Quick unrelated question: is there going to be a post about the comments on the Replacing the Seventeenth amendment post, as you said you will make in a comment to that post, or has it been overtaken by events and other posts?
Yep, it just keeps getting bumped because (1) events and (2) I keep waiting for a completely clear week, because I expect it to be hard to write (because the first two parts were hard to write). Eventually I’ve just got to nut up, because I made a promise.
I think that originalism with respect to infallible statements has to be understood by the Holy Spirit's original intent. After all, we know the prophets in Scripture didn't understand what they were prophesying (1 Peter 1:10-11, let alone Caiaphas in John 11:51 who didn't even know he was prophesying!), so we can't go by their intent. The people who were hearing them often didn't understand anything (e.g. John 7:35), so we can't go by their intent. Original public meaning would, I think, also not rightly understand many prophecies (e.g. Hosea 11:1 - without Matthew's citing it, I never would've guessed it refers to Christ). The only option seems to be the Holy Spirit's intent.
Of course, "who has known the mind of the Lord?", so this can leave us confused just like the crowd hearing Jesus. But, as Paul continues, "we have the mind of Christ," so we hopefully will at least be less confused.
Now this is an angle I hadn't considered. I'm gonna shoot from the hip here, because you raise an interesting point.
My first instinct is that the construction of prophetic texts probably needs to be understood as a separate category from the construction of legal texts (with somewhat different rules). I'm pretty sure that's right.
But they're still similar enough to be worth exploring, and I actually still think original public meaning comes out rather well here!
Original public meaning textualism is so obsessed with the text, rather than what people think about the text, that it sometimes finds itself in situations where it is okay with saying, "Objectively, according to how all those words and phrases were defined in that language at that time, this text admitted several interpretations, including X, Y, and Z, all of which are valid according to original public meaning. The fact that nearly everyone thought it meant Y does not mean X is wrong."
This is how you (fairly often) get originalists who say that miscegenation laws were unconstitutional the day the 14th Amendment was ratified. "Equal protection of the laws" was a legal term of art with an objective contemporary meaning, and the collective decision of the overwhelming majority to simply turn an unreasoning blind eye to that meaning whenever interracial marriage came up does actually change that meaning. Loving v. Virginia was not only right in 1968, but 1868 (so the argument goes; I don't actually know enough about the original meaning of equal protection to have an opinion).
So when we have a prophecy that people misunderstand, but the prophecy is still fulfilled by events that fall squarely within the fair meaning of the prophetic text, original-understanding folks definitely have to sweat, but the original-public-meaning gang (some call us "the O.G.") just nods with satisfaction, impressed by the power of people's expectations to foil the objective meaning of plain language. (Jesus was often, um, impressed by the same thing! Luke 24:25-27 might be retranslated: "Can't you people *read*? I gave it to the prophets and they wrote it down in your own language and then it all *happened* and you *still* can't connect it to the OPM? For Christ's sake, guys!")
Hosea 11:1 is a particularly tricky case, though, because -- like much of the O.T. -- I think it has (at least) a double meaning. It really *is* about Israel. *And* it is about Jesus. *And* it is about linking the two together, so that we see the parallels between their stories, and identify the one with the other.
So I don't even think the Jews were even wrong when they interpreted it the obvious way. That interpretation was valid by original public meaning and valid objectively. They just missed that there was another layer in there, *also* perfectly valid according to the original public meaning of the language, but not something anyone was going to recognize until it was fulfilled in Christ.
P.S. I've been loving your Revolutionary War series, not just because it's a war I don't know enough about, but because you keep coming up with new angles on it and new questions I never even thought to ask. Like, I knew about the invasion of Canada and the Plains of Abraham and all that, but the *context* of that invasion never really occurred to me, and you put all those dots together. I don't comment enough, but I love it all.
Yes, prophetic texts are different from legal texts - but I think that still fits within the maxims of originalism! One part of the original intent, original understanding, or public meaning, is what genre of text it is! And then another part is how they understood that genre - after all, we don't want to interpret the Psalms the same way as modern praise songs, even though they're both within the genre of "musical poetry."
But that's an interesting question you raised about what sort of "meaning" original public meaning looks at. It seems to me that double fulfillment fails original public meaning unless the original public understood it as meaning both fulfillments - if they didn't understand "My son" as being Messiah, then the original public meaning of Hosea 11:1 wasn't Messianic, even though we nod along with them in agreeing it *also* meant Israel.
I suppose you might be able to construct a level of abstraction at which they understood it in the same way we do, similar to the scholars you cite about "equal protection" and miscegenation laws? But I haven't read those scholars either, and that feels abstruse to me.
And thanks for your praise of my Revolutionary War series! That's what I'm aiming for - there's so much I didn't realize either until I started digging in to research it this year!
"We could stop here, as Hans Küng did, and say that this simply means full-fledged conciliarism is true, that councils can contradict the pope, that all recent attempts to refute it (for example, Vatican I’s teachings on papal co-supremacy) have been heretical, that the Catholic Church is therefore quite possibly a false and contradictory Church, that the pope is a mere inferior officer of the Church, and that the Old Catholics are probably right. (Unsurprisingly, Hans Küng was excommunicated.)"
