04034.1 - Papal Infallibility Explained - 1

§34.1. Papal Infallibility Explained, and Tested by Tradition and Scripture - Part 1.

Literature.

I. For Infallibility. The older defenders of Infallibility are chiefly Bellarmin , Ballerini , Litta , Alphons de Liguori (whom the Pope raised to the dignity of a doctor ecclesiæ, March 11, 1872), Card. Orsi , Perrone , and Joseph Count du Maistre (Sardinian statesman, d. at Turin Feb. 26, 1821, author of Du Pape, 1819; new edition, Paris, 1843, with the Homeric motto: eis koiranos estō.

During and after the Vatican Council: the works of Archbishops Manning and Dechamps , already quoted, pp. 134, 135.

Jos. Cardoni (Archbishop of Edessa, in partibus): Elucubratio de dogmatica Romani Pontificis Infallibilitate ejusque Definibilitate, Romæ (typis Civilitatis Cattolicæ), 1870 (May, 174 pp.). The chief work on the Papal side, clothed with a semi-official character.

Hermann Rump : Die Unfehlbarkeit den Papstes und die Stellung der in Deutschland verbreiteten theologischen Lehrbücher zu dieser Lehre, Münster, 1870 (173 pp.).

Franz Friedhoff (Prof. at Münster): Gegen-Erwägungen über die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit, Münster, 1869 (21 pp.). Superficial.

Flor. Riess and Karl von Weber (Jesuits): Das Oekum. Concil. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, Neue Folge, No. X. Die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit und der alte Glaube der Kirche, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1870 (110pp.).

G. Bickel : Gründe fur die Unfehlbarkeit des Kirchenoberhauptes nebst Widerlegung der Einwürfe, Münster, 1870.

Rev. P. Weninger (Jesuit): L’infaillibilité du Pape devant la raison et l’écriture, les papes et les conciles, les pères et les théologiens, les rois et les empereurs.Translated from the German into French by P. Bélét .(Highly spoken of by Pius IX. in a brief to Abbé Bélét, Nov. 17, 1869; see Friedberg, l.c. p. 487. Weninger wrote besides several pamphlets on Infallibility in German, Innsbruck, 1841; Graz, 1853; in English, New York and Cincinnati, 1868. Archbishop Kenrick, in hisConcio; speaks of him as ’a pious and extremely zealous but ignorant man,’ whom he honored with ’the charity of silence’ when requested to recommend one of his books.)

Widerlegung der vier unter die Väter des Concils vertheilten Brochüren gegen die Unfehlbarkeit (transl. of Animadversiones in quatuor contra Romani Pontificis infallibilitatem editos libellos ), Münster, 1870.

Bishop Jos. Fessler : Die wahre und die falsche Unfehlbarkeit der Päpste (against Prof. von Schulte), Wien,1871.

Bishop Ketteler : Das unfehlbare Lehramt des Papstes, nach der Entscheidung des Vaticanischen Concils, Mainz, 1871, 3te Aufl.

M. J. Scheeben : Schulte und Döllinger, gegen das Concil.Kritische Beleuchtung, etc., Regensburg, 1871.

Amédée de Margerie : Lettre au R. P. Gratry sur le Pape Honorius et le Bréviaire Romain, Nancy, 1870 Paul Bottala (S.J.): Pope Honorius before the Tribunal of Reason and History, London, 1868.

II. Against Infallibility.

(a) By Members of the Council.

Mgr. H. L. C. Maret (Bishop of Sura, in part., Canon of St. Denis and Dean of the Theological Faculty in Paris): Du Concile général et de la paix religieuse, Paris, 1869, 2 Tom. (pp. 554 and 555). An elaborate defense of Gallicanism; since revoked by the author, and withdrawn from sale.

Peter Richard Kenrick (Archbishop of St. Louis): Concio in Concilio Vaticano habenda at non habita, Neapoli (typis fratrum de Angelis in via Pellegrini 4), 1870. Reprinted in Friedrich, Documenta, I. pp. 187-226. An English translation in L. W. Bacon’s An Inside View of the Vatican Council, New York, pp. 90-166.

Quæstio (no place or date of publication). A very able Latin dissertation occasioned and distributed (perhaps partly prepared) by Bishop Ketteler , of Mayence, during the Council. It was printed but not published in Switzerland, in 1870, and reprinted in Friedrich, Documenta, 1. pp. 1-128.

La liberté du Concile et l’infaillibilité . Written or inspired by Darboy , Archbishop of Paris. Only flfty copies were printed, for distribution among the Cardinals. Reprinted in Friedrich,Documenta,I. pp. 129-186.

Card. Rauscher : Observationes quædam de infallibilitatis ecclesiæ subjecto, Neapoli and Vindobonæ, 1870 (83 pp.).

De Summi Pontificis infallibilitate personali, Neapoli, 1870 (32 pp.). Written by Prof. Salesius Mayer , and distributed in the Council by Cardinal Schwarzenberg.

