Thoughts on Sedevacantism
Its Claims Are Self-Defeating and Make Papal Infallibility and Supremacy Meaningless
If you’ve read, listened to, or watched any of my satirical work on my other Substack, you’ve seen me cover sedevacantists like the Dimond brothers of “Most Holy Family Monastery” frequently over the past few months.
The primary reasons are timing—I just found out about them—and satirical and the many bizarre tales of the Dimonds’ career, videos, and their many lawsuits and other battles against their own former monks make greater fodder for my writing. But the ultimate reason, or at least the final cause that should, I believe, be motivating me, is pity.
The particular breed of sedevacantists that constitute the Dimonds and their followers are a sad bunch. I’ve argued with them frequently over the last couple of months and it’s obvious. According to their view of the Church, where, like most other sedevacantists, they claim that some number of the most recent Popes are not real Popes, but false antipopes, there are, according to them, little to no valid/licit Masses, Sacraments, or priests anywhere in the world that one can go to. Being a “Traditional Catholic”, for sedevacantists like those I’ve debated recently, most eminently means not going to Mass, and is reduced to baptizing yourself in the shower because you don’t trust that your baptism is valid, obsessing over veils for women in a creepy, weird way, telling anyone who does go to Mass that they are going to hell, and resharing despairing videos back and forth. Oh, and possibly planning a violent revolution or two while playing a lot of online chess.1
Maybe I’ve just been talking to the “wrong” sedevacantists, but all of them, in holding to this position, have a dark, dreadful, despairing view of the Church on at least some level. Bluntly, I just feel sad for them. Their emotional state must be quite miserable.
The sedevacantist position, while based on certain valid concerns about the trajectory of the Catholic Church and the world over the past century and a half, is, ultimately, a despairing approach to the problems out there, a conspiracy theory born out of scrupulous anxiety and lack of trust in God, that, practically speaking, does the opposite of what it claims to do.
While claiming to be defenders of the Church, of tradition, and of the papacy against a completely new “Novus Ordite” and neo-pagan religion, sedevacantism, in the end, does the opposite.
I won’t offer an entire refutation of sedevacantism. They are great at firing quotes and writing endless tracts of words. But on a basic level, I’m here to show that sedevacantism is self-defeating as it produces the opposite effect of what its intended purpose claims to be.
Catholics should care about refuting sedevacantism because sedevacantists have souls, and we should want them to be in the truth and with the Sacraments, and not in a state of despair. But we should also care, because sedevacantists, in their Pharisaical affixation to traditions of men (take your pick, the Dimond brothers or Richard Ibranyi ), take those who would otherwise be most fervent in defense of tradition, morality, and the Church, out of the Church. Sedevacantism, as I will look more into in a future article, actually makes liberals and wokes within the Church stronger by self-neutering the efforts of otherwise faithful Catholics. Sedevacantism, by taking natural conservatives out of the church, actually makes Christ’s church weaker.
And even if you’re not Catholic, as I know I have many Orthodox and Protestant readers, you should care about the falsity of this position out of Christian charity alone. Whatever you think about the Catholic Church (email me and let’s chat about it) sedevacantists are our Christian brothers in a state of despair. They need our prayers and our support in regaining faith in Christ as their merciful Lord and Savior and in the truth of His promises.
Sedevacantism is Self-Defeating
I sympathize with some of the concerns raised by sedevacantists as many things within the Church trouble me today. However, I approach the problem a little differently. If sedevacantism is true, then certain things about the nature of what Christ has established in the papacy are untenable. If sedevacantism is true, there is no reason to limit it and say that only the last six popes are false popes as the Dimond brothers and many other sedevacantists claim.2
What if it’s right?
Here are a few thoughts about what would be the case if sedevacantism is true:
According to most sedevacantists, any appearance of heresy, false teaching, or lack of correcting the false teaching of others from a true Pope is impossible
If there is any appearance of heresy from someone claiming to be the Pope then he is not the Pope.
