary was a feminist, telling women they ‘need to lead us back to sanity’

Cancelling a speaker mid-speech

Rachel Mastrogiacomo was scheduled to give a talk on the Saturday afternoon, titled “Out of The Darkness and into the Light” (How one woman overcame priestly abuse and found healing in the Traditional Latin Mass.)

For some reason, reportedly, the MC interrupted Mastrogiacomo’s talk twice, with the second cutting her talk short. Apparently this took place when she was talking about the defects of the Novus Ordo rites.

Mastrogiacomo later gave the full talk on the YouTube channel Pitbulls of the Lord Spiritual Warfare, run by Eira Wulfnothsson. Wulfnothsson describes herself in the following terms:

“Ave Maria-- as an ex-occultist of 4 decades and now a traditional Roman Catholic and consecrated Marian, I serve The Lord through a Mandated Catholic Exorcist. I am no stranger to evil ‘past or present.’ And yet I am no stranger to grace as The Lord shows his mercy, love and peace with each breath I take. On this channel I share my journey, the joys and crosses, and share the aspects of Spiritual Warfare which have been the backbone of The Liberation Ministry of The Catholic Church since its inception. I will shine a light on the magickal rites used against you from the world stage. I’ll decode the public rituals so you might recognize them and inoculate yourself against them. I’ll share with you the reasons symbolism and psychology matter to our evil overlords. You'll learn of fallen angels and demons and the protocol and prayers which counter them. All, In Jesus Name.”

Whatever we might think of all this, it’s difficult to imagine Mastrogiacomo saying something more offensive or absurd than Michael Matt (who was not censored at all).

Conclusion

What is there to say?

Who needs this kind of drama?

Not me – and not Mrs Wright either.

I am not aware of everything said by the other speakers said at this conference, and I am sure that many of the women had a good time there. It’s a shame that it has become surrounded in drama, as those organising it will have had the best of intentions – even aside from the mainstream “Recognise and Resist” angle of the speakers (which did indeed come up at points). But from what we’ve seen, I can say this with confidence: if I had paid money for Mrs Wright to endure all this, I would not be happy about it.

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This is why I am sending readers these four conferences by priests of the Roman Catholic Institute, at a Women’s Day of Recollection at Queen of All Saints chapel in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The event took place in March 2026.

The first two talks are by our friend – who should be familiar to readers of The WM Review by now – Fr Reid Hennick. Fr Hennick was ordained in 2016, and was a member of the Society of St Pius X until February 2025. Earlier this year, he joined the Roman Catholic Institute.

On the subject of the RCI: Sister Mary Savio’s fundraiser for her really complex surgery is currently sitting at $84,452 out of the $92,000 needed. That means they’re just 8% away. I’m so proud of the response of The WM Review’s readership – can we help them raise that last $7,548 needed?

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

Both of Fr Hennick’s conferences are based around the concept of the “virago” – the courageous woman:

1. The first conference takes the somewhat negative-sounding word virago, and uses it to crack open a question the ancient world couldn’t answer: if virtue etymologically means “manliness,” then what does a virtuous woman look like? Working through Genesis, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr Hennick explains why feminine strength isn’t a watered-down copy of the male version, and that although the Romans couldn’t even conceive of it, it was present in Genesis from the beginning.

2. The second conference builds on the first, by showing how grace elevates feminine nature’s traditional “weakness” – her affective, empathic constitution – into a source of extraordinary spiritual strength, and he shows where the definitive model of the virago is found. But Fr Hennick soften what he’s saying for the audience: as well as naming the “weakness” which weaker speakers would avoid, he identifies four obstacles to feminine fortitude, namely inconstancy, mercy without truth, vanity, and the temptation to control.

The second two conferences and the short final comments, were given by Fr Hennick’s colleague Fr Tobias Bayer. Fr Bayer, an American and Colombian by nationality, was ordained in 2022 by Bishop Donald Sanborn.

3. The third conference lays out six duties of a Catholic wife. Fr Bayer talks about what to when your husband walks through the door after a bad day, the impact you have on your children when you convey disapproval, and what to think about the cooling of marital love.

4. The fourth conference names the remaining six duties, and drives at the most important one, which is getting your children’s souls to heaven. Everything else is worthless, if it costs them their faith. Fr Bayer is blunt about what this looks like in practice.

