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How about I give you enough rope to hang yourself with, and ask you to cite the passage in VAS which says this provision only applies to “minor excommunications.”

That is obvious, because it refers to cardinals (you must be a member of the Church to be a cardinal). It also states "or of any other ecclesiastical impediment", thus it cannot be referring to heresy, which is not merely an ecclesiastical impediment, but an impediment of divine law. It is just blatantly obvious to anyone of good-will that this is what he is referring to. For heretics that reject the unity of the Church and believe a manifest heretic can be it's head, they have to twist the meaning.

What a moron:

A disciplinary docuмent has been elevated to divine law (and is therefore irreformable)??

I never said that, yet again you are reading into things! I said it is a matter of divine law, because the subject matter is just that. Heretics are not members of the Church by divine law, as the canonist Maroto states: “Heretics and schismatics are barred from the Supreme Pontificate by the divine law itself, because, although by divine law they are not considered incapable of participating in certain types of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, nevertheless, they must certainly be regarded as excluded from occupying the throne of the Apostolic See…”

So no, cuм ex is not merely disciplinary (which is something like the law to abstain on fridays), because it is predicated on the divine law that a heretic is not a member of the Church and therefore could not possibly be it's head.

There's a difference between a) a Cardinal who believes heresy and b) an actual heretic Cardinal, as declared by canon law.

Furthermore, cuм Ex is still in force

If any part of it is still in force, it's quite a small part.  Here's the thing, the election laws which Pius X and Pius XII enacted, to keep the conclave going, do not contradict cuм Ex at all.  They are in perfect agreement.


cuм Ex says that the election of a heretic is null and void.  Yes, from the spiritual standpoint of the papacy, that's exactly correct.  The question is, would the pope-elect regain his status as pope, if he were to return to orthodoxy?  Most of you assume no, but cuм Ex doesn't elaborate, so this important point is debatable.

Pius X and XII's law changes allow a heretic to vote/be elected...but right afterwards...ALL spiritual penalties (including excommunication) kick back in.  Which gives the same effect as cuм Ex...the spiritual aspect of the papacy is null.  But...this leaves more questions:
a) This elected heretic would be the temporal pope, because he was validly elected.  He just has no spiritual authority.
b) Would he regain his full spiritual powers, if he converted?  I would assume a strong "yes".

Either way, in a general sense, both laws have the same result:  A pope with temporal/govt power, but with no spiritual authority.  Popes Pius X and XII clearly wanted the election to be valid (in a temporal sense) because otherwise they would have said the whole ordeal is null.  Instead, they clearly wanted the human side of the conclave to be valid (which popes have the power to "bind and loose" human rules) but they kept in place the spiritual penalties.