Sedevacantist
Watch…
FR. CEKADA’S DESPERATION REACHES NEW
LOWS:
HE BLAMES ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE
FOR HIS SEDEVACANTISM!
HE BLAMES ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE
FOR HIS SEDEVACANTISM!
 |
| Archbishop Lefebvre |
“The SSPX and R&R Camp’s claim,
therefore, that these supposed bitter fruits of Sedevacantism somehow defeat
its theological arguments is founded on ignorance of history and hypocrisy.”
Now think about this for a moment. Fr.
Cekada skips over 20 chapters which are full of very weighty theological
arguments against Sedevacantism, addresses the only chapter in the entire book
that was not intended to be theological, and then argues that this chapter does
not refute the theological arguments of Sedevacantism. Can one think of a more
obvious red-herring than that?
What these videos demonstrate is that Fr. Cekada is getting desperate
and many Catholics are realizing it. We
have been particularly inundated with emails about his latest video from those who
are outraged that he would accused the Archbishop of being a Sedevacantist, and
of being responsible for him embracing the error. Instead of simply admitting that he has been
wrong, he resorts to dodges and distractions, while simultaneously dressing up
his videos with his customary juvenile attempts at humor, no doubt hoping that
he will be able to keep his audience entertained and diverted from the real,
theological issues which he is avoiding. Unfortunately, the more videos Cekada produces,
the more damage he does to his own position and credibility.
But his recent video does provide some very revealing information about
why he became a Sedevacantist, which helps to explain why he is unable to defend
his position theologically. Specifically, in the video, Fr. Cekada admits that
as a young seminarian he embraced Sedevacantism as an emotional, not a
theological, response to the crisis in the Church; he even readily admits that
he could not explain his decision in “formal, theological terms,” even though
the question of why (or if), a man who has been elected Pope by the Church is
not a legitimate pope, involves very complex theological question. So, why did Cekada believe Paul VI was not a
true Pope? In the video, he
explains that
he arrived at this position because he did not think Paul VI acted like a Pope should act, and
therefore sensed that he was not a
true Pope. It was because of this internal “sense” (not theological arguments)
that he embraced the Sedevacantist position while still a young Seminarian (he admits
that he did not recite Paul VI’s name in the canon of his very first Mass). Now, basing one’s intellectual belief on an
internal “sense” is precisely how the Modernists operate, which would indicate
that the many years Fr. Cekada spent in formation at St. Francis Seminary
College, which is one of the most Modernists (and morally corrupt) seminaries
in the United States, had more of an effect on him than he realizes.
One wonders what Fr. Cekada’s internal sense would have told him had he
lived at the time of Pope John XII, a teenage Pope who “was accused of
sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery, and incest”[1]
and for which he was “summoned in writing to defend himself;”[2] or
at the time of John XXII, a doctrinally confused Pope who was dividing the
Church by preaching a false doctrine which would be formally condemned as a heresy by his immediately successor.
Would Fr. Cekada have sensed that these
men were not acting like a Popes, and
declared them anti-popes as well? If so,
he would have been quite mistaken.
We will delve deeper into Fr. Cekada’s root error (relating to how he
became a Sedevacantist) in an upcoming article. For now, we wish to dispose of
his false accusation that Archbishop Lefebvre was a Sedevacantist.
Archbishop Lefebvre Was Never Sedevacantist
The Five Stages
To help us understand the Archbishop’s position and his many statements
on the crisis in the Church, we believe it is important to explain the steps
that one logically takes before becoming a Sedevacantist. There are five clear
stages that one goes through, with the last stage ending not only in a
rejection of the Pope, but also a rejection of the entire visible Church over
which he reigns. In explaining these stages, we will demonstrate that
Archbishop Lefebvre never went beyond the first stage, which is simply
questioning whether it was possible for the conciliar Popes to be illegitimate
Popes. This first step is one that many Traditional Catholics (ourselves including,
as we mention in our book) have taken - but most never move past it to the
second stage.
Stage
1 - Questioning Phase: This first phase is one in which many Traditional
Catholics have been at one time or another. Rightly scandalized by the words
and actions of the recent Popes and the dire situation in the Church, they
wonder if perhaps the answer is that these men have not been true Popes at all
(some may even raise the question publicly, but without forming a judgment on
the matter). We both entered this phase, by at least privately raising the
question to ourselves, which is what led us to researching the Sedevacantist
position. Following the shocking resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the
election of Pope Francis, who has done much damage to the Church in a very
short time, even many conservative Catholics are now in this questioning phase.
