The "Sede conundrum". If Francis is not the Pope, can a Conclave, the majority of which were appointed by an anti-Pope, elect a true Pope?
From One Peter Five
By Fr Brian Harrison, SThD
Francis-Only Sedevacantism: Reply to Mazza
The debate among traditionally-oriented Catholics continues unabated: Is Francis a true pope? On November 25 I posted a “priest’s reply” to an essay by Dr. John Lamont here. He had expounded on the Rorate Coeli website a closely argued claim that the current occupant of the Apostolic Palace has become a notorious heretic and has therefore lost the papal office. Dr. Edmund Mazza, whom I mentioned briefly in replying to Lamont, has posted a rejoinder to my own essay here.
In contrast to ‘classic’ sedevacantism – the view that Peter’s See has been vacant ever since Vatican Council II – Drs. Lamont and Mazza espouse what we might term ‘Francis-only’ sedevacantism. They accept as genuine Successors of Peter the five ‘conciliar’ popes from John XXIII to Benedict XVI, and draw the line only at Jorge Maria Bergoglio, whose doctrinal and social progressivism is commonly – and I think rightly – seen by most traditional and conservative Catholics as far more radical than that of any of his predecessors. Mazza and Lamont differ, however, as to how long Bergoglio has been an antipope. The former holds the ‘Benevacantist’ view that he has never been pope because Benedict XVI, owing to his faulty theology of the papacy, resigned invalidly in 2013 and so remained pope until his death at the end of 2022. The latter does not dispute the validity of Francis’ election, but argues that he has since then manifestly fulfilled the conditions for loss of office recognized by all the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and canonists who have taught on this matter: departure from the Catholic faith through notorious heresy.
In his reply to my essay, Mazza limits himself to supporting Lamont’s argument, for he agrees with the latter that the man generally known as Pope Francis has become a notorious heretic since donning the white papal cassock and zuchetta. So I in turn will confine my response mainly to this aspect of Dr. Mazza’s position, without addressing his arguments for the invalidity of Bergoglio’s election to the papacy in 2013.
Readers of my reply to John Lamont will have seen that I actually made no effort to rebut his specific arguments that J.M. Bergoglio is a heretic by notoriety of fact, and did not claim they were certainly fallacious and unfounded. I merely made the generic comment that I found those arguments “not at all conclusive”, thus agreeing partly with the anonymous “Benedictine Monk” who commented on both my and Lamont’s articles (cf. “Certain Truth, or More Probability? Reply to Lamont and Harrison”). Rather than tackling head-on the core ‘ontological’ issue (“Is Bergoglio in reality a notorious heretic and therefore not pope?”), I thought it opportune to focus on two related aspects of the problem: (1) the ‘epistemological’ issue (“How can ordinary Catholics, clerical and lay, know whether or not they should regard Bergoglio as pope? Whose judgment should they trust?”); and (2) the canonical issue (“Supposing Lamont is right in concluding that Francis has lapsed from office as a notorious heretic, what practical consequences will follow from that, according to the Church’s law?”) Mazza disputes my responses to both of the above questions. Let’s first consider what he says about (1) above.
1. How should ordinary laity and clergy evaluate Francis-only sedevacantism?
Dr. Mazza begins his critique of my essay by misrepresenting my position. Referring to “the growing number of voices asking whether Francis is Pope”, he claims that “Fr. Harrison . . . thinks that’s one question we ought not to ask”. But I never said we shouldn’t ask it. Recognizing that the question is already being asked with increasing frequency, I simply focused on how ordinary Catholics should prudently go about trying to answer it. I claimed that since “ordinary lay Catholics in the pews”, and even most ordinary priests, lack the specialized historical, theological and canonical knowledge to evaluate independently the (Francis-only) sedevacantist arguments of scholars like Lamont and Mazza, they will need to trust the judgment of someone more qualified than themselves. And I argued that the prudent course will be to trust the contrary judgment of the entire College of Cardinals, and a moral unanimity[1] of the Catholic bishops, who accept Francis as pope right up to this day.
