SUSANVACANTISM: The Spiritual Dangers
It is the year 2051 CE. Rad-Trads have declared, based on their own private judgment, that Pope Susan is in fact a woman, and therefore not the pope. Fredrik Tunaphisch reports on SUSANVACANTISM.
Disclaimer – The following article is satire. Satire, of its nature, can be biting – but it's intended with the best wishes towards those satirised. I hope that it may make our position clearer to those who do not understand it; and may make the objects of the satire re-evaluate their own positions.
This article was originally published for us at Crisis in the Church without attribution. I have lightly updated it.
Contextual Introduction
It is the year 2051 CE.
Karen McNuggets was elected to the See of Rome a few years ago, and took the name ‘Pope Susan.’ Since then, Pope Susan has begun radically changing everything in the Church.
Some were dismayed by this turn of events, and began promoting a horrible conspiracy theory – that Susan is a woman, and therefore not the Pope.
They refer to dusty old texts such as that of Caesar Badii’s 1921 commentary on the Code of Canon Law:
‘The law now in force for the election of the Roman Pontiff is reduced to these points:…
‘Barred as incapable of being validly elected are the following: women, children who have not reached the age of reason, those suffering from habitual insanity, the unbaptized, heretics and schismatics.’1 (Emphasis added)
However, some of the most faithful conservative Catholics, wishing to return to the balanced and moderate principles laid out by Pope St Francis the Great, have taken great scandal and anxiety at the presumption of such claims – which have come to be known as Susanvacantism.
These faithful (and moderate) conservatives feel that Susanvacantism is dangerous, and that it is their duty to warn their fellow Catholics.
One such faithful and moderate (and balanced) conservative is Fredrik Tunaphisch, the editor of Catastrophe Magazine.
Catastrophe Magazine, along with other similar anti-Susan outlets like Galatians 3.1 (and to a lesser extent The Leftovers) have charted a sensible, prudent course – making sure that they are resolutely neither cold nor hot.
The Spiritual Dangers of Susanvacantism
Everyone knows that Catholicism online is a different world to what you find in real life.
If, for example, you went to a typical Catholic parish and asked everyone, ‘Is Susan the pope?’ you’d probably get 100% of the congregation saying ‘Yes.’ You’d also get some odd looks for asking such a stupid question.
Yet if you spend time on engaging with Catholics on Y (formerly X [formerly Twitter]) and elsewhere, it won’t be long before you encounter someone insisting that ‘Pope Susan isn’t really the pope.’
While this view might sound crazy to the average, normal Catholic, it’s understandable to anyone paying attention to Church politics today.
A small – but growing – group of Catholics deny that Susan is the pope.
While this idea option might be tempting, it’s incredibly dangerous to the soul.
Denying the legitimacy of Susan’s papacy means that there is no valid pope – the see of Rome is vacant. This position rests on these two ideas:
That Susan is a woman.
But who are they to say that Susan is a woman?
It’s a well-known provision of Canon Law that the first see is judged by no-one. It is not for mere laymen to be assuming the gender of the pope (let alone judging it).
This would require several warnings, as well as a declaration from the college of Cardinals.
At present, Susan is at most an occult woman or suspect of being a woman – but until there has been a declaration by authority, we are naturally unable to notice, judge or act on any such idea. This would be private judgment on steroids. This is just like Martin Luther all over again.
That a woman is incapable of being pope.
But while this is a venerable theological thesis, taught by theologians and canonists, has it ever been declared infallibly by the extraordinary magisterium of the Church or by a pope ex cathedra?
And what are we to make of the story of Pope Joan?2
Unbelievably, some of these Susan-deniers even think that the story of Pope Joan is a myth with no bearing on the question.
Engaging in such ‘revisionist history’ simply shows how desperate the partisans of Susanvacantism really are.
In this article, I won’t be refuting those who reject Pope Susan. These refutations can be found elsewhere. My intention is to point out how spiritually dangerous this position of Susanvacantism really is.
Why is rejecting Susan as pope so dangerous? Because at its root it is utterly opposed to the fundamental principles of the faith. It is an elitist position, based on the idea that a few souls have a special knowledge that other Catholics do not have.
It is impossible for some Catholics to know something that other Catholics might not know. That would just be gnosticism.
It is also impossible for Catholics to disagree about things which involve a right or wrong answer – especially if it would mean that my team might be wrong.
These Susan-deniers claim to know that Susan is a woman, even though she has been peacefully and universally accepted by the hierarchy of the Church as pope.
Sure, nobody actually pays any attention to Susan or follows the teaching of her papal magisterium, and many openly resist and deny what she teaches. But this simply proves all the more clearly just how universally Susan has been accepted, and how necessary the papacy is to the Church.
Those who struggle with this may need to apply the great lesson taught to us by Bl. Rex Mottram, and acknowledge that this is a sort of ‘spiritual’ universal and peaceful adherence, ‘only we are too sinful to see it.’
And sure, Susan is herself open about being a woman, but even this doesn’t prove anything in the legal order. Susan could quite easily be a woman coram Deo (before God), without being a woman coram Ecclesia (before the Church).
This, after all, was the teaching of St Robert Bellarmine: it is evident that by ‘ipso facto’ he meant ‘following a declaration.’
That’s another thing. There are in fact many flavours of susanvacantism. Some of them recognise those points I just mentioned, adhering to what is called “The Karenciacum Thesis.” After all, it is argued, one can be materially male (female) without being formally male.
