The Sedevacantist Dead End

[00:00:12] The Francis pontificate saw a dramatic rise in the number of Sedeva contests, even though Francis is now dead and gone, sadly. Still, many Catholics deny that we have a valid Pope. [00:00:24] Why is this path a spiritual dead end? That's what I talk about today on Crisis Point Home. I'm Eric Simmons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I think for those who watch the podcast regularly, you might notice a difference. Yes, I have a new podcast setup. I have some new equipment. I have obviously a new setup, new mic, a lot of new things about it. I hope this is an improvement. I hope people enjoy it. If you're listening, there probably isn't any difference really in what you're hearing. I actually have a new mic, so maybe it sound a little bit better. I will say this. I am still in the process of tweaking everything and setting it up. I'm spending all weekend doing a lot of this and some things might be changed a little bit. I might improve some things. If I have any technical issues, I apologize and I thank you for your patience. [00:01:10] I have a lot planned for the podcast this year. I'm hoping to up the number of episodes that I do, different topics and things of that nature. [00:01:20] Also, I want to note that this is our Tuesday afternoon live podcast. So I thought I'd start off with a live podcast. If everything goes wrong, you'll know it live. [00:01:28] And so I just want to mention also that we're now on Rumble Live, our we're live streaming on Rumble. So if you're over there, please join us. I. I appreciate that. Obviously we're on YouTube, Facebook and X still. Okay. So last week I did a podcast with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, which was about the disastrous pontificate of Pope Francis. I got a lot of good comments on on there. A lot of people were thankful for the podcast. I also got a number that were. Chris, I thought we should have been more critical of Pope Leo. The podcast wasn't really about Pope Leo, so I didn't see why to bother with that. [00:02:06] But however, what I noticed more than anything was there was a number of comments that basically denied Francis as the Pope. Like he wasn't a disastrous pope because he wasn't a pope. [00:02:18] And it kind of reminded me that there are still sedative accountants out there. Here's some of the comments. I just put them up here on the screen for you. [00:02:25] Anti Pope Dr. David Howard says. [00:02:29] Another one says we should probably look at Pope Benedict's questionable resignation first. That's John Malloy, Ron Martis says, remember he wanted the name Francis and not Pope Francis on his tomb. He basically did not want to be known as the Pope. What other proof do you need? [00:02:46] A lot more than that. I know that Ron. [00:02:49] John Collins says there's one reason why Pope question mark Francis wasn't the worst pope in history. That is he wasn't the pope. [00:02:57] And then another comment, final one here. John Donovan says how can one evaluate a pontificate that wasn't so obviously what we see here is oops, sorry about that. See already messing up something on the screen here. [00:03:12] What we see here is a number of people still deny that Francis is ever Pope and I assume then they deny that Leo is the Pope. And this is interesting because obviously like I mentioned, sedevikantism was something that really flared up during the pontificate of Pope Francis. But I will say it seems to have died down a bit since Leo became Pope. At least I'm not seeing as much online as I used to. [00:03:38] I personally haven't talked about it much. I did a podcast on it two years ago back in 2024. I'll link to it in the show Notes where I talk about set of accountism, why I think it's wrong, things like that. [00:03:50] But really set of accountism which has existed for decades now really became very popular under Francis. [00:03:58] Now I will say this, I have noticed and I know some state of a conscious won't like well state of accountants aren't going to like hardly anything I say in this podcast. So that's okay. [00:04:09] I'm more and more convinced that Sadie Vacantism is primarily an online phenomenon. [00:04:16] I like it a lot to a lot to the Nick Fuentes phenomenon. [00:04:21] I'm not saying these phenomenons aren't real, that there aren't real people involved in them and there aren't really people in real life who really do think the thing are said of a contest or are Nick Fuentes fans or whatever. [00:04:35] But I will say the online world really outsizes them, makes them much, much more prominent than they really are. [00:04:44] Because I've been off X for a while like really looking through it in social media and I've been more and more offline and doing things more in real life and I've noticed the sedative contentism just isn't something people are talking about. It's just not something that is really