I have always heard that he was, and did not question that. As that article makes clear, it's a very common belief -- but 100% a false one. I suppose I will have to edit to say "condemned for heresy" instead.
I don't believe that Excommunication would imply laicization, so I think it would be plausible that a priest could be excommunicated while still being a priest. Not saying that your point about him not being excommunicated in the first place is wrong, but your evidence that he was still a priest is not an argument in favor of it.
This is one of the more interesting things I've read on Substack. I really appreciate seeing you work through the question from so many different angles.
1. I love you. No one else writes about this stuff.
2. I'm a bit surprised that you only grant ecumenical councils as infallible, since my impression was that you like to follow Bellarmine on this sort of thing, and he thought that papally approved particular councils would also be infallible.
3. I ran across one guy on twitter who affirmed the Avignon line as the legitimate line, but this is very rare.
4. Where does Gregory formally refuse to recognize the previous sessions? I know there was the additional convocation, but I didn't see that done in a way that the former stuff was declared invalid. I at some point pulled up Gregory's bulls, but didn't look through them carefully enough.
5. I'd be interested in looking further at the Eugenius approbation of Constance and Basel in 1446, I wasn't aware of that one. I've also seen someone say that there was something in 1447.
6. You might want to be aware of Pius II (who followed the rump council of Basel earlier in his life), in the third of his Retractationes in 1463 says that he follows the teaching of Constance on the authority of the general council. But this has some qualifications limiting it.
7. I've seen the "conciliariter" as interpreted in reference to the immediate context of the Polish king wanting some things done which had been approved by many of the people present, but not done as a council.
8.If the "that German guy" was meant to be a reference to Hefele (after reading further down: okay, yes it was), I think that the oft-repeated claim that he affirmed only the things done after Martin was elected is false. This was only posed as a "at the very least," not as an exhaustive thing. At least, as far as I remember it.
9. The council of Constance manifestly thinks it has the power to depose popes, since it treats its attempts to do so as legitimate, and as effective under the supposition that they be the real pope.
10. I'm a bit surprised that there was no reference to the Gallicans anywhere in this, seeing as the declaration of the clergy of France had, as one of its four articles (only the final of which was directly contradicted by Vatican I), that Haec Sancta was binding.
2. Yeah, I tend to follow Bellarmine because the Church tends to follow Bellarmine, but the Church really has not followed Bellarmine on this. I don't know if there's anything wrong with any pope-presiding local or regional councils (mostly I was relieved when I realized I didn't have to go through all of them to find out for my infallibility project!), but approximately nobody sees the Synod of Piacenza as an organ of infallibility today.
3. The *post-*Urban VI Avignon line? Well, God bless 'im, takes all sorts.
4. I did not translate Session 14, so I may have misunderstood this. I took this idea from the passage of Fr. Hughes' history quoted at PapalEncylicals.net:
> Gregory XII sent to Constance as his representatives his protector Carlo Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, and the Dominican cardinal, John Domenici — to Constance indeed, but not to the General Council assembled there by the authority, and in the name, of John XXIII. The envoys’ commission was to the emperor Sigismund, presiding over the various bishops and prelates whom his zeal to restore peace to the Church had brought together. To these envoys — and to Malatesta in the first place-Gregory gave authority to convoke as a General Council — to convoke and not to recognise — these assembled bishops and prelates ; and by a second bull he empowered Malatesta to resign to this General Council in his name.
> The emperor, the bishops and prelates consented and accepted the role Gregory assigned. And so, on July 4, 1415. Sigismund, clad in the royal robes, left the throne he had occupied in the previous sessions for a throne placed before the altar, as for the president of the assembly. Gregory’s two legates sat by his side facing the bishops. The bull was read commissioning Malatesta and Domenici to convoke the council and to authorise whatever it should do for the restoration of unity and the extirpation of the schism — with Gregory’s explicit condition that there should be no mention of Baldassare Cossa, with his reminder that from his very election he had pledged himself to resign if by so doing he could truly advance the good work of unity, and his assertion that the papal dignity is truly his as the canonically elected successor of Urban VI.
5. I did go hunting for the 1446 statement, but failed to track down the original context. I've also heard something about 1447 but I know much less about it. Not much help, I know!
6. I was *not* aware of this! Would certainly be interesting to see what he has to say about it. I don't suppose you know a site where it's available in English?
7. I tend to think of that whole answer as, first and foremost, a response to the Polish king about Falkenberg. I didn't really draw on this line of thinking in the article (it was long), but, if (as seems all but certain) popes can ratify a council by tacit consent, simply by not objecting, then it's worth considering whether this passage should be treated (as so many treat it) as a deliberate ratification. One way of reading it is just Pope Martin saying, "No, I'm not doing anything on Falkenberg beyond what the council did," and the fact that "I'm with the council" was the answer on the tip of his tongue is a sign that he wasn't trying to object.
