Part 4 of Exclusive Transcription: Is Benedict XVI Still the Pope? Dr. Edmund Mazza & Patrick Coffin
https://www.patrickcoffin.media/is-benedict-xvi-still-the-pope/
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I’ll tell you Patrick, I tried to get my article on this published by a prominent editor in a prominent Catholic journal whose names I will not name. But I got an email back telling me that people who are thinking along these lines are leading people out of the church, and he didn’t use the word “schism,” but that was the implication. And so I just want to clear that up.
And first, I’ll say two things. The first one is that I think people are leaving the church already, and going into schism because they think Francis is Pope. Because they think that he’s a monster Pope, that’s destroying the church and teaching things that are not Catholic. That all religions, that God wills, all religions, for example, as in the Abu Dhabi declaration, which on the face of it is heresy.
I’ll give you an example who I think is the poster boy of this, Sean Hannity, Right? From Fox News, the conservative commentator, He left the Catholic faith. I think it’s probably the catalyst that pushed him over the edge was having a Marxist Pope; thinking that Francesco is running the show here.
So I would differ. I talk sometimes with Ann Barhardt, she says her inbox is flooded with people who thank her for looking into this subject, because it’s keeping them in the church rather than encouraging them to leave the church.
And the second thing that I would want to say is that technically, if you look at the statements of the different saints and scholars on the subject, just because you suspect the Pope might not be the Pope, doesn’t put you into a schism.
Patrick Coffin:
Or Sedevacantism.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Or a Sedevacantism, that’s another thing they call you a sedevacantist. But I got two quick quotes here. Here is one from Saint Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, whose feast day we celebrated back on August 7th. He wrote a multi-volume commentary on the Suma Theologica. And this is what Saint Cajetan says, “If someone for a reasonable motive holds the person of the Pope in suspicion and refuses his presence, even his jurisdiction, he does not commit the delict of schism, nor any other whatsoever, provided that he’d be ready to accept the Pope were he not held in suspicion. It goes without saying that one has the right to avoid what is harmful and to ward off dangers. In fact, it may happen that the Pope could govern tyrannically, and that is all the easier as he is the more powerful and does not fear any punishment from anyone on earth.”
And the second quote is from, back before Vatican II, the most respected commentary on Canon aw was an eight volume set by Francis Xavier Wernz and Peter Vidal. And this is what they wrote in volume seven of their commentary on Canon Law. “Finally, they cannot be numbered among the schismatics who refuse to obey the Roman pontiff because they consider his person to be suspect or doubtfully elected on account of rumors in circulation.” I think we have a lot more than rumor to go on here.
Patrick Coffin:
I do too. I’m glad you brought up Sean Hannity, I actually debated Sean Hannity on his own show back in 2001.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Really?
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, very low information guy. He kept bragging about the fact that he had studied Latin and was an altar boy. I mean who cares, Sean? He never saw an Orthodox priest he, wasn’t willing to attack on his own show. So this is very important, what you’re saying. I despise anyone who would grease the skids for someone to leave the Catholic faith.
Our Lord and Savior did not call angels to the priesthood or to the Episcopacy. His raw material is sinner. Church corruption to me is a proof of the divine foundation of the Catholic Church. We’ve had 37 anti-Popes, not the antichrist. It’s a Pope that’s thought to be the Pope, but falsely so.
And a good example is the great and brilliant Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrar, who firmly supported Clement VII, who was an anti-Pope. So even saints can get this wrong, the Holy Spirit is going to work this out. My message is if Christ is having a long power nap in the boat, don’t get out of the boat, and don’t leave Jesus and Peter because of Judas. And don’t put yourself in the category of disciples that he rebukes when he wakes up.
This is a trial for the church. This is a test of your fidelity to Christ himself. A lot of the former pillars of support and so on have been slowly withdrawn. I think this is, all of this is a remote dress rehearsal for the rise of the Antichrist. That’s my view. I’m not saying Pope Francis is the Antichrist. People always want to put a spin on what you try to say clearly. However, weaponized ambiguity is not the certain trumpet blast of the gospel that we have seen from each of the previous 266 Popes. This is utterly without precedent.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
No. In fact, Pope Benedict, when he was Joseph Ratzinger in the Ratzinger report, right? Available from Ignatius Press in November, 1984. He said, actually that ambiguity is the hallmark of the devil.
