Preparing for a Suspended Magisterium? Response to Dr. Ed Feser (Catholic Caucus | Michael Lofton fails to adequately refute Dr Ed Feser's statements concerning a Catholic Magesterium suspension)

Michael Lofton engages the "suspended magisterium" thesis that is being promoted by some in the church today. He considers whether there is a suspense in the magisterium and why some are promoting the thesis.

Link to Dr Feser’s statements below:

Timestamp 1:02-1:10 ~ Dr. Feser’s statements are read by Lofton:

“St. John Henry Newman famously noted that during the Arian crisis, “the governing body of the Church came short” in fighting the heresy, and orthodoxy was preserved primarily by the laity.”

Timestamp 1:10 - 1:28 Lofton says “Let me stop there, that’s half true... Partly true. But of course it was not preserved by the laity alone, but also faithful from the college of bishops, so faithful bishops, and then faithful popes.”

But notice Dr Feser declared “primarily”. Dr Feser didn’t say completely, and thus what Dr Feser said wasn’t half true or partly true.

But as then so now, faithful bishops have arisen, as in Bishop Strickland.

Timestamp 2:25 - 2:28:

“there were always still those among the College of Bishops who were still preserving the truth, teaching the truth...”

Case in point today would be Bishop Strickland (and others).

Timestamp: 4:03 - 4:05 “And he does note that what Pope Liberius signed was not an ambiguous formula but was Catholic.”

Timestamp 4: 47: “what he signed was Catholic in nature...”

The kicker, listen to timestamp 3:27 - 4:20 and recomcile what Lofton said there with the following:

“...the Arian Philostorgius related that Liberius was restored only when he had consented to sign the second formula of Sirmium, which was drawn up after the summer of 357 by the court bishops, Germinius, Ursacius, Valens; it rejected the terms homoousios and homoiousios; and was sometimes called the “formula of Hosius”, who was forced to accept it in this same year, though St. Hilary is surely wrong in calling him its author. The same story of the pope’s fall is supported by three letters attributed to him in the so-called “Historical Fragments” (”Fragmenta ex Opere Historico” in P.L., X, 678 sqq.) of St. Hilary, but Sozomen tells us it was a lie, propagated by the Arian Eudoxius, who had just invaded the See of Antioch.

St. Jerome seems to have believed it, as in his “Chronicle” he says that Liberius “conquered by the tedium of exile and subscribing to heretical wickedness entered Rome in triumph”. The preface to the “Liber Precum” also speaks of his yielding to heresy. St. Athanasius, writing apparently at the end of 357, says: “Liberius, having been exiled, gave in after two years, and, in fear of the death with which he was threatened, signed”, i.e. the condemnation of Athanasius himself (Hist. Ar., xli); and again: “If he did not endure the tribulation to the end yet he remained in his exile for two years knowing the conspiracy against me.”

St. Hilary, writing at Constantinople in 360, addresses Constantius thus: “I know not whether it was with greater impiety that you exiled him than that you restored him” (Contra Const., II).

Sozomen tells a story which finds no echo in any other writer. He makes Constantius, after his return from Rome, summon Liberius to Sirmium (357), and there the pope is forced by the Semi-Arian leaders, Basil of Ancyra, Eustathius, and Eleusius, to condemn the “Homoousion”; he is induced to sign a combination of three formulæ: that of the Catholic Council of Antioch of 267 against Paul of Samosata (in which homoousios was said to have been rejected as Sabellian in tendency), that of the Sirmian assembly which condemned Photinus in 351, and the Creed of the Dedication Council of Antioch of 341. These formulæ were not precisely heretical, and Liberius is said to have exacted from Ursacius and Valens a confession that the Son is “in all things similar to the Father”. Hence Sozomen’s story has been very generally accepted as giving a moderate account of Liberius’s fall, admitting it to be a fact, yet explaining why so many writers implicitly deny it. But the date soon after Constantius was at Rome is impossible, as the Semi-Arians only united at the beginning of 358, and their short-lived influence over the emperor began in the middle of that year.

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