Sedevacantism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sedevacantism is the position held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics who hold that the present occupant of the papal see

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

is not truly Pope and that, for lack of a valid Pope, the see

Episcopal See

An episcopal see is, in the original sense, the official seat of a bishop. This seat, which is also referred to as the bishop's cathedra, is placed in the bishop's principal church, which is therefore called the bishop's cathedral...

has been vacant since the death of either Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII

The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....

in 1958 or Pope John XXIII

Pope John XXIII

-Papal election:Following the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, Roncalli was elected Pope, to his great surprise. He had even arrived in the Vatican with a return train ticket to Venice. Many had considered Giovanni Battista Montini, Archbishop of Milan, a possible candidate, but, although archbishop...

in 1963.

Sedevacantists believe that Paul VI

Pope Paul VI

Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...

(1963–1978), John Paul I

Pope John Paul I

John Paul I , born Albino Luciani, , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and as Sovereign of Vatican City from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent Year of Three Popes...

(1978), John Paul II

Pope John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

(1978–2005) and Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...

(since 2005) have been neither true Catholics

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

nor true Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

s, by virtue of allegedly having espoused the heresy of Modernism

Modernism (Roman Catholicism)

Modernism refers to theological opinions expressed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but with influence reaching into the 21st century, which are characterized by a break with the past. Catholic modernists form an amorphous group. The term "modernist" appears in Pope Pius X's 1907...

, or of having otherwise denied or contradicted solemnly defined Catholic dogmas. Some of them classify John XXIII (1958–1963) also as a Modernist antipope

Antipope

An antipope is a person who opposes a legitimately elected or sitting Pope and makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At times between the 3rd and mid-15th century, antipopes were typically those supported by a...

.

The term "sedevacantism" is derived from the Latin phrase sede vacante
Sede vacante
Sede vacante is an expression, used in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, that refers to the vacancy of the episcopal see of a particular church...

, which literally means "the seat being vacant", the seat in question being that of a bishop. A specific use of the phrase is in the context of the vacancy of the Holy See

Holy See

between the death or resignation of a Pope and the election of his successor. "Sedevacantism" as a term in English appears to date from the 1980s, though the movement itself is older.

Among those who maintain that the see of Rome, occupied by what they declare to be an illegitimate pope, was really vacant, some have chosen an alternative pope of their own, and thus in their view ended the vacancy of the see. They are sometimes called "conclavists

Conclavism

Conclavism is the belief and practice of some who, claiming that Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and other recent occupants of the papal see are not true popes, elect someone else and propose him as the true pope to whom the allegiance of Catholics is due....

Early history

One of the earliest proponents of sedevacantism was the American Francis Schuckardt

Francis Schuckardt

Francis Konrad Schuckardt was an American Traditionalist Catholic independent bishop and the first known bishop of the sedevacantist movement in the United States. Sedevacantism holds that Pope Paul VI —sometimes going back to include John XXIII— and his successors are not valid Popes...

. Though he was still working within the "official" Church in 1967, he publicly took the position in 1968 that the Holy See

Holy See

was vacant and that the Church that had emerged from the Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...

was no longer Catholic. An associate of his, Daniel Q. Brown

Daniel Q. Brown

Daniel Quilter Brown is an American Old Roman Catholic bishop. He was a Roman Catholic layman who left the Catholic Church in the late 1960s because he was dissatisfied with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Brown was consecrated a bishop in 1969 by Hubert A. Rogers.In 1971 he consecrated...

, arrived at the same conclusion. In 1969, Brown received episcopal orders from an Old Catholic bishop, and in 1971 he in turn consecrated Schuckardt. Schuckardt founded a congregation called the Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church.

In 1970, a Japanese layman, Yukio Nemoto (1925–1988), created a sedevacantist group called Seibo No Mikuni.

