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Eric S's avatar

It would be interesting to do a historical study on when the idea of Benevacantism and the whole munus vs. ministerium idea began to take hold. Some of the people who were sedevacantists going back to the days of JP2 might have used it as early as 2013 though in truth none of them would likely have considered Benedict to be a valid pope anyways so maybe not. I suspect it was around the time of Amoris Laetitia or maybe the months leading up to it during the first sessions of the Synod on the Family in 2015 though I don't really remember hearing much about it until later. My point though is that I suspect that people really didn't go for this idea until Francis started doing things that they didn't like or they thought were harmful to the Faith. In other words it was more a political argument than a legal argument which is why even if there were any truth to it it never was going to go anywhere.

With the 2025 Conclave however this issue was brought up by certain parties, yourself included, before the election i.e. it was an argument saying that this was a bad and illicit way to do a conclave period. It wasn't about "we don't like the guy who was elected so we're going to invent an argument as to why this was a bad conclave", it was "you guys are doing this illicitly and it will be a stain on the papacy no matter whether I like the man who was elected or I don't like him." And it was made before the election happened. That I think makes this a very different animal than the Benevacantism nonsense.

Again you're absolutely right: this might all blow over in the sense that it may be that nobody ever calls either Leo XIV or the Cardinals out on what they did here but still... It was bad. It was a lawless act. And it was made even worse by the fact that the Congregation of Cardinals admitted in their statement of 30 April that they were violating UDG, but to justify their illicit action they put forth an idea that let's just say has a somewhat problematic relationship with the truth that Francis had somehow dispensed them from following that law, which there is absolutely no record of him doing anywhere or at anytime. That to me is the Achilles heel of this whole thing.

They didn't say that this a bad law and we are unable to follow it. They said that they were dispensed from following it which they were not.

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Aemilia Latin's avatar

Thanks for your clear and distinctive explanations.

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