When you preface a story by saying, “This is so spectacularly stupid, there is no way I could have ever made this up….”, you know the story is going to be mildly amusing at the absolute minimum. Such is this.
So I receive an email from a guy that said, at tremendous length, that I am a Sedevacantist. I don’t reply to many emails, but I did briefly reply to this one. I replied, of course, that since Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger is very much alive, and still the one and only living Pope due to his invalid attempt to partially resign only the “active munus” of the papacy, while continuing on as the “contemplative memeber” of the new “synodal, collegial” papacy, to accuse me of sedevacantism is flatly mendacious. The entire point is that the See was never vacant after Ratzinger’s substantially erroneous maneuver per Canon 188, and thus the conclave of March ARSH 2013 was invalid, and Bergoglio is an Antipope.
Now here comes the crazy, folks. The guy replied that I am, in fact, a sedevacantist because, and I promise I’m not making this up:
Pope Benedict XVI will die at some point in the future (true), and when he does, at that time the See will be vacant (true), and thus I will be a Sedevacantist at that time (true, because the Pope will be, er, DEAD, and thus the See will be vacant, which I am told is kinda the key concept conveyed by the term sedevacante), in the future (yes…), until a conclave is called and another Pope elected (yeppers), and thus I am a sedevacantist… wait for it… NOW.
Again, NOT. MAKING. THIS. UP.
Just sit in stillness and think about that for a minute until the full craziness of it sinks in.
Brings new meaning to your High School graduating class’ motto: THE FUTURE IS NOW!, doesn’t it?
Uh, so… yeah. This is the level and quality of argument on the other side. One can and should read into this, and use it as not a piece of primary evidence, but certainly as a supporting piece of evidence.
Now, mind you, most people on the “Francers is totes the Pope! And besides, the Papacy doesn’t really matter, never really did, and it’s just a label anyway…” side in Traddyland deftly deploy the classic rhetorical defense of, “SHUT UP, FREAK!”, and refuse to engage the dataset. Hence all of those comment deletions you folks keep emailing me about. That in and of itself is so, so telling. Quashing argument in situations such as: “9/11 was done by shape-shifting time-traveling lizard-Joooz with holograms and tractor beams!”, is completely appropriate. The appropriate response to delusional, schizophrenic crap like that is dismissal and quashing, because the premise is completely, totally irrational (and also a synthesis of every Star Trek: The Next Generation plot device known to man.)
We all know darn well that what is now sometimes referred to as “The Barnhardt Thesis” with regards to the Bergoglian antipapacy is completely logical and backed up by objective evidence, namely the public words and deeds of Ratzinger himself, and Canon Law. Nevermind the enormous circumstantial and subjective evidence set, which just keeps growing every day.
I wanted to bring this to your attention just to demonstrate how incredibly weak the counter-arguments, if you can even call them that, are. Now, with this new truly pathetic tack, I think we can say that the other side is jumping the shark. Also note in the completely bizarre argument the emailer made above, Sedevacantism is being wielded, as I have been warning about, as a purely political football, when in fact, it is an objective binary state. Either the See is occupied, or the See is vacant. The politicizing of the state of sedevacantism over the past decades is a masterstroke of satan, and it is precisely because so many Trad Catholics are completely terrified of being called “sedevacantist”, no matter how spectacularly stupid and irrational the argument (see above), that so many are cowering in fear. This fear is a pure function of EFFEMINACY.
So these people are now hurling the term “sedevacantist” the way the little Social Justice Warrior Snowflakes are hurling the word “HATER!”
Alas, that crap doesn’t work on me. I just take stuff like this and turn it into a teaching moment, and hopefully a source of edification.
On a related note, I saw Frank Walker over at Canon212.com, braving the hurricane on the East Coast of Florida, linked yesterday to a little poll being done on a small Trad Catholic blog called SaintLouisCatholic. It is a poll asking, “Which best describes your opinion about the current Pope?”
The choices are:
A.) Duh. Francis is Pope.
B.) Um, Benedict is Pope.
C.) Some other person is Pope.
D.) No one is Pope.
Folks, it is nearly 2:1 for Benedict as I write this. It is 28% Bergoglio, 51% Ratzinger, and 19% sedevacante. My linking to it will skew it, but I wanted to draw this to your attention not because truth is a democracy, but just to reiterate that despite all of the censoring going on on OnePeterFive, RemnantNewspaper and elsewhere, the truth is that there are A LOT of people who are figuring out or have figured out that Bergoglio is an Antipope and that Pope Benedict XVI is still the one and only living pope.
YOU AREN’T ALONE.
YOU AREN’T CRAZY.
YOU AREN’T A BAD PERSON, A BAD CATHOLIC, A HERETIC, OR A SCHISMATIC.
Don’t fall for gaslighting.
Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us.
Christ, have mercy on us.