Questioning a Pope’s Prudential Judgement Is Not Schismatic – So What’s The Real Reason Fr. Vaughn Treco Was Excommunicated?

If questioning a pope’s prudential judgments was schismatic, as it supposedly was for Fr. Vaughn Treco, then St. Paul would have been excommunicated.

Saint Peter, or Cephas as he was called, was given a vision as recorded in chapter 10 of the Acts of the Apostles that the keeping of the Mosaic law was no longer required by God. This he taught infallibly at the Council of Jerusalem as recorded in chapter 15 of Acts.

But when he went to Antioch, he ate with the so-called Judaizers who taught that Christians must keep the Mosaic law and receive circumcision. This is when St. Paul criticized the prudential judgment of a reigning pope as he saw that St. Peter’s act would scandalize other Christians into thinking they too must keep the Mosaic law. The incident is recounted by St. Paul in Galatians 2:11–14 as follows:

But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that some came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circumcision. And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented, so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as the Jews do, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?

A pope’s prudential judgments, such as allowing Communion in the hand or not disciplining heretical clerics, are certainly not infallible and can be questioned by the faithful.

Read more at Church Militant