The general premise and conclusion of this post is taken from the book The Sedevacantist Delusion - Why Vatican II's Clash with Sedevacantism Supports Eastern Orthodoxy, by John C. Pontrello.
Traditional Roman Catholicism includes those varying factions that reject Vatican Council II (1962-1965) and the teachings of every Pope from John XXIII to Francis I. The largest groups center around the priestly societies known as SSPX, CMRI, SSPV, and so-called Independents. These groups vary on whether or not the aforementioned "modernist" popes were true popes, whether or not one must declare them to be antipopes, holding the "sede vacante" (vacant See) position, and whether or not the New Order sacraments instituted by Paul VI are valid. They differ on which of their break-away bishops are valid, and therefore impart valid sacraments. A few fringe groups have even elected their own popes. But the one thing these groups have in common is that they claim to uphold pre-Vatican Council II Roman Catholicism.
This post mainly addresses that majority of Traditional Roman Catholics (Trads) who accept Pius XII as the last valid pope to date, along with all his teachings, and those of his predecessors. But it also speaks to that handful of Roman Catholic Recusants who believe there have been antipopes for a few or even several centuries.
Trads accept the First Vatican Council, and the 1917 Code of Canon Law. They also accept the established Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic church, holding their sacraments, priesthood and liturgies as valid.
Trads justify their rejection of Rome by claiming the church is in a sede vacante state - the state in which Roman Catholicism finds itself when one pope dies and the next has not yet been elected. The Roman See is not merely vacant, however. It is not in an extended inter-regnum because all the cardinals and magisterium of Rome have also fallen away along with the pope, and there is no way to re-elect a valid pope! According to Roman Catholicism, even if an individual pope should turn out to be an antipope, the Roman Cardinals always retain the ability to elect a valid pope:
1917 Code of Canon Law
Canon 160 The election of the Roman Pontiff is guided solely by the const. of Pius X Vacante Sede Apostolica of 25 Dec. 1904:
27. The right to elect the Roman Pontiff belongs exclusively and privately to the Cardinals, to the exclusion of all...
Canon 233 § 1. Cardinals are created and published by the Roman Pontiff in a Consistory, and those so created and published obtain the right of electing the Roman Pontiff...
The correct term for the state of the Roman See, according to Catholic theology, is sede impedite, or impeded see, for the all the Offices have been overtaken by modernist heretics and apostates. This is the public stance of my former group, the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV):
SSPV, “A Statement of Principles in a Time of Crisis”1. The changes following the Second Vatican Council have proven so damaging to the Roman Catholic Religion and so detrimental to the sanctification of souls... This Council marked the culmination of the first phase of a liberal and modernist intrusion into the Roman Catholic Church...
3. These intruders have attempted to promulgate, in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, abominable novelties in every aspect of her life, i.e., in the areas of doctrine, morals, liturgy, canon law, pastoral practices, seminary education and religious life.
4. The intrusion of the liberals and modernists into positions of control has caused the wide-spread destruction of Catholic Faith, morals and worship and the creation of a new religion – the so-called conciliar religion which is not the Catholic Religion.
7. To exercise authority over the Church one must externally be a member of the Church. To be a member of the Church one must profess the Catholic Faith. Public abandonment of the Faith severs one from the Church and causes one to lose any position of authority one may have had. For this reason, theologians of all time have held and taught, and Canon Law confirms in Canon 1325, no. 2, that anyone who publicly and notoriously defects from the Faith by obstinately denying or doubting any article of Divine and Catholic Faith is a heretic. It is evident that such a person could not possibly rule the faithful...
The problem with this position is that it is contrary to the dogmatic teaching of the First Vatican Council (1870), which they hold as infallible. The belief that the Roman See can apostatize at all is a heresy according to Vatican Council I, Leo XIII’s encyclical Satis Cognitum, and Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis regarding the Roman See’s permanency, necessity, visibility, infallibility and indefectibility. Roman Catholics are not permitted to believe Christ would allow the Roman See to apostatize:
First Vatican Council, 1870 https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm
Session 4, Opening Statements
3...it was His will that in His church there should be shepherds and teachers until the end of time.
