SIX SYLLOGISMS

[Bogatyr 335]

“Mtr. Adolpha Yohanah, to Father Lüdiger, be this critique written (&del.),

Ineffable Creator,

Who, from the treasures of Your Wisdom have established many hierarchies of angels, have arrayed them in marvellous order above the fiery Heavens, and have marshalled the regions of the world with many treasures of taste and unsubtle intellect,

You are proclaimed the true font of light and wisdom, and the primal origin raised high beyond all things. You make eloquent the tongues of neonates and infants and thereafter. Refine my lips and pour forth upon my lips the keenness of speech, which proceedeth from the goodness of Your blessing.

Grant, O merciful Lord, that I may ardently enquire, prudently examine, truthfully acknowledge, and articulately accomplish what is pleasing to You for the praise and glory of Your name. Amen.

(Mtr. Adolpha Yohanah, the Rosary Prayer)

 

 

SIX SYLLOGISMS

The True Nature and End of the Mother Church and its Government

Without falling back on the perspective of textual fideism or hierarchical ecclesiology within the ministry—

AS no city or village is redeemed without a magistrate, so the Church of God, as I have entailed before, cannot be redeemed without a form of spiritual government. When we say government, this term is altogether distinct from civil government; the power of jurisdiction within the Church is, in brief, nothing but the order provided for the preservation of spiritual polity. We will today respect, reaffirm, and expound the words of the Seventy Commandments in the text’s commendable commitment to the equality of persons and the egality of offices within the Church. However, it errs severely in concluding that equality precludes the necessity of office and governance even in function if not in hierarchy. Equality in dignity does not countermand the need for order in function. For it must be held, even in a Church where no man should stand exalted above his brother by nature or indelible rank, there heretofore have been and hereinafter must be appointed ministers for the sake of ministry, teachers for the sake of tutelage, and judges for the sake of justice.

 

To this end, there were established in the ministry from its earliest, tribunals which might take cognisance of morals and exercise the office of keys who were joined with pastors, shepherds, and ministers in the spiritual government of the church (although they are not called magistrates); “[…] the brothers set shepherds over the flock of men, and so created a priesthood for their instruction, in anticipation of the second son of Spirit.” (Silence 5:5). Howbeit, we must caution that we do not attribute too much to ministers and the ministry insofar that we might mistake them for magistrates. With this standard in mind, we will proceed to outline some key syllogisms that may rectify the problematic articles of the Seventy Declarations;

 

(1)THE ARTICLES:

§6. The Rite of Universality, founded in the Virtue and Spirit, binds all men under one Church; no tribe, race, or house stands apart from this singular and holy order. The Church, as commanded by God through His Exalted, is universal not in name alone but in function, serving all peoples equally beneath the mantle of the Scrolls.

§13. Ecclesiastical unity is not founded upon loyalty to any single seat or person, but upon shared reverence for the Virtue and the Scrolls, as all righteous paths are equal before the Lord God.

§18. Without Canon Law, the Church must return to the law laid out by God Himself in natural ordinance, wherein all ordained priests hold equal voice and duty in electing rightful leadership.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (a) we hold the major premise that any society ordered toward a common good requires a principle of governance to advance toward its end, AND (b) that the Church is a visible, ordered, institutionalised society ordered toward the common good being the instruction of the elect (Silence 5:5) and the delivery of sacraments and preservation of the Word of God (5:24);

∴	EX QUO SEQUITUR, the Church requires governance even in function if not in office, such as in the ordered functions of teaching and ministering, to attain its end.

The equality of the person and egality of offices does not countermand the need for ordered functions within a society as within the Church. Let there, therefore, be distinction of role—and, notice role, not rank—cura personalis, not for the sake of elevating one man over the other. In a vacuum, no elect could be instructed, no sacrament could be delivered, and no Word could be preserved. Even a church of equals would require governance in function, that no man should usurp greater authority from his fellow-bishops and that his primacy should proceed from unity in order that the Church may be shown to be one.

