Sedevacantism

Today I learned a new word (new to me that is):

Sedevacantism (Latin: Sedevacantismus) is a doctrinal position within traditionalist Catholicism,^[1][2] which holds that the present occupier of the Holy See is not a valid pope due to the pope’s espousal of one or more heresy(ies) and that therefore, for lack of a valid pope, the See of Rome is vacant.

I had to look that up because I found myself in a dark Twitter wood, where the true way had been lost, and ran into this guy:

Which led me to this, in case you really want to go down this particular rabbit hole.

And then I thought, “I wonder what Adrian Vermeule thinks about all this? Somewhat to my surprise, I discovered that he doesn’t believe he’s more Catholic than the Pope — at least not yet:

IIRC (not looking it up) Louise Mensch is the former member of the British parliament who a few years ago kept claiming the bailiff of the Supreme Court had just ordered Trump’s arrest, or something like that.

My favorite Borges story, at least on some days:

After having razed the garden and profaned the chalices and altars, the Huns entered the monastery library on horseback and trampled the incomprehensible books and vituperated and burned them, perhaps fearful that the letters concealed blasphemies against their god, which was an iron scimitar. Palimpsests and codices were consumed, but in the heart of the fire, amid the ashes, there remained almost intact the twelfth book of the Civitas Dei, which relates how in Athens Plato taught that, at the centuries’ end, all things will recover their previous state and he in Athens, before the same audience, will teach this same doctrine anew. The text pardoned by the flames enjoyed special veneration and those who read and reread it in that remote province came to forget that the author had only stated this doctrine in order better to refute it. A century later, Aurelian, coadjutor of Aquileia, learned that on the shores of the Danube the very recent sect of the Monotones (called also the Annulars) professed that history is a circle and that there is nothing which has not been and will not be. In the mountains, the Wheel and the Serpent had displaced the Cross. All were afraid, but all were comforted by the rumor that John of Pannonia, who had distinguished himself with a treatise on the seventh attribute of God, was going to impugn such an abominable heresy.

Aurelian deplored this news, particularly the latter part.