SPIRITUAL FRAUD IN THE ROMAN CHURCH:
The teaching of the
infallibility of the universal Church, which comes from Christ and His apostles,
was common in Christianity during the course of the first centuries and
remained unchanged in the Orthodox Church. But in the West, side by side with
other deviations, this view of the infallibility of the Church also underwent
distortion. The Roman bishop was always considered one of the members of the
council, and he submitted to its decisions. But, in the course of time, the
pope of
Besides the invisible Head,
Jesus Christ, Catholics recognize yet a visible head, the Roman bishop, the
pope, and they consider him, and not the universal Church, infallible.
The teaching on the
supremacy of the pope arose in the ninth century and is the main dogma of the
Roman confession and its main difference with Orthodoxy. Catholics assert that
Christ made one of His disciples, namely the Apostle Peter, His vicar on earth,
the prince of the apostles, the head of the visible Church with plenipotentiary
authority over the apostles and over the whole Church, and that only through
him did all the remaining apostles receive their grace-filled rights. Catholics
also assert that the Roman pope became the successor of the Apostle Peter and
received all rights and privileges from him as well. He, the pope, is the head
of the whole Church, the vicar of Christ, the sole bearer for the whole visible
Church of all her grace-filled rights; his voice in matters of faith, speaking
ex cathedra - "from the chair", that is, officially - is infallible
and obligatory for each member of the Church individually and for all together.
In this dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, three elements
stand out: 1) the teaching on the supremacy of the Apostle Peter, 2) on the
supremacy of the pope and 3) on his infallibility.
Catholics base the teaching
on the supremacy of the Apostle Peter on two passages of Sacred Scripture. The
first pertains to the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew
(verses 13-19):
"When
Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying,
Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art
John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He
saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said,
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said
unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto
thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys
of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven."
In the
Saviour’s words quoted above, nothing is said about the supremacy of the
Apostle Peter or in general about his relationship to the other apostles. Here,
Christ is speaking about the founding of the Church. But the Church is founded
not on Peter alone.
In the Epistle to the
Ephesians (2:20), the Apostle Paul, addressing the Christians, says: "[Ye]
are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ
himself being the chief corner stone"; while in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians (3:10-11), the Apostle Paul, speaking about the creation of
Christ’s Church, expresses it thus: "According to the grace of God which
is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and
another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth
thereupon. For other foundation can no may lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus Christ." In the Apocalypse, where the Church is compared to a city,
it says: "And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the
names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Revelation
In
Ephesians
In Revelation 21:14, again,
it is the Apostles (plural) who are the foundation upon which Christ built the
Church Catholic. In 1 Cor3:10-11
The
history of the Apostolic Council (Acts, Chapter 15) speaks especially clearly
against the supremacy of the Apostle Peter. The Antiochian Christians appeal
not to the Apostle Peter for the resolution of their perplexity, as should have
occurred if we are to believe the Catholic dogma, but to all the apostles and
presbyters. We see in this excerpt from the book of the Acts of the Apostles
that the question at the Council is subject to a general discussion by the
Council and that the completion of the matter at the Council belongs to the
Apostle James, and from his words the decision is written, and not from the words
of the Apostle Peter.
The fact that Peter,
according to the testimony of Sacred Scripture, is SENT BY the apostles
(Acts 8:14), gives an account of his actions to the apostles and the faithful
(Acts 11:4-18) and listens to their objections and even denunciations (Gal.
2:11-14), which of course, could not be if Peter were the prince of the
apostles and head of the Church, also speaks against the Catholic teaching.
The claims of the Roman
Papacy can only rest secure by deceit, fraud and rewriting history and
reinventing history. False documents were often used to substantiate this false
claim as the truth defended against their position. Generally,
"quotes" from the Patristic Fathers and the writers in the early
Church were fraudulent or taken out of context or quoted only in part which
changed the meaning of the author.
