D. The Sole Remedy for a Bad Pope: a Text of Cajetan's on Prayer
The Church has no power to change the form of her government, nor to control the destiny of him who, once validly elected, is no vicar of hers but Vicar of Christ. Consequently she has no power to punish or depose her head. She is born to obey. This truth may seem hard, but the best theologians have never attenuated it; rather, they have accentuated it. To make us aware of all that we ought to be ready to suffer for the Church, of how much heroism she can ask of us, they have proposed extreme cases. They have supposed a Pope who shall scandalise the Church by the gravest sins; they have supposed him to be incorrigible; and then they ask whether the Church can depose him. Their answer is, no. For no one on earth can touch the Pope.
In his Summa de Ecclesia (lib. II, cap. cvi) Cardinal Turrecremata pointed out several remedies for such a calamity: respectful admonitions, direct resistance to bad acts, and so forth. All these could, of course, prove useless.
There remains a supreme resource, never useless, terrible sometimes as death, as secret as love. This is prayer, the resource of the saints. "See that I do not have to complain of you to Jesus crucified," wrote Catherine of Siena to Pope Gregory XI; "there is none other to whom I can appeal, since you have no superiors on earth." And again, a little earlier in the same letter: "Take care, as you value your life, that you commit no negligence."
To the bad theologians who thought that the Church would be defenceless if not allowed to depose a vicious Pope, Cardinal Cajetan, who had seen the reign of Alexander VI, had but one answer: he reminded them of the power of prayer. For never has it such power as in such crises. We must always have recourse to prayer, as one of the purest weapons a Christian can use. But here it is not only a "common" means, i.e. one to be used along with others, it is the "proper" means, the proper instrument for the use of the Church in distress. "If you tell me that prayer is but a common remedy to be used against all the ills that afflict us, and that for the special evil that troubles us here we need a proper remedy - since every effect comes of a proper cause, not merely from general causes - I reply, in a general way, that the highest causes, although they play the part of common causes in respect of lower effects, play in fact the part of proper causes in respect of higher effects. And that is why prayer, which is to be put among the highest of supernatural second causes, is only a common cause of lower effects; but it is a proper cause and the proper remedy for the highest effects, such as would be - since it is matter reserved for God - the removal from this world of a still believing but incorrigible Pope."[1] The same author sufficiently indicates the sort of prayer to be offered when he reproaches his contemporaries for their manner of reciting the Divine Office and of celebrating Mass.
[1] De Comparatione Auctoritatis Papae et Concilii, cap. xxvii, no. 422.
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Here he shows both the clarity of his genius and the charity of his heart. "The divine Wisdom," he says, "who in the natural order governs lower things through the higher and these last through the highest second causes, acts in a similar way in the supernatural order, to which belong grace and faith, and the Church based on the faith. On the other hand, causes are proportionate to their effects, the highest causes having the highest effects. If then, on the one hand, the means available to human effort ["providentia humana"], even if super-elevated by the authority of the Church, are a force inferior to prayer, appointed as the highest of second causes by God, to whom all creatures, corporeal or spiritual, are subject; and if, on the other hand, a remedy against a bad but still believing Pope[1] is among the highest effects in the Church, it follows that God, in His wisdom, must have given the Church for remedy against a bad Pope, not now any of these merely human means which may avail for the rest of the Church, but prayer alone. And can the prayer of the Church, when she perseveringly asks things needful for her salvation, be any less efficacious than merely human means? Is not the fervent prayer of an individual soul who asks such things for himself, already efficacious and infallible?[2] If then the salvation of the Church demands that such and such a Pope should be removed, then undoubtedly the prayer we have mentioned will remove him. And if it be not necessary, why question the goodness of the Lord, who refuses what we wish and gives us what we ought to prefer? ... But alas, it seems that we are come to the days announced by the Son of Man when He asked whether, on His return, He should find faith on the earth. For the promises relating to the highest and most efficacious of second causes are held to be of nothing worth. They say that we must depose a bad Pope by human means; that one cannot be content with resort to prayer and to divine providence alone! But why do they say that, if not because they prefer human means to the efficacy of prayer, because the animal man does not perceive the things of God, because they have learnt to trust in man, not in the Lord, and to put their hope in the flesh? So, if a Pope hardened in evil ways appears, his subordinates, without leaving their own vices, content themselves with daily murmurings against the evil regime; they do not seek to avail themselves, save perhaps in a dream and without faith, of the remedy of prayer; so that what Scripture predicts comes about by their fault, namely that it is due to the sins of the people that a hypocrite reigns over them, holy in respect of his office, but a devil at heart ... We have become blind to the point of refusing to pray as we ought, while yet desiring the fruit of prayer; of refusing to sow, while still wanting to reap. Let us not call ourselves Christians any longer! Or if we do, let us turn to Christ; and the Pope, were he frantic, furious, tyrannical, a render, dilapidator and corrupter of the Church, would be overcome. But if we do not know how to overcome ourselves, what right have we to complain of being
[1] Great theologians have admitted that the Pope could personally fall into the sin of heresy. See Excursus IX.
