“Catholic“ Treasures’ video entitled Sedevacantism, a talk delivered by Charles Coulombe and Bill Biersach

The Remnant and Robert Siscoe Refuted on Sedevacantism (video and article)

Bro. Peter Dimond

Catholic Treasures?

Catholic Treasures in California recently produced a video entitled Sedevacantism, a talk delivered by Charles Coulombe and Bill Biersach. Along the same lines as the St. Benedict Center (Richmond, NH) article, the video attempts to defend that a heretic is a Pope. Biersach and Coulombe do not explicitly deny that Antipope John Paul II is a heretic; they even seem to admit it by referring to such instances as when Antipope John Paul II kissed the Koran (the Muslim ‘holy book’) and prayed for the coming of the Messiah with the Jews in a synagogue in 1986. They also admit that St. Robert Bellarmine taught that a Pope who becomes a heretic loses his office ipso facto (by that very fact and without further declaration).

St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30: "A pope who is a manifest heretic automatically (per se) ceases to be pope and head, just as he ceases automatically to be a Christian and a member of the Church. Wherefore, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the ancient Fathers who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction." 14 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30: "For, in the first place, it is proven with arguments from authority and from reason that the manifest heretic is 'ipso facto' deposed. The argument from authority is based on St. Paul (Titus 3:10), who orders that the heretic be avoided after two warnings, that is, after showing himself to be manifestly obstinate - which means before any excommunication or judicial sentence. And this is what St. Jerome writes, adding that the other sinners are excluded from the Church by sentence of excommunication, but the heretics exile themselves and separate themselves by their own act from the body of Christ." 1 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30: "This principle is most certain. The non-Christian cannot in any way be Pope, as Cajetan himself admits (ib. c. 26). The reason for this is that he cannot be head of what he is not a member; now he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian, as is clearly taught by St. Cyprian (lib. 4, epist. 2), St. Athanasius (Scr. 2 cont. Arian.), St. Augustine (lib. De great. Christ. Cap. 20), St. Jerome (contra Lucifer.) and others; therefore the manifest heretic cannot be Pope." 2

But Biersach and Coulombe defend their position in the video by asserting that the words of St. Robert were only his opinion. Biersach challenges the Sedevacantists to produce a dogmatic statement which corroborates the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine. Unfortunately for Mr. Biersach, he fails to realize that St. Robert's teaching is rooted in the solemnly defined dogma that a heretic is not a member of the Church, and therefore cannot be Pope. We have quoted this dogma already in this article. Thus, the words of St. Robert Bellarmine are not an opinion but a dogmatic fact - a fact inextricably bound up with dogma. In the video, the two men also put forward the argument that if John Paul II is not the Pope due to his being a heretic, then the first Pope, St. Peter, was not the Pope either since he denied Christ three times. If they had read the First Vatican Council carefully they would have discovered that Vatican I defined as a dogma that St. Peter was not entrusted with the supreme jurisdiction of the Church until after the Resurrection, by the words in John 21:15 - "Feed my sheep, etc." (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council I, Session 4, Chap. 1). 4 The words that Our Lord spoke to St. Peter in Matthew 16:18-19 were a promise that He would build the Church upon Peter, and that He would give him the keys to the kingdom, but these words did not give Peter the keys. So when Peter denied Christ (which was an act of heresy) he was not yet the Pope. When St. Peter finally became the Pope he was a Catholic who denied nothing. If he had been the Pope and denied Christ he would have ceased to be the Pope. We don't have time to refute all the errors of this video here, but we will simply say that Bill Biersach, Charles Coulombe and Catholic Treasures are all guilty of denying the same dogma: that a heretic is not a member of the Church. Endnotes 1 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30. 2 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30. 3 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30. 4 Denzinger 1822; Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2, p. 812.