And you really look well this year. You really look great. Really, very young.

That’s what they always say when somebody is sick apart (laughs) with diabetes and you know what. (laughs) Yeah. (laughs) But thanks anyway. (laughs)

Yeah. But you’re feeling great, right?

Yes.

Yeah. Um, in the United States, the people who contact me are having a hard time trying to figure out where is the Catholic faith? Right. Does it reside in Rome? Does it reside with the pope? Uh, does it reside where? They must obey Vatican II. It was a council.

No.

What, what do you mean no?

Well, I’ll explain.

Go ahead. Thank you.

Now, this is the whole point. The pope is absolutely bound to tradition, he’s not the master of tradition. Therefore, it is absolutely not sufficient to speak about an ecumenical council just because the pope called it a council, the pope called it, then led it and then called it a council. And I will explain this. Ludwig Ott, who is one of my favorite authors in Catholic theology, still, he says that in order to speak about an ecumenical council, you have to have the pope calling, gathering the bishops. You have to have the pope gathering the majority of bishops, and he has to approve whatever the council will later on publish as decisions and doctrine. As much as I respect Ludwig Ott, and I have to say that I’ve hardly ever found a mistake in his books, I have to say that he is thoroughly wrong on this definition of a council. If Ludwig Ott was right, that the very fact that the pope calls a council makes it a council, then the first eight ecumenical councils would not have been councils. I’ll explain. I wrote up a list of these councils because contrary to what some people seem to think about me, my memory is not photographic. (laughs)

The First Council of Nicaea in 325 was called by the emperor. The Second Council of Constantinople in 381 was called by the emperor. The pope was not even present, and the council only was approved as an ecumenical council in the 6th century. The Third Council of Ephesus of 431 was called by the emperor. The pope was present. The Fourth Council of Chalcedon of 451 was called by the emperor. The pope attended. The Fifth Council of Constantinople II, 553, was called by the emperor, and the pope didn’t even show up. The Sixth Council of Constantinople Number Three was called by the emperor, and the pope attended. The Seventh Council of Nicaea II, 787, was called by the emperor, and the pope attended. The Eighth Council of Constantinople Number Four was called by the emperor in 869, lasted until 870, and the pope was present. So, how would one be able to say that in order to have a council, all that’s sufficient is that the Pope calls it, that the Pope proclaims the council? Obviously, we cannot justifiably think in such a formalistic way.

Because you see, the whole point about a council is… A council, very obviously, since the bishops will sit together and discuss things. So, a council has something in common with a board meeting, a conference. At the same time, and I think that’s a much more important side to any ecumenical council. When the council is opened, the bishops put on the cope, they put on the miter, and they would carry the crosier if it wasn’t for the presence of the Pope. And they will proceed into… Last time, it was St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. They would proceed, solemnly proceed, into St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, dressed as if it was for vespers or for the consecration of an abbot, which are sacramentals. And then they would kneel down, all of them, at the same time, and sing the Veni Creator Spiritus to invoke the Holy Spirit to guide the council. How can anyone say that this is just a board meeting? It’s not like the Bavarian beer meeting on Sunday after mass, where people sit down together and discuss the problems of the village. Well, the church, in a way, is a small village because Earth is small. The world is small. But to me, it seems, and not just to me, by the way, but to all Catholic dictionaries before 1950, that this would be, first of all, formalistic, second, insufficient as a definition or even as a description of a council. If it was sufficient to sit down together to discuss things with majority vote, there would be no need to call on the Holy Spirit, there would be no need to put on the miter, and there would be no need to put on the cope, which means there would be no need to dress liturgically. Bishops do not dress liturgically for having dinner. Bishops dress liturgically in order to perform a holy act, be it a sacrament. But since there are seven sacraments, period, and not an eighth or ninth sacrament, you cannot possibly say that a council would be a sacrament. But they are also dressed liturgically in order to administer a sacramental. The sacramental is somewhat analogically similar to the sacrament, but it does not confer the grace out of itself. Ex opere operato, out of the work that is done. And I would venture to say, in accordance to the couple of dozen dictionaries that I was able to consult on this problem, that in case of doubt, a council is much closer to a sacramental, if not higher than the sacramentals, and it’s much closer to a sacrament rather than to a board meeting. Like when the board of directors meet, or whatever you call them.