4. In order, then, that the episcopal office should be one and undivided and...the whole multitude of believers should be held together in the unity of faith and communion, He set blessed Peter over the rest of the apostles and instituted in him the permanent principle of both unities and their visible foundation.
5. Upon the strength of this foundation was to be built the eternal temple...
6. And since the gates of hell trying, if they can, to overthrow the church, make their assault with a hatred that increases day by day against its divinely laid foundation, we judge it necessary, with the approbation of the sacred council, and for the protection, defense and growth of the catholic flock, to propound the doctrine concerning the institution, permanence and nature of the sacred and apostolic primacy upon which the strength and coherence of the whole church depends.
7. This doctrine is to be believed and held by all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and unchanging faith of the whole church.
Here is the dogmatic teaching on the PERMANENCY of the Roman See:
First Vatican Council, Session 4, Ch. 2. On the permanence of the primacy of blessed Peter in the Roman pontiffs
1. That which our lord Jesus Christ, the prince of shepherds and great shepherd of the sheep, established in the blessed apostle Peter, for the continual salvation and permanent benefit of the church, must of necessity remain forever, by Christ’s authority, in the church which, founded as it is upon a rock, will stand firm until the end of time.
2. For...blessed Peter, prince and head of the apostles, the pillar of faith and the foundation of the catholic church...to this day and forever he lives and presides and exercises judgment in his successors the bishops of the holy Roman see...
3. Therefore whoever succeeds to the chair of Peter obtains by the institution of Christ himself, the primacy of Peter over the whole church. So what the truth has ordained stands firm, and blessed Peter perseveres in the rock-like strength he was granted, and does not abandon that guidance of the church which he once received.
5...if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord Himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church; or that the Roman pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.
Here are the decrees on the Roman See's PERPETUAL INFALLIBILITY:
First Vatican Council, Session 4, Ch. 4. On the infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff
6...this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour to the prince of his disciples: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.”
7. This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the whole church is preserved in unity, and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell.
Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, 1896The Church Always Visible
3. And, since it was necessary that His divine mission should be perpetuated to the end of time... the Church was begotten...it is external and necessarily visible.
Every Revealed Truth, without Exception, Must be Accepted
9...Christ instituted in the Church a living, authoritative and permanent Magisterium, which by His own power He strengthened...He willed and ordered, under the gravest penalties, that its teachings should be received as if they were His own...If it could in any way be false, an evident contradiction follows; for then God Himself would be the author of error in man...
...For this reason the Fathers of the Vatican Council laid down nothing new...when they decreed as follows: "All those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written or unwritten word of God, and which are proposed by the Church as divinely revealed, either by a solemn definition or in the exercise of its ordinary and universal Magisterium" (Sess. iii., cap. 3).
Hence, as it is clear that God absolutely willed that there should be unity in His Church, and as it is evident what kind of unity He willed, and by means of what principle He ordained that this unity should be maintained... that Church, which, as is evident to all, possesses the supreme authority of the Apostolic See...
...It is then undoubtedly the office of the church to guard Christian doctrine...since Jesus Christ...ordered the Church to strive, by the truth of its doctrine, to sanctify and to save mankind. But faith alone cannot compass so great, excellent, and important an end. There must needs be also the fitting and devout worship of God, which is to be found chiefly in the divine Sacrifice and in the dispensation of the Sacraments, as well as salutary laws and discipline. All these must be found in the Church, since it continues the mission of the Saviour forever...
The Church is a Divine Society
10 ..the Church is a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its end and in means proximately adapted to the attainment of that end...it is called the kingdom which God has raised up and which will stand forever. Finally it is the body of Christ - that is, of course, His mystical body, but a body living and duly organized and composed of many members; members indeed which have not all the same functions, but which, united one to the other, are kept bound together by the guidance and authority of the head.
...inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion, is necessary jure divino. "The unity of the Church is manifested in the mutual connection or communication of its members, and likewise in the relation of all the members of the Church to one head."
