Read www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com
Read www.the-pope.com/library.html
Read www.trosch.org
Read http://www.geocities.com/prakashjm45/michaeline.html
Read http://www.sedevacantist.com/pontiffs.html
This page shows how unsure the Catholic Church is of exactly how many popes it
has
Read http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/SiSiNoNo/2003_March/errors_of_vatican_II.htm
Read http://www.sxws.com/charis/pope-20.htm
for proof that the Church has no idea how many real or false popes it has see
also http://www.trosch.org/for/popes-ca.htm
http://www.catholicrestoration.org/
www.tracts.ukgo.com/loraine_boettner.htm
http://www.catholicism.org/pages/sedevac.htm
http://www.christorchaos.com/PrayforthePopeTheLastOneandtheNextOne.html
Condemns the heresy and blasphemies of John Paul II
Read www.catholictreasures.com
– Proves Modern Vatican is anti-Catholic
Website of “Pope Peter II” http://custodi.club.fr/Indexangl.htm
Website on “Pope Linus II” http://www.tboyle.net/Catholicism/Unknwn_%20bp's_Consecrations.html
Page that supports view that new mass is a novelty http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20031027.html
Heresies of Pope Benedict XVI http://holywar.org/Ratzinger.htm
http://www.traditioninaction.org
pictures showing the outrageous defiance of Catholic teaching by the recent
popes
http://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/
Read http://www.catholicapologetics.info/
Foreword
Roman Catholic dogma says that the bishop of
In the past there have been two or three men claiming to be the true pope
at the one time and excommunicating each other and each others followers. Some Catholic apologists have come out with
the incredible idea that at the time there were two or three popes, if you were
a faithful Catholic and obeyed the man your conscience told you was the real
pope you were not in schism even if you were wrong about who was pope! That is like the Society of St Pius X
claiming that though it has bishops consecrated in defiance of papal authority
and though it runs independent of the modern day pope it is not in schism! It is in schism, it is separated from the
Church for it acts it. It has been
excommunicated by the
If such a schism can happen then surely you can have a pope becoming a
heretic and destroying or harming the faith.
If such a thing can happen then popes are no use for they don’t have any
legitimate authority over the Church.
The Church has to depend on hearsay,
speculation and being selective with evidence and only hearing what it
wants to hear to come out with a title deed, a legal list of popes, to defend
the authority of its pope and itself for if its rock has no authority it
doesn’t have any either and is usurping it.
The damage the Great Western Schism did to Catholic belief was
incalculable. The next time it happens
and it will be soon it will do worse damage for communications are better
now. When
URBAN VI AND HIS RIVAL
CLEMENT VII
In 1378, cardinals in
All of the cardinals agreed that the election of Urban VI was invalid for
they didn’t have any freedom during the conclave due to threats from a mob
demanding a Roman or an Italian. The mob
had even invaded the building they were in.
The two rival popes caused the Great Western Schism and resulted in one
Roman Catholic Church being led by Urban in
Please go to the Catholic Encyclopedia which is now online to verify
these details. I found it vital to my
research. If you go to Antipopes on this
site finding the information will be easier.
At times there have been two and even three popes without people knowing
who was the real and who was the phoney.
Sometimes the two contending popes didn’t know themselves! The worst example of this took place with the
Great Western Schism.
Do these fiascos prove that the pope is not infallible? Protestants may say that they do for God
would not let the world be confused about which man was infallible. There is more than that at stake. The wrong pope means that the Church he leads
can go into error for it is not the true Church. If you can’t tell which claimant is the real
pope then how can any of them really be leading the true Church?
The Protestants say that if Jesus made the pope the infallible rock he
built his Church on, that the Church and the pope would have been inspired to
prevent these disasters. This is true
for if Jesus will not allow the Church to err in doctrine and morals as the
Church teaches then he cannot allow the Church to end up being built on the
wrong rock or not knowing which rock is the real rock.
