Tag Archives: Bennyvacantism

Canon Law, Editorials

From straw man to superstition

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By Br. Alexis Bugnolo

I have watched Steve Skojek’s argumentation over the last 14 months go from straw man arguments, to unreasoning blather, to insults and vicious invective against almost anyone who would point out the unreasonableness of his approach to the problems with the Declaratio of Pope Benedict XVI and its consequences in the Church.

And I have kept silent about it, except for a passing comment here and there, here at FromRome.Info, because I am not concerned with nit picking the sophistries of immature people who do not have the intellectual or moral integrity to discuss something honestly as an adult. I am concerned with the truth of history in this matter, not in the sense of what people might write about it now or in the future, but in the sense of what really did happen, and what it really does mean in canonical and theological terms.

But as Skojec’s private magisterium has become a personal superstition and grows daily among some minds as a cult of superstition, I consider it necessary to say something, because I want every one to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. And for this, error must be refuted, by all who can ably refute it.

So I will broach this topic by commenting on some twitter conversations, the screen shots I was given. Here Steve comments on two groups, as he calls them, the Sedevacantists and the Bennyvacantists. Steve says he did not invent the latter term, but he keeps using it as a 13 yr old petulant school-boy uses a phrase he thinks is cool, but which makes him appear in reality stupid. Because by the term, Steve thinks he is referring to those who hold that Pope Benedict is still the pope, but the term obviously refers to those who think that Benedict vacated the see. So the term really refers to himself. The other term, for those who do not know, refers to those who think there have been no popes since Pius XII. — So of these 2 groups, Steve says:

Screenshot_2020-02-04 Steve Skojec on Twitter JZmirak chesterbelloc3 I think if the Catholic Church's claims were ever some[...]

Steve, if my sources are correct, has admitted to taking one introductory course to Canon Law at Steubenville, where he graduated. My sources tell me that Steve also cannot read the Code of Canon Law, because he does not read Latin. So he reads it, when he does, in the English translation, which, as I have mentioned many times, is both not authoritative and full of errors. As far as I know, also, Steve has never tried to investigate the matter further than his limit of knowledge and has not gone to Rome to speak with anyone about the questions of law or fact. — I have it that he corresponds or at least knows Ryan Grant, whom I showed the other day does not know the basic principles of Canon Law. Ryan, himself, though he is a published translator, is not a very good one. The passages I have examined in his translation of Saint Alphonsus have more than one error in every sentence, and hence I conclude they are worthless for anyone to use.

For this reason, I think that Steve’s first tweet, above, is very honest. I do not think he has the intellectual preparation to see the differences or appreciate them. Even if he knew what they are. Sedevacantists are a group of individuals who do not care about the Church in the least. They only care about condemning others so that like Jansenists they can revel in a being better than everyone else kind of spirit.  Catholics, on the other hand, when they encounter schism and heresy, do something about it, by either trying to reconcile the parties involved or seeking their canonical solutions, because their love is for the Church and for the salvation of souls.

That is why, if you love the Church, you can probably see the difference between Sedevacantists and Catholics. It is not just an argument over what was said by so and so and whether that is heretical or not. Though, Sedes nearly always get this wrong, because they have an animus to find fault where not as much fault is found as they would want, in order to continually justify themselves as better than everyone else.

Catholics, concerned about the canonical problems in the Declaratio of Pope Benedict XVI, are obviously not interested at all in themselves, they are interested solely in the good of the entire Church and solving the problems at the root. To deny that is merely a glib ad hominem of a person who cares nothing for the Church and has no consideration for the possibility that his fellow man might actually care for the common good of the Church. His desire, rather, is always to put him down, because that is the only way to prove his superiority.

In his next, tweet Steve recites his straw man argument, which he brings out and dangles about like a shaman does with the bones of a dead man, before reciting an incantation on cue.  Steve has been shown by many interlocutors over the past year that the opinion of John of Saint Thomas about universal acceptance refers to a canonical election, not to a doubtful or uncanonical election — taking doubt here in the objective positive sense. — So his continued appeal to universal acceptance is simply dishonest. And his continued use of it as a dogma is superstition.