Jos. de Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Prof. at Tübingen): Causa Honorii Papæ, Neap. 1870 (pp. 28). The same: Honorius und das sechste allgemeine Concil (with an appendix against Pennachi, 43 pp.), Tübingen, 1870. English translation, with introduction, by Dr. Henry B. Smith , in the Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, New York, for April, 1872, pp. 273 sqq. Against Hefele comp. Jos. Pennachi (Prof. of Church History in Rome): De Honorii 1. Pontificis Romani causa in Concilio VI.

(b ) By Catholics, not Members of the Council.

Janus : The Pope and the Council, 1869. See above, p. 134.

Erwägungen für die Bischöfe del Conciliums über die Frage der päpstlichen Unfehlbarkeit, Oct. 1869. Dritte Aufl. München. [By J. von Döllinger .] J. von Döllinger : Einige Worte über die Unfehlbarkeitsadresse, etc., München, 1870.

Jos. H. Reinkens (Prof. of Church History in Breslau): Ueber päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit, München, 1870.

Clemens Schmitz (Cath. Priest): Ist der Papst unfehlbart? Aus Deutschlands und des P. Deharbe Catechismen beantwortet, München, 1870.

J. Fr. Ritter von Schulte (Prof. in Prague, now in Bonn): Das Unfehlbarkeits-Decret vom 18 Juli 1870 auf seine Verbindlichkeit geprüft, Prague, 1870. Die Macht der röm. Päpste über Fürsten, Länder, Vöker, etc. seit Gregor VII. zur Würdigung ihrer Unfehlbarkeit beleuchtet,etc., 2d edition, Prague. The same, translated into English (The Power of the Roman Popes over Princes, etc.), by Alfred Somers [a brother of Schulte], Adelaide, 1871.

A. Gratry (Priest of the Oratoire and Member of the French Academy): Four Letters to the Bishop of Orleans (Dupanloup) and the Archbishop of Malines (Dechamps), in French, Paris, 1870; several editions, also translated into German, English, etc. These learned and eloquent letters gave rise to violent controversies. They were denounced by several Bishops, and prohibited in their dioceses; approved by others, and by Montalembert. The Pope praised the opponents. Against him wrote Dechamps (Three letters to Gratry, in French; German translation, Mayence, 1870) and A. de Margerie. Gratry recanted on his death-bed.

P. Le Page Renouf : The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, London, 1868.

Antonio Magrassi : Lo Schema sull’infallibilità personale del Romano Pontefice, Alessandria, 1870.

Della pretesa infallibilità personale del Romano Pontefice, 2d ed. Firenze, 1870 (anonymous, 80 pp.).

J. A. B. Lutterbeck : Die Clementinen und ihr Verhältniss zum Unfehlbarkeitsdogma, Giessen, 1872 (pp. 85).

Joseph Langen (Old Catholic Prof. in Bonn): Das Vaticanische Dogma von dem Universal-Episcopat und der Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in s. Verh. zur exeg. Ueberlieferung vom 7 bis zum 13ten Jahrh . 3 Parts. Bonn, 1871-73. The sinlessness of the Virgin Mary and the personal infallibility of the Pope are the characteristic dogmas of modern Romanism, the two test dogmas which must decide the ultimate fate of this system. Both were enacted under the same Pope, and both faithfully reflect his character. Both have the advantage of logical consistency from certain premises, and seem to be the very perfection of the Romish form of piety and the Romish principle of authority. Both rest on pious fiction and fraud; both present a refined idolatry by clothing a pure humble woman and a mortal sinful man with divine attributes. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which exempts the Virgin Mary from sin and guilt, perverts Christianism into Marianism; the dogma of Infallibility, which exempts the Bishop of Rome from error, resolves Catholicism into Papalism, or the Church into the Pope. The worship of a woman is virtually substituted for the worship of Christ, and a man-god in Rome for the God-Man in heaven. This is a severe judgment, but a closer examination will sustain it. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, being confined to the sphere of devotion, passed into the modern Roman creed without serious difficulty; but the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which involves a question of absolute power, forms an epoch in the history of Romanism, and created the greatest commotion and a new secession. It is in its very nature the most fundamental and most comprehensive of of all dogmas. It contains the whole system in a nutshell. It constitutes a new rule of faith. It is the article of the standing or falling Church. It is the direct antipode of the Protestant principle of the absolute supremacy and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures. It establishes a perpetual divine oracle in the Vatican. Every Catholic may hereafter say, I believe-not because Christ, or the Bible, or the Church, but-because the infallible Pope has so declared and commanded. Admitting this dogma, we admit not only the whole body of doctrines contained in the Tridentine standards, but all the official Papal bulls, including the mediæval monstrosities of the Syllabus (1864), the condemnation of Jansenism, the bull ’Unam Sanctam ’ of Boniface VIII. (1302), which, under pain of damnation, claims for the Pope the double sword, the secular as well as the spiritual, over the whole Christian world, and the power to depose princes and to absolve subjects from their oath of allegiance. [SeeNote #322] The past is irreversibly settled, and in all future controversies on faith and morals we must look to the same unerring tribunal in the Vatican. Even œcumenical Councils are superseded hereafter, and would be a mere waste of time and strength. On the other hand, if the dogma is false, it involves a blasphemous assumption, and makes the nearest approach to the fulfillment of St. Paul’s prophecy of the man of sin, who ’as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself off that he is God’ (2 Thessalonians 2:4).

