www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Why is the Immaculate Conception considered Ex-Catherda?

Of course Vatican I was a valid council! But it has to be understood in the light of the other councils of the church, both before and afterwards. It cannot be understood in isolation.

Would do you mind explaining this? For me, in light of the councilor nature of the early church, Vatican 1 becomes harder, not easier, to understand.

Latrocinium.

The answer depends on the question. What is it about Vatican I that you find hard to understand/accept?

As I understand Vatican I, reading it together with the rest of the teaching of the Fathers and the Councils, the infallibility of the Pope depends on the infallibility of the Church, which is guaranteed to Her by the Lord (Mt 16:18). So the Pope is infallible when, in communion with the other Bishops, he teaches what the Church has always taught.

As for the two papally defined dogmas (the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption), I believe in them and hold them to be true, but I also accept that they are couched in Western theological terms which seem strange to Eastern Christians.

To give a counter-example, as a Latin Catholic I do not feel completely at home with the invocation "Most Holy Theotokos, save us!" but I accept that this is the liturgical language of the East and that this is the Eastern way of expressing the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary brings us salvation not on her own but through her Son.

So, while I realize not everyone will agree with me, I believe that with a little bit of good will and mutual understanding, we can overcome these apparent differences between East and West.

The answer depends on the question. What is it about Vatican I that you find hard to understand/accept?

1. The council was not free and open. The agenda was closely controlled by the Curia, and interventions contrary to the preordained outcome were suppressed.

2. The council did not represent a majority of the bishops. By the time Pastor aeternus was passed, only a rump synod was present. Most of the anti-infalliblists, seeing the handwriting on the wall, departed early. It is debatable whether there was evan a quorum.

3. Compulsion was employed upon the delegates, the most famous example being Melkite Patriarch Gregorios, who was forced to sign the confession of faith Pius IX required from all the bishops--despite which, a considerable number managed to escape without signing (mainly by leaving early), some of whom never signed it at all.

4. It is quite evident that moral unanimity was not present regarding Pastor aeternus, therefore it is not binding on anyone whose particular Church has not received it.

Stuart,

It is difficult to address this kind of criticism when you give no sources for your views.

With all due respect, StuartK, I agree with Latin Catholic.

I did not source this time because this horse has been flogged too many times after its demise. Just look up earlier threads on Vatican I. But I suggest a look at August Berhard Hasler's book How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion. (Doubleday) 1981; and Luis M. Bermeo's Infallibility on Trial: Church, Conciliarity and Communion (Christian Classic) 1992. The latter makes extensive use of contemporaneous notes taken by French theologian M. Icard, which includes such priceless examples as Pius IX public humiliation of Guidi.

Bermejo quotes, for instance, this contemporary statement of Bishop F. Lecourtier, a delegate to the council:


Bermejo does some interesting math, too. He notes that the total number of bishops who attendede the First Vatican Council was 793, but not all of these showed up for every session, and, as the council continued, fewer and fewer were in attendance. Of these, 285 of the bishops were from Italy, and 61 from the Oriental "rites". All of these were financially dependent upon the Papacy, which used that fact to force them to conform to Papal positions. The 61 Oriental bishops were directly controlled by the Praefect of the Propaganda Fidei (today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Cardinal Barnabo. Of those, sixteen signed a postulatum against Pastor aeternus, but were forced by Barnabo to withdraw their signatures. As is well known, Melkite Patriarch Gregorios I Yousef was reprimanded, threatened and instructed not to address the council Fathers again without first submitting his speech for approval by Barnabo (this was during the council itself, and predates the infamous incident of the papal buskin upon the patriarchal neck). Between them, the Italians and the Orientals represented 43% of the total bishops in attendance. On the day that Pastor aeternus was approved, the combined Italian and Oriental vote constituted half of the bishops voting. That comes awfully close to the Chicago Rules.

So, I'll stand with Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, who described Vatican I as having "as much claim to be called a council as the present day meetings of delegates in the USSR to be regarded as free expressions of the will of the people".

I can go on at great length, and provide many other contemporaneous quotes from people who were there (e.g., Bishop Strossmeyer writing to Lord Acton: "There is no denying that the Council lacks freedom from beginning to end", and later to Professor Reinkens in the Netherlands, "My conviction, which I shall defend before the judgment seat of God just as I defended it in Rome, is firm and unwavering, namely that the Vatican Council had not the freedom necessary to make it a true council and to justify resolutions that would bind the conscience of the entire Catholic world"), but that would be tedious, and I have done so many times over the years, so if you wish to find citations, do what I did, and hunt for them.

