What's the best explanation for the crisis in the Church?
Abductive reasoning shows us that an extended vacancy is the explanation that best fits the facts of the last sixty years or so. In fact, it is the only explanation that fits those facts.
Abductive reasoning shows us that an extended vacancy is the explanation that best fits the facts of the last sixty years or so. In fact, it is the only explanation that fits those facts.
Introduction
This is Chapter III of my latest “book”, ‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy. This chapter deals with the doctrine of indefectibility itself – before proceeding, in later chapters, to examine other interpretations in light of it.
This chapter covers the following topics:
Chapter III: Indefectibility and an Extended Vacancy
Abductive reasoning
What indefectibility does not prevent: A falling away, and an extended vacancy
The effect of an extended vacancy
An extended vacancy is possible
Spotless and Unsullied is Part III of my response to Fr Thomas Crean OP’s article “A City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden: The Perpetual Visibility of the Catholic Church Under the Pope.” Peter Kwasniewski described Fr Crean’s article as “a definitive rebuttal of sedevacantism, at the level of first principles.”
All the parts may be found here:
‘Radically insufficient’ – Reply to Fr Crean on the Church’s visibility
‘Zero Marks’ – Why the Conciliar/Synodal Church is not the Catholic Church
‘Spotless and Unsullied’ – Indefectibility and the Extended Vacancy
Although Spotless and Unsullied builds on the previous two parts, and the various “ancillary” articles published since I began this response, it can be read independently of them.
How we are publishing Spotless and Unsullied
Although Fr Crean only published a short and popular article against “sedevacantism”, it contained many points that need to be addressed. I am grateful to him for prompting this response, which has ranged over many different topics.
Spotless and Unsullied is not as long as Zero Marks (the previous part), but it is still very long and detailed for a single article – running to nearly 26,000, including notes (which contain a lot of interesting material).
For this reason, I will again be making it available first for WM+ members, and then releasing each of the four chapters separately for all readers over the coming weeks. The previous chapters are available here:
Substantial work of this length and depth is only possible thanks to those who subscribe to WM+, to whom we are very grateful.
If you would like to read the whole essay immediately, sign up to WM+ plus today:
Other resources
I discussed this chapter with Stephen Kokx over at Integrity Magazine.
A video playlist of interviews on these studies with Stephen Kokx may be found here:
This chapter refers to other recent articles which provide further and better particulars of what is discussed. They can be found here:
How long can the Holy See be vacant? Fr Louis Coache (and context)
‘Sedevacantism’ as a ‘pestiferous heresy’? Fr Ripperger’s accusation analysed
Does a long vacancy interrupt perpetual succession? Fr Raphel Cercia SJ
Readers are also advised to consult the treatment of the topic of indefectibility in the many works of ecclesiology available, as well as Fr Damien Dutertre ICR’s study on the same topic:
Fr Damien Dutertre ICR: On the Indefectibility of the Church
Chapter III: Indefectibility and an Extended Vacancy
Abductive reasoning
Both “sedevacantists” and “sedeplenists” like Fr Crean are broadly united in their recognition of the facts of the last sixty years. Where we differ is our understanding of how these facts are to be explained.
The method of reasoning based on an inference to the best explanation is known as abduction.
Abductive reasoning seeks to infer from the evidence the best explanation of various effects. In inferring the best explanation, abductive reasoning favours simplicity, explanatory power, prior probability and normality (i.e., explanations which are the least extraordinary), although none of these criteria can be wholly decisive. In our use of abduction, we must specifically mention coherence with Catholic doctrine as a criterion, as any explanation which contradicts Catholic doctrine must be rejected.
But before considering this line of argument, let us note the following.
“Sedevacantists” hold the vacancy of the Holy See to be certain, and this certainty may be attained in several ways.
For instance, Mgr Guérard des Lauriers’ argument, based on the impossibility of a true Pope promulgating the documents of Vatican II on 8 December 1965, is referred to as his deductive argument. This argument continues to hold for other “impossibilities” that have occurred since then, and because Paul VI’s successors have at least tacitly renewed the “impossibilities” of their predecessors.
