Fr. Gruner on Sedevacantism

This issue of The Fatima Crusader is about defending your eternal salvation, defending the Catholic Faith, defending the Message of Our Lady of Fatima, defending your very important role in promoting the Fatima Message and the requests of Our Lady. Especially, it is in defense of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic papacy — that is, not this Pope or that Pope, but the office of the papacy as instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ.


The "Sedevacantist" Theory is False
For many years now, I have been hearing about the movement or theory of sedevacantism: the false belief that we have had no true Pope since Pope Pius XII died in October 1958, because the Vatican II popes have fallen into heresy and are all "anti-popes".
I can sympathize with the many people who are tempted to agree with this theory due to the grave scandals that are seen every day, not only in local parishes and dioceses but also, and even worse, in Rome and in the Vatican itself.

Having lived through the fervent Catholic atmosphere of the Province of Quebec in the 40’s and 50’s, I realize how blessed we were compared to what children and young adults today see before their eyes what a Catholic should be and should do. In other words, it is hard sometimes for people to understand how a young person has a chance to know what the Catholic Church is, since many Church leaders seem to have forgotten. For example, the Blessed Sacrament is trampled in the mud at papal Masses, and people are invited to riotous, rock and roll papal World Youth Days, which events are more scandalous than rock concerts. These poor, misguided young people attend Masses, yes, papal Masses, dressed in either a slovenly manner or in highly immodest clothing. Church leaders do not do their duty to remind these young people they must dress neatly and modestly for Holy Mass. These are only a few examples of the many outrages never before seen in our lifetime prior to the Second Vatican Council.

I still remember watching an old home movie my father made in the 1940’s, in which the women were all dressed so modestly with their skirts falling well below their knees. Everyone accepted it. No one thought it was frumpish or that these modest clothes were hard to wear. How far we have fallen in the past 60 years.


Scandals Will Arise
It is understandable that people were scandalized when Pope John Paul II was photographed kissing the Koran, the book the Moslems revere, the book which contains terrible blasphemies against our Holy Catholic religion. Yet, if the Pope can kiss the Koran, then it would appear that anything goes. In order to keep our balance, we need to cling to the unchangeable Catholic Faith. We also need to remember that Our Lord told us that scandals would arise in the latter times: but woe to those by whom scandals come. Some people seeing these scandals — such as bare-breasted women at Pope John Paul’s Mass reading the Epistle and bringing up the Offertory gifts which no Pope has ever allowed before — jump to the conclusion that therefore he cannot be the Pope.

Unfortunately, these Catholics have not understood that even though the Pope is infallible — he cannot teach an error when he defines something solemnly with his apostolic authority — it does not mean that the Pope cannot sin, cannot give scandal, cannot give bad example. (See The Fatima Crusader No. 66, "Mission Infallible" by Jonathan Tuttle.) We must realize that it is not what our superiors do that entitles them to their office but rather God’s grant of authority.

It does not guarantee that they therefore remain faithful to the graces of that office. Like all of us, they can choose to sin, to take the easy way out, to do what the world wants them to do, to do what the devil wants them to do — rather than doing what Jesus wants them to do.

However, since the scandals have gone on for so long and through several pontificates, there have been various reactions to this:
                    1. To pretend that nothing at all has happened.
                    2. To assume that if the Pope did it, it must be okay, because he’s the Pope.
                    3. To declare the Pope and bishops are not really the Pope and bishops, and to despise everything they do because they permit or cause scandal.
                    4. To be faithful to God, to His teachings and to the Bible which tells us we cannot call good evil, and we cannot call evil good, and we must therefore resist the evil and                         denounce it, while not usurping to ourselves the power to depose those guilty.

This final reaction, according to the teachings of the Saints and Doctors of the Church, is the correct one.

Quite simply, if somebody robs a bank, for example, we say it’s wrong. But what if the bank robber is your father, or the president, or a priest, a bishop, or even the Pope? It is still wrong. What about if someone denies the Faith? Our Lord told us, "If you deny Me before men, I will deny you before the Father". But what if your father, or a parish priest or the Pope denied the Faith? It is still wrong. You will be judged for what you do, and if you follow someone else, even the Pope, in denying Jesus Christ in any way, then Jesus will deny you before His Father. You must be faithful to Jesus and Mary and God, and faithful to the Catholic Faith and to the moral law of the Catholic Faith — even if people in high positions are doing the opposite.


