Ex-communicated priest against infallibility

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Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, a Roman Catholic priest in the 19th century, was ex-communicated for teaching against the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. I was reading his work and he makes a pretty good point. I will quote a passage:​

• "In the first three centuries, St. Irenaeus is the only writer who connects the superiority of the Roman Church with doctrine; but he places this superiority, rightly understood, only in its antiquity, its double apostolical origin, and in the circumstance of the pure tradition being guarded and maintained there through the constant concourse of the faithful from all countries. Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, know nothing of special Papal prerogative, or of any higher or supreme right of deciding in matter of doctrine. In the writings of the Greek doctors, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, the two Gregories, and St. Epiphanius, there is not one word of any prerogatives of the Roman bishop. The most copious of the Greek Fathers, St. Chrysostom, is wholly silent on the subject, and so are the two Cyrils; equally silent are the Latins, Hilary, Pacian, Zeno, Lucifer, Sulpicius, and St. Ambrose.

St. Augustine has written more on the Church, its unity and authority, than all the other Fathers put together. Yet, from all his numerous works, filling ten folios, only one sentence, in one letter, can be quoted, where he says that the principality of the Apostolic Chair has always been in Rome—which could, of course, be said then with equal truth of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Any reader of his Pastoral Letter to the separated Donatists on the Unity of the Church, must find it inexplicable…that in these seventy–five chapters there is not a single word on the necessity of communion with Rome as the centre of unity. He urges all sorts of arguments to show that the Donatists are bound to return to the Church, but of the Papal Chair, as one of them, he says not a word.

We have a copious literature on the Christian sects and heresies of the first six centuries—Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Philastrius, St. Augustine, and, later, Leontius and Timotheus—have left us accounts of them to the number of eighty, but not a single one is reproached with rejecting the Pope’s authority in matters of faith.

All this is intelligible enough, if we look at the patristic interpretation of the words of Christ to St. Peter. Of all the Fathers who interpret these passages in the Gospels (Matt. xvi.18, John xxi.17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied themselves with these texts, yet not one of them whose commentaries we possess—Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations are collected in catenas—has dropped the faintest hint that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission and promise to Peter! Not one of them has explained the rock or foundation on which Christ would build His Church of the office given to Peter to be transmitted to his successors, but they understood by it either Christ Himself, or Peter’s confession of faith in Christ; often both together. Or else they thought Peter was the foundation equally with all the other Apostles, the twelve being together the foundation–stones of the Church (Apoc. xxi.14). The Fathers could the less recognize in the power of the keys, and the power of binding and loosing, any special prerogative or lordship of the Roman bishop, inasmuch as—what is obvious to any one at first sight—they did not regard a power first given to Peter, and afterwards conferred in precisely the same words on all the Apostles, as anything peculiar to him, or hereditary in the line of Roman bishops, and they held the symbol of the keys as meaning just the same as the figurative expression of binding and loosing" *
(Janus (Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger), The Pope and the Council (Boston: Roberts, 1869), pp. 70-74).​

One really good point he makes- “We have a copious literature on the Christian sects and heresies of the first six centuries… but not a single one is reproached with rejecting the Pope’s authority in matters of faith.”

NONE of the heretics/sects of the early church ever said anything about papal infallibility!

 

[DOShea]

I’m not sure what “nothing in the writings” really tells us. If I searched statements from baseball team owners in the first quarter-century of the 1900s, it’s possible I might not find any that directly speak of the power of the Chairman of the National Commission, the predecessor to the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. Yet we have evidence that the Chairman did exercise power, Babe Ruth’s famous $5,000 fine for example.

Do we have evidence that the Bishop of Rome acted in a manner that would coincide with the concept of one Bishop (Rome) acting with authority over others? Do we, for example, have a matter deferred to the Bishop of Rome while the Apostle John was still alive, or not? If we do, then such a record of actual event should speak louder than what isn’t said in the early writings.

 

[tonyrey]

Regardless of history, is it likely that God would allow the successor of St Peter, the rock on whom the Church was built, to teach false doctrine to the faithful? If any Pope has distorted any **fundamental truth **of Christianity evil has prevailed in the very community founded by Jesus to spread the Good News throughout the world in spite of His promise to be with us until the end of time! There have been Popes who have been morally corrupt but infallibility does not imply impeccability. It simply means that the Bishop of Rome is prevented from teaching that which is false…

 

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It just seems that the Orthodox Church is right.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

And just what then are they charged with rejecting? See, the way that things are phrased can be very subtly ‘twisted’ to ‘prove’ almost anything. The thing with the infallibility charism is that it isn’t put out there every time a heretic says “I won’t believe.”

The infallibility charism also extends to the Magisterium, and to the bishops when speaking collegially. Probably the latter was the case at that particular point of time.

With due respect to my Orthodox brothers and sisters, one does need to know that ‘papal infallibility’ is more than just ‘the pope speaking ex cathedral’ Papal infallibility is inextricably entwined with the concept of infallibility itself; knock it down and what happens to the Church itself? If ‘the’ leader cannot exercise then charism then neither can the patriarchs, nor the Magesterium, and what then of Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell would not prevail? What assurance then that ‘error’ did not creep in?