All of the expert canonists and theologians who expound on the five opinions are unanimous in stating that the difference between Opinion No. 4 and No. 5 is that No. 4 requires a judgment to be made by the Church before the pope falls from office, whereas No. 5 holds that the fall from office is automatic, and takes place independently of and before any judgment is made. In order to support their erroneous opinion on this point, Salza & Siscoe in Chapter 11 of their book quote the ambiguously stated opinion of Fr. Sebastian Smith (Elements of Ecclesiastical Law, p. 210. 68 Ibid., Preface, p. xi.), who wrote in 1881, “Question: Is a Pope who falls into heresy deprived, ipso jure, of the Pontificate? Answer: There are two opinions: one holds that he is by virtue of divine appointment, divested ipso facto, of the Pontificate; the other, that he is, jure divino, only removable. Both opinions agree that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church - i.e., by an ecuмenical council or the College of Cardinals.” It is first to be pointed out that Fr. Smith states ambiguously that there are “two opinions” on the question (there have been five opinions, but only two which admit the removal of a manifest heretic pope); and he says, “Both opinions agree that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church”. This statement, “Both opinions agree that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church”, simply means that in the case of an ipso jure loss of office which takes place automatically even before the declaration and independently of it; and the case of jure divino “only removable” opinion, in which the loss of office is said to take place immediately upon the declaration: in both cases, a declaratory sentence would be required to enforce the removal and authorize the election of a new pope. Expressed in the manner that it is formulated, the statement can superficially be misinterpreted to mean, (in the manner that Salza & Siscoe opportunistically misinterpret it for their own purpose), that the declaration would be required in order for the loss of office to take place. As they do with so many authors (as will be shown later in this work), Salza & Siscoe twist the meaning of a passage to make it appear to say exactly the opposite from what a critical examination of the words demonstrates to be their authentic meaning. Smith is clearly referring to Opinion No. 5 when he says, “one holds that he is by virtue of divine appointment, divested ipso facto, of the Pontificate”; since he writes in answer to the question, “Is a Pope who falls into heresy deprived, ipso jure, of the Pontificate?” Now in Canon Law, the expression that one is deprived ipso jure means that it is automatic – it takes place ipso facto before any judgment is prounounced. This is exactly how the medieval Decretists employed the term in the earliest formulations of Opinion No. 5, and it is employed in exactly the same manner by the Council of Constance when it deposed Pedro de Luna “as a precautionary measure”, and declared that he had already fallen from every ecclesiastical dignity and had been severed from the body of the Church ipso jure before any judgment was pronounced. The term is again employed in exactly the same manner in the 1983 Code of Canon Law of Pope John Paul II. When Smith says of “the other”, i.e. “that he is, jure divino, only removable”, he is clearly speaking of Opinion No. 4 in its less radical formulation (Suárez), according to which the Church would deliberatively determine that the pope is a heretic, and upon the juridical declaration of guilt, the pope would immediately fall from office. If Smith had meant by, “Both opinions agree that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church”, that in both cases a declaration of guilt would be necessary for the fall from to take place; that would mean that there would not be two opinions on the question, but only one, namely, “that he is, jure divino, only removable”. Yet this absurd interpretation of the passage is exactly how it is understood by Salza & Siscoe in Chapter 11 of their book: «Fr. Smith expressly states that “both opinions agree” that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church. If he is not found guilty, he remains a true and valid Pope.” ». Then they state their non sequitur conclusion: «The teaching of Fr. Smith confirms John of St. Thomas’ understanding of Bellarmine and Suarez’s position, since he [John of St. Thomas] stated that “Bellarmine and Suarez” both held that a heretical Pope loses his office only if he is “declared incorrigible.” » In reality, what Fr. Smith’s teaching confirms is that John of St. Thomas failed to correctly understand Bellarmine’s exposition on the question; and that Salza & Siscoe