8. Per the translations posted in other comments today by Gilbert, you are clearly correct.
9. Sure, but there are very special circumstances, both in general and in specific (the true pope, Gregory, volunteered; the plausible antipope, John, volunteered and then tried to renege but the council held him to his word; the French antipope, Benedict, was I suspect regarded by a supermajority as an antipope with no rights anyway). I don't think Constance's belief in its power to depose *these* popes at *this* moment necessarily implies that they were full-fledged conciliarists.
10. I had to cut off the history at some point, and it was already getting out of hand! But the other, real reason is that I haven't read that declaration since... wow, it would have been 2009. I've forgotten everything in it, I think.
I was in Rome with a flock of seminarians and I vaguely remember having a wee panic about Constance and doing what I always did when I felt insecure about the coherence of Catholic doctrine: torment a seminarian.
Their home dioceses appear to have believed that the reason so few seminarians on that trip became priests is because there were girls there. But I know better. It's because I was a huge pest. (Sorry, Aaron! Thanks for letting me in the book club anyway!)
2. You're right, that is unpopular. I wonder why the shift there. I know people like to minimalize what's infallible for apologetics reasons—"that's not infallible" is a handy response to things claimed problematic.
4. You could well be right. At the very least, it's not like the council as a whole took the stance, but if there is anything, that might matter for partisans of Gregory.
5. I haven't set my own eyes on the 1447 myself, I just heard about that from Denny.
9. But look at the way that they condemn him. "This same holy synod, moreover, as a precautionary measure, since according to himself he actually holds the papacy, deprives, deposes and casts out the said Peter from the papacy and from being the supreme pontiff of the Roman church and from every title, rank, honour, dignity, benefice and office whatsoever."
10. Yeah, I wonder to what extent it is compatible with the post-Vatican I church. I assume it could all be held to except in the 4th point?
If we at last ask if the council of Constance was a general one or not, then no doubt can obtain that its last four sessions (42-45) in which pope Martin V presided have the dignity of ecomenicity, because in these primacy and episcopacy collaborated harmonically. But how about the previous sessions and their decisions? Above we already saw how pope Martin approbated and ratified, on occasion of the Falkenberg case, those decisions which had been made in materiis fidei [in matters of faith] and conciliariter (by the whole council, not just nationaliter, that is by individual nations). (page 368) But in this he can not have meant to say that he was witholding his approval from A L L other decisions which did not affect Q U E S T I O N S O F F A I T H, for then he would also have withdrawn his approval from the reform decrees of the 39th session (because the do not treat de materiis fidei [of matters of faith]) and he would rather clumsily have pulled the ground under his own feet, for the decrees by which John XXIII and Benecict XIII were deposed and his election was ordered also don't treat de materia fidei [of matters of faith]. In addition, already in his bull of February 22nd, 1418, Martin demanded of everyone recognition that the council of Constance was a general one and that what it decreed in favorem fidei et salutem animarum [for the benefit of the faith and the hail of souls] would have to be held to. (page 347) Hence he also recoginized the generally binding, so ecumenical character of other dercrees than those in materiis fidei[in matters of faith]. But from declaring a completely general approbation he bewared and especially his words in favorem fidei et salutem animarum [for the benefit of the faith and the hail of souls] seem to me to have a r e s t r i c t i n g character. With this he implied that he was excepting some decrees from the approbation but obviously in the interest of peace didn't want to declare himself more clearly. His successor Eugen IV declared himself more specifically in the year 1446, by accepting the whole council and all its decisions absque tamen praejudicio juris, dignitatis et praeeminentiae sedis apostolicae [but without predjudice to the right, dignity and preeminence of the apostolic see] (See Vol. 1 page 54). That he thereby wanted to exclude the Constance decrees of the superiority of general councils over the pope from approbation seems beyond doubt [is "wohl" beyond doubt which has no English analogate but in this context I think is just a ceremonial scientific acknowledgement that the author is fallible und could theoretically be wrong but you wouldn't suggest that now would you]. According to this and according to today's law which declares the papal approbration of all general councils necessary for making them such, it seems to be[again is "wohl"] subject to no doubt that all decisions of Constance which do not constitute a prejudice to the papacy must be regarded as ecumenical, while all those that contravene the jus[right], the dignitas[dignity] or the praeeminentia [preeminance] of the apostolic see are to be considered reprobed.
(About half of that stiltedness is already in the German while the other half is from trying to translate fairly literally)
Starting on page pp 372 not 327, which is the one of probably many typos I will actually correct since it might inconvenience attempts to check the source.
Also looking at p. 368, pope Martin /was/ explicitly withholding approval from /something/.
"Everything sic conciliariter in materiis fidei [that counciliarily in matters of faith] was decided I approve and ratify but not aliter nec alio modo [anything else or in another way]". The councilliary restriction could be explained by the immediately preceding fight but the matters of faith restriction is not from the immediate context.
Now technically the relation between pope and council is at least now a matter of faith but looking just at the few pages I just read and without any other background it seems plausible that he was trying to weasel out of answering the constitutional question and everybody understood him to be so weaseling out. If so or even arguably so, it was not a proper approval and therefore no dogma.
