Robert J. Siscoe and The Remnant’s Canon Law Fiasco

Nice try, guys…

Robert Siscoe and The Remnant’s Latest Canon Law Fiasco

As of late, a number of articles critical of the Sedevacantist position have been published by the usual semi-traditionalist opinion outlets — Catholic Family News and The Remnant. While Novus Ordo Watch always makes every effort to provide a response to such articles, in recent months we have been so busy with just keeping up on the daily chaos perpetrated by Francis that such larger projects have been delayed. In addition, we Sedevacantists are greatly outnumbered by adherents to the more popular and much more convenient semi-trad “recognize-and-resist” position, so on that score alone it is always easier for the other side to produce more content and to do so more frequently.

We were quite pleased, therefore, to find that Mr. Steven Speray of the Catholicism in a Nutshell blog had published an article directly responding to claims made by Robert J. Siscoe in his recent essays, “Can the Church Depose an Heretical Pope?” and, “Sedevacantism and the Manifest Heretic”, both published by The Remnant, in 2014 and 2013, respectively. As Speray offers an important refutation of several main theses on which the anti-Sedevacantist position of The Remnant & Co. hinges, we would like to draw your attention to this monograph:

“The Remnant’s Latest Canon Law Fiasco”
by Steven Speray

17 Pages (253 KB)
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD (PDF)

While we still intend to publish our own response to Mr. Siscoe, we thank Mr. Speray for his contribution.

What’s really disturbing in all this is that when it comes to Sedevacantism, such publications as The Remnant and Catholic Family News are happy to unleash upon their readers a barrage of articles written by people who appear not to understand the subject matter, effectively making the reader into a veritable guinea pig for what amounts to little more than a perhaps well-intentioned but forlorn theological experiment. Has it never occurred to the writers and editors that these questions they are exploring — heresy, excommunication, loss of office, deposition, etc. — can actually be looked up in a Catholic library? We don’t need a John Salza, a Christopher Ferrara, or a Robert Siscoe arguing what this or that canon possibly or probably means, or whether this or that penalty applies in a given case — we can just go and look it up. And it is because at Novus Ordo Watch we do precisely that — looking it up — that it sometimes takes a considerable amount of time for us to publish our rebuttals.

For example, it took us almost two years to publish a response to John Salza’s essays against Sedevacantism, but when we finally did, we hit it out of the park with this lengthy and well-documented refutation:

• The Chair Is Still Empty: A Response to the Alleged “Errors of Sedevacantism” by John Salza

Read it and ask yourself which side has really done its research, and which side is merely blowing smoke. Yes, we are aware that Mr. Salza has just recently attempted to rebut our critique, but rest assured that we will take that apart in one of our TRADCAST podcast episodes in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

Here are some more links to various articles and audio files on this extremely important topic of whether the “Popes” since 1958 have been legitimate or are actually usurpers and spiritual charlatans:

• Why it DOES Matter whether Francis is a valid Pope or Not
• Proving Sedevacantism: An Easy-to-Follow Syllogistic Argument
• The Perfect & Perpetual Immunity of the Church from Error and Heresy
• A Failed Strategy: How’s “Recognize-but-Resist” been working out?
• The “Bad Popes” Argument: The Crucial Difference between a Bad Pope and an Invalid Pope
• Comedy Hour with John Salza: Refuting Salza’s Errors on the Papacy & Magisterium
• You Can’t Have It “Your Way”: Response to Fr. Chazal on Sedevacantism
• Stumbling at the Finish Line: The SSPX’s Illogical Stance on the Pope Question
• “Recognize and Resist”? Why It’s Not an Option
• The Absurdity of the “Recognize-and-Resist” Position Demonstrated
• Traditional Catholics and Devotion to the Pope: Can we “Recognize and Resist”? (Audio)
• “The Errors of the Society of Saint Pius X” (Audio)
• “The Ordinary Magisterium and Devotion to the Pope” (Audio)
• Why Sedevacantism? (Video)
• Traditionalists, Infallibility, and the Pope [PDF]
• Opinionism – Is the Pope Question just a Matter of “Opinion”?
• A Refutation of Various Common Objections to Sedevacantism

For all who, after such “dry” reading, need something on the lighter side, we recommend our hilarious post “Sedevacantism For Dummies.” We often use satire against the Vatican II Church in order to demonstrate how ludicrous, how laughable, the whole situation is in which we find ourselves. The least we can do with regard to the Modernists is not take them seriously. One hundred years ago, no one would have taken such an impious and heretical fool as Jorge Bergoglio seriously in his claim to being the Pope of the Catholic Church. You see, the man is so dangerous and able to do so much damage only because people do take his claim seriously. Regardless of their intentions, the semi-traditionalists like John Salza and Robert Siscoe are only perpetuating the problem of the Modernist Church, because its survival depends on people believing it to be the Catholic Church. Take that away, and the whole thing falls down like a house of cards.