Thursday, July 4, 2024

Michael Lofton on Marcel Lefebvre, Me on Both and on Pope Michael


New blog on the kid: Refutation of Dr. Steven Nemes · I Heard the Cardinal Zen had Taken on Michael Lofton · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Michael Lofton on Marcel Lefebvre, Me on Both and on Pope Michael · Sola Scriptura is NOT My Position · Michael Lofton Responded to Cardinal Zen · Great Bishop of Geneva! Blunder, Gendron!

Was Marcel Lefebvre (SSPX) a Closet Sedevacantist?
Reason & Theology | 27 June 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMIw6PPVy64


1:53 "he never comes out and says the see is empty"

Would he have if he had seen 1992—1994, CCC, "Galileo was right", "Evolution is more than [just] a theory", "Exegesis of the Bible in the Church"?

2:32 No, the part "approved by the Church" is not incorrect.

1) St. Robert Bellarmine is approved by the Church through his canonisation.
2) St. Francis of Sales is approved by the Church through his canonisation.
3) The Council Fathers at the Vatican Council are approved by the Church, or they would not have been holding a valid council in 1869 to 1870.

In the pauses of the latter council:
"what if there is a pope who falls into heresy?"
"he would immediately lose papacy" ...

They thought this so obvious they didn't bother to waste time on it, and it was raised and so answered in the proceedings, apparently with no one contradicting.

Forget which Dimond Brothers video I owe that to, for St. Robert, I already knew before I heard of them.

10:27 1987 was four years before he died. He was 82 years old. Or 81, since it's before his birthday.

One can understand if he did not draw out the conclusions fully, which would have involved a drastic change for him. Even so he did a drastic move the next year.

A younger man did draw out the conclusion fully, he was already out of Winona by 1989, and for 1990, he convened an emergency version of an election in which he got elected.

11:45 I'm noting that the quote from 1976 was 13 days after a Suspension a divinis he considered invalid (by the way, the exorcist concluding he was great because a demon was afraid of him, that was before this day, 22 of July 1976, when the penalty or pseudo-penalty was pronounced, he was still "in full communion" any metric you wish, from a Novus Ordo perspective).

Back then he could have shied back from pronouncing sede vacante in the hope of some bargaining space. And also because there was only a suspension, no excommunication pronounced from the man held by some to have been "Pope Paul VI" ... he could have felt that going as far as fully pronouncing sede vacante would be raising the tone too quickly.

13:01 Supposing the Council had been in fact a real one, denying that would not be heresy, it would be schism.

He would have been denying a dogmatic fact, not a dogma. And the dogmatic fact would have been accessible as such by "full communion with the Church", hence the term schism.

Precisely as an Orthodox who says St. Thérèse Martin was no saint would not be denying a dogma, but a dogmatic fact (also infallible), and one accessible through full communion with the Church (and this time over, I would myself use that term, as Pius XI was really Pope).

How come you will defend communion with Orthodox who deny filioque, (which I did not do while Romanian Orthodox, not even the moment of "converting", I thought I had an insight it was theologically superfluous), while you say counting "Vatican II" as non-council is heresy, not just schism?

15:12 December 2, 1986, is an interesting one.

According to that, the need for a nihil obstat and imprimi potest or imprimatur, or at the very least a nihil obstat would still be there, even if "Paul VI" abolished it.

Which brings us to the question if Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre had such a thing. On the online version from SSPX-Asia, I don't find it.

If they thought their own approval was equivalent, then St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, or their superiors in the District of France, or in Écône, could have, when I was there, a weekly and nearly daily parishioner, taken some of my stuff, given it their own equivalent of imprimatur, and printed it, while we were in agreement on where the Church was to be found.

I could have had an income from my writing, and an appartment, and a wife, I could be raising soon to be teens by now ... I have never had a full explanation from the parish why it didn't happen or why it doesn't happen now. I mean, presumably they won't state that "earth was 5200 years old when Jesus was born" or "earth neither spins on its axis nor orbits the sun" is equivalent to "Michael II is pope" much as they dislike that idea, and presumably also, they don't feel bound by CCC § 283.

