Did Rome ever teach heresy?

[rootsman]

Hi all,
I am raised as a protestant and (of course) filled with a lot of unfavourable claims about Catholics. However, after I started to systematically read the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, I have been “mystically” drawn closer and closer to the Catholic faith (not to wonder).

One issue I am struggling with is a claim I found in David Curries book “born fundamentalist - born again Catholic”. There he claims that “heresy was never taught from Rome by any of its bishops (popes)”. He lists the bishops between year ~300 to ~600 and compares them with bishops in other cities in the same timeframe ans shows that Rome was the only city that not from time to time fell into heresy.

So, my question is if there is available information to verify or falsify this claim.

The information I have found so far is very spurious and often very biased - so a complete list of all popes with a kind of “curriculum vitae” for each one would be very helpful.

Thanks for your help.

 

[mathematician]

The information I have found so far is very spurious and often very biased - so a complete list of all popes with a kind of “curriculum vitae” for each one would be very helpful.

If you define heresy as contrary to what the Roman magesterium teaches, then by definition it can’t have been guilty of heresy.

It all depends whose definition of heresy you adopt, and it is not exactly obvious where you would have to go to find an “unbiased” opinion as to the “correct” definition.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Hi, rootsman. Welcome to the forums! I hope your stay here is helpful and enjoyable. Let me be the first to warn you not to take any uncharitable things that posters may say here to heart. Just as in any group of Christians, there are some who exhibit the transformation of the Holy Spirit better than others, but in Love we can assume everyone’s trying his best. So if some Catholic says something nasty, don’t worry, most folks here won’t treat you that way.

As far as your question is concerned, I can tell you the following:

First, a list of every pope with all of their teachings would be unfathomably big. It would just be impossibly large to begin to put together, nevermind to actually read! Narrowing the list down to a few hundred years doesn’t help either, for what seems like it would be a contradictory reason: Not much survived, but what survived is too much. In other words, we don’t have writings from all the popes back from 300-600. Many of them have not survived history. On the other hand, what we do have is again a very large body of work which would take quite some time to break down into a list of bullet points. Now some of those popes, up until about 600 anyhow, can be found in the standard collection of early fathers, if you would like to poke around.

Now, there have been many converts who took years to convert, spending that time pouring over every historical document they could get their hands as part of their conversion. One such person is Dr. Scott Hahn, a wonderful Biblical scholar who simply amazes people with his insights and teachings. He does tremendous work, and makes a great deal of it accessible to everyday folks like us. Here is a list of the books he’s published. Any one of them would be great to pick up. Even as a regular ole’ Protestant you’d probably find them really interesting, but as one interested in the Catholic Church, all the more so. I especially recommend Rome Sweet Home, his conversion story. It’s an easy but impactful read.

In any case, Dr. Hahn spent years agonizing over the Catholic Church, and at one point during that time poured over every thing he could in search of one heresy or contradiction. He poured over not only the stuff you and I have access to, but also more rare historical documents that only a scholar would typically have access to. He searched and searched, and in his opinion was not able to find anything.

I will give some additional thoughts in a second post.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Now, if we are looking for a heresy taught by a pope, then perhaps the best thing we can do is to look to anti-Catholic sources, or those criticizing the Church. Apologists who believe Catholicism is erroneous and dedicate their lives to attacking it, just as Catholic apologists dedicate their lives to defending it, have obviously tried very hard to find things like heresy coming out of Rome. There has been 450 years of Catholic-Protestant debate for the Church’s opponents to dig up something. Modern day anti-Catholic apologists have that backlog of history and their own study and argumentation to draw from.

As a convert and someone very interested in apologetics, I’ve spent a great deal of time paying attention to the Catholic-Protestant debate, and there is one case that is regarded by all opponents of the Church as the best argument they have. This one case is that which all of these people hearld as the best example of heresy that exists.

Keep that in mind as I explain it: this is the very best that anyone’s ever, in 450 years, been able to find when looking for an example of heresy coming from Rome.

It is the case of Pope Honorius. Pope Honorius was pope from 625-628. During the year 634, there arised a great controversy over the use of the phrase “one operation,” meaning that Christ had one will in Him. Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, wanted to use the phrase to help bring some monophystite heretics (who believed Christ had only a Divine nature) back into the Church, but a monk insisted that “one operation” was itself a heresy. Sergius chose to write to Pope Honorius to ask his opinion.

