27 Comments
User's avatar
Our Blood and Soil's avatar

This is an excellent article. Thanks and amen!

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

thanks for the encouragement! i appreciate it !

Expand full comment
Felix Mark's avatar

When discussing Vatican II it must be acknowledged that it was conducted to submit to American hegemony and the post-Nuremberg world order. Too many fail to see this.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

yeah i probably agree but think its best just to focus on teachings, not in intrigues. thanks for reading and commenting.

Expand full comment
Felix Mark's avatar

Yes, that rather sound. Can’t say I agree with all points you make, I align with the Society. That being said, as usual your work is very well written, thought provoking and enjoyable. Keep it up.

Expand full comment
Anthony Cooling, PhD's avatar

Depressing, but as usual, a good read. Could you give some examples of these conservatives trying to square Vatican II with everything that came before? The only examples I can think of is Dr. Larry Chapp (who even calls his website Gaudium et Spes 22 - https://gaudiumetspes22.com/) and Jimmy Akin (who admittedly I do listen to quite a bit). Maybe Trent Horn? Full on rejection of Vatican II, even among "trad" influencers online is rare, and having conservative views on what the church has always taught about sexuality, divorce, etc. (even among promoters of Vatican II like Larry Chapp or accommodationists like Trent Horne) in my opinion makes you a "traditionalist".

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

one of the most vallian attempts is by aiden nichols OP. i forget the title.

it is rare because it means total disenfranchizement. someone like bp schneider says it, i.e. an ecumenical council, needs to be corrected because it has errors, but he doesnt call for wholescale removal. this seems to be political, not theological thinking. if a council has errors its not a council. period. i drew it up like this because it is important to grasp the psychology, there are many poeple who love the TLM who have a conservative psychology.

Expand full comment
Anthony Cooling, PhD's avatar

I see what you mean. This continues to lead to me think that eventually, due to demographics if nothing else, eventually the "excesses" of Vatican II will be "clarified" as the documents themselves don't literally say what has been implemented. On a side note, since 2020 I have done virtually all charitable donations to Bp A. Schneider's Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima because it was the only organization in the Church that I felt stood with my family's decision not to get the covid shots.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

from a dogmatic point of view (1) no council needs to be clarified or corrected. (2) there are errors in the text. LG 12-16 are unacceptable for instance.

Expand full comment
Jared's avatar

Okay, hang on. I agree that Francis did all those things, but what do you mean there was no real resistance from any faction in the Church? Each of these was highly controversial, most especially the publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which was immediately rejected by an entire continent of bishops.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

i dont consider compaining resistance. if someone breaks into your house, begins stealing your most prized possessions, perhaps harming your wife and children, and you tell him to stop and complain taht you dont think what he is doing is good, and maybe even call a few neightbors to tell them of your opposition to the theft, did you resist manfully? no.

Expand full comment
Jared's avatar

So what does manful resistance look like here? Obviously I'm going to physically restrain the home invader, and possibly even use a weapon if it seems necessary. In what manner should I resist a magisterium that seems to be going off the rails besides speaking out against the Holy Father's errors, which many have been doing for the past decade?

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

bishops condemning errors and the men spreading them. thats thier job, that should be our focus, beyond this a lot can be done in terms of noncompliance or civil disobedience. but complaining is not resistance or real opposition.

Expand full comment
Jared's avatar

Isn't that exactly what happened with Fiducia Supplicans?

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

not at all.

Expand full comment
John Wright's avatar

I find this interesting. I’m about as anti-modernist that one can be but associate with your category of ‘conservative’ — and genuinely think that Vatican II flirted with modernism but then turned away. I love the scholastics but they received 1000 years of reflection before them. I mourn the modernism among theologians and especially the bishops but celebrate the retrieval of the Fathers. I try to be as honest as possible in assessment but fear Trads alienate from friends like myself.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

i get this. i drew these categories up to make sense of the intellectual dynamics i see, and i know most trads even would be classified as conservatives, but my divisions explain the types of behavior.

if you disagree, you could deal with my argument, i listed modernist claims from vatican II in a footnote. it is undeniable that modernism triumphed at vatican two and exactly the way i described. (1) the death of post-aeternis patris neoscholastiicsm, (2) the death of political integralism and religious exclusivism. conservatives do not deny there were changed in each of these three categories just that they went too far in the wrong direction. my argument is that conservaives are working of a modernist foundation. its an extreme view but the only way to make sense of where we are. at this point i dont care who i alienate. i want to try to think in a principled catholic manner about what is going on in the church.

