(LifeSiteNews) — As Francis’s pontificate appears to draw toward its unhappy close, an increasing number of Catholics question whether it ever really began.
Doubts about the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation have long been ventilated ever since in his resignation speech he appeared deliberately or mistakenly to resign only part of the papacy – the ministry (“ministerium”) but not the office (“munus”) – a partial resignation is no resignation, it is argued.
Others believe that Benedict’s resignation was made under duress and was thus invalidated by the provisions of Canon 188 of the Code of Canon Law which invalidates resignations made out of “grave fear.”
Yet others claim that the various illicit pre-conclave plots hatched by the so-called Saint Gallen Mafia invalidated the results of the subsequent election.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has recently endorsed the “Cassiasiacum thesis,” of Bishop Guérard des Lauriers, which holds that a failure on the part of the cardinal elected, Jorge Bergoglio, to wish to promote the Catholic faith created an impediment which prevented him, though validly elected materially, from assuming the papacy formally.
All these arguments have provoked a great deal of discussion and amassed an increasing number of supporters who consider the possibility of the prolonged vacancy of the See of Peter a more palatable proposition than one occupied by someone whom they consider a serial heresiarch.
But one argument which has been little considered raises perhaps the most doubts regarding the validity of the Bergoglian papacy: it holds that the election itself was null for a manifest breach of Church law.
In 1996 Pope John Paul II promulgated the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis which completely revised and replaced the law regulating papal elections: it lays down the law in the form of 92 norms which govern every detail of a conclave from the moment of the vacancy of the Apostolic See until the acceptance and proclamation of the new pope.
Elections which do not follow the constitution are invalid:
Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected (Norm 76).
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The apparent problem with the 2013 conclave concerns Norm 37 which expressly specifies that a papal election cannot take place unless 15 full days have elapsed from the time of the vacancy of the Holy See. Pope Benedict’s resignation took effect on February 28, 2013, at 8 p.m., so the conclave could not therefore have lawfully started before March 16; however, Francis was “elected” on March 13, on the second day of a conclave which began four days too early.
The only exception to the mandatory 15-day waiting period applies in the situation where all the cardinal electors are present in the Vatican: “nonetheless, the College of Cardinals is granted the faculty to move forward the start of the Conclave if it is clear that all the Cardinal electors are present” (Norm 37). (This modification to the norms of the conclave was introduced by Benedict XVI shortly after he announced his forthcoming resignation.)
Notice of Benedict’s resignation was given more than two weeks in advance of it coming into effect, so the cardinals were able to make arrangements to arrive in Rome with relative tranquillity.
Impatient to begin the conclave they agreed on March 8 to anticipate the election. They would have been perfectly entitled to do this had they all been present, however two of their number were missing: the Indonesian Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadia and the Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien.
The reason given by Cardinal Darmaatmadia – who is still alive – for not attending is entirely unconvincing: he claimed that his failing eyesight would not have enabled him to take part in proceedings. Norm 40 allows for a cardinal not to take part in a papal election for reasons of “manifest illness” but this needs to be “attested to under oath by doctors” and “confirmed by the majority of electors”; it does not appear that Cardinal Darmaatmadia provided the necessary sworn affidavits which would have justified the dereliction of his solemn duty to participate in the conclave.
But even if he had, it seems evident that failing eyesight does not constitute the sort of illness which excuses non-participation. In fact, Norms 64-67 of the constitution provide for cardinal Infirmarii, to assist the sick and incapacitated and who are empowered to take the votes from any cardinal unable to attend the Sistine Chapel and also to fill out the voting forms for such cardinals who, because of infirmity, cannot write.
Cardinal Darmaatmadia would therefore have been able to attend the conclave, participate, and vote; on no possible analysis had he lost his capacity to participate as he claimed.
The absence of Cardinal O’Brien is even more inexcusable. On February 23, five days before Benedict’s resignation was to take effect, the Observer newspaper, in a manifest attempt to create scandal around the conclave and so to interfere with the election of Benedict’s successor, published scurrilous allegations against O’Brien who was forced to resign his position as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and, on account of mounting media pressure, subsequently cited “personal reasons” for not attending the conclave.
The College of Cardinals may have felt that it would be better for the Church if Cardinal O’Brien did not attend the election; however, the pre-conclave solemn oath contained in Norm 53 includes the promise that the cardinals either individually or as a group would never “lend support or favour to any interference, opposition or any other form of intervention, whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree or any group of people or individuals might wish to intervene in the election of the Roman Pontiff.”
Norm 80 prohibits under pain of automatic excommunication any cardinal from seeking to give force to any “possible forms of interference” designed to influence the papal election. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the College of Cardinals collectively capitulated to the external interference which led to the unprecedented absence from the conclave of a cardinal because of media pressure and to his exclusion from the effective possibility of election; whether the assembled cardinals as a body incurred automatic excommunication as a result of giving effect to the Observer’s “veto” is an interesting canonical question.
Norm 40 regulates the situation where a cardinal with the right to vote refuses to enter the Vatican City to take part in the election (effectively the situation of Cardinals Darmaatmadia and O’Brien). In this eventuality the remaining cardinals may proceed with the election without waiting for the absent cardinal to arrive. But Norm 40 does not permit shortening the 15-day minimum waiting period specified by Norm 37, it is a provision which dispenses them from having to wait beyond those 15 days.
Regardless, the incontrovertible fact is that not all the cardinal electors were present on March 8, 2013, and so there was simply no power on the part of the remaining assembled cardinals to have anticipated the conclave. Cardinals Darmaatmadia and O’Brien did not cease to be electors because they chose not to attend the conclave, and the College of Cardinals had no powers to strip them of their status as electors (Norm 35).
The conclave concluded with the “election” of Cardinal Bergoglio three days before it was even lawfully permitted to start and so the election of Francis would appear therefore to have been null and void.
This conclusion is buttressed by Norm 34 which makes null and void any “acts which would in any way temerariously presume to modify the regulations concerning the election or the college of electors” and the constitution’s closing words which declare “completely null and void anything done by any person, whatever his authority, knowingly or unknowingly, in any way contrary to this Constitution.”
In the face what would appear to be a completely unlawful conclave some have claimed that his subsequent “peaceful universal acceptance” by the whole Church somehow conferred the very legitimacy on Bergoglio which his uncanonical election could not; Francis may not have been validly elected Pope, the argument goes, but because the Catholic world accepted him as such, his election thereby became legitimized and so he is now Pope after all.
Leaving aside whether, as a matter of fact, there has been a peaceful universal acceptance of Francis, this claim is highly problematic since it makes the election of a pope occur otherwise than by means of secret ballot and by people other than cardinals: this is expressly prohibited by the constitution. Whether this principle of legitimization by passive acceptance could have applied in previous times, as some theologians from the past have postulated, this is now simply no longer a possibility.
The impatience displayed by the College of Cardinals in 2013 has unfortunately, it would appear, left us not only with a doubtful pope but also with the grave problem of how to ensure that the next conclave will not lead to another dubious result this time due to the presence of electors appointed by someone who had no power whatsoever to appoint them.