In fact, I have never even had a partial explanation. Did they think I was gay and did they take that from an Orthodox misjudging my taking of advice from an older man about First Millennium examples of actually papacy (Rome as adequate succession of Petrine office)? If so, did they think printing the works of a (supposedly) gay man was collaboration in evil? I have had hints going in those directions, but nothing precise enough to pinpoint that that is what they mean ....

15:34 No, he was not saying "Rome's in schism with me" he was saying "the Conciliar Church is in schism with predecessors" ... i e much like Laurentius Petri was in schism with Gustav Trolle and Johannes Magnus, much like Cranmer was in schism with William Warham and with the early part of his own carreere.

The statement was not about Marcel Lefebvre, but about the very recent and verifiable past of the Church. Even if it had been wrong, it would not have been a statement about Marcel Lefebvre.

16:30 No, "Rome is in apostasy" is not tantamount to "the Church has defected from the faith", so the statement as such is not heretical. If erroneous, it would be schismatic.

If true, the one question is, what was he doing about it?

David Bawden did what his words spelled out.

18:15 No, what Marcel Lefebvre taught was not equivalent to these condemned theses:

23. Excommunications are only external penalties and they do not deprive man of the common spiritual prayers of the Church.
24. Christians must be taught to cherish excommunications rather than to fear them.


Condemned by the real Pope Leo X. In Exsurge Domine.

Marcel Lefebvre was not making such general statements about excommunications, he was focussing on a very narrow frame in which certain (apparent) officeholders abuse the penalty while being otherwise heretical. If Marcel Lefebvre was in a real but limited sense sedevacantist (and Pope Michael I would agree that in 1988 there was no Pope), the statement was not the least equivalent to Luther's statement. Since, obviously, Luther was not the least trying to call Leo X a non-Pope or doubtful Pope or someone in schism with his recent predecessors.

18:48 I'm noting "of excommunication" is not even in the Marcel Lefebvre quote, it is in square brackets.

Marcel Lefebvre referred to it as "the sanction" (presumably on part of a non-Church) and not as "the excommunication" or "sanction of excommunication" as if he considered it equivalent to those actually hitting Luther.

21:41 As said, he was arguably an old man afraid of his own conclusions.

24:00 Here is the take of Pope Michael I on SSPX:

Lefebvrites

On June 30, 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Meyer consecrated four priests of Lefebvre’s Apostles of Jesus and Mary, known under its public title as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. Both Lefebvre and de Castro Meyer had participated in Vatican II and accepted some of the more minor heresies of that Council. They also recognized the claimants to the papacy of the Conciliar Church, namely Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II were valid Popes, which makes them technically schismatics.

St. Cyprian “”To adhere to a false Bishop of Rome is to be out of communion with the Church.”


Three of these bishops in turn consecrated Bishop Rangel for the priests that were under Bishop de Castro Meyer. Bishop Rangel has reunited with the Conciliar Church. Bishop Williamson has consecrated two other bishops.


https://web.archive.org/web/20190327225441/http://pope-michael.com/pope-michael/summary-of-the-position/validity-of-the-ordination-and-consecration-of-pope-michael/

24:25 Not remotely same way.

Marcel Lefebvre held that Roncalli was a valid Pope and that Pius XII was valid.

Luther pretended to have his own predecessors way back before his lifetime, like in the time of the Apostles and also of Constantine, but not all that much further on if it came to full orthodoxy.

27:45 If you think that "valid councils are schismatic" is equivalent to "this council" [in fact, unlike what the speaker thinks it is a valid one] "is schismatic" you have a problem in logic.

If you think "this council" [in fact, unlike what the speaker thinks it is a valid one] "is schismatic" is condemned along with "valid councils are schismatic" or in error etc, you should not be teaching "Magisterial studies" ...

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