SEDEVACANTISTS (Religious Movement)

From the words ‘sede’ meaning a ‘seat’ or ‘see’ of a bishop, and ‘vacante’, meaning ‘being vacant’, ‘sede vacante’ is the term formally applied to the period between the death of one pope and the election of another. This period has, over the last couple of centuries at least, been relatively short, but in the past there have been papal elections which have lasted nearly three years. The term ‘sedevacantist’ is applied to those people—it is hardly a movement in any technical sense—who hold that there is currently no legitimate pope and that the present incumbent is an apostate. The argument for this stance arises from the belief that the Church cannot fall into error—this is a maxim of traditionalist Catholics (and, to be fair, in some form is held by all Catholics). But because traditionalists believe that the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) are errors, therefore those who sanctioned the conclusions of Vatican II must be in error and have as a consequence forfeited their ecclesiastical authority. Chief among these must be numbered the Pope. He is regarded as an apostate for the same reasons that members of the Lefebvre Movement withdrew their allegiance from the papacy, although Lefebvrists are not strictly speaking sedevacantists. Two things in particular are cited as evidence of papal ‘apostasy’, support for the order of mass as it was introduced after Vatican II, and papal sympathies for the ecumenical movement. Much of the hostility to Vatican II arises from a conviction that the Roman Catholic Church cannot, and has not, changed. The papacy, therefore, has separated itself from the dissidents, not vice versa. Specifically, the dissidents point to the introduction of the new liturgy, not only on the grounds that it is new, but because they claim that it is Protestant in inspiration. The objection to ecumenism is based upon the fact that anyone entering into ecumenical dialogue necessarily accepts that the religion of the dialogue partner has in it some elements of truth. This the traditionalists deny. The Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, therefore, is a document which they find particularly objectionable. One rigorous sedevacantist, for example, claims that there is a direct and explicit contradiction between that Declaration and the 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura of Pope Pius IX condemning the errors of the age—specifically liberalism in all its forms. The French priest Abbe Georges de Nantes wrote in his monthly news-letter La Contre Reforme Catholique, ‘Freedom of conscience and of religion is an error, insulting to God and pernicious for all human society’—a view which can certainly be found in several papal encyclicals in the nineteenth century. De Nantes’ belief that the Pope (Pope Paul VI in this instance) had fallen into heresy did not, however, arise expressly from the documents of Vatican II but from the promulgation of the new liturgy in 1969. De Nantes himself eventually came to the conclusion that a strict sedevacantism was impracticable, and argued that though the Pope had erred he had done so only in a personal capacity and not as Pope. Even strict sedevacantists admit there is a practical problem with their stance because, if the Pope (and, one should add, the bishops for they all accept the new liturgy and the changes brought about by Vatican II) can no longer be regarded as true Catholics, where then is the visible Church? Some respond rather along the lines of de Nantes that the election of popes and the appointment of bishops are themselves valid, but because the office-holders accept doctrine incompatible with true Catholicism they have no jurisdiction over the Church. Others reject this view as a fudge. They argue on the contrary that what is essential is the Catholic faith itself which ecclesiastical structures only serve to promote, but the faith may survive at least for some time without these structures, until the Pope and bishops see the error of their ways and repudiate the decrees of Vatican II and the new liturgy.