But again I really know nothing about this and might be missing lots of decisive context.
One final snippet before I go to bed where I already should be:
From page 104:
"But the claim of the Gallicans, that Martin had approved also the earlier sessions of Constance and with this the decrees of the fifth session is certainly incorrect. Of the Constance decrees Martin only approved what was decreed in materiis fidei conciliariter et non aliter nec alio modo; But according to his own understanding and the opinion of the entire college of cardinals, as we learn from d'Ailly (in Gerson, op. ed Du-Pin, T. II. 940) nothing was decided conciliariter that was decided w h i t h o u t t h e c o n s e n t o f t h e c a r d i n a l s just by the majority-vote of the nations. And this is applicable particularly to the present case."
Of course the non-cardinals probably disagreed so this might open an entirely new can of worms about original papal intent in approving.
This is ridiculously useful and I'm very grateful! I have added links to these comments from the main article, and I'm sure to refer back to them myself in the future. (Stilted is good when trying to give the exact sense of a translation.)
So clearly I got Hefele wrong, because Hefele took the (I think) much less convincing route of casting doubt on the ratification.
(annnnd I can't say more about that now because my wife has called me to dinner. But thank you for lending your translation skills!)
I have not read the book and realistically won't but he also wrote a 1967 article "Besitzt das konstanzer Dekret Haec Sancta dogmatische Verbindlichkeit?", that is "Does the Constance decree Haec Sancta have dogmatic force?" That is ~20 years before the book and apparently a fairly direct answer to Küng but it says basically what James says Brandmüller says. A German pdf with bad OCR but in the latin/modern Alphapet is available on the Intertubes at https://roemischequartalschrift.digitheo.de/ojs/index.php/rq/article/view/89904, the first article in the volume. This is 17 pages and still in copyright so public translations are right out.
Anyway some key points hastily summarized by an incompetent German guy on the Interet:
1. The decree was not meant to be dogmatic.
1.1 Language wise it avoid docmatic language like "faith", "doctrine", "truth" but uses diciplinary language like "obey" or "punish". Also the decree goes on in undoubtedly disciplinary matters and it would be weird to basically make a dogmatic pronouncement in a side note. The same council did use explicitly dogmatic language elsewhere and so die Basel later when it tried to do the same thing.
1.2 The even if pope language is deliberately hypotetical because at that point they were deliberately not specifying who was really pope.
1.3 Furthermore the even if pope language is a formula also used at the council of Siena (for a secrecy order when the pope wasn't actually there" and a regional synod around that time had similar even if bishop language where that authorithy wasn't in doubt at all. So probably this is just an emphatic yes everybody, not just the unimportant folk.
1.4 The reference to "alterius concilii" is not a reference to just any council but a safeguard because the council was aware their attempt might fail just like the Pisa one and then they would have to try again. That is also whie they they said "alterius" and not "alii".
2. The decree was not understood as dogmatic by the 15th century church.
2.1 Even Basel gave up on its attempt to declare the pope heretic for rejecting Haec Sancta because that wasn't enough to be a heretic.
2.2 The German elector-lords didn't consider Haec Sancta dogmatic or else they couldn't have justified their careful neutrality to Basel
2.3 The papal legates at Siena made big claims about the supreme authority of the pope and that was not recoginzed as heresy.
2.4 The pope could actually govern and later dissolve the council of Siena and in the end even the opposition accepted that.
2.5 At the council of Constance itself the relation between pope and council continued to be hotly debated after Haec Sancta and the very bishops who had approved the decree didn't claim this made anyone a heretic.
3. Even if Martin V. had appoved Haec Sancta he could only have approved the meaning that was meant.
4. Haec Sancta was therefore not a dogmatic declaration but a decree of positive emergency law.
5. Constance could do that because during the crisis it was a "legitimate if susdiary carrier of the supreme eccelesiastical power". This changed when there was a proper pope again and we see this in the changing form of counciliar documents from that time on.
6. Brandmüller doesn't buy the "conciliariter" explanation of how Martin would have excluded Haec Sancta from approbation.
7. But seeing the question as non-disciplinary is anachronistic, Martin wanted to exclude it as not a matter of faith.
8. In fact Martin couldn't have approved Haec Sancta because that would mean it needed approval and then he wouldn't have been pope in the first place.
Forgot to say: I'm really grateful you found this. It's taking me time to get it translated for myself, but even knowing that his views surely evolved over the subsequent 30 years, what you described here made it irresistible.
Quick unrelated question: is there going to be a post about the comments on the Replacing the Seventeenth amendment post, as you said you will make in a comment to that post, or has it been overtaken by events and other posts?
Yep, it just keeps getting bumped because (1) events and (2) I keep waiting for a completely clear week, because I expect it to be hard to write (because the first two parts were hard to write). Eventually I’ve just got to nut up, because I made a promise.
Fascinating questions!
