By: Francisco José Vegara Cerezo
Priest of the diocese of Orihuela-Alicante
As the idea is increasingly spreading to take advantage of the currently reigning confusion to attribute all evils to the Second Vatican Council—and thus, in colloquial terms, «when all is lost, go down with the ship»; for poor health, none, we break the whole deck and go to get some fresh air—with the aim of linking, on our own account and risk, with an ideal past where a pure and uncontaminated doctrine was still maintained, I consider it a duty of justice toward the truth and a tribute to the truly Catholic conscience to affirm the substantial orthodoxy of said Council. Precisely Protestantism, in essence, is that: judging the Church from individual criteria, erecting the individual as judge to determine what must be done; and that usually implies rupture, in which one supplants the already established hierarchy to create a new authority that breaks the organic continuity and, thus, the unity of the Church of Christ.
In particular, I am going to stick to the critique of the article titled The dilemma of the faithful Catholic: accept what the Church has always taught or accept the novelties, published on September 27, 2025. I will proceed by bringing the most highlighted texts—which will appear in italics—to which I will add my comment.
One thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relation. In other words, if a proposition is true, then the contradictory proposition is necessarily false, and vice versa. This is evident.
By virtue of this principle, every Catholic would be capable of rejecting certain propositions that contradict what the Magisterium of the Church teaches.
Wanting to be «full-on traditionalist,» the author goes over—as I anticipated—to the most unbridled Protestantism; for, if every Catholic can erect himself as the judging instance of the propositions of the Magisterium that must be accepted or rejected, what the heck is the First Vatican Council needed for? Indeed, if it is a matter of judging the teachings of the Pope, no infallible papacy would be needed.
Evidently, the principle of non-contradiction—the ultimate and radical foundation of all logic and, by its transcendental scope, applicable to everything—is no less infallible than the Pope speaking ex cathedra. But, taking into account, on the one hand, that in the definition of the principle it was missing to add «in the same sense,» and, on the other, that theological discourse, given its subtlety, usually harbors multiple senses and nooks when trying to express very profound mysteries, the application of said principle must be carried out with utmost caution. It can only be considered fulfilled when the opposing statements are diaphanous, concrete, and explicit, to the point that no other sense that escapes the contradiction can be considered. According to this, I am going to analyze the alleged doctrinal contradictions that are pointed out there.
First contradiction
Proposition A: Catholics are the only ones who have the right not to be impeded, by any human power, from expressing themselves publicly.
Proposition B: Catholics are not the only ones who have the right not to be impeded, by any human power, from expressing themselves publicly.
That contradiction is irrelevant to the case, for the Magisterium of the Church has no political authority but only theological—on faith and morals. Moreover, if we apply to politics the elementary principle of reciprocity, how can we demand for ourselves the same thing that we deny to others? Didn’t Jesus say: «Do to others what you want them to do to you» (Mt 7:12)? It does not seem, then, very coherent to prohibit others what we impose for ourselves.
Second contradiction
Proposition A: The Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are absolutely identical.
Proposition B: The Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are not absolutely identical.
As «Catholic Church» can be understood in a double sense—theological, where it appears as an intangible mystery; and juridical, where, on the contrary, it must appear as something visible and tangible as a perfectly delimited society—, the entire contradiction is undone. The Catholic Church is the Church of Christ in the theological sense, but not strictly in the juridical sense, insofar as the former sense is broader, encompassing also those who are inculpably not in juridical visibility, and integrating the triumphant and purgative Churches, which are obviously no longer visible here. Hence the Catholic Church also appears defined as the Mystical Body of Christ; which, as the appellation denotes, is irreducible to the merely juridical, for the Church is not a natural society, and its sense is not exhausted in canonical visibility.
In the constitution Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council, in no. 8, it is said that the Church of Christ «subsists in the Catholic Church.» This expression, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, means that, as regards duration and uniqueness, the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are identical. But, as regards operative presence, the Church of Christ is distinct from the Catholic Church because it is broader than the latter.
The distinction is not happy, for the only channel of grace is the visible Church, to which all salvific means belong as proper, as seen in the requirement—indispensable for the validity of the sacraments—of maintaining the intention of the Church. Therefore, the visible Catholic Church is the only and exclusive salvific means, just as Christ’s human nature is, to which that Church is intimately united as the body to the head to save the ultimate salvific uniqueness.
