Just Another Day In The Rubber Room

The past five years have been quite tumultuous. Indeed, they have been the most tumultuous of times.

Although I recognized that there were mine fields aplenty in what my former colleague Paul Likoudis at The Wanderer characterized as the "swampland known as sedevacantism" when I began to write at the beginning of May of 2006 about the plausibility of sedevacantism, nothing of the history that I read concerning the conflicts that had taken place within this swampland prepared me adequately for its reality. Perhaps the phrase "swampland" is an inapt metaphor that should be replaced by "the rubber room of traditionalism" as the madness that we have encountered in the past five years would be enough to drive anyone to bang his head against the padding of a rubber room unless one kept in mind this simple fact: none of the problems or conflicts that exist in the infinitesimally minute world of Catholics who reject the legitimacy of the conciliar "popes" and the liturgy and teachings of their false church makes those conciliar "popes" or their teachings legitimate.

The devil wants to discredit the Faith in general by inspiring us who are known to be Catholics to give bad example to non-practicing, fallen-away Catholics and to non-Catholics alike. He wants to discredit any and all commitment to the true state of Holy Mother Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal by inspiring conflicts aplenty to dissuade Catholics from leaving the conciliar church.

It is thus necessary to preface this particular article, which I loathe having to write, by repeating points made in an article posted six days ago, Accepting All Within God's Holy Providence.

A Quick Review of the Insular Mentality Found Within Some Sedevacantist Venues

Although Rocky Roads in Rocky Times reviewed some of the problems caused by the insularity and arbitrariness to be found in many sedevacantist venues that we have experienced in the past five years, it was perhaps an oversight on my part not to indicate that some of the conflicts that have been recounted are really nothing new in the history of Holy Mother Church. People tend to get so caught up in the intricacies of a given problem when it is right in front of them that a sense of perspective is lost on the fact that even men who were later raised to the altars of Holy Mother Church fought with each other in similar situations.

For example, the conflict between Saint John Gualbert and Saint Peter Damian was touched upon briefly in Reconciling Enemies One To The Other. There are so many other examples, including the fierce battles that erupted during the Great Western Schism that lasted between 1378 to 1417 during which time advocates for claimants to the papal thrones published tracts containing harsh, bitter and vitriolic ad hominem attacks upon those who disagreed with them. Even authors of tracts that stuck to the issues caused offense because they dared to disagree with the preconceived notions or vested self-interest of others.

Let me reiterate the following passage from Father Edward Leen that so few people caught up in the heat of controversy seem willing to accept as they take bitter personal offense at every criticism without giving any indication that they have ever understood the simple Catholic truth that it is good to be criticized and to be misunderstood. Our pride and disordered self-love and inflated views of ourselves and our own nonexistent self-important prestige must be beaten out of us if we have any hope to save our immortal souls:

It has been the case in the history of Holy Mother Church that the establishment of a new religious community or of a new university or seminary has engendered resentment and hard feelings on the part of those belonging to the long-established, existing institutions. The efforts of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila to reform the Carmelites were met with fierce opposition from those they called the calced Carmelites as they distinguished their reforms by referring to themselves as the discalced Carmelites. Saint John of the Cross, whose feast is celebrated on a truly splendid, day, November 24, was imprisoned for over eight months by the calced Carmelites, being subjected to weekly public lashings at one point before he was able to escape miraculously on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15, 1578. You think we've got problems now? Need much be written about the suspicion with which the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola were viewed when he wrote them?

Things were far from being peachy keen swell among the American bishops of the United States of America in the eighteen decades between the founding of the country and the rise of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII on October 28, 1958. There were conflicts between the usually unforgiving, grudge-holding bishops of Irish descent and the bishops who were "ABI"--anything but Irish. Bishops of French, German and Italian birth or descent were viewed with great contempt by many of the "freedom loving," turf-protecting, self-promoting American bishops of Irish birth or descent, something that is being explored in in my book on the heresy of Americanism.

Sick and tired of the Irish clan mentality that sought to isolate and marginalize "foreigners" who were possessed of such silly, outdated concepts as the Social Reign of Christ the King, Archbishop John Martin Henni, who had been born in Switzerland in 1805 and served as the Bishop and (upon the elevation of his see to an archdiocese in 1875) Archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from March 19, 1844, to September 7, 1881, said the following: "No Irish bishop will ever sit on my throne!" (as found in Solange Hertz, The Star Spangled Heresy: Americanism: How the Catholic Church in American Became the American Catholic Church, Veritas press, 1992, p. 84.)

Conflicts occurred between religious communities and among bishops even when we had true popes, some of whom acted slowly to end a conflict, believing that various situations would work themselves out over the course of time. We should not be surprised that differences and conflicts should be more numerous, speaking proportionately in comparison to the relatively small number (somewhere around 100,000 out of 1,800,000,000) Catholics worldwide who reject the conciliar church and its sacrilegious, sacramentally-barren liturgical rites and condemned teachings and novelties, when we lack a true and valid Successor of Saint Peter to guide us. Having a true pope, however, is no more a guarantor of absolute peace and comity that the Catholic Church will be free of conflict and controversy than is having a good father as the head of a particular household.

A good father is the figure of Saint Joseph in his family. He tries to exercise the virtue of prudence in governing his family, tempering discipline with mercy, correction with compassion for the erring child, the necessity of exercising authority with the duty to be patient and meek and humble of heart. Even a father who does these things, however, has no guarantee that a child will obey him. He has no guarantee that a child who has obeyed him over the course of childhood will do so in adolescence. He has no guarantee that the best efforts to maintain a house of prayer and of a supernatural outlook on life that seeks to avoid the pitfalls of naturalism will produce a child or children who will not embrace the world with gusto when they are grown. There are conflicts and problems even in the most well-ordered of families.

Lacking any true father, the Holy Father, on earth at this time means that conflict and disagreement will be the order of the day more times than not. We should not be surprised or shocked at this. What we must remember, though, is that different people can see the same problem in different ways. This is the source of a great deal of human conflict. Problems of differing perspectives are rarely wrapped up as neatly as were fictional cases on Perry Mason or the far superior program, Ironside. Life is not compressed into fifty-one minutes of commercial free episodes. Some disputes are simply never going to be resolved, less yet understood, to the satisfaction of everyone in this passing, mortal vale of tears.

As I keep trying to remind the readership of this site, it is simply going to be the case that the good, the bad and the ugly about each of our lives and the truth of every situation in which we have found ourselves will not be made manifest clearly to all others until the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead. Those seeking to "find answers" to all problems now are simply going to live lives of utter, if not sometimes angry, frustration at trying to get others to see things the way that they do. This is not possible. Indeed, this is a straight ticket to a rubber room.

Truth never has "sides." We must be detached from all persons to examine evidence with as much objectivity as possible. Catholic scholarship and writing demand such dispassion and detachment. All I can do to present evidence. Readers can make whatever judgments they want thereafter.

We must be willing to put aside preconceived notions and prejudices for or against what is perceived to be a particular "side" in order to dispassionately review the evidence that is placed before us.

It does not matter how zealous a prelate or a cleric might be in the admirable charge of his episcopal or priestly duties.

And it does not follow that having a particular number of years of experience as a prelate or a cleric endows one with an expertise in all fields to such an extent that he is immune from criticism principally on the basis of having years of experience.

If this was the case, good readers, then we should all pay our obeisance to Joseph Ratzinger as "Pope" Benedict XVI as he has been a cleric since he was ordained to the subdiaconate in Germany in the 1940s and he has been a priest for sixty years, having observed his sixtieth anniversary of priestly ordination on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29.

Many good priests, some of whom suffered tremendously at the hands of their conciliar "bishops" or religious superiors, have not come to accept the true state of the Church Militant at this time despite their many years of experience.