The point is that with the solemn ritual invocation of the Holy Spirit and the according dress, a council has to be considered a wholly liturgical act. We may, according to the old definition of sacramentals, we may dispute if it’s a sacramental. Some people might say no, some others might agree. The whole point is, if it is anything, then it is higher than a sacramental and about the closest thing that can go up to the level of a sacrament. You must not forget that one of the most important purposes of the existence of the church is to safeguard the truth. It’s one of its foremost reasons to exist. If that is true, which is a dogma, then the very extraordinary… I will come back to that term. The very extraordinary occasion on which this is taking place cannot be considered a mere formal gathering. In most of the available Catholic dictionaries, including, if I remember well, the Catholic Encyclopedia, you will notice that a council is usually put on the same level as any decision, any possible decision of the highest authority in the church, which is the Magisterium, and in that case, the infallible Magisterium. So, one of the characteristics of a council is that it has to be considered infallible if it decides something. Such a rare and special occasion, I have to point out again that one would need to have a twisted mind to think that an ecumenical council is something ordinary in church history. There was one council in 325, 381, 431, 451, 553, 680, 787, 869, 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215, 1245, 1274, 1311, 1414, 1431, 1512, 1545, and then in 1869. That makes 206 years, because Trent ended in 1563, makes 206 years between the last two councils. You cannot possibly say this is an ordinary, everyday happening in the church, just like a sermon given by the Pope or an encyclical published by the Pope. Something of such a rare… Consider the church is 2,000 years old, and we’re talking about 20 ecumenical councils, not 400. Such a rare and special occasion, to call that a board meeting means to trivialize one of the most important historical event in church history, an ecumenical council. Therefore, I think it is absolutely justified, I cannot pronounce this as a dogma as I lack papal authority, but I think it’s absolutely justified to say that in case of doubt, you have to consider an ecumenical council under similar terms as a sacrament or a sacramental. In both cases, whenever you talk about the validity of a sacrament, you have to talk about matter, form, and intention.

Question: Father, if I may interject at this point. Ecumenical. We, and today we have, I think a different idea of ecumenical than you are proposing, to what you’re saying. Could you explain this word?

Answer: Thank you, John. That’s extremely important because the word ecumenical obviously today means let us all gather together in the Holy Spirit and forget our differences and worship whatever God you like. (laughs) This is not ecumenical at all, because the word ecumenical is Greek. In Greek, it’s Oikumene. Oikos in Greek is the house. Oikumene is the household, everything that belongs to the household. Now, take an average family. It’s a household, right? Who’s part of the Oikumene? The house, obviously, father, mother, children, and if they’re living together, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, whatever. Those who belong there, that’s Oikumene. And from the very beginning of church history, it was called ecumenical not because heretics were allowed to participate. On the contrary. They were safeguarding wherever the council took place in order to make sure no heretic and no schismatic was let in, because this was ecumenical. It was an event that belonged to the household, and was none of the outsiders’ business. So, all the bishops in union with the Pope were called. Nobody else. Period. That’s what it means, ecumenical council. At Vatican II, that’s one of the things. It wouldn’t invalidate the council, but it’s one of the things that didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, John XXIII made a contract with Moscow that he will not allow the council to condemn Communism or Soviet Russia or the satellite states or, as a matter of fact, any other Communist state or Communism as such, simply in order to have the great, great, extraordinary, unbelievable privilege granted of having two Russian Orthodox KGB agents participating in the council. This, of course, is absurd, but it wouldn’t invalidate the council, so it’s an interesting historic note on one who committed treason in the Catholic Church. Some people say he’s blessed. I say he’s not.

