Chapter 2 of John Salza’s and Robert Siscoe’s book’s main focus is the four marks of the Church.
I’ve argued many times that this is the crux of the matter because if the four marks are missing, so is the Catholic Church. The Vatican 2 church doesn’t have them and doesn’t even claim them, at least, not as the Catholic Church understands them. Salza and Siscoe have attempted to say otherwise and have made some of their biggest blunders in doing so.
Error 1: The Vatican 2 religion is not formally but only materially divided.
On pages 54-55, Salza and Siscoe claim that unity of faith concerns only with doctrines that require “assent of faith.” Since Vatican 2 and the Vatican 2 popes have not imposed anything requiring an assent of faith, then no formal disunity has taken place.
The hypocrites Salza and Siscoe have no problem applying their rule to their religion but refuse it to everybody else. They make a big deal out of divisions among sedevacantists, but according to their own argument, the divisions are only material and prove nothing.
They forgot, however, to include the fact their popes have not given assent of faith to certain dogmas. Therefore, there is a formal division between the faith of the Vatican 2 popes and Salza and Siscoe. Oneness in faith includes having the same Catholic Faith as the pope. If the pope doesn’t profess the Faith, then formal division necessarily follows. This is why a pope can’t be heretical.
Salza and Siscoe write about Liberius signing the semi-Arian creed under “force” to prove that division can occur between the faith of the pope and the people. The problem is that a pope who signs a heretical document under duress is not a heretic. The document would not be official Catholic teaching since the pope didn’t freely sign it. There is no actual division of faith. [1]
Lastly, Salza’s and Siscoe’s entire argument flies in the face of Quanta Cura.
Pope Pius IX declared in Quanta Cura, Dec. 8, 1864: “And, we cannot pass over in silence the boldness of those who ‘not enduring sound doctrine’ [II Tim. 4:3], contend that ‘without sin and with no loss of Catholic profession, one can withhold assent and obedience to those judgments and decrees of the Apostolic See, whose object is declared to relate to the general good of the Church and its right and discipline, provided it does not touch dogmas of faith or morals.’ There is no one who does not see and understand clearly and openly how opposed this is to the Catholic dogma of the plenary power divinely bestowed on the Roman Pontiff by Christ the Lord Himself of feeding, ruling, and governing the universal Church.”
Therefore, unity of faith requires more than what Salza and Siscoe claim. Their resistance position is a sin and loss of Catholic profession of the faith, which proves they are not one in faith! The next mark proves it more.
Error 2: The Vatican 2 religion is holy.
Salza and Siscoe write that the Church “is holy in the doctrines that it teaches” (p. 47).
Of course, this is true, but the doctrines they are referring to are only the ones that require the “assent of faith.”
One of the doctrines taught by the Vatican 2 religion is religious liberty, which Salza and Siscoe admit is a problem. [2]
Vatican 2 necessitates that the Catholic world to recognize the heresy of religious liberty “in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.” [3] Since Salza and Siscoe claim it was not a definitive teaching requiring the assent of faith, it can be resisted. The problem is that many Catholics will believe in religious liberty precisely because it’s taught officially by their pope and council. One minority group of Catholics will resist the teaching, while the great majority will not.
The idea there is no formal disunity and unholiness in doctrine when a majority of Catholics hold to a heresy because the Church officially but not definitively taught it, is ludicrous. Might as well say the Protestants are unified and holy since they haven’t definitively or infallibly taught anything.
This is just one of dozens of examples of errors of the Vatican 2 religion and Salza’s and Siscoe’s book. A holy religion has all holy doctrines, not just some.
Universal laws also play a role in the dogma of holiness. Canon law, for instance, must be holy. Salza and Siscoe argued that Pope Celestine III promulgated heresy by law. They so want sedevacantism to be wrong that they’ll deny their own religion in trying to disprove it.
Error 3: “We also find the miraculous charisms in the post-Vatican II Church. Padre Pio, for example (who remained a member of the modern Church and accepted Paul VI as Pope until his death in 1968),7 performed countless miracles throughout his life. He possessed the miraculous gift of reading hearts, which he did daily in the confessional. He also miraculously bore the wounds of Christ (the “stigmata”) which he suffered until his death. This is just one example of the charisms present in the Church since Vatican II.” (p. 48)
The post-Vatican 2 church according to Salza and Siscoe is a church with non-definitive heretical teachings from a council leading the world astray but whose members must remain loyal to pre-Vatican 2 teachings and practices and reject its own council.