I think that originalism with respect to infallible statements has to be understood by the Holy Spirit's original intent. After all, we know the prophets in Scripture didn't understand what they were prophesying (1 Peter 1:10-11, let alone Caiaphas in John 11:51 who didn't even know he was prophesying!), so we can't go by their intent. The people who were hearing them often didn't understand anything (e.g. John 7:35), so we can't go by their intent. Original public meaning would, I think, also not rightly understand many prophecies (e.g. Hosea 11:1 - without Matthew's citing it, I never would've guessed it refers to Christ). The only option seems to be the Holy Spirit's intent.
Of course, "who has known the mind of the Lord?", so this can leave us confused just like the crowd hearing Jesus. But, as Paul continues, "we have the mind of Christ," so we hopefully will at least be less confused.
Now this is an angle I hadn't considered. I'm gonna shoot from the hip here, because you raise an interesting point.
My first instinct is that the construction of prophetic texts probably needs to be understood as a separate category from the construction of legal texts (with somewhat different rules). I'm pretty sure that's right.
But they're still similar enough to be worth exploring, and I actually still think original public meaning comes out rather well here!
Original public meaning textualism is so obsessed with the text, rather than what people think about the text, that it sometimes finds itself in situations where it is okay with saying, "Objectively, according to how all those words and phrases were defined in that language at that time, this text admitted several interpretations, including X, Y, and Z, all of which are valid according to original public meaning. The fact that nearly everyone thought it meant Y does not mean X is wrong."
This is how you (fairly often) get originalists who say that miscegenation laws were unconstitutional the day the 14th Amendment was ratified. "Equal protection of the laws" was a legal term of art with an objective contemporary meaning, and the collective decision of the overwhelming majority to simply turn an unreasoning blind eye to that meaning whenever interracial marriage came up does actually change that meaning. Loving v. Virginia was not only right in 1968, but 1868 (so the argument goes; I don't actually know enough about the original meaning of equal protection to have an opinion).
So when we have a prophecy that people misunderstand, but the prophecy is still fulfilled by events that fall squarely within the fair meaning of the prophetic text, original-understanding folks definitely have to sweat, but the original-public-meaning gang (some call us "the O.G.") just nods with satisfaction, impressed by the power of people's expectations to foil the objective meaning of plain language. (Jesus was often, um, impressed by the same thing! Luke 24:25-27 might be retranslated: "Can't you people *read*? I gave it to the prophets and they wrote it down in your own language and then it all *happened* and you *still* can't connect it to the OPM? For Christ's sake, guys!")
Hosea 11:1 is a particularly tricky case, though, because -- like much of the O.T. -- I think it has (at least) a double meaning. It really *is* about Israel. *And* it is about Jesus. *And* it is about linking the two together, so that we see the parallels between their stories, and identify the one with the other.
So I don't even think the Jews were even wrong when they interpreted it the obvious way. That interpretation was valid by original public meaning and valid objectively. They just missed that there was another layer in there, *also* perfectly valid according to the original public meaning of the language, but not something anyone was going to recognize until it was fulfilled in Christ.
P.S. I've been loving your Revolutionary War series, not just because it's a war I don't know enough about, but because you keep coming up with new angles on it and new questions I never even thought to ask. Like, I knew about the invasion of Canada and the Plains of Abraham and all that, but the *context* of that invasion never really occurred to me, and you put all those dots together. I don't comment enough, but I love it all.
Interesting response too!
Yes, prophetic texts are different from legal texts - but I think that still fits within the maxims of originalism! One part of the original intent, original understanding, or public meaning, is what genre of text it is! And then another part is how they understood that genre - after all, we don't want to interpret the Psalms the same way as modern praise songs, even though they're both within the genre of "musical poetry."
But that's an interesting question you raised about what sort of "meaning" original public meaning looks at. It seems to me that double fulfillment fails original public meaning unless the original public understood it as meaning both fulfillments - if they didn't understand "My son" as being Messiah, then the original public meaning of Hosea 11:1 wasn't Messianic, even though we nod along with them in agreeing it *also* meant Israel.
I suppose you might be able to construct a level of abstraction at which they understood it in the same way we do, similar to the scholars you cite about "equal protection" and miscegenation laws? But I haven't read those scholars either, and that feels abstruse to me.
And thanks for your praise of my Revolutionary War series! That's what I'm aiming for - there's so much I didn't realize either until I started digging in to research it this year!
"We could stop here, as Hans Küng did, and say that this simply means full-fledged conciliarism is true, that councils can contradict the pope, that all recent attempts to refute it (for example, Vatican I’s teachings on papal co-supremacy) have been heretical, that the Catholic Church is therefore quite possibly a false and contradictory Church, that the pope is a mere inferior officer of the Church, and that the Old Catholics are probably right. (Unsurprisingly, Hans Küng was excommunicated.)"
I'm not familiar enough with Kung's ideas to say whether this describes his ideas, but I don't think he was ever excommunicated. His Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Küng) says he was stripped of his right to teach as a Catholic theologian, but explicitly states several times he remained a priest--which I don't think would have been the case if he was outright excommunicated. Now, Wikipedia could be wrong, but him losing his status as a theologian while remaining a priest is repeated at places like https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/hans-k-ng-celebrated-and-controversial-swiss-theologian-has-died and https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/hans-kung-famous-dissident-needs-your-prayers as well.
