I HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE of being raised by a simple man, a man for whom the truth mattered. On one occasion while I was working in the Delphi Cafeteria (a restaurant my father purchased and ran for 17 years so that he could put his four youngest children through college), may dad was asked by a customer if he believed all that Christian stuff. Without missing a beat, my dad answered, "If I didn't believe all this stuff, I'd have better things to do on Sundays."
On another occasion when I was still a young boy (the context of which now escapes me), my father, himself not a Catholic, but a devout evangelical Protestant, said to me,
“Vaughn, when asking questions about the truth, never ask what price you will have to pay for it. Seek the truth. When you find it, pay whatever price you must to get it. Then, pay whatever price you must to keep it.” Again, sometime later he said to me,
“If you must choose to disappoint someone, never disappoint God.” I do not know how my father fared before Christ at the Particular Judgment (he passed away on March 6, 2017), but I am certain that the instruction that he gave me as a young boy made it possible for me to make my way through the labyrinth of Protestant error — especially in its Anglican form — and to be rescued by the Bark of Peter. It also continues to steady me in this time as the Church is “on the verge of capsizing” (Benedict XVI)….
In 2018, on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, I preached a
sermon that attempted to describe the current state of the Catholic Church, to identify the root causes, and to offer a safe way forward. With the launch of "In the Same Sense," I hope to resume and extend the research and reflection that culminated with
The Fathers's Grapes and the Children's Teeth. That sermon and this project, each in their own way, are efforts to live out my father's instruction.
It remains our fundamental conviction that any safe way forward through the Church's present crisis must look to the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church both for its content and its methods. Because of this, our goal is simple and straightforward; to identify and restate principles, and to collect and present the relevant data.
The principles to be identified and restated are those which enable Catholics to adhere faithfully to the Doctrine which Jesus Christ entrusted to His Holy Apostles, and to the Church which He founded upon Blessed Peter. Among the more important of these principles is the ordinary Christian's ability to discern the difference between "the faith delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) and "a different gospel" (Galatian 1:8).
The data to be presented concern the perennial teaching of the Holy Roman Church compared and contrasted with the teaching which has been advanced and disseminated from the Vatican since the early 1960s. We are confident that, after having seen the above data side by side, the reader will be in a position to answer the following question: "Does the latter teaching convey the same doctrine as the former
in the same sense and with the same interpretation?
"In the Same Sense" is being created for the glory of God, and the salvation of souls. It is offered to all those who wish to know, embrace and live the truth of the Catholic Faith, even if the price for doing so is a personal crucifixion like the one endured by God the Father's Incarnate Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Jesus through Mary always,
Fr. Vaughn Treco
Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
11th October 2020