In the interests of discussing important issues of our time, Rorate is posting this reply of Dr. Lamont to Dr. Shaw. Readers should bear in mind that we do not necessarily endorse the positions of guest articles posted here.
Reply to Joseph Shaw on Francis
John Lamont
I am grateful to Dr. Joseph Shaw for his discussion[1] of my article ‘What Are the Consequences of Francis’s Theology?’[2], in which I concluded that Francis is no longer the pope because he is a public and notorious heretic. I think his attempt to rebut my conclusion did as well as any such attempt could do, while falling short of being convincing. I will explain why I hold this to be so.
The question turns on a number of theological and canonical issues. The Church has a lot of experience in trying and sentencing heretics, so these issues have been extensively discussed and thoroughly worked out by theologians and by the law and teaching of the Church. To bring clarity and order to the mass of materials that bear on our subject, it will be necessary, at the cost of some repetition of the material in the earlier article, to start from first principles.
Belief and membership in the Church
Newman observes:
When our Lord went up on high, He left His representative behind Him. This was Holy Church, His mystical Body and Bride, a Divine Institution, and the shrine and organ of the Paraclete, who speaks through her till the end comes. She, to use an Anglican poet’s words, is “His very self below,” as far as men on earth are equal to the discharge and fulfilment of high offices, which primarily and supremely are His. These offices, which specially belong to Him as Mediator, are commonly considered to be three; He is Prophet, Priest, and King; and after His pattern, and in human measure, Holy Church has a triple office too; not the Prophetical alone and in isolation, as these Lectures virtually teach, but three offices, which are indivisible, though diverse, viz. teaching, rule, and sacred ministry. ...Theology is the fundamental and regulating principle of the whole Church system. It is commensurate with Revelation, and Revelation is the initial and essential idea of Christianity. It is the subject-matter, the formal cause, the expression, of the Prophetical Office, and, as being such, has created both the Regal Office and the Sacerdotal. ...If the Church is to be regal, a witness for Heaven, unchangeable amid secular changes, if in every age she is to hold her own, and proclaim as well as profess the truth, if she is to thrive without or against the civil power, if she is to be resourceful and self-recuperative under all fortunes, she must be more than Holy and Apostolic; she must be Catholic. Hence it is that, first, she has ever from her beginning onwards had a hierarchy and a head, with a strict unity of polity, the claim of an exclusive divine authority and blessing, the trusteeship of the gospel gifts, and the exercise over her members of an absolute and almost despotic rule.[3]
To these three offices of the Church correspond the three munera of the priestly office: the munus docendi (office of teaching), the munus sanctificandi (office of sanctifying), and the munus regendi (office of ruling).
Newman mentions one respect in which prophecy comes before the other offices of the Church, as being the initial and essential idea of Christianity. There is another way in which it is fundamental. Unlike other polities, allegiance to Christ and his Church happens through belief in Christ’s message. All the other elements of the allegiance that makes one a member of the Church begin with and are founded upon this belief. That is why in the rite of baptism, the person to be baptised asks for faith, renounces Satan, professes the faith, and says the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Rejection of this belief is rejection of allegiance to Christ and of membership in His Church.
The Catholic Church differs from Protestant churches in claiming to be a political society that is completely developed and that was founded as such by Christ. Theologians express the notion of a completely developed political society by the term ‘perfect society’. This term does not mean a society made up of perfect people, but a complete society — a society that contains within itself everything needed to achieve its end, including a supreme authority possessing legislative, judicial, executive, and coercive power that is subject to no-one and to which all other persons and authorities are subject. Sovereign states are perfect societies in the temporal realm, and the Church is the sole perfect society in the spiritual realm. Although human beings have the power to set up temporal states on their own, they cannot as humans establish a sovereign power in the spiritual realm, a realm which belongs to God. This can be done by God alone, and it was done by Christ while on earth. As Leo XIII asserted in Satis cognitum:
4. ... Not the foundation of the Church alone, but its whole constitution, belongs to the class of things effected by Christ’s free choice. ..10. ... Wherefore Jesus Christ bade all men, present and future, follow Him as their leader and Saviour; and this, not merely as individuals, but as forming a society, organized and united in mind. In this way a duly constituted society should exist, formed out of the divided multitude of peoples, one in faith, one in end, one in the participation of the means adapted to the attainment of the end, and one as subject to one and the same authority. To this end He established in the Church all principles which necessarily tend to make organized human societies, and through which they attain the perfection proper to each.
The fundamental public law of the Church, which determines her structures of authority and law, is thus of divine origin and is not subject to alteration. The requirement of belief for membership in the Church is part of this divinely established structure. Faith is also of course required for personal salvation, and is the beginning of this salvation; this is one reason why faith is needed for membership in the Church, the Body of Christ whose mission is salvation. Allowing membership of the Church to those without faith would frustrate the basic goal of the Church.
This requirement of belief needs to be explicated. We are commanded by God to believe the Christian faith with our hearts and confess it with our mouths (cf. Romans 10:9). Violation of either or these duties is a sin. Inner disbelief is a sin and as such a crime against God’s law; outward expression of doubt or disbelief is also a sin, and is a crime both as an act of disbelief and as an attack on the faith of the Church. The first crime of inward disbelief is subject to God’s judgment in this life only in the sacrament of confession. The second crime of outward doubt or disbelief is not only a sin that must be confessed, but a crime that is subject to the judgment of the Church as well as the direct judgment of God.
