Have the Gates of Hell Prevailed? The Papacy and Sedevacantism

Refuting a common objection…

Sedevacantism:
Have the Gates of Hell Prevailed?

One of the most common objections made against the Sedevacantist position is that if it were true that Francis or any of his five predecessors are not valid Popes, it would mean that the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church and therefore Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 that this could never happen would be made void. Although one would hope that most people who have looked into Sedevacantism would know by now that surely no one would hold this position if it were that easy to refute it, it is nevertheless useful to give it some renewed attention.

To properly evaluate the objection that Sedevacantism implies that our Lord Jesus Christ has failed to keep His promise that the gates of hell would not be able to prevail aginst His Church, we must do three simple things: We must (1) examine what our Lord actually promised, and then (2) find out how the Catholic Church understands this promise before we then (3) apply these things to the situation we find ourselves in today. In other words: What did our Lord actually promise, and what does this mean for the church since Vatican II? We will now proceed to answer these questions.

The Promise of Our Lord in Matthew 16:18

Let us begin by quoting the scriptural source passage with its surrounding context:

This is the occasion on which our Lord announces to Simon Peter that he will be the head of His Church. Hence He gives him a new name, Peter [Greek Petros, the masculine of petra, “rock”; cf. John 1:42], to indicate the nature, function, and gravity of this most exalted office. Notice that our Lord is speaking in the future tense: “I will build my Church” — because at this point the Church has not yet come into existence, and hence Peter is not yet the Pope. He will not actually become Pope until after the Resurrection, when Christ charges him with feeding His flock. The First Vatican Council taught this explicitly: “And upon Simon Peter alone Jesus after His resurrection conferred the jurisdiction of the highest pastor and rector over his entire fold, saying: ‘Feed my lambs,’ ‘Feed my sheep’ [Jn 21:15ff.]” (Denz. 1822; italics added).

Although the Pope is typically referred to as the head of the Church, properly speaking he is merely the visible head of the Church, while Christ is and remains at all times the invisible Head. Thus the Pope is called the Vicar of Christ, i.e. the substitute or stand-in: “For Peter in virtue of his primacy is only Christ’s Vicar; so that there is only one chief Head of this Body, namely Christ, who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisible, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth” (Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, n. 40).

As there would be no need for a visible substitute-head before the Resurrection, when Christ was still on earth, it makes sense that our Lord does not make St. Peter Pope until after the Resurrection and before ascending into Heaven. Yet, as Pope Pius XII pointed out, “Between Christ and Peter there existed from the day of the promise at Caesarea Philippi and its accomplishment by the sea of Tiberias a mysterious but eminently real bond, occurring once in time, but which had its roots deep in the eternal designs of the Almighty” (Allocution to the College of Cardinals, June 2, 1944).

Furthermore, it is very significant that before promising that the Church will not be overcome by the gates of hell, our Lord changes Simon’s name into Petros, Rock, especially when considering what our Lord teaches elsewhere in the same Gospel:

Hence it is easy to see why our Lord first names Simon as the Rock and then proceeds to declare that the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against the Church which is founded upon this very Rock. It is also striking that our Lord announces the Petrine office to Simon-Peter right after the latter confesses his faith in Jesus as the Son of the Living God (cf. Lk 22:31-32). Pope Pius IX highlighted this in a speech in 1873:

The faith of St. Peter plays an essential role in his becoming Pope and being the rock on which the Church is founded. This is confirmed also by Pope Pius XI: “The same moment when Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples, confesses his faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in reward for his faith and his confession was the word that built the Church, the only Church of Christ, on the rock of Peter” (Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, n. 22).

During the Last Supper, Jesus prayed specifically that this faith of Peter would never fail: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren” (Lk 22:31-32). Our Lord being God, this prayer infallibly obtained its desired effect, of course. An unfailing faith is thus one of the essential characteristics of the visible head of the Church, guaranteed by the Invisible Head Himself. Commenting on this passage in the Gospel of St. Luke, Pope Pelagius II wrote the following to the schismatic bishops of Istria:

We see here that the correct interpretation of Luke 22:31-32 is that the Faith of Peter cannot be “shaken or changed”, on account of which Pope Pelagius is offering the erring shepherds he is addressing the “integrity of the Faith”. This was also the teaching of Vatican I (see Denz. 1836-37), as we will see in more detail later.

So far, then, it is clear that in Matthew 16:18 our Lord Jesus Christ promises to St. Peter that he will be Pope, the rock upon which the Church is built, on account of his Faith, and this will prevent the “gates of hell” from overcoming, or prevailing against, the Church. But what is meant by these mysterious “gates of hell”?

