Sede-Privationism, If You Must?

 

Prologue: When Necessity Calls To Duty

A screenshot was attached to a comment on my post on X with the request that requires consideration of Cardinal Manning, the Fathers, and the Limits of Analogy:

“What do you say to this? The author is an ex-seminarian of MHTS. It seems to match what Cardinal Manning writes (based on the Church Fathers) in "The Present Crisis of the Holy See"; that as Christ went through His passion, death & resurrection, His Church must also.” 

Below is the text extracted from the screenshot:

Quote from: 2Vermont on January 27, 2021, 09:31:13 AM

What is your position then?

I am not so sure history will not prove us all incorrect, at least in some respect or other. If I HAVE to align with some take or other, the one that makes the most sense to me is Sede-privationism, or the Cassiciacum Thesis of Guérard des Lauriers (who, aside from Fr. Stepanich OFM, was the only legit theologian in Traddieland).

Pure sv-ism has unsolvable issues, as does r&r.

When Christ was on earth, one of the chief reasons His followers were thunderstruck by His death was… Who would've thought God could DIE? He did.

Christ said He'd be WITH the Church until the end, but isn't the life of Holy Church analogous to the life of Our Blessed Lord? Well, He died. Yes. His Divinity remained united to both His body and soul and thus He could reunite them at will. Yet they truly separated, which is the definition of death.

Is there anything which says the Church, like Her Master, cannot die, at least in the sense that Her body and Her soul separate? Would such a scenario necessarily void the promise to be with Her all days?

Much more to say but those are some basic thoughts. 

Here I see a call to duty to intervene in favor of the clarity and precision that our Holy Faith obliges. Oh that it be an edification and not be taken as an exercise of the will to stir controversy! 

The screenshot in question... 

I. The Question Being Raised

The argument under consideration proposes that, just as Christ passed through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, so too the Church, His Mystical Body; may undergo a comparable “death,” understood as a separation between her “body” and her “soul,” without thereby contradicting Christ’s promise to remain with her until the end of time.

This line of reasoning is being advanced in defense of sede-privationism, particularly under appeal to the Cassiciacum Thesis of Guérard des Lauriers and to the writings of Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, especially The Present Crisis of the Holy See.

Because this appeal invokes the Fathers and a cardinal of the Roman Church, it demands precision, not impressionism. 

It is a known fact that analogy, if pressed too far, ceases to illuminate and begins to deform doctrine.

II. Indefectibility: The Non-Negotiable Boundary

Before any analogy is admitted, one principle must govern the entire discussion:

The Church is indefectible. 

According to the constant teaching of the pre-Vatican II Magisterium:

• The Church cannot fail
• Cannot perish
• Cannot lose her essential constitution
• Cannot cease to exist as a visible, juridical, apostolic society

These, the promoters of Sede-Privationism certaintlyhold. It is in fact in an attempt to defend indefectibility that they are convinced Sede-Privationism is the topnotch explanation of the present crisis of the Christ. 

But, in our fallen nature, willing does not always amount doing. Willing to defend indefectibility is noble and highly commendable. But, the question is whether Sede-Privationism actually defends indefectibility. 

Indefectibility does not mean the Church will always appear glorious or dominant. It means she will always remain the Church Christ founded, possessing:

• The true Faith
• The true sacraments
• A real hierarchy with authority in principle

Indefectibility is not merely the survival of an idea, but the uninterrupted existence of the Church as a visible, juridical society endowed with authority in act.

Any theory that results in a Church without authority as such, without visibility, or without juridical reality crosses from theology into contradiction.

III. The Passion Analogy: Legitimate; Within Limits

It is undeniably Catholic to affirm that:

• Christ suffered
• Christ was humiliated
• Christ was rejected by His own
• Christ appeared defeated

It is likewise Catholic to affirm, on the authority of the Fathers; that:

• The Church must follow her Head
• She must pass through a Passion
• She will endure betrayal, eclipse, and apparent ruin

This is the shared foundation on which Cardinal Manning builds.

IV. What Cardinal Manning Actually Teaches

(The Present Crisis of the Holy See)

Cardinal Manning, drawing explicitly from the Fathers, teaches that:

• The Church will undergo a Passion
• Her authority will be mocked
• Her defenders will appear powerless
• Her enemies will claim victory
• Confusion will reign even within her visible structures

He compares this to:

• Christ before Pilate
• Christ abandoned by the Apostles
• Christ nailed to the Cross while the High Priest still sat in office

However, and this distinction is decisive; 

Manning does not teach that the Church dies ontologically.

He does not teach:

• A separation of the Church’s body and soul
• A suspension of apostolic succession
• A metaphysical collapse of ecclesial authority
• A Church reduced to a purely spiritual remnant

Manning’s Passion is historical and moral, not ontological.

• It is humiliation, not dissolution.
• Crucifixion, not annihilation.