Stuart,

Thank you for providing this information on your sources. However, both Hasler and Bermejo seem to me rather tendentious.

In particular, I am not convinced by August B. Hasler, who seems to me a bit extreme. I would instead suggest reading Mark E. Powell, who in Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation of an Ecumenical Issue[/i] [books.google.co.uk] (Eerdmans, 2009) suggests that "Hasler [...] is engaged in heated polemic and obviously exaggerates his picture of Pius IX." Powell turns instead to Dom Cuthbert Butler's [i]The Vatican Council 1869-1870: Based on Bishop Ullathorne's Letters (Longmans, 1930) for a contemporary view of the proceedings.

This approach seems much more satisfactory to me.

I think rather not. There are far too many individuals cited verbatim in Bermejo to be discounted as exaggerations and polemic, and to discount critics of the council because they are critical of the council seems a bit tautological to me. The treatment of the Eastern Catholic bishops at the council is, by itself, more than sufficient to discredit it in my eyes.

Dear brother Stuart,

Well, then we can both agree that calling the IC a heresy is a big no-no.

If you have been paying any attention at all to what I have been writing, instead of nitpicking at at a comment here and there, then you would know the answer is "no."

I obviously disagree. There was near-unanimous consensus before the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. It was only at that time that the EO made a concerted effort to oppose it, and even then, there is testimony at that time that the EO did not reject the teaching, so much as the dogmatization. So there is no difference between my desire to defend the IC, and an EO's desire to defend the Assumption.


Does anyone who disagrees with Stuart automatically get accused of "presuming to impose" the differing belief on others? Are you immune from your own criticism, brother Stuart? Let's dispense with the ad hominems, OK?

This is an empty claim, especially as I gave you two opportunities in an earlier post to explain in what way accepting the IC is tantamount to abandoning "critical elements" of the Eastern Tradition --- and you did not respond.


I'm glad brother Peter corrected you on that point.

When you find yourself bringing up points not germaine to the topic just to disparage the Latin Church, that's a sure sign of something.

Blessings

Dear brother AMM,

A few comments:
Can you clarify this statement? Are you he saying that the "stain" is only mortality, and not also spiritual death (i.e., separation from God)? IIRC, when the Fathers speak of "stain" or "blemish" or "spot" or whatnot, they always refer to the soul or to human nature (i.e., body and soul).

Do you say this because you assume the IC teaches that Mary did not physically die?

That's understandable.

Blessings

Death--true death--is eternal separation of the soul from the body due to spiritual separation from God. However, by his death Christ has conquered death, so true death--the eternal separation of the soul from the body is ended. The death of the body is but a sleep, and those who, when presented before Christ's judgment seat, insist upon remaining separated from God bring condemnation upon themselves.

It might be more correct to say that because Mary did die, the notion that Mary was preserved from the consequences of Adam's sin does not seem to be correct. Unless you want to insist that the ancient sources for the doctrine of the Dormition and Assumption of Mary are incorrect.

Dear brother Bob,

Thank you for the question.

Whether one believes any particular infallible ex cathedra decree (btw, I have to add "infallible" to that statement because not all ex cathedra decrees are infallible) is irreformible has nothing to do with the proscription of this Vatican dogma.

I know several Catholics who accept the Vatican dogmas as well as the Dogma of the Assumption, but doubt or do not in good conscience or by mere lack of understanding do not accept the dogma of the IC, Latins and Easterns alike (I've met only one Oriental Catholic who is of like disposition).

In other words, one's acceptance of the teaching that the Pope has the charism to share in the infallibilty of the Church, and that decrees of his in such wise are irreformible on their own, and not by consensus, has no absolute relation to one's belief in another particular teaching that may have been decreed by the Pope in such wise. Lack of belief in the IC does not automatically mean that one denies the teaching on papal infallibilty. Further, on the principle of invincible ignorance, the circumstances that govern one's acceptance of the first may altogether be different from the circumstances that govern one's acceptance of the other.

I'll give you another example. The Church teaches that all Truth is from God and given to us through the Holy Spirit by virtue of His Magisterium (i.e., divine teaching authority). Does one's lack of belief in, say, the Sacrament of Marriage automatically mean that you don't believe in the teaching that all Truth is from God or that Truth is given through the Holy Spirit?

Does that help?

Blessings