I see this pattern again and again. Some member of the faithful in the Catholic Church, anyone from Cardinal or Bishop to the least lay person, disagrees with a decision of a Pope or an Ecumenical Council — and so they assume that the Pope or the Council must be in the wrong. Blinded by pride, they cannot imagine, for even a second, that when they disagree with the Church, the Pope, or the body of Bishops, they could possibly be wrong.

This happens sometimes to a severe extent. Here is an article with a long list of accusations against many different Popes. So, every time a Pope says or does something, and you disagree, the Pope must be the one who is wrong? Is it not possible that you have misunderstood or misjudged the situation? No?!!? Are you Jesus? Are you personally infallible because you are God? No. Then you certainly could be the one who is wrong. Similarly, here is an article accusing 4 different Ecumenical Councils of grave errors, and counseling the readers to ignore “other councils you’ve never heard of”. An Ecumenical Council is the body of Bishops teaching with the Roman Pontiff. If you find error after error in the decisions of Pope after Pope, and Council after Council, the odds that you are right and all those Popes and many Bishops are wrong is, just in human terms, exceedingly small. And in spiritual terms, the odds are ZERO.

The infallible teachings of the Church are free from all error. The non-infallible teachings and decisions of discipline of the Popes and Councils are free from all grave error. For the Church is indefectible, and therefore can never lead the faithful away from the path of salvation. And this indefectibility is secured, in part, by the charism of truth and never-failing faith given to the Roman Pontiff. You are not on equal footing with any Pope or Council. Even individual Bishops or Cardinals do not have anything like indefectibility or the papal charisms. The Bishops as a body share in some, but not all, of the papal charisms, but then only with and under the Pope.

“But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head. The pope’s power of primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. For our Lord placed Simon alone as the rock and the bearer of the keys of the Church,(156) and made him shepherd of the whole flock….” [Vatican II, LG 22]

Bishop Strickland

Bishop Strickland was interviewed by LifeSiteNews here. When asked why he was removed from office by Pope Francis, Strickland stated the following:

“The only answer I have to that is because forces in the Church right now don’t want the truth of the gospel.”

“They want it changed. They want it ignored. They want to be rid of the truth that is gloriously not going to go away. The truth that is Jesus Christ, His mystical body, which is the Church, all the wonders that the martyrs died for and the saints lived for through almost 2000 years since Christ died and rose.”

So Bishop Strickland disagrees with the decision of Pope Francis to remove him from office. Fine, he can disagree without sin. And when asked to resign, he refused; but he accepted the direct order removing him. Also fine, and not sinful.

But the idea is prideful to an extreme, and patently absurd, that when he, an individual Bishop who does “not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility” (LG 25), has a disagreement with the Pope, he himself represents Truth, Jesus, the Church, and all the martyrs and Saints, while the Pope was influenced to that decision, since certain “forces in the Church right now don’t want the truth of the gospel.” There is no humility in this response from Bishop Strickland. He assumes not only that he is in the right, and the Pope and his advisors are in the wrong, but also that he was removed specifically for being particularly holy and faithful.

How filled with pride to you have to be to accuse the Pope of “undermining the deposit of faith”, support a priest who attacked the Roman Pontiff openly (and later fell into schism and sedevacantism), and then represent yourself as doing nothing but teaching the truths of the Gospel?

NCRonline notes that Bishop Strickland “in recent years questioned the safety of the coronavirus vaccines, called synodality ‘garbage,’ and endorsed a video that attacked Francis himself as a ‘diabolically disoriented clown.’ ” Strickland thereby encouraged the faithful to reject an official Synod of the Church, and by example encouraged the faithful to ridicule the Vicar of Christ.

Strickland also said, in a tweet: “I believe Pope Francis is the Pope but it is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith. Follow Jesus.” In this way, he encouraged the faithful in his own diocese and beyond to imitate him (by the example that he set) in rejecting the “program” of Pope Francis. He accused the Roman Pontiff of undermining the deposit of faith, contrary to the teaching of the Church on the charism of truth and never-failing faith and the freedom of the Apostolic See from heresy (cf. Church teaching on the Pope).