Honorius wrote back, saying, “we acknowledge one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This, taken on face value, is heretical. Christ has two wills - a human and a Divine. Sergius drafted a document caleld the Ecthesis in which he ordered all those under Emperor Heraclius to declare Christ had one Will and to refrain from using the phraes “one operation” or “two operations.” After he died, Pope Theodore’s rejection of “One Will” led the next emperor Constans to replace the Ecthesis with a document called the Type, which removed the declaration of One Will but still forbade the use of the expressions “one operation” and “two operations.” Both of these were condemned by Pope Martin I, because they forbade the use of the orthodox “two operations.”

In 680, the Third Council of Constantinople dealt with many things, including the “One Will” issue. First, the Ecthesis and the Type were condemned again. Then, the Council anathematized those who had been involved with the matter:

"Those whose impious dogmas we execrate, we judge that their names shall also be cast out of the holy Church of God, that is, Sergius, who was prelate of this God-protected royal city, and was the first to write about this impious dogma, Cyrus of Alexandria, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, who presided on the throne of this God-protected city, and who held the same views as the others, and also Theodore, who was Bishop of Pharan; all which persons were mentioned by Agatho, the most holy and blessed Pope of elder Rome, in his letter to the most pious and divinely strengthened and great Emperor, and were cast out by him, as holding view contrary to our orthodox faith; and these we define to be subject to anathema. And in addition to these we decide that Honorius also, who was Pope of elder Rome, be with them cast out of the holy Church of God, and be anathematized with them, because we have found by his letter to Sergius that he followed his opinion in all things and confirmed his wicked dogmas.”

This is the main issue here. It is asserted by those questioning Rome that this Council condemns Pope Honorius for teaching heresy. My next post will list the problems with it.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Here are the many problems with this assertion:

• First an foremost, Honorius’ letter in no way qualifies as Papal teaching. It was written in a letter to one Patriarch and was not presented to the Church as a whole. The letter wasn’t just a private correspondance as some claim, because it was written as an official reply to a Patriarch, but it was not directed towards the whole Church, which is what makes something the pope says into a binding teaching.

Apart from being presented to the whole Church, a pope’s teaching certainly has more weight than if any old priest or bishop said it, but it doesn’t come close to qualifying as something which is said to be “the teaching of Rome” or “the teaching of the Pope.” In other words, its a good guideline, but anyone who likes is more than free to simply ignore such a statement.

• Second, it doesn’t appear that Honorius used the expression “One Will” in a heretical sense. Prior to the Council, Pope John IV had written the “Apology for Pope Honorius.” This was a letter in which he defended Honorius, asserting that Honorius had not meant to say Christ has no human will, but rather that Christ did not have two warring “human wills” in him like the rest of us do: the desire to sin and the desire to do good.

Also prior to the Council, Maximus the Confessor argued the same thing, citing John Symponus who actually had written the letter for Honorius as having verified this understanding. Reading the entire quote of Honorius seems to clearly confirm that this is what he was doing: “Wherefore we acknowledge one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, for evidently it was our nature and not the sin in it which was assumed by the Godhead, that is to say, the nature which was created before sin, not the nature which was vitiated by sin.”

• Third, the very Council itself read aloud and accepted the letter that Pope Agatho (who called the Council) had sent to the Emperor, saying: “This same holy and universal synod, here present, faithfully accepts and welcomes with open hands the report of Agatho, most holy and most blessed pope of elder Rome…” This letter said, among other things:
• “this Apostolic Church of His * has never turned away from the path of truth in any direction of error…”
• “the Apostolic Church of Christ [Rome]… 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…”
• according to Giovanni Domenico Mansi’s collection of the Councils of the Church, "The heretics have followed some passing expressions imprudently set down by one Pope [Honorius], who made no appeal to papal authority, nor to tradition from St. Peter. Against this I put the repeated, the continuous protest of Pope after Pope, authoritative, grave, deliberate. Their voice was intended to be, and was, the voice of the infallible Roman Church.”

Thus, the Council most **clearly **did not believe that Honorius had taught heresy in any way that would qualify as being official teaching of the Church of Rome or of the Pope.

• Fourth, it was Pope Leo II who finally approved the Council (Pope Agatho had died in the middle of it). In his confirmation, he wrote, “We anathematize the inventors of the new error, that is, Theodore, Sergius,…and also Honorius, who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.” Some manuscripts end with “attempted to pollute its purity,” which would be a bit more powerful, yet still does not declare that he had in fact succeeded in doing so, that is, actually taught error.