Again, we thank Dr.
Ed Mazza and Patrick Coffin for giving the Catholic Monitor permission to
transcribe the whole show and post on our site. Above
is a brief taste of the show. The hour and half show transcript is over
thirty pages long so it has been laid out into four parts. Tonight, we
will give part four.
Our plan is to do a series of posts examining if Francis is possibly an anti-pope or as The Coffin Show title stated "Is Benedict XVI Still Pope?" using the show to look at that possibility, but first we will present the four parts. Here is part four which is the final segment of the show:
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, I agree in full. Francis has twice in my mental accounting, alluded to the possibility of his own resignation. And now there’s rumors swirling that there’ll be some kind of meeting in November with the cardinals, after which he will publicly resign. That’s the rumor. Often in the Roman sphere, Rome’s fuel is almost rumors, right? That’s the wind beneath its PR wings, is rumor. But many of the previous rumors about the disastrous Synod on the family, those rumors turned out to be true.
The rumor that Pachamama would be enthroned, that turned out to be true. The rumor that the Argentine bishops in their “Attaboy, double thumbs up” letter in response to the question of whether or not divorced and remarried Catholics, that did not have a decree of nullity, could receive Holy Communion. That wasn’t only approved by Francis, but elevated into the AAS, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which is a kind of vault of official magisterial teaching. That’s a big neon flashing problem to me. That, that error can be enthroned into what we’ve traditionally seen as official Catholic teaching. This is why thoughts like ours this conversation, your research have arisen.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I’ll tell you Patrick, I tried to get my article on this published by a prominent editor in a prominent Catholic journal whose names I will not name. But I got an email back telling me that people who are thinking along these lines are leading people out of the church, and he didn’t use the word “schism,” but that was the implication. And so I just want to clear that up.
And first, I’ll say two things. The first one is that I think people are leaving the church already, and going into schism because they think Francis is Pope. Because they think that he’s a monster Pope, that’s destroying the church and teaching things that are not Catholic. That all religions, that God wills, all religions, for example, as in the Abu Dhabi declaration, which on the face of it is heresy.
I’ll give you an example who I think is the poster boy of this, Sean Hannity, Right? From Fox News, the conservative commentator, He left the Catholic faith. I think it’s probably the catalyst that pushed him over the edge was having a Marxist Pope; thinking that Francesco is running the show here.
So I would differ. I talk sometimes with Ann Barhardt, she says her inbox is flooded with people who thank her for looking into this subject, because it’s keeping them in the church rather than encouraging them to leave the church.
And the second thing that I would want to say is that technically, if you look at the statements of the different saints and scholars on the subject, just because you suspect the Pope might not be the Pope, doesn’t put you into a schism.
Patrick Coffin:
Or Sedevacantism.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Or a Sedevacantism, that’s another thing they call you a sedevacantist. But I got two quick quotes here. Here is one from Saint Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, whose feast day we celebrated back on August 7th. He wrote a multi-volume commentary on the Suma Theologica. And this is what Saint Cajetan says, “If someone for a reasonable motive holds the person of the Pope in suspicion and refuses his presence, even his jurisdiction, he does not commit the delict of schism, nor any other whatsoever, provided that he’d be ready to accept the Pope were he not held in suspicion. It goes without saying that one has the right to avoid what is harmful and to ward off dangers. In fact, it may happen that the Pope could govern tyrannically, and that is all the easier as he is the more powerful and does not fear any punishment from anyone on earth.”
And the second quote is from, back before Vatican II, the most respected commentary on Canon aw was an eight volume set by Francis Xavier Wernz and Peter Vidal. And this is what they wrote in volume seven of their commentary on Canon Law. “Finally, they cannot be numbered among the schismatics who refuse to obey the Roman pontiff because they consider his person to be suspect or doubtfully elected on account of rumors in circulation.” I think we have a lot more than rumor to go on here.
Patrick Coffin:
I do too. I’m glad you brought up Sean Hannity, I actually debated Sean Hannity on his own show back in 2001.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Really?
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, very low information guy. He kept bragging about the fact that he had studied Latin and was an altar boy. I mean who cares, Sean? He never saw an Orthodox priest he, wasn’t willing to attack on his own show. So this is very important, what you’re saying. I despise anyone who would grease the skids for someone to leave the Catholic faith.
