Recognizing the pope — but “for display purposes only”
A New Jersey
lawyer and traditionalist,
Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq., has recently produced an
anti-sedevacantist tract entitled “Defending the Papacy: Opposing the
Sedevacantist Enterprise.” It has been widely circulated by Catholic
Family News and the
Fatima Industry flagship publication, The Fatima Crusader.
Halfway through his article — the first of a promised series on
sedevacantism — Mr. Ferrara remarks:
“In this time of ecclesial confusion, many Catholics do not
recognize a theological absurdity when they see one.”
Well, I for one certainly do — and Mr. Ferrara’s article is loaded with them.
It’s a rich and heady stew of errors, half-truths and
misrepresentations about theological terms (visibility), Vatican I’s
teaching on the pope (perpetuity), canonical maxims (“The First See is
judged by no one”), specialized canon law terms (manifest), church
history (the cases of Popes Honorius and John XXII), papal bulls (Paul
IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus), and much, much more.
Mr. Ferrara’s polemical method is thoroughly dishonest: He says
that identifying sedevacantist “spokesmen” is “not relevant to the aim
of this essay,” so he identifies neither the authors nor the articles
he is attacking. (He quotes or paraphrases me a number of times.) His
real aim, of course, is to prevent readers from looking up articles
that he fears are too convincing.
His opening argument is a lengthy attack on his targets’ sanity.
Sedevacantists adhere to a “patent absurdity.” They
are sometimes “highly intelligent” but nevertheless exhibiting the
“impenetrable self-enclosed reasoning of a madman.” Translation: Ignore
all evidence, folks.
In all this, Mr. Ferrara is very much like a truculent
non-lawyer trying to argue a case in civil court. He slings around
lingo he doesn’t understand, repeatedly ignores the rules of evidence,
and pulls as many dirty tricks as he can.
I can’t fine Mr. Ferrara for contempt and clogging the system.
But I can at least blow the whistle on a few of his major howlers.
But first, some prefatory remarks are in order.
Mr. Ferrara
advocates essentially the same position as the Society of St. Pius X,
Fr. Nicholas Gruner, and countless others: You claim to “recognize”
Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI as true popes. At
the same time YOU decide which papal teachings, laws,
sacramental rites, or commands are good, and which you’ll reject,
resist or publicly denounce.
Under this system, a pope no longer possesses the supreme
authority to “bind and loose” on earth. A New Jersey lawyer, the Superior General of SSPX, the CEO of the
Fatima Industry, the editor of Catholic Family News, or, generally, any traditional
Catholic whatsoever, does the final review for him.
The New Mass? A sacrilege, intrinsically evil, or the pope
didn’t promulgate it correctly anyway. Ecumenism? No thanks, the pope’s
wrong. Consecration of Russia to Immaculate Heart? The pope didn’t do
it right. Excommunicated or suspended? Invalid, no matter what the pope
and his curia say. Consecrate bishops against the pope’s explicit will?
Necessity lets me do it. And so on.
Who needs to visit the Throne of Peter? You give the final
thumbs-up or -down from your easy chair.
The pope speaks. You decide…
This system makes a mockery of the Catholic teaching that the
pope possesses not only a “Primacy of honor” (framed photos in the
vestibules of wildcat traditionalist chapels, say) but also “supreme
and full power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, both in
matters of faith and morals, as well as in those things that pertain to
the discipline and rule of the Church spread throughout the world,” a
power that is “ordinary and immediate over each and every church, as
well as over each and every pastor and member of the faithful,
independent of any human authority.” (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution De
Ecclesia Christi, DZ
1827; Canon 218.)
Mr. Ferrara wrote a book on the post-Vatican II mess entitled The
Great Façade. No
wonder. Mr. Ferrara’s system gives you a cardboard pope — “for display
purposes only.”
Sedevacantism (from the Latin phrase sede vacante, denoting
the interregnum between the death of one pope and the election of
another) refers to the belief among some traditionalists that
post-Vatican II popes are not true popes.
It begins with two points all traditionalists agree on: (1) The
New Mass was evil and harmful to the Church, as was a great deal of the
post-Vatican II legislation. (2) Many teachings of Vatican II and the
post-Vatican hierarchy contradict previous Catholic teaching and are at
least errors.
From here sedevacantism generally argues as follows:
1. The authority of the Church, because of Christ’s promise,
cannot give evil laws or teach error.
2. It is therefore impossible that the evils and errors
officially sanctioned by the post-Vatican II hierarchy could have
proceeded from the authority of the Church.
3. Those who promulgated these evils and errors must somehow
lack (have lacked) real authority in the Church.
