The appeal to the explanation of Beal is futile; since all arguments which say that the defector who has lost office ipso jure remains in office until the declaration is issued is against reason. It involves a fatal contradiction. How can one who has actually lost office ipso jure still remain in office until the declaration is issued? It is an absolute impossibility.
Pax Vobis resorts to mendacious sophistry: 《Just like a judge’s recognition of a jury’s guilty verdict is the recognition of a crime. There is no crime (in temporal terms) until the Church rules.》In penal law, one is not presumed to have incurred a penalty unless the competent authotity has declared it. Canon 194 is an administrative canon. The loss of office prescribed in this canon is not a penalty. Penal deprivation of office is dealt with separately in the penal section of the Code. Loss of office in this case does not depend on the commission of a crime or its juridical recognition; but the statute decrees the loss of office ipso jurebon the sole basis of the public fact of defection. The propisition therefore, is manifestly false that: 《The point is, without the declaration, there is no loss of office. The declaration is the enforcement; without enforcement, there is no punishment for the crime. 》The loss of office is not a punishment for a crime; but is the natural effect of defetion from the faith, which is why St. Robert Bellarmine explains that it is unanimously taught by the Fathers that heretics lose office entirely by themselves, ipso facto, and not by the force of any human law, but ex natura hæresis. Thus, the fall from office takes place independently of the jurisdiction of the Church; and, as Suárez proves, papal loss of office cannot take place by the force of any human law.* Therefore, the administrative laws of the Church merely recognize the nature of the ipso facto loss of office as being ex natura hæresis, and accordingly statutes that such a loss of office takes place ipso jure. Refuting all of those who held that loss of office takes place as a penalty for having violated ecclesiastical laws, St. Robert Bellarmine in Book II Chapter XXX of De Romano Pontifice cites Aquinas, saying, “St. Thomas teaches that schismatics straightaway loose all jurisdiction”; and cites the unanimous teaching of the Fathers: “Nor does the response which some make avail, that these Fathers speak according to ancient laws, but now since the decree of the Council of Constance they do not lose jurisdiction, unless excommunicated by name, or if they strike clerics. I say this avails to nothing. For those Fathers, when they say that heretics lose jurisdiction, do not allege any human laws which maybe did not exist then on this matter; rather, they argued from the nature of heresy … Yet heretics are outside the Church, even before excommunication, and deprived of all jurisdiction, for they are condemned by their own judgment, as the Apostle teaches to Titus; that is, they are cut from the body of the Church without excommunication, as Jerome expresses it.” In the previous sentence, Bellarmine established the unanimity of the Fathers, quoting an impressive array of Fathers, saying, “the Holy Fathers teach in unison, that not only are heretics outside the Church, but they even lack all Ecclesiastical jurisdiction and dignity ipso facto.”
* R. P. Francisci Suarez, Opera Omnia, Paris 1863 (Vivés), Tomus Doudecimus, Tractatus Primus, De Fide Theologica. Disputatio X. De Summo Pontifice, Sect. VI. p. 316: «…nec vere cadere potest Pontifex ipso facto a sua dignitate propter jus humanum, tum quia illud esset latum vel ab inferiori, scilicet concilio, vel ab æquali, nempe preedecessore Papa; at neuter horum habet vim coactivam, ut punire valeat Pontificem æqualem, vel superiorem»