Sacred Origins of Profound Things, page 62
In this century, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have been unanimously adamant in their rejection of the papal claims to primacy (that only bishops of Rome are direct successors of Saint Peter) and infallibility.
The schism between the Latin and Greek Churches occurred in 1054, when papal leadership in the Church was replaced by papal monarchy over the Church, when Rome began to exercise the muscle of plentitudo potestatis, “full authority.” The split was deepened when the bishop of Rome began to sell indulgences and benefices (Church offices and titles for a fee) in order to support the burgeoning army of bureaucrats at Rome. And promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility in July of 1870 only rubbed salt in long-festering wounds.
Most Christian denominations argue that by the word “rock” Christ meant himself; upon himself he founded his Church—not upon Saint Peter and all his successors who happened to reside in Rome.
This idea might be shocking—or blatant sacrilege—to most Roman Catholics. But the truth is, the great fathers of the Church—Cyprian, Origen, Cyril, Hilary, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine—all viewed Christ as the Rock on which the Church rests. It is Peter’s faith that Christ elsewhere refers to as “stone” or “rock.”
Furthermore, all the councils of the Church—Ecumenical Councils (those summoned by civil power; language, Greek) and General Councils (summoned by popes; language, Latin) from Nicaea in the fourth century to Constance in the fifteenth century: Nicaea I (325 C.E.) and II (787); Constantinople I (381), II (553), III (680), and IV (869); Ephesus (431); Chalcedon (451); Lateran I (1123), II (1139), III (1179), and IV (1215); Lyons I (1245) and II (1274); Vienne (1311); Constance (1414–18)—agreed that Christ himself is the only foundation of the Church, not any human mortal.
As mentioned earlier, the modern-day attitudes of papal primacy and infallibility gradually took hold in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—paving the way for the nineteenth-century dogma of inerrancy when a pope speaks “from the chair of Peter,” ex cathedra.
DOGMA OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY: JULY 1870
Papal infallibility was officially granted to Pius IX and his successors in July of 1870, but the seeds were sown sixteen years earlier: on December 8, 1854. That’s when Pius IX, exerting extraordinary authority, defined as dogma Mary’s Immaculate Conception in his bull Ineffabilis Deus.
As the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Talbot, confided to a friend: “The most important thing is not the new dogma, but the way it is proclaimed.” Essentially, through papal infallibility. For while the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had received enthusiastic support from bishops of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, bishops from other countries did not embrace it. They preferred to allow Catholics to believe whatever they wished about Mary’s conception with or without original sin.
As we saw earlier, until the twelfth century, Christians took for granted that Mary was conceived in original sin. Pope Gregory the Great, Peter’s sixty-third successor, in the late sixth century stated emphatically: “Christ alone was conceived without sin.” He, and other popes, believed that the sex act always involved sin. Mary was conceived through sex, and therefore in sin. The Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches never altered in this belief.
With the Immaculate Conception as dogma, no Catholic’s soul could be saved without embracing the concept 100 percent. This is what had many bishops uncomfortable.
Pius IX was a very political man. He’d floated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 as a pilot balloon for the upcoming definition of papal infallibility.
Why, after all these centuries, was it suddenly necessary to dogmatize so controversial an idea as infallibility?
BISHOPS SUMMONED TO ROME. Pius IX knew when he took office in the late 1840s that the days of the Papal States were numbered. In fact, no sooner did he become pope than a temporary republic was set up in Rome. Italy was coalescing into a country. Papal States would soon be forcibly annexed to burgeon the boarders of the new Kingdom of Italy.
Feeling himself stripped of temporal power, Pius IX moved to exploit his spiritual authority. The government could take away his jurisdiction over lands, but not over souls. He’d already tested the waters. Sixteen years earlier, he’d passed as dogma an idea that did not have the full support of the world’s bishops. And they’d done nothing to stop him.
