This letter was written by Mr. Hutton Gibson, from Australia, in response to my tract
Repair My Church.
HUTTON GIBSON
Tangambalanga 3691
27/7/97
Dear Mr. Prakash,
I entered the battle to preserve our faith actively in 1971, over heresy taught in religion classes in Australian Catholic schools. I soon read the decrees and documents of Vatican II, and branched out. I hate being robbed, especially by those charged with guarding the treasury.
I recently received your
Repair the Church paper of 20/9/96 from Mr. Nestor Carvalho of Goa. He wrote: "... this is the first tract I've seen, concerning Traditional Catholicism, in these parts, in the last five years or so."
I like most of it, especially the good sense with which you treat the
Cassiciacum theory first advanced by Father Guerard des Laurieres, ordinarily a straight thinker. I have treated this idiocy in my periodical
The War Is Now! and in my book,
The Enemy is Here!, a collection of the first 34 issues of the aforesaid periodical. Since it is on the computer, it is no trouble to run it off.
Objection—There is in JP2 (as there was in Paul VI) a pope, but in view of his false teaching a pope without divine authority—a pope who apart from merely occupying the papacy and appointing, on the merely human leverl, occupants for the bishops' chairs has lost his office. Like the pope himself, the bishops are as so many corpses till they either correct their heresies or in the name of the Church are served official notice of them by at least some diocesan bishops. Only by two such warnings would either pope or bishops cease altogether to occupy their offices for having become manifest heretics.
Reply—A man without divine authority is not pope, whether he appears to occupy the papacy or not. A public heretic is ineligible. If (as with Paul VI, JP1, and JP2) he is elected anyway, such election is null and void. Any ecclesiastical actions, from appointment of bishops to canonizations to promulgation of a new code of canon law, suffer from the same consequent lack of divine authority.
Corpses have none of the rights or privileges of living men. The first penalty for public heresy is ipso facto excommunication, which removes clerics from all offices in the Church without any declaration. Not only are two warnings superfluous, where are your diocesan bishops to give them? Where is the legal requirement that these notice servers must be diocesan bishops? Anyone may warn anyone; the law has already penalized public heresy. Augustine's (1922) A Commentary on the New Code of Canon Law: "The censure inflicted is excommunication incurred ipso facto, which per se requires not even a declaratory sentence... Note that the term moniti (2314 §1, n. 2) does not refer to the incurring of the censure. Consequently, no canonical warning or admonition is required."
The public heretic has already left the Church; how can he be head or hold office in it from outside? The other penaltyies include "privation of every benefice, dignity, pension, office, or charge; also infamy and, after a fruitless warning, deposition." But the first part of the law is clear. The fact that no one will assume the duty of providing the warning required for the paperwork does not continue heretics in office or authority. In the cases under consideration sufficeint warning has been provided by the Church for nineteen centuries. Our "pope" and "bishops" are neither ignorant nor in good faith. They were all trained in the religion. They were not ordained without passing their canonical examinations.
Objection—The Conciliar Church is not strictly speaking another church or new denomination. The visble establishment has forfeited its aurthority, yet in the providence of God it carries on the Church in its human aspect as a visible society.
Reply—It preaches different doctrines. It confers new (invalid) sacraments. Its official worship is idolatry. It is not the Church God provided. Strictly speaking, it is not a Church but an apostasy. Apostates fall under the same canon (2314) as heretics. Again, no declaration is required. What you term the Session (external functions) of the Church should be recognized rather as the Secession of the establishment. It may call itself Catholic, but so does the Church of England.
Objection—Pope Wojtyla and his henchmen ocupy the offices of the Church illegitimately—if nonetheless validly.
Reply—They have all either lost all offices or ineligibly assumed them through public adherence to heresy. This is the law of the Church. This is the plainest sense. What do you gain by such a stupid statement?
Objection—We have a pope materially but not formally, since Vatican II and papal promulgation of teaching clearly contrary to the infallible magisterium. Sedevacantist arguments prove a vacant office rather than a vacant throne. For a vacant seat or throne may lead to a disastrous attempt to elect a pope to fill a chair not in fact emply, thus creating a schism.
Reply—Schism? We already have a full-fledged apostasy. A man is or is not pope. No one ever heard of a part-pope, or an ineligible public heretic filling the papal office. How is the office different from the throne? Is a good background in philosophy and theology really necessary to distringuish a Catholic from a heretic?
