Matt Gaspers and I have previously—and charitably—debated the likelihood that Francis was ever a valid Pope due to Benedict’s innovation of becoming Pope Emeritus. It is in the same fraternal spirit that I take up the challenge again.
Virtually no one disputes that Pope Francis is at least a public material heretic (whether he is formally heretical, that is to say, subjectively guilty is a subject for another debate).
In his recent LifeSite article, however, Mr. Gaspers disputes Matthew McCusker’s position (and the authorities he cites) that Francis is not Pope because public material heretics are not members of the visible Church (and thus automatically lose office). Gaspers writes:
With all due respect for Msgr. Van Noort, it seems to me that material heretics — those “who externally deny a truth … or several truths of divine and Catholic faith … ignorantly and innocently,” in his words — must necessarily remain members of the Church, given that pertinacity (obstinate denial or doubt) is the hallmark of heresy in its full and proper sense. If full knowledge and full consent are lacking, it is simply not the case that one is a true heretic, canonically speaking.
In the first place, with all due respect to Mr. Gaspers, if he doesn’t believe Msgr. Van Noort’s claim that material heresy by itself is enough to place a person outside the visible Church and thus automatically lose office, perhaps he will listen to Ludwig Ott, the beloved author of Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma? Ott writes:
Public heretics, even those who err in good faith (material heretics), do not belong to the body of the Church, that is, the legal commonwealth of the Church. [1]
But if Mr. Gaspers doesn’t believe Ott that material heresy by itself is enough to place a person outside the visible Church and thus automatically lose office, perhaps he will listen to the young Karl Rahner? Rahner states that this is, in fact, not just his opinion but the almost unanimous [2] position of theologians up to and including the 1940s:
…even those public heretics and schismatics who either cannot be proved to be, or in fact, are not in heresy or schism through formal sin or subjective guilt are outside the Church. In short, even heretics and schismatics in good faith…do not belong…to the visible Church…
It was the almost universal teaching of theologians even before 1943, and…it follows from the very nature of things, that even material heretics and schismatics do not belong as members to the visible Church. For if those who are outside the Church by a non-imputable, but nevertheless public and juridical act, belonged…to the Church, then the visible Church could no longer be one in respect of her visibleness…[3]
But if Mr. Gaspers doesn’t believe Rahner that material heresy by itself is enough to place a person outside the visible Church and thus automatically lose office, perhaps he will listen to the eminent Louis Cardinal Billot? Billot writes:
The excommunication of vitandi is a consummated excommunication…they are quite simply outside the Church, no differently than are heretics and schismatics, though by a different means.
I say, ‘by a different means’…For heretics and schismatics—even purely material ones—are separated from the communion of the Catholic Church by the natural divine law itself. [4]
But if Mr. Gaspers doesn’t believe Billot that material heresy by itself is enough to place a person outside the visible Church and thus automatically lose office, perhaps he will listen to Doctor of the Church St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine? Bellarmine writes:
The Fathers teach unanimously not only that heretics are outside of the Church, but also that they are ‘ipso facto’ [automatically, without Church declaration] deprived of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction and dignity…
[A] pertinacious heretic is condemned by his own judgment, that is, as Jerome explains, he is not expelled from the Church by excommunication like a lot of other sinners, but he himself expels himself from the Church. [5]
But if Mr. Gaspers still insists, despite the unanimous judgment of the Fathers (like St. Jerome) that current Canon Law somehow prevents the course of Divine Law from taking effect, perhaps he will grudgingly accept Bellarmine’s rebuttal of his position?
Nor does the response which some make avail that these Fathers speak according to ancient laws, but now since the decree of the Council of Constance they do not lose jurisdiction unless excommunicated by name…this avails to nothing. For those Fathers when they say that heretics lose jurisdiction, do not allege any human laws…rather they argued from the nature of heresy.[6]
But if all this fails to persuade, perhaps Mr. Gaspers will accept the opinion of the greatest interpreters of Canon Law of the 20th century, Fathers Wernz and Vidal? In their multi-volume work they declare:
Through notorious and openly divulged heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into heresy, by that very fact is deemed to be deprived of the power of jurisdiction even before any declaratory judgement by the Church…A pope who falls into public heresy would cease ipso facto to be a member of the Church; therefore, he would also cease to be head of the Church.[7]
The heretic Pope “is deemed to be deprived of the power of jurisdiction even before any declaratory judgement by the Church.”