At this point A. J. Baalman shares a series of tweets, drawing on the commentary on Canons 332, 187 and 188 made by Cathy Caridi on her blog, Canon Law Made Easy, which I reviewed yesterday.  A. J. says:

Screenshot_2020-02-04 Steve Skojec on Twitter AjBaalman chesterbelloc3 But if there is such doubt about this centuries-old [...]

Notice how Steve brings out his straw man, again, and rattles it in the air, as if by such an incantation you can participate in a rational argument. He omits the word “canonical” in front of “papal” once again, to make it seem more supportive of his position. But here he goes one step further. There can be no question of an problematic papal election so long as it was accepted. No need to investigate. — I do not know what others might thing about such a line of reasoning, but it sounds to me the kind of thing a canon lawyer working for the Lavender Mafia might use, because it really aids and abets almost any possible course of corruption and interference in a papal election, as to defy rational explanation. No honest man can reason thus.

A. J., counters and insists on an investigation, and Steve responds:

Screenshot_2020-02-04 Steve Skojec on Twitter AjBaalman chesterbelloc3 But if there is such doubt about this centuries-old [...](1)

Steve says an investigation should be done, but it won’t be completed in the life time of the Pope or of Bergoglio. That is a very bold claim coming from someone who is not an investigator and who has shown no inclination to examine the facts already presented in the historical record. It is also another attempt at gaslighting, because it takes about 5 seconds to see the Renunciation is invalid.

Because all you have to do is 1) see that the Latin of Canon 332 §2 says munus, and that the Latin of the Declaratio says ministerium, and 2) recognize that what you do not renounce, you keep.

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Anthropology

The War of 2 Tongues

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The Child Jesus preaching in the Temple.

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

The purpose of human language is to communicate truth.

This is saying which is agreed upon by nearly every member of humanity. But we often forget how profound its implications are.

Saint Thomas says, that the truth of which we speak here, is the right relation between the human mind and reality as it is.  The discovery of truth, then, is the discovery of the right way to understand the reality which is around us or inside us.

But we often forget the other word in this universal definition of human language: communicate.  “Communicate” is word which comes from the Latin verb meaning “to build up together” or to “to share gifts with one another”.  In the definition of human language we see the profound social aspect of speaking and its goals on the level of society: sharing and the promotion of the perfection of one another.  The communication of truth therefore is the fulfillment of the inherent goals both of communication and of truth.

What I have just written could be called the philosophical or anthropological principles of human language. Not just of any one particular human language, but of all human language.

The other tongue

An individual human language is also called a “tongue” from the fact that each language requires for its proper enunciation a way of enunciation which is habitual and requires the tongue which speaks it to adapt accordingly.

But there is another sense of the word, “tongue”, which I want to employ here: this is the sense in which the word means not one kind of human speech, but an entire different philosophy or definition of human language.

Because just as human language according to its natural or proper definition is a set of spoken sounds, which can be recorded in written forms, for the sake of communicating truth, so, if one changes the final purpose of human language, one, as it were, gives birth to an entirely different tongue, on account its altered purpose.

And such a tongue exists. And it has a name, not from its human author, but analogously from the first being which used communication for another purpose: Satan.

Satanic language is a system of communication for the purpose of sharing falsehood, and not for building up or the sharing of gifts, but for tearing down and theft and robbery, and ultimately for murder.  As Christ said of its author:  “Who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning” (cf. John chapter 8: read this whole chapter to see both Tongues at work)

This other tongue, since it is not creative except of deception — as it has no other reason for being — uses the words of human language and creates new words which serve to hide the lie under the appearance of truth.  We can easily recognize these lying words, because of their novelty, and not just any novelty, but a novelty used to overthrow the words which have been used from the beginning.

