Refuting Sedevacantism

By Noah Perez, Catholicism Coffee, September 14, 2022

Introduction

Sedevacantism is the claim that the Papacy is currently uninhabited and that all the Popes since the death of Pope Pius XII are antipopes. For Sedevacantists, from the Papacy of St. John XXIII to the current Papacy of Francis I, there has been no true Pope on the chair of St. Peter but false claimants to the Papacy. Sedevacantists are a minority group and are most present in small organizations which proclaim to be “traditional Catholics.”

Sedevacantism is particularly pervasive on the Internet as Sedevacantist groups use the web to promote their beliefs and spread their ideas, primarily on YouTube and their websites. With the rising wave of traditionalism emerging among Catholic youth, Sedevacantism often appears as a promising idea.

However, Sedevacantism is a schismatic belief, and the various organizations which promote it are schismatic. They are separated from the Catholic Church, the fountain of salvation, in the same way Orthodoxy is. The first Sedevacantists were, in fact, Bishops and Priests. Such clerics were excommunicated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the approval of St. John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. Therefore, all future Bishops and Priests in the Sedevacantist line of succession recognize their distinctness and separation from the visible Catholic Church.

However, Sedevacantism is a schismatic belief, and the various organizations which promote it are schismatic. They are separated from the Catholic Church, the fountain of salvation, in the same way Orthodoxy is.

However, Sedevacantism is a schismatic belief, and the various organizations which promote it are schismatic. They are separated from the Catholic Church, the fountain of salvation, in the same way Orthodoxy is.

The Sedevacantist organizations which I will be criticizing are the Roman Catholic Institue (RCI), Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), Society of St. Pius V (SSPV), St. Gertrude the Great Church, and the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI).

The arguments I am currently presenting against Sedevacantism are, to the best of my understanding and recollection, new.

1) The “Authority” Problem

The variety of Sedevacantist positions is such that there is seemingly no end. MHFM, the RCI, SSPV, St. Gertrude, and CMRI are all in a rift with one another in unusual ways. For one, MHFM utterly condemns and damns the other four, and the SSPV will not grant members of the other organizations to receive Communion. Furthermore, the RCI does not allow those who hold the positions of MHFM to receive.

On the other hand, the RCI, St. Gertrude, and CMRI are in rift over ideas concerning the proper doctrine of the Papacy. The RCI holds a unique position on the structure of the papacy itself called Sedeprivationism (the specifics of which are not important for the scope of this article). Such a position, however, means that the RCI and St. Gertrude have recently ruptured a genial union, as both bishops have argued ad nauseum concerning the validity of such a position.

This argument, however, has only been ended by the lamentable passing of the Bishop of St. Gertrude’s. May God have Mercy. Just as the Protestant Reformers did not recognize authority and split themselves into many denominations, the Sedevacantist organizations find themselves with no proper authority to turn to resolve doctrinal matters.

Picking between all these organizations entails that a confused individual understands all the nuanced arguments of each. Sedeprivationism is, by no means, a simple position to understand. Sedevacantism itself includes diverse and contradictory arguments for its veracity. As such, someone who desires to know the truth about the present crisis in the Church must wade their way through dense philosophical and theological arguments about Ecclesiology to find what they hope to be the true Ark of Salvation. However, the true Ark of Salvation is found in the visible Catholic Church, for as St. Paul says: “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33).

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
— John 17:20–21

“To say nothing, then, of the wisdom that you [Manicheans] do not believe exists in the Catholic Church, there are many other things that most rightfully hold me in her bosom. The agreement of peoples and nations holds me. The authority begun with miracles, nourished with hope, increased in love, and strengthened with age holds me to the Catholic Church.”
— St. Augustine’s “Answer to the Letter of Mani”

Not even this alone is the full force of the current argument, however. The main argument comes from the fact that these organizations, no matter how many arguments they may make, cannot back them up with any proper authority. The only proper authority would be the Church, headed by the Papacy. This is agreed upon by Sedevacantists. However, what Sedevacantists do not understand is what this implies. If there is no proper authority to decree that one position (for example, that of the RCI) is correct, then the RCI cannot say anything with power or authority.