And, but we have to stay with the facts, otherwise we’d be sitting here at 2:00 at night. The facts are, what is the intention for a council? What is the right intention? All the dictionaries will agree on that. Not just the dictionaries. For simplicity’s sake here, I’m quoting the dictionaries. I cannot give you… I have not the list of books memorized that I studied in order to see if you could really talk about an invalidated council or not. I want, at this occasion, by the way, I want to underline the fact that whatever you think about Father Hess, the very thought that the ecumenical, so-called Ecumenical Council Vatican II was not indeed an ecumenical council at all occurred to me the first time in 1996, believe it or not, not earlier than that. In 1996, when I read a series of articles, beautiful articles, profound articles, excellent articles, in the Si Si No No. That’s a publication that, if I’m right, in the United States is called Rome Courier. Is that right? Well, anyway, in France it’s called Courrier de Rome. In German it’s called Rom Kurier. And in the original Italian, it’s called Si Si No No. You remember Si Si No No means yes, yes, no, no. (speaks Greek) as Christ said, „This may be your words, yes, yes, no, no.‟ He didn’t want twisted answers and lies. And in this wonderful publication where I’ve never found anything but beautiful theology, I really started to understand that we were all gravely mistaken thinking that Vatican II might be something like a less-than-perfect council or a council containing errors or whatever each one of us was thinking. I really understood that it was not a council at all, simply because I said there has to be the intention, the matter, and the form.

In 1786, a bunch of crazy bishops called together by an even more crazy Austrian Habsburg Archduke in Tuscany gathered together in the otherwise little known town of Pistoia in order to decide, quote-unquote, about reforms in the church. It was because of political circumstances, you have to remember it was the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. It needed until 1799, until Pope Pius VI published one of the most unusual documents in church history under the title, for those who are interested, find the document on your, what’s that beeping thing on your screen? The website. Find it there because you can find it there. Somebody told me. It’s called Auctorem Fidei. I spell that for those who really want to do their own research. A-U-C-T-O-R-E-M F-I-D-E-I. Alpha, Uniform, Charlie, Tango, Echo, Mike. The second word is Foxtrot, India, Delta, Echo, India. Find the document for the simple reason it is exceptional. Most of the papal bulls and encyclicals, a bull is when a pope decides about things, an encyclical is when he just teaches. Most of the papal bulls and encyclicals are addressed to the fellow patriarchs, cardinals, bishops, archbishops, or whatever, and prelates in the church. Not so Auctorem Fidei. Pope Pius VI wanted every (Italian), Christ faithful, to read that document. And very unusual, he addressed the document (Italian), to all faithful in Christ. And there he says, I quote the most important line, „The purpose of a synod…‟ The word synod is the Greek term for the Latin word council. Council is concilium, when you gather together. Synodos in Greek, hodos means the way. Syn means like cum, concilium. Concilium is cumcilium. Synodos is the same word. It’s the Greek translation of council, and council is the Latin translation of synod. Pius VI says, „The purpose of a synod is to clarify terms, not to complicate them.‟ Obviously, because the truth is infinitely simple ultimately, since God is infinitely simple. God is not only infinitely simple, God is absolutely simple. If God is absolutely simple, the higher the truth, the simpler it is. Therefore, you cannot possibly claim to pronounce the truth if you complicate it. That’s why Pius VI said, „The purpose of the synod is to clarify terms.‟ What did Pope Pius IX do in 1854 when he made the Immaculate Conception a dogma? Simple. He didn’t say anything new. He just said, „This is exactly the way it has to be understood, period. And that period is forever.‟

Question: Father, before you go onto that, could you expand a bit on a bull and an encyclical?

Answer: Oh, I just said. A bull is when an encyclical… It’s a document in which the pope makes decisions like in Quo Primum, where he says that this missal has to be used forever. And an encyclical usually is one of his teaching documents.

Questioner: So, the papal bull is for all the church?

Answer: So is the encyclical.

Questioner: What’s the difference?

