Fr. Hesse: Against the ‘Popesplainers’

[Stone]

Father Gregor Hesse: Against the ‘Popesplainers’
Part I

CFN [Emphasis mine] | October 30, 2024

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited transcript of a lecture given by Father Hesse at the Fatima 2000 Conference in Rome titled ‘Discernment of Spirits’, Nov. 18-24th. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the content of this presentation has been published on the internet. This conference in particular is especially relevant for our time, with Father Hesse identifying certain errors made by defenders of the post-conciliar revolution that are now quite common in polemical debate.

The title of my presentation is “The Discernment of Spirits”. It will treat of how to distinguish if some statement has been made by Our Lord or by the devil … if some statement bears the truth or is just a lie.

The only metaphysical certitude we can have (that is, absolute safety in knowing that we are presented with the truth) is, of course, in Revelation and Sacred Tradition. Everything else has to be examined in accordance with Divine Revelation and Sacred Tradition.

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius points out that the devil first gives good thoughts, then more good thoughts and then he lets the bad thoughts creep in. The devil will tell you a lot of truths. He will continue for a long time to tell you the truth and then he will start to let the errors and the lies creep in.

About the discernment of spirits, the famous Jesuit theologian, Scaramelli, says that one of the best ways to find out if something corresponds to the truth or not is by checking it against the Church Magisterium (with the teaching of the Catholic Church). The same is said by Cardinal Bona, who wrote a book on the discernment of spirits. He said that whenever the devil talks, you have 90 percent truth and 10 percent lie. And it is the 10 percent lie that causes all the havoc, confusion and loss of souls.


Two Principles

How do we know if something is true or not?

There are two principles.

The first principle is that we have to check it against the teaching of the Church.

The second principle is contained in Our Lord’s words “a tree is recognized by its fruits”. You watch for awhile, see what is happening and then you will find out if the source of everything has been divine or evil. Don’t forget that Our Lord talked about the wolves in sheep’s clothing. And St. Thomas said, “The worst wolves in sheep’s clothing are the heretics and then, bad prelates.”

Why did he say the bad prelates? He was talking about the bishops who enable heretics to spread their lies. Because if a heretic is silenced by a bishop, then the heretic is finished (of course, we are talking about the old days when there was no mass communication). The problem was that all too often, the bishops did not silence the heretics. They just listened or they didn’t care.

St. Thomas, who noted that the divine truth never changes, and who also noted that Our Lord warned “Fear ye not them that kill the body … but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell,” concluded that capital punishment for heretics could be justified, because it is our souls that are at stake here, and not our bodies.

I do not fear a murderer, I fear a subtle, intelligent heretic.


Two Mistakes

I said that one of the best ways to find out if some statement is coming from the devil or from God is to compare it with the teaching of the Church.

Now, what exactly do the words “teaching of the Church” mean? What has to be understood by the term “Magisterium of the Church”? There are two basic errors in understanding this.

The first mistake is to believe that only a defined Dogma is binding in the faith. The second mistake is to think that everything the Pope says and does, and everything the bishops say and do has to be repeated or followed. This of course, is ridiculous. A speech or sermon given by the Pope is not ordinary teaching (Magisterium). It is simply a sermon given by the bishop of bishops.


Humani Generis

Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis made very clear what is to be understood under the term of ”binding” teaching of the Church. Precisely, Pope Pius XII taught that nobody should suppose that whatever is said or written in the encyclicals does not demand consent just simply because the Popes in writing encyclicals do not exercise their extraordinary teaching.

Those encyclicals are statements with the power of ordinary teaching of the Church. Ordinary does not mean vulgar or base, ordinary simply means “according to the rules.” And he quotes the Lord saying “He who hears you hears Me.” Pius XII further explains that, most of the time, what a Pope says in one of his encyclicals has been said before …either by a council, by a predecessor of the reigning Pope, or even by an encyclical of the same Pope.

So Pius XII underlines the fact that the teaching of the Church has to be obeyed even if it is not extraordinary teaching defining a dogma. It is sufficient to have a Papal Encyclical, it is sufficient to have a Papal Bull.


How About Contradictions?

Now, lets suppose that you find contradicting lines between two different encyclicals. Let’s say that Pope “A” says “yes” to something and Pope “B” says “no” to something. What do you do? Well in that case, you choose what has been said previously and choose what is consistent with the traditional teaching of the Church. You follow this course for the very simple reason that the Pope is the supreme person in the Church. He is not the supreme principle. The supreme principle of the Church is the truth, and the truth is laid down in the faith. The basis of the faith (as the Dogmatic Constitution of the First Vatican Council entitled Dei Filius says) is based on Revelation and Tradition. And those two cannot change, cannot be changed, and cannot be “updated” to the times.


Liturgy

The unchangeableness of Liturgy reflects this. Liturgy is a source of the faith in the sense that liturgy has to contain everything the Church believes. This is why I will quote from the Pope St. Pius V’s famous Bull Quo Primum, the first document you find in the old Missal. Pope Pius V declares that “this decree is valid from now on until forever”. Now this was said on July 14, 1570 and he says that this missal that he is publishing with Quo Primum must never be changed. It must never be changed by whomever. That means his successors too. This is not just the ordinary phrase used in every papal document saying “this has value from now on forever”. He specifies, that nobody, whoever it may be would ever be able to abolish this, his decree. Otherwise, he would have just utilized the usual formulations. But he says explicitly, this document can never be recalled or reduced by whomever. And that binds his successors who have indeed sworn the Coronation Oath to be found in the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum which is one of the- oldest collections of Papal decrees – probably put together in the 9th Century with texts that contain centuries of tradition. And in this Coronation Oath, the Pope swears an oath and says that he will never change what he has inherited from his God-willed predecessors.


