Questions, Objections, and Myths
Regarding the Traditional Catholic Movement
GENERAL HEADINGS:
General Liturgy
Vatican II Crisis
Traditional Groups
Religious Liberty Questioning of Popes
Miscellaneous
Why be a traditional Catholic?
What are some of the basic terms and
jargon used in the traditional Catholic community?
Can you summarize or give me a picture
of where the true Catholic Church is to be found today?
Are not the newer
Catechisms easier to read and follow?
Why do you want to go back to
what was? Can't you just accept the fact that things have changed now, and
are going to be different from now on?
Why should we be so
concerned about such things as the way the Mass or sacraments are said, when
so many more important things such as abortion or starvation require more
urgent attention?
Vatican institution leaders often
make such a big fuss about being ecumenical and friendly with other churches.
Why can't they be so friendly to traditional Catholics?
What Creed (other than
the Standard Creeds of the Church) would you categorize as most representative
of all traditional Catholics?
What Statement best
defines the position taken by this Website?
Why do you feel free to
disregard the contentions the home-aloners make regarding the lack of valid
and/or licit orders among the various groups that comprise the traditional
Catholic movement?
Why can't the Novus Ordo be
considered acceptible if done without any abuses?
Didn't some expert in
Aramaic claim that translating "for you and for many" as "for
you and for all" in the consecration form of the Mass was harmless
because the original language Jesus used had no distinct words for
"many" and "all?"
But didn't the liturgy
grow and change throughout the history of the Church? If such an amount of
change was lawful then, how is it not lawful now?
Why allow the liturgical
reform of Pius V while forbidding the liturgical reform of Paul VI?
But no pope should be
able to bind future popes, or else their authority is not truly equal. Each
pope stands in the Shoes of the Fisherman and his authority is supreme. If
Pope Pius V could bind his successors with Quo Primum, then his successors
would have had less authority than he did, and would not be true Popes. Why
couldn't a later Pope (such as Paul VI) replace or undo the liturgical decrees
of a previous pope (such as Pius V)?
All twentieth century
popes, from Pope Saint Pius X onward have supported the Liturgical Movement,
which culminated in the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae! How do you
explain that?
Do you mean to claim,
therefore, that the Novus Ordo Missae is intrinsically invalid?
You wouldn't allow the
Novus Ordo alongside the Tridentine Mass, would you? It doesn't seem fair to
want equal rights for the Tridentine Mass, but then not be willing to grant
the same to the Novus Ordo Missae.
Why make this big deal
about Latin? I happen to like the New Mass in its vernacular, which I find
much easier to understand than all that old Latin.
If the Vatican institution
returns to the Tridentine Mass for its Western Rite portion, would that mark
the end of the crisis?
Would not the Holy
Spirit prevent an Ecumenical Council from doing the clear and serious harm
Vatican II has evidently caused?
How is it that it took
until this book to find out what had happened at Vatican II to separate the
Catholic Church from the Vatican institution; and on the other hand, what
makes you so smart as to be able to find those tiny clauses about the Church
"subsisting in" the Vatican institution and actually figure out the
true import of those statements?
Why can't that
statement in Lumen Gentium about "elements of sanctification"
subsisting outside the Vatican institution apply to Protestant ministers or
schismatic East Orthodox patriarchates as the Council Fathers obviously
intended?
Leaders and representatives of the
Vatican institution frequently refer to their organization simply as the Catholic
Church, and yet you give more weight to those few references in Lumen Gentium
and other Vatican II documents stating that their organization merely "subsists
in" the Catholic Church than to all of those other references they make to the
contrary. How do you justify that?
Did not Cardinal Ratzinger refute
your claim about the infamous "subsists in" clause in Lumen Gentium?
Did not the Vatican II
Schema "Lumen Gentium" also promulgate the heresy of Collegiality?
"Pastoral"
doesn't really mean anything at all; the Second Vatican Council was really
just like all the others.
But isn't every council
followed by a period of doubt and confusion on the part of the faithful?
Won't people eventually get used to having Vatican II around and soon let
things return to normal? Maybe the decline in religious interest is temporary.
But didn't Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre finally end up signing even those last two Vatican II schemas?
I read somewhere that he did.
Obscure technical
distinctions between the Vatican institution and the Catholic Church
notwithstanding, I just find it too hard to believe that God would allow that,
which so many honest, sincere people take to be His Church, to promulgate
invalid sacraments.
But aren't things
getting better now? I know that many crazy abuses and so forth have happened,
but isn't the pendulum starting to swing back to normalcy?
Hasn't the Church always
had trouble? Why should we regard today's troubles as some sort of more
serious crisis than before?
Times have changed. You
can't turn back the clock. The old ways don't work any more. Why hang on to
those obsolete structures and methods which may have served in the Dark ages
well enough but are ineffective in these modern times?
Why is there almost
nothing said in this book about the various visions and apparitions which talk
about this, or the new apparitions?
Why is there almost
nothing is said in this book about the plots of Masons, Jews, and Communists
who have infiltrated the Church, nor about the "Three days of
Darkness," the "Antichrist," or the "Man of Sin" or
other End-time prophecies about what has brought about this current crisis?
You describe the Uniate
Eastern Rites as being still traditional. Is that therefore a good safe haven
for traditional Catholics over the long term?
