Woah, seriously, nice. I'd skimmed the constitutum maybe two years ago, I think because Edward Denny had tried to cite it as an example of a pope contradicting himself ex cathedra (if it was him, I think he has a significantly broader reading of what ex cathedra means than most modern RCs do). Unfortunately (recall: I'm protestant), the only relevant case was Ibas, which wasn't worded strongly enough for me to be happy with it. (and you consider that a disciplinary decree—but doesn't the statement involve rejection of what anyone says to the contrary, not just discipline?)
Looking back at Denny: he thinks that the council anathematized Vigilius when they anathematized those who accept the three chapters (Vigilius was still not on board with the council). I'm not sure what you think of anathematizing popes, validity of not-yet-papally-approved councils, etc.
Do you have a citation for popes being unable to be deposed? Since my impression was that there were a decent number of depositions in the course of history. Felix and Liberius, for one (though I guess now Felix is considered an anti-pope, even though he was held to be the real one for most of history), and I think that one guy who was pope three times might have been deposed, I don't remember. And of course, the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel claimed to be able to, and actually exercised the power the claimed.
(On that note, I'd be quite interested to hear what you think of those councils.)
Can I see the Giant Spreadsheet of Papal Definitions? Please???
> I think he has a significantly broader reading of what ex cathedra means than most modern RCs do
Probably -- but, writing in 1912, he was probably closer to the mark of the views of his contemporary RCs.
> (and you consider that a disciplinary decree—but doesn't the statement involve rejection of what anyone says to the contrary, not just discipline?)
I use "disciplinary" very broadly: if a decree isn't doctrinal, it's disciplinary. (This is fairly common in contemporary RC discussions of infallibility.)
The first part of this decree is a ruling on the discipline Ibas faced (and escaped) at Chalcedon, so that's straightforwardly a discipline. The second part instructs everyone to shut up about it. "Shut up" is not a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, so it is a discipline. :)
I'm not certain my classifications will enjoy universal acceptance even among Catholics, so it's certainly open to quibbles, but hopefully that explains where I'm coming from.
> Looking back at Denny: he thinks that the council anathematized Vigilius when they anathematized those who accept the three chapters
They may well have had this in mind! I am a pretty strong believer in the text, though. Christ never said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against the intentions of many bishops"; He said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against my Church," which I take to mean that the Holy Spirit protects only the actual acts of an ecumenical council from error (and only certain acts!).
I don't think Vigilius can fairly be said to fall within the original public meaning of the anathemas of Constantinople II -- and, even if he can, I hold the perhaps uncommon view that the personal anathemas of councils are disciplinary, not doctrinal, thus fallible. I also think it's revealing that, immediately after the Council read the Emperor's letter demanding Vigilius be struck from the diptychs, the Council said -- in the very next sentence -- "Let us preserve unity toward the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome." They seemed to think that, whatever they were doing to Vigilius, they were nevertheless in communion with the Holy See itself.
However, whatever happened at Constantinople II, I tend to be forgiving of councils that erroneously anathematize the legitimate pope.
> I'm not sure what you think of anathematizing popes
I'm not a fan! But, then, there have been cases where the papal claimant does not legitimately hold title to the office, in which case he is an antipope and a council *ought* to excommunicate him (and has done so appropriately).
So, insofar as Constantinople II attempted to excommunicate Vigilius, I think that was the wrong call, and facially invalid. There was no question of Vigilius's title to the office.
But, at the same time, I'm inclined to be forgiving toward all the councils in the early Church. Christian doctrine is messy, and maybe we'd have had fewer schisms along the way if everyone had been a little sweeter to one another. (Certainly the Reformation was largely our own dumb fault.)
> I'm not sure what you think of... validity of not-yet-papally-approved councils
I'm right in the middle of reading the Council of Constancel, so... let me get back to you on that! Constance and Florence-Ferrera-Basel are the true tests of every theory of papal authority.
> Do you have a citation for popes being unable to be deposed?
I (probably wisely) restricted my claim with the phrase "according to Catholic teaching," because I recognize it's a particular interpretation of a complicated history. Probably nobody Orthodox or Protestant would agree with my claim that "a pope cannot be deposed by any earthly power except resignation." But that is the *Catholic* view.
But it comes (as you suss out) with a big asterisk: a papal claimant who does not hold legitimate title to the throne is an antipope, and can be deposed, because he isn't really the pope. This means there *are* people in history who talked like popes and quacked like popes but got deposed anyway, and the Catholics recognize the validity of those depositions.
But not Liberius! Liberius was deposed illegitimately. You're right that Felix was believed to be a legitimate pope for much of history, but not because Christianity recognized the validity of his claim, but rather because the Christian world got Antipope Felix mixed up with a martyr and forgot the true story of how he helped overthrow the legitimate pope!
The key point is that an antipope is an antipope by virtue of a defect in title. A legitimate pope, whose title is established, cannot be deposed for any (other) cause. (and the few Catholics who think a pope can be deposed for heresy didn't read that bit of Bellarmine carefully enough).
(Hopefully the coherence of this belief survives direct contact with Constance-Florence-Basel!)
> Can I see the Giant Spreadsheet of Papal Definitions? Please???
As soon as it's finished, I plan to publish it as a searchable web database. I have already built the website, so now it's just a question of reading Constance/Basel-Florence through Evangelium Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis! I am probably over the halfway point of this project!
(This project celebrated its third birthday last month. Oof.)
Of course, I am but an amateur and my list cannot be considered definitive. I am sure, in fact, that many of my judgments will be controversial. (For one, I take the side of those who think Dignitatis Humanae, Humanae Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis all contain infallible teachings! This is a SPICY take on the 20th-century Catholicism debates!) But there's no list and there needs to be a gorram list so that those of us arguing about infallibility at least have some clue what we're actually arguing about. So yeah I'm making a list.
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for the interesting-as-always comment!
"Furthermore, if anything concerning these Three Chapters has been done, spoken, or written contrary to what we have asserted or established here—whether by anyone within the ecclesiastical orders or dignities, in any place or time, and no matter where it may be found—we completely reject it by the authority of the apostolic see, which, by the grace of God, we govern."
That seems more than telling people to stop talking. (The latin for reject is "refutamus," I'm not sure of the semantic scope.)
>I am a pretty strong believer in the text, though. Christ never said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against the intentions of many bishops"; He said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against my Church," which I take to mean that the Holy Spirit protects only the actual acts of an ecumenical council from error (and only certain acts!).
Well, you brought up the text, so I figure this is as good a time as any. Gates are a defensive fortification. When we're talking about gates prevailing, what that means is that they successfully defend against the assault. So, what this is saying, is that ultimately hell will be vanquished (if you view the gates as keeping people out), or that people will be saved from hell (if you view the gates as keeping people in, I just thought of this second possible reading right now). It does not mean that any particular assault of hell on the church of God will fail.
Accordingly, that particular point is not useful for saying that the church is infallible. They only show that it is indefectible—that is, it will not totally apostatize—and ultimately victorious. I do not think error is totally apostasy, nor does current error make eventual victory over hell impossible.
