Thursday, October 17, 2019

Sedevacantism

I'm not a Catholic canon lawyer, so I might be mistaken, but I had a question about the coherence of sedevacantism. In my experience, sedevacantists think there's been a string of antipopes from John XXIII to Francis. John XXIII became pope in 1958. 

To my knowledge, a valid priest must be ordained by a valid bishop, and (diocesan) bishops must be appointed by the pope. If, however, the papal office has been vacant for over 60 years, doesn't that rupture apostolic succession? There's a chain reaction down the line: popes appoint bishops while bishops ordain priests. If there's too great an interval, then there ceases to be any living bishops to ordain priests. At that point there's a break in apostolic succession, and once broken, the rift can be restored. 

4 comments:

  1. Looking up what sedevacantism meant (only having heard the word before but not knowing what it meant), I came across this:

    https://www.catholic.com/video/the-problem-with-sedevacantism

    The host of the show seems to even accentuate the issue you make at 3 mins into the video.

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  2. Breaking canon law by not having a papal mandate for a bishop consecration would only make the consecration illicit- not invalid.

    Sedevacantists would say of the Thuc line bishops, for example, that they are licit as well as valid, though, because a church law ceases automatically if it becomes impossible to fulfill.

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  4. Cekada's 2006 Absolutely Null and Utterly Void addresses this directly.

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