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I am grateful to Fr. Brian Harrison for his discussion of my analysis of the consequences of Francis’s open espousal of heretical theses. I hope my answer to his discussion will advance understanding of the situation. Some of his points have been addressed in my response to Dr. Joseph Shaw’s criticism of my position,[1] and readers who are interested in the debate will find it useful to consult this response. Fr. Harrison’s article also deserves a response of its own.
Fr. Harrison observes that I have added my voice to that of Abp. Viganò and others who affirm that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not pope. I would want to qualify this assertion. Abp. Viganò and others who agree with him maintain that Abp. Bergoglio was never validly elected to the papacy, and hence never has been the pope. I do not agree with this. The reasons given for this thesis are that Pope Benedict’s resignation was not valid, and that the election of Abp. Bergoglio as pope was marred by irregularities that made it invalid. I am certain that Benedict’s resignation was valid. His statement of resignation was a perfectly clear and legally valid statement, and he signed it with full knowledge and will and did not retract it later. It said:
… with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.
That means that Benedict resigned the papacy. It does not matter what he said or thought at other times. That is how legal actions work. I do not know that any irregularities in the election of Francis were severe enough to invalidate his election. My view is that Francis was validly elected to the papacy and became pope, and subsequently ceased to be pope because of public and notorious heresy.
There is a fundamental difference underlying my disagreement with Abp. Viganò and those who agree with him. Their thesis preserves the outlook that a pope is always substantially trustworthy and good. The heresies and misdeeds of Francis do not undermine this outlook, because according to them he was never pope from the beginning. They thereby preserve a conception of Catholicism that sees the faith as requiring blind and unquestioning trust and reverence for the pope, no matter what he does. I do not myself hold this conception; it is not traditional, being first widely promoted by de Lamennais in his ultramontane phase, and is not compatible with the facts of history or theology.
Fr. Harrison argues that my position is incompatible with Canon 194 §2 of the Latin Code of Canon law, which states that the removal from ecclesiastical office of a person who has publicly defected from the Catholic faith can been enforced only if it is established by the declaration of a competent authority. Since there has been no declaration of Francis’s loss of office for heresy, he concludes that he remains the pope.
This argument misinterprets the canon in question. The ‘competent authority’ referred to is not anyone in the Church who has a position of authority, but the person who is in a position of authority over the cleric concerned and has the legal right and responsibility to make this declaration. Not all ecclesiastical superiors have the right to declare such penalties as loss of office or excommunication for their subjects, so the term ‘authority’ is qualified by the specification ‘competent’ here. The canon specifies the process for loss of office in the case of clerics who have competent ecclesiastical superiors. Since the pope has no ecclesiastical superior of any kind, he does not fall within its scope. The canon would fall into absurdity if it applied to the pope, as it would presume the possibility of action by a superior who cannot exist.
The canon therefore does not support the position of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, who require some sort of action by the bishops of the Church in order for a pope to fall from office as a result of heresy. I am not sure if Fr. Harrison holds this position. He seems to express some agreement with it when he identifies the ‘competent authorities’ who are supposed to declare the pope a heretic with the bishops of the Catholic Church. But the bishops of the Church are not competent authorities in the sense of Canon 194 §2, because they are the pope’s inferiors and have no authority over him. Canon 194 §2 therefore does not require or permit them to declare his loss of office due to heresy. I argue against the position of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, and in favour of the pope ipso facto losing his office through heresy, in the article to which Fr. Harrison responds and in my response to Dr. Shaw; and I do not have more to say about that question.
Fr. Harrison asserts that even if Francis had lapsed from office as a notorious heretic, his continuing acts of papal governance would still be valid, even though illicit, because ‘according to c. 1331, §2, no. 2, those acts, unlawful though they be, will be invalid only after his excommunication has been declared by the competent authority.’ This is incorrect for the reasons given; there is no such thing as a competent authority in this case. The idea that a pope who is a public and notorious heretic can retain papal jurisdiction is addressed at length in my response to Dr. Shaw. The main points of the position I advance there can be briefly recapitulated. It is true that the Church permits clerics who are legally guilty of heresy to retain some limited forms of jurisdiction. This is possible because the power of jurisdiction in the Church is either ordinary jurisdiction, possessed in virtue of holding an office, or delegated jurisdiction provided by someone who has ordinary jurisdiction. Although public and notorious heretics lose office and hence all ordinary jurisdiction as a result of heresy, they can still exercise jurisdiction in these limited circumstances in virtue of delegated jurisdiction supplied to them by the Church. But a pope who becomes a public and notorious heretic loses ordinary jurisdiction by divine law, and cannot have delegated papal jurisdiction because there is no other pope to delegate it to him. He cannot therefore exercise papal jurisdiction of any sort.
