Papal Indefectibility
Michael Dimond wrote the famous "Has Rome Become the Seat of the Antichrist?"
When I first saw Jean Andre Perlant's article teaching Papal Indefectibility
on David Bawden's website, I was reminded of the quotations in Dimond's article.
I assembled these (post Vatican Council, 1870) quotations by date, and offer
it to the reader.
My argument against Perlant is this: If what he teaches is true, that Vatican I taught Papal Indefectibility, then theologians would no longer be free to teach the old, contrary ideas. As a matter of fact they did, evidencing against Perlant's interpretation of Vatican I.
Not seeing Papal Indefectibility taught by Vatican I or any other time by the Magisterium, I follow Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy, that the Pope, after becoming Pope, still has his free will and so can not only sin but can even depart into heresy. To claim that the Pope is Indefectibile is to deny his free will - necessarily a heresy.
Therefore, we are forced to conclude, that if this article of the Bawdenites is right, then the Church has erred with its Ordinary Magisterial Infallibility having failed signally to detect these errors being published with its imprimaturs...
The same Wernz-Vidal Canon Law Commentary states: "A doubtful pope is no pope." (Fr. Anthony Cekada, Traditionalists, Infallibility, and the Pope, St. Gertrude the Great Church, 11144 Reading Rd., Cincinnati, OH, p. 57.) Wernz-Vidal: Jus Canonicum, lib. 2, n. 454.
A.: "The Primacy will always be attached to the episcopal See of Rome. The diocese of Rome, therefore, will never be destroyed nor suppressed. Despite any possible political changes, there will always be some faithful Christians in the diocese of Rome, and the Pope will be their bishop. The true "Eternal Rome," to use a popular expression, is not political Rome, but the Rome of Saint Peter and of his successors; in other words, perpetuity belongs to ecclesiastical Rome, whatever political changes the centuries may bring."
On the contrary, as shown in The Papal Indefectibility Controversy, I believe that the Vatican Council taught not Papal Indefectibility but the Indefectibility of the Roman Church.
Prakash J. Mascarenhas. November, 2000; Revised September 2002