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In this episode Trent rebuts the arguments Peter Dimond made in a recent Pints with Aquinas debate on the issue of sedevacantism, or the claim that there have been no valid popes since 1958.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. In today’s video I’m going to address the arguments Peter Dimond made in defense of Sedevacantism in a recent debate with Jeff Cassman on Pints with Aquinas. To give you a little background, Sedevacantism is the view that the chair of Peter is vacant or there is no valid pope and the current Pope is an illegitimate anti-pope.
There’ve always been periods when no man holds the office of the papacy. This is called an interregnum and it usually happens in the weeks and months that follow when one Pope dies or resigns until another pope is elected. Sedevacantism however, goes much further. It says this interregnum period has lasted for decades and is still not ended. The most common claim which Dimond makes in the debate, is that the last person to validly hold the papacy was Pope Pius XII and that every Pope since 1958, including John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis are anti popes.
The reason I want to make a video on this matter is because Sedevacantism is a spiritually dangerous position. It claims not just that there isn’t a Pope, but that every bishop ordained after Vatican II was never validly ordained, and if they weren’t validly ordained, then none of the priests they ordained are real priests either. This means that it is almost impossible from Dimond’s perspective to find a valid mass or to receive the sacraments. That’s why on his website he wrote the following back in 2014 and doesn’t seem to have updated it.
He said, “We are not aware of any church a Catholic should attend on Saturday or Sunday in order to receive communion, people should stay home on Sunday and pray 15 decades of the rosary. That’s because essentially all the priests are clear heretics and they give sermons or talks on those days. We don’t believe people should receive the sacrament from them during a mass at which they give a sermon.” So basically according to them, you can never receive the Eucharist. This advice can send well meaning Catholics to Hell, and so it needs to be addressed.
But let me share a little more about Dimond and his organization. He and his associate Michael had a nonprofit called Most Holy Family Monastery that defends their particular sedevacantist position, a position that’s not even shared by many other sedevacantists. They also hold some rather bizarre views on a variety of topics, but I won’t be getting into those in this video as fun as that would be. Instead, I’m going to stick to what Dimond said in his debate with Jeff Cassman on sedevacantism itself. Before I do that though, I want to make a note on the debate itself.
A lot of people asked me to review this debate because they felt that Cassman decisively lost, but after reviewing it and taking notes, I don’t think this was the case at all. What made the debate difficult to review, as you will see, is that Dimond uses a debate tactic called a Gish gallop. This was named after young-earth creationist, Duane Gish, who would debate people on the subject of evolution. In those debates, Gish would make dozens of claims about evolution being wrong because it couldn’t explain certain features of the natural world and the person debating him would never be able to respond to everything Gish brought up because it always takes longer to explain an argument than it does to simply make an assertion or to put it another way, it always takes longer to clean up a mess than to make a mess, and Dimond does the same thing in this debate, he rattles off dozens of accusations against the post-Vatican II hierarchy.
Also, Cassman was hampered in this debate because as a member of the Society of St. Pius X or SSPX, he doesn’t fully accept the authority or teachings of the post-Vatican II church either. Though he does believe there have been valid bishops in pops during that time. So I’m not going to defend Cassman’s views or go into detail about the SSPX, but this is important to know for context in judging the arguments of this particular debate. With all that being said, let’s take a look at Peter Dimond’s arguments for sedevacantism in his opening statement.
Peter Dimond:
In various passages of the Old Testament, God promised that the throne of King David would have perpetual successors. In Jeremiah 33:17, God promised through Jeremiah that King David shall never lack a man from his family to sit upon his throne. Yet shortly after Jeremiah made that prophecy the Babylonian empire sack Jerusalem, took King Zedekiah into exile where he died and there was no successor to David’s perpetual throne for over 500 years.
As a result of this long vacancy, some people thought that God’s promise had failed or they didn’t know how it would be fulfilled. So how did the 500 plus year vacancy end and the perpetual succession in the throne of David continue? The vacancy only ended when Jesus himself came and took the throne holding it forever.
There is a definite connection in scripture between the office of David and the office of St. Peter. It therefore makes perfect sense that just as prior to Christ first coming, there was an extended vacancy of David’s throne prior to his second coming during the prophesied Great Apostasy, there will be and is an extended vacancy in the throne of Peter. The evidence that this has occurred starting with Anti-Pope John XXVII and Vatican II is simply overwhelming and irrefutable as we’ve documented on vaticancatholic.com for over 20 years.
Trent Horn:
Dimond’s argument is that just as David’s throne could remain empty for over 500 years until Christ came to sit upon it through his Messianic mission, the chair of St. Peter or the office of the papacy could be empty for an extended period of time until Christ returns in a second coming. The problem with this argument is that the church teaches that there will never be a time when there are no visible successors of the apostles and no successor of St. Peter. Pope Leo XIII said the church, “Must uniformly remain to the end of time.” If it did not, then it would not have been founded as perpetual and the end set before it would’ve been limited to some certain place and to some certain period of time, both of which are contrary to the truth.
Pope Pius IX said that, “Schismatics deny also the indifectibility of the church and blasphemously declare that it has perished throughout the world and that its visible head in the bishops have aired.” The teachings that the church will always have a visible existence are not like the passage in Jeremiah 33:17, which is a conditional prophecy, it’s not an absolute promise.
To see why, note that verse 17 says, “For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.” But the next verse says, “And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn cereal offerings, and to make sacrifices forever.” Even if we interpret Christ as our new Levitical priest, Christ does not offer burnt or Cereal offerings for us, he offers himself on the cross instead. This shows that these prophecies in Jeremiah were limited in their scope. They can’t be used to justify the claim that God will allow the office of St. Peter to be empty for decades or even centuries.
Unlike David’s throne, Peter’s chair or the papacy and the Office of Bishop itself, they are guaranteed to perpetually endure with an entirely different set of promises that can be found in the New Testament. These promises were also infallibly defined at the First Vatican Council, which said the following, “If then any should deny that it is by the institution of Christ, the Lord, or by divine right that blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of successors in the primacy over the universal church or that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter in his primacy, let him be anathema.”
Peter Dimond:
Scripture indicates that during the Great Apostasy, the temple of God and the church’s physical structures will be taken over by her enemies. Indeed, my opponents hero Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre said that Vatican II fulfilled 2 Thessalonian 2:4 prophecy by establishing the cult of man in the sanctuary. The Great Apostasy is predicted to be the worst spiritual crisis of all time, leaving hardly any faith on earth as Jesus indicated in Luke 18:8. It’s worse than the Arian crisis in which almost all churches became infected with Arianism according to Saint Jerome, and it’s worse than the great westernism in which an anti-pope was recognized by all the cardinals.
