Can Sedevacantists Solve the Jurisdiction Issue?

A response from Fr. Gabriel Lavery

Recently Matt Gaspers wrote the following post on X:

Dear @StephenKokx and @TheWMReview,

I listened to your “Where Is the Church?” podcast today, hoping for a substantive answer to that very question. After nearly an hour and ten minutes, you finally addressed it as follows: youtube.com/watch?v=5EbeX9…

Stephen: “What sort of light can you shed on those thorny questions, when it comes to jurisdiction and where the Church actually is?”

Seán: “…in a sense, the Church is where she’s always been. She is the body of men who are baptized, who profession the Faith, and are subject to legitimate pastors where they are — where they are. Now, as I said earlier on, they’re not here.”

Seán went on to say he does “believe there must be, indeed, living legitimate successors to the Apostles. Exactly where they are, that’s a difficult question. It’s not one that I’m afraid to answer, but it’s a long question; it’s a long answer; it’s a complicated answer; and it requires an element of good will on the part of people who you’re speaking to — and if someone doesn’t really grasp the nature of the crisis, they’re just going to hear that kind of explanation and think, ‘That’s just totally contrived,’ or, ‘That’s just impossible.’ So, I’d be happy to discuss that, but I think it does need a full treatment.”

I’m confused. The title of your show was literally, “Where Is the Church?” and yet you chose not to provide any sort of substantive answer. Why? Because only those who “really grasp the nature of the crisis” and are of “good will” are able to understand your explanation? With all due respect, that sounds rather gnostic and patronizing to me.

Also, Seán, the fact that you “don’t see a problem” with your inability to identify “living legitimate successors to the Apostles” is astounding. You claim to accept Fr. Berry’s teaching (as all Catholics should) that “the Church must have a legitimate, or formal, succession of pastors to transmit apostolic authority from age to age” (The Church of Christ, p. 78 amazon.com/Church-Christ-…), yet you are unable to identify even a single such pastor on earth today — and you don’t find that even a little problematic?

But back to “the nature of the crisis.” What is it, according to you both? Based on your comments during the show, I think it can be summed up as follows:

(1) Vatican II was a revolutionary event that established an entirely new religion.

(2) As a result, and since 1965, the Catholic Church has been “obscured” by an entirely separate entity, the “Conciliar/Synodal Church,” which holds and teaches the new religion established by Vatican II.

Well, my question remains: Where is the Catholic Church today, which you claim still exists on earth?

Let’s make it even more practical: To whom should someone go who wants to be received into the Catholic Church today? The SSPX? The CMRI? The RCI?

What about someone who has cut himself off from the Church by heresy, schism, or apostasy? Who currently has the authority to lift the censure and receive such a person back into the Church?

These are not “gotcha” questions, gentlemen. This is me engaging you in good faith, seeking real answers to very serious questions on which the salvation of souls depend (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus).

I responded thusly:

I actually agree with @MattGaspers here. Not that Sean did not respond on Stephen’s show necessarily. But that the big platform sedes (@NovusOrdoWatch @TheWMReview @vaticancatholic @FrDesposito @FrLavery ) need better answers and need to directly respond to these questions. For some reason many of them are reluctant to do so.

Reasons like the points below are why I’m not a sede, though people like Mark Lambert simply say I am anyway to attack me, as they aren’t concerned with accuracy.

I believe you shouldn’t commit yourself to a position you can’t fully defend. Every major sede personality should be responding to Gaspers interview of Siscoe and Salza, yet many refuse. If they truly are correct about the crisis I believe that’s a missed opportunity.

I have taken much flak for even being nice towards sedes and including them in the conversation. I believe they do deserve a place in the discussion and people like Gaspers shouldn’t use the term as a scare word and villainize them or automatically discount their position or contribution to the discussion.

That said, they need to be able to offer targeted defenses of what they believe when it is publicly attacked or else people will assume they have no answer.

Father Gabriel Lavery is a Sedevacantist priest with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI). He was nice enough to give a thoughtful reply to my X post that I thought would be worthy of presenting here for all who are interested.

Fr. Lavery writes:

@BigModernism, thanks for the tag. Despite the criticism you receive from both sides, I believe in and appreciate your sincerity as I mentioned as far back as my Fatima Conference talk a few years ago.