 

(2)THE ARTICLES:

§4. The Scrolls alone are the measure of the Church’s governance. All other decrees are secondary. The Scrolls must be read and preached in every place, for where they are hidden, error and heresy grow. No new scroll, no vision, no secret writing may annul the four Scrolls delivered to the Exalted. Any who claim otherwise speak as did Iblees in the time of Horen.

§14. When the Pontiff errs, it is the duty of the Synod to correct him; when the Synod errs, the faithful must return to the Scrolls.

§15. The office of High Pontiff is a charge to proclaim the Scrolls; all other powers are secondary and must not eclipse this holy mission.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (a) law, as an ordinance of reason toward the common good (supra), demands promulgation and examination belonging either to the whole people or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people (Godfrey 6:50), AND (b) the power of the Scrolls is as divine law (James II, pref. Virtue) and requires, for their governance of the Church, examination and application adapted to protect and preserve the virtue and its parts for the body politic;

∴	EX QUO SEQUITUR, the Church requires ordered ministers, ordered of function if not of rank, class, or office, to promulgate, examine, interpret, and apply according to the Scrolls.

The end of the ministerial exercise of the ordered ministers’ power and rule, by virtue thereof unto the Church, is the edification of itself. This was the especial end of all power granted by God to the Church ministers; namely, a ministry unto the edification of the law, the Word, and the Church itself, in opposition of all the ends whereunto it had been confused, such that “[the priests of the Church] were quarrelsome, for they had no lords, and they brought great confusion into Godfrey’s kingdom with their divisions […] the priests argued, and cried out about their wisdom and their love of the Lord […] So Godfrey said that none should leave until they had come to accord.” (Godfrey 5:49–53). There, ministerial equality alone could not preserve to the Church its order or promulgation of the law. The law could only be distributed in full when the power of office imposed upon the ministry concord. And, such an office or preeminence was good, just, and ordered to justice and righteousness in itself, not ordered to dominion, even that God would ask the twins Evaristus and Clement to sit on the left and right hands of His Kingdom and the rule thereof. In these parts, we see that the rule of the Church is in role, not rank, and in the guiding of the ministry toward service, humility, and the promulgation of law, while not power or preeminence.

 

(3)THE ARTICLES:

§8. Let all remember that the first man and woman walked in Virtue without churches, without priests; it is the law of God that sanctifies in the foremost, not the structure.

§23. Clerical offices exist as burdens, not as honors. Let every priest remember that his service is to God first, and man second.

§68. Synods and councils must be convened with prayer, fasting, and solemnity, seeking not human advantage but divine wisdom.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (1) all communities composed of men [bound by the Covenant of Horen] demand governance chiefly ordained to the common good, and governance necessarily assumes offices for the exercise of edification, instruction, promulgation, interpretation, and application of the law (Horen 2:78), AND (a) the Church is a community composed of men [bound by the Covenant of Horen] who are directed toward the common good of edifying the Church toward itself, instructing the elect according to the Word, promulgating law in the City of Men, interpreting the Word for the promulgation of law, and administering sacraments, AND (b) edification proceeds from Canon Law, but the application of Canon Law within the City of Men requires ordered ministers and not merely the existence of the law (Silence 5:23), AND (c) ministerial offices are not instituted as honours but as burdens, but burden presupposes duty, and duty requires offices to be exercised lawfully (cf. §13), AND (d) synods and councils are necessary to glean divine wisdom, but said synods presuppose the existence of a lawful authority ordered to convene, moderate, and ratify their wisdoms (cf. §68);

∴

EX QUO SEQUITUR, though the Church’s ministers are equal in dignity and their offices serve for burden not for honour, the Church requires, regardless, a structured and ordered spiritual government for the ratification of the law as communicated through the Word, for the calling of synods, and for the shepherding of the elect.

The government of a ministry within a rational and rightly ordered society precludes the private conscience of the ministers equal in dignity on what pretence soever. The power of rule in the Church, then, is nothing but a right to yield obedience unto the commands of God; offices must be established to carry out the burdens entrusted to them, by such rules, and for such ends, as wherein and whereby their authority is to be acted; councils cannot be convened by impulse, but by authority; government must ratify divine law through ordered function i.e., Canon Law. Equality of persons and humility of office-bearers is reaffirmed, but does not diminish the nature of authority within the Mother Church. For what mother would endure that any power should be exercised in her family as to the disposal of her children and her estate, but her own?