Therefore sedevacantists pose a strict dichotomy where the Pope must be 100% infallible and authoritative at all times or he has lost his office due to any statements contrary to proper doctrine.
If the Pope is 100% infallible and authoritative in anything and everything he says or does (this is ultra ultramontanism)
However, if the Pope says anything incorrect at all or doesn’t stop someone from doing so within the Church, he can’t be the Pope, and he is thus an anti-Pope over a false church.
If the Pope says anything incorrect on any matter of doctrine, it is the duty of the people to call him out as a manifest heretic and not to listen to him.
Any manifest heresy is proof that he is not the Pope.
Therefore, practically speaking, any suspicion about the Pope makes him no longer the Pope.
Anyone, therefore, can judge the Pope and declare him not to be the Pope. Not only can they, but all must judge the Pope to be an anti-pope if there be any suspicion or they have thus joined him in a false church by their permissive silence.
Now this leads to an odd practical state of affairs if we apply these principles to history:
If the Pope is infallible, he has no authority, because anyone can say he has become a heretic over any minor mistake he has made in any statement. Every Pope has made some sort of minor mistake or greater in speech or word. Just look at the 11th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Therefore, there are possible grounds for suspicion over every Pope.
Therefore, every Pope, including Peter, is under the possible ground of suspicion of not being the Pope, and therefore papal infallibility is meaningless as, practically speaking, the safest solution3 for each Catholic in this scenario, claiming the Pope to not be the Pope, would mean that you should mistrust every Pope.
If it’s right, it’s self-defeating
If you mistrust every Pope, then there is no point in infallibility or papal supremacy, as practically speaking, everyone ought not to listen to any Pope at any time as they can never be sure that there wasn’t some false teaching said by him or not stopped by him somewhere within the Church.
In short, without even going into the particular concerns (Baptism of Desire, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, NFP, etc.) that sedevacantists raise to demonstrate their claim, sedevacantism does the opposite of what it claims to do.
Rather than defend and exalt true Popes against false-antipopes, sedevacantism is too arbitrary to end with only the last six popes being anti-popes. ALL the Popes, yes even Peter, must be placed under suspicion of not having been a real pope. Rather than defending papal infallibility and supremacy, the Pope is actually the least infallible and least supreme member of the Church within the sedevacantist view as he can and should be judged and ignored by any person for the slightest of concerns.
The more self-consistent sedevacantists are groups like that of Richard Ibranyi, or even quasi-Orthodox positions, which would claim that many many of the Popes, perhaps all the ones that came after St. Peter, have not been real Popes. However, since I trust Christ's words about the gates of hell not prevailing against his Church, I cannot accept the sedevacantist position. Even though I do think many things have been bad recently, the 15th century, the 11th century, and the Arian Crisis were far worse in terms of troublesome actions by the Popes and widespread heresies going uncorrected within the Church.
Sedevacantism is Protestantism Arising Out of Ultramontanism
Ironically, the Dimond brothers and similar sedevacantists, in adopting a hyperpapalist/ultramontanist view, one where they take papal infallibility and supremacy within the Church to an extreme degree, actually destroy both in the process. Their real problems are with Vatican I, as even though the First Vatican Council did make elevated proclamations about the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope in matters of jurisdiction, it also put limits on their exercise that conform it’s reality to what we have seen across the history of the Church.
Remove these limits as sedevacantists do and rather than exalting the Pope, the hyperpapalism, self-defeating, makes them into Protestants, but even more dissipated and schismatic from each other as each person must either be the entire and only ground of interpretation of every Church document (as one must check each one for consistency with all the others). You cannot trust any visible Church in this view, you must protest them all to be a proper sedevacantist. And, in fact, you must, if you wish to be self-consistent, even discount, reinvent, or twist much of Church tradition because you have to fear that some of the Church documents you once thought were safe were actually written by a heretical anti-pope you didn’t realize yet was an antipope. Or, if you reject the visible Pope of the Catholic Church but don’t want to put in the effort yourself to read every document, you can make the Dimond brothers or Richard Ibranyi your magisterium and literally your Pope instead.
