DISCIPLINE, OBEDIENCE AND THE WILL OF GOD
In 'Election Update' number 2, we noted that Rev. Nicolas Neuberger in his Commentary on Canon 8 46 has cited the Church's laws concerning discipline as negatively infallible, meaning that they cannot work to the harm of souls or the destruction of the divine principle of perpetuity and infallibility on which the Church is built. Volume V (v), of the Catholic Encyclopedia, under 'Discipline' states that it is the UNANIMOUS OPINION of the theologians that discipline enjoys a negative, indirect infallibility, i.e., the Church can prescribe nothing that would be contrary to the natural or Divine law, nor prohibit anything that the natural or Divine law would exact.' We know from our examination of infallibility on page 248 of WILL THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SURVIVE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY? that Pius IX declared the unanimous opinion of theologians to be infallible, and hence anything determined by them unanimously must be firmly believed. (DZ 1683) Furthermore, we have the words of Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical 'Quartus Supra', where he teaches: ... discipline is often so closely united to dogma, it has such an influence on its preservation and on its purity, that the sacred Councils have not hesitated in many cases to pronounce anathemas against those guilty of disciplinary violations and separated them from communion with the Church.' Leo XIII states in his encyclical 'Sapientiae Christianae': 'In setting how far the limits of obedience extend, let no one imagine that the authority of the sacred pastors, and above all of the Roman Pontiff, need be obeyed only insofar as it is concerned with dogma, the obstinate denial of which entails the guilt of heresy .... Christian men must be willing to be ruled and governed by the authority and direction of ... (in the first place) the Apostolic See .. When the Church speaks, even when She does not speak with all the weight of Her infallible utterance, She does so invariably to give us SAFE GUIDANCE... a Catholic is PRACTICALLY secure in listening to the voice of those whom God has set to rule the Church.' (see DZ 1673 and 1792)The constitutions and Decrees of the Holy Pontiffs are most especially embodied in Canon Law, according to Volume IX (iii) of the Catholic Encyclopedia. Concerning Canon Law's constitution, Rev. Francis J. Schaeffer writes in this volume: "THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF CANON LAW IS GOD, whose will is manifested either by the very nature of things (natural Divine law) or by Revelation (positive Divine law) ... to attain its sublime end, the Church, endowed by its Founder with legislative power, makes laws in conformity with natural and Divine law. The sources or authors of this positive ecclesiastical law are essentially the episcopate and its head, the pope, the successors of the Apostolic College and its divinely appointed head, St. Peter. They are, properly speaking, the active sources of canon law. Their activity is exercised in its most solemn form by the ecumenical councils ... (these) councils, especially ... Trent, hold an exceptional place in ecclesiastical law ... the sovereign pontiff is the most fruitful source of canon law: ... From the earliest ages the letters of the Roman Pontiffs constitute, with the canons of the Councils, the principal element of Canon Law; ... they are everywhere relied upon and collected, and the ancient canonical compilations contain a large number of these precious decretals.' If we wish to know the will of God, and the mind of the Church as it has been consistently expressed throughout the ages, we need only look as far as Canon Law.From Christ's promises to Peter, we know that the Church can never fail and. will last, as it was constituted, even until the final conflagration. From the unanimous opinion of the theologians, we know that NONE of the laws of the Church can ever be seen to contradict Divine law. Therefore none of the ecclesiastical laws governing papal elections can be upheld in contradiction to the Divine promises of perpetuity. But is it God's WILL that the Church last, or does He will it to fail shortly before His Second Coming, as many Traditionalists maintain today? To answer this question we turn first to the letter of Pope Leo IX, 'In Terra Pax Hominibus': ... the (same) Son of God, declared that He had won from His Father the fulfillment of this promise', (that the gates of hell should not prevail), "when He said to Simon Peter: 'Simon behold Satan...' (Luke 22:31). WILL ANYONE BE SO FOOLISH TO DARE IMAGINE THAT THIS PRAYER OF HIM WITH WHOM 'TO WILL' IS 'TO BE ABLE' COULD FAIL IN ANY POINT? Is it not a fact that in the See of the Prince of the Apostles ... the hearts of his brethren have been confirmed by the faith of Peter, a faith which so far has never failed, nor will fail to the end?"Next we wish to quote the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, 'Satis Cognitum' which states: "Therefore, ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF ITS AUTHOR, the Church must be alone in all lands in the perpetuity of time ... whoever go apart (from it) wander away from the will and prescription of the Lord and ... digress to destruction." (It must be remembered that this same pope uttered in another encyclical the following words: .... without the Pope there is no Church, and there is no Catholic Society without the Holy See." This