 

(4)THE ARTICLES:

§33. Let all clerics remember that their words hold weight only when they flow from the Scrolls; personal wisdom must bow before divine instruction.

§35. When clerics impose penalties of their own invention, exceeding what is written in the Scrolls, they sin not only against man but against the order established by God Himself.

§36. Let it be known that no man, even the High Pontiff, holds the authority to declare a soul lost where God has not so judged, as judgment belongs only to the Most High.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (1) law, as an ordinance of reason toward the common good (supra), demands promulgation and examination belonging either to the whole people or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people (Godfrey 6:50); the force of a law depends on the extent of its justice, AND (a) the ministers are charged as lawful judges within the demesne of the Church and the Faith to interpret and distribute Canon Law judiciously, not merely to echo it ad rote (Godfrey 6:50), AND (b) judgement belongs to God absolutely (Virtue 7:8), but God exercises judgement within the Church demesne through the appointed offices interpreting His Law within the limits of office (Godfrey 6:23), not within private conscience or invention, AND (c) clerical penalties preclude invention when they proceed from lawful and judicious authority interpreting and distributing Canon Law to particular cases; and in such judgements, ministers act not presumptuously in God’s stead but ministerially under His ordinance (Godwinites 1:19; Jorenites 2:10–17);

∴

EX QUO SEQUITUR, the ministers do act lawfully, judiciously, and lowly toward God when, within the limits of their offices, they interpret and distribute the law in particular cases, including their penalties, judgements, excommunications. Law is rendered ineffectual when this authority (solely and foremostly for edification, and not for ostentation or abuse) is denied.

All those, by whom the ordinary rule of the Church is to be exercised unto its edification, are as to their offices not as lords of their faith, but as helpers, shepherds, teachers of their joy. Authority is not by quotation alone which diminishes the law’s (and, by virtue whereof, the office and duty of pastors, the minister’s) capacity to prudential application and correction. For hardly shall we meet two cases of any kind, that will exactly be adjudicated by the same rule; all manner of circumstances giving them variety, of which exercise requires prudence but not parroting. Authority interprets law to circumstance. Where-for it is true as stated that no man, even the High Pontiff, holds the authority to declare a soul lost where God has not so judged (cf. §36), but ministers chiefly observe among all churches to judge exterior communion and not the end of a soul’s fate; excommunication excludes visibly from the Church’s order here and now, while not excluding eternally, which belongs to God’s hidden judgement alone. Hence, without the necessary exercise of this lawful judgement by an ordained office, governance might remain impossible. In no cases is this authority exercised to rival God’s judgement, neither could any authority at all be exercised through merely reciting the law, but the authority tends to reconcile the peace and edification of the Church under God’s prescribed order.

 

(5)THE ARTICLES:

§36. Let it be known that no man, even the High Pontiff, holds the authority to declare a soul lost where God has not so judged, as judgment belongs only to the Most High.

§37. Forgiveness is a gift from God, given through sincere repentance and amendment of life, not through gold or transaction; any other teaching is false.

§38. Indulgences, where given, are to be signs of intercessory prayer, not substitutes for true penance, lest the faithful mistake the symbol for the thing itself.

§39. To sell the Spirit’s mercy is to trample upon the wealth of the Spirit, exchanging incorruptible treasure for corruptible coin, which is forbidden by both law and conscience.

§40. The state of purgation, wherein souls are prepared for the Skies, is ordained by God’s mercy; it must not be used as pretext for worldly gain or clerical manipulation.

§41. The Church’s duty is to pray for the dead, not to tax the living in their name; for as Exalted Owyn taught, “Holiness cannot be divided or sold.”

§42. The wealth of the Church must serve not itself, but the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, and the stranger. To do otherwise is to violate the Canticle of Charity.

