Tradcast Express.
The post in question is dated May 25th, 2019, and the writer says,
All the conservative and traditionalist anti-open letter Catholic commentators and all the Sedevacanists are united in rejecting or ignoring the teaching of Dr. of the Church St. Francis de Sales.
And then he quotes that teaching.
The Pope, when he is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church,
and the Church must either deprive him or, as some say, declare him deprived of his apostolic see.
And then that's where the quote from St. Francis de Sales ends.
And the blogger at Catholic Monitor continues,
The Sedevacanists reject the doctor of the Church's teaching that the Church must declare him, the explicit heretic Pope, deprived of his apostolic see,
because like neo-Protestants, they, the Sede,
get to declare him deprived of his apostolic see, not the successors of the Apostles, who Jesus Christ put in authority.
The Sedes love quoting that the explicitly heretical Pope falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church,
but then dishonestly ignore or deliberately leave out the second part of the sentence.
Thus far the accusation.
So what's going on here?
Are we just dishonest cowards?
Can't face up to the teaching of a doctor of the Church?
Well, not quite.
When St. Francis de Sales says that the so-called heretical Pope must be deprived or be declared deprived of the apostolic see,
he's not talking about this needing to happen in order for him to actually lose his office.
After all, he just said, in the first half of the same sentence,
that this office is lost ipso facto, which is Latin for by that very fact.
The fact being him having...
become a Manifest Heretic.
So either the so-called heretical Pope loses his office immediately and automatically simply by becoming a Manifest Heretic,
or he doesn't lose it until the Church deprives him of the office.
Both cannot be true.
But obviously St. Francis isn't contradicting himself in one and the same sentence.
So what's going on here?
Well, St. Francis doesn't really elaborate,
but if we assume that he was not an airhead, and he wasn't,
then there is really only one explanation that I can think of that can make sense of what he says here,
and that is St. Francis' position was that the Pope who becomes a Manifest Heretic loses the papacy immediately,
but the Church cannot proceed to the election of a new Pope until the Church has made a declaration that the Holy See is now vacant.
Which makes very good sense, especially if they're going to send in the guards to drag the former Pope out of St. John Lateran or St. Peter's Basilica.
So yes, the former Pope must be deprived of his see in that sense,
in the sense of removing the trappings from him, getting him out of the building and such.
In other words, these things must happen before any other action can be taken.
And they can only happen at all because the man in question is already not the Pope anymore.
Otherwise, there would be no authority on earth that could do this because not even the Church as a whole has the power to take away the pontificate from a legitimate Pope.
And the denial of that is a great error of our times, a heresy actually,
because there are a lot of people among the Semitrads who seem to think that a Pope loses the papacy
if only enough bishops or cardinals get together and decide to take it from him.
So no, St. Francis de Sales does not present a refutation of the Sedevacanus position.
And that's not surprising because he was a saint and a doctor of the Church like St. Robert Bellarmine.
And among the big theologians who debated the whole issue of the possibility of a heretical Pope
and what would happen if, back in the 16th and 17th centuries,
the only one who was canonized a saint and declared a doctor of the Church is St. Robert Bellarmine,
the one we Sedevacanus agree.
All the others, Fr. Suarez, Cardinal Cajetan, and John of St. Thomas,
are neither doctors of the Church nor even canonized saints.
And yes, there is a Saint Cajetan, but that's a different person.
That's not the Cardinal Cajetan we're talking about here.
So just saying because people get these two confused sometimes.
Oh, and by the way, we're not even saying that Francis was Pope and then lost his office.
We're saying he was never Pope to begin with.
But time and again, our opponents come back to this loss of office business.
It's really frustrating.
But hey, while we're on the topic of answering our critics,
let's turn to a challenge posted on the Toronto Catholic Witness blog on June 29th of this year,
entitled, Pope Francis, is he the Pope or the false prophet?
The writer of this post is concerned by people concluding,
that Francis isn't the Pope.
And he asks,
Now, he's right to ask these questions,
but rather than looking up the answers in a pre-Vatican II theology book,
he instead turns to an anti-Sedevacanist essay
written by the Novus Ordo Finiite brother André Marie of the St. Benedict Center.
And so, what does brother André Marie write?
Well, the Toronto blogger uses two quotes from brother André Marie.
The first one is not relevant, and the second one is false.
Regarding the first one.
First, brother André Marie, of course, uses the argument from loss of office,
which is definitely not relevant to Francis.
