Müller: No Canonical Process Can Declare a Pope a Heretic
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- Papal infallibility is not a special grace that saves a pope from sin and apostasy.
- Catholics are not subjects of ecclesiastical superiors to whom they owe blind obedience, as in a totalitarian system.
- Absolute rulers who eliminate their recalcitrant colleagues and punish them with exile, confiscation of property and show trials are no model for the Church.
- Papal history [especially in modern times] offers some unworthy spectacles of power triumphing over law.
- A pope can "schismatically separate himself from the Church".
- Apostasy, manifest heresy or open schism of a Pope as an individual is rather a theoretical question [until Francis came].
- In today's technical sense of formal heresy, i.e. the direct denial of a revealed doctrine dogmatically defined by the Church, there has not been a single heretical pope (not even as a private person), even [= only] in historical retrospect.
- If a pope blatantly and notoriously contradicts Scripture or Catholic doctrine, the faithful are no longer obliged to obey him and he would, so to speak, lose his office himself. In practice, however, this would divide the Church into different obediences, depending on who considered which pope to be the legitimate successor of Peter.
- The Councils of Constance and Basel (1431-1449) had to find a practical way out of the Western Schism [with up to two antipopes], despite the Councils' false teaching of the superiority of the Council over the Pope.
- There can be no canonical procedure by which a reigning pope could be officially declared a formal heretic and legally deposed. The supreme authority cannot be judged.
- There can be no contradiction between doctrine and pastoral care.
- Bonus quote: "It is not enough to be photographed with so-called 'transsexuals', but one must have the courage to call the [superficial] bodily change of sex a grave sin against the will of the Creator".
- Fun quote: "Church life takes place in the parishes [= RIP Church]".
Picture: © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk, CC BY-NC-ND, #newsProvofkxlu
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