To wit, the late Father John A. Hardon, S.J., suffered mightily within the Society of Jesus for being known as an opponent of ultra-progressivism despite his trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, that is, the "teachings" of the "Second Vatican Council and of the conciliar "popes" with the Catholic Faith. Father Hardon did not "get it" despite his years of scholarship and teaching, despite his many years of superb spiritual conferences and the many retreats that he conducted using the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Having experience as a bishop or as a priest does not mean that one is going to be correct in all situations or that his views or methods cannot be challenged when it is necessary to do so.

To assert, as Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, the Superior General of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, has to me and others in written and oral communication that his twenty years as a bishop and his twenty-six years as a priest erect, in effect, a wall of protection against criticism, especially from members of the laity, whom His Excellency believes must know less about various matters simply because they are members of the laity, is thus to seek to engage in defensiveness when confronted with problems that have been caused by the careless, imprecise use of words and by an unfamiliarity with the life of true Catholic scholarship as it has taken place outside of the incubator of sedevacantism in which he has lived the better part of his life.

Let me make it clear from the outset that I will always be grateful to Bishop Pivarunas for the assistance he provided us back in April of 2006 to understand the principles governing the canonical-doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church concerning sedevacantism and that it applies at this time. This commentary is not an "attack" on His Excellency. It has been my hope to avoid having to write about this whole matter. As Bishop Pivarunas has now made a public statement containing misrepresentations of fact, however, this commentary is being written to present the facts in the context in which they occurred.

Suffice it to say for the moment that the problems that have now come to public light are nothing new. I have attempted to present my perspective on them to Bishop Pivarunas directly on two different occasions in lengthy letters, whose contents he has dismissed on the basis of his years of experience as a bishop and as a priest. I simply want to assure the small readership of this site that I do not relish having to write this commentary, nor do I stand to gain anything from doing so. I ask only that readers assess the evidence, recognizing that nothing I write will "convince" anybody of anything that conflicts with preconceived notions of where the truth of this matter resides.

Those who have spent the better part, if not most, of their lives understanding the true state of the Church Militant at this time have made many sacrifices to make the true sacraments available to us. They were given many graces from Our Lady to see the truth decades ahead of many others of us. Our Lady sent these good, long-suffering Catholics many graces to persevere despite being rejected by their own families and friends and suffering the worst kinds of personal attacks for their fidelity to the immutable truths of the Catholic Church. Those of us who came to accept the true state of the Church Militant late in time would not have been able to do had it not been for the selflessness and courage of these good souls.

There are, however, pitfalls that come from living almost the entirety of one's life in the traditional ghetto. As noted in Rocky Roads in Rocky Times, one of the observations that I made upon entering the rubber room of the fullness of traditionalism was the lack of appreciation for the good work being done by Catholic scholars who are as of yet attached to the conciliar structures, men and women who prepare academic treatises that are not published without being peer-reviewed and who give papers at academic conferences where their findings are challenged openly by panel discussants and by questioners in the audience. It is of the essence of Catholic scholarship to have one's positions reviewed and criticized.

Noting a very few exceptions here and there, most of the sedevacantist clergy, understandably busy with their own heavy pastoral duties, have not had experience with such open criticism of their work or of how a particular teaching of the Church is expressed or applied in concrete circumstances.

Seminary and college professors, for example, have their teaching ability and their subject matter competency reviewed by administrators and/or by outside peer evaluators. This is a given. This is standard. It is no defense for a professor to say, "Who are you to criticize my teaching? Don't you realize that I've been teaching for thirty years, that I've received many awards for excellence in teaching in the past?"

It is sometimes most efficacious to have one's work reviewed and criticized by others.

As has been noted several times on this site, it was because my own uncritical acceptance of the framework of the American constitutional regime as being compatible with the Catholic Faith was challenged openly at a Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Conference in Los Angeles, California, in September of 1987, to read the Church's Social Encyclical letters. I was skewered for all to see. I was wrong. I remain very grateful for the criticism that I received because it set me on the path of truly seeing the world through the eyes of the true Faith. Subsequent papers given at conferences of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and the American Political Science Association through the year 2003 were thus strengthened immeasurably as a result of having received a bit of criticism, which I took to heart even though it stung at the time.

There are areas for improvement in each of our souls and in the performance of the duties of our state-in-life. It is important to bear this in mind as there was much spirited debate in Catholic intellectual circles on various matters even when we had true popes. Exchanging views and having one's work peer-reviewed and/or peer-evaluated gives one a perspective that our disordered self-love, which deludes us into thinking that all is well with what we do and how we do it, is a vital component of good teaching and good scholarship, and one of the great tragedies of the confusion that exists in the state of the Church Militant at this time is not only that we lack proper forums for such review and evaluation but that so many in the underground church believe that a defensive protection of the status quo answers all objections because it has, at least to them, seemed to work well for so long.

One of the things that I tried to get across to my own students over the course of thirty years of college teaching is that I knew that some of them, at least, would be grousing about the "hard work" I required of them. "I know. You complain. You talk to others and share your complaints. Guess what? We talk about you in faculty meetings!" This would usually, although not always, evoke a good deal of laughter from the students. Yes, I tried to use humor and the personality that God gave me to "get through" to my students, which is why I am still in contact with some of them from over thirty-five years ago now.

I've also been in two different seminaries, including the oldest national Catholic seminary in this country, Mount Saint Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Seminarians complain! This is almost part of their vocation. I complained during the time I was at the Mount as I had taken a leave of absence from teaching at Nassau Community College to study for the Diocese of Peoria (where my vocations direction was none other than the current conciliar "archbishop" of Newark, New Jersey, John Myers) and really missed the college classroom after seven years of teaching.

I was appalled at the lack of teaching, save for one man, Monsignor James Mulligan, who was an exemplary teacher, offering us his course in Faith, Revelation and Grace that was completely orthodox. (Monsignor Mulligan, by the way, is from the Diocese of Allentown, where I had taught at Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales in 1979-1980, which is why Bishop Petko, who also knew Monsignor Mulligan very well, and I know a great many of the same people. Monsignor Mulligan is now the Director of the Office of Priestly Life and Ministry for the Diocese of Allentown) Our entire first-year class of fifty men demanded and got a meeting with Monsignor Mulligan to express our concerns. He knew that we had legitimate concerns. One of the men complaining is the now auxiliary "bishop" of Denver, James Conley, who was a friend of mine for some years thereafter. Jim had studied under John Senior in Kansas, converting to the Faith as a result. He knew what scholarship and teaching were about. So did many of us, including those of us who had been academically trained, and one of the seminarians was an older man who had served as staffer for United States Senators and another had been a Trappist brother for decades. (And many of the older professors told stories of past seminarians, each of whom became priests, whose grousing about classes, teachers, living conditions and food did not prevent them from being ordained and becoming good pastors of souls. Father John Joseph Sullivan, whose life's story was recounted in Jackie Boy Remembered Yet Again, told of the hijinks he pulled during his seminary days and in the years after his ordination. He was a most zealous pastor of souls. Seminarians do not enter seminaries fully formed, and they may still have rough edges after their priestly ordinations.)

Some complaints are unjust. Some complaints are just. Each complaint must be considered seriously without resorting to defensiveness. It is not out of the ordinary that seminarians complain about various matters. This does not mean that their just complaints are without merit and it does not mean that unjust complaints are signs that a man does not have a priestly vocation. Seminarians do indeed have an obligation to be respectful of their instructors and to be circumspect in their expression of their views. Fallen human nature being what it is, however, it is sometimes very difficult for men to do so when they are face-to-face with what they consider to be a level of instruction that is facile and that relies upon at least books whose authors were trying to pave the way for an era of more theological "openness."

In the current case, Bishop Pivarunas is upset that four seminarians have brought complaints to him about the level of the instruction at Mater Dei Seminary. Seminary classes do not consist in having students read from books during class sessions for long periods of clsss time (separate courses in public speaking and reading are offered in many seminaries). A professor gives lectures as he discourses on the subject matter while students take good, detailed notes. He is able to apply critical thinking to texts, recognizing that not everything published with an imprimatur prior to the "Second" Vatican Council was immune from modernizing elements (inverting the ends of Holy Matrimony, promoting religious liberty and the Americanist spirit, providing Modernist interpretations of Sacred Scripture that had been condemned by the Pontifical Biblical Commission). It is thoroughly understandable that students used to formal lectures and who are familiar with the modernizing elements of thought and pastoral praxis that were at work in the decades before the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, would object to an uncritical acceptance of the work of certain authors who revealed their agenda in the years during and following the "Second" Vatican Council.