Answer: I just said. It’s a historic distinction between actually a few pages of paper, more or less few, and signed by the pope. There is the possibility of a papal constitution. There can be a papal bull, there can be a papal encyclical. Basically, it’s all the ordinary magisterium or the ordinary power of the pope. A power he enjoys not because he’s a good man, which he very often wasn’t, but a power that he enjoys simply because he has been elected pope. And the pope, as all pastors of the church has three powers: the power of governing, the power of teaching, and the jurisdictional power.

Questioner: So, a bull has no more weight than an encyclical?

Answer: No. A bull usually is more decisive while in an encyclical, the pope will explain something theologically, like Pius X did in his famous encyclical against modernism, Pascendi Dominici Gregis of 1907. And then in the papal bull, as I just quoted, the most important liturgical bull in history, Quo Primum, which canonizes the Roman missal of 1570, and makes it impossible for any future pope, because we’re dealing with something infinitely more important than just disciplinary action, or questions, or disciplinary matter. He made it impossible even for a future pope to change that. So, it’s a very grave and important decision, and that’s what you usually call a bulla. But the term goes back to the times when such important documents were not just signed, but also signed and sealed. Remember good old Cowboy Copas? „Signed, sealed, and delivered.‟ And so, the word bolla, bulla means the seal is put on it. It’s actually… Allow me for the sake of time to simplify things. It’s a historical question.

And then after explaining in Auctorem Fidei that the purpose of a synod is to clarify terms, not to complicate them, Pius VI goes on and in detail condemns some of these really absurd theories and statements of this collection of crazy bishops and Austrian Habsburgs at Pistoia. And the interesting thing is that in Auctorem Fidei, the pope condemns theories that at Vatican II were published as doctrine, or as the wish of the church, or as a pastoral proposal, or whatever these confused minds wanted to call it. Now, here is something that I have to explain to you. There is a traditional hierarchy of truth, not the way Vatican II says. Well, if Vatican II talks about a hierarchy of truth, that means we have some important truth that everybody has to believe, and then we have some lesser truth that not everybody has to believe. This is blasphemy. Christ said, „I am truth.‟ So what? I mean, what does that mean? Does that mean I have to believe in the face of Christ and not in the rest of him, or what? I mean, this is ridiculous. Christ didn’t say, „I give you a list of truth to choose from.‟ He didn’t say, „I give you a list of truth and the first 10 you have to believe, otherwise you go to hell, and for the other 40, you can choose if you like them or not.‟ Christ didn’t say anything of that. Christ was not talking about truths, T-R-U-T-H-S. Christ said capital T-R-U-T-H, „I am the Truth.‟ So, the popes have never, fortunately, until of course 1958 or whatever, the popes have never tired to repeat that we have to believe everything the church teaches. And if we omit one thing, then we have lost the rest. Take… People are so familiar with this funny gadget today called a horseless carriage, a car. Take the gas tank of a car. I’m sure you’d appreciate it if there’s only such a minor, tiny hole in the bottom of that tank, right? What does it matter to you if there’s a tiny hole in the bottom of that tank or a big hole? You need that thing tight. And that’s like having the truth. As if the truth was liquid, and you either take the whole container or you lose everything. If that container of truth, and that’s church doctrine, is not tight anymore, and you’re on the highway, you are lost. Especially in Nevada or Arizona, you might actually be lost, in the true sense of the word. So remember that next time you talk about, „Well, we don’t have to believe all of that. We agree with the Protestants on this and this and this,‟ then think about your gas tank with 15 holes in it, and you’re out there on the highway in western Nevada. Good luck to you. Except that in Nevada, you play with your earthly life. In church doctrine, you play with your eternal life. And if you play with that, you will lose it.

