Posted on 12/07/2005 2:43:04 AM PST by jecIIny
Harley's right..Pope Leo II sanctioned the condemnation--that's a fact of history (see #35 above).
The question turns on what the condemnation meant, and to what degree it affected the putative purity of the Roman See.
Somehow my post never made it but I agree the sticking point would be whether Honorius defined anything ex cathedra. I doubt if we'll find anything substantial one way or the other as way of "proof". Otherwise one of us would have been beating the other one over the head with it these last 500 years. :O)
You think that's possible? Oh, by the way, I sent you an e-mail to the e-mail address you listed on the Una Voce site.
LOL...which is what we do anyway, it seems.
Sanctification? Nahhh...too hard....here, let's argue history for a while. ;)
Its always a matter of just WHO is doing all the declaring....
The most important act accomplished by Leo in his short pontificate was his confirmation of the acts of the Sixth Oecumenical Council (680-1). This council had been held in Constantinople against the Monothelites, and had been presided over by the legates of Pope Agatho. After Leo had notified the emperor that the decrees of the council had been confirmed by him, he proceeded to make them known to the nations of the West. The letters which he sent for this end to the king and to the bishops and nobles of Spain have come down to us. In them he explained what the council had effected, and he called upon the bishops to subscribe to its decrees. At the same time he was at pains to make it clear that in condemning his predecessor Honorius I, he did so, not because he taught heresy, but because he was not active enough in opposing it.
Seems straightforward enough.
The document at issue was a private letter. A pope can't define dogma in a private letter; Vatican I insists that he has to be speaking to the whole church.
("The inventors of the new error" are Theodore and Sergius; Honorius "permitted [the church's] purity to be polluted by profane treachery")
That, of course, is true. So if indeed as I mentioned above Honorius explicitly declaims any intent to define any teaching, and he is not speaking to the whole Church, two of the necessary criteria of dogmatic infallibility are not being met.
Although that shouldn't be surprising. The Fathers of Vatican I went over the Honorius case with a fine-toothed comb, and its definitions were probably drawn up very carefully so that the Honorius case could not be used against the definition.
Oh please. Don't you read New Advent? These are just a FEW of the places it talks about Honorius being a heretic...
In the final acclamations, anathema to Honorius, among the other heretics, was shouted."
They anathematize the heretics by name, Theodore, Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, Peter, Cyrus, "and with them Honorius, who was Prelate of Rome
The letter to the pope, also signed by all, gives the same list of heretics
that the council did not think that it stultified itself by asserting that Honorius was a heretic
I will state that according to new advent Catholics right after the Reformation became a little squimmish over Honorius and tried to downplay the "heretic" status. This lead to an effort to make out that perhaps he wasn't such a bad guy. All this is is revisionist history for Honorius has all sorts of condemnations throughout the ages. Personally I'd stick with Claud's position.
>> A little confusing in my mind. There have been Popes that have been formally declared heretics by the Church such as Pope Honorius (625-638) to name but one. Yet this article states there can't be a heretic Pope. <<
Well, this SOLE instance of Pope Honorius certainly is a significant one, and, as I'm sure you know, is often cited as a refutation of Infallibility. The Bishops of the First Vatican Council expressly look not only to scripture, which they did cite, but also to history, and they find both agreeing that St. Peter did in fact make errant statements. Therefore, they concluded the assurance of the correctness of the pronouncements of St. Peter must only apply when St. Peter spoke on behalf of all the apostles, and in matters of doctrine. And this notion certainly fits the context under which the assurance was given ("The gates of Hell shall not prevail against [the Church]").
Pope Honorius was plainly not speaking with the authority of the church, since his letter recognizes the varying opinion of those in the church. That the Pope was incorrect is very firmly established by ecumenical councils. But from the context of de Suarez, Bellarmine, et al. the notion that a Pope cannot be a heretic is a very different sense of Honorious' wrongfulness: They are discussing whether a Pope could possibly break faith with Catholicism by refusing to accept Catholic doctrine. There was no such refusal on Honorius' part. From the church perspective, he was simply wrong; he did nothing to break faith with the Church.
Of course, the council did more than say he was wrong. It anathematized him. To be more precise, they cheered "anathema" at the calling of his name. Unlike many others who were anathematized by name, they made no claim that he must be anathematized by Catholics. In failing to do so, they made no doctrinal assertion. It is doctrine that the beliefs expressed in a letter by Pope Honorius were heresies; it is not doctrine, however, that Pope Honorius was a heretic, for such things cannot be doctrinally stated, and one CANNOT be guilty of a mortal sin without the will to sin, Honorius did not break faith, so his excommunication is baseless, a mere pique of combattiveness on the part of the council.