Fr. Harrison’s proposal that a priest should feel bound to obey Francis’s just commands and assent to his orthodox magisterial statements, even if Francis is a heretic, obviates the purpose for which the papal office exists in the first place. Since Francis is a heretic who is working to undermine the Church, it can be expected that his commands will be unjust and his statements will be unorthodox. This expectation corresponds to the facts. We therefore have to determine that this expectation is not realized when he issues commands or makes assertions. But what is the use of a pope if we have to carefully scrutinize his orders and statements to see if they are just and orthodox, and only obey them and believe them if we can verify their acceptability? We are then reduced to depending on our own judgment and knowledge in acting and believing. We are not relying on the authority of the pope, and this authority in effect has ceased to exist for us.
Fr. Harrison asks, ‘How are the countless millions of ordinary lay Catholics in the pews to prudently decide this question, given that they don’t have the theological and canonical formation necessary to weigh and evaluate the respective arguments of Dr. Lamont and the scholars who disagree with him? Indeed, how about the ordinary priest, who is not a specialist in these matters?’
This objection has some weight against the theses of Abp. Viganò, Dr. Edmund Mazza and others, who maintain that Francis was never validly elected in the first place. Their positions involve arguments based on the notion of substantial error in canon law, the canonical regulations governing papal conclaves, and the continuing validity of the papal bull of Pope Paul IV Cum ex Apostolatus. Considerable theological and canonical formation is required to weigh and evaluate these arguments, as Fr. Harrison points out.
However, this objection does not apply to the position that Francis was validly elected pope but has ceased to be pope because of public and notorious heresy. This can now be seen to be true without significant theological or canonical formation. Indeed, it is probably easier for a simple priest who lacks such formation to discern its truth, because he will be less vulnerable to specious theological and canonical arguments and thus more able to see and acknowledge the obvious.
Consider such a priest who is confronted with the following well-publicized facts;
- On February 4th 2019, Pope Francis and Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, publicly signed and issued a statement entitled ‘Document on Human Fraternity’, which stated: ‘The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.’
- In October 2019, Francis attended an act of idolatrous worship of the pagan goddess Pachamama, and participated in this act of idolatrous worship by blessing a wooden image of the goddess.
- The idol of Pachamama was placed in front of the main altar at St. Peter’s and then carried in procession. Francis said prayers in a ceremony involving this image and then joined in this procession.
- When idols of this pagan deity were removed from the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina and thrown into the Tiber by Catholics objecting to idolatry, Francis apologized for their removal and another wooden idol of Pachamama was returned to the church. In this apology, he called the idols Pachamama, a name for a pagan goddess of mother earth worshipped in South America.
- In an address to a Catholic junior college in Singapore on Sept. 13th 2024, Francis said: ‘… if you start arguing, “My religion is more important than yours…,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true….,” where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, “Destruction”.] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. “But my God is more important than yours!”. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.’
- In a video message on Sept. 17th 2024 to a meeting of young people both Muslim and Christian, Francis said: ‘Contemplate the difference of your traditions like a richness, a richness God wants to be. Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God. Unity in diversity. Let mutual esteem grow among you, following the witness of your forefathers.’
- Francis has never withdrawn, apologized for, contradicted, or qualified these statements and these acts, although many public protests addressed to him have pointed out that they are contrary to the Christian faith and have asked him to withdraw or correct them.
No theological or canonical training at all is needed to understand that these words and actions are heretical and a repudiation of the Catholic faith. A moderately well instructed catechism class will know this. A fortiori, any priest who has the faith will know it as well.
Can a priest of the sort described by Fr. Harrison know that Francis cannot be pope as a result of his heresy? Francis has shown himself to be a heretic on many occasions. The above examples only concern one heresy; he has knowingly and willingly put forward many others. At this stage it is ridiculous to claim that Francis believes the Catholic faith and has never knowingly denied any of it. Untutored common sense will tell the priest that open, deliberate, repeated, and contemptuous rejection of the Catholic faith is incompatible with being the Pope of Rome. Should the priest wish to verify this finding of common sense, he will find that every commentary on canon law agrees with this common sense verdict and asserts that a pope loses the papal office through heresy.