Our Lord and Savior did not call angels to the priesthood or to the Episcopacy. His raw material is sinner. Church corruption to me is a proof of the divine foundation of the Catholic Church. We’ve had 37 anti-Popes, not the antichrist. It’s a Pope that’s thought to be the Pope, but falsely so.
And a good example is the great and brilliant Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrar, who firmly supported Clement VII, who was an anti-Pope. So even saints can get this wrong, the Holy Spirit is going to work this out. My message is if Christ is having a long power nap in the boat, don’t get out of the boat, and don’t leave Jesus and Peter because of Judas. And don’t put yourself in the category of disciples that he rebukes when he wakes up.
This is a trial for the church. This is a test of your fidelity to Christ himself. A lot of the former pillars of support and so on have been slowly withdrawn. I think this is, all of this is a remote dress rehearsal for the rise of the Antichrist. That’s my view. I’m not saying Pope Francis is the Antichrist. People always want to put a spin on what you try to say clearly. However, weaponized ambiguity is not the certain trumpet blast of the gospel that we have seen from each of the previous 266 Popes. This is utterly without precedent.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
No. In fact, Pope Benedict, when he was Joseph Ratzinger in the Ratzinger report, right? Available from Ignatius Press in November, 1984. He said, actually that ambiguity is the hallmark of the devil.
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, yeah. True if this, not true if that. Right, so you see there are some of the documents of Vatican II that contain this weaponized ambiguity. There’s no doubt about it. Again, it doesn’t make you a SSPX-er or an SPV-er or a member of the resistance. It’s simply saying as Archbishop Vigano did in one of his letters, maybe from last year that, and this was kind of a pill for me.
I’m not going to misquote him, but I’m probably not going to get exactly accurate, but he said this or similar words, that no one ever… There was no controversy over the spirit of Trent or the spirit of Vatican I. Why is that? Well, because the documents are black and white. You might reject the documents. You might not agree, but there’s no doubt as to where the line is drawn and the phrasing that is used is crystal clear.
Not so with this papacy and not so with certain sections of the letter of the council. I wanted to ask you, because you’ve mentioned Pete Seewald and the Ratzinger report. To my mind, the beginning of this fuzzification of the papal office started under Paul VI with his book length interview with his longtime friend, Jean Guitton. I forget the name of it, but it’s a similar unofficial interview.
As far as I know, that’s the first example of the Vicar of Christ talking to a journalist in a quasi-authoritative way. And this was extended or perhaps repeated in 1993, I believe, or 1994 with Crossing the Threshold of Hope where Vitorio Messori, also conducted the Ratzinger report, interviews John Paul II. His answers there, what do they mean? How much weight do they hold? Well, he’s not talking as a Pope? He’s not issuing something from the chair, but it introduces a kind of note of confusion. I don’t think they’re good ideas. There are good reasons why previous Popes never did this. You see?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I think your right. I think your right Patrick. Father Zuhlsdorf, Father Z, has said the same thing that you’re saying. That the Popes over the last 60 years, they’ve been too much of Chatty Cathy’s. And you know what it’s led to, Patrick; it’s led to certain ultra-Montanism among the lay faithful.
So that if you question any comment from a press conference or an airplane or when he was walking down the street or talking to a 90 year old atheist, if you question anything that a Pope says, or a purported Pope says, automatically you’re a schismatic or a heretic or you’re working to undermine the Pope, right?
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, you’re disloyal. You don’t have loyalty. Obedience is the word they use. Hey, the modern magesterium says X, I want to be obedient. That’s another way to squirrel away from it. That no matter what, no matter what he says, you want to baptize it and validate it and try to domesticate it when…
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
That’s never been the teaching of the church, I’m sorry to say. I mean, I’m a medieval historian. I could give you many examples of folks who said things that, you know, are not kosher.
Patrick Coffin:
Right.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Now it doesn’t mean we leave the church. No, we stay with the church. As you said, it’s a hospital for sinners, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to get to the bottom of things
Patrick Coffin:
How strange would it be if Benedict dies first?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Well, that’s an interesting thing on many levels, because in one of the Seewald books, Pope Benedict does say that he has written a Spiritual Last Testament. I wonder if that doesn’t become the new Third Secret. Will we ever get the full content?
