The New Rite: Purging the Priesthood in the Conciliar Church

[Stone]

Response to the above article, also from The Catacombs archive: 

I have recently learned, though I must confess I am not entirely surprised, that there are some OLMC supporters who have disparaged this article by Fr. Jenkins, summarily dismissing it because it was written by a 'sedevacantist'.

Kindly permit me a few remarks in answer to this.

Firstly, to dismiss the content of this article because it was 'written by a sedevacantist' is false. Fr. Jenkins later embraced sedevacantism but had not yet done so at the time this article was written. As was noted in the introduction, it was written while Fr. Jenkins was an SSPX seminary professor of dogmatic theology and philosophy, a post he continued to hold for two years before he left the Society.

Secondly, there is not the least hint of sedevacantism within the article. Fr. Jenkins simply repeats what Archbishop Lefebvre did about the New Mass and the New Sacraments, namely, that the final decision about the validity of the New Rite of Ordination must be left up to the Church's Magisterium to decide.

In the article, Fr. Jenkins points out the positive doubt that exists in the New Rite (long noted by others before him). He further reminds us that doubtful sacraments must be avoided. There is nothing new or novel in what Fr. Jenkins wrote. Pope Innocent XI laid down in 1679 (Dz. 1151) that not even the most probably valid opinion about the validity of a Sacrament could be tolerated, particularly when it came to the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Orders. Fr. Jenkins and the theologians he cites merely remind us of this teaching of the Catholic Church in how to deal practically with these new Rites.

Thirdly, the value in having us call to mind these warnings of the Church is that we are in times where the attacks on the Faith are not coming from without but rather from within. It seems incredible that those who should be safeguarding the Faith are those who are allowing it to be endangered with doubtful Rites:

And all this is precisely because the union desired by these liberal Catholics, a unions between the Church and the Revolution and subversion is, for the Church, an adulterous union, adulterous. And that adulterous union can produce only bastards. And who are those bastards? They are our rites: the rite of the Mass is a bastard rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments – we no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or which do not give grace.  - Archbishop Lefebvre, Sermon at Lille, 1976

In light of the changes made in the New Rite of Ordination and Consecration, we are veritably 'ordered' by the Church to hold them as doubtful (not invalid!) unless the Church declares them otherwise.

Thirdly, as this article makes clear, the theologians define a doubt as 'a suspension of judgement.' It is not a declaration or a passing of a sentence. What has been repeatedly insinuated by OLMC is that a doubt about the New Rite Sacraments is a declaration of invalidity. It is not. This article, written 39 years ago, expresses the same doubt regarding the New Ordinations and Consecrations that continues to be a legitimate concern now, if not more so. In other words, there was a doubt about these new Rites decades before OLMC's issues with Fr. Poisson.

Fourthly, The Catacombs has deliberately not quoted articles from bona fide sedevacantist sources, though they certainly abound, to show the doubt that exists in the New Rites. There are some who say one shouldn't quote any but Catholic authors to make a point. But let us not become pharisaical by forgetting that St. Thomas Aquinas himself quotes Aristotle, Plato, Tertullian, Origen, and even a Moslem, Averroes, who were not saints. The 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that

"St. Thomas Aquinas used the "Grand Commentary" of Averroes as his model, being, apparently, the first Scholastic to adopt that style of exposition; and though he refuted the errors of Averroes, and devoted special treatises to that purpose, he always spoke of the Arabian commentator as one who had, indeed, perverted the Peripatetic tradition, but whose words, nevertheless, should be treated with respect and consideration."

In summary, it is justified and quite proper to quote an article that simply repeats what the Church teaches. Perhaps it is only because the truth of what is written contradicts (and condemns?!) the words and actions of OLMC when it comes to New Rite Ordinations and Episcopal Consecrations that it's followers are casting disparaging remarks about it?