Holy Cross Seminary

Frequently Asked Questions About Catholicism
Answered by Fr. Peter Scott

Question: Does the Society of Saint Pius X promote Nocturnal Adoration in the home?

Answer: The Society of Saint Pius X does indeed promote Nocturnal Adoration in the home. This apostolate is a part of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the Home, as promoted by Father Mateo Boevey-Crawley and by all of our priests However, it is not obligatory, but is an additional practice that very generous families will chose to offer to Our Lord. It consists of taking a nocturnal hour once a month, sometime between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., in order to make reparation to the Sacred Heart. Many mothers are involved in this apostolate of prayer and sacrifice, and that is why the Nocturnal Adoration is organized by the Catholic Mothers Exchange. However, not only mothers, but any Catholic can watch for an hour with Our Lord once a month. Contact information can be obtained from the District Office.

Question: Should a traditional Catholic plan his or her retirement?

Answer: The only true retirement is that of the eternal happiness of heaven, where the soul has the leisure to enjoy the goodness and holiness of the Most Holy Trinity, without any distraction or interruption at all. This is the retirement that a Catholic has to plan for, by his faithful accomplishment of the commandments of God, the precepts of the Church, the duties of his state, especially towards his family, by his fidelity to the true Mass, by the frequent reception of the sacraments, and his daily prayers, meditations, spiritual reading and rosaries.

However, retirement from the active workforce is also something that has to be planned. If not all of us will experience this privileged time, and many of us will be taken beforehand, it nevertheless has the potential of being the most serious, most profound,  most contemplative, most God-centered period of one’s life, as well as the most helpful for others. It is that period of life that most directly prepares for eternity. And yet for so many of the elderly, it is the emptiest and most aimless and meaningless time, without other goal than the temporary joy of the rapidly passing moments.

Plan then for a retirement, not to be spent in continual vacation, but in doing all those things that the necessities of work and family life previously made impossible. Try to live close to a traditional priest, so that you can attend daily Mass and devotions. Donate your time to charity, to teaching and helping out in schools, to work around the church, or being of assistance to poor families or widows. Stay close to your children, so that you can be of assistance in their own difficulties in raising their own children. Be the extended family that they need. Be the stabilizing influence, and the valuable asset that senior members of the community ought to be. Live in the present, and your experience from the past will be of value to the whole community. Use your leisure to teach true moral values and detachment, and you will fight against the feverish hyperactivity of our materialistic world. Use prudence in planning for the retirement years, that you might have the means to support yourself, that you might not be a burden on others. Yet at the same time remember that there is no purpose in heaping up huge mounds of savings for some far off time that might never come, for "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven" (Mt. 6:19, 20).

Question: Are the Masses of Thuc-line priests valid, and can we attend them?

Answer: I do not believe that there is a strong reason to doubt the validity of the episcopal consecrations performed by the exiled Vietnamese Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc. However, there are several lesser reasons, that might be considered sufficient to establish some kind of positive doubt in the matter. These include the absence of correct witnesses during the original ceremony of consecration, which was done in private, and in the middle of the night.

Also relevant is Thuc’s confused mental state, as evidenced by his public concelebration of the New Mass with the local Novus Ordo bishop of the diocese of Toulon, just one month before these consecrations in 1981. Also, the lack of conviction can be seen in the fact that twice he consecrated bishops illicitly and twice he requested absolution from the canonical punishment of excommunication. These frequent changes indicate that he was a man who, to say the least, lacked conviction about what he was doing. This is further confirmed by his failure to join the Coetus internationalis patrum, the traditional group of bishops at Vatican II, and by a certain liberal tendency that he showed during the Council, speaking out against discrimination directed towards women and in favor of ecumenism.. Consequently, although the logical thing would be to presume that he did have the intention of confecting the sacrament of Holy Orders, the absence of co-consecrators, and of a clear purpose, does open the door to some astonishment and doubt. Any doubt concerning the first bishops that he consecrated would clearly be passed on to any other bishops and priests ordained as a consequence.

