SEDEVACANTISM: RESPONSES THAT MISS THE OBVIOUS POINT

 

A “living” authority that can reverse dogma is not living; it is mutating. But, the Church does not mutate...
 Sede vacante since 1958... 

Prologue: When Objectors Miss The Point

Today, more than ever, most objections do not answer what is said; they answer what is imagined.

So too, most refutations do not engage the argument; they replace it.

Most critics do not confront the claim; they reconstruct a safer version of it.

Thus, 

• what appears as debate is often misdirection, 
• what appears as reasoning is often reframing, 
• and what appears as engagement is often avoidance.

The fact is that, before one can answer an argument, one must first understand it. 

When a man misses the point,

• He does not argue the truth ; he argues a shadow of it.
• He does not confront the claim; he replaces it.
• He does not refute the position; he invents one.

Thus the debate never happens, because the argument is never met. Where must the cause be attributed to? Literary ignorance or laziness? Or literary dishonesty at the service of an ideology?

Whatever the cause may be, it is rather appalling that many seem never disposed to get the point of [Theological] SEDEVACANTISM no matter how simply presented. 

The patience of Catholic charity obliges us to never give up showing how the point is missed, perhaps that obstacle responsible may be overcome -be it excusable weakness or damnable malice. 

The Context: How It Got Started

I made the following short post: 

DO NOT ABANDON THE CHURCH!

“Not abandoning the Church”

does not mean staying in occupied buildings.

It means staying with what makes the Church the Church.

The Sedevacantist claim is not:

“We left the Church.”

The claim is:

“We refused to leave the Church — therefore we left those who left her.”

Not:

“We abandoned Catholic authority.”

But:

“We reject false claims to Catholic authority.”

Not:

“We left Catholicism.”

But:

“We refused to follow a rupture.”

Dare to note the difference…

@highlight

The following comments were left by different people:

First:

Leaving the Church is total abandonment of authority.

Just as I will always say. The Catholic Church have 5 major rites. All these rites existed even when the Roman rite still seats. You will ask, how come we have all these rites instead of one rite? It was all born when the Church was in early stage. Worships were done differently which gave rise to those rites. It didn't mean that those other rites abandoned the Church. Rather they were with the authority in Rome where the seat of St. Peter stood. They aligned with the Church in Rome yet upholding their rites, while upholding the same belief. It's not about the building. The usual talk of buildings by Sedevecantist is a false reason selling to those that chose to be deceived.

To stand for the faith is to withstand persecution and not run from it. Real traditional Catholics have stood for the faith remaining within the authority in Rome. They have taken all abuses till date. They refused to be deceived and have proudly lived the faith in the face of challenges especially being called heretics.

Today, Cardinals, Bishops and priests are rising each day calling for return to tradition. If the few who did remain with the Church and her authority did the same as Sedevecantist, how will the battle be won?

Anyone outside the authority in Rome lacks any legal standing with the Church. They are false and pretentious. They sell bad seeds using tradition as bait to lure unsuspecting souls.

                     Ave Maria

             +.+.+

Second:

this is, of course, what all schismatic heretics tell themselves to jutify their disobedience. they assume authority to themselves to decide, rather than listening to and obeying the Church. Not much different than what Martin Luther did.

Third:

you left the catholic church.

Fourth:

Staying with the Church means staying with the Living Magisterium, not a self-made version of tradition. You claim not to leave the Church, yet you’ve adopted the exact logic of the Protestant Reformers: setting yourself up as the judge over the Holy See.

If you reject the visible Head of the Church, you don't save the Church: you become a sect. True Catholicism requires union with the living successor of Peter, not an abstract 'ideal' of a Church that only exists in your own interpretation. Dare to note the difference between fidelity and schism.

A careful reader notices how each missed the point of the original post on which they were commenting.

• What I wrote was ecclesiological, not emotional.
• What they replied with was sociological, not theological.

That’s the disconnect. And it has consequences. 

I was defining what makes the Church the Church; they kept pointing to where people are standing.