Were you possibly getting him partially mixed up with Ignaz von Döllinger?
Huh! Of all the things I feared getting factually wrong in this article, this wasn't it. You're right! He was not excommunicated. https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2012/11/08/was-theologian-hans-kung-ever-excommunicated/
I have always heard that he was, and did not question that. As that article makes clear, it's a very common belief -- but 100% a false one. I suppose I will have to edit to say "condemned for heresy" instead.
I don't believe that Excommunication would imply laicization, so I think it would be plausible that a priest could be excommunicated while still being a priest. Not saying that your point about him not being excommunicated in the first place is wrong, but your evidence that he was still a priest is not an argument in favor of it.
This is one of the more interesting things I've read on Substack. I really appreciate seeing you work through the question from so many different angles.
1. I love you. No one else writes about this stuff.
2. I'm a bit surprised that you only grant ecumenical councils as infallible, since my impression was that you like to follow Bellarmine on this sort of thing, and he thought that papally approved particular councils would also be infallible.
3. I ran across one guy on twitter who affirmed the Avignon line as the legitimate line, but this is very rare.
4. Where does Gregory formally refuse to recognize the previous sessions? I know there was the additional convocation, but I didn't see that done in a way that the former stuff was declared invalid. I at some point pulled up Gregory's bulls, but didn't look through them carefully enough.
5. I'd be interested in looking further at the Eugenius approbation of Constance and Basel in 1446, I wasn't aware of that one. I've also seen someone say that there was something in 1447.
6. You might want to be aware of Pius II (who followed the rump council of Basel earlier in his life), in the third of his Retractationes in 1463 says that he follows the teaching of Constance on the authority of the general council. But this has some qualifications limiting it.
7. I've seen the "conciliariter" as interpreted in reference to the immediate context of the Polish king wanting some things done which had been approved by many of the people present, but not done as a council.
8.If the "that German guy" was meant to be a reference to Hefele (after reading further down: okay, yes it was), I think that the oft-repeated claim that he affirmed only the things done after Martin was elected is false. This was only posed as a "at the very least," not as an exhaustive thing. At least, as far as I remember it.
9. The council of Constance manifestly thinks it has the power to depose popes, since it treats its attempts to do so as legitimate, and as effective under the supposition that they be the real pope.
10. I'm a bit surprised that there was no reference to the Gallicans anywhere in this, seeing as the declaration of the clergy of France had, as one of its four articles (only the final of which was directly contradicted by Vatican I), that Haec Sancta was binding.
1. Aww. Love you too!
2. Yeah, I tend to follow Bellarmine because the Church tends to follow Bellarmine, but the Church really has not followed Bellarmine on this. I don't know if there's anything wrong with any pope-presiding local or regional councils (mostly I was relieved when I realized I didn't have to go through all of them to find out for my infallibility project!), but approximately nobody sees the Synod of Piacenza as an organ of infallibility today.
3. The *post-*Urban VI Avignon line? Well, God bless 'im, takes all sorts.
4. I did not translate Session 14, so I may have misunderstood this. I took this idea from the passage of Fr. Hughes' history quoted at PapalEncylicals.net:
> Gregory XII sent to Constance as his representatives his protector Carlo Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, and the Dominican cardinal, John Domenici — to Constance indeed, but not to the General Council assembled there by the authority, and in the name, of John XXIII. The envoys’ commission was to the emperor Sigismund, presiding over the various bishops and prelates whom his zeal to restore peace to the Church had brought together. To these envoys — and to Malatesta in the first place-Gregory gave authority to convoke as a General Council — to convoke and not to recognise — these assembled bishops and prelates ; and by a second bull he empowered Malatesta to resign to this General Council in his name.
> The emperor, the bishops and prelates consented and accepted the role Gregory assigned. And so, on July 4, 1415. Sigismund, clad in the royal robes, left the throne he had occupied in the previous sessions for a throne placed before the altar, as for the president of the assembly. Gregory’s two legates sat by his side facing the bishops. The bull was read commissioning Malatesta and Domenici to convoke the council and to authorise whatever it should do for the restoration of unity and the extirpation of the schism — with Gregory’s explicit condition that there should be no mention of Baldassare Cossa, with his reminder that from his very election he had pledged himself to resign if by so doing he could truly advance the good work of unity, and his assertion that the papal dignity is truly his as the canonically elected successor of Urban VI.
5. I did go hunting for the 1446 statement, but failed to track down the original context. I've also heard something about 1447 but I know much less about it. Not much help, I know!
6. I was *not* aware of this! Would certainly be interesting to see what he has to say about it. I don't suppose you know a site where it's available in English?
7. I tend to think of that whole answer as, first and foremost, a response to the Polish king about Falkenberg. I didn't really draw on this line of thinking in the article (it was long), but, if (as seems all but certain) popes can ratify a council by tacit consent, simply by not objecting, then it's worth considering whether this passage should be treated (as so many treat it) as a deliberate ratification. One way of reading it is just Pope Martin saying, "No, I'm not doing anything on Falkenberg beyond what the council did," and the fact that "I'm with the council" was the answer on the tip of his tongue is a sign that he wasn't trying to object.