Another founding figure of sedevacantism was Fr. Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga, a Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

theologian from Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. He put forward sedevacantist ideas in his books The New Montinian Church (August 1971) and Sede Vacante (1973). Sáenz's writings gave rise to the sedevacantist movement in Mexico

Mexico

, led by Sáenz, Fr. Moisés Carmona and Fr. Adolfo Zamora, and also inspired Fr. Francis E. Fenton in the United States.

In the years following the Second Vatican Council other priests took up similar positions. They include:

The Dominican theologian Fr. Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers
Guerard des Lauriers
Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers, O.P. was a Dominican theologian and, in later life, a traditionalist Catholic bishop.-Church career:...

, who developed a thesis similar to sedevacantism called sedeprivationism
Sedeprivationism
Sedeprivationism is an ideological school or party of the traditionalist Roman Catholic movement that holds that Popes since John XXIII have been defective Popes, following the principles of the late French theologian Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers, O.P., as Lauriers set it out in his thesis...

in the 1970s.
Several students at the SSPX seminary at Econe in the early or mid-1970s — [ Daniel Dolan
Daniel Dolan
Daniel Lytle Dolan is a sedevacantist traditionalist Catholic bishop.A Detroit, Michigan native, Dolan began his preparation for the priesthood in 1965 at the archdiocesan minor seminary in Detroit...

, Anthony Cekada
Anthony Cekada
Anthony Cekada is a Traditionalist Catholic priest and author.Born in 1951, Cekada studied at St. Francis Roman Catholic Seminary College in Milwaukee, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Theology in 1973; he studied organ and musical composition at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. In 1975,...

and Donald Sanborn — are reported to have been sedevacantists in that period and were expelled together with three others from the SSPX by Archbishop Lefebvre for holding the error.
The English parish priest Fr. Oswald Baker
Oswald Baker
Oswald Charles Baker was a controversial Catholic priest who lived in Downham Market in Norfolk. He was Parish Priest at Saint Dominic's Church between 1951 and 1975. He made headlines in the 1970s when he refused to say the new vernacular Mass and insisted on saying the traditional Latin Mass. ...

, who was a sedevacantist at least by 1982, and reportedly some time before that.
The American missionary Fr. Lucian Pulvermacher
Lucian Pulvermacher
Lucian Pulvermacher was a traditionalist Roman Catholic priest. He was the head of the "True Catholic Church," a small conclavist group that, without authorization from the Holy See of Rome, elected him Pope Pius XIII in October, 1998...

, who left the Roman Catholic Church in 1976 and in October 1998 was elected Pope of the conclavist
Conclavism
Conclavism is the belief and practice of some who, claiming that Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and other recent occupants of the papal see are not true popes, elect someone else and propose him as the true pope to whom the allegiance of Catholics is due....

"True Catholic Church" with the name of "Pius XIII".

Positions

Sedevacantism owes its origins to the rejection of the theological and disciplinary changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

(1962–1965). Sedevacantists reject this Council, on the basis of its documents on ecumenism

Ecumenism

Ecumenism or oecumenism mainly refers to initiatives aimed at greater Christian unity or cooperation. It is used predominantly by and with reference to Christian denominations and Christian Churches separated by doctrine, history, and practice...

and religious liberty

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

, which they see as contradicting the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church and as denying the unique mission of Catholicism as the one true religion, outside of which there is no salvation

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

The Latin phrase Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "Outside the Church there is no salvation". The most recent Catholic Catechism interpreted this to mean that "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body."...

. They also say that new disciplinary norms, such as the Mass of Paul VI

Mass of Paul VI

The Mass of Pope Paul VI is the liturgy of the Catholic Mass of the Roman Rite promulgated by Paul VI in 1969, after the Second Vatican Council...

, promulgated on 3 April 1969, undermine or conflict with the historical Catholic faith.

