Today, Taylor Marshall on his YouTube podcast while claiming "I'm not making" the argument then made the argument anyway that "if you wanted to show Benedict is still the pope you would show coercion in resignation":
"If you wanted to show Benedict was still pope you would show coercion in resignation. That is a little hard to demonstrate... I am way more open to seeing Benedict was coerced."
"When you look at the ATM machines, the Vatican Bank, when you look at the cardinals in drag and all the this stuff, cocaine fueled orgy parties at the CDF and you look at all the things that were happening from Vigano up to the resignation and the butler. There is a argument if you wanted to make it, I'm not making it, but if you wanted to make it coercion seems to me to be where it is at."
(Dr.Taylor Marshall Show, "Cardinal Pell talks Vatican Bank Corruption," April 15, 2020, 56:27-57:29))
It makes me laugh, but Marshall who isn't making an argument, just made an argument despite his best efforts that Pope Benedict XVI's resignation was coerced and therefore is "still pope."
Of course, if I was making an argument, but I am not making an argument, if you wanted to make it (that Marshall was arguing that Benedict is still pope because of coercion) in the above Marshall argument, it seems to me to be where it is at.
I'm hoping that Marshall at some point, even though he wasn't making the argument, will agrue with his own
argument and show why from his argument he and others shouldn't have "doubt... for any reason," no matter how small, that Francis's "papal election is doubtful."
Theologian Fr. Elwood Sylvester Berry (1879-1956) who was a professor at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland wrote:
"Hence the saying of Bellarmine: a doubtful pope is no pope. 'Therefore,' continued the Cardinal, 'if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason, the elected should resign, so that a new election may be held. But if he refuses to resign, it becomes the duty of the bishops to adjust the matter, for although the bishops without the pope cannot define dogma not make law for the universal Church, they can and ought to decide, when occasion demands, who is the legitimate pope, and if the matter be doubtful, they should provide for the Church by having a legitimate and undoubted pastor elected. That is what the Council of Constance rightly did." 8
(The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise, Page 229, Note 8 Bellarmine, "De Concilio, ii, 19)
It is easy to see the invalidity of a renunciation of munus, rather than ministerium, AND it is easy to prove it.
Why does Dr. Marshall look for the hard way. Is he an intellectual masochist?
Or he is cleverly trying to keep folks from taking the easy route back to sanity?
It has always reminded me of my evangelization of my Protestant friends and family using the John 6 discourse on eating the divine flesh of Christ; drinking his divine blood. They take the Bible “literally” (they always say) ..... except for that. Explanations and logic do not penetrate.
Christ states “eat and drink *indeed*” three times. The language of Christ’s meaning is clear.
Most of His disciples subsequently leave because of the seemingly great offense. The physical evidence of Christ’s meaning is clear.
But, like the partial and thus invalid Papal resignation, language and subsequent physical evidence matter not in matters fundamental to the Faith when a battle for souls between God and Satan is at stake. Framing the argument differently won’t change anything. Only prayer will win battles like these.
Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, chapter 1.
I submit to the Holy See and every valid Pope who ever occupied it. Equally. Under Christ. His single, chosen Vicar on earth.
There have been disagreements on *who* occupies it. And there have been antipopes accepted by future Saints over valid Popes.
There is now obvious error in the Holy See; departure from Christ, Sacred Tradition, union with prior occupants; a demonstrable rupture within the Holy See itself at the level of Munus and subsequent authority.
I submit to the Holy See in its God-given totality, and the authority of St. Peter, embodied in all the valid Popes who ever lived, together, in union with each other, in Christ and Sacred Tradition.
I believe that is the basic meaning of Pastor Aeternus.