The second crime typically arises from and manifests the first crime of inner doubt or disbelief. This need not always be the case, as can be seen from the example of an English Catholic in the early 18th century who takes the oaths against transubstantiation in order to obtain a lucrative government appointment, while inwardly retaining belief in the doctrine. Moral theologians classify this as a sin of external denial of the faith, rather than as a sin of heresy. However, as the Rev. Eric F. Mackenzie observes in his The Delict of Heresy, ‘the canonist properly presumes a sin of heresy as the cause of external word and acts contrary to faith, until the presumption is shown to be wrong by contrary facts. Hence the same canonical punishments have always been imposed upon both types of sinners.’[4] We are not concerned here with this sin of external denial of the faith.
The truths that Catholics are required to believe fall into more than one category. We are here concerned with the truths that must be believed with the assent of divine and Catholic faith. The Latin Code of Canon Law describes these truths as follows:
Can. 750 §1. A person must believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, that is, in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium which is manifested by the common adherence of the Christian faithful under the leadership of the sacred magisterium; therefore all are bound to avoid any doctrines whatsoever contrary to them.[5]
Heresy consists in denying some but not all of these truths, while apostasy is the denial of all of them:
Can. 751 Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith...[6]
These canonical definitions are simply statements of the Catholic faith and do not contain positive legislation.
The term ‘pertinax’ in the authoritative Latin original of the Code refers to the quality of pertinacity. As explained in my original article, this means that the doubt or denial of a truth of the faith is done knowingly and willingly, ‘sciens et volens’. It does not add anything to the normal meaning of the concept of doubting or denying a truth, because ascribing an action to someone in normal speech presumes that the action in question is a voluntary one, and voluntary action is action that is done knowingly and willingly. Pertinacity is specified in the law to make explicit the fact that the voluntary character of the action — its being done knowingly and willingly — is something that must be established in law in order for a heretic to be guilty of the crime of heresy.
The term ‘guilty’ can cause confusion due to the range of meaning it has in the English language. This term can be used to mean simply that someone has really committed a crime. It can also mean that the commission of the crime is an established fact from the point of view of the law. These differences of meaning are clarified by the legal terminology that has been established in canon law. Mackenzie describes this terminology:
An occult delict is defined as one which is not public; which has not been noised abroad, and took place in such circumstances that it will not be noised abroad. An act has been committed sufficient in its nature and in the circumstances to be a full violation of a canonical penal law, and hence is a delict; it could have been understood as a delict, had any observer been present, or, being present, had the observer adverted to the act; but it so happened that no observer did advert to the act, or at least no observer was aware of the identity of the delinquent. Occult delicts are distinguished from public delicts, which are known to the community, or to a small group which will almost inevitably make the delict known to the community; and from notorious delicts, which have been committed under such circumstances that they cannot be concealed by any artifice, nor excused by any subterfuge of law (notoriety of fact), or else have been juridically proved by process of law and so entered upon official records (notoriety of law).[7]
Heresy and membership in the Church
Theologians have debated about the consequences for membership in the Church of the sin of purely mental rejection of the faith that is not manifested in any outward act. We are not concerned with this subject, and will only address the consequences of the outward doubt or denial of the faith that is a crime in canon law.
Because outward profession of faith is a requirement for membership in the Church, the Church has always held that heretics cannot hold ecclesiastical office. Leo XIII teaches this in Satis cognitum:
9. ... The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. “No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic” (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).15. ... it is absurd to imagine that he who is outside can command in the Church.
St. Robert Bellarmine observed that the Fathers unanimously agree that heretics in virtue of their heresy are deprived of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction and office, and that the Fathers base their position on divine revelation rather than on ecclesiastical positive law.[8]
How are we to reconcile this with Dr. Shaw’s case of the atheistic French bishop? Dr. Shaw puts forward the following possibility:
Suppose this is the 18th century and your bishop is one of those French atheist bishops who took the salary and spent his time with his mistresses in Paris. This being so his long-suffering Vicar General would receive the priest’s request and send him back with the necessary authorization. This process would not be impeded by the bishop’s rejection of the Faith, because legally speaking he is the bishop, and this process is a legal process. Only in the (sadly, unlikely) case of the bishop’s being denounced by the Pope or some other properly constituted superior (such as the judge of a Church court), would the bishop be removed from office for heresy or apostasy.
