An Urgent Appeal to Pope Francis to Either Change Course or Renounce the Petrine Office
December 8, 2015
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Pope Celestine V (r. 1294), recognizing his incapacity for the office to which he had so unexpectedly been elected as the hermit Peter of Morrone, and seeing the grave harm his bad governance had caused, resigned the papacy after a reign of only five months. He was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V. Pope Boniface VIII, removing any doubt about the validity of such an extraordinary papal act, confirmed in perpetuity (ad perpetuam rei memoriam) that “the Roman Pontiff may freely resign.”
A
growing number of Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, are
coming to recognize that your pontificate, also the result of an
unexpected election, is likewise causing grave harm to the Church. It
has become impossible to deny that you lack either the capacity or the
will to do what your predecessor rightly observed a pope must do: “constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”
Quite the contrary, as shown in the annexed libellus,
you have given many indications of an alarming hostility to the
Church’s traditional teaching, discipline and customs, and the faithful
who try to defend them, while being preoccupied with social and
political questions beyond the competence of the Roman Pontiff.
Consequently, the Church’s enemies continually delight in your
pontificate, exalting you above all your predecessors. This appalling
situation has no parallel in Church history.
Read more and sign the petition at The Remnant >>