As such, they cannot make any judgments about the salvation of those outside the minority of Sedevacantists. MHFM damns everyone outside of their small organization, yet they have no authority to do so. The only organization which has decreed any matters concerning salvation and can even properly say it has the authority to do so is the Catholic Church. Sedevacantists beg the question. They have no authority to decree matters of salvation yet choose to damn those in the visible Catholic Church as those in a “New Religion.” Proper authority concerning the Church’s matters comes from Christ.

Christ does not just end His granting of authority to His Church. The Church is indefectible and never to be abandoned by Christ, and as such His authority will never cease to be granted to Her. That Christ gave the Church authority can be seen in passages such as Matthew 18:18, where Christ says to the Apostles that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Therefore, where did such authority go?

The question as to where Divine Authority went is essential and can only have three proper answers:

(1) Divine Authority has continued to be given to the Catholic Church as it is visibly seen and, as such, Sedevacantism is false.

(2) Divine Authority has been moved from the visible Catholic Church to the Sedevacantists.

(3) Christ has ceased His permission of Divine Authority onto any organization in the World and effectively abandoned the Faithful with no place to turn to for proper authority.

The first proposition is logically coherent while the third one is impossible due to the Divine promises made by Christ to protect and safeguard His Bride until the end of the ages, as seen in passages such as Matthew 16:18. If the third proposition were true, the faithful would be left as sheep without a shepherd.

The second proposition, on the other hand, is rejected even by the Sedevacantists. Sedevacantist organizations admit that they have no magisterial or divine authority. If they believed they did, they would elect for themselves their own Pope. As Bishop Sanborn, the head of the RCI states, “It is impossible to settle theological controversies without the pope. One of the very purposes of the papacy is to settle theological controversies. Barring the pope, there will be some disagreement among Catholics.” Furthermore, any layman or woman cannot just declare themselves to have been made authoritative, and thus even if a Sedevacantist were to claim authority, there is no reason to believe him.

Therefore, the second proposition is false. That leaves the faithful with one choice: continued assent to the only proper authority there is, the visible Catholic Church. As St. Paul says, “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 13:1)

Therefore, be made certain that Sedevacantists cannot say anything concerning the salvific position of those who are not Sedevacantists. Only those with Proper Authority can do so. Christ will not damn a man whose damnation has been decreed to him by an organization that has no authority, to begin with. Christ would not abandon His Church to be found in small remnants of people with no authority.

2) The “Unity” Problem

In the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas states:

“The unity of the Church requires that all the faithful be of one faith. Now, questions tend to arise about matters of faith, and the Church would be divided by differences of opinion unless its unity were safeguarded by the pronouncement of one. Therefore, in order to safeguard the unity of the Church, it is necessary that there be one who presides over the whole Church. Now Christ loved the Church and shed his blood for her; therefore, he did not fail her in her needs, seeing that it is said even of the Synagogue: What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? (Isa 5:4) There can be no doubt, therefore, that Christ provided his Church with a head.”

Now, back to the disunity of the Sedevacantists and how such infighting also contradicts St. Thomas’ first sentence in the passage above. This disunity contradicts the Church’s mark of being One. For the Sedevacantists, they are the last remnants of the true Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church as recognized today is a “New Religion” that is entirely distinct from the True Faith. As such, Sedevacantists must have the four marks, yet can they be said to be One? The answer is no.

However, Sedevacantists respond by stating, from the words of the principal Bishop of the RCI: “All traditionalists profess the same Catholic Faith. There is unity of faith among them all. … Deep down, they detest Vatican II and its changes.” Besides the fact that unity in hatred is not particularly appealing, this argument is weakened by the fact that the Protestant Reformers could say the very same thing. If all the main reformers were put in a room together and their various disagreements were brought to their attention, they could very well use the same justification that Sedevacantists use. “All Protestants profess the same Protestant Faith fundamentally. There is unity of faith among them all. All Protestants agree on the Five Solas, for example. Deep down, they detest the Roman Catholic Church and the changes it brought to the faith of the Bible.” All the other differences among Protestants could simply be said to be minor.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” says the author of Ecclesiastes.