Nevertheless, we can understand Leo’s meaning by his letter to Spanish bishops, which read, “With Honorius, who did not, as became the Apostolic authority, extinguish the flame of heretical teaching in its first beginning, but fostered it by his negligence,” and the Visiogothic king Erwig, which read, “…and with them Honorius, who allowed the unspotted rule of Apostolic tradition, which he received from his predecessors, to be tarnished.” It is clear that Honorius was condemned not as a heretic, but for negligently having used imprecise language and permitting heresy to spread.

That is the very best argument that can be made against the inerrancy of the Roman Church. You’ll have to mull that over and decide for yourself.

You’re in my prayers,

Peace and God bless*

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Hi all,
I am raised as a protestant and (of course) filled with a lot of unfavourable claims about Catholics. However, after I started to systematically read the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, I have been “mystically” drawn closer and closer to the Catholic faith (not to wonder).

One issue I am struggling with is a claim I found in David Curries book “born fundamentalist - born again Catholic”. There he claims that “heresy was never taught from Rome by any of its bishops (popes)”. He lists the bishops between year ~300 to ~600 and compares them with bishops in other cities in the same timeframe ans shows that Rome was the only city that not from time to time fell into heresy.

So, my question is if there is available information to verify or falsify this claim.

The information I have found so far is very spurious and often very biased - so a complete list of all popes with a kind of “curriculum vitae” for each one would be very helpful.

Thanks for your help.

What you are asking for is essentially contained in a book called the *Enchiridion Symbolorum. *It’s published in an english version ***The Sources of Catholic Dogma ***by Henry Denzinger (loretopubs.org/index.php?target=products&product_id=24)

 

[1ke]

If you define heresy as contrary to what the Roman magesterium teaches, then by definition it can’t have been guilty of heresy.

It all depends whose definition of heresy you adopt, and it is not exactly obvious where you would have to go to find an “unbiased” opinion as to the “correct” definition.

The “Roman Magesterium” consists of **all **bishops in union with the pope, not just the pope.

I believe what Currie is trying to say is that none of the heresies eventually condemned in the various Ecumenical Councils (Arianism, Nestorianism, etc) took root in Rome. Other individual bishops did adhere to heretical ideas until things were decided in Council.

 

[rootsman]

Lazerlike42, thanks very much for your clarification. This was helpful.

Br. Rich, “sources of catholic dogma” looked very interesting. I think this is what I am looking for, and I will try to get hold of a copy.

Thanks.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Lazerlike42, thanks very much for your clarification. This was helpful.

Br. Rich, “sources of catholic dogma” looked very interesting. I think this is what I am looking for, and I will try to get hold of a copy.

Thanks.

It’s not exactly what you’re looking for, because it doesn’t list every single thing every pope or Council ever said. It is a selection of quotations from documents going back through the history of the Church that lay out the teaching of the Church. Assuming there were a heresy in Church teaching somewhere, it’s possible that it didn’t end up getting quoted.

In any event, Denzinger’s (as it’s usually called) is pretty expensive, but it is available online: catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma.php

If you’d like something you can lug around with you and read like a good ole’ fashioned book, I highly recommend The Christian Faith: In the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church edited by Jacques Dupuis. It’s similar to Denzingers, but it lists the items by topic, whereas Denzinger’s lists them chronologically, making it hard to look up when and what the Church taught about baptism, for example.

Both are great resources.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

…In any event, Denzinger’s (as it’s usually called) is pretty expensive, but it is available online: catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma.php

Lazerlike42, thanks for the above link…it’s a goldmine. I was thinking of putting together a similar online “Denzingers” but didn’t get beyond the “thinking about it” stage. I wonder about copyright problems, however. The original sources are obviously in the public domain, but I don’t know if the “translations” are.

 

[rootsman]

If you’d like something you can lug around with you and read like a good ole’ fashioned book, I highly recommend The Christian Faith: In the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church edited by Jacques Dupuis. It’s similar to Denzingers, but it lists the items by topic, whereas Denzinger’s lists them chronologically, making it hard to look up when and what the Church taught about baptism, for example.

Both are great resources.

Thanks for the recommendations - I have now ordered both books.