on the, on the, on the forefront of people's minds out there among and I'm talking about among traditional Catholics, obviously it's not going to be among non Catholics or even regular Catholics. Well, even among traditional Catholics, people just. That's not, that's not a thing really. [00:05:18] It's still though, very big online. I mean there's still, I mean I think it's died down since Francis, but it still exists. I just think it's very much a a, it's outsized. It's not as big as it's made out to be. [00:05:33] And you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we get a flood of comments to this video on YouTube from setivacantes because that's kind of my whole point is they very much are in comment sections. They're on social media, but they're. And they're extremely active there. But I don't think their numbers are real life. Numbers are reflected in what you see online, the number of comments. [00:05:58] So for example, if you're regular Catholic, maybe one comment of a normie Catholic view is posted in a YouTube video that might represent 10,000 actual Catholics, whereas one set of a contest comment might represent maybe 100 set of a contest or something like that. That's how much. So it really is very much. But this real. And so I don't want to act like it's not and I'm going to address it. [00:06:26] So like I said, I have a video talking more detail about what's wrong. But I do want to give at least a brief overview of what set of accountantism is and the different flavors of sedative accountism before I talk about why I think it's a spiritual and really psychological dead end. [00:06:42] The term city of a contest gets thrown out a lot. I've been called a set of a contest by people. [00:06:47] Taylor Marshall gets called that. Dr. Peter Kwasnski gets called that. [00:06:52] And it's really. Sometimes it's a term of derision for somebody who doesn't blindly and follow every single dictate of the current Pope. So if you're critical of Pope Francis, you're a city of a contest or you're on or your city of a contest adjacent or something like that. [00:07:10] That's just an abuse of a term. [00:07:13] City of contest has a meaning and it should be used as it's meant to be used. And essentially it just means anybody who believes that the chair of Peter is vacant. SETI is chair vacant. You know, obviously vacant that there's nobody sitting on the chair of St. Peter, that is, there's no valid Pope. Now after Pope Francis died, before Pope Leo was elected, we were all said of a contest because there was no Pope. [00:07:40] There was a time. So there's always been times of sedevacantism between popes. [00:07:45] And so when you say seda vacante, that's usually the period between two valid popes. But this means more that even though people are saying this person, this man is Pope, they're saying no, the chair is actually still vacant. There is no pope right now. [00:08:03] And so really describes anybody right now who thinks that there is no pope. So I would say Pope Leo Robert Prevost is the, is the pope. Pope Leo XIV is a valid pope. Most other Catholics, when I say most, I mean literally almost every single one of them would say the same thing. [00:08:20] But the city of a consist say no, he's not actually the Pope. [00:08:24] And so that's, that's very just the general idea of what it is now. There's different flavors of city of akantism. [00:08:31] There is the 1958 set of a Kantism, which is basically those who say that John 23rd was the first anti pope, that Pope Pius XII was the last valid pope, that after him, then all the popes after that. People who claim to be pope, as they would say, are not actually valid popes. [00:08:51] Now they have a number of reasons. They would say some I've heard on some corners of the Internet talk about how the election wasn't valid in 1958 or something like that, but most of them probably just essentially say because they taught heresy, they, they lost the office and they never had it or something to that effect. There's different flavors, different explanations for why somebody who claims to be pope isn't really the Pope. That's your 1958 state of cantaism. They didn't, just to be clear, they didn't exist in 1958. [00:09:22] There was nobody, no Catholic in 1959 who was saying there is no valid Pope. [00:09:29] I mean, I say and I, and I mean that. I mean maybe one or two or something. I mean some crazy person but really didn't exist. It didn't come into fore until the 1970s, late 1970s really is when it started to become a thing in, in the church was people started because of the problems that happened at your Vatican too. So you see, it's kind of like it's looking back and saying, well, we've had all these problems. How do we explain it will say all the popes since Pius XII are not valid. [00:09:59] And so I think that's a very important point because it's not like people in 1959 were like, hey, that