4. Canonists and theologians teach that public or manifest
defection from the faith, automatically brings with it loss of
ecclesiastical office (authority). They apply this principle even to a
pope, who in his personal capacity, becomes a heretic.
5. Two popes, Innocent III and Paul IV, explicitly mentioned the
possibility that a heretic could end up on the throne of Peter. Paul IV
even declared that such a pope’s election would be invalid and that he
would lack all authority.
6. Since the authority of the Church cannot defect (give evil or
error), but a pope (or a bishop) as an individual can, the best
explanation for the post-Vatican II evils (the new Mass) and errors
(religious liberty, ecumenism, etc.) is that they proceeded (proceed)
from individuals who, despite their occupation of the Vatican and
various diocesan cathedrals did (do) not objectively possses canonical
authority, having lost it through public defection from the faith.
I and others have repeatedly published pronouncements from
pre-Vatican II theologians, canonists and popes — Badii, Bellarmine,
Beste, Coronata, Dorsch Herrmann, Iragui, Prümmer, Regatillo,
Salaverri, Schultes, Van Noort, Vermeersch, Wernz-Vidal, Wilhelm,
Zubizarreta, Pope Innocent III, Pope Paul IV, etc. —to support the
principles enunciated above.
For this I refer readers to my short study Traditionalists,
Infallibility and the Pope and to numerous articles posted on www.traditionalmass.org
That said, we turn to Mr. Ferrara’s more glaring errors.
In each case, I will try to sum up
fairly his various objections to sedevacantism. I will then
systematically refute these objections by quoting theologians,
canonists, popes and canon law. I will also refute in passing some
proofs he offers for the cardboard pope (“recognize-but-resist”)
position.
1. PATENT
ABSURDITY: Sedevacantism
“can only be dismissed as patently absurd,” because it assumes that
most Catholics adhered for five decades to an imposter pope and
episcopacy. This would “make a mockery” of the promise of Christ to his
Church. (pp. 10-11, 9)
Mr. Ferrara’s opening argument is circular: Sedevacantism is
absurd because it is absurd.
Maybe this works in a Jersey courtroom, but in the science of
Catholic theology, you cite teachings of recognized authorities if you
want to be taken seriously.
So, to Mr. Ferrara’s unproven assertion that it is “absurd” to believe that the overwhelming majority of Catholics might one day end up adhering to a false pope, we respond with the teaching of the theologian Father Sylvester Berry:
“The prophecies of the Apocalypse show that Satan will imitate
the Church of Christ to deceive mankind; he will set up a church of
Satan in opposition to the Church of Christ. Antichrist will assume the
role of Messias; his prophet will act the part of Pope, and there will
be imitations of the Sacraments of the Church. There will also be lying
wonders in imitation of the miracles wrought in the Church.” (The
Church of Christ, 119)
“There seems to be no reason why a false Church might not become
universal, even more universal than the true one, at least for a time.”
(ibid. 155)
An ecumenical Super-Church with a false pope? Imitation
sacraments? Lying wonders? The faithful reduced to a remnant?
After four decades of the Vatican II disaster, how absurd does
this sound?
2. DEAD
CHURCH: “Without the
Pope at its head and bishops in communion with him, the visible Church
would cease to exist, and Christ would have been made a liar.” (p.9)
Here Mr. Ferrara gives us nearly word-for-word the major premise of an argument made
by heretics against the Primacy of the Pope. Like Mr.
Ferrara, they contended that, if Catholic teaching on the Primacy were
true, the Church would cease to exist during the vacancy of the Holy
See.
The theologian Salaverri refuted their argument (and Mr.
Ferrara’s) as follows: Instead of being a “primary foundation… without which the Church
could not exist,” the pope is a “secondary foundation,” “ministerial,”
who exercises his power as someone else’s (Christ’s) representative.
(See De Ecclesia
1:448)
So, during the vacancy of the Holy See, despite what heretics
and Mr. Ferrara have argued, the visible Church does indeed continue to
exist.
3. HEADLESS REMNANT: The Church may well be “ultimately
reduced to a very tiny remnant by the time that the Antichrist appears…
but that remnant will still have a Pope at its head… Otherwise that
remnant would not be the Church, but a headless and diffuse body of
believers… If there is no Peter, there is no Church.” (p.9)
This is a variant of the preceding argument. Like it, it is
false — contradicted this time by the
theologian Dorsch:
“The Church therefore is a society that is essentially
monarchical. But this does
not prevent the Church,
for a short time after the death of a pope, or even for many years, from remaining
deprived of her head. [vel etiam per plures annos capite
suo destituta manet].
