How I Came To Acknowledge
His Holiness Pope Michael I
© Lúcio Mascarenhas, Bombay, India.
URL: http://www.geocities.com/livrant/hictapm.html
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PUBLISHED on the Internet: Nov., 19, 2006, developed from a mail sent out October 14, 2006.
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This Article was inspired by Thomas J. Hardy's "How I Came To Acknowledge The Pope".To better understand this article, see also: I was brought up under competing influences, with my father wishing to bring us up "traditionally", praying the Rosary and other devotions, etc., while my mother, who hated the Church, subverted my father's efforts. As a result, we grew up — all of us, me and my siblings — in a spirit of rebellion against Christ, Christianity and the Church.
However, I have also been a bookworm, and have read the Challoner-Douai-Rheims Bible thoroughly from end to end several times while quite young. The Bible left a deep and remaining impression on me.
As a result of my rebellion, as soon as I finished school, I stopped attending Church, and my father could do nothing about it. For two years subsequently, I studied in a Hindu-run junior college, and then began to work. At work, I began to mix with the lowest classes of Hindus, the new immigrants straight from the unmodernized villages of interior Maharashtra and Central India (U.P., Bihar, etc.), who were predominantly upper caste and strongly hostile to Christianity and Christians. Although I bore a Hindu name ("Prakash", imposed by my Modernist uncle, the then "Fr. A.B. Fernandes, S.J.", and which I have now legally changed to "Lúcio") and although I was not a practising Christian, I found myself the target of their barbs, taunts and insults. As a former Christian, I knew from personal knowledge that the vast majority of these barbs were misrepresentations of Christianity, and, I began to react against this hostile attitude. My reaction brought me closer to Christianity. However, as I had little or no true Christian apologetical education until then, I was badly confused about the nature of Christianity and the Church. I therefore was open to the Protestants and began to visit their various facilities in Bombay, and to begin to be acquainted with their thought. But, again, I found that Protestant literature, like that of the Hindus, is full of lies and misrepresentations of Catholicism, which I, with my personal acquaintance with Catholicism knew and recognized them to be the lies and deliberately malicious misrepresentations that they were.
During this time, I found and read two publications that influenced me deeply. In my local parish library, I found Frs. Lesley Rumble & Charles Carty's "The Radio Replies", published in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and in the St. Peter's Church, Hill Road, Bandra, with the help of the late traditionalist-minded retired English Jesuit missionary, Fr. William Astbury, I found the volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia, published from 1907 to 1913 in New York, U.S.A.
Rumble & Carty converted me from a nominal and agnostic Christian, with only social affiliations, to an intellectually believing, fervent Catholic Christian. The Catholic Encyclopedia reinforced this.
Another impetus to my conversion was the urging of a friend and former school classmate, Rajesh William de Sousa, to pray daily the "Three Hail Marys". This practice, I believe, helped greatly to bring me closer to Christ.
As a result of this conversion process, I began to attend the local parish church. However, from the very beginnings, I found the atmosphere awkward and in conflict with my faith. I found it difficult to reconcile the Church's tolerance of women unveiled and in diaphanous dresses, even as I found the rubrics etc. irreverent and somehow un-Christian. I increasingly found that the faith of the Catholic Church in the late 1980s were incompatible with the faith of the Catholic Church as described by Frs. Rumble & Carty in the 1930s & 40s. Something, somewhere was wrong.
I was in this "Catholic Church" for about two years, attending it's services. I began to interact with the priests in the parish. There were two Anthony Fernandes, and while I found the younger ("Fr. Tony") to be more of a politician than a priest, the older, Fr. A.J. Fernandes, who later died at St. Anne's, Bandra, though not himself traditionalist-minded, reinforced my feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the situation as it stood.
