The Papal Situation 

The question has been posed ... "Do we have a pope?" The answer in a nutshell is that the last true pope was Pope Pius XII then Pius XIII who died on Oct. 9, 1958. The 6 men following Pius XIIth, each claiming to sit on the Chair of St. Peter were and are all impostors. This article by a traditional Catholic layman shows why.  

The Creation of a New non-Catholic Religion

What really occurred during the "pontificate" of John XXIII was the coming into existence of a new non-Catholic religion. It began at the very focus of unity, the highest office itself, in the person of the man pretending to hold the Chair of St. Peter. Now as every Catholic cleric worthy of the name knows, the Church founded by Christ on St. Peter and his successors cannot publicly and officially teach error to the faithful. 

Papal Infallibility - Proves a man to be non-Pope

This fact, that a pope cannot teach error, is guaranteed by the dogma of Papal Infallibility and is matter of faith for every Catholic. If, however, as was the situation in the early 1960's, a man believed to be pope was found to teach error via the official magisterium of the Church, the only possible conclusion that could be reached was that the man simply was not a pope. If he was not pope, the institution which he was continuing to preside over was not the Catholic Church. Once these facts were realized, anyone who remained in communion with him and continued to recognize him as the head of their Church, became a member of his new, non-Catholic religion. 

Due to the wording of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, a true pope is protected from promulgating both heresy and error when he teaches officially. Heresy involves the denial or doubting of truths classified as dogmas -- truths divinely revealed and infallibly affirmed as such by Church authority. Truths other than dogmas have been officially and infallibly defined by the Church, as well. Among these are truths classified as "certain." To deny or doubt one of these "certain" truths would place one in "error." This would involve, not an automatic excommunication, nor loss of membership in the Church, as would heresy, but would comprise a mortal sin against the faith and thereby loss of the supernatural virtue of faith. A true pope is prevented, by the divine assistance of the Holy Ghost, from ever teaching either heresy or error, since even one error of misbelief on one's soul would result in eternal damnation. Therefore, it was not necessary for a "pope" to officially proclaim heresy to the world. 

This has been proven to be the case with John XXIII in his Encyclical "Pacem in Terris" of April 11, 1963. Once this error was recognized, every knowledgeable Catholic should have known that the man was not a pope and that all of his acts of "authority" were invalid. 

An Invalid Papal Election

The only possible cause was an invalid election, despite the fact that the man was accepted as pope by all the Catholic clergy of the world. Invalidity of the election could be caused by some canonical defect in the election process or ineligibility of the man "elected." Christ's promise to Peter and his successors in the office of the papacy precludes any possibility of any of the true successors, e.g., any validly elected pope, of ever teaching error to His Church. To hold the opposite -- that a man who was seen to teach error to the Church publicly and officially could in some measure still be considered a validly elected pope is to fall into heresy -- by denial of the dogma. For what cause makes a man pope other than a valid election? How can it possibly be claimed that a man who is seen to teach error officially -- a man who clearly does not possess the prerogative of God-given infallibility -- could still have been validly elected? How can anyone maintain that such a man still holds (or ever held) a claim of any kind to the office, or See, or chair or powers, etc., of the Vicar of Christ? 

To Be Pope -- And Later Not a Pope?

Thus we can safely say that no man who ever was regarded as pope and was later seen to teach error officially and publicly ever possessed the papal dignity. This means it is impossible to regard such a one as a pope -- whose actions were valid for a while -- but who later fell into error. A true pontiff can never at any time prior to his death teach error officially and publicly to the Church. It appears that, even if a man who was validly elected pope could fall into formal heresy sometime later, God's promise would ensure that he would never be allowed to teach his errors ex cathedra. God would use other means to prevent such from happening even if the man was determined to do so, possibly even allowing death to ensue. The dogma of Papal Infallibility does not proscribe the possibility of a true pope falling into error or heresy as a private individual, as some have maintained. This can be held as a pious opinion, however, as St. Robert Bellarmine points out. 