[2] St. Thomas, III Con. Gen., xcv and xcvi.
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unable to break through the evils that surround us by prayers that not only fail to rise through our roofs, but do not even mount as far as our heads? And the worst of all is this: God of old upbraided His people for honouring Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him; but in the days of the revelation of grace, God is not even honoured with lips, for nothing is less intelligible than the recitation of the divine office, nothing said more quickly than the Mass; the time given to these seems long, too long, but time enough is found for play, business and worldly pleasures, and for loitering over them endlessly."[1]
Thus, even though his private life should be grievously sinful, the Pope cannot be deposed. Immense scandal might be given, but his doctrinal infallibility would be unaffected. And it remains true that no temptation is superhuman. God, who is faithful, will suffer none who seeks Him to be tempted beyond his strength, and to each He offers inwardly the help that will enable him to overcome (cf. I Cor. x. 13).
[1] De Comparatione Auctoritatis Papae et Concili, cap. xxvii, nos. 417-20.
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How can the pontificate, once validly held, be lost? At the most in two ways.
a. The first - and at bottom, as we shall see, the only way - is by the disappearance of the subject himself; whether as a result of an inevitable event (death or
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that species of death which consists in irremediable loss of reason), or as a result of the free renunciation of the pontificate such as that of St. Celestine V, "che fece ... il gran' rifiuto". The Pope was considered as having resigned when he was so placed that he could not possibly exercise his powers: "It appears that in those times, when a bishop was removed from his see by a capital sentence (death, exile, relegation) or by an equivalent measure emanating from the secular authority, the see was considered as vacant. It was under these circumstances that the Roman Church replaced in the third century Pontianus by Anteros, in the sixth century Silverius by Vigilius, in the seventh Martin by Eugenius" (L. Duchesne, The Early History of the Church, vol. III, p. 160, note 1).
b. The second way would be by deposition. If deposition means, properly, deprivation by a superior authority, it is evident that the Pope, having the highest spiritual jurisdiction on earth, can never in this sense be deposed. When then the deposition of a Pope is spoken of it can only be in some improper sense. Two cases present themselves.
First, there is the deposition of a doubtful Pope. But a Pope whose election remains uncertain was never Pope, so that there is no question here of deposition properly so called.
Next comes the debated case of an HERETICAL Pope.
Many theologians hold that the assistance promised by Jesus to the successors of Peter will not only prevent them from publicly teaching heretical doctrine, but will also prevent them from falling into heresy in their private capacity. If that view is correct the question does not arise. St. Robert Bellarmine, in his De Romano Pontifice (lib. II, cap. xxx), already held this thesis as probable and easy to defend. It was however less widespread in his time than it is to-day. It has gained ground, largely on account of historical studies which have shown that what was once imputed to certain Popes, such as Vigilius, Liberius, Honorius as a private heresy, was in fact nothing more than a lack of zeal and of courage in certain difficult moments, to proclaim and especially to define precisely, what the true doctrine was.
Nevertheless, numerous and good theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have admitted that the Pope as a private person could fall into heresy and not only in secret but even openly.
