FATHER STEPANICH’S RESPONSE TO FATHER VOIGT’S LETTER IN DEFENSE OF FATHER GRUNER ANTI-SEDEVACANTISM
Dear Father Richard Voigt:
Maybe you could have introduced this unknown Father Richard Voigt first, telling me just who was replying to my “Dear Father Gruner” Letter that criticized Father Gruner’s article against sedevacantism in The Fatima Crusader. Your use of Father Gruner’s stationary does indicate that you work for him and were possibly told by him what to write.
Curiously enough, you explain that Father Gruner wrote his wrong-way article against sedevacantism because he supposedly “wanted to get a communication going with sedevacantists.” Falsifying the sedevacantist position as he has done, is a very strange way to get an honest commun9ication going with sedevacantists!
And you add that Father Gruner believe it or not, “wants to unify the traditional priests and people, in order to go beyond theories and opinions, in something solid and sure: The Fatima Message.”
Father Gruner needs To put FIRST THINGS FIRST. He should know that the big
“solid and sure “something that he is obliged to put first is the Catholic Faith, the unchanged
traditional Catholic Faith, that is the
Supreme Reality by which both the Fatima Message and the Long-distance vacancy
of the Chair of
The Fatima Message I “something solid and sure” only because it is fully in accord with the Traditional Catholic Faith. Father Gruner shouldn’t have to be told about that.
Nor should Father Gruner have to
be told that the more than 40-year vacancy of the Chair of
Yet unbelievably, in contradiction to what the Catholic Faith tells him, father Gruner still persists in obstinately repeating his old falsehood about sedevacantism being no more than a “theory and opinion.”
You on the contrary, frankly confess: “I find sedevacantism very attractive, but also confusing.” Yet, you make no attempt to explain just how “very attractive” sedevacantism could nevertheless be also “confusing” sedevacantism at the same time. Anyway, what is plainly evident throughout your letter is that you yourself are plenty confused about the whole sedevacantism issue. To you credit, however, you humbly seek enlightenment, asking me to “clarify the sedevfacantist powition a little more.” It is decidedly in your favor that you do not reject the sedevacantist position outright, as anti-sedevacantists do.
Accordingly, you bring up some questions and problems you want answered and cleard up. Let’s consider some od them.
Unfortunately, you begin the question and problem part of your letter y falsifying the teaching of the Vatican I Ecumenical Council of 1870. According to you, Vatican I supposedly “proclaimed dogmatically that the Church would always have a ‘VISIBLE HEAD’,” That is your proclamation, NOT the Council’s
If it was your idea to use that false, supposedly “dogmatic”
proclamation of
If the Church has supposedly “always” had a “visible head,” where was any such “visible head” whenever a pope died?
You yourself could have quickly “corrected” that supposed
If you want t be accurate about the Church always having a
Supreme Head, tell us how Our Lord Himself always was, and always will be the Supreme, though INVISIBLE HEAD of His
Church, and that means that the Church has never been “headless.”
You surely understand that Our Lord did not assure His Church the presence of a visible head on the Papal Chair every moment of its existence. He allowed for temporary intervals of no visible head, due to the death of Popes, or their resignation or to the presence of a Heretic on the Papal Chair, posing as the visible head of the Church.
It is not the every-day presence of a live and visible Pope
on
Similarly, you surely understand how Our Lord willed the Perpetual Succession of Popes on the
Chair of
It is high time for anti-sedevacantists to wake up and realize that the absence of a genuine Catholic Pope for over 40 years is a DIVINE PUNISHMENT. Who are the anti-sedevacantists to say that God may not punish his unfaithful children in that way? And who are they to say that God is over doing it in extending His punishment 40 years or more? God punishes us the way we deserve to be punished for our unfaithfulness to Him. No one can tell Him to put a stop to the punishment of taking away from us a true Catholic Pope, before we amend our lives and stop offending Our Lord.
You bring in , as one of your
problems the old Liberious-St. Athanasius
case of long ago. You seem to think that we should first determine the exact
status of Liberius as a Pope, before we can have a
clear idea of the status of the occupants of the Chair of
You need to realize that each case has to be considered and
studied and judged on its own known facts and details. If everything is not
clear enough about the exact status of Livberius As a Pope, the same cannot be said of the Vatican II
occupants of
Your only highly-visible and loudly audible
anti-sedevacantist leaders have for years been providing overwhelming evidence
to show how far from the traditional Catholic faith the Modernist occupants o
You May, at the same time, be acquainted with at least some of the powerful writings of such outstanding sedevacantists as Bishop Donald Sanborn and Father Anthony Cekada, who have for years been exposing and refuting the errors of the Modernist Vatican II “non-Popes,” sowing that they could not possibly be genuine Catholic Popes.
But what drastically distinguishes the anti-Sedevacantists from sedevacantists is the cowardly and dishonest way the anti-sedevacantists have refutsed to draw the unavoidablde conclusions from their own findings, and have refused to state clearly and definitely and fearlessly that the Vatican II would-be “popes” could not possibly be Real Catholic Popes. THAT IS THEIR BIG SIN!
You have the mistaken notion that there ha to be what you
call “judge, persecutor, jury and executioner” to bring about the removal of false “popes” before we can
be sure that the Chair of
It I not up to the sedevacantists
to remove anyone from the Chair of
Sedevacantists do not make
cowardly declarations, as do the anti-sedevacantists,
that a public heretic on the Chair of
The only way you can clearly understand the real status of the Vatican II so called “popes” is by recognizing the Genuine Catholic Faith as the central issue by which those men are to be judged. Sedevacanmtists go strictly by the Traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith which tells them plainly that anyone who contradicts that Catholic faith is not a true Catholic, much less a true Catholic Pope.
God gave us the gift of the Catholic faith to enable us to recognize what is an accord with that Faith and what is contrary to it. If we cowardly refuse to say what our Catholic faith tells us, the we refuse to profess our Faith, awe are strictly obliged to do.
You say that the sedevacantist position is, not just “attractive,” but “very attractive.” This means that you are close to accepting the grace of enlightenment that God is offering you. Don’t let the blind-leading-the-blind anti-sedevacantist browbeat you.
Anti-sedevacantists are
incompetent to handle today’s vacancy of
Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.