Of Hans Lundahl's Attack Against Pope Michael

©Prakash John Mascarenhas, Bombay, India. 16th June 2003. This page is Copyright.
Dear Hans,

I have always respected you and your views. I also admire your contests with heretics, as listed on your Forum. And, as I had told you when we first began to differ, I bent backwards to accomodate you, even though we differ sharply.

However, it seems that you do not reciprocate my respect — or my forbearance.

I am not asking you for any favours. I am asking only that the standards of Christianity be followed. And, evidently, you are not.

You have attacked Pope Michael for an insignificant mistake, making a mountain out of a molehill, and used that as an opportunity to reopen your old attack elsewhere, on him, importing it here, and abusing this forum to peddle your pet peeves against the man, not on any Christian principles, but on the most rudiculous notions and misconceptions.

This behaviour is gross and reprehensible.

You are apparently enough possessed by a spirit of determined — and blind, I would even say 'religious' — hostility directed against Pope Michael. You are obsessed with the idea that you must not act towards him except with contempt and insults.

And, most significantly, you, like a great many, are contemptuous towards the faith and its principles, determined not to work according to it, to examine Pope Michael's claim freely and without prejudice, for the fear that you may discover that his claim is true, after all.

All this is very, very sad. I can only say that I feel badly disappointed and let down.

And what is worse, is that you have entirely disregarded my counterpoint when you attacked him with the charge of sloppiness, showing the Catholic understanding of papal limits, etc. If you had paid attention, you would see that your entire premise is nothing more than nonsensical.

I have taken your post attacking the Holy Father, and counterpose my remarks to yours.


Message #211 Christania

From: Hans Georg Lundahl <[email protected]>
Date: SunJun15,2003 5:52 pm
Subject: ?Pope Michael?

Miss Teresa Benns gives an apt quote:

Hans, you got that first thing wrong. She is MRS. Benns, not MISS Benns. If you have been following the Christania posts, you will have noticed that I address her as Mrs. Benns. She is a mother, and even probably a grandmother...

[email protected] wrote: No, the pope is BUSY, not sloppy, answering the allegations and irrelevant questions of people who will not accept the truths of the Catholic faith, and who sound off on issues when they have no real idea what all is involved or what they are really saying.

In other words, unless your helping with the cooking, stay out of the kitchen.

Teresa Benns
I like the last quote.

"Today what is sold in the stores as white flour, from which it appears that modern hosts are made is not really wheat flour. True it comes from wheat, but not from the whole grain. Only the center of the wheat is retained, the rest cast off for animal food. Many authors have shown that white flour is devoid of all nutritious value. It is virtually worthless. Modern white flour has been enriched, that is chemicals added to supply a few vitamins, which the government thinks should be added. Therefore, even if white flour in its original state was valid matter, in its enriched state it would not be valid matter. It is our humble opinion that white flour is not valid matter and that masses said with hosts made from white flour are as devoid of grace as the flour is of nutrition." Obviously Mr Bawden aka Pope Michael has not been helping much in THE KITCHEN.

YOU know, from what H.H. Pope Michael himself writes, that that claim is nothing but FALSE. He has clearly stated that he has purchased his own flour-mill, purchases wheat directly and practices making hosts at home. And, he makes his own sacramental wine, using the pre-Conciliar formula. Therefore, apparently, enough, he is competent at least to talk on this subject. AND, if at least he does this much, he is helping in the Kitchen, sort of, if not actually running it...

SO, where does this 'Not helping in the Kitchen' thing come from?


He takes the words from "many authors" that almost every housewife and housekeeper who does his own baking can refute.

Refute, Hans? What sensible, sane man would think that by arguing that store flour in Sweden is not the SAME as Store flour in the USA would think that he is refuting what another contends about store flour in the USA?

"Devoid of all nutritious value" he says. There are people who live almost exclusively on white flour, or mainly at least.

Yes, Hans, a man can live on merely bread and water, but that is not really living; it is committing a slow suicide. True, the Catholic Church permits it under controlled conditions, calling it mortification, but mortification is NOT living, it is about dying, putting oneself physically to death, in order that one may spiritually live.

No, it may be devoid of the minerals and fibres of the bran, it may lack some of the fat from the wheat kernel (its removal being the one nearly universal and significant change from traditional production of white wheat flour) And if we take the Conservative Catholic attitude, that may be more than enough cause to reject this as doubtful matter. - which is why it preserves better, the fat being what makes the flour rancid if kept too long - but if it lacked carbohydrates, protein, sugars and all traces of fat, it would
  1. not bake and
  2. not save a man from starvation.
His position on white flour and nourishment smacks of manicheanism - as it would smack of manicheanism to reject full grain wheat for food, because it is rougher to the palate than white flour.

Manicheanism? Nonsense. On the contrary, the Pope is speaking from Common Sense and is following the traditional attitude of the Church, as demonstrated already in previous discussions, which attitude is CONSERVATIVE.