Other traditionalist Catholics recognize as legitimate the line of Popes leading to Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI

. Some of them hold that one or more of the most recent Popes have held and taught unorthodox beliefs, but do not go so far as to say that they have been formal heretics or have been widely and publicly judged to be heretics. Sedevacantists, on the other hand, claim that the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church could not have decreed the changes made in the name of the Second Vatican Council, and conclude that those who issued these changes could not have been acting with the authority of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, they hold that Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI

and his successors left the true Catholic Church and thus lost legitimate authority in the Church. A formal heretic, they say, cannot be the Catholic Pope.

Claims used by sedevacantists to defend their position include the following:

Most pre-Conciliar Catholic theologians and canon lawyers taught that it is inherently impossible for a heretic to hold the papal office.
Particular provisions of Church law prevent a heretic from being elected or remaining as Pope. Paul IV
Pope Paul IV
Pope Paul IV, C.R. , né Giovanni Pietro Carafa, was Pope from 23 May 1555 until his death.-Early life:Giovanni Pietro Carafa was born in Capriglia Irpina, near Avellino, into a prominent noble family of Naples...

's 1559 Bull
Papal bull
A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....

Cum ex apostolatus officio stipulated that a heretic cannot be elected Pope, while Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law provides that a cleric who publicly defects from the Catholic faith automatically loses any office that he holds in the Church.

A number of writers have engaged sedevacantists in debate on some of these points. Brian Harrison of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, for example, has argued that Pope Pius XII's conclave legislation permitted excommunicated cardinals to attend, from which he argues that they could also be legitimately elected.

Opponents of Harrison have argued that a phrase in Pope Pius XII's legislation "Cardinals who have been deposed or who have resigned, however, are barred and may not be reinstated even for the purpose of voting", though it speaks of someone deposed or resigned from the cardinalate, not of someone who may have incurred automatic excommunication but has not been officially declared excommunicated, means that, even if someone is permitted to attend, that does not automatically translate into electability.

There are estimated to be between several tens of thousands and more than two hundred thousands of sedevacantists worldwide, mostly concentrated in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, but the actual size of the sedevacantist movement has never been accurately assessed. (See further the section on statistics in the article Traditionalist Catholic
Traditionalist Catholic
Traditionalist Catholics are Roman Catholics who believe that there should be a restoration of many or all of the liturgical forms, public and private devotions and presentations of Catholic teachings which prevailed in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council...

.)

Catholic doctrine teaches that the four marks of the true Church are that it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and sedevacantists base their claim to be the remnant Roman Catholic Church on what they see as the presence in them of these four "marks", absent, they say, in the Church since the Second Vatican Council. Their critics counter by saying that sedevacantists are in fact not one, forming numerous splinter groups, each of them in disagreement with the others.

Most sedevacantists hold the holy orders

Holy Orders

The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....

conferred with the present revised rites of the Catholic Church to be invalid due to defect both of intention and form. They conclude that the great majority of the bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

s listed in the Holy See

Holy See

's Annuario Pontificio
Annuario Pontificio
The Annuario Pontificio is the annual directory of the Holy See. It lists all the popes to date and all officials of the Holy See's departments...

, including Benedict XVI himself, are in reality merely priests or even laymen.

Bishops and holy orders

Catholic doctrine holds that any bishop can validly ordain any baptised man to the priesthood or to the episcopacy, provided that he has the correct intention and uses a doctrinally acceptable rite of ordination, whether or not he has official permission of any sort to perform the ordination, and indeed whether or not he and the ordinand are Catholics.

On the other hand, while unapproved and irregular ordinations are valid in that the recipient truly becomes a priest or bishop, they are canonically illegal (or illicit), and can entail penalties under church law for those involved. Absent specified conditions, Canon law forbids ordination to the episcopate without a mandate from the Pope, and both those who confer such ordination without the papal mandate and those who receive it are subject to excommunication. Sedevacantists take the position that the normal legal requirements, such as the need for a papal mandate for an episcopal consecration, cannot be applied in the context of a collapse of the Church's structures and the prolonged lack of a Pope.