These public acts are a cause of grave scandal, and extend well beyond his own diocese via the internet. These acts also show an attitude of putting his own judgments above the teachings and decisions of the Roman Pontiff, and of assuming that Strickland’s own understanding of the Gospel cannot err, while that of the Roman Pontiff can err gravely.

In addition, Bishop Strickland fired several diocesan officials, all of them women, apparently because he does not want women in positions of authority in his diocese.

But when removed from office, he claims that the only explanation must be that he is like the martyrs and saints, being persecuted for teaching the truths of the Gospel.

This is ever the way with the opponents of Pope Francis. They present themselves as if sinless and infallible. If the Pope makes a decision they dislike, such as restricting the Latin Mass, they claim themselves to be martyrs and holy faithful Catholics being persecuted by the Pope. For they cannot imagine that they might be in the wrong. They do not consider that they may have used the Latin Mass as a means to gather a community, separate that community from the rest of the Church, and then oppose the Popes and Councils. If the Pope teaches anything contrary to their own understanding, they accuse the Roman Pontiff and Vicar of Christ, who has the charism of truth and never-failing faith [Lk 22:32], of heresy, apostasy, and idolatry, rather than admit that they could be wrong and the Pope could be right.

While the papal accusers claim to be following Tradition or Jesus or the past teachings of the Magisterium, they instead are openly opposing the current Roman Pontiff and rejecting any teachings or decisions by past Popes or Councils, if contrary to their own views. They have transferred their allegiance from the Church led by the successors to the Apostles to a conservative or traditionalist subculture and its obstinate perverse version of Catholicism.

Speaking More Generally

Sometimes individual lay persons complain about the Church. Okay, well the Church is comprised of many fallen sinners, from the Pope and Bishops, to the Saints, Doctors, and Fathers of the Church, to the humble lay persons who do the complaining. The Church, like Christ, is both human and divine. Not human only. The Church is also divine, with Christ, the Son of God, as Her eternal Head and the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church. And the Church is the sole means chosen under the universal salvific will of God to offer salvation to all human persons. (But many are saved by implicit membership in the Church, the sole Ark of Salvation.)

Now many Catholics complain about the Church at length, so as to justify their sins. Complain, complain, complain — “Oh, I’m certainly not going to follow the teaching of the Church on contraception! Look at all the problems in the Church!” That is just a blatant excuse for grave sin. And it doesn’t matter which complaints are used, or which sins are being justified. It is wrong.

People need to be able to admit that they have sinned, and that they can be wrong in their ideas about faith and morals. Catholics need to submit their minds and hearts to the non-infallible teaching of the Church; this is termed the religious submission of will and intellect. Even though the Pope can err, to a limited extent, in a non-infallible decision of doctrine or discipline, we must all put those teachings above our own opinions and judgments. That is what religious submission means. And God can require us to do so, despite the possibility of error, because these errors cannot reach to the extent of endangering our salvation, and because the non-infallible teachings and decisions are an essential part of learning and following the Faith. You cannot live the Faith solely by following what is infallible. Non-infallible teachings as well as discipline, and theological opinions are also a practical necessity for Christian life.

Those who reject any and all non-infallible teachings or decisions that are contrary to their own judgment sin gravely. For they are rejecting the authority of the Church per se, and they are setting themselves up as judges over the Church. There is some room for occasional mild disagreements with non-infallible teachings or decisions of the Pope, only with the admission that we could be wrong and the Pope could easily be right. Any wholesale rejection or comprehensive attitude against any Popes or Councils, claiming that they must be wrong and you must be right, just because you (or the ideological subculture to which you adhere) judge otherwise, is the grave sin of schism, and of pride.

Persons who reject anything non-infallible contrary to their own judgments, these same persons are not going to accept the infallible teachings of the Church. Instead, they will claim that every infallible teaching, contrary to their own ideas, is not really infallible. Pride goeth before a fall, before a schism, before heresy and even apostasy.

Ronald L Conte Jr