Some, such as Bellarmine and Suarez, considered that such a Pope, withdrawing himself from the Church, was ipso facto deposed, "papa haereticus est depositus". It seems that heresy was regarded by these theologians as a kind of moral suicide suppressing the very subject of the Papacy. Thus we come back without difficulty to the first way in which the pontificate can be lost.
Others, such as Cajetan, and John of St. Thomas, whose analysis seems to me more penetrating, have considered that even after a manifest sin of heresy the Pope is not yet deposed, but should be deposed by the Church, "papa haereticus non est depositus, sed deponendus". Nevertheless, they added, the Church is not on that account above the Pope. And to make this clear they fall back on an explanation of the same nature as those we have used in Excursus IV. The remark on the one hand that in divine law the Church is to be united to the Pope as the body is to the head; and on the other that, by divine law, he who shows himself a heretic is to be avoided after one or two admonitions (Tit. iii. 10). There is therefore an absolute contradiction between the fact of being Pope and the fact of persevering in heresy after one or two admonitions. The Church's
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action is simply declaratory, it makes it plain that an incorrigible sin of heresy exists; then the authoritative action of God disjoins the Papacy from a subject who, persisting in heresy after admonition, becomes in divine law, inapt to retain it any longer. In virtue therefore of Scripture the Church designates and God deposes. God acts with the Church, says John of St. Thomas, somewhat as a Pope would act who decided to attach indulgences to certain places of pilgrimage, but left it to a subordinate to designate which these places should be (II-II, q. i; disp. 2, a. 3, no. 29, Vol. VII, p. 264). The explanation of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas - which, according to them, is also valid, properly applied, as an interpretation of the enactments of the Council of Constance - brings us back in its turn to the case of a subject who becomes in Divine law incapable at a given moment of retaining the papacy. It is also reducible to the loss of the pontificate by default of the subject. This then is the fundamental case and the others are merely variants. In a study in the Revue Thomiste (1900, p. 631, Lettres de Savonarole aux princes chretiens pour la reunion d'un concile), P. Hurtaud, O.P., has entered a powerful plea in the case - still open - of the "Piagnoni". He makes reference to the explanation of Roman theologians prior to Cajetan, according to which a Pope who fell into heresy would be deposed ipso facto: the Council concerned would have only to put on record the fact of heresy and notify the Church that the Pope involved had forfeited his primacy. Savonarola, he says, regarded Alexander VI as having lost his faith. "The Lord, moved to anger by this intolerable corruption, has, for some time past, allowed the Church to be without a pastor. For I bear witness in the name of God that this Alexander VI is in no way Pope and cannot be. For quite apart from the execrable crime of simony, by which he got possession of the [papal] tiara through a sacrilegious bargaining, and by which every day he puts up to auction and knocks down to the highest bidder ecclesiastical benefices, and quite apart from his other vices - well-known to all - which I will pass over in silence, this I declare in the first place and affirm it with all certitude, that the man is not a Christian, he does not even believe any longer that there is a God; he goes beyond the final limits of infidelity and impiety" (Letter to the Emperor).[1] Basing our argument on the doctrinal authorities which Cajetan was soon to invoke, we should say that Savonarola wished to collect together the Council, not because, like the Gallicans, he placed a Council above the Pope (the Letters to the Princes are legally and doctrinally unimpeachable), but so that the Council, before which he would prove his accusation, should declare the heresy of Alexander VI in his status as a private individual. P. Hurtaud concludes: "Savonarola's acts and words - and most of his words are acts - should be examined in detail. Each of his words should be carefully weighed and none of the circumstances of his actions should be lost sight of. For the friar is a master of doctrine; he does not only know it but he lives it too. In his conduct nothing is left to chance or the mood of the moment. He has a theological or legal principle as the motive power in each one of his decisions. He should not be judged by general laws, for his guides are principles of an exceptional order - though I do not mean by this that he placed himself above or outside the common law. The rules he invokes are admitted by the best Doctors of the Church; there is nothing exceptional in them save the circumstances which make them lawful, and condition their application."
[1] These were neither new nor isolated accusations. cf. Schnitzer, Savonarola, Italian translation by E. Rutili, Milan, 1931, vol. ii, p. 303.