Her monarchical form also remains intact in this state.…
“Thus the Church is then indeed a headless body.… Her
monarchical form of government remains, though then in a different way
— that is, it remains incomplete and to be completed. The ordering of
the whole to submission to her Primate is present, even though actual
submission is not…
“For this reason, the See of Rome is rightly said to remain
after the person sitting in it has died — for the See of Rome consists
essentially in the rights of the Primate.
“These rights are an essential and necessary element of the
Church. With them, moreover, the Primacy then continues, at least
morally. The perennial
physical presence of the person of the head, however, [perennitas autem physica
personis principis] is not so strictly necessary.” (de Ecclesia 2:196–7)
So once again, Mr. Ferrara is dead wrong. Catholic theology
teaches that the See of Peter can indeed be vacant for many years; all the while, the nature of the
Church still remains unchanged.
4. PERPETUAL SUCCESSORS: “Sedevacantists are flirting with the
Vatican I anathema, which condemns and excludes from the Church anyone
who would call into question the perpetual succession of the papacy as
the visible foundation of the entire Church.” (p. 10)
Mr. Ferrara, like many other anti-sedevacantist
controversialists, stumbled across Vatican I’s statement that by divine
right St. Peter has “perpetual successors” in the Primacy. (DZ 1825: “perpetuos successores.”) This he (and others) took to mean
that, except for the brief period between the death of a pope and the
next conclave, Christ promised and the Church taught that a you’d
always (perpetually) have a real, live pope on Peter’s throne.
Conclusion: good-bye, sedevacantism!
It is hard to imagine a more concentrated dose of pure
theological ignorance.
Vatican I’s definition was directed against heretics who
contended that (1) the Primacy was an extraordinary power Christ gave
to St. Peter alone, (2) Christ did not intend it to be
passed along in perpetuity to his successors, (3) this power either
died with Peter, or was passed along to the Church or episcopal
college. (See Dorsch, de Ecclesia, 2:191-2)
What does the definition itself
mean? That “a primacy of true jurisdiction, together with a full scope
of rights and duties would continue in the Church, and this in virtue
of the will of Christ or by divine law.” (Dorsch 2:191)
The dogmatic theologian Salaverri devotes 23 dense pages to this
passage in Vatican I, nearly all of it directed at proving that Christ
intended the office of the Primacy to be perennis — not limited to Peter, but rather “a
power which will perpetually endure to the end of the world.” (de
Ecclesia, 1:385.)
Mr. Ferrarra, then, has confused two things: (1) the perpetuity
of the papacy as a perpetual institution whose rights and duties continue
forever, and (2) always having a live pope to fill it.
5. FIRST SEE JUDGED BY NO ONE: “Prima Sedes a nemine iudicatur — no
one may judge the First See… That no one
may judge the Pope — that is, his personal sin of heresy as opposed to
the heretical import of his words — is a fundamental truth of our
religion…” (p.13.)
(A) Context: Any first-year canon law student knows that
it says no such thing.
The maxim “the First See is judged by no one” is incorporated
into the Code of Canon Law as canon 1556.
The canon appears in Book IV (Ecclesiastical Trials), Part I
(Trials), Section 1 (Trials in General), Title 1 (The Competent Forum),
which prescribes which ecclesiastical courts have jurisdiction to try
which types of cases.
While it is true that the pope has the final say on doctrinal
and disciplinary matters in the Church — except in the system Mr.
Ferrara and SSPX propose, where they do — the maxim itself merely means
that there is no ecclesiastical tribunal before which one could summon
the pope or to which one could appeal the pope’s final judicial
decision.
Here is an explanation from a standard canon law manual:
“Immunity of the Roman Pontiff. ‘The First See is judged by no
one.’ (Canon 1556). This concerns the Apostolic See or the Roman
Pontiff who by the divine law itself enjoys full and absolute
immunity.” (Cappello, Summa Juris Canonici 3:19.)
The judicial immunity of the pope was disputed in church history
by partisans of Gallicanism and Conciliarism, who also maintained that
a pope’s decisions could be appealed to a general council.
The maxim “the First See is judged by no one” is a procedural norm, then.
(B) Sources: One of canonical sources for the maxim,
the Decree of
Gratian (ca. 1150), reads as follows: “Whose sins [the pope’s] no
mortal man presumes to rebuke, for he shall judge all and is to be judged
by no one, unless he is suddenly caught deviating from the faith [nisi deprehendatur a fide devius].” (Decree, I, dist. 60, ch. 6.)
If anything, one can conclude from this the very opposite of what Mr. Ferrara maintains:
defection from the faith is the one sin of a pope we are permitted to judge.