This is certainly something that might happen and that probably did happen upon occasion. But Dr. Shaw does not specify how the atheism of the bishop manifested itself. Atheism is apostasy rather than heresy, but as the results of heresy and apostasy are the same for our purposes — loss of membership of the Church and consequently of all ecclesiastical offices — we will not consider this difference, and will treat the possibility as if it referred to a case of heresy. This sort of possibility is foreseen by canon law, and the consequences of the bishop’s unbelief depend on the way in which it is manifested. Mackenzie describes the alternative results as follows:
The administration of Sacraments and Sacramentals involves the power of Orders. Other activities of the clergy are based upon the power of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is defined as the power of ruling, or the power of commanding the faithful in all matters which arc in any way necessary for the attainment of the ends for which the Church was instituted. Its two chief kinds are ordinary jurisdiction, where the power of ruling is attached to an office and hence is possessed by whoever holds that office, and delegated jurisdiction, where a person is given certain authority, without possessing the office to which the authority regularly belongs. Obviously, it would be highly improper for anyone but a Catholic to exercise either ordinary or delegated authority, and thus to assume the role of directing the Catholic faithful in their religious life. Canon Law, guided by this principle, has consistently declared that those who do not possess membership in the Church,—heretics or other excommunicates,—are thereby incapacitated for the exercise of jurisdiction over the faithful. ...We have therefore the following possibilities:1. The occult heretic; he is bound in conscience to avoid the exercise of jurisdiction until he has been absolved; but may licitly and validly act when such actions are necessary, either to avoid infamy (canon 2232), or when requested even implicitly by the faithful; save for these exceptions, he acts validly, but illicitly.2. The public heretic, who has not yet been restrained by his Bishop or by judicial sentence: his acts of jurisdiction are valid, but illicit, except when requested by the faithful.3. The sentenced heretic: his acts are both invalid and illicit, except in the one case when he is requested to act by a dying Catholic.This last case is rare, but may be briefly reviewed. If a dying Catholic wishes to receive the Sacraments, for the peace of his conscience and (if the Sacrament be Matrimony) for the legitimation of offspring, any priest, even a vitandus, is fully empowered by the Church to act in her name. Hence he may administer the Sacrament of Penance, and therewith exercise jurisdiction and grant absolution from any sin or censure whatsoever. Canon 2261, §3, permits a Catholic who is in danger of death to seek and receive the Sacrament of Penance from even a sentenced heretical priest, even if there are present or available other priests in good standing, possessed of faculties for the administration of this and other Sacraments. This is a favor extended to the Catholic in what may be the last moments of his life, and is designed to remove any difficulty or repugnance which he might feel toward the Sacrament of Penance, if he could only receive it from the approved priest. This generous permission exists only in regard to the Sacrament of Penance. The sentenced heretical priest cannot administer other Sacraments or Sacramentals if an approved priest is present.[9]
The atheistic French bishop in Dr. Shaw’s example is ex hypothesi not a sentenced heretic, and must therefore be either an occult or a merely public heretic. In either case he can validly exercise jurisdiction.
This canonical approach is an example of how the Church applies the fundamental divinely revealed law to concrete circumstances in order to accommodate the common good. The heretic is enabled to act for the good of the faithful even when he has left the Church through heresy; this is made possible through positive legislation by the Church’s supplying jurisdiction that the heretic cannot possess himself. The divine law is not violated in the case of the sentenced heretic, because there is no question of the heretic possessing ordinary jurisdiction. We will accept that Francis as a public notorious heretic could still exercise the sort of jurisdiction that Mackenzie permits for those in category 3) above, while maintaining that he has lost the papal office and ceased to be a member of the Church as a result of his heresy.
Dr. Shaw might object that this answer presupposes that the bishop is merely a public or occult heretic because he has not been tried and sentenced. It assumes the existence of a properly functioning Church where if a bishop makes his unbelief publicly known in an unmistakable fashion, his denunciation, trial, and sentencing would follow in accordance with the law.
Mackenzie reasonably supposes that this is what will happen, because he is writing about the proper functioning of the law. He divides heresy into occult, public, and notorious. When writing about the effects of heresy on jurisdiction, he then divides heretics into occult, public, and sentenced. This presupposes that notorious heretics will be tried for heresy.
But what happens in reality can be different. In eighteenth century France there were of course means of denouncing this crime to ecclesiastical courts that could have acted to correct it. But what if none of these courts were willing to act against a bishop whose heresy was notorious, out of corruption, fear of political consequences, or some other reason? Would the bishop have then retained his episcopal office? Mackenzie’s analysis does not help with this kind of situation.
The response to this objection is that there must be some degree of flagrant public denial of the faith that would lead to the automatic loss of episcopal office by a bishop. This principle was recognised (rather than created) by the 1917 Latin Code of Canon Law, which stated:
Canon 188. Any office becomes vacant upon the fact and without any declaration by tacit resignation recognized by the law itself if a cleric: ...4.° Publicly defects from the Catholic faith. ...
Suppose for example a bishop were to publicly make a profession of Islam, publicly denounce Christianity, write to the Pope announcing that he was formally renouncing the Christian faith, take up the regular and strict practice of the Muslim religion, and marry four wives; but all this while attempting to retain his office as bishop, and while attempting to use the authority of his office to advance the Muslim cause. Suppose further that the pope did not act against him for this apostasy, perhaps out of fear of retaliation. Would we then say that he continued to hold his office of bishop, simply because the pope had not judged him to be an apostate and removed him from his office? The idea is absurd.
The degree of public evidence of unbelief needed for a bishop to lose his office automatically, and the question of whether or not that degree of evidence existed in a particular case, can be debated; the claim that a bishop can lose his office purely through a sufficiently public manifestation of unbelief cannot. In the case of an unbelieving bishop whom his superior refuses to try or judge, it is a question of how extreme and undeniable his public manifestations of unbelief are. It depends on the individual circumstances of the actual situation. The original article made the case that Francis’ manifestations of unbelief are extreme and undeniable enough to lead to loss of office.
If the bishop’s unbelief turns out to be flagrant enough to lead to loss of office, it is a further question whether or not he could exercise jurisdiction for the good of the faithful. He could at least exercise the kinds of jurisdiction mentioned by Mackenzie in 3) above, but any jurisdiction that he exercised would be supplied to him by the Church, not by the episcopal office that he had lost.
