POPES, ANTIPOPES AND COUNCILS
The pope is the rock that Catholicism says it is built on. The pope claims to
stand in the place of Jesus over the Church - a claim that is totally absent
from early tradition and the Bible. One would think that if Jesus gives us the
pope he could protect the Church from electing a false pope or from having two
or more claimants to the papal throne at the one time!
Two popes have competed with each other for the Church. The Great Western Schism
being a notorious example.
Sickened by the stubborn refusal of rival popes Gregory XII and Benedict XIII to
resolve the Great Western Schism for neither wanted to step down, 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 Pisa council and did consent to it and even promised to
step down to accept the pope they would come up with. Alexander was elected and
was succeeded by John XXIII when he died.
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 Rome in his stead who immediately resigned to let Martin V step in and
with Martin’s election the Great Western Schism ended. Gregory reiterated the
call for the council to come together so as to make it legitimate (page 200, A
Concise History of the Catholic Church) which was of little use for nothing
changes the fact that he didn’t summon or control or supervise the council. He
had representatives there but what use is that? The infallible head of the
Church should not be using fallible go-betweens for that means they are the ones
with the power. The pope would be dependant on hearsay to make decisions and
ratify. Such councils cannot be valid if the Catholic doctrine that conciliar
decrees must be observed and ratified by the pope to be valid is true. The
Catholic Church claiming that the true pope Gregory XII made the Council of
Constance authoritative and legitimate is dubious.
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 Ferrara that is
Florence but many of the ecclesiastics refused to move and the result was two
rival ecumenical councils. One in Basle and the other in Florence. Each claimed
to be the real continuation of the council that originally met in Basle. The
rival in Basle declared Eugene deposed and created the last of the listed
antipopes Felix V who resigned in 1449 after a ten year reign. These issues are
accompanied by such intricate and difficult political slants and facts,
semi-facts and lies that the layperson could not possibly hope to learn who was
right. This is far from the simplicity that Jesus allegedly wanted for his
Church. We all know politicians lie to us but it isn’t always easy to tell
exactly in what they lied. Could the papacy have a divine origin when it is so
despairingly political and complicated?
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 Avignon line
of popes being probably the real line who had to have been a false pope set up
the Council of Basle, Florence under Eugene IV was set up by a validly deposed
pope. How could a Church that is guided by God and given infallibility make such
errors?
The all too human history of the Catholic Church says it is just a human
construct.
Read www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com
Read www.novusordowatch.org
Read www.the-pope.com/library.html
Read www.sedevacantist.com
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/