History Shows that Popes Cannot Infallibly Judge the Legitimacy of Other Popes

In the link below, Dr. Peter Chojnowski presents a quote from St. Robert Bellarmine showing how popes can err in judgment about the legitimacy of popes who came before them.  This should make those think twice who today say that we need to wait for a future pope to make a judgment about who the true pope is currently.  No.  Never in the history of the Church has the resolution of who was the true pope when there was more than one claimant been decided by a future pope.  It was always decided during the lifetime of the claimants.  So, too, must the identity of the current true pope be resolved in our own time.  For anybody who has eyes to see and ears to hear, they can fairly easily come to know that it is Benedict XVI.

http://radtradthomist.chojnowski.me/2020/02/st-robert-bellermines-teaching-gives.html

The following link contains a video in which Fr. Paul Kramer explains why the identity of the current true pope must be resolved today.

We Cannot Wait for a Future Pope to Resolve the Current “Two” Pope Situation

6 thoughts on “History Shows that Popes Cannot Infallibly Judge the Legitimacy of Other Popes”

  1. As all these quotes have come to be realized through the counterfeit pope jorge bergoglio; what is most especially disturbing is that WE ARE BEING MISLED BY OUR PASTORS who have a grave responsibility to be the watchmen as GOD’S appointed ministers who are called by Him to lead us, His faithful, to the TRUTH today.

    However as Saint Francis revealed, “Some preachers will keep silent about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it.”

    WAKE UP, AND STOP OFFENDING GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  2. A Stunning Prophecy by Saint Francis
    11/20/2017 at 10:06 AM Posted by Mary Anne Hackett

    To Whom Does It Apply? You Decide

    by Christopher A. Ferrara, November 16, 2017

    In a famous book which sets forth certain prophecies by Saint Francis — while carefully distinguishing them from doubtful sayings attributed to him (which are found in an appendix to the book) — we read the following stunning revelation to the members of the order he founded, at the center of which is a future occupant of the Chair of Peter:

    A short time before the holy Father’s [St. Francis’] death, he called together his children and warned them of the coming troubles:

    “Act bravely, my brethren; take courage and trust in the Lord. The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase. The devils will have unusual power; the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who obey the true Supreme Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity.

    “At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death. Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it.

    “There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God….

    “Those who preserve their fervor and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth…

    “Some preachers will keep silent about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them, not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.”

    (Works of the Seraphic Father, St. Francis of Assisi [London: R. Washbourne, 1882], pp. 248-250) [paragraph breaks added]

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  3. As Cardinal Luigi Ciappi plainly stated in his message to Professor Baumgartner of Salzburg, “In the Third Secret it is foretold, amongst other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

    In 1999, the late Malachi Martin stated on the Art Bell Show that, while he was secretary to Cardinal Bea, he was given to read the Secret of Fatima in early February 1960, which he described as written on a single sheet of paper.

    He stated that Our Lady’s words were very dry and specific and they foretold of a future “pope” (not the true Pope, but an heretical antipope) who would be completely under the control of the devil. It is clear then, that the Third Secret of Fatima reveals the “mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess. 2:7), the mystery of the red dragon, whose tail swept down a third of the “stars of Heaven”, i.e. one third of the Catholic hierarchy.

    The Third Secret of Fatima reveals this “mystery of iniquity”: a counterfeit Pope will rule from the Vatican. A great portion of the Catholic hierarchy will follow him into apostasy. . .

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  4. On the other hand, if it appears certain to us that the faith which was taught by the Church for twenty centuries cannot contain error, we have much less of an absolute certitude that the Pope be truly Pope. Heresy, schism, ipso facto excommunication, and invalid election are some causes which could make it happen that a Pope never was one or would cease to be one. In this obviously very exceptional case, the Church would be in a situation similar to that which occurs after the death of a sovereign pontiff.
    Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Écône, August 2, 1976.
    https://www.fsspx.com/Communicantes/Oct2002/Servile_Obedience.htm

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  5. “…the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. […] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.”
    — Pope Pius X

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    • WE CAN SAFELY SAY THAT POPE PIUS X WOULD NOT BE BLIND AND DEAF TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES AND INNOVATORS OF THE COUNTERFEIT CHURCH OF OUR DAY. The fact that we have so many false preachers, and Catholic media people, and so called leaders that would have us believe that jorge bergoglio is the pope is beyond ill-formed darkness as it pertains to traditionalists.

