Bishop Schneider responds to Archbishop Viganò on papal legitimacy
This episode of The John-Henry Westen Show is Part 2 of my two-part conversation with Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Joining me for Part 2 of this special two-part episode of The John-Henry Westen Show is Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
While addressing the problems of the Francis pontificate, Bp. Schneider answers problems related to canon law, such as concerns with Universi Dominici Gregis of St. John Paul II, as well as the argument of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
Schneider, when asked about Viganò’s theory that Francis may not have become Pope because he may not have had the intention of preserving the faith, just as a spouse going into a marriage without the right intention fails to confect the sacrament, says that Viganò’s arguments are “very weak” and “completely without basis.” “About interior things, the Church has no power to judge,” Schneider says in Latin, and stressing that only God can judge the interior state of a man and because a man’s intention can change at the last moment. He also stresses that since the papacy is not a sacrament, there is no comparison.
Regarding an invalid papal election, Schneider notes that the 2,000 year praxis of the Church has been such that when the whole College of Cardinals and episcopate recognize the newly-elected Pope as Pope, he is indeed the Pope. “[F]rom this moment, he is the true Pope and … irregularities of intention or election of bribe or simony are healed in this moment, because of the entire Church, because the election of a papacy is not a divine law.” Schneider also applies this rule to objections to the 2013 conclave based on Universi Dominici Gregis, and stresses that “it has not an absolute value and must be subordinated to the greater good of the Church, which is the clarity [of] who is the Pope.”
I also asked him about Viganò’s argument from the election of Pope Urban VI, when most of the cardinals rejected him and elected an anti-pope, Clement VII. Schneider points out that the rejection of Urban VI did not take place for a month, even though the election was likely invalid because of pressure from the Roman mob, but that the current pontificate does not compare because there is no rival claimant for the papacy under Francis – something that in his view is a “fundamental distinction of the situation.” Finally, Schneider examines the opinion of theologians, including Sts. Robert Bellarmine and John Henry Newman, who held that a Pope teaching heresy ceases ipso facto to be Pope. Schneider stresses that such an opinion was only the opinion of theologians and never the teaching of the Church, even if the opinion had a basis in the Decretals of Gratian, a medieval document that served as the Church’s canon law until St. Pius X reformed canon law, a process completed by Benedict XV in 1917.
Schneider also opines that the magisterium of the Church, because the provision in Gratian’s Decretals does not appear in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, shied away from the opinion. While there is an exception to the claim that the 2,000 year history of the magisterium does not support the view of Bellarmine, with a papal bull of Pope Paul IV saying that a heretic cannot be elected Pope, the decision remains the only magisterial text – a text that is therefore not a constant magisterial teaching, and was not promulgated ex cathedra.
Another problem with the issue is that while Gratian’s Decretals made mention of the possibility of an ipso facto loss of papal office, they do not mention any norms for how a sitting Pope would be deposed, nor does Schneider maintain that a former Pope can be deposed by the Church in a future time.
“Really it’s [unresolvable],” Schneider concludes. “They will only create again two, three Popes. This will be for sure the consequence, if a group of cardinals will depose or declare that a Pope lost his office.”