Patrick Coffin:
Unpublished? So it exists, but not published?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
It’s not published yet, and I don’t know to whom he entrusted it to. I hope he made multiple copies. I hope he entrusted it to several people.
Patrick Coffin:
Can you get that? And we’ll come back on the show and do another one of this.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I will do my Indiana Jones best to do so. By the way, can I put in a plug for my Indiana Jones activity?
Patrick Coffin:
Oh, please do. Does it involve a whip and a hat, and a rolling ball?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I’ve actually got them, but I don’t want to go run and get them.
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, do tell.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
So, you know to pay the bills, I do teach online classes in Church History and in World History and starting the week of September 28th, we’re gonna start a three month look at the Catholic church in the 20th century and the World History in the 20th century. And so if folks go to edmunmazza.com, they can look at the syllabus and see all the topics that we’re going to cover.
We’re going to name names. We’re going to talk about Teilhard de Chardin. We’re going to talk about Rauner, Ratzinger, Vatican II, the Novus Ordo, Bugnini. We’re going to get to the bottom of what’s been happening in the church from 1917, with our Lady of Fatima to 1973 with our Lady of Akita. And then a separate course on World History. So we’re going to go through all the heroes and the villains, Stalin, Mao, Hitler.
Patrick Coffin:
Justin Trudeau.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Everything from World War I to Vietnam. So we’re running a special right now. So if folks want to go to edmundmazza.com, I would love to have you.
Patrick Coffin:
Sir, you keep stealing the arrows from my quiver. That was going to be my next roundabout. Edmundmazza.com. E-D-M-U-N-D-M-A-Z-Z-A or ZED-ZED-A, if you’re from the British Empire, .com. That sounds outstanding, Ed. When I hear you describe the syllabus, I think, why doesn’t this exist? Why hasn’t this already existed? This is an enormous amount of important information all in one place.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Thank you.
Patrick Coffin:
So it’s interactive? Can you ask questions?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Oh yeah. So, the way it works is I send the folks a GoToMeeting link, and so people attend live and we have, we run for about an hour and a half. And the last 15 minutes is question and answer, and folks that can’t actually join live during Pacific Time, can watch the video at their leisure. So everybody gets a video link to watch the video.
Patrick Coffin:
Teach, I’m very interest in this. I’ll try to, if I show up, I’ll try to keep my big mouth shut and not dominate the question period.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
No, no. We would love to have you take the lead.
Patrick Coffin:
Ed, you mentioned Fatima from 1917. I wonder, I want to close with this and I’m so glad that you’re going to talk about modernism. Modernism seems to be the font of all of this evil. The synthesis of all heresies, as Pius X said that. Was it Pius X, who said that? Is that in Pascendi?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Yep.
Patrick Coffin:
I had a terrifc interview with William Marshner, who for my money is the scholar of Modernism; because its tentacles are everywhere. It’s in the Von Balthasar, dare we hope that all men be saved. It seems to be in this thinking from Joseph Ratzinger. This kind of new, innovative… Anything with new or neo should not raise a hackle, but at least an eyebrow. Do you agree with that? Like why the endless innovation? Why do you want to endlessly improvise or riff on something so solid, established and rooted in the tradition? Is this an extremist stance here in my skepticism?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
No, not at all. You know Patrick, I consider myself a spiritual disciple of the late great Father Nicholsa Gruner, and I met him four or five times over the last 30 years before he died. And in high school, basically I grew up on the Fatima Crusader. He was a Canadian priest who tirelessly promoted the idea that Fatima is unfinished, that the Pope and the Bishops have not consecrated Russia. And that’s why we’re still in danger of a communist totalitarianism, even here at home. And the Third Secret has not been fully revealed. Especially the words that Our Lady probably spoke have not been fully revealed.
So he was a tireless promoter of that, and what does the message of Fatima tell us? It tells us that the errors of Russia would spread throughout the world. And as I’m sure you know Bella Dodd and other people have testified that they infiltrated the seminaries back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. It’s probably how we got Teddy McCarrick and Helder Camara for people in South America who know what I’m talking about.
And so what is modernism? It’s basically like spiritual Marxism. Marx said that everything in society, everything from how you tie your shoelaces to what your religion is, is based on the current economic model that you’re using, that you’re employing in your society. So if you want to reverse that economic model, if you want to take away capitalism and put Marxism, everything has to change, because that’s the foundation of everything.
