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?
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!
First question - you mention that you highlight that which is defined by Pope Vigilius in bold. However, none of the 'anathemas' in Vigilius' responses to the Theodore's chapters are thus highlighted. Is that because you do not believe that they are definitive, despite the anathemas?
Second question - this is found in Vigilius' response to the 24th chapter: "Therefore, if anyone believes, teaches, or proclaims such things, and does not instead believe that these words are specifically foretold about the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, and that they were fulfilled in him, let him be anathema." However, in the corresponding Latin all I can see is "Qui igitur haec ita credit, sapit, docet aut praedicat, anathema sit."
First question: I don't think I marked this very well, but I considered the Constitution to have three parts: the prologue, the 60 Chapters, and the conclusion. I said at the outset that I only did bold highlighting in the "third part" -- the conclusion. This was a function of laziness. I would have had to put most of what Vigilius's responsed in bold, because most of it is dogmatic definitions (albeit often repetitive).
Second question: I'm going to verify this in a few minutes (on a different computer, so answer will be in a different comment), but what you are saying sounds for all the world like one of the AI hallucinations I worked so hard to edit out of the translation -- but may have missed this one. I'll confirm. One of the other comments has a link to a free translation by a human, which is pretty darned good. (I would not have done all this work if I had known that translation was available, but I searched for hours and never found it.) Worth checking this one against that one if the Latin ever looks hinky.
Marvellous. Thankyou so very much - sorry for missing the comment re: first question. And thanks for sending on that link too for the second :) God bless you.
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?
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!
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.
James, thankyou so very much for this.
First question - you mention that you highlight that which is defined by Pope Vigilius in bold. However, none of the 'anathemas' in Vigilius' responses to the Theodore's chapters are thus highlighted. Is that because you do not believe that they are definitive, despite the anathemas?
Second question - this is found in Vigilius' response to the 24th chapter: "Therefore, if anyone believes, teaches, or proclaims such things, and does not instead believe that these words are specifically foretold about the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, and that they were fulfilled in him, let him be anathema." However, in the corresponding Latin all I can see is "Qui igitur haec ita credit, sapit, docet aut praedicat, anathema sit."
Could you perhaps elucidate this?
Thanks in advance.
You're so very welcome!
First question: I don't think I marked this very well, but I considered the Constitution to have three parts: the prologue, the 60 Chapters, and the conclusion. I said at the outset that I only did bold highlighting in the "third part" -- the conclusion. This was a function of laziness. I would have had to put most of what Vigilius's responsed in bold, because most of it is dogmatic definitions (albeit often repetitive).
Second question: I'm going to verify this in a few minutes (on a different computer, so answer will be in a different comment), but what you are saying sounds for all the world like one of the AI hallucinations I worked so hard to edit out of the translation -- but may have missed this one. I'll confirm. One of the other comments has a link to a free translation by a human, which is pretty darned good. (I would not have done all this work if I had known that translation was available, but I searched for hours and never found it.) Worth checking this one against that one if the Latin ever looks hinky.
Yep. Checked the Latin, and, just as you said, it has no language like this. The translation at https://archive.org/details/the-acts-of-the-council-of-constantinople-of-553-with-related-texts-on-the-three/page/167/mode/1up confirms this. Only explanation is AI hallucination. My error! Sorry! (Let me know if you catch any others.)
Marvellous. Thankyou so very much - sorry for missing the comment re: first question. And thanks for sending on that link too for the second :) God bless you.