[Question:]{.underline} Is a Sedevacantist to be considered a non-Catholic?
[Answer:]{.underline} It is certainly of Faith that Our Lord gave the powers of the keys to the successor of Peter, and that the Pope is the Church’s visible head. However, it is not of Faith that Our Lord would not leave His Church for a time without a visible head. There have been times in past history of up to three years without a Pope, and times during which nobody really knew who the true Pope was. Consequently the belief that this particular person is not the Pope is not necessarily a denial of the Catholic Faith.
The traditional code of Canon Law (Canon 1325, §2) defines a schismatic as one who refuses to submit to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. However, given the present confusion of the Church and the fact that we are obliged by our Faith to refuse so many of the liberal, ecumenical statements of Pope John Paul II, it is not necessarily obvious that a sedevacantist actually refuses to submit to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, and that he is consequently a schismatic.
Nevertheless, it is preposterous to say, as the sedevacantists do, that there has not been any Pope for more than 40 years, for this would destroy the visibility of the Church, and the very possibility of a canonical election of a future Pope.
Just submission to the Pope is a principle of unity in the Church, along with the Faith, the sacraments, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass. This is all contained in the definition of the Church contained in the catechism: “The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him”. However, he is not the only factor of unity. This is the misconception shared by both modernists and sedevacantists alike. They sat that nothing matters but the Pope and become modernist like him, or they say that nothing matters but the Pope, and he is destroying the Church, so therefore there is no Pope. The real problem of the present crisis in the Church is that the Pope is no longer acting as principle of unity, as he ought, for he is no longer adequately promoting the unity of Faith, sacraments and the Mass that has always characterized the Catholic Church.
It is consequently true that there can be some theological discussion as to whether sedevacantists are formally schismatic or not. The answer to this depends on the degree of sedevacantism. There are radical sedevacantists that call us heretics since we are in communion with a heretic (Wotyla), so they say. These are certainly schismatic, for they clearly reject communion with true Catholics, who are in no way modernist. By making their sedevacantism a quasi article of faith they certainly fall into the second category of persons that Canon 1325, §2 declares to be schismatic: “He is a schismatic who rejects communion with members of the Church subject to him (i.e. the Sovereign Pontiff*)”*. It is consequently by their refusal to be a part of the Church, and effectively making the “church” as they see it consist only in sedevacantists that they are certainly schismatic.
There are other sedevacantists, who do not hold their opinion as a question of Faith, but just as a private opinion, and who do not condemn other traditional Catholics who do not share their opinion. On account of the confusion of the present crisis and the fact that they do not refuse communion with Catholics who have the true Faith, it is not unreasonable to hold that such persons are not formally schismatic.
However, the real danger with the sedevacantists, over and above the question of their being formally schismatic, is that they fail to have a Catholic attitude. Their rash and excessive condemnatory attitude, not only towards the Pope and the modernists, but also towards Catholics simply trying to live their Catholic life, and other traditional Catholics, leads them to fall into rigorism, formalism and legalism, and to condemning everybody else. They easily fall into pharisaical pride. They are a real plague to the traditional movement here in the U.S. Such people have no sense of obedience or submission, and often commit rash judgement. They do not feel at home in the Society’s chapels where the Church’s Faith, sacraments, doctrines and Mass are preached together with the interior life of charity and self-sacrifice as the means for restoring all things in Christ.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.