You know the kind of religion you have, the kind of books you read is ultimately based on what economic system is in place. So it’s kind of the same thing with the church. Everything must change because they want a… It’s a new matrix. They’re laying out a new matrix if you will, a Marxist one. And one more thing about Father Gruner, one of the last things he did before he died in November of 2014, he actually gave a talk in which he talks about the renunciation of Pope Benedict, February 11th 2013.
And this is available online; I’ll send it to you. Maybe it can go into the show notes. But there’s a video of Father Gruner talking about Stefano Violi, who was again the Italian Canonist, who said that Benedict did not renounce the munus. He only renounced the ministry and Father Gruner said, you know people ask me. “Father, who do I pray for in the mass? Who do I name as Pope? And he didn’t answer the question. And what he said was whatever Benedict was doing in his declartio, he was not resigning the munus.
Patrick Coffin:
Right, right.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
So I respect Father Gruner.
Patrick Coffin:
Yeah, we could do a whole show on Fatima or hold 50 shows on Father Gruner versus Father Andrew Apostoli versus so much to be said about Fatima. Maybe we can close with our Lady of Lourdes, because you point out, I believe in a blog posted at edmundmazza.com that Our Lady’s message to the unlettered Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, I believe was not “I was immaculately conceived, but I am the Immaculate Conception.” Gerund, ongoing present. I wonder if that was deliberate. A kind of a crumb Easter cookie or tell on Pope Benedict’s part that he’s-
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Like we said of all the days…
Patrick Coffin:
Linking it to the transcendent, eternality of the munus.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
He could have chosen to announce his declaration on any of the 365 days of the year, but he chose to announce it on February 11th, the Feast of our Lady of Lourdes.
Patrick Coffin:
Do you think the cardinals knew beforehand, what he was about to say that day?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
You know Patrick, I think the reason why they looked like nonplussed, or they just seemed okay with it, I think they were just completely stunned, I think. If they were to be believed, you know Ganswein compared what Benedict did in that meeting room with the clergy there, to what happened at St. Peter’s that night when lightning struck the dome.
I mean, if you’re looking for a sign that something is going on here that heaven may not necessarily approve of, that was it.
The bolt from the blue. So, even Ganswein said that whoever was in charge of the meeting that day, it was like a bolt from the blue. So I think it did, I think it caught at least some of them off guard.
Patrick Coffin:
Was Cardinal Sodano then Secretary of State?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
I’m trying to remember who…
Patrick Coffin:
Well he gave a statement. I can put the clip up and folks can make their own conclusions about what that all means. Ed Mazza, thank you so much for your time. I know we just began to scratch the color white of the egg shell here. www.edmundmazza.com, is that how to set up as your student, with your online courses?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Yes, exactly. The PO Box where they can send it to is listed on the website. Just go to www.edmundmazza.com and you can check out the schedule of all the different topics that we’re going to cover.
Patrick Coffin:
I remember National Lampoon back in the day had a, it was a feature called Cliff’s Notes Revisited or something. And it was great works of literature compressed into one sentence, so the history of the world was compressed as, “A whole bunch of different things happened.” The Old Testament was compressed as, “God creates man and everything man does gets God angry.” So thanks for your work, I do recommend that people sign up for the class, that’s about to start. Of course, this is evergreen. In the future this will be ever present, Right?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Oh yeah. As far as I know, because it’s saved as a Google Drive. I think it, yeah, it lasts forever.
Patrick Coffin:
I just want to give a note of hope and encouragement to people who might be a little unsettled by the message today. Jesus Christ is Lord. He has not left us orphans. He founded the church to be indefectible and will last forever until he returns. Even if there are question marks about who the actual Vicar of Christ is, we don’t have to be afraid.
We certainly don’t have to leave the church. We have to pray for unity and above all for clarity. That seems to be the missing link, of clarity. And you know the Holy Spirit is a great teacher. He loves to teach us. He wants to be sought by us. So if we seek Him with all our hearts and not just keep Him on a shelf or consider Him an unreachable mystery, then we will make it all the way home. Can I hear an Amen?
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Amen.
Patrick Coffin:
Awesome. Dr. Ed Mazza, thanks for your time. Appreciate it very much.
Dr. Edmund Mazza:
Thanks so much Patrick.
Patrick Coffin: