Editor’s Note: Uninformed Catholics might be easily fooled by this article from LifeSite News, because it plays on their ignorance of two important canonical terms: manifest and public.

This article reads as if it were Catholic, except that by using the term, “public heretic”, it wants you to have recourse to your  own private judgement without any sentence by superiors in the Church. And the error and sin it attempts to convince you of, is that when your conscience detects manifest heresy in anyone, then automatically that person is a public heretic who loses all rights in the Church, including to be elected pope or vote for the pope.

And as soon as you buy into that premise, you have accepted the core belief of Sedevacantism, which is also that of Martin Luther, that “I myself have sufficient authority in virtue of being a believer in Christ, to determine who is and who is not in the Church.” This is why the most influential sedevacantist site is actually run by a native German, Mario Derksen, “Novus Ordo Watch”.

But in the Catholic Church, when Saints or Doctors of the Church speak of “heresy” or a “heretic”, they know of what the speak: they speak of manifest and public heretics. That is, individuals whom the Church has already recognized as such, by condemning the heresy or the individual. They don’t mean what Saint Thomas Aquinas means, when he says that if you deny what is explicitly affirmed in any scriptural passage (e. g. that Tobias’ dog wagged its tail, as is recounted in the Book of Tobias, in the Old Testament, when he saw his master return from Persia), then you are a heretic. This use of “heretic” regards the sin of deviating from the declared will of God or truth He has promulgated in revelation.

So, yes, while it is true that Catholics should never accept a man who has publicly denied a truth defined in an Ecumenical Council or Papal Decree, since only such a man is a public heretic, it is not true that if a Pope be elected who denies that Tobias’ dog wagged its tale is a public heretic and must himself be denied.

However, if you are a grifter who has made a lot of money personally on opposing Roe vs. Wade, and now are losing track in your grifting potential, you need a new issue to grift on. And testing the waters with an article like this is the best way to decide on what hill of damnation you will stand and die.

When Pope Benedict XVI was alive this same journal ridiculed Catholics who merely pointed out that  his Declaratio of Feb. 11, 2013, was not in conformity with Canon 332 §2. They instead preferred to grift on Pope Francis being canonically elected, in 2013, which was patently false.

But now that he is dying, they have to cut loose from that narrative and plan for the future grift.

What this article does not say, is that only in a disputed election at Rome for the pope, could the Faithful elect a Catholic Candidate to oppose someone who during the Conclave professed manifest heresy. This is a unique prerogative of the Roman Faithful in the Diocese of Rome. Yet it would not have any credibility unless it were led by some of the Cardinals who broke from the Conclave before it elected such a heretic, and themselves elected a Catholic. And indeed, it is the common opinion of Catholic theologians, that the Church of Rome will never lose the Faith, in its majority of electors for the Papacy.

But LifeSite won’t mention that because they already decided that they themselves alone have the sole right to determine whether a man is to be accepted pope or not. Canon Law or Apostolic Right be damned!

Personally, I think the College has already agreed not to elect a Bergoglian revolutionary, so I discount such a future crisis. They need to elect someone who will keep the Africans in the Church, repair the fundraising from the USA (whose laity give 60% of the incoming donations to the Vatican) and restore the moral image of the College, after having elected such a previous creep. He will also have to have a perfect record on abuse, never having covered it up or committed it, and still better if he has blown the whistle on it. That will require grace and a majority consensus. And it is for this that we should be praying night and day.

However, the pro Bergoglians might break and elect their own antipope, since that is also the only way their own grift can keep going.