So the point is, you do never give up one single doctrine. But there is a hierarchy in the sense, not of a more important or less important truth, but of the certainty of something. How certain we can be that something that is derived, that is a conclusion from what has been revealed, is actually true. And this is why the church traditionally makes the distinction between the fide revelata, something of revealed faith. And then we talk about something which is the fide definita, defined faith. Like, revealed faith is the words of Christ in the gospel. Fide definita, that’s, for example, the assumption, and before that, the Immaculate Conception. Something has been defined as divinely revealed. And then we have something which is fide proxima. That means it is not… It’s close to the faith, most close to the faith. It doesn’t mean it’s not faith. It only means it has not yet been defined, probably because there was not yet a need to define it, because everybody believes it anyway, because it’s logically intimately connected with something that has been revealed to us. And then we have what is called of the faith of the Church. That means the Church has always believed it. Nobody has ever doubted it. So there was never a need to discuss it. There was never a need to call a council to discuss it. And the Church has always believed it. What was the Immaculate Conception a thousand years ago? Well, everybody believed it, even though they didn’t know with the same precision we do now what it was. But it was always believed, was always believed that Our Lady was the purest of all mere, quote unquote „mere‟, mere human beings. And then we have what is called the sententia certa, something that’s not yet been defined. It is not inseparably, immediately connected to a revealed truth, but we are very, very sure about it. I mean, not we, you and me, but the Church. That’s what’s called a sententia certa. And then you have the, well, everybody believes it, it’s highly probable, I don’t see any other solution to the theological problem, you talk about the sententia probabilis. Something is probable. And then we have what is called the sententia communis. That means, well, most theologians agree on it. Some others don’t. And now, here, again, as something can be true, something can be wrong. So we have the same certitude in something that is… We have the same hierarchy of certitude as to something that is wrong. If you deny something that Christ personally said or something that has been directly revealed, you’re a heretic. If you deny something that has been defined as a dogma, you’re a heretic. If you deny something that’s the closest possible thing to a dogma, then you are very close to heresy. Heresi proximus, in that case, if you’re male. And again, if you deny a sententia certa, the Church will say you are in error. The Church will not say you’re a heretic or to hell, but the Church will say, „You are in error.‟ The important thing about Auctorem Fidei is that everything that has been put under censure… That’s what you call it. Censura in Latin. The evaluation of a statement. Everything in that bull that has been censured by Pope Pius VI for the very fact that it has been censured by Pope Pius VI, now is at least a sententia certa. Because otherwise, where would the ordinary magisterium of the Pope be if he couldn’t do that? But still, since Pius VI was the one who did it, he still said, for example, that when the Synod of Pistoia demanded a simplification of liturgical rites… Doesn’t that sound familiar to you? A simplification of liturgical rites, Pope Pius VI said that this was offensive to pious ears, offensive to Catholic ears, because it had been a common sentence, a common judgment by all theologians, that this would not be justified. But since Pius VI put this as a censure in his Auctorem Fidei, the very same demand done in the very first of all documents of Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, that the so-called Holy Council wanted to simplify liturgy is not anymore just simply offensive to pious ears. It is simply erroneous, because it goes against something that has been elevated as to its certainty by Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei. We will have to come back to this later when we talk about the matter of a council.

Now, the intention of a council has been for all of the 20 ecumenical councils to call the council together in order to condemn errors and to define doctrine. There is one exception, not as to the intention, but as to the outcome. And that was in 1245 in France, in Lyon, Pope Innocent IV called the council, the First Council of Lyon, with the explicit purpose not just to ban the Emperor Frederick II, anybody who is interested in the Emperor Frederick II. I’m sure there’s hundreds of pages on the website on him. And for mere historical circumstances, which never can determine the validity of a council, for mere historic circumstances, the actual ban pronounced against the Emperor Frederick II, together with a few minor but still dogmatic statements about errors to be found with this emperor, was the only thing the council did. The intention of the council, however, was to rectify everything that had been either pronounced by the Emperor Frederick II or was a result of his attitude and those of his followers. So, the very fact that historically something might not exactly turn out the way it was expected to be doesn’t invalidate, but the intention was there. Lyon number one was called for the same reason that every single council from Nicaea number one until the First Vatican Council was called, it was called to fight heresies. There’s no reason here to name all the heresies that have been fought and more or less successfully by the councils, but that was the common intention ever and always for calling an ecumenical council. John XXIII wanted the contrary. „We shall not condemn anything. We shall not pronounce a dogma here.‟ So, what actually happens was the same thing that would happen if before I approached the altar to celebrate Mass, I tell John in private, „Listen, John, I’m gonna do everything that’s required in order to celebrate Mass, but I have absolutely no intention of celebrating Mass. I want to pull a show.‟ Now, John would be the only one in that case to know that what happened here was not a Mass. That’s how it is possible that something that looks as much as a council as Vatican II did, might not necessarily have been a council, as if fraud was a new thing. As far as the intention is concerned, I don’t think there’s much to add. We can clearly see that John XXIII, as the first pope in the history of the Church, had the contradictory intention of calling an ecumenical council, and at the same time, not to condemn errors and not to define doctrine. 20 times before that in the Church, this was considered unacceptable.

