Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

A Well Needed Trad Debate Between Novus Ordo Watch and Matt Gaspers on the Limits of Obedience and Authority.

Authority and Truth: The Novus Ordo Watch–Matt Gaspers Debate

Every so often, a serious exchange cuts through the noise of Catholic social media and reminds us that ideas still matter. The recent dialogue between Novus Ordo Watch and Matt Gaspers did just that. Here were two articulate, committed Catholics representing very different answers to the same burning question: how far does obedience go when the hierarchy itself seems to have lost the faith?

It’s encouraging to see such a conversation unfold in public. For too long, traditionalist circles have tended to retreat into separate silos, mainstream Trads on one side, sedevacantists on the other, each dismissing the other as unserious or extreme. Yet the crisis in the Church today is so grave, so unprecedented, that every serious claim deserves to be examined without prejudice. Whether one agrees with either side or not, this is precisely the kind of theological disputation that Catholic tradition once thrived on: careful reasoning, citation of authorities, and a shared belief that truth can withstand scrutiny.

The Core Dispute

At the heart of the exchange lies an old but ever-pressing question: what is the relationship between authority and truth in the Church?

Can the faithful publicly correct their bishops and even the pope when the faith appears endangered? Or does the divine constitution of the Church demand external submission even when one is inwardly convinced the hierarchy has erred?

Matt Gaspers, representing a “Recognize and Resist” position, argues that fraternal correction, even public correction, is sometimes not only permissible but necessary. Mario Derksen of Novus Ordo Watch responds from a sedevacantist standpoint, maintaining that such a scenario would undermine the very visibility and indefectibility of the Church: if the hierarchy teaches error, it cannot be the hierarchy Christ founded.

Both appeal to venerable authorities: Aquinas, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and centuries of ecclesiology. Both insist they are defending authentic Catholic tradition.

Matt Gaspers’ Case: Correcting for the Sake of Truth

Gaspers begins from a Thomistic and historical perspective. Citing Summa Theologiae II-II q.33 a.4 ad 2, he recalls that St. Paul “rebuked Peter to his face” because the faith was endangered. For Aquinas, this episode sets a precedent: when a prelate’s action threatens the faith, even a subordinate may publicly correct him.

Gaspers also points to Church history, particularly the Arian crisis, when the faith was preserved more by the laity and a few faithful bishops than by the hierarchy. Quoting St. John Henry Newman, he notes that the “Ecclesia docta” (the taught Church) sometimes upheld orthodoxy when the “Ecclesia docens” (the teaching Church) faltered.

From this foundation, Gaspers builds his argument that genuine obedience cannot mean blind servility. The hierarchy’s authority, he insists, exists to build up, not to destroy. Popes and bishops retain real power to teach and govern, but that authority is bound by the deposit of faith. When they deviate from it, resistance is not rebellion but fidelity.

He also argues that recognizing this possibility does not deny papal authority. It simply acknowledges that the hierarchy can err, as history shows it sometimes has. The faithful, therefore, may measure new teachings against prior magisterium, the extraordinary and the universal ordinary, to discern continuity or rupture.

Strengths:
Gaspers’ approach has several virtues. He appeals to respected theological sources, uses historical examples credibly, and preserves the believer’s moral conscience against the dangers of “blind obedience.” His reading of Aquinas and his invocation of Newman give his position intellectual weight and moral seriousness. Few would deny that the Arian crisis, the Western Schism, and other epochs of confusion lend plausibility to his concerns.

Weaknesses:
Yet his framework raises difficult questions. Who decides when a pope or bishop has contradicted the deposit of faith? If each Catholic measures doctrine by his own reading of “Tradition,” the Church risks splintering into private tribunals. Moreover, Gaspers’ system implies that a true pope could openly teach heresy without losing office: a notion many pre-conciliar theologians considered incompatible with the Church’s indefectibility. And while Aquinas allows for fraternal correction, he does so in the context of personal sin, not magisterial teaching. Extending the principle to papal doctrine is more interpretive than textual.

Still, Gaspers’ tone throughout is measured. He neither mocks nor caricatures his interlocutor, and his desire to defend the faith rather than his own reputation gives his argument an earnest, pastoral gravity.

