Of Lundahl's Attack Against Pope Michael
©Prakash John Mascarenhas, Bombay, India. 18th June 2003. This page is Copyright.
In the Catholic Resistance, people tend to many different opinions or beliefs, and these cause strong divisions. Now, some of these beliefs are such, that they can only be called heresy, and thus those who hold to them must be excluded strictly. Such, for example, are the Feeneyites and 'Old-Catholics'. These people are not really of the Catholic Resistance but are enemy agents for Satan, come in to seduce souls away from Catholicism. However, this is not true of all. When faced with non-heretical differences, or differences which are merely doubtful, there is no reason to reject these persons or refuse to converse with them. Previously, I have, by almost reflex action, tended to combat ideological positions contrary to mine own. However, I have realized that this is counter-productive, in that it merely exacerbates divisions, practical excommunications and the defacto erections of walls and boundaries, segregating people into little Churchlets. Therefore, I decided to control myself, to bend backward and avoid antagonizing such folk, but to try and to get the Resistance together, instead of contributing to the divisiveness.
Therefore, I took for myself the motto: "Don't Win Arguments, Win Souls!" Admittedly, it is not something that I have been very successful at.
Part of the blame, and often enough most of it, lies, I must recognize, in my own attitude and behaviour. That is what I am trying to work on.
One of the more difficult of my friends is one such person, Mr. Hans Lundahl of Sweden. There are too many points on which we disagree. However, we have managed as yet to avoid a serious collision.
Recently, Mr. Lundahl had pointed out a minor mistake of a date in a post of Pope Michael and then taken advantage of the expanding exchange to import his old campaign against Pope Michael's opinion on Store Flour sold in the USA, into the Christania List.
This regrettably seems to be the setting for another rift - and even indeed the serious head-on collision that I was rather hoping to avoid.
Pope Michael has, in one of his pages on his site, doubted the validity of US Store Flour to be regarded as legitimate matter - Flour of Wheat, necessary for the making of hosts for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. His grounds are that not only have vital matters been subtracted, but also that a significant portion of the end product is composed of foreign substances added to the processed flour. Clearly, what is evident in the Holy Father's article is that he is merely stating an opinion, and that too one that is restricted to his empirical knowledge of processed wheat flour sold in stores in his native USA, and that, more pointedly, he is NOT attempting to pronounce "infallibly" or even merely legislatively, on the matter. That much is evident from the text itself.
Given these facts, I fail to see any point at all in Hans Lundahl's long and pointlessly protracted, campaign against the Holy Father's this view, which campaign has evidently degenerated, in the absence of any real motivating cause, into a mere campaign of harrassment and misrepresentation and of character assassination directed against the Holy Father.
At the end, what becomes evident is that Mr. Lundahl is unable to stomach Pope Michael's claim to be the Pope. However, there is a proper way to go about that, and that is to prove that his claim is false in the light of Catholic principles. Instead of doing that, however, Mr. Lundahl degenerates into a smear campaign.
There is a good enough reason why Mr. Lundahl is doing this, in my estimation. And that is that he has no idea at all as how to disprove Pope Michael, which is why he is forced to resort to these means.
Now the Catholic attitude is always this: If I cannot prove that someone is wrong or that his claim is false from Catholic principles, then it necessarily is that his claims are true. Therefore I am forced to acknowledge those claims.
I have myself gone through that phase. If anyone has most famously attacked Pope Michael's claims, it is I. I doubt that there is any other comparable denunciation of Pope Michael's claims. Yet, when I sat down and checked the matter once again, dispassionately, I found that all my objections were wrong and false. That left me with no other option but to acknowledge Pope Michael as the true Pope. I could not be faithful to Christ and to Catholic principles if I failed to do so.
Mr. Lundahl's attacks against the Holy Father are not according to Catholic principles. I offer this open challenge to one and all. If any man (or woman or child) can prove or show that Pope Michael's claim is false on the basis of Catholic principles, I too will turn around and reject this claim.
I am not a zombie, and Pope Michael has not brainwashed me into a Cultee. Finally, my loyalty lies first of all to Christ Jesus.