Those are not the same thing.

Pre-Vatican II Catholic theology is crystal clear on this distinction. But for that distinction, how could we get clarity today! 

Why the First Reply Misses the Point Entirely

The first comment sounds confident, historical, even pious; but it collapses under its own weight because it answers a claim that was never made and ignores the actual issue: what makes the Church the Church.

At no point was the claim ever, “We reject authority,” or “We reject Rome,” or “We reject the papacy.”

That is a strawman.

The actual claim is simpler and far more Catholic:

• False authority is not authority.
• Rupture is not continuity.
• Novelty is not tradition.

By redefining disputed legitimacy as “rejection of authority itself,” the response commits a basic category error. 

Questioning whether a claim to authority is Catholic is not the same thing as rejecting authority as such. Every canonist, theologian, and Father before the modern crisis understood this distinction.

Faith, Not Geography, Defines Catholic Unity

The appeal to the five rites unintentionally proves the opposite of what is claimed.

The Eastern rites were Catholic not because of proximity to Rome, nor because of buildings or administrative alignment, but because they professed the same faith, the same dogma, the same authority in principle.

When other Eastern bodies later kept bishops, buildings, and liturgies but rejected Roman dogma, the Church did not say,

"They stayed in the structure, so they’re still Catholic.”

She said, plainly: they left the Church.

So Catholicity has never been defined by buildings, continuity of occupation, or institutional survival; but by faith and authority in truth.

Persecution Is Not a Substitute for Fidelity

Yes, Catholics endure persecution.

But Catholics are never commanded to endure doctrinal corruption.

St. Athanasius did not say,

“I will heroically remain inside Arianism.”

He said:

“They have the buildings, but we have the Faith.”

That one sentence dismantles the argument entirely.

Remaining inside a system while the faith itself is altered is not heroic endurance. It is theological confusion dressed up as courage.

Suffering does not sanctify error. Heretics suffer. Schismatics suffer. False religions suffer. Truth is not measured by pain; it is measured by conformity to doctrine.

Authority Is Conditioned by Truth, Not the Other Way Around

The claim that anyone “outside the authority in Rome lacks legal standing” assumes something Catholic theology has never taught: that authority validates itself.

Pre-Vatican II theology is blunt:

• Authority exists to guard the Faith
• Authority that contradicts its purpose collapses its own claim

St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a pope who openly deviates from the faith ceases to be pope; not is removed, not is resisted, but ceases. Suarez and Cajetan debate the mechanics, not the principle.

• Office is not magic.
• Jurisdiction does not override doctrine.
• Faith is prior to authority, not downstream from it.

So the dispute is not, “Is there authority?”

The dispute is, “Is this authority Catholic in content, continuity, and identity?”

Diversity of Rites vs. Doctrinal Rupture

• Different rites never meant different faith.
• Diversity of worship, not equal to contradiction of dogma
• Variety of expression, not equal to rupture of belief

But Vatican II did not introduce another rite.

It introduced:

• a new ecclesiology
• a new theology
• a new anthropology
• a new sacramental theology
• a new missiology
• a new ecumenism
• a new doctrine of religious liberty

That is not a plural expression.

That is doctrinal discontinuity.

The issue is not ritual variety; it is identity.

“Staying” Is Not the Same as Being Faithful

History is merciless on this point.

• Saints stood against doctrinal confusion.
• St. Athanasius was outside the structures while heresy ruled inside them.
• St. Maximus opposed emperors and patriarchs.

Truth was not where the buildings were.

Truth was where the Faith was.

“Return to Tradition” Proves Rupture, Not Continuity

Finally, the appeal to “movements calling for a return to tradition” quietly concedes everything.

You do not return to what you never left.

A Church in continuity does not need: 

• restoration movements,
• recovery movements,
• return movements,
• tradition movements.

Those exist only after loss.

The Point, Stated Cleanly

Again, the Sedevacantist claim is not:

“We left authority.”

It is:

“We reject false claims to Catholic authority.”