Dr. Mazza attempts to rebut my argument by adducing one single historic counter-example that supposedly proves that “ordinary lay” Catholics can get it right about who is or isn’t pope even when all the cardinals and bishops get it wrong. But we shall see that even this solitary dart he throws misses the target by a mile.
He writes, “In 1378, there was a concrete case of ‘an ordinary lay Catholic in the pews’ who had to decide whether Clement VII was Pope because God ‘allowed the entire College of Cardinals’ to recognize him as Successor of Peter instead of Urban VI (still very much alive and kicking).” Now, who was this supposedly average lay Catholic? None other than Saint Catherine of Siena! To call this woman “an ordinary lay Catholic in the pews” is preposterous on the face of it. Catherine was one of the greatest saints and mystics in the history of the Church – someone who received communications directly from Our Lord – notably, her famous Dialogue, universally recognized as a classic of Catholic spirituality. So while she did not indeed have the kind of academic degrees attained by Drs. Lamont and Mazza, this young Dominican tertiary was far more qualified than any university professor since she received divine wisdom directly from heaven! This was recognized in her lifetime by popes and other church leaders who sought her counsel, and has resulted in her being proclaimed a Doctor of the Church!
So ‘Strike One” against my critic’s position is the vast difference between St. Catherine of Siena and the “ordinary Catholics” who I maintain don’t have enough professional competence in the sacred sciences to form a sound independent judgment as to whether Francis is truly pope. But we also need to examine Mazza’s claim that there’s a relevant parallel between Catherine’s assertion that all the cardinals in 1378 were wrong in holding ‘Clement VII’ to be pope and his own assertion that all the cardinals today are wrong in holding Francis to be pope. As we shall see, the dissimilarities between the two situations are in fact so glaring as to vitiate radically Mazza’s claim that Catherine’s judgment in the fourteenth century has set a precedent for his own in the twenty-first.
First, my critic claims that the Sienese mystic “declared and considered an elected and generally accepted ‘Pope’ Clement VII an antipope and defied the entire college of cardinals when she wrote to them [to that effect]” (my emphasis). But this falsifies the historical record. Antipope Clement VII was never “generally accepted” as pope in the way that Francis is now. On the contrary, Archbishop Bartolomeo Prignano of Bari had been elected in Rome as Pope Urban VI on April 8, 1378, and was still accepted by all the Romans and most of the Catholic Church when Catherine wrote her letter of defiance to the rebel cardinals six months later. Urban had been immediately accepted by all the cardinal electors, who at his request confirmed in writing, prior to his peaceful enthronement on April 11th, that they had elected him freely and canonically.[2]
Pope Urban retained the allegiance of most Italians and many others in Europe until his death eleven years later. The only reason a rival ‘pope’ was elected in September 1378, occasioning St. Catherine’s letter of denunciation, was that Urban, shortly after his election, began acting in a very high-handed, abusive and authoritarian manner towards many of the cardinals who had elected him. This deeply offended them and caused them to regret their decision. So during the summer the seventeen surviving cardinals of the previous conclave, led by the French majority, gathered at Agnani and declared the See of Peter vacant on the pretext that they had not acted freely in electing Urban. Claiming they had been under duress from the Roman mob outside St Peter’s Basilica back in April, they now elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva as ‘Pope Clement VII’ and the Great Western Schism began.
Dr. Mazza tells his readers none of the above relevant facts showing the historical context of St. Catherine’s defiance of these schismatics. Here, in short, is one great discrepancy between Catherine’s dissent from the “entire College of Cardinals” of her day and Mazza’s dissent from that of our own day: the ‘conclave’ organized by those cardinals in September 1378 took place while there was a man already publicly occupying Peter’s Chair in Rome who was accepted as the legitimate Pope by most Catholics and condemned said ‘conclave’ as illicit, invalid and schismatic. That was obviously not the case with the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis. Strike Two.