If we survey Catholic teaching on the matter, we find the following answers:

Let that false assembly, which without the Apostolic See … was held contrary to the traditions of the venerable fathers against the divine images, be declared anathema in the presence of our delegates, and let the word of our Lord Jesus Christ be fulfilled, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Matt. 16:18); and again: “Thou art Peter…” (Matt. 16:18-19), whose throne holding the first place in all the world shines forth and holds its place as the head of the whole Church of God.

(Pope Adrian I, Apostolic Letter Pastoralibus Curis; Denz. 298)

Pope Adrian here clearly indicates that the gates of hell are being kept from prevailing by the Pope, by the faithful discharge of the office of the papacy, specifically (in the case cited) by his condemnation of the iconoclasts, lest their errors and sacrilege should infect the true Church and sully the stainless robe that is the purity of the true Faith.

It was Pope Vigilius who approved the decrees of Constantinople II in 553, and we find him identifying the gates of hell very explicitly with the “death-dealing tongues of heretics”.

Pope St. Leo IX, too, leaves no doubt as to the identity of the gates of hell: They are “the disputation of heretics”.

Here the Vatican Council, with the authority of Pope Pius IX, declares that what constitutes the keeping of the gates of hell from prevailing is the discharge of the duty of the Pope to protect the faithful from error and heresy, to nourish them with true doctrine and thus to remove occasions of schism, all of which is possible because of the “gift of truth” and the “never-failing faith” that were “conferred upon Peter and his successors” by Christ the Lord. Thus we know that the gates of hell are what would run contrary to this, namely if the Pope were to feed the flock with the “poisonous food of error”, if he were to teach heresy or other errors in place of sound doctrine.

The Papacy is the Divinely-Guaranteed Institution that will never Fail

Now that we understand what are the gates of hell which shall never prevail against the Church founded by Christ our Lord, we can apply this knowledge to the divine promise given in Matthew 16:18 and draw a very straightforward conclusion: It is the Papacy that guarantees that the Catholic Church will never be overcome by false doctrine. This is so because the Papacy was instituted by God Himself as the rock upon which the Church rests, and this rock was established by the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, who Himself vouches for the never-failing Faith of the Pope, not only of St. Peter personally but also all of his legitimate successors (cf. Denz. 1824-25). This is why the Church can and does teach, very emphatically, that we can never be led astray by firmly clinging to the Holy See and giving complete submission of intellect and will to the Vicar of Christ.

Nothing and no one can contradict this doctrine, because the Church teaches it authoritatively, to a large extent even infallibly. It cannot be denied, doubted, relativized, minimized, or ignored — no matter what happens. The truth of Catholic teaching is guaranteed by Christ Himself, and it is not conditioned by the times we live in or by specific circumstances we may find ourselves in. Therefore, no one can invoke pseudo-theological concepts such as “diabolical disorientation” against this teaching, nor say that the doctrine applies to only a certain period of time in Church history but not today (who has the authority to decide that, anyway?). Such ideas, in fact, are Modernistic, for they undermine the objective validity, universality, and immutability of truth (cf. Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi, nn. 26-28; Decree Lamentabili Sane, nn. 58, 59).

What follows is a number of additional excerpts from Catholic magisterial teaching to confirm and underscore that our conclusion about the Papacy being the divinely-guaranteed institution that prevents the gates of hell from prevailing, is in fact correct:

This is the true Catholic teaching on the Papacy. As such, it is of perennial validity, and it is as authoritative and binding as it is beautiful and eloquent.

Applying the Church’s Teaching to our Situation Today

Most readers will realize by now what we have been leading up to. Given the Catholic doctrine on the Papacy as the guarantor of the true Faith and the indefectibility of the Church, if we attempt to apply it to John XXIII and his successors, an absurd and grotesque picture emerges, for the church since 1958 — which we refer to by such names as the Vatican II Church or the Novus Ordo Sect — most definitely is not the church described in the magisterial pronouncements just quoted. To hold that such public apostates as Paul VI, John Paul II, and Francis — to name just the most obvious ones — could be what keeps the Church intact and the gates of hell from prevailing is laughable on its face. In fact, if the Novus Ordo church is not the perfect example of what a defected church looks like, it is hard to imagine what would fit that description. And although many in the semi-traditionalist camp, when cornered, will claim that the Vatican II Church has not defected (either by making up excuses or denying the obvious), we all know that virtually all of them are convinced that it has, because that is what all their actions objectively confirm and what they are usually quite ready to admit, in an unguarded moment, even in words.

No one in his right mind can look at the sorry Modernist Vatican institution today and say, “This is the Ark of Salvation, outside of which no one can attain to eternal happiness; it is the fortress that keeps the powers of hell at bay, the citadel of truth that steadfastly opposes the errors of the world as it faithfully nourishes Christ’s true followers with the pure milk of salutary doctrine and wholesome discipline.” And if anyone could be so foolish as to say this about the Vatican II Sect, Francis will be the first one to tell him that it isn’t true!

