The Nicene Creed says the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These are the four marks of the church.
The public, visible church led from the Vatican by the post-Vatican-II popes seems to have lost the apostolic mark. Obviously it has the apostolic succession, but then so does the Orthodox churches (the schismatics). It seems to me that it doesn’t have the apostolic faith. The hermeneutic of continuity is a dead end; the new thinking can’t be made to agree with the old thinking; and everyone acts in just the way they would act if the council was in fact a revolution.
The recognize and resist movement seems to lose the mark of oneness. The movement preserves the visible hierarchy and parts of the ancient faith, by denying the authority of the hierarchy and the obedience due the sovereign pontiff. When a more orthodox pope is elected, progressives will use the the same tools the movement now uses to justify itself: ever more careful, ever more subtle distinctions and grades of infallibility, and appeals to tradition). The modernists will deny the future orthodox pope’s authority in just the same way the recognize and resist movement denies the authority of the modernist popes. Recognize and resist sounds a lot like Protestantism (“we’ll accept the pope’s teaching when it agrees with our own teaching, and reject it when we disagree”). Not to mention that it reduces papal infallibility to a tautology. “The pope speaks infallibly when he says what is true; when he speaks what is false he is not speaking infallibly”. This applies to all people; my father, who was an atheist, was infallible in just exactly this same way. When my father spoke the truth, he spoke infallibly; when he did not speak the truth, he did not speak infallibly. Recognize and resist results in two parallel churches.
The sedevacantist movement loses the mark of catholicity. The logic is unassailable: the shepherds cannot dispense poison and heresy to the sheep; the Novus Ordo church does in fact dispense poison and heresy; therefore the Novus Ordo church is not the church, and her shepherds are not the shepherds of Christ’s flock. The consequence of losing the visible hierarchy and dissolving the universal church seems unacceptable.
I can’t picture a return to normality with any of these approaches. The revolutionary logic of the Novus Ordo will continue to play out and this church will continue to lose any resemblance to the church of St. Pius X. I see the recognize and resist movement becoming essentially Orthodox: valid apostolic succession, lip service to a common authority, and the different groups continuing to follow their own path. The sedevacantists will be like the Russian old believers.
I don’t see where the Church as a whole, or any of these three groups within the church, preserve the marks of unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. Clearly, the fact that I don’t see a path doesn’t mean no such path exists.
As a side note, this post-Vatican-II situation has distressing practical consequences, from Paul VI forcing several European countries to divest their Catholic nature and enshrine religious liberty in their constitutions, to Francis’ looting of convents and monasteries and his destruction of contemplative orders.
I strive to live according to the commandments, and I continue to pray for the church, the pope (even if he is an anti-pope) and the hierarchy, and I refuse to believe in or live by lies. This puts me solidly in the recognize and resist camp: I acknowledge the church hierarchy but refuse to live the faith in the way that virtually the entire hierarchy would like me to; I acknowledge the people that should have authority over me, but I refuse to accept their authority. This situation induces cognitive dissonance in me; I don’t see a path to live in a complete and genuine Catholic fashion.
thomas.august@devbeatitude.
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