Just hours after his episcopal consecration, Bishop Michael Goldade, SSPX, stated the following in reference to the present ecclesial crisis:
If the Catholic Church in her tradition brings forth life, the modernist church is a desert. It kills. It kills everything that it touches. It kills the supernatural life. It kills the sources of grace. It dries up everything because it has placed man in the place of God.
These comments caused a stir among many “traditional” Catholic individuals, and for good reason. For example, Matt Gaspers had this to say:
With all due respect to Bishop Goldade, juxtaposing “the Catholic Church” with “the modernist church” is bad ecclesiology.
If by this Matt means to reject the notion that the true Church is capable of being a “modernist church,” I agree with his assessment wholeheartedly. He went on to further explain his understanding of the matter:
It’s certainly true that Modernism continues to infect many of the Church’s members, but there simply is not a “modernist church” (separate entity).
At this, our opinions collide.
Already in 1976, not even a dozen years after the Council closed, it was becoming apparent that the “conciliar church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church of all time” (Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre), i.e., it was difficult to deny that the conciliar church is indeed a separate entity.
How much more obvious is it today that the conciliar church is not the Catholic Church?
Having said this much, we will leave any further discussion on this point for another day. In this article, we are going to focus on the observation that many of the Church’s members are infected with Modernism.
While there is truth to this remark to be sure, it must be noted that Matt Gaspers – and indeed all who labor in the Resist-the-Pope movement – frequently go much further, to the point where they evidently believe that one can be both a notorious public modernist and a member of the Catholic Church at one and same time.
This, however, is a myth, the acceptance of which leads to grave consequences.
For example, Matt once wrote about Biden and Bergoglio: A Modernist Duo. More recently, he publicly called Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte a modernist. (Accurate assessments each!)
Now, I’m not picking on Matt, it just so happens that he has provided us with some good examples of the myth under discussion. The fact is, however, Matt Gaspers is far from alone. For the sake of clarity, I will provide just one more example.
In October of 2013, I was present for Holy Mass at the Angelus Press Conference (SSPX) when Bishop Bernard Fellay, from the pulpit no less, declared of Jorge Bergoglio (stage name, Francis):
What we have in front of us is a genuine modernist!
Indeed he was, and yet Bishop Fellay – and many others who agreed that Francis had already revealed himself as a dyed-in-the-wool modernist – went on to speak of him as if he was not only a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, but also her visible head on earth, the pope!
The crucial point that I wish to make is simply this:
The entire Resist-the-Pope movement stands on the self-same myth, namely, when it comes to notorious public modernists – even in extreme cases like that of Jorge Mario Bergoglio – we have no choice but to accept them as members of the Church.
If pressed to explain the basis for this belief, its proponents will immediately and passionately point, oddly enough, to the great anti-modernist Encyclical of Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
Specifically, they will call attention to the following:
That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary especially by the fact that the partisans of error [the modernists] are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear. (Pascendi 2)
The argument goes something like this:
See? Pope St. Pius X doesn’t say that the modernists are outside the Church, he says that they are in the Church’s ‘very bosom and heart!’ They are members!
From there, the pope-resister will confidently and sincerely point to the following:
For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her. (Pascendi 3)
For many so-called “trads,” this clinches it: The Modernists of which Pope Pius X wrote are operating from within the Church, therefore, they must be considered members.
Years ago, during what I like to call my conservative adolescence, I tacitly accepted these claims. I must admit, however, that I had long found it unnerving that persons described by the Holy Father as “the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church” (art. 3), men who are purveyors of the “synthesis of all heresies” (art. 39), could also somehow remain within the very bosom of the Church.
So, what are we to make of all of this? Are the modernists of which Pope St. Pius X warns in Pascendi Dominici Gregis members of the Catholic Church or not?
The key to accurately answering this critically important and ever-timely question lies in just three words among the some 15,000 of which Pascendi is comprised, in ipso latent in Latin, in English, “they lie hid.” (See art. 2 cited above)
In fact, one might reasonably argue that one of the indispensable themes of Pascendi, apart from which it cannot be properly understood, concerns the hiddenness of the modernist threat under discussion therein. The Holy Father writes:
We must now break silence, in order to expose before the whole Church in their true colours those men who have assumed this bad disguise. (art. 3)
Badly disguised, how?
Feigning a love for the Church they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for the strictest morality. (cf art. 2,3)
To facilitate the exposure of these modernists that “lay hid” within the Church, the Holy Father decreed (among other things) that a “Council of Vigilance” be instituted in every diocese without delay:
The priests called to form part in it shall … meet every two months on an appointed day under the presidency of the Bishop … and their function shall be as follows: They shall watch most carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism both in publications and in teaching, and, to preserve from it the clergy and the young, they shall take all prudent, prompt and efficacious measures. (ibid., art. 55)
Now, back to the question at hand: Are the modernists of which Pope St. Pius X warns in Pascendi members of the Catholic Church or not?
ANSWER: To the extent that their modernism lie hid beneath the veneer of a bad disguise, thus externally manifesting the true faith even if insincerely so, yes, they are members.
This is the long-held nature of membership in the Catholic Church vis-à-vis heresy.
The occult heretics are united and are members although only by external union … but manifest heretics do not pertain [as members] in any manner. (St. Robert Bellarmine, On the Roman Pontiff, Book II, Ch. XXX)
Let us now turn our attention back to Matt Gaspers’ statement concerning the Modernism that continues to infect many of the Church’s members.
