Author Topic: Dogmatic Sedevacantists do not exist. (Read 6989 times)

roscoe · « **Reply #5 on:** October 21, 2011, 12:11:23 AM »

There is no such thing as 'sede vacantism'.

Charles · « **Reply #6 on:** October 21, 2011, 12:26:00 AM »

So what are Catholics who do not believe we've had a valid pope for over 50 years called roscoe ?

Raoul76 · « **Reply #7 on:** October 21, 2011, 01:31:48 AM »

You don't think it's something akin to a dogma that a public, manifest heretic can't be Pope? While it may not have been explicitly defined, isn't it Pharisacal to brush it aside on that basis? It's more like common sense than like a dogma, I'll grant you. So maybe the SSPX is not so much heretical as just irrational; and it really is.

Because if a manifest heretic who teaches soul-damning error to the universal Church can be Pope, the Church makes no sense; it's like saying that God can lie. How would we ever know the truth in those circuмstances? The only way would be to appoint a de facto Pope to sift the sayings of the nominal Pope. That is what SSPX has done, the head of the SSPX is in reality, for those who are in SSPX, a de facto Pope, who is looked to the way that Catholics should only look to the Pope. Because if he can tell us when to listen to the Pope and when not to, if he has veto power over the Pope, what does that make him? That's right, kids -- bigger than the Pope, more powerful than the Pope, ergo, the de facto Pope.

Then there are others in SSPX who just deny that they are heretics, as you go on to say ( excellent post by the way ). That is even more irrational.

Quote

A priori, I think most of us accept the theological possiblity of the thing itself: But there are some who contend the "popes" have not done such and such, but they actually make the point; for their argument hinges on the same proposition as ours: That he did NOT DO what we accuse him of doing.

And to try to prove their point, they have to deny the evidence of their own eyes. It reminds me of that line from A Day at the Races with Groucho Marx. He is dressed up as a doctor, pretending to be a doctor, but with bare hairy legs sticking out of his lab coat, looking like a madman, etc. Someone comes in and isn't quite sure they trust him, for obvious reasons. Groucho keeps telling him he's a doctor, and when it's still not working, he says "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Genius line that so accurately describes the superstitious, hoaxed, scared-of-their-own-shadow masses: "Oooh, we might go to hell if we say the obvious non-Catholic who they show on TV is not a Pope." Even if you were WRONG, God does not work like that; if you are sincerely wrong, you wouldn't go to hell for being a sede. I said it before and I'll keep saying it, despite our age of technology and the information superhighway, we are more superstitious and less able to think clearly than illiterate medieval peasants with common sense.

Gregory I · « **Reply #8 on:** October 21, 2011, 02:28:24 AM »

Quote from: Raoul76

You don't think it's something akin to a dogma that a public, manifest heretic can't be Pope? While it may not have been explicitly defined, isn't it Pharisacal to brush it aside on that basis? It's more like common sense than like a dogma, I'll grant you. So maybe the SSPX is not so much heretical as just irrational; and it really is.

Because if a manifest heretic who teaches soul-damning error to the universal Church can be Pope, the Church makes no sense; it's like saying that God can lie. How would we ever know the truth in those circuмstances? The only way would be to appoint a de facto Pope to sift the sayings of the nominal Pope. That is what SSPX has done, the head of the SSPX is in reality, for those who are in SSPX, a de facto Pope, who is looked to the way that Catholics should only look to the Pope. Because if he can tell us when to listen to the Pope and when not to, if he has veto power over the Pope, what does that make him? That's right, kids -- bigger than the Pope, more powerful than the Pope, ergo, the de facto Pope.

Then there are others in SSPX who just deny that they are heretics, as you go on to say ( excellent post by the way ). That is even more irrational.

Quote
A priori, I think most of us accept the theological possiblity of the thing itself: But there are some who contend the "popes" have not done such and such, but they actually make the point; for their argument hinges on the same proposition as ours: That he did NOT DO what we accuse him of doing.

And to try to prove their point, they have to deny the evidence of their own eyes. It reminds me of that line from A Day at the Races with Groucho Marx. He is dressed up as a doctor, pretending to be a doctor, but with bare hairy legs sticking out of his lab coat, looking like a madman, etc. Someone comes in and isn't quite sure they trust him, for obvious reasons. Groucho keeps telling him he's a doctor, and when it's still not working, he says "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Genius line that so accurately describes the superstitious, hoaxed, scared-of-their-own-shadow masses: "Oooh, we might go to hell if we say the obvious non-Catholic who they show on TV is not a Pope." Even if you were WRONG, God does not work like that; if you are sincerely wrong, you wouldn't go to hell for being a sede. I said it before and I'll keep saying it, despite our age of technology and the information superhighway, we are more superstitious and less able to think clearly than illiterate medieval peasants with common sense.

My point Raoul was simply that sedevacantism is a temporal movement in a unique and particular moment of history. The THEOLOGY of it is founded on Dogma, don't get me wrong. But it cannot be APPLIED dogmatically in this sense: To assert That Benedict is the Pope is more an error of fact than dogma. Such an assertion contradicts no teaching of the church: For those who make the assertion simultaneously believe him to not be heretical, unless of course you are SSPX and then it gets complicated.

My main point was that there is no person who can say the denial of sedevacantism constitutes a denial of Catholic doctrine: Because the denial is not based on the denial of theology, but on disagreement as to the FACT of its application here and now.

It's a purely temporal and historical dispute, unless you actually believe in the FACE of the vast majority of theologians that a public and manifest heretic can be Pope. Then you would have problem, because the faithful are obliged to hold to the unanimous teaching (which can be a morall unanimity, and not univocal) of approved theologians.

Nevertheless, roscoe has a point that this teaching, while based on dogma, does not constitute "sedevacantism." That is the name of a movement that applies this theology to real-world applicable situations.

Nishant · « **Reply #9 on:** October 22, 2011, 07:49:26 AM »

Sedevacantism is a theological possibility, but there is a difference in saying, "Everyone is bound to reject the Papal claimant who appears to have fallen into heresy" from "Anyone may reject a Papal claimant who appears to have done so". I think the first can be called "dogmatic sedevacantism" because sometimes it is treated as if it were a dogma, as if it were, properly so called, an object of divine and Catholic faith necessary for salvation, and concepts like culpability and invincible ignorance are likewise applied to it as well.