This means that John XXIII never, from the day of his "coronation" on, ever actually exercised the power of a Supreme Pontiff. All of his acts are as if they never existed -- appointments of Cardinals, bishops, the calling of Vatican II, etc. Once the facts of his erroneous teaching were in the public domain a new religion was born. This knowledge became a critical crossroad for each and every Catholic priest who was forced into a decision of whether to remain faithful to Christ, Who is the Truth Itself, or to accept the lie and join the new religion. In this case, the nature of joining or adhering to a non-Catholic religion presented itself to these priests in an unusual manner. If a true pope had been elected in 1958 upon the death of Pius XII, most of them would likely have remained Catholic, because their faith would not have been put to the test. But God allowed Satan to seemingly secure the highest office in the Church to sift them like wheat -- to see exactly what love of the Truth there was in the poor excuse for alter-Christi who supposedly were serving Him. We must not forget that the reason St. Paul gives for the Apostasy is "because they have not loved the truth, they shall be given the operation of error." 

Priests in the new non-Catholic Sect

The priests were faced with an unusual situation in that, instead of leaving their comfortable situations to join a previously identified non-Catholic sect, a new one was coming to them from the Vatican itself. In this case, joining up did not mean taking an action to leave, it meant rather to stay and be identified with the new dispensation. It was a sin of omission rather than a sin of commission. What God was requiring them to do was to depart their positions once they would become identified as officers of the new religion. To stay was to subscribe, by their silence or inaction, if nothing else, to a new religion and to the heresy/error that the Catholic Church or the Roman Pontiff could teach heresy/error to the faithful, a tacit denial of Christ's own promise to His Church. 

Therefore, once it became obvious to the clergy in the early to middle 1960s, that error was being taught by their "pontiff," if they wished to remain Catholic, they had no alternative but to depart from the new Church before being identified as one of its officers by repeated acts in concert with its head -- the antipope. This of course assumes that the individual priest had adverted to the error being taught, and was not laboring under some misconception of what the nature and extent of Papal Infallibility was. 

The surfacing of the error in April of 1963, just two months before the death of John XXIII, may have caused a number of priests to hold on in the hope that the new pontiff would correct the errors and call an end to the proposed council. When Paul VI reopened Vatican II, suspicions should have been aroused that things were again amiss and a careful eye should have been directed at the new "pope's" actions and the early official teaching from the council. The official teachings from the V-II council in 1964 should have been proof enough for any clergyman to know that he was dealing with something other than the Catholic Church. [I have personal knowledge of a Colomban missionary priest who departed from his order in 1965 for just this reason. He returned to his motherhouse in Los Angeles and resigned, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind about his reasons.] 

The Clincher - Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism

The Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated officially under Paul VI's signature on November 21, 1964 should have been the clincher, however. This decree, which gave credence to non-Catholic religions as means of salvation, clearly violated previous defined doctrine, and could not be digested by any Catholic priest who wished to retain the name. One who with knowledge remained after this had willingly joined or adhered to a non-Catholic sect and suffered loss of all offices in the Church. There may, however, be exceptions found among priests who, because of their circumstances were uninformed, and each case must be considered individually. Certainly, no one could be considered to have joined or adhered to a non-Catholic sect without the requisite knowledge of its non-Catholicity. The official publishing of this Decree provides us with a convenient point about which to pose questions and set presumptions. It seems that it could be safely presumed that a priest had departed the Church by this date, or shortly thereafter, unless he could provide evidence that would stand up in a Church Tribunal to the effect he was ignorant of the promulgation of this teaching. Likewise, he should be queried in regard to his understanding of the teaching of John XXIII -- did he realize that something was in error in "Pacem in Terris"? If so, he departed the Church at an earlier date -- the date when he adverted to that error. 

The Condition of Priests

It would seem that God has given us another safe indicator to determine the condition of the priests of our time, namely, that those who acted innocently throughout the temptations of the Apostasy and the Traditionalist sects have found their way through all of the deceptions and are affiliated with none of them at this time. The others, who accepted errors in order to remain comfortably with one group or another have now been struck with spiritual blindness and cannot see their way to the end of the tunnel, where safety is to be found. May God yet find a way to have mercy upon their souls! "Because they have not loved the truth, they shall be given the operation of error: to believe lying." 
 
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