The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries:
In the middle of the ninth
century, a radical change began in the
It was at this time that
the Decretals were combined with two other major forgeries, The Donation of
Constantine and the Liber Pontificalis, along with other falsified writings,
and codified into a system of Church law which elevated Gregory and all his
successors as absolute monarchs over the Church in the West. These writings
were then utilized by Gratian in composing his Decretum. The Decretum, which
was first published in 1151 A.D., was intended as a collection of everything
that Gratian could find which could give historical precedent to the teaching
of papal primacy, and therefore the authority of tradition, which could then
carry the force of law in the Church. It had such success that it became the
standard work of the law of the Roman Church and thus the basis of all canon
law and Scholastic theology.
Some
Roman Catholic apologists claim that though there were forgeries in the Church,
these really had very little impact upon the advancement and development of the
papacy, since it was already an established reality by the time the forgeries
appeared.
Karl
Keating, for example, states that practically all the commentators, with the
exception of fundamentalists, agree with this assessment. But this is
completely false. The historical facts reveal that the papacy was never a
reality as far as the universal Church is concerned. There are many eminent
Roman Catholic historians who have testified to that fact as well as to the
importance of the forgeries, especially those of Pseudo-Isidore. One such
historian is Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger.
He (von Dollinger) was the most renowned
Roman Catholic historian of the last century, who taught Church history for 47
years as a Roman Catholic. He makes these important comments:
In the
middle of the ninth century—about 845—there arose the huge fabrication
of the Isidorian decretals...About a hundred pretended decrees of the earliest
Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other Church dignitaries and
acts of Synods, were then fabricated in the west of Gaul, and eagerly seized
upon Pope Nicholas I at Rome, to be used as genuine documents in support of
the new claims put forward by himself and his successors.
That the pseudo–Isidorian
principles eventually revolutionized the whole constitution of the Church, and
introduced a new system in place of the old—on that point there can be no
controversy among candid historians.
The most potent instrument
of the new Papal system was Gratian’s Decretum, which issued about the middle
of the twelfth century from the first
The
historian, George Salmon, explains the importance and influence of Pseudo –
Isidore:
In the ninth century
another collection of papal letters...was published under the name of Isidore,
by whom, no doubt, a celebrated Spanish bishop of much learning was intended.
In these are to be found precedents for all manner of instances of the exercise
of sovereign dominion by the pope over other Churches. You must take notice of
this, that it was by furnishing precedents that these letters helped the growth
of papal power. Thenceforth the popes could hardly claim any privilege but they
would find in these letters supposed proofs that the privilege in question was
no more than had been always claimed by their predecessors, and always
exercised without any objection...On these spurious decretals is built the
whole fabric of Canon Law. The great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, was taken in by
them, and he was induced by them to set the example of making a chapter on the
prerogatives of the pope an essential part of the treatises on the Church...Yet
completely successful as was this forgery, I suppose there never was a more
clumsy one. These decretal epistles had undisputed authority for some seven
hundred years, that is to say, down to the time of the Reformation.
If we want to know what
share these letters had in the building of the Roman fabric we have only to
look at the Canon Law. The ‘Decretum’ of Gratia quotes three hundred and twenty-four
times the epistles of the popes of the first four centuries; and of these three
hundred and twenty–four quotations, three hundred and thirteen are from the
letters which are now universally known to be spurious (George Salmon, The
Infallibility of the Church (London: John Murray, 1914), pp. 449, 451, 453).
In
addition to the Pseudo Isidorian Decretals there were other forgeries which
were successfully used for the promotion of the doctrine of papal primacy. One
famous instance is that of Thomas Aquinas. In 1264 A.D. Thomas authored a work
entitled Against the Errors of the Greeks. This work deals with the issues of
theological debate between the Greek and Roman Churches in that day on such
subjects as the Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Purgatory and the
Papacy. In his defense of the papacy Thomas bases practically his entire
argument on forged quotations of Church fathers.
