07-26-2012, 11:28 AM
(07-26-2012, 06:42 AM)SaintSebastian Wrote:(07-26-2012, 04:02 AM)Scotus Wrote:(07-25-2012, 10:59 AM)SaintSebastian Wrote: I know Bishop Joseph Fessler (the secretary at the First Vatican Council) and other defenders of papal infallibility after the First Vatican Council argued vigorously that it was not. It was one of two go-to documents (the other being In Coena Domini) of those who rejected Vatican I's definition (especially Dollinger) because, if taken as a timeless truth, it would contradict on certain points both history and certain contemporary (ie around 1870) ecclesiastical laws. This is why Fessler and other defenders of the Vatican I defintion argued it to be merely a penal Bull, and not an irreformable one meant to define any timeless dogma.
Do you have any sources or links for this? I'd be most interested in reading the arguments. Thanks!
Here's Dollinger's book (written under the pseudonym Janus). There's a chapter on each Bull I mentioned above outlining the problems he sees in them as disproving papal infallibility:
http://archive.org/stream/popeandcouncil...g_djvu.txt
I can't seem to find von Schulte's pamphlet online (the one Fessler references below).
Fessler wrote about it a few times. He does so briefly here (scroll down to 17. ( 8 ) :
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/mode...ssler7.htm
And again briefly in the preface to the second edition of the above book:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/mode...ssler4.htm
Unfortunately, that's all I can find online.
Just as by way of example though, if we apply the very broad penalties in the Bull as a dogma for all time, then at the very least the following papacies (off the top of my head) would be invalid in total or in part: St. Zephyrinius, St. Callistus, Liberius, St. Zosimus, Vigilius, Honorious, St. Celestine V, John XXII, and Pius II--but the Church has never considered them invalid at all. However, if we only apply the penalty in the 1917 Code, they are all valid.
Were they aware that the heresies they held were in fact heresies? Condition of ignorance applies. An example would be that John XXII was not pertinacious of his stance on the beatific vision.