Intellectual Catholic Giant Annihilates Sedevacantist Schismatics

John C. Pontrello

August 10, 2019

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A Sedevacantist apologist recently posted a link to a lengthy excerpt from rhetorician Orestes Brownson who attempted to refute Abbé Guettée′s “The Papacy; Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches.”  I was pleased to see this post for two reasons.  First, it draws attention to Guettée′s monumental work which will no doubt help many people straddling the east -west fence line to fall on the eastern side.  Guettée′s work is a great starter course for real history of the papacy and discovering that the Vatican I papacy, beyond rhetoric sophism & forgery, cannot really be sustained.  It causes thinkers to examine the papal claims in a new light and see beyond Vatican I, which is extremely difficult for many devoted Catholics to do even in the face of Vatican II.  Second, when this Sede apologist posted the link to a book he most likely never read, he did not perceive that Brownson refutes his whole Sede position.  For example, in the very next chapter of the provided link Mr. Brownson covers the same subject I cover in my book – Constitution of the Church - and by so doing destroys Sedevacantists along with the two pillars of their schism: “papacy of desire” & “invisible church ecclesiology.”  Those who read my work know that the Church’s essential constitution is one of the points I hammer on constantly because it destroys Sedevacantism, which heretical theory has zero components of the system upon which the whole Roman Church is claimed to stand.   Brownson confirms many of my own arguments against the Sedevacantists and refutes an ambitius apologist with a predisposition to load and fire before aiming.  By boasting Brownson the Sedevacantist apologist annihilates his own camp.   But that is what Sedevacantists do best- annihilate, first Roman Catholicism by exposing its defection and then as an eventual consequence, faith in Jesus Christ which they think is unprofitable to salvation outside of that system which they themselves work daily to refute.    

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As for Brownson’s “annihilation” of Guettée?   I could spend time addressing his claims but to what point?  Vatican II happened.  Guettée′s work has stood the test of time whereas Brownson’s work was already suspect by the 1950s and permanently rendered obsolete by 1968.  It is most fitting that Guettée introduced his treatise on the papacy with these prophetic words:

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“The pope is king and pretends to be sovereign pontiff of the Christian Church.  We do not propose to occupy ourselves with his royalty.  To what advantage?  It will soon fall.  Its ruin is decreed by Providence.  Foreign bayonets will no more save it than the sophisms of its defenders.” 

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And so it has come to pass.  If I have time to delve more fully into Brownson’s work that corroborates my own in exposing schismatic sedevacantists I will do so.  God willing. 

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