5. The final exhortation turns the series of conferences into a mission and a challenge.

Perhaps next year, Restore Tradition could invite Frs Hennick and Bayer to their conference.

First Conference: Virago – The Call to Feminine Fortitue (Fr Reid Hennick):

Second Conference: Virago – The Call to Feminine Fortitue (Fr Reid Hennick):

Third Conference: For Catholic Wives (Fr Tobias Bayer):

Fourth Conference: For Catholic Mothers (Fr Tobias Bayer):

Final Exhortation (Fr Tobias Bayer):

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And if you liked these talks from these two RCI priests, then please consider helping out with Sister Mary Savio’s fundraiser. They have so far raised $84,452 out of the $92,000 needed.

At just 8% away, can The WM Review readership help them raise that last $7,548 needed?

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

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(WM Round-Up) – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò recently spoke about “sedevacantism” in an interview with LifeSiteNews. LifeSiteNews has, in turn, published my response to his comments.

• Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply

Here is what the Archbishop said:

“I answer that sedevacantism and papolatry are two mirror-image errors, born from the same premise: that the person and the office coincide. The papolatrist says: since this man is pope, everything he does is good. The sedevacantist says: since what he does is not good, this man is not pope.

“Both begin from the identification that I contest, and for this reason both find themselves disarmed before reality. I say instead the only thing that the facts permit: that the office belongs to Christ, that the one who occupies it today truly occupies it, but that he exercises it against the end for which it exists.

“That a pontiff may fail in his mandate is not my thesis: the question of the papa hæreticus was debated for centuries by the most authoritative theologians, and the Church never resolved it with a definition.

“Saint Robert Bellarmine enumerated the opinions without closing the question, and gave the faithful the practical rule that is sufficient for me: sicut licet resistere Pontifici invadenti corpus, ita licet resistere invadenti animas – “just as it is lawful to resist the Pontiff who assaults the body, so it is lawful to resist him when he assaults souls.” To resist: not to depose.

“Because this is precisely the point. To depose a pope, or to declare the See vacant, is an act of jurisdiction, and no private individual – whether bishop or layman – possesses the jurisdiction to perform it.

“Whoever arrogates such power to himself commits, in reversed form, the same abuse that he reproaches Rome for: he makes himself the measure of that of which he is only the guardian. And he suffers the consequence: a Church without a visible See, without the possibility of a future pope through the ordinary means, without any other criterion than the private judgment of those who have declared it vacant. It is a path that ends in a dead end, and I have seen it close in on too many sincere souls.

“There is then a more humble reason, and for me a decisive one. I do not know what the ultimate solution to this mystery is, and I do not presume to know it: a pope or a council will resolve it, or Our Lord Himself when He wills. But I know what my duty is in the meantime, and it requires no juridical sentence. It is not my place to depose a pope: nor is it my place to follow him into error, and as a pastor I have the duty to warn the Lord’s flock.”

Here is a preview of my response:

“Following the release of his recent essay The Capital Schism, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò gave an exclusive three-part interview to LifeSiteNews.

“The interview covered a range of topics about the state of the Church. In the third part, he made a number of critical comments about “sedevacantism” and explained why he is not a “sedevacantist.”

“However, a number of these criticisms were “wide of the mark.” Whether one holds to the “sedevacantist” conclusion or not, it is necessary that such criticisms address what “sedevacantists” actually believe and argue.

“This is a response to his criticisms and certain misconceptions behind them, and will be made in the same dispassionate and respectful way that Viganò himself addressed the question.”

Head over to LifeSiteNews and read the reply in full – and leave a comment over there if you’re so inclined.

• Archbishop Viganò and the Seat of St. Peter: A respectful reply

It’s a long piece (nearly 8,000 words), but a priest who is a friend of The WM Review described it in the following terms:

“One of the most efficient, comprehensive articles you’ve ever written.”

Enjoy!

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Dear Readers,

This is an update on Sister Mary Savio’s dramatic quadruple surgery – and a request that readers of The WM Review help her family’s fundraiser get over the $92,000 line.

I’m only going to send you this one last email about their fundraiser.

So far, they’ve raised 82% – that’s $74,583 – in five days.

That’s an incredible result.

I could see a lot of WM Review readers clicked through to her fundraiser.

And I was really pleased to see some familiar names in the list of donations after we sent the email out.