Every tongue gives birth to its own Culture

Now it is a fact of reality and a truth of anthropology that every unique tongue gives rise to  unique culture. This is because the language according to which we speak is the default form for our way of thinking and perceiving.  And hence every language gives birth to its own culture: every language, not only in the sense of modes of human speech, but also in the sense of which I speak here, of the two purposes of speech.

The summit and perfection, the culmination and fulfillment of every language finds itself and its salvation in Christ, and in particular, in the preaching of the Gospel, the good news, which is the greatest gift we can share verbally and the greatest truth we can communicate.

The characteristic of a human language which is thus baptized is that it means what it says and says what it means, and both in the most profound way. We see this in Sacred Scripture, where though the Hebrew Language was chosen by God to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah, it speaks in vagaries and in a dark and obscure manner, quite unlike the Koine Greek which the Apostles sanctified for the preaching of the Gospel, which reveals clearly and openly the Salvation which comes from the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of the Father. Shadow passes to light, figure and prophecy to reality and fulfillment.

This is true even on the historical level. Because in very many such cultures, it was the preaching of the Gospel which gave rise to the historical forms of their human languages or at least fixed them in written form as a monument to the ages, and provided a millennial bridge from one generation to the next for the preservation of meaning and signification.  We can see this especially in the Latin language, which once understood can grasp the meaning of what writers from the 5th century before Christ to the 19th century after the birth of Christ are saying.  We see this especially in languages which had their birth or genesis after the preaching of the Gospel, as for example, English, a language which in its present form knew not disbelief until disbelief was introduced from another land.

The tongue of Satan also gives rise to its own culture. We can see this in the way those who oppose the Gospel have ever acted: denying the plain meaning of words, denying that words have meaning, denying that words mean things different than other words.  This attack on human language is a necessary technique of that Tongue which serves to break down the other by the employment of deception.

This technique gave rise to a false and misleading way of reading the Old Testament, so as to convince all who read it to deny that Christ was its fulfillment. It created an entire commentary on the Old Testament filled with vain and false tales and strange and novel doctrines which aimed all with that same purpose.  This way of denying Scripture gave birth to a sect in which attacking the good and attacking Christianity was a practiced habit of mind and speech.

All peoples, however, who abandon Jesus Christ and all groups who reject Him, must follow in the same path, because you cannot reject Incarnate Truth without attacking the truth incarnate in every word and speech or thought of mind.

Thus we see this Other Tongue in action in the errors of Nominalism (the philosophical position which says that words do not name anything real), Modernism (the theological heresy which holds that everything in religion comes from sentiment, not God) and the global push for a new form of humanity, divorced from reality and wantonly joined to unnatural falsehoods.

This war of two tongues is most evident in the fight to defend the life of children in the womb and at birth. The entire maniacal and diabolic industry of death and genocide makes its every move on the turn of the meaning of an old word or the invention of a new word to conceal their murderous intent.

Another recent example of this war is the recent study by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, in which the destruction of Sodom is insisted to be a punishment for a lack of hospitality not for a lack of chastity. Still another, is seen in the verbal gymnastics used to insist that Benedict resignation were valid or conformable to the Code of Canon Law also gives rise to entirely new words (Bennyvacantism) used to conceal lies and entirely new ways of reading Canon Law (munus = ministerium), Catholic Doctrine (infallibility does not prevent a heretical pope), or the Bible (the Gates will not prevail means they can succeed some times), which are invented solely for one purpose, to deny the truth.

The war between Satan and Saint Michael the Archangel began with a war of communication with entirely two different tongues. The war of cultures among men also has its source in a war of Two Tongues. I hope, therefore, that this post enables you to discern these Two Tongues and these Two Cultures better. Of them Saint Augustine wrote eloquently in his Book on the City of God, in which he spoke of Two cities: one founded on the love of God unto the contempt of all other things, and the other founded upon the love of self unto the contempt of God.