(C) Papal
Teaching: In two of his
coronation sermons, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) — considered one of
the greatest canonists of his time — explained how a pope who falls
into the sin of heresy is “judged.”
“’Without faith it is impossible to please God.’… And so the
faith of the Apostolic See never failed, even in the most trying
circumstances [turbatione], but always continued intact and
undiminished, so that the privilege of Peter remained constant and
unshaken.
“To this end faith is so necessary for me that, though I have
for other sins God alone as my judge, it is alone for a sin committed against
faith that I may be judged by the Church. [propter solum peccatum quod in
fide commititur possem ab Ecclesia judicari.] For ‘he who does not believe is
already judged’.”(Sermo 2: In Consecratione, PL 218:656)
“You are the salt of the earth… Still
less can the Roman Pontiff boast, for he can be judged by men — or
rather he can be shown to
be judged, if he manifestly ‘loses his savor’ in heresy. [quia potest ab hominibus judicari,
vel potius judicatus ostendi, si videlicet evanescit in haeresim.] For he who does not believe is
already judged.” (Sermo 4: In Consecratione, PL 218:670)
A pope who commits the sin of heresy, then, can indeed be “shown
to be judged.”
(D Finally: Mr. Ferrara, who are you trying to kid?
If the publications you write for actually applied the maxim “The First See is judged by no one” to themselves, they’d be sending their entire editorial content out each month on a postcard.
6. “MANIFEST” HERESY: When the
term “manifest” is applied to heresy, this means “the denial of an
article of divine and Catholic faith, such as the Trinity, not just any
error against the teaching of the Church.” (p.13)
Like the non-lawyer arguing his own case, Mr. Ferrara has the
technical lingo all messed up.
“Manifest,” as applied to
heresy in canon law, however, does not refer to what truths a heretic denies (Trinity,
transubstantiation, etc.), but rather to how openly he denies them.
A heresy becomes manifest (or notorious), when its existence is
“established in a public way” (constat modo publico).
This occurs, for instance, when the existence of the heretical
statement “is established through authentic public documents… because
such documents of their nature are open to inspection by many people,
and therefore necessarily bring with them public notice.” (Michels, De Delictis et Poenis, 1:140)
The authentic public digest for all the
documents of the Holy See is the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. (See canon 9.) Publishing heretical decrees,
pronouncements and encyclicals in the Acta — as JP2 and company did — would
therefore render heresy “manifest” or “notorious.
“Manifest,” again, refers to the how, not the what, of heresy.
7. NO REAL HERESIES: Sedevacantists have failed to
identify any true heresies “among the many ambiguous pronouncements and
disturbing (even scandalous) actions of John Paul II or Paul VI.” (p.15)
For openers, I suggest the following:
(A) Justification: The October 31, 1999 Joint Declaration
on Justification , approved by Ratzinger and John Paul II.
This overthrows the solemn dogmatic definitions of the Council
of Trent concerning justification.
(B) The Church: The Declaration on Communion, the
Ecumenical Directory and the Declaration Dominus Jesus, written by Ratzinger and approved by
John Paul II.
These documents promote the “Subsistent Superchurch” heresy,
which, among other things, denies an article of the Creed (“I believe
in one Church”), as
well as the proposition “outside the Church there is no salvation.”
(C) Notes: The former is “an article of the
divine and Catholic faith,” the latter a “dogma of the faith.”
(Salaverri 1:1095, 1153)
Bishop Donald Sanborn has written several lengthy articles
exposing these heresies. Readers may find them posted at
traditionalmass.org
8. KORAN KISSING: “The latter did not amount to formal
heresy, as the kissing of the Koran was not the pertinacious denial of
an article of divine and Catholic faith.” (p.15)
Oh really? Canonists and theologians teach that external heresy
consists in dictis vel factis — not only in words, but also in
“signs, deeds, and the omission of deeds.” (Merkelbach, Summa
Theologiae Moralis,
1:746.)
9. COUNCIL FOR A HERETIC POPE: “A general council could assemble
to verify the statement or statements allegedly uttered by the Pope,”
who would “be given the opportunity to explain his words or retract
them.” The council could declare “that the Pope, by his own act, had
excluded himself from the Church, thereby ceasing to be pope.” (p.14)
Mr. Ferrara claims this scenario of a pope summoned before a
council, asked to defend himself, and then declared fallen from office
is an “accepted theological view.” Accepted by whom?
He mentions St. Alphonsus Liguori — but he provides no citations
one can use to verify his claim.
Mr. Ferrara also says — again without citations — that this view
was “taught by St. Anthony of Florence.”
