In 1870, Pope Pius IX issued Pastor Aeternus which dogmatised the nature and criteria of papal infallibility and the interpretation of Matt 16:16-19. During Vatican I (1869-70), many at the council were opposed to the then-proposed concept of dogmatising papal infallibilty based on how ahistorical such a doctrine was, though many, after the decree was issued, would accept the doctrine and often would have to revise their previously published writings on more troubling issues, such as Honorious I and his condemnation at the sixth ecumenical council (e.g., Karl Josef von Hefele, author of the 5-vol. History of the Christian Councils).
One opponent of the doctrine who would later leave communion with Rome would be the Ignaz von Döllinger. The following extracts highlight how utterly ahistorical the modern Catholic dogma about papal authority and infallibility is:
Janus (pen name for Ignaz von Döllinger), The Pope and the Council (1870), pp. 53, 54-55, 61-62, 73.
One opponent of the doctrine who would later leave communion with Rome would be the Ignaz von Döllinger. The following extracts highlight how utterly ahistorical the modern Catholic dogma about papal authority and infallibility is:
For thirteen centuries an incomprehensible silence on this fundamental article reigned throughout the whole Church and her literature. None of the ancient confessions of faith, no catechism, none of the patristic writings composed for the instruction of the people, contain a syllable about the Pope, still less any hint that all certainty of faith and doctrine depends on him. For the first thousand years of Church history not a question of doctrine was finally decided by the Pope. The Roman bishops took no part in the commotions which the numerous Gnostic sects, the Montanists and Chiliasts, produced in the early Church, nor can a single dogmatic decree issued by one of them be found during the first four centuries, not a trace of the existence of any. Even the controversy about Christ kindled by Paul of Samosata, which occupied the whole Eastern Church for a long time, and necessitated the assembling of several Councils, was terminated without the Pope taking any part in it. So again in the chain of controversies and discussions connected with the name of Theodotus, Artemon, Noetus, Sabellius, Beryllus, and Lucian of Antioch which troubled the whole Church, and extended over nearly 150 years, there is no proof that the Roman bishops acted beyond the limits of their own local Church, or accomplished any dogmatic result . . . The dispute about heretical baptism, in the middle of the third century, had a still more clearly dogmatic character, for the whole Church doctrine of the efficacy and conditions of sacramental grace was involved. Yet the opposition of Pope Stephen to the doctrine confirmed at several African and Asiatic Synods, against the validity of schismatically baptism, remained wholly inoperative. Stephen went so far as to exclude those Churches from his communion, but he only drew down sharp censures on his unlawful arrogance. Both St. Cyprian and Firmilian of Cesarea denied his having any right to dictate a doctrine to other bishops and Churches. And the other Eastern Churches, too, which were not directly mixed up in the dispute, retained their own practice for a long time, quite undisturbed by the Roman theory. Later on, St. Augustine, looking back at this dispute, maintains that the pronouncement of Stephen, categorical as it was, was no decision of the Church, and that St. Cyprian and the Africans were therefore justified in rejecting it; he says the real obligation of conforming to a common practice originated with the decree of a great (plenarium) Council, meaning the Council of Arles in 314 . . . [In the eighth century] Pope Hadrian I vainly endeavored to get the decrees of the second Nicene Council on Image Worship, which he had approved, received by Charles the Great and his bishops. The great assembly at Frankfurt in 794, and the Caroline books, rejected and attacked these decrees, and Hadrian did not venture to offer more than verbal opposition. In 824, the bishops assembled in synod at Paris spoke without remorse of the “absurdities” (absona) of Pope Hadrian, who, they said, had commanded an heretical worship of images (Mansi, Council. Xiv, p. 415 seq) . . . There is another fact the infallibilist will find it impossible to explain. We have a copious literature on the Christian sects and heresies of the first six centuries--Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Philastrius, St. Augustine, and later, Leonitus and Timotheus, have left us accounts of them to the number of eighty, but not a single one is reproached with rejecting the Pope’s authority in matters of faith, while Aerius, e.g., is reproached with denying the episcopate as a grade of the hierarchy.
Janus (pen name for Ignaz von Döllinger), The Pope and the Council (1870), pp. 53, 54-55, 61-62, 73.