Fr. Harrison imagines this priest asking the question, ‘Could it be that God has not only allowed the Successor of Peter to lapse from office through notorious heresy, but has also allowed the entire College of Cardinals and all the Catholic bishops bar none to remain blind to Bergoglio’s pertinacious heresy and so continue to recognize a faithless impostor and antipope as true pope? Doesn’t that scenario look like the gates of hell prevailing against Christ’s Church?’
I would not concede that all the bishops and cardinals are blind to Francis’s heresy. I suspect that many of them are aware of it but remain silent out of cowardice or misplaced concern for the well-being of the Church. But even if we suppose that Fr. Harrison is correct about the bishops and the cardinals, his conclusion does not follow. By his reasoning, the prophet Elijah should have concluded that God’s covenant with Israel did not exist (cf. 1 Kings 19:9-18). The Old Testament records many instances where almost all God’s people denied Him. On many occasions the New Testament predicts apostasy among Christians and especially among the teachers of the Church. No limits are set to the extent of this apostasy, beyond the assertion that some will not fall in to it. The number of the ‘some’ is not given. The alternative to Francis’s having ceased to be pope is that he continues to be the legitimate pope while being an open heretic who is working for the destruction of the faith and the Church. This comes closer to the gates of hell prevailing against the Church than does the mistaken recognition of Francis as pope.
Francis is one man. His crimes and unbelief are not in themselves sufficient to discredit the Church and make it appear that Christ has abandoned His promises to her. It is entirely comprehensible that a devious man could have contrived to be elected pope despite his hatred of the faith, and then shown his true colours. What does make the claims of the Church seem laughable to unbelievers is the silence of the vast majority of Catholics in the face of his actions. Because of the difficulty in maintaining that an open unbeliever is the pope, it is necessary for those who recognize Francis as pope to pass over or minimize his attacks on the faith.[2] It is rare for Catholics to publicly admit that Francis rejects the Catholic faith but to maintain that he is still the pope. Silence about Francis’s unbelief on the part of the great majority of Catholics is quite reasonably taken by non-Catholics to be consent to it. They do not pay any attention to specious rationalizations about how Francis remains the pope despite constantly attacking and denying the faith. The impression taken away by non-Catholics is that Catholics as a whole do not believe, but only pay different degrees of lip-service to the antiquated dogmas inherited from a benighted past. This fundamentally discredits the Church in a way that Francis’s personal unbelief cannot do. Everyone who minimizes or denies Francis’s unbelief, or asserts that he is still the pope, contributes to this discredit.
Fr. Harrison’s priest also objects:
… how will things play out in a few years’ time when Francis dies? … since after the December 2024 consistory 80% of all voting cardinals will have been appointed by Francis, there will be an overwhelming probability that whoever is elected will owe his election partly to the votes of men who, having received their red hats after Bergoglio lapsed from office, are not true cardinals.
In short, if Lamont, Viganó et al are right, the next man elected to the See of Peter at the next conclave will almost certainly not be a true pope. And since the cardinals he appoints will also not be true cardinals, and since the bishops he appoints will have no true jurisdiction over the faithful in their dioceses, there will be no foreseeable future way out of this rabbit hole. The Church as a recognizable, visible entity will have ceased to exist, because no future conclave will have certainly valid papal electors.
Fr. Harrison’s priest can be reassured that it will be possible to elect a new pope in the next conclave, provided that the man elected is not an open heretic as Francis is. As has been pointed out in connection with possible irregularities in the election of Francis, the peaceful and universal acceptance of a pope after a conclave provides certainty of the pope’s legitimacy. Such acceptance will guarantee the validity of a pope even if most of the cardinals who voted for him were not true cardinals.
It is true that if the papal office were to cease to exist, that would violate Christ’s promises to the Church. But in order for this to happen because of Francis’s being a heretic, it would have to be strictly impossible to elect a new pope after him. This impossibility does not exist. If all the validly appointed cardinals died out, which will not happen for some years – longer than Francis can be expected to live – a pope could still be validly elected by one or other of the means used to elect a pope in the past; by an imperfect ecumenical council as happened with Pope Martin V, or by the clergy of the diocese of Rome as happened in the first millennium.
The assertion that bishops appointed by Francis as ex-pope cannot have jurisdiction assumes the view that all jurisdiction in the Church is either possessed by or derived from the pope. This view is merely a theological opinion that is not compatible with the teaching of Vatican II. The reasons for rejecting this view have been given by myself elsewhere.[3] In the absence of a pope, bishops can still be ordained with jurisdiction over their dioceses if necessary.