I can find no theologian by that name in the
33-volume Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. (See Tables
Générales
1:184-187.) Does Mr. Ferrara mean the
Dominican theologian Anthony of Siena, which is not far from Florence? Or did
St. Anthony of Padua
say something about this? Or maybe St. Antoninus, who was Archbishop of Florence? Who
knows?
This is the sort of half-baked “evidence” that opposing counsel
moves to strike, and the judge instructs the jury to disregard.
Wherever he got it, the elaborate council/trial/defense
/declaration rigmarole Mr. Ferrara describes is absent from the writing
of later canonists and theologians who treated the question of a
heretical pope.
Nearly all resolved it the same way: The Roman Pontiff “would,
by divine law, fall from office without any sentence, indeed, without even a declaratory one.” (Coronata, Institutiones Iuris
Canonici, 1:316)
.
10. DUE PROCESS, GUILT, PERTINACITY: “Absent a procedure to investigate
the papal statement and the surrounding circumstances, including direct
questions of the Pope himself with an opportunty to retract, it would
be impossible to judge the matter fully and fairly.… Who would afford
the pope this due process?” (p.14)
But assume for the sake of argument that a papal trial were permissible. Assume further that
Christopher A. Ferrara Esq. were the heretical pope’s chief defense
counsel, the head of his legal “dream team.”
Before he got to his stirring final summation to the
cardinalatial jury (“If anathema don’t sit, you must acquit”?), what ground rules
would Mr. Ferrara have to follow?
(A) General
Presumption: Would
canon law in general consider Mr. Ferrara’s client innocent until
proven guilty?
No. Canon 2200.1 lays down the general principle: “When an
external violation of the law occurs, in the external forum the
existence of malice (dolus) is presumed until the contrary is
proved.”
The reason such presumptions exist in the law, says the canonist
Michels, is that “in the external forum one acts based on the way
things ordinarily happen and externally appear. And indeed ordinarily,
each person of sound mind customarily acts reasonably and freely, fully
knowing and deliberately willing whatever he really does.” (De
Delictis, 1:134)
(B) Heresy and
Burden of Proof: In the case of heresy, though, wouldn’t
canon law at least require the prosecutor to prove that Mr. Ferrara’s client was
“pertinacious” or “obstinate” in the alleged heresy?
No again. “The very commission of any act which signifies
heresy, e.g., the statement of some doctrine contrary or contradictory
to a revealed and defined dogma, gives sufficient ground for juridical
presumption of heretical depravity… [E]xcusing circumstances have to be
proved in the external forum, and the burden of proof is on the person
whose action has given rise to the imputation of heresy. In the absence
of such proof, all such excuses are presumed not to exist.” (McKenzie, The Delict of Heresy, 35.)
Mr. Ferrara, then, would have to rebut the presumption that his
client is a heretic.
(C) Excusing Causes: Mr. Ferrara is arguing that his
client’s heresy, if any, would not be “manifest.” How could he prove
that?
Mr. Ferrara could argue one of seven causes that would excuse
his client from moral culpability for the alleged offense, and hence
from “manifest” or “notorious” heresy. (See canon 2199ff.) They are:
(1) lack of reason (I was crazy).
(2) habitual inculpable ignorance (I was stupid).
(2) actual inculpable inadvertence or error (I was daydreaming).
(4) involuntary intoxication (Those German Lutherans forced the
beer down my throat).
(5) physical force (I was strong-armed).
(6) uncontrollable passion preceding an act of the will (I got
really mad).
(7) legitimate self defense (I ducked down over that Koran
because the imam took a swing at me ).
Of the seven, I would advise Mr. Ferrara against choosing
ignorance as an excuse. His client is cleric who holds several
doctorates in theology:
“If the delinquent making
this claim be a cleric, his plea for mitigation must be dismissed, either as untrue, or else
as indicating ignorance which is affected, or at least crass and
supine… His ecclesiastical training in the seminary, with its moral and
dogmatic theology, its ecclesiastical history, not to mention its canon
law, all insure that the Church’s attitude towards heresy was imparted
to him.” (McDevitt, 48. My emphasis)
You have six excusing causes left, Mr. Ferrara. Which do you
plead, counselor?
11. JOHN XXII, HONORIUS I: Both these popes “were accused of
heresy.” Despite this, they never ceased to be regarded by the Church
as popes. These examples “show us the Catholic way to address a pope
who is in error or takes some action that threatens the common good of
the Church.” One may “resist him.”(p.15, 49-50)
At this point in his article, Mr. Ferrara begins to introduce
arguments supporting the cardboard pope theory as the “Catholic”
alternative to sedevacantism.