And as St. Thomas Aquinas again states quite directly in his Summa Contra Gentiles, to be One is the same as to be One under the Papacy. As he writes, “Now, although the people are distributed among various dioceses and cities, nevertheless there is but one Church, and therefore only one Christian people. Consequently, just as a bishop is appointed as the head of a certain people and a particular church, so must the whole Christian people be subject to one who is the head of the whole Church.”

The first mark of the Church, to be One, is to be One Under the Papacy. Sedevacantism, as such, lacks that mark of the Church, and the fruits of such lacking are present in the infighting which ensues.

3) The “Proper Interpretation” Problem

The first matter that needs to be discussed is whether or not a Pope’s heresy automatically deposes him from the chair of St. Peter.

The answer to this question is that the Church has not made any authoritative statement in its history concerning this matter. Many Saints and Doctors of the Church have given their opinions, such as St. Robert Bellarmine and his belief that a Pope’s manifest heresy deposes him from the Papacy. Yet even with St. Bellarmine, he proposes five distinct opinions on the matter that were contemporary to his writing.

However, the opinions of theologians, no matter their status as Saints or Doctors of the Church, are neither infallible nor worth risking schism over. The Church has never decreed anything on such a matter, and as such, the matter is best left up to the theologians to discuss. Just as the Jesuit and Thomist schools have argued for centuries concerning Divine Providence and Predestination (Molinism vs Thomism) while still accepting that neither view leads one to damnation nor is worth leaving the Church over, so this matter over Papal heresy is the same. As said above, even some Sedevacantist groups (such as the RCI) hold that the debate over Papal heresy does not deserve attention and that rather a unique perspective should be taken. This perspective is the main one that will be argued against in this third, and final, objection.

The perspective is as follows:

(1) The Church of Christ is infallible and could not promulgate heresy on its faithful.

(2) The Second Vatican Council promulgated heresy on its faithful.

Therefore, the church which promulgated the Second Vatican Council is not the Church of Christ.

If premises 1 and 2 are true, then conclusion 3 is valid. Premise 1 is valid. It is entirely true and may not be contended that the Church of Christ is infallible. She is the spotless Bride of Christ and as such could never lead Her children to damnation, which heresy does. However, Premise 2 is false, if it is to be understood that Vatican II is a Council that has had its documents interpreted by many.

With so many interpretations of Vatican II, there can only be one proper, true interpretation. Some interpretations of Vatican II are pointed in the direction of demonstrating the Second Vatican Council represents a rupture with the teachings of the Church previously in history. These interpretations are those used by Sedevacantists to show that as Vatican II teaches heresy (that is, anything contrary to the Catholic Faith), thus it is not of the true Church. However, what it truly comes down to is the personal interpretation of the Sedevacantists. It is only personal interpretation and opinion which proposes this. Nothing else.

Some examples of orthodox interpretations should be displayed. Will Many Be Saved?: What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization by Dr. Ralph Martin is an essential book that combats specific arguments opposed to Lumen Gentium 16, a primary target for Sedevacantists. A similar argument from this book can be found in a paper by the same author, titled Doctrinal Clarity for the New Evangelization: The Importance of Lumen Gentium 16 (pdf). Another example that comes straight from the Church herself is Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church, authored by Cardinal Ratzinger under the authority of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Lastly, Conciliar Octet: A Concise Commentary on the Eight Key Texts of the Second Vatican Council by Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P. sets out to examine the decrees of Vatican II and read them in an orthodox light. There is also The Second Vatican Council’s Teaching on Religious Liberty in the Light of Tradition by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. is an essential essay on one of Vatican II’s most controversial (and widely used by Sedevacantists) teachings.

These five texts are enough to demonstrate that there are ways to read Vatican II in a way that is orthodox and consistent with prior Church teaching, with a perspective that does not cause rifts with the history of Catholicism.

However, the primary crux of this third argument is not that there are alternative viewpoints to Vatican II, for this is already agreed upon. The argument is that the faithful of the Catholic Church should presuppose the interpretation which is in line with Catholic teaching rather than interpreting the documents to purposefully contradict the past. Even the Church itself, with Her Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has published many confirmations that the promulgations within Vatican II are consistent with the Faith. The essential question of the argument is why one should choose to doubt. “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?,” says Christ to St. Peter (Matthew 14:31). Why should one ignore the confirmations published by the Church and instead maintain their private interpretation?

