This is an important brief piece (below) for many reasons ... a must read. I post it here, as it shows that a pope, Paschal II, under duress, with his free-will impaired, is not held culpable for signing decrees that are heretical. Untrained "folk" have tried to say Gregory XVII ("Siri") lost his office as pope, by signing the V2-Council Docuмents [which Lefebvre did also sign, every one], yet that is impossible; as "Siri's" signature was coerced under grave death threats.
He said the Council was a terrible suffering for him. In fact, Gregory XVII when he had his chance, publicly proclaimed to Catholics that the V2 Council was invalid. He was a top Theologian and knew its pestilent decrees would have indeed (thought[/b] to have) been part of the infallible Magisterium. His telling all Catholics they could never be bound by the V2 Council, would have been a 101 Schismatic act, for a mere Cardinal to proclaim ... .
The Pontificate of Paschal II (1099-1118)[/u].
(From: "Fortes in Fide" Vol. 1, No. 5.)
Once again the whole of Christendom was shaken, this time by the investiture controversy. The Emperor Henry V, after having imprisoned the Pope, forced him to make promises and concessions that were impossible to reconcile with Catholic doctrine. After his release from captivity, Paschal II hesitated for a long time before he annulled the acts to which he had consented while under duress. Despite a considerable number of warnings from saints, cardinals and bishops, he continued to postpone both his own retraction, and the excommunication of Henry V, despite the fact that it was universally desired. A movement thereupon began that swept through the entire Church, which was directed against the Pope and which declared him to be suspect of heresy, and at the same time entreated him to turn back under pain of losing his pontificate.
Vidigal then proceeds to quote the evidence and the historical facts relating to the struggle by saints, cardinals and bishops against Paschal II, thus demonstrating that the theology of this period of the Middle Ages admitted the hypothesis of a heretical pope and that such a pontiff could, in consequence, lose his pontificate.
St. Bruno, Bishop of Segni and Abbot of Monte Cassino, was the leader of the opposition to Paschal II in Italy.
Paschal was very well aware that St. Bruno did not deny the hypothesis that a Pope could be deposed. He tried to pre-empt the issue by dispossessing the saint of his abbacy on the pretext that: "If we do not remove him from his office he will, by the force of his arguments, relieve us of the government of the Church."
And when Pope Paschal at last retracted, at a synod convened at Rome specifically to examine the question, St. Bruno declared: "Praise be to God, for behold the very Pope himself condemns this alleged privilege (that of investiture by temporal rulers) which is a heresy." St. Bruno, in speaking out in this way, for the first time gave public expression to the extent of his mistrust of the Pope's orthodoxy.
St. Bruno was not the only saint of the period to admit that Paschal could have fallen into heresy. In 1112, Guido of Burgundy, Archbishop of Vienne and the future Pope Callistus II, called a provincial synod which was attended, amongst others, by St. Hugh of Grenoble and St. Godfrey of Amiens. With the approval of these two saints the synod revoked the decrees the Emperor had forced on the Pope, and sent a letter to Paschal II telling him, "should you, in spite of our absolutely refusing to believe it possible, choose an alternative path and refuse ratification of our decision, may God protect you, for were this to be the case we should be obliged to withdraw our allegiance from you."
These words are a threat to break with Paschal II, and are to be explained only by the fact that the bishops meeting at Vienne had in mind three main ideas:
1. That to deny the Church's teaching about investitures was heretical.
2. That the Pope had acceded to this heresy.
3. That a Pope who was eventually proved heretical lost his office and, consequently, should not be obeyed.[/b]
This interpretation is borne out beyond a shadow of doubt by the contemporary letters of St. Ivo of Chartres.