election was invalid. Hey, this guy isn't really the Pope. Nobody was saying that until 20 years later. [00:10:09] And really it stayed very quiet. Very few people, some people away from society. Saint Pius X. [00:10:16] And so City of a Condus splinter. [00:10:20] Then they're small people. [00:10:24] Then the next level of happening, Pope Francis, and they come to two different groups. [00:10:34] One is, are those who said that Benedict remained Pope, that his resignation was invalid. [00:10:41] They have various reasons for this. They were sometimes called Benin Vacantis, which is kind of a. A dumb name, but, you know, people understood what they meant. Or Benny plenty, I think, or something like that. The idea, though, is that Benedict remained the 16th, remained pope until his death in 2001, I think it was. Or is it 2020? [00:11:00] I'm sorry, 2021 or 2022. I can't remember now what the year it was because on December 31, I can't remember which year it was. But anyway, a few years ago now, whether or not they thought then Francis became Pope or there wasn't a Pope, I think it depends on who the person is. But a number of people were. They were. They were not technically sedevacantist when Benedict was alive because they did not believe this chair was vacant. That's why there was another name for him, the benevacanist or whatever. [00:11:25] And once he died, they became sedevacantus. If they rejected Francis as the Pope, if they thought the sea was vacant, that made him sedevacantists. [00:11:32] And then the third category of sedevacantists are those who believe that Francis, that Benedict did resign validly, but Francis wasn't a valid Pope. Now, there's a couple different subcategories under this group. You have those who think the election of Pope Francis was invalid for because of Saint Gallen Mafia or whatever reason, or you think that he was elected validly, but then through his actions, he lost the office, perhaps because of. [00:12:02] Because of heresy that he supposedly claim, or they actually thought that he did not accept the office properly. So when he was elected, the election was valid, but he didn't accept it. Val. He wasn't. He didn't accept the election validly. So the point is, is that Francis was not the Pope. And so all those people when Francis died, I assume the vast majority of them remain sedevacantis. And they basically just said that now let's Leo isn't the Pope, that there still is no valid Pope. [00:12:35] And so that's kind of just an overview now, like I said, I have a podcast already. Why I think it's wrong. I go into some of the theological reasons. [00:12:46] I don't really want to talk about that today, the details, because the fact is I want to talk more about the psychological spiritual issues involved with SETI vacantism that you know, how you end up. In fact, I read an article at The Society of St. Pius X website about Set of A. I don't know that it did not have a date nor an author, so I don't know who wrote it, but it was on their website. Here, let me pull it up here for you. [00:13:14] And this is just part of the article, but I thought it was a very important part of it and I'm going to read it here. It says sedevacantism appears to be more a psychological than a theological problem. [00:13:27] It would be both easy and cruel to evoke here some of the variations as well as the successive divisions fostered by their numerous cliques and the astounding reversals and turnabouts coming from their inconsistent motives. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But why be so harsh with them? Are not these reproaches which they make regarding the Pope's teaching, his pastoral approach, including some erroneous Vatican II teachings indeed well founded? So this is basically saying this was written, by the way, under the pontificate of JP2. I could tell like, hey, they have some good criticisms of what's going on in Rome. [00:13:59] Aren't they valid? Yes, admittedly, some indulgence could be shown for some theological error, which for the moment has but little practical consequences if we were not to note and observe the dire consequences brought upon the faithful. [00:14:14] In other words, if it's just a theological disagreement, some minor thing, okay, if it doesn't really. But it has real consequences in the real world. [00:14:22] Continue on the article. We now see only too well what affects those theological outpourings produce in passionate Catholics. [00:14:29] They now have become their own Pope, they judge their own priests. No longer do many of them have recourse to the sacrament of confession. [00:14:37] No longer do they hearken to the Church's infallible teachings. They generally bring moral ruin on their own families. [00:14:45] We used to know truly pious Catholics. After a few years we met them again only to find them marked by a psychological behavior found in types such as the Jehovah's