In a recent video broadcast of the semi-traditionalist Remnant Forum, published on Dec. 19, 2015, Michael Matt went on record complaining that “this isn’t the Catholic Church anymore”, and his associate Christopher Ferrara, elaborating on this obvious fact, explained that instead it is a “massive, ongoing, now-in-its-fiftieth-year fraud upon the faithful, a false religion [!!] being masqueraded as the Catholic religion”, while, however, quickly adding his lawyerly copout, “not in any official way though” (see 16:42 mark and following). We will ignore, for the purposes of this blog post, the lie that this new religion is somehow not “official”, which Ferrara always rolls out whenever it’s convenient, while at other times he writes column after column slamming the rather official errors of the New Church contained in its official liturgical ceremonies, its official disciplinary laws, its official “canonizations”, its official encyclicals and other “papal” documents, and so on.

Ferrara should stop skyping with his Remnant editor friend and instead spend more time reading actual Catholic teaching, such as this:

Since Matt and Ferrara (as well as John Vennari and many others, esp. adherents of the Society of St. Pius X) have publicly admitted that the religion of what they recognize as the Holy See is not their religion, it is clear that by their own reasoning and ideas, they cannot consider themselves to be part of the institution they claim is the Roman Catholic Church. Thus we can see what an absolute and hopeless theological mess is engendered by pertinaciously clinging to the absurdity that Francis is the Pope and his sect is the Catholic Church.

To illustrate very effectively the absurdity we are constantly being asked to accept by people like Matt, Ferrara, and Vennari — and now also especially by John Salza and Robert Siscoe, who have authored a new book against Sedevacantism —, we have put together a short little video that sums up the facts about Catholic teaching on the Papacy and contrasts this with the apostasy of Francis, thus proving that Jorge Bergoglio cannot be the Pope of the Catholic Church:

You are welcome to distribute this video freely and post it on Facebook, on Twitter, on forums, and even embed it in your own blog or web page. We invite Messrs. Salza and Siscoe, or anyone else, to respond to it. We have created a new separate page at Novus Ordo Watch specifically on the topic of Sedevacantism, at which we have linked all our relevant posts, and on which we will publish all of our responses to the book by Salza and Siscoe. Our special topical page can be accessed directly by clicking here.

The Mystery of Iniquity and the Operation of Error

But what is the answer then? many will ask. If we have to rule out as a possibility that the institution currently headed by Francis is the Catholic Church, what remains? The answer to this question is found in what Divine Revelation has to say about what will happen with regard to the Papacy in the latter days. Specifically, the relevant passage in Holy Scripture appears in St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians:

In a series of lectures given in 1861, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808-92) explained the meaning of this mysterious prophecy concerning the “operation of error” and “man of sin” that God would permit in the last days. His Eminence based his lectures not on his own opinions but upon the teachings of the Church Fathers and recognized theological authorities. He notes in the very beginning of his first lecture: “In treating of this subject, I shall not venture upon any conjectures of my own, but shall deliver simply what I find either in the Fathers of the Church, or in such theologians as the Church has recognised, namely, Bellarmine, Lessius, Malvenda, Viegas, Suarez, Ribera, and others” (p. 3; full citation below).

Studying Cardinal Manning’s exposition of this scriptural passage, then, is entirely safe, for we can rest assured that what we are being given is not simply one man’s opinion but the mind of the Church. Cardinal Manning is merely the messenger of what the Church has been saying through various authorities over the centuries. In the words of His Eminence:

It is absolutely crucial to understand this so that we are not scandalized by the terrible afflications Holy Mother Church has had to endure since “Pope” John XXIII and his “Second Vatican Council”. It is a matter of divinely-revealed prophecy, as Cardinal Manning makes clear, that at some point the Vicar of Christ would be “taken out of the way” for a time, in order to permit the mystery of iniquity to unfold. If he were not taken out of the way, then the powers of evil would not be able to unleash the operation of error because the rock that is the papacy, by divine institution, would unfailingly prevent it — just as no one was able to overcome our Lord Jesus Christ until He, of His own free will, decided to allow it (cf. Jn 7:30; 10:18).

We must not fail to notice that His Eminence clearly speaks of the Pope as the victim of this persecution by the powers of hell, just as our Lord was the Victim in His Passion. Like Christ Himself, so the Vicar of Christ is the target of the powers of hell, not their henchman or protagonist. This stands in direct contrast to the nonsense currently being spouted by John Salza and Robert Siscoe, whose own peculiar version of a suffering church presents the Pope not as the victim of the persecution but as its commander-in-chief! This has everything totally backwards, as it would turn the rock that stands forever firm against the gates of hell into an antichrist that unleashes them.

