Res Ipsa Loquitur

Abp. Viganò: Christ would not recognize His Church in ‘the sect’ that’s eclipsing the See of Peter

Your first question is as direct as it is disarming: “If the King of Kings and Lord of Lords were to return today in His glory, would he still recognize His Bride, the Church?” Of course He would recognize Her! But not in the sect that eclipses the See of Peter, rather in the many good souls, especially in the priests, men and women religious, and in many simple faithful souls, who, even if they do not have horns of light on their brow as Moses did (Ex 34:29), are still recognizable as living members of the Church of Christ. He would not find Her at Saint Peter’s, where worship has been offered to an unclean idol; nor at Santa Marta, where the artificial poverty and inflated humility of the Tenant are a monument to his immense ego; nor at the Synod on Synodality, where the fiction of democracy serves to complete the dismantling of the divine edifice of the Catholic Church and to impose scandalous ways of life; not in the dioceses and parishes in which the conciliar ideology has replaced the Catholic Faith and cancelled Tradition. The Lord, as Head of the Church, recognizes the pulsating and living members of His Mystical Body and those who are dead and rotting, having been snatched from Christ by heresy, lust, and pride, and who are now subject to Satan. So yes: the King of kings would recognize the pusillus grex, even if he had to look for it gathered around an altar in an attic, a cellar, or the middle of the woods.

Please note in what follows that Mueller himself avoids use of the misleading term “papal infallibility,” referring instead to the infallible character of declarations that are in conformity with the teachings of Christ. At a certain point I’ve inserted the full final paragraph from Lumen Gentium 25:

Cdl. Müller: Pope would ‘automatically lose his office’ if he became a heretic

'A pope could become a heretic as a private person and thus automatically lose his office if the contradiction to the revelation and the dogmatic teaching of the Church is evident,' affirmed the eminent cardinal.

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Müller made the remarks about a pope possibly losing his office while answering a question about papal infallibility in an interview published on the German Catholic news site kath.net. 

“Dogmatic declarations may have the quality of infallibility if their content derives from Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition of the Word of God, and if they are formally presented to be believed by the proper authority of the Magisterium of the Pope and the Bishops, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as a truth revealed by God,” the German cardinal explained. 

However, “a new public revelation they [the Pope and the bishops] do not accept as pertaining to the divine deposit of faith (Lumen Gentium 25),” Müller continued. 

But when either the Roman Pontiff or the Body of Bishops together with him defines a judgment, they pronounce it in accordance with Revelation itself, which all are obliged to abide by and be in conformity with, that is, the Revelation which as written or orally handed down is transmitted in its entirety through the legitimate succession of bishops and especially in care of the Roman Pontiff himself, and which under the guiding light of the Spirit of truth is religiously preserved and faithfully expounded in the Church.(45*) The Roman Pontiff and the bishops, in view of their office and the importance of the matter, by fitting means diligently strive to inquire properly into that revelation and to give apt expression to its contents;(46*) but a new public revelation they do not accept as pertaining to the divine deposit of faith.(47*)

READ: Cardinal Müller says obedience is not owed to an ‘obviously heretical bishop’

“It is therefore erroneous to think that a council or a pope could annul an earlier dogma or stipulate, for example, that the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders does not include the requirement of the male sex of its recipient,” the German cardinal said, adding that it would also be wrong to think that the pope or a council could introduce marriage between two people of the same sex. 

“In an extreme case, a pope could become a heretic as a private person and thus automatically lose his office if the contradiction to the revelation and the dogmatic teaching of the Church is evident,” Müller stated. 

The position that a Pope could become a heretic and lose his office was also held by St. Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Church, who wrote about the issue in the second book of his work “De Romano Pontifice” (“On the Roman Pontiff”). According to Bellarmine, “the Pope who is manifestly a heretic ceases by himself to be Pope and head, in the same way as he ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church; and for this reason he can be judged and punished by the Church.” (“De Romano Pontifice,” Book II, Chapter 30) 

READ: Cdl. Müller: ‘Nobody can change’ Catholic doctrine that homosexuality is ‘grave sin’

“This is the opinion of all the ancient Fathers,” Bellarmine continued, “who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction, and outstandingly that of St. Cyprian (lib. 4, epist. 2) who speaks as follows of Novatian, who was Pope [antipope] in the schism which occurred during the pontificate of St. Cornelius: ‘He would not be able to retain the episcopate, and, if he was made bishop before, he separated himself from the body of those who were, like him, bishops, and from the unity of the Church.’” 

“According to what St. Cyprian affirms in this passage, even had Novatian been the true and legitimate Pope, he would have automatically fallen from the pontificate, if he separated himself from the Church,” Bellarmine stated, adding that “[t]he foundation of this argument is that the manifest heretic is not in any way a member of the Church, that is, neither spiritually nor corporally, which signifies that he is not such by internal union nor by external union.”