Our next speaker is Father Gregory Hess. He came to us all the way from Vienna, Austria. He has a doctorate in Thomistic theology and canon law, and he was also personal secretary to Cardinal Stickler for some time. I understand he’s gonna tell us a little more about himself before his speech, and so I think the best thing to do is to bring him right in. There’s a new concept today of what’s called living tradition, what is used to supposedly justify the changes, and Father Hess is going to explain why living tradition is a false concept and what is the true concept of sacred tradition. So I’ll bring to the microphone Father Gregory Hess. (audience clapping)

Thank you.

All right, many people have asked me, „Who is this Father Hess?‟ Well, Father Hess was born in Vienna, Austria in 1953, and Father Hess went to Rome in 1976 to study for the priesthood. In those days, I still believed that it was possible to live within the Conciliar Church, or as John Paul II calls it, the Church of the New Advent. I found out to the contrary later. I was ordained in St. Peter’s Basilica the 21st of November 1981, which accounts for the violet buttons and the violet sash in my dress. I’m not a monsignor. But in 1635, the good pope, Urban VIII Barbarini, gave the privilege to the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome that whosoever was ordained within that same basilica enjoyed all the privileges of a monsignor except the title. I thank Pope Urban VIII for that. And in 1991, I went back to Vienna, Austria after 15 years in Rome. I was indeed secretary, the private secretary, to Cardinal Stickler between 1986 and 1988. In 1988, we both were retired, he because of age, me because of orthodoxy. And well, here I am, and I returned to the true, authentic Catholic Church around the year 1991, when I decided to forget modernisms and to fight them for the rest of my life.

Now, before I start this speech today, I want to update you on some of the newest jokes which you can see on the billboards of Protestant churches. K-Mart is not the only saving place. And here’s another one. I was going to waste. Jesus recycled me. Isn’t that good? Somebody should write a book on the billboard quotations of Protestant churches. He has risen.

Now, in my speech today, I’m going to criticize the Pope, and I will reject some of his teachings. But I do not reject his teaching authority. As long as he is Pope, he enjoys the teaching authority, and he also has what you call the imperium. He has the right to command. He is our supreme commander.

The next thing is, what is heresy? Heresy means you reject not the Church as such, but you reject one of its teachings, or many. It is absolutely sufficient to reject one single pronouncement of the Magisterium to be a heretic.

Now, what does it mean, something is valid or licit? Sometimes I hear people complaining to me that I said that the new Mass was valid, or can be valid. Now, validity means that something is actually taking place. Now, when somebody in the traditional spirit says the new mass in Latin, a mass is taking place, the sacrament is taking place. It happens. That means it is valid, but it is not licit. It is not allowed. You see? Valid and licit are two things that most people confuse. Valid means it’s taking place. Licit means it’s allowed. Now, as Father Kramer will explain to you on Sunday, the new mass is definitely illicit, it’s against divine law, and we must not accept it. But the validity is another question.

Now, the distinctions. Objective, subjective. Most people confuse that. Material, formal. They confuse that, too. And they don’t know what act and potency means. I will explain all of it. I’ve already taken one of the distinctions when talking about validity and licity. Now, objective/subjective. See, I’m pronouncing… Today, I’m pronouncing judgment on the Pope, on the present Pope. Do I pronounce judgment on his person? No. And whoever dares to say that I pronounce a personal judgment on the present Pope is guilty of the sin of slander. I do not judge the person of John Paul II, the person of Carlo Wojtyła. Period. I have absolutely no way of being able to look into his interior. (Latin). The Church does not judge internal things. I refuse to give any speculative answer to the question if this pope doesn’t know better or wants to destroy the Church. I’m not interested. I don’t care if this present pope wants to destroy the Church or if he’s just naive and doesn’t know what he’s doing. I don’t care. I’m looking at results. I’m not judging the person. I’m not judging any person. I’m also not judging the person of Leo the 13th, whom I love very much. But I’m not judging his person. I believe he’s in heaven. But that’s of no consequence to what we’re talking about here. I am pronouncing objective judgment. Objective means looking at the object, at the reality of things. Subjective means looking at the subject, at the person. See, this is the reason why we are not allowed to pronounce personal judgments. We do not know what is going on the inside and in the conscience of another person. That is subjective, a judgment we are not allowed to make. But objectively, we can judge facts, quotations, and actions, which is what I’m going to do today.