Trent Horn:
The church does teach that there will be a Great Apostasy at the end of the world. The catechism says the following, “Before Christ’s second coming, the church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the mystery of iniquity in the form of a religious deception, offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the anti-Christ, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his messiah come in the flesh.” But Dimond has presented no evidence, we are currently living through such a period.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 says that Christ second coming will not take place “Unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God declaring himself to be God.” But no post-Vatican II Pope or any Pope for that matter has ever declared himself to be God. So this says nothing about the papacy. Moreover, this passage is not talking about the church. When Paul uses the phrase temple of God in his other letters like 1st and 2nd Corinthians, he’s talking about ourselves as individuals like how our bodies are living temples of God. But in this context, Paul is saying that the lawless man will take a physical seat in a specific building, the temple of God and proclaim himself to be God. Christians don’t call the buildings they worship in temples and there is no single temple of God where all Christians worship.
It makes more sense that Paul is talking about the temple in Jerusalem, which would mean that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem would eventually be rebuilt and a pagan ruler will demand to have a position of leadership within it. This is similar to when the Roman emperor Caligula tried to erect an idol of himself in the Jewish temple. As for Luke 18, when Christ returns, he will find the faith severely weakened, but he will not find an absent church that lacks any successors to the apostles. This would contradict Christ’s prayer to the Father, that to the apostles he would give them, “another counselor” to be with you forever, literally to the age, even the spirit of truth, i.e the Holy Spirit.
Peter Dimond:
It’s also noteworthy the long vacancy of David’s throne, which Jesus himself ended was caused by the Babylonian captivity. While the current vacancy of the chair of St. Peter is caused by the war of Babylon, the prophesied end times counter church. The Vatican II sect, which is not the Catholic church and is not led by valid popes fulfills prophecies about the war of Babylon in many striking ways. We are experiencing an end times Babylonian captivity in which a counter church has taken control of the church’s physical structures, doing everything from restricting the traditional mass to promoting the LGBT agenda while endorsing the worship of idols such as Pachamama. Will it also last for about 70 years like the Old Testament Babylonian captivity? Perhaps.
Trent Horn:
There are some priests and even bishops who promote false or heretical teachings, but that’s always been true throughout church history. In the third century, the Pelaguis Heresy was led by the Bishop [inaudible 00:12:34]. The Arian heresy was led by a priest named Arias and many bishops supported it. The presence of some clerics who fail to uphold the faith does not disprove Christ promises that the church as a whole guided by the Holy Spirit will never defect from the true faith. And when it comes to the church being the whore of Babylon in the book of Revelation, Dimond is using the same arguments as fundamentalist Protestants. For example, on his website, Peter Dimond says the following, “Rome was constructed on seven hills. Since the great Harlot sits upon the city of seven hills, the great Harlot sits upon Rome itself, the center of unity in the Catholic church and the home of the Roman Pontiffs.”
But as I’ve said in previous rebuttals against fundamentalist Protestants who make this objection, Vatican City does not sit on one of the seven hills of Rome. The Holy Sea is located on Vatican Hill, which is across the Tiber and not one of the seven hills of Rome. What makes more sense of these passages is that the whore of Babylon was the Roman empire that persecuted Christians or even apostate Jerusalem. After all, Revelation 17:6 says, “The whore was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” And Revelation 18:24 says, “In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on earth.” But how could the post-Vatican II church have blood on its hands or kill people when one of Dimond’s criticisms of the church is its rejection of the death penalty? So no, the Catholic church is not the whore of Babylon.
Peter Dimond:
Now, the Catholic church teaches that manifest heretics are not members of the church and cannot hold office in the church. A manifest heretic cannot be the Pope. As Pope Leo XII said, “It’s absurd to imagine that he who is outside can command in the church.” A valid pope is by definition a member of the church who professes the true faith. Can a Catholic make that statement about Francis or the other Vatican II anti popes? No. St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Peter Canisius also tell us that we cannot accept as legitimate pastors those who preach new doctrines or fail to preach the apostolic faith. In his 1559 Papal Bull Cum ex Apostolatus, Pope Paul IV taught that if someone before his election to the Papacy had deviated from the Catholic panther fallen into some heresy, the election is totally invalid without the need of any further declaration.
It’s invalid even if it took place with the unanimous consent of the cardinals, even if it obedience is given to the band by all and no matter how long the situation lasts. This bull was also solemnly confirmed by Pope St. Pius V in his bull [inaudible 00:15:17]. It’s also cited in Canon 188.4 of the 1917 code of Canon Law, which says that those who publicly defect from the Catholic faith lose office without any declaration. Although there are disciplinary elements of Paul IV’s bull, the statements about how a heretic cannot be elected to the papacy are an expression of the divine law. A heretic cannot become the Pope.
Trent Horn:
Now we’re finally getting to Dimond’s main argument. It seems to go like this, a manifest heretic cannot become or remain the Pope. Every pope after Vatican II is or was a manifest heretic. Therefore, there have been no authentic popes after Vatican II.
All right, let’s start with the first premise, as Cassman notes later in the debate, there is a difference between the sin of heresy and the crime of heresy. Let me propose a thought experiment for you to consider. If a priest became an atheist but never told anyone, would he stop being a priest? Would he lose the ability to consecrate the Eucharist or absolve people of their sins? The answer is no.
In the early fourth century, the Donatist heretics said that bishops who denied the faith in order to avoid persecution lost their apostolic authority and could no longer ordain priests. The Donatist also said that priests who denied Christ were considered to no longer have the ability to baptize, and so the Donatist re-baptized anyone those priests had already baptized.
But St. Augustine show that the sacraments are effective in transmitting grace in spite of the sinfulness of the minister of the sacrament. Today we call this feature of the sacraments ex opere operato or by the work performed. Think about it, if sacraments became invalid just because the priest offering them is in a state of mortal sin, that would mean you could never know if your baptism or your confession was valid. You could never know if Christ was truly present in the Eucharist at mass, you could never know any of these things because none of us can know the state of another person’s soul. But Christ wants us to have peace and so we can know we’ve received his piece through the sacraments because their validity depends on objective visible signs that we can all observe or at least that we can all check such as by seeing that a priest has faculties to perform a marriage in a certain diocese for example.
But just as a priest does not stop being a priest if he becomes a secret heretic, the pope does not stop being the Pope if he becomes a secret heretic. Otherwise, any rumor about the Pope being a heretic would cast into doubt anything he taught and did as Pope. So the only people who could be prevented from being or remaining Pope are those who are guilty of the crime of heresy, not just the sin of heresy.
Canon 194.2 in the code of Canon Law says, “A person who has publicly defected from the Catholic faith or from the communion of the church loses ecclesiastical office.” This happens through church law and a canonical trial, but how would this apply to the Pope, which Canon 1404 says is judged by no one. That phrase that the Pope is judged by no one goes back centuries in church teaching as it recognizes the Pope’s unique role as pastor of the entire church, but it does not preclude the Pope from being removed from office if he is a manifest heretic.
However, there is a debate among Catholic theologians about how a pope who is guilty of the crime of manifest heresy or knowingly teaching heresy in spite of correction would stop being the pope. In the 16th century, Francisco Suarez said, “All the other bishops of the church in that case, they would act as Christ and take away the office of the papacy by formally deposing the Pope. It would be Christ acting through the bishop’s solemn judgment that would cause the Pope to stop being the Pope.”