Intellect and Will

I mentioned the wolves in sheep’s clothing. How do they operate? How do they spread their error? To understand how easy it is to spread error, we just have to consider the following facts.

First of all, a complete collection of church teachings containing only important Papal decrees is so massive that it is something no human being can memorize. So we have one source of error, lack of memory.

Second, it would be absolutely naive to believe that every single member of the Church is a holy person and always speaks the truth. It is all too common with human beings to make their wishes father of their thoughts. And it is all too common for them to want to spread certain ideas simply because it suits their own purpose. This is the second source of errors and heresies.

You see the human soul has two faculties, the intellect and the will. So you can sin against the truth in your intellect and/or your will.

You can sin against the truth in your intellect by just simply forgetting some truth and saying something different. You can sin against the truth in your will by just simply not wanting to tell the truth. An example of this is to be found in some of the official heretics of our day (mind you there are thousands who are not official heretics but there are others, like Hans Kung, whose teachings have been formally declared heretical by the official Magisterium).

When you ask them what they think, they will give you a different answer every year. They don’t want to tell the truth or maybe they just have bad memories. Both are sources of confusion.


Pascendi

On September 8, 1907, St. Pius X published probably his most important encyclical, Pascendi. He talks about the teachings of the modernists. The name modernists has been given to them by St. Pius X himself. In 1907, the modernists where neither new nor original.

Basically, the characteristic of the modernist is not to be explicitly, clearly a heretic, but implicitly and subtly. The modernist will not necessarily tell you that he does not believe in the Immaculate Conception. He will tell you that the term “Immaculate Conception” has to be understood in a different way today than it would have to be understood in 1854 when the Dogma was pronounced by Pope Pius IX.

The modernists will not directly deny the Divinity of Christ. No. The modernists will tell you everything about Our Lord’s human nature, about Our Lord being a man, about Our Lord being the man, about Jesus of Nazareth being the man who saved the world, about Jesus of Nazareth being the man on whom everything is concentrated. He will not say, “Jesus was not God”, but he will not speak anymore about the fact that Jesus was and is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity become man.


Calculated Unclarity

He will deliberately clothe the content of his speech in sheep’s clothing, in the clothes of “charity and understanding”, and in the clothes of being nice and wanting happiness. He will not speak about saving our souls. He will not mention the fact that everything Christianity is about is to save our souls for the greater glory of God. He will never speak about the greater glory of God. But he will constantly remind us that we have to be kind and nice. So he will do the negative by saying the positive.

It is like the famous American phrase, “think positive!” This is exactly what the modernists want us to do. Think positive, be kind, be charitable, be nice, be happy, smile. The modernists will repeat, until we can’t even stand it anymore, all the “niceties” of the faith, but will never mention the threat of eternal condemnation, the trouble that heresy will bring and the problem of sin.

St. Pius X says the modernist is deliberately ambiguous in his terminology. To make sure that you cannot hunt him down as a heretic, he will not pronounce his heresies as such, but will simply leave out the essentials.

But this is not all. There are two groups of modernists. See, to make things more confusing, you have to have two groups of modernists. You have to have the conservatives, so in case a liberal comes up you can point out a conservative modernist, and you have to have the progressive ones so in case a conservative comes up, you are able to point out a progressive modernist.

And believe it or not, all that I am saying here has been prophesied by St. Pius X in 1907, when he explains that the easiest way to understand the modernists is to reduce their evolution to the battle between two forces, the one that tends towards “progress” and the other one that tends away from “progress” by being conservative. If you’ll pardon a personal comment, this is why I don’t like to be called a conservative, because I do not believe I am a modernist, I am a traditionalist.

St. Pius X says that, the “conservative” influence is dominating in the Church because it is contained in tradition. Keep in mind, this is what the modernists believe, not what the Church, St. Pius X or I believe. The modernists contend that “the conserving force exists in the Church and is found in tradition; tradition is represented by religious authority”, and this is quite natural, because it is in the essence of authority to guard tradition. They also hold that authority is quite remote to real life, removed from reality. They say that authority resists the force that wants to move it towards progress. In essence, “conservative” modernists do not speak about an unchangeable truth. In their view, truth does not bind because it is unchangeable, but because it comes from authority.


Now this is nonsense

Authority on its own, never makes the truth, never changes the truth, and never can take anything away from the truth. Remember Our Lord said “I am the truth.” He is the truth, and His truth is contained in the Gospel and in Sacred Tradition… a Sacred Tradition that does not know “progress” as we have heard somewhere recently, but Sacred Tradition that has been concluded forever with the death of the last apostle. This is what Vatican I defines. So they say the conservatives are conservatives because they don’t understand anything about real life and because they have simply been endowed with a lot of authority and they want to defend their own authority.

Opposed to this, the “progressive” modernists hold that there is a force that tends towards progress, and this progress corresponds to the “innermost needs of the consciousness of the laity.” This is the literal translation of what St. Pius X says. He is speaking about the modernist desire to adapt truth and to adapt the teaching of the Church, to the “innermost needs of the consciousness of the laypeople.” In fact, you will find the term “consciousness,” substituting many truths of the Magisterium in our day.

The one who came up with the idea that everything is “consciousness” was a German philosopher, and this idea was later on adapted to medicine by the famous Sigmund Freud. Well, according to my knowledge, Sigmund Freud has never been granted Church authority, has never been made a member of the Church Hierarchy, and has never been quoted as Church teaching. However, you will frequently find his terminology in today’s sermons, pastoral letters and other documents.