Most people get confused with material and formal. This is the segment in which there was a technical problem with the master recording. And it was here that Father Hess explained the important distinction between formal and material heresy. He explained it by way of an example like this: if a Catholic layman, priest, theologian, bishop, or even pontiff would say, quote, „In accordance with tradition, and in accordance with past papal teaching, I tell you that Protestants can be saved in their religion,‟ close quote, this would make the person who says this a material heretic. Since he somehow believes that he is in accordance with traditional Catholic teaching, he is not a formal heretic, but only what he says is heretical. Now, on the other hand, if a Catholic layman, priest, theologian, bishop, or even pontiff would say, quote, „Contrary to what Pope Eugene the Fourth taught at the Council of Florence, I tell you that Protestants can be saved in their own religion,‟ close quote, then the person who says this would be an objective formal heretic because he is knowingly and willingly contradicting the dogmatic truths of the Catholic faith. Next, Father Hess explained the distinction between act and potency. Act and potency are the two basic terms of the entire Thomistic philosophy. And we resume the lecture with Father Hess explaining these two terms by giving the example of a modern theologian who teaches that through Christ, all men are saved.

… says that through our Lord Jesus Christ, all men are saved. Is that true? Yes, it is. But not as such. You can’t let it stand the way it stands. You see? He says all men are saved in potency. Potentially they’re all saved. Possibly they’re all saved. The probability is highly against it. But possibly. What would you think of me if I said to you right now, I am Pope? Is it true? Oh, yeah. Potentially. The probability is zilch, but potentially, I am Pope. So you see what I mean? When you talk about potency, you have to say so. See, there’s a usage in language. Even in, not just in the American Heritage Dictionary, which very, in a very good way, presents the English language in its usage in the United States. There is a usage in theological talk, in theological speak. And according to the usage of all the past centuries, you have to say when something is only such in potency. See, I’m in potency. I am in act, in actu in Latin. In act, I am a priest. I am a man. And in potency, I am a natural father of children. Won’t happen to me, rest assured. I mean, I’ll try my best. But in potency, I’m also Pope. Now, you would call a psychiatrist if I was going to insist that I’m Pope, right? He says that all men are saved, he’s pronouncing heresy according to the usage of language.

Now, first we have, before I start anything on tradition whatsoever, we have to establish the authority of papal documents. I’m holding here a copy of the encyclical letter, Humani Generis by Pope Pius the 12th, who says… See, some people today talk about a hierarchy of truth. This is not the place and the time today to explain the real Catholic meaning of the hierarchy of truth. What they mean is, there are truth that we may sacrifice in the dialogue with the Protestants. Now, of course, I don’t have to tell you what truckloads this is, but there is a hierarchy of papal authority in the sense. When the Pope or a council pronounce something, they feed as a dogma. It has to be accepted by every Catholic in an assent of faith. That means it’s not sufficient for a Catholic to say, „Okay, all right. I can take that.‟ You have to give it the assent of faith. That means you have to believe it. See, faith is not something left to our free decision. In that case, we go back to those Kmart chapels, you know? We have to accept it in faith. But then when the Pope pronounces something in the ordinary, not the extraordinary, but the ordinary magisterium, we have to obey. That doesn’t mean we have to believe it, but we have to obey unless we are able to contradict what the Pope says in his ordinary teaching by quoting his predecessors, not some theologians. Don’t you ever dare to contradict Pope John Paul II quoting Father Hess. Don’t. I do not have the authority to correct a Pope. I am correcting the Pope, the present Pope today and tomorrow with his predecessors and the councils, not with theologians. Theologians do not have that authority. That’s granted only to Peter.

