A Heretical Pope?

Oh please. Don't you read New Advent?

What, am I supposed to fall down in worship before the almighty 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, that utterly authoritative and divinely inspired source ... or something?

Can I quote the Zondervan Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible and expect you to agree with every word in it?

In any case, you yourself published the citations where it clearly says that Pope Leo didn't agree with the condemnation of Honorius as a heretic. But in case you want another authority:

Pope Honorius seemed not to fully grasp the maneuverings of Sergius. Hence, in 634 he wrote two letters to Sergius that were not heretical, but were ambiguous. Not long after, Pope John IV, in 641, wrote a letter to Emperor Constantius II defending Honorius from a charge of heresy. He said Honorius just meant that Jesus "never had two contrary wills".

But the Council of Constantinople in 681 A.D. wanted to go further. It voted to call Pope Honorius a heretic. However ... a council acting without the Pope has no doctrinal force. ... Pope Leo II followed the guidance of Divine Providence and stated the matter precisely: "Pope Honorius ... failed to add luster to the Apostolic Church by teaching the Apostolic tradition, but on the contrary, permitted the spotless faith to be defiled.

So Pope Honorius was not charged with heresy -- he was not guilty of that. He was charged, rightly, with carelessness by letting true doctrine become ambiguous.

[Citation from Most, Fr. William G., Catholic Apologetics Today (TAN Books, 1986), p. 214.]

Please note the Catholic Church's position

I get tired of going over and over this with you. It seems so simple and obvious to me.

The 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia is not an authoritative teaching document of the Church. Neither is Fr. Most's book I quote above, though he is -- or rather was (he's gone to his reward) -- a well-respected and orthodox theologian.

If you want the "Catholic Church's position" on a question, you'll find it -- if there is one at all -- at www.vatican.va, or in the catechism, or in the decrees and canons of Ecumenical Councils, or in solemn Papal teaching documents.

You refer to this as "like nailing jello to a tree". As I say, I see it as simple and obvious. I wouldn't attempt to pick some book or another off a bookshelf at a Christian bookstore and try to claim it was the "Southern Baptist Church's position", if it wasn't actually published by the SBC. That to me is common sense, no jello required.

St. Hippolytus is an anti-pope who became a saint.

Feast Day - August 13

St. Hippolytus (Pontian - pope and Hippolytus, anti-pope)

(d. 235)

Two men died for the faith after harsh treatment and exhaustion in the mines of Sardinia. One had been pope for five years, the other an antipope for 18. They died reconciled.

Pontian.

Pontian was a Roman who served as pope from 230 to 235. During his reign he held a synod which confirmed the excommunication of the great theologian Origen in Alexandria. Pontian was banished to exile by the Roman emperor in 235, and resigned so that a successor could be elected in Rome. He was sent to the “unhealthy” island of Sardinia, where he died of harsh treatment in 235. With him was Hippolytus (see below) with whom he was reconciled. The bodies of both martyrs were brought back to Rome and buried with solemn rites as martyrs.

Hippolytus.

As a presbyter in Rome, Hippolytus (the name means “a horse turned loose”) was at first “holier than the Church.” He censured the pope for not coming down hard enough on a certain heresy—calling him a tool in the hands of one Callistus, a deacon—and coming close to advocating the opposite heresy himself. When Callistus was elected pope, Hippolytus accused him of being too lenient with penitents, and had himself elected antipope by a group of followers. He felt that the Church must be composed of pure souls uncompromisingly separated from the world, and evidently thought that his group fitted the description. He remained in schism through the reigns of three popes. In 235 he was also banished to the island of Sardinia. Shortly before or after this event, he was reconciled to the Church, and died with Pope Pontian in exile.

Hippolytus was a rigorist, a vehement and intransigent man for whom even orthodox doctrine and practice were not purified enough. He is, nevertheless, the most important theologian and prolific religious writer before the age of Constantine. His writings are the fullest source of our knowledge of the Roman liturgy and the structure of the Church in the second and third centuries. His works include many Scripture commentaries, polemics against heresies and a history of the world. A marble statue, dating from the third century, representing the saint sitting in a chair, was found in 1551. On one side is inscribed his table for computing the date of Easter, on the other a list of how the system works out until the year 224. Pope John XXIII installed the statue in the Vatican library.

Comment:

Hippolytus was a strong defender of orthodoxy, and admitted his excesses by his humble reconciliation. He was not a formal heretic, but an overzealous disciplinarian. What he could not learn in his prime as a reformer and purist, he learned in the pain and desolation of imprisonment. It was a fitting symbolic event that Pope Pontian shared his martyrdom.

