Is Pope Benedict or Pope Francis the True Pope?

On Friday, Bishop Soto of the Diocese of Sacramento announced that one of his priests, Father Jeremy Leatherby, was excommunicated:

Fr. Leatherby has violated my instructions by offering Mass and teaching publicly to a number of the faithful. He has instructed them against the legitimacy of His Holiness, Pope Francis. He has substituted the Holy Father’s name with the name of his predecessor, and omitted my name during the recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer while offering Mass. After obstinately not responding to a number of my inquiries by telephone and correspondence, he has now confirmed his schismatic stance. Because of the grave scandal of these actions I have no recourse but to announce publicly the consequence of his decisions: He has brought upon himself an automatic latae sententiae excommunication.

Those of you who have followed Catholic affairs for a while my be familiar with sedevacantism, which holds that the pope isn’t really the pope. But sedevacants don’t believe that somebody else is: they think that the Chair of Peter is vacant (which is what sedevacantism means). So Fr. Leatherby isn’t a sedevacantist, exactly. He denies the Pope Francis is the pope, but thinks that someone else is… Pope Benedict XVI. He explains his position as follows:

Further, and more importantly, I find it indefensible to hold Pope Benedict’s declaratio of 2013 fulfills the requirements for a valid act of resignation from the papacy, according to canon law; thus, I continue to regard Benedict as retaining the Office of Peter, as mysterious as that might be. Therefore, I do not regard Bergoglio as the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Frighteningly, I believe he may be the head of the “counter church” about which Venerable Fulton Sheen prophesied, or “the anti-church” spoken of by Karol Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II), or the “parallel church” written about recently by Archbishop Vigano.

Yes, I deservedly incur excommunication if Bergoglio is indeed the valid Successor of Peter, and I am guilty of causing great division within the Mystical Body of Christ. However, I could not in good conscience do otherwise.

In reading this, I’m struck by how similar Leatherby sounds to Martin Luther, who (according to legend) ended his defense at the Diet of Worms by saying:

If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God’s word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me! Amen.

I can only hope that Leatherby himself recognizes these parallels, and the spiritual peril in which he’s placed himself. Also worth noting is that Bishop Soto was made Bishop of Sacramento by… Pope Benedict XVI, back in 2007-08 (first as coadjutor, and then as ordinary of the Diocese). By Fr. Leatherby’s own logic, he certainly owes obedience to Bishop Soto, and shouldn’t be in schism from him.

I’ve resisted getting too into the weeds on the “Benedict is the true pope” position, because (a) it’s very much a fringe position, even within traditional Catholicism [the biggest advocate for it boasts of there being “more than 20 priests worldwide” who think Benedict is still pope; for reference, there are more than 414,000 priests worldwide]; and (b) the arguments for it are obscure and convoluted. But because I’ve seen enough people who seem worried about this, here’s the basic case, in a nutshell.

Was Pope Benedict’s Resignation Valid?

Canon law lays out what it looks like for a pope to resign (Can. 332,
§2):

§2 Should it happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns from his office, it is required for validity that the resignation be freely made and properly manifested, but it is not necessary that it be accepted by anyone.

That’s pretty straightforward. In other words, a pope may resign, and doesn’t need to tender his resignation to any higher earthly authority, but the resignation must be free (there were fears during WWII about what to do if Hitler kidnapped Pope Pius XII, and this canon is basically saying that you can’t force the pope to resign under duress). Sowhat did Pope Benedict do? He freely vacated the See:

For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Lest there be any ambiguity on the fact that Benedict was declaring himself no longer pope, he said to the Cardinals who assembled to select his successor:

Before I say goodbye to each one of you personally, I would like to tell you that I shall continue to be close to you with my prayers, especially in these coming days, that you may be completely docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in the election of the new pope. May the Lord show you the one whom he wants. And among you, in the College of Cardinals, there is also the future pope to whom today I promise my unconditional reverence and obedience.