He begins with Popes John XXII and Honorius I.
(A) Unsavory
Company: Citing these
cases to justify “resistance” to the Roman Pontiff puts Mr. Ferrara in
some very unsavory company.
Opponents of papal authority — protestants, eastern schismatics,
Conciliarists, Gallicans, the anti-infallibilists at Vatican I, etc. — routinely pointed to John XXII and Honorius
to shore up attacks against Catholic teaching.
(B) Inadequate
Sources: As the sources
for his account and explanation of both cases, Mr. Ferrara cites only
popular vernacular histories (John, Jedin, Carroll) and an article on
Honorius in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Such sources have their place. But you can’t put much stock in
them if you’re trying to make a serious argument about what ultimately
boils down to a question of dogmatic theology. You
have to consult and cite the lengthy dogmatic treatises on the papacy
written by major academic theologians.
So on the grounds of his sources alone, we can dismiss Mr.
Ferrara’s comments on John XXII and Honorius as lightweight pop
polemics.
(C) Missing
Elements: Mr. Ferrara’s
analogy between these cases and that of the post-Conciliar popes fails
on several points anyway, because in both, one or several of the
elements required for a heretical pope to lose office were missing.
(1) John XXII (1316-1334) preached a series of sermons in
Avignon, France in which he taught that the souls of the blessed
departed do not see God until after the Last Judgement.
Mr. Ferrara’s analogy to the situation of the post-Conciliar
popes does not hold here because:
(a) The doctrine on the Beatific Vision had not yet been
defined, so a denial of it would not constitute heresy.
(b) The pope, who had been a theologian before his election,
proposed his teaching only as a “private doctor who expressed an
opinion, hanc opinionem, and who, while seeking to prove it,
recognized that it was open to debate.“ (Le Bachlet, “Benoit XII,” in Dictionnaire
de Théologie Catholique, 2:662.)
In the pope’s second sermon, moreover, he said the following:
“I say with Augustine that, if I am deceived on this point, let
someone who knows better correct me. For me it does not seem otherwise,
unless the Church would so declare with a contrary statement [nisi
ostenderetur determinatio ecclesie contraria] or unless authorities on sacred
scripture would express it more clearly than what I have said above.”
(Le Bachelet, DTC 2:262.)
Such statements excluded the element of “pertinacity” proper to
heresy.
(2) Honorius I (625-638)wrote several letters relating to the
Monothelite heresy (=Christ had only one will, the divine), for which
he was later accused, variously, of being a heretic himself or being
soft on heresy.
The ins and outs of this complex case need not detain us, except
to mention the following fact: The disputed
formulas came to light only after Honorius died.
According to the theologian Hurter, it is certain that “the
letters of Honorius were unknown [ignotae] until the death of the Pontiff and
[the Patriarch] Sergius.” (Medulla Theologiae Dogmaticae, 360.)
Hence, even if heretical, Honorius’ statements could not have
constituted the “public” heresy required for a pope to lose office.
(D) Failed
Analogies: To sum up, Mr. Ferrara’s attempt to
refute sedevacantism with an analogy to the cases of John XXII and
Honorius fails because:
(1) The doctrines denied by the post-Conciliar popes have been defined.
(2) The post-Concilar popes were not proposing their teachings
as mere opinion for theological debate.
(2) The teachings of the post-Conciliar popes were not “unknown”
until after their deaths, but were published in encyclicals, decrees,
instructions, speeches and discourses transmitted throughout the entire
world during their lifetimes.
12. RESIST A WAYARD POPE: St. Thomas, St. Robert Bellarmine
and the “pious and eminent” Francisco Suarez teach that one may
“resist” a “wayward pope.” (p.50-1)
Here Mr. Ferrara reprints and interprets for us three quotes
from a larger group first published in 1970 in Portugese by the
Brazilian traditionalist Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira.
They are part of Mr. Ferrara’s “direct case” — that is, the
system he proposes instead of sedevacantism.
These endlessly recycled quotes are favorites in SSPX/ CFN
“recognize-but-resist” circles, and they pop up all over the place.
This allows sorts of unlikely types to offer assurances about, say,
Suarez’ teachings, eminence and piety — all without the inconvenience
of slogging through about 21,000 pages of his Latin in really small type.
