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Sedevacantism?
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Sede vacante device, used by the Holy See from a Pope's death or resignation to the election of his successor. Sedevacantism (derived from the Latin words sedes or "seat", and vacans or "vacant") is the position, held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics, that the present occupant of the papal see is not truly Pope and that, for lack of a valid Pope, the see has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. A tiny number of these claim the vacancy actually goes back to the death of Pope Pius X in 1914. Sedevacantists believe that Paul VI (19631978), John Paul I (1978), John Paul II (19782005), Benedict XVI (20052013), and Francis (2013-) have been neither true Catholics nor true Popes, by virtue of allegedly having espoused the heresy of Modernism, or of having otherwise denied or contradicted solemnly defined Catholic dogmas. Some of them classify John XXIII (19581963) also as a Modernist antipope. The term "sedevacantism" is derived from the Latin phrase sede vacante, which literally means "the seat being vacant", specifically in the context of the vacancy of the Holy See. This phrase is normally used between the death or resignation of a pope and the election of his successor. "Sedevacantism" as a term in English appears to date from the 1980s, though the movement itself is older. Among those who maintain that the see of Rome, occupied by what they declare to be an illegitimate pope, was really vacant, some have chosen an alternative pope of their own, and thus in their view ended the vacancy of the see, and are known sometimes as "conclavists".

Early history
One of the earliest proponents of sedevacantism was the American Francis Schuckardt. Although still working within the "official" Church in 1967, he publicly took the position in 1968 that the Holy See was vacant and that the Church that had emerged from
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the Second Vatican Council was no longer Catholic. An associate of his, Daniel Q. Brown, arrived at the same conclusion. In 1969, Brown received episcopal orders from an Old Catholic bishop, and in 1971 he in turn consecrated Schuckardt. Schuckardt founded a congregation called the Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church. In 1970, a Japanese layman, Yukio Nemoto (19251988), created Seibo No Mikuni, a sedevacantist group. Another founding sedevacantist was Father Joaqun Senz y Arriaga, a Jesuit theologian from Mexico. He put forward sedevacantist ideas in his books The New Montinian Church (August 1971) and Sede Vacante (1973). His writings gave rise to the sedevacantist movement in Mexico, led by Senz, Father Moiss Carmona and Father Adolfo Zamora, and also inspired Father Francis E. Fenton in the U.S.

In the years following the Second Vatican Council other priests took up similar positions, including:

Dominican theologian Fr. Michel Louis Gurard des Lauriers, who developed a thesis similar to sedevacantism called sedeprivationism in the 1970s. Several students at the Society of St. Pius X seminary at Econe in the early/mid-1970s i.e. Daniel Dolan, Anthony Cekada and Donald Sanborn reportedly sedevacantists in that period were expelled, along with three other seminarians from the SSPX by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre for holding the error.

English priest Fr. Oswald Baker, who was a sedevacantist at least by 1982, and reportedly some time prior to that. American missionary Fr. Lucian Pulvermacher, who left the Roman Catholic Church in 1976 and in October 1998 was elected Pope of the conclavist "True Catholic Church" with the name of "Pius XIII".

Positions
Sedevacantism owes its origins to the rejection of the theological and disciplinary changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council (19621965). Sedevacantists reject this Council, on the basis of its documents on ecumenism and religious liberty, which they see as contradicting the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church and as denying the unique mission of Catholicism as the one true religion, outside of which there is no salvation. They also say that new disciplinary norms, such as the Mass of Paul VI, promulgated on April 3, 1969, undermine or conflict with the historical Catholic faith and are deemed heresies. Other traditionalist Catholics recognize as legitimate the line of Popes leading to Pope Francis. Some of them hold that one or more of the most recent popes have held and taught unorthodox beliefs, but do not go so far as to say that they have been formal heretics or have been widely and publicly judged to be heretics. Sedevacantists, on the other hand, claim that the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church could not have decreed the changes made in the name of the Second Vatican Council , and conclude that those who issued these changes could not have been acting with the authority of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, they hold that Pope Paul VI and his successors left the true Catholic Church and thus lost legitimate authority in the Church. A formal heretic, they say, cannot be the Catholic Pope. Sedevacantists defend their position using numerous arguments, including that particular provisions of canon law prevent a heretic from being elected or remaining as Pope. Paul IV's 1559 bull, Cum ex apostolatus officio, stipulated that a heretic cannot be elected pope, while Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law provides that a cleric who publicly defects from the Catholic faith automatically loses any office he had held in the Church. A number of writers have engaged sedevacantists in debate on some of these points. Theologian Brian Harrison has argued that Pius XII's conclave legislation permitted excommunicated cardinals to attend, from which he argues that they could also be legitimately elected. Opponents of Harrison have argued that a phrase in Pius XII's legislation, "Cardinals who have been deposed or who have resigned, however, are barred and may not be reinstated even for the
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purpose of voting", though it speaks of someone deposed or resigned from the cardinalate, not of someone who may have incurred automatic excommunication but has not been officially declared excommunicated, means that, even if someone is permitted to attend, that does not automatically translate into electability. There are estimated to be between several tens of thousands and more than two hundred thousands of sedevacantists worldwide, mostly concentrated in the United States, Canada, France, the UK, Italy, and Australia, but the actual size of the sedevacantist movement has never been accurately assessed. Catholic doctrine teaches the four marks of the true Church are that it is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Sedevacantists base their claim to be the remnant Roman Catholic Church on what they see as the presence in them of these four "marks", absent, they say, in the Church since the Second Vatican Council. Their critics counter that sedevacantists are not one, forming numerous splinter groups, each of them in disagreement with the rest. Most sedevacantists hold the Holy Orders conferred with the present revised rites of the Catholic Church to be invalid due to defect both of intention and form. They conclude that the great majority of the bishops listed in the Holy See's Annuario Pontificio, including Benedict XVI and Francis themselves, are in reality merely priests or even laymen.

Bishops and holy orders

Catholic doctrine holds that any bishop can validly ordain any baptised man to the priesthood or to the episcopacy, provided that he has the correct intention and uses a doctrinally acceptable rite of ordination, whether or not he has official permission of any sort to perform the ordination, and indeed whether or not he and the ordinand are Catholics. Absent specified conditions, canon law forbids ordination to the episcopate without a mandate from the Pope, and both those who confer such ordination without the papal mandate and those who receive it are subject to excommunication. Reference: Wikepedia
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