Editor’s note: The following kath.net interview was posted originally on November 15, 2022, and appears here with kind permission of Lothar C. Rilinger and kath.net. English translation is by Frank Nitsche-Robinson.
Vatican (kath.net) According to the modern doctrine of constitutional law, all power in the state emanates from the people. Thus, the basis of every democratic state is the sovereignty of the people. The state of Vatican City, however, is exempt from this. In this state, in the Vatican, the people do not form the sovereign; in the smallest state in the world, the respective pope is still the sovereign. As a result, the Pope in the Vatican could exercise more legitimate power than any statesman in Western Europe. This constitutional construction, which allows for a unique abundance of power, raises questions about the limits of power. We therefore spoke with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who with his book The Pope. Mandate and Mission (Der Papst. Auftrag und Sendung) has spoken up and joined the discourse on the position of the Pope, about the limits of power, both legitimate and granted by the doctrine and tradition of the Church.
Rilinger: Three leadership functions are transferred to the Pope. He is the Archbishop of Rome and thus metropolitan of the Roman ecclesiastical province. Further, he has been called the Patriarch of the West. For historical reasons, Pope Benedict XVI has renamed this task as President of the Roman Catholic Church. As the third and paramount task, he is the Pope of several Catholic churches. To fulfill this role as Pope, the First Vatican Council established that the Pope has the primacy of jurisdiction and can decide ex cathedra, that is, infallibly. Thus the Pope was granted a primacy which had always existed, but was now cast into legal form by the Council. Is this primacy an honorary primacy or is it indeed an apostolic office which – as J. Ratzinger put it – unites in itself the responsibility for the Word and the communion?
Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller: The Catholic Church consists “in and of the particular Churches” (Lumen gentium 23) – of the dioceses led by a bishop. From this, we must distinguish that several dioceses are grouped into a patriarchal federation or, at the national level, into a bishops’ conference with an elected president. This is a matter of history, but not of dogmatic, which aims at the sacramental nature of the Church. The Bishop of Rome with the official title of Pope, as the successor of Peter, is the guarantor of the unity of the episcopate. He stands at the head of the bishops, just as Peter stood at the head of the apostles by virtue of his special calling by Christ himself (Mt 10:2; 16:18). Thus Christ “instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion [of the bishops and their local churches].” (Lumen gentium 18; cf. 23). The primacy of the Roman Church and the personal infallibility of the Pope in the interpretation of revealed truths are thus of divine right and by no means arise only from a contingent historical constellation or even owe themselves merely to the politically justified claim to power of the bishop of the imperial capital of Rome at that time. The historical titles such as Patriarch of the Occident, President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference or Archbishop of the Roman ecclesiastical province, i.e. of the suburbic bishoprics, do not essentially belong to his primacy.
Infallibility is not a private quality or the unconditional power of command, such as the megalomaniac autocrats of this world claim for themselves, but a humble service to the Church in the name of her Lord Jesus Christ, who came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45).
In the strictly revelation-theological context, the charism of infallibility in the doctrine of faith and morals, with which God has endowed his Church, conferred on him personally — and on the ecumenical Council together with him — by the Holy Spirit, is entrusted to him, so that “the Church of the living God, as the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), may present to faith in hearing and teaching the unabridged and undisguised revelation made once for all in Christ.
The Pope as “sovereign of the Vatican State” has nothing to do with this internally. The Holy See as a subject of international law serves only externally to protect the political independence of the Pope and the Roman Curia from the encroachments of politicians, of which these have been guilty so many times in history. The Vatican is not a state like any other, to which the criteria of modern statehood could or even should be fully applied. But neither is the Vatican State an absolute monarchy, as the opposing polemicists claim, but an independent administration of material Church property, at the service of the spiritual government of the Church. The Pope exercises his sovereignty over persons with Vatican passports and servants from outside on a basis of natural law and according to the state of the evolved legal culture – through bodies such as the gendarmerie, the Swiss Guard, the property administration or the banking system, which operate according to professional criteria, to name a few.
