For more on the question of if Vatican I had an ecumenical character, as well as the oppressive environment at present at the Vatican during the council's proceedings, let us turn to Archbishop Elias Zoghby of blessed memory.
Unfavorable
Atmosphere of the Second Millennium
Council or pseudo-council, Vatican I
is the product of a particular Church, the Latin, that "cut off from the
East, has seen its spirituality and theology dried up and impoverished by
rationalization" (Cardinal Etchegaray).
This council is one of those that was held in the second millennium in the West. It followed the Council of Lyons (1274) that Pope Paul VI called the "sixth of the general synods of the West." Therefore Vatican I is not an ecumenical council, nor consequently, infallible. Moreover, one of the conditions required for a council to be ecumenical as enumerated by the second Ecumenical Council of Nicea (787) is that "the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem-in addition to that of Constantinople-consent to it" It is clear! Not being ecumenical, Vatican I cannot be infallible.
On the other hand, what right does any Church have, in the absence of other great churches and especially of the apostolic sees, to define the "things" that are binding on all Christianity, by submitting it to its ordinary, direct and immediate universal jurisdiction, and by imposing on it a papal infallibility binding in conscience. Such behavior is not surprising on the part of the Church of Rome, for already, on the eve of the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Leo IX claimed that "all that is decisive in the life of churches and even the quality of Church comes from the Roman Church" (Cardinal Yves Con gar, Eglise de Saint Augustin, p. 97). Only an ecumenical council held by both Rome and Orthodoxy can legislate in such a matter.
In the face of the impasse caused by Vatican Council I, we must ask ourselves what are the conditions in which this Council was held and unfolded, and if these conditions guaranteed the freedom of action of the bishops that participated in it.
Let us see the atmosphere that prevailed in the Church of the West, especially after the Great Schism of 1054.
1) We recall what Marcel Pacaut says
concerning the Council of Lyons in 1274: "The conciliar assembly did not
discuss; there was no debate, no opposition formulated; it heard the reading of
the proposed documents and approved them. The Council of Lyons is therefore,
like the Councils prior to it from the twelfth century, a chamber recording
pontifical decisions and not a parliament" ( Unite Chrhienne, 102 (1975), no. 2, p. 53).
Humbert of Romans, Master General of the young Order of Preachers, recounts in his report that Pope Gregory X, on the eve of the Council of Lyons, recommended the following motto: "Variety is the mother and origin of discord" (Unite Chretienne, idem).
We notice that six hundred years
later the superior of the Redemptorists would write to Cardinal Deschamps,
archbishop of Malines, on the subject of Vatican Council I: "In Rome,
everything is so well prepared in advance, that nothing remained for the
fathers other than voting" (Cardinal Deschamps, Louvain 1956, II, p.157).
2) It is true that beginning with Pope Saint Gregory the Great, the centralizing power of the pope grew more and more. But it is especially at the beginning of the second millennium that it became intolerable. So much so that Saint Bernard, in a brochure, titled Counsels to the Pope, reproached Pope Eugene III between 1148 and 1152, for "mutilating Churches, upsetting the hierarchy and displacing limits that its Fathers had set. You err if you believe that your apostolic power, because it is the highest, is the only one that God has instituted. All this forms a desire for prestige and wealth, that comes more from Constantine than Peter."
4) The birth of the churches coming
from the Reformation distressed the Roman Church, which tried by all means to
protect herself against a new disintegration. In order to confront the decline
of western Christianity and its political influence, the Council of the Counter
Reformation, held in Trent 1545 to 1563, would make the pope, henceforth, the
only defender of this Christianity, an absolute monarch. Without doubt, this Council
would seek to bring back all the clergy, at all levels, to a more austere
lifestyle, but it would be intransigent in the area of the faith, in order to
avoid new shocks. Popes would impose a uniform formulation of this faith.
5) At the same time the pope became
the absolute monarch, the curia became increasingly powerful. To it was
confided the charge of preparing conciliar texts on which the bishops would
vote. At Vatican Council II, in which I myself participated, we were presented
with texts prepared in advance by the curia. The Fathers enjoyed a sufficient
liberty to refuse these texts and to replace them by others. Thus it was not
the same as the Council of Lyons and those that followed, including Vatican I,
where the curia was all powerful and could impose its texts.
Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447) who proclaimed himself the head of the entire Church and the father and the mother of all Christians, claimed that the college of cardinals was of divine origin. Indeed, in his Bull Non Mediocri, coming almost immediately after the Council of Florence (1439), he granted cardinals precedence over patriarchs, since according to terms of this same bull, the cardinalate had been, "instituted by Saint Peter and his successors" and even, according to Innocent III, says the Bull, the cardinalate "is of divine origin."