What would be really great to see is the Sisters reaching their target before the next round of surgery starts.

Or even before tomorrow morning….

Can we help them hit that remaining $17,417 today?

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

In the previous email I sent on this matter, I told you that Sr Mary Savio had really serious brain surgery earlier in the year.

Her parents explained in the GoFundMe that these four operations were to treat:

• A replacement of the L5 disc in her lower spine

• May-Thurner syndrome, a compression of a major vein in the pelvis

• Nutcracker syndrome, a compression of the vein draining the left kidney

• Superior mesenteric artery (SMA) syndrome, a compression of the small intestine that makes eating painful and has contributed to her weight loss

The surgery started at 8am on Friday.

It lasted for four hours.

A few hours in, her family gave an update on Facebook:

“Thank you to everyone from my family for the prayers. Please continue them. Sister Mary Savio has made it through the first two procedures, the spine prosthetic and May-Thurner compression. Everything is stable. The doctors are going to continue with the next two procedures.”

However, the doctors then decided to delay the remaining operations, and give Sister Mary Savio the time to recover. They’re supposed to take place this week.

It’s more important than ever that Catholics support communities like the Sisters of St Thomas Aquinas.

Why’s that? Well, here’s what Pope Pius VI wrote about such congregations, in his 1791 letter Quod aliquantum, on Revolutionary France’s “Civil Constitution of the Clergy”:

“[N]uns, that most distinguished portion of the flock of the Catholic faithful, have often warded off the greatest scourges by means of their prayer:

“‘If there had been no consecrated virgins in Rome,’ says St. Gregory the Great, ‘not one of us for many years past would have escaped the swords of the Lombards’.

“Benedict XIV renders the same tribute to the religious women of Bologna: ‘This city, buffeted by so many calamities for so many years, would not be standing today if the prayers of the nuns had not appeased the ire of God.”1

In other words: some cities would not even be standing today, were it not for the prayers of consecrated women.

(That reminds me of God’s promise to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if just ten just men were found there. We’re going to need these prayers as things go forward…)

Pope Clement XIV also taught about the outstanding benefits these congregations provide for the Church:

“It is indubitable that among those elements which work most effectively for the good and the well-being of Christian society, the first place must be given to the religious Orders from which the Universal Church of Christ has received in every age assistance, help, and adornment.

“That is why this Apostolic See, not content with approving and encouraging them, has showered benefits upon them – exemptions, privileges, and powers – in order to incite them by these means to constant progress in piety and holiness, in the moral instruction of the faithful by word and example, in maintaining and strengthening the unity of the faith among believers.”2

If you don’t support religious communities – don’t be surprised the awful results that follow:

• In place of progress in piety and holiness, we’ll have impiety and sin

• In place of moral instruction, we’ll have degeneracy and degradation

• In place of the unity of faith, we’ll have heresy and division.

Sister Mary Savio’s fundraiser is the perfect opportunity to provide real, material support to a faithful religious congregation – currently suffering urgent need.

Wouldn’t it be great to see the Sisters hit the target by tomorrow morning?

Perhaps you haven’t given yet – and were waiting to see if they could do it themselves. Well, they’re still 18% down.

Perhaps you’ve already given – but you’d like to give again.

Whichever it is: will you help the Sisters TODAY to pay for Sister Mary Savio’s extensive medical interventions?

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

The Sisters of St Thomas Aquinas were founded by Bishops Donald Sanborn and Joseph Selway, and they are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Institute and Most Holy Trinity Seminary.

They hold to the authentic Catholic faith – rejecting the new religion of Vatican II.

• Their precise position is the Thesis of Cassiciacum – that the Holy See is currently vacant formaliter (whilst being occupied materialiter).

The Sisters are especially dedicated to the education of Catholic children. An important part of the congregation’s activity is running Queen of All Saints Academy – which teaches in-person classes in Florida, and has an innovative remote learning programme for the rest of the world.

The Devil hates faithful religious orders – as is clear from the satanic revolutions of history, which have always struck at them with great brutality.

He must be filled with even more rage when they are engaged in helping educate Catholic youth.

I think this is what prompted some of the obnoxious online treatment of the Sisters earlier in the year.

When they advertised a vocations retreat for young women, a certain Fr Matthew Schneider – a member of the Legionaries of Christ (the congregation founded by the disgraced priest, drug addict, sexual offender (of individuals of both sexes) and a father of six illegitimate children, Marcial Maciel) – decided to accuse them of being in schism.