Novus Ordo Watch’s Case: Defending Authority as Divine Form

Mario Derksen’s response proceeds from a different premise: that the visible hierarchy established by Christ possesses intrinsic authority by divine right. Authority, he insists, does not derive from personal correctness but from legitimate office. To conflate authority with infallibility, as Gaspers seems to do, is to dissolve the very structure Christ instituted.

Quoting Pope Leo XIII’s Est Sane Molestum and Sapientiae Christianae, Derksen notes that even non-infallible teachings carry binding authority. The faithful owe submission not because their superiors are infallible, but because those superiors hold a divine mandate to teach and govern. Without this, the Church would become a democracy of interpreters, each deciding which magisterial acts are valid.

He also cites Casti Connubii (Pius XI), which condemns the attitude that one need obey only solemn definitions. The Catholic spirit, he argues, requires docility to all that the Holy See proposes in faith and morals, guided by divine assistance beyond merely infallible pronouncements.

Derksen warns that the Recognize-and-Resist model effectively undermines the visible Church. If obedience is contingent on personal judgment of orthodoxy, then authority has no meaning. The result, he suggests, is indistinguishable from Protestant private interpretation, merely under a traditionalist veneer.

Strengths:
Derksen’s reasoning is doctrinally consistent and supported by the classical magisterium. His distinction between authority and infallibility is textbook ecclesiology, and his emphasis on the Church’s visible, hierarchical structure reflects a sound understanding of Catholic indefectibility. Within his own premises, especially the sedevacantist conclusion that post-Vatican II claimants cannot be true popes, his logic is airtight.

Weaknesses:
The problem lies in the application. Derksen’s principle that Catholics must maintain external submission to legitimate authority “at least in the external forum” even when privately convinced of error becomes difficult in practice. He resolves the apparent conflict by holding that a true pope or bishop cannot publicly teach heresy; should he do so, he loses office ipso facto. Yet this framework effectively requires each Catholic to determine when that point has been reached. For the ordinary faithful, discerning whether a superior has truly forfeited office is no simple matter, and the line between resisting error and rejecting authority can become perilously thin.

Moreover, because Derksen identifies the divine protection of the magisterium with the legitimacy of its authority, his system binds orthodoxy and jurisdiction in an almost seamless unity. He allows that a pope may err in non-infallible statements, but such errors, he insists, can never endanger salvation or bind the faithful to sin. Were a pope to impose teaching or discipline that did so, it would contradict the Church’s indefectibility and prove he had already lost authority.

This reasoning preserves internal coherence but creates practical tension: it makes the Church’s visibility appear contingent upon the doctrinal safety of every authoritative act. In turn, by linking visibility to the impossibility of the Church binding her members to harm, Derksen makes sedevacantism the necessary conclusion once such harm is judged to exist. The logic is consistent on its own terms but controversial to others, since it implies that the visible hierarchy itself has disappeared where most Catholics see rupture but not extinction.

Two Visions of Certainty

Beneath the citations and quotations lies a deeper philosophical divide.

For Derksen, certainty is institutional: where the divinely constituted hierarchy is, there is the rule of faith.

For Gaspers, certainty is doctrinal: where the perennial teaching of the Church is, there is the rule of faith.

One side prioritizes authority as form, the other truth as content. Both appeal to tradition, but they start from different axioms: one ontological, the other epistemological.

A Needed Dialogue

What makes this exchange valuable is not who wins, but that it happened at all. These are not mere internet provocations but serious attempts to think through the implications of the postconciliar crisis without retreating into slogans. Derksen and Gaspers disagree profoundly on the status of today’s hierarchy, yet both are trying to reconcile fidelity to Christ with fidelity to His Church: two goods that have never seemed so difficult to unite.

Their arguments show that traditional Catholic thought is still alive, still capable of rigorous debate, and still willing to wrestle with the hardest questions of ecclesiology. The fact that they can engage one another publicly, with citations and charity, is itself a model for how the broader traditional world might begin to recover theological seriousness.

Readers are encouraged to study the sources, weigh both sets of claims, and join the conversation respectfully in the comments. The question before us is not abstract. It cuts to the heart of what it means to be Catholic in an age when obedience and truth seem to pull in opposite directions.

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