Admonishing Fr.
Nicholas Gruner
18 September 2006
Dear Fr. Nicholas Gruner,
My name is W. Paul Doughton and, up until
a few years ago, I was an occasional supporter of the
To begin with, my dear sir, you and your organization are heretical
when it comes to the Dogma of Salvation. To wit, the infallible teaching that
no Salvation exists outside the Roman Catholic Church. For while your magazine,
the Fatima Crusader, has recently seemed to uphold this Dogma --- even
fingering its denial as the root of the present crisis --- you nevertheless
admit exceptions due to ‘invincible ignorance’, whereby men can die
in the practice of a false religion, or no religion at all, and still enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven. This directly contradicts the Catholic Faith, which
has never taught exceptions at all, the Roman Pontiffs from the 1st
till the 20th centuries having never, ever, allowed for an
invincible ignorance to operate in proxy for the Sacraments of Baptism or
Penance; moreover, the Popes having made clear that a person cannot be
connected ‘invisibly’ to the Church while nonetheless visibly
separated from Her membership, and that outside Her Sanctuary there can
be no remission of sins --- including original sin and the sin of not believing
in the Religion of Catholicism, which is a breaking of the first commandment.
Yet let us say I am wrong about this accusation. Let us say you and
the members of your organization do not believe that an ‘invincibly
ignorant’ man can enter Heaven. My accusation stands, regardless. For you
most certainly tolerate this heresy in others, to whom you accord the name of
‘catholic’ in spite of their manifest denial of the Salvation
Dogma via the heretical teaching of an ‘invisible connection’ to
Holy Mother Church. A Dogma that, by virtue of its being a Dogma and thus
infallibly defined, as well as a tenet common to everything the Catholic Church
teaches and hence unable to be denied short of actual culpability by a man with
the use of reason, automatically causes such men to be excommunicated for
denying it even if they were truly Catholic prior to denial. And this in turn
means, my dear sir, that you yourself, at the very least, are guilty of the sin
of heresy for tolerating in others what you ought not to tolerate in them ---
especially the transgression of heresy, and especially given that you call
yourself a priest!
Bringing us to the origin of your problems, and the means by which
the enemies of the Church managed to usher in the era of the Great Apostasy
that we face today: the heresy of non-judgmentalism. Viz., the idea that no one
can or should judge another. For, when it comes to people outside the Church,
purported ‘catholics’ claim that we cannot judge their hearts.
Therefore, we must treat them as potential ‘catholics’, as it were,
and not be ‘harsh’ by saying to their faces, or to anyone else for
that matter, that they’re going to Hell, or that, once dead, that
it’s a moral certainty they’re in Hell. Because who knows, say such
‘catholics’, whether or not they are involved in invincible
ignorance, and who knows whether or not they might have converted secretly at
the utter last moment before death, unbeknownst, and consequently invisibly, to
anyone on earth? And, when it comes to people thought to be inside the Church,
purported ‘catholics’ claim, too, that we cannot judge superiors,
particularly the man said to be Pope. Therefore, we must treat them as if they
are ‘catholic’, it not being our privilege or responsibility to say
otherwise since we have no authority over them. Because you know, say such
‘catholics’, only God can rightly judge them or those He’s
put in charge over them, particularly the Pope.
Fr. Gruner, this is nonsense and it is
blasphemy. It eradicates the spiritual duty of a true Catholic to admonish and
rebuke, and it allows such a one to tolerate the public sin of a superior
merely because he is superior. In short, it prevents anyone from being called a
sinner who actually is a sinner, both objectively and evidentially, and it
eventually leads to preventing sin from being openly called sin since no one
wants to assume the burden of sounding ‘judgmental’ and
‘restrictive’ of a person’s motives or freedom, respectively.
Which then also means that sinners are left unidentified and undistinguished, their
sins unopposed, thereby endangering countless unwary souls by leaving them in
the dark about who and what is wicked, and emboldening untold numbers of
rebellious souls by leaving them unafraid of repercussions for committing
similar or other sins. What’s more, souls with some good will are
silenced because afraid to speak up and denounce he who is wrong, and truly
holy souls are persecuted because they dare to rebuke the man others refuse to
chastise. In a word, good and the virtuous are suppressed, and evil and the
wicked are encouraged.
This is exactly the situation with you, my dear sir. For although
you and your organization’s affiliates have become increasingly forward
and explicit in opposing men the world calls ‘catholic’ monks,
nuns, theologians, priests, bishops & cardinals, you go to every length to
avoid opposing he who the world considers a pope --- and even though, when
formerly not a pope but simply a cardinal, and only a couple of years ago, you
held him quite accountable for his wayward ways!
