Could certain bishops, cardinals hold a council to remove Francis as pope?

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Posted on 11/18/2024 11:46:05 AM PST by ebb tide

Centuries ago, Cardinal Thomas Cajetan noted that an imperfect council can be called ‘when there is a single heretical pope to be deposed, and when there are several doubtful supreme pontiffs.’ Perhaps this is the solution to our time?

(LifeSiteNews) — LifeSite recently published Dr. Edmund Mazza’s analysis of why Benedict XVI’s arguably invalid resignation of the papacy would have caused the conclave that ostensibly elected Bishop Jorge Bergoglio to also be invalid. In addition to Dr. Mazza’s argument, which has persuaded many Catholics, there are at least two other serious arguments that Francis is not pope:

• That Francis has lost the papal office because he has “publicly and pertinaciously contradicted a number of central teachings of the Catholic faith,” as suggested in a May 2, 2024 “Call for the Resignation of Pope Francis”  
• That Francis is the head of the anti-Catholic Synodal Church, and therefore an apostate who cannot simultaneously be head of the Catholic Church 

Any of these three independent reasons could, if true, suffice to show that Jorge Bergoglio is not the pope. Thus, if Dr. Mazza’s argument is true, then Francis would not be pope even if he was perfectly orthodox and there was no such thing as the Synodal Church. Or, if Francis was validly elected, he would still not be pope if either of the other two arguments is true. 

The rationale for evaluating whether Francis is the pope would be strong even if his words and deeds were relatively benign and we expected that the next conclave could elect a truly Catholic pope. However, that is clearly not the case: Francis is actively trying to destroy the Catholic Church and, to perpetuate that objective even after his death, he has stacked the College of Cardinals with like-minded opponents of true Catholicism. Thus, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which it would be more obvious that serious Catholics should consider what steps can be taken to remove Francis from the papacy (or declare that he never legitimately occupied it) and elect a truly Catholic pope. 

Some serious Catholics recognize the dire situation with the papacy but argue that there is no dependable precedent for removing a heretical pope. To any such argument, we can fairly respond that there is also no precedent for the following: 

• A pope overtly attacking the foundations of the Catholic Faith while simultaneously embracing essentially every non-Catholic religion 
• A pope championing the LGTBQ agenda, promoting openly homosexual clerics to the highest positions, and authorizing the blessing of same-sex unions 
• A pope creating a new church (such as the Synodal Church) in opposition to the Catholic Church 
• Shepherds standing by meekly, allowing these unfathomable evils to occur without doing everything in their power to stop them 

So, yes, the path to remove Francis is not nearly as smooth and well-marked as we might like. But our current path of allowing Francis to convince the world that the Catholic Church is led by Satan’s minions is so wretched that we must now consider a viable alternative, no matter how unprecedented it might be. 

It is now obvious that the Church will eventually deem Francis to be an antipope

In his biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais recounted the archbishop’s thoughts on whether Paul VI was the pope:

Perhaps one day, in thirty or forty years, a meeting of cardinals gathered together by a future Pope will study and judge the reign of Paul VI, perhaps they will say that there were things that ought to have been clearly obvious to people at the time, statements of the Pope that were totally against Tradition. At the moment, I prefer to consider the man on the chair of Peter as the Pope; and if one day we discover for certain that the Pope was not the Pope, at least I will have done my duty. (p. 506)

Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) rejected the sedevacantist position with respect to Paul VI — and the SSPX currently accepts Francis as the pope — but two phrases from Archbishop Lefebvre’s statement above indicate that, in theory, the situation could have deteriorated to an extent that he would have considered that Paul VI was not a true pope:

• “ . . . perhaps they will say that there were things that ought to have been clearly obvious to people at the time.”
• “At the moment, I prefer to consider the man on the chair of Peter as the Pope . . .”

If, for example, Paul VI had publicly and pertinaciously declared that God positively wills all religions, then perhaps Archbishop Lefebvre would have determined that the situation had become so clearly obvious that he could no longer consider Paul VI to be pope. Even if Archbishop Lefebvre were to have reached that conclusion, though, he presumably would have recognized the need for the Church to take action to officially declare Paul VI to be an antipope and replace him with a true pope. 

God has permitted it to become fairly obvious that Francis is an anti-Catholic heretic. If in the future we have another truly Catholic pope, it seems relatively certain that he would declare that Francis was an antipope. This does not resolve the question of what we can do about the situation today, but it does prompt us to at least consider whether it is God’s will that our remaining faithful shepherds should take steps to defend the Church against Francis. 