Let us first see what the dogma does not mean, and what it does mean.

It does not mean that the Pope is infallible in his private opinions’ on theology and religion. As a man, he may be a heretic (as Liberius, Honorius, and John XXII.), or even an unbeliever (as John XXIII., and, perhaps, Leo X.), and yet, at the same time, infallible as Pope, after the fashion of Balaam and Kaiphas. Nor does it mean that infallibility extends beyond the proper sphere of religion and the Church. The Pope may be ignorant of science and literature, and make grave mistakes in his political administration, or be misinformed on matters of fact (unless necessarily involved in doctrinal decisions), and yet be infallible in defining articles of faith. [SeeNote #323]

Infallibility does not imply impeccability. And yet freedom from error and freedom from sin are so nearly connected in men’s minds that it seems utterly impossible that such moral monsters as Alexander VI. and those infamous Popes who disgraced humanity during the Roman pornocracy in the tenth and eleventh centuries, should have been vicars of Jesus Christ and infallible organs of the Holy Ghost. If the inherent infallibility of the visible Church logically necessitates the infallibility of the visible head, it is difficult to see why the same logic should not with equal conclusiveness derive the personal holiness of the head from the holiness of the body. On the other hand, the dogma does mean that all official utterances of the Roman Pontiff addressed to the Catholic Church on matters of Christian faith and duty are infallibly true, and must be accepted with the same faith as the word of the living God. They are not simply final in the sense in which all decisions of an absolute government or a supreme court of justice are final until abolished or superseded by other decisions, [SeeNote #324] but they are irreformable, and can never be revoked. This infallibility extends over eighteen centuries, and is a special privilege conferred by Christ upon Peter, and through him upon all his legitimate successors. It belongs to every Pope from Clement to Pius IX., and to every Papal bull addressed to the Catholic world. It is personal, i.e., inherent in Peter and the Popes; it is independent, and needs no confirmation from the Church or an œcumenical Council, either preceding or succeeding; its decrees are binding, and can not be rejected without running the risk of eternal damnation. [SeeNote #325]

Even within the narrow limits of the Vatican decision there is room for controversy on the precise meaning of the figurative term ex cathedra loqui, and the extent of faith and morals, viz., whether Infallibility includes only the supernatural order of revealed truth and duty, or also natural and political duties, and questions of mere history, such as Peter’s residence in Koine, the number of œcumenical Councils, the teaching of Jansen and Quesnel, and other disputed facts closely connected with dogmas. But the main point is clear enough. The Ultramontane theory is established, Gallicanism is dead and buried.

Ultramontanism and Gallicanism. The Vatican dogma is the natural completion of the Papal polity, as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is the completion of the Papal cultus.

If we compare the Papal or Ultramontane theory with the Episcopal or Gallican theory, it has the undeniable advantage of logical consistency. The two systems are related to each other like monarchy and aristocracy, or rather like absolute monarchy and limited monarchy. The one starts from the divine institution of the Primacy (Matthew 16:18), and teaches the infallibility of the head; the other starts from the divine institution of the Episcopate (Matthew 18:18), and teaches the infallibility of the body and the superiority of an œcumenical Council over the Pope. Conceding once the infallibility of the collective Episcopate, we must admit, as a consequence, the infallibility of the Primacy, which represents the Episcopate, and forms its visible and permanent centre. If the body of the teaching Church can never err, the head can not err; and, vice versa, if the head is liable to error, the body can not be free from error. The Gallican theory is an untenable via media . It secures only a periodic and intermittent infallibility, which reveals itself in an œcumenical Council, and then relapses into a quiescent state; but the Ultramontane theory teaches an unbroken, ever living, and ever active infallibility, which alone can fully answer the demands of an absolute authority. To refute Papal infallibility is to refute also Episcopal infallibility; for the higher includes the lower. The Vatican Council is the best argument against the infallibility of œcumenical Councils, for it sanctioned a fiction, in open and irreconcilable contradiction to older œcumenical Councils, which not only assumed the possibility of Papal fallibility, but actually condemned a Pope as a heretic. The fifth Lateran Council (1512) declared the decrees of the Council of Pisa (1409) null and void; the Council of Florence denied the validity of the Council of Basle, and this denied the validity of the former. The Council of Constance condemned and burned John Hus for teaching evangelical doctrines; and this fact forced upon Luther, at the disputation with Eck at Leipzig, the conviction that even œcumenical Councils may err. Rome itself has rejected certain canons of Constantinople and Chalcedon, which put the Pope on a par with the Patriarch of Constantinople; and a strict construction of the Papal theory would rule out the old œcumenical Councils, because they were not convened nor controlled by the Pope; while the Greek Church rejects all Councils which were purely Latin. The Bible makes no provision and has no promise for an œcumenical Council. [SeeNote #326] The Church existed and flourished for more than three hundred years before such a Council was heard of. Large assemblies are often ruled by passion, intrigue, and worldly ambition (remember the complaints of Gregory of Nazianzum on the Synods of the Nicene age). Majorities are not necessarily decisive in matters of faith. Christ promised to be even with two or three who are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20). Elijah and the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal were right over against the great mass of the people of Israel. Athanasius versus mundum represented the truth, and the world versus Athanasium was in error during the ascendency of Arianism. In the eighteenth century the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, was under the power of infidelity, and true Christianity had to take refuge in small communities. Augustine maintained that one Council may correct another, and attain to a more perfect knowledge of truth. The history of the Church is unintelligible without the theory of progressive development, which implies many obstructions and temporary diseases. All the attributes of the Church are subject to the law of gradual expansion and growth, and will not be finally complete till the second coming of our Lord.