And here, Pius the 12th says, „Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in encyclical letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such letters, the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their teaching authority, for these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority of which it is true to say, ‚He who heareth you, heareth me.’ And generally what is expounded and inculcated in encyclical letters already for other reasons pertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to the time under dispute, it is obvious that the matter, according to the mind and the will of the same pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.‟ To explain to you what this means, when Paul VI was asked, when John Paul II was asked for the first time if it is possible to ordain women, he said, „This is not a question that is any more open to the discussion of theologians.‟ Now, the moment he said that, he was indeed talking according to tradition. But what happens if the present Pope contradicts the ordinary teaching of his predecessors? Very simple. There cannot be any, ever, any contradiction whatsoever within the ordinary teaching of the church. So if Pius XI in his encyclical Mortalium Animos condemned ecumenism, and the present Pope, as John Vennari explained today, desires ecumenism and preaches ecumenism, the present Pope is just simply wrong. That’s it, period. I mean, there were bad Popes before. There were heretics before. We had three heretical Popes before 1958 already. I’m going to talk about that later.

Now, the question Dei Filius or Dei Verbum, that is a question that arises the moment you read a very famous document, and the only short document ever coming from the present Pope: the apostolic letter of John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei. The 30th of June 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, against the explicit wish of the Pope, consecrated four bishops. He did not establish a new hierarchy with this because he did not give any jurisdiction to the four bishops. As a matter of fact, he himself explains very well that he consecrated those four bishops in order that they can ordain Catholic priests. Because in the regular average seminary of the Church of the New Advent, nobody can become a priest unless he admits to Vatican II and the Novus Ordo of mass. And the only place where you do not have to accept Vatican II or the new rite of mass in the United States is Winona. So the day after, the Pope issued a two-page-only document for the first time in his career. Usually, he writes some 100 pages or what. I do not have the time tonight to talk about the canonical errors in this document, so I will talk about the dogmatic error.

„The root of this schismatic act,‟ he calls the consecration of the four bishops a schismatic act. He says this by its nature is schismatic. In its nature, it’s equal to the refusal of papal authority. That is against the entire tradition of Catholic moral theology. The church has never, in its history, considered an illegitimate consecration a schismatic act. The church has, as a matter of fact, until 1949, punished an illegitimate consecration of bishops with suspension of the holy duties, not with excommunication. But the sin of schism, by itself, requires excommunication as a penalty. So, the Pope is contradicting moral theology. He’s contradicting the accepted and traditional moral theology of the Catholic Church. This is why he says now, „The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of tradition. Incomplete because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of tradition, which as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit, there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience.‟ Uh, I think this is one of the worst documents in church history. He’s quoting, verbatim, the number eight of Dei Verbum. Dei Verbum is the dogmatic constitution on sacred scripture, on the interpretation of sacred scripture of Vatican II. Now, John XXIII said that Vatican II was a pastoral council that did not want to define anything. Paul VI said that Vatican II was a pastoral council that didn’t want to define anything. Now, this pope comes up and says, „The doctrine of Vatican II.‟ But there is a doctrine in Vatican II, yes. Whenever Vatican II quotes the old councils and former popes, which happens rare enough, whenever Vatican II does that, Vatican II is quoting the doctrine of the Church. But when Vatican II exposes some new doctrines, mind you, I didn’t call it new doctrines, the Pope does. When Vatican II exposes new doctrine, Vatican II just simply doesn’t have any authority whatsoever.

See, the Pope says in number 5B of the same document, „Moreover, I should like to remind theologians and other experts in ecclesiastical sciences that they should feel called upon to answer in the present circumstances. Indeed, the extent and depth of the teaching of Second Vatican Council call for a renewed commitment to deeper study in order to reveal clearly the council’s continuity with tradition, especially in points of doctrine which perhaps because they are new, have not yet been well understood by some sections of the church.‟ So the Pope admits that there are new doctrines in Vatican II. You will see that this, as a matter of fact, shows that he does not understand his own authority, because Vatican I defined Constitutio Dogmatica Prima Pastor Aeternus de Ecclesia Christi of the 18th of July 1870. In the fourth chapter defining the papal infallibility, it says, Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus Sanctus promissus est, ut eo revelante, novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente, traditam per Apostolos revelationem, seu fidei depositum, sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent, which in English means… Oh, this is because this speech is going to be printed, you see? And I want people to have it in Latin. „For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by his revelation they might make known a new doctrine, but that by his assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the apostles.‟ That’s a lousy translation. It says in the Latin, „Fideliter exponere et sancte custodire.‟ That means they have to watch over the doctrine saintly, and they have to explain it faithfully. They are not allowed to explain or reveal new doctrines. And the present Pope is talking about the new doctrines of Vatican II. The Pope is referring to a definition of tradition that puts it in the hands of the faithful to develop tradition.