The voters had to deal with a pope
who identified himself as the Tradition and the Church, and with a curia
claiming its origins in "Saint Peter and his successors," and who
dreamt of sharing, if not in the ex sese infallibility
of the pope, at least in his universal jurisdiction, from then on defined by a
council. If we add there the climate of widespread distrust by the tribunal of
the Holy Office, we are right in asking if the fathers of Vatican Council I
enjoyed enough freedom to hold a valid council.
Oppressive
Atmosphere of Vatican I
A. Vatican I-Council of the Latin Countries of Europe
Having
called the Council of Lyons (1274) the "sixth of the general synods of the
West," Pope Paul VI himself denied it the quality of being ecumenical
along with all the councils held in the West after the schism of 1054.
Vatican I was not even
representative enough of the Catholic West. Rather two-thirds of its majority
represented the churches of the Latin countries of Europe.
According to historians, ofthe 1055
fathers having the right to vote, approximately 700 fathers were present.
The Italians represented 35 per cent
of the fathers present, that is approximately 245 fathers.
The
French, 17 per cent, that is approximately 119 fathers.
The fathers from America (121), Asia (41 ), Oceania (18), African Missions (9) totaled 189 Fathers and were, in their majority, originally from Latin countries of Europe.
Approximately two-thirds of the fathers present were therefore from Latin European countries.
The uniate fathers, latinized and
subjected to Roman congregations, numbered sixty. Among them, three Patriarchs
had arranged themselves on the side of the minority who refused the definition
of infallibility of the pope and his other prerogatives, judged exaggerated.
One could object that the majority of council fathers of the ecumenical councils of the first millennium were Eastern, and despite that, their decrees were not rejected. Such an objection is not valid, because all the apostolic sees were represented there, including Rome; and the ecumenical councils that followed, recognized the acts of their predecessors. However the apostolic sees of the East were in no way present at councils held in the West after the schism of 1054, although this presence is required-according to the second Council of Nicea for a council to be ecumenical.
Uniate bishops and patriarchs
present at Vatican Council I and Vatican Council II did not represent
Orthodoxy, first, because they were latinized, and also because they had not
received a mandate to represent it. This is all the more true since the Roman
Catholics and Orthodox would denounce uniatism at the Balamand meeting in 1993.
B. Imbalance
in the Distribution of Responsibilities of the Council
1)
Arbitrary Choice of Consultors and Experts charged with preparing the decrees
of the Council.
Indeed, sixty of these Consultors
and Experts were Romans and the others, numbering thirty six, were known for
their ultramontanist tendencies. This resulted in the council decrees being
prepared by a closed circle according to the will of the pope and the ultramontanists,
and of their being presented as a fait
accompli to the Council Fathers who, it was thought, would have only to
sign them without debate.
2)
Arbitrary Choice of Presidents of the Assembly.
They were all Italians and favorable
to the definition of the prerogatives of the pope and his infallibility.3) Those opposed to infallibility were excluded from the Committee of the Faith.
In 1864, Pius IX began to prepare for the Council. In 1865, he appointed a commission of cardinals to be the central commission charged with directing the preparation of the council.
This commission appointed subsidiary commissions for the faith and dogmas and others subjects, either religious or politico-religious, such as relationships of the church with the state. In all these commissions which comprised 102 members, only 10 were bishops, 69 diocesan priests and 23 religious priests. They had prepared 51 schemas to propose to the Council Fathers.
To facilitate the work, four
permanent committees were created, among which the most important was that of
the faith, from which were excluded those who opposed the definition of the
prerogatives of the pope, particularly his infallibility. Archbishop Henry
Edward Manning, principal partisan of the definition of infallibility,
qualified those opposing it as "heretics, who came to the council only to
be heard and condemned, not to take part in the formulation of the
doctrine."
The fathers opposed to the definition of infallibility could indeed defend their viewpoint in the general congregations, but was it admissible that a group, composed of brilliant and good theologians, not be represented in the most important committee of the Council?
The way the council was conducted
was imposed by the pope and his curia. It had not been elaborated by the
conciliar assembly, nor even submitted to its vote as it had been at the
Council of Trent.
Since the members of the assembly
opposed to the definition of papal infallibility had not participated in the
elaboration of the regulations, they did not feel themselves bound to secrecy
and they used a press campaign to make their objections known. The campaign was
sometimes violent, especially in Germany.
C.
Politico-Religious Character of the Council
Pope Pius IX publicly announced the
council on July 26,1867, at a time when churchmen in the West were of two major
mindsets: on the one hand the liberal Catholics and neo-gallicans, and on the
other hand the ultramontanists, adversaries of modem liberty.
