Sedevacantism
pope of the Roman Catholic Church is currently vacant (sede vacante). Sedevacantists are a traditional Catholic segment of Catholicism who insist that the men who have occupied the Vatican palace since the latter part of the 20th century are heretics for introducing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and for replacing the Tridentine Roman Missal and its order of Mass with a new one which allows the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular instead of Latin. Their conclusion is based to some extent on the decree of papal infallibility of the First Vatican Council. If a pope promulgates heresy, it is reasoned, he lacks infallibility and thus the office of Pope. Another, simpler, view is that a pope falls from office if he embraces heresy and does not need to promulgate heretical teaching to do so. Sedevacantists also cite Paul IV's 1559 which teaches that a heretic cannot be elected pope.
Sedevacantists argue that some recent occupants of the Vatican palace performed actions that would not be carried out by true popes. In such assertions, sedevacantists agree with those who have elected men to positions which they claim are papal but who do not occupy the Vatican palace.
It is stated that Pope Paul VI (r: 1963-1978) abandoned the wearing of the papal crown (called the papal tiara) and that no true pope would have refused to wear the traditional symbol of the papacy. It is also noted that Pope John Paul I (r: August-September 1978) abandoned the Papal Coronation and that Pope John Paul II (r: 1978-present) declined to take the papal oath.
Sedevacantism is a subset of Catholic traditionalism. Other traditionalists maintain that the popes since Pius XII, although they may have personally held many of what some traditionalists perceive as scandalous heretical beliefs, nevertheless were true popes who never tried to use their infallible power (which only is used exceptionally) to promulgate a heresy, which all Catholics believe would be impossible.
Some groups have put forward their own popes in opposition to those in Rome, and thus transferred from sedevacantism to conclavism. The Palmar de Troya movement asserts that Christ appeared to Clemente Domínguez y Gómez, a Spaniard, and told him that he was to assume the papacy on Pope Paul VI's death. This claimant is known as Pope Gregory XVII The true Catholic Church in the late 1990s elected a traditionalist priest to be Pope Pius XIII, claiming that all popes following the death of Pope Pius XII (r: 1939-1958) were invalidly elected or disqualified by virtue of their excommunication.
The United States-based true Catholic Church, a conclavist group, which asserts that Fr Lucian Pulvermacher is the pope, claims that Pope John XXIII (r: 1958-1963) joined the freemasons in 1935, an act that, if true, would have earned automatic excommunication and so made him ineligible for the papacy.
Sedevacantists are few, with a membership of only a few thousand. However, they generally believe that the marks of Christ's church comprise unity, sanctity, catholicity and apostolicity, and do not include size.
There is a movement among sedevacantists in England to be known instead as recusants.
Main sedevacanist groups
See also