Catholics say there was a real but unrecognised pope. They say they know who he was now which as we
will see is not true and scholars continually argue over such matters and the
Vatican has times changed its mind about who the pope was. It might be thought that doesn’t matter if
they do know or not for the Holy Spirit has the power to ensure that the Church
does not lose the legacy of the true pope.
Jesus said there would be false Christs who would do miracles so why
wouldn’t he allow false popes or anti-popes?
He told us to be careful that the false Christs would not deceive us
meaning it is possible to see through them for you cannot resist them unless
you have evidence that they are deceivers.
When Jesus let the Church be misled by a false rock why would he
preserve the legacy of the true rock? He
cannot be trusted to do that. We cannot
trust the Lord so we cannot trust the papacy.
The whole point of the papacy is preserving the true Church and the
faith. Faith includes the doctrine that
you are in the true Church marked out by the pope who is its head. For example, to believe in the legitimacy of
Pope John Paul II is as much as part of the Catholic faith as is the divinity
of Jesus Christ or the existence of God.
It has to be even though they will say it is not. If you are attached to the wrong visible head
of the Church you are not in the true visible
The fact of the matter is if you have more than one person making a
plausible claim to be the pope you don’t know who the preserver of the faith is
and which one has the true Church? The
true pope could not be really a true pope then because then he is not the
rock? He would have to be able to be
rock in practice to be the real rock. He
would not even be a marker for the true Church never mind a rock!
The Great Western Schism started over Pope Urban VI who was elected in
1378 at one of the quickest conclaves ever – the speed itself indicates that
something was amiss. The cardinals later
said they were forced by a mob that bayed around them for an Italian or Roman
pope. If they hadn’t been forced they
could have taken a bit longer, obviously the mob wasn’t going to listen to
reason and give them time to find a pope that would please Italy. They wanted a pope and wanted one fast.
Urban VI was undoubtedly insane his mind having snapped when he was
chosen and most of the cardinals who elected him said they did so by force so
the election was invalid. Urban being
insane couldn’t give the necessary consent to becoming pope so his consent and
therefore his papacy was null and void.
He was not pope. The Catholic
Church will say that he must have been for that would contradict Christ’s
promise to Peter the first pope that he would be the rock of the Church and the
gates of hell will never prevail over the Church. They guess that he was sane despite outward
appearances. That is just
rationalisation. It is refusing to admit
that he might have been crazy and Christ wrong.
Some would say the gates of hell didn’t prevail for the cardinals soon
corrected their fake election by admitting it and coming up with a new solution
to the Urban VI problem. The gates
prevailed briefly then if they are right.
That cannot be hidden away.
Urban VI was nicknamed the “Mad Pope”.
He had his cardinals tortured to death.
At the feast for his coronation he drank and made a total fool of
himself and tried to assault a cardinal. He was notorious for slander and foul
language and of extreme rudeness even to the most diplomatic of men. Many thought he was nothing like the man that
had been Archbishop of Bari just a few days before his elected, pious, quiet,
easygoing and humble. He had
hallucinations of St Peter appearing to him.
The Cardinals who elected Urban VI soon had a new conclave and elected
Clement VII, Robert of Geneva a Frenchman, leaving the Church with two
popes. Nobody was ever able to prove
that Clement VII who is listed as an antipope or false pope really was
that. I would add that the insanity of
Urban VI is clear evidence that Urban’s election must have been invalid for
would God want a lunatic running the Church and teaching the Church? The Catholics just assume that he was validly
elected and they assume it for convenience.
That is not good enough and proves that the papacy is not of divine
institution. A Church that cannot prove
the credentials of its past rocks is not the true Church. A house that breaks the foundation off itself
cannot stand or be a house. Urban VI got
unbalanced as soon as he was elected but he must have shown signs of mental
illness before his election. It is
nonsense to argue that he was an easygoing normal man up until then for he
might have just started to get sick a short time before his election and when
he got absolute power as pope he didn’t hide his problems anymore. An insane pope must depose himself
automatically. If you are a car mechanic
and you lose your arms you automatically cease to be a car mechanic. It’s the same principle.