Under
the names of the eminent Greek fathers such as Cyril of Jerusalem, John
Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Abbott, a Latin forger had
compiled a catena of quotations interspersing a number that were genuine with
many that were forged which was subsequently submitted to Pope Urban IV. This
work became known as the Thesaurus of Greek Fathers or Thesaurus Graecorum
Patrum. In addition, the Latin author also included spurious canons from early
Ecumenical Councils. Pope Urban in turn submitted the work to Thomas Aquinas
who used many of the forged passages in his work Against the Errors of the Greeks
mistakenly thinking they were genuine.
These spurious quotations
had enormous influence on many Western theologians in succeeding centuries. The
following is a sample of Thomas’ argumentation for the papacy using the
spurious quotations from the Thesaurus:
That the same (the Roman Pontiff) possesses in
the Church a fullness of power.
It is also established from the texts of the aforesaid Doctors that the Roman
Pontiff possesses a fullness of power in the Church. For Cyril, the Patriarch
of Alexandria, says in his Thesaurus: “As Christ coming forth from Israel as
leader and sceptre of the Church of the Gentiles was granted by the Father the
fullest power over every principality and power and whatever is that all might
bend the knee to him, so he entrusted most fully the fullest power to Peter
and his successors.” And again: “To no one else but Peter and to him alone
Christ gave what is his fully.” And further on: “The feet of Christ are his
humanity, that is, the man himself, to whom the whole Trinity gave the fullest
power, whom one of the Three assumed in the unity of his person and lifted up
on high to the Father above every principality and power, so that all the
angels of God might adore him (Hebr. 1:6); which whole and entire he has left
in sacrament and power to Peter and to his Church.
And Chrysostom says to the Bulgarian delegation speaking in the person of
Christ: “Three times I ask you whether you love me, because you denied me
three times out of fear and trepidation. Now restored, however, lest the
brethren believe you to have lost the grace and authority of the keys, I now
confirm in you that which is fully mine, because you love me in their
presence.” This is also taught on the authority of Scripture. For in
Matthew
Lord said to Peter without restriction: Whatsoever you shall bind on earth
shall be bound also in heaven.
That he enjoys the same
power conferred on Peter by Christ. It is also shown that Peter is the Vicar of
Christ and the Roman Pontiff is Peter’s successor enjoying the same power
conferred on Peter by Christ. For the canon of the Council of Chalcedon says:
“If any bishop is sentenced as guilty of infamy, he is free to appeal the
sentence to the blessed bishop of old Rome, whom we have as Peter the rock of
refuge, and to him alone, in the place of God, with unlimited power, is granted
the authority to hear the appeal of a bishop accused of infamy in virtue of the
keys given him by the Lord.” And further on: “And whatever has been decreed by
him is to be held as from the vicar of the apostolic throne. ”Likewise, Cyril,
the Patriarch of
With the exception of the
last reference to Chrysostom all of Thomas’ references cited to Cyril of
Edward Denny gives the
following historical summary of these forgeries and their use by Thomas
Aquinas:
As the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals
were by no means the first, so they were not the last forgeries in the
interests of the advancement of the Papal system. Gratian himself, in addition
to using the forged Decretals and the fabrications of others who preceded him,
had incorporated also into the Decretum fresh corruptions of his own with that
object, but amongst such forgeries a catena of spurious passages from the Greek
Fathers and Councils, put forth in the thirteenth century, had probably, next
to the Pseudo-lsidorian Decretals, the widest influence in this direction.
