"The king of France now abandoned the Avignon pope and declared himself neutral. The University of Paris did the same, and besought the two sets of cardinals to come together and work for reunion. Within a few weeks this had happened, and the majority of of the cardinals of both popes met in a common assembly. They summoned a council which met at Pisa ...
"Both popes were cited to Pisa, and when they failed to appear were condemned in their absence for schism, heresy, and perjury, and deposed. Then the cardinals elected the archbishop of Milan ... He took the name of Alexander V ...
"The situation was now, in some respects, worse than ever. There were three popes instead of two, and in the end it was the third pope, the one of the threee who was most certainly not pope, whom practically the whole of Christendom obeyed ...
"Pope Alexander lasted only ten months, and then the Pisan party elected to succeed him Baldassare Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. He was a man so bad and so utterly unworthy of any ecclesiastical office--an ecclesiastical financier who had the name of having once been a pirate and was now a trader in indulgences--that in the end the emperor Sigismund intervened and set in motion the train of events which at last saved the Church."
13 comments:
Interesting that Robert of Geneva/Clement VII had connections to England. As Wikipedia summarizes it:
“From 1373 he held the position of Archdeacon of Dorset,[4] and from 1374 also Prebend of All Saints Parish Church in Middle Woodford in Wiltshire,[5] leaving both positions in 1378. From 1375, he held a living as rector of Bishopwearmouth in County Durham, England, and instead used the income from that highly prized living for his papal election expenses.[6]
As it says on the sunderlandminster website: “ it is highly unlikely that he ever saw Bishopwearmouth”
Thank you for these useful posts. It could be true that people in any era might think that their situation is the worst of its kind. It is rather consoling that our current confusion might not be the worst in history.
Would that we had Catholic emperors again! Now we can clearly see why the toppling of thrones was essential to the project of toppling altars.
If the abdication of 2013 had led to the election of another St. Gregory the Great, the difference between "munus" and "ministerium" would be the last thing on anybody's minds.
I don't know whether I prefer a Pirate Pope or a Dictator Pope.
Antipope John XXIII was a pirate??? Hokey smokes! Why did he want to be a pope, then? Being rich is a lot less work.
Grant Mllburn: I think the oft-quoted words of C S Lewis probably settle that question:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
(That is, of course, to presume – as we are surely bound to – that PF is, if nothing else, sincere.)
My gt-gt+ uncle from Scotland was a privateer/pirate. After becoming a widower, he put his daughters in a convent school & took to the high seas.
This, however, has not prevented me from becoming a Catholic (after a few ancestral detours through doleful Presbyteriansism).
Wynn: yes, pondering my own question further, I concluded that I could live very happily with a Pirate Pope who was so preoccupied with rum, treasure and wenches that he showed absolutely no interest in tinkering with Catholic faith, morals or worship.
Better still, it would be impossible for the papolatrous crowd to maintain that the voice of such a pope was the voice of the Holy Spirit. Yes, it's a Pirate Pope for me. I'm starting to feel a lot of affection for old Baldassare (whose name is an anagram for "real bad***").
I see that Cossa was listed in the Annuario Pontificio as a legitimate pope at least until 1942 :- Gregory XII (1406–1409), Alexander V (1409–1410), and John XXIII (1410–1415).
The list now has Gregory XII (1406–1415), but I do not know when the revision was made.
I wonder what Papa Roncalli actually meant when he said "Twenty-two Johns of indisputable legitimacy have [been Pope], ..."
The fact that the King of France and the University of Paris thought it legitimate to declare themselves neutral demonstrates that the fear of many nowadays of accidentally becoming schismatic (which is impossible since schism require pertinacity) through even entertaining the idea that Francis is not Pope is unfounded. Part of our problem is that we cannot discuss the question reasonably without accusations of schism being thrown around. I, and various other Sedes (though I admit not all), though we find it infuriating, and though I believe that it is 'theologically certain' that heretics cannot hold office in the Catholic Church, do not doubt that those Catholics who disagree with us and insist on following John of St Thomas, Suarez, Cajetan, etc. remain Catholic. If the question could be discussed measuredly, without censorship and without the fear that even raising the question is illegitimate, that would be most edifying.
I hope this comment shall be permitted, since I am simply appealing for measured discussion.
As an answer to the last comment by Augustine Pinnock
Sir, it may be a matter of vanity, but in my book "schismatic" does not necessarily have a worse sound than "stubborn blockhead". Reverend Father, please excuse.
There have been saints who said that that a Pope loses his Papacy upon becoming heretics. Yes. Let's not go into the details that not all have, that even if they're saints and sometimes Doctors of the Church, they are not specifically the Magisterium but theologians, etc. You will not have any of that, fine. Thus, let us grant for the discussion, without conceding it, that Popes indeed lose their office upon becoming heretics. After all, there have been eminent saints and theologians who said that. As you say.