IF THE CARDINALS WERE LYING WHEN THEY SAID THEY INVALIDLY ELECTED URBAN
VI THEN WHY DIDN’T THEY TRY TO DEPOSE HIM BEFORE THEY CREATED A NEW CONCLAVE TO
ELECT POPE CLEMENT VII INSTEAD? They
were not lying at all. At that time, the
idea of deposing a pope for heresy or for mental instability was more
acceptable and the later Councils of Pisa and Constance reflected this
tradition – the first to a greater degree than the second. Deposing Urban VI would have made sure that
they would appear in a good light and would have cleared the way go ahead with
a new conclave and would have guaranteed that most and possibly all of the
Church would accept Clement VII. If they
couldn’t get rid of Urban VI they simply had to declare him deposed in the
sight of canon law and God. That would
mean that even if he didn’t leave the Vatican and step down he was still not
pope. They took the risk of electing a
new pope when Urban VI was in
And the Church ignores the possibility that the cardinals did fiddle the
election to a large extent to prevent non-Italians from being elected and rigged
it to pacify the mob so that a Roman or an Italian, a Tebaldeschi or an Urban
VI to be would be elected. This would
mean the election would be undoubtedly invalid and unfair. A Concise History of the Catholic Church says
that sixteen cardinals were in the conclave in Rome and were attacked in the
streets and threatened to elect a Roman or an Italian on pain of being torn to
pieces and the mob had invaded the papal wine cellar (page 194). It seems ridiculous to disbelieve the
cardinals when they said they chose a fake pope in Urban VI which was putting
themselves in very bad light and it is true that they were not free and to
believe them when they said that Urban VI was the true pope. What else could they say until the idea
occurred to them to elect another? There
is no doubt that the election of Clement VII is more plausible as a real
election for there was no pressure. The
Church also ignores the fact that the mob was delighted with the announcement
that Urban VI was pope and the cardinals would have expected this, the mob did
state they would be content with an Italian.
It should be remembered that nearly all the cardinals involved in the
“election” of Urban VII testified that they fiddled the election. If only half of them were saying it and the
others contradicting them there would be some reason to believe then that they
validly elected Urban VII.
Urban VI reigned from Rome and Clement VII reigned from the papal palace
in Avignon, France. Rival lines of popes
began with this schism.
Nobody knew at the time who the real pope was. If the pope is the rock the Church is built
on and the sign indicating which Church is the one true visible Church of Jesus
Christ as the Church claims and if you don’t know which pope is the rock then
there is only one solution. Both of them
are fakes. They are fakes not because of
evidence but because God’s promise doesn’t fail. This would mean that if there is no marker
then the proper judgement was to obey neither pope. Neither man was a marker so neither man was
pope. So during the Great Western Schism
from 1378 to 1415 there were nine antipopes including the popes recognised as
valid by Catholicism. With all the
antipopes there have been we see it is silly of the Church to say that the line
of popes is impressive and a sign of God’s care for the Church. The mess seems to mean that the papal chair
was vacant for decades. There was no
head of the Church and no centre of unity.
How the Catholic Church could be the true Church and suffer that cannot
be explained.
To recognise Clement VII as true pope means you recognise his successor
Benedict XIII and Clement VIII his successor as true popes. Clement VIII reigned from 10th
January 1423 until he resigned on 26th July 1429. Urban VI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Gregory
XII, Martin V would be have to be dropped from the Church’s list. Martin V wouldn’t be a real pope for the
papal line following Clement VII was the real line and still existed. Benedict XIII who was deposed to make way for
Martin V was still alive and well and claiming to be the real pope. Also the Church says real popes cannot be
validly deposed. Benedict XIII and then
Clement VIII led a tiny Church in the end and excommunicated nearly all
Christendom. Benedict XIII died in 1423
and had a successor in Clement VIII who reigned until 1429 so that means that
there was no pope until
When alleged antipope Clement VIII was elected Cardinal Jean Carrier
claimed the election was invalid and regarded himself as the sole college of
cardinals and he elected Benedict XIV in 1424.