This crisis in my faith was then suddenly pushed into hyperdrive. I attended a meeting in my parish organized by Bandra-based Emmanuel Prayer Group, which opposed Rock music and the modern MTV culture as satanic. This message sat well with me. Then, as follow-up we were invited to a larger meeting at the St. Mary's Church in Mazagon, run by the Jesuits. Here, after the public meeting, we had a personal meeting with one of the most charismatic speakers of the EPG, a person who was identified to me as "Pastor Allen". This man told us during the post-meeting, unofficial interaction, many things that scandalized my faith, principally, a rejection of the Marian doctrines. As I internalized his message over the next few days, I became more and more agitated, and sought around for help in countering the transmission of such messages, whether privately or publicly by people claiming to be Catholics and under the auspices of what claimed to be the "Catholic Church". This precipated me into an open conflict with the Church, and into a so-called "Conservative group", the "Catholics for the Preservation of the Faith", composed largely of residents of the suburbs of Mahim and Bandra.
Over time, I began to believe that the leading lights of the CPF were involved out of egotistic reasons, were largely ignorant of the truths of the faith and were instead indulging in kneejerk and nostalgic reactions rather than a reasoned opposition to heresy, and so I ceased to be involved. Indeed, I found that one of the leading lights of the CPF, Anthony "Tony" Rodrigues, was himself a public heretic who openly and through his magazine, the Coastal Observer, advocated not only heresy but even open apostasy, by upholding the teaching of a pagan friend and financial patron of his and of his magazine, H.S. Krishna Prasad, "that all religions are true and lead to eternal salvation", and that "Catholics who deny this are Fundamentalist and not true Catholics while those who teach this are true Catholics!" (See H.S. Krishnaprasad: "Interfaith Meetings & Catholicism" in the Coastal Observer, September 1993).
Nevertheless, being involved with the CPF was, in a way, good and beneficial, as it put me in touch with the larger Traditionalist movement in South Asia, and introduced me to Mr. John Menezes, President of the All India Laity Congress. Mr. Menezes introduced me to the thought of Dr. Rama Coomarasway, M.D. Until I read Coomaraswamy's works, I found myself in increasing hostility to the Church, yet unable to sever myself from it, as I believed that in doing so, I would be severing myself from the Pope, Christ's Lieutenant, and thus departing into schism from Christ Himself and into heresy and into Protestantism. I was unable to believe that a Pope could depart into heresy. Or, in other words, I believed that "Once a Pope, always a Pope" or that the Pope, being infallible, could not depart from the faith or fall away from the faith and thus into heresy and schism and thus cease to be true Pope. Those who understand Papal Infallibility will recognize this as a misunderstanding or mis-interpretation of the Charism of Papal Infallibility as formally defined by the Vatican Council, 1870; however, at that time, I was under the spell of this error.
Yet, in a few words, Coomaraswamy cut the Gordian knot and showed that this attitude is false: Coomaraswamy showed that even legitimate Popes, aftering being elected as Pope and being invested as Pope or attaining to the fulness of the Papal office, yet nevertheless retain their personal free will, and so, in exercise of their personal free will, they retained fully and without any kind of magical or supernatural inhibition of their free will, the ability to personally err in matters of faith and belief and to fall away partially or in full from the True Faith and to become formal heretics and thus cease automatically to be Pope.
That is, when the personal belief-system of a legitimate Pope no longer coincides with the True Faith, he has become a heretic. If this is secret and occult, then he remains a secret or occult heretic. According to the laws of the Church, a secret or occult heretic remains formally and legally a Catholic, and so, he would not lose his Papal office. However, if he expressed his heresy publicly and pertinaciously (i.e., persistently), against the irreversible pronouncements and legislations of the Church over the centuries, then he automatically became a public and manifest heretic. According to the laws of the Church, a public and manifest heretic immediately ceases to be a Catholic and to immediately lose any position of authority in the Church, becoming in Catholic law an alien to the Church.
Later, I also learned of the law of Pope Paul IV, which also prevented a public and manifest heretic from even becoming Pope in the first place (Pope Paul IV, Bull Cum ex apostolatus officio & H.H. Pope Michael I's explanation of this bull).
The two laws (i.e., Pope Paul IV's & those governing defection from offices) are distinct and should not be confused. However, I later learnt that it is Pope Paul IV's law, embodied in his Bull "Cum ex apostolatus officio" that applied to the present situation, preventing Roncalli, Montini, Luciani & Wojtyla from attaining to the Papacy in Catholic theological fact.