A Judgment We Cannot Make
Since Christ founded His Church on Peter — that is, on the papacy — we cannot simply, on our own volition, on our own private judgment, determine and declare that because the Pope kissed the Koran or did other scandalous things, he, therefore, is not the Pope, or perhaps, never was the Pope. This is explained in great detail in the article by Christopher Ferrara "Defending the Papacy" (in this issue). Up to now, I have not dealt with this topic because I can sympathize with how these poor Catholics are being scandalized, and I did not realize how dangerous this doctrine and movement had become. But now it has come to my attention that this movement is growing and that it is getting in the way of Our Lady’s triumph. It has created a great distraction to people who would otherwise support the Message of Fatima, causing them to do nothing. They say, "We can’t do anything for the Consecration of Russia until we settle who the Pope is or if we have a Pope." A number of people have been saying this now for over 20 years. According to them, the scandals are so bad and they are so certain in their private judgment, that they are convinced there is no Pope. Their position is not tenable. Their position flows from a misunderstanding of certain aspects of the Catholic Faith.

There are learned men, some of them intelligent and kind, in this movement who are mistaken on some fundamental points on this subject. There are also some arrogant men, often the younger men, who possess virtually no formal theological training, who recklessly make these brash statements as if God had given them a special jurisdiction to decide these questions and impose their opinions on the Catholic world.

Even the sedevacantist priests and their self-appointed bishops are mistaken and, unfortunately, this is causing a great schism in the Catholic Church.
This isn’t to say that this is the only schism, there are many other schisms dividing the Catholic Church today. But the particular pity, the particular crime of this schism is that the sedevacantists are being cut off by their own will in reaction to these obvious and terrible scandals and sins against the Catholic Church.
We must grant, however, that at least the sedevacantists understand that certain papal actions over the past 45 years are truly scandalous, whereas many Catholics are so blasé, so lukewarm, that they don’t even notice there is a scandal.

If the sedevacantist could only come to realize that, yes, there is a problem, there are scandals, and yes, we must do something about it, but it is not for us to privately depose the Pope as if we were the superior of the Pope. It is not for us to privately make judicial judgments as if we had that power and authority, when God has not appointed us that authority.
But God has given us means by our Faith, as well as by our circumstances in life, to resist these scandals and to insist upon the one plan that will deliver the Church from these scandals, and that plan is the Message of Fatima.


Fatima Ignored
What is wrong today is that there are too many people in the Church who think they know better than the Blessed Virgin. Many sedevacantists seem also to think that they know better than the Blessed Virgin Mary regarding what must be done to save the Church. Usually it is those Vatican officials who think that, in order to make the Church survive in the 21st Century, they must go along to get along, and embrace the Illuminati/Masonic/Communist plan for the New World Order.
Those modernist officials in the Vatican think they must accept the modern falsehood that the Catholic Church does not have the right from God to its unique moral voice in the public place. Rather they think they must join in the chorus of the thousands and tens of thousands of those false religions, hoping for a crumb of recognition or prestige or power to fall from the government and from the powerful people of this world.

They go along with refusing to obey Our Lady of Fatima. They go along with not upsetting anybody because, according to the proponents of this Masonic New World Order, one religion is as good as another. In fact, the New World Order people themselves have their own religion, but they hide this fact from all but the insiders.
Masonry has been defined in the courts as a religion. It is a religion of the Canaanite gods of the Old Testament. The Masons claim to be impartial with regard to religion but in fact they use this as a shield to advance their own pagan rituals, to advance their own beliefs and adore satan as their god, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out. It was Pope Pius VIII who wrote of the Freemasons, "Their law is untruth, their god is the devil and their cult is turpitude."

Many present-day leaders in the Vatican, due to their ignorance, fail to see that by "dialogue," "ecumenism" and the "opening to the world" they have already betrayed Our Lord, because they have agreed to abide by the program of the Masons and the New World Order, which de facto denies that there is only one true Church founded by Jesus Christ Who commanded them to make disciples of all nations. Whether they realize it or not, these Church leaders have sold Our Lord for thirty pieces of silver, coins of tribute to the powers of the world, just like Judas. He realized too late that he had betrayed innocent blood, so too quite likely will these Judases realize their error too late for them.