Mgr Guérard des Lauriers also proposed another argument, referred to as his inductive argument, which held that, as Paul VI’s acts converged towards the destruction of the Church and its replacement with a false religion, he lacked the habitual intention to procure to “good-end” of the Church, a necessary condition for being the Pope. Again, as Paul VI’s successors have followed his programme, they demonstrate their own lack of this necessary condition.
We could add that the convergence of their actions also demonstrates conclusively that Paul VI and his successors have been heretics and schismatics, and thus neither Catholics nor Popes.
Both deductive and inductive arguments for the vacancy arrive at certainty.1 But we may also reach this conclusion through abductive arguments, and even if their logic does not necessarily attain certainty, they can reinforce the conviction arising from other arguments.
Thus, without regard for the certainty already attained, let us consider why an extended vacancy is the best explanation for the last sixty years, in light of the Church’s indefectibility.
What indefectibility does not prevent: a falling away, and an extended vacancy
Indefectibility does not prevent the failure of parts of the Church. As to this point, Berry is explicit:
“Indefectibility has been promised to the Church as a whole, not to its various parts. The Church as it exists in particular places may fail; even the Church of a whole nation may fall away as history abundantly proves. The Apostolic See of Rome is the only particular Church to which the promise of perpetual indefectibility has been made.”2
This passage describes the basis of our explanation of what has happened since Vatican II. “Various parts” of the Church have failed; but the Apostolic See has not failed, because it has been vacant. This vacancy is proved with certainty in the ways mentioned – one of which is the impossibility of its authority being engaged in the confirmation of Vatican II, and the subsequent aberrations of the Conciliar/Synodal Church. Thus, in spite of the chaos, the Church and the Holy See remain spotless and unsullied.
As a posteriori evidence, our situation is precisely what one would expect during such a vacancy. To understand this, let us consider Vatican I’s teaching on the reason Christ instituted the papacy.
In the discussion of the basis of the Church’s indefectibility, we considered the following text from Vatican I, which expresses the raison d’être of the Papacy itself:
“Now this charism of truth and of never-failing faith was conferred upon Peter and his successors in this chair in order that they might perform their supreme office for the salvation of all; that by them the whole flock of Christ might be kept away from the poisonous bait of error and be nourished by the food of heavenly doctrine; that, the occasion of schism being removed, the whole Church might be preserved as one and, resting on her foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell.”3 (Emphasis added)
To this, we may add the following from the same Council:
“The eternal shepherd and guardian of our souls, in order to render permanent the saving work of redemption, determined to build a church in which, as in the house of the living God, all the faithful should be linked by the bond of one faith and charity. […]
“In order, then, that the episcopal office should be one and undivided and that, by the union of the clergy, the whole multitude of believers should be held together in the unity of faith and communion, he set blessed Peter over the rest of the apostles and instituted in him the permanent principle of both unities and their visible foundation.”4
“[B]y unity with the Roman pontiff in communion and in profession of the same faith, the church of Christ becomes one flock under one supreme shepherd.5
The Council repeats the same idea throughout Pastor Aeternus. Pope Leo XIII teaches the same truth in terms of causation:
“[St Cyprian] calls [the Roman Church] the principal Church, on account of the primacy conferred on Peter himself and his legitimate successors; and the source of unity, because the Roman Church is the efficient cause of unity in the Christian commonwealth.”6
But an efficient cause produces its effect by acting. The Roman Pontiff is not a “Totem Pope”, who secures the unity of the Church merely by his continued existence on the See of St Peter. A “Totem Pope” cannot at all be described as an “efficient cause”.
On the contrary, this unity is secured by the exercise of his powers of magisterium and jurisdiction; by teaching and governing the Church.
Without this efficient cause, the effect is not produced – at least, not in the same way. The theologian Cardinal J.B. Franzelin explains how the Church’s indefectibility, infallibility and unity function during a vacancy of the Holy See:
“It is most important to consider the very root of the whole life of the Church, by which I mean the indefectibility and infallible custody of the deposit of the faith.
“Certainly there remains in the Church not only indefectibility in believing (called passive infallibility) but also infallibility in proclaiming the truth already revealed and already sufficiently proposed for Catholic belief, even while she is for a time bereaved of her visible head, so that neither the whole body of the Church in its belief, nor the whole Episcopate in its teaching, can depart from the faith handed down and fall into heresy, because this permanence of the Spirit of truth in the Church, the kingdom and spouse and body of Christ, is included in the very promise and institution of the indefectibility of the Church for all days even to the consummation of the world.
