Dear brother Jimmy,
The problem is not that a pope can call a council, the problem is that the pope can decide to call an infallible council. No where in history or in the scriptures do you see this.
There is no example of an Ecum Council in Scripture, so the point is moot in that regard. As far as history is concerned, a good portion of the 7 Councils was called by the initiative of the Pope. But I have a question for you: If a council of bishops from all over the world is called to decide on a matter of faith or morals, do you believe that God will
not invest that body with infallibility to prevent it from falling into error?
But let’s take just a local council. Do you believe that a local council on a matter of faith or morals, or even a matter of discpline, needs to wait on the laity to accept it before its decrees go into effect? If not (and I seriously hope your answer is in the negative), why do you expect a body of bishops from all over the world called together to decide something
for the Faith of the whole Church to have to await to see if the laity accepts it for its decrees to be authoritative?
Here’s a possible resolution: Distinguish between the inherent infallible authority of an Ecumenical Council, on the one hand, from its explicit acceptance by the entire Church, on the other. What do you think?
Things have not always followed a specific order within the Church. You want it to be this simple order which can be easily understood but the fact is that the preservation of truth does not happen under human forms. You want the bishops to declare truth and the people to follow. But the fact of history is that the truth will be preserved by the Spirit of God, not by the bishops declaring it and the people being obedient.
I guess that is something we can’t agree on. You think bishops are just regular joes w/ no special charism or God-given authority to teach and must await the democratic approval of the laity for anything they decree. But according to Scripture, bishop are our God-given teachers w/ a special Grace to be so. If a bishop strays, the hierarchy of the Church,
established by God himself, will take care of it. You seem to believe that the people must take direct responsibility to judge its bishops (as the EO did at Florence) and oust them, instead of a formal synod of bishops having that power (which is my position)…
It is not as simple as saying the laity never corrected the bishops. To say this would ignore history. Take for example during the controvercy with the ‘monophysites’. If the laity of Alexandria did not support the bishop, they drove him out of town. They didn’t simply submit to a bishop because he said they should.
They submitted to the authority of their Patriarch, Pope St. Dioscorus, and defended him. I don’t see any comparison here.
It seems that there is no room for the Spirit. The pope declares it, therefore it is infallible. The council in communion with the pope declares it, therefore it is infallible. Vatican II was called by P. John XXIII and it was known ahead of time that it was going to be an infallible council because the pope had called an ecumenical council. There is no room for the Spirit. The Pope wants an ecumenical council therefore he is going to get one.
Since the Spirit who empowers our bishops (as Scripture states), I could just as easily say that your position leaves no room for the Spirit, but leaves it all up to a merely secular “rule by majority.” But that’s not my complaint against EO ecclesiology (I could never accuse EO of being deprived of the Spirit and I think it is unkind of you to sink to such an
ad hominem when referring to the Catholic position). My point is that the Church established from the beginning a way of handling instances where bishops are wayward, but current EO ecclesiology (which takes the events after Florence as its exemplar) violates these standards of discpline set up by Christ himself (recall Christ’s instruction to the Apostles on how to deal with a wayward brother).
My statement there probably has more to do with the development of doctrine than the current question but it is related. My point is simply that infallibity has become something that belongs to the pope rather than an element of the guidance of the Spirit. I say this because the pope says it and it is infallible simply because he said it was infallible. To see what I mean just look at the declarations of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. They follow a specific sentence structure and include certain words like ‘we declare’ therefore they are known to be infallible.
The council, which follows a similar pattern, is consequently of a specific time period. It is not open to an outside voice (whether it is of the Church of the past or future or that of the Spirit). For example, if the bishops of the present were to come to the conclusion that Mary is the mediatrix of all Grace it could be declared to be dogma even though it is not taught by the fathers of the Church. Simply because the bishops of the present came to this conclusion it is consequently infallible. It rejects the statement of St. Vincent of Lerins about the true faith being what was believed in all places at all times.
I see your point. However:
- The Assumption is a really, really bad way to make your point. The belief Assumption is a unanimous belief of all Christians, and is even a Major Feast in the non-Catholic apostolic Churches.
- The formal and defined Catholic teaching on infallibility is that it is co-extensive with the deposit of Faith. So something decreed infallibly by either the Pope or a Council must not only consciously consider Sacred Tradition ,but must always agree with Sacred Tradition by the guidance and protection of the HS. What we have here is a straw man. You have set up your own definition of infallibility and how it is exercised in the Church, and you knock down your OWN definition, not what the Church teaches.
- The belief in the IC is a development of doctrine, true. It will take more discussion among the Churches on the matter. But it certainly does not contradict a single teaching of the early Church, and its seed (that Mary is the new Eve), has been around in the Church explicitly since the turn of the 1st/2nd century (with St. Justin Martyr). St. Ephraim who watered the seed with his explicit teaching that before their respective cosmic decisions, Mary and Eve were “UTTERLY equal.” In the 5th century, the Patriarch of Constantinople (Germanus, I think?) taught that Mary was CREATED pure for the purpose of the divine maternity (a belief carried on in the East for centuries and explicitly taught by St.Palamas as well) That’s all I can say on that for now.
Blessings,
Marduk
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