have understood neither Bellarmine’s exposition on Opinion No. 5, nor have they understood the opinion as it has been elaborated by theologians and canonists for more than eight centuries. In the first of the “two opinions” in which the heretic pope would lose office ipso jure (automatically) the Church would possess the jurisdiction to declare the See vacant, in the manner that the Council of Constance declared “Benedict XIII” to have already lost all ecclesiastical dignity and to have severed himself from the body of the Church, thus removing the last remaining claimant to the papal throne, and juridically establishing the sede vacante. In the second of the “two opinions”, the Church would not be able to declare the pope guilty of heresy, because an official judgment of guilt of an individual pronounced by the Church absolutely requires jurisdiction to judge that person; but neither the cardinals, nor a synod, and not even a general council possess the jurisdiction to make such an official, juridical declaration – so any judgment a council would make would not be a public juridical act of the Church, but would be a non-juridic statement of churchmen utterly devoid of any force of law or juridical value whatsoever. This is the fatal flaw in all the variations of Opinion No. 4, which holds that a heretic pope does not lose his office until he is judged by the Church. John of St. Thomas, who held this opinion, admitted himself the problematic aspect of the opinion when he wrote: “Concerning the second point, namely by whose authority the declaration and deposition is to be made, there is dissent among theologians, and it does not appear by whom such a deposition is to be made, because it is an act of judgment, and jurisdiction, which can be exercised by no one over the pope.” Salza & Siscoe then carry the absurdity even further: « Because the “two opinions” agree that a heretical Pope “must at least be declared guilty of the crime of heresy by the Church,” there are actually three opinions to be noted, which, for the sake of simplicity and easy recall, could be classified as follows: 1) the “Jesuit” opinion (of Bellarmine/Suarez), 2) the “Dominican” opinion (of Cajetan/John of St. Thomas), and 3) the unanimous opinion. The Jesuit opinion is that a heretical Pope falls from office after the crime of heresy has been established by the Church. The Dominican opinion is that a heretical Pope falls from office only after the Church commands the faithful to avoid him. But the unanimous opinion is that “he must at least be declared guilty by the Church.” » The belief that there was a single “Jesuit opinion” is the result of an uncritical failure to distinguish between two of the oldest opinions on the question of the deposition or removal of a heretic pope. As Moynihan demonstrates , among the early Decretists there were those, who maintained that a heretic pope would remain in office until judged guilty of heresy by the Church; and others, mainly of the French school of canonists who advocated the opinion that a heretic pope would by his very heresy automatically lose office by himself, ipso jure. It was among the early Decretists that these opinions, enumerated by Bellarmine as No. 4 and No. 5 originated. Bellarmine argued in favour of the fifth opinion which held that a heretic pope would automatically fall from office ipso facto or (as the Decretists would say), ipso jure; while Suárez followed the fourth opinion, which held that the heretic would remain in office until judged guilty of heresy by the Church. By the late 19th Century, the fourth opinion had been universally abandoned; and since then, the fifth opinion (as will be shown below), has been the morally unanimous opinion among theologians who admit, at least hypothetically, that a pope can become a heretic. Salza & Siscoe have totally inverted the truth in this matter, hysterically claiming that those who follow what is now the virtually unanimous opinion among those theologians who admit at least as a hypothesis, that a pope can become a heretic, (No. 5), (in the manner that it is explained by all of the eminent scholars who have examined each of the five opinions), ‘nonsensically reject the unanimous opinion’ one cannot hold the Jesuit opinion (the Pope loses his office ipso facto), without also holding the unanimous opinion (the Pope must at least be declared guilty of the crime of heresy by the Church).” They then conclude against what has been established and is held with a unanimous consensus of scholars that the “rejection of [what is according to them] the unanimous opinion is clearly not the fruit of sound, scholarly research of the question, but rather a rash and superficial judgment based, in many cases, on snippets read on the internet”. (!) Bellarmine