Rilinger: The communion also includes various patriarchates and Eastern churches that recognize the Pope as their head. The movement of the so-called Synodal Way seems to amount to a separation of the German local churches from the Roman Catholic Church. Do you nevertheless see a possibility that this new church remains in church and Eucharistic communion with the Roman Church, so that this new patriarchate or this new church could also recognize the Pope as spiritual head?
Cardinal Müller: The so-called Synodal Way has nothing whatsoever to do with the formation of the old patriarchal churches. Originally, the churches founded by Peter (Antioch, Alexandria through Peter’s disciple Mark, Rome) were called patriarchates. Later, Constantinople was added for political reasons, while Jerusalem was added for reasons of reverence. Then the Orthodox (autocephalous) national churches reserved the title Patriarch for the leading bishop. In Germany, however, the issue is the attempt to take possession of Catholic institutions, church taxes and building stock for an organization that has abandoned the Catholic faith in its essential elements and has definitely left the ground of revelation. The baptismal creed has been replaced by the idol of pagan LGBT ideology. Instead of looking up to the cross of Christ and carrying the flag of victory of the Risen Christ before humanity, the protagonists of the German Synod raise the rainbow flag, which represents a public rejection of the Christian image of man. They have replaced the creed with the confession to the idols of a neo-pagan religion.
Once again, the words of the eminent philosopher Max Scheler are confirmed: “Man either believes in God, or he believes in an idol (Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Bern-München 51968, 399). When Cardinal Marx, as a protagonist of the German Synodal Way, calls for not talking too much (sic!) of God and when he lays down his pectoral cross in the holy city of Jerusalem out of “consideration” for the feelings of those of other faiths, thus denying the cross as a universal sign of salvation, I prefer to stay with the apostle Paul, who “was not ashamed of the Gospel” (Rom 1:16) and who wrote to the Christians in Corinth: “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor 1:23).
Since “synodal themes” revolve exclusively and incessantly around sexuality as an egomaniacal source of pleasure, one gets the impression that sexology has been declared the leading science and has therefore replaced theology resting on revealed faith. The Barmen Theological Declaration against the German Christians from 1934 should be held up as a mirror to anyone who wants to remain faithful to Christ: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures, and truths, as God’s revelation. […] We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”
The Holy See’s July 21, 2022 statement puts it this way, “The ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany has no authority to oblige bishops and faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals.”
If the Synodal Way propaganda machine knew even a little about the hermeneutics of Catholic theology and the statements about the nature and mission of the Catholic Church in the Dogmatic Constitutions of Vatican II (Dei verbum; Lumen gentium), it would have thanked the ecumenical prefect Cardinal Koch for the free tutoring instead of letting off its usual fireworks of hollow phrases and brazen ignorance. To what intellectual and moral level church and theology in Germany have been run down! One can only hope that Pope Francis will exercise his authority and not fall for the staged consternation ritual of hard-core ideologues or think that he can appease them with diplomacy and pious unity talk.
Rilinger: You said that the rainbow flag is carried by the protagonists of the so-called Synodal Way. Can you explain for what reason you condemn this flag as pagan?
Cardinal Müller: In the Old Testament, the rainbow is considered a sign of God’s covenant and peace with mankind (Gen 9:11-17). However, the original religious meaning was transformed into a symbol for the peace movement. Since the 1970s the rainbow flag, in a reversal of the natural color sequence, has been considered the banner of the international LGBT ideology, which pretends to stand up against discrimination against homoerotically-inclined people, but is, in reality, the antithesis of natural and revealed anthropology. The human body in its natural way of male and female sexuality is considered merely as material, which the autonomous will transforms into an arbitrary means of orgiastic pleasure, in order to escape the basic feeling of nihilism, i.e. to escape the terrible experience of the death of God. As always, the fellow travelers of atheistic ideologies are not aware of the actual intentions of their protagonists. Or they do not want to know these intentions and have themselves readily deceived by the propaganda that anti-discrimination is the sole agenda.