As has been the case in past centuries when priests formed new religious communities and/or new institutions of priestly training to provide what they believe is an environment in which their own charisms can be put to better use and their own perspectives can be implemented to enhance the academic life of Holy Mother Church, growing pains and hard feelings result almost inevitably in a series of bitter recriminations that divide believing Catholics one from another in the heat of battle.

What we tend to forget is that it is sometimes the case that people, even if they are bishops and priests and seminarians, will have different perspectives on a situation that envelopes them. This is true, as has been noted before, even when we had true popes. As no one traditional bishop exercises the power of governance over any territorial jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, therefore, I don't see how anyone can object to the opening of another seminary in order to give us more priests in this time of apostasy and betrayal as men are trained in an environment that is more hospitable to their own educational backgrounds and temperaments.

Bishop Pivarunas sees a spirit of rebelliousness and arrogance on the part of the seminarians he has dismissed that is nothing other than a sincere, earnest desire on their part to be taught in an environment that is more in line with how Catholic seminaries used to be run, and how the formerly Catholic seminaries now in the control of the conciliarists still operate as they propagate error and falsehood in the place of the Catholic Faith. It is the lack of Bishop Pivarunas's personal exposure to the operation of a seminary outside of his own experience in the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen that predisposes him to reject as insolence legitimate objections raised by men who simply want to pursue and thus realize excellence in their studies as Our Lady sends them the graces from her Divine Son to do so.

Bishop Pivarunas's response to Fr. Markus Ramolla's August 21 bulletin does a discredit to the important issues that numerous people have sought to bring to his attention in recent months. Efforts have been made to provide His Excellency with a clear and systematic delineation of the problems that have now burst into public view. As one who has made such efforts, I am amazed at what can be characterized only as Bishop Pivarunas's ever-shifting rationale as to why the seminarians were dismissed.

The concerns raised by Bishop Pivarunas's open letter fall into four basic categories.

The first deals with the issues His Excellency raised concerning Bishop Francis Slupski and Bishop Paul Petko.

The third involves Bishop Pivarunas's indiscriminate and intellectually slothful use of the phrase "Natural Family Planning" to refer to the Catholic Church's teaching that it is proper for married couples to restrict the use of the privileges of the married state in grave circumstances outlined by Pope Pius XII in his October 29, 1951, Address to Italian Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession to a woman's monthly periods of infertility. The Catholic Church has never taught any such thing as "natural family planning." The Catholic Church does not use the language of the population controllers to refer to her teaching concerning the use of the gift proper to marriage.

First, Bishop Pivarunas noted the grievous errors that have been made by Bishop Francis Slupski.

Bishop Pivarunas seems to be completely impervious to the simple truth that Bishop Slupski, who was ordained to the priesthood fifty years ago in Poland for the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorist Fathers), has apologized on numerous occasions for the errors that he has made. His apologies have been made both publicly and privately. I brought this to Bishop Pivarunas's attention in a letter dated April 5, 2011, to which I had never received a response, explaining to him that Bishop Slupski noted his errors and how they had damaged his reputation when he began his sermon at the Mass of the episcopal consecration of Bishop Paul Petko at Saint Joseph Chapel in Rock Falls, Illinois, on Friday, March 11, 2011. He apologized for those errors. He repeated that apology to me personally at the reception following the Mass of episcopal consecration. He has done this on other occasions.

Second, Bishop Pivarunas never fulfilled the precepts of the Eighth Commandment to speak to Bishop Slupski personally about these matters. Bishop Slupski would have informed him of the full set of facts concerning the matter of Ryan Scott, who was recommended by the late Abbot Leonard Giardina, O.S.B., to Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., to be conditionally ordained to the priesthood..

Abbot Leonard recommended Ryan Scott even though the latter could produce no paperwork containing his sacramental records. Bishop McKenna conditionally ordained him without this paperwork. Bishop Pivarunas has been duty bound in justice to speak with Bishop Slupski personally concerning the circumstances of who “ordered” him to consecrate Ryan Scott even though he, Bishop Slupski, had demanded to see Scott’s paperwork, which he never produced. I presented Bishop Slupski's side of this story to Bishop Pivarunas in that April 5, 2011, letter. According to Bishop Slupski, he acted as he did because he was ordered to do so by his own consecrating bishop.

It has only been because of his gratitude to Bishop McKenna for his own consecration that Bishop Slupski has not, unlike Bishop Pivarunas, sought to justify himself before men. This is being brought to light now as Bishop Pivarunas was duty bound to contact Bishop Slupski to hear this from him personally once he had been apprised of this side of the story to make an assessment of its veracity. Unfortunately, Bishop Pivarunas has seen fit to dismiss anything Bishop Slupski might say as being without merit because of his admitted mistakes. Archbishop Pierre Ngo Dinh Thuc made mistakes, for which he apologized. This has mattered nothing to Bishop Clarence Kelly and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius V, whose position on this mattered has divided the underground Church and has been refuted by Mr. Mario Derksen in his Open Letter to Bp. Clarence Kelly on the Thuc Bishops.

This is really the recrudescence of the heresy of Donatism, which rejected the legitimacy of a bishop of Cathage who had been consecrated by a bishop who had knuckled under to the Diocletian persecutions. Holy Mother Church is merciful. She is forgiving. Bishop Slupski knows that he has made mistakes. He abjures them. He abhors them. He drives hundreds of miles each Sunday to offer Holy Mass in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. To continue to castigate him without doing him the courtesy of a phone call is most unjust.

Perhaps it is necessary once again to point out that the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI) was organized in 1967 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, by Francis Schuckardt, a layman who gave talks for the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima (now called the World Apostolate of Fatima) on True Devotion to Mary around the country. The CMRI received the approval of Bishop Sylvester Treinen of the Diocese of Boise, Idaho, in 1969, before adopting the sedevacantist position. Layman Francis Schuckardt was ordained to the priesthood and consecrated as a bishop in a span of four days (October 28, 1971, to November 1, 1971) by Bishop Daniel Quilter Brown, who had been consecrated by a married Old Catholic bishop.

Bishop Pivarunas stayed with Francis Schuckardt for twelve years. He was present at each of the five priestly ordinations over which Bishop Schuckardt presided. And while it is very commendable that he and the late Father Denis Chicoine led the ouster of Bishop Schuckardt in 1984, this has not been considered good enough by Bishop Kelly and Bishop Donald Sanborn and others to undo the mistakes of the past. (Bishop Sanborn has stated that the CMRI should have reorganized itself under a different name to make a complete break from its origins. (See Interview with Bishop Donald Sanborn, on Vatican II, the SSPX, and the Motu Proprio and a 1991 Bishop Sanborn letter about CMRI.) It is very ironic that Bishop Pivarunas has now adopted a policy with respect to Bishop Slupski and Bishop Petko and the clergy associated with them that is identical to the one used by the critics of the CMRI.

The CMRI has engaged in a bit of revisionist history about their origins as Bishop Schuckardt, whose history of personal abuses is now very well known, is airbrushed out of the history books and down into the Orwellian memory hole. There is no mention of Bishop Schuckardt on the History page of the CMRI website. Readers will note that this bit of revisionist history omits the CMRI's history between the years 1967 and 1986. There should be some kind of apology for what transpired in those years, and no amount of airbrushing the truth can make facts disappear.