Is this dodging the issue by putting too fine a point on it? NO! The point of concillar infallibility and the statements of Bellarmine, et al. is that a Christian can follow the teachings of the Catholic faith in confidence of what the true faith is. In the assertion of sedevacantism, not only has the Pope broken faith, but so has the entirety of the college of Cardinals. While the first Vatican council, to my knowledge, never addressed the issue of sedevacantism, to hold a position of sedevancantism is to render truth meaningless. What point is there in declaring that the Church shall always possess the truth, if it is unknowable whether anyone actually represents the Church? If the Church has been so obliterated that no-one who seeks it can find it, have not the gates of Hell prevailed?
>> There have been Popes that have been formally declared heretics by the Church such as Pope Honorius (625-638) to name but one.
There are only two such cases that I'm aware of.
One is Pope Liberius, who signed a heterodox confession of faith under duress. Since it was under duress, it was an act of cowardice and a sin, but certainly wasn't pertinacious denial of a de fide dogma of the faith. ("Pertinacious" would require at least a rebuke and a free opportunity to retract.) <<
Not only that, but the claim Liberius actually wrote it is quite problemmatic. Liberius insists on the truth, repeatedly, to the growing and very expressed fury of the emporer. The emporer ceases Liberius, and sends him to prison, then creates a letter he claims to be written by LIberius. Liberius is eventually freed, and rather than recanting insists he never wrote it.
True, Liberius could, as his enemies claimed, have been lying. On the other hand, what evidence have we that he actually wrote it? The word of an emporer who would attempt to torture a pope into agreeing with him so the emporer could mislead the masses?
>> Don't you also have several anti-popes? Similarly, wasn't one or more of the Avignon popes declared to be schismatic? <<
Anti-popes weren't held to be impostors or bad men. They were popes elected by invalid means, and these means were hardly disingenuous. They were no more a scandal to the institution of the papacy than "President Tilden" was to the institution of the presidency. In fact, some anti-popes were later considered to have been saints.
On the other hand, it has happened where two groups of Cardinals elected two different men to be Pope. Normally, once the Church decided which man was truly the Pope, those who followed the "wrong pope" came back under the authority of the real pope. I don't know of any schismatic popes, but I could hardly be surprised that one or more of such men would be called schismatic for failing to recognize the legitimate pope. But it is impossible, by definition, for the legitimate pope to be schismatic.
Aren't there people who think they are Napoleon in psycho wards? Why shouldn't there be people under delusion that they are Pope?
It IS significant if you want to say there were NO heretical Popes. That simply isn't true.
It ISN'T significant if you want to use this case as a repudiation of the doctrine of Infallibility. That is less conclusive. All the documents of Honorius were burned (not under suspicious circumstances). We'll never know.
>> What am I'm missing? <<
The fact that New Advent has gotten a lot of crdibility because it's the only on-line encyclopedia of its kind, but that it lacks any authority whatsoever. It's primary source is a very poor text from 1904-1914 that schizophrenically wobbles between popular culture sources and church documents. Being from 1914 (much of it even older), it sounds soooo old-fashioned that people falsely associate it with the sort of conservativism that treasures accuracy and authenticity. In fact, at the time, it was downright accomodationist to Protestants. Not that it was at all unfaithful, just that it occasionally defaults to popular sources.
I see that by the time I had a chance to finish what I was writing , the issue was well covered.
All the women in the family will don their pants suits and sing Bishop Williamson's profoundly theological "Off to Argentina" poem to the Mode VIII psalm-tone with ending C.
I'd love to see what YOU think when it turns out that, in the long run, having been their own Popes for so long, none of those Bishops wants to become obedient to the Holy Father.
Did you get your copy of "Not for the General Membership" newsletter that the Superior General sent out to the Superiors of the Society, saying that Pope Benedict's past did not offer many grounds for hope, all the while publishing "filial devotion and reverent loyalty" on the website?
If you were honest, why would you have to send out "not for publication" newsletters that say something obviously different from your website?
So I wonder if they'll have to recant their personal attacks on Pope Benedict . . . oh wait, I forgot, these guys are their own Pope-Committee! They don't take orders from the Pope, just occasionally offer him advice and guidance on how to run the Church.
Pure as angels; proud as devils.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.