What Happens At The Moment A Pope Becomes An Anti Pope ?

[mortify ii]

What if the pope thinks his statement is in conformity with Tradition and some other people do not think so?  Who decides what is in conformity with Tradition?

 

A situation in which a pope knowingly and deliberately teaches error is extremely unlikely to occur.  Most people who teach error do so because they think they are right. 

 

My sister in Christ, a Catholic will know the difference, the Spirit works in those who live the Faith as well. Did not our Lord say God will reveal to babes what was concealed to the learned? Do you think I need a doctorate in theology to know bowing down to and kissing holy texts of false religions is wrong and scandalous? You are making the situation more difficult than it really is. You already know the answer, after-all you attend the "extraordinary form" of the Liturgy for a reason.

[Nihil Obstat]

He dealt extensively with this subject in Apologia. Will post when I get home. My opinions are substantially the same as his, though he articulates them more effectively.

Oops. My apologies; I forgot to track that down. If I get a chance at work I will do so, otherwise after work.

[Perigrina]

My sister in Christ, a Catholic will know the difference, the Spirit works in those who live the Faith as well. Did not our Lord say God will reveal to babes what was concealed to the learned? Do you think I need a doctorate in theology to know bowing down to and kissing holy texts of false religions is wrong and scandalous? You are making the situation more difficult than it really is. You already know the answer, after-all you attend the "extraordinary form" of the Liturgy for a reason.

 

The "kissing the Qur'an" incident is not an example of teaching error since it did not involve any teaching at all.  St. Pope John Paul II was using a gesture to convey respect.  It is difficult to ensure that one's gestures are understood the way that one wishes them to be understood.  It is theoretically possible that he made an error in judgment and that his gesture was so widely misunderstood as to cause scandal.  However, at worst, it was a well-intended mistake. There is no question of heresy or anything that would lead to questioning his right to be pope.

 

One does not need a doctorate in theology to know that we ought to give people the benefit of the doubt and seek the most charitable explanations for their actions.  I prefer to attend the Extraordinary Form because I believe it is a better expression of Eucharistic theology (and tends to be more aesthetically pleasing to me) not because I question the legitmacy or validity of the Ordinary Form.  Nor do I question the authority of the Magisterium since Vatican II.
 

[Credo in Deum]

The kissing of the Qu'ran, IMHO, was an unfortunately mistake, but let's just get over it.  The man has been proclaimed a saint, so regardless of this past action of kissing the Qu'ran, he IS still in heaven praying for all of us.  

Edited May 14, 2014 by Credo in Deum

[Nihil Obstat]

The kissing of the Qu'ran, IMHO, was an unfortunately mistake, but let's just get over it. The man has been proclaimed a saint, so regardless of this past action of kissing the Qu'ran, he IS still in heaven praying for all of us.

One could argue that his canonization makes it more important to distinguish his public mistakes from his successes and personal sanctity. That sort of occurred to me just now, so I have not yet fleshed out my reasoning.

[mortify ii]

The "kissing the Qur'an" incident is not an example of teaching error since it did not involve any teaching at all.  St. Pope John Paul II was using a gesture to convey respect.  It is difficult to ensure that one's gestures are understood the way that one wishes them to be understood.  It is theoretically possible that he made an error in judgment and that his gesture was so widely misunderstood as to cause scandal.  However, at worst, it was a well-intended mistake. There is no question of heresy or anything that would lead to questioning his right to be pope.

 

We teach by our example as well, and our fruits reveal what is within us. There was never an apology or explanation for why that act was appropriate, and sadly there are many cases like it.

 

 

One does not need a doctorate in theology to know that we ought to give people the benefit of the doubt and seek the most charitable explanations for their actions.  I prefer to attend the Extraordinary Form because I believe it is a better expression of Eucharistic theology (and tends to be more aesthetically pleasing to me) not because I question the legitmacy or validity of the Ordinary Form.  Nor do I question the authority of the Magisterium since Vatican II.

 

No one has questioned the validity or legitimacy of the Novus Ordo, but why don't you humbly follow the revisions the Popes since Vatican II made to the liturgy? For decades going to the TLM was considered "schismatic" until an indult was permitted after the SSPX came to be, but that was only meant to nurture those still "fixated" on the old rite as it's now called, it was never intended as to be a separate rite that young folks like yourself should get into. 

[mortify ii]

The kissing of the Qu'ran, IMHO, was an unfortunately mistake, but let's just get over it.  The man has been proclaimed a saint, so regardless of this past action of kissing the Qu'ran, he IS still in heaven praying for all of us.  

 

As far as I'm aware the certainty over canonizations being infallible is not that established, in fact the grade of certainty the theologians placed on it was the same grade they placed on limbo infantum, and we know what happened with that. 

[mortify ii]

Furthermore, it seems to open the "allowable" when it comes to actions. I mean if one Catholic can venerate non-Catholic holy books and get blessed by Pagan shamans, why not the rest of us?

[Credo in Deum]

One could argue that his canonization makes it more important to distinguish his public mistakes from his successes and personal sanctity. That sort of occurred to me just now, so I have not yet fleshed out my reasoning.

 

I agree, since it has to be made clear that his canonization is not an approval of wrong doing or the things he may have done wrong.  Peter is St. Peter, but this does not mean we approve of his denial of Christ. 

 

As far as I'm aware the certainty over canonizations being infallible is not that established, in fact the grade of certainty the theologians placed on it was the same grade they placed on limbo infantum, and we know what happened with that. 

I do not agree. 

 

http://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/theology/81-theology/74-infallability-of-canonizations.html

Edited May 14, 2014 by Credo in Deum

[mortify ii]

I agree, since it has to be made clear that his canonization is not an approval of wrong doing or the things he may have done wrong.  Peter is St. Peter, but this does not mean we approve of his denial of Christ. 

 

St Peter repented, that is a big difference. The Holy Father never apologized for venerating the Quran by bowing to it and kissing it, so we must assume there are cases when it's appropriate for a Catholic to do so without fear of sin or causing scandal, but the Holy Father never explained why it was appropriate Catholic behavior either. We are simply to take it as it is, and to question it only makes others question our own Catholicity. My concern is that this canonization does give a certain legitimacy to these behaviors, because if one can do them and still make it to heaven, why not the rest of us? Why can't I also get blessed by a pagan shaman? And then the deeper question to all this is why is this acceptable, maybe because Catholicism is not the only means of salvation? 

 

I do not agree. 

 

When doubt, liberty.

[Credo in Deum]

St Peter repented, that is a big difference. The Holy Father never apologized for venerating the Quran by bowing to it and kissing it, so we must assume there are cases when it's appropriate for a Catholic to do so without fear of sin or causing scandal, but the Holy Father never explained why it was appropriate Catholic behavior either. We are simply to take it as it is, and to question it only makes others question our own Catholicity. My concern is that this canonization does give a certain legitimacy to these behaviors, because if one can do them and still make it to heaven, why not the rest of us? Why can't I also get blessed by a pagan shaman? And then the deeper question to all this is why is this acceptable, maybe because Catholicism is not the only means of salvation? 

 

 

Peter's actions demanded repentance.  St. John Paul II's are debatable and are not as clear cut as St. Peters.    I do not see the canonization giving any legitimacy to any errors or mistakes the canonized person may have made during his/her life. 

[Nihil Obstat]

Okie dokie, I remembered this time.
 
Unfortunately I do not think it would be appreciated by the powers that be on this site for me to directly link this source, so instead I will post in the reply box under spoilers. My post will contain two appendices from Volume 1 of Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre by Michael Davies, which is freely available online. This will be a bit long, but totally worth taking the time to read and digest.
And again, my posting of this implies neither that I agree nor disagree with any of Mr. Davies positions, though I did previously express my general agreement with his assessment of the possibility of abuse of papal authority.

EDIT: I spread it over three posts because of the character limit.
 
 Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Appendix I

Saint Athanasius The True Upholder of Tradition

[spoiler]


What happened over 1600 years ago is repeating itself today, but with two or three differences: Alexandria is the whole Universal Church, the stability of which is being shaken, and what was undertaken at that time by means of physical force and cruelty is now being transferred to a different level. Exile is replaced by banishment into the silence of being ignored; killing, by assassination of character.

Mgr. Rudolf Graber, Bishop of Regensburg,
Athanasius and the Church of Our Times, p. 23.

The object of this appendix is not to explain the nature of the Arian heresy but to prove that a bishop who is faithful to tradition could be repudiated, calumniated, persecuted, and even excommunicated by almost the entire episcopate, the Pope included. Obviously, this would be an abnormal situation. A Catholic can normally presume that the majority of bishops in union with the Pope will teach sound doctrine; he would be imprudent not to conform his belief and behavior to their teaching. But this is not always the case as the present situation of the Church demonstrates. There is hardly a diocese in the English-speaking world where the bishop insures that Catholic children are taught sound doctrine, where Catholic moral and doctrinal teaching are not contradicted with impunity from the pulpit, where liturgical abuses which sometimes amount to sacrilege remain unrebuked. Writing of the time of St. Athanasius, St. Jerome made his celebrated remark: "Ingemit totus orbis et arianum se esse miratus est" - "The whole world groaned and was amazed to finds itself Arian." The Catholic world in the West today finds itself in a state of accelerating disintegration but for the most part does not groan and certainly does not seem amazed. Indeed, most of the bishops repeat ad nauseum that things have never been better, that we are living in the most flourishing period of the Church's history. A bishop like the late Mgr. R. J. Dwyer, of Portland, Oregon, who had the courage to speak out and describe the situation in the Church as it really is was looked upon as an eccentric, as a crank, as a trouble-maker. The International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL) received fulsome praise from the bishops of the U. S. A. for the liturgical translations now inflicted upon English-speaking Catholics. Archbishop Dwyer spoke of:

...the inept, puerile, semi-literate English translation which has been foisted upon us by the ICEL - the International Commission for English in the Liturgy - a body of men possessed of all the worst characteristics of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, which has done an immeasurable disservice to the entire English-speaking world. The work has been marked by an almost complete lack of literary sense, a crass insensitivity to the poetry of language, and even worse by a most unscholarly freedom in the rendering of the texts, amounting at times, to actual misrepresentation.1 (My emphasis.)

These are strong words. Archbishop Dwyer stood almost alone in denouncing ICEL - but did this make him wrong? It is the truth that matters. Are his criticisms correct or not? If they are then it would not have mattered if every other English-speaking bishop had denounced him. As Appendix II will show, Robert Grosseteste, a thirteenth-century Bishop of Lincoln, was as solitary as Archbishop Dwyer when he made his protest at the iniquitous practice of Pope Innocent IV appointing relations to benefices which they would not so much as visit, simply to provide them with a source of income. The other bishops tolerated the practice, just as most bishops today tolerate unorthodox catechetics and ICEL - but this did not make Bishop Grosseteste wrong.



The Arian Heresy
In his celebrated Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Cardinal Newman wrote:

Arianism had admitted that Our Lord was both the God of the Evangelical Covenant, and the actual Creator of the Universe; but even this was not enough, because it did not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite, Supreme Being, but as one who was made by the Supreme. It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God's Hands; not enough to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough because it was not all, and between all and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval. The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself.2

The Council of Nicea (325) defined that the Son is consubstantial (homoousion) with the Father. This meant that, while distinct as a person, the Son shared the same divine and eternal nature with the Father. If the Father was eternal by nature, then the Son must also be eternal. If the Father was eternal and the Son was not then clearly the Son was not equal with the Father. The term homoousion thus became the touchstone of orthodoxy. In her standard history of heresies, M. L. Cozens writes:

No other word could be found to express the essential union between the Father and the Son, for every other word the Arians accepted, but in an equivocal sense. They would deny that the Son was a creature as other creatures - or in the number of creatures - or made in time, for they considered him a special creation made before time. They would call Him "Only-begotten," meaning "Only directly created" Son of God.3 They would call Him "Lord Creator," "First-born of all creation"; they even accepted "God of God" meaning thereby "made God by God." This word (homoousion) alone they could not say without renouncing their heresy.4

The Council of Nicea had been convoked by the Emperor Constantine, who insisted upon acceptance of its definitions. Arius was excommunicated. But a good number of bishops signed the Creed only as an act of submission to the Emperor, including Eusebius of Caesarea, and Eusebius of Nicomedia. They were, according to Cozens:

Men of worldly character, they disliked dogmatic precision and wished for some comprehensive formula which men of all opinions could sign while understanding it in widely diverging senses. To these men the precise and exact faith of an Athanasius and the obstinate heresy of Arius and his plain-spoken followers were equally distasteful.

