Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 7

by William John Sparrow Simpson

CHAPTER VII

CARDINAL BELLARMINE

Nothing can better illustrate the development of thought on the papal power after the Council of Trent than the theories of Cardinal Bellarmine. A nephew of one Pope and friend of another, a Jesuit, resident in Rome, a Cardinal in 1600, he strikingly represents the extreme tendencies of the Italian School. He put forth to the world in his volumes of Controversies a systematic and elaborated conception of supremacy and Infallibility certainly unsurpassed.

The supremacy of Peter is upheld on the ground that our Lord said to him in the Apostles' presence, "Feed my sheep." In this injunction all sheep must be included. And therefore the Apostles themselves are sheep whom Peter must feed. While the Apostles, it may be admitted, derive their jurisdiction direct from Christ, the Bishops receive it direct from the Pope. Confirmation of this principle is sought in the relation of Moses to the Elders, and also in the monarchical character of the Church's constitution. According to Bellarmine, it is essential to the monarchical idea that all authority reside in one, and from that one be communicated to others. The Bishops are not successors of the Apostles; since the latter were not ordinary but extraordinary and delegated pastors, and as such have no successors at all. From these principles the relation of the Collective Episcopate, or Ecumenical Council, to the Pope may be readily imagined. Existing theories as to Papal Infallibility are grouped by Bellarmine as four. First, that the Pope, even with an Ecumenical Council, can be a heretic and teach heresy, and has actually so done. This is the opinion of Lutheran and Calvinist. Secondly, that the Pope, if he speak apart from an Ecumenical Council, can be a heretic and teach heresy, and has actually done so. This is the Parisian view, held by Gerson and Pope Hadrian VI. Thirdly, that the Pope cannot possibly, under any circumstances, be a heretic nor teach heresy. For this opinion Bellarmine only quotes one writer (Pighius), of whom Bossuet observes that nobody endorses his absurdities. Fourthly, that the Pope, whether he can be a heretic or not, cannot define anything heretical to be believed by the whole Church. This Bellarmine calls the most prevalent opinion of nearly all Catholics. He admits that various advocates of it interpolate various conditions of its exercise, such as consultation with his advisers, mature reflection, and so forth. But he thinks that they would deny that these conditions can ever be unfulfilled; on the ground that God who designs the end must also arrange the means.

Of these four opinions Bellarmine proceeds to pronounce the first heretical. The second he will not venture to term actually heretical, because its advocates are, so far, tolerated by the Church. This audacious statement should be read in the light of the entire previous history of Christendom. Yet Bellarmine holds it erroneous, and proximate to heresy; and that it might deservedly be declared heretical by a decision of the Church. The third opinion he pronounces probable, but not certain.

The last is most certain, and to be taught. He supports it by asserting that no appeal is ever permissible from a Pope to a General Council; that not only the Pope himself is inerrable in matters of faith, but even the particular Roman Church in Italy cannot err. This opinion at least is pious and most probable; although not so certain that the contrary can be called heretical. But, even with this, Bellarmine does not feel that his wonderful construction is yet secure. Accordingly he asserts that it is probable, and may be piously believed, not that the Pontiff cannot officially err, but even that as a particular individual he cannot be a heretic, or pertinaciously believe anything contrary to the faith. This appears to Bellarmine essential to protect the Pope's official Infallibility. For how, he asks, could a Pope, if inwardly heretical, strengthen his brethren in faith and teach the truth? No doubt the Almighty could extort a true confession from the heart of a heretic just as He put true words in the mouth of Balaam's ass. But, to Bellarmine's reflection, this procedure would be violent, and hardly in accord with that Providential Wisdom which sweetly disposeth all things.

After this elevation of papal authority to the highest height, there necessarily follows a corresponding depreciation of the value of the Collective Episcopate and its utterances in Council assembled. General Councils, before the Pope confirms their decisions, may err, unless the Fathers in defining follow the Pope's instructions. He is aware that the School of Paris, and all who maintain the supremacy of the Council over the Pope, will reject this. The Parisian Doctors hold that a General Council cannot err even apart from papal confirmation. But if it could not err then it would be final; and if so, where would be space for papal confirmation? Accordingly Bellarmine could not possibly endorse their view. He knows that his opponents will retort: General Councils anathematise those who contradict; they do not restrain their anathemas until the Pope has confirmed them. Bellarmine answers: They must certainly mean that their anathemas are conditional on the Pope's endorsement!

