A Profession of Faith in the Papacy

A reassertion of creed in response to false claims and accusations

On this feast of Saints Peter and Paul—two of my personal patrons (as my confirmation name is Paul, deliberately after the apostle)—I would like to address, in a public and formal way, various accusations that have been leveled at me over the years by people who have not read my work with any care and who therefore grossly err in their opinion of what I actually hold as a Catholic. I say the following not so much for their benefit, as they often do not seem to care whether or not they are correct and in fact would prefer to continue thinking the worst, as for the benefit of the very many readers of good will who may genuinely wonder about where I stand on various issues.

I have been accused, inter alia, of being a sedevacantist, refusing submission to the Roman Pontiff, asserting that Francis fell from his office due to heresy, and rejecting the teaching of Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I. These issues I will now take up.

Against Sedevacantism

First, I affirm that Pope Francis was the legitimate Roman Pontiff, and that Pope Leo XIV is now his valid successor and the rightful pope. I always accepted that Francis was the true pope, the successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Christ. I argued frequently against the various hypotheses of the sedevacantists and “benevacantists” who tried to maintain that he was not.

Likewise, I accept Leo XIV as the true pope; indeed, it is a serious part of my spirituality, in keeping with my patron saint and my identity as a Benedictine oblate, to pray daily for the pope by name at the Kyrie litany of the monastic Divine Office and in the prayer “Deus omnium fidelium pastor et rector.” I have always attended Masses in which the celebrant commemorates the current pope by name and would not attend Masses in which he refused to do so.

Submission of Intellect and Will

Second, I accept that Catholics, even when raising theological concerns or difficulties, owe the Roman Pontiff “religious submission of intellect and will.”

When I was a professor at the International Theological Institute in Austria (1998–2006), I took the prescribed Oath of Fidelity, which requires exactly this commitment, and made the Profession of Faith in the presence of Cardinal Schönborn, who granted me the mandatum to teach theology. Similarly, when I was a professor at Wyoming Catholic College (2007–2018), I took the same Oath and made the same Profession annually (as was our custom for all the faculty, even though it was not required by church law), and received the mandatum from Bishop David Ricken, a mandatum that was extended by his two successors. Nothing in my thinking or acting has changed in this regard even though I am no longer serving in an academic position that would require said Oath and Profession.

At the same time, in the company of other scholars (Edward Feser, Thomas Pink, Michael Sirilla, Fr. Thomas Crean, Fr. Thomas Weinandy, José Antonio Ureta, Roberto de Mattei, et al.), I have tried to contribute fruitfully to ongoing theological discussions about the limits of this submission precisely in regard to teaching that appears to be contradictory or revolutionary. I recognize that there are “dubia” concerning the concrete meaning and application of certain teachings of Vatican I and Vatican II (see Postscript below). The respectful efforts of theologians to raise questions and examine difficulties is ultimately a service to the Magisterium, as is recognized in the Instruction Donum Veritatis.

The Open Letter of 2019

Third, when I signed the twenty-page Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church, published on April 30, 2019, I did in fact believe—and I continue to believe—that Pope Francis’s words and actions indicated that he held heretical views on seven propositions having to do with conjugal morality, conscience, conversion from sin, absolute moral norms, and the plurality of religions. The Open Letter provided evidence in the form of repeated statements about these matters, contrasted them with authoritative teaching from Scripture and the solemn Magisterium, and showed that he favored bishops and theologians who agreed with his views. It then asked the bishops of the Catholic Church, as successors of the apostles, to investigate this matter and to assume responsibility by admonishing the pope and taking steps to free the Church from a distressing situation.

This Letter was signed by, among others, one of our greatest living theologians, Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, and one of our greatest scholars of antiquity, Dr. John Rist.

In fact, I put my signature to a number of major documents of this kind, all of which can be found in the valuable collection Defending the Faith against Present Heresies: Letters & Statements Addressed to Pope Francis, the Cardinals, and the Bishops, with a Collection of Related Articles & Interviews, which, though published by Arouca Press, is available in the United States through Os Justi Press. I do not regret signing any of the documents, in spite of the enormous professional difficulties they entailed. My conscience is at peace; indeed, it could not have been at peace had I not protested against Francis’s abuse of his office and abuse of the faithful.

More evidence of Francis’s errors and crimes may be found in the recent book The Disastrous Pontificate: Pope Francis’ Rupture from the Magisterium by Dominic J. Grigio.