Anyway, if it's an indirect anathema (anathematizing those things which the pope happens to hold, not the pope directly), wouldn't that count as one of the acts of an ecumenical council that you would consider protected from error?
>"Let us preserve unity toward the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome." They seemed to think that, whatever they were doing to Vigilius, they were nevertheless in communion with the Holy See itself.
Read the last paragraph of the letter. They're arguing that they're only striking Vigilius from the diptychs, but are remaining in unity with Rome. They don't identify Vigilius with the apostolic see. At least, so I read it.
>(Certainly the Reformation was largely our own dumb fault.)
I appreciate the olive branch. Yeah, it would have been much better if you all had listened to Luther (at least, when he had good points, which is often), instead of immediately moving to excommunicate him. At least there've been various corrections, mitigating some abuses in practice, etc. (E.g. the Eucharist is frequently in two kinds now, I believe.)
I'll be happy to hear your takes on the conciliarist middle ages councils, once you have them. If you want to read a defense of the things being legitimate, I think Bossuet's the way to go. I believe in his only Latin work, readily findable on PRDL.
Are you aware that the standard position as to who was the legitimate pope when there were three has changed? Pisa was for some time afterward the line most commonly accepted to be the real popes (and I believe it had the largest following at the time of the council itself), but more recently, Rome became the most popular line to follow.
>But that is the *Catholic* view.
What I'm asking is whether that's dogma or universally held, or whether there exists some line of thinking which disagrees. (If you know.) Perhaps one might think that the pope is the supreme power, and infallible when in his office, but that he can be stripped of that by force (maybe validly but illicitly).
Like, did the Gallicans hold to the same? I get that you can't be a Gallican in its entirety, given that Vatican I word-for-word contradicts the declaration of the clergy of France, but could (in your view) the true path be something intermediate between the standard Gallican and Ultamontanist lines?
My overall impression regarding Roman Catholicism is that there's way more diversity than most people realize.
I'm curious re: Bellarmine. What is he actually saying?
>As soon as it's finished, I plan to publish it as a searchable web database. I have already built the website, so now it's just a question of reading Constance/Basel-Florence through Evangelium Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis! I am probably over the halfway point of this project!
Am I reading you correctly that these are all infallible definitions, not only papal ones?
Are you following Bellarmine or other standard lists for which councils are in or out? (Or parts of councils.) E.g. did you look at 879? Trullo? Pisa? How are you handling stuff like Chalcedon 28? What are you doing about all the lists of condemnations where they range from "heretic" to "offensive to pious ears" without specifying which belongs with which? How does your analysis compare to current resources like Denzinger?
I'm not very familiar with those. Why do you think that those have infallible teachings?
I'm going to try numbering this for legibility, and I'm also going to try to keep this from spilling over into the dreaded multipart comment!
1. Oh! Since you mentioned Ibas, I thought you were talking about the part later on:
> Therefore... we decree by the authority of this present sentence that the faith of the venerable Ibas, bishop, has been rightly and piously declared orthodox... [and] we decree and determine by the authority of this sentence that the judgment of the Fathers who sat at Chalcedon concerning the venerable Ibas and his letter remains inviolable. We forbid anyone within the ecclesiastical orders and dignities from presuming to tamper with this ruling, (etc. etc.)
I was responding to the wrong quote! Looking more closely at the right quote:
You have a point: Vigilius rejects everything "contrary to what we have asserted or established [here] regarding the Three Chapters." So, what has Vigilius asserted or established here regarding the Three Chapters? Summarizing for combox length:
A. Several decrees saying not to "disparage" the authors of the Three Chapters or to disturb Chalcedon's rulings in their cases. (Oddly, he never actually formally *decrees* anything about Theodore, but w/e.)
These are disciplines imposed. Those who "do, speak, or write contrary" to them are properly subject to the human juridical penalties the Church may impose (up to even excommunication -- the ultimate papal "refutamus"), but the decrees by their nature cannot be infallible or irreformable, not even when reaffirmed by the final decree at the end.
B. 60 anathemas against ideas allegedly expressed by Theodore, 6 against Nestorians, and a confirmation of Cyril's 12 chapters.
You're right, these are doctrines defined. The Church can never turn back from them, and the decree at the end includes them, affirms them, and reinforces them. So, you're right, the final decree is not purely disciplinary; it contains a major doctrinal element.
I overlooked this element in my haste to publish, though, because the doctrinal component here was boring and uncontroversial. Nobody orthodox at this time defended any of the propositions infallibly anathematized here. They were fighting over the disciplinary stuff.
3. Re: Gates: I do not consider Matt 16:18 a proof text for conciliar or papal infallibility, and I admit that the text, in isolation, admits alternate interpretations. My use of the "gates of hell" line as an argument for textualism was a rhetorical flourish. I still think it was a good flourish, communicating much of my position and its rationale with few words, but you're right that it doesn't prove the case. More must be said about Scripture, history, and Tradition (uh-oh that's what Glucksberg said) to discern between alternate interpretations.
4. I'm going to take the "indirect anathema" question at the abstract level. I don't see a problem with an ecumenical council infallibly teaching that something (pertaining to faith or universal morals) is false even when the pope is known to believe and even to teach that thing. (Such a council would probably have a hard time getting the pope to *ratify* that condemnation, but let's say he does for some reason.) This infallible definition would prove the pope mistaken, but that is possible and accepted. (Just look at John 22 and the beatific vision!) We only have a problem if the pope has taught the contrary, on an issue of universal faith and morals, *ex cathedra*. I don't see anything even *like* this in the infallible portions of the decrees of Const. II pertaining to the doctrine of the Faith. Vigilius never claimed, for example, that "God the Word was one and the man someone quite different," "like a temple."
5. > They don't identify Vigilius with the apostolic see. At least, so I read it.
Textually, that is also how I first read it, but, contextually, that seems impossible. Nobody in that room (or the Emperor) questioned Vigilius's legitimate title to the bishopric of Rome. Nobody attempted to depose him. They knew Vigilius was head of the Apostolic See (and their repeated entreaties to him proved it). They cannot be making the sedevacantist argument they appear at first to be making.
6. It is absolutely devastating to find that there is in fact an already perfectly serviceable copy of this online. I spent hours looking for one (including in the Archive) before I started translating... and translating took *months*. For my own sanity, I must hope that God had some purpose in hiding that translation from me and putting me to all this -- it turns out, unnecessary -- work. "Augh" is completely inadequate to my feeling right now.
7. Not only am I aware that recognition of papal lines has changed, I'm quite certain I wrote about it in the past eighteen months! But I cannot for the LIFE of me find it. It was a footnote about how the Annuario Pontificio has changed in our parents' lifetimes, but I cannot find it for the life of me, leading me to worry I deleted it by mistake in the drafting stage. (It's remarkably easy to accidentally delete a footnote on Substack.) We also recognized a pope who literally never existed, Pope Donus II!
8. It's not defined doctrine. It's a strongly held consensus. The Code of Canon Law currently states at 1404, bluntly: "The First See is judged by no one," and Vatican I expressly forbade appeals from the pope to an ecumenical council. (Current law states that the papacy and ecumenical councils are both co-equally supreme.)