In light of the continuous papal scandals coming from the Vatican, this phase
is understandable, and there is certainly nothing wrong or sinful about it. For
those in this stage, our book is a must read.
Stage
2 - Private Opinion:
The next phase is when one personally concludes (the intellect arrives at a
judgment and the will embraces it) that the Pope is not the true Pope. Some
priests who have arrived at this stage refuse to include the Pope’s name in the
canon of the Mass. We would call this person a private Sedevacantist.
Stage
3 - Public Opinion:
The next phase is when the person publicly professes their opinion that the
Pope is not the true Pope. He may even
seek to persuade others to embrace the position, but would not attempt to force
his opinion on others.
Stage
4 - Public Fact/Sedevacantism: The next phase is when the person
presents Sedevacantism as if it were an undisputed fact. They promote it
vigorously, and proclaim that all others must accept their position as a fact, lest they cease to be Catholic, at
least in the objective order. These people are known as “dogmatic”
Sedevacantists.
Stage
5 - Public Fact/Ecclesiavacantism: The final phase is the logical
conclusion to the previous. In this phase, the person has lost faith in the
entire visible Church. Once a person arrives at this stage, he considers the
Church itself to be an entirely false Church, and viciously attacks the Church
with the goal of discrediting it. In this phase, which usually goes
hand-in-hand with the previous, the errors of churchmen are not exposed for the
purpose of defending the Faith, but for the purpose of mocking and discrediting
the Church itself. Those in this phase will declare that one may have nothing
to do with the visible Church, since they believe it is a false Church. They
also usually (but not always) declare that it is forbidden even to assist at an
“una cum” Mass – that is, a Mass in which the Pope’s name is mentioned.
Clearly, the leading Sedevacantist apologists of our day fall into this
category. Interestingly, due to a
misunderstanding of the “Conciliar Church,” vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, some
have fallen into the fifth stage, even though they reject states 2 through 4.
With an understanding of these stages, we will be able to more clearly
see how Fr. Cekada has completely mischaracterized the position of Archbishop
Lefebvre, who never advanced his inquiry past the First Stage.
Fr.
Cekada’s Protestant Ploy: Taking Quotes Out of Context to Serve His Pretext
True to his method of appealing to the emotions, and hence the will of
his audience (rather than the intellect), Fr. Cekada begins his video by
playing the pity card, claiming that the purpose of True or False Pope? was to paint Sedevacantists “as totally,
totally, wicked,” and as having “lost faith in the Church.” Of course, the
purpose of the book is to refute, on theological grounds, the many errors of
Sedevacantism, and to demonstrate that the error does indeed lead to a loss of
faith in the Church (Fifth Stage). And how can Fr. Cekada believe he has not lost faith in the Church, when he
maintains that the entire hierarchy has defected, and claims that the visible social unit (the true Church) morphed
into a new Church? His fellow Sedevacantist, Bishop Donald Sanborn, goes so far
as to forbid his seminarians from holding that there are any bishops today with
jurisdiction. But if Bishop Sanborn is correct, it means there is no longer be
a legitimate hierarchy of the Church,
since a “legitimate hierarchy” requires not only validly consecrated bishops,
but validly consecrated bishops with
jurisdiction (which is only be given to the bishops by the Pope). If a
legitimate hierarchy no longer exists, as Bishop Sanborn claims, it means the
indefectible Church has defected.[3]
Fr. Cekada then goes on to ask: “How did we end up so evil? Who led us
down this dark road?” After accusing us of calling Sedevacantists “the enemies
of Christ” (even though we referred to the Jews of the Old Testament as the
enemies of Christ, whose footsteps Sedevacantists follow by being persecutors
of Christ’s Mystical Body), the video then fades to a big picture of Archbishop
Lefebvre, followed by Fr. Cekada saying:
“It was the
founder of the Society of St. Pius X himself, Marcel Lefebvre, titular archbishop
of Synnada in Phrygia, and Sedevacantist!
[Here Cekada plays the introduction to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, for
special effects.] And that is why it is pure idiocy for SSPX priests to endorse
Salza and Siscoe’s 700 pages of anti-Sedevacantist hyperventilations. If you
want to call Sedevacantists like me an enemy of Christ, you better call your
founder, Archbishop Lefebvre one too. Where do you think we got the idea in the
first place?”