from 'Consequences of the Primacy', (page 226.)Finally to lay all doubts to rest, we wish to quote from the Vatican Council's Constitution, 'Pastor Aeternus', which reads: as He 'sent' the Apostles He had chosen out of the world, 'as He was sent by the Father' (John 20:21), so in His Church He WILLED that there should be shepherds and teachers 'unto THE CONSUMMATION OF THE WORLD.'"There can be no question of Christ's will for His Church in' this matter; no question, either, that His will would be fulfilled, according to Pope Leo IX. Each day Catholics pray the 'Our Father', and beseech 'Thy will be done on earth...' They have little if any idea of how this might be accomplished. All they understand is that God's will is something that simply 'happens'. The Great Apostasy has 'happened'; and the shepherd has beer struck as well as the flock dispersed, and they are all quite resigned to all this. Unfortunately they understand only half of the formula used to determine God's will, and as we might expect it it the less important half, and that very aspect most likely to incline to Quietism. St. Cyprian, Father of the Church, gave us a general indication of God's will when he wrote: 'The Will of God is what Christ has done and taught.' Rev. Aldolphe Tanquerey, that great master of the spiritual life, wrote: 'Now to conform our wills to that of God is assuredly to cease to do evil, and to learn to do good. Is not this the meaning of that oft repeated text: 'FOR OBEDIENCE IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICES' (1 Kings XV, 22; Osee VI, 6; Matt IX, 3 also XII, 7) In the New Law, Our Lord declares from the very moment of His entry into the world that it is with obedience that He will replace the sacrifices of the Ancient Law: 'Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. Then I said: Behold I some ... that I should do Thy will, C God.' (Hebrews X, 6-7; Phil 11,8; Phil, IV,3) And in truth, it is by obedience unto the immolation of self that He has redeemed us: 'He was made obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.' (John IV,34) In the same way, it is through obedience and through the acceptance of God-ordained trials in union with Christ that we shall atone for our sins and cleanse our soul.' ('The Spiritual Life', pages 240-241) We must remember these words well. Christ forever gave us perfect example in these matters by fulfilling every point of His Father's will. He enjoined our imitation of Him in this practice of perfection when he told us: 'For whosoever shall do the will of My Father that is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother ... not everyone that saith to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the Kingdom .. but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter ... heaven." (Matt XII, 50; Matt VII,21) ('The Heliotropium' by Jeremias Drexelius is called by his editor, Rev. Ferdinand Bogmer, "... the most distinguished ascetical writer of Germany in the 17th century.') St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, explains further that there are TWO parts to the will of God; the will of signification and the will of good-pleasure. St. Francis lists the following four parts belonging to God's will of signification as the commandments of God and of His Church, the evangelical counsels, divine inspiration, (and those duties peculiar to our chosen vocation)...", ('Holy Abandonment', Rt. Rev. Dom Vital Lehody O.C.R., page 9). Commenting further, St. Francis writes: 'Obedience to the Commandments, both divine and ecclesiastical, is of obligation for all, because there is question here of THE ABSOLUTE WILL OF GOD WHO HAS MADE SUBMISSION TO THESE ORDINANCES A CONDITION OF SALVATION.' (Ibid, emphasis ours) St. Francis observes that God rather desires than wills the counsels, or binding ourselves to some religious order or spiritual director, (which today is totally impossible). Neither can we submit our suspected divine inspirations to a spiritual director today, but this does not mean that we should ignore them, either. Rather we should do what our director would normally do for us, submit our 'inspirations' to the scrutiny of Divine and canon law, holding the law superior to such 'inspirations'. Commenting on St. Francis' observations, Rev. Lehody writes: ... Rules are ordinarily the chief means at our disposal for the purification of our souls. Obedience detaches and purifies us continually by the thousand renunciations it imposes, and still more by its demand for the mortification of our judgement and self-will... the signified will must be considered the fixed and regular path amidst the accidental and variable events of life, the tasks of our days and of every instant.' ('Holy Abandonment', pages 18 and 22) St. Francis relates that God's will of good-pleasure can be found, '... in everything that befalls us: in sickness, in death, in affliction, in consolation, in adversity and prosperity ... in all unforseen circumstances.' (Ibid. page 11) Rev. Lehody spurns the notion of the Quietists that the soul must remain passive and advance no effort, letting God do with it what He will and warns us against such a misinterpretation of God's will of good-pleasure. If the Saints seemed to us to be effortlessly supported by God, we must remember how relentlessly they pursued Him and how tirelessly they worked on His behalf. If we hasten to fulfill all the laws of God because we wish to be obedient to Him, even though we have no superiors, how