The moral theologians say that we must hold to the "pars tutior", or safer position, when it concerns the sacraments. Consequently, in case of doubt, it would not be permissible to go to these priests for the sacraments, unless there was no other priest available, and in danger of death.

However, even were there no doubt at all as to validity, it would still not be permissible to assist at the Masses and receive the sacraments from priests of the Thuc line. For they all hold to the radical sedevacantist position that there is no Pope, and that if anybody says that there is a Pope, or that he is in communion with the Holy Father, then he is in communion with a heretic and a heretic himself. By maintaining such a position, which makes no distinctions, and takes no account of the confusion in the Church due to the breakdown of authority, they not only condemn every other Catholic to hell fire, but effectively separate themselves off from all other Catholics, and make themselves into a church of their own. They are truly schismatic. It is consequently entirely illicit to have any kind of association with them. As a consequence of their loss of the sense of the Church, they abandon all sense of hierarchy and structure in the Church. Any bishop can consecrate any other bishop at any time, without authority between them. These bishops constantly ordain to the priesthood men who have no preparation or training, who belong to no religious community, and who are consequently entirely independent of one another and all Church authority. Throwing all canonical norms out of the window, they effectively become just as protestant as the modernists they pretend to defend the Church against.

Question: Is it possible to state that the Pope has failed to completely transmit the deposit of the Faith without being a schismatic?

Answer: It is certainly true that the principal duty of the Roman Pontiff is to transmit the deposit of the Faith completely, as is taught by Vatican I: "For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth" (Pastor Aeternus, Db 1836).  However, if the Holy Ghost is invoked in this manner, and if this divine function of transmitting the deposit of Faith can only be done through the help of the Holy Ghost, this leaves it to be understood that there can be many human weaknesses in the exercise of the Papacy. This is manifest in the case of Popes who have not been as courageous as they should have been in the defense of the true Faith, such as Pope Liberius.

However, the holy council also teaches "that the See of St. Peter always remains unimpaired by any error, according to the divine promise of our Lord the Savior made to the chief of His disciples: ‘I have prayed for thee, that they faith fail not; (Lk 22:32)". (Ibid.) Note that it is not any one individual that is protected from error or heresy, but the See of St. Peter. This is why the theologians, such as St. Robert Bellarmine, argue about what would happen if the Pope would lose the Faith and become a heretic. This would of course be a terrible tragedy, but it is not impossible, since it is the See of St. Peter, and the infallible teachings of its Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium, which are protected from all error, and not any individual, nor even the Pope when he does not use the fullness of his teaching authority, that is, in his Authentic Magisterium.

Consequently, it is perfectly licit for us to acknowledge the obvious, namely that through the practice of ecumenism, and through the failure to clearly state such dogmas as the Social Kingship of Christ or that outside the Church there is no salvation, and to condemn the infiltration of modernism in every domain of the Church’s life, there have been severe defects in his personal responsibility for the transmission of the Faith. This does not, however, mean that the See of Peter has failed, for it cannot. A schismatic would be one who would maintain that the See of Peter has failed, and that it is no longer the center of visible unity in the Church, and not one who acknowledges the reality of the weaknesses and failures of the last four liberal Popes.

Question:  Is it true that the Church frowns on the use of Gothic vestments, preferring the Roman cut?

Answer:  It is true that when the so-called Gothic vestments appeared early this century, they were considered to be somewhat of a novelty, capable of causing undue surprise in the minds of the faithful. This was not infrequently because more attention was given to the archaic form than to the sacredness of the vestment. The mind of the Church before Vatican II is clearly expressed in this text of 1957, from the Sacred Congregation of Rites, quoted in Matters Liturgical, p. 207: "The older or mediaeval style of the Roman chasuble, popularly by erroneously called the Gothic chasuble, may be used with the permission of the local Ordinary. To his prudent judgment the matter is now committed. In making this judgment he is cautioned to consider local and other special circumstances, to have regard to the sanctity and decorum due to divine worship, and not to authorize this change from the present Roman practice except after consultation and mature deliberation. Especially should he careful to forbid such changes in the form of vestments as are likely to disturb or surprise the faithful".

