On The “Sifters Highway”

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An interesting Chat: 

How did you become a sedevacantist…? if you don't mind telling your story…

Reply:  In 2012, still with SSPX, when they had their "general council" and decided to officially join with the modernists, the rejection of Ratzinger etc as "catholic hierarchy" grew steadily. This urged me to look deeper into the arguments of the Sedevacantists I already had heard of before from time to time. It quickly became apparent that the dogmatic teachings of the Catholic Church and the Divine Law are saying, oftentimes, the opposite of what sspx is saying. From 2013 I was convinced that the novus ordo "hierarchy" is no valid Catholic hierarchy at all and that V2 therefore was not only erroneous but no council of the Catholic Church at all.

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For the records: 

The SSPX-ers cruise what could be called the “Sifters Highway”. 

It is, at first, consoling to hear them admit that Vatican II indeed introduced novelties at variance with consistent Church teachings, novelties once condemned as either heretical or pernicious errors injurious to the faith or of several other theological qualifications. They admit that the liturgical changes made after Vatican II are the flowering of its heresies and that these changes are poisonous to the faith of each Catholic. So far so good! 

Now concerning what ought to be the Catholic response to Vatican II, they say we must resist the substantial changes both in doctrine and praxis made by Vatican II’s aggiornamento and hold on to the traditional, age-old teaching. 

Concerning the authorities behind the diabolic aggiornamento they insist we must give them due recognition as legitimately Catholic, but we must ignore them when they impose anything in line with Vatican II’s aggiornamento or anything that smacks of Modernism.  

In other words, we must recognize the authorities responsible for these substantial changes and those enforcing the changes to-day as legitimate and genuine Roman Catholic authorities having the Infallible Spirit of the Eternal Truth for a principle, but resist and ignore them. 

Any well-meaning Catholic with an averagely informed Catholic-Comon-Sense on hearing this will know at once that the cruisers of the  “Sifters Highway” lack the not-so-common virtue of consistency in logic and operate on an assumption at loggerheads with the first principle of reason; the law of contradiction as it impinges on objective Catholic doctrine and praxis. One wonders: how could an authority responsible for heresies and novelties injurious to the faith be at the same time legitimately and genuinely Catholic? How could a Catholic faithful ignore a legitimate and genuine Catholic authority without being guilty of schism?  

These questions reveal the depressing drama of the “Recognize and Resist-ers” in whose pseudo traditionalism is nothing but a handy tool in the attempt of the enemies of the Papacy to destroy it by devaluing it. They work for the destruction of the Papacy by promoting that monstrosity called a ‘heretical pope’ akin to saying a ‘square circle’. Under this agenda, their attitude is best summed up in Fr. Cekada’s famous epithet “the Pope speaks, you decide” –sift what [you feel/think] is traditional (or Catholic), resist what is modernist, life goes on. 

These Recognize and Resist-ers would have anyone unfortunate enough to give them a hearing, admit the possibility that a Pope can promulgate false doctrines and enact universal disciplines which are evil.  But such an admission is itself a heresy against the teaching that the Catholic Church is infallible in these matters! They would have anyone unfortunate enough to give them a hearing to conceive the idea that, in following the universal teachings of the Church or her universal disciplines, one could be led astray and go to hell. But if this were possible, one would have to conclude that the Roman Catholic Church is not the true Church, but a human institution like any other false church! 

While one may recognize their zeal as such, one must admit that their zeal is without knowledge properly so called and is obliged to reject their un-Catholic response to Vatican II which is essentially Protestant: the response of private judgment. 

In it, the doctrines, decrees, and universal disciplines of what they recognize as the Church are subjected to their private scrutiny. Their response at best ruins the indefectibility of the Catholic Church by identifying the doctrinal and disciplinary defection of Vatican II and its subsequent reforms with the Catholic Church. 

In sum, their response labors under the spirit of schism and their guiding principle of sifting the magisterium is nothing but heretical. To that extent, no Catholic with an informed Catholic-Common -Sense could join their bandwagon. There was only one option left: the footpath that was in the middle of what seemed to have been a highway in years past… The case of the Good-Fellow whose story began this article is but one of the many confirmations!