It is now claimed that Father Denis Chicoine was the true founder of the CMRI as it was under his direction that the community's constitution was reorganized in 1986, following a brief association with Bishop George Musey, with the approval of Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., thus signifying the blessing of a true bishop upon the community's existence. There is one slight problem with this revisionist history: Bishop McKenna, though a true bishop, had no authority from the Catholic Church to establish a religious community. None of our traditionalist bishops have this authority. The existing communities of men and women are merely voluntarily organized pious associations of Catholics who are, in actual point of fact, members of the laity unless, in the case of men, they possess true holy orders. They are nothing more than that according to the law of the Catholic Church. Each community will have to receive formal recognition from duly constituted ecclesiastical authority when we have a true Successor of Saint Peter and true bishops with ordination jurisdiction when and if it is within the Providence of God this to occur.

Despite their true origins, the priests of the CMRI have worked very tirelessly for the good of souls to bring them the true sacraments in this time of apostasy and betrayal. It is no disparagement of their hard working priests, including Bishop Pivarunas, who travels hundreds of miles to offer Holy Mass for the faithful every other weekend, to remind them that others, such as Bishop Slupski, can redeem themselves just as they have. God gives us length of days so that we can correct our ways, and this is coming from a sinner who has made many mistakes and so many sins for which I must make much reparation before I die. Why not Bishop Francis Slupski?

Third, Bishop Pivarunas refused in March of 2010 to conditionally ordain then Father Paul Petko to the priesthood, saying that he would need to know him for ten years before doing so. This was truly remarkable given the fact that he was willing to conditionally ordain Father Paul Sretenovic, who is a conciliar priest “ordained” for the Archdiocese of Newark, at Mount Saint Michael’s Church in October of 2006 without ever having laid eyes on him before. Father Sretenovic, for whom we pray every day, is a devoted son of Our Lady and is very committed to her Fatima Message on modesty of dress. He almost went to Spokane five years ago before being convinced not to do so by others. Bishop Pivarunas was, however, willing to ordain him conditionally without having met him. There was thus an inconsistency on the part of Bishop Pivarunas in the case of Father Petko at a time when the underground Church needs well-trained priests to serve the scattered flock.

Both Bishop Pivarunas and Bishop McKenna, who had imposed a moratorium on himself last year on such ordinations because of his own previous mistakes, recommended that Father Petko seek out conditional ordination at the hands of Bishop Slupski. If everyone is to avoid all contact with Bishop Slupski, why Bishop Pivarunas make this recommendation? Bishop McKenna kept asking me throughout the course of 2010 if Bishop Petko, with whom he met in his office at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in May of 2010, had gone to see Bishop Slupski. His Excellency was delighted to hear the news of the then Father Petko's conditional ordination to the priesthood on Saturday, January 15, 2011.

Fourth, as there is no authority in the Catholic Church, our traditionalist bishops have no papal mandate to govern, a point that was made to me by a layman three years ago at a time when I believed, yes, quite mistakenly, that obedience was owed to these bishops. Our traditionalist bishops have received the fullness of the priesthood solely for the perpetuation of the priesthood and thus of the sacraments. No traditionalist bishop has any ecclesiastical authority to grant or to withhold legitimacy to the work of other such bishops who, for one reason or another, are held in disfavor by him. People are free to associate or not to associate with a particular bishop or priest as they see fit.

It is thus ironic that Bishop Pivarunas, who for twelve years was under the stewardship of a man who went from the lay state to the fullness of the priesthood in four days, invokes church law to object to the consecration of Bishop Paul Petko. Bishop Pivarunas repeatedly ignores the fact that Bishop Petko had four years of college seminary and twelve years of major seminary training, including four at the Society of Saint Pius X’s Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary, before functioning as a priest for sixteen years prior to his conditional ordination, with five of those years having been spent in functioning parishes of what he thought was the Catholic Church. He was very beloved at Holy Rosary Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, for his priestly manner and his firm conviction in preaching the truths of the Holy Faith. One's priestly bearing does not begin when he is conditionally ordained any more than one becomes a Catholic when one embraces the true state of the Church Militant at this time.

Bishop Pivarunas's objections to the consecration of Bishop Paul Petko are, therefore, as purely personal as those who objected to his own consecration twenty years ago on the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, September 24. Some of us are very grateful to God that we have a a bishop who wants to give us priests and not place whimsical objections to their ordination.

Bishop Pivarunas was both inconsistent and intellectually dishonest in stating publicly the reasons why the four seminarians were dismissed. His rationale in this regard has changed considerably in the past few months.

First, Bishop Pivarunas dismissed a nineteen year-old seminarian in a telephone conversation last month when he was explaining to His Excellency the deficiencies in his academic program. Incensed that a nineteen year-old student was attempting to explain the serious problems that exist in the academic and spiritual formation of seminarians, the Bishop resorted to a defensive posture of saying that he had been a priest for twenty-six years and a bishop for twenty years, qualifying him to know how to run a seminary program. His Excellency would not listen to serious objections from a young man concerned about excellence in spiritual and intellectual formation.

The young seminarian had spoken in general terms with others about wanting to leave Omaha at the end of the 2010-2011 academic year because of the problems he saw at Mater Dei Seminary, Bishop Pivarunas had concluded from this that there must have been plans made by Father Ramolla as early as December of last year to open a seminary. This was a conclusion without any foundation. It was and remains a rash judgment. All the young seminarian knew was that he wanted to leave Omaha.

Although Father Ramolla had expressed a wish as early as December of 2009 to have a seminary one day, there were no concrete plans for such a seminary as he his own deportation case was still pending, not to be resolved until May 12, 2011 (see Removing All Doubt).

Furthermore, Father Ramolla had met Father Paul Petko in Indiana only once when he was driving back from meeting with Bishop Pivarunas in Omaha, Nebraska, in August of last year. He had no contact with Bishop Francis Slupski until well after the consecration of Bishop Petko earlier this year. Indeed, Father Ramolla did not have any bishop in sight in late-2010 to confer ordination on any men who might attend such a seminary. Father Ramolla merely had an idea, a hope, a possibility for the future, an idea that interested two other seminarians, one from France and the other from Germany. Bishop Pivarunas misconstrued the general discussion of the possibility of a future seminary, whose general idea had been broached in an interview that Father Ramolla gave in late-2009, as meaning that there had been active plans made to launch one this year. Believing that he had been deceived, Bishop Pivarunas, acting in a fit of anger, dismissed the nineteen year-old seminarian and the two European seminarians right then and there over the telephone. That's when the dismissals took place. Everything else is revisionist history.

Bishop Pivarunas knew full well that the two European seminarians intended to work with Father Ramolla after their priestly ordination as they had discussed this with him personally. His Excellency told me on numerous occasions in the past that he didn't care where men who had studied under him and were not joining the CMRI went after spending some time with a more experienced priest. He told this also to Mr. Timothy Duff in the 1990s. Bishop Pivarunas had found one reason after another in recent weeks to justify this decision before, it appears, settling on Father Ramolla's association with Bishop Petko and Bishop Slupski. Talk about banging one head against in room full of rubber padded walls. Which is it?

Father Ramolla had asked Bishop Pivarunas in a letter sent late last month to transfer the European seminarians to Saint Athanasius Seminary until their new visas had been approved, thus sparing them the expense of having to return to Europe unexpectedly. It is a common practice for administrators of educational institutions to issue such transfers when foreign students leave one school to study at another. His Excellency, who had told the mother of one seminarian and others, including Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI, that he would not "touch" the visas, saw this request, made very respectfully by Father Ramolla, as an invitation to "lie to the government."

It was shortly after this that the visas were lifted, noting that there was a phone call made to Bishop Pivarunas by a traditional priest who has a bit of experience in lifting visas and pursuing deportation cases. We will know on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead if there was any cause and effect between his phone call and the decision by Bishop Pivarunas, who never once telephoned Father Ramolla or the seminarians concerned to discuss the matter. Bishop Pivarunas simply proceeded to cancel the students' visas without notifying the seminarians, who had to find out about the matter when they wrote to him. The seminarians received a short e-mail from Sister Jacinta, Bishop Pivarunas's secretary, informing them that the visas had been canceled. Thus it was that both had to leave the country while their new student visas are being processed. This was unnecessary. This was vindictive. It was petty.

