Conciliar Popes I - Bishop Richard Williamson

[Michael]

Conciliar Popes I

The world has always known bad Popes, but never
As in today’s world more corrupt than ever.

Whenever the claim is put forward that the Conciliar Popes may be at least partly in good faith, there are usually Catholics that protest. They will say that the Popes are intelligent and educated churchmen, so it is impossible that they do not fully realize what they are doing.

The “mentevacantist” theory, according to which these Popes have vacant minds, partly ignorant of the consequences of their own actions, is for these critics absurd. One can understand the protest, but let me quote a friend who understands “mentevacantism” as it needs to be understood:—

“The idea that Popes can be mistaken in good faith because they hold that certain errors are not opposed to the Faith, gets little serious attention, because people have a concept of the papacy too detached from the world, whereas the whole history of the Popes is a history of men of their time being liable to share in all the good and bad habits and vices of their time. The difference lies in the power of the error, which has never been so mighty as it is today, mankind never having been, as one must not forget, so degenerate as today.

“For indeed liberalism is now everywhere and it is overwhelming, no longer a mere thought, or way of thinking, but a very way of being that permeates every man alive, be he an absolute liberal in himself, or an agent of liberalism and its subversion, or merely one of its tools. Such is the case of the Conciliar Popes. They think they are drawing close to the world to heal it. They do not realize that it is the world which is drawing them to itself to infect and control them.

“In such a situation as this, one can certainly speak of liberal Popes but not of non-Catholic Popes, insofar as there is lacking the prime requisite for such a condemnation, namely the personal will on their part to be liberals and not Catholics. All one can do is recognize the fact that in these Popes there is the personal will to be Catholics and not anti-Catholic liberals, since for them there is no contradiction between the two, far from it. According to their theologian and thinker, Joseph Ratzinger, liberalism is one of the good by-products of Catholicism, needing only to be cleansed of certain alien distortions imported into it. And so as for destroying the Church, it stands to reason that Popes believing in such a compromised Catholicism cannot help one of the consequences of their actions being the destruction of the Church.

“Concerning Archbishop Lefebvre, given that he grew up in a Church quite different from today’s Church, I can only conclude that for him it was impossible for a Catholic acting as an instrument of subversion not to realize what he was doing. Still less could a Pope not realize. From reading between the lines of certain of the Archbishop’s writings, I do believe that while his vision of the world certainly included the process of degeneration reaching down to the end of time, it did not include that process involving in any clear manner the Church as well.”

I can just hear readers objecting to this kind of analysis: “Oh, Excellency, please stop defending the Conciliar Popes. It’s black or white. If they’re black, I’ll be a happy sedevacantist. If they’re white, I’ll be a happy liberal. Your greys do nothing but confuse me!”

Dear reader, black is black, white is white, but rarely in real life do we find pure white, and never pure black (whatever is, has the goodness of being). If you want to understand this relative excusing of the Conciliar Popes, the key is to grasp that the world has never been so deeply bad as it is today. From this unprecedented degeneracy it is obvious that Conciliar Popes are in this respect more excusable for going astray in the Faith than any of their predecessors.

Kyrie eleison.

[Dawn Marie]

plus 1

:)

Joseph Wilson said:

Wow! H.E. said a mouthful,and said it well!

[Alley]

So maybe I'm not getting something but to me They are perfectly aware of

what they are doing and have done.

[Dawn Marie]

Well maybe I can take a stab at it.

I think---anyone correct me if I'm wrong--- what he is saying is that the conciliar popes are not all bad (sede)nor all good (novus ordo the popes can do no wrong).  That even if they know what they have done they don't really understand the evil of what they have done.  Some of them through bad formation in their seminary days i.e. Benedict the XVI, think that the bad can be good if just given a chance: Quoting BPW above:"According to their theologian and thinker, Joseph Ratzinger, liberalism is one of the good by-products of Catholicism, needing only to be cleansed of certain alien distortions imported into it. And so as for destroying the Church, it stands to reason that Popes believing in such a compromised Catholicism cannot help one of the consequences of their actions being the destruction of the Church.

So in this instance he is saying something akin to Benedict being "well intended" perhaps.  A good heart but a bad mind----theology.  Therefore if this is the case Benedict can not be "evil" as some, or many say.

Naturally this  "well intentioned" thing may apply to some of the conciliar popes but maybe not all as painting them all with a "well intentioned" brush does not work with all because it is not a one size fits all situation.

Each of these popes may be to a greater or lesser degree guilty.  But for my money Francis takes the cake.  No matter how hard I try I can't see this man as being "well intended".

I dunno....

[Alley]

Hmmmmmm

[David Kaftal]

The pope I have the hardest time with is Paul VI. I can see Francis as a mush-minded buffoon, but Paul suppressed the Mass and replaced it with a horror that was originally intended to not even be propitiatory, and got rid of all the sacraments and replaced them with dubious substitutes and promulgated Vatican II as a superdogma after initially giving lip service to John XXIII's statement that there was nothing dogmatic about it. Even so, I know that I have neither the authority to judge him, nor the sure knowledge of what went on in his mind and soul, which only God knows.

[Alley]

Hey David, I do not know all the circumstances surrounding this but did you know that

there were 2 Paul VI's. They are distinctly different.   

[David Kaftal]

I've heard the two Pauls and the two Lucies theories. Don't know what to believe about either one, but I'm not prepared to dismiss them out of hand.

[Alley]

David look at the pictures they speak for themselves.

[Cristera]

I am sorry if I sound hard, but Mons Williamson is trying to excuse conciliar popes of all the evil they are making. If they were young men, I would certainly consider his theory of being so immerse in liberalism that they don't even imagine the wrong they are doing, but these men learned the old way.

We could then say the same about modernists, and if they don't know that they are doing wrong, and so Our Lord would not punish them, since sin can
only be committed if it is intentional. But they are so surrounded by wrong doing that they are not to blame.

And Mons. Fellay was also born liberal among liberals and it was just because of his house being near the Econe seminar that he went to school there. Should we then think that he really believes he is doing good by trying to lead the SSPX back to Conciliar Rome? He is not to blame and then, why have priests gone through all this trouble to break apart from them?

I really can't understand his thinking and why it is becoming more and more evident that he is falling for ambiguity? Its either truth or not truth, black or white, 2+2=4, or is he now thinking that 2+2 could also probably be 5?

Truly sad :(

[Dawn Marie]

Maybe it's just that the older he gets the more merciful he is in his judgements....I dunno.

But I do know Benedict did not have a Traditional formation in the seminary.  He was trained by some modernist theologian whose name escapes me at the moment.

[David Kaftal]

I think we have to draw the line between a.) discerning the objective reality of the rottenness of the words and deeds of the Conciliar popes, and b.) deciding we can read those popes' minds and their souls and know why they say and do those awful things. H.E. is not whitewashing any modernist abominations; he has said repeatedly that they are rotten. He just does not presume to judge the souls of these men. And we must not either.

[Dawn Marie]

I saw this a bit ago and thought of this thread.

Of course satan is the father of modernism & liberalism.