Benedict XIV then was antipope to Clement VIII. So Benedict XIV claimed to be the real
successor of Benedict XIII. Benedict XIV
is really an antipope for Cardinal Jean Carrier wasn’t invited to the election
and claimed it was invalid because of that!
So the world had three men with a claim to the papacy, Clement VIII,
Benedict XIV and Martin V. Some however might think that Cardinal Carrier was
right. Benedict XIV appointed a Cardinal
Jean Farald and three others before dying or resigning in 1429/30. These cardinals then chose Cardinal Jean
Carrier as Pope Benedict XIV in 1433.
Carrier chose this numbering probably because of some doubt about a
previous Benedict being pope. Carrier
ended up in jail and died there about 1437.
It is alleged that his followers continued electing popes until 1470 but
this is unclear. If Carrier was really
pope then Eugene IV was not a real pope for he was elected during Carrier’s
reign in 1431.
Felix V who is listed as the last
antipope in the records of the Church would then have been a true pope for he
was in opposition to Eugene IV assuming that no successor was chosen for
Carrier. If Felix V was an antipope then
the list can’t continue until 1447 when Nicholas V was made pope in Rome. If the line of Clement VII was valid then it
follows that Carrier when he became Benedict XIV in 1430 even if a successor to
an antipope was the real successor for he was the first pope of the Avignon
line after the end of the reign of Clement VI’s and Benedict XIII’s successor
Clement VIII.
Whatever the real list of popes is, it is very different from the
accepted and official Roman list which has Gregory XI, Urban VI, Boniface IX,
Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Martin V, Eugene IV.
It means that the present pope Benedict XVI may really be Benedict XVII
if the Avignon papacy line was valid and John XXIII who inaugurated Vatican 2
was really John XXIV if the first John XXIII was a true pope. There was a debate in the Vatican about the
numbering when he chose the name John when elected pope. The Church recognising the wrong popes means
the Church is in schism from them and is not the true Church.
The real reason the Catholic Church today wants to pretend that Urban VI
was the real pope is because it doesn’t want to admit that an impostor reposed
on the chair of Peter from the death of his predecessor until the election of
the alleged antipope Clement VII. That
makes a mockery of the idea that the pope is the rock the Church is built on
and the gates of Hell cannot prevail over the Church to give it a pope who is a
fake and who teaches doctrine without authority and divine protection which is
putting the Church in danger of error.
When God could allow such a disaster he could allow a pope to give fake
infallible teaching and lead the whole Church astray. The Catholic Church admits that it is nothing
without its doctrine of infallibility.
To admit that Urban VI was an antipope would be to encourage the scourge
of sedevacantism in the modern Church.
Sedevacantists are traditional Roman Catholics who reject all Roman
popes since Pius XII and hold them to be invalidly elected and condemn them for
heresy, blasphemy and liberalism. They
have FBI documentation proving that Cardinal Siri was elected after the death
of Pius XII as Pope Gregory XVII but a group of cardinals forced him out of the
picture and elected an antipope John XXIII.
If Siri was the real pope and couldn’t act it and Siri certainly did
indicate that there could be a hidden pope then it means that Paul VI, John
Paul I and John Paul II were false popes.
Benedict XVI who many sedevacantists nickname as “Pope” Ratzinger would
be a real pope being the first to be appointed after Siri’s death. Many say that since Paul VI wrecked the
Episcopal consecration rites making them invalid and that unlike the previous
popes Ratzinger was consecrated a bishop under this invalid rite he is not a
true bishop and cannot be the real pope.