But if Gaspers should insist on subsequent canonical confirmation of Wernz and Vidal (favoring Bellarmine’s position) perhaps he will accept the position of leading canonist Dr. Edward Peters? Peters writes:
I know of no author coming after Wernz who disputes this analysis [that of Wernz and Vidal]. See, e.g., Ayrinhac, CONSTITUTION (1930) 33; Sipos, ENCHIRIDION (1954) 156; Regatillo, INSTITUTIONES I (1961) 299; Palazzini, DMC III (1966) 573; and Wrenn (2001) above. As for the lack of detailed canonical examination of the mechanics for assessing possible papal heresy, Cocchi, COMMENTARIUM II/2 (1931) n. 155, ascribes it to the fact that law provides for common cases and adapts for rarer; may I say again, heretical popes are about as rare as rare can be and yet still be.
In sum, and while additional important points could be offered on this matter, in the view of modern canonists from Wernz to Wrenn, however remote is the possibility of a pope actually falling into heresy and however difficult it might be to determine whether a pope has so fallen, such a catastrophe, Deus vetet, would result in the loss of papal office. [8]
Or again, as Rahner put it in 1947:
… Moreover, a bishop or Pope, according to the universal teaching…keeps his ecclesiastical powers even if he is occultly unbelieving in the purely internal forum [i.e. in his heart, not public]. But possession of ordinary ecclesiastical authority [office holding] and non-membership in the Church [for public material heresy] are mutually exclusive notions…it is contrary to the nature of an ordinary sovereign power in a community, that it should be capable of being exercised by a non-member or outsider. For ordinary, enduring exercise of a function proper to the nature of a community does, in fact, constitute membership.
It is a little-known fact (but extremely important that it become widely known) that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Commentary on Galatians, teaches that although no Churchman has power from God to excommunicate a co-equal successor of the Apostles, or a superior, i.e. a Successor of St. Peter (or for that matter, an Angel from Heaven), yet:
…the Apostle [Paul] says the dignity of the Gospel teaching which comes directly from God, is so great that if a man or even an angel preach another gospel …he is anathema, i.e., must be rejected and expelled.
… [W]e must solve the objections which arise on this point. The first is that, since an equal has no authority over his peers and much less over his superiors, it seems that the Apostle [Paul] has no power to excommunicate the apostles, who are his peers, and less so, angels who are superior… Therefore, the anathema is invalid. The answer to this is that the Apostle passed this sentence not on his own authority, but on the authority of the Gospel teaching [Deposit of Faith], of which he was the minister, and the authority of which teaches that whoever says anything contrary to it must [emphasis added] be expelled and cast out.[9]
Yet Gaspers claims that St. Thomas supports his view that pertinacity must be present:
it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error (ST II-II, q. 5, art. 3).
But Thomas is speaking about the subjective guilt of the person, not whether he is still a member of the visible Church. In his Commentary on Galatians, he keeps the door open to the possibility that even material heretics who have not been warned and found pertinacious are ontologically outside the Church, again, as when St. Paul said: “Let them be anathema”:
But whether he [Paul] was then and there passing sentence on heretics by these words is open to question, since sentence was later passed against heretics in the Councils. Yet it can be said that perhaps he was showing that they deserved to be excommunicated.[10]
At any rate, the Church has had 750 years since St. Thomas to reflect, refine and clarify.
If after all this, Mr. Gaspers should insist that only a public FORMAL heretic Pope could ever lose office, then allow me to inform him that Canon Law itself (Canon 1321. 3) asserts that Francis is presumed to be a formal heretic, not merely a material one:
Unless it is otherwise evident IMPUTABILITY IS PRESUMED whenever an EXTERNAL VIOLATION has occurred.[xi] (emphasis mine)
Francis, by his remorseless and repeated materially heretical declarations—such as stating that the death penalty is illicit or that that all religions are paths to God—is, by these EXTERNAL VIOLATIONS PRESUMED a formal heretic because it is NOT “otherwise evident that he is not.”
But if Canon Law says that Francis is to be presumed to be formally heretical, then even Raymond Cardinal Burke must agree that Francis is not Pope, for this is exactly what he told Catholic World Report in December 2016:
If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic. And so, that could happen.[12]
Hundreds of thousands of Catholics are now waiting for His Eminence to follow through on this statement.