As contemporary, Robert Bellarman took a different view. He believed the Pope lost his office when the Pope committed the sin of manifest heresy. By committing that sin, God would directly remove that man from the office of the papacy, while the bishops would merely recognize that this occurred when they deposed him, but the bishop’s judgment itself would not cause the Pope to lose office.
Although this does bring up the question of how the bishops would always know when God had done this in order to properly act and remove the Pope from office. So Bellarman was skeptical that this could even happen. He considered it probable that God would simply never allow the Pope to become a manifest heretic at all. Either way, theologians agree, you could not conclude that a pope was a manifest heretic unless he was found guilty of the canonical crime of heresy either by confessing himself to be a heretic or he’s found guilty by a competent authority like the College of Cardinals or an ecumenical council declaring him to be a heretic. That’s why the fourth council of Constantinople in 870 condemned rash judgment of the Pope and Canon 10 of the council says, “Individuals do not have the authority to judge their bishops privately and then break communion with them.”
If we apply these principles today, we’d see that no one, especially the Pope can be found guilty of the canonical crime of heresy just because some guy with a YouTube channel says he’s a heretic. Peter Dimond is certainly not qualified to determine who is a manifest heretic because he doesn’t even recognize his own manifest heresies. For example, Dimond follows Father Leonard Feeney’s heretical rejection of baptism of desire. This contradicts the church’s teaching that if an adult consciously desires baptism but dies before receiving it, he can still be saved.
The Council of Trent pronounced in anathema, it condemned those who said of the sacraments that without them or without the desire of them through faith alone, men obtain from God the grace of justification. In 1949, the holy office of the church taught that, “That one may obtain eternal salvation. It is not always required that he be incorporated into the church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.”
And while this statement isn’t magisterial because it did not receive papal approval, it still represents a common understanding of baptism of desire in the pre-Vatican II church. So let’s return to Dimond’s argument, a manifest heretic cannot become or remain the Pope. Every pope after Vatican II is or was a manifest heretic. Therefore, there have been no authentic popes after Vatican II. The first premise is true but only applies to those who are guilty of the crime of heresy, not the sin of heresy. There had been plenty of validly ordained bishops in the 1960s who had the authority to declare John XXIII or Paul VI to be guilty of the crime of heresy, but they did not because those men were not manifest heretics.
Let me talk a little about the citations Dimond raises because they come from documents that actually undermine his position. The quote from Pope Leo XII that it is absurd to imagine that he who is outside can command in the church comes from the 1896 encyclical satis cognitum. He writes, “From this, it must be clearly understood that bishops are deprived of the right and power of ruling if they deliberately secede from Peter and his successors because by this secession they are separated from the foundation on which the whole edifice must rest.”
The quote Dimond gives is part of a larger sentence which reaffirms this context. It says, “No one therefore, unless in communion with Peter, can share in his authority since it is absurd to imagine that he who is outside can command in the church.” Pope Leo is saying that a person cannot be a bishop in the Catholic church unless he recognizes the authority of the Pope. This passage is about the relationship of the Eastern Orthodox to Catholicism.
It has nothing to do with Dimond’s argument for private judgment of heretical popes. The encyclical actually counts against Dimond’s position because it condemns the idea that the church could ever become so small that it is essentially unidentifiable. Pope Leo say, “Those who arbitrarily conjure up and picture to themselves a hidden and invisible church are in grievous and pernicious error.”
Next is the papal bull Cum ex Apostolatus, which included disciplinary decrees that were laid down to ensure no protestant could ever become Pope during the difficult period of the Counter-Reformation. However, this was a disciplinary measure that contrary to what Dimond says is not a matter of divine law. If a manifest heretic could never become Pope, well then no convert or revert could ever become Pope. But in the 19th century, Henry Manning and John Henry Newman embraced the errors of Anglicanism. Manning was even an Anglican bishop, but there was nothing that prevented either man from being made a cardinal in the Catholic church. Even other sedevacantists recognize that this was a disciplinary ruling that is not applicable today because it was aggregated by the 1917 Code of Canon Law.
Peter Dimond:
As the pre-Vatican II canonist, Maroto wrote in 1919, “Indeed also heretics and schismatics are barred by the divine law itself from the supreme pontificate.” The Vatican II, anti popes John XXIII through Francis are manifest heretics. The evidence is abundant. They never were valid popes. Before I cover some of that evidence, consider that the magistarium of the Catholic church is free from all error as Vatican I declared, “In the apostasy, the Catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished and holy doctrine celebrated.” Pope Pius XI stated, “To this magistarium Christ the Lord imparted immunity from error.” Can you make that statement about the official and authoritative teaching of the Vatican II anti popes at Vatican II in their encyclicals, et cetera? No.
Trent Horn:
This is where Dimond will shift definitions. In order to make a Gish gallop in order to be a manifest heretic, you have to be guilty of publicly and persistently teaching a heresy or a denial of a dogmatic truth of the faith like Christ divinity or his real presence in the Eucharist. You can’t just be guilty of making any theological mistake. There have been popes in church history who made theological errors, but they did not stop being Pope because of it. For example, Pope John XXII, he believed this prior to becoming Pope, that those saints in heaven do not see God. They don’t behold the beatific vision until the final judgment. He even taught this in some of his homilies but not in his universal magisterium. Even so, he was corrected by the College of Cardinals the year before he died, but this did not mean he lost the papacy. If he did, then things like St. Thomas Aquinas’s canonization that he declared would become invalid.
So in order to be a manifest heretic, a pope would have to abstinently reject a dogma, not merely make a theological error or commit a sin like scandal. So let’s go back to Dimond’s main argument. A manifest heretic cannot become or remain the Pope. Every pope after Vatican II is or was a manifest heretic. Therefore, there have been no authentic popes after Vatican II. So premise one is false, but you could save the premise if you just said a manifest heretic cannot be the pope. When it comes to the second premise, Dimond’s primary error is that he treats any error or any scandal as proof of manifest heresy or is something a true pope would never do. But there is no church teaching that says magisterial documents are free from all error. They could have scientific or historical errors in them that have nothing to do with teachings on faith or morals.
And as we saw in the case of Pope John XXII, a Pope could even be mistaken in matters of faith or morals, but he won’t infallibly define those errors. But the church teaches and Donum veritatis 24 that, “It would be contrary to the truth if proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the church’s magisterium can be habitually mistaken, in its prudential judgments or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission. Moreover, the Holy Spirit’s guidance will prevent the church from formally teaching errors that are harmful to souls.” So all of this we have to remember, the gift of infallibility Christ gave the church or the condition of being free from any error that only exists under certain cases when the magisterium teaches, not all cases.
This includes when the Pope speaks ex-cathedral on faith and morals when something is solemnly defined by an ecumenical council or when the church teaches through the bishops of the world universally across time and space or what is called the ordinary and universal magisterium. So even if there were errors in papal teachings after Vatican II that would not show those popes were not really the pope since papal infallibility does not guarantee everything they teach will be free from error. But as we continue in our analysis, you’ll see that the examples Dimond cites, they aren’t even errors.