Not:

“We left Rome.”

But:

“We refuse to call rupture ‘Rome.’”

Not:

“We abandoned the Church.”

But:

“We refuse to redefine the Church.”

Not:

“We rejected the papacy.”

But:

“We reject a transformed concept of the papacy.”

That is not schism.

That is refusing to confuse survival with identity.

Reply to the Second Comment

(“This is what all schismatics say… Luther!”)

This is rhetorical heat with zero theological light.

Luther’s error was private judgment against defined doctrine.

The traditional Catholic position is the opposite:

• We submit to all defined doctrine
• We reject novelties condemned by previous magisterium

Luther said:

“The Church was wrong before me.” 

 Uncompromising Catholics say:

“The Church was right before you.”

That’s not Protestant logic.

That’s Catholic logic before modernity rewired people’s brains.

If appealing to what the Church always taught is “Lutheran,” then every Father, Doctor, and Pope before 1960 is guilty.

Which is absurd.

Reply to the Third Comment

(“You left the Catholic Church.”)

This is an assertion, not an argument.

It assumes the very point in dispute:

• that the post-rupture hierarchy is identical with the Church as Christ instituted her

But pre-Vatican II theology distinguishes clearly between:

• The Church materially (structures, claimants)
• The Church formally (faith, authority, mission)

You can walk out of a burning house

without walking out of your family.

If the faith is gone, remaining is not fidelity; it is confusion.

Reply to the Fourth Comment

(Living Magisterium, visibility, sect accusation)

This one sounds sophisticated; but it quietly smuggles in a fatal assumption.

The hidden assumption:

The “Living Magisterium” cannot contradict itself.

But if it does contradict itself, one of two things must be true:

• Either the Church has defected (impossible), or
• The contradiction does not belong to the Church

Pre-Vatican II Catholicism already answered this.

The Magisterium is:

• Living, yes

But also bound

• Bound to Scripture
• Bound to Tradition
• Bound to prior definitions

A “living” authority that can reverse dogma is not living; it is mutating.

And the Church does not mutate.

The Core Clarification (the one everyone avoided)

Visibility does not mean “whoever claims office is the Church.”

Visibility means:

• The Faith can be known
• The Sacraments can be found
• Apostolic doctrine remains identifiable

During the Arian crisis:

• Most bishops were wrong
• Many sees were occupied

The Church was still visible; in fidelity, not in numbers

To say:

“Without the current claimant, the Church becomes an abstraction”

is historically false and theologically dangerous.

The Church survived:

• Anti-Popes
• Vacant sees
• Mass apostasy among clergy
• She did not survive dogmatic mutation; because that never happened, and can never happen.

Final Picture (simple, concrete)

Think of a royal seal.

• The wax may change hands
• The table may change rooms
• But when the seal is broken, the document is no longer valid

Uncompromising Catholics are saying:

“We didn’t abandon the kingdom. We noticed the seal was broken.”

That is not schism.

That is recognition of reality.

So?

Fidelity is not following every voice that claims authority.

Fidelity is recognizing authority by the Faith it guards.

When the Faith is preserved, the Church is present; even if the buildings are occupied by strangers.

The dispute at stake is not structural

The dispute is not ritual

The dispute is not emotional

The dispute is not personal

The dispute is not about buildings

The dispute is not about persecution

The dispute is ontological and doctrinal:

Can the Catholic Church change her doctrine, worship, ecclesiology, and moral theology in substance and still be the same Church?

Traditional Catholic answer: No.

Summing Up

It must be reiterated that:

• The argument is not about where the buildings are.

It is about where the Faith is.

• Not who sits in offices.

But what is taught.

• Not who claims authority.

But whether that authority is Catholic in substance.

• Not who governs.

But what is believed.

• Not who controls structures.

But who preserves continuity.

Yes. 

• Continuity defines the Church.
• Rupture contradicts her.
• Truth legitimizes authority.
• Error nullifies it.
• Office does not create truth.
• Truth creates authority.