Quote:

“Christ, like a skillful physician, understands the weakness of men. He loves to teach the ignorant and the erring he turns again to his own true way. He is easily found by those who live by faith; and to those of pure eye and holy heart, who desire to knock at the door, he opens immediately. He does not disdain the barbarian, nor does he set the eunuch aside as no man. He does not hate the female on account of the woman’s act of disobedience in the beginning, nor does he reject the male on account of the man’s transgression. But he seeks all, and desires to save all, wishing to make all the children of God, and calling all the saints unto one perfect man” (Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist).

Origen reconciled too.

Actually, I had only seen that italicized name (indicating an anti-pope) was prefaced by "St." in the World Almanac. Apon further investigation, it's amusingly appropriate for this thread, stirring issues of sedevacantism, substitutional popes, Honorius, Liberius, and so on...

Hippolytus vigorously combatted heresies which denied the seperate personages of the Father and the Son, considering them, instead, to be merely alternate modes of the same person. But he went too far in the alternate direction, almost making Jesus into a second God, subordinate to the Father. Pope Zephyrinus refused to condemn the heresy (one of many, many pre-Nicene demonstrations of papal authority), which Hippolytus falsely presumed to be the mechanations of a deacon. When that deacon eventually became Pope Callistus, Hippolytus presumed him to be heretical, and therefore that the election could not be legitimate.

Hippolytus convened a group of bishops he suaded to his opinion, and they conferred a papacy upon him. He regarded himself heir to St. Peter, and referred to the rest of the Church as the Callistine school.

In 235, an emporer bannished him and the legitimate Pope to the island of Sardinia, where they both contracted illness. At this time, or slightly before this, he was convinced that the Roman bishop (the Pope) was not a heretic, and accepted his authority.

Both Hippolytus and the Pope he reconciled with were considered martyrs (indicating, I would think, a presumption that he reunited with Rome before arriving in Sardinia). Hippolytus is afforded much credit for his (rhetorical, not military) defeat of modalism.

In any case, you yourself published the citations where it clearly says that Pope Leo didn't agree with the condemnation of Honorius as a heretic. But in case you want another authority...

Just for reference's sake, the primary sources are online: the documents of the Third Council of Constantinople. Scanning through, I find that the Council explicitly definitely anathematized Honorius as a heretic. Now, the letter of Pope St. Agatho is not at all as blunt; in fact, I can't see anywhere where it explicitly says that Honorius was guilty of heresy.

Also, Agatho mentions in a few places the Church of Rome being "free from all error". One particular excerpt in his letter is particularly interesting. After Agatho sets forth to orthodox doctrine of the two wills, he says as follows:

And therefore I beseech you with a contrite heart and rivers of tears, with prostrated mind, deign to stretch forth your most clement right hand to the Apostolic doctrine which the co-worker of your pious labours, the blessed apostle Peter, has delivered, that it be not hidden under a bushel, but that it be preached in the whole earth more shrilly than a bugle: because the true confession thereof for which Peter was pronounced blessed by the Lord of all things, was revealed by the Father of heaven, for he received from the Redeemer of all himself, by three commendations, the duty of feeding the spiritual sheep of the Church; under whose protecting shield, this Apostolic Church of his has never turned away from the path of truth in any direction of error, whose authority, as that of the Prince of all the Apostles, the whole Catholic Church, and the Ecumenical Synods have faithfully embraced, and followed in all things;

Later on he gets even more explicit:

For this is the rule of the true faith, which this spiritual mother of your most tranquil empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, has both in prosperity and in adversity always held and defended with energy; which, it will be proved, by the grace of Almighty God, has never erred from the path of the apostolic tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding to heretical innovations, but from the beginning she has received the Christian faith from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Saviour himself,

And then right afterward:

Let your tranquil Clemency therefore consider, since it is the Lord and Saviour of all, whose faith it is, that promised that Peter's faith should not fail and exhorted him to strengthen his brethren, how it is known to all that the Apostolic pontiffs, the predecessors of my littleness, have always confidently done this very thing: of whom also our littleness, since I have received this ministry by divine designation, wishes to be the follower, although unequal to them and the least of all.