Peter Dimond:
The authoritative teaching of ecumenical counsels on faith and morals also cannot be erroneous. As St. Robert Bellarmine said, “All Catholics constantly teach the general counsels confirmed by the supreme pontiff cannot error in explaining the faith.” Vatican II purported to be an ecumenical counsel. It was solemnly confirmed by anti Pope Paul VI. Every document of Vatican II ends with Paul VI by his supposed apostolic authority approving, decreeing and establishing everything the document teaches. There’s no way that a valid Pope can use such language to confirm a supposed ecumenical counsel that is filled with errors and even heresies. In fact, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, my opponent zero, repeatedly stated that Vatican II taught heresy and he was correct on that point.
Trent Horn:
An ecumenical council could have an error even though that is highly unlikely, if the council is not infallibly defining something. But the possibility of error does not mean we can just ignore a council’s teaching. It must be received with the religious submission of mind and will. But as we’ll see, Vatican II does not teach any heresies, so this does not advance Dimond’s position.
Peter Dimond:
Here are just some of the clear errors in Heresies in Vatican II, the following errors are heretical in the most proper sense of the term. That is, they deny a truth that is infallibly taught by the church as divinely revealed.
Trent Horn:
Now you’re about to see the Gish gallop in action, but unlike in a debate, we have time to slow down and look at each accusation and show why it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Also, notice that Dimond’s tactic is identical to the one protestants use when they argue against Catholicism. Protestants will pick two magisterial documents and say they contradict each other, which shows Catholicism is false. Dimond restricts the scope of his argument and says “This only shows the post-Vatican II church is false, but the true Catholic church, whatever that is still remains.” But if you have this attitude of zealously finding anything that looks like an error in post Vatican II teachings and say it contradicts earlier teachings, it won’t be long before you find similar apparent contradictions among pre-Vatican II sources or similar apparent contradictions between books of scripture.
To me this is a case of when sedevacantists act like atheists. They’ve already assumed the post Vatican II church is false just like protestants assume the pre-Vatican two church is false or atheists assume that every church is false or wrong about God and they try to find apparent difficulties to support their previous assumptions. But I’m telling you, if you have that hypercritical attitude, it will not stop at Vatican II, it can easily lead you away from Christ himself when you encounter other difficult passages from scripture and church history.
Peter Dimond:
Vatican II teaches that Jews who reject the gospel are not to be considered rejected by God.
Trent Horn:
Nostra aetate says, “Although the church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or cursed by God as if this followed from the holy scriptures.” In fact, St. Paul said of the Jewish people in Romans 11:28-29, “As regards to gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” In other words, the Jews in Paul’s time who rejected the gospel were still part of God’s plan because of the promises God made to their ancestors. The Jews were not rejected by God because God’s calling of them is irrevocable. This even made it possible for St. Paul to speculate a view versus earlier that, “All Israel will be saved.”
Peter Dimond:
That Protestants and schismatics who reject the papacy and other dogmas are in the body of Christ.
Trent Horn:
Lumen Gentium 15 says the following, “The church recognizes that in many ways, she is linked with those who being baptized are honored with the name of Christian. Though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter, for there are many who honor sacred scripture taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ the son of God and Savior, they are consecrated by baptism in which they are united with Christ.”
So non-Catholic Christians are a part of the body of Christ in virtue of their valid baptism, but they have an imperfect communion with Christ church, this is important to underscore, if non-Catholic Christians are validly baptized, then they are united to Christ. Paul says as much in Roman 6, of anyone who is validly baptized. And the early church recognized the validity of baptisms performed by some heretical groups. So you can’t say protestant baptism is invalid just because it’s not Catholic. That means if non-Catholic Christians are united to Christ then they must be united to the body of Christ even if they have an imperfect communion with Christ’s church.
Peter Dimond:
That non-Catholics may lawfully receive holy communion and that non-Catholics build the church, have the divine life and have a pledge of future glory when they receive the Eucharist outside the church.
Trent Horn:
This may be a reference to when the second Vatican council speaks of the Eastern Orthodox. Unitatis Redintegratio 15 says the following, “Everyone also knows with what great love the Christians of the East celebrate the sacred liturgy, especially the Eucharistic celebration, source of the church’s life and pledge of future glory in which the faithful, united with their bishop have access to God the Father through the Son the word made flesh who suffered and has been glorified and so in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they enter into communion with the most holy trinity being made sharers of the divine nature. Hence through the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in each of these churches, the church of God is built up and grows in stature and through concelebration, their communion with one another is made manifest.” Remember, the Eastern Orthodox have maintained valid holy orders and valid sacraments, so Christ is truly present in the Eucharist of their divine liturgies and Dimond has failed to present any magisterial teaching that says otherwise.
Peter Dimond:
That non-Catholic religions are a means of salvation.
Trent Horn:
Unitatis Redintegratio says of Protestants and Orthodox, “Though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived as significance and importance in the mystery of salvation, for the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation, which derived their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the church.” So God can use non-Catholic churches and communities to bring people to salvation just like he can use nature and conscience to bring people to a knowledge of himself. I came to know Jesus was Lord, for example, through the work of Protestant apologists like William Lane Craig.
The church is only recognizing this document that God can use non-Catholic Christians as means not the means but merely as some means to bring people to salvation. This is similar to an incident in Christ earthly ministry where John the apostle told Jesus, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name and we forbade him because he was not following us.”
In response, Jesus said to John, as is recorded in Mark 9:39-40, “Do not forbid him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us.” Vatican II does not teach that non-Catholic churches and communities by themselves save people. God is simply able to use these non-Catholic Christians to accomplish his salvific plan. But the document does clearly say of the unsaved, “It is only through Christ’s Catholic church, which is the all embracing means of salvation that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation.”
Lumen Gentium 14 also makes this clear when it says, “Basing itself upon sacred scripture and tradition, it teaches that the church now sojourning on earth as an exile is necessary for salvation, Christ present to us in his body, which is the church is the one mediator and the unique way of salvation.”
Peter Dimond:
That religious liberty should be a universal civil right.
Trent Horn:
Since Dimond was brief on this point, I will be brief as well, even though a lot can be said about the issue of religious liberty. Basically, there’s no contradiction on this point because the concept of religious liberty differs in magisterial statements. The church condemned modern theories of religious liberty which claimed it does not matter what religion a person belongs to or said that the state is obligated to treat all religions equally. The church has always affirmed another sense of religious liberty, which says that faith must be freely chosen. Vatican II said, religious liberty, “Has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society.” Therefore, it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men in societies toward the true religion and toward the one church of Christ.
Vatican II allows for the possibility of states that favor the Catholic religion, but in those states people must be free to reject the Catholic faith. St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed this principle when he said that forced baptisms are invalid and previous popes and councils explicitly allowed Jewish and pagan worship to exist in Christian countries. The catechism says, “The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error nor a supposed right to error, but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty.”