In an effort to back up his false claim that Lefebvre was a
Sedevacantist, Fr. Cekada goes on to provide “in the form of a catechism” (his
words) “some of the Archbishop’s statements favoring Sedevacantism.” Favoring
Sedevacantism? How does one “favor” a position he explicitly rejects? Cekada
doesn’t say. He then proceeds to display questions that he himself crafted for
the video (e.g., What are we to think of Vatican II’s errors? If the Pope
adheres to the Conciliar Church, what is the effect?, etc.), which he then
follows with a screen shot of a partial quotation from Archbishop Lefebvre, as
if the Archbishop is directly answering Cekada’s made-up questions!
In other words, Cekada manufactures a fictitious Q&A between himself
and Archbishop Lefebvre, even addressing Lefebvre in the first person, as
“Monsignor, tell us…” (as if Cekada is speaking with him!), and then completely
wrenches the Lefebvre quotations out of context, that is, from the rest of the
teaching tradition of the Archbishop and the priestly society he founded -
which has always rejected the error of Sedevacantism! Fr. Cekada even appeals
to a statement that the Archbishop allegedly made to him in 1979 (that’s quite
a memory!) in a private conversation, which he also displays as a quotation,
surrounded by a border and a photo of Lefebvre, as further “official evidence”
for the Archbishop’s Sedevacantist stance (and which, even if it is a true
statement, as with the other quotations proves nothing). Frankly, the entire
presentation is a sad and disturbing spectacle to behold, especially because it
comes from a priest.
As anyone who watches the video can see, in none of the quotations that
Cekada handpicked (and we assume he handpicked the “best” ones) does Archbishop
Lefebvre adopt the Sedevacantist view. In none of them! The quotations merely
show that the Archbishop, like most Traditional Catholics at one time or
another, was in the questioning phase (the First Stage) of whether a true Pope
could do the things that the conciliar Popes had done. But he never went past
this stage, as Fr. Cekada surely knows. In fact, Fr. Cekada’s presentation is
so ridiculous that he himself may have had a pang of conscience, since he was
forced to admit at the end of the video that “it would be possible, of course,
to assemble a collection of quotes entitled: Marcel Lefebvre:
Anti-Sedevacantist, or Marcel Lefebvre: Recognize and Resister; and one would find an equal amount of
material.” An “equal amount of material”?
Try “a far greater amount of material,” which would reflect his actual
position.
By making this incredible admission, Fr. Cekada openly concedes that the
very evidence he marshals (the quotations) in an effort to prove his case, does
not actually prove his case! Could a more damaging, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot,
presentation be conceived? If a lawyer presented such a case in court, he would
be laughed out of the courtroom and sued by his client for malpractice.
Archbishop Lefebvre Rejected the Sedevacantist
Position
As part of his presentation, Fr. Cekada criticizes us for not including
his selected quotations from Lefebvre in our book, as if they would have had
any impact on the book’s conclusion. But, in reality, we do present Archbishop
Lefebvre’s position at the very beginning of our book, in the Preface. In fact,
we even refer to Archbishop Lefebvre’s most damning indictment of John Paul II,
in which Lefebvre speculated in 1986 that if the Pope continued with his
interreligious worship (like at Assisi 1986), he could possibly be considered a public heretic (which Fr. Cekada, of
course, included in his video).
We then pointed out that Archbishop Lefebvre lived to see John Paul II’s
continued and ongoing participation in pagan worship which took place in Kyoto
(1987), Rome (1988), Warsaw (1989), Bari (1990) and Malta (1990), yet the
Archbishop still refrained from declaring the Pope a public heretic (which
Cekada also knows but completely omitted from his video). We also noted that
Bishop Tissier (who was consecrated by Lefebvre and was much better acquainted
with the Archbishop’s theology than is Cekada) clearly articulated the
Archbishop’s position:
“But for
himself, he preferred to consider them as popes. This supposes that he did not
feel that he possessed sufficient knowledge of the pertinent facts nor the
necessary power for making such a judgment.
This is of critical importance to bear in mind."[4]
This only confirms that the Archbishop never went past the first stage (the
questioning stage), since the second stage requires a judgment, which, as Bishop Tissier said, the Archbishop did not
feel competent to render. And this is indeed of critical importance to bear in
mind, especially for those like Fr. Cekada, who have no shame in recklessly
accusing the late Archbishop of holding a position that he explicitly rejected,
and which the Church itself, at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of
Constantinople, essentially condemned (by attaching an excommunication to those
who formally separate from their
Patriarch, based on an alleged crime, before the Church itself had rendered a
judgment – see: canon 10). Fr. Cekada’s assertions are clearly not honest, especially
since he knows that the Archbishop required all the seminarians at Ecône to
sign a “statement of position” affirming that they were not Sedevacantists
before he would ordain them. The reason he took this measure was because some
of those he ordained were secret, (“Stage 2”) Sedevacantists who only came out
of the closet, so to speak (“Stage 3”), after they were ordained; a practice
that Lefebvre wanted to put an end to, once and for all.
