As Dr. von Hilderbrand states, to look upon every decision of the Pope
as inspired by God and not subject to criticism “places insoluble problems
before the faithful in regard to the history of the Church.” Those who base
their defence of the faith on the axiom that whatever the Pope decides must be
right would find themselves in a hopelessly indefensible position once they
began to study the history of the papacy. They would have to maintain that St.
Athanasius was orthodox until Pope Liberius confirmed his excommunication; that
this excommunication made his views unorthodox; but that they became orthodox
again when Liberius recanted. In other words, there are no standards of
objective truth at all; an article of faith becomes true or untrue simply
because of the current attitude of the reigning pontiff. Similarly, in the year
896 Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of his predecessor Formosus taken from his
tomb, put on “trial”, condemned, stripped of his vestments, and then thrown
into the Tiber. The dead pope was declared deposed and all his acts annulled,
including his ordinations—a somewhat strange act as Pope Stephen VI had been
consecrated as a bishop by Formosus! In 897 Pope Theodore II recovered the body
of Formosus, had it interred with suitable ceremony in St. Peter’s, and
declared his ordinations valid. However, Pope Sergius III (904-911) reversed
this decision and declared the Formosan ordinations to be null and ordered
those ordained by him to be reordained. Without going into the rights or wrongs
of the background of this bizarre affair, it makes one thing quite clear—at least
some of the popes involved must have been in error, and in error on an
important matter of discipline. IT hardly needs stressing that the validity or
otherwise of the Formosan ordinations is quite unconnected with the original deposit
of faith and, as Cardinal Manning explains, infallibility “is simply an
assistance of the Spirit of Truth, by Whom Christianity was revealed, whereby
the head of the Church is enabled to guard the original deposit of revelation
and faithfully declare it in all ages. . . . Whatsoever, therefore, is not
contained in this revelation cannot be a matter for divine faith.” (Michael
Davies, Pope John’s Council [Dickinson, Tex.: The Angelus Press, 1977], 174-75)