Objection—The difference between sede vacante and officio vacante is the distinction between the Matter and Form of the papacy. The one duly elected to the papacy is "matter" or recipient for the divine Authority or "form" which by right belongs to him.
Reply—Desperate problems evoke desperate solutions. We are not concerned with one duly elected but with an ineligible public heretic masquerading as pope. It is all very well to make this philosophical distinction between formal and material papacy, but both form and matter are required—essential, of the nature of the man, the office, the divine Authroity. Lacking either, a man is not a man, a horse is not a horse, a tree is not a tree, a rock is not a rock. One may treat either aspect philosophically, but if either is lacking the "body" does not exist. One may be a formal or a material heretic, but either way one is a heretic—not possibly a Catholic. Again, what is gained by introduction of this irrelevancy? Hylomorphism may have its place, but this is not it. Please remember that most current problems have come down to us from philosophers and theologians with degrees. Anyone who recognizes a heretic as pope joins that "pope" in his heresy. If you say JP2 is a material heretic materially pope, are you not also a material heretic?
Objection—Only the official Church, through canonical warnings, short of his open avowal or admission, can convict JP2 of formal heresy.
Reply—You agree that the "official Church" has been taken over. You know well that it will never take such measures. You should know that canon law makes such measures unnecessary. Montini and Vatican II promulgated previously condemned heresies as publicly as possible. Not only did his two successors vote for and sign these heresies, they each stated on usurping office that the major objective of their reigns would be further implementation of this heretic council. Does this not constitute open avowal and admission of heresy? The holding of hresy is a fact; guilt need not be considere. Any kind of public heretic cannot be pope, cardinal, bishop, or minor cleric in the Church.
Objection—What would become of order in the Church if "every Tom, Dick, or Harry" could judge with the force—moral if not physical—of law?
Reply—What has become of order in the Church?
Why will people jump to conclusions for us? A sedevacantist recognizes our factual, popeless situation. He readily admits that we should have a pope, that a true pope is highly beneficial and desirable as a standard of belief and a focus of unity. (He might even stay home in Vatican City and deal with urgent ecclesiastical matters, of which we have far too many.) But the sedevacantist recognition of fact hardly constitutes an irresistible urge to elect or even find another papal claimant. Confusion already reigns.
He could well have done without Ngo Dinh Thuc's two lines of "bishop", too. These men seem particularly good at fogging issues. They speak of material and formal popes, material and formal hierarchies, material and formal heresies. Think of the possibilities! Material and formal masses, sacraments, marriages, episcopal consecrations, ordinations, canon laws, creeds, doctrines—the field is boundless. One could procure a material annulment from a material pope and his materially heretical court, and remain formally married until the matter can be adjudicated by a formally heretical court under a formally heretical pope.
I trust that the good Father who brought Hylomorphism into the argument will not class me with C.E.M. Joad and his jocose comments on the jugginess of jugs, that that he will appreciate my point: that Hylomorphism has no application to lunacy, schiziphrenia, or split persons. A unit (rock, tree, horse, man) has, according to this theory, matter and form. Both are characteristic of or essential ot hte unity. If either is missing the unit does not exist. One cannot be materially be pope (or anything else) unless also formally pope (or whatoever). Different facets, different functions, different powers of the same object may appear, be recognized, be examined; but the moment they are divorced from the total object they are facets, aspects, functions, or powers of nothing. We have come to bury the whole heretic—not to set up his hollow shell and praise it—to recognize his material papacy. Why anyone should wish to recognize such a useless and nebulous concept completely escapes me. We have trouble enough without borrowing nonsense.
But for reasons I published in
The War is Now! #36, May 1995, page 4, I disagree with your solution. I enclose evidence of my defection fro your consideration.
We both strive for the general return of our Catholic Church. I believe the only way is to discover a genuine Catholic bishop who signed none of the documents of the Second Vatican Council who will publicly condemn the apostates in Rome and around the world, and assume command of the Church. This is a much more practical solution to our problem. But read the argument and think it over. I will take any argument as far as anyone wishes.
I enclose also
The War Is Now! #43, just off the press.
Happy eye-strain!
sd.
Hutton Gibson