"Respectable, tolerant, broadminded" would be their ideal of religion. They therefore brought forward, instead of the too definite, ineradicable homoousion - of one substance - the vaguer term homoiousion, i. e., of like substance. They sent letters far and wide couched in seemingly orthodox and fervent language, proclaiming their belief in Our Lord's divinity, ascribing to Him every divine prerogative, anathematizing all who said He was created in time:5 in short, saying all the most orthodox could ask, except that they substituted their own homoiousion for the homoousion of Nicea.6

It is possible to interpret the term "of like substance" in an orthodox sense, i. e. exactly like, identical. But it can also be interpreted as meaning like in some respects but not in others, i. e., as not identical. A candle is like a star in that it generates heat and light, but it most certainly is not a star.

But a comparison between a candle and a star could be taken as an example of almost perfect precision of language when set beside a comparison between a being that is created (even before time began) and a being that is uncreated.

A mood soon grew up among many of the bishops and the faithful that too much fuss was being made about the distinction between homoousion and homoiousion. They considered that more harm than good was done by tearing apart the unity of the Church over a single letter, over an iota (the Greek letter "i"). They condemned those who did this, to quote Cozens again, as:

...over-rigid precisians, more anxious about terminology than about fraternal charity.

Meanwhile these latter, foremost among them Athanasius, at first deacon and disciple of Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and afterwards his successor, refused to modify in any way their attitude. Steadfastly they refused to accept any statement not containing the homoousion or to communicate with those who rejected it.7

Athanasius and his supporters were right. That one letter, that iota, spelled the difference between Christianity as the faith founded and guided by God incarnate, and a faith founded by just another creature. Indeed, if Christ is not God, it would be blasphemous to call ourselves Christians.



St. Athanasius: Defender of the Nicene Faith
The Catholic Encyclopedia is far from exaggerating when it describes the life of St. Athanasius as a "bewildering maze of events." It would not be practical here to outline even the principal incidents of his truly amazing career, the various councils which declared for and against him, his excommunications, his expulsions from and restorations to his see, his relations with a formidable list of emperors, with his brother-bishops, with the Roman Pontiffs. It can also be added that in some cases the dates affixed to events in his life are only approximate. Those given here may not correspond with those found in other studies.

Athanasius was born around the year 296 and died in 373. He became Bishop of Alexandria within five months of the Council of Nicea, at the age of about thirty.

Hardly had the Council Fathers dispersed when intrigues to restore the fortunes of Arius began. Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, was able to gain favor with the Emperor chiefly through the influence which he exerted upon Constantia, sister of Constantine. He eventually prevailed upon the Emperor to recall Arius from exile. Constantine was induced to write to Athanasius ordering him to admit Arius to communion in his own see of Alexandria. He wrote:

On being informed of my pleasure, give free admission to all who are desirous of entering into communion with the Church. For if I learn of your standing in the way of any who were seeking it, or interdicting them, I will send at once those who shall depose you instead, by my authority, and banish you from your see.8

After various intrigues, Athanasius was eventually banished to Gaul, and Arius returned to Alexandria but fled in the face of the wrath of the populace. He eventually arrived in Constantinople where he was struck dead in so dramatic a manner that no one doubted that, as Athanasius remarked, "there was displayed somewhat more than human judgment."9

The Emperor Constantine died in 337 and the Empire was shared among his three sons. The fortunes of Athanasius are more bewildering than ever during this period. The See of Peter was occupied by Pope St. Julius I from 337 to 352. Pope Julius consistently and courageously upheld the cause of Athanasius and the faith of Nicea. In 350 the entire Empire was united under Constantius following the murder of his brother Constans (another brother having vanished from the scene soon after the death of Constantine). Constantius was an Arian.



The Fall of Pope Liberius
On 17 May 352, Liberius was consecrated as Pope. He immediately found himself involved in the Arian dispute.

He appealed to Constantius to do justice to Athanasius. The imperial reply was to summon the bishops of Gaul to a council at Arles in 353-354, where, under threat of exile, they agreed to a condemnation of Athanasius. Even Liberius' legate yielded. When the Pope continued to press for a council more widely representative, it was assembled by Constantius at Milan in 355. It was threatened by a violent mob and the Emperor's personal intimidation: "My will," he exclaimed, "is canon law." He prevailed with all save three of the bishops. Athanasius was once more condemned and Arians admitted to communion. Once more papal legates surrendered and Liberius himself was ordered to sign. When he refused to do so, or even to accept the Emperor's offerings, he was seized and carried off to the imperial presence; when he stood firm for Athanasius' rehabilitation, he was exiled to Thrace (355) where he remained for two years. Meanwhile, a Roman deacon, Felix, was intruded into his see. The people refused to recognize the imperial anti-pope. Athanasius himself was driven into hiding and his flock abandoned to the persecution of an Arianizing intruder. When he visited Rome in 357, Constantius was besieged by clamorous demands for Liberius' restoration. Subservient bishops around the court at Sirmium subscribed in turn to doctrinal formulas more or less ambiguous or unorthodox. In 358, a formula drawn up by Basil of Ancyra, declaring that the Son was of like substance with the Father, homoiousion, was officially imposed.10

The opposition to the anti-pope Felix made it imperative for Constantius to restore Liberius to his see. But it was equally imperative that the Pope should condemn Athanasius. The Emperor used a combination of threats and flattery to attain his objective. Then followed the tragic fall of Liberius. It is described in the sternest of terms in Butler's Lives of the Saints:

About this time Liberius began to sink under the hardships of his exile, and his resolution was shaken by the continual solicitations of Demophilus, the Arian Bishop of Beroea, and of Fortunatian, the temporizing Bishop of Aquileia. He was so far softened, by listening to flatteries and suggestions to which he ought to have stopped his ears with horror, that he yielded to the snare laid for him, to the great scandal of the Church. He subscribed to the condemnation of St. Athanasius and a confession or creed which had been framed by the Arians at Sirmium, though their heresy was not expressed in it; and he wrote to the Arian bishops of the East that he had received the true Catholic faith which many bishops had approved at Sirmium. The fall of so great a prelate and so illustrious a confessor is a terrifying example of human weakness, which no one can call to mind without trembling for himself. St. Peter fell by a presumptuous confidence in his own strength and resolution, that we may learn that everyone stands only by humility.11

According to A Catholic Dictionary of Theology (1971), "This unjust excommunication [of St. Athanasius] was a moral and not a doctrinal fault."12 Signing one of the "creeds" of Sirmium was far more serious (there is some dispute as to which one Liberius signed, probably the first). The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), describes it as "a document reprehensible from the point of view of the faith."13 Some Catholic apologists have attempted to prove that Liberius neither confirmed the excommunication of Athanasius nor subscribed to one of the formulae of Sirmium. But Cardinal Newman has no doubt that the fall of Liberius is an historical fact.14 This is also the case with the two modern works of reference just cited and the celebrated Catholic Dictionary, edited by Addis and Arnold. The last named points out that there is "a fourfold cord of evidence not easily broken," i. e., the testimonies of St. Athanasius, St. Hilary, Sozomen, and St. Jerome. It also notes that "all the accounts are at once independent of and consistent with each other."15

The New Catholic Encyclopedia concludes that:

Everything points to the fact that he [Liberius] accepted the first formula of Sirmium of 351...it failed gravely in deliberately avoiding the use of the most characteristic expression of the Nicene faith and in particular the homoousion. Thus while it cannot be said that Liberius taught false doctrine, it seems necessary to admit that, through weakness and fear, he did not do justice to the full truth.16

It is quite nonsensical for Protestant polemicists to cite the case of Liberius as an argument against papal infallibility. The excommunication of Athanasius (or of anyone else) is not an act involving infallibility, and the formula he signed contained nothing directly heretical. Nor was it an ex cathedra pronouncement intended to bind the whole Church, and, if it had been, the fact that Liberius acted under duress would have rendered it null and void.

However, despite the pressure to which he was submitted, Liberius' fall reveals a weakness of character when compared with those such as Athanasius, who did remain firm. Cardinal Newman comments:

His fall, which followed, scandalous as it is in itself, may yet be taken to illustrate the silent firmness of those others of his fellow-sufferers, of whom we hear less, because they bore themselves more consistently.17

This is a judgment with which the New Catholic Encyclopedia concurs:

Liberius did not have the strength of character of his predecessor Julius I, or of his successor Damasus I. The troubles that erupted upon the latter's election indicate that the Roman Church had been weakened from within as well as from without during the pontificate of Liberius. His name was not inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.18



Tradition Upheld by the Laity
The fall of Pope Liberius needs to be considered within the context of a failure by the vast majority of the episcopate to be faithful to its commission; only then can the full extent of the heroism of St. Athanasius be appreciated (together with a few other heroic bishops such as St. Hilary, who supported him faithfully). Cardinal Newman cites numerous Patristic testimonies to the abysmal state of the Church at that time. In Appendix V to the third edition of his Arians of the Fourth Century, we read:

A. D. 360. St. Gregory Nazianzen says, about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel by the influence of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance." (Orat. xxi. 24).

Cappadocia. St. Basil says, about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitude, with groans and tears to the Lord in heaven." Ep. 92. Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assemble in deserts, - a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part in the wicked Arian leaven." Ep. 242. Again: "Only one offense is now vigorously punished, - an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries, and transported into deserts." Ep. 243.

In this same appendix, the Cardinal also included an extract from an article he had written for the Rambler magazine in July 1859.19 The article dealt with the manner in which, during the Arian crisis, divine tradition had been upheld by the faithful more than by the episcopate. Three phrases in this article had been misinterpreted when first published, and Newman now took the opportunity of clarifying them in the appendix. The gist of these clarifications will be provided in footnotes. Here is Newman's assessment of the manner in which the laity, the Taught Church (Ecclesia docta), upheld the traditional faith rather than what is known today as the Magisterium or the Teaching Church (Ecclesia docens) - that is, the bishops united to the Roman Pontiff:

It is not a little remarkable, that, though historically speaking, the fourth century is the age of doctors, illustrated, as it is, by the Saints Athanasius, Hilary, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine (and all those saints [were] bishops also, except one), nevertheless in that very day the Divine tradition committed to the infallible Church was proclaimed and maintained far more by the faithful than by the episcopate.

Here, of course, I must explain: - in saying this then, undoubtedly I am not denying that the great body of the Bishops were in their internal belief orthodox; nor that there were numbers of clergy who stood by the laity and acted as their centres and guides; nor that the laity actually received the faith in the first instance from the Bishops and clergy: nor that some portions of the laity were ignorant and other portions were at length corrupted by the Arian teachers, who got possession of the sees, and ordained an heretical clergy: - but I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the divine dogma of Our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the Ecclesia docta than by the Ecclesia docens ; that the body of the Episcopate20 was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the Pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great sees, at other times general councils21 said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Eusebius of Vercellae, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them....

On the one hand, then, I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens.22 The body of bishops failed in their confession of the faith.



