Pope Honorius I a heretic? Papal infallibity?

[Timi_Celcer]

???

 

[JerryZ]

It has nothing to do with Papal infallibility, Honorius was critized quite some years after his death not for something he taught but that he had not stopped the rise of a heresy during his pontificate.
Infallibility only pertains to the Pope teaching on faith and morals ex cathedra.
If he did not more forcefully act against the heretics has no impact on his infallibility as Pope.

 

[CatholicRaven]

I’m not sure what you’re asking here.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be confused and have a lot of questions about Catholicism.

I suggest finding a local parish and asking about attending RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) or its equivalent. I think there, you would find many of these answers and could discuss them more in-depth. By taking the classes, you would not be committed to joining the Catholic Church or anything.

If not that, then perhaps a Catechism of the Catholic Church would be helpful to you.

 

[Zekariya]

Pope Honorius I never spoke ex cathedra. Popes can teach error. Only when the pope speaks ex cathedra is he infallible. Many popes have spoken on faith and morals without speaking ex cathedra. For example, Pope Benedict XVI spoke on faith and morals without speaking ex cathedra. There have been some severely corrupt popes in the past. Being a pope does not make one perfect in all his teachings.

“…we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.” - First Vatican Council, Session 4 (July, 18 1870)
Source: ewtn.com/library/councils/v1.htm

 

[pablope]

???

I suggest that you do some more reading and or research. Pope Honorius, from I recall, was critized for what he failed to do, instead of what he actually acted.

philvaz.com/apologetics/num14.htm

Chapter II : The Infallibility of the Church

philvaz.com/apologetics/num58.htm

Chapter V : The Catholic Position on Infallibility

archive.catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9409fea2.asp

THE TRUTH ABOUT POPE HONORIUS

By ROBERT SPENCER

This Rock
Volume 5, Number 9
September 1994

FOR the serious anti-Catholic, Pope Honorius I (625-638) occupies a small but pivotal role in the drama of Rome’s errors and abuses. This obscure pontiff lacks the lurid luster of the Crusades and the Inquisition in the anti-papist’s arsenal; nevertheless Loraine Boettner and other Protestant polemicists have used Honorius in attempting to deflate papal claims. Eastern Orthodox apologists such as John Meyendorff and Kallistos Ware and even Catholic anti-Catholics such as Hans Kng and Richard McBrien have pitched in to make Honorius the favorite pope of everyone who disparages the papacy.

That left Honorius. Opponents of infallibility said that his case demolished any pretension of papal infallibility, for he was not only a heretic but was condemned as such by an ecumenical council, Constantinople III, in 680, which declared, 42 years after the Pope’s death, that Honorius be “expelled from the Church and anathematized . . . because we find in his letter to Sergius that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.” [Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Building of Christendom: A History of Christendom, vol. 2 (Front Royal, Virginia: Christendom College Press, 1987), 253]
.

Sergius was another one of those stalwart patriarchs of Constantinople, anathematized in the same conciliar declaration for originating the Monothelite heresy. Monothelitism was one of a series of attempts to reconcile the Monophysites, who at that time were a huge portion of the Christian world, with the Catholic Church they had torn by schism more than two hundred years previously.

None of this was clear in the palmy days of 634. Monothelitism had encountered some criticism from the prescient Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, but elsewhere it was more politely received. The Pope had not yet heard of it. With evident high hopes in his own inventiveness and craftiness, Sergius wrote to Honorius about his thoughts.

In his two letters Sergius warned that teaching two wills in Christ would lead to the idea that the human will of the Son of God was opposed to that of his Father. He advised the Pope that it was better to speak of only one will in our Lord. Sergius was trying a little sleight of hand: He was attempting to deny the existence of Christ’s human will by pointing out that our Lord never opposed the Father. Yet if two persons agree, they may be spoken of as being of “one will” this doesn’t mean, of course, that one of them has no will at all.

The Pope, with no idea of Sergius’ between-the-lines message, answered the Patriarch on the unthinkable subject of Christ’s “opposition” to the Father. Monothelites, as they grew in numbers and influence over the ensuing years, seized upon Honorius’ confession of “one will of our Lord Jesus Christ” as confirmation that the Pope believed with them that Christ had no human will.

That is true, but, even more to the point, a look at Honorius’ exact words shows that while he did use a formula–“one will”–that was later declared heretical, he used it in a sense that implied the orthodox belief.

This was picked up as early as 640 by Pope John IV, Honorius’ successor, who pointed out that Sergius had asked only about the presence of two opposing wills. Honorius had answered accordingly, speaking, says Pope John, “only of the human and not also of the divine nature.” Pope John was right. Honorius assumed the existence of a human will in Christ by saying that his nature is like humanity’s before the Fall. No one would claim that before the Fall Adam had no will. Thus Honorius’s speaking of Christ’s assumption of a “faultless” human nature shows that he really did believe in the orthodox formula of two wills in Christ: one divine, one human, in perfect agreement.

**The Third Council of Constantinople was thus in error when it condemned Honorius for heresy. But a Council, of course, has no authority except insofar as its decrees are confirmed by the pope. The reigning Pontiff, Leo II, did not agree to the condemnation of his predecessor for heresy; he said Honorius should be condemned because “he permitted the immaculate faith to be subverted.” [Carroll, 254] **

This is a crucial distinction. Honorius probably should have known the implications of using the “one will” formula; he could have found out by writing a letter to Sophronius of Jerusalem. But he was no heretic.

The anti-papists got the wrong guy. It seems incredible that so many readers of Honorius’s letters, from Patriarch Sergius to Hans Kng, see only what they want to see in Honorius’s “one will” formula.

Since this case seemed to be the best one the anti-infallibilists could turn to, I became an infallibilist, a Catholic with faith in the pope as the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. The Church will live beyond the trials of these days as it did those of Honorius’s day. That bare fact may seem abstract and impenetrable in the convulsions of our age, yet it is our unshakable guarantee.

 

[amsjj]

Here’s an older post on Pope Honorius that might help:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=8504776#post8504776

amsjj

+++
Jesus, God and man,
imprisoned by love in Thy most holy Sacrament,
have mercy upon us.

• Blessed John Henry Newman, December 22, 1851

Tú y yo sabemos por la fe que oculto en las especies sacramentales está Cristo,
ese Cristo con su Cuerpo, con su Sangre, con su Alma, y con su Divinidad,
prisonero de amor.

• San Josemaría Escrivá, 1 junio 1974

… Our Lord Himself frequently said; and it is recorded as an Apostolic tradition from Him
by St. Justin the Martyr. He says ‘Jesus often said, “They who are near Me are near a fire”’.

• Abp. W. B. Ullathorne, August 1st 1886