Ratzinger is the first pope to have been consecrated a bishop under the
new liturgy that came in following Vatican II.
One thing for certain is that if there is the slightest room for doubt
about an Episcopal consecration it has to be repeated to make sure and until
then the person cannot be treated as a true bishop. This is the law and doctrine of the Church
and the reason it requires three bishops to do the consecration of a new
bishop. And yet this Church wrecks the
consecrations with a vague liturgy that doesn’t express the intention of
creating a bishop properly.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the cardinals re-elected Urban VI to
show they were free after Urban came to the Vatican. But what else could they do then? This re-election was held just for the
purpose of confirming the choice they had made so they couldn’t make a different
choice then. It had to be rigged
too. When they rigged the second election
they might have rigged the first one too.
The mob would have hounded them again.
The cardinals could not admit at that stage that they were forced to
choose a pope they didn’t want. They
planned to say nothing for the sake of an easy life.
Pastor, a Roman Catholic historical expert wrote: “It is extremely
difficult for those who study the question in the present day with countless
documents before them, and the power of contemplating the further development
of the schism, to estimate the difficulties of contemporaries who sought to
know which of the two popes had a right to their obedience. The extreme confusion is evidenced by the
fact that canonised saints are found among the adherents of each of the rivals
…All the writings of the period give more or less evidence of the conflicting
opinions which prevailed, and upright men afterwards confessed that they had
been unable to find out which was the true pope” History of the Popes Vol One
pp 138-139 or pages 258-9 of A Handbook on the Papacy. The Church regards the antipope Hippolytus as
a saint which shows that the Church must agree he couldn’t be blamed for
thinking that he was the real pope! The
Church that floats away from its rock is not the true Church any longer.
At the time the cardinals elected Urban VI, they were under pressure from
a violent Roman mob to choose a Roman or at least Italian pope that would
please them. They even presented
Francisco Cardinal Tebaldeschi a Roman to the crowd as pope to placate
them. How tricking the mob in such a
crude way was supposed to do any good and be a solution is impossible to see
and makes it seem that Tebaldeschi was the real pope. Tebaldeschi went crazy on being presented to
the crowd as pope and began ranting about demons and pronouncing curses on
everyone. It was no wonder the cardinals
took him away. They must have known he
was mad before they presented him which adds fuel to the theory that they did
elect Tebaldeschi.
It seems then that Tebaldeschi was pope and when he proved himself insane
the cardinals lied about the election and tried to elect another and they came
up with Urban VI. The cardinals said
they had already elected Urban VI by then.
But there is no evidence that this is true. The online book by Catholic apologist Richard
L Cure available on www.prayforthepope.net
called Pray for the Pope A Study of the
Papacy and Sedevacantism 1998 is interesting. It tells us that the mob was delighted with
Urban VI and that he was elected before they put out the fake pope. The mob would have known for some of them had
invaded the conclave and were taking the roof off. Obviously they didn’t really have another
pope when they presented Tebaldeschi as pope at all. They lied afterwards that they elected Urban
VI. Is it possible that both Urban VI
and Clement VII were antipopes? Some
would surmise that they were. Others
would say that since Tebaldeschi didn’t make any claim to the papacy – which
doesn’t mean he wasn’t pope at least for a while - that the way was clear for
Clement VII to be elected the true pope a few months later. Whatever the truth is, Clement VII was the
real pope.
So Tebaldeschi was the pope and Urban VI the fake. Tebaldeschi didn’t hold on to the papacy but
he was pope during the election of Urban.
This we can be sure of.
The online book makes a point of declaring that Urban VI was accepted by
all. The Church always seems to think
that makes a fake pope to be a real pope!
Strange that that could help when the people aren’t in a position to
judge. And the Church doesn’t regard the
fact that virtually all Catholics see no problem with contraception as
significant so why should public opinion matter in relation to the people just
going along with an allegedly valid papal election?
