Reverend Father Kramer, I recall reading some of your great articles or interviews in the Fatima Crusader about a decade and a half ago? Can I ask if you still believe the Fatima Consecration is necessary and possible? Supposing Pope Francis were to call for it, Pope Benedict XVI would surely join in. Wouldn't that be enough, and isn't it ok for us to keep working for that?
From Catholic Tradition, "
Father Kramer: On this point I would refer to the testimony of the Roman stigmatist, Antonio Ruffini. Pope Pius XII authorized the blessing of a chapel on the spot where Ruffini received the stigmata on the Via Appia, and Father Tomaselli, the miracle worker, wrote a booklet about him ---- a short account of the life of Ruffini. I myself knew Ruffini for many years. In the early 1990s Ruffini was asked point blank in his home: "Is John Paul II the Pope who is going to do the Consecration of Russia?" He answered: "No, it's not John Paul. It will not be his immediate successor either, but the one after that. He is the one who will consecrate Russia." That is, Benedict's successor, during this time of world war and persecution of the Church, will be the one to do the Consecration at long last and then the restoration and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart will begin."
http://catholictradition.org/Mary/fatima40.htm So do you still believe that? Or do you believe this will happen only after a declaration that Francis is not the Pope?
Also, I'm not sure 20th century Catholic Theologians universally abandoned Cardinal Cajetan's opinion - or at least, they found a way to still apply it. For e.g. Cardinal Journet, whom Archbishop Lefebvre called a great Theologian, writing in Church of the Incarnate Word, 1954, stated on the Pope-heretic question, "Others, such as Cajetan, and John of St. Thomas, whose analysis seems to me more penetrating, have considered that even after a manifest sin of heresy the Pope is not yet deposed, but should be deposed by the Church,
papa haereticus non est depositus, sed deponendus. Nevertheless, they added, the Church is not on that account above the Pope. And to make this clear they fall back on an explanation of the same nature as those we have used in Excursus IV. They remark on the one hand that in divine law the Church is to be united to the Pope as the body is to the head; and on the other that, by divine law, he who shows himself a heretic is to be avoided after one or two admonitions (Tit. iii. 10). There is therefore an absolute contradiction between the fact of being Pope and the fact of persevering in heresy after one or two admonitions.
The Church’s action is simply declaratory, it makes it plain that an incorrigible sin of heresy exists; then the authoritative action of God disjoins the Papacy from a subject who, persisting in heresy after admonition, becomes in divine law, inapt to retain it any longer. In virtue therefore of Scripture the Church designates and God deposes.
God acts with the Church, says John of St. Thomas, somewhat as a Pope would act who decided to attach indulgences to certain places of pilgrimage, but left it to a subordinate to designate which these places should be (II-II, q. I; disp. 2, a. 3, no. 29, vol. VII, p. 264). The explanation of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas — which, according to them, is also valid, properly applied, as an interpretation of the enactments of the Council of Constance — brings us back in its turn to the case of a subject who becomes in Divine law incapable at a given moment of retaining the papacy. It is also reducible to the loss of the pontificate by default of the subject. This then is the fundamental case and the others are merely variants."
Please see:
http://theologicalflint.com/journet-on-a-heretic-pope-and-his-deposition/ Your thoughts, Father? God bless.