Peter Dimond:
That is desirable to participate in non-Catholic worship and much more. All of those statements are heretical. I mentioned participation in non-Catholic worship, which is approved in Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism. In his 1928 encyclical, Mortalium Animos, pope Pius XI taught that the Catholic church has never allowed this. Popes consistently condemned any active participation in non-Catholic worship because it signifies a profession of faith in that false religion. Yet the Vatican to anti popes not only constantly actively participate in non-Catholic worship with Protestants, the Orthodox, Jews and Pagans, but they officially approve it in their documents. There’s no way that men who constantly participate in heretical systematic Jewish and pagan worship and officially teach others that it’s good to do so, can be valid popes for the Catholic church has never allowed this activity. The current leader of the Vatican II sect, the man my opponent claims is the true pope, Francis teaches the following errors in blatant heresies among many others.
Trent Horn:
At least with this example, Dimond actually cites a pre-Vatican II teaching that the council allegedly contradicts, instead of just asserting there’s a contradiction as he did in the previous examples. I address the issue of worship with other non-Catholics in my response to the Eastern Orthodox anthropologist Jay Dyer. So I’ll share that again here. But notice the pattern of sedevacantist co-opting non-Catholic criticisms of Catholicism as a whole to use against the post-Vatican II popes, but they ignore how these same arguments can be used against pre-Vatican II popes.
So what about worship with non-Catholics? Vatican II said, “In certain circumstances such as prayers for unity and during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.” But in the earlier document, Mortalium Animos Pope Pius XI said the following, “This apostolic C has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics.”
The key to resolving this discrepancy is to distinguish between active communion and passive communion with non-Catholics. Active communion is an illicit form of worship or behavior that directly engages in worship that contradicts the Catholic faith. This is scandalous because it involves actions that make it seem as if one were professing allegiance to another faith. That is something that Catholics simply cannot do as a matter of divine law. So we can’t pray with non-Catholics in this active sense, but we can pray with non-Catholics in another sense, namely in the sense of praying in their presence. This is the illicit passive communion that Catholics and non-Catholics can share with one another. St Alphonsus Liguori said the following actually, “It is not permitted to be present at the sacred rights of infidels and heretics in such a way that you would be judged to be in communion with them.”
Note the qualifier from St. Alphonsus about how one would appear at such rights and that this doctor of the church, he does not just universally prohibit prayer with non-Catholics. In fact, in 1949 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document on ecumenical meetings between Catholics and non-Catholics. It said in this pre-Vatican II document, “In all these meetings and conferences, any communication whatsoever in worship must be avoided. Yet the recitation in common of the Lord’s Prayer or of some prayer approved by the Catholic church is not forbidden for opening or closing the said meetings.”
So we see that passive communion with non-Catholics that doesn’t contradict the Catholic faith in worship was permitted before the second Vatican council. So those who endorse it after the council are not manifest heretics.
Peter Dimond:
There is no way that according to Catholic teaching, Francis can be considered a Catholic worth a pope when he preaches a false gospel and notorious heresy. In fact, Catholics are forbidden to consider such a person to be a Catholic worth a pope.
Trent Horn:
Now notice how Dimond starts with serious charges like manifest heresy, but then he does a bait and switch. He only presents cases that at worst involve theological errors or scandal or at best ambiguity, but nothing that approaches the level of manifest heresy. I also want to point out before we continue that some people are going to accuse me of Popesplaining or sycophantically painting Pope Francis in the best light instead of facing him for who he is. Look, I think we should give charitable interpretations to every single person but especially to a Holy Father, but I admit in some of these cases, Pope Francis does scandalous things or he makes errors, but none of these things rise to the level of manifest heresy and you have to have that for Dimond’s case to work. If you don’t, the case for sedevacantism falls apart.
Peter Dimond:
Francis teaches that it’s illicit to convince people of the Catholic faith.
Trent Horn:
Pope Francis has often made a comparison between proselytism and evangelism saying the former is wrong with the latter is obligatory. That’s why he said, “It is not illicit that you convince them of your faith. Proselytism is the strongest poison against the ecumenical path or proselytism among Christians, therefore in itself is a grave sin and the church is not a soccer team that goes around seeking fans.” In these quotes, Pope Francis is saying that we should not pressure or use sales tactics to get people to convert in order to make us feel good that the team is growing. This is what he condemns as proselytism and he’s correct. It’s wrong to cause someone to become Catholic through coercion or manipulation.
In a 2017 address, the Pope said, “The church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by attraction just as Christ draws all to himself by the power of his love culminating in the sacrifice of the cross. So the church fulfills her mission to the extent that in union with Christ, she accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord.”
In another address, Pope Francis said this, “What I mean is that evangelization is free. Proselytism on the other hand makes you lose your freedom. Proselytism is incapable of creating a religious path and freedom. It always sees people being subjugated in one way or another. In evangelization the protagonist is God and proselytism it is the eye.” So this is a misrepresentation of what Pope Francis believes. Even if you think the pope’s distinction between proselytism and evangelization is not prudent because it could confuse people, you can still admit that this is a criticism of how the Pope believes we should help people become Catholic. It is not evidence that the Pope embraces the heresy that denies the salvific mission of the church or that the Pope believes that people should not become Catholic at all. He doesn’t. The Pope believes once again you should not use coercive or manipulative tactics to cause people to become Catholic so we can feel good about ourselves. That’s proselytism he condemns. But he approves and exhorts us to evangelization to help the church grow by attraction which includes charitably living out the faith and charitably explaining it to other people.
Peter Dimond:
That the Jews covenant with God has not been revoked.
Trent Horn:
In Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis is simply quoting Romans 11:29, which I noted earlier. It says, “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Vatican II is not saying that the Jewish people have their own means of salvation apart from God through the old covenant given to Moses. It is just saying that the spiritual gifts and calling of God’s chosen people have never been revoked. And so the Jewish people stand in a special relationship to the church that other non-Christians like Muslims do not have. And Dimond does not cite any pre-Vatican II source that says God’s covenant with the Jewish people has been revoked. So there’s no contradiction here. In fact, later in the debate, the only citation Dimond makes in defense of the claim that the Jewish covenant with God was revoked is his private interpretation of a passage, in the letter to the Hebrews, he does not cite a magisterial teaching that contains this language.
Peter Dimond:
That Martin Luther did not err on justification.
Trent Horn:
In a 2017 interview, Francis said, “And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, Luther did not err.” This is a mistake or at least it’s an incorrect generalization. The Pope might have been thinking of the 1999 joint declaration on justification between Catholics and some Lutherans that tried to find common ground on the doctrine. But all this is just a poorly articulated response in an interview. It’s not the Pope acting as a manifest heretic.
Peter Dimond:
That keeping the truth does not mean defending dogmas even though Pope Leo XIII said that to reject dogma is to deny Christianity.