Papal Infallibility and Personal Responsibility. The Christian Church, as a divine institution, can never fail and never lose the truth. Christ has pledged his Spirit and life-giving presence to his people to the end of time, and even to two or three of his humblest disciples assembled in his name; yet they are not on that account infallible. He gave authority in matters of discipline to every local Church (Matthew 18:17); and yet no one claims infallibility to every congregation. The Holy Spirit will always guide believers into the truth, and the unerring Word of God can never perish. But local churches, like individuals, may fall into error, and be utterly destroyed from the face of the earth. The true Church of Christ always makes progress, and will go on conquering and to conquer to the end of the world. But the particular churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and North Africa, where once the Apostles and St. Augustine taught, have disappeared, or crumbled into ruin, or have been overrun by the false prophet. The truth will ever be within the reach of the sincere inquirer wherever the gospel is preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. God has revealed himself plainly enough for all purposes of salvation; and yet not so plainly as to supersede the necessity of faith, and to resolve Christianity into a mathematical demonstration. He has given us a rational mind to think and to judge, and a free will to accept or to reject. Christian faith is no blind submission, but an intelligent assent. It implies anxiety to inquire as well as willingness to receive. We are expressly directed to ’prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21); to try the spirits whether they are of God (1 John 4:1), and to refuse obedience even to an angel from heaven if he preach a different gospel (Galatians 1:8). The Berœan Jews are commended as being more noble than those of Thessalonica, because they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and yet searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). It was from the infallible Scriptures alone, and not from tradition, that Paul and Apollos reasoned, after the example of Christ, who appeals to Moses and the Prophets, and speaks disparagingly of the traditions of the elders as obscuring the Word of God or destroying its true effect. [SeeNote #327] In opposition to all this the Vatican dogma requires a wholesale slaughter of the intellect and will, and destroys the sense of personal responsibility. The fundamental error, the prōton pseudosof Rome is that she identifies the true ideal Church of Christ with the empirical Church, and the empirical Church with the Romish Church, and the Romish Church with the Papacy, and the Papacy with the Pope, and at last substitutes a mortal man for the living Christ, who is the only and ever present head of the Church, ’which is his body, the fullness of him who filleth all in all.’ Christ needs no vicar, and the very idea of a vicar implies the absence of the Master. [SeeNote #328] Papal Infallibility tested by Tradition. The dogma of Papal Infallibility is mainly supported by an inferential dogmatic argument derived from the Primacy of Peter, who, as the Vicar of Christ, must also share in his infallibility; or from the nature and aim of the Church, which is to teach men the way of salvation, and must therefore be endowed with an infallible and ever available organ for that purpose, since God always provides the means together with an end. A full-blooded Infallibilist, whose piety consists in absolute submission and devotion to his lord the Pope, is perfectly satisfied with this reasoning, and cares little or nothing for the Bible and for history, except so far as they suit his purpose. If facts disagree with his dogmas, all the worse for the facts. All you have to do is to ignore or to deny them, or to force them, by unnatural interpretations, into reluctant obedience to the dogmas. [SeeNote #329] But after all, even according to the Roman Catholic theory, Scripture and history or tradition are the two indispensable tests of the truth of a dogma. It has always been held that the Pope and the Bishops are not the creators and judges, but the trustees and witnesses of the apostolic deposit of faith, and that they can define and proclaim no dogma which is not well founded in primitive tradition, written or unwritten. According to the famous rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, a dogma must have three marks of catholicity: the catholicity of time (semper ), of space (ubique ), and of number (ab omnibus ). The argument from tradition is absolutely essential to orthodoxy in the Roman sense, and, as hitherto held, more essential than Scripture proof. [SeeNote #330] The difference between Romanism and Protestantism on this point is this: Romanism requires proof from tradition first, from Scripture next, and makes the former indispensable, the latter simply desirable; while Protestantism reverses the order, and with its theory of the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, and as an inexhaustible mine of truth that yields precious ore to every successive generation of miners, it may even dispense with traditional testimony altogether, provided that a doctrine can be clearly derived from the Word of God.