The conflict was not exclusively
religious. It was politico-religious. The two parties were opposed with regard
to their conception concerning relations between the Church and the State. The
ultramontanists, counter to the other part, wanted more interference of popes
in the affairs of the State. When the council was announced their press
campaign would claim that the definition of the prerogatives of the pope, and
particularly his infallibility in matters of faith, would entail a certain
infallibility in the political area and in his relations with the State, thus
also favoring an autocratic authoritarianism.
D. The
two-thirds majority was hardly concerned with theological reasons
The fathers who were opposed to the
definition of infallibility and the other prerogatives of the pope, while less
numerous, had greater stature. They were distinguished by their theological
knowledge and by the importance of their sees.
This minority was especially made up of the episcopates of Austria-Hungary, the great German Sees, a third of the French episcopate, several archbishops from America, the archbishop of Milan and three Eastern patriarchs.
With the infallibility majority,
non-theological considerations prevailed. They were:
-Infallibility would have repercussions in the
political domain, conferring more ascendancy to the pope over civil authorities
and putting an end to the controversies on this subject.
-For more pastoral reasons, some bishops sought, through
the definition of infallibility and the other prerogatives of the pope, to
strengthen the principle of authority in a society and in a Church invaded by a
revolutionary spirit.
The
minority, opposed to this definition, advanced reasons from the ecumenical and
theological order:
-The pope cannot define a matter of faith independently of the college of bishops and the ecumenical council. Such a definition made by the pope personally would upset the traditional constitution of the church and would compromise the power of bishops and the episcopal college.
-The extension of the prerogatives of the pope would deepen the gulf that separates the Roman Church from the Orthodox Churches of the East. And Protestants would profit by consolidating their position in the face of the Catholic Church.
-Aside from the extension of the prerogatives of the pope, new schisms could be provoked in the milieus of Germanic intellectuals and others.
It is regrettable that these considerations of theological, ecclesiological and ecumenical order were not shared by the European majority of Fathers and did not orient the council in a more religious rather than a political direction.
E. Pressures exerted by the Pope over the Council
Some Council Fathers favorable to the definition of infallibility, wanting to rally the opposing party, sought to appear conciliatory and to bring some rather fundamental reservations to the formulas prepared by the consultors and experts. The pope opposed this and intervened in favor of a rigorous formulation.
On the other hand, fearing that
political events would abruptly stop the works of the council before the
elaboration of the definition of his infallibility, Pius IX had a chapter on
infallibility and his other prerogatives added to the chapter titled "the
Church of the Christ," April 27,1870. He decided to pass immediately, and
by anticipation, to the discussion of this additional chapter. Under the threat
of developing political events, the pope pressed the council fathers to finish
and to accelerate the activities of the council by rushing through 37 general
congregations between May 13 and July 13, 1870. Thus on July 13,1870, thanks to
this rush, infallibility and the other personal prerogatives of the pope were
voted on, constituting a special decree under the title "Pastor
aeternus."
Driven by power to brake this zeal
of the ultramontanists, openly pushed by Pope Pius IX, and not wanting to
confront a pope who decided to have his infallibility defined and to widen his
powers over the whole Church of God, an important number of bishops left Rome
before the final vote. Some say a quarter of the council fathers left early.
To give one example of the
authoritarianism of Pius IX, let us cite the following fact. Our Greek-Melkite
Catholic Patriarch, Gregory Youssef, had refused to sign the acts of the
council relative to infallibility and to the unlimited powers of the pope over
the whole Church. Having undergone some pressures, he ended up by subscribing
to it by adding: "except the rights and privileges of Eastern
patriarchs." Before leaving Rome, he went to take leave of the pope, who
shook the head of the old patriarch who was on his knees, and said to him.
"Testa dura!" Therefore it is not surprising to see that Latin
bishops left Rome and abstained from voting "non placet" in the
presence of a pope so jealous of his authority.
In conclusion, I am not an historian and am not qualified to settle this question of the validity or the invalidity of Vatican Council I. All that I can do is to submit to qualified historians this information, collected from here and there, so that they may check it, complete it or, if necessary, correct it. I leave to theologians the responsibility to judge, in the light of the pressures exerted over the council Fathers, whether they enjoyed enough freedom to hold a valid Council.
What I know is that a marriage
celebrated in similar conditions would have been declared null by the Roman
Authorities themselves. If only reverential fear suffices for a declaration of
nullity of a Catholic marriage, how can a council, held under such a regime of
oppression, be valid?
In any case, valid or not, Vatican I
has the same designation as the Council of Lyons, a "general" synod
of the West. With this designation it is neither ecumenical nor infallible and
could produce only theological opinions that can not be imposed on anyone.
Besides, these theological opinions are peculiar to the circumstances of a
certain historical period. And the Catholic Church itself today, with all of
its bishops and theologians, would have hesitated to adopt them and especially
to erect them as dogmas.
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