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Church
Councils and the Authority of Council Judgment
Edited
by the Rev. Msgr. Keith P. Steinhurst, P.A.
The
following briefly treats the ideas of the authority of the Pope and
Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church. The General Councils
along with selected remarks about them are taken from: Hughes, P.
(1961). The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils
325-1870. Hanover House.
1.	The
1st General Council of Nicaea, AD 325;
2.	The
1st General Council of Constantinople, AD 381;
3.	The
General Council of Ephesus, AD 431;
4.	The
General Council of Chalcedon, AD 451;
5.	The
2nd General Council of Constantinople, AD553;
6.	The
3rd General Council of Constantinople, AD 680-81;
7.	The
2nd General Council of Nicaea, AD 787;
8.	The
4th General Council of Constantinople, AD 869-70;
9.	The
1st General Council of the Lateran, AD 1123;
10.	The
2nd General Council of the Lateran, AD 1139;
11.	The
3rd General Council of the Lateran, AD 1179;
12.	The
4th General Council of the Lateran, AD 1215;
13.	The
1st General Council of Lyons, AD 1245;
14.	The
2nd General Council of Lyons, AD 1274;
15.	The
General Council of Vienne, AD 1311-12;
16.	The
General Council of Constance, AD 1414-18;
17.	The
General Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence, AD 1431-45;
18.	The
5th General Council of the Lateran, AD 1512-17;
19.	The
General Council of Trent, AD 1545-63;
20.	The
1st General Council of the Vatican, AD 1869-70;
21.	The
2nd General Council of the Vatican, AD 1962-65.
The
first General Council met in AD 325 and by then the Church had been
an established fact for nearly three hundred years. Questions such as
(1) how did these councils (meetings of bishops to discuss matters of
common interest) begin? (2) When and where did the first church
councils take place? And (3) what about the beginnings of the
"prestige" of these councils? That is, of the idea that
what bishops collectively agree is law has a binding force that is
greater than any of their individual instructions to their own see.
To begin with the last point, it is a safe statement that from the
moment when history first shows us the Church of Christ as an
institution, the exclusive right of the Church to state with finality
what should be believed as Christ's teaching is manifestly taken for
granted. To bring out a theory of belief, or to propose a change in
morals which conflicts with what the Church universally holds is,
from the very beginning, to put oneself fatally in the wrong. The
immediate, spontaneous reaction of the Church to condemn thinkers
with new and original views of this kind is perhaps the most general,
as it is the most striking, of all the phenomena of the Church's
early history, so far back as the record goes. When it was that
bishops first formed the habit of coming together in council, we do
not know. It is such an obvious act, on the part of officials with
like problems and responsibilities and authority, that to do this was
second nature surely. What we do know is that as early as the second
century (100-200 AD) it was the custom for the bishops who came
together for a bishop's funeral to take charge of the election of his
successor. Here is one likely source, it is suggested, from which
came the council of bishops as a recurring feature of ordinary
Christian life.
About
the year 190 a furious controversy as to the date at which the feast
of Easter should be kept, shook the whole Church, and the pope, St.
Victor I, sent orders to the places most troubled that the bishops
should meet and report to him their findings. And a series of
councils were then held, in Palestine, in Asia Minor, and in Gaul.
Sixty years later when, with the great career of St. Cyprian, the
mists clear away from Roman Africa, we perceive that the bishops'
council is already a long-established practice there." "Ever
since the popes were first articulate about the General Council,
they have claimed the right to control its action and, to take their
place in it (whether personally or by legates sent in their name) or
by their subsequent acceptance of the council, to give or withhold an
approbation of its decisions, which stamps them as the authentic
teaching of the Church of Christ. Only through their summoning it, or
through their consenting to take their place at it, does the assembly
of bishops become a General Council. No member of the Church has ever
proposed that a General Council shall be summoned and the pope be
left out, or that the pope should take any other position at the
General Council but as its president. The history of the twenty
General Councils shows that the bishops, a section of them, not
infrequently fought at the council the policies of the popes who had
summoned the council, and fought even bitterly. But in no council has
it been moved that the bishop of X be promoted to the place of the
Bishop of Rome, or that the Bishop of Rome's views be disregarded,
and held of no more account than those of the bishop of any other
major see. There are, indeed, gaps in our knowledge of the detail of
all these events; the mist of antiquity, at times, no doubt obscures
our view, but through the mist at its worst the general shape is ever
discernible of a Roman Primacy universally recognized, and submitted
to, albeit (at times) unwillingly - recognized and submitted to
because, so the bishops believed, it was set up by God Himself."
This should be enough, for a start, at giving the orthodox view of
authority within the Church.
Some
thoughts on Authority:
2nd
General Council of Nicaea, ca. 2nd Century: "Those therefore
who after the manner of wicked heretics dare to set aside
ecclesiastical traditions, and to invent any kind of novelty, or to
reject any of those things entrusted to the Church, or who wrongfully
and outrageously devise the destruction of any of those traditions
enshrined in the Catholic Church, are to be punished thus: if they
are bishops, we order them to be deposed . . . If anyone rejects all
ecclesiastical tradition, whether written or unwritten, let him be
anathema. . ."
Saint
Athanasius, d. AD 373: "You are fortunate, you who have
remained in the Church through your faith. You hold fast to the
foundations of the faith, which have come down to you from Apostolic
Tradition. In the present crisis, it is they who have broken away
from it. No one, my beloved brethren, will ever prevail against your
Faith. And we are confident that God will one day return our churches
to us."
Saint
Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, ca. 3rd Century: "And now,
through the love which He had for all the saints, having come to our
most important topic, we turn to the subject of the tradition which
is proper for the churches, in order that those who have been rightly
instructed may hold fast to the traditions which has continued until
now, and fully undertsanding it...may stand the more firmly therein..."
