Responses to Some Anti-Sedevacantist Objections

by John Lane

It is true that some authorities have taught that in the extraordinary case of a pope falling into heresy (something the best authorities believe to be impossible), the loss of office would not occur, or would not be known, until after a declaration by a General Council or a Conclave. Who are these few? John of St. Thomas, Suarez, Cajetan, Bioux. Not a canonised saint or a Doctor among them, and they constitute a tiny minority. The opposite view is the common one, and in fact according to Bellarmine it is the constant tradition of Holy Church. He writes: “Therefore, the true opinion is the fifth, according to which the Pope who is manifestly a heretic ceases by himself to be Pope and head, in the same way as he ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church; and for this reason he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the opinion of all the ancient Fathers, who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction…” (De Romano Pontifice, bk II, ch. 30.)

Bellarmine himself has made clear only a few paragraphs before that no declaration is necessary. He writes: “…it is proven with arguments from authority and from reason that the manifest heretic is ‘ipso facto’ deposed. The argument from authority is based on St. Paul (Titus, c. 3), who orders that the heretic be avoided after two warnings, that is, after showing himself to be manifestly obstinate – which means before any excommunication or judicial sentence. And this is what St. Jerome writes, adding that the other sinners are excluded from the Church by sentence of excommunication, but the heretics exile themselves and separate themselves by their own act from the body of Christ.” (Ibid.)