Trapcast Express, it's Wednesday, July 29th, 2020.
Well, it looks like we finally got an answer from the Remnant's Michael Matt
as to what he means by the divine element of the Catholic Church.
Frequent listeners to this podcast will recall that whatever is wrong with the Vatican II Church,
the doctrines, the liturgy, the errors in canon law, the canonizations of saints, and so forth,
all of that is routinely ascribed by Mr. Matt to the human element of the Church.
So, for the longest time, we've been wondering here that if that's all the human element of the Catholic Church,
well, then what is left to...
And now, in a YouTube video posted on July 24th, entitled
Matt has finally answered that question.
Take a listen.
You see, the modern Church has betrayed and abandoned us all.
And again, I'm talking about the human element, not the divine element.
God is still with us. Our Lady is still with us.
The saints and the angels are still with us.
So, for Michael Matt, the indefectible divine element of the Church is God, Our Lady, the angels, and the saints.
And because God, Our Lady, the angels, and the saints will always be there and will never defect,
therefore, the Catholic Church is indefectible.
Yeah, that is absolutely brilliant.
By that logic, I guess the Orthodox Church is indefectible as well,
or the Anglican sect, or the Lutherans, or whoever else.
But, wait a minute.
The saints?
Does that include St. Paul VI, St. John XXIII, and St. John Paul II?
Oh, no, that's right.
Those saints, all canonized by Francis, are, of course, part of the human element of the Church.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is remnant theology,
marketed as traditional Catholicism.
Matt continues.
But the modern Church, the men of the Church, the modernists, have betrayed us.
Indeed, they have.
But if they're modernists, then they're not Catholics by definition.
And if they're not Catholics, then they can't be the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
See, it's always the same with these people.
On the one hand, they will argue that no one is a heretic
until he's been condemned as one by a church.
That's what they say when they're arguing against Sedevacantism
and need to defend their supposed popes.
But then, on the other hand,
as soon as they get out of that anti-Sedevacantist mode,
they have no problem identifying their own hierarchs as modernists, as heretics.
People like Cupich, Casper, Marx, Mahoney, Francis himself, even.
And that's how you know their argumentation is a bunch of baloney,
because they themselves don't follow it.
Because they themselves don't believe it.
They only put it forth when they're arguing against Sedevacantism.
At all other times, they know very well that you can identify a public heretic
without a church judgment.
Namely, when it's manifest that he is one.
Now let's listen to some more sound bites from that Remnant video.
And part of that is because Francis has gone too far.
The Vatican has gone too far.
And during this pandemic,
and during these riots,
the sheep are looking around for a shepherd,
and they realize he's left the pasture.
Okay, so Michael Matt's shepherd has left.
Here he's talking about Francis, of course.
Except that Francis has not left.
He's there, teaching and preaching and legislating all the time.
Matt just doesn't like what he has to say.
He's not stopped leading the sheep.
He's simply leading them astray.
He's leading them to eternal damnation.
Under the guise of mercy and accompaniment.
But the beautiful thing about the divinely instituted papacy
is that the supreme shepherd cannot lead the faithful astray.
That's rooted in Christ's prayer mentioned in Luke 22, 32.
And hence the First Vatican Council teaches,
quote,
Indeed, all the venerable fathers have embraced their apostolic doctrine,
meaning the Pope's apostolic doctrine,
and the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed it,
knowing full well that the See of St. Peter always remains unimpaired by any error,
according to the divine promise our Lord the Savior made to the chief of his disciples.
I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not,
and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.
Unquote.
And that is that quote from Luke 22.
32 used by the First Vatican Council.
So that's the beautiful thing about the Holy See,
the haven of eternal salvation.
Its magisterium cannot defect.
It cannot suddenly start teaching heresy.
Its doctrine, its doctrinal decisions and guidance are always safe to follow.
You cannot suffer shipwreck in the faith by following the Holy See,
by following the Pope.
That is the point of having a Holy See.
That is why Christ established it.
And that is why Pope Pius XI could say in his encyclical Casti Canubii that,
quote,
A characteristic of all true followers of Christ,
lettered or unlettered,
is to suffer themselves to be guided and led in all things that touch upon faith or morals
by the Holy Church of God through its supreme pastor,
the Roman Pontiff,
who is himself guided by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Unquote.