I have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the production of white flour by sifting off the bran after grinding - nowadays it is a question of repeated grindings and siftings so as to make sure less flour gets stuck in the bran - is a traditional means of making white flour from wheat. And white flour being finer in quality than full grain, it is obvious that this means has been used for fine bakery for centuries, obviously for the baking of hosts.

AND the Pope is speaking, not of White Flour, but of ENRICHED FLOUR, as different a thing, as cheese from chalk.

It pays to carefully read, for it prevents a man from making a fool of himself, by alleging something that has NOT actually been said!


I gave him a quote from an annotated Summa: candida, triticea ac tenuis, non magna, rotunda
expers fermenti, non salsa sit hostia Christi.
Now, these are two mnemonic verses, that priests in 1949 or earlier had to learn by heart, in order to decide easily which host is the onlyLICIT and - as for some criteria even the only VALID host to be used.

Instead of grasping that this was a genuine quote from what was being learned in seminaries (the annotated Summa has a few of them, often on moral theology or Canon Law) he wanted to know where the quote was from. That is good modern university scholarship, but not good sense.

Your distinction is nonsensical. If you quote something that I do not know, it is reasonable that I ask you for its references. And, if you are honest and your quote is for real, you will provide the references.

The Holy Father has not claimed Omniscience. Therefore your attempt to impeach him on the grounds that he is not omniscient is foolish.


I still do not know the title of the work it was from (either quoted or extracted), (de antiquis .... ecclesiae or something) and I have not written it down this time either, not having planned to mention it precisely today, but what is the use of giving references to a comparatively unknown scholar, when it is clear it was in a note from times he regards as normal in the Church?

I gave him the reference to the annotated edition, which a seminary student might not need, but which a seminary teacher, a fortiori Pope learning his job, would need pretty badly. When he quoted them in his return message, he did not even write the two mnemonic verses (hexametres, as much menonic verse since the 16th century) as two separate lines. He did not grasp this was something priests were supposed to learn by heart. And the significance of that.I did not have to look the note up again, he can compare the wording if he doubts my memory of verse.

I do not know whether to laugh or to cry. It may have struck you that Pope Michael neither claims to have dropped down from Heaven with Omniscience, nor claims infused and universal knowledge. It may have also struck you that the man has come up just as much as the rest of us, learning the ropes after the Great Apostacy. He was NOT a pre-Conciliar priest, who should be expected to have learnt all this. And his seminary training consisted only in the rather dubious training in two or three Lefebvrist 'seminaries.' So, why all these absurd charges?

[Let us hope that you will not pretend that Seminary training, or even membership in the clergy is a requisite qualification for election to the papacy! ]


"who sound off on issues when they have no real idea what all is involved or what they are really saying" - describes whom?

I hate to say this, but Mrs. Benns' answer is correct - YOU!

Yes, I have changed the subject title: with luck it will bring up the thread ?Pope Michael? on http://groups.msn.com/Antimodernism where you may look the previous controversy up.

AND I must say, with obvious regret, that you are abusing trust and good faith to peddle, not something new, but a rehash of some old nonsense that should have sensibly have been left to lie dead where it was - old garbage!

Now, the thesis of sedes impedita would be well illustrated IF David Bawden were really the Pope since 1992, since his teaching has involved errors on matters of vital importance to the Church. It is important what is the real matter of the Eucharist. It is also important what Saints' days have to give way to Sundays or Ember days. That is not a mere matter of mathematics, but a mathematician who can use sunday letters can check it out.

Rather, should you not put it more correctly this way: IF David Bawden were really the Pope, and IF he attempted to teach something what I charge him to teach, with attempted "infallibility," rather than just as a mere opinion, and that too as being a universally binding legislation...

For myself, I notice the Pope say, "In our humble opinion". So, I wonder, what is all this rudiculous blather you are making about?

I took the trouble to ask the Pope for a clarification, asking whether my understanding of his words, that this was merely his opinion, and that too only — and self-evidently — applicable ONLY to the United States of America, OR whether your (Lundahl's) interpretation (actually, misinterpretation) is right, and he confirmed my interpretation.


I made an error when deciding the weekday my mother was born. She still trusted me but said it didn't matter. I insisted on rechecking. The matter was simple: I had got the month and day mixed up (because that reverse date also means something). When applying the real date, I got the correct answer.

I am relieved David Bawden did some rechecking on the dates and did not require obedience to those dates absolutely, but rather to the week days. That still does not convince me he is Pope, but at least there is greater chance he is honest.

What is it EXACTLY that you were relieved about? That you had found an opportunity to mock Pope Michael and open on this forum your old attacks against him? Obviously, to a man of good will, and even one not favouring Pope Michael, that mistake over a date was very evidently nothing more than a mistake over a date, one that anyone can make.