Not that we cannot presume the invalidity already. For as I have been at pains to demonstrate above, it is the near unanimous opinion among theologians that even a material heretic, that is to say, a man who is NOT a heretic even in the eyes of God, is nevertheless, NOT a member of the visible Church and therefore loses his office ipso facto. As Bellarmine says of Pope Liberius losing his office to Pope Felix:
Then two years later came the lapse of Liberius, of which we have spoken above. Then indeed the Roman clergy, stripping Liberius of his pontifical dignity, went over to Felix, whom they knew [then] to be a Catholic. From that time, Felix began to be the true Pontiff. For although Liberius was not a heretic, nevertheless he was considered one, on account of the peace he made with the Arians, and by that presumption the pontificate could rightly [merito] be taken from him: for men are not bound, or able to read hearts; but when they see that someone is a heretic by his external works, they judge him to be a heretic pure and simple [simpliciter], and condemn him as a heretic. [13]
It is worth mentioning that although many writers quote Thomas Cardinal Cajetan that a Pope only loses office AFTER an imperfect council declares him so, it is a little-known fact (but extremely important that it become widely known) that Cajetan later changed his position to that of Robert Cardinal Bellarmine:
… [Cajetan] abandoned his thesis, so strongly defended in De Comparatione, that in the case of a heresy the pope is not ipso facto to be considered deposed.” [14]
In conclusion, against the position of Matt Gaspers (and others) it seems it simply must be the case that a public material heretic Pope loses office BEFORE any declaratory action on the part of the Church. For as former Vatican Librarian Alfons Cardinal Stickler writes:
…[in] the first millennium of the Church…in the light of that tradition…it appears clearly that the pope stands for the Church which has never erred, which cannot err, in questions that involve eternal spiritual salvation. Therefore, he is the absolute (and consequently, implicitly infallible) guarantor of the truth which one who wishes to be Catholic must profess…if the pope really errs [publicly] in matters already defined (and this is something to be proved because it is often erroneously asserted [by Sedevacantists for example]), he is no longer pope and therefore does not compromise and cannot compromise papal infallibility…[15]
I have long argued that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that Pope Benedict’s resignation was invalid (Cf. The Third Secret of Fatima and the Synodal Church, Vol. I Pope Benedict’s Resignation, Amazon). But if somehow the election of Pope Francis were valid, it is hard to see how the preponderance of the evidence does not now indicate that he has lost his office due to material heresy—even if he were somehow not formally guilty of heresy. [16]
ENDNOTES
[1] Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (TAN Books, 1974), pp. 309-311.
[2] As Gaspers points out: “merely material heretics, even if manifest, are members of the Church, is defended by Franzelin, De Groot, D’Herbigny, Caperan, Terrien, and a few others.”
[3] Karl Rahner, “Die Zugehörigkeit zur Kirche nach der Lehre der Enzyklika Pius XII Mystici Corporis Christi,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 69 Band (1947), pp. 129-188. Cf. https://archive.org/details/theologicalinves0002karl/page/12/mode/2up?view=theater&q=universal+teaching+of+theologians
[4] Louis Cardinal Billot, S.J. Tractatus De Ecclesia Christi 5th Edition (Rome: Gregorian Pontifical University, 1927), pp. 310-311.
[5] St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, On the Roman Pontiff, Vol. 1, Book II, Chapter 30, trans. Ryan Grant (Mediatrix Press, 2015), pp. 308-310. As cited by Billot, p. 295. Cf. https://wmreview.co.uk/2023/01/09/tradivox-vi/#_ftnref9
[6] Bellarmine, On the Roman Pontiff, Vol. 1, Book II, Chapter 30, pp. 308-310.
[7] Fr. Franz Wernz and Fr. Pedro Vidal, Ius Canonicum II, p. 453.
[8] https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/a-canonical-primer-on-popes-and-heresy/
[9] https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/SSGalatians.htm#12
[10] https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/SSGalatians.htm#12
[11] Canon 1321 P. 4 in the latest revision of the 1983 Code. A thank you to Canonist Marc Balestrieri for bringing this to my attention.
[12] https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/12/19/cardinal-burke-no-i-am-not-saying-that-pope-francis-is-in-heresy/
[13] De Romano Pontifice, lib. II, cap. 30.
[14] Ulrich Horst, Juan de Torquemada and Thomas de Vio Cajetan, (Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 2012), p. 172. Horst is likely referencing Cajetan’s response to Luther in De divina institutione pontificatus Romani Pontificis.
[15] The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 60, no. 3 (October 1974), pp. 427-441; Cf. https://www.obeythepope.com/2017/12/the-indefectible-church-of-rome.html
[16]Sedevacantist critics undoubtedly claim the same of all the Popes since John XXIII, but we must remember that we are not merely talking about error on the part of the Popes, but heresy. And heresy means the denial of a teaching to be believed with divine and Catholic faith. It is up to them to prove that any of these Popes publicly denied De Fide dogmas of the Church in the unmistakable manner that Bergoglio has; Cf. https://www.padreperegrino.org/2022/10/infallible/.