“The same is to be said, by the same reasoning, for the unity of communion against a universal schism, as for the truth of the faith against heresy. For the divine law and promise of perpetual succession in the See of Peter, as the root and center of Catholic unity, remains; and to this law and promise correspond, on the part of the Church, not only the right and duty of, but also indefectibility in, legitimately procuring and receiving the succession and in keeping the unity of communion with the Petrine See even when vacant, in view of the successor who is awaited and will indefectibly come […]”7
The full text is here:
However, while this unity remains, a vacancy necessarily suspends the active exercise of the papal jurisdiction and magisterium, which are the means by which the Church is held together as one in faith and in charity. As Romano Amerio wrote in 1985:
“The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing [this disunity] is the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives.”8
(Amerio did not embrace the conclusion of an extended vacancy, but we have discussed why his ideas on this and other matters point to this conclusion, rather than to sixty years of habitual inaction by legitimate popes, in Chapter IV of Zero Marks.)
The “non-functioning” of powers that exist to secure unity predictably results not only in doctrinal confusion, but also in many falling out of communion with the Church – even while the Church as a whole cannot lose this unity of faith and communion.
Further, this falling away can only exacerbate the doctrinal confusion if, due to the vacancy and non-functioning of papal authority, those who fall away are not authoritatively declared as non-Catholics, and if errors are not corrected (or are even proposed by usurpers).
Franzelin’s explanation of the state of the Church during a vacancy is offers further light on this:
“When the Pope dies, says Cano [a leading theologian of the 16th century], the Church, without doubt, remains one, and the Spirit of truth remains in her; but she is left crippled [manca] and diminished without the Vicar of Christ and the one pastor of the Catholic Church.
“Therefore, although truth even then is in the Church; but if controversies over the faith and religion should arise, the judgments of the Church which is without a head on earth will not be as certain.”9
The Church is currently “crippled” in the sense that “controversies” and pressing questions cannot be resolved. These controversies include matters of doctrine, as well as personnel (viz., who is and is not a member or officer in the Church). In fact, controversies over personnel are the defining note of our time, in that more men seem to have fallen away from the whole than those who have remained – and yet both classes are considered to make up the Church. But there is nothing to exclude this possibility, as we discussed in Zero Marks (Chapter II).
The rampant spread of error – and indeed of a false religion, presented as the Catholic religion – is on the outer extreme of what is meant by the Church’s “judgments” being “less certain”. But in spite of the duration and extent of the crisis, our current situation differs by degree from a short interregnum, and not in kind.
The duration and extent of the “crippling” and “uncertainty” produce a grave obscuration of the Church’s visibility, and not a defection. But as I demonstrated in Radically Insufficient, this visibility admits of degrees, and may be gravely obscured without being lost.
To demonstrate this, let us now consider (a) the possibility of an extended vacancy, and (b) the response to the objection that an extended vacancy in our time, as the explanation for our crisis, would constitute a defection, due to the consequences alleged to flow from it.
An extended vacancy is possible
Cardinal Franzelin writes:
“The seat, that is the perpetual right of the primacy, never ceases, on the part of God in His unchangeable law and supernatural providence, and on the part of the Church in her right and duty of forever keeping as a deposit the power divinely instituted on behalf of the individual successors of Peter, and of securing their succession by a fixed law; but the individual heirs or those sitting [sedentes] in the Apostolic seat are mortal men; and therefore the seat can never fail, but it can be vacant and often is vacant.”10
The traditionalist pioneer Fr Louis Coache explains why this is the case:
“The Holy See — or Apostolic See — is a moral person of divine law (Can. 100). It is therefore an institution willed in itself by Our Lord. […]
“Thus the Holy See is a (moral) person of divine institution: autonomous, independent, permanent, and infallible. It is the permanence of the authority of the Roman Church — sovereign authority over the universal Church.”11 (All bold text from Fr Coache is from the original)
The full text is here:
The conclusion which he draws from this is based on the distinction between moral persons of ecclesiastical law and of divine law:
“A moral person of ecclesiastical law is perpetual by nature (can. 102), meaning that it cannot disappear except by the explicit and legitimate will of the competent authority; it even possesses a survival of one hundred years if it ceases de facto to be in exercise.”