And when the moment comes, the forces of Antichrist will spring the trap and send the Catholic Church underground because of the fierce persecution that is about to befall all of us (see "The Imminent Chastisement for Not Fulfilling Our Lady’s Request" in this issue), because our leaders have been blind and leaders of the blind.

Now, the sedevacantists understand this. But unfortunately, they, themselves, have come up with a false solution. Instead of praying for the Pope; instead of promoting Fatima petitions, Fatima Rosary Crusades, and information about this great apostasy predicted in the Third Secret; instead of praying for the blind leaders of the blind; instead of doing penance for them; they have determined to just get rid of them by their own ipse dixit, by just declaring on their own that the Pope is not the Pope and the bishops are not the bishops.
Their "theological reasoning" consequently theorizes that bishops are not bishops, Cardinals are not Cardinals, most priests are not priests and that we are left with a remnant of only one percent of the one billion Catholics — everyone else is lost. It is only they, the sedevacantists who are the true Catholics. Some of them will not even attend a Tridentine Mass if the priest prays for the Pope in the Canon.

They have reduced themselves to what is called the little church movement, in which they say, "No one is saved but you and me — and I’m not so sure about you."
This is dressed up in much more highbrow terms and, as a result, is misleading many more people. It is preventing good Catholics from getting behind the one and only plan that will deliver the Church from the crisis it is in, deliver the civil society from annihilation of nations, and the whole world from being enslaved by Antichrist and the anti-Christian movements of Masonry, Illuminati, Communism, Fascism — and whatever other "isms" and fronts the devil has.


The Central Importance of the Consecration
We must not be on the side of the Fatima revisionists — such as Father Robert J. Fox, who says the Consecration of Russia is done, that Russia is converted and peace is already in the world. This is absurd. Everyone knows there is no peace, as John Vennari’s article on the likely reinstatement of the Draft demonstrates (see "Will the U.S. Reinstate the Draft?" in this issue). Everyone knows there is no conversion of Russia, and that no Pope has ever done the Consecration as Our Lady requested.
Pope John Paul II and Sister Lucy have both agreed that the Consecration as requested by Our Lady of Fatima has not been done. We have documented this in previous issues. (See our web site www.fatimacrusader.com or call to ask for free Fatima Crusader articles on this subject.)

This issue of The Fatima Crusader discusses the sedevacantist’s position and explains why it is fundamentally wrong. Many people of good will have been taken in by the fallacious arguments of the sedevacantists, which have deterred them from promoting the full Fatima Message — the ONLY answer to the crisis in the world and the Church.
At the same time, for those of the faithful who don’t think there is any urgency in this, they should read Father Kramer’s article ("The Imminent Chastisement for Not Fulfilling Our Lady’s Request" in this issue) on the imminent chastisement for not getting the Consecration of Russia done. His article is based on the information he has passed on to many bishops who were very interested in the points he made.

Father Kramer was one of the visitors who met with the Spanish bishops who, we believe, helped bring about the Consecration of Spain to the Immaculate Heart. (See "The Consecration of Spain to the Immaculate Heart of Mary" in this issue.) We must remember that Seville, Spain in 1936 was the only diocese consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and when one and a half million Spaniards were killed in the Spanish Civil War, not one life was lost in the whole diocese of Seville — because of their consecration to the Immaculate Heart.
Portugal has her own similar story of the blessings received as a result of the bishops of Portugal consecrating their country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1931. Portugal avoided the bloody Spanish Civil War; Portugal escaped takeover by communism and completely escaped the most disastrous war in human history, World War II — without a single soldier injured and without any loss of territory whatsoever.

You can clearly see the importance of encouraging your bishop to consecrate your own diocese and receive the special benefit of Mary’s protection in your own area at least.
That is why we encourage you to get involved in our campaign to send 25 million petitions to Pope Benedict XVI. This issue of The Fatima Crusader sounds a loud warning to take your place now in the ranks of Our Lady’s Crusaders and pray as though it all depends on God and work as though it all depends on YOU.