Schneider – also known for his podcasts on Vatican II, and his enthusiasm for the COVID vaccines – also accused the Sisters of being “the real modernists”!

A community, like the Sisters of St Thomas Aquinas, that openly confesses that the Church is suffering an extended vacancy of the Holy See will always struggle to raise funds when compared to those that do not.

And they need the funds to support their members through thick and thin.

But while Marcial Maciel’s Legionaries of Christ and other Vatican II communities had no need to worry about finances (at least while their “Founder” was alive), congregations like the Sisters of St Thomas Aquinas can’t rely on big bailouts from the Novus Ordo establishment.

They’re dependent on ordinary Catholics like us.

Seeing as the Sisters are dedicating themselves to maintaining a traditional religious life, and providing a Catholic education for children all over the world, can you give them a hand and help them reach the remaining $17,417 needed for Sr Mary Savio?

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

And while you’re at it – make sure you share the GoFundMe with anyone who you think would like to help:

Share

Thanks and all the best,

S.D. Wright
Editor of The WM Review

PS: Last week, the Sisters announced a Novena to St Thérèse in the days leading up to her feast on October 3rd, for Sister Mary Savio’s intentions.

If you can’t afford to give, then that would be a good way to support them.

But if everyone reading this email gave $30 TODAY, they’d reach 100% of their total by the morning.

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

PPS: Religious communities are dependent on the support of the faithful.

But the faithful are also dependent on them too.

I already told you what Pope Benedict XIV said in Bologna:

“This city, buffeted by so many calamities for so many years, would not be standing today if the prayers of the nuns had not appeased the ire of God.”

I can’t list all the ways in which the world is falling apart right now. We need holy religious sisters, or it’s game over.

You know very well that an appeal like this is a very rare occurrence at The WM Review – and I won’t be sending another email about it.

So please take this last reminder as an opportunity to help them reach their target tonight:

Sister Mary Savio's GoFundMe

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Editor’s Notes

On 10 March 1925, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France – the precursor to the French Bishops’ Conference – published a “Déclaration” against “the so-called laws of laïcité”. This is a translation of that Déclaration – which not only condemns the “so-called laws” and the concept of laïcité – but also sets out a concrete programme of action.

The word laïcité does not have a direct translation into English – perhaps because our language is too pure to have a word for such a perverse concept, and we have never really had to find a single word to describe it. It is a principle of the French constitution, which sums up the ideas of secularism and the separation of Church and state.

It is an aggressive concept, as it is fundamentally about the “freedom” of the public sphere from the influence of the Catholic Church – as the Déclaration below explains. Today, such laws are often invoked in order to prevent certain public expressions of the Islamic religion – including modesty at the beach or swimming pools (!) – but they continue to serve as obstructions to the Church, and a block against the civil authority discharging its duties to God and the true religion.

We recently reviewed the new book from – a new translation of Fr Théotime de Saint-Just’s classic work, The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie – to which I wrote a foreword. This Déclaration is included in French in an appendix to this new book.

Here is what Fr Théotime had to say about it:

“Since [the First World War], the question of the social kingship has made immense progress. It has penetrated the depths of our people, and hundreds of thousands of French signatures are asking the Pope to establish a liturgical feast celebrating the social kingship of the Sacred Heart throughout the universe.

“From a doctrinal point of view, the issue reached its climax in the Declaration of the Cardinals and Archbishops of France on the So-Called Laws of Secularism.

“This splendid declaration, a true charter of liberation, a luminous counterpart to the obscure and sacrilegious Declaration of the Rights of Man, is, since the [First] Vatican Council, the most important spiritual event of our time. In our opinion, it is the last doctrinal step before the supreme condemnation of secularism and the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the social kingship of Jesus Christ by a General Council.”

The Déclaration is a striking document, with many instructive points for our own time. For example: it says that it is “very desirable” that “publicists and lecturers” be “formed and prepared seriously”, and that “in particular they study the treatises on the Faith, on the Church, and on the State.” It may be possible that this is a reference to Cardinal Pie’s comments, cited in the work already mentioned

“If a good faculty of theology,” he said, “recruited ten or twelve lay students from various parts of France each year, if they came to study a good course in philosophy according to St. Thomas, a course in natural law, a course in Christian social law and ecclesiastical law, the country would be transformed.