“A moral person of divine law cannot die; the Church can therefore remain for a very long time without a Pope – the Holy See is always alive with the permanence of papal authority.”
By contrast, he adds that when the Pope himself does die – whether literally or “morally” – “[t]he authority of the Holy See does not die.”12
He specifies various ways in which, during a vacancy, “the authority of Peter endures in all that authentically expresses it.” In addition to the machinery of the Apostolic See itself, he points to “the Documents of Holy Church” and “her tradition.” A similar account is given by Cardinal Billot,13 Fr René Goupil,14 and the BAC commentary on the 1917 Code of Canon Law.15
Cardinal Franzelin expresses the consequence when he explains how the “the unity of communion” is maintained during a vacancy, through “the right and duty of […] keeping the unity of communion with the Petrine See even when vacant, in view of the successor who is awaited and will indefectibly come.”16 As Fr Coache put it:
“One can therefore be separated from the physical person without being separated from the moral person (on 9 October 1958, we were separated from the person of Pope Pius XII, but we remained united to the Holy See). Let us understand well: “separated from the physical person” because that person fails, or disappears physically or canonically.”17
Nonetheless, such a vacancy is not without consequences. In his work on the Apocalypse, Fr Berry stated the following:
“It is a matter of history that the most disastrous periods for the Church were times when the Papal throne was vacant, or when anti-popes contended with the legitimate head of the Church. Thus also shall it be in those evil days to come.”18
Fr Herman Bernard Kramer, in his work on the same subject, also stated that
“[A]n extended interregnum in the papacy is always disastrous and more so in a time of universal persecution. If Satan would contrive to hinder a papal election, the Church would suffer great travail.”19
The effects of an extended vacancy can indeed be described as “terrible and distressing.” However, the nineteenth century theologian Fr Edmund O’Reilly SJ, Professor of Theology and described as “one of the first theologians of the day” and a “great authority” by John Henry Cardinal Newman,20 wrote the following:
“[C]ontingencies regarding the Church, not excluded by the Divine promises, cannot be regarded as practically impossible, just because they would be terrible and distressing in a very high degree.”21
If an extended vacancy was “excluded by the Divine promises”, then (a) no extended vacancy, even if shorter in duration than that which we posit, could have taken place in history – and yet they have; and (b) theologians would not discuss the possibility of such a vacancy in the way that they do.
In fact, it is beyond question that such an extended vacancy is possible – even though many pundits do question it today. Aside from the testimony of history,22 it has been expressly recognised by theologians such as:
Cardinal Louis Billot23
Fr E. Sylvester Berry (who, in his de Ecclesia, stated that the See could “be vacant for many years”)24
Fr Domenico Palmieri SJ25
Fr Raphael Cercia SJ26
Fr Anton Straub SJ27
Dom Prosper Guéranger OSB28
Fr Edmund O’Reilly SJ29
Their statements may be found here:
Other theologians have recognised that the Church’s indefectibility is not jeopardised by the Holy See’s material occupation by illegitimate claimants.30 Some of the authorities cited in Radically Insufficient also recognised the havoc which would be caused by an extended vacancy of the Holy See, or of a situation in which a given papal claimant is of doubtful legitimacy.
But while an extended vacancy (and the turmoil which attends on it) is possible for the indefectible Church, it is not possible for the Church to defect; neither during a vacancy, nor under a true Pope. The manifest defection of the Conciliar/Synodal Church demonstrates that its recent papal claimants have not been true Popes – and that the body constituted by at least nominal communion with them is not the Catholic Church.
To summarise, an extended vacancy is indeed the best possible explanation for the facts:
It is simple: not in that it is simplistic, but in that it posits a single cause to describe all the events and problems of the last sixty years (e.g., how Vatican II could teach condemned errors, other authoritative documents enshrining error, the habitual teaching of error, evil laws, impossible canonisations, doubtful sacraments, the absence of the four marks in the body, the dissolution of authority into both tyranny and anarchy, and the mass apostasy of so many from the Church – in which many former Catholics continue to be treated as Catholics), rather than each event and problem requiring a separate cause (as is necessary in the alternative explanations)
Related to its simplicity, this explanation has the strongest explanatory power: the vacancy explains the multiplicity of problems arising since Vatican II, mentioned above.