Positive Responses to Sedevacantists
The solution to sedevacantism’s claims about inconsistencies in the Popes is longer and more complicated but begins in moderation. Not adopting a view of ultra-hyperpapalism goes a long way to making the Catholic Church, its hierarchy, and its history make a lot more sense.
The best response I’ve yet seen is this discussion between Matt Fradd and Joe Heschmeyer where they discuss possible other responses to problems in the Church by looking at Heschmeyer’s new book Pope Peter about what papal supremacy and infallibility really are within the Church and what the scriptural evidence for it is.
Matt Fradd’s interview with John Salza is also good in its own way, as is, even though I think Jeff Cassman’s own views limited his effectiveness in arguing for the Church’s position, his debate against Peter Dimond here.
To the Orthodox readers. I have hope that a future council could and will clarify things between us. And yes, the case of the Dimonds and other sedevacantists proves that Vatican I’s definitions concerning the papacy need clarification to those I just angered within the West.
Clarification, not changing doctrine, which is of course impossible, is the best way forward. It’s how the Church has always responded to crises, and is how the challenge of sedevacantists, who have been on the rise recently, especially after Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson discussed the position last month.
It’s a Tragic Story All-Around
There is much more to say here of course, but I sum it up by saying that sedevacantism is an ever-changing conspiracy theory grounded in depression and scrupulosity about the state of the Church, the promises of Christ to it, and, for many of its adherents, fear about the state of their own soul.
I believe that most people who follow it are doing so in good faith, rumors about the Dimonds using bot farms and not living the life they preach themselves notwithstanding. As such, sedevacantism isn’t an evil plot hatched by some group or another to gain wealth or power. It’s just one sad case among many, of well-intentioned, holy faithful becoming paranoid and reacting unreasonably in response to very real, but manageable and small problems they encountered within the world.
The simple response to sedevacantism is the same one we ought to give to all other poor struggling souls in other similar groups across broader Christendom. Prayer. Prayer for their conversion, prayer for their trust in God, prayer first and foremost, for their peace.
There is a larger story here, yes, with all the other interrelated sedevacantist and schismatic movements of the last century and the mirroring cases of wokeness, theological liberalism, and yes, other cults, on the left. I am nowhere near well-studied enough on this or related topics yet but am doing a lot of reading of Church history of the last century and a half and the key persons and organizations therein for the story I wish to tell, which ultimately is a pure tragedy. A tragedy founded in real problems yes, but which grew grave, dark, and wide through paranoia and not in trust in Jesus Christ that has led to visible and invisible splits in the Church this past century as much as it did in the 15th or the 11th. Perhaps this is, as Dostoevsky in a literary way pointed out with his character Raskolnikov, or as John Milton did through Paradise Lost, how the devil works, by driving well-intentioned and good people apart, where weakened and separated, they make better prey. It will be a while before I get around to telling it, but I’d love your recommendations for sources, particularly on Archbishop Bugnini, Levefvre, Popes John Paul II and Francis, Josemaria Escriva, General Franco, and Lenin, who, while a seemingly odd and random mix of characters—are the people who drove the history of the last century—both within and outside the Church.
I’m only half-joking.
For more on the different types of sedevacantists, listen to this video by my friend Seth (Deuterocomical):
Or look at this chart another of my friends found:
And yes, in formal Church doctrine, there is a thing called the tutiorist, or safest principle, which I am not qualified to speak decisively about, but it basically means something like this for each Catholic regarding how he ought to live his faith.
While I think the sedevacantists got it wrong I do get their frustrations. Pope Francis has pushed my buttons too, and the easy ‘solution’ would be so say some version of ‘he is not the pope’. So I say he is the pope, not a good pope, but the one we have, the one we have to pray for. Pray hard.
Thank you for this. I have family that follow these people and I just don’t understand how they can essentially choose despair! Since there are no licit sacraments what does it matter if we go to mass? Everyone is going to hell anyway according to them.