“Cardinal” Coccopalmerio: Sacraments not simply Valid or Invalid!

Introducing… partially valid sacraments!

“Cardinal” Coccopalmerio: Need to Revisit Notion of Sacraments as only either Valid or Invalid

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Valid or invalid? Too black and white for Cocco!

The Vatican II Sect is an absolute circus. What passes for “Catholic theology” in the Modernist dens of the Vatican has the hallmarks of a tragicomedy.

Consider the latest from “Cardinal” Francesco Coccopalmerio, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. In an interview conducted by Ed Pentin of the National Catholic Register, published Mar. 1, the curial “cardinal” said:

We say, everything is valid; nothing is valid. Maybe we have to reflect on this concept of validity or invalidity. The Second Vatican Council said there is a true communion [between Catholics and Protestants] even if it is not yet definitive or full. You see, they made a concept not so decisive, either all or nothing. There’s a communion that is already good, but some elements are missing. But, if you say some things are missing and that therefore there is nothing, you err. There are pieces missing, but there is already a communion, but it is not full communion. The same thing can be said, or something similar, of the validity or invalidity of ordination. I said let’s think about it. It’s a hypothesis. Maybe there is something, or maybe there’s nothing — a study, a reflection.

(“Cardinal Coccopalmerio Explains His Positions on Catholics in Irregular Unions”, National Catholic Register, Mar. 1, 2017)

Ah yes, “reflecting” on traditional Catholic doctrine is how it all starts: Modernists love to “re-think” prior teaching, which is always the first step to dismantling it, usually under the pretext of penetrating deeply into the “real” meaning of the teaching. Curiously, the “real” meaning usually ends up being a denial of the previous meaning, which is how you know that theirs is not a genuine development of the doctrine but a corruption of it. In any case, let’s examine Mr. Coccopalmerio’s argument.

In 1964, the Second Vatican Council invented the idea that the Church of Jesus Christ exists in elements in other religions while fully subsisting in the Catholic Church:

This Church [founded by Jesus Christ] constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.

(Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 8)

Although this primary source text alone may perhaps leave some wiggle room for precisely how this teaching is to be understood, the post-conciliar magisterium has resolved all doubt in favor of a heretical understanding, for the Novus Ordo Church since Vatican II has affirmed time and again that “elements” of the Catholic Church exist in other (i.e. heretical and schismatic) “churches” and ecclesial communities, and it has acted accordingly towards them:

The elements of this already-given Church exist, found in their fullness in the Catholic Church and, without this fullness, in the other Communities, where certain features of the Christian mystery have at times been more effectively emphasized. Ecumenism is directed precisely to making the partial communion existing between Christians grow towards full communion in truth and charity.

(Antipope John Paul II, Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, n. 14)

With this last sentence, John Paul II shows why this doctrine of ecclesial elements — sometimes called Frankenchurch or patchwork ecclesiology — was of fundamental importance at Vatican II: in order to enable and give a doctrinal foundation to ecumenism. Without this doctrinal change from Pope Pius XII’s clear and exclusive identification of the Church of Jesus Christ with the Catholic Church (see Encyclical Mystici Corporis, n. 13) to Vatican II’s “subsists in” heresy, the ecumenical program would have been impossible.

In fact, it was none other than Fr. Joseph Ratzinger (“Pope” Benedict XVI), one of the Modernist periti at the council, who admitted in 1969 that the “subsists in” doctrine of Lumen Gentium constitutes a “reduction in the claim of exclusivity” on the part of the Church (“Reduktion des Absolutheitsanspruchs” — see Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes [Düsseldorf, 1969], p. 236). In other words, Vatican II relativizes or reduces the Catholic Church’s exclusive claim to being the sole true Church of Jesus Christ, and this was a necessary prerequisite for ecumenism.

A lot of water has flowed down the Tiber since the council ended, but its absurd theology is a gift that keeps on giving.

Over 50 years after the close of the council, there isn’t much traditional Catholic doctrine left in the Novus Ordo Sect, but there is some, and it is once again causing pesky problems for ecumenism, as Mr. Coccopalmerio has noticed. This time, the problem is that of sacramental validity. It’s tough to engage in ecumenism and move towards “shared communion” (aka “Eucharistic hospitality”) and shared liturgies when one side maintains that the other doesn’t have real sacraments or real clergy because their ordinations are invalid and thus their “bishops”, “priests”, and “deacons” are nothing but dressed-up lay(wo)men (for example, see Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolic Constitution Apostolicae Curae declaring the invalidity of Anglican orders). Another thing that doesn’t help is when dealing with certain kinds of Protestants whose theology is so out of whack that the very notion of valid sacraments is as meaningful to them as the idea of a valid cheeseburger. What to do?

Not to worry: Cocco to the rescue! As quoted above, the curial “cardinal” suggests we apply Vatican II’s doctrine of a Church-in-elements to the sacraments! And why not? “Cardinal” Christoph Schonborn did it with the notions of virtue and sin at the Synod 2014, and “Pope” Francis adopted the idea in his monstrous exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The result is that the Vatican II Sect now believes that there are elements of matrimony in fornication and adultery — sometimes even in their fullness! –, and that elements of marital fidelity can be found even in sodomy. To say anything different would mean being too black and white, too rigid, too “either/or” and not enough “both/and”.

So why not also for the sacraments? Might as well, at this point. Then you will be able to look forward to Vatican authorities asking their Anglican friends for elements of a blessing, or meeting to discuss what elements of the Eucharist Lutherans might actually possess, at least when their meal service is conducted by a man or woman possessing elements of an ordination. It’s a good Protestants don’t believe in confession, so no one is in danger of picking up a partially valid absolution somewhere.

All this should receive the full support of elements-admirer Fr. Ratzinger. After all, he is still floating around Vatican City claiming some elements of the Papacy, although he has conceded the fullness of them to Jorge Bergoglio, in whom they are currently said to subsist. Besides, it was Benedict XVI who made Coccopalmerio a “cardinal” in the first place.

Of course, the whole elements doctrine — whether applied to the Church, to sacraments, to morality, or anything else — is absolute hogwash and based on a denial of the philosophical principle that essence does not admit of degrees (cf. Bernard J. Wuellner, Summary of Scholastic Principles [Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1956], n. 513): Just as a human is a human and one cannot have “more” humanity in one person and “less” humanity in another, so a particular institution either is the Church of Jesus Christ or it is not. There is no in between; there are no “degrees” of churchness. Then again, sound philosophy has never been the Modernists’ strong suit. At this point, they are so far gone that they cannot even admit that a thing is what it is and is not its contradictory.

We suggest that someone go to the Vatican and see if there are any elements of sanity left.

It’s not looking too promising.