Coomaraswamy helped me to cut the intellectual Gordian knot tying me to what I had increasingly come to realize was a false church, not the Catholic, but masquerading as the Catholic, even as it actively worked to murder Catholicism worldwide. I walked out of this false and satanic sect into the Freedom of Christ and His One Holy Catholic Church on September 8, 1993.
Over the next few years, I continued to study the situation and to try and work out a solution for the problem of the true Catholic Church beseiged by its parasite counterfeit. I studied the Catholic Encyclopedia deeply in the library of St. Peter's, Bandra, and from my studies and notes, along with deductions, came to certain conclusions.
As a result of my conversion due to Frs. Rumble & Carty, I had learnt the deep importance of the Petrine Doctrine, that is, the Primacy and perpetual necessity of a true Pope, as the means by which Christ guides His Church. As a result of learning from Coomaraswamy and the Catholic Encyclopedia, I realized that the notion that "Once Pope, forever Pope" or the idea that legal presumption must be made in favor of one who claims and has possession of Rome or the Vatican, to be the true and legitimate Pope, does not hold true in the face of public and manifest heresy. As a result of my learning from the Catholic Encyclopedia, I realized that the Church "is a perfect society" and has broad and natural powers to preserve itself, by providing for its own disciplinary head, the Pope, by many different lawful means, not only and exclusively by the comparatively recent innovation of the election of Popes by Cardinals.
And, although my thought was still confused on certain points, I was nevertheless able to see very clearly on most important points so that I was emboldened to attempt to join the worldwide Tradititionalist movement and provide a certain impetus to it towards the election of a true Pope by writing my tract, "Repair My Church" in 1996 (See the documents in this folder: RMC). I distributed copies of this to any friend who would care, and somehow, copies reached around the world, to Hutton Gibson in Australia, William Morgan in England, Lucian Pulvermacher and others in the U.S.A., all of who wrote to me in response to my tract.
In my tract, and based on the principles I found in the Catholic Encylopedia, I set out the principles by which the remnant Catholics could elect themselves a true Pope and thus begin the work of restoring the Catholic Church devasted by its parasite counterfeit.
However, I found the overall reaction to be negative, and this, coupled with my intellectual doubts and backsliding in the faith, led to years of stagnancy.
This period of stagnancy ended with my introduction, late 1999, to the Internet, again through Rajesh William de Sousa. He invited me one day to accompany him to a neighborhood cyber cafe, then was called away for some urgent work. The cyber cafe owner was friendly, and helped me to surf by myself and I quickly caught on. As the vast possibilities of the Internet opened itself out to me, I began to use it to reach out to the Traditionalist movement, and to try and find out if the Papal question had been solved. I was put in touch with the group that followed Victor von Pentz as Pope Linus II. Sometime later, I came in contact with the group that followed David Allen Bawden as Pope Michael I. As I had heard of Linus II earlier, however, I was predisposed or biased towards him and did not apply my mind to Pope Michael's claims.
At about the same time, I began to correspond via email with a John Lane in Australia. This was the time when I got caught up in a fight with the trio of F. John Loughnan, William Grossklas and James Akin over their blatant lies that the Hindu ritual of the Aarti was and is merely a social rite of greeting and not of divine worship (See The Aarti Controversy), and in this fight, I grew close to Lane, so that I allowed myself to be influenced by his wrong principles. Lane was more older in the Traditionalist movement than I was, and therefore, I began to look up to him for guidance (I have now discovered that, while certainly older as a Traditionalist than myself by about four years, he is biologically younger than me by two years). However, as I realized later, Lane blindsided me into opposition to Pope Michael's claims. For about a year, the matter rested there. In the meantime, I clashed with this "senior" Traditionalist, Mr. Lane, on the question of the Papacy, when I found that he was teaching ideas that contradicted my understanding of the principles by which the Church can obtain its head in an extraordinary situation (See In Defense of A Lay Papal Election Against John Lane). As a result, Mr. Lane severed contact with me, leaving me to find my own way to solve my intellectual doubts. At the time, I was greatly troubled, but today I recognize that Mr. Lane inadvertantly did me a great favor, by forcing me to use my brains for myself.