There is a strong minority view that a pope who was openly heretical would by that act cease to be pope and would need to be formally deposed by... someone. (Nobody's ever clear on that part.) I treat this theory harshly because it is internally incoherent and also destroys the very teaching authority it pretends to protect. If the pope ever issued a ruling you don't like, you'd just declare him a heretic and go into schism against him, and so would everybody else. The teaching authority *must* be a power to resolve disputes or it is empty and we should all convert to Orthodoxy.
9. Re: Bellarmine: the above view is fed by a section of Bellarmine where he says precisely that a heretic pope would lose office and need deposing. What people miss is that, in the section right before that, Bellarmine concludes (correctly) that this scenario is completely impossible, and he is entertaining the notion as an intellectual exercise / just in case. In my view, if we ever reached that point, enough Catholic claims have been disproven already that we'd have to convert to Orthodoxy anyway. Pope Francis's pontificate has certainly brought many of these arguments back to the fore, and I admit I'm an aggressive partisan of the "this is impossible" camp.
10. It is correct that Catholicism is more diverse than widely realized, both in legitimate (Eastern Catholic Churches, different opinions on questions not yet defined like heretical popes) and illegitimate (plenty of Catholic factions are in effective schism with one another but for theological reasons can't admit it; plenty of pew-sitters don't even believe in the Resurrection).
11. Yes, I am attempting to collect every teaching that meets the Catholic criteria for infallibility ever taught. (including the redundant and the tautological).
12. I am looking outside the standard list of ecumenical councils when there's a compelling reason (took a real close look at Piacenza! and Quin-Sext a bit), but I am leaning pretty heavily on the "standard" Catholic list, and, so far, my conclusions have matched up with it.
13. Chalcedon 28 sure looked disciplinary to me. (It has possible doctrinal implications but all it actually decrees is some details about the election process for certain Eastern bishops.) Thus, my project would have nothing to say about it in any event. Its rejection by both the legates and the papacy makes it very questionable that was even properly speaking the teaching an ecumenical council, but I don't think we need to answer that to pass over Chalcedon 28.
14. Parsing them very closely and consulting my guidelines heavily.
15. Denzinger is a tremendous aid and guide but it is attempting a very different, vastly broader project to convey all weighty magisterial teachings ever. "Just the infallibles" would delete like 99% of Denzinger.
16. You may have to stay tuned for the details, but I think Dignitatis Humanae 2 is just clearly a teaching on faith and morals by an ecumenical council, and the other three papal teachings meet the requirements of Pastor Aeternus *despite* the Vatican's attempts to run away from that scary phrase "ex cathedra" when they promulgated the latter two! This is a spicy take because it combines three aggressively "conservative" positions (Ordinatio and the Vitaes) with one aggressively "liberal" position (Vatican II taught doctrine and the doctrine is religious freedom, so your maximalist, integralist interpretation of Quanta Cura is automatically wrong).
The (fallible) Code of Canon Law currently rules (at Canon 749) that "§3. No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident." Aside from being current law, it seems to just be good common sense.
This helps. There's always going to be gray area where you're, like, "but is this manifest ENOUGH?", and logical consistency is a brutal mistress who makes many things manifest... but Canon 749 tells us to err on the side of "nope" in those cases where the text is too ambiguous to resolve confidently.
5. I think this is very possible, considering that Vigilius has been with them. It seems quite possible that you could have continued communication with the church in Rome, distinct from its bishop. How else could you read that?
6. Yeah, that must feel awful.
8. >The teaching authority *must* be a power to resolve disputes or it is empty and we should all convert to Orthodoxy.
Well, Protestantism, of course.
11. One of the possibilities to ensure infallibility is a universal consensus in the ordinary magisterium, right (or so I've heard)? I assume you're skipping that category?
12. How are you getting a full list of relevant papal statements?
13. Ah, silly of me not to consider the disciplinary character.
14. What are your guidelines?
16. Am I reading you rightly that you think that Quanta Cura (and, I assume, along with that, the Syllabus) is infallible, but is compatible with your reading of Dignitatis Humanae?
Sorry to wade in on someone else's discussion, but I feel compelled to respond:
8. Most Catholics will dismiss Protestantism out of hand because none of the Protestant sects still have valid sacraments (particularly a valid priesthood and episcopate with true Apostolic Succession). If Catholicism is false, all that remains will be Orthodoxy. If we ever reached a point where baptism was the only conferrable Sacrament, due to losing the priesthood and all of the other sacraments dependent upon it, then the Church will have effectively ended, and all of Christianity would be false, starting with the claim that Christ is God.
>Sorry to wade in on someone else's discussion, but I feel compelled to respond:
By all means, feel free to join!
>Most Catholics will dismiss Protestantism out of hand because none of the Protestant sects still have valid sacraments (particularly a valid priesthood and episcopate with true Apostolic Succession).
You only believe that Protestant succession and sacraments are illegitimate because of what the pope said (Apostolicae Curae), right? So that would at that point no longer be a sufficient reason to believe that.
5. They probably *were* in communication with the church in Rome (although only recently: Rome was besieged, conquered, and reconquered between 449 and 552). However, I believe it would have been entirely anachronistic for anyone in 553 to say that they had "unity" with a "See" without its bishop.
I read it cynically: the council did not want to excommunicate Vigilius, but was under the Emperor's thumb, so tried to have it both ways and ended up saying nothing. The council knew very well the forms for deposing a bishop, rendering a seat sede vacante, and excommunicating the office-holder, but declined to use them, and you can't depose the pope by implication. They also knew that communion with a bishopric, but not the recognized sitting bishop, was nonsensical. But they did it anyway because Vigilius's Constitution put them in a politically sensitive spot. (Both the Council and the Emperor himself likely realized that *excommunicating Rome* would pretty seriously impede their desire for the council to be received as ecumenical.)
Again, if the council *had* excommunicated Vigilius, I don't think would threaten anyone's infallibility, so I'm not committed to this view by my other views. I just don't think they achieved that effect.
FWIW, the Richard Price book you linked describes the episode thus:
> Speaking in acceptance of the decree, Eutychius again avoided criticizing Vigilius, and emphasized that the churches were to remain in communion. Such a distinction between the see, still in communion with the other churches, and the holder of the see, excluded from that communion, implied that Vigilius was suspended from office. This fell short of a full condemnation, involving deposition and excommunication, that would have broken the communion between the eastern churches and the Roman see and thereby damaged the ecumenical status of the council. The decree is dated to 14 July, almost two months after the session, which shows that its wider publication was delayed, doubtless in the hope that Vigilius would capitulate and make its publication unnecessary. And indeed, when at the very end of the year, Vigilius finally assented to condemn the Three Chapters, a new edition of the conciliar acts was produced, from which this decree, and other embarrassing documents contained in the record of Session VII, were expunged.