I will devote more time to this material at a later date. In the
meantime, here are a few brief comments:
(A) St. Thomas
Aquinas: Mr. Ferrara
quotes St. Thomas’ justification for fraternal correction of superiors
in general, especially when they say something that endangers the faith. (Summa, II-II.33.4)
From this standard nugget of spiritual wisdom, Mr. Ferrara, SSPX
and countless others have drawn several rather generous practical
conclusions about what the Angelic Doctor is supposedly endorsing:
(1) Catholics are free to decide for themselves on a
case-by-case which teachings, laws, sacramental rites and commands
emanating from the Roman Pontiff they will accept (very few, thank you)
and which they will “resist” and publicly denounce (just about
everything).
(2) Catholics are free to pursue this “resistance” to the
Successor of Peter on a continuous basis — so far, forty years and
counting, with no end in sight.
(3) Moreover, “implicit in St. Thomas’ teaching,” says Mr.
Ferrara, “is that the pope who commits ‘scandal concerning the faith’
remains the pope, though he may be rebuked and corrected.”
“Implicit” indeed! So implicit that one cannot find it at all…
(B) St. Robert
Bellarmine: Not long
ago, I published an analysis of the Bellarmine “resistance” quote, and
based my conclusions upon its context in De Romano Pontifice and upon Cardinal Cajetan’s De
Comparatione Auctoritatis Papae et Concilii, which Bellarmine cited to support his
position.
Among other things, I demonstrated that Bellarmine was talking
about resisting a pope who gives morally evil commands — not one who, like the
post-Vatican II popes, teaches doctrinal
error or imposes evil laws. In his next chapter,
the Saint taught that a heretical pope automatically loses his
authority.
Mr. Ferrara’s “answer” to this is that “nowhere does Bellarmine
teach that ‘kings or councils,’ much less isolated members of the
Church, can judge a pope guilty of heresy.” (p.51)
Nowhere? Has Mr. Ferrara based
this confident assertion on a careful reading of Bellarmine’s entire Opera
Omnia in the 8-volume 1861 Neapolitan quarto edition?
Would he care to demonstrate, based on that edition and a
comparison with Cajetan’s de Comparatione, where my analysis of
the quote in question was in error?
Mr. Ferrara?
In the meantime, I will deem that he has conceded my conclusion
about the quote.
(C) Francisco
Suarez. Mr.
Ferrara quotes a passage from Suarez stating that a pope who would
“overturn all the rites of the Church founded on apostolic tradition” —
think Paul VI, of course — would become a “schismatic.” (p.51-2)
Mr. Ferrara takes consolation in Suarez’ opinion that a
schismatic pope would retain his office, and uses this to shore up the
“resistance” argument.
But Suarez, who tended to lose most controversies with other
Catholic theologians, was the only theologian who held
that position. The rest all taught that a schismatic pope loses the
pontificate automatically because heresy and schism both represented
“defection from the faith.”
Mr. Ferrara also provides us with a “nowhere does Suarez teach…”
argument.
Again, nowhere, Mr. Ferrara? Will we be
swearing you in as an expert witness to testify that you have (a) read
the entire 30-volume 1858 Paris edition of Suarez’ Opera Omnia, and (b) based your
prior factual claim thereupon?
Finally, Mr. Ferrara quotes Suarez as stating, “If [the Pope]…
gives an order contrary to right customs, he should not be obeyed; if
he attempts to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the
common good, it will be lawful to resist him.”
In this quote too, Mr. Ferrara, like many other traditionalist
writers, sees a grand charter for global “resistance” to the
post-Conciliar popes laws, doctrines, etc.
However, the translation into English is faulty: It
mistranslates bonos mores as “right customs,” implying, perhaps,
justification for resisting changes a pope legislates in
liturgical traditions, etc.
In fact the phrase really means “good morals.” (See Suarez, Opera
Omnia, 12:321: “Si enim
aliquid statuat contra bonos mores, non erit illi parendum.”)
So once again, Suarez, like Bellarmine, is saying nothing more
than this: if a pope gives you a command to do something contrary to
the moral law, you don’t have to obey — something like, “I’m ordering you this time, Monsignor: Bring me a
blonde chorus girl, and if the piano player complains, shoot him
between the eyes…”
13. PAUL IV & “RESISTANCE”: The 1559 Bull Cum ex Apostolatus
Officio supports the “resistance” theory, because Paul IV said that
“[The Pope] who may judge all and be judged by none in this world, may
nonetheless be contradicted if he be found to have deviated from the
Faith.” A pope remains pope even if he deviates from the faith. In this
case, one may contradict him. (p.52)
This assertion is ridiculous.
In para. 1 of the Bull, the verb in the Latin phrase si
deprehendatur a fide devius connotes not just a pope
who is “found” to have deviated from the faith, but one who is
“caught” — as in “caught red-handed” in a
crime.