Rilinger: Furthermore, the First Vatican Council decided that the primacy of jurisdiction also includes the possibility of the Pope to proclaim truths of faith ex cathedra. Thus, the Pope is granted the right to infallibly establish tenets of faith that every Catholic must believe. This authority could carry the danger of implying that the Pope is allowed to act absolutely. Yet even infallibility has its limits. What must we understand by the possibility of infallibility?
Cardinal Müller: As I said, the personal opinions and life experiences of the reigning pope are no more or less to be accepted than those of any other educated or even decent, ordinary person. Vatican II explains in Lumen gentium, once again in detail, what is meant by the infallibility of the Church in matters of faith and what is not. Dogmatic declarations can have the quality of infallibility if their content derives from Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition of the Word of God, and if they are formally presented to be believed by the competent authority of the Magisterium of the Pope and the Bishops, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as a truth revealed by God. However, “They do not receive a new public revelation as part of the divine deposit of faith (depositum fidei).” (Lumen Gentium, 25)
It is therefore completely absurd to think that a council or a pope could abrogate an earlier dogma, or to establish, for example, that the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders does not include the requirement of the male sex of its recipient, or that two persons of the same sex may have a natural marriage, that is, a marriage of the unbaptized, or a sacramental marriage, that is, one of two baptized persons, or – to give another example – that the gesture of blessing over a same-sex couple has a positive effect with God, who in his creative will blessed man and woman as a married couple (Gen 1:28). In an extreme case, a pope could become a heretic as a private person and thus automatically lose his office if the contradiction to the revelation and the dogmatic teaching of the church is evident.
Rilinger: What is the process towards an ex cathedra decision? Is it a lonely decision of the Pope or is it rather the end point of a long process of struggling for the right evaluation of a truth of faith?
Cardinal Müller: The truth of the mysteries of faith is revealed and fully contained in Christ, the Word of God made flesh. It can only be a matter of struggle for the conceptual and terminological version of the revealed doctrine. The divine nature of the Son of God and the fact of his assumption of full human nature are the content of revelation. That the councils from Nicea to Chalcedon (451) have preserved this against all deviations and dilutions in the concept of homoousion, i.e. Christ being coessential with the Father of the Godhead and equal to us in human nature, is the result of dogma history. But we do not actually believe in the dogmas of the Church as human words in the Bible or the magisterial definitions, but in God in his revealed truths, which are merely expressed in human language, but do not represent mere – fallible – human opinions about God (cf. 1 Thess 2:13).
Rilinger: The primacy of the Pope is often perceived as a stumbling block, as it prevents individual local churches from going their own ways in faith. We can see this tendency in the efforts of the German local churches, which seem to have joined the Los-von-Rom (Away-from-Rome) movement through the so-called Synodal Way. Does the primacy therefore constitute the guarantee that the Catholic Church can act as a universal Church and not as a national Church?
Cardinal Müller: A national church with its own creed is an absurdity in two respects. First, the nation, the people, the culture, the language are neither productive subjects nor passive membranes that could translate a divine background noise into a human melody according to the taste of the contemporaries. Rather, the consubstantial Son of the Father is the one Word of God who communicated Himself to us fully and definitively in the humanity of Jesus.
The Word of God unites the faithful in the Pentecostal spirit of the Father and the Son across the diversity of cultures into the one Church. Towards the end of the 2nd century, in response to the Gnostics of his and all times and countering the fundamental falsification of the Christian mysteries of unity as well as of the Trinity of God, the Incarnation, the sacramentality of the Church and the corporeity of salvation, Irenaeus of Lyons emphasized the unity and communion of the universal Church on the basis of apostolic tradition. “The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. […]For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world.” (Against Heresies I, 10, 2).
Rilinger: The Petrine primacy has historically developed from the original tripartite primacy of John, James, and Peter, as documented in the New Testament. Can you trace the development from the tripartite primacy to the primacy of Peter and thus of the Pope?
