Quote:The principles governing obedience are known and are so in conformity with sane reason and common sense that one is driven to wonder how intelligent persons can make a statement like, "They prefer to be mistaken with the Pope, than to be with the truth against the Pope."

That is not what the natural law teaches, nor the Magisterium of the Church. Obedience presupposes an authority, which gives an order or issues a law. Human authorities, even those instituted by God, have no authority other than to attain the end apportioned them by God and not to turn away from it. When an authority uses power in opposition to the law for which this power was given it, such an authority has no right to be obeyed and one must disobey it.

This need to disobey is accepted with regard to a family father who would encourage his daughter to prostitute herself, with regard to the civil authority which would oblige doctors to perform abortions and kill innocent souls, yet people accept in every case the authority of the Pope, who is supposedly infallible in his government and in all words. Such an attitude betrays a sad ignorance of history and of the true nature of papal infallibility.

A long time ago St Paul said to St Peter that he was "Not walking according to the truth of the Gospel" (Gal. 2:14). St. Paul encouraged the faithful not to obey him, St. Paul, if he happened to preach any other gospel than the Gospel that he had already taught them (Gal. 1:8).

St. Thomas, when he speaks of fraternal correction, alludes to St Paul's resistance to St. Peter and he makes the following comment:

Quote:"To resist openly and in public goes beyond the measure of fraternal correction. St Paul would not have done it towards St. Peter if he had not in some way been his equal…We must realize, however, that if there was question of a danger for the faith, the superiors would have to be rebuked by their inferiors, even in public."

This is clear from the manner and reason for St. Paul's acting as he did with regard to St. Peter, whose subject he was, in such a way, says the gloss of St. Augustine, "that the very head of the Church showed to superiors that if they ever chanced to leave the straight and narrow path, they should accept to be corrected by their inferiors" (St. Thomas IIa, IIae, q.33, art.4, ad 2).

The case evoked by St. Thomas is not merely imaginary because it took place with regard to John XXII during his life. This pope thought he could state as a personal opinion that the souls of the elect do not enjoy the Beatific Vision until after the Last Judgment He wrote this opinion down in 1331 and in 1332 he preached a similar opinion with regard to the pains of the damned. He had the intention of putting forward this opinion in a solemn decree.

But the very lively action on the part of the Dominicans, above all in Paris, and of the Franciscans, made him renounce this opinion in favor of the traditional opinion defined by his successor, Benedict XII, in 1336.

And here is what Pope Leo XIII said in his Encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888:

Quote:"If, then, by anyone in authority, something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law." And a little further on, he says: "But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest while obeying man, we become disobedient to God."

Now our disobedience is motivated by the need to keep the Catholic Faith. The orders being given us clearly express that they are being given us in order to oblige us to submit without reserve to the Second Vatican Council, to the post-conciliar reforms, and to the prescriptions of the Holy See, that is to say, to the orientations and acts which are undermining our Faith and destroying the Church. It is impossible for us to do this. To collaborate in the destruction of the Church is to betray the Church and to betray Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now all the theologians worthy of this name teach that if the pope, by his acts, destroys the Church, we cannot obey him (Vitoria: Obras, pp. 486-487; Suarez: De Fide, disp. X, sec. VI, no.16; St. Robert Bellarmine: de Rom. Pont., Book 2, Ch. 29; Cornelius a Lapide: ad Gal. 2,11, etc.) and he must be respectfully, but publicly, rebuked.