Urban VI didn’t hear that he was the choice of the conclave until two
days later! By no means could they be
trusted that they really elected Urban VI.
Why not just announce that they chose Urban VI? What if the mob preferred Tebaldeschi and
forced them to say he was the real pope and not Urban VI? They must have feared that. We certainly have an invalid election in
relation to Urban VI for the cardinals were evidently insane with fear.
The Catholic Church thinks Urban VI was the real pope and not Clement VII
because if the cardinals had fiddled the election of Urban VI they would have
chosen Tebaldeschi instead of him for that would have pleased the mob better.
But the mob liked Urban and Tebaldeschi was a disaster.
Urban VI never was a valid pope. Accepted
by all or not, he proves that the whole church can err about the identity of
the pope.
Sickened by the stubborn refusal of rival popes Gregory XII and Benedict
XIII to resolve the Great Western Schism the Church called an ecumenical
Council at Pisa. The solution up to the
Council was for one of these popes to resign so that the Church might accept
the remaining one as true pope.
Acceptance by the Church is supposed to make a pope valid even if his
election was invalid. This council is
not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church as a real ecumenical council or
having the power to give valid and binding decrees. There is no doubt that the Council of Pisa
was right to condemn both popes as schismatics – people who caused division in
the Church.
When the conclave met which elected Gregory XII they all including the
future Gregory XII took an oath at the start that anything was better than
prolonging the schism and that whoever became pope must resign. Both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII the
alleged antipope agreed by oath to resign if the council of Pisa could create a
pope that would unite the Church, and they vowed to resign to validate the new
pope’s election. Gregory XII refused to
resign when Alexander V was elected by the Pisan Council so Gregory became an
antipope from that point on assuming he was ever real pope. Benedict XIII also then became an antipope
assuming he was a real pope. Gregory XII
and Benedict XIII ceased to have any hope of being the real pope in 1409 when
the Council of Pisa which was accepted by them as a true ecumenical council
created Pope Alexander V. Yet Roman
Catholicism denies that Alexander was pope and says it was still Gregory.
Alexander V died and was succeeded by the notorious John XXIII. He summoned a new ecumenical council, the
Council of Constance.
Without Gregory as true pope the Catholic Church loses any right to hold
that the Council of Constance had any authority or infallibility for it says
only true popes call true councils. The
Council of Constance was inaugurated by a man the Catholic Church doesn’t
acknowledge as Pope John XXIII and sanctioned by a pope Gregory XII who by no
means could have been a real pope at the time.
Gregory XII was certainly a schismatic for he validated the election of
Alexander VI and wouldn’t resign and he could have kept his word. He broke away from the true pope if that was
what Alexander was and Alexander had a stronger case to be the real pope than
he had.
If you believe that a council is above the pope which was the doctrine
declared by the Catholic Church at Constance then a council can depose a pope
when it has good reason to. Despite
regarding John XXIII as a real pope the council deposed him as a useless person
and a heretic. Strictly speaking a pope
who causes heresy and schism deposes himself – his sin involves a kind of
resignation so any council deposing him is just making sure he puts this
resignation into practice. Such a pope
is not being the head of the Church but the enemy of the Church. The Council got Gregory XII to recognise it
just as a precaution in case he was the real pope for the council didn’t want
to be rejected as illegitimate on the basis that the true pope didn’t authorise
it and then it compelled him to resign obviously in case he was not the real
pope for it condemned him as a heretic and schismatic. In theory then a council can get together in
spite of the pope and throw him out and replace him. To accept this idea means that the Ecumenical
Council of Pisa (which took place a few years before the Council of Constance
and which the Church doesn’t recognise nowadays) which deposed Gregory XII and
Benedict XIII and elected a third pope Alexander V was right and so Alexander V
and John XXIII his successor were the real popes. If you have two or more claimants to the
papacy and neither will step down causing confusion and division and
endangering the Church with heresy for the false pope will lead the Church
astray then a council to sort out the mess is the only solution and it has to
have the power to depose both of them.
