Welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey everyone, in today's video I'm going to address the arguments Peter Diamond made

in defense of sedive econtism in a recent debate with Jeff Kassman on Pines with Aquinas.

To give you a little background, sedive econtism is the view that the chair of Peter is vacant,

or there is no valid pope, and the current pope is an illegitimate anti-pop.

Now there have always been periods when no man holds the office of the papacy.

This is called an inter-regnum, and it usually happens in the weeks and months that follow

when one pope dies or resigns until another pope is elected.

Sedive econtism, however, goes much further.

It says this inter-regnum period has lasted for decades and is still not ended.

The most common claim which Diamond makes in the debate is that the last person to

validly hold the papacy was Pope Pius XII, and that every pope since 1958, including

John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis are anti-popes.

The reason I want to make a video on this matter is because sedive econtism is a spiritually

dangerous position.

The claim is not just that there isn't a pope, but that every bishop ordained after

Vatican II was never validly ordained.

And if they weren't validly ordained, then none of the priests they ordained are real priests

either.

This means that it is almost impossible from Diamond's perspective to find a valid mass

or to receive the sacraments.

That's why on his website he wrote the following back in 2014 and doesn't seem to have updated

...