That again is Casti Canubii and it's paragraph number 104.
So a defected or a doctrinally dangerous Holy See is not possible.
What is possible, however,
is that a false Pope should be installed in the Holy See
and pretend to be the real Pope.
And one way you can know that,
one way you can know that that's what's taking place
is that the doctrines that are issued by him
are in manifest plain contradiction
to what we are obliged to believe as Catholics.
And in fact, that ties in with our blessed Lord's prophecy in Matthew 26, 31,
which in turn is based on the prophecy in Zacharias 13, 7,
I will strike the shepherd
and the sheep of the flock
shall be dispersed.
Now, of course, that is a prophecy of the passion and death of Christ.
However, since the Pope is the vicar of Christ
and the visible shepherd of the Church,
it is not unreasonable to see in this also a prophecy
of the Pope being struck at some point,
especially given St. Paul's words in 2 Thessalonians 2,
where he speaks of the restraining power
against the Antichrist being taken out of the way
at the appointed time.
And it's very important to understand
that that isn't some kind of triumph of the devil.
It's rather God's providence at work.
Just as Christ had to be slain,
and he did this of his own volition,
and not because his enemies were more powerful than he,
so also the temporary removal of the Pope,
the temporary eclipse of the papacy,
is willed by God in order, ultimately,
to defeat the devil in a more humiliating fashion
and to save more souls
and to give more glory to God.
And, you know, that may not be apparent to us right now,
but the mind of God is infinitely greater
than our little created intellects.
Now, to underscore that I'm not just saying that,
consider what Father Sylvester Berry wrote
in 1921, commenting on chapter 13 of the Apocalypse.
Quote,
The beast arising from the earth is a false prophet,
the prophet of Antichrist.
Our divine Savior has a representative on earth
in the person of the Pope,
upon whom he has conferred full powers
to teach and govern.
Likewise, Antichrist will have his representative
in the false prophet,
who will be endowed
with the plenitude of satanic powers
to deceive the nations.
As indicated by the resemblance to a lamb,
the prophet, meaning the false prophet,
will probably set himself up in Rome
as a sort of antipope
during the vacancy of the papal throne
mentioned above.
Unquote.
And that is from Father Berry's book,
The Apocalypse of St. John, page 135.
In a previous chapter,
Berry had mentioned that the Antichrist
would reveal himself during a vacancy
of the apostolic see.
Here's what he wrote on page 124
of the same book.
Quote,
It is a matter of history
that the most disastrous periods
for the Church were times
when the papal throne was vacant,
or when antipopes contended
with the legitimate head of the Church.
Thus also shall it be in those evil days
to come.
The Church, deprived of her chief pastor,
must seek sanctuary in solitude
there to be guided by God himself
during those trying days.
In those days the Church shall also find
refuge and consolation in faithful souls,
especially in the seclusion
of the religious life.
Unquote.
Now, the point here is not to say
that Francis is the Antichrist
or the false prophet.
I simply want to point out
that the idea that there is a vacancy
of the Holy See
while a false pope reigns in Rome
is not incompatible with Catholic theology,
is not unheard of,
and in fact it seems to be hinted at
in Catholic prophecy
in the sacred scriptures.
So if Michael Matt notices that
the shepherd is absent,
then that's because Francis is not in fact
the Catholic chief shepherd.
But there's more.
Bishop Schneider, where'd he come from?
He's proof, obviously,
that God is still with his Church.
Bishop Schneider is leading us now
as a shepherd, as a faithful shepherd.
Ah yes, so since Matt doesn't like the man
he acknowledges to be the chief shepherd of Catholicism,
he instead turns to a shepherd
of his own choosing,
in this case, Athanasius Schneider.
The problem is that
that's not how it works in the Catholic Church.
You don't get to pick and choose
whichever bishop you prefer to follow.
In the Catholic Church,
your legitimate shepherd
is the bishop of your diocese.
Athanasius Schneider is only an auxiliary.
He's not even an ordinary.
And his jurisdiction is in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Now unless Matt has moved to Central America,
or Central Asia recently,
I'm pretty sure that's not his diocese.
No, Mr. Matt.
Your shepherd is, like it or not,
Bernard Hebda,
the arch-layman of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
And over and above that,
it's Jorge Bergoglio.
You don't get to choose someone from Kazakhstan instead
because you like what he says.
