handed down through the apostles."

Magisterium, either ordinary or extraordinary. As Vatican I declared in the very process of defining and delimiting papal infallibility: "For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that they might disclose a new doctrine by his revelation, but rather that, with his assistance, they might reverently guard and faithfully explain that revelation or deposition of faith that was

[DZ 3070] Now, none of the novel notions by which Bergoglio has afflicted the Church can be found anywhere in the deposit of faith laid down by the Church as a whole since apostolic times. His authorization of Holy Communion for certain public adulterers, his notion of environmental "sins against the Earth," his absurd attempt to repeal the Church’s bimillenial teaching in defense of capital punishment by calling the purported repeal a "development," his innumerable distortions and misrepresentations of the Gospel to suit his endless philippic against observant Catholics, and so forth, are nothing but his own ideas.

the

Magisterium. Nor, for that matter, can they be considered

Catholic

doctrine at all, as opposed to the doctrine expounded by Jorge Mario Bergoglio yet never imposed on the Catholic conscience by a solemn dogmatic definition, which is impossible given the very novelty of what Bergoglio preaches.

Novel ideas are not Catholic doctrine but rather something else that is literally of no moment for a believing Catholic. And so it is with all of the novel notions and practices that have proliferated in the Church since Vatican II. For example, no Catholic is obliged to believe in ecumenism, dialogue, interreligious dialogue or collegiality, whatever these notions might mean, for the simple reason that the Church had never heard of them before 1962—putting aside the further problem of their virtual meaninglessness as mere conceptual containers for various recklessly imprudent ecclesial activities.

The question that confronts us with Bergoglio, therefore, is simply this: Is it possible for a Pope’s personal teaching to depart from what the Church as a whole has always taught and believed in favor of his own novel ideas? It must be possible, for it were not then there would be no distinction between the extraordinary and the ordinary Magisterium and the Pope would have to be viewed as simply inerrant

a Pope who promotes his own ideas when he said the following at the outset of his own pontificate, from which he was driven to pave the way for Bergoglio in a Roman intrigue worthy of the medieval epoch:

The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith.

The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: The Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.

To deny that a given Pope can ever depart from orthodoxy by proclaiming his own ideas is to argue implicitly that every utterance of a true Pope touching on faith and morals must be accepted without question. And it is precisely this Protestant caricature of the papacy to which the sedevacantists resort in opposition to the traditionalist position that Bergoglio may be resisted in his errors while yet being recognized as Pope. To quote the leading sedevacantist website in this regard:

By saying Francis is Pope but then refusing his magisterium, the would-be traditionalists in the Vatican II Church are doing untold damage to the traditional Catholic doctrine of the Papacy because the papal office was instituted as the sure norm of orthodoxy at every point in time in Church history, guaranteed by Christ Himself. This does not mean that every papal magisterial act is infallible, but it does mean that every papal magisterial act is authoritative, thus binding on consciences and, by the providence of Almighty God, always safe to follow.

This means that souls cannot be led astray by any pernicious error if they follow the teaching of the Pope. That safety is guaranteed and caused by Christ Himself. [emphasis added]

So, according to the sedevacantists, while not every magisterial act by a true Pope is infallible, his every magisterial act is authoritative, binding on conscience, safe to follow and free from pernicious error. This laughable self-contradiction is at the heart of the sedevacantist polemic. And so it must be. For if the sedevacantists were to admit that a Pope is capable of erring in his ordinary day-to-day teaching even once, then their position would collapse into a vain argument over a matter of degree: How much error must a Pope manifest before it can be concluded that he has un-Poped himself or that he never was Pope in the first place? Would only one error suffice? If not one, then how many?

There is no escaping this fatal flaw in the sedevacantist position: they must hold that any Pope who errs in any matter of faith and morals by proclaiming some novelty, such as Bergoglio’s opinion (contrary to divine revelation) that capital punishment is an attack on human dignity, cannot be a true Pope. That necessitarian logic means that they must also hold that we have had no Pope since Pius XII, given the profusion of doctrinal novelties—or what they would call doctrinal novelties—and novel practices that litter every pontificate following his in this time of immense confusion. Bergoglio has simply made it appear easier to sustain the ludicrous sedevacantist contention that we have had no Pope since 1958.

From our perspective, however, the Bergoglian Debacle is an evil from which God has already drawn a great good. For Bergoglio has demonstrated dramatically, once and for all, that the limitations of the papacy are exceeded whenever a Pope, in the exercise of his free will, fails to correspond to the grace of his state, departs from the path of Tradition and chooses to "proclaim his own ideas" rather than "constantly bind[ing] himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism."

Bergoglio has dispelled the pious fiction, long promoted by ultramontane theologians, that the faithful are obliged to believe unconditionally that the Holy Ghost infallibly insures the "safety" of every papal teaching and that we must not trouble ourselves with any apparent departure from what the Church has always taught.

Philip Lawler has rightly observed of Bergoglio that "the current Pope’s leadership has become a danger to the faith." That conservative Catholics now recognize what traditionalists have always understood—that a Pope’s leadership

can

be a danger to the faith—is a major step toward the greater recognition that the entire ecclesial crisis of the past half-century has emanated in the first instance from epochal failures of papal governance and that it will end only when a future Pope finds the courage to right the wrongs his predecessors have committed—just as Benedict XVI, at least to some extent, attempted to do before he abdicated the papal throne.

As Bergoglio has said concerning his own conduct of the papacy: "On the other hand, I am by nature oblivious, and so I go ahead." ["D’altra parte, per natura io sono incosciente, e cosi vado avanti."]. Perhaps "oblivious" is too kind a translation of the Italian "incosciente," whose alternate meanings are reckless, thoughtless, irresponsible and imprudent. But then the entire post-conciliar aggiornamento has been reckless, thoughtless, irresponsible and imprudent. The Bergoglian pontificate is but a logical continuation of the same ruinous pursuit of vain novelty.

Surely that must now be obvious to anyone who still cares about the faith of our fathers. This is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio has shown to those who still did not know. ■

Now, none of the novel notions by which Bergoglio has afflicted the Church can be found anywhere in the deposit of faith laid down by the Church as a

And there are times—our time is one of them— when at least a remnant of the laity keeps the faith they were taught even though the hierarchy has generally failed in its commission to defend and