PaxChristi2 - You have descended to the level of a comedian: Salza & Siscoe are in heresy because they assert that the CHURCH can judge a pope guilty of the CRIME of HERESY. Whether or not the pope's doctrine is heresy is a matter that pertains exclusively to the pope's primacy of jurisdiction as SUPREME JUDGE.
Your last sentence is true if the Pope professes a new heresy, not if he denies a dogma that has already been defined. All the early canonists made a distinction between the two and agreed that a Pope could only be "deposed" for denying a defined dogma. Once a dogma is defined it is irreformable, and every Catholic - including the Pope - is bound to accept it.
Fr. Kramer: NO TRIBUNAL ON EARTH CAN CONVICT THE POPE, because judgment on the question of the orthodoxy of his beliefs fall under his own SUPREME JURISDICTION; and he personally cannot be judged guilty by any TRIBUNAL because he is the SUPREME JUDGE IN ALL CASES.
Not if he is denying an already defined dogma.
I would also point out that the reason you said a Pope cannot be convicted is because the judgment concerning the orthodoxy of his believe falls under his supreme jurisdiction. You didn't say the reason is because the first see is judged by no one. Is that because you now concede convicted, in the form of a discretionary judgment, would not violate the legal maxim the first see is judged by no one? Fr. Kramer: In De Conciliorum Auctoritate, Bellarmine explains that if while investigating the pope, the fact of his obstinate heresy would be discovered and manifested, then the council could declare that he is no longer pope.
But according to what you wrote above, the bishops would be unable to determine if a pope was manifestly obstinate in heresy, since "Whether or not the pope's doctrine is heresy is a matter that pertains exclusively to the pope's primacy of jurisdiction as SUPREME JUDGE." You're contradicting yourself. Worse than that, you are misrepresenting what Bellarmine taught in De Conciliorum Auctoritate.
What Bellarmine says is if the bishops at a council can convict the Pope of heresy, they can then judged and depose him. He says that multiple times. Here is one:
Bellarmine: “Moreover, the Pope is not the only judge in a council, but has many colleagues, namely, all the bishops who, if they could convict him of heresy (discretionary judgment), could also judge and depose him, even against his will." (De Conciliorum Auctoritate, lib. 1, cap. xxi).
Why does he say the Bishops can judged and depose him against his will "if" they can convict him of heresy? Because the moment he is convicted he would be ipso facto deposed, and hence no longer Pope.
He also says the Pope retains the authority to summon and preside over a council unless he is legitimately judged and convicted, and therefore is no longer pope.
Bellarmine: "the Roman Pontiff cannot be deprived of the right to summon a Council, and preside over it – a right he has possessed for 1500 years – unless he were first legitimately judged and convicted, and was not the Supreme Pontiff" (ibid).
Fr. Kramer: Ballerini explains that the declaration would say that the man who was pope "had in some manner abdicated".
But he also says the warnings and all the other acts that are done in an effort to get the pope to retract his heresy, before the declaration is issued, are all acts of charity, not jurisdiction. And why does he specify that? Because as long as he remains pope, the Church cannot exercise any acts of jurisdiction over him. And what does that tell us? It tells us that Ballerini believed that the Pope would remain Pope
until the declaration was issued. That's why he specified that all the acts prior to the declaration were acts of charity.
What Ballerini is arguing in the quotation you are referring to, is that it is not necessary to wait for a general council to be convened for an heretical pope to be deprived of the pontificate. He is attempting to show how the crime can be legally established, and the pope can be declared a heretic, before a general council meets. Then, if and when a general council did convene, they sentence would be issued against one who was no longer the Pope. That is the context. Here is the quote:
Peter Ballerini, S.J.: "In the case of the Pope’s falling into heresy, the remedy is more promptly and easily supplied. Now, when we speak of heresy with reference to the Supreme Pontiffs, we do not mean the kind of heresy by which any of them, defining ex officio a dogma of faith, would define an error; for this cannot happen, as we have established in the book on their infallibility in defining controverted matters of faith. Nor do we speak of a case in which the popes err in a matter of faith by their opinion on a subject that has not yet been defined [i.e., a new heresy]; for opinions that, before the Church has defined anything, men are free to embrace, cannot be stigmatized as heresy. The present question, then, pertains only to the case in which the Pope, deceived in his private judgment, believes and pertinaciously asserts something contrary to an evident or defined article of faith, for this is what constitutes heresy. (...) But why, we ask, in such a case, where the faith is imperiled by the most imminent and the gravest of all dangers ... should we await a remedy from a general council, which is not at all easy to convene? When the faith is so endangered, cannot inferiors of whatever rank admonish their superior with a fraternal correction, resist him to the face, confront him, and, if it is necessary, rebuke him and impel him to come to his senses? The cardinals could do that, for they are the counselors of the Pope; so could the Roman clergy; or, if it is judged expedient, a Roman synod could be convened for that purpose. For the words of Paul to Titus: “Avoid a heretic after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a one is perverse and sins, being condemned by his own judgment” (Tit. 13:10), are addressed to any man whatsoever, even a private individual. For he who, after a first and second correction, does not return to his senses, but persists in an opinion contrary to a manifest or defined dogma, on the one hand cannot, by the very fact of this public pertinacity, be excused by any pretext from heresy in the strict sense, which requires pertinacity, and on the other hand declares himself plainly to be a heretic; in other