If someone claims to be a “Catholic” but doesn’t “accept” Pope Francis as the legitimate Pope, they’re not a Catholic.
That’s not true. There have been quite a number of schisms in the catholic church which resulted in a split on who people thought was the pope. The guy who doesn’t come out on top in that situation is called an antipope. Sometimes it was difficult to decide in history which person was the pope and which was antipope. There have been about 40 of them with the last being in the 15th century.
The Palmarian Church is a catholic splinter group that has an antipope.
Yes it is. Catholic dogma dictates that the Pope is the true representative of God and that he functions as the literal mouthpiece of God. Schisms might be true but, according to Catholicism, there can’t be a mistake when it comes to the Pope and what he says when speaking on doctrine. It’s called Papal Infallibility.
Accordingly, that means any schisms from Catholicism, by definition, aren’t Catholic because they break the promise Jesus made to Peter.
This assumes that Catholic dogma is objectively true, and leans heavily on history being written by the victors.
No it doesn’t. It leans on Catholic dogma being defined by Catholics. Papal infallibility comes from Jesus’ promise to Peter that whoever leads the Church will always be guided by God. Since it comes directly from Jesus, the figurehead of Catholicism, the only “truth” that needs to be accepted is that Jesus + Pope (Peter) is Catholicism. There’s no question of truth or victory. The very foundation of the idea of Catholicism relies on the idea that the Pope is never wrong on issues of doctrine and dogma.
That doesn’t change the fact that Palmerians consider themselves the one true catholic church and that they consider their members catholic. They would claim their anti-pope is the infallible one, not Pope Francis.
It doesn’t matter what they consider themselves, though. That’s the point. If the Pope is the mouthpiece of god and is infallible, then their sect (and by extension their anti-pope) cannot be Catholics since dogma and doctrine dictate that the actual Pope is infallible and beyond contestation.
