A Cradle Of Sophistry

Let me just say out of the gate that Matt even making the decision to host this debate on Pints With Aquinas was a bad idea at best and scandalous at worst.

I have written here about the time I came home with a pamphlet put out by Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM) that I picked up at a Padre Pio shrine, felt something was off about it, and ended up throwing it in the trash so no one else would inadevertently find it and be led astray by its errors. What Matt is essentially doing with hosting and posting this debate is akin to fishing through the trash for it and making twenty thousand copies free of charge for sedes to distribute.

"Brother" Peter Dimond is not a canonical Benedictine monastic in any sense of the word, but the true definition of the detestable kinds of monks St. Benedict warns about in the first chapter of the Rule (emphasis mine):

"Third, there are the sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov 27:21), have a character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their tonsure. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord’s. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden."

First, why does this issue of a public debate even matter? Well, when I saw it come across my feed I instantly felt a kind of revulsion. MHFM operates by deception; you can read one father's account of how he lost (and eventually regained) his son to this cult here. And I thought to myself wearily, "how many well-intentioned but naive Catholics are going to click on this video and be swayed by the sedevacantist position away from the Truth?" 

As it turns out, my fears were not unfounded. I could only stomach about five minutes of the "debate" so I can't write the perspective of having viewed it in its entirety, but the comments section was revealing. First, it swelled more than with other PWA videos, and I presume because the sedes came out of the woodwork to rally in it. They are most at home and in their court in the online arena, and comment after comment was like this one that was posted:

"Incredible that someone could listen to this debate and walk away rejecting the sedevacant position. Literally Bro Peter proved that the sedevacatntist position ijs the only possible position a Catholic militant can hold and remain in the The Catholic Church. It's a matter of doctrine, and dogma, and after hearing the facts of the matter any other position held puts one outside of The One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. A Catholic militant simply cannot logically reject the Sedevacantist position, and or esteem these heretical reprobate antichrist antipopes as Pope, and remain in The Bosom of The Catholic Church."

The consensus among almost all, even non-sedes and "normie" Catholics, was that Dimond mopped the floor with Cassman. This is problematic for a number of reasons, not just because Cassman "lost," but because you dont give a platform to sedes in the first place because a platform is what they want most online. The fact that PWA is a more-or-less normie Catholic platform is a thick notch in the bedpost for sedes like Dimond who usually subsist in the digital underground. And the fact that he makes what appears to be the case for the validity of the sede vacante position to unsuspecting but disenfranchised Catholics, it comes across like an effective ISIS recruitment video, pouring gasonline of the fire of defection. Peppered throughout were comments like this one:

"I've been on the fence for awhile. I think I might actually become a sedevacantist because of this debate. Big fan of your show, btw"

Protestantism is an error, but at least they don't pass themselves off as Catholics, unlike the so-called "Old Catholics" and Sedevacantists. I fear Matt has done a lot of inadvertent damage with videos like this one, and if it was for the purpose of driving more traffic to the PWA Youtube channel by way of salaciously clickable content, even more so. As I've said before with regards to Professional Catholic (TM) programming as a way of paying the mortgage: you're better off if you don't quit your day job.

I recall in reading The Confessions of St. Augustine as a young man being in those same formidable years of looking for truth as Augustine was when he fell in with the Mannicheans. He was taken by their seemingly convincing cosmology and way of living, but in earnestly desiring to know the Truth eventually woke up to the defects of their arguments, and that the Truth was not in them. I think one needs to consider the untenability and logical dead end of the sede vacante position objectively (not in this kind of one-two punch debate format, either). But one should also look at the rotten fruit that sedevacantism produces. 

I had the chance to talk with a friend and reader last night who lived for eighteen years in a sedevacantist sect on the West Coast. She detailed the mind-control, the ritual abuse, the sowing seeds of distrust that occurred and broke apart families and led to suicides. She has since left and come back to the true faith, as did these nuns, which is a cause for rejoicing.

When I reflect on the scriptures in Galatians--that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22-23)--I do not see that evidenced in sedevacantism, regardless of how seemingly convincing their online screeds and diatribes are or how many debates they win with ill-prepared normie Catholics. Theirs is a hollow core, an empty gourd; and where the apples rot, the bees gather to sting.

Our current pontiff and the state of the Church do not make it easy to stay on the barque these days. Who wants to be part of a clown Church in its current state? If anything, it feeds this heterodoxy and fans the desire of those who are lured by the asceticism of Orthodoxy and the zealous crusading of Sedevacantism. PWA would have been wise to heed the words of St. Paul to Titus: "But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless."

And yet, here I am. Still. I don't know why, and I can't attribute it to anything apart from 100% pure undiluted grace. It's not the pope. It's not the hierarchy. To keep our eyes fixed on Christ when the world draws our eyes away from Him is a matter not only of focus, but of steadfast survival. The words of Fr. Lazarus El-Anthony, a modern anchorite in Egypt, came to mind: "Out here, no one speaks my language. I have no countrymen...I have no one, no one to help me. If I take my eyes off Christ for one moment, I am completely lost." In our domesticity, we tend to lose sight or forget the intensive spiritual battle for our souls going behind the scenes. The lubricating oil of sophistry greases the skids on chute to Hell, and those who are taken by it do so because they take their eyes off of Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life. He will restore all things in His time. Until then, we must pray for the grace of patience, perseverance, fortitude, and the wisdom to know what is right and true and what is a lie.