The case of a flagrantly unbelieving pope differs from that of such an unbelieving bishop. The flagrantly unbelieving bishop’s jurisdiction is supplied to him by the Church. Supplied jurisdiction, as Mackenzie observes, has to be ultimately supplied by someone whose jurisdiction is not itself supplied but is ordinary – is possessed by virtue of his office. But no-one except the pope possesses the powers of the papal office in the form of ordinary jurisdiction. If a pope loses the papal office through heresy, it is therefore impossible for him to exercise the powers of that office through supplied jurisdiction. There is no other pope to supply them. He has simply lost these powers along with his office, and cannot possess them in any form; and nor can anyone else, until a new pope is elected in his stead.
Some Catholics might be reluctant to accept this possibility, because they hold that the entire power of jurisdiction in the Church has been given to the pope by God in such a way that, as Domenico Palmieri S.J. writes, ‘the supreme ruler’s authority is such that every power in the polity is either his own power, or is derived from his own power in such a way that the supreme power either formally or virtually contains every other power by which the polity is ruled ... the plenitude of power of the Roman Pontiff is of such a nature that all the jurisdiction by which the Church is ruled in found in it as in its source.’ Holding this view, they might fear that if a pope comes to automatically lose the papal office because of notorious heresy, not only the papal jurisdiction but all episcopal and other jurisdiction would cease to exist in the Church; and this would seem to them a betrayal of Christ’s promises to the Church. However, this understanding of papal jurisdiction is contestable (see this and this). The idea that the vacancy of the papal office would lead to the disappearance of jurisdiction in the Church is not compatible with Catholic tradition and law, which hold that jurisdiction continues to exist in the Church in the interregnum between the death of a pope and the election of a new one.
Public heresy by notoriety of fact in the case of a pope
The third possibility given by Mackenzie above refers to a cleric who has been found guilty of heresy by an ecclesiastical court. Mackenzie assumes here that legal guilt for heresy will arise from notoriety of law resulting from the sentence of a court. This is a proper assumption in a work that refers to the situation of clerics who have ecclesiastical superiors, and that is intended to describe the normal functioning of canon law and ecclesiastical justice. This assumption cannot however obtain in the case of a pope, who has no earthly superior to judge him. A pope cannot be guilty of heresy by notoriety of law; he can only be guilty by notoriety of fact.
Dr. Shaw does not dispute that Francis is a heretic through notoriety of fact, but this issue is worth addressing, because many Catholics do dispute that this can happen. Some commentators have denied that it is possible for any pope to be legally guilty of heresy by notoriety of fact. They only admit the possibility of such legal guilt if a pope judges himself to be guilty of the crime of heresy. This position means that a pope can only lose the papal office for heresy in circumstances where he admits his crime and presumably repents of his heresy. If he wishes to retain the papacy in order to better propagate the heresy to which he is publicly committed, he cannot be legally guilty of that heresy and hence continues in the papal office.
This consequence frustrates the intention of the law excluding heretics from the Church and from ecclesiastical office, because a prime reason for this law is to protect the faithful from the attacks on the faith that impenitent heretics holding ecclesiastical office will perpetrate. This law and its intention are divinely revealed and do not admit of exceptions. A position that makes an exception from them in the case of a public and impenitent heretic, simply because he happens to hold the papal office, cannot therefore be maintained.
We must accept that a pope can be legally guilty of heresy through notoriety of fact. The Church has accepted that legal guilt can be incurred through notoriety of fact as well as through notoriety of law. For example, the constitution Ad evitanda issued by Martin V in 1418 excused Catholics from the duty of shunning persons who have committed a crime incurring the punishment of excommunication but have not been convicted of this crime in an ecclesiastical court, except in the case of ‘someone of whom it shall be known so notoriously that he has incurred the sentence passed by the canon for laying sacrilegious hands upon a cleric that the fact cannot be concealed by any tergiversation nor excused by any legal defence. For we will abstinence from communion with such a one, in accordance with the canonical sanctions, even though he be not denounced.’ It is clearly possible for a pope, like anyone else, to commit the crime of heresy in such an open manner that it cannot be concealed by any artifice or clever subterfuge or be excused by any legal assumption or circumstantial evidence — which is the definition of notoriety of fact.
Some Catholics will be inclined to reject this idea out of hand as being sedevacantism. They will assume that to be a sedevacantist is automatically to be a crackpot. Certainly the sedevacantists who do not consider any popes after Pius XII to be real popes often are crackpots and are clearly in the wrong. But they are not wrong because they think that a heretic cannot be a pope; they are wrong because there is no conclusive evidence for the popes between Pius XII and Francis being heretics. These popes did things that would make them suspect of heresy, as, e.g., kissing the Koran, but that is as far as it goes. They also made a number of public statements in defence of the faith - e.g. Paul VI’s Mysterium Ecclesiae and Credo of the People of God, John Paul II’s Dominus Iesus and Veritatis Splendor. These public statements lend credence to the claim that such heretical statements or actions as they may have made were cases of error rather than of knowing denial of the faith.
In contrast, no such statements exist in the case of Francis. We could grant, without conceding, that there is evidence for the heresy of some of these popes that might satisfy the civil standard of proof — that would make it more probable than not that they were heretics. Even if this were to be the case, it would not mean that they had ceased to be popes, because the standard of evidence necessary for notoriety of fact is higher than the standard of evidence needed for civil proof. One can undoubtedly put forward some clever subterfuge or cavilling legal argument to defend the popes between Pius XII and Francis from the charge of heresy, and this has in fact often been done.