Thus, when the bishops were summoned to Rome in 1869 for the First Vatican Council, many were wary.
Most ominously, the date the pope chose to open the First Vatican Council was December 8, the anniversary of his papal definition of the Immaculate Conception. The bishops knew what they were going to be asked to vote on this time. Papal infallibility. They feared a schism in the Roman Catholic Church.
There might be scriptural evidence to support the infallibility of Christ’s Church, as most Christians believed, but not to support the infallibility of its human head. As Cardinal Manning of Westminster moaned: “Oh, the dogma must overcome history.”
And that popular catechism in the United States—the one that blamed “Protestant invention” for the widespread Catholic assumption that popes were infallible—would have to be burned. To its question “Must not Catholics believe the pope himself to be infallible?” the new answer was going to be: “Now they must. By Catholic invention.”
BISHOPS ASKED TO VOTE. As the day of the vote on infallibility approached, many bishops became conveniently sick and left Rome. On the actual day of the session, many more bishops dodged the assembly and left the Vatican rather than vote against their conscience. The doctrine was too hot to make dogma.
On the “first ballot,” only 451 bishops voted yes, fewer than half of the 1,084 members entitled to take part in the council—and less than two-thirds of the seven hundred bishops who’d arrived at Rome for the opening session.
Any vote was meaningless, however. Pius IX had already let it be known that the papacy was going to be infallible “without the consent of the Church.” He’d scribbled in his own hand a message to be passed around: “Don’t waste your words where there is no one to heed them.” Opponents were soon in the minority.
No source tells the story better than How the Pope Became Infallible, by August Bernard Hasler, Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity:
“Just before the solemn vote on July 18, 1870,” writes Hasler, “the minority made a desperate attempt to change the pope’s mind. But all their efforts, including the visit by a delegation of six archbishops and bishops, got nowhere. On the contrary, their request … antagonized the pope.” Now these bishops left Rome in protest.
Believe it or not, the pope threatened suspension or excommunication for bishops who opposed him. As Bishop Joseph Hefele of Rottenburg later wrote: “The position of a suspended and excommunicated bishop strikes me as something terrible. I could hardly bear it.”
At the last meeting of the council on July 18, the number of yes votes rose to 535. Only two bishops voted no—Bishop Luigi Riccio of Cajazzo and American bishop Edward Fitzgerald of Little Rock, Arkansas. Immediately after passage of the doctrine, both men submitted to papal might and right.
“As the dogma was being proclaimed,” writes Hasler, “a violent electrical storm burst over St. Peter’s. The thunder rolled and growled, the lightning flashes threw a ghostly light into the darkness which had filled the cathedral—for some a sign of God’s approval, for others of his wrath.”
UPDATES:
• July 22, 1870. “Almost all the bishops of Austria-Hungary now returned from Rome are furious over the definition of infallibility,” wrote the nuncio in Vienna, Mariano Falcinelli. “The few who have visited me did not dare to talk about the Council.”
• A theology professor denounced Pius IX as a “heretic and devastator of the Church.”
• August 7, 1870. Bishop Philipp Krementz laments in a letter to a friend: “It is hard for me to reconcile what has been decided in Rome with my old theology and the facts of history.”
• In France, six recalcitrant bishops who refused to accept the dogma were either forced to resign or strongly urged to do so—the circumstances surrounding their removal remain unclear.
• In the United States, Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St. Louis, a vocal opponent of infallibility, finally succumbed to pressure from other American bishops. In Rome, the authorities of the Roman Inquisition, as the body is named, accepted his declaration of submission.
In a short time, all bishops would succumb to Pius’s wishes for the sake of Church unity. After all, he was now officially infallible.
Exactly, how bishops gave in is best expressed in Bishop Philipp Krementz’s about-face. Three months after he’d written the above lament, he wrote to a friend on November 8, 1870:
Since the Church has reached this solemn decision, it is therefore certain and self-evident that her resolution is grounded in Holy Scripture and tradition, the two sources of Christ’s teaching, which she interprets unerringly.
