"Let's Call this Race: Fr. Chazal is NOT a Sedevacantist," Captain Obvious Reporting! Read his Reasoning Below. Also, My Short Critique of His New Book.
The letter below from Fr. Chazal, exactly confirms the views that he has communicated to me privately. He has lectured widely on his objections to Sedevacantism of any sort and such positions are clearly articulated in his new book, which I have read. I will try to find my email comments to Fr. Chazal which I sent him when he was in the editing stage of producing his book.
Here is his stated position, now posted on Cathinfo.com:
resistance-bishops-fight-against-sedevacantism
Concerning Father Chazal, he is not sedeprivationnist. Here is what he wrote recently in one of his email (translated from French) :
Dear Sir,
One cannot say that the public life of the Church, the apostolic and visible continuity of the Church is something purely material. No, it is something formal, that is to say very real. Pope Francis is a suspect awaiting conviction and deposition.
So, to answer your questions:
1. No, I am not sedeprivationist.
2. The difference between Cassisiacum and Archbishop Lefebvre is that we are content to separate ourselves from the conciliar Church and leave to God the resolution of the question of loss of office.
fc +
He also condemned sedeprivationnism in his recent book (Contra Cekadam) against sedevacantism :
* Canon 160, against sedeprivationnism. "The election of a Sovereign Pontiff is guided solely by "Vacante Sede Apostolica" of Pope Pius X", which constitution, on #29 not only exclude canonical or juridical censures, but also any reason whatsoever to bar a Cardinal from active or passive voice in a Conclave. More on this later.
* Hence it is impossible to find any trace of your sedeprivationism in the legislation of the Church, and Cum Ex has fallen out of use, if it were ever used to bar a Cardinal to the Papacy. Fr GREGORY HESSE explained that Cum Ex was not used, save for its principle (that the holding of an office is incompatible with heresy), because of the regrettable tendency of Paul IV to imprison clerics without trial.
The last big problem of sedeprivationnism, is that Cardinals are no Popes, so, even in the theory of sedevacantism, they don’t enjoy immunity; they must be judged. We were told by them that special rules, dispensing from a juridical sentence, apply only for the Pope. With sedeprivationnism that is no longer the case, and therefore all ecclesiastical offices are in doubt the minute an individual Catholic deems the holder to be a heretic. Indeed, many sedes say that Cardinals are non Cardinals, bishops fake bishops, priests false priests. It is the proof that much more is at risk than the sole office of a Pope, but all offices in the Church.
End of Fr. Chazal's email.
Here is my (Dr. Chojnowski's) comments on my thoughts concerning the position he articulates in his new book on the current papacy Contra Cekadam. I came to these conclusions after a second reading of the text.
Dear Fr. Chazal,
I have finished reading over your paper
for the second time. I don’t think it would be useful to comment on each
page. Rather, when I step back and consider where it all leads, I am
gravely concerned especially in light of all of the theological research
that has been done by Fr. Kramer. It seems to me that you are creating a
theological position which is schismatic no matter which way you cut
it. You do everything possible to argue that Francis MUST BE POPE and
that no one can legitimately say that he is not and yet you say that we
can legitimately say that we need not listen to the man who we consider
to be pope —— I cannot see how we do not totally change the office of
the papacy, reducing it to a “card board” pope that is there but he is
not one that you have to listen to or obey. This is precisely the
criticism of Fr. Cekada who makes much hay about this.
From your own texts in these last pages,
it clearly seems as if you accept the Conciliar Church to be the
Catholic Church. You criticize the sedevacantists for pointing to the
fact that a false and theologically distorted rite is the one created by
Paul VI for the creation of bishops and priests. If the priests and
bishops are validly ordained and they constitute the real Catholic
hierarchy, as Bishop Williamson never ceases to say, why would we have
ever gone to the SSPX? Not now but even back then. If the Novus Ordo
“bishops” and “priests” — after 50 years of accumulating apostasy — are
still the hierarchy of the Catholic Church then God must lead them and
they must guide the Church correctly. But you say that they do not.
Where is the protection of the Holy Ghost, then, for his Magisterium? If
that is the Church now then the Church is one of heresy and apostasy,
liturgical evil, denial of the fundamental moral law, and syncretism.
The Church your arguments push us towards is more the Harlot of Babylon
than the Immaculate Bride of Christ. But the Church is the IMMACULATE
Bride of Christ. In its doctrines, worship and practice it is totally
pure of any defect. Are you destroying the very nature of the Church in
order to save the claims of Francis?
Also, I have read enough of the
Archbishop to know that he would never agree with your position which
makes a state of “sedevacante” impossible. He often said that he could
reach the point in which he would have to declare the Holy See vacant.
He never publicly did, however, he was always on the edge of it.
He clearly knows that a pope cannot be a
heretic and still be pope. The Archbishop hesitated to call the Vatican
II popes to be heretics because he knew that if he did, he would be
declaring the pope to have fallen from his office or as being a
usurper.
I also cannot accept the idea that you can be in the Catholic Church without holding the Catholic Faith in its purity.
Ultimately the equation:
Public Heresy + true pope = defective Church
We need to break out of the “box” of the
90s and rethink all this through again. I think your argument has as
its consequence a “justification” for the inadequately thought through
mentality we had back in the 90s.
Yours, Peter