The Supreme Authority Founded by Christ
11. The nature of this supreme authority, which all Christians are bound to obey, can be ascertained only by finding out what was the evident and positive will of Christ...since [Christ] willed that His kingdom should be visible...because He was about to withdraw His visible presence from the Church, it was necessary that He should appoint someone in His place, to have the charge of the Universal Church. Hence before His Ascension He said to Peter: 'Feed my sheep' ".
Jesus Christ, therefore, appointed Peter to be that head of the Church; and He also determined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all should be inherited by His successors, in whom the same permanent authority of Peter himself should continue...
Trads claim the Church can "get along without the Pope". Leo XIII's encyclical also points out the NECESSITY OF THE ROMAN SEE, however:
Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, 1896
The Universal Jurisdiction of St. Peter
12. From this text it is clear that by the will and command of God the Church rests upon St. Peter, just as a building rests on its foundation. Now the proper nature of a foundation is to be a principle of cohesion for the various parts of the building. It must be the necessary condition of stability and strength. Remove it and the whole building falls. It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity.
The Roman Pontiffs Possess Supreme Power in the Church Jure Divino
13. It was necessary that a government of this kind, since it belongs to the constitution and formation of the Church, as its principal element - that is as the principle of unity and the foundation of lasting stability - should in no wise come to an end with St. Peter, but should pass to his successors from one to another...
According to Roman Catholicism, one pope dies and another is elected, so there is a short gap, an inter regnum that does not negate the perpetuity of the Office of Peter. But there could, according to Vatican I and Leo XIII, never be a time when the Church looses the means to elect the next pope! Yet, the entire Roman See has, according to Trads, fallen away into heresy and apostasy.
Trads are faced with the dilemma of either accepting the heresies and apostasies of the post-Vatican II hierarchy, or tacitly believing the Popes and entire Roman See have fallen away from the faith, not being the divinely established permanent principle of unity and source of truth. But, as we have seen above, this is also a heretical position, according to Vatican I.
So what do Trad bishops do? In their new theology, they substitute "the Pope" with "the Mystical Body of Christ":
SSPV, “A Statement of Principles in a Time of Crisis”
4. ...those who promote the doctrines and reforms of the conciliar religion do not represent the Roman Catholic Church, which is absolutely and exclusively identified with the Mystical Body of Christ and which is known by its four marks.
5. The Catholic Church was established by Our Lord Jesus Christ for the purpose of teaching, ruling and sanctifying the faithful in His name.
Oops! It is, of course, true that "the Church was established to teach, rule and sanctify". But in the wake of Vatican I, this statement is heretical since, as justification for the SSPV's existence, it implies that the current Roman See does not teach, rule or sanctify:
Vatican I, Session 4, Opening Statements
4. In order, then, that...the whole multitude of believers should be held together in the unity of faith and communion, He set blessed Peter over the rest of the apostles and instituted in him the permanent principle of both unities and their visible foundation.
I guess the SSPV is counting on people being content with their "sacraments" and conservative façade, never questioning their incoherency. But this is true for all the so-called traditional Roman Catholic bishops and priestly societies.
Oops! The SSPV also states "the Church is exclusively identified with the Body"?
First, this statement is illogical, for it says the church is identified with the church. Not only is it contrary to Vatican I and Leo XIII above, it's also contrary to Pius XII's Mystici Corporis. Pius XII specified what "the Mystical Body of Christ" consists of and how it is identified. He states that Christ never ceases to guide His Church through Peter’s Successors, and therefore “the Mystical Body” has a visible Head BY NECCESSITY:
Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, 194339...from Heaven Christ never ceases to look down with especial love on His spotless Spouse so sorely tried in her earthly exile; and when He sees her in danger, saves her from the tempestuous sea either Himself or through the ministry of His angels, or through her whom we invoke as Help of Christians, or through other heavenly advocates, and in calm and tranquil waters comforts her with the peace "which surpasseth all understanding."