Here are some thoughts in response to your comment on Gaspers’ critique.

1) I haven’t watched the interview as I find it impossible to keep up with all the useful interviews put out by so many individuals. It’s hit and miss if I will watch any given interview.

2) That being said, I agree with the criticisms of Gaspers in the screen shots you shared, and these are the very criticisms I have been making of various sedes for several years, especially of WM Review. Any Catholic should be able to give a straightforward answer to where to find the Church today, and not just where to find Catholics, but where to find the Church tas a whole and how to identify the hierarchy. I said this at the very beginning of my Fatima Conference talk on Apostolicity, and I have repeatedly stressed it here on X. A few years ago I went round and round with a couple Thesis priests on this subject because they refused to give any sensible answer as to why a non-Catholic who is looking for a Church with the four marks should go to them to become Catholic. I asked the same question to those who believe we can only recognize it in some unknown bishops-in-the-woods. That was the serious issue I had with WM Review because they seemed to believe in these hidden bishops being the answer yet they would not tell us clearly. Finally, last Christmas they gave me an answer and said that is what they thought (or one of them anyway). Now they seem to be reconsidering that, which is good, but they still are not clear, and I will fully support anyone who says that is unacceptable. It may not always be clear who is a true Pope, as theologians say, but it will always be possible to recognize the Church in those bishops and priests who are part of the hierarchy. The Thesis clergy cannot identify this hierarchy since they deny we are it. Bishop-in-the-woods adherents cannot identify it either.

3) I do believe I have answered Gaspers’ questions multiple times in various responses to people on X as well as in my Fatima Conference talk. I have not gotten to the point of putting it all in writing as a complete whole with all references, although that is my eventual intent, but I have not shied away from answering any questions on the matter, nor do I believe we should avoid them.

4) You have tagged me in various threads on this subject or related subjects. I appreciate that and do save them to respond later, but the unfortunate fact is there are so many simultaneous debates on such a variety of subjects that I cannot respond to everything I want to. I would end up spending all day, every day on X just responding. Then, every response leads to double or triple the amount of further questions and objections so that it is like quicksand. It gets a bit frustrating because it is a waste of time to have to answer the same questions repeatedly and then have to argue with people who simply don’t want to accept what the Church and approved theologians have said on any given subject and they just want to argue. I frequently find myself complaining to myself or others: “Why can’t people just follow what the Church and the theologians teach? There would be so much less time wasted arguing about things that we shouldn’t even be arguing about.” It’s a sad fact that too many Catholics, including priests and bishops, just don’t want to or aren’t able to have a strictly logical theological discussion. So much time is wasted arguing about nothing. I much prefer debating an opponent who is totally opposed to what I’m saying but who is capable of having a rational back and forth discussion that results in something.

5) The best I can suggest, if Gaspers wants to get some answer to these things, is to do key word searches on my profile. He will find plenty that I have written. It won’t be everything that could be said, but it is enough to be a fairly complete answer. I can sum it up as follows:

a) The Church during a vacancy is, as theologians say, identified (visible/four marks) by finding which body of men profess the Catholic Faith and adhere to the decisions of past Popes while believing in and looking forward to submission to the next Pope whenever he should be elected, and who have the ability to elect that next Pope.

b) The Novus Ordo religion does not meet these requirements at all, so it cannot be the Church by some sort of default.

c) The traditional bishops, priests, and faithful around the world do meet this description. We all believe in the papacy, submit to decisions and teachings of past Popes and will to submit to the next Pope while ardently desiring that we do get such a Pope. The hierarchy is still present among these bishops and priests, since they are part of the two-fold hierarchy of Orders and jurisdiction and they are, in fact and legally, pastoring the faithful under their care. As such, they have the right, in the absence of legitimate cardinals, to elect the next Pope.

d) One cannot object that they cannot be part of the hierarchy in the absence of a Pope. I have explained repeatedly that it is the will of Christ and the tacit will of every Pope in history that the faithful have pastors at all times. This is impossible without the ability to lawfully ordain priests and without a mission and jurisdiction from the Church (i.e. from the Pope or some authority in the Church). Therefore, just as we know for certain that every Pope wills priests to be ordained to give the sacraments to the faithful even without explicit approval by the Pope if otherwise the faithful would be totally deprived of priests, and just as we know such ordinations would be lawful, so we also know that it is the will of every Pope that those priests should have jurisdiction too. I have referenced Lainez on this matter primarily, but others can be given and Bp. Roy on the Unam Sanctam site gives one or two others as well. The Thesis clergy are absolutely off in left field when they deny this and claim we are just “sacrament machines.” Their theology on jurisdiction is a complete fabrication of new ideas and definitions that is in total disagreement with the teachings of theologians.

