Brian Harrison

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For the Conservative politician, see Brian Harrison (Conservative politician).

For the Labour politician Brian Harrison (Labour politician).

Father Brian Harrison, O.S., M.A., S.T.D., is an Australian Catholic theologian and a prolific writer on religious issues. He is a professor at the Pontifical University of Puerto Rico, and also an Associate Editor of the Living Tradition, a publication of the Roman Theological Forum hosted by the Oblates of Wisdom in St. Louis, Missouri.

He is doctrinally conservative. While opposing the incorrect interpretations of the Second Vatican Council allegedly made by Progressivists and Modernists, he also opposes what he considers an excess - the criticism of the actual texts of that Council, by such people as Traditionalist Catholics.

He is also a forthright opponent of Sedevacantism. In this connection, he authored a tract in May of 2000 entitled, A Heretical Pope would Govern Validly but Illicitly, where he attempted to base his argument on the 1945 legislation of Pope Pius XII concerning a papal election, Vacantis Apostolicæ Sedis [1]. The papal legislation declared, in part:

"None of the Cardinals may in any way, or by pretext or reason of any excommunication, suspension, or interdict whatsoever, or of any other ecclesiastical impediment, be excluded from the active and passive election of the Supreme Pontiff. We hereby suspend such censures solely for the purposes of the said election; at other times they are to remain in vigor."

After being informed in early 2003 that his article was misleading and that people were still referring to his website article, Fr. Harrison explained the situation in correspondence:

"I now recognize that some things in the article you refer to were not expressed too exactly. It is true that a Pope who was a formal, public, notorious heretic could not govern the Church either licitly or validly, but would automatically laspe from office. My articles in "The Remnant" in 2001-2002, in a debate with sedevacantist Fr. Anthony Cekada, represent my revised position on this issue."

"when I wrote the LT article, I thought that these conditions (public, notorious, formal heresy) could only in fact be verified in the event that a Pope no longer even CLAIMED to be Catholic, and began openly to profess Protestantism, Communism or some other explicitly un-Catholic system of belief. I now recognize that the conditions could also be verified, in theory, even if the hypothetical Pope still claimed to be Catholic while sustaining his heresy."

Fr. Harrison realized his oversight, at that time, and removed the article from the Living Tradition website (http://www.rtforum.org/lt/ No. 87 - May 2000), intending to replace it with a corrected version. That intention has yet to be fulfilled.