In 2015, I posted The Gates of Hell and the Gates of the Church (The Best Defense for Sedevacantism)
I thought it necessarily to revisit my argument against the Recognize and Resist position. Below is a much shorter edited version.
In perhaps the greatest document ever written by a pope, Leo XIII declared in Satis Cognitum on June 29, 1896:
The words – and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it proclaim and establish the authority of which we speak. “What is the it?” (writes Origen). “Is it the rock upon which Christ builds the Church or the Church? The expression indeed is ambiguous, as if the rock and the Church were one and the same. I indeed think that this is so, and that neither against the rock upon which Christ builds His Church nor against the Church shall the gates of Hell prevail” (Origenes, Comment. in Matt., tom. xii., n. ii). The meaning of this divine utterance is, that, notwithstanding the wiles and intrigues which they bring to bear against the Church, it can never be that the church committed to the care of Peter shall succumb or in any wise fail. “For the Church, as the edifice of Christ who has wisely built ‘His house upon a rock,’ cannot be conquered by the gates of Hell, which may prevail over any man who shall be off the rock and outside the Church, but shall be powerless against it” (Ibid.). Therefore God confided His Church to Peter so that he might safely guard it with his unconquerable power.
Pope Vigilius at the Second Council of Constantinople, in 553 called “the tongues of heretics” the “gates of hell.” Pope St. Leo IX’s, In terra pax hominibus, Sept. 2, 1053, declared to Michael Cerularius that “the gates of Hell” are the “disputations of heretics.”
Pope Leo XIII called the Roman Pontiffs “the Gates of the Church” in his 1894 encyclical letter Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae.
Therefore, Roman Pontiffs can’t be heretics or else the gates of the Church and the gates of hell would be one and the same thing implying the Church and Hell are identical.
However, many R&Rer’s have admitted that they personally think John Paul II, Ratzinger and Bergoglio have all been heretics. This means they personally think the gates of hell and the Gates of the Church are one and the same thing.
The phrase “private judgment” can have four meanings with a possible combination of the following: A personal judgment… (a) opposing official Church law or teaching, (b) not made publicly, (c) in accepting Church law and teaching, (d) made without an official declaration.
R&Rer’s meaning is the fourth. They personally believe their popes have been heretics. Until a public judgment is made by their bishops, their popes must be considered popes and not heretics until an official judgment is made by the bishops. However, before their bishops can make that public judgment against the pope, they must first make a private one. In doing so, they would believe the gates of hell and the Gates of the Church are one and the same thing, which is impossible.
Therefore, the entire scenario of needing warnings, declarations, etc. to make an official determination that a true pope is not a true pope is impossible. No one can even suspect the pope of heresy without the consequence of suspecting that the Head of the Church forms the gates of hell. There can be no doubt about the pope for as Rev. Francis X Doyle, S.J. so elegantly explained in 1927, “The Church is a visible society with a visible Ruler. If there can be any doubt about who that visible Ruler is, he is not visible…Blessed Bellarmine, S.J., says: ‘A doubtful Pope must be considered as not Pope.’”
This fact refutes every argument or proposition ever put forth by any and all theologians, canonists, etc., that a pope can be heretical or else Peter and his successors who’ve been handed the Church by God for safekeeping from the gates of hell can themselves be the gates of hell.
Only a pope can cease to be pope by himself, and every individual Catholic must recognize that fact by his personal judgment in the third sense, which is to believe and accept the laws and teachings of the Church and the Divine laws of God. A heretic is not a member of the Church.
Pope Innocent III, Eius exemplo, Dec. 18, 1208:
“By the heart we believe and by the mouth we confess the one Church, not of heretics, but the Holy Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, “Cantate Domino,” 1441:
“The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics…”
St. Antoninus, O.P. (1389-1459):
“In the case in which the pope would become a heretic, he would find himself, by that fact alone and without any other sentence, separated from the Church. A head separated from a body cannot, as long as it remains separated, be head of the same body from which it was cut off. ‘A pope who would be separated from the Church by heresy, therefore, would by that very fact itself cease to be head of the Church. He could not be a heretic and remain pope, because, since he is outside of the Church, he cannot possess the keys of the Church.’” (Summa Theologica cited in Actes de Vatican I. V. Frond pub.)
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