Strike Three against Mazza’s claim – that St. Catherine’s dissent in October 1378 from all the cardinals living then sets a precedent for his own dissent in December 2024 from all the cardinals living now – is another huge dissimilarity between the two situations. That dissimilarity is the following: the cardinals who declared ‘sede vacante’ in September 1378 and elected Antipope Clement ipso facto destroyed their credibility by contradicting their own previous solemn testimony that they had freely elected Pope Urban. By contrast, not one of the cardinals who elected and accepted Francis as pope in 2013 was thereby contradicting any previous testimony he had given. Indeed, the main point of Catherine’s fierce denunciation of the cardinals of her day was that they were condemning themselves out of their own mouths as liars! She knew they would never have concocted the story that they had elected Urban “under duress” if, after assuming office, he had shown a more charitable governing style and policies more in line with their expectations. “You clearly know the truth”, the saint exclaimed,
that Pope Urban VI is truly Pope, . . . chosen in orderly election, not influenced by fear. . . . And so you announced it to us, which was the truth. Now you have turned your backs, like poor mean knights. . . . This is not the kind of blindness that springs from ignorance. It has not happened to you because people have reported one thing to you while another is so. No, for you know what the truth is; it was you who announced it to us, and not we to you. Oh, how mad you are! For you told us the truth, and you want yourselves to taste a lie![3]
2. How would the Church’s law deal with a heretical pope’s loss of office?
We have now seen that Dr. Mazza, in appealing to a supposed precedent set by St. Catherine of Siena, has ‘struck out’ in this attempt to show that “ordinary Catholics in the pews” are quite competent to judge independently that Pope Francis has become a notorious heretic and so is no longer pope. It remains for us to consider his critique of my answer to question (2)above: What practical consequences will follow, according to divine and ecclesiastical law, if it should turn out that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is indeed (or becomes in the future) a notorious heretic? Is the Church’s law equipped to deal with an unprecedented catastrophe of this magnitude?
In my reply to Dr. Lamont I cited cc. 194 and 1331 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law to show that even if he is right in claiming that Francis has become a notorious heretic, thereby losing the papal office and incurring automatic excommunication, his loss of office cannot be enforced, and his ongoing illegal acts of governance will be valid, until such time as the competent church authority declares his crimes and excommunication. (I agree with Lamont that we should follow St. Robert Bellarmine here in holding that the competent church authority in this case would be the College of Bishops.)
Now, Dr. Mazza evidently disagrees with me here. He thinks we don’t need to wait for the world’s bishops to say or do anything. He claims that even if one assumes Bergoglio was validly elected in 2013, his purported acts of papal governance have been both unlawful and invalid from the very day he fell from office on becoming a notorious heretic.
Well, dear reader, wouldn’t you agree that since my opponent rejects my argument based on canon law, he needs to expose what he thinks are its fallacies? Doesn’t he need to demonstrate that the canons I’ve cited don’t apply here, or that I’ve interpreted them wrongly, or perhaps that they’re outweighed by other canons in the Code? Strangely, however, my critic does not even seriously attempt to refute my appeal to cc. 194 and 1331. Instead, he tries to circumvent it by a rhetorical ploy that combines an argument from authority with ridicule directed at a straw man – an extreme and untenable position that I have neither stated nor implied.