The complaints made by the two European seminarians, one of whose angelic voice as raised in chant was very inspiring to some of the parishioners of Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Omaha, Nebraska, about the spiritual, intellectual and liturgical formation at Mater Dei Seminary are nothing new. Others who have left Mater Dei Seminary have brought these objections to my attention in the past five years, which coincide with those that I have seen with my own eyes during our visits to Omaha. Bishop Daniel Dolan, who will align himself with his consecrating bishop when necessity arises even though the latter cut off relations because of his "cattle rustling" of priests and seminarians away from the CMRI in the 1990s, told me, in happier days, Your Excellency, that he found the lack of preparation of some of the CMRI priests to be "embarrassing." Bishop Pivarunas would reject that characterization, but that is apart from the point, which is that the dismissed seminarians simply made observations that have been made to numerous people by Bishop Dolan and Bishop Donald Sanborn and Father Anthony Cekada and some of the clergy associated with them. Whether the seminarians who are returning to Mater Dei Seminary this year share those observations has not been stated publicly at this time.

What is known is that different people can, as noted before, have different perspectives. The four dismissed seminarians did have legitimate concerns, including the presence of girls from Mater Dei Academy dressed in immodest and/or inappropriate attire on the grounds of the campus. Various compromises with the prevailing culture (going to contemporary motion pictures, watching television) also concerned them, something that Bishop Pivarunas knows full well that I share completely. Charity Covereth A Multitude Of Sins, part one was written with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen in mind.

Second, the dismissal of seminarian from Oklahoma was indeed for insufficient reasons. As will be discussed in the next section, if ever so briefly, much of the confusion surrounding this young man's dismissal revolves around Bishop Pivarunas's use of the ideological slogan "Natural Family Planning" to refer to the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the use of the gift proper to the married state in a wife's monthly infertile periods when the grave reasons outlined by Pope Pius XII, amplifying upon earlier pronouncements made by Holy Mother Church, exist. Bishop Pivarunas has used the phrases "Natural Family Planning" and rhythm interchangeably without realizing that the two are not the same (see, for example, his article that appears on the CMRI website as On the Question of Natural Family Planning). This is a serious deficiency for one who is seeking to teach moral theology to future priests.

One will notice that Bishop Pivarunas's response to Fr. Markus Ramolla's August 21 bulletin states the following concerning the dismissal of the seminarian from Oklahoma, and it was a dismissal as there no reason for him to stay in the seminary after being told that he was not going to be ordained unless he accepted a position, "Natural Family Planning," that is not taught by the Catholic Church:

Contrast this with what His Excellency wrote to Father Ramolla in a letter dated July 24, 2011:

Although the three above-mentioned articles have covered this issue thoroughly, I want to reiterate here that the Catholic Church has never taught–and she will never teach–anything called “Natural Family Planning.” Precision of words matters, and it is Bishop Pivarunas's imprecision in the use of words on this issue that has generated much needless confusion.

“Natural Family Planning” refers to an ideology that flowed from the personalist view of marriage that had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in his October 29, 1951, Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession. That personalist view of marriage was incorporated into the text of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968, that inverted the ends proper to matrimony. What is called “Natural Family Planning” is the result of Humane Vitae, not any of the sources cited by Bishop Pivarunas..

Here is the origin of the phrase “natural family planning” that Bishop Pivarunas used in his July 24, 2011, letter to Father Ramolla and in numerous conversations with members of the laity on this matter in recent months:

The Catholic Church has never endorsed any kind of “family planning,” and Pope Pius XII did not authorize the indiscriminate teaching of what Bishop Pivarunas has called both "natural family planning" and "rhythm" to those preparing for marriage, especially in today's world when young people grow up believing that it is necessary to do so because of one rationalization after another. The "they're gonna use contraception" if we don't teach them "nfp" or "rhythm" was, as noted in those three articles, rejected by Pope Pius XII very specifically.

It is thus very tragic for Bishop Pivarunas to use such language in his July 24, 2011, letter to Father Ramolla, in class lectures and in various conversations with members of the laity. He has demonstrated a gross ignorance of historical fact, applying a revolutionary term to the teaching of our true popes. This misleads the faithful and does the cause of truth a grave disservice. It is a problem that His Excellency does not see this as a problem.

It was not until Father Ramolla's July 27, 2011, response to Bishop Pivarunas that the latter began to refer to the “rhythm method” consistently in connection with the dismissal of the concerned seminarian, to whom Father Ramolla provided a clear, systematic explanation of what the Catholic Church really teaches on this subject and the very few circumstances in which it actually applies. Prior to that time, Bishop Pivarunas used the language of the anti-life population control crowd that has been adopted by the conciliar church at the suggestion of population control revolutionaries.

At the root of this imprecision of language rests the shallowness of Bishop Pivarunas's understanding of the Modernist undercurrents that were at work in the Church in the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council, whose doctrinal and liturgical revolutions did not occur overnight as a spontaneous generation. The seeds of revolutionary change had been planted long before that bogus council began its work. Bishop Pivarunas has told numerous lay people that there is nothing wrong with the textbooks that he uses because they had imprimaturs and that it does not matter to him that certain authors might have later played a role in the conciliar revolution as they had ecclesiastical approval for their work in the 1950s, thus validating it for citation uncritically.

Two of the moral theologians whose work on marriage Bishop Pivarunas cited on the CMRI website, Fathers John C. Ford, S.J., and Gerald Kelly, S.J., were in the vanguard of promoting the indiscriminate use of the rhythm method in total disregard for the grave conditions outlined by Pope Pius XII.

Dr. Germain Grisez, a protégé of Father John C. Ford, S.J., explained his mentor’s dissatisfaction with the moral teaching of Pope Pius XII that he could only hint at in the 1950s until being “liberated” to speak more freely after the “election” of John XXIII:

This is what Fathers Ford and Kelly wrote in Volume 2 of Contemporary Moral Theology: Marriage Questions:

It is no accident that one of the men chiefly responsible for the revolutionary text of Humanae Vitae was Father John C. Ford, S.J.

Father Ford did not arrive at these views in the 1960s. He held them long before, and he had expressed them cautiously under the cover of imprimaturs in the 1950s.

A teacher must know the sources he uses and cites. It is Bishop Pivarunas's failure to take the time to know his sources that has angered the seminarians he has dismissed and that has caused needless confusion amongst the laity that has now occurred because of his open letter.

Catholics have never used the phrase “natural family planning.” Not once. Not ever. There is no such thing taught by the Catholic Church.

The whole concept of any kind of "family planning" is foreign to the mind of Holy Mother Church, something that Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who was the Pro-Secretary of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII from January 12, 1953, to the time of His Holiness's death on October 9, 1958, continuing as the Secretary of the Holy Office, whose name was changed to the "Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" in 1966, under Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and Giovanni Montini/Paul VI until January 6, 1968, noted in the following remarks at the "Second" Vatican Council:

Cardinal Ottaviani made this point one hundred nine years after the Bishop of Amiens, France, Louis-Antoine de Salinis, had asked the Sacred Penitentiary in Rome whether married couples who use the right of the marital contract on the days when learned physicians were convinced that conception would not occur were to be disturbed in such conduct. The Sacred Penitentiary replied on March 2. 1853, that “Those spoken of in the request are not to be disturbed, providing that they do nothing to impede conception.”

Was Cardinal Ottaviani, then the head of the Holy Office, ignorant of this answer when he spoke at the "Second" Vatican Council?

Nor was he ignorant of similar answer given by the Sacred Penitentiary in 1880. Those answers did not in the least signify an endorsement by the Catholic Church of the morality of "natural family planning," only a determination that couples could, by mutual consent, abstain from that which is proper to the married state during a woman's monthly periods of fertility as long as they did nothing to interfere with the conception of a child during a woman's infertile periods. There was no thought to establishing a "teaching" that could be interpreted as having to be taught indiscriminately to all engaged couples. The Sacred Penitentiary issued answers to specific questions.