The object of this forgery
was as follows: The East had been separated from the West since the
excommunication by Pope Leo IX of Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, and that of the former by the latter in July 1054, in which the
other Eastern Patriarchs concurred. The Latins, especially the Dominicans, who
had established themselves in the East, made strenuous efforts to induce the
Easterns to submit to the Papacy. The great obstacle in the way of their
success was the fact that the Orientals knew nothing of such claims as those
which were advanced by the Roman Bishops. In their belief the highest rank in
the Hierarchy of the Church was that of Patriarch. This was clearly expressed
by the Patrician Babanes at the Council of
They were ignorant of any
autocratic power residing jure divino in the Bishop of
This work was laid before Urban IV, who was
deceived by it. He was thus able to use it in his correspondence with the
Emperor, Michael Palaeologus, to prove that from ‘the Apostolic throne of the
Roman Pontiffs it was to be sought what was to be held, or what was to be
believed, since it is his right to lay down, to ordain, to disprove, to
command, to loose and to bind in the place of Him who appointed him, and
delivered and granted to no one else but him alone what is supreme. To this
throne also all Catholics bend the head by divine law, and the primates of the
world confessing the true faith are obedient and turn their thoughts as if to
Jesus Christ Himself, and regard him as the Sun, and from Him receive the light
of truth to the salvation of souls according as the genuine writers of some of
the Holy Fathers, both Greek and others, firmly assert.”
Urban, moreover, sent this
work to St. Thomas Aquinas...The testimony of these extracts was to him of
great value, as he believed that he had in them irrefragable proof that the
great Eastern theologians, such as St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and
the Fathers of the Councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon, recognised the
monarchical position of the Pope as ruling the whole Church with absolute
power. Consequently he made use of these fraudulent documents in all honesty in
setting forth the prerogatives of the Papacy. The grave result followed that,
through his authority, the errors which he taught on the subject of the Papacy
were introduced into the schools, fortified by the testimony of these
fabrications, and thus were received as undoubted truth, whence resulted
consequences which can hardly be fully estimated.
It was improbable that the
Greeks, who had ample means of discovering the real character of these
forgeries, should finally accept them and the teaching based on them; but in
the West itself there were no theologians competent to expose the fraud, so
that these forgeries were naturally held to be of weighty authority. The high
esteem attached to the writings of
Von
Döllinger elaborates on the far reaching influence of these forgeries,
especially in their association with the authority of Aquinas, on succeeding
generations of theologians and their extensive use as a defense of the papacy:
In theology, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the spurious
passages of St. Cyril and forged canons of Councils maintained their ground,
being guaranteed against all suspicion by the authority of St. Thomas. Since
the work of Trionfo in 1320, up to 1450, it is remarkable that no single new
work appeared in the interests of the Papal system. But then the contest
between the Council of
Torquemada’s
argument, which was held up to the time of Bellarmine to be the most conslusive
apology of the Papal system, rests entirely on fabrications later than the
pseudo-Isidore, and chiefly on the spurious passages of St. Cyril. To ignore
the authority of
The Dominicans, Nicolai, Le
Quien, Quetif, and Echard, were the first to avow openly that their master
The authority claims of
Roman Catholicism ultimately devolve upon the institution of the papacy. The
papacy is the center and source from which all authority flows for Roman
Catholicism.
Dr. Aristeides Papadakis is
an Orthodox historian and Professor of Byzantine history at the
What was in fact being
implied in the western development was the destruction of the Church’s
pluralistic structure of government. Papal claims to supreme spiritual and
doctrinal authority quite simply, were threatening to transform the entire
Church into a vast centralized diocese...Such innovations were the result of a
radical reading of the Church’s conciliar structure of government as revealed
in the life of the historic Church. No See, regardless of its spiritual
seniority, had ever been placed outside of this structure as if it were a power
over or above the Church and its government...Mutual consultation among
Churches—episcopal collegiality and conciliarity, in short—had been the
quintessential character of Church government from the outset. It was here that
the locus of supreme authority in the Church could be found. Christendom indeed
was both a diversity and a unity, a family of basically equal sister-Churches,
whose unity rested not on any visible juridical authority, but on conciliarity,
and on a common declaration of faith and the sacramental life.