8. Per the translations posted in other comments today by Gilbert, you are clearly correct.
9. Sure, but there are very special circumstances, both in general and in specific (the true pope, Gregory, volunteered; the plausible antipope, John, volunteered and then tried to renege but the council held him to his word; the French antipope, Benedict, was I suspect regarded by a supermajority as an antipope with no rights anyway). I don't think Constance's belief in its power to depose *these* popes at *this* moment necessarily implies that they were full-fledged conciliarists.
10. I had to cut off the history at some point, and it was already getting out of hand! But the other, real reason is that I haven't read that declaration since... wow, it would have been 2009. I've forgotten everything in it, I think.
I was in Rome with a flock of seminarians and I vaguely remember having a wee panic about Constance and doing what I always did when I felt insecure about the coherence of Catholic doctrine: torment a seminarian.
Their home dioceses appear to have believed that the reason so few seminarians on that trip became priests is because there were girls there. But I know better. It's because I was a huge pest. (Sorry, Aaron! Thanks for letting me in the book club anyway!)
2. You're right, that is unpopular. I wonder why the shift there. I know people like to minimalize what's infallible for apologetics reasons—"that's not infallible" is a handy response to things claimed problematic.
4. You could well be right. At the very least, it's not like the council as a whole took the stance, but if there is anything, that might matter for partisans of Gregory.
5. I haven't set my own eyes on the 1447 myself, I just heard about that from Denny.
6.I have no English, but here it is (this should be the correct page): https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pius_II_a_calumniis_vindicatus_ternis_re/l-HjYkc_ZtsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA164&printsec=frontcover
9. But look at the way that they condemn him. "This same holy synod, moreover, as a precautionary measure, since according to himself he actually holds the papacy, deprives, deposes and casts out the said Peter from the papacy and from being the supreme pontiff of the Roman church and from every title, rank, honour, dignity, benefice and office whatsoever."
10. Yeah, I wonder to what extent it is compatible with the post-Vatican I church. I assume it could all be held to except in the 4th point?
So I looked up what Hefele actually said, my tldr would be basically position b above. Anyway he says it on pp 327-373 in the volume the Archive has at https://archive.org/details/conciliengeschic07hefe/page/372/mode/2up and my translation of that is as follows:
If we at last ask if the council of Constance was a general one or not, then no doubt can obtain that its last four sessions (42-45) in which pope Martin V presided have the dignity of ecomenicity, because in these primacy and episcopacy collaborated harmonically. But how about the previous sessions and their decisions? Above we already saw how pope Martin approbated and ratified, on occasion of the Falkenberg case, those decisions which had been made in materiis fidei [in matters of faith] and conciliariter (by the whole council, not just nationaliter, that is by individual nations). (page 368) But in this he can not have meant to say that he was witholding his approval from A L L other decisions which did not affect Q U E S T I O N S O F F A I T H, for then he would also have withdrawn his approval from the reform decrees of the 39th session (because the do not treat de materiis fidei [of matters of faith]) and he would rather clumsily have pulled the ground under his own feet, for the decrees by which John XXIII and Benecict XIII were deposed and his election was ordered also don't treat de materia fidei [of matters of faith]. In addition, already in his bull of February 22nd, 1418, Martin demanded of everyone recognition that the council of Constance was a general one and that what it decreed in favorem fidei et salutem animarum [for the benefit of the faith and the hail of souls] would have to be held to. (page 347) Hence he also recoginized the generally binding, so ecumenical character of other dercrees than those in materiis fidei[in matters of faith]. But from declaring a completely general approbation he bewared and especially his words in favorem fidei et salutem animarum [for the benefit of the faith and the hail of souls] seem to me to have a r e s t r i c t i n g character. With this he implied that he was excepting some decrees from the approbation but obviously in the interest of peace didn't want to declare himself more clearly. His successor Eugen IV declared himself more specifically in the year 1446, by accepting the whole council and all its decisions absque tamen praejudicio juris, dignitatis et praeeminentiae sedis apostolicae [but without predjudice to the right, dignity and preeminence of the apostolic see] (See Vol. 1 page 54). That he thereby wanted to exclude the Constance decrees of the superiority of general councils over the pope from approbation seems beyond doubt [is "wohl" beyond doubt which has no English analogate but in this context I think is just a ceremonial scientific acknowledgement that the author is fallible und could theoretically be wrong but you wouldn't suggest that now would you]. According to this and according to today's law which declares the papal approbration of all general councils necessary for making them such, it seems to be[again is "wohl"] subject to no doubt that all decisions of Constance which do not constitute a prejudice to the papacy must be regarded as ecumenical, while all those that contravene the jus[right], the dignitas[dignity] or the praeeminentia [preeminance] of the apostolic see are to be considered reprobed.
(About half of that stiltedness is already in the German while the other half is from trying to translate fairly literally)
Starting on page pp 372 not 327, which is the one of probably many typos I will actually correct since it might inconvenience attempts to check the source.