Quite frankly, the “innermost needs of the consciousness of the laity” are not interesting to the Church or Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to be saved, that means He wants us to make our innermost needs correspond to His teaching – that same teaching of which no single jot can ever be lost –  that same teaching of which He said “Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words would be for ever.” He wants this innermost need to correspond to His will. In fact, our innermost needs are to fulfill the will of Christ, to listen to His Mother at Fatima and not to listen to the modernists who want to destroy our souls.

So, “the  consciousness of the laity” is something the Church is simply, plainly not interested in. Because the consciousness of the laity is either some self-appointment to authority never granted or it is the conformation of the individuals will with the will of Christ. In other words, either we obey what Our Lord says or the Church has no interest in our consciousness.

St. Pius X further warned, “and in this, reverend brethren, We see this dangerous and destructive teaching which proclaims the laity as the seed of progress in the Church”.


Not a “Church of the Laity”

You see, this is the point. The Church by definition, by it’s own definition is essentially a priestly Church. And if I would want to bore you, I could give you some 50 quotations from Denzinger Schonmetzer on that point – quoting the popes and councils, especially the Council of Trent and Vatican Council I. The Church is not a church of lay people. The Church has been founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ whose power has been vested in His Vicar on earth. It is the Vicar of Christ who grants jurisdiction of this power to His most reverend Cardinals, bishops and priests. If there has ever been a vocation of the laity, this vocation comes from the priests and the bishops. The Church is governed by the Pope the Cardinals and the bishops, not by a democratic agreement of the laity. “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church.” Peter was not a layman. St. Peter was one of the first bishops and he was the first Pope. The fact that John Paul II, and before him all the other 263 popes were successors of St. Peter is a dogma of the faith. It is not an agreement of the faithful, or by the faithful.


On Papal Infallibility

On July 18, 1870, Pope Pius XI together with the Vatican Council I, pronounced the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. In this dogma however he made clear what this means.

First of all he says St. Peter was truly pope, St. Peter was truly the Vicar of Christ and St. Peter was definitely and truly not the last Vicar of Christ. He then explains that all the successors of St. Peter, all the popes throughout history have been the Vicars of Christ – the supreme teachers on earth, the supreme pastors and the supreme judges.

This is why, not so long ago, the Popes used to wear the tiara with the three crowns, for the three priestly offices.

Pius IX and Vatican Council I then say that St. Peter having been the supreme teacher – and his successors having been the supreme teachers – they therefore have the right and the power to come to a final decision binding their successors, and binding all the faithful on earth for ever._And in the 4th chapter of this decree of Vatican I, Pius IX defines and says who does not believe this does not belong to the Church.

However, he also defines that the Holy Spirit has not been given to St. Peter or his successors to define a new doctrine. It has been given to St. Peter and his successors so that they may guard tradition and explain tradition.

So Pius IX binds his successors too. He binds his successors to safeguard the tradition. By proclaiming this dogma of infallibility, Pius IX did not empower his successors to do what they want. On the contrary, the same Puis IX approved with his own signature a letter written by the German bishops in 1871 to Bismark and to some others who had trouble with this new dogma. Pius IX explained that this does not mean that the pope can do whatever he wants, but that the pope is the only one on earth who can solve a problem that has not yet been solved with absolute certainty and forever. He is the only one who can answer a theological question that has not yet been answered definitely and forever.

But the same document explains that this does not mean that the pope has the right to change the tradition or to proclaim something new. In fact, Puis IX is very strict with his successors. For example, he doesn’t say that if a bishop does not fulfill his duty, the pope may act. No, Pius IX says, in agreement with the German bishops that if a bishop does not fulfill his duty, the Pope has to act. Pope Pius IX says this twice in a document that bears his own signature.

I remind you again of the Coronation Oath where the pope says, ”We put under strict exclusion from the church anybody who wants to change tradition be it somebody else or We”. So you see the Papal duty to keep to tradition, the duty to explain the faith the way it has always been done. Pius IX also used the phrase eadem sententia eodem sensu (the same sentence in the same sense). That means, if somebody tries to explain to me that the dogma of the Trinity has to be understood in a different way at the Council of Nicea than it has to be understood today, I will say right in his face that he is not a Catholic.

The Dogma of Transubstantiation is the Dogma which says that at the moment of consecration at Mass the bread and wine are changed substantially into the Body and Blood of Our Lord. If somebody tries to tell us that this was something to be understood differently at the Council of Trent than it has to be understood today, then I’m sorry, whoever says this is a heretic.

And to show you how serious these things are I mention one point that I will developed later on.

In 1794, Pope Pius VI condemned the so-called Synod of Pistoia. This was a few dozen bishops assembling at Pistoia here in Italy, and pronouncing some new so-called “doctrines”. Eight years after this synod, Pope Pius VI, having examined every line that had been published, condemned several of those lines and condemned the whole Synod of Pistoia as such.

Pius VI explained that those who participated in this Synod knew the tricky art of betraying the faith the way the modernists do. He didn’t actually call them modernists, but “renewers”. Because they are afraid of hurting Catholic ears, they try to throw out their nets by covering their words and making them ambiguous. By this, they hide the error contained in their words so as to allow it to enter souls.

Pius VI then said that the purpose of a Synod is not to be ambiguous, but to avoid ambiguities and to clarify what is obscure, clear up any kind of confusion and to make sure the doctrine is explained explicitly.

The purpose of the Council of Trent was to do away with the error of the Protestants, not to create new ambiguities, not to create new errors.

In fact, until the 20th Century, there was never an ecumenical council that had been called for anything but defining doctrine – that means, turning ambiguous terms into certain terms. And only one of those ecumenical councils, the Council of Lyon, for historic reasons, did not manage to define Dogma, the others did. And the only reason they were called was to make sure that the doctrine of the Church was clear, understandable and corresponding to the wisdom of Our Lord.

