This was written by a good friend and one of the most intelligent persons I know. The Catholic Monitor is honored to post it. It is a series of texts which we will call OPEN LETTER TO TAYLOR MARSHALL II and below it will be the original OPEN LETTER TO TAYLOR MARSHAL:
Taylor Marshall (still live) about what Archbishop Vigano said recently
regarding a "non-Catholic pope"--Taylor said, "I don't understand how
this can be. Do you understand? It's a mystery. It's messed up."
Then he went on to the next thing. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! Bergoglio
isn't a mystery"!!! The Trinity is a mystery-- something beyond our
ability to grasp rationally, but not against that ability. Is Amoris AGAINST that ability? What a cop-out on Marshall's part!!
To call this pontificate a "mystery" implies that it is holy, indeed
required by our very Baptism, to accept/acknowledge its validity.
This is such garbage. We laypeople cannot declare Berg [Francis] not the pope,
but we can demand that the "canonical issues" be adjudicated. It is not
required that we, as Catholics, refuse to reach logical conclusions
until the institutional Church gives us a green light.
Fred, did you see this passage? It addresses EXACTLY what we were
discussing yesterday, about Taylor Marshall's "I'm only a simple
layman!" whine. Here Dr. Kwasniewskis is pointing out that contra Marshall we don't
have to be members of the College of Cardinals to reach a conclusion
and to express it.
Also, it appears by Marshall's "logic" that pro-lifers who are "simple laymen" and not lawyers or Supreme Court Justices must say killing unborn babies is a "mystery" and not demand that killing babies be overturned by the Supreme Court. THIS IS SUCH GARBAGE
Now, here is the original OPEN LETTER TO TAYLOR MARSHAL:
Dr. Marshall,
for many of us (myself included), your podcasts have been a source of
enlightenment, entertainment, and—quite frankly—hope, during this very
dark time in the history of the Church. As someone who studied his way
into the Catholic Faith, having the grace and the integrity to
acknowledge the necessity of conversion from the Protestant sect to
which you formerly belonged, you have not been content to rest on your
laurels but have “put yourself out there,” launching the New Saint
Thomas Institute and discussing current events sub luce aeternitatis.
Your willingness to deal with things the way they are, and not the way
they would be if we were all painted on holy cards already, is
refreshing and appreciated.
Accordingly, I am writing to you today in regard to your recent
statements about being “open” to the idea that Jorge Bergoglio is not
actually the pope. For a person in your position, so much as admitting
that possibility must require all the grace and integrity you have
demonstrated in the past—and then some. I say this not in the spirit of
flattery, but in the hopes of spurring you to go even further in the
search for truth upon which you embarked some years ago.
Either Bergoglio is the pope, or he isn’t. The concept of objective
reality, to which our minds must conform, is a philosophical
prerequisite, so to speak, for acceptance of the Catholic Faith itself.
It is humility to recognize the existence of objective reality—not
pride.
There seems to be a missing step, in other words, in the “rush to
non-judgment” taking place among unapostasized Catholics,
post-Resignation. “It is not up to us, to say who is and isn’t the
pope,” has become (rather conveniently) the mantra of the day.
True—and at the same time, not so. While the final determination may be
up to the Church, no one is excused from the requirement of using his
or her own rational faculties in reaching a determination on a matter so
weighty. If we all did so, and began to act legitimately on our
determinations, what would keep things from changing for the better?
As a thought experiment, why don’t we apply this attitude to another
issue—one we all tend to agree on? What if someone were to say, “I am
not a Supreme Court Justice, and therefore it is not up to me whether
unrestricted abortion is the law of the land. I have no opinion on the
matter, and no responsibility to form one, either”? Would we not
reject such a stance as self-excusatory sophistry of the worst kind?
The fact that an ordinary person truly doesn’t have the authority to
overturn Roe v. Wade does not excuse him or her from the
responsibility of doing everything possible, regardless—namely, to
understand that abortion violates the laws of God and man, to recognize
that outrages against the rights of the Creator and one’s fellow man
cannot be permitted to stand, and to demand that those who are Supreme Court Justices reach and respect this reality as well.
“Ah, but that is politics,” I can hear you (and everybody else)
respond. “That’s not how things work, where Cardinals are concerned.
