The Heresy of Robert McKenna

Webpage by Lúcio Mascarenhas, Bombay.
http://www.geocities.com/prakashjm45/mckenna.html
In the late 1990s, in pursuit of my vocation, I had sought admission to some Sedevacantist seminary or the other. The S.S.P.X. was (still is) active in India, but they are in heresy. I wrote to "Traditionalist Catholic" Bishop Robert McKenna and to Rama Coomaraswamy, and was recommended to join Abbot Leonard Giardina's Christ the King Abbey (http://www.christthekingabbey.org).

Soon, however, I received in the mail, a document from McKenna which shook my faith, McKenna's "On Keeping Catholic". I recognized it as being heresy; only later could I know that it was the heresy of Sedeprivationism, also known as Guérardism after its founder, Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers, or Cassiciacanism as it was originally published in the "Cahiers du Cassiciacum", whence it is also called the "Cassiciacum thesis".

This experience filled me with fear and I could no longer trust any "Traditionalist Catholic" as I came to believe or understand that, sometime or the other, after I had entrusted myself to them, they would spring some exotic heresy or the other upon me! This shock, and the resultant uncertainty regarding the trustworthiness of any Sedevacantist, eventually caused me to lose my vocation.

The emphasis are McKenna's.


Lúcio Mascarenhas, Bombay, India.

McKenna: "On Keeping Catholic"

HAS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH GONE MAD?

This was the title of a book written not long after the close of the Second Vatican Council over 25 years ago. The book dealt with the revolutionary changes then sweeping the Church as a result of the Council's liberal decrees calling for an Aggionrnamento or "updating" of the Church (to use the word coined by the then Pope John XXIII). Practically all that was traditional in Catholic worship, devotion, and discipline was being discarded — or rather, in the term preferred by the innovators, "revised." Even Catholic doctrine itself began to be disguised in ambiguous language, and de-emphasized in the interest of so-called "Ecumenism", which was the keynote of the Council. The years since then — now nigh a generation — have seen no end to, if otherwise a slackening of, these changes and de-catholicizing of the Catholic Church.

The answer to author Eppstein's question (for the title of his book) is: No, the Catholic Church, the one true Church of God, has not gone mad, but the Pope has. In the words of Sacred Scripture, cited by Our Lord Himself, "I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered".

Not that the Popes of (or since) Vatican II have been (or are) insane on the natural level but, certainly so spiritually speaking, or on the supernatural level. To deny this is to say that the Catholic Church is not infallibe as she before claimed to be; that she can make mistakes in teaching and guiding men — mistakes now being corrected by and since Vatican II.

But to say this is not only heretical but blasphemous. If the Church was in error before, what guarantee have we that it is not again in error now? The foundation of our faith in the "Holy Catholic Church" of the Apostles' Creed is completely undermined.

John XXIII and his successor-Popes of Vatican II contradict the teaching of the Church and Popes before them. This is insane. They teach Ecumenism in the place of Catholicism. They would have the Catholic Church "work together" with other churches or denominations, but not try to convert them. Pope Pius XI condemned such Ecumenism 30 years before the Second Vatican Council, saying Catholics could have no part in any confederation of churches without betraying the Faith.

Now, however, the Conciliar Popes along with the Council teach that men have a natural "right" to worship as they please, as if it is not rather man's duty to worship as God pleases! The Catholic Church does not traditionally hold freedom of religion to be something good to which man has a right, but at best an evil to be tolerated, for the sake of avoiding greater evils. Freedom of religion, as said Pope Gregory XVI, quoting St. Augustine, is "freedom of perdition". If through your own fault you reject the one true Church that God gives you, you perish! Any Pope who comes along to contradict this, we say, has to be out of his mind — supernaturally speaking.

Now how does one deal with a person mentally deranged? Well, such a one is surely to be pitied and not despised. In charity he should even be prayed for that he may hopefully regain his senses. But in the meantime to take him seriously and heed him as having any real authority is itself insane — once, anyway, one recognizes the situation for what it is.

Now while the Popes of Vatican II, including the present John Paul II, can function on the purely natural level in running the Church as an organization or legal corporation, they have on the supernatural level — in view of their spiritual madness — no divine authority to speak for the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ or to govern the faithful in His name; no power, that is to say, to function precisely as the Vicar of Christ for so long as this insanity continues. They and the bishops under them, blindly following them, are lacking the jurisdiction they wold otherwise have under normal circumstances. We must simply ignore them and carry on as best as we can without them. We must be guided by the traditional doctrine and Magisterium of the Church, refusing like the Maccabees of the Old Testament, to abandon our God-given religion, with its traditional rites and ceremonies, or to live at peace with the enemies who have usurped the Holy City. We otherwise stand to lose our souls. We must keep Catholic not merely in name but in reality.

We must also reject the new Code of Canon Law, based on the Council and promulgated by John Paul II, and continue to observe — as far as possible — the laws of the Church as they were before it.

Even apart from the doctrinal insanity of the Vatican II Popes, the chaos in the Church on the parish level is evidence enough that something is drastically wrong at the top. There are lunatic liturgies in practically every parish of the world, not to say sacrilegious, including Communion in the hand, profane music and singing — even dancing girls and women. Only those born in the last generation and simply ignorant of the traditional Mass and rites of the Church can possibly think such a situation perfectly normal. No Pope in his right mind, knowing his awesome responsibility before God, could fail to use his authority to correct such anarchy which has scandalized untold thousands, if not millions, of the faithful and driven them out of the Church.

