Editor’s Note: Matthew McCusker, who is identified as a historian HERE, but who has no profile on any professional site that I know of, has once again launched into the debate over whether Pope Francis is the pope, using his own erroneous notions, which lead him to attempt to decide by himself or without the authority of the Church, who is in the Church and who is not in the Church.

Once again he confuses “manifest” with “public”,* because he fails to recognize that (1) what any number of Catholics think is the truth is distinct from what the Authority of the Church declares to be the truth — this is the error of protestantism which is at the core of sedevacantism, and (2) that in the Catholic Church there is the rule of law and justice, so that even manifest formal heretics have the right to be tried in court before they are deprived of their rights (though the new Code allows for an administrative procedure, which is not a trial).

Only when a person who is formally accused in a ecclesiastical denunciation to the proper tribunal is reproved 3x and fails to renounce his heretical view(s), does it become juridically certain that he is “pertinacious”. When this occurs, the authority has the right to declare him a “public” heretic. Then the same authority, if it has the jurisdiction, can deprive him of all office and ministry in the Church.

McCusker is trying to convince Catholics, however, that Pope Francis is not the pope simply and solely because McCusker or any number of persons claim he is a heretic. McCusker is against having a trial and thus implicitly must be presumed to be against the Sutri Initiative.

McCusker also in the above article says that no doubt as to the validity of a papal election can be moved long after the election, it must be in the immediate days following. This is simply false, as can be seen from the events of the Great Schism.

So in sum, McCusker stands against any questioning of the Conclave of 2013, but at the same time against any move to remove Pope Francis from office. He hides this his true position under the virtue signaling of his above faulty argumentation.

Many may be fooled by his game. I for one am not.

If you are sincere in wanting Pope Francis declared a public heretic, there is only one way to do it, and that is the Sutri Initiative, because there is only one way the Church has ever done it, and Bellarmine, Noort, Suarez and the like don’t speak of it, so don’t waste your time digging into their writings to find the answer, when the Code of Canon Law already gives one.

_____________________________

Note: In Church Law “public” is used just as it it used in wanted posters for “Public Enemy number 1”, that is, as a qualifier which regards a determination made by legitimate authority. Thus, there are public heretics and public masses, just as there are private heretics and private masses. — McCusker wants you to take it on yourself to usurp the authority in the Church which has the duty to make such declarations. His position is exactly that of Sedevacantists. But Sedevacantists have never wanted to save the Church from Her enemies: they just want to virtue signal and run-away and found their own churches of the pure and enlightened.