Objection: If all the popes since Vatican II have been anti-popes, that means we have been in an interregnum for aprox. 50 years. This is impossible. Therefore, Sedevacantism is wrong. Reply: This is false. The length of the current interregnum is no objection to its factuality. We have seen Paul IV foresee, in Cum Ex Apostolatus, “the lapse of any period of time in the foregoing situation” of a sede vacante that is due to the invalid election of an antipope. Fr. James Edmund O’Reilly wrote regarding the Great Western Schism (1378-1417), that it is not impossible that there should have been an interregnum throughout the entire period, of around forty years. At this time, all of the cardinals went over to an antipope, an antipope ruled from Rome, most theologians recognized an antipope and the true pope was the weakest of three concurrent claimants. The “schism” of competing claimants continued through the pontificates of four successive popes. “If we inquire how ecclesiastical jurisdiction has been continued, the answer is that it in part came and comes immediately from God on the fulfilment of certain conditions regarding the persons. Priests having jurisdiction derive it from bishops or the pope. The pope has it immediately from God, on his legitimate election. The legitimacy of his election depends on the observance of the rules established by previous popes regarding such election. [...] “We may here stop to inquire what is to be said of the position, at that time, of the three claimants, and their rights with regard to the Papacy. In the first place, there was all through, from the death of Gregory XI in 1378, a Pope – with the exception, of course, of the intervals between deaths and elections to fill up the vacancies thereby created. There was, I say, at every given time a Pope, really invested with the dignity of the Vicar of Christ and Head of the Church, whatever opinions might exist among many as to his genuineness; not that an interregnum covering the whole period would have been impossible or inconsistent with the promises of Christ, for this is by no means manifest, but that, as a matter of fact, there was not such an interregnum. [...] “The great schism of the West suggests to me a reflection which I take the liberty of expressing here. If this schism had not occurred, the hypothesis of such a thing happening would appear to many chimerical (absurd). They would say it could not be; God would not permit the Church to come into so unhappy a situation. Heresies might spring up and spread and last painfully long, through the fault and to the perdition of their authors and abettors, to the great distress too of the faithful, increased by actual persecution in many places where the heretics were dominant. But that the true Church should remain between thirty and forty years without a thoroughly ascertained Head, and representative of Christ on earth, this would not be. Yet it has been; and we have no guarantee that it will not be again, though we may fervently hope otherwise. What I would infer is, that we must not be too ready to pronounce on what God may permit. We know with absolute certainty that He will fulfill His promises. We may also trust that He will do a great deal more than what He has bound Himself by his promises. We may look forward with cheering probability to exemption for the future from some of the trouble and misfortunes that have befallen in the past. But we, or our successors in the future generations of Christians, shall perhaps see stranger evils than have yet been experienced, even before the immediate approach of that great winding up of all things on earth that will precede the day of judgment. I am not setting up for a prophet, nor pretending to see unhappy wonders, of which I have no knowledge whatever. All I mean to convey is that contingencies regarding the Church, not excluded by the Divine promises, cannot be regarded as practically impossible, just because they would be terrible and distressing in a very high degree.” (The Relations of the Church to Society – Theological Essays, 1882) A. Dorsch: “The Church therefore is a society that is essentially monarchical. But this does not prevent the Church, for a short time after the death of a pope, or even for many years, from remaining deprived of her head. Her monarchical form also remains intact in this state.” (Institutions Theologiae Fundamentalis, 1928)
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 00:47:57 +0000
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