Now it can be conclusively proved that the dogma of Papal Infallibility, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, lacks every one of the three marks of catholicity. It is a comparatively modern innovation. It was not dreamed of for more than a thousand years, and is unknown to this day in the Greek Church, the oldest in the world, and in matters of antiquity always an important witness. The whole history of Christianity would have taken a different course, if in all theological controversies an infallible tribunal in Rome could have been invoked. [SeeNote #331] Ancient Creeds, Councils, Fathers, and Popes can be summoned as witnesses against the Vatican dogma.

1. The four œcumenical Creeds, the most authoritative expressions of the old Catholic faith of the Eastern and Western Churches, contain an article on the ’holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,’ but not one word about the Bishops of Rome, or any other local Church. How easy and natural, yea, in view of the fundamental importance of the Infallibility dogma, how necessary would have been the insertion of Roman after the other predicates of the Church, or the addition of the article: ’The Pope of Rome, the successor of Peter and infallible vicar of Christ.’ If it had been believed then as now, it would certainly appear at least in the Roman form of the Apostles’ Creed; but this is as silent on this point as the Aquilejan, the African, the Gallican, and other forms. And this uniform silence of all the œcumenical Creeds is strengthened by the numerous local Creeds of the Nicene age, and by the various ante-Nicene rules of faith up to Tertullian and Irenæus, not one of which contains an allusion to such an article of faith.

2. The œcumenical Councils of the first eight centuries, which are recognized by the Greek and Latin Churches alike, are equally silent about, and positively inconsistent with, Papal Infallibility. They were called by Greek Emperors, not by Popes; they were predominantly, and some of them exclusively, Oriental; they issued their decrees in their own name, and in the fullness of authority, without thinking of submitting them to the approval of Rome; they even claimed the right of judging and condemning the Roman Pontiff, as well as any other Bishop or Patriarch. In the first Nicene Council there was but one representative of the Latin Church (Hosius of Spain); and in the second and the fifth œcumenical Councils there was none at all. The second œcumenical Council (381), in the third canon, put the Patriarch of Constantinople on a par with the Bishop of Rome, assigning to the latter only a primacy of honor; and the fourth œcumenical Council (451) confirmed this canon in spite of the energetic protest of Pope Leo I. But more than this: the sixth œcumenical Council, held 680, pronounced the anathema on Honorius, ’the former Pope of old Rome,’ for teaching officially the Monothelite heresy; and this anathema was signed by all the members of the Council, including the three delegates of the Pope, and was several times repeated by the seventh and eighth Councils, which were presided over by Papal delegates. But we must return to this famous case again in another connection.

3. The Fathers, even those who unconsciously did most service to Rome, and laid the foundation for its colossal pretensions, yet had no idea of ascribing absolute supremacy and infallibility to the Pope.

Clement of Rome, the first Roman Bishop of whom we have any authentic account, wrote a letter to the Church at Corinth-not in his name, but in the name of the Roman Congregation; not with an air of superior authority, but as a brother to brethren-barely mentioning Peter, but eulogizing Paul, and with a clear consciousness of the great difference between an Apostle and a Bishop or Elder.

Ignatius of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom in Rome under Trajan, highly as he extols Episcopacy and Church unity in his seven Epistles, one of which is addressed to the Roman Christians, makes no distinction of rank among Bishops, but treats them as equals.

Irenæus of Lyons, the champion of the Catholic faith against the Gnostic heresy at the close of the second century, and the author of the famous and variously understood passage about the potentior principalitas (proteia) ecclesiæ Romanæ, sharply reproved Victor of Rome when he ventured to excommunicate the Asiatic Christians for their different mode of celebrating Easter, and told him that it was contrary to Apostolic doctrine and practice to judge brethren on account of eating and drinking, feasts and new moons. Cyprian, likewise a saint and a martyr, in the middle of the third century, in his zeal for visible and tangible unity against the schismatics of his diocese, first brought out the fertile doctrine of the Roman See as the chair of Peter and the centre of Catholic unity; yet with all his Romanizing tendency he was the great champion of the Episcopal solidarity and equality system, and always addressed the Roman Bishop as his ’brother’ and ’colleague;’ he even stoutly opposed Pope Stephen’s view of the validity of heretical baptism, charging him with error, obstinacy, and presumption. He never yielded, and the African Bishops, at the third Council at Carthage (256), emphatically indorsed his opposition. Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea, and Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, likewise bitterly condemned the doctrine and conduct of Stephen, and told him that in excommunicating others he only excommunicated himself.