What about the rumor that
Cardinal Liénart was a Mason?
Why don't any of the
modern apparitions speak of the traditional Catholic movement?
What are the three basic groups?
In defending so many
different kinds of traditional Catholic orders and not taking sides in their
disputes, aren't you acting just like the Protestants who agree with each
other in "the essentials" but feel free to disagree with each other
about "the non-essentials;" doesn't that make you therefore a
pan-traditionalist?
I find it difficult to
see any "Oneness" amongst the various groups you write about since
they seem to bicker with each other so very much and even say horrible things
about each other.
How can you justify the
sedevacantist's rejection of the Pope?
I hear that sedevacantists
don't pray for the Pope.
Doesn't your claim
regarding the fall of the Vatican institution mandated at Vatican II negate
all the other sedevacantist theories?
How can you justify the
SSPX's disobedience to the Pope?
So often it seems that
the SSPX is always just barely escaping a charge of being schismatic or
excommunicated from the Vatican institution on what strikes me as little more
than obscure technicalities of Canon Law.
How can you justify the
SSPX's refusal to study the theological implications of the current crisis?
Did not Padre Pio predict that
Abp. Lefebvre would "tear apart the community of the faithful" with his
disobedience?
How can you explain Abp.
Lefebvre's continual zigzagging between calling the Vatican leadership
alternately the Successor of Peter and the Antichrist?
How can you justify
the Indult crowd's unity with John Paul II and the Vatican hierarchy?
How can you justify
the Indult crowd's (and even that of Abp. Lefebvre on some occasions) attempt
to make the Tridentine and Novus Ordo Rites coexist side by side?
How can you justify
the Indult crowd's membership in a non-Catholic church?
Why don't you count the
followers of Fr. Leonard Feeney as traditional Catholics?
I've heard that [such-and-such
traditional Catholic organization] is like a cult. What do you say about
that?
Precisely what mental
gymnastics, logic stretching, and special pleading can you possibly come up
with to reconcile Religious Liberty with Catholic doctrine?
If you don't believe
in Religious Liberty, then does that mean that you don't think people should
have the freedom to worship God any way they please? What if a nation should
decide to mandate a religion other than Catholicism?
It doesn't seem fair to
me that the Catholic religion should be given special treatment by the civil
governments.
It seems quite arrogant
of you to insist on the traditional Catholic standard as the only right
standard.
Aren't you being schismatic
by recommending that Catholics attend parishes which are not under the
diocesan bishop, and by casting doubt on the papacy of John Paul II?
Aren't traditional
Catholics acting just like the Old Catholics by setting up their own hierarchy
and separating from Rome?
You "traditionalists"
seem to me to be acting just like the Modernists who want to change the
structure of the Church and feel free to disagree with the Pope.
Isn't it schismatic
to set up a parallel hierarchy?
But didn't John XXIII
promulgate heresy in his encyclical Pacem In Terris, Paragraph 14 when
he wrote that "Everyone has the right to honor God according to the just
rule conscience and to profess his religion in private and public life?"
How can you say that the official pronouncements of the Vatican were protected
up until 1964 when Lumen Gentium was promulgated?
If the Holy Spirit
protects the pope from teaching error, why are ambiguous statements allowed?
What right do you
"traditionals" have to judge the pope? Didn't Vatican I say that
"the judgment of the Apostolic See, whose authority is unsurpassed, is
not subject to review by anyone; nor is anyone allowed to pass judgment on its
decision. Therefore, those who say that it is permitted to appeal to an
ecumenical council from the decisions of the Roman Pontiff, as to an authority
superior to the Roman Pontiff, are far from the straight path of truth?"
If it did, how can you violate that?
Don't Catholic
traditionalists tend to be disgruntled, cheerless, Neo-Nazis, Fascists, and
other such unsavory types?
Traditional Catholics come across
to me as a bunch of kooks, crazies, cranks, and crackpots, pushing all the most
absurd conspiracy theories, apparitions, visions, seers, or end-of-the-world gloom
and doom, and even all the most pathetic attempts at a "theology." Why
should I wish to be associated with that?
But haven't bad things
happened in the traditional Catholic movement? You yourself wrote about how
bad things got under Francis Shuckardt. Why should I risk having to live with
that?
Long ago, well before
Vatican II, I was abused and mistreated by a Catholic priest. Why should I go
back to that?
Aren't there many other
independent bishops and priests out there, and don't some of them claim to be
traditional Catholics? What are we to make of them?
You have written much
here of unofficial ordinations and consecrations and unpleasant controversies;
where is the love that Jesus Christ spoke of? Why couldn't this have read
more like the New Testament?
Why is the individual
Catholic at liberty to conceal his attendance at parishes within other
factions of the Church?
What about activity in
such Catholic organizations as the Blue Army, the Legion of Mary, the Knights
of Columbus, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, or Sodalities, etc.?
Why can't the Church "baptize"
the more modern philosophies such as Existentialism, Phenomenalism, Teilhardism,
and Marxism, etc. the way it once "baptized" the philosophies of Plato
and Aristotle?
Have you shown this book
to any experts so as to get their approval or advice, or to try to bring them
over to your opinion?
What are your opinions
regarding the issues that divide traditional Catholics today? Are you Indult,
SSPX, sedevacantist, or what?