What’s the essence of a council? How would, where would you say a council is really what it is? When somebody says to you, you ask him, say, „Excuse me, Father, what is a council?‟ If I give you an answer that will cause you to say, „Oh, that’s it!‟ then I told you about the essence of a council. Now, the form of a council, essence of a council is, it is extraordinary Magisterium resulting from the extraordinary Magisterium given to the bishops coming from the Pope on such an occasion. What means extraordinary? Again, don’t look up a theological book. Consult your common sense. Saint Thomas Aquinas always talks about the common sense of things. And Gilbert Keith Chesterton says, „The method of Saint Thomas Aquinas was common sense.‟ He used his God-given understanding of things, his common sense, and that was his scientific method. Wish they would have that today. And in common sense you will say, „Well, extraordinary means it’s not an everyday happening.‟ Bingo. I showed you that a council doesn’t happen every day. What means extraordinary? It’s not ordinary. Well, then, of course, you might have to consult a theological dictionary, look up what is ordinary in such a case. Okay. A bishop has Magisterium because… I’m not talking about today’s bishops, I’m talking about the institution, the Catholic institution of episcopacy, of a bishop. A bishop has ordinary Magisterium in his diocese where he is the supreme pastor, the supreme judge, and the supreme teacher by divine law, not by human law. Now, the Bishop of Rome is the exception. He has universal jurisdiction. His jurisdiction, his power does not just extend to the Diocese of Rome, the Archdiocese of Lazio, the territory of Italy and the entire West, but it extends universally. So he’s the bishop of bishops, the bishop of the world, so to speak. So his ordinary Magisterium is when the Pope… For example, I’ve been asked the question bull encyclical. When the Pope publishes an encyclical, that’s ordinary Magisterium. Ordinary, because normal. He’s the bishop of Rome, and for being Bishop of Rome… I say again, not for being a good person, but for the fact that he’s the bishop of Rome, he enjoys the right to bind the entire world to his decisions. That’s part of the dogma, by the way, of the infallibility. And what’s the difference now? The bishop enjoys ordinary Magisterium only in his diocese. It is therefore quite logical to see that when all the bishops are gathered together in Rome, that they do not have ordinary Magisterium. Otherwise, you couldn’t say they have ordinary Magisterium only in their diocese. When the Bishop of New York, the Archbishop of New York or the Archbishop of Berlin or the Archbishop of Palermo gather together in Rome, they do not have ordinary Magisterium in Rome. That’s why they can’t even carry the crozier in Rome. They are not the bishop of Rome. There’s only one bishop of Rome, and that’s the Pope. And then, again, if the Pope calls a council, the Pope cannot speak in ordinary Magisterium. He could speak with his ordinary Magisterium at the council, but the council cannot have ordinary Magisterium. A council, first of all, is not ordinary, as I have shown you historically. Second, a council doesn’t have any ultimate authority unless it’s signed by the Pope. But again, the Pope is not really bound to follow the decisions of the bishop at the council. But obviously, he requests that the bishops, together with him, consider things, think about it, discuss it, and come to a conclusion. You cannot say this is ordinary. Ordinary is if the Pope asks nobody or a few people and then he publishes something. Ordinary is if the bishop talks in his own diocese, but not in Rome, where he’s usually supposed to shut up. So, you have an obviously an extraordinary Magisterium. Extraordinary also in another sense. Can the bishop bind you in your diocese? Can he bind you dogmatically? No. He cannot bind at all. Only in discipline, for church government and discipline, and things that are left up to him. If a bishop in his diocese quotes an infallible decision, then this is infallible too, but the infallibility does not come out of his position. You cannot say possibly that whenever a council gathers, we have bishops with ordinary Magisterium, the pope with ordinary Magisterium. That would mean that the pope, out of his ordinary Magisterium, talks to a bunch of bishops who do not enjoy this same thing at this very place, and they listen. That’s a sort of funny view about a council that has cost the Church millions and millions and millions of dollars, and has cost the Church five years of its… Six years with all the preparations of its life, and has deprived hundreds and thousands of dioceses of the presence of their own bishop. You can’t imagine what was going on in the Universal Church at times when, usually in the fall, all the bishops were gathered in Rome, enjoyed the vacation there, because usually in the diocese, they’re extremely busy, don’t find time for anything. And then finally in Rome, they enjoyed wonderful food, as is customary in Italy, and had time for things, and therefore didn’t really care about the 40 pages written in Latin, which they did not understand anyway, and so they voted yes anyway. This is how it is possible that something like Vatican II happened. But the point I’m making is, a council has by its very own nature extraordinary Magisterium, not ordinary Magisterium. This is universally agreed to by almost all theologians. Now, what happened at Vatican II, the council itself declares that it has ordinary Magisterium. This is what I call a beautiful example of legal suicide. If a council that by its very definition and nature has extraordinary Magisterium says about itself that it has ordinary Magisterium. Does it say that? You don’t believe me? Switch on this beeping pile of plastic of yours called computer, go onto this funny thing called website with the W-W-W-W-W such com dot et cetera, and look up the documents of Vatican II. You will find Lumen Gentium, the so-called dogmatic, means only its teaching, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium. As an appendix to this, you will find a declaration by the secretary of the council, Archbishop Felici, who later on became cardinal and happened to be one of my best friends in Rome when I was there for 15 years. He died, unfortunately, in 1982. But he himself confirmed to me what I’m saying now, and he confirmed that to Archbishop Lefebvre too, that the council actually does not pretend infallibility. It does not pretend the extraordinary Magisterium because in this appendix to Lumen Gentium, it says, „Whatever has been said in this council enjoys the power of ordinary Magisterium, unless otherwise stated.‟ There is no unless otherwise stated in the entire collection of the conciliar documents. And therefore, how can you say this was a council if it doesn’t even correspond to the very essence of a council being of extraordinary Magisterium?