That’s not the Catholic Church. Catholic councils ratified by popes must be accepted with docility because it would be safe to do so. It took time for most Catholics to realize and understand they had been duped by Vatican 2 and the Vatican 2 popes. Catholics can be fooled and still be Catholic and Padre Pio was no exception.
We know Padre Pio wasn’t aware of the heresies of Paul VI, because ten days before Padre Pio died, he wrote a letter to Paul VI saying, “I pray that God may lead you with His Grace to follow the straight and painful way in defense of eternal truth, which does not change with the passing of years.”
Had Padre Pio known, his letter to Paul VI would’ve been quite different. He probably would have denounced him as a devil because as he said, “eternal truth…does not change” and no pope can change eternal truth as Paul VI attempted to do with his council and sacraments.
Padre Pio was a very simple man and most certainly wasn’t a theologian.
Paul VI was morally accepted as pope by most all those who would be sedevacantists in the short time after the council.
One exception was Fr. Saenz Y Arriaga, who would appear to have been a member of the Vatican 2 religion if he didn’t speak out and write his book. He made it perfectly clear (after Padre Pio’s death) that he never accepted its false teachings or belonged to the sect.
The years before Padre Pio died in 1968, he was ill and frail. The new mass hadn’t been promulgated and Padre Pio already showed disapproval for some of the changes that were taking place.
It was simply unthinkable that such evil could occur. No one expected it and almost no one had the moral fortitude to react correctly except for heroes like Fr. Saenz Y Arriaga. I’m sure Padre Pio would have supported the Mexican priest if lived long enough.
Error 4: “Because moral catholicity requires ‘a great number of people,’ the visible society will never be reduced to only a small remnant. There may come a time when the internal virtue of faith is only present in a small number of the members of the visible Church. But, as we will see in Chapter 3, the loss of interior faith alone does not, in and of itself, separate a man from the visible Church. Hence, the loss of faith in the end times, alluded to by Christ (Luke 18:8) and St. Paul (2 Thes. 2:3), does not contradict the teaching that the Church will always possess, as Van Noort said, ‘a great number of men from many different nations.’” (p. 50)
Defending the above statement, Salza and Siscoe turn to Van Noort:
“The Church is endowed with moral catholicity: Christ’s Church, after its beginning, should always be conspicuous for its morally universal diffusion. … To satisfy the requirements of moral catholicity in fact – a quality belonging to Christ’s Church perpetually and necessarily – we stated there was required: ‘a great number of men from many different nations.’ … Such diffusion, obviously, cannot be had without a really large number of adherents.”16
Salza and Siscoe took Van Noort and created their own “dogma,” viz, the Church must always be large in numbers. That’s not what Van Noort said. Salza and Siscoe like to place an ellipsis, when the rest of the quote or teaching doesn’t fit their argument. Van Noort wrote 5 pages on the subject and even the quote they provide doesn’t imply that the Church can’t be reduced to a remnant.
First of all, the Church was small in the beginning and yet had the mark of Catholicity. Van Noort points to that fact on the very page Salza and Sisco quote from. He’s just saying the Church was created for men in all nations and that it will reach all nations. Because it reaches all nations, it will be large in numbers.
Van Noort did not say or imply that the Catholic Church must always have large numbers. He couldn’t say that, because it would necessarily mean the Church was absent of Catholicity in the beginning, which is absurd.
On the very next page, Van Noort writes:
Please note, however, that the continuity of this progressive expansion should not be pressed too hard. The texts cited do not rule out the possibility of the Church’s being notably decreased in this or that century due to schism or heresy (whose occurrence was foretold in the Sacred Scripture), without it being able to recoup immediately. Still, theologians usually reject the hypothesis that the Church might ever be so besieged with heresy that it would-even for a brief period- be restricted to just one nation 12. Neither should one interpret the scriptural prophecies about the great defection at the end of the world in such a sense. 13
The footnotes read: 12 Melchior Cano (De locis, IV, 6. ad 13) and Bellarmine (De ecclesia, IV, 7) were of the opinion that even in this hypothesis the Church could still be call catholic; namely, insofar as it could be clearly proved to be the same Church as that Church which was once diffused throughout the whole world. But the point at issue is whether the Church, if confined in that fashion, would still be catholic in the sense indicated by the Scriptures.