Then there is the verb redargui —rebuke. What “rebuke” did Paul IV
envision for a pope caught this way? Not, as Mr. Ferrara might have us
think, forty years of open letters/we-contradict-you-to-your-face
articles written by laymen for some Counter-Reformation equivalent of The
Angelus, Fatima Crusader or Catholic Family News.
Rather, Paul IV promulgated the Bull to automatically deprive or
bar from office those who had defected from the faith, whether secretly
or openly.
In particular, he wished to bar from the papacy in the next
conclave Giovanni Cardinal Morone (1509-1580), whom he suspected of
being a secret Protestant heretic, and whom he even imprisoned in the
Castel’ Sant’ Angelo.
So, the Bull fills nearly 10 double-columns in one edition of
the Bullarium Romanum with line after line of blood-curdling language
automatically depriving of ecclesiastical office not just those
actually convicted of heresy, but even those simply caught (deprehensi) deviating from the faith (a fide
deviasse).
Then in para. 6, we get to the punch line of Paul IV’s rebuke
for the secret heretic who has been caught red-handed: Paul IV
explicitly decrees invalid and null the election of a Roman Pontiff
“who has beforehand deviated from the Catholic faith [a fide
Catholica deviasse] or
fallen into any heresy,” and this “without the need to make any further
declaration” [absque aliqua desuper facienda declaratione].
Note again: without
the need to make any further declaration. No trial, no dream team, no Court
Channel interviews.
Invalidity of election and automatic loss of office
— not “contradiction” in the popular press from the likes of Mr.
Ferrara — was the rebuke Paul IV prescribed for the a pope who had
“deviated from the faith.”
Should Mr. Ferrara, by the way, continue to advocate Suarez’
superseded opinion that schismatic pope does not lose office, I call his
attention to the following: A footnote in the Bullarium quotes another edition of the Bull
that, after deviation from the faith and heresy, also specifically
applies all its provisions to those “who have incurred, stirred up, or
committed schism” [seu schisma incurrisse vel excitasse aut
commisisse].
And finally, it was for planning to sell out to the Lutherans on
the doctrine of justification that Paul IV barred Morone from papal
office as a heretic and threw him in jail. (See Francesco Ricossa,
“L’heresie aux Sommets de l’Eglise,” 50-1.)
This, of course, is exactly what the heretics Ratzinger and John
Paul II did in 1999: sold out the Catholic teaching on justification to
the Lutherans.
* * *
At
this point we have gotten
though two-thirds of
the first installment of Mr. Ferrara’s article and disposed of any
substantive issues he tried to raise.
The rest of his article is nothing more than the type of
argumentation that my lawyer-friends call “pounding the table”: guilt
by association (Palmar de Troya), creating the specter of a conspiracy
(the sedevacantist “Enterprise” — though Mr. Ferrara has been the one
“exploring strange new worlds”), special pleading (SSPX’s “state of
necessity”), inadmissible evidence (secret Vatican assurances),
circular arguments from authority (the opinion of Ratzinger — who
declared that a Mass without the words of consecration was valid — taken seriously regarding
Holy Orders conferred by Abp. Thuc), pompous generalizations (conclaves
are “logical outgrowths”), etc. etc. — and the whole production backed
up by non-existent to dodgy sourcing at about the level of a high
school religion paper.
Mr. Ferrara, accustomed to flattering his juries during
summations, closes with a final appeal to the crowd: For those, he
says, who “are reasonably well-informed about the Faith, however,
refutation is a simple matter.”
That’s for sure: Mr. Ferrara’s circular argument on
sedevacantism as an “absurdity” is refuted by the theologian Berry. His
pronouncement on visibility shot down by Salaverri. His
“headless/diffuse body” statement on the length of the vacancy buried
by Dorsch. The “perpetual successors” argument rendered unsuccessful by
Dorsch and Salaverri. His misrepresentation of canon 1556 corrected by
the Code, Cappello, Gratian and Pope Innocent III. His misuse of
“manifest” exposed by Michels. JP2’s Koran-kissing re-criminalized for
him by Merkekbach. “Due process” fallacies refuted by Michels,
McKenzie, the Code, and McDevitt. Faulty analogies about John XXII and
Honorius I demolished by Le Bachlet and Hurter. Myths about
“resistance” texts duly toppled by the Latin originals.
Refutation by the “reasonably well-informed” has been very simple indeed…
So when Mr. Ferrara publishes the next installment of his attack
on sedevacantism, filled with more confidently stated assertions and
aggressively formulated arguments about theology, church history and
canon law, just remember the one great truth we have demonstrated here:
Christopher Ferrara is a windbag. He has no idea what he’s
talking about.
(August
2005)
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