If one chooses to ignore the orthodox interpretation, then pervasive reasoning comes about. Those that interpret Vatican II to profess heresy are purposefully justifying their own beliefs circularly. Instead, one should make the effort to agree with the orthodox position because the Church cannot be but orthodox.

Similar apologetics is used in the case of the Papacy contrary to Protestants. Protestants argue, “What if the Pope spoke heresy while speaking from the chair of St. Peter? Would that not mean that Papal Infallibility would be wrong?”

The Catholic response is simple in that it states that the Pope could not teach heresy with the aim of imposing it on the universal Church because it would be impossible as it would go against the Divine Promise given in Matthew 16:18. The gates of hell would have prevailed if the very speaker of the Church and Her head could define and force the whole Church to believe a new Gospel, as it is written: “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Gal. 1:8) Therefore, using a brute fact to defend Vatican II is just as one may use a brute fact to defend Papal Infallibility.

The brute fact is simply that the Church cannot teach heresy, and as such, the interpretation which should be sought is that which presents itself in an orthodox light. If such an interpretation is possible, then of course it is the one that should be embraced. It is up to the Sedevacantist to prove his very radical theory that there has not been a Pope for over 60 years. As such, he cannot just use private interpretation when there are already orthodox interpretations to counter them.

As the First Vatican Council states: “By divine and Catholic faith, all those things must be believed which are contained in the written word of God and in tradition, and those which are proposed by the Church, either in a solemn pronouncement or in her ordinary and universal teaching power, to be believed as divinely revealed.” (Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, D. 1792). However, the Sedevacantist will say that he does not contradict this statement as he does not believe that the Church which promulgated the Second Vatican Council was the true Church, to begin with. Yet, this begs the question because by what other means has he come to that conclusion than to privately interpret the Council to be contrary to the Catholic Faith and, as such, contradict Vatican I?

Once again, a comparison to Protestantism may be made. The Protestant Reformers chose to maintain their private interpretations of the Biblical Texts to fight against the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Instead of submitting to the Church’s power to interpret the Scriptures, the Protestant Reformers chose instead to interpret them on their own, thus opening the way for a vast quantity of interpretations. Furthermore, the Protestant Reformers used the Church Fathers to justify their interpretations. In a similar vein, the interpretation made by a Sedevacantist will always have zero authority, even if they use previous Church teaching in Councils to justify themselves.

The interpretation made by a Catholic will always have the authority of the visible Church with him and the presupposition that the Church is indefectible. The first premise which the Sedevacantist tries to defend, that being the indefectibility of the Church, ends up being used squarely in the pocket of the Catholic, as only he can say with any real certainty that he has authority (and indefectible authority, at that) to justify his interpretation.

Michael Lofton has brought up an interesting perspective on interpreting Vatican II. Just as the Sacred Scriptures may often seem to contradict each other, a deeper reading proves that there is no conflict. What one requires when reading Sacred Scripture’s apparent contradictions is charity. Therefore, the same must be done when one reads Vatican II and previous Church documents. The two must be read charitably and, as such, no conflict will be seen.

Conclusion

Sedevacantism can be a very appealing idea to traditional Catholics nowadays, particularly with the increasing amounts of attacks on the Tridentine Mass and traditional movement. Nevertheless, schism is never the answer to the problems within the Church. Just as the Saints of the Baroque period chose to reform the Church on the inside (in what is commonly called the “Counter-Reformation”) rather than leave the Ark of Salvation (as the Protestant Reformers did), so must traditional Catholics work to improve the Church rather than be distinct from it. To reject the Catholic Church as a “new religion” and instead work to build and spread a position that, as shown, is weak in its structure and justifications, would be a grave mistake.

Sedevacantists have no authority over which they can decree that one is saved or not on the grounds of accepting or denying Sedevacantism. As such, their words of fear hold no grounds. Leaving the Ark of Salvation is never a promising idea but leaving the Ark in the middle of the Flood (it can most certainly be said that the Latin Rite is in the middle of a storm at present) is particularly foolish. Confusion follows Sedevacantism. But reforming the Church from the inside will bring nothing but prosperity.

“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.” (Revelation 22:12)

Special thanks to Isidore Foakes for his help editing this piece.

THis article first appeared HERE.