INNOCENT X: September 15, 1644-January 7, 1655
1999: Decree of the Holy Office, January 24, 1647
. . .
Errors on the Dual Head of the Church
This proposition:
“St. Peter and St. Paul are the two princes of
the Church who amount to one”, or: “they are the two leaders and supreme heads
of the Catholic Church united with each other in the greatest unity”, or: “they
are the twofold summit of the universal Church joined together as one in a most
sublime manner”, or: “they are two supreme pastors and governors of the Church who
constitute a single head”,
interpreted in such a way as to imply a complete equality between St. Peter and
St. Paul without the subordination and subjection of St. Paul to St. Peter in
the supreme power and governance of the universal Church, the most holy Lord <pope>
has decreed and declared heretical (Latin: haereticam censuit et declaravit).
Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash (43rd ed; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 455
Here is a scan of DS 1999 from Denzinger:
This is important as it blows out of the water a common "proof-text" Catholic apologists use to support the dogmatic (read: Vatican 1 [July 1870]) understanding of the papacy from Irenaeus of Lyons:
A common "proof-text" for the Roman Catholic understanding of the papacy (informed by the dogmatic teachings from Vatican I) is that of Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2:
Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. (Against Heresies 3.3.2)
Irenaeus does not differentiate the authority of Peter from that of Paul, as if the former has greater authority than the latter—the prima facie reading is that, for Irenaeus, the authority of Peter was equal to that of Paul. However, Innocent X condemned this teaching as heretical(!)