6. It does!
8. I must confess that I don't think Protestantism makes any sense. The five solae each have a point and react against opposite errors, but, like the Miaphysite response to Nestorianism, they go much too far to the opposite extreme. Protestantism imagines itself the true Christian Church by implying that the true Christian Church *didn't exist* for over 1300 years, and it cuts itself off from all the roots of that Church: efficacious sacraments, the Real Presence, an ordained priesthood, everything the Church ever established about its own governance dating back to Acts 15, and plenty more. (Naturally, this led to the swift revival of every ancient heresy, from Apollinarism to iconoclasm, as well as swift, fractal schisms, to the point where non-Protestants have a very hard time tracking or characterizing Protestant beliefs.) In 1515 Europe, with very little good church history available and a (corrupt) Roman Catholicism as the only other game in town, it was, perhaps, plausible to claim that the Reformation was the true continuation of the Church after a brief, tragic Roman interlude. In 2025, I just have a really hard time with it. Orthodoxy and the anti-Chalcedonian Churches seem much more likely.
Sometimes I can almost talk myself into thinking the Anglicans (whose split from Rome was less liturgically cataclysmic than others') might have something believable, but that's about the limit.
I hope I do not offend with this. I wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't directly asked. I'm very fond of Protestants and don't generally want to pick fights with them.
11. Yes, my view is that the ordinary and universal magisterium includes a set of infallible teachings that is both uncountably many and inherently undefined. (...since what gets it defined is the extraordinary definition of an ecumenical council or pope, generally when one of the teachings is called into question.) By its nature, it cannot be catalogued, and, by its nature, its contents are disputable.
12. For starters, I'm reading Denzinger cover to cover, which is very slow let me tell you. Then investigating one council or papal document will lead to another, and another. So it's just a bunch of diligent work. I cannot hope that my list will be perfect at publication time; it is all but certain that I will miss at least one thing in just about 2000 years of Church history (assuming Pentecost happened in 30 AD). I can only attempt to make it as complete as I can.
14. They're too long (and shorthand and messy) to post here! However, Christian Washburn has two papers that I have found very useful: "Archbishop Henry Manning and Papal Infallibility," and "Bellarmine on the Infallibility of General Councils." (I am also reading Bellarmine himself, as mentioned in the article.) Both are available online, at least through academia.edu.
So, yeah, if I am correct, either its teachings on religious freedom are compatible with Dignitatis Humanae or Catholicism is false! I'm pretty sure it's the former. QC and DH simply need to be read in light of one another; DH even comes out and says that (though not by name).
The Syllabus, though, *absolutely not*. The Syllabus quotes documents, some of which contain infallible definitions and some of which do not. By itself, it's just a quote mill, no more authoritative than Denzinger or some of those apologetics blog posts. I've certainly read the Syllabus carefully to make sure that I check each of those documents, but it's right there in the name: it was just a syllabus, a summary, circulated privately to bishops, which Pope Pius did not seem to realize would be read by everyone.
I'd be cautious about using this as your definition for Protestantism. Generally speaking, it's better to follow the actual authors, instead of 20th century sloganeering.
>Protestantism imagines itself the true Christian Church by implying that the true Christian Church *didn't exist* for over 1300 years,
This is not a good representation of Protestantism. Even the Baptists thought that it existed, just only in a bunch of the groups formerly recognized as heretics. But Protestants were often willing to recognize the church as existing, but in serious error.
> and it cuts itself off from all the roots of that Church: efficacious sacraments, the Real Presence, an ordained priesthood, everything the Church ever established about its own governance dating back to Acts 15, and plenty more.
I would affirm efficacious sacraments (although some of this depends on what precisely you mean by efficacious, but you still consider Scotists permissible. And you wouldn't even need to make that caveat with Lutherans, I think).
I would affirm the real presence (though not transubstantiation, and I do not think that worship is appropriate).
I affirm that ordination should occur; I do not think that they are priests in the sense of offering Christ to the father as a sacrifice. (But it's of course a fine word etymologically.)
I recognize that the Church has the authority to govern.
So some of those would depend on how you would construe things, but I certainly think that Protestants, at least, traditional Protestants, are far closer than you realize on all of that.
>Naturally, this led to the swift revival of every ancient heresy, from Apollinarism to iconoclasm, as well as swift, fractal schisms, to the point where non-Protestants have a very hard time tracking or characterizing Protestant beliefs.
I agree that schism is bad. I think at least a part of the blame here should go, first, to the end of established churches and the granting of religious toleration, and second, to the fall of mainline protestantism to liberalism.
Iconoclasm is correct (or, at least, iconography to be religiously venerated is bad, and there exist situations where it is appropriate to remove it), but I do grant that there were many heretical positions downstream of the Reformation. I mean, Servetus was famously put to death for his anti-trinitarian positions. Anabaptists were generally not welcome in most places in Europe. (Which is really funny considering that no one hates the Amish now.)
>In 1515 Europe, with very little good church history available and a (corrupt) Roman Catholicism as the only other game in town, it was, perhaps, plausible to claim that the Reformation was the true continuation of the Church after a brief, tragic Roman interlude.
I guess I'm not sure what counts as good church history. Protestants were certainly making use of the fathers. They were pretty influential, for example, on the Reformed (for reference, I go to a church in the Reformed tradition) Eucharistic positions, among other things.
>In 2025, I just have a really hard time with it. Orthodoxy and the anti-Chalcedonian Churches seem much more likely.
Fair enough, I don't have a comparative case at the ready.
>I hope I do not offend with this. I wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't directly asked. I'm very fond of Protestants and don't generally want to pick fights with them.
I'm certainly not offended. I always enjoy talking about these things.
11-12. Makes sense.
14-16. Thanks! I know that that's not the only place where there are things against religious libert. I know there's some in Exsurge Domine, but all the condemnations have a general condemnation, where it says something like "condemned as heretical, schismatic, rash, scandalous, offensive to pious ears,…" which makes it hard to figure out which thoings would actually have to be false, instead of badly put.
Great article. Love the very entertaining and enlightening telling of early church history (more of this please!) (especially the footnotes which continue to be un-skippable).
A few notes:
```
The Council went on to ferociously condemn the Three Chapters, including the posthumous excommunication of Theodore, exactly as Justinian wanted.
```
I assume (assuming this is the original Three Chapters and not Justinian's Three Chapters lol) that the council condemned the Three Chapters and affirmed (not condemned) the posthumous excommunication?
```
- attempted excommunication of a man who’d been for a century;
+ attempted excommunication of a man who’d been **dead** for a century;
```
I am not going to read the actual translated document, due to time (and the warning at the top of the article (which imo should be placed below the history section so people don't mistakenly skip it)), but it does comfort me that if I ever *did* want to read it, it would be there. Thank you for the effort!
Woah, seriously, nice. I'd skimmed the constitutum maybe two years ago, I think because Edward Denny had tried to cite it as an example of a pope contradicting himself ex cathedra (if it was him, I think he has a significantly broader reading of what ex cathedra means than most modern RCs do). Unfortunately (recall: I'm protestant), the only relevant case was Ibas, which wasn't worded strongly enough for me to be happy with it. (and you consider that a disciplinary decree—but doesn't the statement involve rejection of what anyone says to the contrary, not just discipline?)
