Dear Father Gruner,

      You are accustomed to sending out frequent encyclical-like letters of exhortation and appeal,
 with the ones coming to my address have the “Dear Father Stepanich” personal touch to them.

      To make things plain to you right from the start, this letter has a personal message for you, a
 message that you cannot afford to ignore. If correction is something that does not exactly appeal to
 you as a world-renowned celebrity, especially when coming from a 90-year-old nobody, just fasten
 your seat belt and . . . Tolle! Lege! Take and Read!

      In the Summer 2005 issue of The Fatima Crusader, you treat readers with the misnamed
 article, Defend Your Salvation, an article that in no way defends anyone’s salvation. If anything,
 the article endangers the salvation of souls, because it fails to present to them the true picture of the
 situation in the Church when a public heretic occupies the Chair of Peter. All that your article does
 is to defend your mistaken notions in regard to sedevacantism. A more accurate title would read:
 Defend Anti-Sedevacantism.

      What greatly aggravates an already bad situation is that other would-be “defense” article in the
 same issue of The Fatima Crusader, the article that brashly entitled Defending the Papacy, which
 by no means defends the Papacy, and certainly not the genuine Catholic Papacy. The article is
 very plainly an ill-advised defense of the presence of a public heretic on Peter’s Chair. Its title
 should, in all honestly, read accordingly, that is, Defending A Public Heretic On The Chair Of
 The Papacy.

      Sooner or later, Father Gruner, you will with embarrassment regret giving space to an article like
 Ferrara’s in Our Lady’s review. Have you considered changing the title of that review to The
 Anti-Sedevacantist Crusader?

      Curiously enough, the Ferrara article showed up also in The Catholic Family News, but with a
 different title, the unimaginative title Opposing The Sedevacantist Enterprise. But, whatever title
 the anti-sedevacantists dream up for the Ferrara article, it does not deserve to be printed in any
 genuine traditional Catholic publication.

      Father Gruner, your outstanding and well-deserved merit for so many long years has come from
 your courageous promotion and defense of God’s Fatima Message, given to the world through
 Our Lady and the Angel of Fatima. Why, then, have you now gone out onto the dangerous
 anti-sedevacantist limb where you don’t belong? As it is, that limb was already weighed down
 heavily by even such heavyweight anti-sedevacantists as Vennari and Matt and Guimaraes and
 Kramer and the official SSPX.

      Although it has been well-known for years that you are, in practice, an incorrigible
 anti-sedevacantist, acknowledging as you have long done, the Vatican II ecumenical and
 religion-mixing “popes” as being real Catholic Popes, why do you now have to pose as somewhat
 of an authority on sedevacantism, while neglecting to make clear just what sedevacantism really is,
 in its full and correct meaning?

      Just how confused and one-sided your thinking is on sedevacantism is glaringly evident in the
 first sub-title in your article, which reads: The Sedevacantist Theory Is False. There you come up
 with a categorical and blatantly untruthful declaration that sedevacantism is nothing more than a
 mere “theory,” when it is in reality an undeniable fact in all its three meanings.

      Father Gruner, you had the chance to explain to readers in what ways the Chair of Peter can
 become vacant, and actually has become vacant many times. There are three instances in which
 Peter’s Papal Chair can become vacant, and no one should have to tell you what those three
 instances are. But, since you did not do the necessary explaining, let me do it for you.

      You presumably agree that when a pope dies, the Chair of Peter becomes vacant. This is an
 undeniable fact, wouldn’t you say? It’s not just a “theory,” is it? It isn’t just an “enterprise” that
 anti-sedevacantists oppose, is it?

      The plain fact is, as you well know, that the vacancy of Peter’s Chair caused by the death of a
 Pope is sedevacantism in all its undeniable reality. It is the first of three instances in which the
 Papal Chair of Peter can become vacant.

      The second instance in which the Papal Chair becomes vacant is when a Pope resigns from the
 Papacy. That is what Pope St. Celestine V did in 1294. He resigned. Do you agree that here you
 have sedevacantism again, in all its undeniable reality? You wouldn’t say that it’s only a
 “theory” that resignation by a Pope causes vacancy of Peter’s Chair, would you?