What can actually be done? 

As with many others, St. Francis de Sales wrote that the Church must take some action even if a pope automatically loses his office through heresy: 

Now when [the Pope] is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church must either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See. (from Virgo Sacrata, with extensive quotations on the topic) 

This raises an obvious question: how can the “Church” take any such action when the pope would ordinarily be the one who would lead the Church in all important matters? 

In his 2018 article — Can the Church Defend Herself Against Bergoglio? — Christopher Ferrara discussed the possibility of an “imperfect council”:

So what can be done to defend the Church against Bergoglio? That the mode of papal election by cardinals has persisted for nearly a thousand years has led to the general impression that it pertains to the irreformable divine constitution of the Church, but it certainly does not. As to matters of purely ecclesiastical law such as this one the Church has always allowed for departures from traditional practice in cases of emergency or grave necessity. And just as a synod was employed to address three rival claimants to the papal throne in 1046, declaring at least two of them deposed, so today might it be possible for reform-minded cardinals and bishops, comprising an imperfect council, to undo the incalculable damage caused by the cabal that lobbied for Bergoglio’s election before the last conclave—a cabal that included none other than McCarrick, whom Bergoglio rewarded by rehabilitating that monster despite the massive evidence of his unspeakable crimes.

Thus, reform-minded cardinals and bishops (discussed below) would gather to (a) determine whether Francis had either lost the papacy or never possessed it, and (b) if so, remove Francis and elect a true pope. 

While we may have little reliable precedent for this (aside from the example Mr. Ferrara cited), and it may strike some as a rash response to the crisis, the reality is that calling an imperfect council was already a reasonable approach when Mr. Ferrara wrote his article in 2018. Since then, we have seen Francis commit so many crimes against God and His Church that it may now be the case the Pachamama scandal is no longer in the list of top five offenses. Even if we had never heard of the possibility of an imperfect council, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that it is entirely reasonable and natural for the remaining faithful bishops to decide that they must gather together to prayerfully discern God’s will regarding the papacy. 

Who would participate in an imperfect council?

In his 2014 article — Can the Church Depose an Heretical Pope? — Robert Siscoe discussed the difference between a perfect council and an imperfect council, citing Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (1469-1534) on who would participate in an imperfect council:  

A perfect council is one in which the body is united to its head, and therefore consists of the Bishops and the Pope. This is sometimes referred to as an absolutely perfect council. Such a council has the authority to define doctrines and issue decrees that regulate the universal Church. An imperfect council is one that is convened ‘with those members who can be found when the Church is in a given condition.’ Cardinal Cajetan refers to an imperfect council as ‘a perfect council according to the present state of the Church,’ and explained that such a council ‘can involve itself with the universal Church only up to a certain point.’ Unlike a perfect council, it cannot define doctrines or issue decrees that regulate the universal Church, but only possesses the authority to decide the matter that necessitated its convocation. Cajetan notes that there are only two cases that justify convoking an imperfect council. They are: ‘when there is a single heretical pope to be deposed, and when there are several doubtful supreme pontiffs.’ In such exceptional cases, a general council can be called without, or even against, the will of the Pope.

Although it would be ideal to have all bishops participate in an imperfect council, Cajetan appears to leave open the possibility that not all bishops would be involved, depending upon the circumstances: An imperfect council is one that is convened “with those members who can be found when the Church is in a given condition.” The “given condition” of the Church today is that many cardinals and bishops appear to have lost the Catholic Faith. 

However, to bear good fruits, the participants of any such imperfect council would need to be faithful Catholic cardinals and bishops who earnestly seek to do God’s will. It would be counterproductive to ask heretical cardinals and bishops to remove Francis and elect another pope: they would almost surely refuse to remove Francis and, if they did, they would likely replace him with someone even worse. Thus, because those cardinals and bishops who are not Catholic (by virtue of their heterodoxy) cannot possibly be expected to participate in an imperfect council, the question becomes one of how to identity cardinals and bishops who still have the Faith. 

For better or worse, Francis’s hostile occupation of the papacy has managed to cause a significant separation between those who have the Faith and those who go along with the anti-Catholic revolution led from Rome. If we want a simple litmus test, any bishop who would not denounce the Synod on Synodality, Fiducia Supplicans, or the heretical view that God positively wills non-Catholic religions, no longer has the true Catholic Faith and should be excluded from participation in an imperfect council. For good measure, those who call the imperfect council could further stipulate that participation is limited to those cardinals and bishops who would take St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism, which includes a passage that effectively denounces almost every significant utterance we hear from Rome today:

I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.