Looking back at Denny: he thinks that the council anathematized Vigilius when they anathematized those who accept the three chapters (Vigilius was still not on board with the council). I'm not sure what you think of anathematizing popes, validity of not-yet-papally-approved councils, etc.
Do you have a citation for popes being unable to be deposed? Since my impression was that there were a decent number of depositions in the course of history. Felix and Liberius, for one (though I guess now Felix is considered an anti-pope, even though he was held to be the real one for most of history), and I think that one guy who was pope three times might have been deposed, I don't remember. And of course, the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel claimed to be able to, and actually exercised the power the claimed.
(On that note, I'd be quite interested to hear what you think of those councils.)
Can I see the Giant Spreadsheet of Papal Definitions? Please???
> I think he has a significantly broader reading of what ex cathedra means than most modern RCs do
Probably -- but, writing in 1912, he was probably closer to the mark of the views of his contemporary RCs.
> (and you consider that a disciplinary decree—but doesn't the statement involve rejection of what anyone says to the contrary, not just discipline?)
I use "disciplinary" very broadly: if a decree isn't doctrinal, it's disciplinary. (This is fairly common in contemporary RC discussions of infallibility.)
The first part of this decree is a ruling on the discipline Ibas faced (and escaped) at Chalcedon, so that's straightforwardly a discipline. The second part instructs everyone to shut up about it. "Shut up" is not a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, so it is a discipline. :)
I'm not certain my classifications will enjoy universal acceptance even among Catholics, so it's certainly open to quibbles, but hopefully that explains where I'm coming from.
> Looking back at Denny: he thinks that the council anathematized Vigilius when they anathematized those who accept the three chapters
They may well have had this in mind! I am a pretty strong believer in the text, though. Christ never said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against the intentions of many bishops"; He said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against my Church," which I take to mean that the Holy Spirit protects only the actual acts of an ecumenical council from error (and only certain acts!).
I don't think Vigilius can fairly be said to fall within the original public meaning of the anathemas of Constantinople II -- and, even if he can, I hold the perhaps uncommon view that the personal anathemas of councils are disciplinary, not doctrinal, thus fallible. I also think it's revealing that, immediately after the Council read the Emperor's letter demanding Vigilius be struck from the diptychs, the Council said -- in the very next sentence -- "Let us preserve unity toward the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome." They seemed to think that, whatever they were doing to Vigilius, they were nevertheless in communion with the Holy See itself.
However, whatever happened at Constantinople II, I tend to be forgiving of councils that erroneously anathematize the legitimate pope.
> I'm not sure what you think of anathematizing popes
I'm not a fan! But, then, there have been cases where the papal claimant does not legitimately hold title to the office, in which case he is an antipope and a council *ought* to excommunicate him (and has done so appropriately).
So, insofar as Constantinople II attempted to excommunicate Vigilius, I think that was the wrong call, and facially invalid. There was no question of Vigilius's title to the office.
But, at the same time, I'm inclined to be forgiving toward all the councils in the early Church. Christian doctrine is messy, and maybe we'd have had fewer schisms along the way if everyone had been a little sweeter to one another. (Certainly the Reformation was largely our own dumb fault.)
> I'm not sure what you think of... validity of not-yet-papally-approved councils
I'm right in the middle of reading the Council of Constancel, so... let me get back to you on that! Constance and Florence-Ferrera-Basel are the true tests of every theory of papal authority.
> Do you have a citation for popes being unable to be deposed?
I (probably wisely) restricted my claim with the phrase "according to Catholic teaching," because I recognize it's a particular interpretation of a complicated history. Probably nobody Orthodox or Protestant would agree with my claim that "a pope cannot be deposed by any earthly power except resignation." But that is the *Catholic* view.
But it comes (as you suss out) with a big asterisk: a papal claimant who does not hold legitimate title to the throne is an antipope, and can be deposed, because he isn't really the pope. This means there *are* people in history who talked like popes and quacked like popes but got deposed anyway, and the Catholics recognize the validity of those depositions.
But not Liberius! Liberius was deposed illegitimately. You're right that Felix was believed to be a legitimate pope for much of history, but not because Christianity recognized the validity of his claim, but rather because the Christian world got Antipope Felix mixed up with a martyr and forgot the true story of how he helped overthrow the legitimate pope!
The key point is that an antipope is an antipope by virtue of a defect in title. A legitimate pope, whose title is established, cannot be deposed for any (other) cause. (and the few Catholics who think a pope can be deposed for heresy didn't read that bit of Bellarmine carefully enough).
(Hopefully the coherence of this belief survives direct contact with Constance-Florence-Basel!)
> Can I see the Giant Spreadsheet of Papal Definitions? Please???
As soon as it's finished, I plan to publish it as a searchable web database. I have already built the website, so now it's just a question of reading Constance/Basel-Florence through Evangelium Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis! I am probably over the halfway point of this project!
(This project celebrated its third birthday last month. Oof.)
Of course, I am but an amateur and my list cannot be considered definitive. I am sure, in fact, that many of my judgments will be controversial. (For one, I take the side of those who think Dignitatis Humanae, Humanae Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis all contain infallible teachings! This is a SPICY take on the 20th-century Catholicism debates!) But there's no list and there needs to be a gorram list so that those of us arguing about infallibility at least have some clue what we're actually arguing about. So yeah I'm making a list.
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for the interesting-as-always comment!
"Furthermore, if anything concerning these Three Chapters has been done, spoken, or written contrary to what we have asserted or established here—whether by anyone within the ecclesiastical orders or dignities, in any place or time, and no matter where it may be found—we completely reject it by the authority of the apostolic see, which, by the grace of God, we govern."
That seems more than telling people to stop talking. (The latin for reject is "refutamus," I'm not sure of the semantic scope.)
>I am a pretty strong believer in the text, though. Christ never said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against the intentions of many bishops"; He said "the gates of Hell will not prevail against my Church," which I take to mean that the Holy Spirit protects only the actual acts of an ecumenical council from error (and only certain acts!).
Well, you brought up the text, so I figure this is as good a time as any. Gates are a defensive fortification. When we're talking about gates prevailing, what that means is that they successfully defend against the assault. So, what this is saying, is that ultimately hell will be vanquished (if you view the gates as keeping people out), or that people will be saved from hell (if you view the gates as keeping people in, I just thought of this second possible reading right now). It does not mean that any particular assault of hell on the church of God will fail.
Accordingly, that particular point is not useful for saying that the church is infallible. They only show that it is indefectible—that is, it will not totally apostatize—and ultimately victorious. I do not think error is totally apostasy, nor does current error make eventual victory over hell impossible.
Anyway, if it's an indirect anathema (anathematizing those things which the pope happens to hold, not the pope directly), wouldn't that count as one of the acts of an ecumenical council that you would consider protected from error?
>"Let us preserve unity toward the Apostolic See of the most holy Church of ancient Rome." They seemed to think that, whatever they were doing to Vigilius, they were nevertheless in communion with the Holy See itself.