And while the Pope has apologized for the error, what do you do? You scarcastically mock him, making unwarranted talk about a 'Calender Reform.' Is this Good Faith?

But not only that, you seized upon this insignificant incident to push your old bogey to the forefront, to try and mock the man. This is un-Christian.


Are you prepared to recheck: 1. the licitness of lay conclaves A Lay Election was, is and remains legitimate as an EXTRA-ORDINARY MEANS of supplying and or procuring the Pope.

2. the factual matter whether the See might be occupied by a visionary claimant who is NOT guilty of heresy - I am thinking about the "unknown" successor of ClementXV/Michel Colin in Paris, as unknown presumably as Pope Michael/David Bawden has been for most of the decade since the conclave and undoubtedly for the same or similar reason Regretably, you make it your 'vocation' to mock, slander and libel Pope Michael, even as you relentlessly seek to attach yourself first to one fantastic Harry-Potteresque wierdo and then onto another. I am sorry to say this, but this is the truth. There is nothing more sorry than the spectacle you present. You have given up on the Palmarian clown only to latch onto the Colinist clowns.

Regardless of the "crimes" of Pius XII, it remains that Michael Colin was nothing less than a crook and a heretic.

He was also a liar.

He hijacked the heretical and condemned "Melanist" movement, of Melanie Calvet, originally a visionary of La Salette but who had latter forged the messages of our Lady of La Salette, and who (Melanie) was repeatedly warned and Indexed...

He founded a schismatic and heretical, ultra-Modernist sect. This sect wanted faster "Reforms" - which is why the sect was given the name "Renovated Church of Christ" by its founder...

Lastly, I have conclusively demonstrated that claimed "Mysticalist insertion" of a person into the papacy is and always will be heresy. That and nothing more.

That is, any pretension by any man to have become pope purely as a result of being so constituted in a claimed Apparition is and always will be nothing more than heresy.

No private revelation can ever contradict or amend Public Revelation and Christian Doctrine.

People have quoted to me private revelations. I ask them to kindly give me authenticated revelations certified as true by the Church. I am yet to be provided even one.

I do not care for old people's gossip, however pious-sounding words it may be couched in.

Purely on the basis of Christian Doctrine, I confidently reject and exclude one and all attempt to constitute a papal claimant purely on the basis of his being so constituted in an Apparition as being nothing more than a fraud and moreover as being heresy. This is something I will NOT yield on...

Anyone who contends otherwise makes shipwreck of the faith.

But if you accept Colin, why not his successor Gaston Tremblay aka John-Gregory XVII?

Whatever. Both factions, as far as I know, are ultra-modernist. Both "ordain" women to the priesthood... Definitely, these abominations are only a few of the delectables that await you there...

I would seriously suggest that you reform drastically. Either you make a sharp turn towards Catholic sense, or go over, like Richard Gere and a lot of others, to some fantastic nonsense or the other. Take your pick: Scientology, Raelism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Mormonism, etc.


3. in particular whether it be true that Pius XII was really Pope till 1958, or a heretic (otherwise there can be no Colinist claim of course) Another question you should be asking: If Pius XII was found to be a heretic, was he an inadvertant heretic, such as John XXII, the Avignonese, or was he a public and manifest heretic? Again, from when did he become a heretic? From before his election? After?

Since you have been at this matter the longest, why dont you sit down and write out a comprehensive page, listing charges and dates, and then show it to us. We can take it as our starting point...

There is no use over-flogging this horse. Let us come to a determination once and for all - did he vanish into heresy, or did he not.


4. the licitness of chosing for Pope a man who is more prepared to trust scholarship than common sense in matters where it applies? It is merely YOUR contention that Pope Michael chooses to trust Scholarship rather than Common Sense. I find that he follows the Faith and interprets problems from Common Sense. It was Common Sense that alerted him to the fact that there is indeed a problem with the store flour sold in the US, that it is adulterated, and therefore, according to Catholic Standards, doubtful matter. Common Sense is not Common Sense if it rejects Scholarship. The Church has never been favouring NESCIENCE. Leave that to the WIERDOS. On the contrary, the Church has always been rationalistic.
This whole thing stinks hugely and it discredits none but YOU! This is not the way that a honourable man behaves... exaggerating and twisting things out of context.

What the Pope has written, he has not attempted to bind as a legislation. It is only his opinion. And it is only relevant, as seen in the context, to the USA, and is NOT universal.

Again, the principles he uses are proper. I had asked you a question when you had raised this issue on your Antimodernism list: If you have flour made from Genetically Modified (GM) Wheat, would you consider that legitimate matter, from a Catholic viewpoint, for the making of hosts, whether whole flour or sifted, white flour?

You did not answer me then. Will you please answer me now?

Prakash John Mascarenhas

References:
  1. Wheatenhost I
  2. Wheatenhost II
  3. Wheatenhost III
  4. Decree on the Blessed Sacrament
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