What forces Bellarmine to these eccentricities is his opinion that no authority was given by Christ to the Universal Church but only to St Peter. Consequently, if the General Council represent the Universal Church, yet it cannot possess what the entire Body did not receive. To Bellarmine's view the Supreme Pontiff is simply and absolutely above the Universal Church, and above the General Council; so that no judgment on earth can be superior to his. If the objection be urged that on this theory the Church is left in case of trouble without a remedy: Bellarmine answers, No; there is the divine Protection. We may pray God to convert the Pope, or to take him away before he ruins the Church.

It is certainly one of the ironies of history that the volume of Controversies, in which these theories are contained, was placed on the Index by Pope Sixtus V. as deficient, in certain respects, in the regard which a Catholic owed to the Holy Father. In the curiously self-laudatory pages of Bellarmine's Autobiography there still survives his own comment on this act of papal authority. He informs us that in the year 1591 Gregory XIV. was reflecting what he ought to do with the Vulgate edited by Sixtus V. There were not wanting men of importance who held that the use of this edition ought to be publicly prohibited. But Bellarmine suggested, in the Pope's presence, that correction was better than prohibition. Thus the honour of Pope Sixtus would be saved, and the book produced in an emended form. He advised, therefore, a republication after correction, with a preface stating that in the first edition various errors, typographical and other, had, through haste, crept in. Thus, says Bellarmine, he did Pope Sixtus good in return for evil. For Sixtus placed Bellarmine's work on Controversies upon the Index of Prohibited Books, because it rejected the direct dominion of the Pope over the whole world. But, when Pope Sixtus was dead, the Congregation of Sacred Rites ordered the prohibition of Bellarmine's work to be erased.^[1]

The theories of Roman theologians made great advances in the sixteenth century. But it is curious to note that some of the most extreme are yet considered inadequate and defective by papal writers since the Vatican Decrees. Torquemada was a theologian devoted to the enhancement of the Apostolic See.^[2] For him the plenitude of power existed in the Pope alone. Was it not written there shall be one fold and one shepherd? For him all the other Apostles derived their jurisdiction from St Peter. And, accordingly, all Bishops derive their jurisdiction immediately from the Pope, and not from Christ. But notwithstanding all this, Torquemada does not come up to Ultramontane requirements. The German infallibilist, Schwane, is not satisfied with him as an advocate of Papal Infallibility.

 

"Infallibility of the Pope," says Schwane, "could not be passed over in silence by a papal theologian as eminent as Torquemada. Nevertheless, he has not realised this doctrine in all its purity."^[3]

 

Torquemada, it appears, had such regard for papal freedom of will that he could not deny the possibility of its erroneous exercise, even in the discharge of the highest papal function. But while admitting that the Pope might err in an official utterance to the whole Church, he evaded the disastrous consequence to the doctrine of Infallibility by affirming that such a misuse of authority would constitute the Pope a heretic, and, as such, ipso facto, Pope no longer. Thus he secures the Papal Infallibility by maintaining the self-deposition of any Pope who teaches erroneously.

Schwane remarks acutely enough that Torquemada's defence of Papal Infallibility virtually places the supreme decision not in the Pope but in a General Council of the Church. For it manifestly tends to ascribe to General Councils the right to revise all papal dogmatic decrees, in order to ascertain whether they are heretical or not; whether they proceed from one who is really Pope, or from one who, having taught erroneously, is not Pope at all.

To avoid these dangerous tendencies Torquemada, according to Schwane, ought to have denied the possibility of the Pope's misuse of free will in his ex cathedra pronouncements; and this on the ground that the promises of Christ cannot fail to secure their own fulfilment, and must accordingly override the metaphysical possibility of mistake. This theory of the unconditional character of Christ's promises, of the almost mechanical necessity of their realisation, irrespective of the human will and human compliance, constantly meets us in recent Ultramontane developments. Torquemada, however, knew nothing about all this, or did not see his way to accept such theories. There remain, therefore, grave discrepancies, according to recent Roman writers, between this papal theologian of the sixteenth century—papal though indeed he was,—and the doctrine as it shaped itself in the Vatican Decrees. This inadequacy of its defenders, as judged by the standard of the nineteenth century decision, is a not unimportant feature in the doctrine's development.

1. Cf. Döllinger und Reusch, Die Selbstbiographie des Cardinals Bellarmin, p. 38, and notes pp. 106–111.
2. Ghilardi, De Plenitudine Potestatis, R.P. p. 15.
3. Hist. Dogm., v. p. 377.