However, about a year or so after I wrote out a tract attackin the claims of Pope Michael, Mrs. Teresa Benns, who is his principal intellectual collaborator, wrote to me asking me to re-investigate Pope Michael's claims as she claimed that my tract on his claims was erroneous.
Although I was quite certain that I had not erred, I nevertheless re-investigated Pope Michael's claims. This time however, I realized that I had been influenced by a hostile bias induced into me during the time I did my first investigation. I realized that the election of Pope Michael fit in entirely with the principles I had myself set out in my tract "Repair My Church". After considering all things carefully, I realized that I was obliged to retract my first report on Pope Michael's claims and to submit to him as the legitimate Pope, which I did.
In the history of the Church, Catholics have several times found themselves confronted with the rival claims of men to be true Popes. The most famous time was what is now called the Great Western Schism, although the name makes rather bad sense. It was a virtual civil war within the Church, with three men claiming to be the true pope. Yet, notorious as it was, it was not as worse as an earlier time when there were four claimants: Benedict IX, Sylvester III, Gregory VI-II (John Gratian), and a shadowy John XX, a man about whom nothing is known other than his regnal name.
Another time was the conflict between Anacletus II and Innocent II, both men claiming to be the True Pope. Anacletus was more powerful and influential in Rome and held possession of the city until his death eight years later, while Innocent II fled into exile into France. Here, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, reformer of the Cistercian order, studied his claims and accepted them, and becoming his champion, convinced many to adhere to him, so that today, it is Innocent II who is recognized as the legitimate Pope, not Anacletus II.
We can position these three times by putting the Anti-Theophylact conflict first, at the head of a movement for reform within the Church, with the reformers rallying around John Gratian as Gregory VI-II against Benedict IX (Gregory VI-I had but a generation earlier stood against the same Theophylact family of Benedict IX that had reduced the papacy to a family plaything, but had failed in his efforts), followed by the efforts of Hildebrand as Pope St. Gregory VII, and then the Innocent II-Anacletus II conflict, ultimately leading to the work of Pope Boniface VIII, his conflict with King Philip the Fair of France, the Outrage at Anagni, the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon and the Great Western Schism.
What is important is the outstanding role played by St. Bernard in favor of Pope Innocent II.
Today, in the Traditionalist movement, people who claim to be Catholic are yet frightened or reluctant to acknowledge the Pope, or take practical steps to ending what they believe is the Papal vacancy (or "sede vacante"). Yet, every Christian is strictly obliged by his faith to do his best to end this "sede vacante" if it is true that there is one, or to submit to the true Pope if there is one. Yet Sedevacantist Traditionalists notoriously shy away from seriously considering this matter and coming to a conclusion on it.
Those who do so (that is, refuse to act on the election of the Pope) cannot claim to be sincere Catholics.
Since I have found the claims of Pope Michael to be genuine and true, I have made several appeals to Sedevacantists and other Traditionalists to investigate the claims of Pope Michael and to come to a final conclusion in accordance with the the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church. My appeals have been ignored again and again. However, I once again appeal to you, the reader. Please consider your responsibilities. Your responsibilities stand towards God and not to any mere man. It is your responsibility to God to acknowledge the true Pope and submit to him, so that the work of restoration can go on forward. To do other wise is a grave mortal sin against God.
Kind regards,
Lúcio Mascarenhas, Bombay, India.
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PUBLISHED on the Internet: Nov., 19, 2006, developed from a mail sent out October 14, 2006.
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P U R P O S EWritten with the purpose of educating people in matters concerning the Catholic Resistance to the Modernist Apostasy, and based on the principles elucidated by the Church, that the truth is never afraid, and that the Church is never afraid of the Truth, and on the principles elucidated by Frs. Rumble & Carty and by Fulton Sheen in his essay, "The Art of Controversy". — Benedicamus Deus, Lúcio. |