This statement is undoubtedly true, but it is true only insofar as it pertains to persons who externally manifest the true faith, but who embrace – in a manner that is hidden – the modernist principles described in Pascendi. That is to say that these persons espouse (write, teach, or otherwise defend) the modernist propositions, opinions, and doctrines that they hold, at most, within certain closed circles and not in a manner that is properly considered publicly manifest and notorious.
Obviously, this in no way describes the captains of the conciliar enterprise presently in occupation of the Vatican, up to and including Leo. The same can be said of every post-conciliar regime that ever existed, from that of Montini onward.
These men are known to us as flag waving modernists, not merely by implication, but rather by way of their very public words and deeds, including, in the case of the putative popes, propositions set forth in their authoritative decrees, those produced by the Second Vatican Council among them.
Readers may remember the infamous Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, one of eight men handpicked by Francis in 2013 to take part in what was called the “C-8,” Jorge’s inner circle of closest advisers concerning the reform of the Conciliar Curia.
In a speech delivered at the University of Dallas on October 26th of that year, Maradiaga boldly proclaimed:
The Second Vatican Council was the main event in the Church in the 20th Century. In principle, it meant an end to the hostilities between the Church and modernism, which was condemned in the First Vatican Council.
As our friends in the Resist-the-Pope movement will admit along with us, Maradiaga was speaking for many if not most in the hierarchy of the conciliar church, men whose infestation with Modernism lie anything but hidden under a disguise, bad or otherwise. Rather, these men profess and promote their modernist propositions, opinions, and false doctrines openly, unapologetically, and proudly for all to see.
In other words, despite the widespread myth under discussion, Pascendi provides exactly no support for the idea that these men are members, much less hierarchs, of the Holy Catholic Church.
Take that myth away from the Resist-the-Pope movement and the entire program crumbles under the weight of its own presumptions, leaving its participants with only two choices:
Either acknowledge that the conciliar enterprise is, in fact, a separate entity led by men who have severed themselves from the Church or reject the longstanding Catholic understanding that manifest heretics do not pertain as members of the Church in any manner. (See St. Robert Bellarmine cited above.)
In response, one might expect some of the most ardent pope-resisters to cling all the more tightly to Pascendi in a last gasp effort to legitimize the modernist myth that undergirds their movement.
The argument might go something like this:
Pope St. Pius X, in his gold standard treatise on Modernism, offered no commentary on the loss of membership among modernists! Therefore, how can we?
To which the well-grounded Catholic is moved to reply:
Pascendi, as previously suggested, is not directly concerned with the matter of membership. The Holy Father’s stated purpose was to reveal Modernism for what it is, “a system that does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories but in a perfectly organized body” (art. 39), and this in an effort to expose the modernists enemies of the Church that “lay hid” within her structures (art. 2).
NB: That is not to say that the mind of the saintly pope on the matter of membership relative to Modernism is unknown. Quite the contrary, the Holy Father made his mind on the matter known plainly, without any ambiguity whatsoever.
On Nov. 18, 1907, less than 90 days after the promulgation of Pascendi, Pope Pius X issued the motu proprio Praestantia Scripturae wherein he declared:
… intending to repress the daily increasing boldness of spirit of many modernists, who by sophisms and artifices of every kind endeavor to destroy the force and the efficacy not only of the Decree, Lamentabili Sane Exitu, which was published at Our command by the Sacred Roman and Universal Inquisition on the third of July of the current year [1907], but also of Our Encyclical Letter, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, given on the eighth of September of this same year by Our Apostolic authority, We repeat and confirm not only that Decree of the Sacred Supreme Congregation, but also that Encyclical Letter of Ours, adding the penalty of excommunication against all who contradict them; and We declare and decree this: if anyone, which may God forbid, proceeds to such a point of boldness that he defends any of the propositions, opinions, and doctrines disproved in either document mentioned above, he is ipso facto afflicted by the censure imposed in the chapter Docentes of the Constitution of the Apostolic See, first among those excommunications latae sententiae which are reserved simply to the Roman Pontiff. [DZ 2114]
[NOTE: The “Constitution of the Apostolic See” to which the Holy Father refers is the papal bull, Apostolicae Sedis Moderationi (Pope Pius IX, 12 October 1869), which addressed the matter of latae sententiae censures, including excommunication.]
Yes, I know, that’s a very long sentence from the motu proprio of Pope St. Pius X. Read it again for clarity if you must, but here’s a brief summary:
All who contradict either the Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists (Lamentabili Sane Exitu) or the Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, incur ipso facto excommunication.
Pope St. Pius X could not have spoken more plainly about the fate of the manifest modernists that comprise the upper (and much of the lower) echelons of the conciliar church; they are ipso facto afflicted by the censure of excommunication, i.e., they are outside the Catholic Church.
With all that has been said in mind, who among us can continue to embrace the modernist myth that public modernists, like the charlatans that walk the halls of power at the Vatican, must be considered members of the Holy Catholic Church?
At this, I would simply implore every sincere individual who presently finds themselves immersed in Resist-the-Pope “traditionalism” – be that person a cleric, a public figure like Matt Gaspers, or simply just someone who is attached to the SSPX – to do some soul searching in light of everything presented above.
One last suggestion: As you ponder this matter further, bear in mind condemned proposition no. 8 in the Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists:
“They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the Roman Congregations.”
Warning to the wise from Pope St. Pius X: Treat the ipso facto excommunication of the manifest modernists lightly and, regrettably, you may find yourself numbered among them.