Witnesses or in Protestants in general, haughty understanding everything, seeing everything through their jaundiced and obsessed eyes, unceasingly shaking their rattles of definitive, final and unanswerable arguments which they do not understand themselves. Beware the time when they lose their God given faith and give up on everything. [00:15:12] I mean, that's pretty harsh talk, I admit. [00:15:15] But at the same time, at the same time I think it's very accurate that the fact is that sedevacantism is more of a psychological than a theological issue. [00:15:27] It's a spiritual dead end. What happens is you end up in an independent chapel in someone's basement or some old Protestant church, and you're completely untethered from the larger church. You no longer have the larger church to kind of keep you in check, to keep you from being just your own Pope, being on your own. [00:15:48] And what happens is these independent chapels end up rejecting the other independent chapels. I mean, here's an example from my own hometown of Cincinnati. We actually have two sedevacantes chapels. One is part of the Society of St. Pius V, which is an offshoot of the Pious SSPX. And I think its official position is it's agnostic on whether or not we have a Pope. But in practice it's seddevacant this it does not name Leo in, in the Mass. [00:16:13] Then we have another one that's completely independent in town and Father. [00:16:20] What was his name? Sadaku, I can't remember. He was a pretty well known sedipantist priest online, but then he passed away a few years ago. God rest his soul. That's another one. Well, they don't get along with each other. They're both set of a contest, but they do not commune with each other. In fact, I've heard stories of like a couple, like a man and a woman who were, were one was at one chapel or the other and they started dating and like basically the fan. It was like Romeo and Juliet. The families rejected them, the priests wouldn't marry them. [00:16:50] They won't give communion often for the members of one chapel to the members of the other chapel, even though they're, they're all set of a contest. [00:16:58] This is not an uncommon situation among city of a contest chapels and institutions of often there's not even a chapel round. So the person doesn't even attend Mass. Like the article said, they don't attend a sacrament of confession. This has real world consequences for their soul. It's not just an online debate about, okay, let's have a theological debate about what St. Robert Bellarmine said or St. Thomas Aquinas or whatever. It's a matter of people literally separating themselves from the means of grace that God has given us in the sacrament. [00:17:31] And that's why I call it a dead end. Because ultimately if you end up Rejecting that there is a Pope, you're going to end up separating yourselves from the sacraments because you're not going to be willing to go to a parish, a Catholic parish that is in communion with the Pope to receive the sacraments. And maybe you're lucky there's a, there's a chapel nearby, but that ends up becoming a big mess too. Like I said, they might end up having different theological views. And, and because you've already separated yourself from, from Rome, from the Pope, what's to keep you from separating yourself from that chapel? When that pastor says something that you don't really like? [00:18:12] Once you reject authority, the inevitable consequence is that you become the authority unto yourself. This is why we need to be part of a larger church. This is very important. [00:18:24] Important. It helps us to stay in check. It helps us from creating our own true church. One of the things you'll, you'll notice online that sand of a contest hate is when you call them, say they're like Protestants, but it really is true in a lot of ways. Now, it's not to say that they accept Protestant doctrines like sola scriptura or sola fide, or they look up the Martin Luther heck and they will be the first to say Pope Francis looked more up to Martin Luther than any of them would. So I'm not saying that. I'm not saying they're accepting Protestant doctors. And I'm also agreeing that too much process has been accepted within the Catholic Church and high rankings of the members of the Catholic Church. [00:19:07] But ultimately, the reason I would say the state of akantism is a form of Protestantism is because the mentality, the psychology, the way in which you look at truth and how you accept truth, you no longer look at it as something where you accept it from an authority, an outside authority outside of you. You basically decide for yourself what is the proper beliefs that we should have, how should we practice them, just like a Protestant does. [00:19:40] That's what a Protestant does. Trust me, I was a Protestant. I know when you see all the splintering of the Sedevacantis chapels, that's also perfectly. You see this