Naturally, if you are the true pope you will be supernaturally guided by
God to know it so even if you are a false pope you dare not give in to those
who accuse you of being an antipope. You
can’t be the rock the Church is built on unless you don’t doubt and can’t doubt
that you are the true pope. A council
would be the only hope.
An infallible Church should be able to tell which rival pope was the real
pope. When it is a dogma of the faith
that the pope is the head of the Church then clearly it must be a dogma that
say Pius XII is a real pope. There is no
point in saying the pope is the head and God revealing it when God won’t reveal
who the pope is. A Council of the
Church, and the councils of the Church are thought to be infallible, would be
the only way to infallibly determine who was the real pope. Even if the pope is the head of the Church
and no council can be called without him as the Church teaches today, it still
doesn’t mean the council can’t decide who the real pope is and depose the false
pope. After all they are trying to make
sure the true pope gets his rights as head of the Church.
The Catholic Encylopedia regarding Pisan so-called antipope Alexander V
says: “Whether or not Alexander was a true pope is a question which canonists
and historians of the Schism still discuss. The Church has not pronounced a
definite opinion nor is it at all likely that she will. The Roman
"Gerarchia Cattolica", not an authoritative work, which prior to 1906
contained a chronological list of the popes, designated Alexander V as the
211th pope, succeeding Gregory XII, resigned.”
If Alexander V was the true pope then so was his successor John XXIII
who was deposed by the council and if councils have no right to depose popes as
many Catholics believe then it follows that Pope Martin V upon whose election
the Great Western Schism ended was a fake though Catholicism accepts him as
real. If John XXIII was a true pope he
was forced to resign by the Council and if you can’t force a pope to do that
then the Council was not infallible and Martin V was an antipope.
The Council of Pisa expected Europe to support the new pope it come up
with, Alexander V, and most of it did but Gregory XII and Benedict XIII
wouldn’t abandon their offices. The only
reason the modern Church doesn’t believe in the Council of Pisa is because it
supposedly met without the sanction of the pope whoever he was and because it
deposed the two popes as heretics and schismatics and the Church was to believe
that one of them had to be the real pope.
But the two popes didn’t run the
The alleged antipope and rival to the supposed real pope, Gregory XII of
Rome, John XXIII summoned the Ecumenical Council of Constance. The Church to this day regards it as a true
council and infallible despite its doctrine that a council called in opposition
to a true pope and without the consent of the pope cannot have any
authority! The Church shouldn’t
recognise the council if it says John was a fake pope but it does even though
it considers another man, this Gregory XII, to have been the real pope.
The Church says that maybe John XXIII called it but the real pope
validated it for he sanctioned it. It
makes no difference. John XXIII who
embodied great materialistic infamy and was rumoured to be an atheist would not
have summoned the council except he thought that his brand of Catholicism would
win out and the rival popes would be vanquished. Any sanction he got wouldn’t have been entitled
to get taken seriously.
However the Council deposed John
XXIII even though he was believed to be the true pope because he lost most of
his support and they accepted Gregory XII, the pope in
The Ecumenical Council of Basle which curiously is recognised by the
Church as infallible up until the twenty-fifth session was decreed and
established by Martin V but when it started it was dogged by the hostility and
opposition of Martin’s successor Pope Eugene IV who ordered it to stop meeting.
It ignored him (page 332, The History of Christianity). Here we have proof that if this council
really was infallible then it had the right to defy the pope. The Catholic idea that a council can’t be
infallible unless called by the pope is contradicted by the Church accepting
this council. The pope moved the council
to
Felix V was elected mainly by conciliarists, Catholics who believed that
ecumenical councils had the power to depose a pope if he was not doing his job
or if he was teaching heresy for the councils have supreme authority. They declared Pope Eugene to be deposed for
denying and working to destroy this doctrine forever and to make the Church
definitively declare it heresy.
