Which of the two have I been doing the years from 2001 to present? It might be for me to ask but not for me to answer. But it might still be for those who answer to know the facts as I present them.
...perpetuos successores ...
The Council convened by Pope Pius IX in the Vatican, outside the city walls and across the Tiber of Ancient Rome defined as solemnly as it could that:
1) St Peter was supreme head of the Church;
2) He has perpetual successors.
Neither of these propositions is very doubtful, neither of them is for instance contested by the Orthodox - as if that would automatically make a thing very doubtful. Of course, in and of itself it would not. What they do contest is that:
3) These perpetual successors are the successive Popes.
Gregory Palamas, the doctrinal victor of Fifth council of Constantinople version the third and last, was after that council and with that council corrected by Ancient Rome condemning a few doctrines of Constantinople V
ter - one of them being that the Blessed not even in Heaven see God in His Nature, but even there only in His Uncreated Energies. That was condemned by Ancient Rome as opposed to "we shall see him as he really is".
Apart from exactly that point Gregory Palamas was not condemned in any doctrine by the Popes in Rome (he had been condemned in doctrine and person, I think, by first and second convenings of Constantinople V) until - Vatican I. The same guy who condemned one part of his Petrology - he concurred in first two theses but differed from Innocent III or Vatican I by thesis:
3 b) Each local bishop with ordinary jurisdiction is successor of St Peter.
- the same guy who directly condemned with Vatican I what may seem identical to this, namely at least:
3 c) The college of bishops are collectively successors of St Peter
OR, at most also and identical to 3b this:
3 d) The college of bishops are individually successors of St Peter
SINCE the words "collectively" and "individually" are missing from that condemnation; well the very same guy, Pope Pius IX, who possibly condemned Palamas' Petrology there, had just a few years earlier CONFIRMED the Mariology of Gregory Palamas, against if not the intended faith at least the extant formulations of Sts Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. The Staroveri who, under a charismatic leader called Avvakum who was burned on the stake by the Russian Orthodox Church, affirmed not only certain previous Russian particularities in ritual enumerations (five or seven pieces when cutting the host before consecration, which two fingers and which three fingers represent the two natures and the three persons), but also, as inheritors of Gregory Palamas, the Immaculate Conception. Such Orthodox as today attack the doctrine are often falling back on ... St Thomas Aquinas. It would seem that doctrines have crossed paths between Papal West and non-Papal East.
Now, if Vatican I was not only a valid but also a fully ecumenical council, then we must indeed conclude that Gregory Palamas was wrong - at least if intended condemnation was that of 3 d, since that is identical to 3 b=Palamas' Petrology.
May it have been anything else?
If Palamas was right about Petrology, Vatican I would not have full Ecumenicity due to only Pope Pius IX's convening and approving it. For if so Bishops who were not in communion with the Pope due to his claim of being Supreme bishop and who did not approve Vatican I may have had formal apostolicity. Vatican I would either have been what it was according to them - a Conciliabulum of Heretic Filioquists - or at best, what Constantinople V
ter was (or seems to my knowledge to have been) in the eyes of Rome back then: a Council which was local and not fully confirmed.
But if Palamas was wrong, it would seem that we must have the perpetual successors of St Peter even if looking at the Papacy alone and at no other bishop's see. And that poses the problem what "perpetual successors" mean.
John Lane cited Cardinal Billot who said there would often be interregna. I did not hear him cite precisely Billot as saying they could even be of significant length.
Gaps in Temporal Succession of Popes are to Papal Claims what Gaps in Series of Intermediate Forms are to Evolution: it is not their number, but their width as gaps that problematises the theory. The more often the See of Rome is occupied between St Peter and Peter the Roman the more often will it be vacant. If the number of Popes is 300, the number of vacancies is 299. If the number of Popes is 250, the number of vacancies is 249. If for any given period of forty years there was one vacancy prolonged all that time, then that is an occurrence of 1 per those forty years of sedisvacancy. But if the Popes elected during that period are all valid and there were Popes lected during that era, then 1 Pope reigning most of that time would imply two sedisvacancies, two Popes would imply three sedisvacancies, and so on and so forth.
The less long the See is vacant in any given interregnum, the more often interregna occur.
I am not at all sure who wrote an interregnum could theoretically last twenty or thirty years "though we must pray for this not to happen." As I heard it was not Billot, but some later guy, whose name John Lane did not pronounce loud and clear enough. I have a half-memory in the back of my head of having read this before, and it being from Ludwig Ott. A man who, as I recall, was neither Geocentric nor even Young Earth Creationist.
Was John Paul II one of the perpetual successors?
Assisi I and II, 1986, 1992. Excommunication of Archbishop Lefèbvre. Affirming evolution and Galileo being right.
Was Pius XII one of them?
