John Salza's Comment on "Lay Preachers" Changing Opinions

New blog on the kid: John Salza's Comment on "Lay Preachers" Changing Opinions · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Kennedy Hall Defending SSPX (and Attacking Someone's Online Behaviour)

Salza 2015

What is most puzzling is that these lay preachers don’t seem at all concerned that their private opinion (which they publicly proclaim to be “the truth”) has continuously changed over the years (today directly contradicting what they taught yesterday). This realization does not seem to hinder them in their efforts, nor does it cause them to think that if what they are preaching today is true, it means they were leading souls into error, schism, and heresy yesterday. But if, according to their own standard, they were leading souls into error, heresy and schism yesterday, how can they be sure they are not doing the same today? Perhaps those who have spent nearly their entire adult life leading people astray were not cut out to be lay preachers of the Gospel, as they imagine themselves to be, but should instead keep their continuously changing position to themselves to avoid further harming souls. But, evidently, intellectual pride is not easily swayed by such thoughts

This is, as note 37 says, from John Salza and Robert Siscoe, True or False Pope?: Refuting Sedevacantism and Other Modern Errors (STAS Editions, 2015), 410., p. 78 quoted on:

John Salza Replies to John Salza
Rudolph West July 30, 2022, THE SSPX DEBATE
https://onepeterfive.com/john-salza-replies-to-john-salza/

In other words, what Salza had said in 2015, he repeated in 2022 as conclusion, on at least one point.

I think the very fair reply is also given on this exact page, by Fr. (?) Zuhlsdorf. At least if I am wrong.

Due to its complexity, as Fr. Zulsdorf notes, the interpretive canonical principle is one of charity, not canonical rigour.

Note 1 to this says:

“The anomalous and slowly evolving SSPX situation is complicated. When things are really complicated in the Church, we are charity bound to cut people some slack and interpret restrictive laws as strictly as possible so as to give people maximum latitude.” Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, “ASK FATHER: Not AGAIN! “Does attending an SSPX Mass fulfill one’s Sunday obligation?”

There is exactly one item where I have changed opinions pretty often since 1988 for one converting that year. Where is authority in the Church?

The Vatican with its apparent holders?

A Semi-Vatican in Écône?

A Vatican elsewhere, Palmar de Troya or Topeka?

No Vatican right now?

Each bishop, as per Eastern Orthodox?

Yes, I know about the Bible, I have NOT wavered on the answer on this one being "Bible, Tradition, Magisterium" - just on "where is the magisterium right now" ...

Now, the fact is, I am an essayist. An intellectual. I do not pretend to lead souls. I do pretend to furnish souls with argument which can help them when God sends them an actual preacher.

To some, the fact I do so means I am a "lay preacher" ... such people have no culture. Chesterton did not claim to be a preacher, he was an essayist, and so am I. C. S. Lewis was not a preacher, also an essayist. And his arguments against Roman Catholicism (as a package) were so much more weak than his arguments on lots of other topics (including ones where he was decidedly on the Catholic side) - which is how he led me, Peter Kreeft I suppose, and lots of others, into Catholicism.

Accepting me as an essayist does not mean to give me magisterial authority, preaching authority, an occasion to lead souls. It is allowing me to do my job as providing arguments. And most of the time on topics that are not this one, on where the magisterial authority is. And on most of these, I haven't changed opinion very much at all.

From the Raffiner et finir ma table de Fibonacci? via the Table modifiée, analysée par convergence avec l'a priori (referred to as Table de Fibonacci and Nouvelle table), to Tables de carbone 14 sur les bases révisées (I - VI) (in English part of New Tables, not to be confused with Nouvelle table), I have changed my mind on when carbon dated 5000 BC was, from 2510 BC, via 2375 BC, to 2153 BC, which is a change of mind about 350 years of patriarchal history inside Genesis 11.*

For many other subjects, I have not changed my mind since I first came across the subject at all and took an antimodernist and controversial stance.

As little as the sobriquet "lay preacher" as little does the sobriquet about "today directly contradicting what they taught yesterday" concern me. Even when it comes to where the pope is, I have had a fairly stable deference to Pope Michael from 2013~14 to his death about a year ago, and up to today to his memory.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

* The same set of data from a book about Varna was recalibrated twice : Le premier or, chronologie des pages 42-43 récalibré in 2017 and Le premier or revisité from January 2022.