Obviously if they were right to put councils above the pope then Felix V
was a true pope and they did legally and morally depose Eugene. Eugene’ successor Nicholas V was appointed
two years before Felix V gave up his papal claim so Nicholas V would have been
an antipope if Felix was a true pope.
Even if the pope is the rock the Church is built on there has to be some
circumstances in which he can be deposed by an ecumenical council. When a pope calls a council and it declares
certain dogmas infallible obviously the council is above even the pope because
he is not declaring them. Commonsense
says that even if the pope is infallible it is better for a large crowd of
bishops to make dogmas not him for he is still a single man. Jesus gave the apostles the same powers as he
gave Peter meaning that Peter was not to be a superbishop but to work together
with the rest. If the pope is the rock
the Church is built on he is rock by his cooperation and his obedience to
previous popes and to ecumenical councils.
Ecumenical councils have made decisions without the pope dictating to
them so it is clear: the pope being rock does not mean the pope must give us
all the infallible doctrines or make all the rules. The current Catholic Church is in schism and
heresy from a past true pope Felix V.
The doctrine that the Church can depose a heretical and dangerous pope
is right for the Church when it is infallible should at least be equal with the
pope and able to fire him under some circumstances. Actually, the Church being more
representative of what people want and being a number of people should have
this power for these reasons. People
have the right to remove their dictator and their king. We see the Catholic Church rejects Felix V
just because of a silly doctrine that the pope must be absolute monarch of the
Church and it is unfair to mark down anybody as an antipope just because of
your doctrinal prejudices. It’s a matter
of evidence and inquiry.
If the Church has the right to depose popes that would mean that some of
the currently accepted popes who were deposed and refused to accept it ceased
to be popes and became antipopes. In the
first millennium, there were no laws saying the pope couldn’t be deposed so the
Church must have that right for what a Church doesn’t forbid it allows, that’s
the case with all law.
Is infallibility any good or is there any evidence for it when the Church
can drop popes from the list and even Councils that were alleged to be
infallible for one reason or another and then change its mind in say a few
years time? What happens is that if a
Council says something the Church doesn’t like the Church just declares it
invalid and having no infallibility – it isn’t hard to claim to be infallible
and get away with it when you can tailor things that way!
Councils that have been considered infallible and authoritative by the
modern Church and which have been for years are shown to be false when they
were convened by fake popes contrary to the law that only true popes can call
together authoritative and infallible councils.
Martin V due to the
The history of the popes which reveals that many popes were really antipopes and which reveals how hard it was to discern the true pope from the false shows that the pope cannot be the mark of the one true visible Church of Christ at all. Roman Catholicism is not the one right religion. The list the Church has of popes has been produced by men who took sides. Even if you have evidence for one pope being real who is to say that the case for him is just based on hearsay and gossip and the case against his rival isn’t based on hearsay and gossip? Many antipopes took office after the deposition of the pope. If you disagree with the Catholic doctrine that the Church cannot depose a valid pope the whole thing gets far more murky and means that plenty of men rejected by the Church as antipopes were in fact real popes. What list you will accept will depend on your prejudices. However if you are biased towards reason your list will be drastically different to that of the modern Church. The number of papal disasters is too high to deny that the papacy is just a human institution.
The Church says that reason shows that the Church needs a simple marker to indicate that it is the true Church so that even the most uneducated person can see where the true Church is. But none of this papacy stuff is simple. Even the experts in the Vatican were wrong about who was pope and who was a pretender. So how then can the pope mark out the true Church?
To have a situation in which the true pope cannot be known and nobody knows which of two or more claimants is the true pope proves Catholicism is false because tradition is the supreme authority in Catholicism and the wrong pope means you have the wrong person telling you what divine tradition is. The true pope alone can have the means of working out what true tradition from God is and can have the power to protect it.
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26 December 2007