Catholic principles are not hard to find and to learn. If I am able to do so, certainly one situate in the West, in Sweden, should be able to.
I have learnt much of my faith from the Radio Replies. It is to this work that I credit my conversion to Christ Jesus, for which reason, I account its authors, Fr. Leslie Rumble and Fr. Charles Carty, to be my spiritual fathers - my initiators into the Faith. Another, to an extent, is Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy, because of whom I was able to recognize the fact that the sect presently commanded by Charles Joseph Wojtyla is NOT Catholic.
Therefore, in disquiet and exasperation against this unwarranted and un-Catholic attack on the Holy Father, I turned to the Radio Replies once again. I looked up the relevant portions, and I offer it up here to the reader to see my point:
[©1940, Frs. Rumble & Carty. Imprimatur: Joannes Gregorius Murray, Archiepiscopus Sancti Pauli. Die 27a Dec., 1941.]
Q. 345. There have been evil Popes. Was it God's will that they should be head of the Church?
It was at least God's permissive will. It was quite against God's positive will that the few unworthy Popes should have lived in a disedifying way. But we should quarrel, not with the fact that they were Popes, but with the fact that they did not live up to their obligations, and set a good personal example to the faithful.
Q. 346. Yet you have to believe that those Popes, sinful themselves, could do no wrong where the affairs of the Church were concerned?
Catholics certainly must and do believe that no Pope, whatever his personal character, has ever defined an erroneous doctrine to be true. But the gift of infallibility does not extend to matters of practical administration. And Popes have undoubtedly been guilty of imprudence in such matters. The Church, however, being indefectible in virtue of Christ's promise to be with her all days till the end of the world, has survived all such mistakes in management and policy on the part of the Popes.
Q. 356. What of the incident concerning Apiarius, 451 A.D.?
That case is often quoted where the right of appeal to the Pope against the disciplinary decisions of other bishops is concerned. About the year 417 A.D., Apiarius, a priest in Africa, was deposed and excommunicated by his own bishop. Apiarius appealed to the Pope, who took up his case, and reversed the decision of the African bishop, ordering Apiarius to be reinstated. After the death of Pope Zozimus, the case was again put to Pope Boniface, his successor. For five years, lettes were exchanged between Africa and Rome concerning the principles involved, and Pope Boniface died without concluding the discussion. He was succeeded by Pope Celestine I., who settled the case by admiting that Apiarius was justly condemned by his own bishop, and should be deposed; but he insisted that, by virtue of their primacy, the Popes retained the right to hear and judge appeals from Africa, or anywhere else in the world.
403. If the Popes were always infallible, how does Pope Liberius measure up to the doctrine?
In every necessary way. In their efforts to refute the Catholic doctrine, enemies of the Church have ransacked history in the hope of finding a Pope who has taught heretical ideas. They thought that they had found such a Pope in Liberius, urging that he subscribed to the Arian heresy condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. But let us take the facts. Liberius became Pope in the year 352. From the outset he fought against the continued efforts of the Arians to corrupt the faith. The Emperor Constantius, himself an Arian, seized Pope Liberius by force and exiled him to Berea, in Thrace. It is said that, to escape this exile, and induced by fraud and threats, Pope Liberius signed a formula drawn up by the Arians. But historical reserach has shown that it is doubtful whether he signed the document at all. If he did sign, he was not a sufficiently free agent for a lawful exercise of his duty. And in any case, the document he is supposed to have signed was not directly heretical, but ambiguous, admitting of an orthodox as well as a heterodox interpretation according to the viewpoint taken by the reader. St. Athanasius and St. Hilary, who thought he did sign, insist that no charge of heresy could be made against Liberius, on the score that the document was not necessarily heretical. Moreover, the absolute orthodoxy of Liberius is so well known from other sources that it is impossible to say that he ever entertained heretical Arian views, and so erred in matters of faith. On his return from exile he defended the Nicene decisions against Arianism, and remained a most uncompromising defender of the orthodox doctrine until his death in 366 A.D.
To all this you can add one point. Even if Liberius signed the document, and even if that document was heretical, and even if Liberius personally held and believed heretical doctrine, no argument even then could be drawn from the case against the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility.