A common theme among Fr. Harrison, Dr. Shaw, Bp. Schneider and others who reject the idea that Francis is no longer pope is that if we accept that Francis has lost the papacy due to his heresy, the governance of the Church will have ceased to exist, and that this is a consequence that cannot be accepted. This ignores the fact that governance of the universal Church has already ceased to exist under Francis. The governance of the Church is by its nature directed towards the just enforcement of law and the defence and enhancement of the good of the Church. Francis rules by ignoring and breaking ecclesiastical law, and working to destroy the hierarchical personnel and governmental structure of the Church. There is no governance under his rule, only despotic and criminal exercise of power. Criminal sexual misconduct, financial corruption, and open denial of the faith among the clergy are not punished, except in the case of enemies of Francis. Orthodox bishops who are good pastors have been illegally removed from office for objecting to his crimes or refusing to follow his criminal orders. Francis has a policy of protecting and appointing criminal sexual predators and protectors of such predators to high ecclesiastical office. He has appointed sexual deviants and open heretics who reject the faith and work to erase it as cardinals and as powerful officeholders in the Roman Curia. He has illegitimately given the criminal and atheist government of China control over the Chinese Catholic church. These actions are documented in the ‘Call for the Resignation of Pope Francis’ issued on May 2nd 2024.
Francis has endorsed the conclusions of the recent ‘Synod on synodality’, stated that these conclusions must be implemented throughout the Church, and ordered bishops to report on this implementation during their ad limina visits to Rome. This synod identifies the ‘People of God’ with the baptized, contradicting Catholic doctrine that requires faith in Christian revelation as conveyed by the Catholic Church and union with the Holy See for membership in the Church. It was not composed solely of bishops, but included lay people, priests and religious. Its proceedings and final document express the intention to redefine the Church as including all baptised persons, vest authority in the whole body of those persons as opposed to the pope and the bishops, and attribute the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the religious beliefs of this collective independently of Scripture, tradition and magisterial teaching. Francis did not issue its final document under his own name, but simply indicated that it was part of the magisterium, and thus claimed to extend magisterial authority to non-bishops. The synod has been denounced by Cardinal Gerhard Müller as a ‘hostile takeover of the Church’. Admittedly, its claim to identify the baptized as a whole as the source of religious authority is about as genuine as Mao’s claim to base his authority on a democratic mandate from the Chinese masses; the real goal of ‘synodality’ is control by lawless bureaucratic power and ideological conformity to progressive and anti-Catholic ideology, along the well-known lines of 20th-century communist states. Nonetheless, both in its theoretical and its real form ‘synodality’ is an attempt to destroy the divinely established structure of the Church and replace it by something else. Francis’s order to implement its ideas will, if followed, cause the Church to cease to exist.
It might be replied that although the governance of the Church has ceased to exist for the time being, it has not vanished permanently; but if Francis were not the pope, it would have ceased to exist and could never return. This is not the case, since Francis’s loss of the papacy does not prevent the election of a new pope. What is the case is that governance of the Church cannot exist until Francis is recognized as no longer being pope. Francis will continue to make the governance of the Church impossible until he goes, and he could no longer exercise the papal authority rightly even if he wanted to. If he succeeds in his goal of getting another heretic to win the election in the next papal conclave, which is not unlikely, the same situation of disappearance of governance will exist under the next heretical anti-pope. Restoration of the supreme governance of the Church requires acknowledging that heretics are not eligible to exercise this governance, and acting on this acknowledgement. This is so obvious that it is rather disconcerting to have to argue for it.
The facts that popes ipso facto lose their office for public and notorious heresy, and that Francis has ceased to be pope for this reason, thus do not spell doom for the government of the Church. The opposite is the case. Because Francis is no longer the pope as a result of his heresy, his orders and decrees are not legally binding and have no force, and there is a way of removing him and preventing him from causing further damage. Fr. Harrison and Dr. Shaw should be rejoicing over this, rather than denying that it is the case.
[1] See here for Dr. Shaw’s criticism and here for my response to him.
[2] See e.g. Fr. Harrison, “Francis Doubles Down – but Has He Apostatized?”
[3] See https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/12/on-papal-deposition-of-bishops-dr-john.html, https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-defense-of-moderate-position-on.html.