But let's humor him for the moment.
Brother claims that the automatic loss of the papacy in the case of a manifest heretic,
is merely theological speculation.
Nothing more than an opinion that some authors hold.
And that's hogwash already.
St. Robert Bellarmine says,
And, of course, it's a conclusion that follows necessarily
from the fact that one cannot hold an office in the church
if one is not even a member of the church.
And membership of the church is lost through manifest defection from the faith.
If you look at the theology books after the First Vatican Council, in 1870,
if you look at the 1917 Code of Canon Law, that's all pretty clear.
So, for brother André Marie to act as though this were a topic that the church has no position on,
and is all just speculation, is wrong.
Secondly, with Francis, we're not even talking about a pope, or supposed pope,
who stubbornly clings to a heresy privately, in his capacity,
as a private theologian.
No, we're talking about a papal claimant who is promulgating heresy after heresy,
damnable error after damnable error,
to the entire church as part of his magisterium.
Now, that was considered completely out of the question
for any of the theologians who debated the issue with St. Robert Bellarmine.
They were all agreed that that was impossible.
That's why you find them debating only whether
a pope could become a heretic as a private teacher,
not as the head of the church.
And thirdly, there is absolutely no doubt regarding Francis' status as a non-pope.
Brother André Marie says, quote,
If I refuse my subjection to the Roman pontiff with a practical doubt
as to whether or not he is the pope, I commit an act of schism.
Unquote.
Well, but there is no doubt that Francis is a non-pope.
There is no doubt Francis is most definitely not the pope.
And if you think otherwise, then please take our Francis papacy test
and find out for yourself.
You can find that test at novosordowatch.org.
In the menu, just click on the issues menu option
and then click on the Francis papacy test option.
And that will take you right to that papacy test.
Now, regarding the second excerpt from Brother André Marie
that the Toronto Catholic Witness blog presents,
I want to quote that in full because it'll be a delight to refute.
Quote,
Yes, and we all know what our Lord did.
He deposed the high priest and declared the seat of Moses vacant, didn't he?
The point is simply this.
If the man-god himself had enough respect for the sovereign pontiff of the law,
of types and figures, as to say of the heretical Jew who was soon to murder him,
that he sat in the seat of Moses,
how does anyone in the present law, the more perfect law, dare to do the opposite?
Let me spell this out.
Our Lord was not a Sedevacantist.
The evil deicide heretic who had authority over the Church of Israel
was still the head of the true religion.
The religious society of the old law,
was still intact.
Anyone wishing to save his soul could look to this office for leadership.
Its sacrifices were accepted by God,
and despite the abusive views to which it was put,
the prophetical office was even maintained by this man.
What did St. John say about Caiaphas' prophecy of our Lord's death?
And this he spoke not of himself,
but being the high priest of that year,
he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation.
No matter how you view it,
the present Pope's actions come nowhere near the iniquity of Caiaphas."
Now I should point out here that Brother André-Marie's essay was published in 2005,
the year of John Paul II and Benedict XVI,
so he was not referring to Francis.
But it really doesn't matter, because the argumentation is all wrong anyway.
When our blessed Lord appeared before Caiaphas, the high priest,
Caiaphas asked him to testify whether or not he was the Messiah.
And when our Lord affirmed that he was,
Caiaphas rejected him and tore his garments,
accusing our Lord of blasphemy.
What happened at that moment?
To answer that question,
let's turn to the church's greatest authority on the Bible,
St. Jerome.
In his commentary on Matthew 26, 65,
he wrote,
And by this rending of his garments,
Caiaphas shows that the Jews have lost the priestly glory,
and that their high priest's throne was vacant.
For by rending his garment,
he rent the veil of the law which covered him."
In other words,
St. Jerome tells us that when the high priest Caiaphas tore up his garments
and rejected Christ as the Messiah,
he lost his spiritual authority,
and his office,
automatically and without a declaration,
by publicly defecting from the true religion.
If that sounds familiar to you,
there's a reason for that.
So, what lesson have we learned here?
We've learned that if you want to know the traditional Catholic position,
don't go to Brother Andre Marie,
but go to the pre-Vatican II Catholic theology books,
and look it up.
What a concept, huh?
Tradcast Express is a production of Novos Ordo Watch.
Check us out at Tradcast.org,
and if you like what we're doing,
please consider making a tax-deductible contribution
at NovosOrdoWatch.org
slash donate.