Augustine is often quoted by Infallibilists on account of his famous dictum, Roma locuta est, causa finita est. [SeeNote #332] But he simply means that, since the Councils of Mileve and Carthage had spoken, and Pope Innocent 1. had acceded to their decision, the Pelagian controversy was finally settled (although it was, after all, not settled till after his death, at the Council of Ephesus). Had he dreamed of the abuse made of this utterance, [SeeNote #333] he would have spoken very differently. For the same Augustine apologized for Cyprian’s opposition to Pope Stephen on the ground that the controversy had then not yet been decided by a Council, and maintained the view of the liability of Councils to correction and improvement by subsequent Councils. He moreover himself opposed Pope Zosimus, when, deceived by Pelagius, he declared him sound in the faith, although Pope Innocent 1. had previously excommunicated him as a dangerous heretic. And so determined were the Africans, under the lead of Augustine (417 and 418), that Zosimus finally saw proper to yield and to condemn Pelagianism in his ’Epistula Tractoria .’

Gregory I., or the Great, the last of the Latin Fathers, and the first of the mediæval Popes (590-604), stoutly protested against the assumption of the title œcumenical or universal Bishop on the part of the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria, and denounced this whole title and claim as blasphemous, anti-Christian, and devilish, since Christ alone was the Head and Bishop of the Church universal, while Peter, Paul, Andrew, and John, were members under the same Head, and heads only of single portions of the whole. Gregory would rather call himself ’the servant of the servants of God,’ which, in the mouths of his successors, pretending to be Bishops of bishops and Lords of lords, has become a shameless irony. [SeeNote #334] As to the Greek Fathers, it would be useless to quote them, for the entire Greek Church in her genuine testimonies has never accepted the doctrine of Papal supremacy, much less of Papal Infallibility.

4. Heretical Popes .-We may readily admit the rock-like stability of the Roman Church in the early controversies on the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, as compared with the motion and changeability of the Greek churches during the same period, when the East was the chief theatre of dogmatic controversy and progress. Without some foundation in history, the Vatican dogma could not well have arisen. It would be impossible to raise the claim of infallibility in behalf of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, or Antioch, or Alexandria, or Constantinople, among whom were noted Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Monothelites, and other heretics. Yet there are not a few exceptions to the rule; and as many Popes, in their lives, flatly contradicted their title of holiness, so many departed, in their views, from Catholic truth. That the Popes after the Reformation condemned and cursed Protestant truths well founded in the Scriptures, we leave here out of sight, and confine our reasoning to facts within the limits of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. The canon law assumes throughout that a Pope may openly teach heresy, or contumaciously contradict the Catholic doctrine; for it declares that, while he stands above all secular tribunals, yet he can be judged and deposed for the crime of heresy. [SeeNote #335] This assumption was so interwoven in the faith of the Middle Ages that even the most powerful of all Popes, Innocent III. (d. 1216), gave expression to it when he said that, though he was only responsible to God, he may sin against the faith, and thus become subject to the judgment of the Church. [SeeNote #336] Innocent IV. (d. 1254) speaks of heretical commands of the Pope, which need not be obeyed. When Boniface VIII. (d. 1303) declared that every creature must obey the Pope at the loss of eternal salvation, he was charged with having a devil, because he presumed to be infallible, which was impossible without witchcraft. Even Hadrian VI., in the sixteenth century, expressed the view, which he did not recant as Pope, that ’if by the Roman Church is understood its head, the Pope, it is certain that he can err even in matters of faith.’ This old Catholic theory of the fallibility of the Pope is abundantly borne out by actual facts, which have been established again and again by Catholic scholars of the highest authority for learning and candor. We need no better proofs than those furnished by them.

Zephyrinus (201-219) and Callistus (219-223) held and taught (according to the ’Philosophumena’ of Hippolytus, a martyr and saint) the Patripassian heresy, that God the Father became incarnate and suffered with the Son.

Pope Liberius, in 358, subscribed an Arian creed for the purpose of regaining his episcopate, and condemned Athanasius, ’the father of orthodoxy,’ who mentions the fact with indignation.

During the same period, his rival, Felix II., was a decided Arian; but there is a dispute about his legitimacy; some regarding him as an anti-Pope, although he has a place in the Romish Calendar of Saints, and Gregory XIII. (1582) confirmed his claim to sanctity, against which Baronius protested. In the Pelagian controversy, Pope Zosimus at first indorsed the orthodoxy of Pelagius and Celestius, whom his predecessor, Innocent I., had condemned; but he yielded afterwards to the firm protest of St. Augustine and the African Bishops. In the Three-Chapter controversy, Pope Vigilius (538-555) showed a contemptible vacillation between two opinions: first indorsing; then, a year afterwards, condemning (in obedience to the Emperor’s wishes) the Three Chapters (i.e., the writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas); then refusing the condemnation; then, tired of exile, submitting to the fifth œcumenical Council (553), which had broken off communion with him; and confessing that he had unfortunately been the tool of Satan, who labors for the destruction of the Church. A long schism in the West was the consequence. Pope Pelagius II. (585) significantly excused this weakness by the inconsistency of St. Peter at Antioch.