13. Luke 18:8, II Thess. 2:3, see St. Augustine [?] De unitate ecclesiae 15. 38.
As sedevacantists, we most certainly don’t hold that the Church has been reduced to one nation, because sedevacantists exist in every nation. According to Van Noort, Cano and Bellarmine theorize that the Church could be restricted to one nation but would still be Catholic.
Rev. Sylvester Berry refutes Salza’s and Siscoe’s claim:
The idea of diffusion, or extension, throughout the world has so predominated in the notion of universality that the term Catholic is now used almost exclusively in that sense. …Catholicity of diffusion may be either de jure or de facto. The Church is catholic or universal de jure (by right) because it is destined for the salvation of all men, and therefore endowed with the ability to spread to all parts of the world to fulfill that mission; it is catholic de facto (in fact) when actually diffused or spread throughout the world. All who admit that Christ founded any church at all, must admit that it is Catholic de jure, — that it was commissioned by Christ to carry salvation to all nations, and that it was consequently endowed with the ability to spread throughout the world for this purpose. Hence de jure Catholicity is an essential property possessed by the Church of Christ from the first moment of her existence. It is immediately evident that de facto Catholicity could only come with the lapse of time, and gradually increase with the passing centuries, until the Church becomes completely Catholic, embracing all nations, tribes, and tongues. Therefore de facto Catholicity is not an essential property of the Church in the sense that it must have been present at all times from the very beginning; it is an essential property in the sense that it necessarily flows from the very nature of the Church as a society destined to carry the Gospel to all nations. (Berry, The Church of Christ, p. 69; italics given.)
Jesuit theologian Fr. Timothy Zapelena (1883-1962), who taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome wrote about catholicity of the Church towards the end of time:
[Objection 10:] However, the truth is, at the end of the world catholicity will be absent, as is clear from Lk 18:8: “But yet the Son of Man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” But catholicity presupposes unity of faith. Therefore…
Answer. I distinguish the major [premise]: That at the end of the world, living faith will be lacking in many, I grant; that all faith [will be lacking] according as there is an apostasy of all or of most—[this] the second premise demonstrates. Very decidedly, “then shall many be scandalized … and many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold” (Mt 24:10-12). But if at the end of the world apostasy of such a kind actually were to be the case in most men, it would be necessary to think of catholicity in such a manner that it must be understood in a very restricted sense as a stage immediately and very shortly preceding the consummation of the world. However, the difficulty relates to the end of the world, not the existence of the Church throughout the ages, about which we especially speak in this thesis. (Rev. Timoteo Zapelena, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi: Pars Apologetica [Rome: Gregorian, 1955], p. 489; italics given; underlining added. Translation by Novus Ordo Watch.)
Lastly, in explaining the third mark of Catholicity, Salza and Siscoe leave out a very important aspect to the dogma. The Roman Catechism explains:
“She is also called universal, because all who desire eternal salvation must cling to and embrace her, like those who entered the ark to escape perishing in the flood. This (note of catholicity), therefore, is to be taught as a most reliable criterion, by which to distinguish the true from a false Church.”
This is important because their religion doesn’t claim to be the only ark of salvation. The Vatican 2 religion includes false religions as making up the Church of Christ. As long are you’re in one of these false religions, you’re in the ark of salvation.
Error 5: “The attribute of infallibility guarantees that the Church will never impose a heresy upon the faithful to be believed with the assent of faith. This is the biggest sticking point today for the Sedevacantists, since they believe that unity of doctrine no longer exists, and infallibility has been violated. About this, however, they are mistaken.” (p. 52)
As long as the pope doesn’t teach ex cathedra, Salza and Siscoe believe he may impose a heresy to be believed by the faithful. They’ve heretically argued that Pope Celestine III taught heresy by law and they heretically argue the Church has taught heresy by Vatican 2 decrees. The argument Salza and Siscoe advance originated with the Feenyites, the absurdity I’ve dealt with here: Non-infallible Church Teaching Can’t Be Heretical
Salza and Siscoe write: “The Arian crisis is a parallel of the situation in which we find ourselves today, when vast numbers of Catholic bishops have been infected with the heresy of Modernism, just as the majority of the bishops in the fourth century were infected with the heresy of Arianism. But, in spite of the doctrinal crisis currently afflicting the Church’s hierarchy, the true Faith is still professed with clarity by countless traditional-minded Catholics throughout the world (priests and laity alike), just as it was during the time of the Arian crisis.” (p. 53)
The Arian crisis parallels today, but not for their resistance movement. St. Athanasius forbade worshipping with the Arians who had taken over Catholic churches, while bereft of the faith themselves. Salza and Siscoe act like the Arians were Catholics in the Church. They were not.