Let’s take a look. Dr. Mazza cites (with no context) brief statements by a string of authorities: “Blessed” (sic) John Henry Newman, Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, the late Cardinal Alfons Stickler, the late Fr. Malachi Martin, and the distinguished canonists Wernz and Vidal, authors of a classic commentary on the old (1917) Code of Canon Law. All these authorities are quoted to the effect that a manifestly heretical pope would ipso facto fall from office. Well, I’ve already made it clear that I would agree with them on that. But Mazza claims that “if Fr. Harrison’s reasoning is correct”, what all these ecclesiastical luminaries “really meant to add (but did not) is that canon law requires us to treat him as pope anyway”. (He sarcastically repeats this refrain word-for-word, like a pseudo-litany, after citing each authority.) But by truncating my expressed position with the airily dismissive word “anyway”, he caricatures it. In order to be fair, he would have to replace that one word by a quite lengthy qualifying clause, saying (still sarcastically) that if Harrison’s reasoning is correct, what all the aforesaid learned clerics “really meant to add (but did not) is that canon law requires us to treat him as pope until such time as the College of Bishops declares that he has (already) lost office ipso facto through manifest heresy.“
However, if my critic had substituted that italicized clause (or words to the same effect) for “anyway”, not only would the canonical/theological position thus expressed not be ridiculous enough to be a fit object for the sarcasm he wants to employ; it would be so plausible as to be the position that might actually have been endorsed by some or all of Dr. Mazza’s six authorities, even though it seems they didn’t express it – or at least, not on the same pages where he found the statements he cites.[4] Indeed, St. Robert Bellarmine’s position appears entirely consistent with the modern canon law to which I have appealed. For in rebutting several opinions concerning the hypothesis of a heretical pope, notably Cajetan’s view that such a man would lose office through being deposed by the Church, and thus after committing the crime of heresy, Bellarmine points out that no one in the Church on earth has the authority to depose a pope. Therefore, he argues, the manifestly heretical pope will lose his office and all jurisdiction simultaneously with his commission of the crime. He writes,“Now the fifth [and] true opinion is that a Pope who is a manifest heretic, ceases in himself to be Pope and head, just as he ceases in himself to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church; whereby he can be judged and punished by the Church” (emphasis added).[5] So since that judgment and punishment will come after the heretic pope loses office and jurisdiction, some provision will need to be made for the governance of the Church during the interval between the actual loss of office and the Church’s subsequent judgment that this has occurred. And this is clearly the purpose of the canons I have cited.
Dr. Mazza includes canonists Wernz and Vidal among the authorities he thinks oppose my position. Here is his citation of their commentary:
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 (emphasis added [by Mazza]).
However, Wernz and Vidal are simply following Bellarmine, as I do. Mazza is evidently confusing two possible kinds of “declaratory judgment” by the Church: (a) one which would cause a heretical pope to lose office and jurisdiction; and (b) one that would verify to all the faithful that the former pope has already (at some previous point in time) lost office and jurisdiction ipso facto by his manifest heresy. Wernz and Vidal, like Bellarmine, are rejecting Cajetan’s contention that (a) would be needed. But they are by no means denying that (b) would be needed. At least, they don’t deny it in this citation provided by Mazza. And the need for (b), the one I claim is clearly contemplated by the 1983 Code of Canon Law, is, as I have explained above, implied by Bellarmine even though he doesn’t spell it out.
The earlier Code that was in force when Wernz and Vidal wrote includes canons similar to those I have cited from the current one. This 1917 Code also prescribes latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for heresy, and its canon 2263 states that an excommunicated person “is forbidden to exercise ecclesiastical offices or duties.” But the next canon, 2264, affirms the following: “An act of jurisdiction carried out by an excommunicated person, whether in the external or internal forum, is illicit; and if a condemnatory or declaratory sentence has been pronounced, it is also invalid, without prejudice to c. 2261, §3;[6] otherwise it is valid” (emphasis added).
I have no access to Wernz and Vidal’s commentary on the 1917 Code, but unless Dr. Mazza can show evidence to the contrary, he should admit that these renowned canonists of the early twentieth century would logically have had to agree with me, on the basis of the law then in force, that the acts of jurisdiction illicitly carried out by a pope who had through manifest heresy fallen from office would nonetheless be valid until such time as the Church declared that said loss of office and excommunication had already occurred ipso facto at the time his heresy became manifest.