Now, whatever be said against Honorius (and let's remember this case was uppermost in his mind), Agatho apparently doesn't think it affected the doctrinal purity of the Roman See. But his next thought, while not mentioning Honorius by name, seems to have been composed with him in mind:

For woe is me, if I neglect to preach the truth of my Lord, which they have sincerely preached. Woe is me, if I cover over with silence the truth which I am bidden to give to the exchangers,...
Since, therefore, such an extremity of punishment overhangs the corruptors, or suppressors of truth by silence, would not any one flee from an attempt at curtailing the truth of the Lord's faith? Wherefore the predecessors of Apostolic memory of my littleness, learned in the doctrine of the Lord, ever since the prelates of the Church of Constantinople have been trying to introduce into the immaculate Church of Christ an heretical innovation, have never ceased to exhort and warn them with many prayers, that they should, at least by silence, desist from the heretical error of the depraved dogma, lest from this they make the beginning of a split in the unity of the Church...

At least by silence--seems to be a reference to our Honorius. Combining this letter with the previous excerpts I posted from Leo II (post #35), which also defends the purity of the Roman See but adds that it had been "tarnished" and "polluted" by Honorius's actions.

To me at least, it looks like while the Council anathematized Honorius as a heretic, the Popes did not go so far, and in fact stated that the purity of Roman orthodoxy had never been forfeited. However, they also seem to have approved the Council, so where that gets us I dunno. :)

Now, the letter of Pope St. Agatho...

With all due respect Claud, Pope Agatho died during the council. Pope Leo took over and it states HE is the one who took over and judged Honorius. The "keys" passed to him. Newadvent states that it is Leo who agreed with the council and called Honorius a heretic. It would be his writings we would need to find.

Honorius reigned for 13 years so it is unlikely he didn't have SOME proclamations. Whether any of those proclamations were heretical we'll never know because the council had everything burned. Most likely (as is stated) they felt everything from him was tainted. Whether any of this was from the "chair of Peter" remains a historical mystery. They were glad that they stood up to the Pope.

If Honorius wasn't a heretic was the council wrong? Did the council make an error? Whose right? 1) Pope Agatho who didn't think Honorius was quite a heretic. 2) The council who though that Honorius was a heretic? or 3) Pope Leo whose "official" opinion we're still looking for? Why burn his writings?

I will say it is disingenuous of some to suggest the Catholic encyclopedia is inaccurate simply to support their claims. People are saying I wrong when I quote from the Catholic encyclopedia yet can't point me to an "official" source that support their views. www.vatican.va has nothing there that I can see. How does any Catholic know if any doctrine is RIGHT. I'm glad I didn't spend my $29.95 for the CD from newadvent. And, yes, understanding Catholic doctrine is like nailing JELLO to a tree-especially when some claim an encyclopedia that discusses THE TRADITION OF THE CHURCH is OUT OF DATE. Does this make sense?

BTW-You're reading into what Pope Agatho and others stated about the "infallibility". He only states that:

this Apostolic Church of his

from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end

et. alt.

There is nothing here that states the Pope is infallible. Only that the "church" (I would agree with a small "c") is guided by God. Less I be accused of being bias and a Catholic basher, it was about 300 years later the Eastern Orthodox broke with Roman for making such a claim so they must not have interpreted these past writings the way you are.

Where it gets us is this:

What does "anathema" really mean, and is it a doctrinal statement?

Had Honorius been living when he was anathematized, he would have been excommunicated, and thus no longer part of the Catholic Church. He also would have the opportunity to have repented and been restored to the Catholic Church. But what are the effects of anathematizing a dead person? Is the issue not moot? Or did by anathemization the church pereceive itself as capable of judging a mortal soul as condemned? If so, it's odd that such authority is never brought up in subsequent theological discussions of the content of Hell.

It would seem to me that the council was merely making a governmental decision, and it's placement early in the documents is no more significant than an artifact of chronology of having addressed the underlying heretical doctrine quickly. In many instances, the councils not only declared someone anathema, but also stated that the faithful must concur. Also, such declarations occurred within canons. Neither such condition exists here. Thus, the declaration would seem to be neither an issue of morality or doctrine, the conditions under which infallibility exists. As such, the Pope could affirm the council (an issue of infallibility), while not implicitly affirming the anathematizations.