And this is why I quote this. It is relevant to our times because the greatest source of confusion in our day is the ambiguities and errors of the Second Vatican Council of which I will treat in Part II.

[Stone]

Against the ‘Popesplainers’
Part II

CFN [Emphasis mine] | November 4, 2024

Editor’s Note: The following is part two of an edited transcript of a lecture given by Father Hesse at the Fatima 2000 Conference in Rome titled ‘Discernment of Spirits’, Nov. 18-24th. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the content of this presentation has been published on the internet. Frequent listeners of Father Hesse will recognize certain elements present in this conference, though this section is notable for certain insights concerning salvation outside of the Church and for his articulation of the Catholic understanding of the Magisterium.

“Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam Catholicam.” This is one of the few parts of Church doctrine that the Church has bothered to define and redefine over and over again. Somehow people seem to have trouble understanding this. The Church has defined several times over that “outside itself there is no salvation”. Some people think that means “outside the Catholic church and outside everything and everybody who wants to be in there, there is no salvation”, but that is not what the Church says.


One Universal Church

Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 pronounced ex cathedra (that is, infallibly): “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all can be saved.”

Pope Boniface VIII, in his bull Unum Sanctum, in 1302 said: “We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

It is therefore, as we see, not sufficient just to belong to a church. At the Council of Florence in 1441 (found in Denzinger-Schonmetzer [En-chriridion Symbolorum], number 1351), Pope Eugene IV defined ex cathedra, that:

“The most holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes, and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, and heretics, and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal, but that they will go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they have joined with her, and that is so important to the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church until salvation; and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one even if he pour out his blood for the name of Christ can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”

That means, just as Saint Pius X said in his catechism: “Nobody who has not been baptized with the Holy Spirit and water can be saved, unless – “; and now he makes an exception that is hardly applicable practically: “unless he has not been able to be baptized; unless he has never heard anything about Jesus Christ; unless he has strived for all his life to please God and has never sinned against what he has been taught to be pleasing to God.”

Only under these very strict, and all of these very strict conditions, can he be saved. That means, practically speaking, nobody outside the Church.

It certainly does not mean Protestants living in the United States, or Protestants living in England, or Protestants living in Germany who can hear the teaching of the Church wherever they want, and who can, if they really strive personally for perfection and for the truth, find the truth.

Now how do we reconcile the former ex cathedra statement with the statement I will read to you now?

“Our Lord Jesus Christ does not shrink from giving salvation to the efforts of the Protestant churches.”

Do you see any possibility here to reconcile those two statements? Well, you do not, and I do not. The translation from the Latin being literally: “… To the efforts of which [the Protestant churches], the spirit of Christ does not shrink from giving salvation.”

I think that you can easily see that with the ex cathedra statement just given to you, the latter can in no way be reconciled. It is stating the exact contrary. It is stating that it is the efforts of the Protestant churches that save a man – not the innocent Protestant baby that dies after Baptism and has never had a chance to become a Catholic. No. It says, “to the efforts of the Protestant churches Christ gives salvation”. This is explicit, clear, and understandable heresy. The sentence is to be found in Unitatis Redintegratio, number 3, the Decree on Ecumenism from the Second Vatican Council, and this same sentence is repeated in the letter Catechesi Tradendae, number 32 of Pope John Paul II [1979].


Tradition: The Visible and Evident Will of Christ

Now mind you, I have been quoting Pope Innocent III, Pope Eugene IV and Pope Boniface VIII; and I have also, by quoting those three Popes, been referring to the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. However, Unitatis Redintegratio, number 3, the Decree on Ecumenism from the Second Vatican Council says the contrary.

So is it possible that for some reason Innocent III or Eugene IV did not understand fully Church Tradition? Is it possible that the doctrine of the Church has changed? Is it possible that John Paul II, directly, openly and explicitly contradicting his predecessors, has with the help of the Holy Spirit, come to a new conclusion contradicting His predecessors? Well, let us ask Church doctrine about this. Let us ask the “visible and evident will of Christ” about that question.

Pope Pius IX wrote up a collection of errors in 1864, which is usually named Syllabus, that means “collection”; a collection of eighty theological theses or statements that the Pope in this document declares to be against the doctrine of the Church. Do we have to consider whether this document, Syllabus, is extraordinary, infallible Church Doctrine or just ordinary Magisterium? No we don’t, for you remember that in Part One of this presentation I said that Pope Pius XII explained in Humani Generis that the faithful and the entire Church are bound to the statements of the ordinary Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff.

In fact, in number 22 of that very same Syllabus, Pope Pius IX teaches that it is an error that “the obligation strictly incumbent on Catholic teachers and writers is limited to those points which have been defined by the infallible judgement of the Church as dogmas of faith to be believed by all.”

This means whoever says that the Church is only bound to infallible statements of dogma is not a Catholic. The Church is bound by the ordinary Magisterium as well, and so are the successors of the Pope who pronounce this ordinary Magisterium, as you will see immediately.


Scripture and Sacred Tradition

Is Divine Revelation something that is subject to progress and improvement? In number 5 of the Syllabus, it condemns the proposition that “Divine Revelation is incomplete and therefore subject to a constant and unlimited progress that corresponds to the progress of human reasoning;” [Denzinger-Schonmetzer, number 2905]. This proposition sentence has been condemned simply because the Church has always taught and explicitly defines in the infallible document Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council: “Divine Revelation (Scripture) and Sacred Tradition, as the two sources of the faith, have been concluded with the death of the last apostle who has, as have all the apostles, received the Tradition right out of our Lord’s own divine mouth.”

