A. Today’s State of Grave General Necessity Without Hope of Help on the Part of Legitimate Pastors

The grave general or public necessity for the souls of today is without hope on the part of the legitimate pastors because these generally are swept away or paralyzed by the neo-modernistic course of the Church. Contradiction to revealed truth is championed by the hierarchy or it is silent or in collusion.

"...[I]deas conflicting with revealed and constantly taught Truth, true and real heresies in the sphere of dogmas and morals [through which] Christians today are dismayed, confused, perplexed, ..." ¹¹

"The Church finds herself in a time of unrest, of self-criticism, it could even be said of auto-destruction. It is almost as if the Church assaults her very Self" [Pope Paul VI].⁹

This last admission amounts to saying that today the Church and souls are attacked by the very ministers of the Church as at the time of Arianism, when "the priests of Christ were contending against Christ."²³

Romano Amerio in Iota Unum has been able to document the doctrinal deviations of the Vatican Council II with conciliar texts, acts of the Holy See, papal allocutions, declarations of cardinals and bishops, pronouncements of Episcopal conferences, and articles from L’Osservatore Romano.

That is to say, traditional Rome condemns neo-protestant Rome with "official or unofficial disclosures of the Church hierarchy" ²⁴ arriving at the conclusion that:

"...the doctrinal corruption has ceased to be a phenomenon of little esoteric circles and has become a public action of the ecclesial body in sermons, books, schools, and catechisms." ²⁵

In Iota Unum Romano Amerio illustrates the renunciation on the part of the Holy Father to exercise the power received from Christ Our Lord in order to condemn error and extirpate the ones erring.²⁶ Pope Paul VI admitted:

"So many expect from the Pope outspoken actions and energetic decisions. The Pope cannot consider any other possibility [of action] than that of confidence in Jesus Christ, for Whom His Church matters more than anything else. It will be to up to him to calm the tempest." ⁹

Fine and good, but this does not exempt Peter from maintaining the place of Christ in the government of the Church by taking hold of the rudder again and straightening it out!

Regarding the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the following declaration of the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to the Chilean Episcopal Conference (1988) says it all:

"...[T]he myth of Vatican harshness in the face of progressivist deviations has been shown to be an empty speculation. Basically, as of today, only admonitions have been issued [which are] in no case fully canonical in the proper sense." ²⁷

The abandonment of utilizing supreme papal authority in the face of error and the ones erring endorses the abandonment of every other authority in the Church. Cardinal Ratzinger continued at the same episcopal conference:

"The same Bishop, who, before the [Second Vatican] Council, used to have an irreproachable professor expelled for somewhat uncouth speech, is in no position to remove, after the Council, a teacher who is denying openly some fundamental truth of the Faith."

Now, whenever souls are not able to hope for help from the legitimate pastors, there is imposed upon anyone having the possibility the duty under pain of mortal sin of offering help to Catholics in large part tempted by atheism, by agnosticism, by a sociological Christianity, without defined dogma and without objective morals, and this duty falls first of all upon the bishops and then the priests, because the failure to help souls in the state of spiritual necessity is a matter not only contrary to the precept of charity, but is also a matter "directly inconsistent with the episcopal and sacerdotal state,...in direct conflict with the episcopal and sacerdotal state (Suarez)."

B. The Duty of Temporary Substitution on the Part of Bishops

This duty of assistance is especially imposed upon the Bishops. Cardinal Journet writes that the papacy and the episcopate:

"...are two forms, one independent...; the other subordinate to one and the same power that comes from Christ and is ordered to the eternal salvation of souls." ²⁸

In plain words, the pope and bishops are in the Church through divine positive law as husband and wife are in the family through divine natural law. The bishop is subordinate to the pope, just as the wife must be to her husband, but both ordered to the same end, that is, the good of the Church and the salvation of souls. As the duty is imposed upon the wife to substitute (within the limits of her capabilities) for her husband if, with or without fault, he is delinquent in his office, so the duty is imposed upon bishops to substitute (within the limits their capabilities) for the pope if, with or without fault, does not provide for the necessity of souls.