“In ten years, a hundred students would have received this education, and even if half of them did not take advantage of it – for we must anticipate failures – the others would bring to the functions of the state and to the liberal professions, to the great benefit of the country, this knowledge that only priests possess today and that no one else has any idea about. Twenty or thirty superior men, well versed in the science of law, supported by the principles of which the Church has remained the sole repository, would have an enormous influence either in a national assembly or in the management of various public offices.”

Some simple works on these topics could include:

• Philosophy (including natural law): An Introduction to Philosophy (Mgr Paul J. Glenn)

• Faith: Laying the Foundation: A Handbook of Catholic Apologetics and Fundamental Theology

• The Church: The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise (Fr E. Sylvester Berry)

• The State: Sociology: A Class Manual In The Philosophy Of Human Society (Mgr Paul J. Glenn)

And of course:

• The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie – Fr. Théotime de Saint‑Just O.M.C.

More advanced works could include:

• Philosophy: The sky is the limit here, but a step up from Glenn’s Introduction would be his individual “Class Manuals”:

  • Dialectics (formal logic)

  • Criteriology (major logic or epistemology)

  • Ontology (metaphysics and being)

  • Cosmology (the physical world)

  • Ethics (natural law and moral philosophy)

  • Psychology (intellectual, animal and vegetative life)

  • Theodicy (natural theology)

• Faith:

  • On Divine Revelation: The Teaching of the Catholic Faith (Fr Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange)

    • Vol. I

    • Vol. II

  • The Theological Virtues: Vol. I. On Faith

• The Church: Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB: On the Church of Christ • On Holy Scripture (Fr Joachim Salaverri SJ, Fr Michaele Nicolau SJ)

• The State: The Framework of a Christian State (Fr Edward Cahill SJ)

The Déclaration also states that, over the last several decades, we have become habituated to the idea that it is acceptable to vote for a candidate who represents the “lesser evil”. The habituation has, in some cases, turned acceptability into duty.

“In the mind of these serious men,” the prelates say, “the theory of the lesser evil, pushed beyond all bounds, has brought us defeats and misfortunes ever more irreparable, which we could have averted, at least in part, by a firmer attitude.” By contrast, the Cardinals and Archbishops of France openly recognise the legitimacy of Catholics, as a voting bloc, being instructed to refuse to vote for candidates who might seem to be a lesser evil unless they are truly “adversaries of laïcism”.

The Déclaration also shows the centrality of the doctrine of Christ’s “Social Kingship”, presented in the encyclical Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI only a few months after this document.

Fr Théotime adds, speaking of both the Déclaration and his own book:

“French Catholics who have admired and appreciated this incomparable document [the Déclaration] now know their duty. The doctrinal pages we present to them will help them to understand it even better and to fulfill it without fail.”

Readers who wish to read “the doctrinal pages” of Fr Théotime’s book on Cardinal Pie’s writings may find it here:

• The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie – Fr. Théotime de Saint‑Just O.M.C.

(NB: I do not receive any commission or benefits from sales of the book.)

S.D.Wr.

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Declaration of the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France

On the so-called laws of laïcité
and on the measures to ne taken to combat them

Available in French

I. The injustice of the laws of laïcité

1. The laws of laïcité are unjust, first of all, because they are contrary to the formal rights of God. They proceed from atheism and lead to it in the individual, familial, social, political, national, and international order. They presuppose the total disregard of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Gospel. They tend to substitute for the true God mere idols (liberty, solidarity, humanity, science, etc.); to de-Christianise all lives and all institutions. Those who inaugurated their reign, those who have strengthened, extended, and imposed it, have had no other purpose. By this very fact, they are the work of impiety, which is the expression of the most culpable of injustices, just as the Catholic religion is the expression of the highest justice.

2. They are unjust, moreover, because they are contrary to our temporal and spiritual interests. Let them be examined: there is not one among them that does not strike us at once in our earthly goods and in our supernatural goods.

• The education laws take from parents the liberty that belongs to them, and obliges them to pay two taxes: one for official instruction, the other for Christian instruction; at the same time, it deceives the intelligence of children, perverts their will, and distorts their conscience.

• The law of separation despoils us of the properties that were necessary to us and places a thousand obstacles in the way of our priestly ministry, not to mention that it entails the official, public, and scandalous rupture of society with the Church, with religion, and with God.