The True Voice of Tradition
What, then, are the lessons we can learn from the fall of Liberius, the triumph of Arianism, the witness of Athanasius, and the fortitude of the body of the faithful? Newman provides us with the answers, recognizing that what has happened once can happen again. In his July 1859 Rambler article, he wrote:

I see, then, in the Arian history, a palmary example of a state of the Church, during which, in order to know the tradition of the Apostles, we must have recourse to the faithful; for I fairly own, that if I go to writers, since I must adjust the letter of Justin, Clement, and Hippolytus with the Nicene Doctors, I get confused: and what revives me and reinstates me, as far as history goes, is the faith of the people. For I argue that, unless they had been catechized, as St. Hilary says, in the orthodox faith from the time of their baptism, they never could have had that horror, which they show, of the heterodox Arian doctrine. Their voice, then, is the voice of tradition....

It is also historically and doctrinally true, as Newman stressed in Appendix V to The Arians of the Fourth Century, "that a Pope, as a private doctor, and much more Bishops, when not teaching formally, may err, as we find they did err in the fourth century. Pope Liberius might sign a Eusebian formula at Sirmium, and the mass of Bishops at Ariminum or elsewhere, and yet they might in spite of this error, be infallible in their ex cathedra decisions."

Finally, what the history of this period proves is that, during a time of general apostasy, Christians who remain faithful to their traditional faith may have to worship outside the official churches, the churches of priests in communion with their lawfully appointed diocesan bishop, in order not to compromise that traditional faith; and that such Christians may have to look for truly Catholic teaching, leadership, and inspiration not to the bishops of their country as a body, not to the bishops of the world, not even to the Roman Pontiff, but to one heroic confessor whom the other bishops and the Roman Pontiff might have repudiated or even excommunicated. And how would they recognize that this solitary confessor was right and the Roman Pontiff and the body of the episcopate (not teaching infallibly) were wrong? The answer is that they would recognize in the teaching of this confessor what the faithful of the fourth century recognized in the teaching of Athanasius: the one true faith into which they had been baptized, in which they had been catechized, and which their confirmation gave them the obligation of upholding. In no sense whatsoever can such fidelity to tradition be compared with the Protestant practice of private judgment. The fourth-century Catholic traditionalists upheld Athanasius in his defense of the faith that had been handed down; the Protestant uses his private judgment to justify a breach with the traditional faith.

The truth of doctrinal teaching must be judged by its conformity to Tradition and not by the number or authority of those propagating it. Falsehood cannot become truth, no matter how many accept it. Writing in 371, St. Basil lamented the fact that:

The heresy long ago disseminated by that enemy of truth, Arius, grew to a shameless height and like a bitter root it is bearing its pernicious fruit and already gaining the upper hand since the standard-bearers of the true doctrine have been driven form the churches by defamation and insult and the authority they were vested with has been handed over to such as captivate the hearts of the simple in mind.23

But there will never be a time when the faithful who wholeheartedly wish to remain true to the Faith of their Fathers need have any doubt as to what the faith is. In the year 340 St. Athanasius wrote a letter to his brother bishops throughout the world, exhorting them to rise up and defend the faith against those he did not hesitate to stigmatize as "the evil-doers." What he wrote to them will apply until the end of time when God the Son comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead:

The Church has not just recently been given order and statutes. They were faithfully and soundly bestowed on it by the Fathers. Nor has the faith only just been established, but it has come to us from the Lord through His disciples. May what has been preserved in the Churches from the beginning to the present day not be abandoned in our time; may what has been entrusted into our keeping not be embezzled by us. Brethren, as custodians of God’s mysteries, let yourselves be roused into action on seeing all this despoiled by others.24

Footnotes

This appendix is available in an expanded version as a separate pamphlet published by The Remnant. It is available from The Angelus Press. Some of the works referred to in the notes have been abbreviated as follows:

AFC J. H. Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1876).
CD W. Addis and T. Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary (London, 1925).
CDT J. H. Crehan, ed., A Catholic Dictionary of Theology (London, 1971).
CE The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1913).
HH M. L. Cozens, A Handbook of Heresies (London, 1960), available from The Angelus Press.
NCE New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967).
PG Migne, Patrologia Graeca.

1. National Catholic Register, 2 March 1975.

2. The Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1878), p. 143.

3. Arius taught that Christ was the only being directly created by God and that having been created, He then created the rest of the universe on behalf of the Father. The rest of creation is, therefore, created directly by the Son and only indirectly by the Father.

4. HH, p. 34.

5. Arius taught that Christ was created before time began.

6. HH, pp. 35-36

7. HH, p.36.

8. AFC, p. 267.

9. AFC, p. 270.

10. E. John, ed., The Popes (London, 1964), p. 70.

11. A. Butler, The Lives of the Saints (London, 1934), II, p. 10.

12. CDT, III, 110, col. 2.

13. NCE, VIII, 715, col. 1.

14. AFC, p. 464.

15. CD, p. 522, col. 2.

16. NCE, VIII, 715, col. 2.

17. AFC, pp. 319-320.

18. NCE, VIII, 716, col. 2

19. The Rambler, Vol. I, new series, Part II, July 1859, pp. 198-230. This article had been written to refute criticisms of an unsigned article he had contributed to the May 1859 issue of The Rambler, of which he was editor.

20. Where Newman uses the term "body" he means "the great preponderance," the majority.

21. Newman is not referring to any of the recognized Ecumenical ("from the whole world") Councils of the Church, of which there were none in the period he is describing. He is referring to gatherings of bishops large enough to come under the classification of the Latin word generalia.

22. Newman explains that by "a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens" he means "that there was no authoritative utterance of the Church’s infallible voice in matters of fact between the Nicene Council, A. D. 325, and the Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381."

23. "Des heiligen Kirchenlehrers Basilius des Grossen ausgewählte Schriften," in Bibliothek der Kirchenväter (Kosel-Pustet, Munich, 1924), I, 121.

24. PG XXVII, col. 219.
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Edited May 14, 2014 by Nihil Obstat

[Credo in Deum]

y.

[Nihil Obstat]

Appendix II:
Part I: Robert Grosseteste, Pillar of the Papacy


[spoiler]
Part I

Robert Grosseteste: Pillar of the Papacy

The Redemptorist Christian Encounter is one of the most widely read Sunday bulletins circulating in Britain. Its issue of 11 May 1975 contained a short account of the life of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who was born in 1175, or thereabouts, and died in 1253. The fact that 1975 may mark the eight centenary of his birth could account for the article.

It is a matter for regret that the few brief details given in the bulletin will be all that most of its readers will ever learn of Bishop Grosseteste; most Catholics will not know this much and the majority would not even recognize his name. This is a pity as Robert Grosseteste is quite possibly the greatest Catholic the English Church has yet produced, not excluding St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More, or Cardinal Newman. He is also one of England's truly outstanding scholars, famous throughout the world for his learning and intellect.

Among the details given in Christian Encounter is the fact that as well as being a great scholar and a great reformer, Robert Grosseteste "might have been canonized if he hadn't opposed the papacy in matter of Church practice.” This, then, is the explanation of his neglect among English Catholics - he did not simply oppose the Pope but refused to obey a papal command. "I disobey, I contradict, I rebel,” was his answer to an order from the Pope which had been phrased carefully to exclude any legal loophole which might provide an excuse not to comply. As every theologian is aware, it is possible for a pope to fall into error and it is a matter of free debate among theologians as to what, if any, action could be taken in such case. What is interesting in the case of Robert Grosseteste is that heresy was not involved. He was not claiming to defend Catholic doctrine, but refusing to implement a practical directive from the Pope which he considered harmful to the Church. The first and natural reaction of the Catholic reader will be to say: "Then he must have been wrong." When the facts have been presented it would be surprising to find even one who would not say without any hesitation: "He was certainly right."

Robert Grosseteste was born in very humble circumstances in the village of Stow in Suffolk. He has been described as "a man of universal genius" by one of England's outstanding modern historians, Sir Maurice Powicke, formerly Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford.1 As a student he was considered a prodigy of remarkable efficiency in the liberal arts and of wide learning and dexterity in legal and medical matters. He was one of the first chancellors of Oxford University and, according to Professor Powicke, perhaps "the greatest of her sons" - a truly staggering tribute when the list of those sons is considered. Had he not been a churchman he would still have a world reputation as a natural scientist, a man with a truly scientific mind at whose clear-headedness and insight contemporary historians of science are bound to marvel. He knew Greek and Hebrew, was an outstanding student of the Greek Fathers, and was responsible for many translations and commentaries including the first complete Latin version of Aristotle's Ethics. Notes in his handwriting demonstrate his familiarity with such authors as Boethius, Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Ptolemy, and the Christian poets.2

Bishop Grosseteste was also a great biblical scholar, "an unwearied student of the Scriptures," in the words of a contemporary who disagreed with him profoundly on some issues.3 He had a most exalted view of the Bible and considered it to be the basis, the primary source for the spiritual formation of the clergy and their preaching and teaching. "All pastors after reciting the offices in Church," he ordered, "are to give themselves diligently to prayer and reading Holy Scripture, that by understanding of the Scripture they may give satisfaction to any who demand a reason concerning hope and faith. They should be so versed in the teaching of Scripture that by reading of it their prayer may be nourished, as it were, by daily food."4

He became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235 at the age of sixty. As bishop he was distinguished by the "conviction that the cure of souls directed by a responsible and singleminded episcopate must be the aim of ecclesiastical policy...."5 This has always been the aim of the great Catholic reformers such as Pope Gregory the Great, but even this saint could not have been more determined or more consistent than Robert Grosseteste in making the salvation of souls the guiding principle of all his policies and actions. He regarded this duty as a truly fearful responsibility which he hardly dared accept: "I, as soon as I became bishop, considered myself to be the over-seer and pastor of souls, and lest the blood of the sheep be required at my hand at the strict Judgement, to visit the sheep committed to my charge."6 He not only set himself the highest possible standards of pastoral solicitude but demanded the same high standards from all those subordinate to him and from his superiors in the Church, including the Pope himself. Needless to say, such an attitude was not calculated to win popularity. His principal aim was to achieve "the reformation of society by a reformed clergy.''7 He was famous throughout England for the severity of his visitations. Strict continency was required from the clergy; they must reside in their benefices; they must reach a required standard in learning; they must not take fees for enjoining penances or any other sacred ministration; directions are given regarding reverence in celebrating Mass and carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick; care must be taken that the Canon of the Mass is correctly transcribed; since the observance of the ten commandments is vital to the salvation of souls, they must be expounded to the people frequently; the divine office is to be recited in its entirety with devout attention to the meaning of the words so that there is a living offering and not a dead one; parish priests must be ready to visit the sick day or night lest anyone should die without the Sacraments; special attention must be given to the religious education of children; and, as was mentioned above, great stress was laid upon the importance of Holy Scripture. His objective was to "raise the standard of the clergy alike in their preaching and teaching as well as in their moral conduct."8 Bishop Grosseteste's concept of the pastoral ideal was set out in his famous "sermon" which he delivered in person at the Council of Lyons in 1250 at the age of seventy-five:

The pastoral charge does not consist merely in administering the sacraments, saying the canonical hours, celebrating Masses, but in the truthful teaching of the living truth, in the awe-inspiring condemnation of vice and severe punishment of it when necessary. It consists also in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, covering the naked, receiving guests, visiting the sick and those in prison, especially those who belong to the parish, who have a claim upon the endowments of their church. By the doing of these things is the people to be taught the holy duties of the active life.9

