Part I: The Crisis
I have spent a good part of my life trying to discover the truth. When I was 18, I left atheism for Protestantism and developed Calvinist persuasions. Thirty-three years later, after learning of the evidence for the Catholic Faith and the beauty of the Eucharist, I embraced Catholicism at the 2024 Easter Vigil. But I was soon confronted with Modernist teachings as well as the Charismatic Renewal. Did I leave Protestantism only to return to it in a different form? Having immersed myself in online sources teaching that the Catholic Church had been replaced by a demonic counterfeit after Vatican II, I left for a sedevacantist chapel—chasing a mirage into the wilderness.
Soon after my arrival, I was startled to find many individuals struggling with profound spiritual and psychological problems such as depression, crippling anxiety, social phobia, suicidality, scrupulosity, domestic abuse, and even a break with reality. I witnessed one poor woman so consumed with fear she could not enter the confessional.
In my work as a physician in the field of addiction, I regularly encounter patients struggling with psychological problems, so I am sensitive to these issues. In the chapel, I witnessed scrupulosity so often that the sedevacantist enterprise initially seemed to be defined not as much by theology as by behavioral aberration, whose characteristics reminded me of the addiction cycle. I even saw my newly baptized 10-year-old daughter showing the telltale signs.
The scrupulosity cycle of rising doubt and anxiety with temporary relief—achieved by confession, conditional administration of a sacrament, binge immersion in online echo chambers, exaggeration of the evils of the Novus Ordo, or trading conspiracy theory narratives—reminded me of the addiction cycle of craving, consumption, and transient relief. Scientific research has noted similar neural pathway activations in scrupulosity, a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction. Outrage and disgust, especially if accompanied by a sense of superiority for having outwitted the “psyop,” can produce rewarding dopamine “hits” that perpetuate the cycle. I was no different, until I saw the rotten fruit.
Conspiracy and paranoia create a bunker mentality that makes it difficult to engage the outside world. Conspiracy theories, since they don’t meet the criterion of “moral certainty” required for holding negative judgments of others according to Catholic moral theology, objectively violate the eighth commandment. But conspiratorial thinking is so prevalent in sedevacantism that it becomes part of the air one breathes. It is “common knowledge” and may seem certain to an insider.
The belief that the See of Rome is vacant is generalized into “omnivacantism,” a belief that all seats of authority in society are vacant. Any experts are viewed with suspicion. The web of all experts, whether secular or religious, is viewed as a totally depraved new world order “entity” that acts as a demonic cabal.
I believe most have been ensnared by the echo chambers online that spread these ideas. Many are kind and sincere, but zeal and sincerity don’t equal truth. The result for some individuals is a stance of radical autonomy where one becomes an authority on almost everything—deciding whether the pope is valid, deciding which sedevacantist bishops to trust, deciding which sacraments are valid, etc. A hypervigilant attitude is acquired since every rubric, every sacrament, and every expert opinion must be scrutinized—since the individual is now the sole arbiter of truth.
The Scholastic principle of God’s love and providence working for our good despite bad leaders and a society that is a mixture of good and bad has been lost. Jesus asks us to take His yoke upon us, since His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But many are shouldering burdens they were never meant to carry, and they are being crushed under the weight. The tragic outcome is the devastation that I and others have witnessed in sedevacantist communities.
I want to suggest that there is a far better solution. We can fight for Catholic tradition on the true spiritual battlefield that exists within the Church. The Church needs people who care about her to fight for her from within rather than hide away in isolation.
Ironically, this isolated way of living is more Modernist than the Modernism sedevacantists think they are fighting. The essence of Modernism is self-determination: bringing truth up from within without regard for objective reality, whether in the form of religious dogmas, scientific or historical evidence, or established authorities. The traditionalist version of Modernism is subjective across the board, since it lacks a living magisterium and must apply private judgment to all authorities past and present.
When I raised my concerns with the leadership at the chapel, there was acknowledgment of problems but an unwillingness to address internal root causes. “But these are Trads!” was the main reply I got. I thought at that point that perhaps I did not want to be a “Trad”; I wanted to be a Catholic.
The Scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas is founded on the principle that “grace does not destroy but perfects nature.” God’s grace elevates our individual human natures, and the Church as a whole engages with the secular world to draw it toward God. The natural world has a relative good. It is not a totally depraved cabal—an application of the Calvinist concept of total depravity to society at large—and therefore we can cooperate with nonbelievers for the common good. In sedevacantism, there is instead a sense that the world of grace and the “holy remnant” are in a zero-sum game with secular society, so a strategy of either counterrevolutionary subversion or total avoidance is promoted.
The portrayal of the outside world as a monstrous, monolithic evil betrays a Neo-Gnostic, Manichaean mindset. The chapel’s weekly bulletin around Easter noted that the world was like a narcissist and its problems were silly. These attitudes encourage a profound loss of charity toward those in need of a compassionate hand. The main focus becomes a pharisaical “preserving of one’s purity and holiness” by avoiding contact with the world rather than loving God and neighbor. Corporal works of mercy are denigrated and considered “too Novus Ordo.” One person I encountered reacted with disgust when I mentioned I worked in Covington, Kentucky, with addiction patients.
My confusion returned and grew. Is this true Catholicism? Have I been misled?