Cardinal Müller: We encounter these three apostles in the synoptic Gospels as the closest circle of apostles within the college of the twelve apostles. Post-Easter and post-apostolic, due to the early Christian mission, local churches with a college of presbyters, also with deacons, presided over by a single bishop, have developed. The bishop then also represents in his person the diachronic and synchronic unity of the Church in the succession of the apostles and the inner continuity of the Church with its origin in Christ and the apostles. Since only the Bishop of Rome is the personal successor of Peter, while the other bishops are successors of the Apostles according to their entire college, the prerogatives of Simon in his capacity as Peter, as the rock on which Christ, the Son of the living God, will build his Church, apply also to the Bishop of Rome. In the course of time, the title of Pope has emerged to summarize the Petrine ministry of the Roman bishop in one term.
Rilinger: Even if the Pope announces a decision ex cathedra only in exceptional cases, the question arises as to how the Pope prepares his decisions. Does he rely on a circle of advisors? And how is this circle of advisors composed? Does the Pope consult with personal friends or professional advisors who are paid for their services, or does he rely on the support of the cardinals, who are supposed to be the born advisors of the Pope?
Cardinal Müller: Even if doctrinal decisions of the Church in particular cases infallibly reflect revelation because they are borne by the charism of the Holy Spirit, they nevertheless require the best possible human preparation so that revelation “under the guiding light of the Spirit of truth is religiously preserved and faithfully expounded in the Church.” (Lumen gentium 25). To this end the Pope and the bishops are inwardly committed. Also, for the general government of the Church, the Pope is to rely first on the College of Cardinals, which, after all, represents the Roman Church and – like the presbyterate advises a bishop – advises the Pope collegially/synodally. As in all cases, an advisory body composed by the supreme decision-maker along the lines of compliancy and cronyism is of little use and does more harm than good to the incumbent. The latter does not need the praises that flatter human vanity, but the critical expertise of collaborators who are not interested in the benevolent gestures of the superior, but in the success of his office, i.e. the pontificate, for the Church.
Rilinger: Through the primacy of jurisdiction, the Pope can proclaim dogmas that must be followed by the people of God. However, even a dogma could not be withdrawn from discourse, so that doubts about the truth of the dogma could arise through theological and philosophical development. Then, if the doubts become evident, must the dogma be upheld or would there not rather be the possibility of forgetting it – as Karl Rahner put it – since every dogma should be open to the future?
Cardinal Müller: For Rahner, “open to the future” does not mean borrowing from an evolutionary understanding of truth, but rather the deepest possible conceptual and spiritual understanding of revealed truth on the part of an individual Christian or the entire people of God. One must distinguish between the believed truth and its linguistic version. The truth of God is completely revealed in Christ, but it remains the ever greater mystery, which makes itself known to us in our language, but cannot be encompassed by our concepts and therefore cannot be rationalistically broken down to a calculation. The act of faith is not directed towards the confessional formula – as it were, towards the precious setting of the infinitely more valuable diamond – but towards the content, namely towards God, who himself is the truth (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II q. 1 a. 2 ad 2).
Rilinger: J. Ratzinger even speaks of the fact that popes could also become a scandalon, because as human beings they believe in wanting to establish a way, which from their logic could present the appearance of legitimacy, but contradicts the divine word. Is this also a limit of infallibility?
Cardinal Müller: It is not a question of limiting the infallibility of the Church in the full presentation of revelation, since it owes itself to a charism of the Holy Spirit. But every pope must distinguish precisely between his task and himself as a private person. He must not impose his preferences on other Christians, like the Chinese, for instance, must study the Mao Bible or the wisdom of their “Great Chairman.” Nor must a pope or bishop or other church superior abuse the trust, which is readily placed in him in a fraternal atmosphere, in order to provide his incompetent or corrupt friends with church sinecures. If there was a traitor among the apostles chosen by Jesus and even Peter denied Jesus in the course of the Passion, then we know that church officials throughout history and in the present can also fail and abuse their office selfishly or narrow-mindedly.
