Transcript:
The reflections on the question of the validity of the papacy of Pope Francis, the safest guiding principle in the crucial question for the life of the church, regarding the validity of the papacy of Pope Francis, should be the prevailing practice in the history of the church, with which were resolved cases of presumably invalid papal renunciations or elections. In this prevailing practice was shown the Sensus Fidelis Ecclesiae, the perennial meaning of the church, the principle of legality applied ad litteram to the letter, or that of juridical positivism, was not considered. In the great practice and tradition of the church, an absolute principle, since the legislation of the papal election is only a human, positive law and not a divine, revealed law.
The human law that regulates the assumption of the papal office or the dismissal from the papal office must be subordinated to the greater good of the whole church, which in this case is the real existence of the visible head of the Church, and the certainty of this existence for all the body of the church, clergy, and faithful. This visible existence of the head and the certainty about it are required by the very nature of the Church. The Universal church cannot exist for a considerable time without a visible supreme Shepherd, without the successor of Peter, since the vital activity of the universal church depends on its visible head, such as, for example, the appointment of diocesan bishops and cardinals, appointments that require the existence of a valid Pope.
In turn, the spiritual good of the faithful depends on a valid appointment of a bishop, since in the case of an invalid Episcopal appointment due to a presumably invalid Pope, priests would lack pastoral jurisdiction, confession, and marriage. From these also depend those dispensations that only the Roman Pontiff can grant, and also indulgences, all these for the spiritual good and eternal salvation of souls.
Applying, in this case, the principle of supplying jurisdiction would undermine the characteristic of the church’s visibility, and would be substantially the position of the sedevacantist theory. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, when consecrating bishops without the Pope’s mandate, also applied the principle of supplying of jurisdiction, but he applied it only to specific cases and not to the entire pontifical jurisdiction. He always mentioned the Pope in the canon of the Holy Mass.
The acceptance of the possibility of a prolonged time of vacancy of the Holy See easily leads to the spirit of sedevacantism, which ultimately constitutes a kind of sectarian and quasi-heretical phenomenon that has appeared in the past 60 years due to the problems with Vatican two and the conciliar and post-conciliar popes. The spiritual good and eternal salvation of the faithful is the supreme law in the normative system of the church. For this reason, there is the principle of supplet ecclesia, or sanatio in radicze, healing at the root, that is, the church completes what was against the human positive law in the case of the sacraments, which demand jurisdictional faculties, as for example, confession, marriage, confirmation, and the burdens of the intentions of the holy masses.
Guided by this truly pastoral principle, the instinct of the church has also applied the principle of supplet ecclesia, or the sanatio in radicchie, in the case of doubts about a renunciation or a pontifical election, concretely, the sanatio in radicchie, the healing At the root of an invalid pontifical election was expressed in the peaceful and morally universal acceptance of the new pontiff by the episcopate and the Catholic people for the same fact that this election elected, presumably invalidly elected pontiff, was nominated in the canon of the Holy Mass, practically by the entire Catholic clergy.
The history of the church is a sure teacher. In this matter, the longest vacancy of the apostolic see lasted two years and nine months from November 29, 1268, until September 1, 1271, the time where lived St. Thomas Aquinas lived. It was also the time there were evidently invalid pontifical elections in other times, for example, the assumption of the papal office invalidly by Pope Gregory VI, and he became Pope by buying the papacy with a large sum of money from his predecessor, Pope Benedict IX, in the year 1045. However, the Roman church has always considered Gregory VI as a valid Pope, and even Hildebrand, who was a cardinal, who later became Pope Saint Gregory VII. He considered Gregory VI to be a legitimate Pope, notwithstanding the illegitimate manner by which Gregory VI became Pope.
Then, another example, Pope Urban VI had been elected under enormous pressure and threats from the Roman people. Some cardinals electors feared for their lives, such was the atmosphere of the election of Urban VI in the year 1378. During the coronation of the new Pope Urban VI, all the cardinals electors, without exception, paid him homage and recognized him publicly as pope during the first month of his pontificate. After a few months, however, some cardinals, especially the French cardinals, began to doubt the validity of the election because of the threatening circumstances and the moral pressure they had to suffer during the election. For this reason, these cardinals elected a new pope who was called Clement VII, a Frenchman who chose Avignon as his residence and became an antipope. He and his successors were considered by the Roman church always as antipopes, as all the editions of the Anuario Pontificio demonstrate.
This began thus, after the election of this antipope, Clement VII began one of the most disastrous crises in the history of the church, the so-called Great Western Schism, which lasted almost 40 years, tearing apart the unity of the church and damaging the spiritual good of souls so much. The Roman church has always recognized Urban VI as a valid Pope, despite the probably invalidating factors of his election. The fact that even saints, as, for example, Saint Vincent Ferrer, during a time, recognized the antipope, claiming Clement VII as the only valid pope, is not a convincing argument, since saints are not infallible in all their opinions, the same Saint Vincent Ferrer, however, later abandoned the Avignon antipope Clement VII and recognized the Pope in Rome.