3rd Principle: The Obligation of Assistance Is Coextensive With the Power of Order (But Not of Jurisdiction). The Power of Jurisdiction Springs From the Necessity of the Faithful.

In necessity one is bound to offer help, while it is needed, within the limits of one’s possibilities, which, for a priest or bishop, means within the limits of their own power of Order. It is on account of this that in the extreme necessity of the individual and in the grave necessity of many, any priest is bound under pain of mortal sin to give sacramental absolution, even if deprived of jurisdiction.⁶ St. Alphonsus writes that even:

"...the excommunicated vitandus, if he can validly administer the sacraments, is bound to administer them in danger of death on account of divine and natural precept to which the human precept of the Church would not be able to oppose itself." ²⁹

In brief, as long as the extreme necessity of the individual or the grave necessity of many demands it, one can lawfully, indeed, one must under pain of mortal sin do all that he is able to do validly in virtue of the power of order. The necessary jurisdiction is acquired at the request of souls. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (can. 2261, §§2,3) states that the faithful can "on account of any just cause" demand the sacraments from an excommunicated priest [whom the Church has deprived of jurisdiction] and at that time the one excommunicated, so requested, can administer them. Fr. Hugueny, O.P. remarks that "the demand [of the faithful] gives to the excommunicated priest the power of administering the sacraments." ³⁰ This means that, in necessity, the exercise of the power of order to the full extent necessary is called into act not by the will of the hierarchical superior, but directly by the state of necessity. "The action otherwise prohibited...is rendered licit and permitted by the state of necessity. [Catholic Encyclopedia, on "Necessity (State of)"]."

In such extraordinary circumstances, the jurisdiction lacking is said to be supplied by the Church. The Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c.7) [Denzinger, 903] assures us that it is contrary to the mind of the Church that souls be lost by reason of jurisdictional reservations or limitations:

"But lest anyone perish on this account, it has always been piously observed in the same Church of God that there be no [jurisdictional] reservation at the moment of death [i.e., grave necessity of the individual thus equated with grave necessity of many —Ed.]." ³¹

And Pope Innocent XI, cutting off every argument on the subject, establishes definitively that in necessity the Church supplies jurisdiction lacking even to heretical, infamous, and excommunicated vitandi priests.³²

The thought and practice of the Church has as its principle that in necessity there is imposed, through natural and positive law, a grave duty of charity and that against the divine and natural law the Church does not have any power. In addition to St. Alphonsus already quoted above, Suarez writes, "Justice or charity command avoiding...harm to neighbor, and to this [divine] mandate human law cannot be reasonable opposed." ³³ St. Thomas Aquinas says that "the disposition of human law cannot ever infringe upon the natural law and the law of God (ST, II-II, Q. 66, A.7)."

This is valid above all for human ecclesiastical law which is meant to facilitate the exercise of charity, not obstruct it. Fr. Cappello writes that it is certain that the Church supplies jurisdiction in order to provide either for the extreme necessity of the individual or "for the public or general necessity of the faithful." ³⁴ The reason, says St. Alphonsus, is that otherwise many souls would be lost and therefore it is reasonably presumed that the Church supplies jurisdiction.³⁵ In other words, as in material necessity things revert to their primary end, which is the benefit of all men in general, so in spiritual necessity the power of Order reverts to its primary end, which is that of providing for the necessity of all souls in general, and the limitation (or total deprivation) of jurisdiction arising from ecclesiastical laws vanishes.³⁶ St. Thomas Aquinas explains:

"In virtue of the power of order, any priest has power indifferently over all [men] and for all sins. The fact that he is not able to absolve all from all sins depends on the jurisdiction imposed by the ecclesiastical law. But since necessity is not subject to law [cf. Consilium de Observ. Ieiun., De Reg. Iur. (V Decretal.) c. 4], in case of necessity, he is not impeded by the discipline of the Church from being able to absolve even sacramentally provided that he has the power of order [Supplement, Q. 8, A. 6]."

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