Loss of papal office

Fourth, as noted above, I always recognized Pope Francis as the pope until his death on April 21, 2025. This answer is compatible with the preceding answer because—in sharp contrast to sedevacantists—I do not concur with, indeed I reject as impossible, the theological opinion that a pope immediately loses his office under suspicion of being a heretic or by teaching a heretical proposition in his ordinary (non-infallible) magisterium,¹ even were an individual Catholic to have arrived at moral certainty that such was the case or had occurred.

Since the Church has never defined the one and only view to be held on this complicated issue, Catholics remain free to hold one of several views that have been argued by theologians and canonists over the centuries.²

One permissible view is that a pope retains his office as long as he has not been proved guilty of pertinacity through the intervention of the college of bishops, his fellow successors to the apostles, or through the intervention of the cardinals, his senate in the governance of the Church, and, accordingly, that no individual Catholic can, on his own authority and by his own initiative, declare that a man who is recognized as having been elected pope in conclave has either failed to receive his office or has lost an office once received.

In short: the man who is universally recognized as the pope is indeed the pope, and, in the view I accept, a formal procedure would be required on the part of the bishops and/or the cardinals in order to call this into question, as doing so is inherently beyond the competence of a mere layman.

Communion with the Church

I remain and desire always to remain in communion with the Roman Catholic Church—specifically with the bishops united to the current Holy Father—and reject any position that would separate me from that communion.

I believe the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and that its visible head on earth is the pope, the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, the principle of unity for the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy. As I profess the faith of the Church without equivocation, seek to follow her precepts without exception, and reject anything incompatible with Catholic faith and morals, I believe with reasonable confidence that I am in living communion with all the bishops, a gift for which I give thanks to the Lord.

The Roman Catholic Church is the communion, the koinonia, into which I was baptized; it is the communion to which I hope that my every reception of the Holy Eucharist may further unite me; and it is the communion in which I hope to breathe my last breath, with the sentiments of St. Thomas Aquinas in my heart, if not verbatim on my lips:

I receive Thee, price of my soul’s redemption, I receive Thee, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched, labored; I have preached Thee, I have taught Thee… If I have taught anything poorly on this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I leave this life.

Postscript: The First Vatican Council

The intention behind, interpretation of, and long shadow cast by, Vatican I’s dogmatic decree Pastor Aeternus are complex and difficult topics—ones that I wrote about recently at this Substack:

In addition to that post, I recommend reading the following articles, and in the order given:

• Pauper Peregrinus, “Papal Infallibility After One Hundred and Fifty Years”

• Timothy Flanders, “The Dubia of Vatican I”

• Peter Kwasniewski, “Objections and Replies on Pastor Aeternus”

• Darrick Taylor, “Can We Learn Anything from the Critics of Vatican I?”

• Robert Lazu Kmita, “The Hyperpapalist Interpretation of Pastor Aeternus: Why Modernists and Sedevacantists are Both Wrong”

• John P. Joy, “Is There a Charism of Infallible Safety?”

• Thomas Pink, “Papal Authority and the Limits of Official Theology”

• Jeremy Holmes, “On non-infallible teachings of the Magisterium and the meaning of ‘obsequium religiosum’”

For those interested in a deeper dive, I recommend these books:

• John P. Joy, Disputed Questions on Papal Infallibility (Os Justi Press, 2022);

• Peter Kwasniewski, ed., Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith (Os Justi Press, 2024), which includes essays by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Phillip Campbell, Stuart Chessman, Charles A. Coulombe, Roberto de Mattei, Edward Feser, Timothy S. Flanders, Rémi Fontaine, Matt Gaspers, Jeremy Holmes, John P. Joy, Robert W. Keim, John Lamont, Sebastian Morello, Martin Mosebach, Clemens Victor Oldendorf, Thomas Pink, Enrico Roccagiachini, Eric Sammons, Joseph Shaw, Henry Sire, Thomas Sternberg, Darrick Taylor, and José A. Ureta;

• Peter Kwasniewski, The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism: Rethinking the Papacy in a Time of Ecclesial Disintegration. Volume 1: Theological Reflections on the Rock of the Church (Arouca Press, 2022).

1. As for the extraordinary (infallible) magisterium, it is self-evident that a pope could not define heresy in this manner; that is the very dogma of Vatican I.

2. The anthology Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith explores these views in some detail.