• The law of divorce separates spouses, gives rise to sensational legal proceedings that humiliate and degrade families, divides and saddens the child, renders marriages partially or entirely sterile, and moreover it juridically authorises adultery.

• The laïcisation of hospitals deprives the sick of that devoted and disinterested care which religion alone inspires, of the supernatural consolations that would soften their sufferings, and exposes them to dying without the sacraments.

One could develop these considerations endlessly, adding to them and showing that laïcism, in all spheres, is fatal to the private and public good.

From this it follows that the laws of laïcité are not laws. They have of law only the name, a usurped name; they are but corruptions of law, acts of violence rather than laws, as St. Thomas says: “They are acts of violence rather than laws.” (Ia IIae, q. 96, art. 4). Even if they harmed us only in the temporal order, in themselves they would not oblige us in conscience:

“Such laws (namely, laws contrary to the human good) do not bind in the court of conscience.” (ibid).

But since the laws of laïcité attack the rights of God; since they strike us in our spiritual interests; since, having ruined the essential principles on which society rests, they are the enemies of the true religion which commands us to recognise and to adore, in every domain, God and His Christ, to adhere to their teaching, to submit to their commandments, and to save our souls at all costs – it is not permitted to us to obey them; we have the right and the duty to combat them and to demand their abrogation by every honest means.

“Laws can be unjust by being contrary to the divine good, as tyrannical laws inducing to idolatry or to anything else that is against the divine law: and such laws it is in no way permitted to observe, because as it is said, Acts 5, ‘It is necessary to obey God rather than men.’” (Ibid.)

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II. Measures to Be Taken to Combat the Laws of Laïcité

Two approaches. The first would consist in not confronting the secular legislators head-on; in trying to appease them and to obtain from them that, after having applied their laws in a spirit of moderation, they should end by letting them fall into disuse. It is possible that with certain men invested with power who are less ill-disposed, this method might have some chance of success. Cases could be cited in history where it has succeeded. Moreover, it would have the advantage of not exasperating adversaries and of not provoking on their part measures all the more formidable for being inspired by a more irritated sentiment. However, this approach presents several grave disadvantages.

1. It leaves the laws standing. Supposing that one ministry or several ministries should use them only with benevolence, or cease to use them against Catholics, it will depend upon a new government to draw them out of oblivion and to restore their vigour and their efficacy. This danger is not imaginary, for in our time power passes continually from a relatively tolerant party to an extreme party. It is enough that the first should have shown itself somewhat conciliatory for the second, by reaction, to show no consideration whatsoever towards us.

For years we have witnessed this ebb and flow of religious persecution which, at bottom, has always grown worse. It habituates minds, even those sincerely Catholic, to regard the laws of laïcité as just, as compatible with religion; it favours those men who, perpetually oscillating between laïcism and Catholicism, are ready for every concession in order to win votes on the right and on the left, to enter a ministry, and who, attempting only to attenuate some effects of laïcism, leave its principle intact, and in practice sacrifice Catholicism to it almost entirely. It will be said that an attitude of conciliation has won us some particular favours. Small advantages when one considers the immense current of error that invades souls and carries them to apostasy! Small advantages that chain us and prevent us from reacting against our adversaries!

2. The most harmful of these laws continue to operate, whatever the intentions of successive ministries. During the periods of apparent calm in which we have placed too much trust, the atheistic schools were functioning without interruption; dossiers were being prepared against the Religious Orders, and the appropriation of ecclesiastical property is being pursued stealthily and surely.

3. This policy encourages our adversaries, who, counting on our resignation and our passivity, commit each day new outrages against the Church. In sum, the laws of laïcité have multiplied to the point of reducing each day further the recognition of the divine dominion over us and the scope of our rights and liberties. These thoughts will strike forcefully anyone who recalls the series of laws of which we are the victims, anyone who invokes the testimony of history over the last half-century.

This is why the majority of Catholics truly attached to their faith ask that a more militant and more energetic attitude be adopted. They ask that, on every ground, in every region of the country, war be declared openly and unanimously against laïcism and its principles, until the abolition of the iniquitous laws that emanate from it; and that, to succeed, every legitimate weapon be employed.