40. But we must not think that He rules only in a hidden or extraordinary manner. On the contrary, our Redeemer also governs His Mystical Body in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on earth...Christ our Lord...entrusted to the Chief of the Apostles the visible government of the entire community He had founded. Since He was all wise He could not leave the body of the Church He had founded as a human society without a visible head...Christ, who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisibly, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth. After His glorious Ascension into Heaven this Church rested not on Him alone, but on Peter, too, its visible foundation stone...
41. They, therefore, walk in the path of dangerous error who believe that they can accept Christ as the Head of the Church, while not adhering loyally to His Vicar on earth. They have taken away the visible head, broken the visible bonds of unity and left the Mystical Body of the Redeemer so obscured and so maimed, that those who are seeking the haven of eternal salvation can neither see it nor find it.
50...It is [Christ] who...enriches...above all His Vicar on earth with the supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom, so that they may loyally preserve the treasury of faith, defend it vigorously, and explain it and confirm it with reverence and devotion. Finally, it is [Christ] who, though unseen, presides at the Councils of the Church and guides them.
52...our Savior Himself sustains in a divine manner the society which He founded.
53...He so sustains the Church, and so in a certain sense lives in the Church, that she is, as it were, another Christ.
64...so is it with His Mystical Body...that He might consecrate in His blood the visible Society founded by Him and "lead man back to things invisible under a visible rule."
65. ...those who dream of an imaginary Church...fail to understand that the reason which led our Divine Redeemer to give to the community of man He founded the constitution of a Society, perfect of its kind and containing all the juridical and social elements - namely, that He might perpetuate on earth the saving work of Redemption...
69. Now since its Founder willed this social body of Christ to be visible...Above all, it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY that the Supreme Head, that is, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, be visible to the eyes of all, since it is He who...commissioned Peter and his successors to be His personal representatives on earth and to assume the visible government of the Christian community.
The claim that "modernists have overtaken the Church", is completely heretical, since it makes Christ incapable of, or negligent in, protecting and guiding His Church. The Recusant claim is just as bad, for it says Christ abandoned His Church as a punishment for man's wickedness. But Christ promised to be with His bishops until the end of time:
Matt. 28:20 ...behold I am with you [Apostles] all days, even to the consummation of the world.
Therefore, Christ's Church is where faithful Bishops are. The Traditional Roman Catholic position untenable because all Trad bishops accept Vatican Council I. One must conclude, then, that the Roman Catholic model is not from Christ or His Apostles. So who is left? Old Catholics, Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox.
Both Old Catholics and Protestants are also faced with a dilemma, since their Orders stem from Roman Catholic Bishops who have accepted the papal monarchical system (the tenets of Vatican I) ever since the time of Antipope Gregory VII. If the previous Bishops were not heretical, then there is no justification in separating from them. If they were heretical, then there has been a break in apostolic succession, for centuries, which could only be healed by entering into communion with faithful, apostolic bishops.
Only the Orthodox Church can justly maintain that it is the one Church Christ founded. By acknowledging that the Roman See has apostatized from the Faith, Trads tacitly admit the Orthodox position: that the Roman See is fully capable of falling away from the Faith, and that it has fallen away. The Church Christ founded is known by its four marks: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. The true Church is indefectible because Jesus Christ is its Head, and because it is guided by the Holy Spirit, especially through Councils. It is visible, not only in the valid successors of St. Peter, but in all faithful Bishops. Only the Orthodox Church is one, having one apostolic faith and creed from the beginning, as well as the same conciliar model of government (Apostolic Canon 34). It is holy, retaining the same Sacraments, Liturgies and keeping the canons and customs faithfully. It alone is catholic, for the same has been believed and practiced everywhere by all at all times. Finally, only the Orthodox Bishops have true apostolic succession, which includes Christ's mission to teach, govern and sanctify. Apostolic succession is lost through schism, heresy and apostasy. The Roman See did, indeed, apostatize, but not with Vatican Council II. It fell away in the 11th century, just as the Orthodox have always proclaimed to the world. The Orthodox Church is Christ's spotless Bride (even today during the Great Apostasy of Ecumenism). Roman Catholics, Trads and Recusants have just been too blind to see it.
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