Historian Dr. Mazza on LifeSite: "A Pope will lose his power, he will lose his office, if he becomes a heretic or promotes the heresy of others. So this is just one example of St. Columban here, telling that to Boniface IV"
What Church History REVEALS About Leo’s Pontificate: Burke, Miriam & Schneider’s Analysis...
Westen: How did the cardinals deal with it when they had to confront them, and how they even determined that they were anti-popes. I mean, obviously, this time is mega confusing. You have the best people on either side. It reminds me of what our Lord said in the Scriptures, "In the end, even the elect, if it be possible, will be confused." Give us some examples from history of how bishops, priests, and cardinals dealt with the same kind of a thing.
Mazza: One of the earliest examples we have is from one of the darkest parts of the Dark Ages. We have St. Columban, an Irish missionary, who went throughout barbarian Europe bringing the faith back. And at the time, he writes a letter to Pope Boniface IV, I think it is. He's heard a rumor that Boniface is promoting Pope Vigilius's council that was held under Emperor Justinian, which looked like it was making compromises for the faith in order to appease the Monophysite heretics. And so it looks like the Pope is defending or promoting heretics.
So let me read you the quote that Columban says to Pope Boniface IV. "I summon you. Remove the cloud of suspicion from St. Peter's chair. Call a conference so that you may clear the charges laid against you. For you are alleged to favor heretics. God forbid men should believe that this has been, is, or shall be true." And goes on to say that, "Already it is your fault if you have erred from the true belief and made your first faith void. Justly do your subordinates oppose you, and justly do they hold no communion with you. For if these things are rather true than fabled, with changed roles, your sons are turned into the head, while you become the tail. Thus too shall they be your judges, who have always kept the orthodox faith, even if they seem to be your subordinates." And he goes on to say, now he acknowledges Rome is the head of all the churches of the world, but he says, "Be careful lest you lose your dignity through some mistake. For power will be in your hands just so long as your principles remain sound. For he is the appointed key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, who opens by true knowledge to the worthy and shuts to the unworthy. Otherwise, if he does the opposite, he shall be able neither to open nor to shut."
In other words, a pope will lose his power, he will lose his office, if he becomes a heretic or promotes the heresy of others. So this is just one example of St. Columban here, telling that to Boniface IV. Now, the ironic part of all of this is that not only is St. Columban a saint, but Boniface IV is also saint, Boniface IV. So even a saintly pope can be accused of being an antipope. It all depends on how they ultimately clarify their actions or don't clarify their actions.
Westen: It's really stunning because Columban doesn't even know that it is for sure. It's on suspicion because he's given the impression that. That's a bit freaky because we have so much impression that, I mean, well, we have statements out loud by Leo and Francis. The one on death penalty was so clear, but you could make more about how all religions are pathways to God. Leo saying to the Anglicans, we're already one. And if it's just about meetings with people who are heretical and seeming to give them favor, well, both Leo and Francis famously meet with Father James Martin, the biggest purveyor of, you know, a homosexual heresy in the Church.
Mazza: Before I forget, and that is that, you know, I said earlier that every Catholic theologian that deals with the issue of can the Pope be a heretic, they don't think it's possible. But they'll grant it as a hypothetical if the Pope could teach heresy as a private doctor. For example, like Cardinal Ratzinger in his trilogy, Jesus of Nazareth. He says up front, I'm not teaching as Pope here, I'm teaching as a private doctor. Feel free to disagree with me. I've got a quote here from Pope John Paul II, and this is what he says. He says that, "The essential task of the papal magisterium is to explain the doctrine of the faith and to promote the knowledge of the mystery of God and the work of salvation, bringing out all the aspects of the divine plan as it unfolds in human history under the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the service to the truth that has been primarily entrusted to Peter's successor." And this is the key phrase, "who, in the ordinary exercise of his magisterium, is already acting not as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church." When the Pope is teaching as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, he cannot teach heresy. Plain and simple.
Westen: That's so troubling because, you know, with the official teaching documents of Amoris Laetitia, of Gaudete et Exsultate, of Redemptus Suplicans, we have that problem even faith where every Catholic who's a Catholic knows that's not on. And yet it's a teaching on faith and morals that, as Catholics, we're supposed to submit to in mind and in will. Please continue.