Now, tomorrow, I can’t go into this right now, because tomorrow I’m going to talk about St. Pius X’s famous encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, against modernists. And I’m going to explain to you in detail how the modernists think, and why it is possible that modernists can, for some perverted reason, reconcile the traditional concept of tradition with the concept of tradition exposed, expounded in Vatican II.

And then it says, again, Vatican I, in the decree on faith and reason, „For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity…‟ So we cannot perfect it. „… but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ.‟ In the average usage of language, a deposit is a deposit. It’s not ever-growing. „To be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained, which our Holy Mother of the Church has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them.‟ This is in direct contradiction to the definition of tradition in Dei Verbum. And now, Vatican I is quoting St. Vincent of Lérins. „Let then the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each and all, of individuals and the whole Church, in all ages and all times, increase and flourish in abundance and vigor, but simply in its own proper kind. That is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one and the same judgment.‟ It’s a lousy translation again. We have to go back to the Latin. I’m sorry. I’m quoting just the last paragraph, St. Vincent of Lérins. „Crescat igitur et multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatum ac saeculorum gradibus intelligentia, scientia, sapientia, sed in suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia.‟ The important thing here is eodem sensu, in the same sense, eademque sententia, in the same sentence. That means judgment. Same sense, same meaning. There cannot be an improvement of meaning or a growth of meaning. There can only be a deeper understanding in the same sense.

Example, for 1,853 years, a Catholic was not a heretic when he said that Our Lady was not immaculately conceived. He was in error. He was not a real heretic because it was not a defined dogma of the Church. It was part of tradition, though. Now, Pope Pius IX, servant of God, pronounced Immaculate Conception as a solemn dogma. Did that change anything in the tradition? No. It just provided a deeper and final understanding of what Immaculate Conception means. And in the future, future popes will have the right to interpret the Immaculate Conception in the same sense and in the same judgment. One day perhaps in the future, a pope will explain to us if the Immaculate Conception is to be understood with animation at the same time or not. If it means that Our Lady was immaculately conceived, which means that she got the soul already in the moment of conception, that would provide a deeper understanding. But it doesn’t change the tradition, it doesn’t change the sentence of the dogma, it doesn’t change the sententia, the judgment of the dogma. And we needed 1,950 years until we finally could give our assent of faith, and had to give our assent of faith to the bodily assumption of Our Lady into heaven. That wasn’t changing anything. The Church has always believed that. The apostles were witnesses to that. They found an empty grave and a lot of lilies growing. So where did she go? So the Catholic Church knew from the very beginning that Our Lady was assumed into heaven as a singular exception in mankind. Well-deserved, I say. It didn’t change anything. Tradition doesn’t change.

What is then this sensus fidelium, the sense of the faithful, the understanding of the faithful? The same Saint Vincent of Lérins, whom I quoted before, says, „The sensus fidelium, the sense of the faithful, in the sense that a faith that was believed, semper, ubique, ab omnibus, always, everywhere, by everybody.‟ With other famous church fathers, you will have the sense of the faithful explained as something that comes from the sense of faith, and is the universal adherence of the faithful to the teachings in matters of faith and morals. It is a gift of God which has to do with the subjective reality of the faith, and gives the whole Church the assurance of an indefectible faith. The whole Church, mind you. It is a strength, an almost instinctive power to know the truth revealed by God, adhere to it, discern it, and penetrate it in all of its amplitude. It certainly is not a religious sentiment of the modernist type. „It is a knowledge by assimilation, adaptation, conformity, or conaturalness.‟ So this definition we would add in the spirit of St. Vincent of Lérins, but it also is a special affinity with everything that Holy Church has taught over the centuries in a uniform and consistent manner, uniform and consistent manner. That excludes Vatican II totally. And which has always stirred up enthusiasm in the best that could be found among the faithful. Now how enthusiastic the people are today about Vatican II you can see easily. The churches are empty. (microphone thumps) And people leave the Church by hundreds every day. That’s the enthusiastic approval of the great Second Pentecost.