Pope
Saint Stepehen I, ca. 3rd Century: "Let them innovate in
nothing, but keep the traditions. "
Saint
Vincent de Lerins, d. AD 445: "What then shall the Catholic do
if some portion of the Church detaches itself from communion of the
universal Faith? What other choice can he make? And if some new
contagion attempts to poison, no longer a small part of the Church,
but the whole Church at once, then his great concern will be to
attach himself to antiquity which can no longer be led astray by any
lying novelty."
Saint
Jerome, ca. 4th Century: "The best advice I can give you is
this. Church traditions -- especially when they do not run counter to
the Faith -- are to be observed in the form in which previous
generations have handed them down..."
Saint
Vincent de Lerins, Commonitoria, ca. 5th Century: "The Church
of Christ, zealous and cautious guardian of the dogmas deposited with
it, never changes any phase of them. It does not diminish them or add
to them. It neither trims what seems necessary nor grafts things
superfluous...but it devotes all its diligence to one aim: to treat
Tradition faithfully and wisely; to consolidate and to strengthen
what already was clear, and to guard what already was confirmed and defined."
St.
Isidore, Etymologies, ca. 7th Century: "Therefore, heresy is
from the Greek word meaning "choice"...but we are not
permitted to believe whatever we choose, nor to choose whatever
someone else has believed. We have the Apostles of God as authorities
who did not choose what they would believe but faithfully transmitted
the teachings of Christ. So, even if an angel from heaven should
preach otherwise, he shall be called anathema."
Saint
Thomas Aquinas: "Hold firmly that our Faith is identical with
that of the Ancients. Deny this and you dissolve the unity of the Church."
Cathechism
of the Council of Trent, ca. 16th Century: "The true Church is
also to be known from her origin, which she derives under the law of
grace from the Apostles; for her doctrines are neither novel nor of
recent origin, but were delivered of old by the Apostles and
disseminated throughout the world."
Pope
Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8, 1907):
"Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting
together all the errors that have been broached against the Faith and
to concentrate into one sap and substance of them all, he could not
succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they
have gone farther than this, for...their system means the destruction
not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion."
Pope
Pius XII, a few days before his death: "The day the Church
abandons Her universal tongue will be the day before She returns to
the Catacombs . . ."
Selected
Council Opinions:
I.
An indifferentist and ecumenical conception of the Church
The
concept of the Church as "the People of God" is found in
many official documents: the acts of the Council, Unitatis
Redintegratio, Lumen Gentium; the 1983 code of Canon Law (c. 204.1);
the letter of Pope John Paul II, Cathechesi Tradendae; the allocution
in the Anglican Church at Canterbury; and the
ecumenical
directory, Ad Totam Ecclesiam of the Secretariat for the Unity of
Christians. This conception breathes an indifferentist interpretation
and a false ecumenism. The facts manifest with evidence this
heterodox conception: namely, the authorizations for the construction
of rooms which are destined for religious pluralism; the edition of
ecumenical Bibles which no longer conforms to Catholic exegesis; and
the ecumenical ceremonies like those of Canterbury. In Unitatis
Redintegratio, it is taught that the division of Christians...is for
the world an object of scandal and the obstacle of the preaching of
the Gospel to all creatures... that the Holy Spirit does not refuse
to make use of other religions as means of salvation. This same error
is repeated in the document Cathechesi Tradendae of Pope John Paul
II. It is in the same spirit and with affirmations contrary to the
traditional faith that Pope John Paul II declared at the Cathedral of
Canterbury, May 25, 1982, "that the promise of Christ inspires
us with confidence that the Holy Spirit will heal the divisions
introduced into the Church from the first times at Pentecost" as
though the unity of the Credo had never existed in the Church. The
concept of the "People of God" leads to belief that
Protestantism is none other than a particular form of the same
Christian religion. The Second Vatican Council teaches "a true
union in the Holy Spirit" with heretical sects (Lumen Gentium,
14); "a certain, though imperfect, communion with them"
(Unitatis Redintegratio, 3). This ecumenical unity contradicts the
Encyclical Satis Cognitum of Pope Leo XIII which teaches that:
"Jesus did not found a Church made up of a number of communities
that were generically similar, yet separate and without those bonds
of unity which make the Church one and invisible." Similarly,
this ecumenical unity is contrary to the Encyclical Humani Generis of
Pope Pius XII, which condemns the idea of reducing to a vague formula
the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church. It is also
contrary to the Encyclical Mystici Corporis of the same Pope which
condemns the conception of a "pneumatic" Church which would
be an invisible bond unifying the separated communities in the faith.
This ecumenism is equally contrary to the teachings of Pope Pius XI
in the Encyclical Mortalium Animos. Concerning this point it is
timely to expose and reject a certain false opinion which is at the
origin of this problem and of this complex movement by the means of
which non-Catholics strive to obtain a union of Christian churches.
Those who adhere to this opinion constantly cite these words of
Christ: "That they all may be one... and there shall be one fold
and one shepherd" (Jn. 17:21 and 10:16), and they claim that by
these words Christ expresses a desire or a prayer which has never
been realized. In fact, they claim that the unity of faith and of
government, which is one of the marks of the true Church of Christ,
in a practical manner, up to today, does not exist. This ecumenism
condemned by Catholic morality and law, now manages to permit the
reception of the sacraments of Penance, Holy Eucharist and Extreme
Unction from "non-Catholic ministers" (canon 844, 1983 Code
of Canon Law), and encourages "ecumenical hospitality" by
authorizing Catholic ministers to give the sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist to non-Catholics. All these things are contrary to Divine
Revelation, which stipulates the... (continue
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