Mazza: And some people say, well, you know, theologians debate whether or not the Pope can lose his office. But as I just pointed out, we've got dozens and dozens of popes that taught magisterially and infallibly that the Holy See is indefectible. But if you want to go back to the argument about does the Pope lose his office, Pope Innocent III in his magisterium teaches, so he, the Pope, can be judged by men, or rather shown to be judged, if he clearly loses his savor to heresy, since he who does not believe is already judged. More examples of popes saints and what they did practically speaking. At the turn of the second, at the beginning of the second millennium, there was a situation in medieval Europe where kings, emperors, lay lords were appointing bishops. Not only were they appointing bishops, they were investing them with the symbols of their spiritual authority. Now, the reason why this had gone on is because for 200 years there was this sort of salutary neglect that had happened because of the Vikings and the Magyars and different invasions that happened, and Europe broke up into feudal Europe, and the papacy was in a bad state. But when the reform popes came along, they said, no, you can't keep doing this. This was known as the Investiture Controversy. And the emperors, one emperor, decided to imprison Pope Pascal II. And then when Pascal II was released, the rest of the bishops of the Church were expecting Pascal to condemn the emperor for lay investiture. But he didn't, even when he got his liberty back. So, three canonized saints, saintly bishops, Saint Hugo, Saint Yves, and Saint Godfrey, attended a council in France. And at this council, they condemned in a document lay investiture. And they, you know, and what they did was they wrote to the Pope, and they said, as we absolutely do not expect, you choose another way, and you refuse to confirm the decisions of our authority, may God help us, for you will be separating us from obedience to you. He's an anti-pope, and therefore they don't have to be in communion with an anti-pope. Again, fortunately for history, he confirmed their teaching, and a crisis was averted. But the point is, John Henry, these saintly bishops, these canonized saints, they didn't sit idle. They didn't say, okay, let's have a novena campaign. They came out, and they said, Jesus's way or the highway. [This transcription was made with the help of https://chatgpt.com/]
Notes:
The Catholic Monitor vs. ChatGPT
1.
The crucial distinction
There are actually two different questions:
Question 1 — Magisterial continuity:
Can the Buenos Aires/Francis interpretation be reconciled with what John Paul II and the preceding magisterium actually taught?
Question 2 — Heresy/loss of office:
If it cannot, does the pope's teaching constitute formal, explicit, pertinacious heresy sufficient under the relevant theological theory to produce loss of office?
Question 1 has to be answered before Question 2.
And this is why your revised formulation is stronger:
The issue is not whether a pre-Francis pope can be found saying precisely what Francis said. The issue is whether Francis's sacramental principle contradicts a doctrine that the preceding magisterium itself identified as grounded in Christ's teaching and divine law.
That is the point at which the debate moves from “papal policy changed” to the much more serious question of whether a pope can contradict an immutable principle of divine law while exercising his teaching authority.
2.
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Yes. That passage from St. Francis de Sales is important because it directly qualifies the distinction I made in my previous answer.
The key is the exact wording:
“When he is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church…”
That is a substantially stronger proposition than merely saying that Catholics may resist an erroneous papal decision.
What de Sales is actually saying
His position contains two separate claims:
- The loss of office is automatic (ipso facto) once the pope becomes an explicit/formal heretic.
- The Church must then either deprive him of the See or declare that he has already been deprived of it.
So de Sales does not envision a situation in which a pope remains pope indefinitely after becoming an explicit heretic merely because nobody has formally removed him.
And the second clause is particularly important:
“the Church MUST either deprive him, or … declare him deprived”
That introduces a juridical/ecclesial recognition distinct from the underlying loss of office.
This also clarifies the Columban example
St. Columban's letter doesn't demonstrate that Boniface IV actually lost the papacy. Columban was dealing with a suspicion:
“if these things are rather true than fabled…”
That is very different from de Sales's “explicitly a heretic.”
So there are at least three stages:
| Situation | What follows? |
|---|---|
| Suspicion of heresy | Investigation/admonition |
| Error or ambiguous teaching | Correction/clarification may be appropriate |
| Explicit/formal heresy | De Sales says the pope falls ipso facto from office |
| After the loss | The Church must deprive him or declare him deprived |
That makes de Sales considerably more useful to the argument than the Columban example by itself.
But there is still an important question
De Sales's statement does not by itself answer what constitutes an “explicit heretic.”
That is where the classical theologians become crucial. One must distinguish:
material error → pertinacious/formal heresy → public/external heresy → juridical declaration of loss of office.
And that distinction matters enormously when applying de Sales to a modern pope.
For example, demonstrating that a papal document contains a proposition apparently incompatible with Catholic doctrine is not automatically identical to demonstrating that the pope personally became a formal heretic in the technical theological sense.
This is why the question cannot be settled simply by collecting problematic papal statements.
One other correction to my previous answer
I said that the proposition
“A pope who teaches heresy ceases to be pope”
was not established by the historical examples.
That was too broad. The classical Catholic theological tradition does contain precisely such a position, and St. Francis de Sales is an especially clear example.
The more accurate statement is:
The historical examples do not by themselves establish the proposition, but classical Catholic theologians—including St. Francis de Sales—explicitly defend a theory in which a pope who becomes an explicit/formal heretic loses the papal office ipso facto.