Also looking at p. 368, pope Martin /was/ explicitly withholding approval from /something/.
"Everything sic conciliariter in materiis fidei [that counciliarily in matters of faith] was decided I approve and ratify but not aliter nec alio modo [anything else or in another way]". The councilliary restriction could be explained by the immediately preceding fight but the matters of faith restriction is not from the immediate context.
Now technically the relation between pope and council is at least now a matter of faith but looking just at the few pages I just read and without any other background it seems plausible that he was trying to weasel out of answering the constitutional question and everybody understood him to be so weaseling out. If so or even arguably so, it was not a proper approval and therefore no dogma.
But again I really know nothing about this and might be missing lots of decisive context.
One final snippet before I go to bed where I already should be:
From page 104:
"But the claim of the Gallicans, that Martin had approved also the earlier sessions of Constance and with this the decrees of the fifth session is certainly incorrect. Of the Constance decrees Martin only approved what was decreed in materiis fidei conciliariter et non aliter nec alio modo; But according to his own understanding and the opinion of the entire college of cardinals, as we learn from d'Ailly (in Gerson, op. ed Du-Pin, T. II. 940) nothing was decided conciliariter that was decided w h i t h o u t t h e c o n s e n t o f t h e c a r d i n a l s just by the majority-vote of the nations. And this is applicable particularly to the present case."
Of course the non-cardinals probably disagreed so this might open an entirely new can of worms about original papal intent in approving.
This is ridiculously useful and I'm very grateful! I have added links to these comments from the main article, and I'm sure to refer back to them myself in the future. (Stilted is good when trying to give the exact sense of a translation.)
So clearly I got Hefele wrong, because Hefele took the (I think) much less convincing route of casting doubt on the ratification.
(annnnd I can't say more about that now because my wife has called me to dinner. But thank you for lending your translation skills!)
Furtermore on Brandmüller:
I have not read the book and realistically won't but he also wrote a 1967 article "Besitzt das konstanzer Dekret Haec Sancta dogmatische Verbindlichkeit?", that is "Does the Constance decree Haec Sancta have dogmatic force?" That is ~20 years before the book and apparently a fairly direct answer to Küng but it says basically what James says Brandmüller says. A German pdf with bad OCR but in the latin/modern Alphapet is available on the Intertubes at https://roemischequartalschrift.digitheo.de/ojs/index.php/rq/article/view/89904, the first article in the volume. This is 17 pages and still in copyright so public translations are right out.
Anyway some key points hastily summarized by an incompetent German guy on the Interet:
1. The decree was not meant to be dogmatic.
1.1 Language wise it avoid docmatic language like "faith", "doctrine", "truth" but uses diciplinary language like "obey" or "punish". Also the decree goes on in undoubtedly disciplinary matters and it would be weird to basically make a dogmatic pronouncement in a side note. The same council did use explicitly dogmatic language elsewhere and so die Basel later when it tried to do the same thing.
1.2 The even if pope language is deliberately hypotetical because at that point they were deliberately not specifying who was really pope.
1.3 Furthermore the even if pope language is a formula also used at the council of Siena (for a secrecy order when the pope wasn't actually there" and a regional synod around that time had similar even if bishop language where that authorithy wasn't in doubt at all. So probably this is just an emphatic yes everybody, not just the unimportant folk.
1.4 The reference to "alterius concilii" is not a reference to just any council but a safeguard because the council was aware their attempt might fail just like the Pisa one and then they would have to try again. That is also whie they they said "alterius" and not "alii".
2. The decree was not understood as dogmatic by the 15th century church.
2.1 Even Basel gave up on its attempt to declare the pope heretic for rejecting Haec Sancta because that wasn't enough to be a heretic.
2.2 The German elector-lords didn't consider Haec Sancta dogmatic or else they couldn't have justified their careful neutrality to Basel
2.3 The papal legates at Siena made big claims about the supreme authority of the pope and that was not recoginzed as heresy.
2.4 The pope could actually govern and later dissolve the council of Siena and in the end even the opposition accepted that.
2.5 At the council of Constance itself the relation between pope and council continued to be hotly debated after Haec Sancta and the very bishops who had approved the decree didn't claim this made anyone a heretic.
3. Even if Martin V. had appoved Haec Sancta he could only have approved the meaning that was meant.
4. Haec Sancta was therefore not a dogmatic declaration but a decree of positive emergency law.
5. Constance could do that because during the crisis it was a "legitimate if susdiary carrier of the supreme eccelesiastical power". This changed when there was a proper pope again and we see this in the changing form of counciliar documents from that time on.
6. Brandmüller doesn't buy the "conciliariter" explanation of how Martin would have excluded Haec Sancta from approbation.
7. But seeing the question as non-disciplinary is anachronistic, Martin wanted to exclude it as not a matter of faith.
8. In fact Martin couldn't have approved Haec Sancta because that would mean it needed approval and then he wouldn't have been pope in the first place.
Forgot to say: I'm really grateful you found this. It's taking me time to get it translated for myself, but even knowing that his views surely evolved over the subsequent 30 years, what you described here made it irresistible.