One should add that these sedevacantists have not always had justice done to them. Some of them, like Fr. Anthony Cekada and John Lane, are intelligent men. Those who reject their position have not always properly distinguished between their being wrong because they clearly lack sufficient evidence for heresy in the case of the popes they reject, and their being wrong because the very idea of a pope being a heretic and thereby losing the papacy is obviously irrational, schismatic, and beyond the pale. The former is the case, but not the latter.
The original article detailed Francis’s adherence to the heresy that asserts: ‘God not only permits, but positively wills, the pluralism and diversity of religions, both Christian and non-Christian.’ The evidence given in the original article was sufficient to establish that Francis is a public and notorious heretic by notoriety of fact. The article also mentioned other heresies that Francis has maintained. We will explore one of these other heresies here, in order to provide a deeper understanding of his heretical belief. The ‘Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church’ denounced him for holding this heresy:
VI. Moral principles and moral truths contained in divine revelation and in the natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of action, inasmuch as these are always gravely unlawful on account of their object.[John Paul II, Veritatis splendor 115: “Each of us knows how important is the teaching which represents the central theme of this Encyclical and which is today being restated with the authority of the Successor of Peter. Each of us can see the seriousness of what is involved, not only for individuals but also for the whole of society, with the reaffirmation of the universality and immutability of the moral commandments, particularly those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts”, DH 4971.See also: Rom. 3:8; 1 Cor. 6: 9-10; Gal. 5: 19-21; Apoc. 22:15; 4th Lateran Council, chapter 22, DH 815; Council of Constance, Bull Inter cunctas, 14, DH 1254; Paul VI, Humanae vitae, 14: AAS 60 (1968) 490-91; John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, 83: AAS 85 (1993): 1199, DH 4970.]
It pointed out that Francis clearly stated this heresy in the following passage of the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia:
Amoris laetitia 304: ... It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations.
This heresy was the thesis of a moral theory that was given the name of proportionalism. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor was principally aimed at denouncing this heresy, as the encyclical itself stated:
4. ... it seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the Church’s moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied. In fact, a new situation has come about within the Christian community itself, which has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and objections of a human and psychological, social and cultural, religious and even properly theological nature, with regard to the Church’s moral teachings. It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine, on the basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions. At the root of these presuppositions is the more or less obvious influence of currents of thought which end by detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth. Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is rejected; certain of the Church’s moral teachings are found simply unacceptable ... In particular, note should be taken of the lack of harmony between the traditional response of the Church and certain theological positions, encountered even in Seminaries and in Faculties of Theology, with regard to questions of the greatest importance for the Church and for the life of faith of Christians, as well as for the life of society itself. ...5. .... The specific purpose of the present Encyclical is this: to set forth, with regard to the problems being discussed, the principles of a moral teaching based upon Sacred Scripture and the living Apostolic Tradition (footnote 12: Cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 10). ...81. In teaching the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the Church accepts the teaching of Sacred Scripture. The Apostle Paul emphatically states: “Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10). If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it.[10]
Francis is perfectly aware of the teaching of the Catholic faith as set forward in Veritatis splendor. He had serious academic qualifications and academic posts before his elevation to the papacy. The Catholic theology faculties in Argentina where he served as professor and rector may not have been top-flight academic institutions, but it is unreasonable to think that their lecturers could be ignorant of Catholic doctrine. The Society of Jesus to which he belongs is an intellectual outfit that requires intellectual ability and academic qualifications. Moreover, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he presided over a conference on that encyclical. Here is an article from the Catholic News Service in 2004:
Catholic University of Argentina convenes International Congress on 10th anniversary of Veritatis SplendorBuenos Aires, Argentina, May 20, 2004 / 22:00 pmIn order to mark the 10th anniversary of the papal encyclical Veritatis Splendor, the Pontifical Universtity of Argentina is organizing an international theological congress in September, bringing together Catholic intellectuals from around the world.The congress will begin on September 23 with conferences by Arcbishop Angelo Amato, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Jose Rovai, President of the Bishops Committee on Faith and Culture, Professor Livio Melina of the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University in Rome, and Professor Real Tremblay of the Alfonsian Academy of Rome.Friday, September 24, will begin with a video conference led by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice. A roundtable discussion will follow between Auxiliary Bishop of La Plata Antonio Marino, Professor Jean Laffitte of the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University in Rome, Professor Juan Jose Perez Soba of the St. Damasus Theology Department of Madrid, and Professor Francisco Leocata of the Pontifical University of Argentina.Friday afternoon will feature a video conference with Cardinal Georges Cottier, Theologian of the Pontifical Household, with a roundtable discussion to follow between Bishop Eduardo Miras, President of the Argentinean Bishops Conference, Professor Angel Rodriguez Luño of the Pontifical Univerisiy of Santa Cruz in Rome, and Professor Juan de Dios Larru of the St. Damasus Theology Department of MadridSaturday’s panelists include Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, with a roundtable discussion between Archbishop Estanislao Karlic, Archbishop emeritus of Parana, Professor Jaroslav Merecki of the Univeristy of Lublin, Poland, Fr. Domingo Basso, Rector emeritus of the Pontifical University of Argentina, and Professor Fernando Ortega of the Ponficial University of Argentina.The closing address of the congress will be given by the Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical University of Argentina, Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio.[11]
The heresies that have been identified in the public statements and actions of Francis are views that achieved wide currency in the second half of the twentieth century, and were promoted by many Jesuit scholars. Indeed, Jesuits were the main figures in elaborating and defending these views. Richard McCormick S.J. was the main proponent of proportionalism; we have noted in the original article that Jacques Dupuis S.J. and Karl Rahner S.J. were main proponents of religious pluralism. We can find the ‘fundamental option’ theory of Karl Rahner in the utterances of Francis as well — the task of doing so is left as an exercise for the reader.