Error 6: “The principal difference between the teaching of the Catholic Church and that of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox sects regarding the mark of apostolicity, is apostolicity in government. This is because they lack legitimate apostolic succession (formal apostolic succession), which is also lacking in the Sedevacantist sects. In fact, it is apostolicity in government (the clearest mark of the true Church) that gives the Sedevacantist apologists the most difficulties. Their position forces them to openly depart from the teaching of the Church, or else invent wild theories to keep from having to reject what they know the Church teaches.” (p. 51)
What the Church teaches is not what Salza and Siscoe present. The one quote Salza and Siscoe rely solely on comes from Van Noort, who inserted his mere opinion in his “Christ’s Church Vol. 2.” He writes, “The only point to be proven here is that it was Christ’s will that the apostolic college should continue forever, in such a way that there would always be in the Church a body of men invested with the threefold power which the apostles enjoyed [which includes jurisdiction]. This thesis is a dogma of faith, as we know, e.g., from the Council of Trent, Sess. 23, c. 4 (DB 960).”
The Council of Trent says no such thing. It didn’t come close.
Christ instituted a hierarchy, but never did Trent say the offices will always be filled.
Salza and Siscoe could have just quoted Trent to prove their point, but Trent doesn’t say what they want it to say, so they turn to Van Noort’s interpretation of it.
It’s hard to believe a theologian could twist something so badly, but Van Noort did so and Salza and Siscoe tried to capitalize off of it. I looked up four other theologians and none of them say what Van Noort said. It clearly is no dogma that a body of men filling bishopric offices will always exist. Only the potential of having offices filled will always exist.
I provided an explanation of the mark of apostolicity here: The Catholic Bottom Line – Part VIII. This link covers all the arguments on the subject in chapter 2 of True of False pope.
The rest of the chapter concerns arguments and opinion that have no bearing on whether sedevacantism is true or false. Therefore, we’ll ignore it.
To be continued…
Footnotes:
[1] Pope Pius IX in Quartus Supra (# 16), January 6, 1873 A.D., On False Accusations, declared: “And previously the Arians falsely accused Liberius, also Our predecessor, to the Emperor Constantine, because Liberius refused to condemn St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and refused to support their heresy.”
[2] Pages 184-185
Likewise, the statement that man has a right to religious liberty and freedom of conscience is in itself perfectly orthodox, provided one understands it to mean that man has the right to embrace and publicly profess the one true religion established by Christ, and the right to refuse evil based on the dictates of a well-formed conscience. However, the statement would be erroneous if it meant that man has a moral right to violate the First Commandment by practicing a false religion, or that he should be permitted to publicly violate a just moral law by appealing to his “conscience” which does not reproach him for doing so.
A footnote on page 428:
Archbishop Lefebvre provides us a great example of the justifiable withholding of assent to the teachings of Vatican II through his scholarly and well-reasoned objections to the council’s teaching in Dignitatis Humane on religious liberty. In fact, in October 1985, Lefebvre submitted his famous Dubia about Religious Liberty to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which demonstrates that the council’s teaching is incompatible with the Church’s perennial condemnations of religious liberty. The authors have a copy of the Congregation’s 21-page unpublished reply (dated March 9, 1987) to Lefebvre’s dubia against Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty. The Congregation’s reply does little more than repeat the teachings of Dignitatis Humanae, rather than reconcile them with Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors. Furthermore, the Congregation admits the possibility of further study of the problem (“…demeure la possibilité d’une étude ultérieure de ce problème…”
See also REMNNAT NEWSPAPER: A Vatican/SSPX Discussion (remnantnewspaper.com)
[3] Dignitatis humanae (vatican.va)
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