§68. Synods and councils must be convened with prayer, fasting, and solemnity, seeking not human advantage but divine wisdom.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (1) the abuse of a thing does not invalidate its rightful use (Sixtus VI, the Eleventh Bull of Holofernes sec.3 §3); what is abused can be corrected by all means of confession and sanctification, but not abolished, AND (a) the ministerial offices, disciplines of penance and intercession, and the apostolic constitution on the liturgy are ordained for the common good of the Church and the laity i.e. their mutual edification (supra. §3), AND (b) the abuse of these offices for private or meditated asset gain is contrary to their ordained end and must be corrected, not abolished;

∴	EX QUO SEQUITUR, the ministerial offices, disciplines of penance and intercession, the apostolic constitution on the liturgy, and all other charges of ecclesiastical governance remain necessary and good, even if they have been abused.

Whereas it is agreed on all counts that, the Church pontificates, judges, and administers communion, not eternity; the clergy do not barter nor serve, but sell; indulgences are intercessory and may not be substituted for penance; the bartering of mercy is sinful; the end of purgation is not gain; the Church prays but does not tax; the Church’s wealth serves the poor, the abuse of the station does not countermand the virtue of the station in the first place. An action, law, station, office, or charge, is seen to be virtuous in two chief ways. The first, from the fact that a man does something virtuous; thus the act of justice and equality is to do what is fair: in this way, law prescribes certain acts of virtue. Secondly, an act of virtue is when the man proceeds the virtuous action, law, station, etc. in the way that a virtuous man does it. Such an action, law, station, etc. always proceeds from virtue regardless of its abuse: it does not come under a precept of the law, but is the end at which every lawgiver or lawmaker aims, abusus non tollit usum.

 

(6)THE ARTICLES:

§69. Let this letter be proclaimed in all churches and assemblies, that all may hear and understand the true order of the Church and the nature of God’s law.

§70. And so let all who hear or read these declarations hold fast in patience, diligence, and fidelity: striving always to enter into the Skies, not through false peace or worldly indulgence, but through steadfast adherence to the Holy Scrolls and the Rite of Universality.

THE SYLLOGISMS:

SINCE (1) offices, ministerial or magisterial, are enshrined in any society not for the superiority of persons but for the functions by which the society is ordered toward its end (Everard IV, Pontifical Encyclical: Justice in Our Time sec.1), AND (b) the Church is a visible, ordered, institutionalised society ordered toward the common good being the instruction of the elect (Silence 5:5) and the delivery of sacraments and preservation of the Word of God (5:24), AND (c) the Church is a visible, ordered, institutionalised society in which all persons and offices are equal before God; no office holds in contempt or self-service ontological superiority over another, AND (d) functions i.e. apostolic constitution for the liturgy, must be distributed among persons for the exercise of ministry, instruction, judgement, and spiritual governance, which are necessary to order the Church to its end of edification and goodness;

∴	EX QUO SEQUITUR, the Church must preserve in itself ordered, officed, stationed functions in the exercise of ministry, instruction, judgement, and spiritual governance, without any hierarchy of dignity in or between its ministers.

A due meditation of these things is enough to make the wisest, the best of men, and the most diligent in the discharge of the pastoral office to cry out, ‘and who is sufficient for these things?’ For no sense of insufficiency, the forethought of abuse, of hierarchy, of superiority, can completely discourage any in the undertaking of a work or office, which he is assured that God calls him to. Where God calls to a duty, he gives competent strength for the performance in it. His Grace is sufficient for us.

 

Insofar that law cannot apply itself, neither can Scripture interpret itself, or councils and synods gather themselves without ministers distinguished not for the elevation of purpose but for the distinction of service,

et Deus optime scit.

 

Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised, my Mercy, who didst create me and didst not forget me even when I forgot Thee. O true Light, to You I lift up my heart and mind lest it should teach me vanities. For in the restless misery of fallen spirits, which expose their darkness stripped of vesture of Your light, You clearly show how great You made the rational creature, since for its repose and beatitude nothing less than You suffices, and from Thee shall arise our vesture of light, and our darkness shall be as midday. 

 

Since he is the Alpha and the Omega, this apologetic is ended thus with God, who is blessed throughout the ages.

Edited July 17, 2025 by Bogatyr