Just three weeks ago, we had a momentous event in the life of the Church, the election of a new Pope. Robert Cardinal Prevost became the 267th successor of St. Peter and so the oldest institution in the world continues. And yet there are some in the traditional Catholic world who do not accept that Leo XIV is the Pope of the Catholic Church. These people are called sedevacantists. Sedevacantists are Catholics who believe that there is no Pope of the Catholic Church because the Pope has fallen into heresy. Most believe that there has not been a legitimate Pope since Pope Pius XII died in 1958. I want to warn you against this opinion. The sedevacantists represent something new in the history of the Church. There have been bad Popes throughout the Church’s history, as well as anti-Popes, but never a movement of people who have claimed that the Pope had no authority over them and yet claimed to remain Catholic. It is striking that Our Lord Himself was not a sedevacantist. The religious leaders of His time were evil, yet He supported their authority, “ The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not” (Matt. 23:2) Perhaps this example of Our Lord is why there has been no real sedevacantist movement until modern times, despite the fact that there have been plenty of bad Popes. Perhaps another reason why there have never been sedevacantists until the current crisis in the Church is that no one in the Church has the authority to depose the Pope. There is a principle in Canon Law which states that “No one judges the first seat”. There are theologians who have speculated that the Pope might automatically lose office if he falls into heresy. But it is clear that no individual Catholic is in a position to say whether that has happened or not. Our Lord certainly does not ask us to decide whether this or that person is the Pope or not. The Church could never have any real unity if that were the case. Just think what would happen if a company would run that way. For Abp. Lefebvre, it was theoretically possible that a Pope could lose his office by falling into heresy. But, in practice, he realized that he was not in a position to make that judgment and the prudent thing to do was to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. That was why, while he recognized the terrible scandals that were happening in the pontificate of John Paul II, he yet went to the Pope and tried to work with him to get permission to consecrate bishops. We will obviously be doing the same with Pope Leo XIV. Unlike Abp. Lefebvre, the sedevacantists do believe that they are in a position to decide with certainty that there is no Pope. But this seems rash, imprudent and prideful. It also seems to represent a bad ecclesiology. The Church simply cannot work that way.