You don’t have to be a theologian to understand what’s happened here. Benedict was pope, and then he resigned, just as canon law said that he could. And what’s more, even if canon law hadn’t said anything, he would still be free to resign. Popes prior to him (most recently, Pope St. Celestine V) have resigned, prior to the creation of modern-day canon law. Canon law is simply recognizing the reality that popes can resign. In fact, canon 331 is clear that “by virtue of his office, he [the pope] has supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church, and he can always freely exercise this power.” In other words, the pope doesn’t need canon law’s permission.

So Why Do People Deny That Benedict Resigned?

One of the most obsessive writers on this topic is one Br. Alexis Bugnolo, and his argument is (to put it nicely) a convoluted mess. Basically, canon law talks about resigning the office (munus) of the papacy, and Benedict spoke of leaving the “ministry” (ministerium) of the Bishop of Rome. Bugnolo has written thousands of words about the alleged differences between ministerium and munus, even though Latin dictionaries will tell you that the two words are synonyms.

But even assuming that the two words mean (slightly) different things, what’s the theory here? The only way that Benedict could cease to exercise the ministry of the Bishop of Rome is to cease to be the pope. Moreover, he explicitly announced that he was vacating the See, and that there would be a new pope to whom he pledged his loyalty. There’s no wiggling out of his words there, as if he was somehow unclear.

Resignation isn’t a magical spell that you have to word just right. If you tell your boss, “I’m ending my employment here, effective immediately,” he doesn’t expect you back on Monday because you said “employment” and not “occupation.” And the pope is free to resign however he wants, as long as he’s not doing so under duress or in some way prohibited by divine or natural law.

So that’s the technical argument, and as I said, it’s not much. Reading the advocates’ arguments, it’s easy to get lost in a maze of canon legalese and Latin vocab, but the simple argument they’re making is theologically bankrupt. Canon law doesn’t restrict the pope’s free authority to resign, and no reasonable person can deny that Benedict exercised this authority quite publicly in 2013.

On Good and Bad Popes

But there are a couple of other reasons that I think people often entertain this theory. One is that Francis says and does things that are scandalizing to a lot of people. I get that, and I understand why some people pine for the days of Benedict. But the fact that you might want Benedict to be pope doesn’t make him the pope. Fr. Leatherby speaks of being unable to “morally, spiritually or intellectually, in good conscience, align myself” with Pope Francis, because of disagreements over things that Pope Francis has said and done. This radically misunderstands things. It’s not a question of whether one is “aligned” with Pope Francis, but whether or not he’s the successor of Peter. It’s entirely possible for him to be both (a) the pope, and (b) not a good pope. Bear in mind, I’m not making an argument one way or the other: I’m just saying that whether Pope Francis is the best or worst pope in history doesn’t change the fact that he’s the pope. Perhaps a familial analogy will help. St. Paul says in Ephesians 6:1-4,

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

I heard a homily once from a priest who claimed that these two halves were conditioned on one another, as if St. Paul is saying to obey your father as long as he doesn’t provoke you to anger. But of course, he’s saying quite the opposite. Obey your father, even if he provokes your ire. A child has to obey the instruction to honor his father and mother even if his parents aren’t living up to the calling to which God has called them (and they aren’t, because none of us are). Likewise, whether we like or loathe our pope, bishop, and priests, we’re still bound by Hebrews 13:!7 to “obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account. Let them do this joyfully, and not sadly, for that would be of no advantage to you.” That’s why the question “is Pope Francis doing a good job” just isn’t relevant to the question of whether he’s the pope, just like “is the governor doing a good job” just isn’t relevant to the question of obeying the law.

On Modern Gnosticism

One of the first heresies ever facing the Church was that of Gnosticism, which held that there was some set of “secret teachings” that Jesus had, and that He didn’t share these with the unenlightened masses, but just the enlightened few. It’s easy to see the appeal of this: you’re in on the secret, you’re not one of the blind sheeple. But Jesus says, “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together; I have said nothing secretly” (John 18:20). And He actually calls for us to be like sheep. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Gnosticism is the anti-Gospel.

