David Bawden Replies
Dear Prakash, From David Bawden To Prakash J. Mascarenhas Subject Please pardon the delay Date Mon, 30 Sep 2002 05:48:52 -0600
Here are the answers to your questions.
The first question deals with the publication of laws and similar provisions. We never claimed to have actually published a law, but a set of facts, which called certain laws into operation.
Will the Catholic Church Survive the Twentieth Century? was published on January 25, 1990. We invoked the provision of Canon 9 on publication of laws as a similar provision, not stating that we were promulgating a law. Canon 18 provides: If the meaning of the terms remains doubtful or obscure, one must have recourse to parallel passages of the Code (if there are any), or to the purpose of the law and its circumstances, and the intention of the legislator.
Since the book involved a publication and distribution world-wide to all sede vacantists listed in Jansky’s with the exception of those personally known to us to be heretics, we applied the provision of Canon 9. All we were doing was making an analogy to the Code.
You wrote: If you incurred excommunication before your purported election, then you were not eligible to be elected, nor Benns to participate in the election, and your election is rendered null and void.
This is erroneous on two counts. Pope Pius XII’s decree on Papal Elections states: Of the Cardinals, each and every one has the right to vote in the election, even though under excommunication. Therefore excommunication does not bar one from electing or even being elected.
The reason is that the absolution of the excommunication is reserved to the Pope, as is any judgment in the matter, but there is no Pope at the moment to judge or absolve. Therefore the Popes have decided that excommunicates can vote.
However, heretics cannot, because they have ceased to be members of the Church. So it is not the excommunication for heresy that bars one from voting, but the very act of heresy itself.
This statement is wrong on another base. Given the confusion from 1958 until 1990, each and every potential elector had incurred one or more excommunication for participation in the Novus Ordo or in the heresies of the Traditionalists.
True, most of us were ignorant at the time, but the good of the Church demands the observance of the excommunication, until the Pope removes it personally or through his delegate.
Simple priests and even Bishops have no jurisdiction to absolve from these excommunications, since this is reserved to the Pope, who has delegated it by law to the Local Ordinary. To argue that these excommunications barred us from voting, when we had done all in our power to return to the Church, the balance being impossible until a Pope was elected, leads to the heretical conclusion that there will never be another Pope.
Vatican Council (DZ 1825): If anyone then says that it is not from the institution of Christ the Lord Himself, or by divine right that the blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church, or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of the blessed Peter in the same primacy, let him be anathema.
The matter on page 472 was prophetic conjecture written by Teresa Benns. Basically the Pope is Bishop of Rome, even if Rome is now the Seat of Antichrist and probably destined for destruction.
Also never was Roncalli in heaven. This is an allegorical battle. We are forwarding to Teresa and asking her to comment, as well.
Now to another matter. We received several emails from Hans Lundahl, which were sent Re: Seeking the pope... (originally sent to Bishop John Prakash, Bombay) Have you been consecrated bishop?
If so, do you realize that without a Papal Mandate, you are excommunicated most specially reserved to the Apostolic See. (Pope Pius XII made this change in law in the 1950’s for the good of the Church.)
Pope Michael