For the Catholic Church has never defined that the Popes are always infallible in all that they personally believe. The Catholic Church declares that the Pope is infallible when he gives an official definition of doctrine concerning faith or morals, it being required that he acts freely, tht he declares himself to be acting in his capacity as head of the whole Church, and that he intends his definition to be binding upon all the faithful throughout the world. Not one of these last requirements was verified in the case of Liberius, and whatever view one takes of the case historically, it is invalid as a test of infallibility.
404. How does Pope Honorius measure up to infallibility?
Nothing that Pope Honorius ever said or did in his life conflicts in any way with the Catholic doctrine of infallibility. He has been accused of having taught the Monothelite heresy in two letters to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Sergius favoured the Monothelite heresy, or the doctrine that there was only one will in Christ, not two wills, the one Divine, and the other human. He wrote a very deceptive letter to Pope Honorius begging him not to condemn the doctrine, since such a condemnation would greatly disturb the peace of the Church. Honorius wrote to Sergius praising him for his good intentions, and sanctioning his expectations, though interpreting them in a perfectly orthodox way which Sergius did not not accept for a moment. But Sergius had got all he wanted, staving off papal condemnation. If there is one thing clear, it is that Honorius neither taught heresy in either of his letters to Sergius (nor anywhere else), and that he gave no dogmatic definition on the subject. This case, also, therefore, is besides the point where infallibility is concerned.
Q. 405. Honorius was condemned as a heretic by subsequent Councils, a condemnation ratified by Pope Leo II.
After the death of Honorius in 638 A.D. the Monothelites continued their heretical teachings, and in 680, the Sixth General Council was convoked to deal with Sergius and his supporters, including the name of Pope Honorius with them. They sent their decisions to Pope Agathon saying, "We leave it to you to decide what is to be done in your capacity as Bishop of the First See in the Universal Church." But Pope Agathon died before he could ratify the decrees, and was succeeded by Pope Leo II. Pope Leo approved and ratified the decisions. Later, writing to the bishops in Spain, he said that he had no intention of condemning Honorius for any heretical teaching, but because he was negligent in dealing with the Monothelites, fostering their heresy by his very inactivity. Even when he saw that the bishops of the Council had condemned Honorius for supporting the teachings of Sergius, Pope Leo II. corrected their decree by saying that he unbecomingly permitted them to flourish. Far from being condemned as a heretic, then, Pope Honorius was condemned for not using his supreme and infallible authority to settle the dispute.
Q. 406. Why was the anathema repeated till 1590, and then dropped?
The statement that the Sixth General Council had condemned the Monothelite heresy together with Sergius, Cyrus, Honorius, Pyrrhus, and others who supported it, used to appear in the ancient Roman Breviaries. No one paid much attention to it until the sixteenth century, when a new impetus was given to historical research. The discovery of the special qualifications Pope Leo II. had made when approving the decisions of the Sixth General Council made it clear that the name of Honorius was unjustly bracketed with that of Sergius, and those of the others: and his name was rightly deleted in future editions of the Breviary.
Q. 407. Is papal infallibility still possible?
It is a fact. But here once more I must point out that, even if Pope Honorius had been guilty of heresy in his writings (as he was not) papal infallibility would not be affected. For he was not pronoucning an official definition in virtue of his supreme office in the Church and with the intention of obliging the whole Church to accept his teaching under pain of heresy. But where these historical cases are concerned, surely you do not think that the bishops of the world assembled at the Vatican Council would be so foolish as to define the doctrine without deeply considering the facts of history? You can be quite sure that they knew all the facts about Pope Honorius, even as they knew that those facts were available to the world. Do you think that they would have defined infallibility, knowing that hostile critics had only to quote Honorius to prove them utterly wrong?
Therefore, keeping these facts in view, let us examine the Holy Father's statement that Mr. Lundahl has quoted in his attack: http://popemichael.homestead.com/MFMATTER4.html
At the end of all this, I still want to retain Mr. Lundahl's friendship. Not friendship for friendship's sake, but for the sake of Christ, to edify or build up the Church. I want to team up with others not to tear up the Church but to build it up together, in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prakash John Mascarenhas
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