I then began researching and writing to try to see through the fog. I began writing initially to defend the sedevacantist position but quickly developed serious doubts. I arrived at the conclusion that at a minimum sedevacantism was a private opinion that could not bind anyone’s conscience. Since a private opinion cannot justify separating communion, I began contemplating a return to the Church. In fact, the concept of the indefectibility of the Church—as I later learned—means that one will never have to separate from the one, visible, institutional Catholic Church. No more burning the midnight oil trying to discern its location!
I began reading John Salza and Robert Siscoe’s book, True or False Pope? Refuting Sedevacantism and Other Modern Errors, which is considered by the majority of observers to have exhaustively refuted sedevacantism. Fr. Anthony Cekada—one of the intellectual architects of sedevacantism who broke away from the Society of St. Pius X with a group of eight other priests in 1983—tries to refute the arguments presented in the book. In an online video, he attempts to answer each major section and shows his disgust by ripping up portions of the book and throwing them in the trash. This is a red flag! Someone who has a substantive refutation does not need to perform such stunts.
Once I had completed the book, I moved from viewing sedevacantism as a doubtful private opinion to a definitive error that was an understandable but ultimately destructive response to the crisis in the Church.
In Part II, I will summarize the results of my research, which proposes a Thomistic metaphysical diagnosis for the current crisis, including the development of sedevacantism. Understanding the DNA of sedevacantism helps to place it in perspective and ultimately reject it as the rotten fruit of progressive error. In Part III, I will provide a theological refutation of sedevacantism and a way forward for full resolution of the crisis.
Sedevacanism ultimately amounts to calling Jesus a liar, thus, its very existence is blasphemous. In Matthew 16 Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. By divine law, only a valid pope can appoint valid bishops, and only valid bishops can ratify a newly appointed pope as being valid. While there have been a few instances of long interregnums in Church history (including a two year one in the late Middle Ages), an extended one lasting generations means that the Church is dead, and has no ability to regenerate itself. The oldest living bishop (from Mexico) is the last bishop appointed by John XXIII, thus, there are no bishops still alive appointed by Pius XII, thus, if Pius XII was the last legitimate pope then the Church is dead, and Jesus lied. And for those who recognize all the popes up to and including Benedict XVI but not Bergoglio and Prevost, this same situation will eventually happen in the future, when the last of the bishops appointed by Benedict XVI have died (scary to think about). This position is actually worse than Protestantism, because Protestants get around this by defining “Church” differently. They are misled and wrong, but at least honest. We Catholics believe that there is only one Church, and thus there is no way to play word games here with what Jesus said.
Where Sedevacanists get into trouble is in failing to distinguish and prioritize the laws that govern the Church. Divine law has governed the Church since its very foundation on Good Friday. It is simple out of necessity, because the apostles and first generation Christians were not lawyers, scribes, nor theologians. The papacy, episcopacy, and priesthood are all part of divine law.
Canon law and the cardinalate came into being later in Church history, as the Church grew (specifically late antiquity/early Middle Ages). They simply did not exist in the beginning, and for the first half of Church history cardinals did not elect popes (other means were used to select them). They are good institutions, that helped governed the Church as it grew larger, but can never supersede divine law. Thus, while St. Charles Borromeo was a saint and brilliant canon lawyer, he was flat out wrong when he stated that a pope that taught heresy would be ipso facto deposed, because he was trying to elevate canon law above divine law. By divine law there are only two things that can end a papacy: death and resignation. Nothing else can (yes it is possible to force an end to a papacy by murdering a pope, like what happened in the Dark Ages – it would be interesting to see how Sedevacanists would explain papal succession through the Dark Ages).
This is also why, even if there was something fraudulent or at least irregular/non-canonical in the election of Bergoglio, he was the valid pope by virtue of the common recognition of this fact by the bishops (not by being selected by the cardinals). And Benedict XVI clearly resigned. Saying that he has to use “exact, certain words or phrases” again amounts to elevating canon law above divine law. This is also why Bergoglio’s deposition of Bishop Strickland, while illegal and a gross violation of canon law, was ultimately valid – because by divine law the pope has the authority to depose any bishop for any reason. Good popes care about following canon law for the sake of good governance of the Church – bad popes do not, even if it means running the Church like a “banana republic”.
This is not to say that Bergoglio was a good pope. I consider him the worst pope in Church history, and would not want to be where he is right now. And Prevost is on track to potentially be worse, as he may end up formalizing and codifying a lot of the damage his predecessor caused, instead of repairing it. But both were/are legitimate popes. Yes, the Church is in a major crisis situation.
What a great article. I am looking forward to parts 2 and 3. I lived and worked as a nurse clinical adviser at a major insurance company in Louisville for 6 years. I came to the Catholic Church in my teens mid-Vatican II before all the many unsettling changes.
I have had a love/disappointment relationship with the Catholic Church and at times considered Sedevacantism, but never embraced it.
Fortunately, I am now a member of an approved TLM personal parish. It feels like coming home to the Catholic Church I converted to. That is not to say I don’t attend a Novus Ordo mass when I can’t make my preferred TLM mass. I certainly do and have no concerns for its validity. I just feel more comfortable and elevated by the beautiful tradition and sacredness of the TLM Mass.
I do feel the Church is in an existential and threatening spiritual, moral, and institutional crisis as it has been in many times before. Satan will not prevail, but his power and influence does wax and wane. I think, currently, it’s waxing.