3. If all Francis’ acts are invalid, will the next conclave produce a true pope?
One more of Mazza’s objections to my comments on Lamont’s essay needs to be addressed here. My claim is that the Catholic Church on earth, the Ark of Salvation, would be kept afloat by the steel undergirding and impenetrable air chambers of far-sighted, disaster-proof legislation, even if it should turn out that a spurious pope-captain at the helm, unchallenged by an obsequious crew of bishops, is now ramming the ship into an iceberg. I maintain that since the cardinals unlawfully nominated by the putative impostor would nonetheless be valid papal electors, the next conclave will produce a true captain of Peter’s Barque. And hopefully he will repair at least the worst damage done to the ship and steer her into safer waters.
But will this be the case if, as Mazza claims, none of Bergoglio’s acts of papal governance has any validity whatsoever? Let’s remember that his own thesis (in contrast to Lamont’s) is that Bergoglio has been an antipope not just since becoming a notorious heretic some time in the last decade, but ever since he was invalidly placed on the Chair of Peter in 2013. If Dr. Mazza is right about that, and is also right to brush aside as irrelevant the canonical legislation I have cited, the Church has been plunged into irremediable chaos as a result of Francis’s fall from office, given the failure of the worldwide College of Bishops to recognize this calamity and take appropriate action. For if Mazza’s correct, doesn’t this mean that all of Bergoglio’s acts of purported papal governance have been invalid from Day One, so that the now headless Body of Christ on earth has collapsed into virtual reality mode? Its “visibility” has become like that of a hologram whose apparent solidity vanishes on close-up inspection. The hundreds of bishops named by ‘Antipope’ Francis have no legitimate jurisdiction over the dioceses to which he has sent them; none of the heads of Roman dicasteries he has appointed has any authority whatsoever; all his legislation regarding the reorganization of the Roman Curia, marriage annulment procedures, and many other important matters, has no force at all; his canonizations are worthless (that’s why Mazza won’t call John Henry Newman “Saint”, only “Blessed”), and the new feasts and saints’ days he has added to the liturgical calendar should be scrubbed and never celebrated.[7]
Editor’s note: according to an interview with Dr. Mazza and my own correspondence with him, Dr. Mazza claims that even as an Antipope, Francis still appoints valid Cardinals. However, I cannot confirm if this view is held by other adherents of the “BIP” hypothesis. -TSF
Worst of all, since 80% of the current College of Cardinals have received their red hats from an impostor, it will follow from these premises that the man elected at the next conclave will also be an antipope. And since his appointees to the College of Cardinals will in turn also be phonies, the Church Militant will be left indefinitely in a decapitated state. The dominoes will then continue to topple each other so that within a few decades, when the last bishops appointed by genuine (pre-Bergoglian) popes have died, not a single diocese on earth from Rome on down – indeed, not a single parish – will be governed by a bishop or priest with true jurisdiction over his flock. All the true shepherds from top to bottom having been struck down, the sheep will be scattered and left to the tender mercies of hirelings and wolves.
Doesn’t that scenario look pretty much like the gates of hell prevailing against Christ’s Church? But we know that can never happen because of Christ’s promise to the contrary. So this should sound yet another alarm bell that something must be gravely wrong with those sedevacantist theories (whether classic or Francis-only) that make such a scenario inevitable.
I mentioned this looming abyss of an upcoming invalid conclave in my reply to John Lamont. In response Mazza again whistles in the dark, assuring readers that I am being needlessly alarmist. He reminds us that “the Visibility of the Church survived . . . the Great Western Schism when for forty years there were two ‘popes’ and then three at a time.” Then he adds, “And those cardinals and bishops appointed by antipopes were ultimately considered valid. Why not today?”