Pope Saint Celestine V made his renunciation in circumstances of pressure and in the presence of the powerful Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, who succeeded him as Pope Boniface VIII in the year 1294. Because of these circumstances, a part of the faithful and clergy of that time never recognized Boniface VIII as a valid Pope. They continued to consider Celestine as a valid Pope, even though he had already abdicated. However, the Roman church considered Boniface VIII as a legitimate Pope because the acceptance of Boniface VIII by the overwhelming part of the episcopate and the faithful healed at the root the possible invalidating circumstances of both the renunciation of Celestine V and the election, consequently, of Boniface VIII.
Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the particular secretary of the former Pope Benedict XVI, said, in a declaration to LifeSiteNews from February 14, 2019, that the renunciation of Benedict XVI of the Petrine office was valid, and he stated that there is only one Pope legitimately elected, and it is Francis, end of the quote of Archbishop Georg Gänswein.
By then, the idea of a possible redefinition of the papal Ministry had been launched. Some people say that Pope Benedict’s intention was that maintain the papacy, assuming the office capable of bifurcating into two, but this is a substantial error, since the monarchal and unitary nature of the papacy is of divine right and cannot be divided in such a manner.
God alone judges intentions, whereas canon law merely limits itself to evaluating the outward behavior. A well-known sentence of canon law affirms that de internis, non judicat, pretor, which means a judge does not judge interior things, thoughts, intentions. On the other hand, Canon 1526, paragraph one of the new code of canon law points out that “the onus of providing the proofs falls to the one alleging,” onus probandi, incompit ek we assert it. Assert it. There is a difference between a clue and proof. Therefore, we have to be very careful here.
Furthermore, if Pope Benedict is the legitimate Pope, what would happen if from one day to the next he should die, or instead, before he died, Pope Francis should pass away or renounce given the fact that many current cardinals were created by Pope Francis and none of the cardinal electors consider him as an antipope, the apostolic succession would be interrupted at the see of Peter, jeopardizing the visibility of the church. The paradox is that to prove the invalidity of Benedict’s renunciation is a juridical sophism, and they are employed for these juridical sophisms. But then, to resolve the problem of Benedict’s or Francis’ succession, they would be necessary extracanonical solutions. To be used against the law, the hypothesis of Benedict XVI’s invalid renunciation, and therefore of the, consequently, invalidity of the papacy of Francis, properly presents itself as a dead end.
For nine years, the apostolic see would have been de facto vacant since Benedict XVI did not make any act of government, no Episcopal or Cardinal appointment, no act of dispensation, of indulgences, and so on. For this reason, the universal church would be paralyzed in its visible aspect. Such an assumption would amount, in practice, to the attitude of sedevacantism. In the past nine years, all the appointments of apostolic nuncios, diocesan bishops and cardinals, all the Pontifical dispensations, the indulgences granted and used by the faithful, would be null and void, according to this theory, and with all the harmful consequences for the spiritual good of souls.
All the Cardinals nominated by Pope Francis would be, according to this theory, invalid. That is, there are no cardinals, and this would apply to most of the current College of Cardinals. Another, so purely theoretical hypothesis is that we cannot apply this as a pure hypothesis. It remains a hypothesis that we have to carefully examine.
Therefore, we have to repeat the surest way of the great tradition of the church, the hypothesis that says that Benedict XVI is still the only valid Pope, and therefore Pope Francis would be an invalid Pope. Contradicts not only the proven and reasonable practice of the great tradition of the church, but also simply common sense. Furthermore, in this case, one absolutizes the aspect of legality, that is, in our case, the human norms of renunciation and of pontifical election to the detriment of the harm of the good of souls. Since there is created, there would be created a situation of uncertainty on the validity of the acts of the government of the church. And this undermines the visible nature of the church, and one approaches, therefore, the mentality of sedevacantism.
The surest way via tutsior, and the example of the constant practice and the great tradition of the church, must be followed. Also in our present case, the rudder of the boat of the church holds our Lord Jesus Christ in his almighty hands, even in situations of heaviest storms, such as it can be in a time of a doctrinally ambiguous Pope, such storms are relatively short compared to other great crises during the 2000 years of the existence of the militant church.
In the midst of the confusion and the storm within the life of the church of our day, our Lord will rise. Rebuke the winds and the sea and there will be again given a time of calm, doctrinal security, liturgical sacredness and holiness of the priests, bishops and popes, we have to renew in the midst of a situation which, humanly speaking, appears helpless, our unshakable faith in the divine truth that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the Catholic Church.