The greater breadth of the Church of Christ resides, then, only in the members, since that unique channel of grace is capable of reaching beyond the strictly visible, to also reach those who are inculpably outside juridical visibility. It could be said that, in the visible Church, not all who are are there, nor are all who are there; for neither being in it is a guarantee of salvation, nor not being in it is of damnation.
Third contradiction
Proposition A: There is a single subject of the supreme power of the Church.
Proposition B: There is not a single subject of the supreme power of the Church.
Proposition B is found in the Second Vatican Council, in no. 22 of Lumen gentium, according to which there are two subjects of supreme power in the Church: on the one hand, the Pope alone; on the other, the bishops united with the Pope. This thesis is also taught explicitly in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, in canon 336.
As an example, in the Bible it is said, on the one hand, that Christ is the only rock and, on the other, that St. Peter is likewise rock. The solution consists in considering that St. Peter alone is rock insofar as united to Christ, the only one who is rock by himself. That is why Christ, before entrusting to St. Peter the sheep he had redeemed, asked him if he loved him (Jn 21:15), to emphasize the necessary unity that love establishes.
From the very analogy of body and head, the Pope is the only one who, by himself, possesses supreme authority, while the bishops only participate in it united to the head. What, in the end, is meant is that the entire episcopal order forms a unity—the episcopal college—whose indispensable head is the Pope, who, from that very headship, acts as principle of unity.
Fourth contradiction
Proposition A: The Spirit of Christ refuses to make use of communities separated from the Catholic Church as means of salvation.
Proposition B: The Spirit of Christ does not refuse to make use of communities separated from the Catholic Church as means of salvation.
Since the sacraments act ex opere operato, it is evident that separated communities that possess valid sacraments are also means of salvation, although not by themselves, but by what they have preserved from the Catholic Church. To this belong properly the sacraments, which, for their part, only act in those who do not put obstacles to grace, that is, in those who are inculpably outside Catholic visibility.
Fifth contradiction
Proposition A: The Old Covenant has been revoked.
Proposition B: The Old Covenant has not been revoked.
The true one is the first proposition, and the confusion in the case of the second would be due to a bad translation, for in the Spanish version of point 121 of the official Catechism it is said that the Old Covenant has not been «revoked,» when in the original it does not say revocatum, but retractatum. It is very different, insofar as God revokes successive covenants, but does not retract from any.
Sixth contradiction
Proposition A: The death penalty can be morally permitted.
Proposition B: The death penalty cannot be morally permitted.
More than a formal contradiction, the recent Magisterium presents a doctrinal development that, attending to current conditions and to the dignity of the person, leads to considering the death penalty inadmissible in our time. The case deserves separate treatment, but it is not necessary to pose it as a denial of the faith.
Conclusion
A Catholic whose intelligence functions normally therefore has no choice: either he accepts what the Church has always taught and then rejects the contradictory novelties; or he accepts the novelties, but then he must reject the Magisterium of the Church.
Since when does the intelligence of a Catholic—however normal or excellent it may be—incumb the judgment of faith to decide what is perennial Magisterium of the Church and what are dispensable novelties? As already said at the beginning, this reduces the claimed objectivity of Catholic doctrine to the level of the purest Protestant subjectivism.
Moreover, the opposition between irrevocable doctrine and current Magisterium is erroneous, for doctrine bases precisely its irrevocability on springing from the Magisterium, which, as long as it is valid as to its source, has the same authority at any time.
The intelligence that, in the end, does not seem to function well—for incurring serious formal and content defects—is that of the author of the article. To him, with the utmost respect—for he who has a mouth makes mistakes, and before God humility that rectifies has more merit than sagacity that hits the mark—, I beg him to reconsider his position so as not to increase the already existing confusion, retroactively bringing darkness to a period when there was still some light. It cannot be that the Church has been roundly wrong and astray for more than sixty years; that would break all organic continuity and would give, in the ultimate instance, reason to all the secessions that have occurred throughout history, whose recurring argument has always been the total corruption of the Church, without the moment in which it occurred being relevant in the end; what would be decisive would be the failure of Christ’s promise: «the gates of hell shall not prevail against it» (cf. Mt 16:18).