SEALED FOLIOS AND VANISHING FILES. The official Historian for Vatican I was Archbishop Vincenzo Tizzani—one of the few men in the Curia (“together virile”) strongly opposed to the doctrine of infallibility. He’d taken extensive notes, but published nothing. When he died in 1892, the Vatican bought all of his manuscripts from his niece, the Countess Lucrezia Gazzoli (and paid only a fifth of the agreed-upon price, which led to litigation). To this day, Tizzani’s papers are under lock and key in the Vatican secret archives.
The notes of a second bishop who had planned to publish the opposition’s view of the council have vanished entirely.
In December of 1966, the Vatican secret archives opened up to researchers “all materials” touching on the pontificate of Pius IX—but boxes already had been “tidied up.”
“To this day,” wrote Hasler in 1979, “no one has published a history of the First Vatican Council based upon [primary] sources.”
After its passage in 1870, the dogma of papal infallibility was not invoked again until 1950, when in the bull Munificentissimus Deus, Pius XII declared as dogma Mary’s Assumption, body and soul, into Heaven.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) confirmed the dogma of papal infallibility—how could it denounce it?—but did not discuss the touchy topic. In fact, no one likes to discuss it anymore. It’s become an embarrassment.
Swiss theologian Hans Küng challenged the basis of papal infallibility—from both the Bible and tradition—in the 1960s with his book Infallible? An Inquiry. In December of 1979, Küng, probably the world’s best-known theologian, was stripped of his right to teach the Catholic faith, and thus lost his post at the University of Tübingen.
To this day, the dogma of papal infallibility, and its intrinsic corollary of the primacy of the bishops of Rome, is the single greatest obstacle to unity among the world’s Christians.
DOCTRINE OF “CREEPING INFALLIBILITY”
Peter De Rosa, in Vicars of Christ, neatly sums up the evidence against papal infallibility.
1. Saint Peter himself was fallible, having blundered many times before and after Christ’s Crucifixion.
2. There is no proof in the New Testament that Peter alone possessed some divine power that all his successors would inherit.
3. According to early Church fathers, Peter had no single successor. They viewed all bishops as succeeding to the apostles—not an individual bishop at Rome (a pope) succeeding to an individual apostle (Peter).
4. All the great doctrinal statements of the Church, especially the creeds, came not from individual bishops of Rome but from councils of bishops. It never occurred to the early bishops of Rome that they could define doctrine for the whole Church.
5. The First Vatican Council really needed to explain why, if papal infallibility is crucial to the Church, there is no mention of it in the creeds and councils, and why it was not imposed until 1870. Before then, belief in papal infallibility was in no way demanded of Catholics. They could deny it—and whole countries did—without any suggestion that they were bad Catholics.
“Papal infallibility does nothing to enlighten the church,” argues De Rosa. “It seems to have less to do with truth than with control.”
De Rosa makes the potent point that the pope’s prestige and power rest not on the dogma of infallibility—which is infrequently invoked—“but on what has been called ‘creeping infallibility.’ ” That is, the doctrine of infallibility is so intimidating and formidable that the very idea imbues the pope with an aura of total inerrancy such that all his words appear to Catholics as being infallible—all the many words he does not speak ex cathedra. “Creeping infallibility” makes even a modern pope’s statements on world politics and matters not of faith and morals appear to carry a divine imprimatur of inerrancy.
Reference and Reading
IS THERE A SUBJECT that’s been more voluminously covered than religion? I know of none. In order to maximize accuracy and minimize dispute, I’ve leaned heavily on standard religious encyclopedias and dictionaries. These works cover a wide spectrum of sacred origins. At other times, I’ve had to seek the origins of a particular devotion, amulet, or sacramental in a more obscure source. The essential bibliography includes:
Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. Vols. 1, 2. Isaac Asimov. Avenel Books, 1981.