explained that the manifest heretic pope would cease “by himself” to be pope, a Christian, and a member of the Church; and “for which reason” (quare) having ceased to be pope, “he may be judged and punished by the Church.” It is unmistakably clear from the explicit wording of the text that Bellarmine is saying that the manifest heretic pope, completely by himself, i.e. by his own act of defection from the faith, “sine alia vi externa”, ceases to be pope, a Christian and a member of the Church; and precisely because he would cease to be pope, he, having fallen from office, could then be judged and punished by the Church. Ballerini, following Bellamine, is more explicit in saying that the heretic pope, upon manifesting his pertinacity, would have “abdicated the primacy and the pontificate”, ceasing automatically to be pope, without any judgment, but explains the pastoral reason why a declaratory sentence would need to be made. Pope Gregory XVI explicitly endorsed Ballerini’s opinion. A declaratory sentence is absolutely necessary not only for the pastoral reason given by Ballerini, (so that the faithful may be warned about the heretic), but more importantly, because unless the heretic intruder be visibly and juridically declared to have fallen from office and to have vacated the chair, a manifestly and certainly valid pope could not be elected and universally accepted by the whole Church for so long as the intruder is allowed to carry on with his imposture. As they do with the passage of Fr. Sebastian Smith, similarly Salza & Siscoe twist the words of Bellarmine and Ballerini, even falsifying the text of the latter (as is shown later in this work) to fit their own meaning. All three of these authors mentioned in the previous paragraph (Bellarmine, Ballerini and Gregory XVI), were following the ruling of the Council of Constance, which declared that Pedro de Luna had already lost all office and ecclesiastical dignity by himself, prior to his being judged by the Council. By the late 19th Century, Fr. Sydney Smith SJ (in 1895) testified that it had already become the common opinion that a manifestly heretical pope would cease automatically to be pope, and that in such a case the Cardinals, being duly informed, would only need to issue a declaratory sentence on the one who was no longer pope. (This is also the explicitly stated opinion of Cardinal Raymond Burke ). Thus, it would seem highly unlikely that Fr. Sebastian Smith would have been so ignorant as to mean by saying, “Both opinions agree that he must at least be declared guilty of heresy by the Church”, that both opinions held that the fall from office would only take place upon judgment by the Church, as Salza & Siscoe maintain. What his words clearly indicate, if one examines them critically, is that whether the pope would be “divested ipso facto, of the Pontificate” (Opinion No. 5), or, “that he is, jure divino, only removable” (Opinion No. 4), a declaratory sentence would be necessary in order to enforce the loss of office and facilitate the election of a new pope in the former case; and at least a declaratory sentence as opposed to penal judgment and deposition by a tribunal, would be necessary to effect the removal of the heretic pope from office in the latter. Thus, Smith uses the term “removable” in the same manner as it is used in By Bellarmine in his refutation of Opinion No. 2, rather than that a reigning pope could be juridically judged and deposed from office. What this shows, is that Sebastian Smith is testifying that in his day (1881), the classical position of Opinion No.4 formulated by Cajetan during the Reformation, which held in favour of a juridical deposition of a heretical pope, had already been universally abandoned, and was replaced by a less radical version of the opinion; which held, contrary to the vast majority who favoured Opinion No. 5, that a heretic pope would fall from office upon the issuance of a merely declaratory sentence after a merely deliberative inquiry. The flaw in this theory is that a mere declaration pronounced on actually reigning pontiff by his subjects would lack all jurisdiction, and would therefore not be an official judgment of the Church, because so long as he is pope, the pontiff, who is solemnly defined to be the supreme and final judge in all cases, is the only one who has the authority to judge his own case. Without jurisdiction to pronounce judgment on the pope, a council’s judgment would not be a judgment of the Church, but a mere opinion of men, who would invalidly presume to convene in a council and pronounce a judgment they are juridically incompetent to make. The belief that the Cardinals, or even an ecuмenical council would be competent to judge a pope juridically is a heresy that directly offends