Read the last paragraph of the letter. They're arguing that they're only striking Vigilius from the diptychs, but are remaining in unity with Rome. They don't identify Vigilius with the apostolic see. At least, so I read it.
Also, I just found this. It seems to have translated the constituta. https://archive.org/details/the-acts-of-the-council-of-constantinople-of-553-with-related-texts-on-the-three/page/164/mode/2up
>(Certainly the Reformation was largely our own dumb fault.)
I appreciate the olive branch. Yeah, it would have been much better if you all had listened to Luther (at least, when he had good points, which is often), instead of immediately moving to excommunicate him. At least there've been various corrections, mitigating some abuses in practice, etc. (E.g. the Eucharist is frequently in two kinds now, I believe.)
I'll be happy to hear your takes on the conciliarist middle ages councils, once you have them. If you want to read a defense of the things being legitimate, I think Bossuet's the way to go. I believe in his only Latin work, readily findable on PRDL.
Are you aware that the standard position as to who was the legitimate pope when there were three has changed? Pisa was for some time afterward the line most commonly accepted to be the real popes (and I believe it had the largest following at the time of the council itself), but more recently, Rome became the most popular line to follow.
>But that is the *Catholic* view.
What I'm asking is whether that's dogma or universally held, or whether there exists some line of thinking which disagrees. (If you know.) Perhaps one might think that the pope is the supreme power, and infallible when in his office, but that he can be stripped of that by force (maybe validly but illicitly).
Like, did the Gallicans hold to the same? I get that you can't be a Gallican in its entirety, given that Vatican I word-for-word contradicts the declaration of the clergy of France, but could (in your view) the true path be something intermediate between the standard Gallican and Ultamontanist lines?
My overall impression regarding Roman Catholicism is that there's way more diversity than most people realize.
I'm curious re: Bellarmine. What is he actually saying?
>As soon as it's finished, I plan to publish it as a searchable web database. I have already built the website, so now it's just a question of reading Constance/Basel-Florence through Evangelium Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis! I am probably over the halfway point of this project!
Am I reading you correctly that these are all infallible definitions, not only papal ones?
Are you following Bellarmine or other standard lists for which councils are in or out? (Or parts of councils.) E.g. did you look at 879? Trullo? Pisa? How are you handling stuff like Chalcedon 28? What are you doing about all the lists of condemnations where they range from "heretic" to "offensive to pious ears" without specifying which belongs with which? How does your analysis compare to current resources like Denzinger?
I'm not very familiar with those. Why do you think that those have infallible teachings?
I'm going to try numbering this for legibility, and I'm also going to try to keep this from spilling over into the dreaded multipart comment!
1. Oh! Since you mentioned Ibas, I thought you were talking about the part later on:
> Therefore... we decree by the authority of this present sentence that the faith of the venerable Ibas, bishop, has been rightly and piously declared orthodox... [and] we decree and determine by the authority of this sentence that the judgment of the Fathers who sat at Chalcedon concerning the venerable Ibas and his letter remains inviolable. We forbid anyone within the ecclesiastical orders and dignities from presuming to tamper with this ruling, (etc. etc.)
I was responding to the wrong quote! Looking more closely at the right quote:
You have a point: Vigilius rejects everything "contrary to what we have asserted or established [here] regarding the Three Chapters." So, what has Vigilius asserted or established here regarding the Three Chapters? Summarizing for combox length:
A. Several decrees saying not to "disparage" the authors of the Three Chapters or to disturb Chalcedon's rulings in their cases. (Oddly, he never actually formally *decrees* anything about Theodore, but w/e.)
These are disciplines imposed. Those who "do, speak, or write contrary" to them are properly subject to the human juridical penalties the Church may impose (up to even excommunication -- the ultimate papal "refutamus"), but the decrees by their nature cannot be infallible or irreformable, not even when reaffirmed by the final decree at the end.
B. 60 anathemas against ideas allegedly expressed by Theodore, 6 against Nestorians, and a confirmation of Cyril's 12 chapters.
You're right, these are doctrines defined. The Church can never turn back from them, and the decree at the end includes them, affirms them, and reinforces them. So, you're right, the final decree is not purely disciplinary; it contains a major doctrinal element.
I overlooked this element in my haste to publish, though, because the doctrinal component here was boring and uncontroversial. Nobody orthodox at this time defended any of the propositions infallibly anathematized here. They were fighting over the disciplinary stuff.
3. Re: Gates: I do not consider Matt 16:18 a proof text for conciliar or papal infallibility, and I admit that the text, in isolation, admits alternate interpretations. My use of the "gates of hell" line as an argument for textualism was a rhetorical flourish. I still think it was a good flourish, communicating much of my position and its rationale with few words, but you're right that it doesn't prove the case. More must be said about Scripture, history, and Tradition (uh-oh that's what Glucksberg said) to discern between alternate interpretations.
4. I'm going to take the "indirect anathema" question at the abstract level. I don't see a problem with an ecumenical council infallibly teaching that something (pertaining to faith or universal morals) is false even when the pope is known to believe and even to teach that thing. (Such a council would probably have a hard time getting the pope to *ratify* that condemnation, but let's say he does for some reason.) This infallible definition would prove the pope mistaken, but that is possible and accepted. (Just look at John 22 and the beatific vision!) We only have a problem if the pope has taught the contrary, on an issue of universal faith and morals, *ex cathedra*. I don't see anything even *like* this in the infallible portions of the decrees of Const. II pertaining to the doctrine of the Faith. Vigilius never claimed, for example, that "God the Word was one and the man someone quite different," "like a temple."
5. > They don't identify Vigilius with the apostolic see. At least, so I read it.
Textually, that is also how I first read it, but, contextually, that seems impossible. Nobody in that room (or the Emperor) questioned Vigilius's legitimate title to the bishopric of Rome. Nobody attempted to depose him. They knew Vigilius was head of the Apostolic See (and their repeated entreaties to him proved it). They cannot be making the sedevacantist argument they appear at first to be making.
6. It is absolutely devastating to find that there is in fact an already perfectly serviceable copy of this online. I spent hours looking for one (including in the Archive) before I started translating... and translating took *months*. For my own sanity, I must hope that God had some purpose in hiding that translation from me and putting me to all this -- it turns out, unnecessary -- work. "Augh" is completely inadequate to my feeling right now.
7. Not only am I aware that recognition of papal lines has changed, I'm quite certain I wrote about it in the past eighteen months! But I cannot for the LIFE of me find it. It was a footnote about how the Annuario Pontificio has changed in our parents' lifetimes, but I cannot find it for the life of me, leading me to worry I deleted it by mistake in the drafting stage. (It's remarkably easy to accidentally delete a footnote on Substack.) We also recognized a pope who literally never existed, Pope Donus II!
8. It's not defined doctrine. It's a strongly held consensus. The Code of Canon Law currently states at 1404, bluntly: "The First See is judged by no one," and Vatican I expressly forbade appeals from the pope to an ecumenical council. (Current law states that the papacy and ecumenical councils are both co-equally supreme.)