Many of the magisterial documents of John Paul II were explicitly aimed at condemning these views as incompatible with the Catholic faith. These condemnations caused enormous resentment among the Jesuits and were the object of constant, highly-publicized attacks and attempted refutations in all the Jesuit publications. It would have been humanly impossible for Francis to be ignorant of these controversies. He simply accepts the heresies that were promoted by members of his Society and condemned by John Paul II. There is nothing surprising about this.
It is a situation that was anticipated with uneasiness by many Catholics when a Jesuit was elected to the papacy; they feared that a Jesuit would hold the heresies current in the Society of Jesus. Francis does so. He understands these heresies well — as is shown by his accurate exposition of them. He knows that they were condemned as heresies and are contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and his words and actions in support of them are clearly consciously designed to undo the effects of these condemnations and to obtain acceptance of these heresies as legitimate positions or even as the (new) teaching of the Church. There is no doubt at all that Francis knows that his considered views expressed in public statements are contrary to teachings that the Catholic Church has presented as requiring the assent of divine and catholic faith. It is simply foolish to deny that this is so.
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| From top left: Teilhard de Chardin; Karl Rahner; Pedro Arrupe; Jorge Bergoglio; Tom Reese; Marko Rupnik; Antonio Spadaro; James Martin |
Francis and the promises of Christ to the Church
Dr. Shaw does not directly deny that Francis has knowingly and willingly denied teachings of the Catholic faith. Instead, he argues that Francis has not ceased to be pope. He writes:
My objection is a practical one. If some kind of council or gang of cardinals denounced a pope, then at least the same people would presumably organize a conclave to elect a new pope. This council would in some way, on the John of St Thomas theory, represent a sufficient kind of legal authority in the Church. If Dr Lamont is correct and this attribution of the necessary authority to such a council is impossible (and I agree, it does seem dubious), what is going to happen next?If, instead, on Dr Lamont’s preferred view, a large body of Catholics agreed that a pope was a heretic and shunned him, and if that was (as he argues) sufficient to establish publicly, legally, that this pope had fallen from office, and if the Pope refused to accept this, what then? A stubborn, heretical pope would very probably be able to reign over a large majority of the Church thanks to timeserving functionaries, people who shared his errors, and the cooperation of secular authorities. As for the rest of the Church, there would be no coherent body of prelates (as per John of St Thomas’ council) who could offer an institutional alternative. This being so, the pope would continue to appoint cardinals and bishops, to pass laws, and do all the things popes do. The next pope would be elected by a mixed body of valid and invalid cardinals. The election itself might be run on the basis of rules which are not validly promulgated. The next person elected might well share the heresy of the previous one. It is not difficult to imagine the Church’s descent into an irretrievable state of confusion, in which the institution of the Papacy would effectively cease to function.This failure of the papacy as a legal reality in the Church is surely impossible on the Catholic understanding of the indefectibility of the Church, and it is because the classic sede vacantist position implies that this has already happened, that the rest of us reject it. What Dr Lamont’s argument suggests is that it could become the reality, if it ever happened that a sufficient body of Catholics recognized that a pope was a heretic. This solution seems worse than the problem to be solved.My own solution to the conundrum is this. ‘Shun the heretic’, Dr Lamont points out, is an obligation of divine law. He understands it as the obligation to cease ‘treating him as the legitimate ruler of the Church’: a kind of rebellion. We can always carry out negative obligations such as not killing the innocent, but carrying out positive obligations such as this requires resources which we are not guaranteed to have. As the father of a family, I am obliged to feed my children, but if there is literally no food to be had, I would not be to blame if I failed to do so. There are, in short, some problems that cannot be solved: or that can only be solved by God.
Dr. Shaw asserts that ‘Dr Lamont’s preferred view’ is that if ‘a large body of Catholics agreed that a pope was a heretic and shunned him’ this would be ‘sufficient to establish publicly, legally, that this pope had fallen from office’. This is quite wrong, both as a description of the article Dr. Shaw is criticizing and as a matter of fact. The actions of Francis alone are what establish that he is publicly and legally a heretic. What else could it be that would do this? Whether or not Catholics agree to shun him makes no difference to his legal status as a heretic. The original article stated this plainly: ‘On the correct view, a pope loses the papacy as soon as he is guilty of the crime of heresy. If Francis has committed this crime, and is a public heretic through notoriety of fact, then he ceased to be pope as soon as the crime was notoriously committed. The public crime itself causes this, regardless of what the rest of the Church believes or wants to be the case.’
