I read once that Abp Henry Newman wrote a refutation of Dollinger. If you do read Dollinger, I hope you balance it with a reading of Newman on Infallibility.
Grace and Peace mardukm,
Actually, I thought he was Henry IV of Germany…
‘claims to primacy’… these aren’t ‘claims to primacy’ but ‘claims of Papal Monarchy’ over not only all of Rome but over the entire Church.
Dictus Papae was published by Gregory VII shortly after taking office…
I believe Dollinger knew more about Roman Catholic History and Doctrine than either you or I and I feel Vatican I was not a valid council.
Thanks for the correction on Henry IV. 90% of what I write is from memory which is obviously not infallible.
. And I am never angry when people have different beliefs than my own, but I do like to hear valid reasons from people to back up what they’re saying.Opinion? No, there were two formal statements. One was in the 1800’s with Pius IX and the other with Pius XII in 1950.
Let’s do a little more study of it, shall we? Who was the first Pope that appealed to the Donatio? And what was the reason this Pope appealed to the Donatio? Did any other Pope appeal to the Donatio? And what was the reason THEY appealed to the Donatio? After you answer these questions, we can proceed with further analysis to see if your objections to it stand up to inquiry.
Were they addressed to the Church or to Henry IV?
Dollinger’s notoriety is not based on his knowledge but on his INTERPRETATION of well-known facts. I would welcome an opportunity to critique Dollinger in the future. Do you have a link to his works?
To put in easy to understand terms, it means that the Pope is infallible whenever he speaks to the whole Church when teaching Faith and Morals. Faith is what we believe and Morals is how we live that belief. The Bishops are Infallible when they are in union with the Pope. Christ promised that HIS Church, the Catholic Church, would never error, the gates of Hell would never prevail against it. The Holy Spirit will always protect the Catholic Church from teaching error in Faith and Morals. And for 2,000 years the Church has taught what Jesus Christ taught the Apostles. Infallibility is the protection from error given the Pope for the protection of the Catholic Church. The Church has always believed in the infallibility of the Pope, to define a Dogma means to explain more clearly something the church has always believed from the time of Christ and the Apostles.
So to sum up, you believe there have been two ex cathedra statements, no more and no less; I believe that’s just your opinion.
Yes. I have heard many differing opinions.
It was in his negotiations with Constantinople in 1054 that Pope Leo IX resorted to huge quotations from the Donation of Constantine as a prized authority for his claims over the Eastern Church but the first pope to make a territorial claim by explicitly referring to the Donation of Constantine was Pope Urban II in 1091 when he laid claim to Corsica. Urban also claimed the Italian islands of Lipari for the papacy in the same year. (see The Papacy 1073-1198 I.S. Robinson, Cambridge University Press, Combridge, 1993.)
I can understand your conflation of claims to papal primacy and that of papal monarchy because in the West the two are bond together but I can assure you prior to the Gregorian reforms of the 11th century nothing like this had been attempted in the Church of the Living God. Understanding the abuses of the Papacy prior to Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) I can feel sympathy for the need of reforms in the west but like so many revolutions the Gregorian Reforms far overstepped their bounds. The second claim of the Dictus Papae states, “That the Roman pontiff alone is rightly to be called universal”. It’s important to note the mixing of monarchical and universal claims. The sixteenth claim states, “That no synod may be called a general one without his order”. Again these documents are the overstepping of any understanding of the Patriarch of Rome being ‘First among Equals’ and begins the official claims that ‘Peter is Caesar’.
These are claims are a creed or manifesto of sorts which merge temporal and spiritual claims of authority and they are pressed before the Temporal Authorities as well as those of the Spiritual as I have pointed out with Pope Leo IX.
I can’t find any Councils but I know that the English Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear), 1154-1159, bestowed Ireland on England’s King Henry II, recognizing that it was his to dispose of, based on the Donation of Constantine. As witnessed by the English historian John of Salisbury in 1159: “At my request [Hadrian IV] conceded and gave Ireland as a hereditary possession to the illustrious king of the English, Henry II, as his letter still bears witness today. For all islands are said to belong to the Roman church by ancient right, according to the donation of Constantine, who richly endowed it.”