      The third instance in which the Chair of Peter shows up to be vacant is when it is occupied by
 a public heretic and a mixer of religions.

      Believe it or not, it is a consideration of this third instance of the vacancy of Peter’s Chair that
 brings about a complete spin-around of the minds of the anti-sedevacantists. They simply ignore the
 first two instances of vacancy of that Chair, as if they were not undeniable instances of
 sedevacantism. All that the word sedevacantism means to them is the vacancy of Peter’s Chair
 caused by public heresy – and that is the kind of sedevacantism they vehemently reject, with
 pertinacity and obstinacy.

      Father Gruner, let’s make things perfectly clear right here: to sedevacantists, the central and
 unquestionable issue in all this is the true and unchanged Catholic Faith.

      To sedevacantists, a true Catholic Pope is one who professes and teaches and defends and
 promotes the true Catholic Faith whole and entire, without change, and without any mixing
 with other so-called “faiths” or religions.

      Have you ever herd any anti-sedevacantist saying it as definitely and clearly as that?

      What you have heard, over and over again, and what you yourself keep saying, is that the
 Vatican II occupants of the Chair of Peter, despite being the public and scandalous heretics
 that you have long known them to be, are nevertheless legitimate occupants of that Chair.

      The one big enterprise of anti-sedevacantists is to justify the presence of a public heretic
 on the Chair of Peter. For anti-sedevacanists, that is the central issue in their wrong-way
 opposition to sedevacantists.

      And what, Fr. Gruner, are the rationalizations that anti-sedevacantists use when insisting that the
 Vatican II heretics on the Chair of Peter have all been legitimate Catholic Popes?

      One of the favorite rationalizations of anti-sedevacantists is, Don’t judge the Pope! In that not
 too careful judgment of sedevacantists, you make them look as though they judge genuine Catholic
 Popes who profess the true and unchanged Catholic Faith of all times. To be truthful and accurate
 about this matter of “judging the pope,” you know you would have to accuse sedevacantists of
 judging an occupant of the Chair of Peter who does not profess the traditional and unchanged
 Catholic Faith, while the anti-sedevacantists wrongly imagine such a man to be a real Catholic
 Pope, despite what he does and teaches that is contrary to the Catholic Faith.

      You anti-sedevacantists carelessly make it look as if any and all judgments about a Pope are
 automatically wrong. No one needs to tell you that God gave men in general the ability to judge
 between right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, truth and error. You also know that, with
 the gift of the Catholic Faith, God gave us the ability to judge the difference between what is in
 accord with the Catholic Faith and what is contrary to the Catholic Faith.

      You also know very well that we are obliged to profess the Catholic Faith fully, without
 holding back, and state frankly what we see to be contrary to that Faith, even in one who sits in the
 Chair of Peter. Anti-sedevacantists, to their shame, hold back on professing the Faith fully
 when they refuse to declare that the Vatican II occupants of Peter’s Chair have been
 professing a new, ecumenical and un-Catholic religion, and cannot therefore possibly be even
 Catholics, much less Popes.

      As you can plainly see, Father Gruner, your “Don’t judge the Pope” argument is a dead
 argument, useless in defense of anti-sedevacantism.

      Another dead argument of anti-sedevacantists is the “visible Church” argument. For
 anti-sedevacantists, the visibility of the Church requires that someone must occupy the Chair of
 Peter, even if he be a public heretic and mixer of religions.

      The truth is that Our Lord did indeed establish His Church as a visible Church, but what
 anti-sedevacantists don’t tell you is that His visible Church is one that professes and practices the
 unchanged one and only true Catholic Faith.

      No one should need to remind you that Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, Hindu temples
 and Moslem mosques are all highly visible. But of what use is that kind of visibility if the one and
 only True Faith is missing in such places?