can He possibly be said to fault us? St. Bonaventure writes: 'A11 religious perfection equals martyrdom in merit.' ('Holy Abndonment', page 18) And St. Bernard teaches that neither zeal for good works, nor the sweetness of divine contemplation, nor the tears of penitence would have been acceptable to Him apart from obedience. (Ibid. page 21) He also calls obedience WITHOUT DELAY ... the first degree of humility...' ('The Book of Catholic Quotations', page 642) And it is useless to say that having no superiors, we are excused, for the laws of numerous popes and councils throughout Church history continue to remain at our disposal in the form of Canon Law, which it has not been greatly altered in all its 1,858 years or so of existence. We would do well to remember the words of Pius XII in his encyclical, 'Hortalium Animos': ... No one is in this Church, no one perseveres, unless he acknowledges and obediently accepts the power and authority of Peter and his legitimate successors.' Likewise we read in the Vatican Council documents: ...the faithful... are bound by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, not only in those things which pertain to faith and morals,BUT ALSO THOSE WHICH PERTAIN TO THE DISCIPLINE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH, so that the Church of Christ, protected not only by the Roman Pontiff, but by the unity of communion as well as the profession of the same faith, is one flock under one highest shepherd. THIS IS THE DOCTRINE OF CATHOLIC TRUTH FROM WHICH NO ONE CAN DEVIATE AND KEEP HIS FAITH AND SALVATION.' (DZ 1827; emphasis ours) Here, then, is the final answer to all those who dare to assail Canon Law. They cannot understand that it is not inequitable LAWS that bind us, but the failure to obey these laws and make them known to those who are in ignorance concerning them. Here the Montinian Church has had a legitimate complaint: We have not obeyed the laws of the Church existing before 1858. Instead we have erected illegal 'Trad centers' in violation of ALL the laws governing the Church. But neither are Conciliarists justified in obeying Post VII authority. We all know that the Church can bind us only through Her LEGITIMATE pastors; this is the entire thrust of Paul IV's infallible decree 'Cum ex...' We cannot pick and choose which laws we must follow either, unless we have duly followed the methods decreed by Canon Law itself to determine whether a law has ceased to bind, or whether we may invoke Canon 20 to proceed in the absence of any known legislation governing our present situation. This we amply explained in Part III of the book. Scripture tells us that the man who is faithful, even in little things, is the man who is pleasing to God.Many Traditionalists have lost all hope of a reprieve and have, as a result, fallen prey to the 'pray, retreat and await the end' syndrome. They have not studied to learn God's will of signification, so they are ignorant of the obedience owed to ALL the laws of the Church under pain of exclusion from Her pale. They make no effort and expect God to carry them through whatever trials and tribulations await us in the. Latter Days. As we observe in the book, this is fatalism and is condemned by the Church. (see pages 252-255) The great French orator,Bossuet addressed this Quietistic error when he wrote: 'Having endowed us with intelligence, foresight and liberty, (God) wills that we should make use of them ... To abandon ourselves to God without on our side doing what we can, is cowardice and insolence. There was nothing of this bad tendency about the piety of David .. in the conduct of David we have abandonment in the Christian sense of the word and according to Apostolic teaching Whilst he awaited submissively whatever God should ordain regarding his kingdom and person, during Absolom's revolt, without losing a moment he issued the necessary orders to his troops, his counsellors and principle confidants, to secure his retreat and re-establish his authority ... One can see that (such behaviour) rests on two fundamental principles: the conviction that God has care of us and the conviction that we must none the less exercise our energies and vigilance, otherwise WE SHOULD BE TEMPTING GOD.' ('Holy Abandonment', pages 36 and 37) Drexelius, in his 'Heliotropium' tells us the same: 'That war and death of all kinds are from God is clearly enough. But the conclusion drawn from this that we must not resist an enemy, and must not grapple with disease, is bad. The sick man does not know hoe long God wills that he should be afflicted.' Therefore he may '... strive against it and use any lawful remedy for recovering his health ... God often willed that the Children of Israel should be attacked ... but as long as it did not appear that He willed they should be overcome, so long did they resist an enemy ... It would have been otherwise if God had warned them, as He did by the prophet Jeremias, that they should surrender themselves as servants to King Nebuchodnasor.' (pages 12-13) Here we see the assertions of George Tyrell vindicated, who so plainly demonstrated that we must not be content to be merely static Catholics, but must work to learn our Faith and PROPERLY PRACTICE IT.Rather than a prohibition, in our case we have a positive COMMAND to act. Through His vicars, Christ has enjoined us to act in the absence of the hierarchy to "Go and teach all nations.' Through the reasoned application of the laws of His Church He has enabled us to obtain CERTAINTY