In a specific pronouncement in 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , previously known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition , and after 1904 called the Supreme...

declared devoid of canonical effect the consecration ceremony conducted for the Palmarian Catholic Church

Palmarian Catholic Church

The Christian Palmarian Church of the Carmelites of the Holy Face , commonly called the Palmarian Catholic Church , is a schismatic Catholic church with its own pope, Gregory XVIII.-Origins:...

by Archbishop Ngô Ðình Thuc on 31 December 1975, though it refrained from pronouncing on its validity. This declaration applied also to later ordinations by those who received ordination in the ceremony. Of those then ordained, seven who are known to have returned to full communion with Rome did so as laymen,. Again, when Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo

Emmanuel Milingo

Emmanuel Milingo is a former Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia. In 1969, aged 39, Milingo was consecrated by Pope Paul VI as Bishop of the Archdiocese of Lusaka....

conferred episcopal ordination on four men in Washington on 24 September 2006, the Holy See's Press Office declared that "the Church does not recognize and does not intend in the future to recognize these ordinations or any ordinations derived from them, and she holds that the canonical state of the four alleged bishops is the same as it was prior to the ordination."
This denial of canonical status simply means that he has no authority to exercise any ministry.
However, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini of the Holy See Press Office, who was responsible for publicly issuing, during the press conference, the communique on Milingo, stated to reporters that any ordinations the excommunicated Milingo had performed prior to his laicization were "illicit but valid", while any subsequent ordinations would be invalid.

However, on June 11, 2011, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts issued a statement about illicitly ordained bishops,including those ordained by Archishop Emmanual Milingo, incidently Milingo was never accused of being schismatic but merely disobedient, before he was reduced to the lay state in 2009 and those ordained for the schismatic Palmar movement by the late Archbishop Thuc, pointing out the canons which provide for an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication for both the ordaining bishop and those ordained. Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, Secretary of the Council, explained that the statement applied to the bishops ordained by Milingo as well as to more recent cases.

The bishops who are or have been active within the sedevacantist movement can be divided into four categories.

Bishops consecrated within the "official" Church who were subsequently persuaded to the sedevacantist position. To date, this category seems to consist of only two individuals, both now deceased: the Vietnamese Archbishop Ngô Ðình Thuc (who, before he died in 1984, may have been reconciled to Pope John Paul II) and the Chicago-born Mgr. Alfredo F. Mendez, the former Bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo is a municipality in the northern midwest coast of Puerto Rico and located by the Atlantic Ocean, north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta, and Florida. Arecibo is spread over 18 wards and Arecibo Pueblo...

. The late Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer
Antônio de Castro Mayer
Antônio de Castro Mayer, STL was a Brazilian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. A Traditionalist Catholic and ally of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, he was Bishop of Campos from 1949 until his resignation in 1981....

of Campos, Brazil is also said to have embraced, or at least flirted with, sedevacantism, despite his association with the non-sedevacantist Society of St. Pius X
Society of St. Pius X
The Society of Saint Pius X is an international Traditionalist Catholic organisation, founded in 1970 by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre...

.

Bishops whose lineages derive from the foregoing bishops, which essentially means the "Thuc line" of bishops deriving from Archbishop Ngô Ðình Thuc. While the "Thuc line" is lengthy and complex, reportedly comprising 200 or more individuals, the sedevacantist community generally accepts and respects most of the 12 or so bishops following from the three or four final consecrations that the Archbishop performed (those of Bishops Guerard des Lauriers, Carmona, Zamora and Datessen). Bishop Mendez consecrated one priest to the episcopacy, Fr. Clarence Kelly of the Society of St. Pius V
Society of St. Pius V
The Society of St. Pius V , abreviated SSPV, is a Traditionalist Catholic society of ordained priests formed in 1983 and based in Oyster Bay Cove, New York. The priests of SSPV broke away from the Society of St...