Perhaps his notoriety, to you, is based on his interpretation but his renown predated his views of infallibility.
So, aside from Pope Leo IX, the Donatio was utilized by Popes for the purpose of territorial claims within Latin Christendom. Good. That’s settled then. Aside from the case of Pope Leo IX, the Donatio can’t be used by you as basis for claiming hegemony over the East. What’s left for us, then, is to examine Pope Leo IX’s use of the Donatio in relation to Patriarch Michael Cerularius. Was he using the Donatio to claim mastery over the East? Perhaps it was something else.
What you understand is really your own misconception of the papacy as an absolute monarchy. Trust me. Eastern and Oriental Catholics don’t view him that way, and a majority of Latin Catholics don’t either. It’s only a polemic to justify an unjustified agenda against the papacy. No truth to it whatsoever, except by virtue of the fanciful imaginings of polemicists.
To repeat, the conflation of Spiritual and Temporal papal prerogatives occurred only in the sphere of Latin Christendom brother. Once again, don’t attempt to extrapolate it to the relationship of the Pope to Eastern Christendom.
Thanks for demonstrating how the influence of these documents was limited to the Pope’s relationship with Western Christendom. But you still haven’t answered my question: Did the Pope make claims of primacy/supremacy BEFORE the latter half of the 8th century?
Let’s be clear on the context. Nicetas of Nicomedia was in a debate with Anselm of Havelberg. Anselm was himself a papal extremist and had suggested to Nicetas that the Easterns are bound to obey the Pope just because the Pope says so, without recourse to consultation or discussion with his brother bishops. THAT is the context of Abp Nicetas’ response. But we know, as I have proven in this thread, that the Pope does not make decrees without recourse to his brother bishops.
Somehow, I seriously doubt that the non-Catholic polemicist’s interest in him goes beyond his interpretative contribution to arguments against the papacy.
Thank you Marduk, we need someone like you on every thread on this forum it seems. The things they throw at the Catholic Church without ever stopping to think that she has survived 2,000 years of all sorts of false claims and She continually carries on the mission Jesus Christ gave Her in the beginning. And always will. The Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope has seen kingdoms come and go, nations rise and fall, and she stands strong and holy today, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that Jesus promised the “Gates of Hell would never prevail against”. And they haven’t and they won’t! EVER. My faith is is the promise of Jesus not the false claims of others.Dear brother Chris,
So, aside from Pope Leo IX, the Donatio was utilized by Popes for the purpose of territorial claims within Latin Christendom. Good. That’s settled then. Aside from the case of Pope Leo IX, the Donatio can’t be used by you as basis for claiming hegemony over the East. What’s left for us, then, is to examine Pope Leo IX’s use of the Donatio in relation to Patriarch Michael Cerularius. Was he using the Donatio to claim mastery over the East? Perhaps it was something else.
Unbiased historical accounts of the matter (e.g., Claudio Rendina’s The Popes Histories and Secrets, and Karl F. Morrison’s Tradition and Authority in the Western Church,etc.) and even anti-papal Protestant accounts of the matter assign to the Donatio an exclusive influence in the affairs of the WESTERN Church. Its mention by Pope Leo IX to Patriarch Michael Cerularius was not for the purpose of imposing the Pope’s authority over the East, but rather merely to defend the Western See against the patriarch’s unscrupulous charge of heresy against the Latin Church for her use of unleavened bread. Pope Leo IX argued that he cannot judge the Western Patriarchate since it was the primatial See, quoting the Donatio in the process to prove the primatial status of the Roman See – once again, not to impose jurisdiction on the Easterns, but merely to refute the Eastern Patriarch’s claim to be able to judge the Western patriarchate.