against the judicial supremacy and injudicability of the Roman Pontiff, solemnly defined in Pastor Æternus; against the repeated declarations of the popes teaching that the pope cannot be judgd by anyone, as well as against the solemn pronouncement of the Fifth Lateran Council that the pope has absolute authority over a council . Bellarmine refuted this opinion in his exposition on Opinion No. 4 demolishing the argument, by explaining that neither the bishops nor the cardinals have any power over a pope, and to pronounce official judgment on a pope is to exercise power of jurisdiction over a pope. Wernz and Vidal most conclusively refute and utterly demolish the theory that a council could even pronounce a merely declaratory sentence on a reigning pope: Finally there is the fifth view of Bellarmine which was expressed at the outset in the assertion [above] and which is rightly defended by Tanner and others as being more approved and more common. For he who is no longer a member of the body of the Church, that is, of the Church as a visible body, cannot be the head of the universal Church. But a pope who falls into public heresy would by that fact cease to be a member of the Church; therefore he would also, upon that fact, cease to be the head of Church. So, a publicly heretical pope, who by the mandate of Christ and of the Apostle should be avoided because of danger to the Church, must be deprived of his power, as nearly everyone admits. But he cannot be deprived of his power by a merely declaratory sentence. For every judicial sentence of privation supposes a superior jurisdiction over him against whom the sentence is laid. But a general council, in the opinion of adversaries, does not have a higher jurisdiction than does a heretical pope. For he, by their supposition, before the declaratory sentence of a general council, retains his papal jurisdiction; therefore a general council cannot pass a declaratory sentence by which a Roman Pontiff is actually deprived of his power; for that would be a sentence laid by an inferior against the true Roman Pontiff. In sum, it needs to be said clearly that a [publicly] heretical Roman Pontiff loses his power upon the very fact. Meanwhile a declaratory criminal sentence, although it is merely declaratory, should not be disregarded, for it brings it about, not that a pope is “judged” to be a heretic, but rather, that he is shown to have been found heretical, that is, a general council declares the fact of the crime by which a pope has separated himself from the Church and has lost his rank. Following the doctrine of Innocent III , who taught that the pope, as pope, cannot be judged; Bellarmine says in Book Four, Chapter Seven of De Romano Pontifice, “the Pope cannot be judged”, but only upon having fallen from office ”by himself” (he explains in Book Two Chapter Thirty) he could then be judged and punished by the Church. It suffices to say that if even a council may not judge a pope, then a fortiori neither can any other group or individual which would be less than a council, judge a pope, but could only declare in such a manner that he may be “shown to be already judged” (Innocent III), to have already fallen, to already have lost any office and all ecclesiastical dignity ipso jure (Council of Constance) to have “abdicated the primacy and the pontificate” (Ballerini), and to have “fallen from the pontificate by himself” (Gregory XVI). Ballerini states in the most explicit of terms that, a general council has no power to judge a pope, since the pope receives his power not from his electors or from the Church, but immediately from God; by which he is the Pontiff over the whole Church, and superior over general councils, and therefore is entirely removed from the jurisdiction of all others who are inferior to him, and precisely for this reason, the machinations of Basel against Eugenius IV ended up in open schism: « . . . contra certum Pontificium jus nulla vel generalis concilii potestas est: cuм ob idem jus non ab electoribus, nec ab Ecclesia, sed a Deo immediate tributum, verus Pontifex toti Ecclesiæ, & generalibus quoque synodis (ut probavimus) superior, ab aliorum omnium sibi inferiorum jurisdictione subtrahatur. Hac quidem de causa Basileensium molimina & gesta contra Eugenium IV. unicuм certumque Pontificem illegitima & inania nihil potuerunt ad ipsum deponendum, & in apertum schisma deflexerunt. » Ballerini’s formulation leaves absolutely no room for the sole exception for heresy theory that had been formulated by canonists since the time of the Decretists, according to which, a council would have the authority to depose a certain pope from office for the crime of heresy. On page 132 of the same work, Ballerini declares, «Ideo enim (ut antea probatum est) supra certum pontificem