We have an example even in matters of faith, as Paul opposed Peter to his face when the latter allowed himself a dangerous ambiguity in the “truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:11-14). Our affective and effective attachment to the Pope and to our bishop or pastor has nothing to do with the unworthy personality cult of secular autocrats. It is, rather, the brotherly love for a fellow Christian who has been entrusted with a high office, in which he can also fail. That is why loving criticism promotes the Church more than servile hypocrisy.
But the best means by which we can assist the Pope and the bishops is through our prayer. We trust in Jesus, the Lord of the Church, who before the Passion said to Simon, the rock on which he would build his Church (Mt 16:18), “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” (Lk 22:31-32).
Rilinger: Eminence, thank you for these clear explanatory words.
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The fruit of Post-Conciliarism is this Permanent Attack on “Rigidity” of Catholicism – from the very men who occupy the positions of authority established to defend the dogmatic truth, the faith and the Divinely Established Institution.
“We are dealing with people who have a different philosophy to ours… who are influenced by all modern subjectivist philosophers. For them there is no fixed truth, there is no dogma. Everything is evolving. That is a totally Masonic concept. This is really the destruction of the Faith.” (Lefevbre Fideliter No. 79, January-February 1991)
“A non-aggressive agreement has been made between the Church and masonry. It was covered up by calling it aggiornamento, reaching out to the world, ecumenism.” (Le Figaro, August 2, 1976)
Synodal Way to Destitution is the final Machiavellian Stage of the C6 Freemasonic Infiltrates’ Great Modernist Apostasy.
Once recognized, the Apostasy of Aggiornamento must be fought – before we find ourselves observing Act V of Hamlet?
Dear Mike:
It appears that a laissez faire attitude has gripped church leadership. Gnosticism, nihilism or political correctness seem to be the aim of various and sundry!
Jesus was not magnanimous towards the religious leaders of the day. Those who love Christ will rebuke the pretenders of our day.
2 Peter 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
Jude 1:4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
God bless you,
Brian
The problem with the German bishops is that they are homosexualists (if not, in fact, homosexuals) first and followers of Christ second (or third, fourth, or fifth depending on which way the socio/cultural/political wind is blowing on any particular day). And whose fault is this? Francis’, since he has failed miserably in his pastoral responsibility to instruct the brother(s). Francis is too busy castigating the ‘older brother who stayed in his father’s house’ while sending signals to the prodigal son to persist in his life of squalor. Shameful.
More and more, men of faith are rebuking weak and wayward leadership. Thank God for men of Muller’s character and stature. That the Lord would lead us to pray for him and others that share his love for Christ. We were redeemed at a great price, let us be mindful of what a gift the Lord has given.
1 Corinthians 16:13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Job 38:1-7 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? …
1 Peter 1:20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you
Hebrews 9:14 How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Blessings to all who love the Lord.
Lothar C Rilinger German jurist, author is also theologically equipped to ask the key questions of Card Müller. Rilinger immediately poses the crux implied declaratively, “Thus the Pope was granted a primacy which had always existed, but was now cast into legal form by the Council”. Posed directly, Is this primacy honorary or Apostolic?
This key question is explored in its shades of authority. Card Müller first establishes what has currently come into question, the local suzerainty of bishops conferences and the apostolic unifying authority of the pope [aware of the present antagonism in the role appointed bishops during the Synod typified by G Weigel as “note takers’]. Müller first defines his terms, infallibility “is not a private quality or the unconditional power of command”, rather “it’s meant to serve Our Lord”.
Rilinger, aware of the current controversy, asks as an attorney leading questions that address the Synod on Synodality. Pertinent to this controversy is the CWR Editors contribution to the controversy, ‘that the pope, an absolute monarch within the confines of the Vatican State, is not such regarding universal ecclesial authority. The editors suggest a carryover of this sense of monarchic authority to the universal Church, by Francis.