Another notable characteristic of Bishop Grosseteste was "his mystical veneration for the plenitude of papal power."10 This veneration for the pope's plenitude of power, plenitudo potestatis, is of paramount importance in considering his subsequent refusal to obey Pope Innocent IV. Attempts have been made to portray him as some sort of proto-Anglican, which may account for the fact that he is held in greater esteem in the Church of England than among English Catholics. The truth is that: "The most striking feature about Grosseteste's theory of the constitution and function of ecclesiastical hierarchy is his exaltation of the papacy. He was probably the most fervent and thoroughgoing papalist among medieval English writers."11 In 1239, in a discourse on the ecclesiastical hierarchy addressed to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, he wrote:

For this reason after the pattern of the ordinance made in the Old Testament, the Lord Pope has the fullness of power over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to waste and destroy, and to build and to plant....Samuel was like the sun of the people, among the people of Israel, just as the lord Pope is in the universal Church and every bishop in his diocese.12

For Robert Grosseteste:
The Vicar of Christ was the lynch pin upon which the whole fabric of the Church depended; but he was the Vicar of Christ and woe betide if he fell short of his awful responsibilities. Orthodox minds were more outspoken then they were in post-Tridentine days in their criticism of papal behavior.13

In a letter to a papal legate written in about 1237 he warns:

But God forbid, God forbid that this most Holy See and those who preside in it, who are commonly to be obeyed in all their commands, by commanding anything contrary to Christ's precepts and will, should be the cause of a falling away. God forbid that to any who are truly united to Christ, not willing to go in any way against His will, this See and those who preside in it should be a cause of falling away or apparent schism, by commanding such men to do what is opposed to Christ's will.14

Bishop Grosseteste regarded with horror even the idea of disobeying the legitimate use of any lawful authority in the Church or State. He considered us bound by God 's Commandments to honor and obey our spiritual parents even more than our earthly parents. He was fond of quoting the text that the sin of disobedience is the sin of witchcraft (1 Samuel 15:23).15 Obedience is the only response to legitimate authority exercising itself within its competence. But authority only exists within its limits, set by commission or delegation, and always by the law of God. There is no authority outside those limits - ultra vires - and the answer to an invocation of authority beyond them can be a refusal which is not disobedience but an affirmation that the person giving the command is abusing his power. To give an obvious example, Catholics are bound to obey the civil authority but when, under Elizabeth I, the government made assisting at Mass illegal, those Catholics who continued doing so were not disobedient. The government had exceeded its authority and was guilty of an abuse of power; a refusal to submit to abuse of power is not disobedience. Medieval political theory included the right of resistance to tyranny which was "imported into the domain of ecclesiastical polity."16 It is the common teaching of some of the greatest Catholic theologians that, in the words of Suarez, it is licit to resist the Pope "if he tried to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the common good."

Robert Grosseteste certainly believed that the Pope possessed the plenitude of power which he had the right to exercise freely; but he accepted the medieval view that this was not arbitrary power given to the Pope to use as he liked, but was an office entrusted to him and "instituted for the service of the whole Body."17 The Pope's power had been given to him for the cure of souls, to build up the Body of Christ and not to destroy it. He was the Vicar of Christ, not Christ Himself, and must exercise his power in accordance with the will of Christ and never in manifest opposition to it. God forbid, as he had said, that the Holy See should be the one cause of an apparent schism by commanding faithful Catholics to do what was contrary to Christ's will.

The issue which provoked Bishop Grosseteste's refusal to comply with what he considered to be an abuse of papal power was that of the papal provision of benefices. He was a man who would allow no compromise on a matter of principle and this was a question which could not have been more directly concerned with the cure of souls. Where he was concerned, there were two considerations which must come before all else when appointing a priest who was to be a true pastor of his people - the pastor must be spiritually worthy of his awe-inspiring office and must live among his flock. This will seem so obvious to a contemporary Catholic that it hardly needs stating, but at that time there were many who did not consider that the cure of souls was the only or even the prime function of a benefice. A system existed in which certain benefices came under the "patronage" of important figures in Church and State who were entitled to appoint their nominees when a vacancy occurred, subject to certain conditions. These patrons often used the livings they controlled to provide a source of income for men who would never even visit their flocks, let alone offer them any form of pastoral care. "It would be wrong to regard this system simply as an abuse; it must have seemed to contemporaries the only way of supporting the necessary bureaucracy in Church and State."18 It must be remembered that almost all the offices in what would now be considered as the state bureaucracy (a term which is not intended to be pejorative) were filled by clerics who had to get an income from somewhere. It is obvious that in both Church and State the Pope and King alike would find it more convenient if the incomes of these bureaucrats could be paid from a source other than their own pockets. But to Robert Grosseteste this was a perversion in the precise meaning of the term, "it reduced the pastoral care to a thing of secondary importance, whereas in his view only the best brains and energy available were good enough for the work of saving souls."19

The Bishop had:

...no hesitation in rejecting presentations to benefices, if those who were presented lacked the qualifications which he considered necessary for the cure of souls, whoever were the patrons, whether laymen, friends of his own, monastic bodies, or even in the last resort, as time went on, the Pope himself.20

A papal provision took the form of a request from the Pope to an ecclesiastic to appoint a papal nominee to a canonry, a prebend, or a benefice. The process began as a trickle, became a stream, and the stream a flood. Executors were appointed to insure that papal mandates were obeyed and this led to a great deal of subsidiary corruption; for example, they would use their authority to obtain benefices for their own friends or in return for a bribe. The papal nominees rarely resided in their benefices, could not speak the language of the country if they did, and spent most of their revenues in Italy. It was Robert Grosseteste's elevated concept of both the pastoral and papal office which led him to oppose such practices. He accepted that, in virtue of his plenitude of power, the Pope had the right to make nominations to benefices and where this right was properly exercised he was prepared to accept it.21 But both papal power and the provision to a benefice had one end - the salvation of souls. The Pope had been given the power to nominate men to pastoral offices only to build up the Body of Christ through the effective cure of souls; and how could the cure of souls be advanced by alien pastors, who never even saw their flocks and were interested only in the gold they could obtain from them? "Where Grosseteste showed his originality and clear-sightedness was in seeing this system of exploitation as one of the root causes of spiritual inefficiency."22 He was a man of genius and vision who thought not simply of the contemporary situation but of the future, and of the corrupting effect such a system must have upon the life of the Church, an insight which time proved to be only too accurate.

He resisted these papal provisions by every legitimate means at his disposal, particularly by the skillful use of Canon Law to defer the need to comply. In 1250, at the age of eighty, he made a journey to the papal court at Lyon and confronted the Pope in person.

He stood up alone, attended by nobody but his official Robert Marsh....Pope Innocent IV sat there with his cardinals and the members of his household to hear the most thorough and vehement attack that any great Pope can ever have heard at the height of his power.23

The gist of his accusation was that the Church was suffering because of the decline in pastoral care.

The pastoral office is straitened. And the source of the evil is to be found in the papal Curia, not merely in its indifference but in its dispensations and provisions of the pastoral care. It provides bad shepherds for the flock. What is the pastoral office? Its duties are numerous, and in particular include the duty of visitation....24

How an absentee pastor could visit his flock was something beyond even the Pope's power to explain! It is worth noting that, as in all things, Bishop Grosseteste taught by example as well as by precept and, in an unprecedented act, had resigned all his own prebends, but for the one in his own Cathedral Church of Lincoln, a step which evoked ridicule rather than respect from his more worldly contemporaries. "If I am more despicable in the eyes of the world," he wrote, "I am more acceptable to the citizens of heaven."25

Unfortunately his heroic visit to Lyon was of no avail, and it was heroic not simply for the manner in which he pointed out the failings of the Pope and his court to their faces, but for the very fact that a man of his age even undertook such an arduous journey under thirteenth-century conditions. The priorities of the Pope differed from those of the Bishop. Innocent IV had become dependent upon the system of papal provisions to maintain his Curia and to bribe allies to fight in his interminable wars with the Emperor Frederick II. His political ambitions took precedence over the cure of souls.

In 1253, the Pope nominated his own nephew, Frederick of Lavagna, to a vacant canonry in Lincoln Cathedral. The mandate ordering Bishop Grosseteste to appoint him was something of a legal masterpiece in which the careful use of non obstante clauses ruled out every legal ground for refusal or delay. This, then, was the Bishop's dilemma. He was faced with a perfectly legal command from the Sovereign Pontiff, which apparently must be obeyed, and yet the demand, though legal, was obviously immoral, a clear abuse of power. The Pope was using his office as Vicar of Christ in a sense quite contrary to the purpose for which it had been entrusted to him. The Bishop saw clearly that there is an important distinction between what a pope has a legal right to do and what he has a moral right to do. His response was a direct refusal to obey an order which constituted an abuse of authority. The Pope was acting ultra vires, beyond the limits of his authority, and hence his subjects were not bound to obey him.

It is of great importance to note that Robert Grosseteste made this stand not because he failed to appreciate or to respect the papal office but as a result of his exalted appreciation of and respect for papal authority.

In his attitude to the papacy Grosseteste was at once loyal and critical. It was just because he believed so passionately in the papal power that he hated to see it misused....If there had been more loyal and disinterested critics like Grosseteste, it would have been better for all concerned.26

Lesser men could and did acquiesce in what was wrong, using a facile concept of obedience as their justification. True loyalty does not consist in sycophancy, in telling a superior what he probably wants to hear, in using obedience as an excuse for a quiet life. Had there been more "loyal and disinterested critics" like Bishop Grosseteste, prepared to stand up to the Pope and tell him where his own policies or those of his advisors were wrong, then the Reformation might never have taken place. But men of courage and principle will always be the exception, even in the episcopate, as was made clear in England when the Reformation did come and only St. John Fisher made a stand for the Holy See.

Bishop Grosseteste refused to appoint Frederick of Lavagna to the canonry in Lincoln Cathedral. The letter in which he expressed most strongly his resistance to what he considered to be the unrighteous demands of the Pope was addressed to "Master Innocent," a papal secretary then resident in England. (Some historians have mistakenly concluded that the letter was addressed to Pope Innocent IV himself.) This is his answer to the papal mandate:

No faithful subject of the Holy See, no man who is not cut away by schism from the Body of Christ and the same Holy See, can submit to mandates, precepts, or any other demonstrations of this kind, no, not even if the authors were the most high body of angels. He must needs repudiate them and rebel against them with all his strength. Because of the obedience by which I am bound, and of my love of my union with the Holy See in the Body of Christ, as an obedient son I disobey, I contradict, I rebel. You cannot take action against me, for my every word and act is not rebellion but the filial honor due by God's command to father and mother. As I have said, the Apostolic See in its holiness cannot destroy, it can only build. This is what the plentitude of power means; it can do all things to edification. But these so-called provisions do not build up, they destroy. They cannot be the works of the blessed Apostolic See, for "flesh and blood," which do not possess the Kingdom of God "hath revealed them," not "our Father which is in heaven."27



Commenting on this letter in his study, Grosseteste's Relations With The Papacy and The Crown, W. A. Pantin writes:

There seem to be two lines of argument here. The first is that since the plenitudo potestatis exists for the purpose of edification and not destruction, any act which tends to the destruction or the ruin of souls cannot be a genuine exercise of the plenitudo potestatis....The second line of argument is that if the Pope, or anyone else, should command anything contrary to Divine Law, then it will be wrong to obey, and in the last resort, while protesting one's loyalty, one must refuse to obey. The fundamental problem was that while the Church's teaching is supernaturally guaranteed against error, the Church's ministers, from the Pope downwards, are not impeccable, and are capable of making wrong judgements or giving wrong commands.28

"You cannot take action against me," Bishop Grosseteste had warned - and events proved him to be correct. Innocent IV was beside himself with fury when he received the Bishop's letter. His first impulse was to order his "vassal the king" to imprison the old prelate - but his cardinals persuaded him to take no action.