in Protestantism. I mean, we say, you know, there's over 30,000 denominations. Why is that? Because when somebody's not happy, they go to form their own church, they form their own church, they break away. And sedevacantists do this as well because they don't have an authority. And usually it's not even that they reject the Pope, but because they reject the Pope, they reject the bishop. [00:20:14] And so they don't have a chapel where they have. Now I know they might have a bishop somewhere that ordained their priests, something like that, but not a real, not a bishop. Like that's actually truly their authority. It's again, they choose, okay, I'm going to accept this bishop, this priest, but not this one or that one. Now it's true as Catholics we often are critical of bishops like a Cardinal Cupich or priest like a Father James Martin. So I'm not saying that like Catholics are like, hey, we just accept everything every priest or bishop says we can be critical of them. But there's a difference between that and just saying I'm going to break communion with these people. [00:20:50] It's not my, it's not my person, it's not within my authority to do that. [00:20:58] So that's why it really is a type of Protestantism. As harsh as that may sound, that's the reality. [00:21:05] Now why does this matter? [00:21:07] It matters very much because I do think it becomes an issue of salvation. I'm not saying that if you question whether or not Francis Pope that you're going to hell. I am saying though that the path you take when you go down the path towards sedevacantism, when you, as soon as you reject that we have a pope and you go down that path, it ends in a dead end in which you have no authority over you and you don't even have access to the sacraments. Ultimately, I know that I frustrate City of a Contest because I don't spend hours focused on their detailed arguments like Novus Ordow Watch is a website and they love to just say how I, you know, they have these very long, super long posts critiquing me about why I'm wrong about this or that theological point. It's got all these quotes from tons of theological manuals and people like that. [00:22:01] And then they always like to say, oh, he doesn't even respond. [00:22:04] And that frustrates them. The reason is, is because here's the thing, it reminds me so much of my Protestant days arguing with Calvinists. [00:22:13] Calvinists are extreme. I'm not talking about, I'm talking about like the hardcore Calvinists. Calvinists are extremely logical. Once you're in their system, everything fits and it makes sense. [00:22:25] But you have to enter into their system for that to happen. If you're outside the system, what you see is, you see the first principles are often wrong. [00:22:34] And when they start from bad first faulty first principles, then it doesn't matter how logical they are moving forward. [00:22:40] It's still going to be erroneous, but they could argue your socks off and spend hours and hours and write detailed arguments. They're all internally logical, but because they reject certain first principles, it just really is a house of cards. It's a beautiful house of cards. When you build it all up, you're like, oh, this is great. But you realize it's built, like our Lord said, on sand. [00:23:04] That's what, that's what set of akantism is. When you see the, the long articles with tons of quotes and things like that, it just ends up. The problem is again, if they, if I was in a debate with one of them about inside their system, I'm sure they would win. [00:23:23] I mean, I'm sure somebody's gonna post that Eric Sammons admit save a contest would win debate. [00:23:27] Well, they probably would. First, I'm not, I'm not like some master debater, but more importantly, I would have to accept their first principles, their faulty first principles in order to enter into the debate. And so I just don't do that. I just don't think. And just to be clear, there's lots of stuff on the Internet. I mean, I hear sage vocantists sometimes say this, like, oh, yeah, they won't argue with us. They won't debate us. They won't, you know, they ignore us. No, there is tons of actual detailed explanations of why they're wrong. [00:23:56] And so you can find them very easily. You know, St. Pius X has some. But then others have written great stuff about this as well. I, I talked about a little bit in my podcast that I did as well a couple years ago. [00:24:08] But like I said, they have faulty first principles. So what are those first principles that I think that they are faulty about that. Why I don't even enter into debates where I think it's. I think that once they, because they've accepted these faulty first principles, everything else falls apart. [00:24:24] The first is, the first principle is Christ protects his church. [00:24:30] Christ protects his church. [00:24:32] What exactly do you think Christ would allow? [00:24:36] Because