No. I’m not viewing consensus as a formal authority, and I think that’s the main difference between us. Whether it is a bishop, council, consensus, etc. I do not posit that there is any formal authority by which we can be absolutely certain of the truth except for the Holy Spirit. I think this need for a formal authority is a major distinguishing principle between the Catholic and Orthodox.
You are the one who said that the Holy Spirit declares Dogma through the concensus of the Church, I was just asking if you applied that to Chalcedon. Perhaps you have a different definition of concensus, since it plainly doesn’t apply to Chacedon in its common definition.
More like…a couple insults by an angry man
Christ is the head of the Church.
There have been many threads here regarding birth control vs NFP…do a search.
That’s a very rude thing to say.
For what?
Do you have stats on that?
Have you ever heard of Honorius?
Do you have stats? I think that the RC numbers may be decreasing in the U.S…but I don’t know worldwide.
Of course not…because all your questions are biased driven.
More like this:
Perhaps I was unclear. What I meant to say is that the consensus of the Church is a witness of the Holy Spirit, not that consensus establishes a formal authority. This would be impossible in the strict sense in which you seem to be applying the word since obviously there would always be someone to disagree with a council’s decree. I mean the term consensus in exactly the way St. Vincent of Lerins does in my signature quotation, the faith believed “always, everywhere, and by all.” Again, no I do not believe there is an external we can point to that is a guarantee of truth. If that were the case, the Church wouldn’t have prayed, studied, and struggled with the faith in the way it has for all of its history, it could simply have pointed to this authority and ended the debate. The bulls of the popes, decrees of the councils, statements of the fathers, etc. are witnesses to the truth, not a perfect guarantee.
That is a false dichotomy; the pope could be not the leader of the Christian world without Christ being a liar. He said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church, not to one specific hierarch (i.e., the pope), but the entire Church.
You see it as divisive; we see it as unimportant. Far more disturbing to me is the fact that the Catholic Church has a leader who can issue infallible statements, but the very same church cannot agree on which statements are infallible.
That is because the policy of transferring priests who abuse children to other jurisdictions borders on abetting. What unsettles people about the whole matter is that the Vatican did very little to stop the abuse, especially in Europe. I hope that the Catholic Church will pull through and rise above this terrible scandal.
You’ve made this claim several times now. Which patriarch of Moscow went into apostasy for Rome? Of course it matters very little, since if if did happen, he was wrong to do so (being a fallible human and all). I only know of one church which insists on the infallibility of its leader (yet cannot decide on when that infallibility is exercised). Your claim that the papacy was untouched by heresy is untrue, as shown by Honorius. In terms of numbers, there are plenty of quickly growing religions out there. The Mormons and Jehova’s Witnesses are in fact growing faster than the Catholic Church, as are the Muslims. Statistics indicate that Orthodoxy is growing too, so I have no idea where you get the erroneous notion that the Catholic Church is the only growing church.
Thank you for the clarification!
The only certainty that Christ left us was that he had trampled down death by death. Nowhere did He guarantee that we would not fall into heresy if we followed some magic formula to invoke the protection of the Holy Spirit. St. Maximus the Confessor’s certainty in the orthodoxy of dyothelitism certainly came from no infallible council or pontiff.Thank you for the clarification!
I still don’t think your answer reflects the reality of the Church and the Faith, however, since there is nothing of the Faith that has been believed “always, everywhere, and by all”. Even C.S. Lewis’ “mere Christianity” doesn’t meet that standard. You hint at the problem when you say that the Church has struggled with the Faith; if it was as simple as your view seems to suggest then there would be no struggle at all. There would never be any Councils called, and there certainly wouldn’t have been votes held at the Councils (yes, there were votes taken at every Ecumenical Council that I’m aware of). On the other hand Papal Infallibility, as understood by the Catholic Church, does not negate the need for Ecumenical Councils and the consulting of the Faithful, nor of a nebulous “consensus” of sorts; they all reflect the special infallibility of the Church Herself, and the expression and flowering of the riches of Apostolic Teaching over time.
The funny thing is that in principle I agree with you, namely in the notion that the Faith is not something found through formal authority. What formal authority does provide, however, is certainty for the Faithful. Christ promised us this certainty, and for the Apostles He even provided that Peter would turn back to the Faith and strengthen the brethren. I bring this up not as a proof text for Papal Infallibility (though I do believe that this is where it is derived from) but to show that Christ did will such certainty for the Apostles, and if for the Apostles then I believe He would will it for us too. If such certainty vanished after the death of Peter then Christ has left us with less than He left for those who knew Him personally and had no reason for confusion.
I simply can’t believe that Christ would do that.
Whether the certainty of the Papacy, or Ecumenical Council, or true consensus, Christ must have left us something. Of these three things, only the Papacy continues from the time of Christ to the present, so I tend towards that as the promise of certainty.
Peace and God bless!
Is this a rhetorical question?
There was consensus! The faithful body of believers, who had always held the orthodox view of faith held Chalcedon to be true, and therefore it was. The consensus is not merely the consensus of the bishops in council. If the faithful reject the decision the bishops came to (the council of florence for example) then the Holy Spirit has shown infallibility through the entire body of the faithful, and not just the episcopacy.
It could be rhetorical. It probably was meant as a pithy and concise question. Afterall, who in their right mind would think the HS is the author of all this confusion?
How is that different from Arius, Nestorius, Luther, Calvin, etc etc etc. Don’t THEY consider themselves the “faithful” and everyone else is the heretic? Your answer doesn’t work
Pithy and concise.
There has never been a Patriarch of Moscow who converted to the roman church! And, as far as the pope becoming apostate and falling into heresy, that depends on who you ask. As other have pointed out, Honorius did, but then I would also argue that every pope since about the year 1000 AD has as well. (My opinion) Patriarchs can fall into heresy because they are fallible men, just like every other man on earth.One man’s heresy does not mean that the entire church is in heresy. That, in fact, is impossible because the gates of hell cannot prevail against the ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC (UNIVERSAL) AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH!
According to the definition of papal infallibility, (emphasis mine)
First of all Fr. Hopko is simply wrong in his statement that the Councils reached a consensus of all believers; you yourself have admitted as much in previous posts.