The Church is not a democracy, after all!” Of course not. But it is
not Nazi Germany, either. The faithful are not required to behave like
brainwashed tools in totalitarian systems. On the contrary, God both
wants and obliges us to use the gift of reason with which He has endowed
us. Is it possible to know who is the true pope? First of all, let us
agree that we are not excused from attempting to find out. “But what
can we do?” In addition to keeping up the prayers we can exercise our
rights and responsibilities as baptized Catholics, start demanding that
others do so as well, and quit wimping out.
Secondly, I would like to address your own tendency--shared by other
Catholic luminaries as well--to speak as though reaching such a
determination is a matter of indifference, even if it is possible.
“Saints have disagreed about who the actual pope is; some have even
been wrong!” runs the next stage of the argument. (The name Vincent Ferrer
is almost certain to crop up at this stage.) It is telling, however,
that this observation only cuts one way. As currently wielded, it means
that people who accept Bergoglio as the successor of Saint Peter will
be justified if they turn out to be wrong in the long run, while people
who question the Argentinian’s papal validity in the first place are bad
Catholics, ipso facto. You yourself, commendably, have backed off from this double standard markedly in recent days, but many others have not.
In the same vein let’s talk, for a second, about your treatment of Felix
II in a recent podcast. What struck me, as someone admittedly ignorant
of the historical circumstances beyond what you stated in the
presentation itself, was your selective application of “the moral of the
story” to one side of the current conflict only. OK, so there still
exists some residual fuzziness about who was the authentic Roman
Pontiff, or even (in some attenuated sense) whether there were “two
popes at one time,” back in the day. That doesn’t mean that comparable
confusion exists right now, nor that an aberration can be retrofitted as
the norm. Maybe it is difficult to sift through the tangled
theological and political intricacies of that all-but-forgotten
episode. Reading through Universi Dominici Gregis isn’t. Why
not draw the lesson that, because there have been antipopes before,
there very well could be again? It’s not impossible. It’s not even
unlikely, as Cardinal Pell did a stint in jail for knotting his eyebrows
over.
Another big difference between then and now is, of course, Amoris laetitia
Chapter 8. Could it be that Vincent Ferrer made it to Heaven without
getting the “pope quiz question” right because, at the time, it didn’t
make any serious difference to souls—his own, or anybody else’s? Before
Bergoglio, deciding between one claimant to the papal throne and
another was a matter of merely temporal, not theological, importance,
since only the former archbishop of Buenos Aires has ever dared to
insert situation ethics into the AAS, or change the Catechism of the Catholic Church
to suit his own revolting, long-discredited ideological biases, or take
issue with (you can’t make this stuff up) the wording of the Our Father itself. L’eglise c’est moi! I for one do not attempt to justify the bad example of John Paul II at Assisi and elsewhere, but between Veritatis Splendor and Laudato Si’
there exists an abyss like unto the one separating Lazarus resting in
the bosom of Abraham from the Rich Man in torment. Did Our Lady come
down from Heaven and make the sun spin in order to warn everybody
against Felix II? She did not; and why not? Maybe because he wasn’t
worth Her time.
Speaking of Fatima, here’s another thing you guys always stop just short
of taking into consideration. When a person passes in front of a
mirror, it is quite true that you can suddenly see two of them. Problem
is, reflection not only doubles; it also reverses. If the Third
Secret revealed that there will be more than one “Holy Father” in this
sense, then according to the apparition’s own imagery, one of them—the
one that isn’t the original--has to be exactly backwards.
Are you seriously going to contend that we have no way of identifying
which man-in-a-white-cassock-currently-residing-in-Rome (Jorge Bergoglio
or Joseph Ratzinger, take your pick) constitutes the perfect inversion
of everything an authentic Supreme Pontiff is meant to be?
At the more practical level, I (among other Taylor Marshall loyalists)
have been waiting a long time now for you to move beyond private
judgment in your treatment of the Bipapal Arrangement. I listen as
often and as carefully as I can, and maybe I have missed something, but
all I have ever heard you say about the munus/ministerium clash
is that you have examined those arguments for yourself and have found
them wanting. Well frankly, every Protestant convert has to confront
the fact that his or her own perspective simply isn’t, in the final
analysis, the determining factor about anything. I have a good friend,
for example, to whom I often try to explain points of Catholic belief
while she patiently identifies which ones she agrees with, and which
ones are out of luck. What I have yet to succeed in getting across to
her is that her personal rejection of the Immaculate Conception, for
instance, taints Our Blessed Mother not one spot. What I am trying to
say is that what you think, Dr. Marshall, doesn’t . . . well . . .
matter. If someone dares to opine that Ratzinger may still be
reigning, he or she immediately runs afoul of the “Karens of
Bergoglianism,” ever ready to issue the scolding reminder that “Francis”
is “the Pope” whether we like it or nor! Nobody ever points out,
however, that there is a flipside to this very coin. If “Francis”
actually isn’t “the Pope,” then all the Karens in the world can’t make him one.