This is said very clearly in Denzinger­ Schonmetzer, number 1501, and in Denzinger­ Schonmetzer, 3006.

At this point I think there is an apology needed. I am going to shower you with quotations in this speech.

But I only do that because I do not have the six hours necessary to explain to you what I have to squeeze into forty-five or fifty minutes. So I am going to shower you with quotations and you will have to look up some things on your own.


Papal Oath

I said the Pope is bound to what his predecessors teach and define. Why? In Part One, I mentioned the fact that every single Pope has sworn an oath of incoronation. I am talking about every single Pope up to and including Paul VI. This oath of incoronation, in Latin called Indiculum Pontificis, is something that definitely goes back in its present form to the time of Pope Saint Agatho who reigned as Supreme Pontiff from June 27, 678 until July 10, 681.

Pope Saint Agatho wrote down this text in a collection of Papal texts, privileges and decrees called Liber Diurinus Romanorum Pontificum, the “daily book [of the Roman Pontiff]”. That means – and I talked about this to the Prefect of the Vatican Library just last Monday – that by the time Pope Saint Agatho wrote down the text, this text was probably already a couple of centuries old.

We are looking back at something that every single Pope has sworn to for more than sixteen hundred years. The present Pope says in a different context that the heritage of this size cannot be a formality or an historical incident. It is an explicit expression of the will of Christ. Now let us hear what this explicit expression of the will of Christ means and is.

The Pope swears, he says first “I” (not the traditional Papal expression, “We”). He said, “I swear to God Almighty and the Savior Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His Successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors have defined and declared.” And then he swears that he “will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the rite of the Church”.

The Pope swears he will keep this just the way he found it and as it has been transmitted to him by his holy predecessors; and he swears that he will keep the things of the Church without any loss, and that he will guard and he will make sure that everybody else does so. He swears that he will make sure that nothing of what is in the Tradition coming from his predecessors will either be diminished or changed or he will make sure that nothing whatsoever new can be added to it.

Towards the end of this page-long text, the Supreme Pontiff swears and signs that he will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath, saying explicitly, “whoever dares to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I”.

So you see, the Pope makes it explicit that he has to firmly adhere to what has been given to him by his predecessors. He has to faithfully conserve everything that has been transmitted and he has to make sure that nobody else touches it.


Sacred Tradition is Complete

So how do we simple Catholics judge what is Tradition? Most of us have not studied theology to the point of having a doctorate degree. Most of us do not have the possibility to study theology to the point of being able to distinguish exactly what is Tradition, what is Papal teaching, and what is against it. So what do we do? How do we judge? The First Vatican Council gives us the answer since it is the First Vatican Council that defines Tradition. In that very same Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council that I have already mentioned, the Church says we have two sources of the faith: Divine Revelation written down, and the unwritten Tradition coming right out of the divine mouth of Our Lord and having been heard by the apostles until the last apostle died. Those are the sources of the faith; and that is the definition of Tradition.

Yet, the Second Vatican Council, in Dei Verbum, number 8, dares to oppose this definitionby saying: “There is progress to Tradition and this progress can be had and will be arrived at by the study of the faithful and by the faithful contemplating what they have heard in their heart and that this progress of Tradition comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience.”

This is a lot more than the Church has admitted to Tradition in over eighteen hundred years’ teaching, and you can see the contradiction.

Now, Sacred Tradition being finished and complete with the death of the last apostle can indeed experience a new depth. It is true. Saint Thomas Aquinas said there is no Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX, in 1854, defined forever that there is; but Saint Thomas Aquinas was not Pope and did not pronounce ordinary Magisterium. There cannot be contradiction within ordinary Magisterium, as we have seen looking at the oath the Pope has to swear; an oath that is explicit recognition of the will of Christ. There cannot be contradiction within the magisterium; there can be further explanation and deepening, but there cannot be contradiction.

What, therefore, do we have to say about so-called magisterium that contradicts Magisterium? Well, a future Pope will have to decide about that, but I can tell you that “magisterium” of today that contradicts former Magisterium just simply is not magisterium, for the very reason that the Pope has sworn the oath of not going against what he has received from his predecessors, and for the very reason that the Pope has made sure that anybody who does so is outside the Church.


Contradictions of Vatican II

Now, this is what I will leave with you, as a result of this conference. We will go through the most important points of the Second Vatican Council, the very points or the very statements that contradict Church doctrine. It will not be necessary every single time to point out that this is heresy or not. To us it is totally sufficient to see that there is an explicit and clear contradiction to be found between what the Church taught, what the Church actually teaches, and what Vatican II says.

I remind you of the fact that divine truth cannot change. The magisterium cannot change and the Popes cannot contradict each other; and if the Pope does, then he just simply errs. Mind you, it would not be the first time in Church history.

Before I go through these points, I have to tell you that the Second Vatican Council itself made clear that it did not want to define doctrine. Now a Council that does not want to define any doctrine, a Council that is not interested in clearing up terms that have been somewhat doubtful until then, a Council that has no intentions to teach, but just to talk about practical advice for pastoral purposes, a Council that has been declared a pastoral Council by John XXIII who started it, and by Paul VI who finished it, such a Council can also not claim the necessary inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit has been granted to the Catholic Church to define doctrine and to clear up questions of theology. The Holy Spirit has not been granted as an absolute and infallible help to the Catholic Church for practical, pastoral advice.

And I remind you of what Pope Pius VI said in his Auctorem Fidei condemning the Synod of Pistoia, when he stated that the purpose of a Council is to define things, not to make them ambiguous. Mind you, Auctorem Fidei was not written just to the bishops. Pope Pius VI wrote this document and wanted every single Catholic on earth to know it.