Here’s the reason why not. On July 4, 1415, the true pope at that time, Gregory XII, formally convoked the Council of Constance and validated the cardinals who’d been appointed by Antipope ‘John XXIII.’ Gregory gave them extraordinary faculties so that they could join with his own cardinals in electing a new pope right after his own resignation, which followed immediately.[8] Historian Warren Carroll expresses with laconic starkness the awesome magnitude of that day’s events: “The action by Pope Gregory XII . . . saved the Church, the papacy and Christendom.”[9] But if you are right, Dr. Mazza, there is now no true pope, and, therefore, no one on earth who can save the Church and the papacy in like manner. (Christendom, unfortunately, is no longer with us; it needs to be resurrected rather than saved.)
The basic flaw in all attempts by sedevacantists to find precedents for their position in the Western Schism is that nobody back then was a sedevacantist. All Catholics throughout those traumatic four decades believed – rightly – that there was a continuing succession of true popes on Peter’s Throne. They just disagreed as to which of the rival successions was the true one. And it’s only because there was indeed a true pope from Urban VI through to his successor Gregory XII that unity and peace could eventually be restored to the Church. But on the premises posited by Mazza and other contemporary sedevacantists, today’s Church is a mortally wounded patient in a field hospital that lacks any surgeon capable of performing the necessary life-saving operation.
Dr. Mazza’s final barb – a semi-serious attempt to hoist me on my own petard – should be addressed in order to conclude my reply. In his last paragraph he implies that if I’m going to insist that all participants at the next conclave be canonically eligible voters in order for the man they elect to be a true pope, I myself will have to admit, on the basis of that very insistence, that whoever comes out of the next conclave will be a false pope. And why? Because the vast majority of today’s cardinals, says Mazza, are heretics! Therefore, being under latae sententiae excommunication, they’re ineligible to carry out any ecclesial function whatever. He writes: “As for which of the cardinals are eligible to vote in the next conclave, I would say the ones who have never publicly and pertinaciously denied or cast doubt on any Catholic dogma of faith and morals. That should narrow the number down to about twelve or so, don’t you think Father?”
Nice try, Dr. Mazza. But even supposing the number of righteous men left in red-hatted Israel is even smaller than your estimate, this won’t affect the validity of the next papal election. That’s because once again canon law has beaten you to the draw. Holy Mother Church has long anticipated the possibility of this infiltration of traitors into her most élite cohort and has nipped in the bud, by a bold and perhaps surprising stroke of her legislative pen, its potential to invalidate a papal election. She suspends every possible kind of excommunication or other penalty that a cardinal may have incurred (including, therefore, that imposed for heresy) at least for the duration of the conclave, so that such a cardinal may not only validly elect the next pope (electio activa), but even be validly elected (electio passiva). In article 35 of his Apostolic Constitution Romano Pontifici Eligendo (October 1, 1975), Pope Paul VI, following similar legislation by his predecessors over many centuries, decreed:
No Cardinal elector may be excluded in any way from either active or passive election of the Supreme Pontiff by reason or pretext of any excommunication, suspension, interdict or ecclesiastical impediment whatsoever. These censures are to be considered suspended, but only for the effects of the election.[10]
That was the law under which John Paul I and John Paul II were elected. Benedict XVI and Francis were elected under a simplified amendment that has the same effect as regards the election itself, but remains silent as to whether or not the censures in question will be renewed once the election is over. In the corresponding article 35 of his Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis of February 22, 1996, Pope St. John Paul II decreed: “No Cardinal elector can be excluded from the active or passive election of the Supreme Pontiff for any reason or pretext, with due regard for the provisions of No. 40 of this Constitution.”[11] The words “Cardinal elector” clearly refer to any cleric under 80 years of age who has been appointed to the College of Cardinals by a man commonly recognized as pope and has not (like ex-Cardinal McCarrick) been subsequently removed from it by the same authority. And the all-encompassing words “for any reason or pretext” mean that not even a latae sententiae excommunication for heresy will exclude a cardinal from electing, or being elected as, the next pope.