John XXII. (d. 1334) maintained, in opposition to Nicholas III. and Clement V. (d. 1314), that the Apostles did not live in perfect poverty, and branded the opposite doctrine of his predecessors as heretical and dangerous. He also held an opinion concerning the middle state of the righteous, which was condemned as heresy by the University of Paris.

Contradictory opinions were taught by different Popes on the sacraments, on the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary (see p. 123), on matrimony, and on the subjection of the temporal power to the Church. [SeeNote #337] But the most notorious case of an undeniably official indorsement of heresy by a Pope is that of Honorius 1. (625-638), which alone is sufficient to disprove Papal Infallibility, according to the maxim: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. [SeeNote #338] This case has been sifted to the very bottom before and during the Council, especially by Bishop Hefele and Père Gratry. The following decisive facts are established by the best documentary evidence:

(1.) Honorius taught ex cathedra (in two letters to his heretical colleague, Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople) the Monothelite heresy, which was condemned by the sixth œcumenical Council, i.e., the doctrine that Christ had only one will, and not two (corresponding to his two natures). [SeeNote #339]

(2.) An œcumenical Council, universally acknowledged in the East and in the West, held in Constantinople, 680, condemned and excommunicated Honorius, ’the former Pope of Old Rome,’ as a heretic, who with the help of the old serpent had scattered deadly error. [SeeNote #340] The seventh œcumenical Council (787) and the eighth (869) repeated the anathema of the sixth.

(3.) The succeeding Popes down to the eleventh century, in a solemn oath at their accession, indorsed the sixth œcumenical Council, and pronounced ’an eternal anathema’ on the authors of the Monothelite heresy, together with Pope Honorius, because he had given aid and comfort to the perverse doctrines of the heretics. [SeeNote #341] The Popes themselves, therefore, for more than three centuries, publicly recognized, first, that an œcumenical Council may condemn a Pope for open heresy, and, secondly, that Pope Honorius was justly condemned for heresy. Pope Leo II., in a letter to the Emperor, strongly confirmed the decree of the Council, and denounced his predecessor Honorius as one who ’endeavored by profane treason to overthrow the immaculate faith of the Roman Church.’ [SeeNote #342] The same Pope says, in a letter to the Spanish Bishops: ’With eternal damnation have been punished Theodore, Cyrus, Sergius-together with Honorius, who did not extinguish at the very beginning the flame of heretical doctrine, as was becoming to his apostolic authority, but nursed it by his carelessness.’ [SeeNote #343] This case of Honorius is as clear and strong as any fact in Church history. [SeeNote #344] Infallibilists have been driven to desperate efforts. Some pronounce the acts of the Council, which exist in Greek and Latin, downright forgeries (Baronius); others, admitting the acts, declare the letters of Honoring forgeries, so that he was unjustly condemned by the Council (Bellarmin)-both without a shadow of proof; still others, being forced at last to acknowledge the genuineness of the letters and acts, distort the former into an orthodox sense by a non-natural exegesis, and thus unwillingly fasten upon œcumenical Councils and Popes the charge of either dogmatic ignorance and stupidity, or malignant representation. [SeeNote #345] Yet in every case the decisive fact remains that both Councils and Popes for several hundred years believed in the fallibility of the Pope, in flat contradiction to the Vatican Council. Such acts of violence upon history remind one of King James’s short method with Dissenters: ’Only hang them, that’s all.’

