If you call the pope a heretic, you’re calling Christ a liar.

aylor Mar­shall, the aca­d­e­m­ic turned pod­cast­er who thinks truth can be acquired from demons, and who describes the Church as a blonde woman with engorged breasts writhing on a bed, says that Pope Fran­cis teach­es heresy. Imag­ine that.

This time, the accu­sa­tion is about the pope’s Wednes­day audi­ence on Feb­ru­ary 2, in which he gave a brief cat­e­ch­esis on the Com­mu­nion of Saints. Specif­i­cal­ly, Pope Fran­cis said:

What, then, is the “com­mu­nion of saints”? The Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church affirms: “The com­mu­nion of saints is the Church” (no. 946). What a beau­ti­ful def­i­n­i­tion this is! “The com­mu­nion of saints is the Church.” What does this mean? That the Church is reserved for the per­fect? No. It means that it is the com­mu­ni­ty of saved sin­ners. The Church is the com­mu­ni­ty of saved sin­ners. This is a beau­ti­ful def­i­n­i­tion. No one can exclude them­selves from the Church. We are all saved sin­ners.

 

[…]

 

“Father, let us think about those who have denied the faith, who are apos­tates, who are the per­se­cu­tors of the Church, who have denied their bap­tism: Are these also at home?” Yes, these too, even the blas­phe­mers, every­one. We are broth­ers. This is the com­mu­nion of saints. The com­mu­nion of saints holds togeth­er the com­mu­ni­ty of believ­ers on earth and in heav­en.

Faith­ful­Catholics™ had a fit. Mar­shall had a fit (here and here). Fake Site News had a fit (here and here). Pope Fran­cis, they cried, con­tra­dicts Pius XII, who in Mys­ti­ci Cor­poris Christi 23 says that heresy, apos­ta­sy, and schism “sev­er a man from the Body of the Church.” How, then, TM™ demand­ed, can they still be in the com­mu­nion of saints?

Pope Fran­cis con­tra­dicts the Bal­ti­more Cat­e­chism!

Pope Fran­cis con­tra­dicts the Roman Cat­e­chism! (That’s the Cat­e­chism of the Coun­cil of Trent, for those who don’t know.)

And so on.

Dr. Mar­shall, et al.™ nev­er cite the exist­ing uni­ver­sal Cat­e­chism; nor do they seem to wor­ry that they’re con­tra­dict­ing Pope Pius IX when he con­demned as heresy (no. 23) the claim that a pope could teach heresy. (I’m going to return to this.)

Pedro Gabriel and Ron Con­te do a good job explain­ing the ortho­doxy of what Pope Fran­cis said. I’m not going to add too much to it. Here is the full pas­sage of the Cat­e­chism that the pope cit­ed on Feb­ru­ary 2:

946 After con­fess­ing “the holy catholic Church,” the Apos­tles’ Creed adds “the com­mu­nion of saints.” In a cer­tain sense this arti­cle is a fur­ther expla­na­tion of the pre­ced­ing: “What is the Church if not the assem­bly of all the saints?” The com­mu­nion of saints is the Church.

947 “Since all the faith­ful form one body, the good of each is com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the oth­ers. … We must there­fore believe that there exists a com­mu­nion of goods in the Church. But the most impor­tant mem­ber is Christ, since he is the head. … There­fore, the rich­es of Christ are com­mu­ni­cat­ed to all the mem­bers, through the sacra­ments.” “As this Church is gov­erned by one and the same Spir­it, all the goods she has received nec­es­sar­i­ly become a com­mon fund.”

948 The term “com­mu­nion of saints” there­fore has two close­ly linked mean­ings: com­mu­nion “in holy things (sanc­ta)” and “among holy per­sons (sanc­ti).”

The Cat­e­chism then expands upon these two mean­ings. The “com­mu­nion of the saints,” it says, includes “com­mu­nion of the sacra­ments.”

All the sacra­ments are sacred links unit­ing the faith­ful with one anoth­er and bind­ing them to Jesus Christ, and above all Bap­tism.

“And above all bap­tism.” Well, bap­tism is indeli­ble; noth­ing can erase it. Even Dr. Mar­shall in his two pod­casts affirms this. Not even peo­ple who go to Satan­ic rit­u­als that attempt to remove their bap­tismal char­ac­ter suc­ceed. So in that regard, every bap­tized per­son belongs to the com­mu­nion in holy things. And the Cat­e­chism describes that as one part of the Com­mu­nion of Saints.

