Catholic Candle note: Sedevacantism is wrong and is (material or formal) schism. Catholic Candle is not sedevacantist. We recommend a small book explaining the errors of sedevacantism. It is available:

• Here, for free: https://catholiccandle.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sedevacantism-material-or-formal-schism.pdf
  

• Here, at cost ($4): https://www.amazon.com/Sedevacantism-Material-Quanta-Cura-Press/dp/B08FP5NQR6/ref=sr_1_1

Below is the second of a series of articles which cover specific aspects of the error of sedevacantism. The first article of this series can be found here: If a pope publicly preaches heresy, does he cease to be pope?: https://catholiccandle.org/2024/09/26/cc-in-brief-sedevacantist-questions/

Are We Allowed to Decide that Pope Francis Knows He Does Not Qualify as a Catholic?

We previously saw¹ that a pope does not cease to be pope simply because he plainly (manifestly²) and publicly preaches heresy unless he also knows that what he teaches is incompatible with being Catholic – that is, unless he is a formal heretic. But I have a follow-up question:

Q. Don’t Pope Francis’s words and actions show that he knows that what he is teaching is incompatible with being a Catholic?

A. No. Pope Francis’s words and actions do not conclusively show that, nor has he ever told us that he knows that his beliefs are incompatible with being a Catholic. It is the sin of rash judgment to conclude that he knows of such incompatibility without our having proof which allows no doubt whatsoever. Let us explain more fully.

If we were to judge someone to be a formal heretic, we would be judging him to have mortal sin on his soul, since formal heresy always brings interior culpability for mortal sin. If someone says he is Catholic and we were to judge him to be a formal heretic, we would be concluding that such a person “really knows” that he denies what the Church (God) teaches us that we must believe, but that he won’t admit the “fact”. Making this judgment is the sin of rash judgment. But in order to explain this, we must first see that God made our intellects to be perfected by universal truth and we must distinguish this truth from opinions about individual matters.

Unchangeable Truth, the Good of the Intellect

God wills men to know the unchanging truth. There are innumerable such truths. To take two simple examples: 1) the whole is greater than its own part; and 2) 4 + 4 = 8.

The truths of our Holy Catholic Faith are unchangeable truths and are especially perfecting for our intellects. Two quick examples of this are: 1) God has no body; and 2) The Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul.

Unchangeable truths, most of all the Holy Catholic Faith, perfect our intellects. In other words, such truths make our intellects good. In seeking the truth, we should strive to be completely objective in knowing things exactly as they are.³ For this reason, when determining whether a particular statement is against the Catholic Faith, we should judge the statement with complete objectivity.

By contrast, when we judge the motives or culpability of persons, we must judge in the best possible light, not with complete “even-handed objectivity”. This is true even if we were usually wrong about such a person’s culpability.⁴ Judgments about the culpability of our neighbor are singular, contingent facts (in contrast to eternal, unchangeable truth) and such singular facts do not perfect our intellect. It is better to be usually wrong making too-favorable a judgment about a person’s culpability than to be wrong even occasionally, making too negative a judgment.⁵ Such an unproven, negative judgment about a person’s culpability is called “rash judgment”.⁶

For this reason, when determining whether a person is blamable for holding an objectively heretical opinion, we should not judge his interior culpability with complete objectivity but rather, in the best possible light (if we judge at all). For, as St. Thomas explains, following St. Augustine: “Our Lord forbids rash judgment, which is about the inward intention or other uncertain things”.

If a man says he is a Catholic and says that he believes that a Catholic is permitted to hold the opinions that he does, we should judge him in the best possible light and not assume he “knows” his position is contrary to the Catholic Faith, but that he won’t admit the “fact”. Nor should we assume that, just because we are unsuccessful in changing his opinion, that this means the man “knows” his position is contrary to what he must believe in order to be Catholic.

Thus, it is good to judge objectively the errors themselves, taught by Pope Francis (or others), because the truth of statements should be judged “evenhandedly” and objectively. But it is rash to judge Pope Francis’s culpability with objective “even-handedness” and assume he certainly “knows” that he holds heresy and thus, is not “really” Catholic (and pope).

To the extent we judge Pope Francis’s interior culpability at all, we must judge in the best possible light. Thus, we would judge him to be a material heretic (not a formal heretic) and judge him to still be Catholic (as he professes to be) and to still be the pope (as he professes to be).

Similarly, whatever objective heresies are held by the 1.2 billion people who profess to be Catholic, we should judge their interior culpability in the best possible light (if we judge at all). We should not conclude they are formal heretics and are not “real” Catholics (as the sedevacantists judge them).

It is Rash Judgment to Judge a Person’s Interior Culpability

When can we conclude someone is a Formal Heretic?

We could conclude Pope Francis were a formal heretic if he announced that he did not believe what the Church (God) teaches that a Catholic must believe now. We would not be judging him rashly because we would merely believe what he tells us about himself.

Let us take the example of a man committing an objective sin of theft as he leaves a restaurant, taking an umbrella that does not belong to him. This objective theft is a “material theft” only, when he believes that this umbrella belongs to him. Further, in order to avoid rashly judging him, we should not rashly assume that he knew better and so committed the subjective, interior sin of theft. But if this man tells us that he took the umbrella knowing that it does not belong to him, then our believing him (that he is a thief) is not rash judgment any more than our believing that a man is a formal heretic when he tells us that he knows that what he believes is incompatible with being Catholic.