Trent Horn:
This is from a homily that Pope Francis gave to a community from Myanmar, also called Burma, a country that is often plagued with violence and extreme poverty. So already this is more of a pastoral address than a theological treatise. The Pope said, “Jesus asked the father to consecrate his disciples in truth as they will be sent throughout the world to carry on his mission. Keeping the truth does not mean defending ideas, becoming guardians of a system of doctrines and dogmas, but remaining bound to Christ and being devoted to his gospel. Truth for the apostle John is Christ himself. The revelation of the father’s love.”
A charitable interpretation would be that Pope Francis is simply stressing the personalist element of being a Christian. Keeping God’s truth is not synonymous with just doing apologetics. It also involves having a real relationship with God who is truth itself. Guarding truth means we guard a person not just a set of propositions, but once again, this is ambiguous at worst. It’s not the heretical claim that dogmas don’t matter or have no relation to our salvation. So this is not a manifest heresy.
Peter Dimond:
That all the baptized, including apostates, are in the body of Christ.
Trent Horn:
In a 2022 address, Pope Francis set of apostates or those who deny the faith, we are brothers. This is the communion of saints. The communion of saints holds together the community of believers on earth and in heaven and on earth, the saints, the sinners, all. But there are two different ways to understand the term communion of saints. The catechism says the following, “Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others.” We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the church. The term communion of saints therefore has two closely linked meanings, communion in holy things, sancta and communion among holy persons, sancti.
So those who are in a state of mortal sin and openly defect from the church are not in communion with other holy persons because they lack sanctifying grace. But apostates can be in communion with holy things. Specifically they share the same indelible mark of baptism that the saints in heaven have. Pope Francis is just making the point that even a Catholic who commits the worst sin possible is not removed from the church as if he now became a pagan who had to be baptized all over again. Such a notorious sinner is still our brother, and so we can encourage him, for example, as a brother in the faith to repent, go to confession and return to full communion with the saints.
Peter Dimond:
That no one can be condemned forever.
Trent Horn:
In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis says the following, “It is a matter of reaching out to everyone of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial community and thus to experience being touched by an unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous mercy. No one can be condemned forever because that is not the logic of the gospel. Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone in whatever situation they find themselves.”
Dimond is assuming that Pope Francis is saying, no one can be condemned forever by God, but that’s not what the Pope is talking about in this context. In the preceding paragraph, Pope Francis says the following, “There are two ways of thinking which recur throughout the church’s history. Casting off and reinstating, the church’s way from the time of the council of Jerusalem has always been the way of Jesus, the way of mercy and reinstatement. The way of the church is not to condemn anyone forever. It is to pour out the bomb of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart. For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional, and gratuitous.”
Even the most severe forms of excommunication do not permanently bar someone from the sacraments. A person can always repent and return to full communion with the church or in other words, the church does not condemn people forever. But in other context, Pope Francis has affirmed that God can condemn someone forever if that person dies in a state of rebellion to God. In 2014, the Pope told the members of the Italian mafia, “convert, There is still time so that you don’t end up in hell.”
In 2016 he said, “The danger always remains that by a constant refusal to open the doors of their hearts to Christ who knocks on them and the poor, the proud, rich and powerful will end up condemning themselves and plunging into the eternal abyss of solitude, which is hell.” And when it comes to being lost forever, in 2019, the Pope said, “The possibility of conversion is not unlimited. That’s why it is necessary to seize it immediately. Otherwise it may be lost forever.”
Peter Dimond:
But God wills the plurality and diversity of religions and he officially included that heresy in his ex.
Trent Horn:
This is about the document on human fraternity for world peace and living together that was signed in 2019 in Abu Dhabi by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar. The document says in part, “The pluralism and the diversity of religions color, sex, race, and language are willed by God in his wisdom.” This was also included word for word in the ecumenical declaration at the seventh congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions held in Kazakhstan in 2022. However, that document was changed a few hours after it was read to say, “God permits religious diversity.” Rather than that God wills religious diversity. This is a controversial statement because it seems contradictory for God to will that all men be saved, but for him to also will that they belong to non-Catholic religions.
The second Vatican council taught that all men are called to belong to the new people of God. Wherefore this people, while remaining one and only one is to be spread throughout the whole world and must exist in all ages so that the decree of God’s will may be fulfilled. But when we say God will something that can refer to God’s active will that directly causes things or his passive will that merely tolerates or allows things to happen. For example, it is not a part of God’s will that anyone should be damned, in the sense that God doesn’t actively will or predestined people for hell. The catechism says, “God predestines no one to go to hell for this a willful turning away from God, a mortal sin is necessary and persistence in it until the end.” So God does not actively will that anyone go to hell.
But it’s true to say hell is a part of God’s will. God allows it to exist. He knows people will go there, but hell is something God passively wills or tolerates. So human beings are free to accept or reject him. In the same way you can say the diversity of religions is something that God tolerates so that people are free to choose or reject the one true religion. Bishop Athanasius Schneider even said that he spoke to Pope Francis in 2019 shortly after this incident and Pope Francis told him and the other bishops with him, “You can say that the phrase in question on the diversity of religions means the permissive will of God.” So there is nothing erroneous about this statement.
Peter Dimond:
That the death penalty is contrary to the gospel.
Trent Horn:
This one deserves its own podcast, which I have addressed before, but if you really don’t agree with Pope Francis on this point, you can just say that this is a prudential judgment you don’t accept. That would be the judgment that sense society can be protected through non-lethal means from violent criminals. The continued use of lethal means to achieve this goal is unwarranted, and so it is contrary to the gospel. This would be similar to saying that in the time of the New Testament, owning slaves was never said to be contrary to the gospel and that there could be just situations for Christians to own slaves as long as they treated them justly. This is why Ephesians 6:9 tells Christians to be kind to their slaves rather than command that Christians free their slaves. Or to give another example, if an aggressor nation was defeated in war, their male soldiers might be enslaved as a form of retribution during this time.
But now that society can function without these traditional applications of slavery, the continued use of them would be contrary to the gospel. Likewise, the death penalty can be said to be contrary to the gospel even though there was a time when it was justified. But even if you’re not convinced of this explanation, Pope Francis’s prudential judgment about the death penalty doesn’t rise to the level of a heresy.
Peter Dimond:
He constantly teaches religious indifferentism, as did John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Trent Horn:
This is hopelessly vague. If Dimond’s claim is that the Pope is a manifest heretic, then he has to do better than simply say he teaches religious indifferentism. Even if the Pope acted in scandalous ways toward other religions that would not prove he was no longer the Pope. St. Peter scandalized a faithful by not dining with gentile Christians and Galatians 2 that led to St. Paul rebuking him, but that did not mean Peter stopped being the Pope. Dimond has given no specific example of the Pope making a heretical statement on religious indifferentism. John Paul II even confirmed the CDFs teaching in this matter in Dominus Iesus when Benedict was its prefect. It said this, “With the coming of the savior, Jesus Christ, God has willed that the church founded by him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity.” He even says this truth, “Rules out in a radical way that mentality of indifferentism characterized by our religious relativism, which leads to the belief that one religion is as good as another.”
Peter Dimond:
He approves pro-LGBT activists such as James Martin.