concerning our actions, so that we might be assured that we are not acting contrary to His will. Since the laws governing discipline cannot work to the detriment of the faithful or the destruction of the Church, we know that "He who walks with the law walks safely.' The Popes, saints, and theologians quoted here clearly teach that in order to aspire to salvation, we must obey the Divine and ecclesiastical laws found embodied in Canon Law, for it is the direct signification of God's will.Sadly we must report that some of those who gave us good hope of joining our effort to elect a pope now wish to delay the election for two years, while they instruct and unify the faithful, in order to gain greater 'credibility' for this act in the eyes of the world. They cite no law nor elicit ANY canonical reasons from the Code for their action, except that the six months (three for promulgation, three for election) allowed by law is too short a time to reach all who are qualified. They disobey the law requiring proofs, the laws governing certitude (listed under Canon 20), as well as Canons 17 and 18. This in addition to those laws which allow three months for promulgation, and an absolute MAXIMUM of three months to elect. Yet those who ARE qualified are charged with praying AND watching (acting), and unless they be wandering in the desert must surely be aware of this effort. The laws for canonical elections state only that every REASONABLE effort be made to reach those who are QUALIFIED to vote. The law itself states that once notification has been sent, stating the day, date, place and time, those who assemble on the day specified VALIDLY ELECT. Those who follow only their own will in this matter ignore the perilous times in which we live, and thereby tempt God by allowing the enemy time to subvert and eliminate those Catholics who yet remain. We know that God did not allow Gideon to do battle until his army had been reduced sufficiently, that God might be seen to be all the more glorified by his victory over the many by so few. So it seems to be with us. Those who prefer delay prefer their will to God's. Those who would choose quantity of voters and the 'agreement' of all voters over the INTEGRITY of voters invite unholy compromise and guarantee the same disaster that befell those who 'elected' Roncalli: the disqualification of the electors for heresy and the election of an unworthy candidate, i.e. the invalidation of the election. To pretend unity can be effected prior to the election we have shown to be already refuted by Pope Leo, (above, but Palmieri clarified this pontiff's statement when he wrote: 'The whole society is made one by that authority which does not yet suppose the society; but from which the society follows. The authority of the Rock does not suppose the edifice, but this follows from it. The authority of him who has the Keys of the Kingdom does not suppose the kingdom itself as already in existence, but EFFECTS it. Hence, independently of the Roman Pontiff, there is no unity of the Church, and no society which can be called a Church.' ('De Romano Pontifice', page 358) This is but a reinforcement of Pope Leo, and a restatement of St. Thomas Aquinas' teaching and that of other saints and theologians. (See Part III, page 267)How DARE any Catholic pretend a greater knowledge and judgement in such grave matters against Saints and Popes and theologians, whose faith and wisdom so far exceed their own! Certainly this can only be the height of intellectual pride on their part. We have maintained all along that only the educated laity, those few who remain faithful to the WHOLE law (hence God's will), will be able to posit this election. Unity cannot help but follow this act, yet it cannot possibly precede it. Those who insist on maintaining the opposite despite God's will would do well to heed the words of St. Dorothy: "When you see a solitary who has abandoned his state and fallen into serious disorders, understand that this misfortune is the result of his insistence on following his own will. For nothing can be so perilous and pernicious as to take as our guide our own spirit, directing our steps by our own lights.' ('Holy Abandonment', page 19)It must be remembered that only Lot escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; that only eight entered the ark of Noah; that only two of the Israelites who left Egypt entered the promised land; and finally, that only Our Lady and St. John (who later retreated to the upper room); Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James the less, and Salome, along with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, were to be found at Calvary. The Apostles were far removed from the sight, hiding in the upper room 'for fear of the Jews.' So also may the valid hierarchy remain in hiding who justifiably fear for their lives. Webster's Dictionary defines 'remnant' as "a small fragment, a scant trace." In obedience to the will of God, only three or five, or twelve may assemble themselves to elect a Pope, but this remnant will assemble under perfect obedience to that Will and with complete trust in Him who promised never to leave us orphans. For wherever two or three are gathered in His name, there shall He also abide. As Psalm 110 proclaims: 'They that put their trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Sion; he shall not be moved forever." Fiat voluntas tua!Teresa Stanfill Benns
Michael Fighting
"Michael…who standeth for…thy people," — Dan. 12:1-12