That means if anybody asked you and said, “How dare you contradict Vatican II? What authority do you have in contradicting Vatican II?”, you can answer, “Pope Pius VI gave me this authority in Auctorem Fidei, and I have read that document.” (Actually you should. It is only a few pages.) “And this document says that whenever a Council is ambiguous it is certainly against its own purpose.”


Norms of Theological Interpretation

There is indeed at the end of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium an explanatory note. It is an announcement made by the Secretary General of the Council at the 123rd General Congregation, November 16, 1964, and it says:

“Taking into account … and the pastoral purpose of the present Council, the Sacred Synod defined as binding on the Church only those matters of faith and morals which it has expressly put forward as such. Whatever else it proposes as the teaching of the Supreme Magisterium of the Church is to be acknowledged and accepted by each and every member of the faithful according to the mind of the Council which is clear from the subject matter and the formulation following the norms of theological interpretation.”

The “norms of theological interpretation” referred to have been laid down by Pope Pius IX when he said, Iadem sententium, eodem sensum, (the same sentence in the same sense) … a dogma saying something said fifteen hundred years ago still says the same today, and that means if the Council of Nicea defines something it means the same today. And as the Latin language, thank God, has not changed ever since, you just have to read the Latin text to get the original meaning.


Lumen Gentium

The first statement we want to examine is from Lumen Gentium, number 1. In Lumen Gentium, Vatican II says:
“Since the Church in Christ is in the nature of sacrament, a sign and instrument that is a communion with God and unity among all men …” Et cetera, et cetera.

In truth, however, the Church is neither in the nature of sacrament, nor is it a sign of the unity among all men.

First of all, there are Seven Sacraments to the Catholic Church, not eight or nine.

Second, the Church is not a “sign”. The Church has been defined for eighteen or nineteen hundred years as a societas perfecta, a “perfect society”. That means a real being, and not a sign.

Moreover, the Church is not a “sign of unity among all men”. On the contrary, Christ prophesied that we will be persecuted. Christ said, “Non veni pacem mittere, sed gladium”, “I did not come to bring peace but the sword.” Christ said, “They will be scandalized about us.” Christ said that we will be persecuted for His sake and Christ, as a matter of fact, prophesized in today’s Gospel, the Gospel of the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, that He will finish with the whole business before the last just person is sacrificed. Christ said that the troubles will be such that there will be only a few just left. That doesn’t sound like a “sign of unity among all men” to me.

And you cannot talk about the Church being a sign of unity among all men as long as the forty-sixth Surah of the Koran says that every single faithful Muslim should really start to wage war against us, and as long as the forty-seventh Surah in their Koran says “You have to kill the unfaithful dogs.”

[Stone]

Against the ‘Popesplainers’
Part III

CFN [Emphasis mine] | November 25, 2024

Editor’s note: In this final segment of the edited transcript of Father Hesse’s lecture at the Fatima 2000 Conference in Rome, he addresses the question of salvation outside the Catholic Church. This topic is particularly relevant today, given the ongoing controversy surrounding repeated Vatican statements suggesting that salvation can be found outside the Church through various paths. Father Hesse’s insights demonstrate that this issue did not originate with Pope Francis but can be traced back to the Second Vatican Council itself.

Our next point is Lumen Gentium, number 8, where it says: Ecclesia Christi … subsistit in Ecclesia catholica, “the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.” The word “subsists” means it is something below it.  That means a Protestant Church, or a Southern Baptist or anybody, could be the Catholic Church too; could be the Church of Christ, too.

Cardinal Ratzinger was asked why Vatican II had said “subsistere” in Latin and he said, “Oh, you know ‘subsistere’ is a verb much stronger than ‘esse’.” He is saying, therefore, that the Church “subsisting” in the Catholic Church is something much stronger than if he had said that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. This however, is simply not true, and Cardinal Ratzinger was quoting Saint Thomas out of context. Saint Thomas said, “Substentia est nobilissima forma essendi,” “Subsistence is the most noble form of being.” Yes in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Whose divine nature is subsistent to everything that exists. But that is true for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and nobody else, and certainly not the Church.

The Catholic Church has taught for nineteen hundred years that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church, as I read to you before, and will read to you again, Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull, Unam Sanctam decreed ex cathedra: “We declare, say, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

I do not think that Southern Baptists or Lutherans, as a matter of fact, are subject to the Roman Pontiff. I think they would state the contrary.


Perfection of the Church

Continuing with the same Lumen Gentium number 8, we next consider the statement: “Nevertheless many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside Its invisible confines. Since these are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.” That is twice against the Magisterium of the Church.

First of all, there is absolutely no element whatsoever of sanctification outside of the Catholic Church. The innocent child that is baptized by a Lutheran Pastor is not baptized by the efforts of the Protestant churches, but it is illicitly baptized with the Catholic sacrament of baptism.

Second, “these are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity,” is saying ipso facto by the same sentence that therefore there is no complete unity within the Church. I am holding here, right in my hand, the encyclical, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, of Pope Pius XI,


Sacraments, the Exclusive Property of the Church

Let us next examine Lumen Gentium, number 15. “The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized, who are honored by the name of Christian, but who do not however profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the Successor of Peter. These Christians are indeed in some real way joined to us through the Holy Spirit, for by His gifts and graces, His sanctifying power is also active within them.”

That is contrary to the Council of Trent which defines that there cannot be sanctifying grace outside the Catholic Church, not objectively. We are not talking about the poor man who does not know better, which is the usual objection to this statement (people who make such objections should look up the terms “subjective” and “objective” in the dictionary before they speak).

