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Poll

Sedevacantists:if you were convinced sede-ism was wrong, what would you do next?

Become an R&R Traditionalist
12 (35.3%)
Become an Indult Traditionalist
6 (17.6%)
Become an NO Cath Conservative
9 (26.5%)
Become a very liberal Catholic
1 (2.9%)
Cease to practice Catholicism
6 (17.6%)

Total Members Voted: 28

Author Topic: Sedevacantists:if you were convinced sede-ism was wrong, what would you do next?  (Read 26923 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

How can we be sure that only sedevacantists have taken this poll?

This can easily lead to non-sedevacantists taking the poll just to click on and promote their own current positions.

Susceptible to vote fraud.
We can't, especially given the tally currently shows 17 sedevacantists voted.  I didn't vote, so exactly who are these other 17 sedevacantists on this forum?

It would be interesting if those sedevacantists that voted posted who they are (no need to say how they voted, just that they voted).

Offline Ladislaus

  • Supporter
Dogmatic Sedevacantism (DS): SVism is dogma. If you don't believe it, you are in heresy!

Moderate Sedevacantism (MS): SVism is a personal opinion. The Church may confirm or reject it in future.

Ultra-Dogmatic SVism (UDS): If the "dogma" of SVism is proven incorrect, I will simply leave the Catholic Church.

Am I mistaken or are the persons here going even beyond DS to UDS? And I thought many were MSes.

Your DS and UDS are merely flip sides of the same coin.  UDS is a logical corollary of DS.


Struthio is probably considered an example of a dogmatic sedevacantist. Yet in another thread when I asked him what if sufficiently many years passed, he answered:

"I would (have to) admit that my current assessment of the situation is or was wrong, as soon as the generation of the Robber Council will have passed away (which cannot happen while I have to continue in this life)."

Edit: Just saw, "UDS is a logical corollary of DS." Ok. I would have thought the Dogmatic SVist would at least become non-dogmatic Svist in light of powerful evidence to the contrary. Also, a dogma can only be believed with infallible faith on the authority of the teaching Church. Otherwise, it would remain something like at most a theological conclusion only. But the Church has not ruled that Pope Francis is not the Pope. Ergo, there cannot be de fide certainty that such is the case. 

An analogy would be someone writing AGAINST the Immaculate Conception the day before it was defined. He may think he has good theological arguments for the same. But if it were dogmatically defined by the Church, and he wanted to remain Catholic, he would have to say, "I retract my opinion and submit to the infallible judgment of the teaching Church".

In the same way, if it were proved, for e.g. (1) that SVism leads to EVism, and (2) EVism is heretical, a sedevacantist who intends to remain Catholic should retract what was never a dogma of faith, returning to the Authority of the Church that he thought had defected.

Offline Ladislaus

  • Supporter
Your DS and UDS are merely flip sides of the same coin.  UDS is a logical corollary of DS.

If you believe something to be dogma, and then you find out that dogma is not dogma, like with my analogy to the Immaculate Conception earlier, then the entire rule of faith becomes undermined.  It's the same reason why if a person doubts or denies one dogma, he denies them all.  If one were to be invalidated, the foundation for all dogma would be invalidated.  If someone does NOT believe this to be the case, and believes that it's possible to be mistaken about sedevacantism, then the person is not really a dogmatic sedevacantist.  So what you're missing is probably something in between moderate sedevacantism and dogmatic sedevacantism, where the person is adamant that they're right but it's not quite dogmatic.

Offline Ladislaus

  • Supporter
An analogy would be someone writing AGAINST the Immaculate Conception the day before it was defined. He may think he has good theological arguments for the same. But if it were dogmatically defined by the Church, and he wanted to remain Catholic, he would have to say, "I retract my opinion and submit to the infallible judgment of the teaching Church".

This is probably a good analogy to describe those who are in between moderate and ACTUAL dogmatic sedevacantism.  It's a personal opinion that this is dogma, but it's not yet backed by the authority of the Church, so its denial cannot be formal heresy.

I'll give you an example with myself.  I am convinced that "Rewarder God" theory (in the EENS category) is objectively heretical.  But since the Church has not definitively condemned the opinion as heretical, I cannot hold anyone who believes in it to be a formal heretic.  I believe it to be heretical and have my arguments for why I believe this, but if I were a priest, for instance, I would not refuse Communion to someone who held that opinion because I don't have that authority.  This is in fact my big beef with the Dimond brothers.  I feel that it entails a schismatic mentality to exclude from the Church those whom the Church has not excluded.  It's one thing to argue that the position is objectively heretical, and quite another to consider people who hold it to be non-Catholics ... since it hasn't been so defined by the Church.  They make syllogisms from other dogma to prove that the conclusions are heretical, but these syllogisms involve human reasoning and therefore do not rise to the level binding consciences.

So, for instance, if someone had argued before the definition of the Immaculate Conception that this was a revealed dogma and its denial was objectively heretical, he would in fact be right, since it's always been objectively a dogma.  But for him to then go on and refuse Communion to someone who didn't believe in it before the definition, that would have been schismatic.