"You must do nothing. It is true. We cannot condemn him. He is a Catholic and a holy man, a better man that we are. He has not got his equal among the prelates. All the French and English clergy know this and our contradiction would be of no avail. The truth of this letter which is probably known to many, might move many against us. He is esteemed as a great philosopher, learned in Greek and Latin literature, zealous for justice, a reader in the schools of theology, a preacher to the people, an active enemy of abuses."29

This account was written by a man who had no love for the bishop - Matthew Paris, executor of the mandate which Grosseteste had refused to implement. But Matthew recognized the greatness and sincerity of Robert Grosseteste and was stirred by it.

Innocent IV decided that the most prudent course would be to take no action and in that same year the aged Bishop of Lincoln died. Robert Grosseteste was a great scholar, a great Englishman, a universal genius, perhaps the greatest son of Oxford, and above all one of the greatest of all Catholic bishops, a true bonus pastor who would willingly have laid down his life for his flock.

He knew everybody and feared nobody. At King Henry's request he instructed him on the nature of an anointed king, and in so doing courteously reminded him of his responsibility for the maintenance of his subjects in peace and justice and of his duty to refrain from any interference with the cure of souls. He would allow no compromise on matters of principle. The common law of the land should be applied in the light of equity, the dictate of conscience, and the teaching of the natural law, as revealed in the Scriptures, implicit in the working of a Divine Providence, and conformable to the teaching and guidance of Christ in the Church Militant on earth.30

There were many reports of miracles at his tomb in Lincoln, which soon became a center of veneration and pilgrimage. Repeated attempts were made to secure his canonization; but these were met with little sympathy by the Holy See.31 His only rival as the greatest of all English bishops is St. John Fisher, whose loyalty and love for the Holy See certainly did not exceed that of Bishop Grosseteste. It is quite certain that had this thirteenth-century bishop occupied his see under Henry VIII he would have joined St. John Fisher on the scaffold and died for the Pope. It seems equally certain that had the bishop of Rochester lived during the pontificate of Innocent IV he would have joined Robert Grosseteste in opposing a flagrant abuse of papal power. Who knows, the saintly Bishop of Lincoln may yet be canonized.

Footnotes

The following works are referred to in the notes as indicated:

RG D. A. Callus, ed., Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1955).
KHLE F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward (Oxford, 1950).
RGBL M. Powicke, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, Vol. 35, No. 2, March 1953.
1. RGBL, p.482.

2. D. A. Callus, "Robert Grosseteste as Scholar," RG, pp. 1-69. A. C. Crobie, "Grosseteste's Position in the History of Science," RG, pp. 98-120. B. Smalley, "The Biblical Scholar" RG, pp. 70-97

3. Matthew Paris, executor of the papal mandate which Robert Grosseteste refused to implement, RG, p. 170.

4. RG, pp. 168-169.

5. KHLE, p. 287.

6. RG, p. 150.

7. RG, p. 85.

8. RG, p. 146ff.

9. RG, p. 170.

10. KHLE, p. 287.

11. RG, p. 183.

12. RG, p. 185.

13. RGBL, p. 503.

14. RG, p. 189.

15. RG, p. 188.

16. O. Gierke, Political Theory of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1968), p. 36.

17. Ibid.

18. RG, p. 181.

19. RG, p. 182.

20. RG, p. 158.

21. RG, pp. 158-159.

22. RG, p. 182.

23. RGBL, p. 504.

24. KHLE, p. 284.

25. RG, xix.

26. RG, p. 197.

27. KHLE, p. 286.

28. RG, pp. 190-191.

29. KHLE, p. 287.

30. RG, xxi.

31. E. W. Kemp, "The Attempted Canonization of Robert Grosseteste," RG, pp. 241-246.


 
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Edited May 14, 2014 by Nihil Obstat

[Nihil Obstat]

Appendix II,
Part II
 
The Right To Resist an Abuse of Power

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Part II

The Abuse of Ecclesiastical Power

According to Catholic theologians and canon lawyers, a prelate can abuse his position in a number of ways, which include the imposition of unjust laws or failure to guard and transmit the deposit of Faith, either by remaining silent in the face of heresy or even by teaching heresy himself. A Catholic has the right to refuse obedience in the first case and a duty to oppose the prelate in the second. Their consensus regarding law in general is that the legislator should not simply refrain from demanding something that his subjects would find impossible to carry out, but that laws should not be too difficult or distressing for those subjected to them. St. Thomas explains that, for a law to be just, it must conform to the demands of reason and have an effect which is both good and for the benefit of those for whom it is intended. A law can cease to bind without revocation on the part of the legislator when it is clearly harmful, impossible, or irrational.1 This is particularly true if a prelate commands anything contrary to divine precept. (Praelato non est obediendum contra praeceptum divinum.) In support of this teaching St. Thomas cites Acts 5:29: "We ought to obey God rather than men." He teaches that not only would the prelate err in giving such an order but that anyone obeying him would sin just as certainly as if he disobeyed a divine command. ("...ipse peccaret praecipiens, et ei obediens, quasi contra praeceptum Domini agens...").2

Dealing with the question as to whether subjects are bound to obey their superiors in all things he explains that: "Now sometimes the things commanded by a superior are against God. Therefore superiors are not to be obeyed in all things."3

Where a matter of faith is involved, resistance is not a right but a duty for the faithful Catholic. The only correct course of action is that taken by Eusebius and so highly praised by Dom Guéranger in his Liturgical Year:

On Christmas Day, 428, Nestorius (Patriarch of Constantinople), profiting from the immense crowd assembled to celebrate the birth of the Divine Child to Our Lady uttered this blasphemy from his episcopal throne: "Mary did not give birth to God; her son was only a man, the instrument of God."

At these words a tremor of horror passed through the multitude. The general indignation was voiced by Eusebius, a layman, who stood up in the crowd and protested. Soon a more detailed protest was drafted in the name of the members of the abandoned Church, and numerous copies spread far and wide, declaring anathema on whoever should dare to say that He Who was born of the Virgin Mary was other than the only begotten Son of God. This attitude not only safeguarded the Faith of the Eastern Church, but was praised alike by Popes and Councils. When the shepherd turns into a wolf the first duty of the flock is to defend itself. As a general rule, doctrine comes from the bishops to the faithful, and it is not for the faithful, who are subjects in the order of Faith, to pass judgment on their superiors. But every Christian, by virtue of his title to the name Christian, has not only the necessary knowledge of the essentials of the treasure of Revelation, but also the duty of safeguarding them. The principle is the same, whether it is a matter of belief or conduct, that is of dogma or morals. Treachery such as that of Nestorius is rare in the Church; but it can happen that, for one reason or another, pastors remain silent on essential matters of faith.

Dom Guéranger then insists that, when the Faith is compromised by someone in authority in the Church, the true Christian is the one who makes a stand for the truth rather than the one who does nothing under the specious pretext of submission to lawful authority.

To sum up what has been demonstrated so far, normally subjects must be obedient to lawful authority in Church and State but they have the right to resist harsh and harmful laws which do not contribute to the common good. They must never compromise the Faith under the pretext of obedience. "When the shepherd becomes the wolf the flock must defend itself."

Few Catholics concerned to uphold orthodoxy within the Church during these troubled times would dispute this. Catholics in English-speaking countries do not normally have to contend with shepherds who have actually become wolves but with shepherds who permit wolves to ravage their flocks, shepherds who condemn any of the sheep who have the temerity to complain. Such bishops are not the exception, they have become the norm. Dietrich von Hildebrand denounces them with the burning indignation of an Old Testatment prophet:

They either close their eyes and try, ostrich-style, to ignore the grievous abuses as well as appeals to their duty to intervene, or they fear to be attacked by the press or the mass-media and defamed as reactionary, narrow-minded, or medieval. They fear men more than God. The words of St. John Bosco apply to them: "The power of evil men lives on in the cowardice of the good."...One is forced to think of the hireling who abandons his flocks to the wolves when one reflects on the lethargy of so many bishops and superiors who, though still orthodox themselves, do not have the courage to intervene against the most flagrant heresies and abuses of all kinds in their dioceses or in their orders.4

Dr. von Hilderbrand is in perfect conformity with the authorities who have already been cited when he denies that the faithful have the duty of automatic obedience to their bishops in the present state of the Church. He shows with admirable clarity that the mark of a truly faithful Catholic can be a refusal to submit to heretical or compromising bishops.

Should the faithful at the time of the Arian heresy, for instance, in which the majority of the bishops were Arians, have limited themselves to being nice and obedient to the ordinances of these bishops, instead of battling heresy? Is not fidelity to the true teaching of the Church to be given priority over submission to the bishop? Is it not precisely by virtue of their obedience to the revealed truths which they received from the Magisterium of the Church, that the faithful offer resistance?...

The drivel of the heretics, both priests and laymen, is tolerated; the bishops tacitly acquiesce to the poisoning of the faithful. But they want to silence the faithful believers who take up the cause of orthodoxy, the very people who should by all rights be the joy of the bishops' hearts, their consolation, a source of strength for overcoming their own lethargy. Instead, these people are regarded as disturbers of the peace.5

"Is not fidelity to the true teaching of the Church to be given priority over submission to the bishop?" asks Dr. von Hildebrand. "Yes, it is," replies St. Thomas Aquinas together with every reputable theologian who has examined the subject. There can be very few faithful Catholics who would refuse to align themselves with St. Thomas and Dietrich von Hildebrand on this point - with one reservation. Many, if not most, would add the proviso: "Unless the bishop in question is the Bishop of Rome." Some are quite unwilling to admit, even to themselves, that an occasion could ever arise when a Catholic should justifiably refuse obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff. However sincere such people may be, they display a lamentable ignorance of Church history and Catholic theology.

Professor Marcel de Corte of the University of Liège can be ranked with Dr. von Hildebrand as one of the outstanding Catholic philosophers of our time. He has noted that the attitude of these Catholics towards the Pope is tantamount to the claim that he is inerrant, that his every decision, his every word, is divinely inspired, that he is, in fact, a divine oracle. Writing in the March 1977 issue of the Courrier de Rome he remarked:

For them it is as if the person of the Pope were, as such, infallible, and as if all his words, all his directives, all his judgments in all matters, even those foreign to religion, could never be subject to error, though the whole history of the Church protests against that conviction which is close to idolatry.

There have been Popes whose doctrine was near-heresy, Honorius and Liberius for example. There were others whose faith, hope and charity could hardly be perceived behind the disorders of their conduct. And there were some whose faults, stupidity, blunders, extravagances, and weaknesses in the government and administration of the Church were such that the divine organism entrusted to their care was more than once shaken. It is enough to read the twenty or so volumes of Ludwig von Pastor's History of the Popes to be convinced of that.

Few readers will possess this huge work but some will own the very scholarly one-volume work on the same subject, The Popes, edited by Eric John and published by Burns and Oates in 1964. It is only necessary to glance through the brief lives of the Popes in this book to find literally hundreds of examples of "faults, stupidity, blunders, extravagances, and weaknesses" among the Popes. A few of these examples will suffice to make the point:6

The pontificate of Pope Zosimus lasted for one year only, from 417-418.

His knowledge and prudence were insufficient for his task of governing the Church, and he was a weak man who blustered and yielded. Within a few days of consecration he conferred on Patroclus, Bishop of Aries, a usurper of the see, unscrupulous in his methods, what amounted to legatine authority over all the bishops of southern Gaul, and reprimanded them harshly when they defended their rights....Zosimus ordered the rehabilitation of an African priest, Apiarius, degraded by his bishop for his immoral life.

Pope Boniface II (530-532) attempted to nominate his successor, "an ambitious and unscrupulous deacon named Vigilius. His action, however, met with such general disapprobation that he rescinded the decree." Here is an example of a pope who was clearly in the wrong, who met with legitimate resistance, and eventually abandoned his misguided policy. Pope Zosimus had refused to budge when opposed on equally just grounds.