But Alt! If Pope Fran­cis meant bap­tism, why did­n’t he say bap­tism? Why is he so con­fus­ing? My head hurts.

Except that the pope has. In an ear­li­er cat­e­ch­esis on the Com­mu­nion of Saints, the pope expands upon sanc­ta (com­mu­nion in holy things) and sanc­ti (com­mu­nion among holy per­sons). He says this:

[T]he com­mu­nion of saints goes beyond earth­ly life, beyond death and endures for ever. This union among us goes beyond and con­tin­ues in the next life; it is a spir­i­tu­al com­mu­nion born in Bap­tism and not bro­ken by death.

I should also point out here that Fr. Roch Keresz­ty (who taught the­ol­o­gy at Mar­shal­l’s alma mater, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dal­las) also under­stands Pope Fran­cis to have been think­ing of bap­tism. (I don’t make these things up, dear read­er.) Fr. Keresz­ty explains:

Most of Wednesday’s talk [Feb­ru­ary 2] is a beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on the com­mu­nion of the saints in which Pope Fran­cis empha­sizes so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly the bap­tismal bond’s strength that some of his state­ments can eas­i­ly be mis­un­der­stood. … Aware of his many attes­ta­tions that he is a son of the Church and teach­es only what the Church teach­es, I exclude an inten­tion to con­tra­dict the Church’s faith.

Bap­tism imprints an indeli­ble mark on the soul, called bap­tismal char­ac­ter, and if there is no oppo­si­tion by the soul, it also results in sanc­ti­fy­ing grace in virtue of which Christ lives in the soul and joins us to him­self and to all Chris­tians both on earth and heav­en,” he con­tin­ued. “By grave, mor­tal sin we lose sanc­ti­fy­ing grace and thus the indwelling of Christ in the soul and, of course, the right to heav­en. But no sin­ner, no mat­ter how obsti­nate, can lose the indeli­ble mark of the bap­tismal char­ac­ter.

But Alt! What about Pius XII? Does­n’t he say that apos­tates are “sev­ered” from the Church? If Pope Fran­cis is right, then Pius XII is nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong. Are you say­ing Pius XII is a heretic?

No. I’m say­ing that they’re both right. Ron Con­te spends a lot of time in his arti­cle (linked above) point­ing out that there are dif­fer­ent sens­es and dif­fer­ent degrees to the term “com­mu­nion of saints”—a term that Pius XII does­n’t use, by the way, mak­ing it hard­er to sus­tain an argu­ment that the two popes are in con­tra­dic­tion.

If, for exam­ple, I were to renounce my par­ents and estrange myself from them, I would be sev­ered from the fam­i­ly. That’s entire­ly true to say. It’s even pos­si­ble that my par­ents could cut me off from my inher­i­tance. But I am still relat­ed to them by blood; I can’t change that; and it’s also true to say that. It’s also true to say that I am still my par­ents’ son and still my sis­ter’s broth­er.

Remem­ber that in canon law, an excom­mu­ni­cat­ed Catholic is still Catholic. The excom­mu­ni­cat­ed are still oblig­at­ed to attend Mass and con­tribute to the mate­r­i­al well-being of the Church. If they are still under the juris­dic­tion of the Church, they must in some sense still belong to the Church.

If I sev­er myself from my par­ents by dis­own­ing them, I’m still oblig­at­ed to obey the fourth com­mand­ment. Noth­ing I do can erase my belong­ing to them.

•••

I don’t know whether this is the cor­rect way to har­mo­nize Pope Fran­cis and Pope Pius XII. But I do know that they can be har­mo­nized, and that Catholics must try to do that rather than grand­ly leap to pan­ic and impos­si­ble accu­sa­tions of heresy. A pope’s words, says Fr. Keresz­ty, “must always be inter­pret­ed in a Catholic con­text.” Dr. Mar­shall should have paid bet­ter atten­tion to the the­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sors at Dal­las.

When Pius IX con­demned as heresy the state­ment “Roman pon­tif­fs … have even erred in defin­ing mat­ters of faith and morals,” he is say­ing that a pope can not teach heresy. (For that’s what a heresy is: an error con­cern­ing faith and morals.)