The crisis itself, however it is to be explained, is utterly improbable; but given that it is here, an extended vacancy has a greater degree of prior probability. There have been comparable (if less grave) scenarios in the past, and Catholic theologians have recognised the possibility of an extended vacancy and the harm that it would cause. By contrast, the idea that the Church could suffer sixty years of Popes carrying out or even tolerating the phenomena just described, with Catholics needing to “recognise” their legitimacy whilst “resisting” their acts, has no prior probability at all.
It has normality, in the specific sense that the principles behind the explanation have been acknowledged by Catholic authorities in the past; whereas principles of the “recognise and resist” or “contrive a reconciliation between contradictions” explanations have not. Further, the theology upon which the extended vacancy is based is classical, as has been demonstrated throughout; whereas advocates of the latter two explanations both (a) recognise the need to “rethink” this classical theology, and even (b) sometimes rely on misunderstandings or distortions of what these authorities have written (e.g., St Robert Bellarmine’s “resistance” comments).
It coheres with Catholic doctrine, without doing violence to the doctrines discussed, as I have explained in these responses. Every difficulty can be answered with reference to theological authorities, with all points of doctrine respected. On the other hand, the alternative requires the “rethinking” mentioned, and the overlooking of the crucial aspects of the Church’s indefectibilty and other points of doctrine.
In this essay, focused particularly on indefectibility, the final point is the most important. Our account is compatible with indefectibility; Fr Crean’s, unfortunately, is not.
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For the certainty of this argument, notwithstanding the extension of its application back to John XXIII (with which I do not agree), see Fr Damien Dutertre, The Thesis, Chapter X: On the lack of intention to accept the papacy.
Berry, p. 30.
Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus Ch. III.
Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, Preamble.
Pastor Aeternus Ch. III.
Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, nn. 12, 13.
Cardinal J.B. Franzelin, Theses de Ecclesia Christi (Opus Posthumum), pp. 227–8. Trans. James Larrabee, S.C. Propaganda Fide, Rome, 1887. Available at: https://www.wmreview.org/p/franzelin-vacancy
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum – A study of the changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth century, pp. 143, 147. Sarto House, Kansas City MO, 1996.
Franzelin, p. 228–9.
Ibid., pp. 227.
Abbé Louis Coache, Les pouvoirs du Prêtre “Petit essai”, Supplement to no. 27 of Forts dans la foi, 3 September 1972, pp. 26–28. Translated by The WM Review: https://www.wmreview.org/p/how-long-can-the-holy-see-be-vacant
Fr Coache explains in a footnote:
The Pope, for his part — also of divine law — can die (264 of them have died!) or die morally (resignation, madness, heresy). The authority of the Holy See does not die.
The Roman Pontiff, incarnating the Holy See with his monarchical, discretionary,* personal, universal, and immediate power, is bound, like every head of a moral person, by the “statutes” of that person — in casu, divine Law and the Faith; he is limited by them; if he departs from them, he fails in his office.
[Note: “Discretionary” is a juridical term denoting the initiative of government… and not its caprice!]
“When one says that this succession has always lasted without ever being interrupted, one does not mean that no interval of time elapsed between the death of a pope and the election of his successor, nor that there is absolutely none in the whole genealogy whose legitimacy would be doubtful. One means that the pastors succeeded one another in such a way that their see never ceased to be occupied, even when it was vacant or when its incumbent was doubtful.
“In this way, the preceding government continued to exercise itself virtually through the rights of this see, which always remained in force and were always recognised, and the concern was always maintained to designate a successor with all certainty. It is in this sense that the succession was not interrupted: on condition of denying the interruption insofar as it is compatible with the material subject of the succession, and corresponds to a human mode of succession, in a government where the subject of the power is designated by an election, as Christ willed when He instituted His Church.”
Billot, p. 260.
