Sedevacantists - Criticism

Criticism

Against sedevacantism, mainstream Catholics advance arguments such as:

• According to Catholic doctrine, the Catholic Church is a visible identifiable body that is literally catholic, in the sense of universal ("for all people"). This is seen as incompatible with the sedevacantist claim that the true nature of the Catholic Church has been hidden from the world for half a century
• The 1870 Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council reaffirmed that "it has always been necessary for every Church, e.g., the faithful throughout the world — to be in agreement with (the Roman Church) because of its preeminent authority" and that consequently the bishop whom the Church in Rome acknowledges as its head "is the successor of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, true vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church and father and teacher of all Christian people. To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal Church." This is seen as incompatible with the sedevacantist claim that the papal line of succession has been broken since 1958 (or 1963).
• Critics of sedevacantism argue this also means that the theory advanced by the seventeenth-century theologian and Doctor of the Church Robert Bellarmine that a pope who fell into heresy would automatically forfeit his office and could be formally deposed has been overruled by Church authority by Benedict XIV in "De Synodo Dioecesano" (10,1,5) and by the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Can. 2232, Par. 1, "A penalty that is latae sententiae, whether medicinal or punitive, holds for one who is aware of his own delict in both fora ; but prior to a declaratory sentence, the delinquent is excused from observing the penalty any time that he cannot observe it without infamy, and in the external forum no one can compel the observance of that penalty from him unless the delict is notorious, with due regard for Can. 2223, Par. 4." Sedevacantist appeals to Bellarmine's authority in this point accordingly could not be sustained, adding that Bellarmine envisaged that such a deposition, even if possible, could only be undertaken by a significant body of the Church including many bishops and cardinals, rather than by a few individuals.
• The Catholic doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church, which appeals to Christ's promise to the Apostle Peter in Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter (the Rock), and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it") excludes the possibility that the Catholic bishops around the world and the Pope with whom they are in communion would succumb to heresy and fall from office.
• They claim sedevacantists wrongly treat certain papal statements of the past as if they were ex cathedra declarations.
• They claim sedevacantists fail to distinguish between matters of discipline — such as the use of Latin and of the Tridentine Mass — which can be reformed at any time, and infallible dogmatic teachings.
• They claim sedevacantists indulge in the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc when they attribute problems that the Church has experienced in the Western world since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council to the reforms themselves rather than to the general decrease in religiosity in the West.

Sedevacantists advance counter-arguments, such as:

• They deny that they implicitly repudiate the dogma of papal infallibility as defined at the First Vatican Council, and maintain that, on the contrary, they are the fiercest defenders of this doctrine, since they teach that the Apostolic See of Peter, under the rule of a true Pope, cannot promulgate contradictory teachings.
• They argue that the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus concerns the permanence of the primacy of the Holy See over the universal church and condemns as heretical the propositions that the authority granted to St. Peter by Christ either was abolished after his death or devolved to the college of bishops, both positions that were argued by Orthodox theologians. The very purpose of the Constitution was to solemnly and dogmatically refute those errors. The perpetuity granted divinely to the Petrine ministry was not the constant occupation of that office but that the monarchical structure of the Church, with the Seat of Peter as its head, would never be abrogated and endure throughout history. It is this permanence which allows the Holy See to function as the point of unity even during papal interregnum.
• To rebut the accusation of denying the catholicity and indefectibility of the Church, they say that, between the death of every Pope and the election of his successor, there is a sede vacante period during which there is no visible Head of the Church, and — while mainstream Catholics hold that, according to the dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council, which speaks of "perpetual successors" in the pontificate, there must be, apart from such transitory periods, a perpetual presence of the Bishop of Rome, not merely of his office — that the absence of a Pope has become a long-term feature of the Church's structure.
• They claim that, during the 40-year Great Western Schism, although no one asserted the see of Rome to be vacant, there was great uncertainty about which of the two (eventually three) claimants was the true pontiff, with even canonized saints taking opposing sides in the controversy. In his 1882 book, The Relations of the Church to Society — Theological Essays, a Jesuit theologian, Father Edmund J. O'Reilly, wrote: "... not that an interregnum covering the whole period would have been impossible or inconsistent with the promises of Christ, for this is by no means manifest."

Like other traditionalist Catholics, sedevacantists criticize liturgical revisions made by the Holy See since the Second Vatican Council:

• Anthony Cekada, an assistant pastor of sedevacantist bishop Daniel Dolan, in his book Work of Human Hands, says that the Mass of Paul VI is invalid and moreover strips down or removes completely every prayer in the Latin Rite which covers subjects such as judgment, heaven and hell, Satan, et al., and suggests that their full-scale removal, if such were to happen, would contribute to a lack of self-discipline and eventual loss of faith and skepticism among Catholics, responding to the post hoc ergo propter hoc accusation above. He criticizes the Mass of Paul VI for what he calls its "Protestantizations", such as referring to the service as a "supper" with a "table" and "cup" instead of a "sacrifice" with an "altar" and "chalice", making the congregation, in his view, the center of worship instead of God, and so forth. He claims that the Mass of Paul VI uses a Modernist method of mixing traditional language with Protestant language to appeal to both sides, and thus falling into heresy, in the same way as the Church of England is said to be "both Catholic and Reformed". The observation about the use of the word "cup", rather than "chalice", concerned only the English translation in use from 1973 to 2011, which employed both terms. It does not concern the original Latin text of the Mass of Paul VI, translations into other languages, or the present English translation, which always uses the word "chalice".
• Cekada, Patrick Henry Omlor and Rama Coomaraswamy criticize what they consider the wholescale removal of prayers and revisions to the consecration of the Eucharist. Omlor has objected to pro vobis et pro multis being translated in an earlier English translation as "for you and for all", instead of "for you and for many" as in the present English translation. On this see pro multis. They have also said that the revision of the words of consecration of the wine invalidates the sacrament by moving the phrase mysterium fidei (in the English translation, "the mystery of faith"), from the middle of the formula of consecration of the wine to after it and changing its context from, they say, referring to the transubstantiated Sacrament to the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection.
• They claim that the new rites of ordination and consecration are invalid, for not explicitly endowing the priest with the power to "offer Mass for the living and the dead", but simply, they say, "to preside over the assembly of the people". (The new rite in fact prays: "May Jesus preserve you to sanctify the Christian people and to offer sacrifice to God".) Consequently, they regard Catholic priests ordained or consecrated as bishops since 1968, when the new rite came into use, as invalid, and they consider Pope Benedict XVI, who was consecrated a bishop in 1977 in the new rite, to be a mere priest, who cannot be the Bishop of Rome.