      Read the following in order to imbue your mind and form your SENSUS CATHOLICUS rightly:

      Complete English Text: Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s ‘Expanded Petrine Office’ Speech

      Diane Montagna | May 30, 2016

      Benedict XVI’s personal secretary stresses there are not two popes, but “an active member and a contemplative member”

      Since the election of his successor Francis, on March 13, 2013, there are not therefore two popes, but de facto an expanded ministry — with an active member and a contemplative member. This is why Benedict XVI has not given up either his name, or the white cassock. This is why the correct name by which to address him even today is “Your Holiness”; and this is also why he has not retired to a secluded monastery, but within the Vatican — as if he had only taken a step to the side to make room for his successor and a new stage in the history of the papacy which he, by that step, enriched with the “power station” of his prayer and his compassion located in the Vatican Gardens.

      It was “the least expected step in contemporary Catholicism,” Regoli writes, and yet a possibility which Cardinal Ratzinger had already pondered publicly on August 10, 1978 in Munich, in a homily on the occasion of the death of Paul VI. Thirty-five years later, he has not abandoned the Office of Peter — something which would have been entirely impossible for him after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005. By an act of extraordinary courage, he has instead renewed this office (even against the opinion of well-meaning and undoubtedly competent advisers), and with a final effort he has strengthened it (as I hope). Of course only history will prove this. But in the history of the Church it shall remain true that, in the year 2013, the famous theologian on the throne of Peter became history’s first “pope emeritus.” Since then, his role — allow me to repeat it once again — is entirely different from that, for example, of the holy Pope Celestine V, who after his resignation in 1294 would have liked to return to being a hermit, becoming instead a prisoner of his successor, Boniface VIII (to whom today in the Church we owe the establishment of jubilee years). To date, in fact, there has never been a step like that taken by Benedict XVI. So it is not surprising that it has been seen by some as revolutionary, or to the contrary as entirely consistent with the Gospel; while still others see the papacy in this way secularized as never before, and thus more collegial and functional or even simply more human and less sacred. And still others are of the opinion that Benedict XVI, with this step, has almost — speaking in theological and historical-critical terms — demythologized the papacy.

      In his overview of the pontificate, Regoli clearly lays this all out as never before. Perhaps the most moving part of the reading for me was the place where, in a long quote, he recalls the last general audience of Pope Benedict XVI on February 27, 2013 when, under an unforgettable clear and brisk sky, the pope, who shortly thereafter would resign, summarized his pontificate as follows:

      “It has been a portion of the Church’s journey which has had its moments of joy and light, but also moments which were not easy; I have felt like Saint Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: The Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout the Church’s history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I have always known that the Lord is in that boat, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine, it is not ours, but his. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is he who guides it, surely also through the men whom he has chosen, because he so wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing can obscure.”

      I must admit that, rereading these words can still bring tears to my eyes, all the more so because I saw in person and up close how unconditional, for himself and for his ministry, was Pope Benedict’s adherence to St Benedict’s words, for whom “nothing is to be placed before the love of Christ,” nihil amori Christi praeponere, as stated in rule handed down to us by Pope Gregory the Great. I was a witness to this, but I still remain fascinated by the accuracy of that final analysis in St. Peter’s Square which sounded so poetic but was nothing less than prophetic. In fact, they are words to which today, too, Pope Francis would immediately and certainly subscribe. Not to the popes but to Christ, to the Lord Himself and to no one else belongs the barque of Peter, whipped by the waves of the stormy sea, when time and again we fear that the Lord is asleep and that our needs are not important to him, while just one word is enough for him to stop every storm; when instead, more than the high waves and the howling wind, it is our disbelief, our little faith and our impatience that make us continually fall into panic.

      Thus, this book once again throws a consoling gaze on the peaceful imperturbability and serenity of Benedict XVI, at the helm of the barque of Peter in the dramatic years 2005-2013. At the same time, however, through this illuminating account, Regoli himself now also takes part in the munus Petri of which I spoke. Like Peter Seewald and others before him, Roberto Regoli — as a priest, professor and scholar — also thus enters into that enlarged Petrine ministry around the successors of the Apostle Peter; and for this today we offer him heartfelt thanks.

      Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household
      20 May 2016

      Translated from the Italian by Diane Montagna of Aleteia’s English edition.

      Link: aleteia.org/2016/05/30/complete-english-text-archbishop-georg-gansweins-expanded-petrine-office-speech/3/

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