Fr. Cekada also knows that the Archbishop suppressed those within the
Society who publicly promoted the Sedevacantist position, and even dismissed
Fr. Guerard des Lauriers (in 1977), and Bernard Lucien (in 1979), for their
promotion of Sedevacantism. Where were these facts in the Cekada video? The
Archbishop also refused to ordain members of Fr. Olivier de Blignières’
religious community who were openly Sedevacantist. Again, where were these
facts in Cekada’s video? They were omitted, of course, because Cekada’s video
is not meant to convey the truth, but to pull a fast one on his viewers by passing
the buck to Archbishop Lefebvre as being the cause of him embracing the
Sedevacantist position (and which, we suspect, he is now beginning to realize
is false). Our book, on the other hand, faithfully presents the Archbishop’s
position. If anything, we could be questioned for not including the many
anti-Sedevacantist quotes from Lefebvre, which we deliberately excluded so as
to rest our case upon the Popes, Councils and classical theologians of the
Church.
Following the release of Fr. Cekada’s video, we received the following email
from a former Sedevacantist:
“I just got an
email from a sedevacantist friend … [Fr. Cekada] is now attacking the book
using the memory of Abp. Lefebvre, manipulating quotes and de-contextualizing
them. As if that has any relevance to the question at hand. The fact that they
are employing yet another red-herring is further proof that they cannot answer
your refutation of their absurd errors and heresies.
“The strategy,
however, is not surprising. Cekada has successfully demonized the SSPX in the
eyes of his cohorts: it is easy for him to distract these bamboozled folk from
the formidable arguments of the book by manipulating them with atavistic lore. …
“As someone who
has read the book, the reason I see why Abp. Lefebvre was not cited in regards
to sedevacantism was because the authors were concerned only with those
authorities that all Catholics and the sedevacantists would have to
acknowledge. The sedevacantists would not have taken the book seriously if it
had relied on Abp. Lefebvre regarding this matter, since the Archbishop would
not have fared better with these people, seeing that even Cardinal Billot and
St. Robert Bellarmine have suffered abuse at their hands. If the Archbishop
would have been cited, then Cekada would have exclaimed frantically, "Ha!
That's proof that the book is SSPX propaganda!" … It is really pathetic to
see a self-professed Catholic Priest spending Lent, the most sacred season of
the Liturgical year, making inane videos. It is disedifying to say the least.”
To demonstrate just how untruthful Fr. Cekada is about the position of
the Archbishop vis-à-vis Sedevacantism, he actually has an article on his
website, written by his fellow Sedevacantist apologist John Daly, in which Daly
explicitly states that Archbishop Lefebvre was never a Sedevacantist. That’s
right. After an opening introduction by
Fr. Cekada himself, we read the following from Daly:
“So far as we
know, Archbishop Lefebvre never formed a definite judgment that John-Paul II
was not a true pope. So if we divide the ecclesiastical spectrum into two
categories, those for whom the see is legally vacant and those for whom it is
legally occupied, Archbishop Lefebvre
will be in the non-sedevacantist camp."[5]
But let’s not take Sedevacantist John Daly’s word for it. As Fr. Cekada
recommended in the video before he displayed his handpicked quotations, let’s
have Archbishop Lefebvre “speak for himself.” We will do just that by providing
a quotation from the Archbishop, which he gave several years before Fr. Cekada
and eight of his colleagues were expelled from the Society. The following
quotation is from November 1979, which is the time period that Cekada alleges
Lefebvre was a Sedevacantist and “leading others to Sedevacantism.” Let us see
if Fr. Cekada’s accusation corresponds to reality:
“Can a Pope be
Liberal and remain Pope? The Church has always severely reprimanded Liberal
Catholics, but she has not always excommunicated them. Here, too, we must
continue in the spirit of the Church. We must refuse Liberalism from whatever
source it comes because the Church has always condemned it. She has done so
because it is contrary, in the social realm especially, to the Kingship of Our
Lord.
"Does not
the exclusion of the cardinals of over eighty years of ages, and the secret
meetings which preceded and prepared the last two Conclaves, render them
invalid? Invalid: no, that is saying too much. Doubtful at the time: perhaps.
But in any case, the subsequent unanimous acceptance of the election by the
Cardinals and the Roman clergy suffices to validate it. That is the teaching of
the theologians.