This did not prevent Vigilius from eventually obtaining the papacy. Pope St. Silverius was unjustly deposed in 537 and Vigilius elected in his place. St. Silverius was handed over "to Vigilius and his slaves. He was taken to the island of Palmaria where on 11 November his resignation was extorted. On 2 December 537 he died, a victim of ill use and starvation. The guilt of his death rests primarily on Vigilius. The Church honors him as a martyr."

After becoming Pope "letters frankly Monophysite7 addressed to the Monophysite bishops are attributed to Vigilius and reputable Catholic scholars believe in his authorship. In view of his shifty and unscrupulous character...we may be disposed to agree." The Emperor Justinian was anxious to reconcile his Monophysite subjects and hoped to achieve a compromise with them by condemning three authors of whom they did not approve. "These writings proposed for anathema were known as the 'Three Chapters.' Though the condemnation would not reject [the Council of] Chalcedon,8 it must derogate from its authority, and would therefore be a sop to the Monophysites." The Emperor wished Vigilius to condemn the Three Chapters. "A pitiful history of vacillation and evasion followed." One of the writings was a letter by a Bishop Ibas which had been read at Chalcedon and pronounced orthodox. A Council of Oriental bishops falsely claimed that the letter of Bishop Ibas was not the document read at Chalcedon. The Council excommunicated Pope Vigilius, who then surrendered. He "condemned the Chapters and even endorsed the Council's lie about Ibas' letter on pain of heresy for disputing it. It was perhaps the greatest humiliation in the history of the papacy."

Pope Honorius I (625-628), though orthodox in his personal belief, wrote letters which could be interpreted in a heretical sense. "The progress of the heresy [Monothelitism], the clear revelation of its character after Honorius' death, and the use made by the heretics of his approving letters, compelled the General Council of 680 to condemn Honorius along with the Patriarch Sergius. This condemnation was sustained by Pope Leo II and repeated by subsequent popes."

The case of Pope Honorius poses a particular problem for those who claim that the Pope is inerrant. If Honorius did not really favor heresy then Leo II erred in condemning him, but if Leo II did not err in his condemnation then Honorius was guilty of favoring heresy.

Pope Sergius II (904-911):

...certainly took the papacy by force, but he is customarily regarded as a legitimate pope. Legitimate he may have been but suitable he certainly was not....This unscrupulous man who ruled the Church so arrogantly held a Roman Council which overturned the acts of the Council of 898....the execration of some undoubted popes by this terrible man, were enough to cause scandal. Many of the better men of the day resisted and a bitter conflict arose.

Here is another example of good Catholics justly resisting a bad pope.

Pope John XII was "a scandal to the whole Church...John conducted himself in the manner of a layman, preferring hunting to church ceremonies, and largely indifferent to Church matters....It was said that he was struck with a paralysis while visiting his mistress. He died on 14 May 964, without confession or receiving the Sacraments."

Pope Alexander II (1061-1073) made a sincere effort to introduce much needed reforms into the Church. "Both in northern Italy, and to a lesser extent in England, reform had served as a cloak for dirty politics without the Pope realizing he was being used by men less scrupulous than himself."

St. Gregory VII (1073-1085) was able to humiliate the Emperor Henry IV "but it proved to be a political mistake."

Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) "commissioned a convert from heresy, the Dominican Robert le Bougre, a sadistic monster who was later burned himself, as his inquisitor in France."

A French pope, Martin IV (1281-1285) had served the King of France before Pope Urban IV called him to the Curia. "An ardent patriot, Martin IV was the devoted servant of Charles, and all else was now sacrificed to French interests. Charles was made a senator of Rome for life. Seven new cardinals were created, four of them Frenchmen. Those appointed to offices in the Papal States by the previous pope were now displaced in favor of Frenchmen."

Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404):

...increased the taxation of the Church and sold provisions and expectatives for ready cash. Indulgences were multiplied, to be gained by an offering of money with little regard paid to the essential spiritual conditions. In the year 1400 the Pope proclaimed a Holy Year and allowed would-be pilgrims to the shrines of Rome to forego the arduous journey for a sum roughly equivalent to what they would otherwise have spent. The bankers of Europe were called in to collect the offerings which they divided equally with the Pope. There can be little doubt that Boniface IX, who treated the whole business simply as a political problem, was guilty of simony on a massive scale.

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) had one dominating idea, "the desire to advance his family and obtain for it a leading position in Italy. Other popes had engaged in nepotism, some out of family loyalty and others from political considerations: but under him it became the chief influence in papal policy."

Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) was:

...a kindly and genial man [but] he lacked the personality and intellectual capacity for the office of pope. His morals were equally unsuitable, and he openly avowed his illegitimate children....To the open scandals caused by the pope's morals and policies - the advancement of his bastard Franceschotto, and his collaboration with the heathen - were added the results of corruption in the Curia. Administrative incompetence and the expenses of foreign policy in the early years of his pontificate led both to an increase in the sale of offices and to the creation of new posts in order that they might be sold. The number of papal secretaries was increased to twenty-six and the new posts sold for 62,400 ducats, while fifty-two Plumbatores were appointed to seal bulls, each of whom paid 2,500 ducats for his appointment.

Despite the fact that all these citations appear in an approved and highly praised work of Catholic scholarship, many Catholics will be shocked to read them. They reveal that men totally unsuited for the highest office to which a human being can rise have been elected to the office of Sovereign Pontiff. They reveal that popes have appointed unworthy officials; that popes have been deceived by unscrupulous men; that policies they initiated have done harm to the Church; that they have subordinated the good of the Church to political policies, to the interests of a particular country or their family. If true, these statements reveal that to be elected pope guarantees neither impeccability nor inerrancy. But as the Church has never taught that the pope is impeccable or inerrant, no Catholic should shirk facing up to the truth. Mention was made earlier of Baron von Pastor's History of the Popes. A most interesting article on this work appeared in the 19 July 1940 issue of The Commonweal, at that time one of the most reputable and orthodox publications in the English-speaking Catholic world. The first volume of Baron von Pastor's great work was published in 1886 - the last in 1933. The article in The Commonweal comments:

The circumstances of the time were favorable to Pastor. The nineteenth century had seen an unprecedented development of the historical sciences, and nowhere was this development more remarkable than in Germany, where Pastor was trained. Immense stores of authentic materials were made available to historians, and the publication of manuscripts and documents, of the fruits of individual and collective research, of historical monographs of every kind and of reviews which gave expression to the findings and opinions of every school of thought increased on all sides. Leo XIII gave further impetus to this movement when in 1883 he opened to historians the incomparable riches of the Vatican archives.

Pope Leo performed an even greater service by his letter on the study of history, in which he declared that the Church has nothing to fear from the truth and desires only that the truth be known. He reaffirmed the norms by which all sound historical scholarship must be guided; the first law of history is, "Never tell a lie," and the second, "Do not fear to tell the truth." It is understandable, though deplorable, that many who observe the first cannot bring themselves to fulfill the second. From this selective obedience arises the grave abuse by which history, maimed and distorted, is made the unprofitable servant of unsound apologetics. Cardinal Newman remarked that the endemic fidget about giving scandal is itself the greatest of scandals, and we may paraphrase his famous comment on literature by saying that we may expect a sinless history only from a sinless people.

Pastor's freedom from the criminal trait of accommodating his matter is an imperishable glory for Catholic historical readership and is surely not the least of the reasons for the esteem in which his work is held by Catholic and non-Catholic scholars alike.

Conservative Catholics who ignore the truth and insist that every decision of Pope Paul VI was divinely inspired cannot hope to be vindicated by history. For many centuries there was an unfortunate tendency for Catholic apologists to adapt the facts to suit the case. Thus Liberius neither signed one of the creeds of Sirmium nor confirmed the excommunication of St. Athanasius (see Appendix I); Honorius did not write the letter for which he was condemned - it was a forgery; Bishop Grosseteste did not write the letter denouncing Pope Innocent IV - it was also a forgery.

An ability to face up to the truth is a sign of a strong and informed faith. Had the Church taught that every pope is impeccably virtuous this could not be reconciled with the life of Pope Alexander VI - but as the Church has never taught that the popes are impeccable, Alexander VI may be a source of scandal but he is not an impediment to faith. It should never be forgotten that the first pope actually denied Our Lord - perhaps this was intended as a lesson and a warning to us. Certainly, not even the most dissolute of St. Peter's successors ever descended to the extent of denying Christ.

Professor de Corte comments:

One must have a very weak faith to be upset by this human side of the Church. One can, indeed, suffer in one's feelings; but the solidity, the Amen, of our response to the action of God in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church should never be damaged by it: God writes straight with crooked lines, says the Portugese proverb, He always draws good from evil; and we know from Scripture that the time of universal apostasy will be followed by the glory of eternity.

The epidemic of the kind of deification of the Pope which is raging, in different degrees, in Catholic souls, and which inclines them, again in different degrees, to an absolute obedience to his injunctions in any domain whatsoever, is relatively recent. The Middle Ages, for example, knew nothing of it. It certainly cannot be said that that period, the most brilliant in the history of Christianity, ever cast doubt on the spiritual primacy of the papacy in the order of faith. The struggles between the Empire and Rome, however violent they were, respected the fundamental principle of the Catholic faith. When Dante, with a sort of ferocity, put Boniface VIII, the Pope gloriously reigning at the time he wrote, into the abysses of Hell, in company with some of his predecessors, he did not, like Luther, condemn to a shameful execution the Papacy itself as the principal organ of the Church.

Professor de Corte has touched here upon what is perhaps the most important distinction to be made in this discussion - the distinction between schism and disobedience. This distinction is discussed in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique by no less a person than Fr. Yves Congar, O. P., an implacable critic of Mgr. Lefebvre and the traditionalist movement.9 Father Congar writes that schism involves a refusal to accept the existence of legitimate authority in the Church, e. g. Luther's rejection of the papacy to which Professor de Corte referred. Father Congar explains that the refusal to accept a decision of legitimate authority in a particular instance does not constitute schism but disobedience. A Catholic who misses Mass on Sunday without good cause is disobedient but not schismatic - and his disobedience constitutes a sin. But disobedience to an unlawful command, a refusal to submit to an abuse of power, can be meritorious. It was not Bishop Grosseteste who sinned in refusing to appoint the Pope's nephew as a canon of Lincoln Cathedral but the Pope who sinned by using offices intended for the cure of souls as a means of obtaining revenue for his relatives. But how can such a viewpoint be reconciled with the teaching of Pastor Aeternus, the dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council on the Church and particularly papal authority?