However, it is rash to judge the interior culpability of Pope Francis (or anyone else) and conclude he is a formal heretic simply because he is a material heretic, i.e., has heretical opinions and refuses to be corrected by traditional Catholics.

Protecting Ourselves from Evil Without Judging Interior Culpability

Of course, even giving the benefit of the doubt and judging that someone is not a formal heretic (if we judge him at all), does not mean we should accept him as our child’s catechism teacher. For our child would be harmed by his errors, however interiorly blameless the man might (hypothetically) be in professing heresy.

Without judging someone’s interior culpability, we should take into account the person’s wrong-doing (which we must judge objectively). For when a man is prone to take other people’s umbrellas, we should keep a close eye on our own umbrella (when he is present) even if every umbrella that he has ever taken in the past was taken innocently.

Likewise, we should warn people not to read a particular book which contains heresy even if the author of that book teaches these errors innocently. We should be wary and warn others, simply based on the book teaching error, whether the author is interiorly culpable or not.

Judging any person to be interiorly culpable for his sinful act only results in concluding his soul is lower with regards to our own soul, than would be true if he were not culpable. But our rashly judging his interior culpability in this way does not allow us to protect ourselves any better than if we didn’t rashly judge him.

But isn’t it “Obvious” that Pope Francis is a Formal Heretic?

But “rash judgers” would exclaim that it is “obvious” that the man (in the example above) knows he is taking someone else’s umbrella (and is therefore interiorly culpable), because his own umbrella is a different color or because he did not bring his own umbrella with him today. Notice the hidden assumptions within the “rash-judger’s” conclusion. He assumes that the “umbrella thief” remembers which umbrella he brought today. St. Thomas replies about such rash judgment:

It is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man.⁷

Similarly, “rash judgers” say the pope is “obviously” a formal heretic. They say he “must” know he denies Church teaching because he was trained in the Catholic Faith before Vatican II or that his errors have been pointed out to him. Notice the hidden assumptions in the “rash judger’s” conclusion. He assumes that the “heretic” had a good (or at least an average) Catholic education, or that if he had a good education but later fell into heresy, that he knew it was heresy. St. Thomas replies to these “rash judgers” that we must not judge based on such probabilities and assumptions.⁸

We are not obliged to search for an explanation of how the pope (or anyone else) might not be blamable for whatever objective heresy he holds. The members of the post-Vatican II hierarchy are not stupid, but they received an extremely bad philosophical formation, including the principle (which is at the root of modernism) that all truth evolves. By contrast, all correct reasoning (and the Catholic Faith) relies on the philosophical principle that there is eternal, unchanging truth.

In his masterful treatment of modernism, Pope St. Pius X explained that modernists profess that all truth changes:

[T]hey have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth …. [They say] dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. … Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher.⁹

Thus, because of bad philosophy, modernists think a dogma used to be true (and used to be taught by the Church) but is no longer true or taught by the Church. This explains why the present hierarchy treats the Church’s past teaching, not as false at the previous time, but as “obsolete” or no longer binding. For example, Pope Benedict XVI treated the (truly infallible) teachings in the syllabi of Pope Pius IX and Pope St. Pius X as if they were now-outdated and no longer true. He says that:

[T]here are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications. In this regard, one may think of the declarations of popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church’s anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.¹⁰

Again, we are not obliged to search for an explanation of how post-Vatican II Catholics (including the pope) avoid being formal heretics. It suffices that we judge them (if at all) in the most favorable light. Even if a modernist were absolutely clear in denying a dogma (such as our Lady’s Assumption), it would not necessarily mean he was a formal heretic and that he ceased to be Catholic. This is true even assuming that he knows the Church defined the Assumption as a dogma. For a modernist could think the particular dogma had previously been true and Catholics used to be required to believe it, but that this particular truth has changed.

Such changeability of truth is a philosophical error underlying modernism.

However, the unchangeability of truth is not itself a dogma of the Faith although this philosophical principle underlies Church dogma as well as every natural truth. A person who holds a (materially) heretical position does not become a formal heretic unless he knows that the Catholic Church not only used to teach a particular dogma, but still teaches it and that we must believe it now, in order to be Catholic now.

A modernist could think that Catholics of a past age would have been required to be martyred rather than deny a particular dogma even though that same modernist thinks that the “former” dogma is now no longer even true. The false philosophy underlying modernism corrodes the mind but can be one of many reasons why various modernists are material heretics but not formal heretics. For us, though, “it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man”.¹¹

Summary of this present article

A person could profess heresy but still be Catholic, if he were a material heretic only. We must not judge a man’s interior culpability. Therefore, we must not judge a man to be a formal heretic if he professes to be Catholic and says he believes what a Catholic must believe now, in order to be Catholic now.

If we judge them at all, we must judge in the most favorable light the interior culpability of the pope and the 1.2 billion people who profess to be Catholic. We must not judge they are not “real” Catholics.

Thus, we must judge Pope Francis to be a material heretic, not a formal heretic, and that he is the pope. If the world’s 1.2 billion self-described Catholics hold heresy, we judge them to be material heretics only unless they themselves tell us that they know they don’t believe what is necessary for them to be Catholic.

Further Objection

But how can rash judgment be forbidden when the hierarchy of the Church has excommunicated heretics throughout the history of the Church? That question raises the important topic of excommunications and judgments made in the “external forum” (as it is called). But that topic must wait for another “day” and a different article.