When Padre Ruffino Niccacci hid Jews in the Cathedral of Assisi, he dressed them up as Franciscans. When German Soldiers (this was under the Salò Republic = German Occupation except for liberated zone outside Mussolini's domain altogether), when German Soldiers entered the Cathedral, they sang the Gregorian Plain Chant in Latin, according to the Office of the Church. As soon as the German Soldiers left they sang the Jewish office in Hebrew.
He had the blessing of his bishop. Who had, though that was not said by Alessandro Ramati, the blessing of Pope Pius XII. Was the Church exorcised after these Jew savings had given them the opportunity for desecration of a Catholic Church with the practise of a non-Catholic religion? Maybe so, but I have not heard of it.
Father Feeney was excommunicated by Pius XII. It was Paul VI who reconciled him, and allowed him to recite as creed testifying his orthodoxy the Athanasian one.
And if Pius XII did not himself say evolution was right, at least he allowed it to be discussed in Humani Generis. Exactly as in 1820's the books teaching Copernican doctrine were no longer on the index.
And precisely as Paul VI, Pius XII allowed explicitly, though as in other case "only for grave reasons" the practise of Natural Family Limitation, known as Natural Family Planning.
I did not find that one in St Thomas Aquinas except as a venial sin.
He also advised, as Cardinal Pacelli, the 1917 Codex Iuris Canonici, in which taking usury is no longer automatically sinful.
I did not find that in St Thomas Aquinas except as a mortal sin to do and an error to defend. FSSPX men defended the position of 1917 Code by referring to Inflation and thereby identifying the taking of interest to taking a refund for damnum emergens - the damnum emergens from the loan being that the money nominally same sum was worth less in buying power when loan was repaid.
Of course, there is the dictum, which I forgot when angry at Pius XII, that where there are sufficient reasons, venial sins are not sinful at all in certian occurrences, or that that may even be the case for things that are usually mortal sins.
That is the conundrum, now for what I did about it:
Up to St Bartholomew's day 2001, I accepted that evolution was licit though not preferred teaching, NFP licit though not preferred behaviour. I accepted the theology of non-obedience to man for obedience to God, or of non-obedience to unclear papal teaching for obedience to earlier clearer one, as formulated by Mgr Lefèbvre. And so on.
I was not happy, but that was due to external circumstances, I had no access to SSPX chapels in Malmoe, Sweden.
The eve of that day, I read in an astronomy handbook from 1980 or so that the largest observed parallax, that of proxima Centauri, was 0.76 arch-seconds back and forth per year. And that the largest proper motion was 10 seconds one direction per year, year after year. Less than 1 second per half year is less than 10 seconds per year, by a ratio of 1:20. And the largest parallax was
less than 1 second.
In St Thomas Aquinas, I had read that stars are moved by angels.
That night I had a moment of blackness - not blackness as menace or as evil, but simply absense of visible light. In that moment shone forth one idea, about as clearly visualised or audialised as an "aha" or less. After it I immediately started piecing the strings together in words about that idea. I counted it as a revelation of God. But I have defended the idea in the words of men and with the arguments of men.
Briefly: since angels could be causing what is falsely classified as parallax by astronomers and it could be a proper movement, parallax does not, unlike what I had thought since my teens, prove heliocentrism. Since angels act as wills, not as mere vectors, they could be causing all the Tychonian System quite independently of the masses of any heavenly body. All the Tychonian System corrected by orbits being (for sun and moon each year and month) elliptical or as ellipsis on ellipsis rather than circle on circle.
This means that Bible and Scholastic philosophy were right. And that Pius XII was wrong and should be opposed for not defending them, insofar as he did not.
I had already seen a discrepancy between the story of the Dormition and part of the text of ... a discrepancy which I retracted ...
If Pius XII was no Pope or ceased to be Pope before he died there had to be another Pope during his lifetime. Fr Brian Houghton had already enumerated someone condemned by Pius XII in the same breath as Palmar de Troya, and therefore I sought that providential branching out to avoid Pius XII in Palmar de Troya.
It took me some days to get hold of their site on the internet. When I did I found that Popes from Pius IX up to and including Paul VI were prisoners in the Vatican and that Paul VI had had falsified acts, like the promulgation of Novus Ordo Missae.
OK, acts by Pius XII being falsified was as good as Pius XII not having lasted to hsi death as Pope to me.
I tried to notify Palmar de Troya of my submission to Gregorio XVII, but failed - at least I failed in getting an answer.
Only fourteen months later, in October 2002, did I find out that Palmarian Catechism included sayings attributed to the Blessed Virgin which contradict St Augustine on there being three dimensions to symbolise the Three Persons of God. I left Palmar de Troya, provisorically, and stopped defending it, but did not attack it. I felt I could not quite trust my conclusions about who was Pope and who was not in the latter part of the XX
th and early part of XXI
st centuries.