"The visibility of the Church is too
necessary to its existence for it to be possible that God would allow that
visibility to disappear for decades. The reasoning of those who deny that we
have a Pope puts the Church in an inextricable situation. Who will tell us
who the future Pope is to be? How, as there are no Cardinals, is he to be
chosen? This spirit is a schismatical one
for at least the majority of those who attach themselves to certainly
schismatical sects like Palmar de Troya, the Eglise Latine de Toulouse, and others.
Our Fraternity absolutely refuses to
enter into such reasonings. We wish
to remain attached to Rome and to the Successor of Peter, while refusing
his Liberalism through fidelity to his predecessors. We are not afraid to speak
to him, respectfully but firmly, as did St. Paul with St. Peter.
"And so,
far from refusing to pray for the Pope, we
redouble our prayers and supplications that the Holy Ghost will grant him light
and strength in his affirmations and defense of the Faith.
"Thus, I
have never refused to go to Rome at his request or that of his representatives.
The Truth must be affirmed at Rome above all other places. It is of God, and He
will assure its ultimate triumph.
"Consequently, the Society of St. Pius X, its
priests, brothers, sisters, and oblates, cannot tolerate among its members
those who refuse to pray for the Pope or affirm that the Novus Ordo Missae
is per se invalid. Certainly, we
suffer from this continual incoherence which consists in praising all the
Liberal orientations of Vatican II and at the same time straining to mitigate
its effects. But all of this must incite us to prayer and to the firm
maintenance of Tradition rather than to
the affirmation that the Pope is not the Pope."[6]
Here we have the true thinking of the Archbishop regarding Sedevacantism
and the visible Church itself. He rejected the “schismatical spirit” of
Sedevacantism (which is certainly where it leads), and “refused” to “tolerate”
those who embraced the position. Yet Fr.
Cekada, in his video, has the temerity to declare: “For Archbishop Lefebvre,
Sedevacantism was a tenable position for a Catholic to hold.” This is nothing
but revisionist history intended to excuse himself, and shift the blame for his
error to the Archbishop.
Interestingly, at the end of Fr. Cekada’s video, the perceptive viewer
will notice that he unwittingly admits he wasn’t really out to prove Archbishop
Lefebvre was a Sedevacantist (he can’t, of course). Rather, Cekada reveals that
the video’s real purpose was to get people to stop listening to us (Salza and
Siscoe), by painting us as the “bad guys,” while he and his comrades (including
Archbishop Lefebvre!) are the “good guys.” He says the video and his handpicked
quotations “suffice for our one purpose here: To shoot the hot air out of the
Society of St. Pius X’s cynical attempt, through Messrs. Salza and Siscoe, to
demonize Sedevacantism, and to paint those who adhere to it as the spawn of
Luther. Don’t believe it, folks!”
In other words, by his own admission, the sole purpose of Cekada’s video
was a full-out, unmitigated act of damage control. Don’t believe it, folks!
Don’t listen to the demonizers, Salza and Siscoe. And most of all, don’t read
their book! Of course, Fr. Cekada has
good reason to worry that “folks” are “believing” what we have been arguing, since
he has been unable to offer a single theological rebuttal to the book or our
feature articles exposing his many errors and dishonesty, and people are
beginning to take notice.
What we fully expect from Fr. Cekada and his Sedevacantist colleagues are
more red-herrings, directing attention to irrelevant issues that side-step the
direct theological arguments contained in the book, which is a tactic they have
mastered. Unfortunately, with each new article they write and video they
produce in an attempt to counter our book, it becomes more evident that the Sedevacantist
apologists are simply out to defend their position at any cost, and are not
being truthful with themselves or their readers.
(Revised 3/20/16)
[1] Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII
(New York, Robert Appleton Co, 1913), p. 426
[2] Ibid.
[3] “The Indefectibility of the
Teaching Body [i.e., the legitimate hierarchy] is at the same time a condition and a consequence of the Indefectibility of the Church. … the Teaching
Body as a whole could not die or fail without irreparably destroying the continuity
of authentic testimony” Wilhelm, Joseph and Scannell, Thomas, A Manual of
Catholic Theology, vol. 1, 3rd Edition (New York, Cincinnati, Chicago:
Benzinger Bros., 1906), pp. 45-46.
[4] Fideliter, 1988 (emphasis
added).
[5] http://www.fathercekada.com/2012/09/04/pro-sedevacantism-quotes-from-abp-lefebvre/
[6] Text of Archbishop Lefebvre,
“The New Mass and the Pope,” cited by Michael Davies, in Apologia Pro Marcel
Lefebvre, Volume 2, Chapter XL.
