POPE FRANCIS - A HERETIC? ON THE PUNISHMENT OF HERETICS AND ESPECIALLY OF THE POPE WHO HAS BECOME A HERETIC WILLIAM OF OCKHAM Dial. 6 CHP. XLVIII

Inter Milan's Javier Zanetti

Chapter 48

Student: I am surprised by the statement that anyone's appeal or demurrer can suspend the pope's authority, since no one can be suspended except by man or by law. But the pope cannot be suspended by man, since no one is his superior. Nor may he be suspended by law, because whoever is suspended by law is suspended either by natural law or by divine law or by positive law. But the authority of the pope is not suspended by natural law as a result of such an appeal or demurrer, since appeals and demurrers are of human establishment and so do not stem from natural law. Nor is it suspended by divine law, for the same reason. Nor is it suspended by positive human law, since no mention whatsoever of such a suspension can be found in the entire positive law.

Master: These theorists have no wish to quarrel about the term "suspension", and therefore whatever may be its technical meaning in legal parlance, in the present instance they are using the word "suspension" to indicate that for cause authority must not be exercised over another person. And in this way they say that the authority of the pope is suspended in a certain manner by such an appeal or demurrer, namely because the pope is bound by necessity of salvation not to exercise his authority over the appellant or the person entering a demurrer so as to prejudice his appeal or demurrer. And this suspension is by the natural law, because it proceeds from a natural dictate. For natural reason decrees that if anyone appeals from or enters a demurrer against a judge for a cause which if proved would have to be considered legitimate, the judge must not exercise authority over him in prejudice of his appeal or demurrer before the appellant or the person entering the demurrer is convicted of malice. And when you argue that appeals and demurrers do not stem from natural law but are humanly established, the answer is that it does not follow from this that such a suspension is not authorized by natural law. Sins, for instance, are not from natural law, but their repression is authorized by natural law in the state of corrupt human nature, though not in the original state of human nature. One might likewise say that such a suspension is from divine law because it can be shown by divine law that the pope must not exercise such authority in prejudice of the given person's appeal or demurrer.