Let’s take Lumen Gentium I. The Council of Trent gives a very explicit and clear definition of a sacrament, and this is also a definition that has always been upheld in the history of the Church. A sacrament is a sign that confers visibly the, it confers invisibly, I’m sorry. It confers invisibly, in the visible way particular to the sacrament, sanctifying grace. So it is a sign that gets you sanctifying grace in the very way that is depicted, visible. At baptism, the child is washed of its original sin. Anybody can see that. In confession, you sort of repent and you hide like somebody who has something to hide in the dark corner of the confessional, and you get rid of your sins. Like Gilbert K. Chesterton said when he was asked, „Why did you convert Mr. Chesterton?‟ And he said, (in a British accent) „To get rid of my sins.‟ (laughs) So this is the purpose. You hide. This is not something you enjoy doing publicly. And look at all the sacraments. You’re anointed at the confirmation. That’s like knighthood. And in marriage, you enter the bond of marriage. That’s the ring. You chain yourself to somebody. Am I glad for celibacy? (laughs) Anyway, beg your pardon out there who’s married. In all the sacraments, the grace that has been conferred, that will be conferred, is visible. Now, how can you say the church is a sign? The church is not a sign. The church is dogmatically defined as a perfect society on Earth that has the purpose of teaching the gospel and saving souls by administering the sacraments. So now according to the logics of Vatican II, here is a sacrament conferring sacraments. Okay, if you like it.