what they're saying is, especially in 1958, study of a contest, they're saying that Christ would allow there to be no pope. But most Catholics think there's a Pope and have reason to believe there's a Pope because all the church leaders think there's a Pope for 70 years now, almost 70 years now. [00:24:53] That's really what you think, that the Lord would, would not protect his church enough that you have all cardinals, all bishops, all priests, basically saying there's a Pope, but they're all wrong. Every single person, authority that Christ of the Church Christ established would allow that. [00:25:10] Now, it's true there's been crises in the past and there's been a lot of confusion in the past, you know, Aryan crisis or the Great Western Schism, times like that. [00:25:19] But the longest we've never had a Pope was three years. [00:25:24] And that was during a long conclave. But here's the difference between then and now. Not only the length of time, because let's say you just go back to Francis, that's still 12 years. That's four times as long as actually almost 13 years. Four times as long as the longest ever interregnum. But here's the big difference. [00:25:43] During those three years, everybody acknowledged there was no Pope. It wasn't like somebody was saying there's Pope, and everybody's like, oh no, there's not. There's not really Pope. Some people. But everybody else said there is. No, everybody thought there wasn't Pope. They're trying to elect one. [00:25:55] Likewise, during the Great Western Schism, we had a very long time. [00:25:59] I think it was 70 years, something like that, where you had multiple people claiming to be Pope. [00:26:04] Yet that's different too, because there was a Pope. [00:26:08] Now, some people might have been wrong. It was a scandal, it was a crisis. [00:26:11] But the fact is God didn't not provide a Pope, he provided a Pope during that time. It just was confusion about who it was. [00:26:20] But the state of cons are saying there hasn't been a pope for 13 years or for 70 years almost, or something like that. [00:26:27] That's unprecedented. And it really does seem to violate the first principle. You can talk about what St. Bar Bellarmine said, which by the way, I think is. I explained my last podcast on this two years ago. That is just, it's misunderstood. Or others, you know, you could quote some Saint from some Dr. Church, you could quote some theologian from the 17th century, something like that. But ultimately what you're saying is Christ can't even keep his church protected enough to have a Pope, the most important office in the Church. [00:26:56] So that's the first principle that they. The faulty first principle is they don't recognize Christ protects his Church. The second one is that popes can make grave errors. Now, I know, I know every city of a contest say, we're not saying they're impeccable, they can't ever make errors, but the fact is, is that they're hyper papalist. They're basically saying is we don't think this man is worthy to be Pope. So we're going to say he's not the Pope. [00:27:22] That's ultimately what all comes down to. Like I said, these things are always backtracking. [00:27:26] If Pope Francis had been a wonderful pope, orthodox, holy, not a single person who, who now says the election was invalid in 2013 would be saying it. It's always going back. And look, and that's what happened, like I said, with the original 1958 City of a contest. It was 20 years later. They were trying to explain what happened, and they went back and said, okay, he wasn't really John xxiii, wasn't really Pope, neither was Paul vi. [00:27:52] So again, it's looking back and it's basically saying, okay, this Pope wasn't worthy of being Pope. And so we're going to say he's not the Pope. And that's what really does come down to. As much as they might want to deny it, that's what it is. And the final first principle that they violate Christ protects his Church. Popes can make grave errors. The final first principle I think that they violate is the idea that we have no personal authority. I have no authority. [00:28:22] You have no authority. Nobody listening to this podcast unless he's a bishop, and I do think a couple bishops listen sometimes, or the Pope have authority to make the declarations they make. I see it so much in comment section where, like, Francis is a heretic. A heretic can't be a pope, therefore Francis isn't the Pope. And they think that's literally that. They've made the argument and now it's a sealed done deal. [00:28:45] That's not how it works. That's just not how it works. [00:28:49] I mean, analogy I read, actually, I was thinking in the SSPX article was if somebody commits murder and there's eyewitnesses, they know he committed murder. [00:29:01] The fact is he is not yet a murder under the law until he's been convicted by a court. [00:29:08] So if you saw somebody murder somebody