.
. . throughout the history of the Church, there have been other papal
statements [other than Pius XII, Munificentissimus
Deus, which defined the Bodily
Assumption of Mary] in which the pope was clearly intending to discharge his
office and define a doctrine to be held by the whole Church. Thus, if the First
Vatican Council is to be believed, these, too, must be infallible, protected
from error by the Holy Spirit.
This
claim first encounters difficulty with a statement of Pope Innocent early in
the fifth century. St. Augustine relates that Innocent settled a controversy
regarding the question of whether or not Holy Communion should be given to
infants in no uncertain terms:
What
was that which the same pope replied to the bishops of Numidia concerning this
very cause, becoming he had received letters from both Councils, as well from
the Council of Carthage as from the Council of Mileve—does he not speak most
plainly concerning infants? For these are his words: “For what your Fraternity
asserts that they preach, that infants can be endowed with the rewards of
eternal life even without the grace of baptism, in excessively silly; for
unless they shall eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, they
shall not have life in themselves. “Pope Innocent, of blessed memory, says that
infants have not life without Christ’s baptism, and without partaking of
Christ’s body and blood. If he should say, They will not, how then, if they do
not receive eternal life, are they certainly by consequence condemned in
eternal death, if they derive no original sin. (Blessed Augustine, Two Letters
Against the Pelagians, 2.7)
Was
people Innocent speaking ex cathedra? He was responding to letters from
two local councils that were considering this question, and thus clearly
exercising his authority, acting—as Vatican I put it, “in discharge of the
office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme
Apostolic authority.” Was he intending to define, “a doctrine regarding faith
or morals to be held by the Universal church”? That is clear as well since he
says that infants, as Augustine relates Innocent’s ruling, “have not life
without Christ’s baptism, and without partaking of Christ’s body and blood.”
This is clearly a doctrine that Innocent believed to be held, or should be
held, by the universal Church: infants can’t be cut off from eternal life for
not receiving Holy Communion in one jurisdiction and yet free from this risk in
another.
The
fact that Innocent’s statement has apparently not survived outside of
Augustine’s writings is immaterial. Augustine is not known to be an
untrustworthy witness, although he is known to be at odds with other Fathers
regarding original sin for what is known as “ancestral sin” among the
Orthodox); and the passage of time is so great that no conclusions can be drawn
from the absence of this document in the papal archives, if it is indeed not
present there.
What
is important about Innocent’s statement is that it meets all of Vatican I’s
criteria for an infallible statement of the Roman Pontiff. Such decisions, says
Vatican I, are “irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the
Church” (Pastor Aeternus, 4). Yet Roman Catholics did not hesitate to reform
it, at the Council of Trent over a thousand years later. That Council taught a
flat contradiction of what Pope Innocent had taught, “If anyone says that
communion of the Eucharist is necessary for little children before they have
attained the years of discretion, let him be anathema” (Council of Trent, [session
21] canon 4).
Not
doubt by the time of the Council of Trent, Pope Innocent’s words had been long
forgotten, and the practice of the Roman Church had changed; Holy Communion was
no longer given to infants. But if papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I
is indeed a divinely revealed dogma, then it had to be a part of the teachings
imparted by the apostles to their successors, the first bishops; the Roman
Church, like all Christian churches, teaches that revelation ended with the
death of the last apostle.
That
means there is no time limit. Dogmas are divinely revealed, and as such they do
not expire. Truth is eternal and changeless. A is A throughout all ages. If
Pope Innocent intended to teach a doctrine that he believed should be held by
the whole Church, then it would be a doctrine to be held by the whole Church
for all time. The infallibility of the Church is held by the apostolic Churches
in both the East and the West; it is a recognition of the Lord’s promise that
He would send the Holy Spirit, who would not allow the Church to go astray,
“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all
truth.” (John 16:13).
The
only way out of this for defenders of papal infallibility would be to maintain
that Pope Innocent was not speaking ex cathedra. But which parts of the
Vatican I criteria for an ex cathedra statement did he not meet? He was
responding to letters from local councils who were asking not his personal
opinion, but the view of the Pope of Rome on a matter of Christian doctrine.
Innocent clearly meant to settle the matter by giving the orthodox view. And
when he did so, he characterized the rulings of these local councils as
“excessively silly,” and warned that unless infants received Holy Communion,
they did not have eternal life.
If
this was a question of salvation or darnation, it was quintessentially a matter
of faith. But if it was indeed such a matter, then the pope’s teaching is
contradicted by the later Roman Council, which Roman Catholics consider to be
an ecumenical council, and so either the pope or the Council is wrong and
therefore not infallible. Yet according to Roman Catholic teaching, both popes
and Ecumenical Councils are infallible, and so in this contradiction the Roman
Catholic teaching on how infallibility is exercised within the Church is thus
revealed to be false.
The
only other possibility is that People Innocent was referring only to baptism,
not Holy Communion, as necessary for infant salvation, for it is the idea that
infants need not be baptize that he terms “excessively silly,” and only
introduces the question of Holy Communion after that. However, Augustine’s
summary statement clearly refers to both sacraments: “Pope Innocent, of blessed
memory, says that infants have not life without Christ’s baptism, and without
partaking of Christ’s body and blood.” Augustine also speaks elsewhere of the
need for infants to receive both baptism and the Holy Eucharist: “If
reconciliation through Christ is necessary to all men…This reconciliation is in
the laver of regeneration and in the flesh and blood of Christ, without which
not even infants can have life in themselves” (Blessed Augustine, Two Letters
Against the Pelagians, 4.8).
Thus
it is clear that Augustine understood that the pope meant to say that both
sacraments were required for infants, and that Pope Innocent meant to settle a
matter of faith for the whole Church. The contradiction of this teaching on
this matter by the Council of Trent destroys the entire edifice of papal
infallibility. (Robert Spencer, The Church and The Pope: The Case for Orthodoxy [Uncut Mountain
Press, 2022], 48-51, comments in square brackets added for clarification)