Card Müller capsulizes his response to papal authority distinguishing the personal thoughts, even living intentions of a pope as distinct and private, and not associated with the authority of the Chair of Peter instituted by Christ. That, “the truth of God is completely revealed in Christ, but remains the ever greater mystery, which cannot be rationalized calculation. Faith is directed towards God, who himself is the truth” (ST 2a2ae 1 2 Ad 2).
Unfortunately, unlike most respondents to CWR essays, the laity at large fail to make these distinctions. Recently I had to discuss at length the difference between a pontiff’s informal remarks as not binding doctrine. What Card Müller provides us in this interview requires simplification for teaching the laity.
Hello Fr. Peter,
In John 20:21, it seems to me Jesus gives all 12, (or eleven at the time), of His Apostles, His Power to bind and loost sins on earth. Is this correct? Certainly even Priests have Christ’s Power to loost sins in the Confessional.
John 20:21 Appearance to the Disciples.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Can a Pope, Bishop or Priest, intentionally do, opposite the Will of Jesus, evil, when using Jesus’ Power to bind and loost sins? It would seem that even Incarnate Jesus had the human free-willed power to do, opposite the Will of God the Father. I am not sure what good it does us if Popes, Bishops and Priests can infallibly know the Will of God, but use human free-will to bind, or unbind, the opposite of God’s Will?
John 14:31
” . . . but the world must know that I love the Father and do as the Father has commanded me.”
Luke 22:42
“Father, if it is your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.”
Hebrews 4:14
Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our profession of faith. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned.
Matthew 16:13
Jesus replied, “Blest are you, Simon son of John! No mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. I for my part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
I understand the unifying ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ authority of the papacy in deciding which direction the Church will go as a whole. I am not so sure that God will over-ride a human free-willed Pope’s leadership decision to choose evil. I believe the reason ‘the gates of hell will not prevail’, is because Jesus will Divine Intervention, Second Coming, Come to straighten things out Himself, on free-willed earth, when that time arises, like He did in His First Coming, where He replaced Jewish leadership of God’s Church.
Can you, Fr. Peter, talk about Pope’s human free-will, and whether or not they can intentionally disobey God on leadership issues on morality.
At the Counsel of (Pope Francis equivalent) Caiaphas; the, God Authorized Church leaders, Council ordered Jesus to be put to death. The Counsel infallibly knew Jesus was innocent, yet they bound the opposite into Church Law.
Steven, neither a pope nor presbyter can absolve a penitent of serious sin if the penitent isn’t repentant of that sin. Conversely, a repentant sinner is forgiven when confessing regardless of the intention of the confessor. It is Our Lord who forgives, the authority given to the confessor cannot impede the Author of that authority in these circumstances.
Although a confessor pope or presbyter [both are priests] can mislead a penitent to accept the error that a serious is not serious sin. The confessor is then guilty of a serious sin, and likely the penitent for denying what he should know.
A pope given the authority to teach infallibly has free will. Can he oppose the will of God and will evil? Yes. Although the power [faculty] commissioned to the Chair of Peter is protected by Christ, who instituted and conveys that authority. Similar to the above on absolution of sins, what God promises to Peter and his successors regarding infallibility has its power in Christ, who is truth. The truth that is Christ cannot be subverted by the very power, infallibility conveyed by Christ and belonging to Christ to Peter and his successors.
The wisdom given to the Church by the Holy Spirit insures the faithful of infallibility in his self revelation to the world, and when the pope speaks [pronounces] formally and universally ex Cathedra to the entire Church. That infallible office is in this manner protected by Our Lord. Although, outside of ex Cathedra pronouncements the Office of the papacy does not by necessity receive that protection, and popes as you suggest can at least theoretically act and will against the will of God revealed to them. Some argue they can’t err even in that capacity, although there’s evidence, contested by some with Honorius I, and during the Arian heresy with many hierarchy.
