(LifeSiteNews) — My familiarity with sedevacantism goes back over forty years. In 1981, one of my brothers had entered a traditional religious community. The following year, his superior turned sedevacantist and was made a bishop. I was still a teenager at the time, and, as it goes with teenagers, had my moment of fascination with the idea. It did not last long, however. I tried to convince my brother that it was a dead end. I didn’t succeed then and have not since. He is still with this community and is one of its few priests. So let’s just say that when people speak to me of sedevacantism, I know what they’re talking about.
All that was in the first years of the pontificate of John Paul II. As I recall, the events that, at the time, left my brother’s community so shocked were the inter-religious events this pope was so fond of. I still remember my brother, with a look of disbelief, showing me photos of John Paul II praying with the Archbishop of Canterbury. “How can this man be the Pope when he pretends that the heretical successor of Thomas Cranmer is a real bishop?” The Assisi events and the kissing of the Koran – which were determining factors in the hardline positions of others – had not yet taken place.
For those of us who, while frowning upon such novel and ambiguous words and actions, took the stand that the Pope remains the Pope even if he can scandalize the faithful by things he says or does, the election of Joseph Ratzinger in 2005 and his openness to the traditional Mass in particular were like a breath of fresh air. Now finally things were rolling in a better direction, even though Benedict XVI himself was far from incarnating the perfect Pope as we understood him.
All that, of course, changed with the events of 2013: the abdication of Benedict and the election of Francis. It cannot be denied that this pontificate has been one long disaster. It seems almost every month, sometimes every week, brings more bad news: another scandalous appointment, yet another ambiguous or even overtly erroneous declaration of some sort. The faithful who remain attached to Tradition are bewildered, as are, clearly, a number of prelates who every now and then voice their concern but remain helpless to do anything about the situation.
In this context, it is no surprise that the sedevacantist thesis has gained in popularity. Of late, new voices have been heard, but the arguments are the same: Francis is so deeply in error and so given over to corruption that he cannot possibly be the Pope. What most people don’t realize is that it’s the same old tune they were singing in the seventies and eighties. New messengers, same message.
Unfortunately some traditional outlets relay these discussions, apparently convinced that somehow a debate as to whether or not we have a pope is good for the Church.
From this debate are notoriously absent precisely the ones who have the grace to discern the truth of the matter, namely the cardinals and, to a certain extent, the bishops. Most of those debating are not even priests, but laymen, some of them very gifted, who seem to consider themselves somehow endowed with a charism similar to that of the medieval University of Paris, whose master theologians certainly carried weight in the Church of their day. While it can be interesting to read what they have to say, it does not appear to be helpful.
Years ago, when I wrote my doctoral thesis, one of the points I made was that there were questions that are rightly debated among theologians that should not be brought out into the public. The reason is obvious: doing so only exacerbates an already tense and loaded Church situation. The wisdom of the ages is that when a man of learning has issues with the state of things, he must bring them to those who can do something about it, not to the simple faithful, who are neither equipped nor competent to judge the matter.
These men should be lobbying bishops and cardinals to think these matters through and give an answer. Should they be right, they must believe that the Holy Spirit will inspire prelates, whose role it is to defend the Church of God, to speak out for what appears to them to be true. The fact that our age of social media makes it possible for anyone to become a “master” in just about anything and to have a considerable following does not dispense those with learning to respect the wisdom of the ages.
But there is another important reason for which it is futile to attempt to prove Francis cannot be Pope. While it is true that he pours fuel on the fire almost every day and gives his enemies plenty of ammunition against him, there is a very important point that the present day sedevacantists seem to have overlooked. While John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI all seemed to take seriously their role as universal teacher – even if the way they fulfilled their role was often lacking – Francis gave us, in the very first months of his pontificate, two keys to understanding his very different methodology. In my opinion these two keys rule out the possibility of his being a formal heretic and therefore dissolve the entire debate about whether or not he is the Pope.
The first key was at the first World Youth Day he presided over in July 2013, and at which he spoke words that shocked everyone at the time, but which were repeated on other occasions as well: “What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses! … I want to see the Church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”
Well, that sure was a shock. It still is, coming from the mouth of the Supreme Pontiff whose immediate predecessor had treated the Church to some of the finest homilies in papal history. We can leave it to psychologists to explain what it indicates about the mentality of the one who said it, but one thing is certain: Pope Francis was not going to lead the Church in any remotely classical way. For him, reform means shaking things up and causing trouble, out of which good is bound to come.
The second key was given the same year, in one of the very first interviews he gave as Pope, in September 2013, to his Jesuit confrere Fr Antonio Spadaro. This first interview contained the following:
If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists — they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else — God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.
A book could be written about the many implications of this paragraph. One point, however, is clear: you are not going to get any doctrinal precision from Pope Francis, for he does not believe that is the solution. So don’t expect it. And it is here that I believe our newfound sedevacantists err. Since they dissect his words as if he were teaching a theology course every time he opens his mouth, they inevitably come to the conclusion that he is a heretic. But this is simply to not have understood at all what he is about.
Let’s not forget what Bishop Athanasius Schneider testified regarding the scandalous Abu Dhabi document on Human Fraternity, signed by Pope Francis and which claims that God wills all religions. When Schneider asked the Pope how this could be understood in a Catholic way, Francis replied that it is not by God’s positive will but by His permissive will that all religions exist.
Well, there you have it. He will always find a way of coming clean because he does know his theology, but he is intentionally provocative because he thinks that is the way to achieve the true reform of the Church. You will never convict him of being a formal heretic. Stop wasting your time and troubling the faithful.
Perhaps Pope Francis really doesn’t care about the truth; perhaps he is a heretic; perhaps there is a whole list of Catholic dogmas he does not fully adhere to. All that is quite possible. What is not possible is for us, members of the Ecclesia discens (and not the Ecclesia docens), to declare him to be a formal heretic. That could be done only after a close investigation and questioning of the Pope, and this in turn could potentially be done only by those who have received, in the Church, the task of being shepherds of the flock.
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In the meantime, those who persist in declaring to the world that they know he is not the Pope are just emulating the one they condemn: they are making a bigger mess. And the world laughs.