That's not traditional Catholicism,
which you're supposedly fighting for.
Here, instead, is traditional Catholicism.
Listen to Pope Leo XIII,
quote,
To the shepherds alone
was given all power to teach,
to judge, to direct.
On the faithful was imposed the duty
of following their teaching,
of submitting with docility to their judgment,
and of allowing themselves to be governed,
corrected, and guided by them
in the way of salvation.
Thus it is an absolute necessity
for the simple faithful
to submit in mind and heart
to their own pastors,
and for the latter to submit with them
to the head and supreme pastor.
In this subordination and dependence
lie the order and life of the church.
In it is to be found
the indispensable condition
of well-being and good government.
On the contrary,
if it should happen
that those who have no right to do so
should attribute authority to themselves,
if they presume to become judges and teachers,
if inferiors in the government
of the universal church attempt
or try to exert an influence
different from that of the supreme authority,
there follows a reversal
of the true order,
many minds are thrown into confusion,
and souls leave the right path.
Unquote.
That is traditional Catholic doctrine.
That was Pope Leo XIII
in his apostolic letter,
Epistola,
to the shepherds alone,
in the letter Epistola tua.
Published June 17, 1885.
But there's more.
When I was a child,
Catholics looked to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
when he stood up and said
something has gone very wrong in the church.
We looked to him for leadership
and for Catholicism
and for Christianity
and for salvation of our children,
our schools, our seminaries, our priests.
We looked to Archbishop Lefebvre
and now we look to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano,
To Bishop Athanasius Schneider and to whatever faithful priests and bishops are left to keep and defend the old faith.
Yeah, see, and that's exactly how it does not work in the Catholic Church, because believe it or not, that is private judgment.
Matt has decided on his own non-existent authority to follow a bishop who is not his shepherd.
And he's done so even in defiance of the man he claims is the vicar of Christ on earth.
And why? Well, because it is obvious that this man, Francis, is not leading souls to salvation.
Not only by his own personal bad example, but in his official capacity, in his magisterial documents,
in the men he declares to be saints, in the liturgical and disciplinary laws that he issues,
and so forth. It is obvious.
But it is, by Catholic theology, a necessary consequence, then, that this man cannot be the pope,
else we are totally destroying the entire Catholic doctrinal edifice of the papacy,
which is exactly what the remnant and the other recognize-and-resist trads are doing
with their persistent recognition of this manifest opportunity.
The Pope has to be the Mittelbritannian, if you will,
because they don't want to be Sedevacantists.
Alright, one more clip.
The world is desperate for the return of the king.
The world is desperate for holy mother church to come back to them.
But we're not a democracy.
The bishops, the priests, the cardinals, eventually a future pope will have to lead us back.
Okay.
admits that the church is not a democracy right after he's told us to pick and choose
which bishops to follow.
Which, by the way, is a totally deadly and self-refuting idea, because if he gets to
follow Athanasius Schneider instead of Bernard Hebda or Jorge Bergoglio, well, what's going
to keep someone else from following Blaise Cupich, Reinhard Marx, or Wilton Gregory?
See, that's why there is a pope in the Catholic Church.
Well, when there is one.
You ultimately have to be in union with the pope, not with this or that other bishop of
your own choosing who opposes the pope, but with the pope.
On January 21, 1878, Pope Pius IX wrote about opposition to the papal magisterium in his
apostolic letter Didicimus.
To the president of the Italian Catholic Youth Council, as follows,
quote,
"...divine providence permits this so that it may appear all the more clearly that the
church established by God cannot be destroyed by violence from without or by discord from
within.
And all history has shown very well that the ills she suffers have no other result than
a more striking manifestation of the truth, a firmer,
and more effective faith on the part of those who have held to the truth, a more docile
and more zealous union with this chair of truth.
We congratulate you, therefore, on the fact that although you suffer doubtless at the
defection of your brothers, separated from you by the breath of perfidious teaching,
you are not troubled for all that, and are even being stimulated by their error to receive
with greater willingness.
And to follow with more zeal not only the orders, but even all the directives of the
apostolic see.
And by so doing, you are certain that you cannot be deceived or betrayed."
And now you know, ladies and gentlemen, what is the real divine element of the Catholic
Church.
But the modern church, the men of the church, the modernists have betrayed us.
Tradcast Express.
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