St. Vincent Ferrer
I’m going to do something that I told myself I’d never do when I made this website. I’m going to talk about sedevacantism. For those who don’t know, sedevacantists are a group of Catholics(it may bother some that I say they’re Catholics but they are) who believe that the throne of Peter has been empty since October 9, 1958. They say that John XXIII and all the popes after him are antipopes. I should point out that every Cardinal who voted for John XXIII was made into a Cardinal by a valid pope according to the sedevacantists.
Anyways, what do I see when I look at a sede. I look at someone who is deeply frustrated by the modernism of the last several popes and longs for a time when popes will affirm what they firmly held in the 19th century. They’ve normally found a sedevacantist priest who runs a mass in someones’ basement or something like that. I sympathize with them. The election of Pope Francis has probably only affirmed them in their beliefs.
There is one principal problem with the sedevacantists though. I would say it’s almost as bad as not believing in the current Pope. Their faith essentially devolves into who is on the throne of Peter. That’s the most important question for them.
If they see a traditional Catholic like myself, they don’t care that I attend the TLM, pray the rosary often, have a strong belief in the doctrines of the Church, have a strong relationship with God’s saints; all they care about is whether I believe Francis is the Pope or not. If I believe in Francis, nothing else matters. There may be some exceptions but I’ve never met any.
There have been times of confusion in Church history before. Pope Honorius preached heresy both to the Patriarch of Constantinople and to other people. He was later condemned as a heretic at an ecumenical council but he was Pope until the day that he died and no one questioned it. No one became a sede back then. St. Vincent Ferrer is a canonized Saint and he followed the wrong pope during the Great Western Schism. In my view he made a mistake but that didn’t undermine all the other good he did or believed. The man was extremely holy and was responsible for converting many Jews in Spain to Christianity. He made a mistake but we don’t look at his one mistake, we look at the rest. That’s the problem with sedes. It’s all or nothing on this one particular question.
There are very few sedes out there. Their numbers seem large because they’re very loud, especially on the internet. I don’t want to name names but I think my readers know who I’m talking about. Anyways, my opinion won’t please everyone but you’re free to disagree in the comments section. God bless.
Hi Allan.
Like you, I was expecting you never to mention sedevacantism at all in your blog and this post was a pleasant surprise.
Reading it I experienced another suprise of a different kind : what strikes me the most is that the arguments you offer are really arguments for sedevacantism, not against it.
Who is the victim of an unfair “all or nothing” treatement ? Not you, but the sedes. Never mind all the lengthy elaborate arguments that sedes have to offer (as expressed for example in the Ottaviani intervention, Abbé de Nantes’ book of accusations, etc), all that matters is their conclusion that “Francis is an anti-pope”. All that non-sedes care about is that sedes’ conclusion that “Francis is an anti-pope”, and this alone is enough to censor sedes, never mention their position in decent company, never write about their position in one’s blog, etc.
Same thing with that Vincent Ferrer business. The mainstream opinion is that “claiming that Francis is an anti-pope” is outlandish and a pathological denial of an obviousness – the religious equivalent of Holocaust denial. Surely, Vincent Ferrer’s example goes some way to show that determining the identity of the Pope is not such an obvious thing ?
Your account of the Honorius case contains two direct falsehoods and an implied third.
“Honorius preached heresy” : nope. He merely refrained from condemning it.
“He was later condemned as a heretic at an ecumenical council” : nope. As you can see from the the condemnation formula endorsed by the Popes after him (PL 105, col. 52A, viewable at https://books.google.fr/books?id=Ij18R__FCysC&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q&f=true), he was condemned as having failed to denounce heresy. The text clearly makes a distinction between the heretics and Honorius, and a separate condemnation for the latter.
“He was Pope” : this is true but the implied falsehood is that Honorius failed in his role of Pope. Not so, as all his contributions on the subject are all private letters. He failed only as a private doctor.
The reason that nobody reacted at the time is not, as you seem to suggest, that people considered it OK for the Pope to preach heresy, but simply that nearly everyone was unaware that the Pope has expressed thoughts on the issue. The purpose of private letters is to stay private, you know.
You write as if “believing in Francis” and “believing Francis is the pope” were synonyms, but in fact they are light years apart. Thus, most traditional Catholics (including you) do not believe in Francis in the sense that they do not approve of the wrong things he’s doing, and denounce them. But they certainly believe that Francis is a true pope, which is what makes them reject sedes instantly.
When you say you have a “strong belief in the doctrine of the Church”, as a regular reader of your blog I beg to differ. I contend that what you strongly believe in is today’s traditional-Catholic consensus, which is not the same thing as the Catholic creed you often read as part of your research activity.
Your “About Me” section is quite telling and truthful in that regard : it does not contain any endorsement of any specific Catholic Creed or catechism (such as would almost invariably be found in the “About” section of a sede website).