It seems to me that there’s something of a Gnostic spirit in the modern world. Rather than accept that there might be a pope (or even a secular authority) that we don’t like, we come up with esoteric conspiracy theories. We see this all the time in American politics: we try to come up with some technical reason why the election was “stolen” from us (rather than that we lost, fair and square), or why the other person allegedly can’t be president on some technical infraction (rather than doing the harder work of changing hearts and minds). It’s an ugly spirit there, and it’s worse when it happens in the Church. Back in the 1980s, a guy by the name of Gary Giuffre came up with the theory that Cardinal Siri was the true pope, but that he was being held in captivity in Rome. Everything Siri said or did was parsed for secret clues… even though Siri denied being the pope. Likewise, Benedict denies being the pope. The idea that the right answer is the one that isn’t accessible to the world, but only to twenty priests worldwide, and people who can parse the shades of difference between munus and ministerium is totally contrary to the spirit of the Gospel.

Back in the fourth century, St. Optatus laid it out pretty simply: if you want to know who the pope is, look to who is in possession of St. Peter’s. In the history of the Church, there have been times where there was confusion over who the legitimate pope was, and (at least as far as I can discern) Optatus’ rule has always been proven correct.

Jesus isn’t trying to trick us. We’re not going to get to the Judgment Seat and find out that we were in the wrong Church because we didn’t know about some obscure treatise or overlooked a footnote somewhere. What He promises us is a Kingdom that started out small, but quickly grew to the size of the proverbial mustard tree. If you’re still rooting around in the garden looking for a mustard seed to believe in, you’re looking in the wrong place.

The Papal Connection That Remains

But there’s one final reason that some people are confused: Benedict still looks like the pope. He wears white, he lives in Rome, etc. It’s true that had his signet ring (the seal of his office) chiseled, but he definitely still looks papal. In this regard, it’s worth remembering that Benedict is traveling uncharted waters. Celestine V, the last pope to resign, did so in 1294, nearly three hundred years before it became customary for the pope to wear a white cassock. So Benedict is the first person in history to have to answer the question, “should a retired pope still wear the white cassock?”

Here again, a little common sense goes a long way. While retired popes are virtually unheard of, retired bishops are fairly commonplace. In my own diocese, Kansas City in Kansas, Archbishop Naumann is the archbishop, and Archbishop Keleher is the archbishop emeritus. These aren’t rival claimants, and there’s no question which of the two is the “diocesan bishop” in the sense that canon law (can. 381 §1) describes. But there’s also no question that Archbishop Keleher retains an authentic spiritual connection to the Archdiocese. Retirement doesn’t simply dissolve the spiritual bonds created by 22 years of fatherly leadership, and nor should it. Indeed, not even death dissolves these bonds. After all, why do we speak of the See of Rome as the “Petrine office”? Because we recognize that, even though Peter’s reign ended in the year 66, he continues to lead the Diocese (and the Church) in some real way.

Pope St. Gregory speaks of a Petrine connection shared by the Patriarchates of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. In a letter to Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria, he says:

Wherefore though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself the See of the Prince of the apostles alone has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the See of one. For he himself exalted the See in which he deigned even to rest and end the present life [Rome]. He himself adorned the See to which he sent his disciple as evangelist [Alexandria, founded by St. Mark]. He himself established the See in which, though he was to leave it, he sat for seven years [Antioch]. Since then it is the See of one, and one See, over which by Divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you, this I impute to myself. If you believe anything good of me, impute this to your merits, since we are one in Him Who says, That they all may be one, as You, Father, art in me, and I in you that they also may be one in us [John 17:21].

So even though Peter was to leave Antioch, he remained connected to it in an important way. Likewise, perhaps it’s proper that Benedict should wear the white, to show that even though he no longer reigns as pope, his fatherly love and concern for the Church remains, not to be cut off even by death.