Catholics like Dr. Mar­shall have it back­wards when they cite Bel­larmine and try to prove that a heretic pope would auto­mat­i­cal­ly lose the papa­cy. They believe that a heretic can’t be a pope, when the truth is that the pope can’t be a heretic. This may seem like a triv­ial, even disin­gen­u­ous, dis­tinc­tion, but it’s impor­tant. It’s not that a pope could teach heresy but the Church would be saved by the fact that he auto­mat­i­cal­ly los­es the papa­cy; it’s that a pope could not teach heresy in the first place. So if it seems to you that a pope has, the first ques­tion you should be ask­ing is not: Is this guy still the pope? Do we have sede vacante? Was this guy ever real­ly the pope? Was the elec­tion invalid? Rather, your first ques­tion should be: Where am I wrong?

It’s impor­tant to under­stand that Bel­larmine was engag­ing in the­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion. I wrote about all that here. Bel­larmine did not actu­al­ly believe that a pope could be a heretic. Canon lawyer Ed Peters takes a dim view of such a pos­si­bil­i­ty and cites canon­ist Uldar­i­cus Beste, who could find “no exam­ples” of a pope ever teach­ing heresy.

In fact, I would argue that if a pope did teach heresy, it would mean that Christ was lying when he said that the Gates of Hell would not pre­vail over the Church.

We can dis­miss out of hand the sil­ly notion that a pope could teach heresy but would then auto­mat­i­cal­ly cease to be pope. There’s sim­ply no mech­a­nism by which that would hap­pen. Extreme notions of God strik­ing the pope down, or the Col­lege of Car­di­nals con­ven­ing to judge the pope a heretic and depose him, are absurd fan­ta­sy.

The very con­text of Christ’s words about the gates of Hell are a dis­cus­sion of Peter’s abil­i­ty to dis­cern truth. Christ had asked “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter imme­di­ate­ly answered that Christ was the Messiah—the Son of God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar­jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heav­en.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not pre­vail against it.

The “rock” is Peter’s ability—through the charism of the Holy Spirit—to speak truth and not error.

The Sec­ond Coun­cil of Con­stan­tino­ple (553 A.D.) taught that the Church under­stands “the gates of Hell” to mean heresy:

[W]e bear in mind what was promised about the holy church and him who said that the gates of hell will not pre­vail against it (by these we under­stand the death-deal­ing tongues of heretics).

Pope St. Leo IX teach­es the same thing in his encycli­cal In Ter­ra Pax Hominibus (1053 A.D.), cit­ed by Den­zinger:

The holy Church built upon a rock, that is Christ, and upon Peter or Cephas, the son of John who first was called Simon, because by the gates of Hell, that is, by the dis­pu­ta­tions of heretics which lead the vain to destruc­tion, it would nev­er be over­come; thus Truth itself promis­es, through whom are true, what­so­ev­er things are true: “The gates of hell will not pre­vail against it” [Matt. 16:18]. … By the See of the chief of the Apos­tles, name­ly by the Roman Church, through the same Peter, as well as through his suc­ces­sors, have not the com­ments of all the heretics been dis­ap­proved, reject­ed, and over­come, and the hearts of the brethren in the faith of Peter which so far nei­ther has failed, nor up to the end will fail, been strength­ened?

Leo IX also dis­putes that a pope could cease to be pope. “No one should remove their sta­tus,” he says, “because ‘the high­est See is judged by no one.’ ”

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Intro­duc­tion to Matthew in the Cate­na Aurea declares that “the mad­ness of heretics” is “right­ly called the gates of Hell.”

St. John Cass­ian, in Chap­ter 14 of On the Incar­na­tion, says “The gates of hell are the belief or rather the mis­be­lief of heretics.”

St. Fran­cis de Sales, in The Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy, says that nei­ther Peter nor his suc­ces­sors can be “crushed and bro­ken by infi­deli­ty or error, which is the prin­ci­pal gate of Hell.” Of the pope, St. Fran­cis con­tin­ues:

In truth, it is nec­es­sary that we should fol­low him sim­ply, not guide him; oth­er­wise the sheep would be shep­herds. … Now all this has not only been true of St. Peter, but also of his suc­ces­sors; for the cause remain­ing the effect remains like­wise. The Church has always need of an infal­li­ble con­firmer, to whom she can appeal; of a foun­da­tion which the gates of hell, and prin­ci­pal­ly error, can­not over­throw; and has always need that her pas­tor should be unable to lead her chil­dren into error. The suc­ces­sors, then, of St. Peter all have these same priv­i­leges.

The teach­ing of the Church, and of the saints, could not be more clear. If you say the pope has taught heresy, you say that Christ is a liar. To point the fin­ger at the pope is only to accuse your­self. By your own log­ic (“a heretic is sev­ered from the Church”), you put your­self out­side the Church.