To Give a Defense

Does Canon 194 provide an opening to depose a heretical pope?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 10, 2017 • Canon Law

A reader points to Canon 194 as a possible opening for deposing a heretical pope. The canon lists certain conditions under which a person is “removed from an ecclesiastical office by the law itself.” These are: (1) A person who has lost the clerical state; (2) A person who has publicly defected from the Catholic faith or from the communion of the Church; (3) A cleric who has attempted marriage even if only civilly. The canon adds an important qualification. “The removal mentioned in nn. 2 and 3 can be enforced only if it is established by …”

A heretic would not cease to be pope: Thoughts on Bellarmine.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 7, 2017 • Apologetics; Canon Law

I have argued before that a pope can not be a heretic. There is nothing that makes it theoretically impossible; the Holy Spirit only protects the pope from binding Catholics to heresy. But it seems to me that the safest way for the Holy Spirit do to this is simply to ensure that no one who is a heretic, or who could become a heretic, would ever be elected pope. The other option, I guess, would be that the Holy Spirit could strike the pope down with a stroke or a heart attack just before the fatal moment when any such binding were to occur. These are extravagant speculations.

About that Syllabus of Errors? Guess what else Pius IX condemned.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 6, 2017 • Apologetics

Enemies of so-called “innovations” in Vatican II like to cite the Syllabus of Errors in order to claim that the Council contains Modernist heresies. For example, they like to cite No. 15, in which Pius IX condemns the belief that “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” This, say disciples of Lefebvre, contradicts Dignitatis Humanae, which insists upon religious freedom. But guess what else Pius IX condemns in that Syllabus? These pre-Vatican II documents are full of surprises!

Close reading the pope on Martin Luther.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Justification; Pope Francis

Let us do that thing that the blogging Catholic must sometimes do, which is to parse a difficult passage from one of the pope’s interviews. This, again, was his interview last June as he winged his way back to Rome from Armenia. A reporter said, “Hey! That Martin Luther guy. You can rehabilitate him, right? Perhaps lift his excommunication? What say you?” It was an insane question. Martin Luther’s excommunication ended in 1546 when he died. Now, I have been told: “Well, you know, the pope only meant to say Luther was not altogether wrong.

Pope Francis is wrong about Luther and justification.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 5, 2017 • Apologetics; Justification; Pope Francis

Things the pope says in an interview are not Magisterial. Here is part of what the pope said: “And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err.” Now see, this infuriates me as an apologist (and former Protestant). I defend the poor man, but at times he exasperates me. I pointed this out in 2014, and I point it out again now: The CDF hath said that Catholics and Lutherans do not in fact “agree” on justification. We must look at this text.

Oh, that conference on deposing a pope? Church Miscreant had it wrong. And Fake Site News.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • April 4, 2017 • False Report

Last month our friends at Church Miscreant were all jittery at the news that there would be a conference in Paris on how to depose a pope. Canon lawyers, Christine Niles gushed, would be there! You know, actual canon lawyers, who might advise on how to get rid of that pesky Bergoglio. Two people scheduled to speak at the conference even signed a letter critiquing Amoris Laetitia! Another supported the dubia! Fake Site News tried to make the same connection. Turns out, it was nothing of the kind. Wrong again at Fake Site and Miscreant; what a shock.

The horrible, dangerous things the Catechism and Vatican II say about Islam.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 31, 2017 • Islam; Vatican II

You may have read that cafeteria Catholic Steve Skojec has pronounced the anathema of One Luther Five upon the Catechism and Vatican II. (Or, at least, upon what those texts have to say about Islam.) “Dangerous wishful thinking!” Mr. Skojec cried on Twitter. “The Catechism isn’t infallible on this topic,” he continued in his bull. So always being willing to follow up a claim, even one uttered in a cafeteria, I decided to go and see for myself what dangerous errors the pillar and ground of truth is promoting in such key texts. And I find that Skojec is right to be alarmed.

Did Pope Honorius I teach the Monothelite heresy?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 30, 2017 • Apologetics; Church History

Pope Honorius I (625–638) is a favorite example among anti-Catholic Protestants (among them our old friend Dr.* James White) who wish to dispute the doctrine of papal infallibility. Of late, some Catholics have picked up on this, seemingly in an effort to lay groundwork for the claim that Pope Francis teaches heresy. “Why, popes have taught heresy before!” they will say. “The Third Council of Constantinople condemned Pope Honorius I. Thus do Catholics, in a zeal of Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, begin to sound like Protestants who reject the papacy.