My opinion is that for given reasons, let’s say widespread lax moral practice [Catholics who abort and or either vote for abortion platforms, who choose homosexuality, who rarely attend Mass, who lie, slander, offer false witness, commit adultery and worse] God may permit clergy from presbyter to pope to further mislead the faithful as a chastisement. To permit the nominal and sinful to align and lose themselves to Satan. A pontiff with evil intention, or mistaken opinions may conceivably mislead the faithful outside of his ex Cathedra office by misleading remarks, suggestive words and actions.
So, during this time of severe trial we have a greater responsibility to pray and offer sacrifice for the many who travel the wide path to perdition.
Stephen, insofar as popes held to have been in error [heresy] we have as mentioned Honorius I and Liberius. Honorius did not teach heresy in his magisterial capacity ex Cathedra, rather he was cited by a Council post death on the basis of an exchange of letters with the patriarch of Constantinople in which he wrote in support of the patriarch’s belief in an Arian form of heresy that disparaged the unity of divine and human natures in the one Person of Christ. Insofar as pope Liberius, he condemned Saint Athanasius of Alexandria for denial of the Arian heresy. Although, he as well as Honorius did not formally [ex Cathedra] confirm the Arian heresy. His condemnation of Saint Athanasius falls under his governing capacity, which is not the same as his infallible capacity when declaring a doctrine ex Cathedra.
So there is no historical evidence of a pope formally teaching heresy.
I have seen the exchange summarized as:
BISHOP SERGIUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE: Let’s stop discussing whether Jesus has one or two energies. People might get confused and think that Jesus has two contrary wills.
POPE HONORIUS I: Agreed. Let’s stop the discussion about one or two energies. And Jesus has one will, because he did not receive our vitiated nature tainted by Adam’s fall, but the human nature that Adam had prior to the fall.
(After Honorius dies) MONOTHELITES: Jesus only has one will, just like Pope Honorius said.
ALL SUBSEQUENT POPES: No, actually, Honorius simply meant that Jesus does not have a sinful will, and that his human will is always in complete harmony with the divine will.
Mark Morin, PsyD.
Mark although your argument is feasible [St Bellarmine in line with ecclesial historian Card Baronius held the documents were forged that there was no heresy] regarding intention there remains the reality of the one Person Christ necessarily possessing two distinct wills as taught by Cyril of Alexandria in opposition to Nestorius of Constantinople, the latter who held to a form of Monothelitism.
Two distinct wills, one human [a true human will free of the deleterious effect of original sin] one divine are necessary that the passion and crucifixion was a freely decided act of the human will in obedience to the divine will. This ‘conflict’ then is in reality the saving act of the Son of Man. One will was held by Honorius and Sergius to the detriment of the necessary ‘conflict’, realized in a true temptation [Christ who suffered all temptation to sin as we but did not sin] to avoid the crucifixion then giving assent to the Father [in Gethsemane].
One will however seemingly practical reduces the human will to irrelevance in effect reducing the reality of Christ’s sacrifice.
How cometh it to pass,
now, surely we must ask;
How one so solid and true,
is banished into the blue?
Whilst the stale great Apostasy,
the Zeitgeist bubble where Bats-sing;
Continueth so unabated,
with cultic touch—masturbated!
For all of us who, at one time or another, might also have validated our own particular waywardness within some larger bubble of self-deception (isn’t this how Evil works?)…
Let us now pray together that even Germania’s bubbling Synodal Wayward will be overcome by the light—and our brethren Batzing/Grech/Hollerich’s Scandal of 2022 fully undone, with restitution, in 2023 or 2024…otherwise, the millstone.
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.
“And Faith unfaithful, kept him falsely true.”
No doubt, if not for a Crisis Of Faith, which began with a denial of The Word Of God from The Beginning, with the denial of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, leading to a denial of The Sanctity of human life from the moment of conception to natural death, and a denial of The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament Of Holy Matrimony, resulting in a denial of the fact that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, would the atheist materialist overpopulation alarmist globalist have been successful in their attempt to destroy the Papacy?
In other words, “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth”, is a call to action, not to complacency.