This document was sent by Mr. Hutton Gibson, from Australia, as an attachment to his letter in response to my tract Repair My Church. See his letter here.

HUTTON GIBSON

REPLY TO TWO PAPAL ELECTORS

Perhaps you recall five minutes of white smoke, the traditional method of announcing the election of a pope, from the Sistine Chapel chimney October 26, 1658. At the same time the word went out from the Conclave marshal on the private telephone line to his outside counterpart to call out the guards to welcome the new pope. Then the guards were recalled; it was all a mistake. Sure it was! These people so privileged and so proud of their (non-voting) participation in the Conclave are of all men the least likely to fail their official duties. So we may take it that the Conclave had served its purpose and elected a pope who had accepted his election, or there would have been no white smoke and no telephone call. So somehow his election was set aside, and we were granted an antipope, a heretic and freemason, Roncalli. But there was no interregnum because there was a legitimately elected pope, even if we knew nothing about him—probably Cardinal Siri. We were given this excuse that the College of Cardinals countained no one of papal calibre, so it had seated this aged incompetent to appoint Montini a cardinal to be eligible at the next opportunity. But the College included men who would have stood out in any age, not least Ottaviani and Siri.

The whole concept is heretical. Was a fisherman of papal calibre? Christ seems almost to have gone out of His way to choose a pope and apostles for jobs clearly beyond their capabilities, thus proving that he power was in the message, not in the messenger. But they had the Holy Ghost, and so has a genuine pope, which is one proof that Roncalli, Montini, Luciani, and Wojtyla have never been popes. Any fool can be pope; the Holy Ghost will preserve him in truth. He cannot wander accidentally into heresy.

So we could have had a genuine pope kept from his rightful place by some such threat as a atom bomb on Rome, or the killing of millions of Catholics behind the iron curtain. He would still be pope, and he just may have changed the requirements for election of his genuine successor, whom he just may have appointed. We may have a pope now. We cannot be sure that we have not. If we have, we can have no mandate to elect one.

If popeless we still lack a mandate to elect one. A good case exists for our generation's unworthiness of a pope and the ordinary means of salvation. If we were obliged to compensate for God's "oversight," how? What would qualify an elector? The Faith? Who will examine him? Who, where what is the standard? If we could pull it off, who guarantees the result? Where is our authority? Who will accept our pope? There must be some prospect of success, or the effort is unjustifiable.

If we have a pope somewhere your project cannot produce a pope. If we have none it is not the first time. If your project can produce a pope, why cannot Elizabeth Gerstner's project have produced a pope? Why cannot any one of a dozen projects produce a pope? What can we do with a dozen popes? Are we not better off with none? As your lay-elected Vicar follows Christ "to uphold and show the truth and glory of all the laws of His Church, not one tittle of which shall be overlooked" how will he have obeyed the laws governing papal elections?

You write, "Another fact which follows from these declarations is that, if the successors of St. Peter are perpetual, then the electors of a Pope are also perpetual." We could conclude from this conditional statement that there would always be a college of cardinals, or at least a Roman clergy. But let us confine ourselves to the declaration that "the Vatican Council, with the infallibility of Pope Pius IX, made the statement that the Church will have perpetual successors of St. Peter." This quotation is simply untrue. The Vatican Council in 1870 stated that St. Peter has (not will have) perpetual successors. The Church can oblige us only to Scriptural prophecy (such as St. Paul's revolt). The pertinent quotation is found in Denzinger #1825: Si quis ergo dixerit, non esse ex ipsius Christi domini institutione seu iure divino, ut beatus Petrus in primatu super universam ecclesiam habeat perpetuos successores; ... anathema sit."

Habeat = he has (present tense—subjunctive because it follows dixerit according to sequence of tenses). Future tense (he will have) = habebit. He must have = debeat habere.

Again, if God wills "perpetual successors" He therefore wills perpetual electors. If He wills perpetual successors where is the successor that we should have had for 36 years? Without a need for him, where is the need for perpetual electors?

When St. Paul predicted the revolt in the last days, he wrote that some one (probably a pope) would be taken out of the way. He exhorted us to keep to the traditions which we had from him and his fellow Apostles. There had been as yet no papal election. This may or may not be why he never recommended one.

The apastasy could not happen without the permissive will of God. Nor could our extended popeless period, almost necessary for our current fragmentation. It could be advanced, rather shakily, that we are popeless because God may not want us to have a pope.

One man held a Conference on Church problems, then complained of the poor attendance. It might be relevant to know the objections of that 75% who fialed to attend out of personal pride. And why had these defections provoked limitation of all those presumably serious problems to just one issue? Why was it the issue for which the conference was supposedly convoked? Perhaps it was the most important issue? Then we have no real problems. After a 36-year survival without a visible pope, where is theurgency? In his endeavor to elicit votes from all Catholics he differs little from David bawden and Teresa Benns, to whose fiasco I objected partly because they would surely have less than 5,000 electors. (They had six!) If he succeeds in holding an election I doubt that he can drum up 500 voters. But they will, of course, constitute all of the world's Catholics; if for any reason we will not vote, he decrees, we are heretics, because the devil is responsible for all objections to the projected election.

Such an election cannot be prudently projected without some possibility of general recognition and acceptance of its result. It seems essential for success of any such project that it first be established that there will be a sufficient vote. I can think of no method of insuring this except to open a register of qualified (how?) voters. These must then be apprised of location, time, and names of suitable candidates. In a matter of such imputed importance there must be no absentee ballots; they are subject to loss, forgery, supplementation, or miscount.

How will the winner assume office? Terms of popes not bishops when elected date from the episcopal consecrations. Where find a genuine Catholic bishop or three to consecrate him? The process must be shown proper and fool-proof, and must have undeniable authority.

But leave me out of it!

Hutton Gibson