words, he declares that he has departed from the Catholic faith and from the Church of his own accord, in such wise that no declaration or sentence of any man is necessary to cut him off from the body of the Church. St. Jerome’s perspicacious commentary on the above-quoted words of St. Paul affords us insight into the matter: “It is for this reason that [the heretic] is said to be self-condemned: whereas the fornicator, the adulterer, the murderer, and those guilty of other sins are cast out of the Church by her ministers [sacerdotes], heretics, for their part, pronounce sentence against themselves, leaving the Church of their own accord; and their departure is considered as a condemnation issued by their own conscience.” Therefore, the Pope who, after so solemn and public a warning given by the cardinals, the Roman clergy, or even a synod, would harden himself in his heresy, and thus would have departed plainly from the Church, would, according to the precept of St. Paul, have to be avoided; and, lest he bring destruction upon others, his heresy and contumacy would have to be brought forth into the public, so that all might similarly beware of him; and in this way the sentence that he passed against himself, being proposed to the whole Church, would declare that he has departed of his own accord, and has been cut off from the Body of the Church, and has in certain manner abdicated the Papacy, which no one possesses, nor can possess, who is not in the Church. You see, then, that in the case of a heresy to which the Pope adheres in his personal judgment, there is a prompt and efficacious remedy apart from the convocation of a general council; and in this hypothetical case whatever would be done against him to bring him to his senses before the declaration of his heresy and contumacy would be the exercise of charity, not of jurisdiction; but afterwards, when his departure from the Church has been made manifest, whatever sentence would be passed against him by a council would be passed against one who is no longer Pope, nor superior to a council."
Notice what all Ballerini addressed:
1) A new heresy (or error opposed to an undefined dogma), as opposed to the denial of a defined dogma.
2) The need for warnings to be issued by the Cardinals, the clergy of Rome, or a Synod, which is how the Church (the ecclesia docens) would legitimately establish pertinacity. Why warnings? Because, as Cajetan explains, warnings are the way in which divine law has established that heresy be judged by human judgment. He writes: "Human judgments are of two kinds, some determined by natural or divine law, some by positive law. (…) The form of human judgment of a heretic was determined by divine law so that he is to be avoided after the first and second admonition." (Cajetan)
3) He says everything done against the Pope before the "declaration of his heresy and contumacy," are to be acts of charity, not jurisdiction, which only makes sense if Ballerini believes the heretical Pope remains Pope until the declaration is issued. If he believed the Pope would have already fallen from the Pontificate - even before the warnings were issued - it would have made no sense for him to go out of his way to state that all the acts against him would have to be in the form of charity.
4) He then states that when the council does finally convene, whatever sentence it issues would be against a former Pope - one who fell from the Pontificate before the bishops gathered at the council, but not before the Church (the ecclesia docens) issued a public and solemn warning, provided the Pope ample opportunity to amend, and finally declaring him a heretic.
Fr. Kramer: Pope Gregory XVI, citing Ballerini, says the deposition would not violate the rights of the primacy, because the judgment would not be made against the present holder of the office, but "against the one who before was adorned with papal dignity."
First of all, it needs to be established that you are quoting Cardinal Cappellari, who would later be elected Pope Gregory XVI. You're not quoting what he wrote as Pope. Secondly, provide the entire quote in English, and in context (with a link to the Latin), because I suspect that what Cardinal Cappellari is referring to is the sentence issued by the council, not the prior declaration of heresy and contumacy.
The"conviction" can only be made against a pope who has already tacitly abdicated the office. The actual judgment of the Church would only take place AFTER the act of tacit abdication has taken place.
The pope can only be "judged and deposed," or "judged and punished" after he has ceased to be Pope, since that implies a coactive or coercive judgment. But the Pope can be convicted of heresy prior to falling from the pontificate, according to Bellarmine.
Fr. Kramer: The level of your sophistry descends to the level of pathos when you accuse me of heresy for judging a pope to be suspect of heresy.
I said you are a heretic according to your own reasoning. I don't believe it is heresy for someone to have the personal opinion (human judgment) that the Pope is a heretic, any more than I believe it is forbidden for bishops at a council to collectively arrive at the same opinion.
Fr. Kramer: If the indicia of heresy are manifested by the pope, a man has the right to judge accordingly that such a one is suspect of heresy. That does not violate the rights of the primacy. It would violate the primacy only if the judging individual would presume to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and thereby claim that his private judgment is a juridical judgment of the Church.
But you didn't simply arrive at the personal opinion that Benedict XVI is suspect of heresy. After you judged him to be suspect of heresy, you publicly declared it as a fact, which you have no authority to do. You then went further by publicly declaring that the Papal see is to be presumed vacant, and went further still by exhorting all the remaining clergy to presume the same - all based on your extremely fallible personal opinion. So fallible, in fact, that you yourself rejected it several months later, as evidenced by the fact that you tore into Pax Vobis for referring to you as a Sedevacantist – which you most certainly would be if you still presumed what you declared and exhorted Catholics to presume a mere 5 months earlier.
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