Those who can sincerely take the Oath Against Modernism may still disagree on key points, but their task during an imperfect council would be to petition God to guide them in electing a pope who could resolve the various points on which faithful Catholics disagree today. 

What if the bishops and cardinals could not agree to remove and replace Francis?

The May 2, 2024 “Call for the Resignation of Pope Francis” (mentioned above) acknowledged the possibility that the cardinals and bishops could potentially fail to remove and replace Francis: 

If Pope Francis refuses to resign, the duty of the bishops and cardinals is to proceed to declare that he has lost the papal office for heresy. If such a declaration cannot occur because there are too few bishops and cardinals willing to speak out about Francis’s heresy, the faithful bishops and cardinals should form a united group to publicly warn the faithful of his crimes and heresies, state that his tenure of the papal office is in doubt due to his heresy, and admonish the faithful not to believe his statements or obey his orders unless it is clear on independent grounds that these statements and orders should be respected.

If, through the process of prayerfully attempting to discern God’s will, the cardinals and bishops determine that they cannot conduct an imperfect council without badly splintering faithful Catholics, or otherwise causing more harm, then they can at least take steps to form a united group against the errors emanating from Rome under Francis. 

This determination to do their best to cooperate with God’s grace even if they cannot remove a pope trying to destroy the Church is consistent with St. Robert Bellarmine’s response to Protestants who argued that the Catholic Church was without a remedy if a pope tried to destroy it: 

But [the Protestants] will say . . . the Church is without remedy if it has a bad Pope, and the Pope can disturb all things unpunished, and destroy and no one will be able to resist. . . . I respond: No wonder, if the Church remains without an efficacious human remedy, seeing that its safety does not rest principally upon human industry, but divine protection, since God is its king. Therefore, even if the Church could not depose a Pope, still, it may and must beg the Lord that He would apply the remedy, and it is certain that God has care for its safety, that He would either convert the Pope or abolish him from their midst before he destroys the Church. Nevertheless, it does not follow from here that it is not lawful to resist a Pope destroying the Church; for it is lawful to admonish him while preserving all reverence, and to modestly correct him, even to oppose him with force and arms if he means to destroy the Church. (De Controversiis, On the Church: On Councils, On the Church Militant, On the Marks of the Church, p. 220)

If, after attempting to prayerfully discern God’s will, the cardinals and bishops determine that they cannot actually remove and replace Francis, they “may and must beg the Lord that He would apply the remedy.” In the meantime, they should resist Francis and all others who seek to destroy the Church. 

We do not know how God will resolve the ongoing passion of the Mystical Body of Christ, but we can trust that He will reward our efforts to try to defend His Church and the Faith He gave us. If it is not His will to remove and replace Francis through an imperfect council, it will not happen — but those faithful bishops who would sincerely seek to do God’s will in considering that option would still please God and win graces for the Church. But if it is God’s will that cardinals and bishops remove and replace Francis through an imperfect council, then it seems that the day has now arrived for the remaining faithful shepherds to allow themselves to be instruments of God’s will by at least taking the initial steps down that path. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us! 

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Some serious Catholics recognize the dire situation with the papacy but argue that there is no dependable precedent for removing a heretical pope. To any such argument, we can fairly respond that there is also no precedent for the following: 

• A pope overtly attacking the foundations of the Catholic Faith while simultaneously embracing essentially every non-Catholic religion 
• A pope championing the LGTBQ agenda, promoting openly homosexual clerics to the highest positions, and authorizing the blessing of same-sex unions 
• A pope creating a new church (such as the Synodal Church) in opposition to the Catholic Church 
• Shepherds standing by meekly, allowing these unfathomable evils to occur without doing everything in their power to stop them 

So, yes, the path to remove Francis is not nearly as smooth and well-marked as we might like. But our current path of allowing Francis to convince the world that the Catholic Church is led by Satan’s minions is so wretched that we must now consider a viable alternative, no matter how unprecedented it might be. 

1 posted on 11/18/2024 11:46:05 AM PST by ebb tide

To: Al Hitan; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; kalee; markomalley; miele man; Mrs. Don-o; ...

2 posted on 11/18/2024 11:46:41 AM PST by ebb tide ("The Spirit of Vatican II" is nothing more than a wicked "ideology" of the modernists.)

To: ebb tide

3 posted on 11/18/2024 11:47:29 AM PST by nickcarraway

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