No Pope, No Eucharist
June 11, 2020
FOR THOSE Catholics who aspire, despite their many and obvious failings, to be simple, direct and docile in their faith and who, through the unmerited grace of God, the use of reason and this effort at total submission, realize that the papal chair is currently vacant and no true pope sits in Rome, the words of the French monk Dom Prosper Guéranger relating to today’s Feast of Corpus Christi, which celebrates the true and miraculous Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, a belief which modern materialists and pantheists, like their forerunners in ancient times, find barbaric and repugnant, may serve as a stern warning about the possibility of obtaining the Eucharist at this time.
Aspiring to be simple and submissive despite my many failings and sins, I consider Guéranger’s words on the indispensable bond between the Vicar of Christ and the Eucharist cause for grave doubt about the Traditionalist Chapels which rightly disavow the false pope in Rome while still dispensing what they claim to be the lawful and valid Eucharist. Where there is doubt, we must not act.
The fact that these chapels are not united in their beliefs, especially as to who should receive and who can lawfully consecrate the Blessed Sacrament, is another cause for grave doubt. Catholics are expected to make gruelingly difficult decisions on jurisdictional matters before they can approach the altar at some of these chapels. The faith is not enough; one must be a genius in ecclesiastical law and spend hours poring through reams of documents about the psychological status of certain deceased bishops to know what is right.
Then there are the rogue “independent” chapels that simply take one and all, as if there ever was a thing called “independence” in the Catholic Church. As long as you like the look of Traditional Catholicism, you’re in. Appearances count most. All this smacks of Protestant disunity, which leads inevitably to two very unfortunate and opposing calamities: fanaticism and indifference.
As the prophetic Guéranger put it in the nineteenth century, “Christ in his Sacrament, and Christ in his Vicar, is in reality but the one same Rock that bears the building which is erected upon it; the one sole Head, visible in his representative, his Vicar, and invisible in his own substance, in the Sacrament.”
I recommend Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, Volume X, “Tuesday after Trinity Sunday” reading in full. Here are some pertinent excerpts: Read More »