When Cardinal Manning speaks of the Church returning to a “state of suffering, as in the beginning”, we remember that in the beginning, until Constantine, the Church had to operate underground, in the catacombs, in caves, secret places, etc., until Divine Providence saw fit to put an end to the persecution. Thus we must not be scandalized or discouraged if now once again the Church is, as it were, underground, and reduced to only a relatively small number, for this is how God preordained it from the beginning.

Who can doubt that we are now in the time spoken of by Cardinal Manning? Little did His Eminence know that less than 100 years lay between his lectures and the actual “taking out of the way” of the Vicar of Christ with the usurpation of the Throne of St. Peter by the first of the Novus Ordo antipopes, Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII), after the death of Pope Pius XII. But this is the situation we find ourselves in now. We must remember that the time period in which God chooses to place anyone is the time that is most beneficial to his soul. Shall we refuse God’s Providence? Shall we dispute or doubt His infinite wisdom, power, or benevolence? God “will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4); “Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows” (Lk 12:7).

What of the gates of hell, then? Does Manning not say that “the Son of God shall permit, for a time, the powers of evil to prevail”? Indeed he does, but a little bit further on he explains in what sense this must be understood:

The Son of God who guaranteed that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church is the same Son of God (cf. Heb 13:8) who also taught, through St. Paul and St. John, that the mystery of iniquity would be successful for a time. Indeed, He is the same Son of God who was wholly victorious in His own apparent defeat, where it appeared that His enemies had triumphed over Him as He suffered His bitter but glorious Passion. We can only marvel at the beauty of God’s ways — when all seems lost and evil seems to have prevailed, He proves through the inscrutable designs of His infinite wisdom that the opposite is in fact the case. “For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts”, says the Lord through His prophet Isaias (55:9).

Let us, therefore, not agonize over attempting to understand why God permits the operation of error, the mystery of iniquity, and the manifestation of the Antichrist to begin with. Let it suffice for us that the all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God has willed it so, and thus we know that, whether we understand it or not, it is ultimately to His glory and for the salvation of His elect (cf. Is 55:8-9; 1 Tim 2:3-4; 2 Thess 2:10-11; Rom 8:28).

As it was in Christ’s seeming defeat that His greatest Victory was to be found, so we may rest assured that it will also be with His Church: Although the gates of hell seem to have prevailed, they actually have not, and this was prophesied so that we would not be scandalized when the time came: “At present I tell you, before it come to pass: that when it shall come to pass, you may believe that I am he” (Jn 13:19); “Behold I have told it to you, beforehand” (Mt 24:25). It is supernatural Faith that gives us this assurance, that Faith which is not merely human, or a sum total of probabilities (cf. Pope Pius X, Decree Lamentabili Sane, n. 25), but which is a gift of God (Eph 2:8), absolutely indispensable for salvation (Rom 3:28; Heb 11:6) — that firm assent of the mind to what God has revealed because He has revealed it, He who can neither lie nor be mistaken: “For we walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).

We have every reason, then, to be full of faith, hope, and charity, for although our times are most distressing, nevertheless “all is going according to plan”, so to speak, as we see Catholic prophecy unfold exactly in the way intended by God from all eternity. All we are enduring is a confirmation of what we believe, not its negation. Pope Saint Pius X assures us that God will always draw good even out of the most terrible afflictions the Church may undergo:

The gates of hell cannot prevail against the true Catholic Church; the Son of God has promised it. And to this end He instituted the Papacy as the unconquerable guarantee that the Ark of Salvation would forever be pure in Faith and united in the bonds of charity. Hence the Pope had to first be “taken out of the way” to allow the mystery of iniquity to do its evil work, and this happened not by accident, nor by surprise, nor without God’s foreknowledge or permission. In fact, as no earthly power could possibly overcome the papacy, God Himself had to intervene to allow its apparent failure for a time, just as He brought about the hour when He would allow His enemies seemingly to triumph over Him for a short while.

And thus we see that while the rock — St. Peter and his successors — can be taken out of the way, it cannot fail. But if the “popes” after Pius XII — that is, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — are true Popes, then the rock has failed, which is impossible. And thus we know, with the highest possible certitude, that the Modernist Vatican II Sect is not the Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that its heads are not true Popes. Instead, the false church in Rome is in truth the “operation of error” that began to manifest itself in 1958, when “he who now holdeth” was “taken out of the way” so that people would “believe lying: that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity” (2 Thess 2:7,10-11).

Wherefore: “Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities” (Apoc 18:4-5). Believe in the Lord, who conquered all in His apparent defeat and assured us: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away” (Mk 13:31).

Behold, He has told it to us beforehand.

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