“Let us not forget that this formal and uninterrupted succession should be understood morally, and such is of the very nature of things where there is a succession of persons who are elected, as Christ wished and which has been practiced since times of ancient Christianity. This perpetuity does not require that there be no lapse of time between the death of a predecessor and the election of a successor; nor that in a series of such pastors there never be one who is dubious; but one understands by this a succession of legitimate pastors, such that the pastoral See, even when vacant, even when occupied by someone whose title is dubious, cannot really be thought to have ceased to exist.
“This is to say that the government of the predecessors virtually perseveres in the law of the See which remains always in force and always recognized; and that it will also always persevere in its solicitude for electing a successor.” (Cf. Antoine, De Eccl.) [Emphasis added.]
Fr Auguste-Alexis Goupil, S. J. L’Église, 5th ed., 1946, Laval, pp. 48-49, cited in Fr Bernard Lucien, La situation actuelle de l’autorité dans l’Église, Brussels 1985. Auguste-Alexis Goupil, L’Église, 5th ed. (Laval, 1946). Taken from Fr Nicolás E. Despósito ICR, The Apostolicity of the Church and the Cassiciacum Thesis, p. 11. 2026.
“The perpetuity of the law means that it does not cease by the mere fact that the authority of him who imposed it is extinguished, nor by a change in the subjects, nor of itself through the passage of a fixed period of time, but only by revocation of the Superior or by the adequate cessation of the end or reason [ratio] of the law.”
« La perpetuidad de la ley significa que ésta no cesa por el mero hecho de extinguirse la potestad del que la impuso, ni por cambiarse los súbditos, ni por sí misma en el transcurso de un tiempo determinado, sino únicamente por revocación del Superior o por cesar adecuadamente el fin o la razón de la ley. »
Miguélez Domínguez, Alonso Morán, and Cabreros de Anta, Código de Derecho Canónico y Legislación Complementaria, Tit. I, commentary on c. 8, n. 1, p. 7. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid, 1957. Available at https://archive.org/details/cic-1917-espanol/page/n30/mode/1up
Franzelin, p. 228.
However, in words destructive of those who wish to pursue a policy of “recognise and resist”, he adds:
“But if one separates oneself by rebellion, by a wilful breach, from the physical person who is still united to the Church insofar as he embodies unity, on a question of Faith or Morals, then in that case there is necessarily separation from the moral person and therefore from the whole Church. There is [in that case,] schism.”
Fr E. Sylvester Berry, The Apocalypse of St John, p. 124. 1st ed., John W. Winterich, The Catholic Church Supply House, Columbus, Ohio, 1921.
Fr Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny, p. 278. TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., Rockford, Illinois, 1975.
John Henry Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 1875, p. 338. Published in Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, Vol. II. Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1900. Available at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section9.html
Rev. Edmund James O’Reilly S.J., The Relations of the Church to Society: Theological Essays, pp. 287-8. J. Hodges, London, 1878.
Cf. Matthew McCusker, ‘We shouldn’t be afraid of concluding that the See is vacant: here’s why’, LifeSiteNews, 30th October 2024. Available here: https://www.wmreview.org/p/we-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-concluding
“By all means God can permit that at some time or other the vacancy of the see be extended for a considerable time.”
Billo, p. 261. Translation: https://novusordowatch.org/billot-de-ecclesia-thesis29/.
“In place of this supreme authority, the Church has the right and the duty of selecting someone upon whom Christ will again bestow it. It is evident, then, that the Apostolic succession cannot fail in the Apostolic See so long as the Church herself continues to exist, for although the see be vacant for many years, the Church always retains the right to elect a legitimate successor, who then obtains supreme authority according to the institution of Christ.”
Berry, The Church of Christ,, p. 227.
Fr Palmieri answers the following objection:
“Objection 2°. Even when the Roman Pontiff is lacking for several years, the Church remains one and the same as before.”
After addressing the various points, he presents his summary conclusion without at all disputing the possibility of the extended vacancy:
“Therefore, if it is said that, when the Roman Pontiff is lacking, the Church still remains the same and one, I distinguish: completely, I deny; incompletely, and in such a way that it is still one because of its subordination to the power of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, so that he by his authority is in the Church the efficient principle of unity, I concede.”
Fr Domenico Palmieri SJ, Tractatus de Romano Pontifice: cum prolegomeno de ecclesia, p. 520, 523. Prati, Ex Officina Libraria Giachetti, Filii et Soc., 1891.
