Cardinal Louis Billot, S.J.
Tractatus De Ecclesia Christi
5th Edition, pp. 623-636
(Rome: Gregorian Pontifical
University, 1927)
THESIS XXIX
Since title to the succession of
Peter in the primacy of the entire Church is legitimate election as bishop of
Rome, one must bear in mind before everything else that, speaking at least
according to rule, the conditions of this election depend on pontifical law
alone. — Moreover, in a person duly elected and elevated once and for all to
the pontificate, power can in fact come to an end through voluntary abdication,
but by no means through deposition, and indeed not in any manner whatsoever,
if, according to the well founded opinion of Bellarmine and other theologians,
the case of a Pontiff who ceased to be of the Church on account of notorious
heresy be supposed impossible. — But whatever you may still think about the
possibility of this hypothesis, at least one
must necessarily admit that the peaceful adherence of the universal Church will
always be an infallible sign of the legitimacy of the person of the Pontiff,
and what is more, even of the existence of all conditions that are requisite
for legitimacy itself.
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