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Donatism vs. Catholicism: Loss of Office and Valid Sacraments
Sam Shamoun: Ecumenical Fake Christian Exposed
Sincere Question: How is your position that Heretics lose office instantaneously not Donatism?
Dershogun
In charity, your incorrect understanding of Donatism has led you to conflate distinct issues. Donatism was the false belief that wicked or unholy ministers could not validly perform sacraments. That’s false. It’s not the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church because a wicked person or someone outside the Church can validly perform a sacrament (e.g. baptism) if he observes the requisite matter, form, etc. Donatists also held that the Church only consisted of the morally pure. That’s also false because not every grave sin (but only schism, heresy or apostasy) severs a man from the Church.
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (#23), June 29, 1943: “For not every offense, although it may be a grave evil, is such as by its very own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy.”
So, the Catholic Church rejects the position of the Donatists that unholy people cannot perform sacraments or be part of the Church. But the Catholic Church teaches that if someone denies the faith (and is a heretic) he automatically loses membership in the Church and therefore cannot rule it. The position that heretics automatically lose membership and authority in the Church is not only found in authoritative papal teaching but was articulated by the very doctors of the Church who condemned Donatism. So, our position is Catholic and has nothing to do with Donatism.
Pope St. Celestine, To The Clergy And People Of Constantinople: “Nevertheless, lest the sentence of him who had already called down a divine sentence upon himself should appear to have force even for a time, the authority of Our Apostolic See has openly ordained that no bishop, cleric, or Christian of any profession, who were deposed from their position or from communion by Nestorius and those of his ilk from the time [ex quo] they began to preach heresy, is to be seen as either deposed or excommunicated. But all these have been and until now remain in Our communion, because he who stumbled in preaching such things was not able to depose or remove anyone.”
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Bull Cantate Domino, 1441: “It [the Holy Roman Church] condemns, rejects and anathematizes all who think opposed and contrary things, and declares them to be aliens from the Body of Christ, which is the Church.”
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, Book 2, Chap. 30: “For when those Fathers say that heretics lose jurisdiction, they do not adduce any human laws, none of which perhaps even existed at that time on this matter, but they argue from the nature of heresy. The Council of Constance, on the other hand, does not speak except concerning the excommunicated; that is, concerning those who through a sentence of the Church have lost jurisdiction. Heretics, however, even before an excommunication are outside the Church and deprived of all jurisdiction, for they are condemned by their own judgment, as the Apostle teaches in Titus 3. In other words, they have been cut off from the body of the Church without excommunication, as Jerome explains.”
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, Book 2, Chap. 30: “... a manifestly heretical Pope automatically ceases to be the Pope and the head just as he automatically ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church, and that for this reason he may be judged and punished by the Church. This is the judgment of all the ancient Fathers, who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction...”
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Militante, Chap. 10: “For that reason [Popes] Celestine and Nicholas, in the passages cited, say that a heretical bishop, from the time he began to preach heresies, was not able to loose or bind anyone…”
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