The Crisis Today: An Impossible Separation Unmasked
Prologue: Can the Imposition of a New Religion Be Separated from the Status of the Pope? My attention was recently drawn to what is described as a “magnificent response” to an objection. Summarizing the response, the poster affirmed: “ The crisis of today is the imposition of a new religion by the ‘proximate Rule of Faith’, not that of a ‘heretical pope’.” The response itself stated: “ Our argumentation is thus entirely independent of the personal status in the Church of the ‘Vatican II popes’: are they heretics, are they schismatics? This last consideration does not have any bearing on the value of the argument presented above: namely that one cannot become the pope unless one intends to uphold the Catholic religion. Whether one is a heretic or the most devout of Catholics does not in itself change the value of this argument. The question of the personal status of the pope as he is a private person, and the question of the objective imposition of a false new religion are two entirely ...