We teach and declare that, in the disposition of God, the Roman Church holds the pre-eminence of ordinary power over all the other churches; and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate. Regarding this jurisdiction, the shepherds of whatever rite and dignity and the faithful, individually and collectively, are bound by a duty of hierarchical subjection and of sincere obedience; and this not only in matters that pertain to faith and morals, but also in matters that pertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the whole world. When, therefore, this bond of unity with the Roman Pontiff is guarded both in government and in the profession of the same faith, then the Church of Christ is one flock under one supreme shepherd. This is the doctrine of Catholic truth; and no one can deviate from this without losing his faith and his salvation.10

In their zeal to uphold papal authority some Catholics interpret these words as if they invested the Sovereign pontiff with an authority which he has never possessed and could never possess. Probably without realizing it, they are claiming implicitly if not explicitly, that the Pope possesses absolute or arbitrary power, i.e. - that the Church has been placed at his disposal to be governed at his whim. But the authority of the Pope is neither absolute nor arbitrary - the idea that Pastor Aeternus might be interpreted in this manner was considered ridiculous during the debates of the First Vatican Council and attempts to include clauses intended to exclude such an interpretation were treated as absurd. One American Father, Bishop Verot of Savannah, proposed a canon stating: "If anyone says that the authority of the Pope in the Church is so full that he may dispose of everything by his mere whim, let him be anathema." He was told that the Fathers had not come to Rome "to hear buffooneries."11

Bishop Freppel of Angers (France) had been professor of theology at the Sorbonne and was one of the theologians who were called to Rome to prepare for the Council. During the debate on the Pope's power of jurisdiction he commented:

Absolutism is the principle of Ulpian in the Roman law, that the mere will of the prince is law. But who has ever said that the Roman Pontiff should govern the Church according to his sweet will, by his nod, by arbitrary power, by fancy, that is without the laws and canons? We all exclude mere arbitrary power; but we all assert full and pedect power. Is power arbitrary because it is supreme? Are civil governments arbitrary because they are supreme? Or a General Council confirmed by the Pope? Let all this confusion of ideas go! Let the genuine doctrine of the schema12 be accepted in its true, proper, genuine sense, without preposterous interpretations.13

Bishop Zinelli was Relator (Spokesman) for the Deputation of the Faith, the body charged with explaining the meaning of the schemas to the Fathers. In answer to the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch he explained that papal power was not absolutely monarchical because the form of Church government had been instituted by Christ and could not be abolished even by an ecumenical council. "And no one who is sane can say that either the Pope or the Ecumenical Council can destroy the episcopate or other things determined by divine law in the Church."14

If the power of the Pope is neither absolute nor arbitrary it must obviously be limited. The most obvious and most important limitation upon the plenitude of papal power (plenitudo potestatis), mentioned on a number of occasions during the debates of the First Vatican Council, is no less than that upon which Bishop Grosseteste based his refusal to obey Pope Innocent IV:

As I have said, the Apostolic See in its holiness cannot destroy, it can only build. This is what the plentitude of power means; it can do all things to edification. But these so-called provisions do not build up, they destroy (see p. 389).

This is precisely the point made by Bishop d’Avanzo of Calvi, another spokeman for the Deputation of the Faith, during the Vatican I debate on papal authority:

Therefore Peter has as much power as the Lord has given to him, not for the destruction, but for the building up of the Body of Christ that is the Church.15

Sylvester Prierias was a prominent Dominican opponent of Martin Luther and defended papal authority in his Dialogus de Potestate Papae (1517). He accepted that the Pope could abuse his position and used the terminology of Bishop Grosseteste - that the Pope possessed his power only to build, not to destroy:

Thus, were he to wish to distribute the Church’s wealth, or Peter’s Patrimony among his own relatives; were he to wish to destroy the Church or to commit an act of similar magnitude, there would be a duty to prevent him, and likewise an obligation to oppose him and resist him. The reason being that he does not possess power in order to destroy, and thus it follows that if he is doing so it is lawful to oppose him.

Sufficient evidence has already been presented to make it clear that Pastor Aeternus does not oblige Catholics to accept that the Popes has absolute or arbitrary power, or that all legislation which he promulgates in accordance with prescribed legal norms must necessarily be above criticism. Doctrinal teaching promulgated with the Pope’s infallible teaching authority comes into a special category and every Catholic is bound to give it full internal and external consent.

Commenting on the possibility of a conflict between conscience and papal authority, Cardinal Newman explains:

Next, I observe that, conscience being a practical dictate, a collision is possible between it and the Pope’s authority only when the Pope legislates, or give particular orders, and the like. But a pope is not infallible in his laws, nor in his commands, nor in his acts of State, nor in his administration, nor in his public policy.16

Opposition to any papal command is not something to be contemplated lightly. Indeed, it would be better to err in the direction of unthinking and unqualified obedience than to adopt the Modernist attitude of submitting every papal decision to our personal judgment. Cardinal Newman warns:

If in a particular case it (conscience) is to be taken as a sacred and sovereign monitor, its dictate, in order to prevail against the voice of the Pope, must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question. And further, obedience to the Pope is what is called "in possession”; that is, the onus probandi of establishing a case against him lies, as in all cases of exception, on the side of conscience. Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the Papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and would commit a great sin in disobeying it. Prima facie it is his bounden duty, even from a sentiment of loyalty, to believe the Pope right and to act accordingly.17

This is an admonition which traditionalists should always keep in the forefront of their minds. There can be no source of action which a Catholic should undertake with more fear and trembling than that of disobeying a papal command. Such an act can only be prompted by the certainly that to obey the Pope would be to disobey God ("We ought to obey God rather than men " [Acts 5 :29] ).

Cardinal Newman stresses that if a man is sincerely convinced that "what his superior commands is displeasing to God, he is bound not to obey."18 He adds that:

The word "Superior" certainly includes the Pope; Cardinal Jacobatius brings out this point clearly in his authoritative work on Councils, which is contained in Labbe's collection, introducing the Pope by name: "If it were doubtful," he says, "whether a precept (of the Pope) be a sin or not, we must determine thus: that, if he to whom the precept is addressed has a conscientious sense that it is a sin and injustice, first it is his duty to put off that sense; but, if he cannot, nor conform himself to the judgment of the Pope, in that case it is his duty to follow his own private conscience, and patiently to bear it if the Pope punishes him." - lib. iv. p. 241.19

It was in this context that Newman remarked:

Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink -to the Pope, if you please, - still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.20



A Distinction: Legal and Moral Norms

The above sub-title appears on page 394 of Karl Rahner's book Studies in Modern Theology which was published in English in 1965. Father Rahner makes an important distinction between what is legally valid and what is morally valid. He cites an example of a papal act which would be legally valid but morally illicit which has some similarity to the case of Bishop Grosseteste and Innocent IV.

Take the case of a pope's deposing a competent and pious bishop without any objective reason, merely in order to promote one of his relatives to the post. It could hardly be proved that such a deposition is legally invalid. There is no court of appeal before which the Pope and his measure could be cited. The Pope alone has the competence of competence, that is, he alone judges in the last juridical instance on earth whether in a given act he has observed those norms by which in his own view that act is to be judged. But for all the unassailable legal validity of such a measure, such a deposition would be immoral and an actual offense against the divine right of the episcopate, though not an offense extending to the proper sphere of doctrine.

One hundred years ago, in May 1879, Joseph Hergenröther was created Cardinal together with John Henry Newman. The Cardinal, one of the greatest theologians of his time, was called to Rome to assist in the preparatory work for the First Vatican Council. He was acknowledged as one of the most effective apologists for and interpreters of the Council. Pope Pius IX was one of his most fervent admirers. Cardinal Hergenröther made it quite clear that by no stretch of the imagination could the powers of jurisdiction ascribed to the Pope by the Council be considered as arbitrary or unrestricted.

The Pope is circumscribed by the consciousness of the necessity of making a righteous and beneficent use of the duties attached to his privileges....He is also circumscribed by the respect due to General Councils and to ancient statutes and customs, by the rights of bishops, by his relation with civil powers, by the traditional mild tone of government indicated by the aim of the institution of the papacy - to "feed" - and finally by the respect indispensable in a spiritual power towards the spirit and mind of nations.21

Cardinal Hergenröther's reference to ancient customs is very peninent to the refusal of Mgr. Lefebvre and traditionalists in general to accept the New Mass. Cardinal Jean de Torquemada22 was the most influential champion of the papal primacy in the fifteenth century. His Summa de Ecclesia (1489) is a systematic treatise on the Church, defending the infallibility and plenitude of papal power. This work forms the basis of the arguments of the most notable defenders of the primacy up to the First Vatican Council - such theologians as Domenico Jacobazzi and Cajetan, Melchior Cano, Suarez, Gregory of Valencia, and Bellarmine. Cardinal Torquemada taught that the Pope could become a schismatic by breaking with tradition, particularly with respect to worship:

The Pope can separate himself without reason purely by his wilfulness from the body of the Church and from the college of priests by not observing what the universal Church by apostolic tradition observes...or by non-observance of what was ordered universally by the universal councils or by the Apostolic See, especially in respect to the divine cult if he does not want to observe what concerns the universal rite of the Church's worship.23

Similarly, the wholesale reversal of traditional customs and ceremonies could, in the opinion of Francisco de Suarez (1548-1617), result in the Pope actually becoming a schismatic. Suarez is usually considered the greatest Jesuit theologian and was called by Pope Paul V "Doctor eximius et pius. " For Suarez, schism, in the specifically theological sense, is a cleavage in the one Church. This need not involve formal heresy but can include one who retains the faith but in his actions and conduct is unwilling to maintain the unity of the Church. Suarez writes:

The Pope can be a schismatic if he does not want to have union and bond with the whole body of the Church, as he should, if he attempts to excommunicate the whole Church, or if he wants to abolish all ecclesiastical ceremonies, which are confirmed by apostolic tradition as Cajetan remarks.24

It is an indisputable fact that never in the history of the Church has any Pope presided over so wholesale an abolition of traditional customs and ceremonies as Pope Paul VI. The only comparable revolution was that of the Protestant Reformation - but this was done by men who were openly acting outside the unity of the Church.

Father Rahner also uses a similar example to illustrate a morally illicit papal act:

Imagine that the Pope, as supreme pastor of the Church, issued a decree today requiring all the uniate churches of the Near East to give up their Oriental liturgy and adopt the Latin rite....The Pope would not exceed the competence of his jurisdictional primacy by such a decree, but the decree would be legally valid.

But we can also pose an entirely different question. Would it be morally licit for the Pope to issue such a decree? Any reasonable man and any true Christian would have to answer "no." Any confessor of the Pope would have to tell him that in the concrete situation of the Church today such a decree, despite its legal validity, would be subjectively and objectively an extremely grave moral offense against charity, against the unity of the Church rightly understood (which does not demand uniformity), against possible reunion of the Orthodox with the Roman Catholic Church, etc., a mortal sin from which the Pope could be absolved only if he revoked the decree.

From this example one can readily gather the heart of the matter. It can, of course, be worked out more fundamentally and abstractly in a theological demonstration:

1. The exercise of papal jurisdictional primacy remains even when it is legal, subject to moral norms, which are not necessarily satisfied merely because a given act of jurisdiction is legal. Even an act of jurisdiction which legally binds its subjects can offend against moral principles.

2. To point out and protest against the possible infringement against moral norms of an act which must respect these norms is not to deny or question the legal competence of the man possessing the jurisdiction.25 26



Father Rahner asserts that "there can be a right and even a duty to protest" against a morally illicit act "even where the legality of an act of ecclesiastical authority cannot be questioned." He refrains from discussing the nature such a protest might take but censures in the most scathing terms those who insist that any act of an ecclesiastical superior, the Pope included, cannot be contested if legally valid. (Note that this was written before 1965.) His indictment can be applied directly to those conservative Catholics who attack traditionalists simply because they oppose legally valid papal legislation. It would be a different matter if they contested the grounds upon which traditionalists protest, e. g. it is a matter for debate as to whether the New Mass constitutes a break with tradition, has compromised true Eucharistic doctrine, and leads to liturgical abuse, etc. But when they deny that a Catholic ever has the right to contest any legally valid papal act there is no room for debate. Such an assertion is nonsensical: there is nothing to discuss.27

Has the example of papal interference with liturgical custom, chosen by Fathers Rahner and Suarez, ever been applied in practice? The answer is "yes," and on at least two occasions. During the pontificate of St. Victor (189-198) a dispute arose due to the fact that some Asiatic Christians did not conform their system for reckoning the date of Easter to that of Rome, with the result that Easter was celebrated on different days in different parts of the Church.