      A public heretic and mixer of religions on the Chair of Peter is also highly visible. But of
 what use is his kind of visibility for the salvation of men if he does not profess nor practice the
 traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith?

      Still another dead argument of anti-sedevacantists is the mistaken notion that the Church
 would stop existing if the Chair of Peter remained unoccupied for an extra long period of time. So,
 supposedly, in order to safeguard the Church’s continued existence, anti-sedevacantists strangely
 insist that even a scandalous public heretic on the Chair of Peter must be recognized as a legitimate
 Catholic Pope, just so the Papal Chair does not remain vacant for too long a time.

      Father Gruner, who decides when the Chair of Peter has been vacant for too long a time for the
 Church to keep existing? Are the anti-sedvacantists the ones to decide this?

      The fact is, Father Gruner, that men cannot destroy the Church. Men cannot make the Church
 stop existing. To use the technical term, men cannot destroy the indefectibility of the Church.
 The most that men can do is to help destroy the Faith of the individual members of the Church, even
 to the point – as you yourself admit – that there would remain only a “remnant” of those faithful to
 Our Lord. Wherever the True Faith would still be professed and practiced, even if there were no
 Pope on the Chair of Peter, that is where the essential nucleus of the True Church would be.

      No matter how long the Chair of Peter may remain vacant, and no matter how many may fall
 away from Our Lord’s Church, nothing can possibly prevent God from restoring His True Church
 and the True Faith, nor, in fact, can anything prevent God from even raising up new members “from
 the very stones,” if He so willed.

      When Our Lord promised “I will be with you all days . . .,” He surely meant that He would
 be with those professing the traditional and unchanged Catholic Faith. He could not possibly
 have promised to be with a public heretic and a mixer of religions occupying Peter’s Chair, as is
 acknowledging such a one to be a genuine Catholic Pope.

      It isn’t Our Lord, but the anti-sedevacantists who unthinkingly insist that a public heretic on
 Peter’s Chair is “still the Pope.” To anti-sedevacantists, he may still be the “Pope” and dress like
 a Pope, but he cannot possibly be a genuine Catholic Pope. Such a “Pope” is really nothing but the
 “our kind of Pope” that the Freemasons were dreaming about long, long ago, and, in fact, actually
 predicted that the day would come when “our kind of Pope” would occupy the Chair of Peter.

      Anti-sedevacantists get themselves tangled up talking about a “formal” Pope and a “material”
 Pope. By a “formal” Pope they presumably mean a genuine Catholic Pope. But what in the world is
 a “material” Pope? If the man on Peter’s Chair is not a true Catholic Pope, then he simply is not a
 Pope, period! The only place you could be sure to find a “material” Pope is in a coffin.

      Anti-sedevacantists also like to refer to a heretic “pope” as “the Holy Father.” What do they
 now call him, seeing that he addresses them as “Dear Brothers and Sisters”? Shouldn’t they call him
 “the Holy Brother”?

      Father Gruner, if you have the idea that sedevacantists are obstructing or delaying the
 Consecration of Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart by a Pope, that is nothing but a slanderous
 misjudgment on your part. Our Lady could not possibly have asked for Russia’s consecration
 to be done by a public heretic and mixer of religions, who himself needs conversion to the true
 Catholic Faith, one who does the scandalous things that you complain about while still calling him
 “the Pope.”

      But enough is enough! All the foregoing is more than enough to give you a chance to know and
 understand the real sedevacantist position on the Vatican II occupants of the Chair of Peter,
 something that your readers of The Fatima Crusader will not get the chance to do.

      Father Gruner, if you are still there reading this “Dear Father Gruner” letter, maybe you might
 welcome the recommendation that you and your devoted followers frequently recite the following
 prayer attributed to Our Lady in The Mystical City of God (Coronation volume, page 244): “I
 ask, O my Son, that Thou look upon the affliction of Thy Church and that, like a loving
 Father, Thou hasten the relief of Thy children engenders by Thy Most Precious Blood.”
 

                    Fr. Martin Stépanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.
                                August 16, 2005