, who in turn has consecrated one further bishop. In addition, many bishops in the "Thuc line" are or have been associated with the conclavist
Conclavism
Conclavism is the belief and practice of some who, claiming that Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and other recent occupants of the papal see are not true popes, elect someone else and propose him as the true pope to whom the allegiance of Catholics is due....

Palmarian Catholic Church
Palmarian Catholic Church
The Christian Palmarian Church of the Carmelites of the Holy Face , commonly called the Palmarian Catholic Church , is a schismatic Catholic church with its own pope, Gregory XVIII.-Origins:...

. On September 24, 1991, Father Pivarunas was consecrated a bishop at Mount Saint Michael by Bishop Moises Carmona. On November 30, 1993, Bishop Pivarunas conferred episcopal consecration to Father Daniel Dolan in Cincinnati, Ohio, and on May 11, 1999, he also consecrated Martin Davila for the Union Catolica Treno to succeed Moises Carmona.

Bishops whose lineages derive from earlier schisms. A considerable number of sedevacantist bishops are said to derive from Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, who in 1945 set up his own schismatic "Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church
Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church
The Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church is an independent Catholic church established in 1945 by Brazilian bishop Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, a former Roman Catholic Bishop of Botucatu.The ICAB has 58 dioceses and claims five million members in 17 countries...

". More numerous are those who have had recourse to the Old Catholic line of succession. Bishops of this category include Francis Schuckardt
Francis Schuckardt
Francis Konrad Schuckardt was an American Traditionalist Catholic independent bishop and the first known bishop of the sedevacantist movement in the United States. Sedevacantism holds that Pope Paul VI —sometimes going back to include John XXIII— and his successors are not valid Popes...

and others associated with him. The orders of the original Old Catholic Church are regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as valid, though no such declaration of recognition has been issued with regard to the several Independent Catholic Churches
Independent Catholic Churches
Independent Catholic churches are Catholic congregations that are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church or any other churches whose sacraments are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church...

that claim to trace their episcopal orders to this Church. Some shadow of doubt hovers over the validity of the orders received from these bishops, and the claimants have not received wide acceptance in the sedevacantist community, though most have at least some small congregation.

Bishops whose orders are generally regarded as invalid through lack of proper lineage. Lucian Pulvermacher
Lucian Pulvermacher
Lucian Pulvermacher was a traditionalist Roman Catholic priest. He was the head of the "True Catholic Church," a small conclavist group that, without authorization from the Holy See of Rome, elected him Pope Pius XIII in October, 1998...

and Gordon Bateman of the small conclavist true Catholic Church fall into this category.

Criticism

Against sedevacantism, mainstream Catholics advance arguments such as:

According to Catholic doctrine, the Catholic Church is a visible identifiable body that is literally catholic, in the sense of universal ("for all people"). This is seen as incompatible with the sedevacantist claim that the true nature of the Catholic Church has been hidden from the world for half a century.The Church
The 1870 Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council
First Vatican Council
The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This twentieth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned...

reaffirmed that "it has always been necessary for every Church — that is to say, the faithful throughout the world — to be in agreement with (the Roman Church) because of its preeminent authority" and that consequently the bishop whom the Church in Rome acknowledges as its head "is the successor of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, true vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church and father and teacher of all Christian people. To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal Church." This is seen as incompatible with the sedevacantist claim that the papal line of succession has been broken since 1958 (or 1963).
Critics of sedevacantism argue that this also means that the theory advanced by the seventeenth-century theologian and Doctor of the Church Robert Bellarmine
Robert Bellarmine
Robert Bellarmine was an Italian Jesuit and a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was one of the most important figures in the Counter-Reformation...