Victor bade the Asiatic Churches conform to the custom of the rest of the Church, but was met with determined resistance by Polycrates of Ephesus, who claimed that their custom derived from St. John himself. Victor replied with excommunication. St. Irenaeus, however, intervened, exhorting Victor not to cut off whole Churches on account of a point which was not a matter of faith. He assumes that the Pope can exercise the power but urges him not to do so. Similarly the resistance of the Asiatic bishops involved no denial of the supremacy of Rome. It indicates solely that the bishops believed St. Victor to be abusing his power in bidding them renounce a custom for which they had apostolic authority....Saint Victor, seeing that more harm than good would come from insistence, withdrew the imposed penalty.28


Similarly, a number of Popes including Nicholas II, St. Gregory VII, and Eugenius IV attempted to impose the Roman rite upon the people of Milan. The Milanese even went to the extent of taking up arms in defense of their traditional liturgy (the Ambrosian rite) and they eventually prevailed. As a rite with a prescription of two centuries it was not affected by the promulgation of Quo Primum in 1570. 29 30

Pope John XXII actually taught heresy in his capacity as a private doctor. (Many papal utterances express no more than the personal opinion of the Pope and do not involve the teaching authority of the Church.) Pope John XXII taught that there was no particular judgment; that the souls of the just do not enjoy the beatific vision immediately; that the wicked are not at once eternally damned; and that all await the judgment of God on the Last Day. The Pope was denounced as a heretic by some Franciscans and then appointed a commission of theologians to examine the question. The commission found that the Pope was in error and he made a public recantation.31

One of the most serious cases of papal error was that of Pope Sixtus V. This well-meaning pontiff considered himself to be a biblical scholar and Latinist of no small ability and decided to intervene personally in the revision of the Vulgate which had been ordered by the Council of Trent.

Sixtus V, though unskilled in this branch of criticism, had introduced alterations of his own, all for the worse. He had even gone so far as to have an impression of this vitiated edition printed and partially distributed, together with the proposed Bull enforcing its use. He died, however, before the actual promulgation and his immediate successors at once proceeded to remove the blunders and call in the defective impression.32



The Rebuke at Antioch

St. Paul's rebuke to St. Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2) provides a classic example of an occasion when the Pope himself needs to be corrected. Peter's behavior in not eating with the Gentile converts was not in conformity with his own convictions or the truth of the Gospel. He was also endangering both the liberty of the Gentiles and the Jews from the Mosaic Law and, although not guilty of doctrinal error, he was, at the least, exerting moral pressure on behalf of the Judaizers.33 St. Thomas comments:

If the Faith be in imminent peril, prelates ought to be accused by their subjects, even in public. Thus, St. Paul, who was the subject of St. Peter, called him to task in public because of the impending danger of scandal concerning a point of Faith. As the Glossary to St. Augustine puts it: "St. Peter himself set an example for those who rule, to the effect that if they ever stray from the straight path they are not to feel that anyone is unworthy of correcting them, even if such a person be one of their subjects."34

To quote Suarez again:
If [the Pope] lays down an order contrary to right customs one does not have to obey him; if he tries to do something manifestly opposed to justice and to the common good, it would be licit to resist him; if he attacks by force, he could be repelled by force, with the moderation characteristic of a good defense.35

Vitoria, his Dominican counterpart, writes: "If the Pope by his orders and his acts destroys the Church, one can resist him and impede the execution of his commands."36

Saint Robert Bellarmine considers that:

Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff who attacks the body, so also is it licit to resist him who attacks souls or destroys the civil order, or above all tries to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and by impeding the execution of his will; it is not licit, however, to judge him, to punish him, or depose him, for these are acts proper to a superior.37

Sufficient should now have been written to indicate that the right to resist the Pope has a solid foundation in Catholic theology although the circumstances which could justify such resistance would have to be of the utmost gravity. To repeat a citation by Cardinal Newman: "Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the papal injunction, he is bound to obey it." The object of this appendix is limited to proving that under extraordinary circumstances a Catholic can have not simply the right but the duty to disobey the Pope. A related topic is that of the deposition of a heretical pope. It will be dealt with only briefly here.

Writing in The Tablet in 1965, Abbot (now Bishop) B. C. Butler posed the question as to the source of authority in the Church "if the Pope has disenfranchised himself by public heresy? Where at such a time is hierarchical authority? Where is the authority that can, not indeed depose a pope (no human authority can depose a pope), but declare that the soi-disant pope has lost his powers whether by heresy, schism, or lunacy?"38

It will be noted that Bishop Butler phrased his question carefully. He does not suggest that any authority on earth could either judge or depose the Pope but asks whether there is any authority competent to declare that the Pope has lost his powers. The First Vatican Council taught that: "They err from the right path of truth who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman Pontiffs to an Ecumenical Council, as to an authority higher than that of the Roman Pontiff."39 Canon Law states clearly: Prima sedes a nomine iudicatur - "The first see can be judged by no one." (Canon 1556) On the other hand Canon 2314 states that: "All apostates from the Christian faith, and all heretics and schismatics: (1) are ipso facto excommunicated; (2) if after due warning they fail to amend, they are to be deprived of any benefice, dignity, pension, office, or other position which they may have in the Church, they are to be declared infamous, and clerics after a repetition of the warning are to be deposed."

Clearly, if the Pope came into one of these categories he would incur the appropriate penalty - as a cleric he would be deposed but who could depose him as he has no superior? Theologians have answered this question in two ways. One school of thought, represented by St. Robert Bellarmine, taught that a heretical pope would be judged by God and cease per se to be pope: "The manifestly heretical pope ceases per se to be pope and head as he ceases per se to be a Christian and member of the Church, and therefore he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the early Fathers."40 The man the Church would be judging and punishing would not be the Pope, he would not even be a Catholic.

This is also the view taken in the classic manual on Canon Law by F. X. Wernz, rector of the Gregorian University and Jesuit General from 1906 to 1914. His work was revised by P. Vidal and last republished in 1952.41

The fact that the Pope had been deposed by God for heresy would need to be made known to the Church. This could be done by the declaration of a General Council. Cardinal Torquemada makes it clear that the Pope would not actually be judged by the Council - a Council cannot judge a pope nor is there any appeal from a pope to a Council. It would be a "declaratory sentence," a declaration that the Pope has lost his office through heresy or schism. "Properly speaking, the Pope is not deposed by the Council because of heresy but rather he is declared not to be pope since he fell openly into heresy and remains obstinate and hardened in heresy."42

Wernz-Vidal explain the position in very similar terms, i. e. the Pope is not deposed in virtue of the sentence of the Council but "the General Council declares the fact of the crime by which the heretical pope has separated himself from the Church and deprived himself of his dignity."43

In other words, the sentence merely declares publicly that the Pope has already been deposed: it is not the sentence which deposes him.

An important group of theologians including Cajetan, Suarez, and two Spanish Dominicans who were prominent in the debates at the Council of Trent - Melchior Cano and Dominic Soto, held a contrary view which was that it was the sentence of the Council which deprived the Pope of his office. This view does not appear tenable subsequent to the teaching of Vatican I which has already been cited, i. e. that there is no appeal from the judgment of a pope to a General Council. However, even the view that the General Council does not depose the Pope, but merely declares him to be deposed, raises extremely difficult problems. Who would summon a General Council since this is the prerogative of the Pope? What if the Pope could be persuaded to summon it but then refused to accept its decision? Fortunately, Pope John XXII submitted to the commission of theologians which declared his views on the Judgment to be heretical. Sixtus V died before his erroneous version of the Vulgate could be promulgated. The hypothesis of a heretical pope who either refused to summon a Council or or refused to submit to its judgment, and did not die in the opportune manner of Pope Sixtus V, is one which would give even the very best theologians a great deal of food for thought. No attempt will be made to solve it here as it is only a hypothesis. The purpose of raising the matter of a papal deposition is to demonstrate that not only is it quite legitimate to resist the Pope if he is using his power to destroy the Church but that the far more serious step of actually deposing the Pope has been a matter for free debate among theologians.



Conclusion

The only possible conclusion to be drawn from the evidence provided in this appendix is that a Catholic has the right and sometimes the duty to oppose papal teaching or legislation which is manifestly unjust, contrary to the faith, or harmful to the Church. Such resistance has occurred during the history of the Church. Such a refusal could only be justified in the most exceptional circumstances when the fact that the subject was right and the Pope was wrong was just not probable but manifest. The conditions which Cardinal Newman set out as necessary preparation for such resistance should be observed stringently.

History must decide whether Archbishop Lefebvre had sufficient grounds for his refusal to obey Pope Paul VI. In the case of Bishop Robert Grosseteste there can be no reasonable doubt but that he was right and Pope Innocent IV wrong. What has happened once can always happen again and we can say with the saintly English Bishop, and in perfect loyalty to the Holy See: "God forbid that to any who are truly united to Christ, not willing in any way to go against His will, this See and those who preside in it should be a cause of falling away or apparent schism, by commanding such men to do what is opposed to Christ's will."



Footnotes

1. A comprehensive selection of citations from all the principal authorities is provided in an article by Fr. Raymond Dulac in the Courrier de Rome, No. 15, to which full acknowledgment is given.

2. ST, II-II, Q. XXXXIII, a. VII, ad. 5.

3. ST, II-II, Q.CIV, art.V, ad. 3.

4. The Devastated Vineyard (Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), pp. 3-4.

5. Ibid., p. 5.

6. References are not provided for these quotations as they can all be found in the accounts of the lives of the Popes to whom they refer.

7. Monophysitism: The doctrine that in the Person of the Incarnate Christ there was but a single Divine Nature, as against the orthodox teaching of a double Nature, Divine and Human, after the Incarnation.

8. The Council of Chalcedon (451) condemned those who deny the title Theotokos ('God-bearer') to Our Lady. A denial of this title implied that the Humanity of Christ is separable from His Divine Person. It also condemned those who denied any distinction between Our Lord's Divine and Human natures. Catholic teaching is that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is one Divine Person with two natures, Divine and Human.

9. Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, XIV, 1303, col.2.

10. Denzinger, 1827.

11. C. Butler, The Vatican Council (London, 1930), II, 80.

12. Preparatory document which the Fathers could discuss and amend.

13. Ibid., pp. 84-85.

14. J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissa collectio (Paris, 1857-1927), LII, 715.

15. Ibid.

16. Difficulties of Anglicans (London, 1876), p. 256.

17. Ibid., pp. 257-258.

18. Ibid., pp. 260-261.

19. Ibid., p. 261.

20. Ibid.

21. CE, XII, 269-270.

22. Uncle of Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor.

23. Summa de Ecclesia (Venice, 1560), lib. iv, para. ii, cap. 11.

24. De charitate, Disputatio XII de schismate, sectio I (Opera Omnia, Paris, 1858), 12, 733ff.

25. Father Rahner is here making the same point to be found in Father Congar’s article on schism in Le Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, i. e. that to question the use made of authority in a particular instance without denying or rejecting that authority does not constitute schism.

26. K. Rahner, Studies in Modem Theology (Herder, 1965), pp. 394-395.

27. Ibid., p. 397.

28. CE, XII, 263, col. 2.

29. Sadly, it was "reformed” on the lines of the Roman Rite after Vatican II but whether or not its traditional character has been destroyed I am unable to say.

30. CE, I, 395, col. 2.

31. E. John, The Popes (London, 1964), p. 253.

32. CE, II, 412, col. 1.

33. A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (London, 1953), p. 1116.

34. ST, II-II, Q. XXXIII, art. VII, ad. 5.

35. De Fide, disp. X, sect. VI, n. 16.

36. Obras de Francisco de Vitoria, pp. 486-487.

37. De Summo pontifice (Paris, 1870), lib. II, cap. 29.

38. The Tablet, 11 September 1965, p. 996.

39. D. 1830.

40. Bellarmine, De Summo pontifice, n. 30, lib. II, cap. 30.

41. Wernz-Vidal, Jus Canonicum (Rome, 1952).

42. Summa de Ecclesia, n. 18, lib. II, cap. 102.

43. Wernz-Vidal, Jus Canonicum (Rome, 1943), II, 518.

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