Now, the sensus fidelium might once again save the Church. People like you, because you’re here to hear the truth. I don’t think you came here to have the entertainment of your life. Might as well watch Tom Clancy’s Red October. You came here to hear the truth. You want the approval of your sensus fidelium if you have it. And it might be the so-called traditionalist, I don’t like that term because we do not follow an ism, we follow the Catholic doctrine. That means we are not traditionalists, we are simply Catholics who believe in the one baptism, the one faith, and the one Church. We do not believe in several churches. And who cares if you’re baptized anyway? We do not believe that. No baptism, no salvation. No church, no salvation. No faith, no salvation. Period.

Three times before in history, there are magnificent examples on how the sensus fidelium, the real grasp of tradition, saved the Church. The first time was under the heretical Pope Liberius. That was in, I have a bad memory for years. Well, 4th century anyway, when Pope Liberius fell for the Arian heresy that said that Christ our Lord was not divine. A pope, mind you, until Liberius, all popes are canonized. Liberius was the first one who was not canonized. But St. Athanasius, who fought the Pope, and who disobeyed the Pope publicly like Archbishop Lefebvre did, St. Athanasius was canonized. And who saved the church at the time? The Pope didn’t, the bishops didn’t. As usual, the bishops had other problems and went with the Pope into the heresy. The people saved it. The simple faithful who rejected the new heresy.

The second example is with Pope Honorius. Pope Honorius believed that Christ had only one will. That’s not true, of course, because otherwise He would either not be God or not man. Christ was fully God and fully man, and still is. So He has His divine will. A person without will is not a person. And He had His will as a human being. So there were two wills in Christ. Otherwise, how would it be possible that Christ was obedient? If he could not submit His human will to the divine will, He could not be obedient. But Pope Honorius I said, „I don’t believe that.‟ So the people went mad against him. That was the old days in Rome. To show you how the old days in Rome were, in 595, my patron saint, Saint Gregory the Great, dared to add a few words to the Roman Canon of Mass. At the moment when the priest stretches out his hands and says, (Latin), he put in the words, (Latin), that you may dispose our days in your peace. The people of Rome almost killed him. They said, „How dare you touch the canon? What’s the matter with you?‟ Imagine how the people of Rome in those days would have reacted to the new order of mass. Paul VI, zip. He would not have survived it. This is the sensus fidelium. Now, Pope Honorius was a heretic and the people said, „Come on. We don’t buy that.‟

The third example, in 1332, Pope John XXII said that the souls of the faithful cannot have beatific vision before the Last Judgment. And he said that the souls of the damned will not go to hell before the Last Judgment. That’s a heresy. But he said it. And you know what? He wrote that down. He preached it and he wrote it. And when his writings were read to the most reverend professors of the University of Paris, those professors got up and left. Said, „We don’t want to hear that. That’s garbage.‟ And when the people heard about it, they just went like that. They thought they had a granola bar pope, and they had. As nutty as a fruitcake until the day of his death, when he took back that horrible heresy. Only the last day of his life, he took back that heresy. But the people never accepted it. Oh, some wise guys did, as usual, and some theologians, of course, but generally the people didn’t. You see, this is the sensus fidelium. We had three heretical popes in history. All three times, it was the simple people who saved the ship.

And with this sensus fidelium, at the same time, I give you a sermon, because I appeal to your sensus fidelium. Don’t let any of your vainglorious opinions keep you from the sensus fidelium. You will never lose the sensus fidelium as long as in your heart and your mind you agree automatically with what the church taught before 1958. In the old days, the people knew, instinctively knew in their sensus fidelium that they would not have the right to accept heresies even if they were coming from a pope. I think you know the following quotation. „But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.‟ Saint Paul. So, we don’t have an angel giving us a new doctrine which we have to reject, but we have a pope who does so. See, this is another reason why I said we do not have the right to judge a person, because how do we know why John Paul II became the way he is? He didn’t have a good seminary. He wasn’t lucky as I was to have the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas on his bookshelf. He was taught long before he decided to become a priest, he was taught some very evil doctrines by the theater group he joined that was founded by a certain Helena Blavatsky of the Anthroposophists. That’s a very, very evil and satanic spirit. So we can’t judge the man, but we can judge the pope. And as far as his papal pronouncements are concerned, I’ve given you a vivid example of what can happen if a pope ignores the basic doctrines of philosophy, which is the doctrine of act and potency in Saint Thomas Aquinas, which I have explained before.