The ecclesiology of
communion and fraternity of the Orthodox, which was preventing them from
following Rome blindly and submissively like slaves, was based on Scripture and
not merely on history or tradition. Quite simply, the power to bind and loose
mentioned in the New Testament had been granted during Christ’s ministry to
every disciple and not just to Peter alone...In sum, no one particular Church
could limit the fulness of God’s redeeming grace to itself, at the expense of
the others. Insofar as all were essentially identical, the fulness of
catholicity was present in all equally. In the event, the Petrine biblical
texts, cherished by the Latins, were beside the point as arguments for Roman
ecclesiology and superiority. The close logical relationship between the papal
monarchy and the New Testament texts, assumed by
The
Byzantine indictment against
As
it happens, contemporary historians have repeatedly argued that the
universal episcopacy claimed by the eleventh–century reformers would have been
rejected by earlier papal incumbents as obscenely blasphemous (to borrow the
phrase of a recent scholar). The title ‘universal’ which was advanced formally
at the time was actually explicitly rejected by earlier papal giants such as
Gregory
"The emergence of a papal monarchy from
the eleventh century onwards cannot be represented as the realization of a
homogenous development, even within the relatively closed circle of the
western, Latin, Church’ (R.A. Marcus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great
(London: Variorum Reprints, 1983), p. 355).
"Papatus" (a new
term constructed on the analogy of episcopatus in the eleventh century)
actually represented a rank or an order higher than that of bishop, and was a
radical revision of Church structure and government. The discontinuity was
there and to dismiss it would be a serious oversight (Aristeides Papadakis, The
Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s, 1994),
pp. 158-160, 166-167).
It is illuminating
to understand that even some very
illustrious Roman Catholic theologians today recognize that the Papacy as it
now exists is of late origin. W. DeVries admits, ..throughout the first
ten centuries
Cardinal Avery Dulles considers the development of the
Papacy to be an historical accident. "The strong centralization in
modern Catholicism is due to historical accident. It has been shaped in
part by the homogeneous culture of medieval
The Church was never intended to be an institutional
government that is ruled with worldly power (See Matt. 23:8-10). Rather
its leaders must be the servant of all.
I entreat my many Catholic friends to examine these
facts. Do they not give ample evidence that the cause of the Great Schism
is rooted in the exaggerated Papal claims and that the way to unity is to
return to the Church which did not fall into this error?
World's Roman Catholic Bishops address papal
primacy, role of bishops Proposals to diminish papal authority in the Church in
favor of semi - autonomous national episcopal conferences were a major feature
of the World Synod of Bishops, entitled "The Bishop: Servant of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ for the Hope of the World", held in Rome September 30 -
October 27, 2001.
New York Cardinal Edward Egan was the general relator (effectively chairman)
of the Synod.
The Synod began with more than a week of interventions by about 250 bishops
from around the world and several religious and lay participants.
A Colombian, Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Barranquila, called upon the
Synod to "rethink the Petrine ministry", for purposes of greater
collaboration with national episcopal bodies. The bishop, he asserted, must
"listen to the Spirit Who lives in His people, confirming the people in
that same Spirit and leading them to achieve what that Spirit has aroused and
confirmed in His Church".
From the Eastern Rite Catholics in union with
Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewiz of
ecclesiology in calling for closer collaboration between the Holy See and
regional Episcopal Conferences, an extension of "the sphere of competence
of the Episcopal Conferences".
His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni of the Armenians warned that "an
excessive centralization by
particular churches".
Bishop Louis Pelatre of
Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, archbishop of the Syro-Malabars in
Indeed, by the logic of their remarks it was possible to conclude that Eastern
Orthodoxy itself is the superior Church.
From the West, Father David Fleming, superior general of the Marianists,
pointed to the "collaborative model" of governance followed in
religious orders since the Second
Cardinal Walter Kasper, prefect of the Holy See's Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, "we must create a better balance between the particular
Churches and the universal Church", he announced.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Holy See's Council for Inter -
Religious Dialogue, .... "Orthodox practice has to be based on
orthodoxy. The bishop is above all the teacher of the doctrine of the
faith ..."
Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of
In another unusually blunt speech, Cardinal Joachim Meisner of
Bishop Oswald Thomas Colman Gomis (
SEE ALSO: http://www.celticorthodoxy.com/bkceltic-orthodox-church/faq.html
Home page http://www.celticorthodoxy.com/bkceltic-orthodox-church/