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III. Means to Be Employed

These means can be reduced to three:

1. Action upon opinion

2. Action upon legislators

3. Action upon the government.

1. Action upon Opinion

Action upon opinion shall be exercised through the propagation of truth; through the denunciation of the prejudices that lead the people astray by blinding them; and through outward demonstrations.

a. Propaganda will be fruitful if it is persevering; if, all in agreement, Catholics everywhere sound the same note of reprobation against the injustices of the legislation – that is, the neutrality (mendacious moreover and impossible) and laïcité of education, the unified school system (école unique), divorce, the despoiling of the clergy, the ostracism of the Congregations, the atheism of the State and of domestic, social, charitable, and political institutions – if the episcopal letters, the diocesan bulletins, the parish bulletins, the reviews, the press, posters, lectures, and catechisms all give the same message.

After having shown that individuals, families, and nations owe to God and to Our Lord an official, interior, and exterior worship; a submission of the intelligence, of the will, and of activity, it will be necessary to bring out the temporal advantages that the Catholic religion brings in every domain, and the innumerable evils that the laws of laïcité cause in this regard. For example, the enemies of the scourge of depopulation are faith in another life and in a Supreme Judge, Christian education and morality, the evangelical doctrine of marriage and of its indissolubility; unbelief, the secular school, and divorce are its accomplices. No law is as favourable to the education of young minds and young hearts as the Christian law, while science and morality have suffered gravely by breaking with the Church.

The application of the laws of laïcité has cost France billions that could have been saved, that could have served to relieve the unfortunate, to increase the wealth and reserves of the country, and to ensure for it abroad a growing prestige. Despite these ruinous expenditures, the sick, the orphans, the poor, and the elderly have only been worse cared for. What has become, under the regime of laïcism, of the impartiality of the courts, the liberty of individuals, of families, of officers, of magistrates, of schoolteachers, of civil servants, of the dying; the participation of the best citizens in public offices, commutative or distributive justice, the relations between classes, unity, internal peace, professional conscience, etc.? Leo XIII returned often to these considerations which move the multitude.

b. It would also be necessary to confound the prejudices that lead the people astray by blinding them. Here are some of them:

• The law, just or unjust, is the law; one is bound to obey it.

• The laws of laïcité are untouchable – whereas others can be changed, and Parliaments spend their lives changing them).

• To attack the secular laws is to attack the Republic – as if legislation and the Constitution were not distinct; as if the least suspect republicans did not attack the very laws they themselves have voted, and even the Constitution of which they are the authors. The truth is that Catholics must always combat laïcism whatever the regime – monarchical or republican – that shall have put it into force).

• Religion and politics must be separated – whereas they must not be separated; they must be distinguished and reconciled.

• Religion is a private affair – Religion is a private affair, but also a domestic affair, and a public affair. Society, like the individual, owes to the true God adoration and worship.

• Religion has nothing to do with politics – whereas religion leaves to each person the freedom to be a republican, a royalist, or an imperialist, because these diverse forms of government are compatible with it; it does not leave him the freedom to be a socialist, a communist, or an anarchist, for these three sects are condemned by reason and by the Church. Barring particular circumstances, Catholics are bound to serve loyally the governments in fact so long as these work for the temporal and spiritual good of their subjects; they are not permitted to lend their support to unjust or impious measures taken by governments; they are obliged to remember that politics, being a part of morality, is subject, like morality, to reason, to religion, and to God. It is in an analogous manner that the other prejudices spread among the population should be refuted.

Connected with this action upon opinion through propaganda is the question of publicists and lecturers. It is very desirable that these be formed and prepared seriously; that they not content themselves with universal formulae – generalia non movent (generalities do not move) – or with vague and empty phraseology, but that they demonstrate precision, competence, force, and clarity; that in particular they study the treatises on the Faith, on the Church, and on the State.

c. Action upon opinion through outward demonstrations. — In this matter, prudence prescribes that we proceed according to its precepts, that we avoid recklessness, and that we take all necessary precautions. But it is certain that outward demonstrations, well prepared, will impress the crowd by giving it an idea – which it does not have – of our number, our unity, our power, and of the unshakeable resolve in which we stand to claim our rights until victory. “Opinion,” said one of our cardinals recently, “declares for those who fight well.” It abandons those who abandon themselves.