In Lumen Gentium VIII, the council says, „The Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.‟ Subsistit in Latin. And subsistere in Latin means it sort of… It’s lying underneath, like the four legs of this table that are upholding the actual tabletop. And some people have chided Father Hess for saying subsistit. When I say subsistit means that there could be other churches that are also the Church of Christ, like the Russian Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox, or even the Protestant or Anglican Church. They say, „No, Father Hess. The council never wanted to say that.‟ I don’t know if the council wanted to say it, but Cardinal Ratzinger, who happens to be the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says so in printing. He has said so in interviews. He says so in at least two of his most important books. The Pope has never contradicted him on that, on the contrary. The Pope who happens to have written his first encyclical with a total lack of understanding of what the church is, because in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, he never speaks about the Roman Catholic Church. In the entire document, he speaks a couple of times about the conscience of the church. He speaks about the Conciliar Church, and he speaks about the Church of the New Advent. And his very actions confirm that he sees the word subsistit the way I viciously see it.

In the same Lumen Gentium VIII, you can find the directly heretical statement that the Holy Spirit is to be found in non-Christian religions. That’s directly against what Saint John says in his gospel. In Lumen Gentium XVI, you can find the remarkable statement that the Muslims, together with us, pray to one merciful God. They have shown us September 11th last year how much they pray together with us to one merciful God. And in the same paragraph, you can find the council saying that the Jews, together with us, pray to one merciful God. That’s probably one of those occasions where the present pope confirming that statement and the council fathers simply seem to be unaware of what Saint Paul is saying. Saint Paul said, „The Jews see even the truth of the Old Testament only through a veil, a curtain.‟ That means they don’t even know the truth. How can they pray together with us to one merciful God, which in the eyes of the Jews is God Father, just God Father, and then God Father. They don’t even call him God Father, but it’s just the one Almighty God, the one I Am, which is true. I Am is true. But the one I Am, there are three I Ams. There’s only one Am, but there are three I, three persons in one nature. And the Muslims that call the Trinity in the Quran… I beg your pardon, I quote the Quran… excremental, the very idea of the Trinity. And here is a so-called council that utters the blasphemous statement that they pray to one merciful God together with us. Now, I’m not talking about individuals, obviously. I’m just talking about the necessary understanding of the exact phrasing (speaks in Latin). The Muslims, together with us, adore one merciful God. It says (speaks in Latin), together with us. Some vicious translators have translated it with along with us. It’s nonsense. (Speaks in Latin) means along with us. (Speaks in Latin) means together with us. But you see, the whole thing is so patently absurd that you have to ask yourself how it is possible that somebody who still has a functioning reason and is not yet dressed in white in a rubber cell could possibly say that this is actually church tradition, in accordance with church tradition and in accordance with the magisterium of the church. Either the Holy Spirit is wrong or Vatican II was not a council. It’s as simple as that. Because when you see that Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius X, Pope Benedict XV, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII explicitly condemned the very concept of religious liberty. Not talking about tolerance towards the ones who are not Catholics, but religious liberty. That means you’re free to choose your religion. That has been condemned, and Vatican II makes it a civil right.

And then, you find statements like in Gaudium et Spes, the very spirit of the founder of the Opus Dei, who since last Sunday is apparently a saint. You find statements like Gaudium et Spes number 12, „The believers and nonbelievers unanimously agree that all our actions, all our activities are directed towards man as the center and summit.‟ That is the second step in Satanism. The first step in Satanism is there is no devil. The second step in Satanism is to say God has to be replaced by man. The third step is to worship the devil. Vatican II has managed to get to the second step by saying that all our activities, all our efforts are directed towards man as the center and summit. Is there anybody here who could possibly say that this could be inspired by the Holy Spirit? No. That statement is utterly wrong and blasphemous. All our efforts should be directed towards the greater glory of God, not towards man as the center and summit. Therefore, I can say out there to you, I can say one thing. Either Vatican II was not a council or the Holy Spirit was wrong. Thank you.