There is a strong minority view that a pope who was openly heretical would by that act cease to be pope and would need to be formally deposed by... someone. (Nobody's ever clear on that part.) I treat this theory harshly because it is internally incoherent and also destroys the very teaching authority it pretends to protect. If the pope ever issued a ruling you don't like, you'd just declare him a heretic and go into schism against him, and so would everybody else. The teaching authority *must* be a power to resolve disputes or it is empty and we should all convert to Orthodoxy.
9. Re: Bellarmine: the above view is fed by a section of Bellarmine where he says precisely that a heretic pope would lose office and need deposing. What people miss is that, in the section right before that, Bellarmine concludes (correctly) that this scenario is completely impossible, and he is entertaining the notion as an intellectual exercise / just in case. In my view, if we ever reached that point, enough Catholic claims have been disproven already that we'd have to convert to Orthodoxy anyway. Pope Francis's pontificate has certainly brought many of these arguments back to the fore, and I admit I'm an aggressive partisan of the "this is impossible" camp.
10. It is correct that Catholicism is more diverse than widely realized, both in legitimate (Eastern Catholic Churches, different opinions on questions not yet defined like heretical popes) and illegitimate (plenty of Catholic factions are in effective schism with one another but for theological reasons can't admit it; plenty of pew-sitters don't even believe in the Resurrection).
11. Yes, I am attempting to collect every teaching that meets the Catholic criteria for infallibility ever taught. (including the redundant and the tautological).
12. I am looking outside the standard list of ecumenical councils when there's a compelling reason (took a real close look at Piacenza! and Quin-Sext a bit), but I am leaning pretty heavily on the "standard" Catholic list, and, so far, my conclusions have matched up with it.
13. Chalcedon 28 sure looked disciplinary to me. (It has possible doctrinal implications but all it actually decrees is some details about the election process for certain Eastern bishops.) Thus, my project would have nothing to say about it in any event. Its rejection by both the legates and the papacy makes it very questionable that was even properly speaking the teaching an ecumenical council, but I don't think we need to answer that to pass over Chalcedon 28.
14. Parsing them very closely and consulting my guidelines heavily.
15. Denzinger is a tremendous aid and guide but it is attempting a very different, vastly broader project to convey all weighty magisterial teachings ever. "Just the infallibles" would delete like 99% of Denzinger.
16. You may have to stay tuned for the details, but I think Dignitatis Humanae 2 is just clearly a teaching on faith and morals by an ecumenical council, and the other three papal teachings meet the requirements of Pastor Aeternus *despite* the Vatican's attempts to run away from that scary phrase "ex cathedra" when they promulgated the latter two! This is a spicy take because it combines three aggressively "conservative" positions (Ordinatio and the Vitaes) with one aggressively "liberal" position (Vatican II taught doctrine and the doctrine is religious freedom, so your maximalist, integralist interpretation of Quanta Cura is automatically wrong).
Please let this fit in the combox.
Additional note on #14:
The (fallible) Code of Canon Law currently rules (at Canon 749) that "§3. No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident." Aside from being current law, it seems to just be good common sense.
This helps. There's always going to be gray area where you're, like, "but is this manifest ENOUGH?", and logical consistency is a brutal mistress who makes many things manifest... but Canon 749 tells us to err on the side of "nope" in those cases where the text is too ambiguous to resolve confidently.
Thank you!
5. I think this is very possible, considering that Vigilius has been with them. It seems quite possible that you could have continued communication with the church in Rome, distinct from its bishop. How else could you read that?
6. Yeah, that must feel awful.
8. >The teaching authority *must* be a power to resolve disputes or it is empty and we should all convert to Orthodoxy.
Well, Protestantism, of course.
11. One of the possibilities to ensure infallibility is a universal consensus in the ordinary magisterium, right (or so I've heard)? I assume you're skipping that category?
12. How are you getting a full list of relevant papal statements?
13. Ah, silly of me not to consider the disciplinary character.
14. What are your guidelines?
16. Am I reading you rightly that you think that Quanta Cura (and, I assume, along with that, the Syllabus) is infallible, but is compatible with your reading of Dignitatis Humanae?
Sorry to wade in on someone else's discussion, but I feel compelled to respond:
8. Most Catholics will dismiss Protestantism out of hand because none of the Protestant sects still have valid sacraments (particularly a valid priesthood and episcopate with true Apostolic Succession). If Catholicism is false, all that remains will be Orthodoxy. If we ever reached a point where baptism was the only conferrable Sacrament, due to losing the priesthood and all of the other sacraments dependent upon it, then the Church will have effectively ended, and all of Christianity would be false, starting with the claim that Christ is God.
>Sorry to wade in on someone else's discussion, but I feel compelled to respond:
By all means, feel free to join!
>Most Catholics will dismiss Protestantism out of hand because none of the Protestant sects still have valid sacraments (particularly a valid priesthood and episcopate with true Apostolic Succession).
You only believe that Protestant succession and sacraments are illegitimate because of what the pope said (Apostolicae Curae), right? So that would at that point no longer be a sufficient reason to believe that.
5. They probably *were* in communication with the church in Rome (although only recently: Rome was besieged, conquered, and reconquered between 449 and 552). However, I believe it would have been entirely anachronistic for anyone in 553 to say that they had "unity" with a "See" without its bishop.
I read it cynically: the council did not want to excommunicate Vigilius, but was under the Emperor's thumb, so tried to have it both ways and ended up saying nothing. The council knew very well the forms for deposing a bishop, rendering a seat sede vacante, and excommunicating the office-holder, but declined to use them, and you can't depose the pope by implication. They also knew that communion with a bishopric, but not the recognized sitting bishop, was nonsensical. But they did it anyway because Vigilius's Constitution put them in a politically sensitive spot. (Both the Council and the Emperor himself likely realized that *excommunicating Rome* would pretty seriously impede their desire for the council to be received as ecumenical.)
Again, if the council *had* excommunicated Vigilius, I don't think would threaten anyone's infallibility, so I'm not committed to this view by my other views. I just don't think they achieved that effect.
FWIW, the Richard Price book you linked describes the episode thus:
> Speaking in acceptance of the decree, Eutychius again avoided criticizing Vigilius, and emphasized that the churches were to remain in communion. Such a distinction between the see, still in communion with the other churches, and the holder of the see, excluded from that communion, implied that Vigilius was suspended from office. This fell short of a full condemnation, involving deposition and excommunication, that would have broken the communion between the eastern churches and the Roman see and thereby damaged the ecumenical status of the council. The decree is dated to 14 July, almost two months after the session, which shows that its wider publication was delayed, doubtless in the hope that Vigilius would capitulate and make its publication unnecessary. And indeed, when at the very end of the year, Vigilius finally assented to condemn the Three Chapters, a new edition of the conciliar acts was produced, from which this decree, and other embarrassing documents contained in the record of Session VII, were expunged.