that a Pope who fell into heresy would automatically forfeit his office and could be formally deposed has been overruled by Church authority by Benedict XIV in "De Synodo Dioecesano" (10,1,5) and by the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Can. 2232, Par. 1, "A penalty that is latae sententiae, whether medicinal or punitive, holds for one who is aware of his own delict in both fora [i.e., public and private]; but prior to a declaratory sentence, the delinquent is excused from observing the penalty any time that he cannot observe it without infamy, and in the external forum no one can compel the observance of that penalty from him unless the delict is notorious, with due regard for Can. 2223, Par. 4." Sedevacantist appeals to Bellarmine's authority in this point accordingly could not be sustained. They add that Bellarmine envisaged that such a deposition, even if possible, could only be undertaken by a significant body of the Church including many bishops and cardinals, rather than by a few individuals.
The Catholic doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church, which appeals to Christ's promise to the Apostle Peter in ("You are Peter (the Rock), and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it") excludes the possibility that the Catholic bishops around the world and the Pope with whom they are in communion would succumb to heresy and fall from office.
They say that sedevacantists wrongly treat certain papal statements of the past as if they were ex cathedra declarations.
They claim that sedevacantists fail to distinguish between matters of discipline — such as the use of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

and of the Tridentine Mass
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...

— which can be reformed at any time, and infallible dogmatic teachings.
They say that sedevacantists indulge in the logical fallacy
Formal fallacy
In philosophy, a formal fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that is always wrong. This is due to a flaw in the logical structure of the argument which renders the argument invalid...

of post hoc ergo propter hoc
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this," is a logical fallacy that states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one." It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause,...

when they attribute problems that the Church has experienced in the Western world since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council to the reforms themselves rather than to the general decrease in religiosity in the West.

Sedevacantists advance counter-arguments, such as:

They deny that they implicitly repudiate the dogma of papal infallibility as defined at the First Vatican Council
First Vatican Council
The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This twentieth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned...

, and maintain that, on the contrary, they are the fiercest defenders of this doctrine, since they teach that the Apostolic See of Peter, under the rule of a true Pope, cannot promulgate contradictory teachings.
They argue that the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor æternus concerns the permanence of the primarcy of the Holy See over the universal church and condemns as heretical the propositions that the authority granted to St. Peter by Christ either was abolished after his death or devolved to the college of bishops, both positions that were argued by Orthodox theologians. The very purpose of the Constitution was to solemnly and dogmatically refute those errors. The perpetuity granted divinely to the Petrine ministry was not the constant occupation of that office but that the monarchical structure of the Church, with the Seat of Peter as its head, would never be abrogated and endure throughout history. It is this permanence which allows the Holy See to function as the point of unity even during papal interregnum.
To rebut the accusation of denying the catholicity and indefectibility of the Church, they say that, between the death of every Pope and the election of his successor, there is a sede vacante period during which there is no visible Head of the Church, and — while mainstream Catholics hold that, according to the dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council, which speaks of "perpetual successors" in the pontificate, there must be, apart from such transitory periods, a perpetual presence of the Bishop of Rome, not merely of his office — that the absence of a Pope has become a long-term feature of the Church's structure.
They recall that, during the 40-year Great Western Schism
Western Schism
The Western Schism or Papal Schism was a split within the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417. Two men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. Driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance . The simultaneous claims to the papal chair...

, while nobody claimed that the see of Rome was vacant, there was uncertainty about which of the two (eventually three) claimants was the true pontiff, with even canonized saints taking opposing sides in the controversy. In his 1882 book, The Relations of the Church to Society — Theological Essays, the Jesuit theologian, Father Edmund James O'Reilly, wrote: "... not that an interregnum covering the whole period would have been impossible or inconsistent with the promises of Christ, for this is by no means manifest."
They say that they primarily base their claim of the empty Apostolic See
Apostolic See
In Christianity, an apostolic see is any episcopal see whose foundation is attributed to one or more of the apostles of Jesus.Out of the many such sees, five acquired special importance in Chalcedonian Christianity and became classified as the Pentarchy in Eastern Orthodox Christianity...