It is a teaching of the Catholic faith that heretics do not belong to the Church. Scripture, sacred tradition and the law of the Church all state this teaching. The fact that heretics cannot hold office in the Church is also a teaching of the Church, and is evident to reason. These teachings are not optional for Catholics. They must be professed and acted on.
In the case of a pope, it is legitimate to require the strongest evidence before concluding that the man validly elected to the papacy is a heretic and hence has lost the papal office. The argument presented here has conformed to Catholic legal tradition and used this standard of evidence, by accepting that papal heresy must be notorious in fact if a pope is to be a heretic. The standard of evidence required for notoriety of fact sets the evidential bar as high as it can reasonably be set. Francis has met that standard. That means that he is no longer the pope and is no longer a member of the Catholic Church, regardless of what other Catholics may think or wish to be the case.
The situation is comparable to a papal resignation. If a pope resigns his office in due form, he is no longer pope, and he cannot be made the pope or kept as pope by Catholics who dispute his resignation. Open adherence to heresy is in fact a conscious decision to renounce membership in the Catholic Church, since it is a decision to refuse an essential and fundamental element of this membership. Voluntary adherence to heresy by a pope is thus also a voluntary rejection of membership in the Church and of the papal office. A pope who becomes a heretic is thus ipso facto no longer the pope. Francis in choosing heresy has chosen not to be the pope. This reality just has to be accepted.
The situation is comparable to a papal resignation. If a pope resigns his office in due form, he is no longer pope, and he cannot be made the pope or kept as pope by Catholics who dispute his resignation. Open adherence to heresy is in fact a conscious decision to renounce membership in the Catholic Church, since it is a decision to refuse an essential and fundamental element of this membership. Voluntary adherence to heresy by a pope is thus also a voluntary rejection of membership in the Church and of the papal office. A pope who becomes a heretic is thus ipso facto no longer the pope. Francis in choosing heresy has chosen not to be the pope. This reality just has to be accepted.
Some commentators have disputed this claim by appealing to the authority of Cardinal Raymond Burke, an eminent canonist. They cite this interview given by the Cardinal to Catholic World Report on December 19th, 2016:
CWR: Some people are saying that the pope could separate himself from communion with the Church. Can the pope legitimately be declared in schism or heresy?Cardinal Burke: 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,CWR: That could happen.Cardinal Burke: Yes.
[...]CWR: Back to this question about the Pope committing heresy. What happens then, if the Pope commits heresy and is no longer Pope? Is there a new conclave? Who’s in charge of the Church? Or do we just not even want to go there to start figuring that stuff out?Cardinal Burke: There is already in place the discipline to be followed when the Pope ceases from his office, even as happened when Pope Benedict XVI abdicated his office. The Church continued to be governed in the interim between the effective date of his abdication and the inauguration of the papal ministry of Pope Francis.CWR: Who is competent to declare him to be in heresy?Cardinal Burke: It would have to be members of the College of Cardinals. [source]
There is an appearance of contradiction here. On the one hand, the cardinal is stating that the pope automatically ceases to be pope when he is a manifest heretic, and on the other hand he seems to be stating that the pope must be declared a heretic by the College of Cardinals in order to cease to be the pope. The seeming contradiction here is easily reconciled. Cardinal Burke is being asked about what would happen if the Pope is a heretic and is no longer Pope - 'What happens then, if the Pope commits heresy and is no longer Pope?' He answers that events will proceed as they are supposed to proceed in other cases where a pope ceases to be pope, as for example in the case of a papal resignation. The College of Cardinals will proceed to elect a new pope. The former pope will presumably still be alive; if he were dead, the question of his losing the papacy for heresy would be moot, since the death of a pope vacates the papal throne.
This means that some legal basis for proceeding to elect a new pope while the former pope is still living must be given by the Sacred College. It would have to be stated that 'Since So-and-So, formerly pope, is no longer the pope because of manifest heresy, the College of Cardinals will proceed to elect a pope to fill the vacant See of Peter'. Such a statement is necessary for the purpose of electing a new pope. It is an acknowledgement that the former pope has already lost the papacy for heresy, not a declaration that causes him to cease to be pope for heresy. As such it does not contradict Cardinal Burke's position that 'if a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope', which is the position being advanced here and in the original article. The cardinal also asserts in the interview that Francis is not a manifest heretic, but since the interview was given in 2016 this is an assessment of Francis's words and actions at that time, not at the present, and it will not be disputed as not being pertinent to the current state of affairs.
Dr. Shaw himself seems to accept this obligation of the divine law in general terms. He states: ‘“Shun the heretic”, Dr Lamont points out, is an obligation of divine law. He understands it as the obligation to cease “treating him as the legitimate ruler of the Church”: a kind of rebellion.’
But if the pope is a heretic, he is no longer the legitimate ruler of the Church, and ceasing to treat him as the ruler of the Church is not rebellion.
It is rather surreal that Dr. Shaw should object to my position on the grounds that it implies that ‘a stubborn, heretical pope would very probably be able to reign over a large majority of the Church thanks to timeserving functionaries, people who shared his errors, and the cooperation of secular authorities.’ This is obviously exactly what is happening right now in the case of Francis. This state of affairs does not depend on my position about heresy and the papacy being true. It already obtains. My position means that it is possible to do something about it. Dr. Shaw holds that we just have to accept it.
