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Thank you, Liberty Women, for your good will and good heart. I am a Catholic blessed to have many fine Protestants among my friends and family. I do think we are one family in Christ.

So what do you do with the many papal decrees that exclude Protestants from being part of the body of Christ?

And what is your position on Pope Francis: Is he

1. Not a true Catholic but a heretic yet still a validly elected pope.

Not a true pope, with the last valid pope being______

By definition, some Pope has to be the worst Pope ever (or to date).

Any Protestant (or other non-Catholic Christian) who is baptized (even as a Lutheran, Baptist or whatever), has received the Sacrament by which a person becomes a Member of the Body of Christ, and is therefore a Catholic in the Sacramental sense.

That's because this person, we're assuming, has not wittingly or willingly committed the sins of heresy, apostasy or schism. He isn't personally responsible for those sins which destroy unity with the Church.

This has all kinds of canonical implications which I can't address, since I am pretty comprehensively ignorant of canon law. I do know that most Protestants are technically eligible to receive the other Sacraments, (e.g. my baptized-Baptist husband, marrying me, received the Catholic Sacrament of Matrimony).

In an extreme situation, Protestant in danger of death could receive he Sacrament of Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, probably all the prayers and sacraments for the Dying. You hear about this happening in situations of war, epidemic and natural disaster.

I don't know, but I suppose that popes in historic eras that faeatured a lot of actual, personal defection from the Faith, or large-scale, continent-wide schism, meant to address the situation at hand. A person who intentionally commits apostasy, heresy or schism is, by that act, intentionally separating himself from the Body of Christ.

If he didn't know and intend that, then --- well, you're not morally answerable for a choice when you didn't know what you were choosing. The practical maxim is, "We know where the Church is, but we don't know where he Church is not."

We have only exterior evidence to go on. But God is the Judge, and he judges the heart.

That's as well as I can figure it. If you want more, you'll just have to consult a canon lawyer.

On the topic of this bizarre papacy, I am not morally sure whether Jorge Bergoglio is the pope or not. It seems that upon his election, he was received as pope, unanimously, by all the active bishops and cardinals. Historically, to be considered an anti-pope, you had to be a member of a faction which disputes a conclave.

This is a surreal case, because in retrospect --- what a lot of us didn't realize at the time ---there were some pretty disputable things about the conclave.

The question of whether Pope Benedict XVI freely and totally abdicated. Was he acting freely, or was he under some kind of coercion or pervasive manipulation by somebody else? Was his abdication total, or does he see himself as having split the papacy into two roles, active and contemplative, in which he is still the "Silent Partner" in a double papacy? There's evidence on both sides, and Bxvi hasn't tied up all the loose ends, which is exceedingly strange.
The question of whether the March 2013 conclave was valid. The previous legislation ("Constituton") on papal succession said there is to be no politicking before, during or after the conclave, and if there is, the election is invalid and the people who engaged in politicking are excommunicated.
There's emerging evidence hat the March 2013 conclave was strategized by the members of the so-called "Sankt Gallen Group" (or "Mafia"). Even without the rumors of the lying pervert Cardinal (now "Mister")("Uncle Ted") McCarrick lurking around the Termini handing out fat envelopes of euros, McCarrick himself has openly credited himself with "managing" the election, and there's a guy just begging for enhanced interrogation if I ever saw one.
But I expect he'll die and take his secrets to the grave, and get perhaps a nice perch in the Molten Lava Spa from his true master.
There's the question of whether Bergoglio has de facto separated himself from the true and Catholic Faith even before his election; which if he had, would invalidate the election since no heretic can exercise any office, elected or appointed, in the Catholic Church.
And there's the related question of whether acts of heresy subsequent to his election, invalidate the Bergoglio Papacy automatically, on the spot. By me, he is in "vehement suspicion of heresy," to use a time-honored phrase, for at least two official acts where he presented heretical deviations as acts of the authentic papal magisterium.

The long and short of it, is that we are in a state of bizzarro-world confusion because the main opponent of the real papal magisterium, happens to be the pope.

I don't think this has ever happened in quite this way before --- a putative pope attempting to use papal authority to systematically deconstruct Catholic doctrine --- and there doesn't seem to be a remedy except for a literal Act of God, e.g. a well-timed cerebral vascular or maybe myocardial "event".

I have always been told that anything you can legitimately hope for, you can legitimately pray for. Lord have mercy. Let us pray.

Not a true pope, with the last valid pope being______

Now, now.

This would involve JUDGIN G a person; something that Catholics do NOT do. (unless they are Protestant)