The technical issue of an heretical pope goes back to Reformation discussions, led by the Jesuits, Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez, among others. Others maintain that if a heretic is elected to the papacy, he will automatically convert on accepting the Office of Peter. I had a professor of theology who held that, if a pope was about to sign an heretical document, he would be dead the next morning. Some writers hold that a pope cannot be a heretic. But I would be surprised if Pope Francis did not have a huge following in Argentina. Still he sent a document that Archbishop Bergoglio wrote on the gay question in which Francis upheld the old Roman Law tradition of marriage that referred to a mother and the sons begotten of her. The man adds that this last view is no longer tenable. A correspondent in Argentina, however, writes that only three views of this pope exist: 1) he is a modernist, but covers himself by occasionally talking of the devil, 2) he seeks attention and power by attracting everything to himself, and 3) he is a confused thinker but basically orthodox. George Weigel noted that the modern world has waited half a century for the Catholic Church to accept its mores. I know a man who thinks that the pope should simply resign because his comments have caused so much anguish and confusion. William Oddie thinks that, in recent comments on marriage, Francis has done this. Cardinal Burke remarked that Pope Francis should clarify just what he stands for. Under Pope Francis, columnists from all over the world broach the “heresy” question, which he is said to foment. The Eastern Orthodox have rejected the papal position for centuries. Pope Paul III excommunicated Henry VIII precisely over the question of the indissolubility of marriage. The Reformation itself mostly declared all popes heretical back to Peter. At Vatican I, several notable figures did not accept the infallibility doctrine. He invited leaders of other religions to Assisi to pray together, but he failed to evangelize them or insist in uniqueness of Catholicism. Whole groups maintain that all popes after Vatican II are heretics, even John Paul II. One man whom I know holds that all popes since Pius X were heretics.
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