Incredibly, then, rather than undermining the infallibility of the Pope, I would think this proves the case. First, the council was not convened as an ecumenical council. As such, the authority of the council was not imparted by the nature of an ecumenical council, as the Orthodox would assert, but purely on the basis of the Pope's affirmation. How could a council be an infallible, ecumenical council without being aware of it, unless that determination is made elsewhere? Second, it demonstrates that the First Vatican Council did not simply tailor the conditions of infallibility to fit historical actions , but rather the conditions themselves are historical, at least as far back as the 6th century. For we see here that by affirming a council as ecumenical, the Pope accepts the moral judgments and doctrines of the council without implicitly accepting other statements. [OK, since I wrote this, Harley brought up the issue of which Pope approved the council, and I can't address this, but I figure the issues brought up still are relevant to the broader questions.]

>> I will say it is disingenuous of some to suggest the Catholic encyclopedia is inaccurate simply to support their claims. People are saying I wrong when I quote from the Catholic encyclopedia yet can't point me to an "official" source that support their views. www.vatican.va has nothing there that I can see. How does any Catholic know if any doctrine is RIGHT. I'm glad I didn't spend my $29.95 for the CD from newadvent. And, yes, understanding Catholic doctrine is like nailing JELLO to a tree-especially when some claim an encyclopedia that discusses THE TRADITION OF THE CHURCH is OUT OF DATE. Does this make sense? <<

What I said about New Advent, and the opinions are mine alone, was not about trying to establish what doctrine is corrcet. The doctrine is quite objectively known, and unlike any other denomination, authoritative. So it's the only thing that ISN'T like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall. On doctrines, New Advent still isn't exactly a papal encyclical, but since the doctrines are so objectively knowable, it is a credible reference. Further, the Catholic Encyclopedia's 1914 Nihil Obstat means that a church expert (a bishop) failed to find any doctrinal errors. (Of course, an error that may have been insignificant in 1914 may be much more noticeable now, so that doesn't make it perfect, but it's still good enough for our uses.)

I was referring strictly to issues which have absolutely nothing to do with doctrine whatsoever. We're not debating doctrine. The church's position on infallibility is quite clear. What is at issue immediately is whether historical *events* undermine the church's *arguments* in favor of its doctrine. On such issues, there are no authoritative Catholic documents for the Catholic Encyclopedia to look to, and the encyclopedia explicitly denies the existence of any Catholic expertise. Thus, although the Catholic Encyclopedia is a useful starting point for research, it is not singularly authoritative on all issues.

You wouldn't expect to use the Encyclopedia Brittanica to solve all arguments, would you? All I am saying is that the Catholic Encyclopedia is merely an encyclopedia of topics relevant to the Catholic faith. And, being 90 years out of date, not exectly the best one for addressing every issue. For instance, the Essene texts weren't found yet, so it just might accept the argument (made by St. Augustine) that the Septuagint was not a terribly literal translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

Yes, Pope Agatho died during the council. But his writings are illustrative as to what a future Pope thought of the Honorius incident.

Whether any of those proclamations were heretical we'll never know because the council had everything burned. Most likely (as is stated) they felt everything from him was tainted

But we do know indirectly, in the sense that Popes like Agatho and Leo knew very well what he wrote, and (as far as I can see) refrained from calling him an outright heretic and maintained the purity of the Apostolic See.

BTW-You're reading into what Pope Agatho and others stated about the "infallibility".

"Apostolic Church" does not necessarily mean the whole Church. It can be a particular church which is Apostolic, and that's exactly what I think Agatho is saying here. But in the English anyway, these letters don't seem knock-down-drag-out clear that he's talking about Rome rather than the whole Church, although if the latter--why all the references to Peter? So a bit of skeptical wiggle room perhaps, but I don't find it especially convincing.

Oh, and yes, I agree that Leo's writings are important here--shame I can't find them online anywhere.

And, while we're at it, you think it's any easier trying to pin down/understand Protestant doctrines? Nothing I can point to is held as definitive except the Bible itself. :)

Well, I can certainly understand the Catholics confusion. People spout out all sorts of weird things not having the foggiest idea of where some of these doctrines come from and the history behind it. Protestantism today is a muddled mess unless one stay close to Reformed doctrine as laid out by Calvin. I have to keep reminding myself God predestined all of this so it must be good. Calvin's not perfect but IMHO (as a born again Calvinist) it is one of the most comprehensive view of what Protestantism is really about.

I should add that I did not reach this conclusion through Calvin but through Augustine whose writings I started with. Augustine developed the thought and took it far along. In my personal opinion Calvin just expanded and refined Augustine's ideas. I could articulate Calvin's position never having read Calvin simply by understanding Augustine. Like you I believe in going back to the original teachings.

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