The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert C. Broderick, ed. Thomas Nelson Publications.
Catholicism. Vols. 1, 2. Richard P. McBrien. Minneapolis, Minn.: Winston Press.
Dictionary of Catholic Devotions. Michael Walsh. Harper San Francisco, 1993.
Eerdmans Handbook of the Bible. David Alexander and Pat Alexander, eds. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994.
Encyclopedia of Catholic History. Matthew Bunson. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1995.
Encyclopedia Judaica. Vols. 1–16. Cecil Roth, ed.-in-chief. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House.
The Encyclopedia of Judaism. Geoffrey Wigoder, ed.-in-chief. Macmillan Publishing Co.
The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vols. 1–15. Mircea Eliade, ed.-in-chief. Macmillan Publishing Co.
Expression of Catholic Faith. Kevin Orlin Johnson. Ballantine, 1994.
The Interpreter’s Bible. Vols. 1–12. George Arthur Buttrick, ed. New York: Abingdon Press.
The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible. Pat Alexander, ed. London: Bloomsbury.
New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vols. 1–17. William J. McDonald, ed.-in-chief. Catholic University of America Press.
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vols. 1–15. Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed.-in-chief. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House.
The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, eds. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Reader’s Digest: ABC’s of the Bible. Pleasantville, N.Y.: The Reader’s Digest Association, 1991.
I ALSO FOUND handy several religious almanacs, atlases, and catechisms. These books, while seldom delving into historical origins, present concise factual knowledge and statistics, which I’ve used to flesh out my text:
American Jewish Yearbook 1994. David Singer, ed. Scranton, Pa.: Haddon Craftsmen.
Catechism of the Catholic Church. Doubleday, 1995.
Essential Truths of the Christian Faith. R. C. Sproal. Illinois: Tyndale Publishers, 1992.
A Guide to Jewish Religious Practices. Isaac Klein. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America; KTAV Publishing House, USA.
The Jewish Almanac. Richard Siegel and Carol Rheins, eds. New York: Bantam.
1995 Catholic Almanac. Felician A. Foy, ed. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing.
The State of Religion Atlas. Joanne O’Brien and Martin Palmer. Simon and Schuster, 1993.
IN ATTEMPTING TO present a cross-cultural picture of religious customs and practices, I’ve relied on several standard and popular works:
A Handbook of Living Religions. John Hinnells, ed. Penguin, 1991.
Our Religions. Arvid Sharma, ed. Harper San Francisco, 1993.
Sacred Writings, Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992; six volumes—which present, authoritatively, the world’s major religious texts:
Vol. 1, Judaism: The Tanakh
Vol. 2, Christianity: The Apocrypha and New Testament
Vol. 3, Islam: The Koran
Vol. 4, Confucianism: The Analects of Confucius
Vol. 5, Hinduism: The Rig Veda
Vol. 6, Buddhism: The Dhammapada
World Religions. Charles R. Monroe: Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995.
World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present. Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. New York: Facts on File, 1983.
FOR THE CHAPTERS on the origins of religious symbols, the following texts were used to varying degrees. All are highly recommended to any reader wishing to delve further into this subject:
Catholic Sacramentals. Ann Ball. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1991.
A Dictionary of Symbols. J. E. Cirlot. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971.
Our Christian Symbols. Friedrich Rest. Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1982.
Outward Signs: The Language of Christian Symbolism. Edward West. New York: Waller & Co., 1991.
The Secret Language of Symbols. David Fontana. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993.
ANY READER WISHING to further explore the fascinating histories of such places as Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo would not be disappointed with these detailed, often cross-cultural, works (which I refer to, and comment upon, throughout my text):
The Birth of Purgatory. Jacques Le Goff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Heaven: A History. Colleen McDonnell and Bernhard Lang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
A History of Hell. Alice K. Turner. Harcourt Brace, 1993.
Limbo: The Unsettled Question. George J. Dyer. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964.