Dr. Shaw further objects that ‘the pope would continue to appoint cardinals and bishops, to pass laws, and do all the things popes do. The next pope would be elected by a mixed body of valid and invalid cardinals. The election itself might be run on the basis of rules which are not validly promulgated. The next person elected might well share the heresy of the previous one.’ What is now happening is that Francis is trying to name cardinals who share his heretical views, in order to assure that his successor will share and enforce those views. If Francis remains the pope despite his heresy, as Dr. Shaw maintains, then all the cardinals he appoints will be genuine ones, and all the laws he promulgates will be real and binding ones. If these cardinals are heretics themselves who want to elect a pope that will follow in Francis’s footsteps, and the laws for election of the pontiff are designed to enable them to succeed in this aim, there will be no legal obstacle to their doing this. Their actions in electing a heretical successor to Francis will be valid and legally binding. Those believing cardinals who were named by Francis’s predecessors will eventually die off and the college of cardinals will be left to his supporters.
Dr. Shaw laments that ‘it is not difficult to imagine the Church’s descent into an irretrievable state of confusion, in which the institution of the Papacy would effectively cease to function.’ It is not at all difficult to imagine this descent, because it is what is actually happening under Francis. If he succeeds in guaranteeing that his successor is a heretic — and that the successors of his successor will be heretics, because that is his goal and will be the result of his policies if they succeed — then the institution of the papacy will indeed cease to function, because the holders of the papal office will be unbelievers who deny rather than teach the faith. On Dr. Shaw’s view, the actions that Francis is taking to secure this goal are legally valid and binding. They must therefore be accepted, however lamentable their consequences are. On my view, they are not. This does not give his view any superiority over mine.
To do justice to Dr. Shaw’s position, we should try to tease out the substantive concerns that motivate his conclusions. He objects that ‘this failure of the papacy as a legal reality in the Church is surely impossible on the Catholic understanding of the indefectibility of the Church’. Dr. Shaw seems to envisage Francis being rejected as pope for heresy by some Catholics, but retaining the allegiance of most Catholics who do not think that he is a heretic or do not think that a pope loses the papacy through heresy. The Catholics who reject him might or might not contrive to elect another pope. If they did not, they would be left recognizing no-one as possessing papal authority, and would have no authority to govern them. If they did, there would be competing candidates for the papacy and consequent division and confusion among Catholics.
‘Failure of the papacy as a legal reality in the Church’ does not occur when the papacy is disputed or there is no valid pope. The identity of the true pope was uncertain for 40 years during the Western Schism. The papacy could only fail as a legal reality if it effectively became impossible for the papal office to exist. This is in no way a necessary consequence of recognizing that Francis is no longer the pope. In a healthy Church, this recognition would have occurred already, and he would have been removed and a new pope elected. The reason this has not happened is the decadent state of the Church, which suffers from widespread weakness, infidelity, and ignorance. Christ’s promises to the Church do not include a promise to preserve the faithful from the unfortunate effects of these shortcomings.
Dr. Shaw can suppose that the disappearance of the papacy is the most likely consequence of acknowledging that Francis is no longer the pope. One can counter this supposition by a different supposition, that asserts that rejecting Francis as pope will hinder his efforts to pack the episcopate and the college of cardinals with morally compromised heretics, and will thereby thwart his attempt to effectively extinguish the papal office by ensuring that the papacy is given over to heresy permanently. These competing hypotheses are pure speculation and do not have any weight in argument. We are not required to successfully second-guess divine providence in order to determine if we should accept Francis as the pope. He has himself settled that question by his own actions.
NOTES
[1] https://onepeterfive.com/the-problem-of-a-heretical-pope-a-reply-to-john-lamont/
[2] https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2024/10/what-are-consequences-of-franciss.html
[3] John Henry Newman, Preface to the Third Edition of the Via Media of the Anglican Church’, https://newmanreader.org/works/viamedia/volume1/preface3.html.
[4] Rev. Eric F. Mackenzie, The Delict of Heresy in its Commission, Penalization, and Absolution, Catholic University of America Canon Law Studies no. 77, (Catholic University of America: Washington, D.C., 1932), p. 35.
[5] “Fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt quae verbo Dei scripto vel tradito, uno scilicet fidei deposito Ecclesiae commisso, continentur, et insimul ut divinitus revelata proponuntur sive ab Ecclesiae magisterio sollemni, sive ab eius magisterio ordinario et universali, quod quidem communi adhaesione christifidelium sub ductu sacri magisterii manifestatur; tenentur igitur omnes quascumque devitare doctrinas iisdem contrarias.”
[6] “Dicitur haeresis, pertinax, post receptum baptismum, alicuius veritatis divina et catholica credendae denegatio, aut de eadem pertinax dubitatio; apostasia, fidei christianae ex toto repudiatio...”
[7] Mackenzie (1932), p. 45.
[8] St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, lib. II, cap. 30.
[9] Mackenzie (1932), pp. 81-83.
[10] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html.
[11] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/1192/catholic-university-of-argentina-convenes-international-congress-on-10th-anniversary-of-veritatis-splendor. See also https://fides.org/es/news/3290-AMERICA_ARGENTINA_La_Verdad_os_hara_libres_Congreso_Internacional_promovido_por_la_universidad_Catolica_a_10_anos_de_la_publicacion_de_la_Enciclica_Veritatis_Splendorhttps://fides.org/es/news/3290-, https://juanpablo2do.blogspot.com/2008/08/veritatis-splendor-el-esplendor-de-la_06.html.