jus nullum est concilio etiam generali, quia verus Pontifex est, & primate fruitur, ob quem toti Ecclesiæ etiam collective sumptæ, & in concilio adunatæ jure divino superior est; nec inferiori in superiorem suum coactivum jus esse potest.» Peters attests to the fact that the opinion that a heretic pope would remain in office until even a merely declaratory sentence would effect his removal as a dispositive cause for his fall from office has been entirely abandoned in his article where he says, «I know of no author coming after Wernz who disputes this analysis [of Wernz and Vidal]. See, e.g., Ayrinhac, CONSTITUTION (1930) 33; Sipos, ENCHIRIDION (1954) 156; Regatillo, INSTITUTIONES I (1961) 299; Palazzini, DMC III (1966) 573; and Wrenn (2001) above. As for the lack of detailed canonical examination of the mechanics for assessing possible papal heresy, Cocchi, COMMENTARIUM II/2 (1931) n. 155, ascribes it to the fact that law provides for common cases and adapts for rarer; may I say again, heretical popes are about as rare as rare can be and yet still be. In sum, and while additional important points could be offered on this matter, in the view of modern canonists from Wernz to Wrenn, however remote is the possibility of a pope actually falling into heresy and however difficult it might be to determine whether a pope has so fallen, such a catastrophe, Deus vetet, would result in the loss of papal office. » Incredibly, Salza & Siscoe adamantly and delusionally insist that the common opinion today is that a manifest heretic pope would not fall from office until he is judged by the Church; and, according to them, the opinion which was originated by the Decretists of the early 1180s, namely, the Fifth Opinion which holds that a manifest heretic pope would automatically fall from office ipso facto by the act of formal heresy itself before any judgment by the Church, is nothing but an opinion of sedevacantists who do not understand Bellarmine! As I just quoted Peters, “I know of no author coming after Wernz who disputes this analysis [of Wernz and Vidal]”; yet the two armchair theologians – the tax lawyer and the businessman, who have no formal education in Canon Law or Theology presume to differ with the unanimous opinion of canonists and theologians on papal loss of office, and their learned understanding of Opinion No. 5. De Auctoritate Summi Pontificis” Disputatio III, Articulus II XVII De Depositione Papae & Seq. James M. Moynihan, STL, JCD; Papal Immunity and Liability in the Writings of the Medieval Canonists, Gregorian University Press, Roma 1961, Chapter Three. 2 "
t has been generally held that, given the possibility of a personally heretical Pope, he would ipso facto cease to be Pope by ceasing to be a member of the Church. The Church in that case, as represented by the Cardinals or otherwise, could on due information of the fact pass a declaratory sentence on one who being no longer Pope was no longer its superior, and then take measures to remove him from the see in which he had become an intruder." (Dr. Littledale's Theory of the Disappearance of the Papacy - Sydney F. Smith S.J. Catholic Truth Society, London, 1896.) 3 “If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic. And so, that could happen. […] It would have to be members of the College of Cardinals [to declare him to be in heresy].” Interview with Catholic World Report, December 8 2016. 4 “. . . the Roman Pontiff alone, possessing as it were authority over all Councils, has full right and power of proclaiming Councils, or transferring and dissolving them” (The reference is provided below with the text of the full paragraph.) 5 Wernz-Vidal, IUS CANONIcuм II (1928), n. 453 6 «Qui autem judicat, dominus est» (I Cor. IV).” And again: “The Roman Pontiff has no superior but God. Who, therefore, should a pope ‘lose his savour’, could cast him out or trample him under foot”. 7 De Potestate Ecclesiastica. De casu Schismatis, quo duo vel plures se se gerant tamquam Pontifices; p. 130. 8 https://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/a-canonical-primer-on-popes-and-heresy/ 9 Ibid. « Wrenn, writing in the CLSA NEW COMM (2001) at 1618 states: “Canon 1404 is not a statement of personal impeccability or inerrancy of the Holy Father. Should, indeed, the pope fall into heresy, it is understood that he would lose his office. To fall from Peter’s faith is to fall from his chair.” » An earlier edition of that same commentary says, “Communion becomes a real issue when it is threatened or even lost. This occurs especially through heresy, apostasy and schism. Classical canonists discussed the question whether a pope, in his private or personal opinions, could go into heresy, apostasy or schism.” 
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