The theologian Fr Raphael Cercia SJ addresses another objection against the dogma of Peter’s “perpetual successors”:
“Objection III. Yet in the series, there occur not so much doubtful pontiffs, but rather frequent interruptions, on account of the see being vacant for a long time. Therefore, etc.”
Cercia answers:
“Resp. I distinguish the antecedent. Frequent interruptions occur which have the true character of an interruption of the series: I deny; which were a simpler, shorter or longer vacancy of the Roman see: I concede.
“For Christ promised the perpetuity of the succession in such a way as to show that He would efficaciously prevent all things that could indeed truly interrupt the series of the succession — but not, upon inspecting everything, that which would merely delay the institution of a successor. Therefore nothing can be concluded in itself from a vacancy of the see, however long, until it be proved that that vacancy had the characteristics of a true interruption.”
Fr Raphael Cercia SJ, De Ecclesia Vera Christi et de Romano Pontifice, p. 351. Volumen I, Tractatum Complectens de Ecclesia Christi, Editio Tertia, Danis, Neapoli, MDCCCLVIII.
“Assuredly, the visibility of the Church requires that its head be visible per se; and it is not incompatible with this that the head should, per accidens, not be seen for some time when disturbances have been stirred up.
“And indeed, the see of the primacy can be doubtfully occupied for years, no less than it can be plainly vacant.
“Nor should any other measure rightly be assigned to the duration of such a doubt – or equally of such a vacancy – than one which, if exceeded, would mean that the at least morally perpetual continuation of the primacy of Peter, or of the exercise of the primacy necessary for the preservation of the Church, would be at an end […]”
The rest of this section deals with what Fr Straub believes would end the “at least morally perpetual continuation” – which is cited and addressed elsewhere in this article.
Anton Straub, De Ecclesia Christi, Volumen I, footnote on pp. 489–90. Oeniponte, Typis et sumptibus Feliciani Rauch (L. Pustet), 1912.
“A Decius may succeed in causing a four years’ vacancy in the See of Rome; anti-popes may arise, supported by popular favour, or upheld by the policy of Emperors; a long schism may render it difficult to know the real Pontiff amidst the several who claim it: the Holy Spirit will allow the trial to have its course, and, whilst it lasts, will keep up the faith of his children; the day will come when he will declare the lawful Pastor of the flock, and the whole Church will enthusiastically acknowledge him as such.”
Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Vol 9 (Paschal Time – Book III), St Bonaventure Publications, Great Falls, Montana, 2000. Thursday after Whitsun, p. 385.
In relation to the Great Western Schism, Fr O’Reilly wrote:
“There was, I say, at every given time a Pope, really invested with the dignity of Vicar of Christ and Head of the Church, whatever opinions might exist among many as to his genuineness; 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, but that, as a matter of fact, there was not such an interregnum.”
(O’Reilly, p. 283.)
Fr Cercia and others also recognise the possibility that the period of the Great Western Schism was an extended interregnum:
“Finally, even if no Pontiff had existed in that age, this case should be reckoned among the cases of a see extrinsically impeded – as being vacant through an accidental cause.”
(Cercia, https://www.wmreview.org/p/vacancy-cercia.)
Cf. the texts from Cardinal Billot and Fr Goupil in fn. 57 and 58, as well as Fr Cercia:
Objection II. In the series of subsequent Roman Pontiffs there occur doubtful Popes, intruders, simoniacs, etc. Therefore nothing certain about the integrity of that chain can be affirmed.
Resp. In the objection, it is either supposed that the institution of such Pontiffs was either legitimate, or not. If the legitimate, it does not matter that they conducted themselves wickedly, or that they did everything through simony, etc. For as we noted above, the sanctity of the succession does not depend on the deeds of individuals, and as St. Leo says (serm. III de Nat. ips. III cap. IV) “The dignity of Peter does not fail in an unworthy heir”.
But if the discussion is about those whose institution was null on account of the vice of intrusion, or simony, or for some other reason, or [was] doubtful, such a time time must be considered as one of the see being vacant and not yet provided for. So that meanwhile the uproar and protests may subside, and whatever consensus there may be regarding that Pontiff – whether by admitting or tolerating him – already every wound is understood to be healed by the consent of the Church itself.