Popes, Councils, and Theology

From Pope Pius IX to Pope Francis

Owen F. Cummings

• Editorial: Pickwick Publications
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725288942
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Dénominations chrétiennes

Do you wish to understand something of the contemporary Catholic Church? If you do, then this book is for you. It offers a careful overview of the history of the church from the mid-nineteenth century, with Pope Pius IX, until the present day, with Pope Francis. It deals with two major councils of the church, Vatican I (1869-70) and Vatican II (1962-65). Furthermore, it provides a detailed and accurate summary of the major theological movements in the church during this period.

1

Eighteenth-Century Soundings

The arrival of democracy almost destroyed the papacy.

—Eamon Duffy1

At the close of the eighteenth century the French Revolution shattered the alliance that had been the foundation of the social order in every European country, Catholic and Protestant, for centuries.

—Gerald A. McCool2

After the French Revolution, the church retreated to an intellectual ghetto from which it did not emerge until the twentieth century.

—Ulrich L. Lehner3

If Vatican II was in some sense “the end of the Constantinian era” and in another “the end of the Counter Reformation,” in still another it was, or wanted to be, for Roman Catholicism “the end of the nineteenth century.”

—John W. O’Malley4

The Eighteenth Century

The modern church and papacy is unintelligible without some grasp of the church and papacy in the nineteenth century, the century that “was not kind to the papacy.”5 That “unkindness” makes no sense unless one begins with some awareness of the phenomenon of Gallicanism and its effects on the papacy of the eighteenth century, and in turn it is necessary to have some perspective on the papacy of the seventeenth century. If we are to understand what church historian John O’Malley means in the words cited at the head of this chapter, it is impossible to understand the achievement of Vatican II, the greatest event in Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century, without first attending to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. An attempt must be made briefly and therefore inadequately to sketch the background of those earlier periods, albeit, in what I am calling “soundings.”

“Rome continued to attract pilgrims in great numbers and continued as the first training ground for aspiring artists. The city was resplendent with Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces. The Papal States, under control to a degree not known before and secure from foreign aggression, produced a decent revenue. . . . The popes and the institution over which they presided had settled into a comfortable mediocrity. Nonetheless, on the surface, all seemed well—at least to a superficial observer.”6 This summary offered by John O’Malley is very fair, even if not particularly detailed, but Rome and the papacy are necessarily affected, influenced, and interpreted by events elsewhere. In this introductory context, we shall simply and all too briefly point to the following: Gallicanism and the Gallican Articles, the national checking of papal authority, the Enlightenment, the Catholic Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon. Then we shall move on to the papacy of the early part of the nineteenth century before Pope Pius IX.

Gallicanism

First, Gallicanism and the Gallican Articles. Gallicanism was the French phenomenon of valuing the national church over the pope, and it is crystallized in a serious of statements known as the Gallican Articles. Pope Innocent XI (1676–89) resisted the absolutist claims of the French King Louis XIV. These claims in respect of the church had to do especially with Louis’s decrees of 1673 and 1675 expressing his right to administer the temporal and spiritual affairs of his entire kingdom. Pope Innocent XI and King Louis XIV differed on the appointment of bishops and on the revenues of vacant episcopal sees. Most of the French clergy, many of them sympathetic, submitted to the king’s authority in this regard.7 This was the immediate background to the so-called Gallican Articles.

On March 19, 1682, there was a Grand Assembly in Paris to sort out the rights and privileges of the French clergy. The Parisian assembly produced a document, drawn up by Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), one of the ablest French theologians and bishops of his time, known as the “Four Gallican Articles.” The first article denied that the pope had authority over temporal matters, and affirmed that kings were not subject to the authority of the church in civil matters. The second article endorsed the decrees of the Council of Constance (1414–18) that upheld the authority of a General Council of the church over the pope. This may be seen as the triumph of conciliarism, one of the traditional centers of which had been the Faculty of Theology in Paris. The third article stated that the ancient liberties of the French church were inviolable. Among these “liberties” was the idea that papal judgments on the faith had to be formally accepted by the French episcopate, usually also including the French king, before they could be published in France. The fourth article reads: “In questions of faith the leading role is that of the Supreme Pontiff, and his decrees apply to all churches in general and to each of them in particular. But his judgment is not unchangeable (Latin, irreformabile), unless it receives the consent of the church.”8 It is a complex statement, but it was widely maintained that the judgment of the pope is dependent upon the consent of the church, and has been described as “the most innovative and controversial.”9 Very obviously, the Gallican Articles curtailed and controlled the authority and power of the pope in the French church. The Gallican Articles were finally set aside both by Pope Alexander VIII in 1691 in the bull Inter Multiplices, and later by King Louis XIV in 1693, but they formed and influenced ecclesiological thought in France for generations, and indeed well beyond France, and really were checked only by the First Vatican Council in 1870.

The curtailment of papal power at this time, however, goes far beyond the Gallican Articles of the French church. Predominantly Catholic countries like Austria, various regions of Germany, and Portugal all developed policies that restricted papal power and influence in their internal affairs. The traditional Catholic governments of Europe used their veto power to ensure that no very capable popes and no very young popes ascended the throne of St. Peter.10 The shades of papal interference in national governments, and of brokering power on the international scene made these traditional Catholic regions ...