V. The Necessary Distinction: Passion IS NOT Death

Here the critical distinction must be made.

What May Be Said (With the Fathers and Manning)

It is legitimate to say:

• The Church may be crucified by persecution
• She may be surrounded by false shepherds
• Her true voice may be drowned out
• Her authority may be claimed by impostors
• She may appear abandoned; even “defeated”

This corresponds to Christ:

• Mocked as King
• Stripped and scourged
• Declared powerless by those who held office

What May NOT Be Said (Without Breaking Tradition)

It is not legitimate to say:

• The Church’s soul separates from her body (the Modernists perpetuating the Body, Traditional Catholics the Soul...)
• The Church ceases to be juridically constituted
• The Church “dies” in the proper theological sense
• The Church must later be reconstituted

Christ’s death involved:

• A unique hypostatic union
• A true separation of body and soul
• Divine power to reunite them

The Church is not a divine person.

She is a society constituted precisely by visible unity.

To apply death proper to the Church is to collapse analogy into identity; something neither the Fathers nor Cardinal Manning ever do.

VI. Sede-Privationism Examined in This Light

Sede-privationism attempts to preserve indefectibility by positing:

• Material occupancy of office without formal authority
• A prolonged, universal privation of papal form

However:

• This distinction is speculative
• It is unknown to the Fathers
• It is absent from pre-Vatican II magisterial teaching
• It risks redefining the papacy itself

Cardinal Manning does not describe a Church with a “half-pope,” nor a hierarchy suspended between being and non-being. His crisis is not metaphysical; it is moral, historical, and juridical.

VII. Why Absolute Sedevacantism Fits Manning More Naturally

When Cardinal Manning speaks of crisis, his emphasis consistently falls on usurpation, not suspension.

Drawing from Scripture and the Fathers, he describes:

• Offices held by those who betray their purpose
• Authority claimed without divine sanction
• A visible structure retaining form while lacking legitimacy

This mirrors:

• Caiaphas holding the High Priesthood while condemning Christ
• Judas among the Apostles
• Shepherds who scatter rather than gather

Absolute sedevacantism, in its classical and restrained form, makes a clean claim:

• Public defection from the Catholic faith is incompatible with holding ecclesiastical office.

This position:

• Requires no speculative metaphysics
• Does not divide authority into material and formal halves existing side by side
• Preserves the Church’s nature without redefining it

The Church remains alive.

Authority remains in principle.

What is absent is not the Church; but legitimate occupants.

And, the Church makes a provision in her Canons for the principle to apply and what must be done when constituted authority ceases to function.

VIII. Vacancy Is Not Death

Here the final clarification must be made:

• Vacancy is not death
• Usurpation is not indefectibility’s failure
• Eclipse is not annihilation

Cardinal Manning’s Church on Good Friday:

• Appears leaderless
• Appears abandoned
• Appears overcome

Yet she is not dead.

She is suffering.

Absolute sedevacantism, carefully stated; fits this image better than sede-privationism, because it does not require altering the Church’s metaphysics in order to explain her Passion.

IX. “I Am With You All Days”

Christ’s promise to remain with His Church all days, even unto the consummation of the world, guarantees what pertains to the being of the Church:

• Continuity of mission: the Church never ceases to teach, sanctify, and witness to the truth.
• Continuity of authority in principle: the power Christ entrusted to His Church is never extinguished, even when its exercise is obscured or impeded.
• Continuity of the true Church: the Church founded by Christ never perishes, is never replaced, and is never transformed into another body.

This promise does not guarantee what pertains merely to appearances:

• That every claimant to ecclesiastical office is therefore legitimate by default.
• That usurpation or betrayal cannot occur within visible structures.
• That outward authority always coincides with inward fidelity.

X. Conclusion: If You Must?

If one insists on invoking Cardinal Manning and the Fathers of the Church, it must be stated with precision and without qualification:

• They do not teach a “dead Church.”
• They do not teach a separation of the Church’s body and soul.
• THEY DO TEACH a Church that may be betrayed, crucified, and apparently defeated, yet never deprived of her essential being, never stripped of her divine constitution, and therefore always indefectible.

Within that framework, if one feels compelled to choose among imperfect explanations to account for the present crisis, the distinction becomes clear:

• Sede-privationism overreaches by introducing speculative metaphysical distinctions unknown to the Fathers and unsupported by the pre-Vatican II Magisterium.
• Absolute sedevacantism, when held soberly and without reductionism, conforms more naturally to the Patristic and Manning paradigm, insofar as it explains the crisis in terms of usurpation and betrayal, rather than by redefining the nature of ecclesiastical authority itself.

The governing truth, however, admits of no compromise:

Christ truly died.

The Church truly suffers; but does not die.

Anything beyond this crosses the boundary of legitimate analogy and leaves the Fathers behind.

I am persuaded that this intervention has served its purpose: to stand on the side of clarity, precision, and fidelity to Tradition.

Blessed be God.