But the fact that some susanvacantists disagree about why Susan is not the pope proves that they are all wrong. After all, how could they be right about who is or is not the pope, if they disagree about something like that?
The Catholic religion is a visible, physical religion. Revelation is public, and all men can know God because of this. God assumed human nature to save us. We receive grace through the visible signs of the sacraments.
But crucially, the Church is a visible institution: she has a visible hierarchy and so we can ‘know’ the men (or ‘women’?) whom God has put in authority over the Church.
Now, some might object that there have been disputes over the identity of the true pope before. I’ve already mentioned the medieval Pope Joan, and those who claim (based on their own uncertain private theories and judgment) that she was not the pope, because she was a woman.
I’ve also already mentioned that some claim that Pope Joan didn’t even exist.
But whether Pope Joan did or didn’t exist, she was definitely accepted as Pope, and decisively supports my argument.
Further, the Pope Joan debate was conducted amongst those with the authority to determine who is the pope. Today, those who reject Pope Susan argue that every single Catholic bishop is wrong about who is the pope. We might think that every single Catholic bishop is wrong about every other part of the faith – but they cannot be wrong about the identity of the pope.
Instead of pointing to the teaching of all the bishops and the Bishop of Rome, as did St Irenaeus in his day in refutations of gnosticism, those who reject Pope Susan claim to have ‘hidden knowledge,’ telling them that we cannot trust the bishops to know the true identity of the Bishop of Rome.
If you spend any time engaging with these Susanvacantist people, this gnostic tendency is unmistakable. They will tell you that if you watch this video or hear this argument, you’ll see that Susan isn’t really the pope. (And, they say, if you don’t accept this, then you must be a rotter).
I’ve been told so many times that my refusal to consider arguments that Susan is a woman, or that a woman cannot be pope, is based on cowardice, or fear of losing my income.
But as Catholics, we know the truth through God’s public revelation, given to us by his visible Church. We don’t know it by spending dozens of hours watching videos on YouTube – and especially not from reading Catholic websites.
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Even if someone is troubled by the pontificate of Susan, individual Catholics cannot decide that she is not the true Pope. That’s not how the Church works. In the future, a pope or council might condemn Susan and nullify her pontificate.
But if you make that decision on your own, based on your own private judgment, and a supposed God-given ability to apprehend facts and attain moral certainty without the intervention of authority, you’re doing so in opposition to all the bishops of the world.
As I suggested, it's one thing to oppose the bishops of the world in matters of faith, and adhere to what our Catastrophe Magazine experts and other contributors say instead – that’s understandable and acceptable.
It’s another to oppose them in matters of contingent fact, like the identity of the Pope. Anyone who does that, places themselves above – and outside – Christ’s visible Church.
One certainly sympathises with those who reject Pope Susan. But ultimately, their ideas lead to a spiritual dead end.
For how will the papacy ever be restored, if they are right? How will the Church elect a legitimate pope, if every single papal elector is wrong about Pope Susan, if many or all of them were appointed by an ‘invalid’ ‘female’ pope?
After all, it's not as if any theologian, saint or Doctor of the Church ever considered the possibility of a papal election if something happened to all the cardinals. Right?
Which only leaves the possibility of a supernatural event. But presuming on some sort of divine intervention is outside of the normal way of things established in the Church. It is close to the sin of presumption.
In the end, rejecting Pope Susan leads to a rejection of the Church and the formation of a man-made religion.
It’s ok to have difficulties with Pope Susan. In fact, we should do. But as Cardinal John Henry Newman said, ‘Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.’ If we have faith, we will know that these things will be worked out in God’s time. The Church has seen more than a few popes like Pope Susan – in fact, she has seen hundreds – and often they caused problems which were not resolved until decades later.
The Church will resolve these things, but she works not in days or years, but centuries.
At the end of the day, having serious concerns about Pope Susan whilst still accepting the legitimacy of her pontificate demands humility.
Are you humble?
I know we are: ever so very ’umble.
After all, we recognise that Christ founded a visible Church, and put fallible men in charge. We must remain in that Church, acknowledging her visible leaders – even if they no openly longer acknowledge her (or her divine spouse).
This truly humble course recognises that we Catholics do not have the authority to say who is or isn’t the Pope, who is or isn’t a Catholic, and who is or isn’t a woman.
And anyway, as Simone de Beauvoir once said,
‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one.’
Afterword
Some have suggested that, if the Conciliar-Synodal Church introduced female deacons, such a move may at last lead people to wake up to the situation in the Church.
Maybe. However, to paraphrase the Gospel:
They have Popes Leo XIII, Pius XII and others; the Code of Canon Law and its interpreters; Ss Robert Bellarmine, Alphonsus, Francis de Sales and the doctors and theologians, and the entire body of the Church’s magisterial teaching about herself. Let them hear them.
If they hear not them, neither will they believe if women are made deaconesses – or priests, or even popes.
Further Reading
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Institutiones Iuris Canonici. Florence: Fiorentina 1921. 160, 165. (His emphasis.) Taken from Fr Anthony Cekada, Traditinalists, Infallibility and the Pope, 2006. Available here.
The editor of the site on which this was originally posted felt that it was necessary to point out that Pope Joan is myth. I am replicating that warning here.
No doubt, Pope Susan took her regnal name to honor Susan from the Council and all the Susans who have assiduously served the Spirit of Vatican II through their activism in their local parish councils.
It’s extremely funny but at the same time it’s not because it hits too close to reality..