That the Vatican II Popes are spiritually or supernaturally demented is, then, a fact — painful as it may be — based on not only the logic of Faith itself but on ordinary observation. How it has happened is another question — too involved to detail — but the point here to be noted is that the fact does not depend upon its explanation. The reason for something, right or wrong, does not change the fact itself. Suffice it to say, as we have indicated, that in the words of Our Lord (the parable of the wheat and cockle) "An enemy has done this".

Why the papal insanity happened is the more important question. Why has God permitted such a thing? And the answer, very simply: because of our sins! We Catholics (and with us the whole world) are being punished for our failure to heed the warnings of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. The "salt of the earth" — we with the gift of the true Faith — has "lost its savor" and the whole world is paying the frightful penalty.

Our Lady at Fatima tod the three shepherd children that if men did not do penance, amend their lives, keep the Commandments, and pray the Rosary daily, they would be severely punished by Almighty God. Communist Russia would be the instrument of His wrath, spreading its errors "throughout the world." Yes, we may say, and even infiltrating its errors into the Church, deprived of a theologically sane Pope.

Recall the famous "Third Secret" of Fatima. Sister Lucy wrote it down years later with much fear and trembling, and transmitted it to the Pope. Our Lady wished it ot be revealed to the world in 1960. The whole Catholic world waited anxiously for the time to come, but when John XXIII opened and read the secret, he refused to reveal it or even make any comment on it. He simply filed it away, and no Pope since has dared to make it public, despite repeated pleas by many of the faithful.

Now in view of the general disorder and confusion — to say the least — that has prevailed in the Church these last 30 years since then, it seems clear enough that the secret has to do with forewarning Catholics of Satan's invasion of the Church and the spiritual enslavement of the papacy itself. The Vatican II Popes will not incriminate themselves by revealing the Third Secret!

Fatima only confirms what Faith itself should suffice to tell us — that unless — and until — we do penance for our sins and pray as never before, in vain will we search for any solution to the ever worsening crisis in the Church and in the world. Communism is not dead but playing possum!

Nor is the penance and prayer required of us beyond our strength. But they are the minimum; namely the penance of keeping carefully the Commandments of God and His Church — the Ten Commandments of God and the Six Precepts of the Church — and fidelity to the duties required of each one of us according to our state in life. And the minimum prayer required, Our Lady insisted, is the daily Rosary.

Is this all to much to believe that the Church could be deprived of a Pope? Deprived of one for all practical purposes — deprived of one spiritually competent and in his right senses?

Only, we answer, if one is ignorant of Sacred Scripture. St Paul tell us of a great apostasy to come — of a revolt within the Church — which will usher in the reign of Antichrist, that "son of perdition" who will set himself up in the temple of God as if he were himself God, and seduce the masses by "lying signs and wonders." And this will happen, the Apostle goes on to say, because men have not "loved the truth" — the truth of God as taught by His true Church. "For this have I come into the world," Christ said to Pilate, "that I might bear witness to the truth." If what the Catholic Church is suffering now — in the years since the passing of Pope Pius XII — is not that great apostasy, it is at least nothing greater than that apostasy will be, and therefore not something beyond belief.

Nor is it a case of Christ having abandoned His Church and failed in His promise to be with it all days. Satan has assailed the Church as never before, but he has not "prevailed" against it — not so long, mind you, as there remains at least a renmant of faithful bishops and priests to carry on the mission of the Church — the mission given by Christ to His Apostles and their successors, nor so long as there remains a remnant of faithful to follow them. "When the Son of man returns," said Our Lord, "will he find, do you think, faith on the earth?" The implication is, very little! "Many are called but few are chosen." As the Scripture also says, "Let him who stands take heed lest he fall."

A word of caution in closing: Beware those who imagine that they can both "have their Pope and eat him too" — who think they can recognize full authority in the Pope and at the same time disobey him — namely for going against the traditional teaching and laws of the Church. No Pope in his right mind can possibly mislead the Church. If he could, the Church herself would not be our infallible guide and teacher. No, if a Pope is found to contradict the traditional teaching of the Church, it is rather proof that he is, as we say, out of his mind, spiritually speaking, and therefore unable to exercise his office and to claim any divine authority. On the supernatural level he is paralyzed and for all practical purposes dead. For to otherwise rebel against or resist one truly Pope is to cut oneself off from the Church by the sin of schism.

Let us then amend our lives before it is too late, for it is already the eleventh hour, and pray the Rosary as never before that God may have mercy on us and restore sanity to the papacy. In the meantime hold fast to the traditional teaching, worship, and laws of the Holy Cathlic Church our Mother. "He who perseveres to the end," says Christ, "will be saved." Therefore, not otherwise.


The Most Rev. Robert F. McKenna, O.P.
Received by bookpost on April 5, 1994 from the Rt. Rev. Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P., Chairman, Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement, Dominican Fathers, Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel, 15 Pepper Street, P.O. Box 283, Monroe, Connecticut. 06480-0283. USA.
 
PUBLISHED on the Internet: June 3, 2003; Revised August 28, 2006.
 

P U R P O S E

Written 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.

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Lúcio Mascarenhas


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