"Upon becoming heretic." They meant that he does some concrete, specific heretical thing.
And here's where the sedevacantist stubbornness and blockheadedness come in: They see that Pope Francis is damaging the Church, and assume he is doing so on purpose (which for the purpose of discussion I'll grant again, without conceding). They say "a man that is so bad for the Church cannot possibly be Pope". Then, they say: "So, as I recall that heretics cannot be Pope, he must be a heretic". And then they are, it seems, psychologically impeded from going over the facts.
The facts are:
1. The theory requires a specific obvious heresy. Not aiding heresy; not abetting heresy; not failing to combat heresy; not "obviously all this only makes sense if he does not believe the Catholic truth in his heart"; not grotesque failure to condemn heresy at the very moment such a condemnation was required (which the 3rd Council of Constantinople was right to condemn Honorius I for, but wrong in calling him heretic for). What's the heresy? When, exactly, would he have ceded to be Pope? What specific dogma would he have contradicted, and that publicly, stubbornly, and without the excuse of "just a bad expression"?
No; an opinion that is erroneous, against the sense of scripture, in contradiction of the Roman Catechism and the Catechism of St. John Paul II. at the same time plus all other theologians that have treated the matter, and possibly haeresi proxima does not suffice. Pope Francis has done that, in the matter of capital punishment (without need: St. John Paul II was quite within the possibilities of actual development of doctrine). But the Papacy being a public office which is instituted to settle theological debates, not to create ones about whether the Pope is Pope; so, even if a heretic loses the office it is only if he is a heretic without the slightest possibility of a discussion about that. And the saints you quote say as much. (Some of them entertain also the possibility of "not quite so clear but still heretic", for which case they think a council should judge. They are not quite clear about how this council should be convened. They are clear, though, that not every man in the pews can say "I'm fed up with this Pope, I'll judge him a heretic now and become sedevacantist.)
But "without the slightest possiblility of a discussion" requires that the thing had previously been dogmatized, i. e., included in a Canon of a coucil with "anathema sit" attached, or one of the few Papal dogmas. (By the way, not anything like "we judge as heretical or rash or erroneous or offending pious ears, without caring precisely which censure applies").
The doctrine "Capital punishment is in principle something the State can resort to" may have been taught at any level below that, but not at that level. There is no document that says "whosoever dares to disbelieve that, let him be anathema." So, no Papa haereticus here. And that was the closest I could think of.
The following facts will be quicker:
2. Look at each of the bad things the Holy Father has done. Certainly viewed each by itself, the judgment cannot be other than "it's a pity, but of course, this may happen". Fallible assertions are, by definition, fallible. Popes have no guarantee against mismanaging, or against personal failure, or against sins. They are only prevented from teaching something wrong when dogmatizing, and apart from possibly canonizations (the thing is not quite undisputed now, but even for those that do hold that those are infallible, their "infallible part" is only that the person is in Heaven now, which does not exclude an exceptional pardon of Purgatory punishment; not that they are worthy of being singled out this way or that their Church policy was correct) he has not dogmatized at all, so that rules out that possibility.
The sedevacantist, confronted with this, would presumably say: "Yes, each of the cases yes; but so much of it at the same time by the same Pope!" But that is not logic. The logic is that if each single of these things can happen, then all of them can happen in the same pontificate by a particularly bad Pope" is stubbornness.
3. And of course, the fact that the King of France and the University of Paris did declare themselves neutral does not mean they had a right to do so. In fact, it can be argued that at least the former, being one person and not a collective body, had been excused as a follower of a wrong Pope whom he thought to be the right one before, but became then a schismatic.
4. The obvious point about the issue was that there were then three Popes with a substantial claim to the Papacy. John (XXIII)'s was the weakest, as our reverend host says, but even he had some of it. The Roman Pope: "I was elected in Rome, that they rebelled later changed nothing. Also (until Pisa, that is) I am the one treated as a bishop in the actual city of Rome." The Avignon Pope: "That election was under duress, and the Cardinals have assembled anew." The Pisan Pope: "This situation is that much a catastrophe that a Council, even one that is less one of the world's episcopate but more one of the Curia, must take matters in its own hands. And it has. Also, I rule Rome now." The last is weakest, but it is some claim.
A situation rather different from one when we have an undisputed Pope who does some bad things. The question how "very bad" the bad things are is quite immaterial.
"The logic is that... is stubbornness": Sorry. I meant, as is plain, "To deny the logic that ... is stubbornness".
Embarrassing, but also a nice example for the "excuse of 'just a bad expression'", of an actual slip of the tongue, which I mentioned above: errors of that kind would not make me a heretic, even if the literal words technically were heresy.
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