e) There seems to be a intellectual inability, or perhaps a deliberate unwillingness, to grasp this simple concept of tacit will of the Popes in certain R&R and Thesis defenders. They mock what they refuse to understand. There is nothing hard to grasp about it if you understand how all jurisdiction works in the first place, which is this: All jurisdiction, at all times in the Church, whether during a vacancy or when there is a Pope, no matter what kind of jurisdiction--absolutely all!--comes from Christ. He is, at all times, vacancy or not, the one who is giving the jurisdiction. If He didn’t give it, then no Pope ever could and any attempt of a Pope to do so would be useless. But Christ established the Church in such a way that He gives this jurisdiction--all of it!--not *immediately* but *mediately*, i.e. through the WILL of the Pope. The Pope is like the trustee of a financial trust who has been given full authority to distribute the funds as he WILLS and subject to certain parameters established by the one who set the trust up (Christ). The trustee is NOT the one who put the money in the trust. He is only the one who decides whether it will go to this person or that person. The position of trustee is filled by successive persons as each one dies and is succeeded, but whatever any given trustee has WILLED during his lifetime, continues after his death until a successor revokes it. So, if Trustee A has willed that money should be given monthly to all needy persons who make less than poverty level income, then this money continues to go to all those who meet that qualification even long after Trustee A has died. This never stops unless successor Trustee B revokes this grant of funds.

Now, let’s apply this to jurisdiction. If Pope Pius XI wills (by explicit or even tacit will) that jurisdiction should always be granted to priests who meet such-and-such conditions (perhaps “all priests who end up in a Communist prison camp and otherwise couldn’t hear confessions of the prisoners for lack of jurisdiction”), then Christ gives jurisdiction to every priest who meets those conditions, and Christ continues to do this until the end of the world, or until Pius XII or some future Pope revokes it by a contrary will. But we know that no Pope will ever will to revoke jurisdiction that the Church has always believed would be granted in desperate cases where souls would be lost. De Lugo, speaking of confession, says the Holy Ghost has ensured that all Popes have willed to grant the needed jurisdiction for such dire circumstances. Lainez says this is the reason why a bishop consecrated in a remote land completely unknown to the Pope would have jurisdiction. None of this is affected by the death of the Pope or a vacancy, because it is always Christ Himself who gives the jurisdiction, and He is as alive now as He was during the reign of Pius XII, nor has the will of the Popes changed. Therefore, neither has the very basis on which Christ gives jurisdiction changed. We receive it from Christ just as priests did when Pius XII was alive, and we receive it mediately, as priests did then, because it is granted because Popes willed it.

f) Some people, through ignorance or through little ability to think things through, have mocked this by saying things like: “So Bishop so-and-so is bishop of the whole world?” Do they really think Lainez and other authors wouldn’t have thought of this if it really was an objection? They are completely ignoring the fact that this jurisdiction is not a free-for-all. It is granted strictly within the limits of the will of the Popes, and thus, strictly within the limits of what is necessary “lest souls perish.” Clearly, that is not universal jurisdiction. “Ne pereant animae” is a very clear delimiting clause. If Bp. Pivarunas has souls that in fact depend on him and would perish if he lacked jurisdiction, then he has it, as much as is needed, from Christ by the will of the Popes. Clearly this does not imply that souls would perish if such bishops did not have the full powers of a Pope! Otherwise, even diocesan bishops would become universal bishops during a vacancy. From this, anyone with a brain can see the absurdity of objections such as: “Oh, then Bp. Pivarunas can excommunicate me?” Such ignorant statements deliberately ignore the restricting clause that is the entire basis for receiving the jurisdiction: “lest souls perish.” Then again, now that they mention it, maybe it WOULD be for the salvation of souls if certain vociferous defenders of R&R errors could be excommunicated... 🤔

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