Letter
to Moses “Mo” Derniste continued: “Why I remain a Catholic”
I am
a Catholic because the pope is infallible. “What?” I hear you say. “Have you
read any history? There have been some truly whackadoodle popes. What about Pope Boniface VIII
(1235 – 1303)? He really believed he was in charge of EVERTHING and EVERYBODY. For instance, he got into a fight with the
powerful Colonna family, and trashed several of the towns they ran including
Palestrina where 6,000 citizens were killed.
Then there’s Benedict
IX (1012 – 1065, maybe). He was made pope when he was a teenager and was
tossed out of office twice, because he was so dissolute and then abdicated
because he was not sure he could stay pope and wanted to marry his cousin
anyway. He sold the papal throne to his uncle. He got tired of being married
and wanted to be pope for a third time. He was finally deposed by Emperor
Henry III of Germany. His father, a Roman politician, had gotten him
elected. He had no qualifications and led a dissolute life of rape, adultery,
and murder. St. Peter Damian said that
Benedict was “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest.” “His life as a pope,” wrote Pope Victor III,
“was so vile, so foul, and so execrable, that I shudder to think of it.” There
is a possibility that he repented and died as a monk. Let’s hope.
Everybody’s
favorite bad pope is a Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI
(1431 – 1503), father of the murderous Cesare -and Lucretia, the poison-pouring
tramp (who actually may not have been as bad as everybody says.) The whole Borgia crew currently has a couple
of miniseries going. The Borgias are very popular in syndication.
Rodrigo’s
uncle was Pope
Calixtus III who whisked this very capable and crafty nephew through the
ranks of bishop and cardinal, naming him vice-chancellor of the Papal States.
This made him so rich that he was able to buy the papacy by bribing the
electing cardinals. He had at least seven different children by several women.
Rodrigo was refreshingly honest in so far as he recognized his children as his
children. He also gave them lavish bequests at church expense. He made his son
Cesare a cardinal at one point, but Cesare eventually quit the job and went
back to what he was good at; killing and soldiering. Giovanni de Medici said
“Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world
has ever seen. And if we do not flee, he will inevitably devour us all.” I could go on for quite a while. There are a
lot more horrible popes. Read Mike
Aquilina’s book, “Good Pope Bad Pope.”
All
this said, I am a Catholic because the pope is infallible. “What?” Again, I can
hear you mutter. “I wouldn’t be part of that institution for a minute!” Hold on
a minute, there have been 266 popes and only ten truly horrible ones. There
have also been a lot of anti-popes. These are guys who thought they were pope
but weren’t. The list includes some very powerful men and some true loons who
put on a white beanie and declare, “I’m the pope. Jesus told me so.” There’s
about five or ten of them around right now! I am not saying I am Catholic
because most of the popes have been decent. I am a Catholic because the popes
have proved to be infallible. None of them have succeeded in changing the
universal teaching of the faith to suite their own peculiarities.
My
point is this. There have been some very bad popes elected. We have been
blessed in modern times with good and holy men, so it may come as a surprise to
you that there have been some very bad men who have parked their papal dignity
on the throne of St. Peter. That is one of the reasons I am a Catholic. The
faith has not been derailed by the some of the worst men in history. The faith
handed down to us from the apostles Peter and Paul remains intact. It has been
assailed by countless theologians, politicians and self-serving clerics and yet
it remains. Back to papal infallibility which, as history proves, is a real
thing. What then is papal infallibility? Here is the text book definition from the First Vatican Council.
“We teach and define that it is a dogma
Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is
when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by
virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding
faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance
promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which
the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining
doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the
Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church
irreformable.”
What
most people don’t understand is that the doctrine of papal infallibility serves
to limit papal power. For instance, in a document called the “Dictaus Papae”,
Pope Gregory VII, or one of his minions in 1075, insisted “That all princes
shall kiss the feet of only the pope.” This means that the pope has complete
political power. The doctrine of papal infallibility means that the pope is
infallible only in matters of faith and morals. He is not politically
infallible. He cannot dictate political policy to anyone nor infallibly endorse
one political system over another. The
doctrine of papal infallibility is a reaction and a refutation to the error of Ultramontanism.
Ultramontanism
which means “beyond the mountains” – the
Alps to be precise. The pope lives beyond the Alps, down there in sunny
Italy. Ultramontanism places strong
emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the pope. From the 17th century on,
Ultramontanism became closely associated with the Jesuits, who take a vow of
personal loyalty to the pope. They were excellent teachers and were tutors in
the royal courts in Europe. They were
famous for their political influence promoting papal interests in European
politics. They held the pope to be superior to governments and kings, even in
temporal questions. In other words, if the pope says it will rain tomorrow, it
will rain tomorrow. This means that papal infallibility does not extend to
political theory or weather forecasting.
The popes may comment on such things, but they are not part of the
deposit of Catholic faith.
Another
limitation, the pope is infallible only when speaking Ex Cathedra. This is very important. In times past a rabbi had a chair on which he
sat when teaching. We see in the gospel of Matthew that Jesus goes up the
mountain and sits down to teach his sermon on the mount. The pope when he
“sits” in the Chair of Peter, that is he speaks as the spiritual descendant of
Peter, will not be allowed by the Holy Spirit to fall into error. He still
cannot predict the weather. That would be to “sit” in the chair of the 10
O’clock weather report. Different chair. The pope cannot change revealed truth.
He cannot add to revealed truth. He can and must reemphasize and bring forward
in current language what the Lord and the Church have always taught. His
infallibility is a catholic infallibility. It is part of an unbroken chain of
truth that reaches back to Christ.
Infallibility
does not give anyone the ability to contradict Christ and the consistent two-thousand-year-old
deposit of faith. Take the case of Pope Liberius (310 –
366) He got into a tussle with the Christian Roman emperor Constantius who
favored Arianism – the doctrine that Jesus wasn’t
really divine and there wasn’t really a Holy Trinity. Constantius arrested
Liberius and after a couple years of exile, Liberius seems to have written a
couple of letters to Constantius that waffled on Arianism, thus winning his
freedom and returning to Rome. These letters may or may not have been written
by Liberius, but they certainly weren’t Ex
Cathedra, and the faith in one God in three persons and the divine person
of Jesus, fully human and fully divine in nature have been taught since before
the Scriptures were written and continue to be taught. It is a universal that is “catholic” teaching
believed by the whole Church for its entire history. To radically depart from
the catholic nature of a teaching, that is its consistent teaching throughout history,
is to cease to be Catholic. In a certain sense Jesus gave his teaching chair to
Peter and Peter gave it to his successors, the bishops of Rome. When a pope like Liberius or Alexander sits
in his own chair he is simply not speaking infallibly.
Despite
all the corruption and the theological controversy of times past, the faith is
still the faith and the little red lamp still burns before the tabernacle. And
I am still a Catholic.
Rev.
Know-it-all
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