Trent Horn:
Bad hiring Decisions and promotions only show you’re a mediocre manager not a manifest heretic.
Peter Dimond:
On October 13th, 2016, Francis professed that Lutherans follow the true faith of Jesus. That’s manifest heresy.
Trent Horn:
That’s not what he said. In an address to Lutheran pilgrims in 2016, Pope Francis was asked what he likes and what he does not like in the Lutheran ecclesial community. So the Pope said, “I really like the good Lutherans, the Lutherans who follow the true faith of Jesus Christ. However, I do not like lukewarm Catholics or lukewarm Lutherans.” The Pope’s point is that he likes people who aren’t hypocritical or lukewarm. The Pope is not saying Lutherans as a whole or Lutheranism constitute the true faith of Jesus. He’s saying among Lutherans, he likes the ones who follow what Jesus said and take Christ’s teaching seriously. He likes the good ones who are not lukewarm about Jesus’s teachings.
This is also why as Cassman notes later in the debate, in order for someone to be found guilty of the crime of heresy, they have to confess to being a heretic or the bishops or a pope must find them guilty of heresy. Otherwise, anybody with a YouTube channel can twist any off the cuff remark the Pope says and just call it a manifest heresy even when they’re clearly wrong in that charge. In this case, a charitable interpretation would lead us to conclude the Pope was simply finding common ground and saying he likes Christians who seek to follow Jesus’s teachings even if they aren’t Catholic.
Peter Dimond:
Like John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he also approved the Vatican Lutheran agreement on justification, which I’ve read three times, which teaches justification by faith alone. See the Official Common Statement Annex 2c and that the cannons of the Council of Trent no longer apply to the Lutheran heresies.
Trent Horn:
Once again, Dimond does not cite anything specific. He’s just dumping as much as he can on his opponent. In the Annex he cites faith alone is only mentioned once and it says the following, “Justification takes place by grace alone, by faith alone, the person is justified apart from works. Grace creates faith not only when faith begins in a person, but as long as faith lasts. The working of God’s grace does not exclude human action.”
In other words, we can say we are saved by faith alone if we have a proper understanding of the kind of faith we are talking about. Pope Benedict XVI said, “Luther’s phrase, Faith alone is true if it is not opposed to faith in charity and love.” St. Paul’s speaks of faith that works through love and the Council of Trent taught in its decree on justification that, if anyone say that by faith alone the imperious is justified, in such ways as to mean, note the qualification, that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining the grace of justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will let him be anathema.
So in having dialogue with Lutherans on our understanding of faith and justification, the church is just finding common ground here to say that we can believe in formulations like faith alone if we believe that faith is not merely some intellectual ascent, but it is that which as St. Paul says in a letter to the Galatians, it is a faith that is worked out in love, that they’re not separated from one another. The declaration does not say Lutherans are simply right about justification and so the canons of the Council of Trent don’t apply to them at all. It’s simply a way of finding common ground if we define faith alone appropriately.
Peter Dimond:
On February 12th, 2016, Francis signed a joint declaration in which he condemned unionism. That is, that separated Eastern sex need to embrace the papacy. Benedict XVI and John Paul II did similar things thereby denying Vatican I. Vatican I teaches that its dogmatic statements must be believed by all Christians. They must be accepted. But John Paul II Benedict XVI, Francis, Paul VI et cetera, teach that the Orthodox and other individuals who do not accept the papacy are not required to do so and in fact they condemn trying to convert them. They condemn trying to proselytize them.
Paul VI made a statement to that effect in a joint declaration. Francis has said the same thing 50 times. John Paul II approved the Balamand statement which said that we no longer seek the conversion of the Eastern Orthodox to the Catholic faith. As I mentioned, Francis condemned unionism, the need for them to be converted and return to being Catholic. Benedict XVI on World Youth Day 2005 told Protestants that we don’t believe in what is called the ecumenism of the return by which they would return to the Catholic faith and reject their religion. He rejected that. That’s a denial of Vatican I.
Trent Horn:
Let me work backwards through these accusations. In an address on August 19th, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI said that, “The Catholic church also has as her goal, the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ as defined by the second Vatican ecumenical council in its various documents.” On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return. That is to deny and reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not. So this means that the Catholic Church wants full visible unity among all Christians. We want everyone to belong to Christ Church, but that does not mean that everyone has to give up their illicit spiritual heritage in the process.
Benedict goes on to say, “It does not mean uniformity and all expressions of theology and spirituality in liturgical forms and in discipline.” In other words, creating unity in the church does not mean that people have to abandon all of their spiritual customs.
For example, in seeking unity with Anglicans, the church allows the Anglican ordinariate? Eastern Catholic churches that were previously part of Eastern Orthodoxy retain their customs and so on provided that they accept the teachings of the universal church. Speaking of which, the Balamand statement, that particular statement from the 1990s deals with issues in seeking the full communion of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic church. John Paul II signed it in 1994 actually.
One of its biggest points involved the question of the Eastern Catholic churches. The Eastern Orthodox said that these churches should be dissolved and those Eastern Catholics should return to orthodoxy before any talk of full communion could be entertained by both churches. So in response, Pope St. John Paul II and representatives of Eastern Orthodox churches agreed to several principles of dialogue. These included respecting people’s conscience and not using violence or coercion to push them into a certain church.
It included recognizing the right of Eastern Catholic churches to exist in contrast to what the Orthodox wanted, and it included rejecting the idea that converts between faiths needed to be rebaptised, which is also something the Eastern Orthodox wanted. The declaration also said the following, “Pastoral activity in the Catholic church, Latin as well as Eastern no longer aims at having the faithful of one church pass over to the other.” That is to say it no longer aims at proselytizing among the Orthodox. It aims at answering the spiritual needs of its own faithful and it has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox church.
So in other words, neither church would try to convert each other’s members, but instead both of these churches would work together to seek reconciliation and full communion as one united body. That’s why the declaration says this, “According to the words of Pope John Paul II, the ecumenical endeavor of the sister churches of East and West grounded in dialogue and prayer is the search for perfect and total communion, which is neither absorption nor fusion, but a meeting in truth and love.”
Notice that the controversial part of the document is a declaration on behavior not theology. Pope John Paul II did not say through this declaration that Eastern Orthodox should not become Catholic or deny Catholic doctrine. Instead, this was a practical declaration about how ecumenism should be carried out. It’s something like a truce in a conflict so that both sides can, as the document goes on to say, completely remove mistrust and suspicion. So on the one hand, this can be a benefit for Eastern Catholics who live in predominantly Orthodox countries who would benefit from people not constantly trying to convert them.
On the other hand though, this can make it very difficult to help Orthodox Christians interested in becoming Catholic. So you’re completely free to say that this declaration was a very bad prudential judgment on the part of Pope Saint John Paul II and other popes who made it. But you can’t say that it’s a heresy because all the popes recognize that the Orthodox have a right to follow their conscience and become Catholic and it is a good thing if an Eastern Orthodox freely chooses to become Catholic. Once again, this just involves a prudential judgment about how to achieve full unity with Eastern Orthodox that you can freely reject and say it’s a bad prudential judgment. But there’s nothing her because there’s no theological statement in this declaration pertaining to that matter.