You see, the title of my talk is Tradition. But here, the Pope throws out the window not only the concept of tradition itself, but the tradition of moral theology, the tradition of legal understanding in the Church, the tradition of legal judgments in the Church, the tradition of canon law, in short. He disregards his own canon law, he disregards his predecessors and their dogmatic pronouncements, and he disregards his predecessors and their ordinary Magisterium. This is against the Sensus Fidelium. It is against tradition. It is against what the Church teaches, and it’s against anything that we know as Catholic.

And what does the traditionalist-minded Catholic, which means simply the Catholic, do? You ignore him. You do not deny his authority if you want to stay in the Church. You pray for him. Please do. I will so in a few minutes on the altar, ‚cause I am not a schismatic and I’m not a sedevacantist. Pray for the Pope, but don’t listen to what he says. Don’t reject it for a principle that would make you a schismatic again. Reject it because you do not, you have not studied theology to distinguish of what is right and wrong in his writings. Most of the things he says may be correct. There’s a lot of blah blah in his writings. Lots of blah blah. Lots of it. Truckloads of it. But then you do not have the capacity or the authority to distinguish between what is right and wrong in his documents. Now, in Church tradition, a document that contains a single error will finish on the index on the list of forbidden books. And I propose that we all, in our minds, put the entire Vatican II and the encyclicals of the present pope on the index. Most of them contain errors or heresies. I will quote only one here. „The spirit of Christ does not refrain to give salvation to the efforts of Protestant churches.‟ That’s a heresy against what Pope Eugene IV defined in 1441 at the Council of Florence when he said, „Nobody who is in heresy or schism can be saved under no circumstances, even if he thinks that he is shedding his blood for Christ.‟ Objectively speaking, of course. Doesn’t mean that everybody’s in hell. Objectively speaking, again. I underline that. But the Pope, again, objectively speaking, says the spirit of Christ does not refrain from giving salvation to the efforts of the Protestant Church. If he had said that one or the other Protestant might be saved, notwithstanding his membership in a heretical church, okay, possible. Not very probable, possible. But Christ Himself cannot give salvation to the efforts of heretical and schismatic churches. So you just stick to what the Popes said up to Pius XII, who was the last Pope whose documents are free of error, completely free of error. I’m not pronouncing a personal judgment, neither on the Pope nor coming from my person. I just check with his predecessors. If a Pope dares to contradict the predecessor in matters of faith and moral, I am not allowed to follow him. Saint Thomas Aquinas says so. Most of the saints said so. And some Popes have indicated the possibility that successors might be heretics. St. Pius, very soon, I hope, Pius IX, I wanted to say, Pius IX, servant of God, in a letter to the Bishop of Brixen in 1869 said, „If a future Pope pronounces heresy, you just don’t follow him.‟ And that’s what I repeat here. It’s not Father Gregory Hess speaking. It’s Pope Pius IX speaking. If there is a Pope who pronounces heresy, you do not follow him. But at the same time, please do not deny that he’s Pope. You only complicate things. And the sedevacantists based themselves on a misconception of the value of pronouncements in an papal encyclical, which is something going a little bit too far for today.

Keep faithful to tradition. Retain and hang on to your sensus fidelium. Reject the concept of living tradition. And whatever else I couldn’t say today, it will be filled in tomorrow with my speech about St. Pius X and tradition and modernism, quoting and reading to you parts of Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the famous encyclical condemning modernism. And you won’t believe what a prophetical document that is. So, in a few moments, I will say Holy Mass, and I will offer up today’s mass for John Paul II. (applause) I take this applause for the Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. Thank you. (applause)