Let me summarize. I continue to maintain that even in the event that Jorge Mario Bergoglio should no longer be pope, and has thus lost all jurisdiction and even membership in the Catholic Church, his continuing illicit acts of governance are guaranteed to be valid by a combination of the Church’s law and the failure of the College of Bishops to declare his loss of office. The men he has made Cardinals can therefore vote validly at the next conclave, which will thus elect a new and true pope. For my argumentation to that effect, I refer readers back to my original comments on canons 194 and 1331 here.
[1] Mazza has pointed to three ostensibly Catholic bishops (all retired) who deny that Francis is a true pope: Carlo Maria Viganò, Jan Pawel Lenga and René Gracida. They constitute about 0.05% of the approximately 5,600 Catholic bishops now living. Also, Gracida has not denied outright that Francis is pope; he considers the matter doubtful and in need of adjudication by the College of Cardinals. Cf. https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/worlds-second-oldest-bishop-is-a-staunch-defender-of-the-unborn-and-the-latin-mass/, accessed 1/1/2025.
[2] Cf. Warren H. Carroll, The Glory of Christendom (Front Royal, VA, Christendom Press,1993), p. 430.
[3] Ibid., p. 425, citing St. Catherine of Siena’s letter of October 1378 to the three Italian cardinals who had been complicit in the election several weeks earlier of the antipope ‘Clement VII’.
[4] Since I currently have no access to the sources Dr. Mazza uses, I am simply taking his word for it that the various writers to whose authority he appeals do not (or at least, not in the same locus that he cites) add anything about how and by whom such loss of the papal office would be verified, and what its canonical implementation would look like.
[5] St. Robert Bellarmine, De Controversiis: On the Roman Pontiff, tr. Ryan Grant (Mediatrix Press, Kindle edn.) Ch. XXX, p. 316.
[6] Canon 2261, §3 of the 1917 Code simply makes an exception to this invalidity when it is a case of an excommunicated priest (whose sentence has been declared) giving absolution to someone in danger of death.
[7] I suppose some TLM devotees might be consoled by the thought that if Mazza is right, Traditionis custodes is among the dozens of Bergoglian Motu Proprios that have no force whatsoever. Adherents of the Society of St. Pius X, however, may not be quite so happy. For if Mazza is right, Bergoglio’s non-papal status will also mean that his concession of validity to their clergy’s Confessions and witnessing of marriages is itself invalid and worthless.
[8] For a gripping account of how the Western Schism was ended, cf. Carroll, op. cit., pp. 477-490.
[9] Ibid., p. 477.
[10] “35. Nullus Cardinalis elector, cuiuslibet excommunicationis, suspensionis, interdicti aut alterius ecclesiastici impedimenti causa vel praetextu, a Summi Pontificis electione activa et passiva excludi ullo modo potest; quae quidem censurae, ad effectum huiusmodi electionis tantum, suspensae putandae sunt”. Cf. https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19751001_romano-pontifici-eligendo.html, accessed January 4, 2025.
[11] “35. Cardinalis elector nulla ratione vel causa a Summi Pontificis electione activa et passiva excludi potest, vigentibus tamen iis omnibus quae sub n. 40 huius Constitutionis statuuntur”. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/la/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_22021996_universi-dominici-gregis.html, accessed January 4, 2025. (Article 40 simply lays down the conditions under which a cardinal may be readmitted to the election procedures if he has to leave the conclave temporarily for some grave reason such as the urgent need for medical attention.) As has often been the case, the English version of this text on the Vatican website is inaccurate. It reads, “No Cardinal elector can be excluded from active or passive voice in the election of the Supreme Pontiff . . . ”. In the definitive Latin text there is nothing corresponding to “voice”, a gratuitous word that makes the statement obscure, if not meaningless. (What on earth would “passive voice” – normally a grammatical term! – mean here?) No other vernacular translation on the Vatican website has this falsification of the original.
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