Bishop Pivarunas has explained that he does adhere to teaching of Pope Pius XII. Fine. He must recognize that he has caused massive confusion by his use of a phrase that conveys an ideology that has nothing to do with that teaching. Cardinal Ottaviani knew the mind of Pope Pius XII better than almost anyone else. He knew that the Catholic Church had never taught any kind of "family planning," and that she never can teach this, which is why using the language of the lords of Modernity in the world and of the Modernists in the conciliar church is simply without justification.

This issue is important as it illustrates some of the frustration that the dismissed seminarians have had in their studies at Mater Dei Seminary.

Bishop Pivarunas's mistaken use of the ideological slogan “natural family planning”calls to mind a much more egregious error on his part, namely, the endorsement that he gave to the transplantation of a heart into the body of the child of one of his parishioners. He accepted the myth of “brain death,” aligning himself once again with the conciliar church, which accepts this myth as well, and the medical spare-body parts industry, rejecting the irrefutable medical facts provided by Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death (From The Michael Fund Newsletter). Indeed, Bishop Pivarunas told me in December of 2007 that he was not interested in even speaking to Dr. Byrne about the subject. (It should be added that Dr. Byrne was very willing to speak to Bishop Donald Sanborn in early-2008. Bishop Sanborn wrote to me to say that he had no interest in meeting with Dr. Byrne. This insularity of sedevacantist clergy leads to many tragic--and quite needless--errors. Catholics can find this kind of confusion in their local Novus Ordo parish.)

There is no such thing as “brain death” despite what Bishop Pivarunas's medical doctor brother informed him. (A separate article on the issue of "brain death" will be published tomorrow, Wednesday, August 31, 2011, the Feast of Saint Raymond Nonnatus. Several such articles have been published on this site previously, including Triumph of the Body Snatchers.)

Vital organs can only be transplanted from living human beings, who must be dissected alive in order for their organs to be transplanted. It is not without just cause that a major behind-the-scenes figure in a traditional chapel told me that Bishop Pivarunas was guilty of condoning a murder in this regard. This is correct, and it matters not that the child dissected for his heart would have been killed anyway to provide it for some other child awaiting a heart transplantation. No one can have anything to do with such a procedure. It is that simple. And it is to the utter shame of many of us let our true affection for Bishop Pivarunas and our admiration for his pastoral zeal or souls from recognizing that such a grave error, based in utilitarianism and sentimentality, discredited the Bishop Pivarunas and the priests of the CMRI as reliable teachers of moral theology. This is not a minor error. This is an error founded in an uncritical acceptance of the slogans used in the world and by the conciliar church, and Holy Mother Church can never be restored on the foundation of such critical errors no matter the "good intentions" and the pastoral zeal of the priests who condoned the dissection of Baby Trevor. (For a summary of the case of the dissection of Baby Trevor, please see the appendix below. Please click here for a general discussion of Why Heart Transplants Are Intrinsically Evil. Both articles were written by a Catholic priest, who also provided the reference sources.)

Some would argue at this point that the parents of the child in whose body the dissected heart was transplanted were faced with the loss of their newborn baby. As difficult as this would have been for the parents, a Catholic priest, that is, one possessed of the sensus Catholicus and a true understanding of her moral teaching, should have reminded them that a baptized child who dies shortly after birth or at any time prior to the age of reason goes straight to Heaven. That little child thus achieves the very end for which God created Him, that is, to know, love and to serve Him in this life so as to be happy with Him for all eternity in Heaven. And the family in such an instance gains a saint in Heaven to intercede for them. One cannot condone the murder of another's child, even if that child was destined for death himself in a short time, to save the life of his own child. The Fifth Commandment prohibits any action whose only end is the direct, intentional death of an innocent human being. And while this has happened within the Providence of God and the child whose life was saved has an opportunity to grow in sanctity throughout her life, the action itself was morally unjustifiable. God does bring good out of evil. However, we can not do evil to bring about a perceived good.

It is the spirit of naturalism and sentimentality, of avoiding hurt feelings and pain, that prevails in many instances in the CMRI. This is why Bishop Pivarunas decides, at least in some cases, to leave divorced and remarried couples who had received worthless decrees of nullity from a conciliar marriage tribunal in "good conscience" so as not to disturb their peace as he does not believe that it is possible for such couples to live in a Josephite marriage for the sake of their own souls and for the common good of their children. He has no authority from the Catholic Church to do this. Pope Pius XII spoke directly about the fallacy of the "impossibility" of a married couple practicing such abstinence for long periods in his October 29, 1951, Address to Midwives on the Nature of their Profession. This issue is treated in Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae.

Bishop Pivarunas was wrong to accept the medical industry's money-making myth of "brain death." He was wrong because he accepted wrong premises uncritically. While it is admirable that he has memorized the entire texts of moral theology tomes, one has to apply critical reasoning to moral issues whose answers are not always going to be found in those old tomes. Bishop Pivarunas is as wrong about "brain death" and vital organ transplantation as Bishop Donald Sanborn and Father Anthony Cekada were in supporting the removal of the late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo's nutrition and hydration that resulted in her cruel, thirteen-day execution by starvation and dehydration. Bishop Sanborn wrote to me in 2008 at a time I was attempting to convince him of his error that we could not have nation of "125 year-old headless corpses" tethered to machines. Terri Schiavo was not a headless corpse, and it is this kind of unreliable moral teaching from sedevacantist prelates and clergy that dissuades many Catholics from embracing the true state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal as they figure men who can justify the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings can't be trusted on any issue, including their reasoning concerning the true state of the Church.

The seminarians dismissed by Bishop Pivarunas knew that their rector was not always a reliable teacher of moral theology. They are, to be honest, relieved that they no longer have to be silent about such egregious errors of principle and fact. It is important, however, to note the facts surrounding their dismissal and that the complaints they brought to His Excellency's attention are not simply the grousing of "rebels." Bishop Pivarunas was predisposed to believe that the seminarian from France was a "rebel" because of information that had been provided to him by several sedevacantist priests in Europe who work closely with Bishops Dolan and Sanborn, both of whom do not want any newly ordained priest to work under their "enemy," Father Markus Ramolla, at Saint Albert the Great Roman Catholic Church and elsewhere. No amount of criticism directed at the persons of these seminarians can detract from the legitimacy of their concerns whose gravity readers can determine for themselves from the facts presented above.

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this whole utterly needless controversy is that it could have been avoided if only there had been a willingness on the part of Bishop Pivarunas to accept criticism with grace and with a sense of deep self-reflection as this would have prompted him to recognize his errors and to apologize for them publicly. Each of us makes mistakes. We must, however, recognize our mistakes and apologize for them, especially if they have resulted in confusing the faithful and/or leading them into various errors. Once again, the Church Militant on earth is not going be restored with any kind of admixture of truth and error when it comes to the teaching of Faith and Morals.

The announcement in the Saint Albert the Great bulletin of the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 21, 2011, contained no personal attacks upon Bishop Pivarunas. Each of our actions is subject to review and criticism. A criticism of someone's words and actions is not an "attack" upon anyone's person. It is only because men who have priestly vocations have had unjust obstacles placed in their way that Father Ramolla had to explain the reason for opening Saint Athanasius Seminary.

Bishop Pivarunas has chosen, however, to engage in a bitter ad hominem attack on Father Ramolla, something that is very curious coming from a man who has shown himself to be so hypersensitive to the least bit of criticism.

Bishop Pivarunas accused Father Ramolla of being of being deceitful in what he seems to characterize as plotting with the seminarians behind his back. If Father Ramolla had done so, though, why wouldn’t he have applied for the student visas for the European seminarians months ago? He would have raised money for the seminary.

None of this happened. Father Ramolla had no idea that the seminarian from Oklahoma was going to be dismissed because he was unclear about a moral teaching as represented by Bishop Pivarunas, which is why Father Ramolla referred to the dismissal as being for insufficient reasons. Bishop Pivarunas's imprecision of language and liberal interpretation of the teaching are what produced the confusion. No student should be punished for the imprecision of his teacher. Father Ramolla believed that he was duty-bound before God to help this young man understand the teaching of the Church and thus to continue his studies for priestly ordination. There were no plots. There was no deceit.

