Heresy – the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.
Schism – the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him. (cf., CCC 2089; CCL, 751)
I have watched the progress of LifeSite news over the years, and have known a number of those who have worked there: hearty acquaintances and fellow workers in the Lord’s vineyard, some my former students. Even if I don’t agree with everything therein, I have supported their work for life and truth. A few articles of my own have appeared amongst its pages, which I hope in a small way helped in that cause. What I write here, I write in charity, and with a solicitude for the LifeSite community – writers and readers.
What began as a pro-life news organization slowly morphed into something else along with that initial apostolate, a theological commentary on the Church, and criticism of her shepherds. That itself can be a good thing. Sometimes, our leaders – spiritual and secular – need to be called out, gently but firmly brought back to the true course. As Canon Law states,
In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons (CIC, can. 212 # 3; cf., CCC, 907).
But something shifted during the latter days of the pontificate of Francis, evident in Archbishop Carlo Vigano’s wholesale rejection of Vatican II as a legitimate ecumenical council, against which position I wrote on LifeSite a few years ago. Vigano, now a public sedevacantist, has been excommunicated, but continues with a prominent voice on the site. Of course, since he considers Francis not a pope, but a usurper, he now claims that all of Francis’ acts are null and void, including, we may suppose, the excommunication of Vigano.
Other recent articles follow this position. Bruno Quintavalle surmises that the conclave of 2013 may have been invalid, since it started too early, and two of the cardinals present did not have what seems to the author a legitimate excuse for their absence. That’s like someone who was not even present declaring your marriage invalid years later due to some apparent irregularities of which he had heard. The fact that both of these conditions were accepted by the cardinals present as legitimate seems not to faze Mr. Quintavalle.
Another, by Matthew McCusker, takes it upon himself to list the requirements for the next pope – what he must do, and not do – which, unless fulfilled to the letter, would render his election invalid, and himself an anti-pope before he even started:
If a candidate refuses to make a full profession of the Catholic faith, if they remain silent over heresies and errors, if they leave evil disciplines in place, if they continue to suppress the rites of the Church, these will be clear and indisputable signs that we are dealing with the Successor of Francis, and not with the Successor of St. Peter.
In the face of such a false pope, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” every man and woman will have to do their duty and remain faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church which tells us that the election of a public heretic, or of a pope whose election is doubtful for well-founded reasons, cannot be accepted.
Anyone who refuses submission to the Successor of Francis must be prepared to face mockery, derision, even persecution, but we may have no choice. The teaching of the Church is clear, and we must remain faithful to it, no matter what the cost.
This goes way beyond ‘public and manifest heresy’ as invalidating one from the papacy, of which Saint Robert Bellarmine writes hypothetically in his treatise De Romano Pontifice. Anything the future pope may not do that would exclude him, even in the realm of practical matters, even if they are only indirectly connected with heresy, and often tenuously at that.
One might think that it is up to the cardinals in conclave, and ultimately the Holy Spirit, to determine who may be fit for the papal office. McCusker’s article claims the approbation of Bishop Strickland, a voice of tradition and orthodoxy, who was retired under controversial circumstances. But even a bishop’s imprimatur cannot a priori approve conditions that would render a man so unfit for office that he would be ipso facto deposed (or, perhaps, never validly elected).
I’m all for free speech, and airing one’s opinions, and we should say that LifeSite has published articles defending the legitimacy of Francis’ papacy, including this one by Dom Pius Mary Noonan, O.S.B. (upon which he expands in Crisis this morning). Officially, LifeSites’s position seems neutral, claiming that “both sides of the debate should be responsibly discussed by a media organization committed to the truth”. Even that, however, has its dangers, for validity must be presumed in any canonical situation, from marriage to pontificates. These more tendentious articles sow doubt in the minds of the faithful.
Such pieces are charting a dangerous path, one that is fomenting schism not only in the present – by their promotion of sedevacantist theories – but also for the future, by offering Catholics grounds to reject anyone chosen in the next conclave, if they don’t immediately and manifestly fulfill a pre-determined set of a priori criteria.
This is incipient quasi-Donatism, the attempt in the fourth and fifth centuries to create a ‘pure’ Church, against a ‘false’ Church, with ministers – bishops and priests – who could ‘pass the test’, morally and doctrinally. The Church has always had problems, with wayward popes and bishops have through the ages. The wheat will be sown with the tares until that last syllable of recorded time.
The basic problem here is that the Church is not ours to save, nor to determine who is ‘worthy’, especially for hierarchical office. That is the task of Christ and His vicar, and those appointed by him.
All schisms and heresies have been an attempt to reform the Church, which may begin with good intentions, seeking simple solutions, cutting the Gordian knot. We may sympathize, for who doesn’t want a way out of the apparent labyrinth?. But they end up in more tangled drifts, often in great disorder and chaos, as things become more unhinged from the rock of Peter. After all, who’s to say whose ‘reform’ is the true one?
Any human successor of the office of Peter is fallible and sinful, as the first Peter himself confessed. For all we know, many have been hidden heretics, or at least doubters. But that’s their problem, for which they will have to face God. It is not our right to pass condemnation upon them, and far less to depose them. As the prophet David said to Saul – as unfit for his office as any – ‘who am I to lay hands upon the Lord’s anointed?’. Just as the kingdom of Israel was founded upon the inviolability of the monarchy, far more is the stability of the Church upon the papacy, whether the holder of that office be saint or sinner.
Here is Father Brian Harrison, O.S. – always level-headed and clear – on what sedevacantism implies, and this may be applied to any pontiff:
But will this be the case if, as Mazza claims, none of Bergoglio’s acts of papal governance has any validity whatsoever? Let’s remember that his own thesis (in contrast to Lamont’s) is that Bergoglio has been an antipope not just since becoming a notorious heretic some time in the last decade, but ever since he was invalidly placed on the Chair of Peter in 2013. If Dr. Mazza is right about that, and is also right to brush aside as irrelevant the canonical legislation I have cited, the Church has been plunged into irremediable chaos as a result of Francis’s fall from office, given the failure of the worldwide College of Bishops to recognize this calamity and take appropriate action. For if Mazza’s correct, doesn’t this mean that all of Bergoglio’s acts of purported papal governance have been invalid from Day One, so that the now headless Body of Christ on earth has collapsed into virtual reality mode? Its “visibility” has become like that of a hologram whose apparent solidity vanishes on close-up inspection. The hundreds of bishops named by ‘Antipope’ Francis have no legitimate jurisdiction over the dioceses to which he has sent them; none of the heads of Roman dicasteries he has appointed has any authority whatsoever; all his legislation regarding the reorganization of the Roman Curia, marriage annulment procedures, and many other important matters, has no force at all; his canonizations are worthless (that’s why Mazza won’t call John Henry Newman “Saint”, only “Blessed”), and the new feasts and saints’ days he has added to the liturgical calendar should be scrubbed and never celebrated
There’s more, but you get the gist. The visible Church would have ceased to exist, reduced to a ‘church’ of individual charisms, each claiming to have the goods on the ‘real’ Church. The barque of Peter may go off course, even seem to founder on the shoals, but only for a time, and we must trust in Christ to set the ship right again. He will not abandon His Church, nor leave her in some headless zombie-state at least for any length of time. As Christ said to His Apostles, in their fear of being inundated by the waves in their own stormy sea ‘Have ye no faith?’.
A good question, that, one that I often ask myself, a man of little Faith, which I pray and hope the Lord will increase.
Stay the course, dear reader. Keep up the good fight, and trust in the Holy Spirit to guide the Church to her heavenly port.