5. The idea of Papal absolutism and Infallibility, like that of the sinlessness of Mary, can be traced to apocryphal origin. It is found first, in the second century, in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which contain a singular system of speculative Ebionism, and represent James of Jerusalem, the brother of the Lord, as the Bishop of Bishops, the centre of Christendom, and the general Vicar of Christ; he is the last arbiter, from whom there is no appeal; to him even Peter must give an account of his labors, and to him the sermons of Peter were sent for safe keeping. [SeeNote #346] In the Catholic Church the same idea, but transferred to the Bishop of Rome, is first clearly expressed in the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, that huge forgery of Papal letters, which appeared in the middle of the ninth century, and had for its object the completion of the independence of the Episcopal hierarchy from the State, and the absolute power of the Popes, as the legislators and judges of all Christendom. Here the most extravagant claims are put into the mouths of the early Popes, from Clement (91) to Damasus (384), in the barbarous French Latin of the Middle Ages, and with such numerous and glaring anachronisms as to force the conviction of fraud even upon Roman Catholic scholars. One of these sayings is: ’The Roman Church remains to the end free from stain of heresy.’ Soon afterwards arose, in the same hierarchical interest, the legend of the donation of Constantine and his baptism by Pope Silvester, interpolations of the writings of the Fathers, especially Cyprian and Augustine, and a variety of fictions embodied in the Gesta Liberii, and the Liber Pontificalis, and sanctioned by Gratianus (about 1150) in his Decretum, or collection of canons, which (as the first part of the Corpus juris canonici ) became the code of laws for the whole Western Church, and exerted an extraordinary influence. By this series of pious frauds the mediæval Papacy, which was the growth of ages, was represented to the faith of the Church as a primitive institution of Christ, clothed with absolute and perpetual authority. The Popes since Nicholas 1. (858-867), who exceeded all his predecessors in the boldness of his designs, freely used what the spirit of a hierarchical, superstitious, and uncritical age furnished them. They quoted the fictitious letters of their predecessors as genuine, the Sardican canon on appeals as a canon of Nicæa, and the interpolated sixth canon of Nicæa,’ the Roman Church always had the primacy,’ of which there is not a syllable in the original; and nobody doubted them. Papal absolutism was in full vigor from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII. Scholastic divines, even Thomas Aquinas, deceived by these literary forgeries, began to defend Papal absolutism over the whole Church, and the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Florence (1439) sanctioned it, although the Greeks soon afterwards rejected the false union based upon such assumption. But absolute power, especially of a spiritual kind, is invariably intoxicating and demoralizing to any mortal man who possesses it. God Almighty alone can bear it, and even he allows freedom to his rational creatures. The reminiscence of the monstrous period when the Papacy was a football in the hands of bold and dissolute women (904-962), or when mere boys, like Benedict IX. (1033), polluted the Papal crown with the filth of unnatural vices, could not be quite forgotten. The scandal of the Papal schism (1378 to 1409), when two and even three rival Popes excommunicated and cursed each other, and laid all Western Christendom under the ban, excited the moral indignation of all good men in Christendom, and called forth, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the three Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which loudly demanded a reformation of the Church, in the head as well as in the members, and asserted the superiority of a Council over the Pope. The Council of Constance (1414-1418), the most numerous ever seen in the West, deposed two Popes-John XXIII. (the infamous Balthasar Cossa, who had been recognized by the majority of the Church), on the charge of a series of crimes (May 29, 1415), and Benedict XIII., as a heretic who sinned against the unity of the Church (July 26, 1417), [SeeNote #347] and elected a new Pope, Martin V. (Nov. 11, 1517), who had given his adhesion to the Council, though after his accession to power he found ways and means to defeat its real object, i.e., the reformation of the Church. This Council was a complete triumph of the Episcopal system, and the Papal absolutists and Infallibilists are here forced to the logical dilemma of either admitting the validity of the Council, or invalidating the election of Martin V. and his successors. Either course is fatal to their system. Hence there has never been an authoritative decision on the œcumenicity of this Council, and the only subterfuge is to say that the whole case is an extraordinary exception; but this, after all, involves the admission that there is a higher power in the Church over the Papacy. The Reformation shook the whole Papacy to its foundation, but could not overthrow it. A powerful reaction followed, headed by the Jesuits. Their General, Lainez, strongly advocated Papal Infallibility in the Council of Trent, and declared that the Church could not err only because the Pope could not err. But the Council left the question undecided, and the Roman Catechism ascribes infallibility simply to ’the Catholic Church,’ without defining its seat. Bellarmin advocated and formularized the doctrine, stating it as an almost general opinion that the Pope could not publicly teach a heretical dogma, and as a probable and pious opinion that Providence will guard him even against private heresy. Yet the same Bellarmin was witness to the innumerable blunders of the edition of the Latin Vulgate prepared by Sixtus V., corrected by his own hand, and issued by him as the only true and authentic text of the sacred Scriptures, with the stereotyped forms of anathema upon all who should venture to change a single word; and Bellarmin himself gave the advice that all copies should be called in, and a new edition printed with a lying statement in the preface making the printers the scape-goats for the errors of the Pope! This whole business of the Vulgate is sufficient to explode Papal Infallibility; for it touches the very source of divine revelation. Other Italian divines, like Alphonsus Liguori, and Jesuitical text-books, unblushingly use long-exploded mediæval fictions and interpolations as a groundwork of Papal absolutism and Infallibility.

It is not necessary to follow the progress of the controversy between the Episcopal and the Papal systems during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is sufficient to say that the greatest Catholic divines of France and Germany, including Bossuet and Möhler, together with many from other countries, down to the 88 protesting Bishops in the Vatican Council, were anti-Infallibilists; and that popular Catechisms of the Roman Church, extensively used till 1870, expressly denied the doctrine, which is now set up as an article of faith necessary to eternal salvation. [SeeNote #348]