Although he supports his Superior General fully, Father Casimir Puskorius, CMRI, wrote the following to me on August 21, 2011, as I protested against the baseless assertion that Bishop Pivarunas was making to others about Father Ramolla's "plans" to open a seminary, thus slandering his priestly character in the process:

It is a rush to rash judgment, premised upon suspicion and surmise, to contend in a public forum that Father Ramolla was being deceitful when a simple phone call could have rectified any misunderstanding.

Bishop Pivarunas told me in three different phone conversations in November of 2009 that he knew that Father Markus Ramolla had been unjustly dismissed from Saint Gertrude the Great Church on November 5, 2009. He told me on the morning of November 6, 2009, that he stood ready to help Father Ramolla secure a new religious work visa to stay in this country, an offer that Father Ramolla could not accept as another prelate had become involved in the matter, offering his own assistance and support at the time.

Bishop Pivarunas shared with me once again his own experiences of dealing with Bishop Daniel Dolan, explaining how he started to steal his missions in Mexico right out from under him shortly after he consecrated Father Dolan to be a bishop in 1993. He knew that Father Ramolla was telling the truth in all that happened at Saint Gertrude the Great Church, explaining that the "people vote with their feet" and that he stood ready to provide the sacraments for those who had left there spontaneously because they knew that Father Ramolla's complaints were the very ones that they had brought to Bishop Dolan's attention over the years, and that they were tired of the lies and rationalizations told repeatedly to justify the status quo.

Bishop Pivarunas met with Father Ramolla in person in 2010, having lengthy discussions with him on the matter, extending an invitation to him to go to the Fatima Conference that year and to be photographed with the CMRI clergy, something that wasn't possible because Father Ramolla was in deportation proceedings (see Removing All Doubt), thus making air travel impossible without his German passport, which was in the custody of Federal immigration officials.

Throughout it all, however, Bishop Pivarunas told me the same thing that he told Father Ramolla: that he could not take any public stand on the matter because his priests wanted to “avoid controversy.” His Excellency told me this repeatedly.

Behold the controversy that Bishop Pivarunas has brought upon us all in the insane fish bowl and padded rubber room that is the traditional world now. His rash judgments, his imprecise use of language and his lack of understanding of the sources he cites in class lectures and in some of his website postings are now laid out publicly even though he could have wished the dismissed seminarians well and have considered, if only for a moment, that there was room enough in the underground Church for another seminary to help men with different perspectives than his own to prepare for priestly ordination.

It would be wonderful not to have to spend time writing on these matters. Readers of this site know that I did not defend myself when the website launched by the close friend of Bishop Daniel Dolan and Father Anthony Cekada engaged in a caricaturing of my work that Bishop Dolan, for one, had once praised so highly in public and in private. I accepted the castigation and ridicule and mockery and scorn as a just chastisement for my sins, which are truly numberless and for which I hope to live long enough to make reparation. I cannot, however, remain silent when the truth about others is misrepresented. I would be no better than the Levite who passed by the man wounded by robbers in the parable of the Good Samaritan if I chose the path of a convenient silence over what so many think are "local" issues.

I will repeat now what I have written before: it is never a "local" issue when one member of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth suffers unjustly at the hands of shepherds, men who have been ordained to care for the sheep, not lord it over them and treat them as inferior creatures who must be made to feel guilty and foolish, if not ignored entirely by silence, that is, for even daring to suggest that they had concerns that had been gnawing away at their hearts.

This is a chastisement for the clergy and religious and the lay people associated with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen and Saint Albert the Great Church (and its mission Mass sites) for their sins.

This is a chastisement for the small fish bowl that exists inside the rubber padded room of sedevacantism.

The whole state of the Church Militant is itself a chastisement for our sins and those of the whole world.

This is a chastisement in large measure because the more that we waste our time fighting what should be seen as healthy growing pains in the traditional movement that are so similar to the formation of new institutions throughout Holy Mother Church's history is seen as opportunity to express tears of bitter resentment that one's own work is not hailed universally as we think it to be in our own mind's eye.

The only winner in all of this is the man pictured below in the Spanish caballero hat::

We must accept the fact that part of the chastisement that we must endure at this time is being estranged from others who think the absolute worst of us and our motives. Good. Everything gets revealed on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead, and it will only be then that each of us will see the intentions of the hearts and the circumstances of the lives of others with the perfect clarity with which we saw ourselves and our own lives for the first time at that truly terrible moment called the Particular Judgment that awaits each us much sooner than we realize or expect.

The two European seminarians had experienced the legendary arbitrariness of Bishop Donald Sanborn, the rector of Most Holy Trinity Seminary before they went to Mater Dei Seminary. It was because of this arbitrariness that a priest told me at Romano's Macaroni Grill in Springdale, Ohio, on Monday, June 29, 2009, that Michael Oswalt, who had been installed two years before as a presbyter for the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, and then left the Novus Ordo structures to prepare for conditional ordination to the priesthood at Most Holy Trinity Seminary, would "not last six months" in that seminary. "You must tell him to go Bishop Pivarunas," the priest told me.

It was at that meeting that this priest told me that Bishop Sanborn had told the then Reverend Mister Julian Larrabee's that he wanted to cancel his ordination to the priesthood at Queen of Martyrs Church in Fraser, Michigan, on the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, July 1, 2009, because he had verbal discussion and exchanged e-mails with this priest offering criticisms of the seminary, asking the priest to intercede with Bishop Sanborn and Father Nicholas Desposito, Most Holy Trinity Seminary's prefect of discipline, to rectify the abuses within the seminary. Bishop Sanborn accused Father Larrabee that he had engaged in "trash talk" against the seminary, adding that his priestly ordination would proceed only because it would not be convenient to cancel it. According to the priest, Bishop Sanborn told the Reverend Mr. Larrabee that "I will ordain you, but I will tell the seminarians to have nothing to do with you." This scared me tremendously.

The priest with whom I lunched on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 2009 also said that the seminarian-friend of Father Larrabee, both of whom were students of mine in the three weeks of my own teaching at the seminary in September and October of 2007, was given a "contract" by Bishop Sanborn to sign that would have bound the seminarian to refuse to assist at Masses offered in chapels that met with his, Bishop Sanborn's, disapproval. The language of the "contract" made Bishop Sanborn its sole arbiter, meaning that he could decide which chapels were to be on the banned list for the seminarian's summer vacation. Bishop Sanborn then gave oral instructions to the seminarian, who was about to be tonsured on the day of Father Larrabee's priestly ordination, that he could not go to his own home chapel, Our Lady of the Angels Chapel in Santa Clarita, California, which is served by Father Dominic Radecki, CMRI. The seminarian refused. Bishop Sanborn took the refusal to mean that he had "left" the seminary on his own volition. Just another "non-dismissal dismissal," which Bishop Sanborn justified in letters to various sedevacantist clergymen on the grounds that he was "testing" the seminarian's "loyalty" to him.

Why was Bishop Sanborn upset with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen at that time? According to the former seminarian, the problem at that time was that Bishop Pivarunas had accepted a seminarian from Germany after his expulsion from Most Holy Trinity Seminary. Such arbitrariness and mean-spiritedness, although hardly unknown to me at that point, was frightening.

The priest who gave me this information insisted, therefore, that there was no guarantee that something like this would not happen to Michael Oswalt, who thought about the matter over the summer of 2009 and decided to contact Bishop Pivarunas. Two years to the day after I telephoned him, that is, on June 29, 2011, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Bishop Pivarunas ordained, de novo, Father Michael Oswalt to the Catholic priesthood.

The priest who explained to me the problems at Most Holy Trinity Seminary is considered by so many to be a "troublemaker" and a "rebel," a man who makes it a point to "calumniate" and "slander" those with whom he disagrees. He is nothing of the sort. He simply cares about truth, and has shown that he is willing to lay down his very life in its defense, showing this courage now to afford more young men an opportunity to give more honor and glory to the Most Holy Trinity and to add grace to the world as they offer the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross, Holy Mass.