on "proven" denial of Catholic dogma by post-1958 or post-1963 Popes, and only secondarily on the thence originating changes in discipline and liturgy.
They interpret the Book of Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...

as speaking of an end-times Great Apostasy on the City of Seven Hills (Rome) and say that Our Lady of La Salette
Our Lady of La Salette
La Salette is a small mountaintop village near Grenoble, France. It is most noted for an apparition of the Virgin Mary that was reported in 1846 by two shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, followed by numerous accounts of miraculous healings....

warned on 19 September 1846 that Rome would lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.

Groups

The Holy Catholic Mercedarian Church.
Most Holy Family Monastery
Most Holy Family Monastery
Most Holy Family Monastery is a non-profit sedevacantist organization run by Michael Dimond. The diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, condemns them as anti-Catholic, although it is supported by Roman Catholic laymen...

, a sedevacantist community living in Fillmore, New York
Fillmore, New York
Fillmore is a hamlet in Allegany County, New York, United States. It is named after President Millard Fillmore.The former Village of Fillmore dissolved its incorporation and became a community in the Town of Hume in the northwest quadrant of the county.Fillmore is home to the Hungarian Scout Camp...

, under the headship of Michael (official name Frederick) Dimond. Only Michael and his biological brother Peter (official name Robert) Dimond write the contents of the website.
Society of St. Pius V
Society of St. Pius V
The Society of St. Pius V , abreviated SSPV, is a Traditionalist Catholic society of ordained priests formed in 1983 and based in Oyster Bay Cove, New York. The priests of SSPV broke away from the Society of St...

, formed when nine priests of the Society of St. Pius X
Society of St. Pius X
The Society of Saint Pius X is an international Traditionalist Catholic organisation, founded in 1970 by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre...

split from that organization over a number of issues including using the liturgical reforms implemented under Pope John XXIII
Pope John XXIII
-Papal election:Following the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, Roncalli was elected Pope, to his great surprise. He had even arrived in the Vatican with a return train ticket to Venice. Many had considered Giovanni Battista Montini, Archbishop of Milan, a possible candidate, but, although archbishop...

. The SSPV maintains that much of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church no longer adheres to the Catholic faith but instead profess a new, or Conciliar religion. They regard the question of the legitimacy of the present hierarchy and the possibility that the Holy See is unoccupied to be unresolved. The SSPV does not impose sedevacantism as a morally binding teaching.
The Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục lines of episcopal succession

Catholic Restoration, consisting of the founding members—dissenters from SSPV-- (Anthony Cekada
Anthony Cekada
Anthony Cekada is a Traditionalist Catholic priest and author.Born in 1951, Cekada studied at St. Francis Roman Catholic Seminary College in Milwaukee, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Theology in 1973; he studied organ and musical composition at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. In 1975,...

, Daniel Dolan
Daniel Dolan
Daniel Lytle Dolan is a sedevacantist traditionalist Catholic bishop.A Detroit, Michigan native, Dolan began his preparation for the priesthood in 1965 at the archdiocesan minor seminary in Detroit...

, Donald Sanborn), together with newer priests who were trained in their seminary.
Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen
Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen
The Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen is a Sedevacantist Traditionalist Catholic religious congregation dedicated to promoting the message of Our Lady of Fatima and devotion to the Virgin Mary according to the teachings of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, whom they regard as their...
The Society of the Immaculata, founded by Dennis McCormack
Apostles of Infinite Love
Apostles of Infinite Love
The Apostles of Infinite Love is a group mainly active in Quebec and Guadeloupe. It was founded by Michel Collin, a French priest in Lille, and self-proclaimed Pope , saying he was inspired by "unknown messages" from the Virgin Mary...

, founded by Michel Collin.

Early history

Positions

Bishops and holy orders

Criticism

Groups

See also

Sedevacantist sites

Criticism