Expand full comment
John Wright's avatar

(1) I don’t necessarily disagree, especially as you survey the scene empirically.

(2) Gladium et Spes seems most conducive to your reading. Only St. JPII’s intervention ‘preserved’ the document for me. The Council moved in direction you not in the last year.

(3) ‘Dominus Iesus’ seems crucial to keep ‘conservatives’ orthodox. I’m not sure that the hierarchy has received it as it needed.

(4) I interpret Thomas via Augustine and Dionysius rather than a certain type of an anti-Platonic Aristotle.

(5) Thank you for your work.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

thanks alot for your engagement and encouragement. i came to the faith under francis, so i think some of the inferences--i dont think this discredits them-- are due to my not having lived under more stable popes who made v2 more palpable, and my search for causes for the problems i saw over the past few years.

when i criticize the herm. of continuity, it is just this sort of argumentation i am referring to. the texts of vatican two are intentionally ambiguous and therefore inadequate to be counted as Sacred Tradition. but to focus on jp2s read of gaudium et spes, or to try to read all of the post-conciliar ecumenical shenanigans in terms of dominus iesus is to already show a willful blindness or a lack of vigilance in defending the truth. pope francis writes in EG 247-9 that jews cannot be considered a separate religion from catholicism. how do i interpret this, do i need to look for a meaning in light of tradition, or search for a logical universe where dominus iesus and evangelii gaudium can both be true. no. i dont. i shouldnt and i wont do it. EG is a text that promotes religious indifferentism and should be condemned. period. to suggest the heirarchy didnt recieve dominus iesus is to misunderstand how the post conciliar papacy works, they werent supposed to and didnt have to, the popes throw bones to both conservaitve and liberal tribes and calls this being pastoral ,and lets them do and think according to their wish. dominus iesus was a conservative bone. ratzinger giving communion to fr roger was a liberal bone. there is no consistency in principle or action, its just a demented pastoral sernse to ally warring factions. i reject the whole thing.

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

if you read what the african bishops wrote about FS they say they are culturally different and that is the root of the problem, not that it is heresy. to inform the pope that you arent going to let him poision your particular branch of the church, for cultural reasons, is a form of self defense, but its not defending the church catholic. their opposition should have had nothing to do with culture or being african but about being catholic.

Expand full comment
North West's avatar

I’m still curious what the intellectually sincere Catholic is supposed to do with the subversion of the papacy under Vatican II and Francis. I appreciate that you’re committed to the faith without playing games with words to explain away modernism in the church. I hear you saying you’re not sede vacantist but also that the Papacy isn’t what it used to be. Where does that leave you?

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

Right i am not done with this series so i do Hope to get a little more into this, but at this level i was hoping to clarify broad dynamics without commiting to a specific position on the post-conciliar papacy. The thesis that seems best to me, but im not confident i can adequately defend it, is sedeprivationism. The papacy is formally absent but materially present. i.e. the form is the teaching of the Holy Spirit, the matter is jurisdiction. These guys have jurisdiction unjustly.

Expand full comment
Jack Phillip's avatar

The only thing that gives me hope is the ongoing Catholic circular firing squad. Keep it up boys!

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

u seem pleasant.

Expand full comment
Namenlos's avatar

That's an awful lot of words for "surrendering to fags and letting them beat you makes you less a man than a faggot."

Which every adult should already know.

There are things to be done outside the list of Sankt Gallen co-op narratives you listed there, like electing a Pontiff.

https://rumble.com/v6u2pjz-how-to-retake-the-church-from-the-masonic-elite.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp

Expand full comment
Stephen Weller's avatar

you do have a knack for concision. perhaps also a the rhetorical high ground. i wrote this partially to think it through myself. thanks for reading.