That priest is none other than Father Markus Ramolla, who is praying fervently and offering Masses for the chains that bind the Chair of Saint Peter at this time to be broken by the miraculous intervention of God Himself as a result of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Yes, Bishop Pivarunas would not have had Father Michael Oswalt to ordain and thus to teach the students at Mount Saint Michael's Academy had it not been for Father Markus Ramolla's willingness to break ranks with the status quo and to put the interests of Holy Mother Church, which so desperately needs priests at this time, above self-interest. Perhaps it would be very good for Holy Mother Church for the speculation concerning a possible future episcopal consecration of Father Ramolla took place, thus making those spreading this rumor, and it is nothing other than that, to be veritable prophets. After all of the controversies of the past two years, how much worse could it get if the critics had Bishop Ramolla rather than Father Ramolla as their favorite hobby while another German cleric gives one sacrilege to another to God and deceives souls aplenty in the process? Yes, perhaps that would be a very good thing.

With total trust in Our Lady and with unwavering belief in her Fatima Message, may we continue to pray for each other as we beg her for the graces to save our souls and to continue to persevere against the enemies of the Holy Faith in the world and those in the counterfeit church of conciliarism., accepting the travails of the present time as coming directly from the hand of God so that we might be purified of the stains of our sins and disordered self-love to serve Him more perfectly through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Let us pray for each other in this time of apostasy and betrayal, hoping for a good reconciliation in eternity if it is not possible to have one now.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church and Protector of the Faithful, pray for us.

[A Catholic priest wrote the following summary of the case of Baby Trevor. I have removed the names of the recipient baby and her parents as the issue, to be explored more fully in my next article, revolves around the decision-making of the CMRI.]

On April 17, 1998 a newborn baby named Trevor was murdered by the surgeons who removed his heart to give it to another newborn baby named [name omitted]. Bishop Pivarunas and the priests of the CMRI (i.e., the Mt. St. Michael group) were consulted by the family. Pivarunas & the CMRI clergy not only failed to oppose this evil act but they indeed gave their approval to this horrible deed. The doctors who removed the heart from little Trevor are guilty of willful murder. The advice given by the clergy of the Mt. St. Michael group was intrinsically evil.

CBS News Program ‘The Public Eye With Bryant Gumble’ —‘A Heart For Hannah’ July 8, 1998

[The parents] knew before the birth of their daughter that she had a heart defect and would certainly not survive without a heart transplant. Their doctor (clearly seeking publicity) arranged with CBS to document this story (and to cover the expenses). So it was that the CBS (now-canceled) news program ‘The Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel’ aired an hour-long program on July 8, 1998 entitled ‘A Heart for Hannah’ — featuring the [parents] and Fr. Radecki.

It was in February of 1998 that Fr. Cordova traveled to Spokane and there with Pivarunas and his cohorts held a ‘Council Meeting’ to discuss this issue. The Pivarunas ‘Council’ decided that the heart transplant was acceptable and assured the family that they could proceed with the plans for the transplant to take place as soon as the baby was born.

[The parents] thus relocated to Loma Linda, California (the hospital that ‘specializes’ in heart transplants for children -- you may recall that it was at Loma Linda that they did the unsuccessful baboon heart to human baby transplant a number of years ago). [A sister of the baby's father] called and spoke with Fr. Cordova who assured her the Bishop Pivarunas and the ‘Council’ had approved this procedure. When she asked for an explanation she was told that Pope Pius XII had approved the transplanting of human cornea (see reference below)! On April 6, 1998 [the baby] was born. On April 17, 1998 a little baby named Trevor was murdered (with the approval of Pivarunas the CMRI clergy) and his heart was given to [the newborn baby].

Here are some references:

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the only certitude of death is the general putrefaction of the body. (Medical Ethics — Loyola University Press - 1956 and which bears the ‘Imprimatur’ and the ‘Nihil Obstat’ by Edwin F. Healy, S.J. — page 382)

The Catholic Encyclopedia teaches:

Is this not precisely because the immortal soul animates the human body and thus human life ends when the immortal soul is separated from the human body. Is not this then the only true Catholic definition of (real) death?

You may find it interesting to note that Dr. Norman Fost, a well known ethicist and professor at Princeton University, states (as quoted in a recent article published in the New York Times): “The notion of brain death , Dr. Fost said was concocted about twenty years ago by medical specialists who wanted to increase the supply of organs for transplants.”

In the February 1998 edition of The Catholic World Report in an article entitled: ‘Not Quite Dead?’ by Monica Seeley one reads: “The term “brain death” entered common usage in the medical world at approximately the same time that new technology made possible the first transplants of vital organs. In 1968 the ‘Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death’ stated: “…the report argued that “obsolete” criteria for the determination of death were aggravating the shortage of organs available for transplant.…” In this same article Dr. Christopher DeGiorgio, an associate professor of neurology and neurological surgery admits that the term ‘brain death’ is a misnomer. “From a purely metaphysical point of view, one can still argue that as long as the heart is beating, you have a human being.”

Again, in this same article, Dr. Paul Byrne, a pediatrician and neonatologist states: “To refer to someone who is in an intensive care unit on a ventilator, whose heart is beating and who has blood pressure and other findings that we identify with being alive as a cadaver, is simply not the truth.” Moreover, surgeons have observed that ‘brain-dead’ patients frequently react strongly to surgical incision at the time of organ procurement, with a rapidly increasing heart rate and a dramatic rise in blood pressure. Because of these signs of distress, donors are sometimes anesthetized during organ retrieval. One must ask, what purpose would anesthesia serve for a corpse? Dr. Byrne brings the argument to its logical conclusion by stating that it is impossible to remove vital organs from a corpse and successfully use those organs for transplant. If brain-dead patients were actually dead by classical criteria, the lack of oxygen would quickly cause their organs to deteriorate. “The present state of the art for these vital organs is such that they have to come from someone who is alive. It takes about an hour of operating to get the heart out during which time the heart has to be living and many other organs and systems of the body are functioning.…”

“Injustice is done not only by destroying the life of a human being, but also by harming him in his rights to bodily integrity or well-being.” [Moral Theology — Volume II McHugh & Callan 1958]

“In general, any act which injures or impairs bodily integrity is called mutilation. … is any cutting off, or some equivalent action, through which an organic function or a distinct use of a member is suppressed…” [Moral Theology — Volume II McHugh & Callan 1958]

“The basic principle governing the morality of mutilation is: Man is not the master of his own life, but only the custodian. Accordingly, neither is he the master of his own body. Thus, Pope Pius XII speaking of the ‘Surgeons Noble Vocation’ declared: “God alone is the Lord of the life and integrity of man, Lord of his members, his organs, his potencies particularly of those which make him an associate in the work of creation. Neither parents, nor spouse, nor the individual in question may dispose of them at will.” [Moral Theology — Volume II McHugh & Callan 1958]

Pope Pius XII in 1957 in an Address to Anesthesiologists stated: “But considerations of a general nature allow us to believe that human life continues for as long as its vital functions -- distinguished from the simple life of organs -- manifest themselves spontaneously or even with help of artificial processes.”

In the same Address Pope Pius XII stated: “In case of insoluble doubt, one must resort to presumptions of law and of fact. In general, it will be necessary to presume that life remains, because there is involved here a fundamental right received from the Creator, and it is necessary to prove with certainty that it has been lost.” (Underline added.)

Also, Pope Pius XII in an Address about corneal transplantation stated: “Public authorities and the laws which concern the use of corpses should, in general, be guided by these same moral and human considerations, since they are based on human nature itself, which takes precedence over society in the order of causality and in dignity. In particular, public authorities have the duty to supervise their enforcement and above all to take care that a ‘corpse’ shall not be considered and treated as such until death has been sufficiently proved.”

Just Another Day in the Rubber Room of Traditionalism

by Thomas A. Droleskey


© Copyright 2011, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.