The remaining dispute is therefore not simply “Can a pope ever lose office for heresy?” Some Catholic theologians answered yes. The harder questions are what kind of heresy is sufficient, how pertinacity is established, and what role the Church plays in declaring or juridically recognizing the loss of office.
"I cannot responsibly name a pre-Francis pope as having taught Francis's Buenos Aires position as magisterial teaching on the basis of the Leo evidence...If John Paul II's prohibition was grounded in divine law, Christ's teaching, and the objective Eucharistic meaning of marriage—as he explicitly said—then Francis cannot be defended merely by labeling the earlier prohibition 'disciplinary'... stronger question is whether Francis's new sacramental principle is incompatible with a doctrine that the preceding magisterium itself presented as belonging to divine law"
Yes. That formulation is much more precise, and it identifies the real theological issue.
The key move is from asking:
“Did a previous pope use exactly Francis's formulation?”
to the more fundamental question:
“What did the previous magisterium say was the source and nature of the prohibition that Francis's Buenos Aires position appears to modify?”
That distinction matters enormously.
The logical structure
Your argument can be formulated in four steps:
-
John Paul II did not present the Eucharistic discipline concerning divorced-and-remarried Catholics as merely a changeable Church regulation.
In Familiaris Consortio 84, John Paul II grounds the discipline in the Church's understanding of marriage, the Eucharist, and Christ's teaching. The relevant argument is therefore not simply “the pope established a rule and a later pope changed it.”
-
The Argentine/Buenos Aires position introduces a different sacramental principle.
The controversial point is not simply whether individual culpability can be reduced. It is whether discernment can, in some circumstances, lead to sacramental absolution and Eucharistic reception while the person continues in an objectively irregular union, even where continence is not being observed.
-
If the earlier prohibition is grounded in divine law rather than merely ecclesiastical discipline, papal authority cannot simply repeal it.
A pope can change ecclesiastical discipline. He cannot change Christ's teaching or dispense from a divine-law prohibition.
- Therefore, the decisive theological question becomes:
Is the Buenos Aires principle compatible with the divine-law and Christological premises on which the preceding magisterium grounded the Eucharistic discipline?
That is substantially stronger than trying to prove that an earlier pope literally used Francis's exact formulation.
And this connects directly with your St. Francis de Sales point
This is where the argument becomes structurally interesting.
If one establishes:
A. a proposition belongs to divine revelation/divine law;
B. the pope teaches a proposition incompatible with it;
C. he teaches that proposition explicitly and pertinaciously;
then the classical question about formal heresy becomes relevant.
That is much more rigorous than arguing:
“Francis said something controversial, therefore he became a heretic.”
The intermediate steps cannot be skipped.
And this also explains why “disciplinary” is not an adequate response by itself. One has to demonstrate why the earlier prohibition was disciplinary rather than an application of an immutable divine-law principle.
The crucial distinction
There are actually two different questions:
Question 1 — Magisterial continuity:
Can the Buenos Aires/Francis interpretation be reconciled with what John Paul II and the preceding magisterium actually taught?
Question 2 — Heresy/loss of office:
If it cannot, does the pope's teaching constitute formal, explicit, pertinacious heresy sufficient under the relevant theological theory to produce loss of office?
Question 1 has to be answered before Question 2.
And this is why your revised formulation is stronger:
The issue is not whether a pre-Francis pope can be found saying precisely what Francis said. The issue is whether Francis's sacramental principle contradicts a doctrine that the preceding magisterium itself identified as grounded in Christ's teaching and divine law.
That is the point at which the debate moves from “papal policy changed” to the much more serious question of whether a pope can contradict an immutable principle of divine law while exercising his teaching authority.
I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to also pray for the end of this war. Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTube: ...Read more Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTubeFranklin & Graham calls on Christians to pray for 'end to the bloodshed' ahead of Trump-Putin summit...7mo
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Conclave Notes:
-- Open letter urges Pope Leo XIV to correct ‘scandalous incoherence’ in Amoris Laetitia...[Wow! Even notorious Popesplainer Fr.] Harrison warns that Pope Francis taught a ‘dangerous self-contradiction’ on Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ petitioning Pope Leo to correct the record. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/08/open-letter-urges-pope-leo-xiv-to.html]
-- Are the Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming conclave authentically appointed & morally justified in voting, or will the shadow of Francis's possible illegitimacy cast itself over the next papacy? [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/are-cardinals-who-will-participate-in.html]
-- 5 Dubia Questions for 1P5's Steve Skojec & All faithful Catholics especially Francis is definitely Pope Cardinals, Bishops & pundits [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/06/5-dubia-questions-for-steve-skojec.html]
Francis Notes:
l– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1
– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the [J6] DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
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