and then you saw him the next day and you shot and killed them, you would be guilty of a crime. [00:29:16] If you were like, no, this man's a murderer. I'm going to execute justice. [00:29:21] I'm going to execute judgment on him, give him the death penalty. You, by that very fact, are yourselves a murderer and committing a crime. [00:29:30] Not until the proper authority says this person committed murder is it actually true. In fact, for the purposes of the law, for the purposes of authority. [00:29:43] Likewise, if the entire authority of the Church being all the cardinals, bishops, priests, everybody says, this man is the Pope, you can't say he's not the Pope. No matter what you think of how he's doing as pope, you have to basically accept the authority of the Church to say that, yes, he is the Pope. Now, you could try to affect change, like maybe talk, you know, try to get cardinals to look into it and say maybe this, the election was invalid or something like that. Fine. [00:30:14] But the fact is, if everybody says that he is the Pope, then all the people that matter, these people in authority, do. He is the Pope. The faith is not a mathematical equation. This is what the Calvinists do, and this is what state of the Countists do. It's like they have this very set way of looking at it. Like I said, okay, Francis is a heretic. A heretic can't be a pope. Therefore Francis is not the Pope. And they think that's the argument. That's not how the faith works. It's not like a mathematical construct. Yes, there is logic involved. I'm not saying we go against logic, but the fact is, is there's so much more involved in the faith. And a lot of our faith is based upon the authority of the Church. [00:30:56] That's how we know about Jesus. That's how we know about his resurrection. That's how we know about the Sacred Scriptures. That's how we know about the, you know, the, the tradition. We know about due to the authority of the Church and the authority of the Church, which is the same authority that gave us the sacred Scriptures that told us Jesus rose from the dead, that, that told us about the, you know, that defined the Trinity for us, that, that defined the Immaculate Conception, all these things. We accept that authority. And then we say, oh, but we're not going to accept the authority of a, A, all the cardinals and bishops say who the Pope is. We've made ourselves our own authority. So it's a, it's a first principle. So these state of conscience violates these first principles. So as much as they might want to argue in the weeds, ultimately their foundation is weak. Their foundation is, is, is sand. [00:31:44] So I just want to kind of, before I get to the live chat, I just want to note that we, we really do need. I mean, I, I know I'm being kind of hard on state of the contest here. And again, I'm not trying to be hard on the person who just thinks something's wrong. I don't understand how Francis could have been the Pope. Okay, fine. [00:32:06] But those who dogmatically declare online or elsewhere that Francis definitely was the Pope, Leo's definitely not the Pope. That is A spiritual dead end. And it really does impact potentially your soul. [00:32:19] And so I would just say for all those who are kind of tempted by Sedevikantism, trust in the Church even during times of crisis, even when it looks like the church is weak, which it does today, trust the church that when all the cardinals and bishops say this is true, then it is true. [00:32:33] Also I would argue, I would say read more history books. [00:32:37] I found that most city of the contest, all their knowledge comes from like theological manuals from like the 18th and 19th century. It's early 20th century. If you read the history of like the early church, the church in the early, you know, in the Middle Ages and whatnot, you see very much that there is some severe crises going on. But people don't up and say this isn't the Pope or anything like that. [00:33:01] Understand that this is not. This is a. This is a time of crisis, everyone. Crisis magazine, of course I think that. [00:33:08] But there have been other times of severe crises as well. And the answer isn't to set up your own independent chapel or just pray at home or something like that. [00:33:16] Also, don't go down the Internet conspiratorial rabbit holes. I know this is very tempting. I've talked about conspiracy theories in the past and I embrace some conspiracy theories. Not all of them, but some of them. [00:33:31] Just don't go down that path. Be connected to an actual parish in communion with Rome. That's your best really bet to withstand kind of temptations of the Internet apologist, Internet evangelist for set of akantism is you simply go to your local parish, preferably a traditional Latin mass would be great. And you and you say connected to the people there, to the priests there, because that's how you remain in communion