How the attempt to avoid sedevacantism led Patrick Coffin to sedevacantism.

ormer Catholic apol­o­gist and Catholic Answers Live host Patrick Cof­fin has now embraced sede­va­can­tism, as I pre­dict­ed he would. [Link no longer avail­able.] It works this way:

• First, you decide that the pope is teach­ing heresy.

This is impos­si­ble, for rea­sons I have before explained. Mr. Cof­fin, to his cred­it, con­cedes that a heretic can’t be pope. He under­stands you can’t rec­on­cile it with Christ’s promise that the Holy Spir­it will guide the Church into all truth.

But here is where he went amiss a few years back: Rather than accept­ing that Pope Fran­cis does­n’t teach heresy, he decid­ed that Bergoglio must not be pope. Fran­cis had to be teach­ing heresy. Why? Because … well, because it seemed that way to Cof­fin. And who is Cof­fin to doubt him­self?

• Sec­ond, you con­clude that he must not be the pope.

Bergoglio is an anti-pope! said Cof­fin. But that left him in an dif­fi­cult spot. If Bergoglio is not the pope, does that mean there is no pope? Coffin—again, to his credit—understood that sede­va­can­tism is an intol­er­a­ble posi­tion. How could Christ leave his Church shep­herd­less?

• Third, you decide that, since you can’t accept sede­va­can­tism, Bene­dict XVI must still be pope.

Thus did Mr. Cof­fin con­coct a con­vo­lut­ed the­o­ry as to why the late pope emer­i­tus did­n’t real­ly resign. His res­ig­na­tion was invalid, and Bene­dict knew it was invalid, and he meant for us to know that it was invalid. And because Bene­dict meant for us all to know that, Mr. Cof­fin alone fig­ured it out.

(This is hyper­bole, dear read­er. I don’t mean Cof­fin invent­ed this idea, or that oth­ers don’t sub­scribe to it. It’s just that they’re in such a minor minor minor­i­ty that Cof­fin may as well be a sede­va­can­tist unto him­self. The posi­tion is some­times called “Beneva­can­tism.”)

Mr. Coffin’s posi­tion about Bene­dic­t’s fake res­ig­na­tion is so wild it’s hard­ly worth the both­er to refute. It’s worth tak­ing note of, if only to illus­trate the poten­tial Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome has to leave you a vagabond from rea­son.

The prob­lem always was that, even­tu­al­ly, Bene­dict XVI would die. And what then?

• Fourth, when Pope Bene­dict XVI dies, you sud­den­ly are forced to accept the very sede­va­can­tism you con­coct­ed your the­o­ry to avoid.

And so it is. Mr. Cof­fin writes on Twit­ter:

The Pope has entered eter­ni­ty, RIP. The imped­ed See is now vacant. May the pre-2013 car­di­nals do the write thing and avoid yet anoth­er antipope.”

I wrote on March 23, 2022: “All that has to hap­pen for Cof­fin to become a sede­va­can­tist is for Bene­dict XVI to die.”

I told you so.