This is either cowardly or complicit of you. A real Catholic must
denounce sinners by name, admonishing public sins in public. Furthermore, a
real Catholic must rebuke his superior in a public fashion when that superior
has objectively sinned in a way that is public. Whether or not the sinner means
to sin, whether or not the man who looks like he objectively sinned actually is
guilty of sin, or the appearance is misleading, a true Catholic must
nevertheless rebuke the apparent sinner for what looks like an objectively real
sin until shown otherwise. This is fundamental morality and hence a fundamental
Catholic obligation. Unwilling to satisfy this obligation, one cannot be a good
Catholic, and will soon cease being Catholic altogether, presuming Catholicity
to begin with.
Dear sir, you have failed to denounce Benedict XVI and his
cardinals, bishops, priests and laymen. Because neither he nor they admit the
true, unchangeable meaning of the Salvation Dogma. Their approbation of Vatican
II documents proves this, and, as if that were not enough, their acceptance of
John Paul II’s catechism clinches it. As a
result, they are manifestly heretical and outside the Church. Other heresies
and sins are obvious, too; notwithstanding, this by itself is enough to convict
them. The Church says infallibly that no manifest heretic can hold office in
Her Hierarchy since no man can function as the head of that to which he does
not belong. This includes the man who would be Pope. Nor are real Catholics
‘guilty’ of overstepping jurisdictional boundaries by their
recognizing and publicizing manifest heretics as such, who some might think
hold an ecclesial office. Any man with the use of reason must use the gift of
his mind to judge and to distinguish, thereby knowing what dogmas he must hold
in common with the Church in order to be a member of Her,
and what commandments he must obey in common with the Church in order to be a good
member of Her. As well, the Church being visible and her members thus
plain for any to see by virtue of public profession and open practice of
Her Faith, it then rationally follows that any member of the Church with the
use of reason both can and must exercise identical judgment in
identifying those who would go by the name of ‘catholic’ while
publicly, objectively and manifestly violating Her Dogmas.
Any reasonable man can do this. Ergo, presuming real Catholics can
access the public evidence for a man’s heresy, then there is no
possibility they will not agree about who is a heretic and therefore not truly
an occupant of ecclesial office, should such a one pretend to be in the
Church’s Hierarchy. It is hence not Catholic laymen who juridically judge
these persons excommunicated when they recognize heretics as heretics. Rather,
it is the Church Herself who judges them as such. This includes he who would be
the Pope, and why Innocent III said so, admitting that a Pope might become a
heretic. (Sermon 4, AD 1198) Because who can judge the Pope, the man standing
over all others in the Church juridically judging them instead? And the answer:
No man judges him jurisdictionally, but only factually ---
something every man must do in a life filled with all kinds of facts, many of
which are crucial to know in order to hold correct beliefs and perform right
actions. For facts are facts. Be it true that a man who was Pope, or who
pretends to be a pope, factually denies, either by his words or his deeds, the
dogmas of the Roman Catholic Faith, then anyone that calls himself a Catholic
must discern this man --- factually, examining the hard evidence of public
record --- to no longer be, or to never have been, a Catholic, and thus also
not an actual Pope. Yet it is not the Catholic who discerns this truth that
stands jurisdictionally in judgment over the man who was once a Pope,
consequently ‘deposing’ him from the Papacy… it is the Church
Herself that does so! This is why canon law provides for automatic
excommunications, and why they happen automatically, whether prior to,
or without, a superior making it [crystal clear] by a formal pronouncement
later on.
This you have failed to do, Fr. Gruner.
You both call ‘catholic’ many who clearly do not profess the
Catholic Faith whole and entire, and refrain from denouncing them for their
heresies. You especially grant the name of ‘catholic’ to antipopes,
men who publicly profane the Roman Catholic Religion by changing dogmas to mean
whatever they want them to mean, in this way denying them as they have always
been infallibly proclaimed and universally understood to mean by real Catholics
hitherto this era. And you pervert the Message of Fatima, too, if only by
talking like the
You may learn more [by reading the books I have suggested], particularly
On Judging; Bad Books with Imprimaturs; The Salvation Dogma;
Why we lost the Pope, not the Papacy, and the Mass; and Heresy and
Heretics. Each of these writings and others rests soundly upon the
infallible mind of the Church via Her Popes, Scripture, Tradition, Doctors
& Saints, refuting the errors of the Great Apostasy. I adjure you also,
once you have found the purity and totality of the Faith, to publicly abjure in
writing your manifest heresies and sins. Praying and sacrificing for your conversion,
-W.
Paul Doughton
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