Over the past 40 years the use of the so-called Gothic vestment has become universally accepted. However, there is a grave danger of the sacredness of this vestment being lost, which is what is responsible for the extremely distasteful modernist vestment, which have neither decoration nor symbolism. Consequently, there would no longer be any reason to disapprove of a "Gothic" vestment, so long as it is designed as a sacred vestment, with religious ornamentation, and with a cross on the back, symbolizing the sweet yoke of the cross that the priest must carry if he is to be filled with the all-encompassing charity that the chasuble, a little hut that entirely surrounds the body, symbolizes.

Fr. Nichols Gihr has this to say in The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, first published in 1877: "Originally the chasuble was an outer garment which fell about the priest and completely enveloped him. The chasuble had an opening in the middle by which it was allowed to come down on the shoulders. As these cloak- and bell-shaped chasuble had much about them which was inconvenient, they began in the eleventh century to shorten or open them at both sides for a freer use of the arms, and this alteration gave the form of the so-called Gothic chasubles, which were still common in the sixteenth century. Although from this period more and more was cut away from the chasuble, it yet remained up to the eighteenth century tolerably long and full of folds, but alas! since that time the vestment has been replaced by a chasuble of still shorter and less graceful pattern."

Question: I was told that the Church’s law permits Catholics to satisfy their Sunday obligation at a schismatic orthodox ceremony, and that this was the case both before and after Vatican II. Is this true?

Answer: The authority that you quote (Catholic Family Radio) defends the opinion that it was and is permitted to satisfy this obligation of assisting at Mass in a schismatic church before and after Vatican II. It quoted Canon 1258 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, and the shameful Canon 844 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law on the sharing of sacraments with non-Catholics.

However, I am sorry to inform you neither of these Canons is relevant to the question at stake.

To start with the 1917 Code, or pre-Vatican II practice, the Canon that you used to justify the possibility of satisfying the Sunday obligation at a schismatic orthodox church actually means exactly the opposite. Let me quote for you Canon 1258: "It is illicit for Catholics to assist actively in any way, or to take part in, the sacred worship of non-Catholics". Could there be a more explicit prohibition, and could there be any way of interpreting this as meaning that it is permissible to attend an orthodox, that is non-Catholic, ceremony?

However, there is another canon in the 1917 code of Canon Law that treats of the question more specifically. It is Canon 1249, which states that: "The precept of hearing Mass is fulfilled by being present at Mass celebrated in any Catholic rite..." . I cannot possibly see how any Catholic commentary on Canon Law could interpret "any Catholic rite" as including Orthodox ceremonies, since these are manifestly schismatic and not Catholic. The following is the commentary on this section of the Canon, taken from a standard textbook on the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Bouscaren & Ellis, p. 635): "The Mass may be celebrated in any Catholic rite; therefore an Oriental may satisfy the precept by hearing Mass according to the Latin rite, and a Latin by hearing it according to any of the Catholic Oriental rites". The schismatic Orthodox rites are consequently explicitly excluded from the fulfillment of the law, and a Catholic who assists at these ceremonies does not fulfill his Sunday obligation.

Despite all the changes that have taken place in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, this is in fact one thing that has not changed. The appropriate canon to refer to is not Canon 844, but Canon 1248, §1, which states that: "The precept of participating in the Mass is satisfied by assistance at a Mass which is celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite..." Consequently, as before, the presence at a schismatic non-Catholic orthodox ceremony does not satisfy the Sunday precept. It is true that Canon 844, §2 authorizes Catholics to receive valid sacraments from heretical or schismatic non-Catholic ministers, but this is a betrayal of the unity of the Church. However, it nowhere states that this constitutes a satisfaction of the Church’s precept for Sunday and holy days. It is one of the many contradictions that ecumenism injected into the modernist code of Canon Law.

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