Steve Skojec, Cafeteria Catholic

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 30, 2017 • Blind Guides & False Prophets

Mary Pezzulo asks, “Who is Steve Skojec, anyway?” Apart from being a RadTrad blogger and pope basher at One Luther Five (he calls it One Peter Five, which is his right, I guess), he is a cafeteria Catholic. I have, from a distance, been observing the Twitter war, of several days’ duration, between Mr. Skojec and my Facebook friend Mary Hammond; and I say, I was not going to get in the middle of it, because he was making enough of an ass of himself on his own. But part of it touched upon one of my blog topics this month.

Supremacy of conscience, but only if formed by the Church.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 29, 2017 • Apologetics

According to Donum Veritatis, conscience gives us no rationale to dissent from the Church. Conscience is “supreme,” but not subjective, and not independent from the Church. “Argumentation appealing to the obligation to follow one’s own conscience,” the CDF says, “cannot legitimate dissent.” Although every believer “must follow his conscience, he is also obliged to form it. … Setting up a supreme magisterium of conscience in opposition to the magisterium of the Church” is “incompatible with the economy of Revelation.”

Stop it already with “But Paul corrected Peter”!

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 28, 2017 • Apologetics; Exegesis

But Paul corrected Peter!” is a standard objection raised in one of two contexts. Either it is raised by Protestants in order to deny papal infallibility and papal primacy; or it is raised by Catholics in order to defend their rebellion against Pope Francis, or the notion that people like Cardinal Burke should issue a “formal correction” of the Holy Father. The problem is that this biblical example does not at all prove what those who use it think it does. Peter, as pope, made a judgment binding on the whole Church. His judgment was correct. But what happened was, he was a hypocrite.

Cardinal Burke can’t “correct” the pope, but the pope can correct Burke.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 28, 2017 • Amoris Laetitia; Church Scandals

Fake Site News is blaring trumpets again about the so-called “correction” of the pope by Burke, et al. If Pope Francis won’t answer the dubia, “we simply will have to correct the situation.” Ahem. Sometimes people will ask me: “Alt! Do you still stand by that article you wrote, you know, the one where you said you changed your mind about Pope Francis? Mr. Skojec declared that you had seen the light.” I do stand by my article. Recall I said the pope should answer the dubia. But any talk of Burke or anyone else “formally correcting” the Holy Father is just impertinence.

Dissenting from the Magisterium causes great spiritual harm.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 23, 2017 • Apologetics

In Donum Veritatis, the CDF lists several forms dissent against the Magisterium might take. (This is the fourth post in a series that I link to in the text.) Dissent,” the CDF clarifies, is different from “personal difficulties.” One must distinguish. You can work through a personal difficulty; but to dissent is to rebel. “Spiritual harm” comes of dissent. There are five kinds: philosophical liberalism, manipulation of public opinion, acceptance only of infallible teachings (sound familiar?), argumentum ad populum, and false appeals to conscience. Dissent is a “leaven of infidelity.”

Don’t believe this fake Pius IX quotation on a pope teaching heresy.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 22, 2017 • False Report

If a future pope teaches something contrary to the Catholic faith, don’t follow him.” Trads who promote dissent from Pope Francis claim Pius IX said this in a letter to “Bishop Brizen.” One glaring problem: There has never been a bishop by that name, still less during the reign of Pius IX. Oops. Now, there is a Roman Catholic diocese of Brixen. Perhaps this is where the confusion is. Perhaps Pius IX wrote the letter to the “bishop of Brixen.” Well, the bishop of Brixen during the reign of Pius IX was Vincent Ferrer Gasser. He wrote a Relatio for Vatican I on papal infallibility.

But Alt! The Church says the Ordinary Magisterium may have defects!

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 21, 2017 • Apologetics

“But Alt! The very same text you cite to claim that Catholics must submit to the Magisterium on all points also says that some teachings may have ‘deficiences.’ The CDF says some things might be reformable. Do you really mean to say Catholics must not object to such things?” Yes. This is not the green light for dissent some claim it to be. Let’s take a look at the actual extent of these words. The discussion begins at §24, where Donum Veritatis reads: “[T]he Magisterium can intervene in questions under discussion which involve … conjectural elements.”