Peter Dimond:
Francis actively participated in the worship of the idle Pachamama and of all the false religions at his Assisi event because he hosted it.
Trent Horn:
Dimond has presented no evidence that a pagan idol was worshiped in the Vatican Gardens in 2013. There is also evidence that these were indigenous Catholics offering worship with a symbol of Mary. In the video you can hear one of them refer to the statue as Our Lady of the Amazon or this statue could just be a symbol of an abstract concept like life or motherhood. It’s not a pagan deity. But even if this was pagan worship, Dimond has presented no evidence that Pope Francis actively participated in it instead of awkwardly observing it. You could say, well Francis is a heretic because he failed to stop idle worship at the Vatican, so he is not the Pope.
The problem with this argument is that on Dimond’s website he says The seventh century Pope Honorius failed to stop the heresy of monothelitism, but Pope Honorius was not a heretic just because he failed in his pastoral duties to stop the heresy of monothelitisism. The same we true of Pope Francis, that even if this were an idolatrous of worship, at best he would be like Pope Honorius failing to stop it, but that would not make him a manifest heretic just because he failed in his duties. Manifest heresy involves the teachings you make, not the failure to act when you should.
Peter Dimond:
This summer he arranged and actively participated in a pagan ritual that worships the “Western grandmother” and the “sacred circle of spirits.” That’s an act of apostasy.
Trent Horn:
Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith and Pope Francis has not done that. At worst, he engaged in scandalous behavior by being present at this event. But as I noted earlier, St. Peter committed the sin of scandal when he refused to dine with Gentile Christians. And Galatians 2 such behavior would make it appear that Peter denied a dogmatic truth about the salvation of the Gentiles. But Peter didn’t stop being Pope just because of his cowardly scandalous behavior. In fact, in order to avoid this objection related to Peter, Dimond claims that the Cephas Paul rebukes and Galatians 2 isn’t actually St. Peter he is some other guy. And while some church fathers did entertain this view, the vast majority of them as well as academic scholars today rejected the idea that the Cephas and Galatians 2 that Paul rebuked is not St. Peter, nearly everyone holds that they’re the same person. Even agnostic scholars like Bart Ehrman who once endorsed the theory Cephas and Peter in Galatians 2 are different people, Ehrman now rejects that theory. He calls it silly and says that Cephas is Peter in Galatians 2.
Peter Dimond:
On May 23rd, 2015, Francis admitted that his own teaching might be heresy and he doesn’t even care, further proving his immutability or guilt.
Trent Horn:
This refers to something Pope Francis said in an address to the John 17 ecumenical group. The address is in Spanish, but here is an English translation from an article written by my colleague Jimmy Akin.
So here is what the Pope said to that group, “Division is the work of the Father of lies, the father of discord who does everything possible to keep us divided. Together today I here in Rome and you over there, we will ask our Father to send the spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and to give us the grace to be one so that the world may believe. I feel like saying something that may sound controversial or even heretical perhaps, but there is someone who knows that despite our differences, we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he who is persecuting Christians today. He who is anointing us with the blood of martyrdom. He knows that Christians are disciples of Christ, that they are one, that they are brothers. He doesn’t care if they are evangelicals or Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics or Apostolic. He doesn’t care, they are Christians.”
The Pope is just saying that the devil wants to persecute you because you’re a Christian and he doesn’t care what kind of Christian you are, he’s still going to persecute you. That should make sense to anybody. In saying this is a heresy, the Pope isn’t using the word in its technical meaning about denying dogma. The Pope is speaking to an ecumenical group of non-Catholics. So he is probably using the word in a broad sense to mean something unusual, something that goes against standard norms like when we say pineapple on pizza is heresy. In this case, it is an idea people may not be as familiar with that the devil has a special animus towards anyone who is a Christian and not just towards those who belong to the church Christ established.
So the Pope later says, in this message to this ecumenical group, “We will search together, We will pray together for the grace of unity.” And he sees the common bond of being martyrs for the faith as something that can help Christians find this important unity that we are all subject to the devil’s persecution and temptation and sufferings inflicted upon us just because we are Christian, remember we won’t be able to talk about what divides us as Christians until we have a solid foundation on what unites us and makes our theological differences less difficult to navigate.
Peter Dimond:
Francis is such an obvious and notorious heretic that 1500 scholars and others in the Vatican II Church signed a letter that openly accuses him of the crime of heresy and you don’t need to receive canonical warnings or an official declaration to be recognized as a notorious heretic. Heretics can be notorious by notoriety of fact without any canonical process as pre-Vatican II canonist correctly taught. Furthermore, almost all of the heresies that Francis promotes were promoted by John Paul II and Benedict XVI and are rooted directly in Vatican II. They are not true popes.
Trent Horn:
If Francis were a true heretic, then why weren’t any of those 1500 signatories a bishop who has apostolic authority? Dimond might say it’s because they are all heretics appointed by John Paul II and Benedict. All right then, as I said earlier, why didn’t any of the bishops alive in 1962 say Vatican II was heretical or Pope John XXIII was a heretic. The vast majority of the bishops signed the Vatican II documents and the handful who didn’t sign never said the council was heretical. In a church filled with tens of millions of lay people and tens of thousands of priests, you could find 1500 people to accuse the Pope of anything.
In order to prove the Pope is guilty of the canonical crime of heresy, that must be left to the teaching authority of the church. It won’t do any good to say, well, it’s just a notorious fact because I’ve shown all of Dimond’s notorious examples aren’t notorious at all, and if they were applied to every other Pope before Vatican II, that same rigorous hypercritical standard, hardly any Pope before Vatican II would be a true Pope. So Diamond’s position would refute Catholicism as a whole, not just his special version of it.
All right, well, that’s a wrap for now. The last note I’ll end on is this. It’s fine to have criticisms of Pope Francis or the bishops or anybody for that matter. Nobody’s perfect. But I’m really worried that some people have taken this license and have adopted a light sedevacantism. They call Pope Francis Bergoglio. They say they don’t care what the bishops think, but then they turn around and they make fun of sedevacantists, but sedevacantists have a good point when they say, “If you feel that you can disobey the Pope’s teachings whenever you want, then in what sense is he even the Pope for you?” I actually did an episode recently with the Catholic Answers president, Chris Check on how people like St. Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena teach us to follow and respectfully challenge our bishops.
And this is what we should do. It would be a tragic irony if someone chose sedevacantism and thought they were serving Christ, but the entire time they ignored Christ in the Eucharist who was waiting for them, because they were misled by these spurious arguments about the promises that Christ made to his church. But as I said, that is a wrap for now.
Thank you guys for watching. If you want a full treatment of sedevacantism to dive deeper in the subject, I’d recommend the book, True or False Pope. I’ll link to it in the description below. And yeah, I just hope you all have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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