with Rome is in real life, not online. So I think that's another thing. And also finally be humble. Recognize you don't have all the answers. You don't know if something doesn't make sense when you hear about before Francis did that or Pope Leo. Now does this. [00:34:15] Just be humble and understand you're not going to understand everything. You're not always going to know what's going on. So you know, that's just kind of the way it is. So. [00:34:23] Okay, so let me go to live live chat here real quick. I don't have my assistant with me today, but okay now. But I'll pull up a few of these. Patriot Pooh Bear says love the new camera work. Thank you very much. I spent a lot of time on it. Like I said, I'm still working on a few things, but I am glad very much that you like it and I think it's a much better setup and I'm looking forward to, you know, doing more podcasts going forward. [00:34:46] Okay. YouTube says beneficantism is such an excellent term because it's nonsensical aspect reflects the nonsensical reality of its inheritance. You know, actually that's a good point. It is nonsensical benevism, but that does kind of reflect the fact that it is a nonsensical idea. So, okay, Patriot Pooh Bear says, I've been at two parishes where this was a minority yet loud opinion. I'm not an FSSP parish. I don't have to, pardon my French, give a blankety blank about any of it. And that's the thing is if you are in a parish, your typical fraternity parish or even society or institute parish or something like that, there might be a couple state of accounts there, but it's unlikely. And so you can really just interact in with actual traditional Catholics who aren't going down the crazy path and, and just accept that, you know, accept Leo as the valid pope. [00:35:38] Okay, let me see what else we have here. [00:35:42] TKO Trash says I have enough trouble understanding the nuances of Catholicism. I don't have time to understand all the arguments of every single Seti or Protestant, quite honestly. Yeah, I mean, honestly, we're not called to understand all these different arguments and everything going on in, in all these theological arguments on the Internet. So don't feel like you have to just stick to the faith again. [00:35:59] Stick to your parish life. That's probably the most important thing. [00:36:06] Okay, let's see here. Cling to tradition, but isn't selecting what teaching to follow or not to follow? Ray what Pope Francis pontificate caught when majority of bishops, cardinals have not condemned makes one his own pope? That's a great question. I really do appreciate that question because there is an issue here. I have been on record criticizing things that Pope Leo has said, I'm sorry, Pope Francis has said many times. [00:36:31] And you know, what they're teaching is, I think, what it is, it's not making yourself your own pope. Peter Kwesniewski explains this better than anybody. [00:36:41] But like essentially what we're doing is we're clinging to Catholic teaching as it's always been taught. And so if a bishop goes astray and doesn't really forcefully say it or confusingly or maybe even contradicts it, we don't have to follow that even if that bishop is the Bishop of Rome so it's not a matter of rejecting that the pope is the Pope. It's a matter of saying, okay, as it's always been taught, obedience does not require us. We don't have blind St. Thomas Aquinas teaches this. We don't have blind obedience to anybody except for God. So there are times and situations in which we might have to say we're following the Catholic tradition on this. Even if a pope or bishop says otherwise. I don't think that makes us our own pope, because ultimately we understand it's an exception, we understand it's not the norm, and that we still acknowledge the Pope as the universal head of the church and that we're not going to pick and choose everything he says, but instead we're going to be submissive to his teachings. But if it comes to the point where he says something that does seem to contradict previous teachings, we are able to just say, no, we're not going to follow that one. So. [00:37:54] Okay, last comment is just from Patriot Pooh Bear. No Any good bitcoin books? Oh, it's funny you should ask. That has nothing to do with today's topic. But I will say I do know of a good bitcoin book called Moral Money the Case for Bitcoin by Eric Sammons. Get it at your local bookstore or probably more likely at Amazon or at Sophia and Stu Press. So okay, well, thank you everybody for joining us today. I don't think we had any too many major technical problems, which is good. Like I said, I'm going to be tweaking the the podcast setup, and I appreciate those who watch. If you only listen, I appreciate that. But maybe check out the podcast on YouTube or rumble and you can kind of see what we're talking about. Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you. And remember the Po.