To that end, Pope Leo wrote his letter thus: To open, Pope Leo introduces the purpose of his letter, assailing the patriarch for having the “presumption and incredible audacity” to condemn “the apostolic Church unheard and uncondemned” (i.e., through no ecumenical synod, but by his own presumptuous authority). Then he proceeded to his arguments against the invalidity of the patriarch’s presumption. First, he pointed out that the Easterns had so often depended on the Western Church as the standard of orthodoxy to stamp out the numerous heresies that had originated from the East, heresies that were even supported by so many of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. Next, he criticized the Constantinopolitan patriarch’s claim to the title of “ecumenical patriarch,” quoting at length St. Gregory’s repudiation of the title, pointing out that Rome had not used it even when Chalcedon offered it to Leo. At this point, he finally appeals to the Donatio to establish that the See of Rome was the primatial See, and that it cannot be judged by anyone. Leo follows up by claiming that Constantinople owed such eminence as it had to Rome, for out of love for Constantine, she agreed that the city which he adorned with human honors should also enjoy ecclesiastical precedence, always preserving the ancient dignity of “the principal and apostolic sees of Antioch and Alexandria.” After all this, Leo asserts the usual spiritual-theological foundations of the papal claims, and adds that the Donatio merely reinforces those claims, but are not the basis for them - “…imperial attributes are but a useful ornament on this structure.”
Some sources also claim that Pope Leo IX’s use of the Donatio was an attempt to regain the territories of southern Italy from the Byzantines, but nothing more than that, and certainly not to make a claim over the entire East!
That Rome tried to use the Donatio to establish dominance over the East is a polemical fiction. That is proven not only by the full contents of Pope Leo’s letter, but also by the fact that it was never used by Rome in its relations with the East afterwards. The argument was probably brought into the usual repertoire of EO senseless polemics by some anti-Catholic convert from Protestantism.
What you understand is really your own misconception of the papacy as an absolute monarchy. Trust me. Eastern and Oriental Catholics don’t view him that way, and a majority of Latin Catholics don’t either. It’s only a polemic to justify an unjustified agenda against the papacy. No truth to it whatsoever, except by virtue of the fanciful imaginings of polemicists.
Second, the dictatus papae and the Donatio were utilized ONLY in the West to increase the Pope’s temporal prerogatives in reaction (perhaps overreaction) to the attempts of the State to control the Church. They have nothing to do with the relationship of the Latin Church with the Eastern Church. That is why none of those documents you mentioned are quoted as authorities by the reunion Councils of Lyons or Florence, nor by any other General Council of the Catholic Church. And by the time of the Council of Trent, they had fallen into disrepute. So appeal to these documents as a basis for the tension between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism is unfounded at best, sinfully divisive at worst. Stop listening to those polemicists, brother. I’m not saying don’t be EO. I’m just saying don’t be a senseless polemicist. Work for unity and understanding.
To repeat, the conflation of Spiritual and Temporal papal prerogatives occurred only in the sphere of Latin Christendom brother. Once again, don’t attempt to extrapolate it to the relationship of the Pope to Eastern Christendom.
Thanks for demonstrating how the influence of these documents was limited to the Pope’s relationship with Western Christendom. But you still haven’t answered my question: Did the Pope make claims of primacy/supremacy BEFORE the latter half of the 8th century?
Let’s be clear on the context. Nicetas of Nicomedia was in a debate with Anselm of Havelberg. Anselm was himself a papal extremist and had suggested to Nicetas that the Easterns are bound to obey the Pope just because the Pope says so, without recourse to consultation or discussion with his brother bishops. THAT is the context of Abp Nicetas’ response. But we know, as I have proven in this thread, that the Pope does not make decrees without recourse to his brother bishops.
Somehow, I seriously doubt that the non-Catholic polemicist’s interest in him goes beyond his interpretative contribution to arguments against the papacy.
Blessings,
Marduk
You must be reading the wrong threads. I’ve seen a number of Protestant and Orthodox posters who present their arguments in a very polite and reasonable manner.
Jimmy what is your litmus test for synodality or conciliatory and what satisfies you that something is “ecumenical”? A Maronite perspective on this will be most interesting.
Wasn’t that what you believed already?
You both might be interested in this.
Please answer the following questions succinctly:
AMEN!!! God Bless, Memaw