“But the Cardinals elected him!” That’s the whole problem about
antipopes, isn’t it? If someone who isn’t the pope hadn’t been
apparently raised to the papal dignity somehow, he’d hardly qualify in
the first place. The question is—how? “But most of the
Cardinals believe he’s for real, and they’re the ones who make the
call!” The private judgment of a Cardinal, or even a majority thereof,
has no more bearing on the issue than yours or mine. Even Princes of
the Church have to conform their subjective determinations to reality,
and elect popes in deference to canon law.
In the same way, everybody (and I believe I am correct in including you,
Dr. Marshall, in this crowd) brushes aside the thought that Benedict
might have resigned under duress by piously repeating his attestations
to the contrary. Have you ever seen “Charade,” with Cary Grant and
Audrey Hepburn? There is a classic scene in which Hepburn’s character
tries to determine whether Grant’s character is lying, and he points out
it’s nearly impossible to do so. There are two kinds of Indians,
according to him (please excuse the deplorable lack of political
correctness, back in the day) a Truthful Whitefoot, and a Lying
Blackfoot. One always tells the truth, and the other always lies.
“Which are you?” she wants to know.
“A Truthful Whitefoot,” he replies, with that winning and iconic but ultimately enigmatic smile.
Dr. Marshall, if Benedict XVI did resign under duress, perhaps through
fear inflicted by threats so horrific that you and I cannot make any
informed conjecture about their magnitude, from which his prompt
abdication and self-imposed lifelong silence constitutes in his mind the
only possible deflection, then what do you expect him to say about it,
afterwards? “Pope Emeritus, did you freely resign?”
“No way, Jose. I stepped down because only by doing so and then keeping
quiet forever could I avert consequences too terrible to talk about,
which is precisely why I’m mentioning them to you right now.” Makes
sense, no? No.
In other words, Dr. Marshall, think for a second! Benedict XVI would
have to say the same thing about the “force or fear” question, whether
he is being a “Truthful Whitefoot” or not.
Still, duress isn’t the only invalidating factor; it just seems to be
the only one you ever talk about because, in your mind at least, it
appears to be the most easily debunked. What about the Daneels
admission that the Sankt Gallen Mafia colluded to elect Bergoglio, in
direct contravention of existing conclave rules? The extra ballot? The
fact that no one seems to have dispensed the Argentinian Jesuit from
his religious vows prior to March 13, 2013, making it impossible for him
to have accepted the office even if elected validly? What about
Cardinal Burke’s perspective, expressed to Patrick Coffin and swiftly
consigned to the Memory Hole, that it could probably be proven that
Bergoglio is an imposter and that the only real drawback is the
difficulty of collecting the evidence? And by the way, has the Holy
Spirit also decided that all of this is all above His pay grade,
too--quietly giving up on His responsibility of protecting genuine
successors of Saint Peter from teaching error in matters of faith and
morals? Or are we just going to continue moving the doctrinal and
pastoral goal posts until all that was previously identifiable as
“Catholicism” simply disappears, in deference to the insatiable
Bergoglian appetite for globalist control, entirely?
I do not know the answers to all of the above, even if my opinion is
just about as “revealed” as Qui Gon Jinn’s regarding whether or not
young Anakin is supposed to bring balance to the Force. What I don’t
like is the effective suppression, by the relevant commentariat at
large, of all such questions. Please, Dr. Marshall, crack open the
Overton Window a little more, if you really meant what you said about
possibly being wrong yourself. You speak with edifying clarity,
authority, and erudition on many other matters pertaining to the ongoing
crisis of our times. Why not the one on which the rest may finally
hinge?
Note: This was written by a good friend and one of the most intelligent
persons I know. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/05/open-letter-to-taylor-marshall_25.html]
Stop
for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next.
In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost - Three Divine
Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth
and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal
happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make
this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading
anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
- Doctor
of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt
the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church
in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial
weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples
facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of
Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia
has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the
Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters
magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on
Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M
Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA
Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic]
Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God's Will and to do it.