Expand full comment
Namenlos's avatar

Sorry if I sounded overly kurt, I'm not trying to be adversarial. Here is my verbose version.

The new book out Vatican Spies, and then also David Wemhoff's recent but older title "John Courtney Murray, TIME/LIFE, and The American Proposition," are essential reading.

Paul Williams' book on Operation Gladio and David Yallop's title In God's Name are also worth grabbing.

These help put the lie to the idea that these ideological niches are anything but silo civision tactics. Yes, orthodoxy and the law must be insisted upon, but logically carried through with actions--not just held as a placard [to quote the psychologist who took over Timothy Leary's post at Harvard for a while :-] of justification for disobeying an apparent ordinary.

There are ways, especially in the American system, to twist the arm of an ordinary with RICO and other means to get cooperation for priests to offer traditional rites without harrassment and persecution. However, the best start is to have a legitimate pontiff, get new ordinaries with legitinate jurisdiction to replace the supermajority of heretics, allow some time for Catholics to form the community around these, and start the organized effort to jail the criminals together with the civil authorities in those areas where they are not entirely corrupt.

The One Ring is already destroyed, the jig is up, the routing of the traitors and subsequent scouring of the Shire and finally the banishing of Saruman in the form of restoring the Scriptural, juridical, and theological ties to the fathers, doctor, theologians, and pontiffs and formally condemning errors more manifest now than when Quanta Cura was published.

Mary's triumph is underway, but the proud boasts of Goliath-on-vinyl-loudspeaker outside the camp are still frightening the despondant to engage in the Bystander Effect.

Remember this above all else: just like the SSPX was founded by the son of a French/British spymaster freemason as a control system, and the fssp founded by CIA perv JPII out of a subsection of those clergy, and both the aforesaid orgs have unusually large numbers of peserast and pedophile personnel, so too the "Sedevacantist" movement was formed from pervs and splitoffs of these intel-front groups, to squat on the terminology and even scholarship to a degree that would have helped people solve the situation, while using it to AVOID doing anything to help the Universal Church so unlike the Crusaders and reformers of old, or especially the agenda of St. Athanasius by comparison.

It is just as stupid, stupefying, and fake as the "antifa" groups that are also intelligence fronts to surveil and disrupt and corral into irrelevance any left wing agitation and also to play name games and secind grade frame games "oh you're not antifash? Cool story, that means you're fash"

Bonus point: if anyone reading this has drunk the koolaid that Putin is alright as a leader/ remember he was the spook in charge of der Roter Armie Faktion / Baader-Meinhof Komplex in the 70's. Also very very many instructive details in that case about Israelis and the PFLP of the time, but I digress.

"Ohhhhh we're still in Sede Vacante, ohhhh the pope's-not-the-real-pope, sounds like you're a sedevacantist huh"

Nah, there is an immediate issue, with an actual solution,and yes one can argue it ought to have been done already, but this is still a reverse Gideon problem getting people to stop loving their daydreams more than the obligation of doing what is right for the Church in service of the supreme Head, Jesus, and the rights His Apostles Peter and Paul have given, *durably* to the Church of Rome.

Universi Dominici Gregis explicitly grants the exclusive right of the college of cardinals to elect the pontiff, and abrogates any previous law that touches on the same things it governs in the sese vacante and subsequent conclave election, but it recognizes that an election must be valid, and highly constrains the cardinals to a set limited timeframe and number of options.

The apostolic-Traditional manner of electing the Bishop of Rome, although because papal laws are binding is only now an extraordinary means, is not subject to itself being abrogated in a papal decree, because it is not a papal law and also not pertinent to the structure of the papal particular rules that go into an exclusive clergy and then later conclave of cardinals process. It comes from an Apostle whose authority is primordial to his successors, and whose successors cannot undo in their basis the principal rights he granted to the faithful of Rome/Latium

There is no conflict there, the criminals cannot even pretend to follow the Law, just as in "The Council" they cannot bind anything because the program requires ideological niches and making lore up to lock people into the brainwashing on the go, aside from the obvious non-binding nature of any statement that exceeds the scope of Apostolic remit by abandoning the clear condemnations of Fathers, doctors, and even modern popes!

Expand full comment