Sedevacantists - Bishops and Holy Orders

Bishops and Holy Orders

Catholic doctrine holds that any bishop can validly ordain any baptised man to the priesthood or to the episcopacy, provided that he has the correct intention and uses a doctrinally acceptable rite of ordination, whether or not he has official permission of any sort to perform the ordination, and indeed whether or not he and the ordinand are Catholics. Absent specified conditions, canon law forbids ordination to the episcopate without a mandate from the Pope, and both those who confer such ordination without the papal mandate and those who receive it are subject to excommunication.

In a specific pronouncement in 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared devoid of canonical effect the consecration ceremony conducted for the Palmarian Catholic Church by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục on December 31, 1975, though it refrained from pronouncing on its validity. This declaration also applied pre-emptively to any later ordinations by those who received ordination in the ceremony. Of those then ordained, seven who are known to have returned to full communion with Rome did so as laymen. When Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo conferred episcopal ordination on four men in Washington on September 24, 2006, the Holy See's Press Office declared that "the Church does not recognize and does not intend in the future to recognize these ordinations or any ordinations derived from them, and she holds that the canonical state of the four alleged bishops is the same as it was prior to the ordination." This denial of canonical status means Milingo had no authority to exercise any ministry.

However, Rev. Ciro Benedettini, of the Holy See Press Office, who was responsible for publicly issuing, during the press conference, the communique on Milingo, stated to reporters that any ordinations the excommunicated Milingo had performed prior to his laicization were "illicit but valid", while any subsequent ordinations would be invalid.

On June 11, 2011, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts issued a statement regarding episcopal consecrations in China, saying that the penalty of excommunication imposed by law on those who consecrate or are consecrated without a papal mandate "must be tempered or a penance employed in its place" when those involved in the intrinsically evil act are "coerced by grave fear, even if only relatively grave, or due to necessity or grave inconvenience". It recalled that absolution from the excommunication in question is reserved to the Holy See. Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, Secretary of the Pontifical Council, explained that the statement applied to the bishops ordained by Milingo and Thuc, as well as to the Chinese cases.

The bishops who are or have been active within the sedevacantist movement can be divided into four categories:

• Bishops consecrated within the "official" Church who were subsequently persuaded to the sedevacantist position. To date, this category seems to consist of only two individuals, both now deceased: the Vietnamese Archbishop Thục (who, before his death in 1984, may have been reconciled to Pope John Paul II) and the Chicago-born Mgr. Alfredo F. Mendez, the former Bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

• Bishops whose lineages derive from the foregoing bishops, which essentially means the "Thục line" of bishops deriving from Archbishop Thục. While the "Thục line" is lengthy and complex, reportedly comprising 200 or more individuals, the sedevacantist community generally accepts and respects most of the 12 or so bishops following from the three or four final consecrations that the Archbishop performed (those of Bishops Guerard des Lauriers, Carmona, Zamora and Datessen). Bishop Mendez consecrated one priest to the episcopacy, Fr. Clarence Kelly of the Society of St. Pius V, who consecrated one further bishop. Many bishops in the "Thục line" have been associated with the conclavist Palmarian Catholic Church. On September 24, 1991, Father Pivarunas was consecrated a bishop at Mount Saint Michael by Bishop Moises Carmona. On November 30, 1993, Bishop Pivarunas conferred episcopal consecration to Father Daniel Dolan in Cincinnati, Ohio, and on May 11, 1999, he consecrated Martin Davila for the Union Catolica Treno to succeed Bishop Carmona.

• Bishops whose lineages derive from earlier schisms. A considerable number of sedevacantist bishops are said to derive from Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, who in 1945 set up his own schismatic "Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church". More numerous are those who have had recourse to the Old Catholic line of succession. Bishops of this category include Francis Schuckardt and others associated with him. The orders of the original Old Catholic Church are regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as valid, though no such declaration of recognition has been issued with regard to the several independent Catholic churches that claim to trace their episcopal orders to this church. Some shadow of doubt hovers over the validity of the orders received from these bishops, and the claimants have not received wide acceptance in the sedevacantist community, though most have at least some small congregation.

• Bishops whose orders are generally regarded as invalid through lack of proper lineage. Lucian Pulvermacher and Gordon Bateman of the small conclavist "True Catholic Church" fall into this category.