I had encountered and debated, defending Palmar de Troya, Michael I. He was at least a Geocentric. But he had not my take on perpetuos successores and he did not think white flour could be valid matter ingredient for the Blessed Sacrament. One take was saying that "totus ex grano tritici" meant what it does not mean, namely "ex toto grano tritici". Another was saying that the bleaching agent added to take away yellow tinge of colour and which might be residual in parts per million or so was an addition making the matter invalid. It seemed obvious to me that he had wanted a fool proof excuse for classifying the Eucharist in Novus Ordo as invalid and therefore all the masses said in communion with Paul VI and successors as invalid excepting possibly parts of Eastern Europe (where, as we know, the Church had had other fish to fry, with Commies and all, than the question whether Popes in Vatican were valid Popes: he also took that into account). He was living the years in which the Beast forbade the Continual Sacrifice. If he was right, he ended that era last Gaudete Sunday, when he had been ordained priest on the day before and when he was ordained bishop. I think and I thought he was wrong. I thought and I think that "totus ex grano tritici" forbids adding or replacing with other grains as well as of course using adulterated merchandise with gypsum replacing some quantities of the flour. I have indications capitalism back in the Twenties and Thirties was that bad that such fraud was an issue. Unless it was only so insofar as it still is, always someone trying to make a good deal out of unfair prestations.
I gave up on perpetuos successores being necessarily the Popes of Rome. But accepting Orthodox ecclesiology does not automatically mean become Eastern Orthodox.
I did not until in 2005 I had another revelation if you like to call it that (I took it so at the time), meaning that "from the Father and the Son" and "from the Father alone" both meant "essentially from the Father, but then as each person is to the other two, so are the other two to each other: Holy Ghost from Son (proceeding), and Son from Holy Ghost (born), because they are to each other as the Father is to them from Whom is born the Son and from Whom proceeds the Holy Ghost".
When I accepted it, I thought Photius might have had the better terminology. When I did something about it and was already in there, I saw I was wrong: St Athanasius had clearly written that the Son is from the Father ALONE, BORN but the Holy Ghost is from BOTH, PROCEEDING.
It seemed to me the Orthodox were praying for me because I had been too talkative, so I didn't openly say this when getting first a Communion then a Confession Chrismation and Communion from an Orthodox priest, Christmas day 2006 and January 2 2007. When I returned to the parish where I had been preparing my Orthodox conversion, I found myself trapped, spiritually: I felt guilt for not having stated my position to the priest. I talked to the deacon. I left the mass. One man went out, saw me sitting divided a piece of bread - a blessed bread, from same loaf as the host to be consecrated - and threw it on the road. I took it as a sign of excommunication.
I tried to confess again 2009. By then I had a lot of bitterness in my heart for letting myself get trapped into an excommunication and against them who abused that position to pray for my continued poverty and celibate. I left the confession and the Church without absolution. Next confession was in St Nicolas de Chardonnet: Benedict XVI lifting the excommunications had temporarily given me back some hope for himself. And made it seem less erroneous than otherwise of FSSPX to accept him.
It has seemed to me preferrable seeking marriage even before I get perfect doctrinal and pastoral clarity on these issues, but at same time it has seemed to me others wanted me to be a monk and a penitent lifelong for such totally imaginary sins - imagined by them - as making myself the Pope or anything. Seeking the Pope and being even prepared to seek him in the guise of a Roumanian Orthodox bishop is not at all the same thing as making oneself the Pope.
And not hastening to submit to a superior's implicit demands did not seem to me the same thing as braving explicit ones, which he would have had to put in words and defend. With the possibility for me, if I thought his defense unorthodox, to withdraw obedience. Or, if I found his defense erroneous, with the possibility to defend my position, because I was told where I was being attacked. Or if I found his defense correct to submit.
When it comes to Geocentrism, I do not think I will find it correct to submit to Heliocentrism or to withdrawing my arguments. When it comes to Pope Pius XII, I hold it as certain that he was more than duly impressed by the "competence" of modern scientists. When it comes to Eastern Orthodox, I am certain they are not the Church alone, I am certain they often submitted even worse than Pius XII to modern expertise, due to Communist pressure, I am certain the ones I have had ecclesiastical communion with wanted me to submit so too and that some are very bitter against Catholicism, about World War II, especially in Serbia.
I was once shown martyrs who had been in diplomatic conflict with Austria and then martyred by the Turks, the Brancoveanu family. It seems to me it seemed to the ones showing me that that they wanted me to repent of Austrian guilt in their martyrdom. But only guilt in Austria for the Brancoveanus would have been not making a crusade against the Turks to rescue them who had ot asked for rescue. And Orthodox are so often blaming Latins for joining the Crusades that Alexios Komnenos DID ask of them ... can we ever get it right with them? Should we bother to try?
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou
Sunday and St Charles Borromeo
4-XI-2012
With myself, I am not sure FSSPX or is any better. But I have not found doctrinal surety among the parishes in communion with Rome either.
