The always helpful Pat Buchanan has solved a potential Catholic conundrum: what to do if a pope, supposedly infallible in matters of faith and morals, nevertheless issues ex cathedra (official) statements which seem to conflict with long-held Catholic doctrine? Here is Mr. Buchanan’s solution:
“Traditionalists believe moral truth does not change, nor can Catholic doctrines be altered. Even a pope cannot do that. Should such be attempted, the pope would be speaking heresy. And as it is Catholic doctrine that the pope is infallible, that he cannot err when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals, this would imply that Francis was not a valid pope and the chair of Peter is empty.”
Brilliant! Any pope who utters heresy (in the considered judgment of Pat Buchanan and other traditionalists) isn’t really a pope at all! It’s just like if a president wasn’t really a U.S. citizen because he was born in Kenya (for instance) and so wasn’t eligible for the office to begin with! The chair of Peter, like the Oval Office, is empty, albeit temporarily and illegitimately occupied by a usurper.
Kudos to Mr. Buchanan for figuring this out, and for understanding the consequences; since such a pretend pope would surely not step aside to be replaced by a real one, faithful Catholics would have to abandon the Roman ship and board an ark of their own making—“We would then be reading,” writes Buchanan, “about schismatics and sedevacantists.”
I for one would love to read about sedevacantists, if only to find out who or what they are.2
Regardless of what “traditionalists believe” or what Pat Buchanan claims to the contrary, lots of Catholic doctrines have changed over the centuries, as have Catholic rituals. Whether a given doctrine is central to the faith, and whether it has ever been affirmed in ex cathedra fashion and is therefore unalterable, has to be determined, one assumes, on a case-by-case basis; and perhaps, in this case, by the same College of Cardinals which elected Pope Francis to the papacy. If the cardinals were misguided enough to put this heresy peddler into the chair of Peter, why would anyone trust them to determine which doctrines can and cannot be changed?
Well—I guess we could just ask that noted arbiter of the Faith and sometime sedevacantist, Pat Buchanan, Mr. “More Catholic than this pope” himself. I'm sure Pat, as unelected papal arbiter, would clarify, in his ex cathedra fashion, what Catholics are allowed to believe and what the actually elected pope is allowed to proclaim.
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1 http://buchanan.org/blog/price-papal-popularity-7042
2 Wikipedia to the rescue: "Sedevacantism is the position, held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics, that the present occupant of the papal see is not truly pope and that, for lack of a valid pope, the see has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. A tiny number of these claim the vacancy actually goes back to the death of Pope Pius X in 1914.
Sedevacantists believe that there is at present a vacancy of the Holy See that began with John XXIII (1958–63) or at latest with Paul VI (1963–78), who, they say, espoused the heresy of Modernism and otherwise denied solemnly defined Catholic dogmas and so became heretics.
The term "sedevacantism" is derived from the Latin phrase sede vacante, which literally means "the seat being vacant". The phrase is commonly used to refer specifically to a vacancy of the Holy See from the death or resignation of a pope to the election of his successor. "Sedevacantism" as a term in English appears to date from the 1980s, though the movement itself is older.”
The linked website is the best at expounding the sedevacantist position. https://novusordowatch.org/wire/#.UswnWtJDvE0
Posted by: JohnSede | 11/28/2017 at 12:43 AM