6. It does!
8. I must confess that I don't think Protestantism makes any sense. The five solae each have a point and react against opposite errors, but, like the Miaphysite response to Nestorianism, they go much too far to the opposite extreme. Protestantism imagines itself the true Christian Church by implying that the true Christian Church *didn't exist* for over 1300 years, and it cuts itself off from all the roots of that Church: efficacious sacraments, the Real Presence, an ordained priesthood, everything the Church ever established about its own governance dating back to Acts 15, and plenty more. (Naturally, this led to the swift revival of every ancient heresy, from Apollinarism to iconoclasm, as well as swift, fractal schisms, to the point where non-Protestants have a very hard time tracking or characterizing Protestant beliefs.) In 1515 Europe, with very little good church history available and a (corrupt) Roman Catholicism as the only other game in town, it was, perhaps, plausible to claim that the Reformation was the true continuation of the Church after a brief, tragic Roman interlude. In 2025, I just have a really hard time with it. Orthodoxy and the anti-Chalcedonian Churches seem much more likely.
Sometimes I can almost talk myself into thinking the Anglicans (whose split from Rome was less liturgically cataclysmic than others') might have something believable, but that's about the limit.
I hope I do not offend with this. I wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't directly asked. I'm very fond of Protestants and don't generally want to pick fights with them.
11. Yes, my view is that the ordinary and universal magisterium includes a set of infallible teachings that is both uncountably many and inherently undefined. (...since what gets it defined is the extraordinary definition of an ecumenical council or pope, generally when one of the teachings is called into question.) By its nature, it cannot be catalogued, and, by its nature, its contents are disputable.
12. For starters, I'm reading Denzinger cover to cover, which is very slow let me tell you. Then investigating one council or papal document will lead to another, and another. So it's just a bunch of diligent work. I cannot hope that my list will be perfect at publication time; it is all but certain that I will miss at least one thing in just about 2000 years of Church history (assuming Pentecost happened in 30 AD). I can only attempt to make it as complete as I can.
14. They're too long (and shorthand and messy) to post here! However, Christian Washburn has two papers that I have found very useful: "Archbishop Henry Manning and Papal Infallibility," and "Bellarmine on the Infallibility of General Councils." (I am also reading Bellarmine himself, as mentioned in the article.) Both are available online, at least through academia.edu.
16. My position is that Quanta Cura contains infallible definitions, yes. (I count 17, but there are various ways to divvy it up.) St. John Henry Cardinal Newman's commentary is an essential guide to parsing it, IMO: https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section6.html
So, yeah, if I am correct, either its teachings on religious freedom are compatible with Dignitatis Humanae or Catholicism is false! I'm pretty sure it's the former. QC and DH simply need to be read in light of one another; DH even comes out and says that (though not by name).
The Syllabus, though, *absolutely not*. The Syllabus quotes documents, some of which contain infallible definitions and some of which do not. By itself, it's just a quote mill, no more authoritative than Denzinger or some of those apologetics blog posts. I've certainly read the Syllabus carefully to make sure that I check each of those documents, but it's right there in the name: it was just a syllabus, a summary, circulated privately to bishops, which Pope Pius did not seem to realize would be read by everyone.
8.
>The five solae
I'd be cautious about using this as your definition for Protestantism. Generally speaking, it's better to follow the actual authors, instead of 20th century sloganeering.
>Protestantism imagines itself the true Christian Church by implying that the true Christian Church *didn't exist* for over 1300 years,
This is not a good representation of Protestantism. Even the Baptists thought that it existed, just only in a bunch of the groups formerly recognized as heretics. But Protestants were often willing to recognize the church as existing, but in serious error.
> and it cuts itself off from all the roots of that Church: efficacious sacraments, the Real Presence, an ordained priesthood, everything the Church ever established about its own governance dating back to Acts 15, and plenty more.
I would affirm efficacious sacraments (although some of this depends on what precisely you mean by efficacious, but you still consider Scotists permissible. And you wouldn't even need to make that caveat with Lutherans, I think).
I would affirm the real presence (though not transubstantiation, and I do not think that worship is appropriate).
I affirm that ordination should occur; I do not think that they are priests in the sense of offering Christ to the father as a sacrifice. (But it's of course a fine word etymologically.)
I recognize that the Church has the authority to govern.
So some of those would depend on how you would construe things, but I certainly think that Protestants, at least, traditional Protestants, are far closer than you realize on all of that.
>Naturally, this led to the swift revival of every ancient heresy, from Apollinarism to iconoclasm, as well as swift, fractal schisms, to the point where non-Protestants have a very hard time tracking or characterizing Protestant beliefs.
I agree that schism is bad. I think at least a part of the blame here should go, first, to the end of established churches and the granting of religious toleration, and second, to the fall of mainline protestantism to liberalism.
Iconoclasm is correct (or, at least, iconography to be religiously venerated is bad, and there exist situations where it is appropriate to remove it), but I do grant that there were many heretical positions downstream of the Reformation. I mean, Servetus was famously put to death for his anti-trinitarian positions. Anabaptists were generally not welcome in most places in Europe. (Which is really funny considering that no one hates the Amish now.)
>In 1515 Europe, with very little good church history available and a (corrupt) Roman Catholicism as the only other game in town, it was, perhaps, plausible to claim that the Reformation was the true continuation of the Church after a brief, tragic Roman interlude.
I guess I'm not sure what counts as good church history. Protestants were certainly making use of the fathers. They were pretty influential, for example, on the Reformed (for reference, I go to a church in the Reformed tradition) Eucharistic positions, among other things.
>In 2025, I just have a really hard time with it. Orthodoxy and the anti-Chalcedonian Churches seem much more likely.
Fair enough, I don't have a comparative case at the ready.
>I hope I do not offend with this. I wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't directly asked. I'm very fond of Protestants and don't generally want to pick fights with them.
I'm certainly not offended. I always enjoy talking about these things.
11-12. Makes sense.
14-16. Thanks! I know that that's not the only place where there are things against religious libert. I know there's some in Exsurge Domine, but all the condemnations have a general condemnation, where it says something like "condemned as heretical, schismatic, rash, scandalous, offensive to pious ears,…" which makes it hard to figure out which thoings would actually have to be false, instead of badly put.
Great article. Love the very entertaining and enlightening telling of early church history (more of this please!) (especially the footnotes which continue to be un-skippable).
A few notes:
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The Council went on to ferociously condemn the Three Chapters, including the posthumous excommunication of Theodore, exactly as Justinian wanted.
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I assume (assuming this is the original Three Chapters and not Justinian's Three Chapters lol) that the council condemned the Three Chapters and affirmed (not condemned) the posthumous excommunication?
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- attempted excommunication of a man who’d been for a century;
+ attempted excommunication of a man who’d been **dead** for a century;
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I am not going to read the actual translated document, due to time (and the warning at the top of the article (which imo should be placed below the history section so people don't mistakenly skip it)), but it does comfort me that if I ever *did* want to read it, it would be there. Thank you for the effort!
Thanks for these! Fixed 'em both!
And, yes, you read that line about the posthumous excommunication correctly.
There are a number of misspellings of "Mopsuestia" as "Mopsuetia"; I think all of them can be found by searching on "suet".
That sounds like me. :( Thanks for pointing it out! Will fix tonight.