2. Action upon Legislators

This action can lead to some happy results.

a. Through petitions sent to the deputies and senators of each district. It would be fitting that these petitions should come from every kind of group: groups of fathers of families, of former combatants, of Catholic Youth, of railway workers, of war widows; from Catholic women’s leagues, from the most considerable personages of banking, industry, commerce, etc. These petitions would be addressed to all parliamentarians, without exception, and if a minister belonged to the district, care would be taken to send him these protests and these demands.

b. Certain considerable personages would wish to go further and to give all Catholics the instruction to refuse their votes to candidates who are not, in theory and in practice, adversaries of laïcism and of the neutral bodies. In the mind of these serious men, the theory of the lesser evil, pushed beyond all bounds, has brought us defeats and misfortunes ever more irreparable, which we could have averted, at least in part, by a firmer attitude.

3. Action upon the Government

What moves opinion and the Chambers by that very fact reaches the government, but it must also be approached directly. Socialists, communists, civil servants, workers, and merchants give us the example. When a law or a decree displeases them or harms them, they do not consider sufficient the interpellations of their representatives in the Chamber or the Senate: they address themselves to the power directly. They proceed in mass to the doors of the town halls, the prefectures, the ministries; they send to the holders of authority protests, delegations, ultimatums; they multiply their approaches, and even their strikes; they besiege and they harass the government, which has, almost always, ended by yielding to their demands. Why, so far as we are permitted by our morality, our dignity, and our love of peace – founded upon justice and charity – should we not imitate them, in order to efface from our code the laws which, according to the forceful words of one of our bishops, are leading us “from laïcism to paganism”?

Assuredly the task is immense and difficult, but it is the nature of the virtue of fortitude to confront obstacles and to brave danger. Moreover, we have at our disposal troops whose number and courage equal at least the number and courage of other groups, for a multitude of Christians – counting only those who are fervent and active – are impatient to join the battle. Our cadres – parishes, dioceses, ecclesiastical provinces – are prepared. What has been too much lacking hitherto among Catholics is unity, concentration, harmony, and the organisation of efforts. Will they not have enough self-denial to form a compact body that will work in concert under the direction of their hierarchical superiors? It will be said that this attitude exposes us to ruthless counter-offensives from our adversaries. This is not certain; and in any case, to what calamities does the opposite attitude not expose us? What future awaits us if, satisfied with a slight and artificial relaxation of tension, we fall asleep? Never perhaps in fifty years has the hour appeared so propitious; to let it pass without seizing it would seem to be a betrayal of Providence.

Paris, 10 March 1925.

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Postscript: About Stabat Mater Press

I mentioned that the Déclaration appears in The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie, by Fr. Théotime de Saint‑Just, O.M.C – and that this book had recently been translated and published by Stabat Mater Press, with a foreword by myself.

Stabat Mater Press was founded in 2024 as a publishing house for traditional Catholic books and “dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the Church’s intellectual and spiritual patrimony.”

“We prioritize,” they say, “works that are expressly related to, or can shed light on, the Social Kingship of Our Lord.”

They also are engaged in restoring older texts. With a few exceptions, publishers releasing OCR scans of old texts can have low standards – and publish their Catholic works indiscriminately with very bad books (occult, masonry, heresy, and so on). Stabat Mater Press’s editions are avoiding both problems. You can see a sample of their quality in this preview of Fr Edward J. Cahill’s Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement:

Regarding big print-on-demand publishers of good and bad OCR scans indiscriminately, SMP says:

As a family-owned publishing house, we take seriously the idea that Catholic books should be made by Catholics and for Catholics — those formed by the Faith, obedient to the Church, and committed to tradition.

Stabat Mater Press has already put together a small but impressive range of books in nice editions, including:

• Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement – Fr. Edward J. Cahill

• To Restore All Things: Essays of Catholic Political Thought – de Maistre, Belloc, Dononso Cortes

• The Heresy of Popular Sovereignty – Fr. Charles Maignen

• The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie – Fr. Théotime de Saint‑Just, O.M.C.

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The editor is planning to migrate all of the titles away from Amazon in due course, in accordance with the vision which Mr Theo Howard from called “The Little Way of Christendom” – which is explained in the video and One Peter Five articles below:

• The Little Way of Christendom, Part 1

• The Little Way of Christendom, Part 2

You can get Fr. Théotime’s book here:

• The Social Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie – Fr. Théotime de Saint‑Just, O.M.C.

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