No Christian not in union with the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic Church is in the state of sanctifying grace; it is heresy and blasphemy to say the contrary. No Christian is ever in union with the Church, if he does not agree with the primacy of the Papacy, and if he does not agree with the dogma of his infallibility (Denzinger­ Schonmetzer, 3050 ff.) But Lumen Gentium says that “these Christians are indeed in some real way …”

See, this is the thing with Vatican II: they say “in some real way.” That is not true. The Protestants, in some potential way, are joined with the Church. They might become members of the Church through conversion. Not dialogue. Through conversion.

The document continues: “joined to us through the Holy Spirit for by His gifts and graces, His sanctifying power is also active in them.”

In truth, the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit that is active in an innocent little Protestant child is active because that innocent little Protestant child as I have said before, has received in an illicit way the sacrament that is property of the Catholic Church.

The innocent little Russian in Moscow who is baptized in the Russian Orthodox baptism has received a sacrament that the Russian Orthodox, in 1054, stole from us. It is not theirs. It is always the sacrament of Christ belonging to His only Church. And God saves that little child, if for some reason it dies, because it has received the valid sacrament of the Catholic Church. God does not condemn that child, because that child is innocent of the fact that he does not belong visibly to us.


Moslems Not Included in Plan of Salvation

Out of these errors, Vatican II then concludes in Lumen Gentium, 16: “Finally those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways … ” Mind you, “the People of God” is a term throughout Vatican II synonymous with the term “Catholic Church.” And they say: “But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator in the first place amongst whom are the Moslems.”

Christ has died for all on the cross in potentia; that means as far as possibilities are concerned. Potentially! He has not died for all as far as realities are concerned, because those who refuse Him and go to hell reject the cross.

And here they add, “the Moslems, [who] profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore one merciful God …” The Latin original says, Nobiscum Deum adorant unicum. Not as some other wiseguy has translated, “along with us.” “Nobiscum” does not mean “along with us.” “Nobiscum” means “together with us.” And here Vatican II says that the Moslems pray to one merciful God together with us.

Now I will tell you something about that, and I beg the pardon of everybody present. But I am quoting the Koran, that same Koran of the Moslems who, according to this Council, are praying to the same God with us, the same ‘one merciful God.’ That same Koran says, “The very idea of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is an idea of dung.” This Koran is the “Holy Bible” of the Moslems.

Now you might object and say, “Well, some poor little Korare[1] in the Sahara Desert, who has never heard of Christ, probably prays to the same God with us.” Maybe, but that is not what we are talking about. Subjectively, maybe the child does. But here the Council says, “the Moslems.” As a matter of fact, a capital letter is used in the Latin original, “Musulmani”: “the Moslems”. These, “together with us pray to one merciful God.” That is heresy by leaving out the dogma of the Trinity, and by forgetting about the dogma of Incarnation; and it is blasphemy by putting our Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit of the Most Blessed Trinity, on the same level with that sick invention of “Allah.”

Saint Paul who, I believe, was orthodox all through his life, always spoke the truth. Right? Saint Paul says that the pagans adore demons. That means Allah, God of the Moslems, in Saint Paul’s opinion (I call it “teaching of the Church”) is a demon. Again, we are not talking about the [Korare] in the Sahara Desert. He doesn’t know it. Maybe I should say, “God bless him.” The poor guy has not even heard the truth. Here, however, we are talking objectively about the Moslems.


Animists in the Plan of Salvation?

And the same paragraph says: “Nor is God remote from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God.”

It is getting better all the time. Now we have the Animists somewhere down in Africa – Lake Togo, praying to the same God. Our beloved Holy Father was quite excited about the fact that in 1986, at Lake Togo, in Cameroon, he was able to pray with Animists and perform their rites with them. That is his personal problem, but I will not believe that the Church is able to teach that these people, against what Saint Paul says, are praying to the same God with us.

And the paragraph says that even the Jews “pray to the same God with us.” Actually, Saint Paul explains that because the Jews have rejected Christ, now they cannot even see the truth of the Old Testament. He says literally, “The Jews now see even the truth of the Old Testament through a curtain.” If that is not clear, I do not know what is.

Such is Lumen Gentium, and I am just giving you the most important points because we don’t have enough time to go through everything that is problematic in Vatican II.


Conversion Necessary for Those Who Have Left the Church

Now, in the Decree on Ecumenism, they speak, with every single paragraph, about the “separated churches.” Mortalium Animos does not call them the “separated churches,” but those who have “gotten lost …” those who have left the Church. The Lutherans are not a separated church, the Lutherans are just simply not Catholics, and Pope Pius XI, in his magnificent encyclical Mortalium Animos (against inter-faith activities) says quite clearly that the only way to have non-Catholics join the Catholic Church is by conversion, by full and unreserved acceptance of the entire Church doctrine in its entirety.

I will now move to a few points which contradict Mortalium Animos.

Now the Decree on Ecumenism is something that I recommend to you as negative reading. The document is called Unitatis Redentegratio of November 21, 1964. In this document, number 3, the point to which our present Holy Father refers when, in Catechesi Tradendae, 32, he says, that “Our Lord does not shrink from giving salvation to the efforts of Protestant churches” – in this translation, it says ‘the brethren’ – “divided from us, also carry out many liturgical actions of the Christian religion”. This no doubt refers to the heretical and blasphemous services of the Protestant churches. That is what they are talking about here. They are talking about these ridiculous things that take place in a Southern Baptist Church down in Georgia.

Now listen to this! The document says, “These liturgical actions most certainly can truly engender a life of grace.” This is explicit heresy against the Council of Trent, which says the life of grace cannot be obtained other than through the Catholic sacraments. Now they are talking just objectively again. They are talking objectively about the separate communities. I wonder about the grace of the Blessed Eucharist being given to a Southern Baptist down in Georgia.

