Ordaining Bishops Against the Will of the Pope: Is It Ever Lawful?

Abstract Canon law forbids episcopal ordinations to take place in the Latin church without a papal mandate. I consider whether this is also a requirement of divine law. Arguments that might be used to seek to show that such ordinations could never be licit are that they are schismatic (especially in the light of the teaching of Vatican II about the episcopal office of governance and about collegiality); that they tend to produce schism; or that they are contrary to the teachings of Trent and Vatican II on canonical mission. A further argument that could be used for the same conclusion is that to claim that a state of necessity could arise in the Church that could render such ordinations lawful is contrary to the doctrine of the Church’s indefectibility. I argue that none of these reasons is probative, and that such ordinations cannot, therefore, be absolutely excluded, and I finish with a thought experiment that supports this conclusion.