“And one must say,” the Council says, “can actually give access to the Communion of Salvation.” Now the “Communion of Salvation” is defined doctrine, and is only the Catholic Church, as I have read to you before; hence, the title of this seminar, “Outside the Church there is no Salvation.”

But here, Vatican II says that these separate Churches with their ridiculous ceremonies, with their aping of the Mass, can give salvation. And then they encourage and recommend dialogue. And of course, “asking competent experts,” as it says, to enhance dialogue between us and them. And they venture to say that the results will be that ”little by little, the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome and all graces will be gathered in the common celebration of the Eucharist”. That means that the Council seems to believe that if we start dialoguing, all Protestants will convert. Actually no, they do not think that, because they say [the Protestants] have the means of salvation already.

And then they give instructions on how to do the dialogue. They say, “or even the way the Church teaching has been formulated to be carefully distinguished from the deposit of faith itself.”

That means that now Vatican II is doing something the Popes have always condemned: It is putting up a hierarchy of truth. Vatican II is postulating that Church teaching can be subject to dialogue, and it says so elsewhere expressedly. I am quoting, by the way, Unitatis Redintegratio, number 6, which states that “This has to be carefully distinguished from the deposit of faith itself.” This has been condemned in the Syllabus.


On Religious Liberty

The next document I want to introduce is Dignitatis Humanae. Pope Saint Pius X said, “The only dignity in human beings is in their being Christians.” That means he who is in the state of grace; he who, therefore, is in the state of sanctifying grace, that very miraculous form of grace that is created every time one receives the sacrament; he has the dignity of man, in the sense that he has, through the mercy of the Lord, had the sacraments and been returned to the state that Adam and Eve were in before the fall.

The new trend among highly placed church leaders is to quote often from the book of Genesis which says that our Lord created man “to His image and likeness.” Yes, He did, Adam and Eve. Never again. The image of God is in every single human being from birth. The likeness of God – and this is very clearly said in the Council of Trent’s decree on justification – the likeness of God cannot be achieved unless one is in the state of sanctifying grace. So it really cannot be said that every human being is created according to the image and likeness of God.

Now, in this Decree on Religious Liberty, is postulated exactly what has been previously condemned by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Saint Pius XI, and Pius XII: “Also included in the right to religious freedom is the right of religious groups not to be prevented from freely demonstrating the special value of their teachings for the organization of society and the inspiration of all human activity.”

This is explicitly against the Syllabus. This is explicitly against Pope Pius XI’s proclamation on Christ the King [Quas Primas], where he said that every single human being is subject to Christ the King; which contradicts, of course, the quite audacious theory stating that in religious freedom it is the right of religious groups not to be prevented from freely demonstrating the special value of their teachings for the organization of society and the inspiration of all human activity. This is explicitly against the Syllabus.

I wonder how this paragraph will be accepted once we get some Brazilian or whatever cannibals who, returning to the faith of their Fathers, start to slaughter people in Chicago and New York. It will not make much of a difference in the crime rate, but I wonder how society would react to this free exercise of their own religion. And it would be lovely, just lovely, to see what would happen if we adapted this postulate of Vatican II to the few Aztecs left in Mexico.


Man Exalted Over the Incarnation

And now we come to the last, and in my opinion, the lowest document of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, about the Church and the Modern World. I have to give you two points of this decree before I read some sentences of the Syllabus to you. Number 22 reads: “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.” So, the purpose of the Incarnation was not to reveal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but to explain the mystery of man? Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam is the very relation of the mystery of the Father, of His love fully revealing man to himself? Now, I grew up with the concept that the gospel is all about God. I grew up with the concept that the New Testament is all about revealing God fully and finally to us. Here, however, I read it “reveals man to himself.”

But this statement, of course, will not surprise you once you read Gaudium et Spes, number 12, where it says: “Believers and unbelievers agree almost unanimously that all things on earth should be ordained to man as to their center and summit.” So man is the summit of everything? I would be very surprised if there is a single person in this hall now who needs a comment on that statement. Therefore, it is the same Vatican Council, in Gaudium et Spes, number 88, which very naturally concludes that “Christians should willingly and wholeheartedly support the establishment of an international order”. The “Novus Ordo Seculorum,” that appears on the one-dollar note, perhaps!


Prophetic Document Condemns Modern Errors

So, in what I have previously read, Pope Pius IX has been revealed as quite something of a prophet because he condemned in his Syllabus the following statements: “Every human being is free to accept the religion and confess the religion which he thinks is the true one;” and “Man can find salvation in the exercise of each and every religion.”

The same Syllabus has condemned the statement which you find explicitly in Gaudium et Spes: “The Church has to be separate from the state and the state from the Church.”

After Vatican II, the Vatican asked the Government of Colombia to cancel the first paragraph of their constitution, which declared the state religion of Colombia to be the Catholic one. The same was requested for the Canton of Wallace in Switzerland and constitutions of a few other countries.

Pius IX’s Syllabus also condemned the statement: “In our time it is not good anymore to see the Catholic religion as the only religion of the state under exclusion of all other cults.” This statement has been condemned. However, as I read to you, Vatican II’s Document on Religious Liberty teaches the contrary.

For those who wish to consult the documents of Vatican II, I recommend that you use the only trustworthy translation, by Austin Flannery, O.P.: Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents. (There is another translation with a red label: it is worth nothing.) Read it. Think of what Pope Pius VI said in Auctorem Fide: The purpose of a Council is to clear up things, not to create ambiguities. This, Pope Pius VI did not only say to us, but to his Successors, who are bound to it.



[1] Editors note: We are not sure what exactly Korare means here. I speculate this is an idiosyncratic expression of Father Hesse to refer to people from the Kaouar region.