Saturday, February 16, 2019
I made several deletions from the side margin today including the graph outlining deaths since 9/11, various syndication buttons that were either no longer in existence or obsolete, and removed the St Blogs Webring since that webring is nothing but a ghost town now and has apparently been so for a long time.
More will be forthcoming in soon but I do not have time to go into it right now.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Revisiting the Subject of Private Revelations:
Though I have written more completely on the subject in years past, the following was occasioned by the words in dark green below. Without further ado...
One often hears it said today that, "Fatima is [merely] a private revelation." While many subjects who make such statements are well-meaning, and while the assertion is even true in a limited sense, often they are made with the purpose of minimizing the revelations at Fatima to the point of insignificance, by way of suggesting they may be ignored by any Catholic who wishes to do so.
Actually, no one is obligated to believe in any apparition, period. You would be wise to not take this beyond what the Catholic Church teaches on private revelation.
Someone is not more or less Catholic for accepting or rejecting any apparition. If anything, apparitions (even approved ones) can be a pathway to schism or worse when those who are devoted to them in any way place said devotions above their required assent to the Church's Magisterium. (Which is nor optional.)
Apparitions are not to be used as deciding questions of history, natural philosophy, philosophy, or theology and those that do engage in no small amount of abuse of them. (For example, the person on your thread criticizing Pius [XI] and Pius XII for not avoiding WWII and its aftermath because of not "obeying Fatima" or some nonsense like that.) Apparitions can actually do more harm than good unless those that follow them use them correctly. If they are used in any way for more than helping the person renew their own faith through repentance then they are being abused. If they are used as requirements of the Faith by anyone, they are being abused.
Yes, Fatima is merely a private revelation. If you personally find the arguments for it convincing, then you can give it the assent of human faith but that is all. This is what the Church since the time of Benedict XIV has taught on private revelations. It would be advisable not to go beyond that.
Though I have written more completely on the subject in years past, the following was occasioned by the words in dark green below. Without further ado...
One often hears it said today that, "Fatima is [merely] a private revelation." While many subjects who make such statements are well-meaning, and while the assertion is even true in a limited sense, often they are made with the purpose of minimizing the revelations at Fatima to the point of insignificance, by way of suggesting they may be ignored by any Catholic who wishes to do so.
Actually, no one is obligated to believe in any apparition, period. You would be wise to not take this beyond what the Catholic Church teaches on private revelation.
Someone is not more or less Catholic for accepting or rejecting any apparition. If anything, apparitions (even approved ones) can be a pathway to schism or worse when those who are devoted to them in any way place said devotions above their required assent to the Church's Magisterium. (Which is nor optional.)
Apparitions are not to be used as deciding questions of history, natural philosophy, philosophy, or theology and those that do engage in no small amount of abuse of them. (For example, the person on your thread criticizing Pius [XI] and Pius XII for not avoiding WWII and its aftermath because of not "obeying Fatima" or some nonsense like that.) Apparitions can actually do more harm than good unless those that follow them use them correctly. If they are used in any way for more than helping the person renew their own faith through repentance then they are being abused. If they are used as requirements of the Faith by anyone, they are being abused.
Yes, Fatima is merely a private revelation. If you personally find the arguments for it convincing, then you can give it the assent of human faith but that is all. This is what the Church since the time of Benedict XIV has taught on private revelations. It would be advisable not to go beyond that.
Briefly on the Christian Faith:
The words that occasioned this were ones directed at Rod Dreher who was accused of being an apostate. I responded originally as follows:
Apostasy is the repudiation of the Christian faith. Dreher did not do that by swimming the Bosphorus.
As for the rest, my words are in regular font.
Do the "orthodox" churches retain the Christian faith despite their numerous heresies? :)
A better question is, do the so-called "traditionalists"? :o
The answer to your question is yes because the Catholic Church has always recognized the Christian faith in the Orthodox Churches. There is 95+% concurrence in faith albeit often explained differently (as western and eastern theological approaches differ) and the differences boil down oftentimes to interpretations.
For example, the Orthodox believe usually in papal primacy but not in the manner that the west conceives of it, they believe by theological default in the immaculate conception as doctrine not dogma (long story here), they believe in prayers for the dead but not many of the medieval western accredations that are often attached to the dogma of purgatory, etc.
They retain the Christian faith albeit imperfectly. That also applies to the Protestants who though varying from group to group all are far more deficient in the Christian faith than the Orthodox. But the Church recognizes those of good will who profess a belief in the basic Trinitarian doctrines as Christians with varying degrees of deficiencies of course. Heck, she even recognizes the "traditionists" as Christians despite their varying degrees of deficiency too :)
The words that occasioned this were ones directed at Rod Dreher who was accused of being an apostate. I responded originally as follows:
Apostasy is the repudiation of the Christian faith. Dreher did not do that by swimming the Bosphorus.
As for the rest, my words are in regular font.
Do the "orthodox" churches retain the Christian faith despite their numerous heresies? :)
A better question is, do the so-called "traditionalists"? :o
The answer to your question is yes because the Catholic Church has always recognized the Christian faith in the Orthodox Churches. There is 95+% concurrence in faith albeit often explained differently (as western and eastern theological approaches differ) and the differences boil down oftentimes to interpretations.
For example, the Orthodox believe usually in papal primacy but not in the manner that the west conceives of it, they believe by theological default in the immaculate conception as doctrine not dogma (long story here), they believe in prayers for the dead but not many of the medieval western accredations that are often attached to the dogma of purgatory, etc.
They retain the Christian faith albeit imperfectly. That also applies to the Protestants who though varying from group to group all are far more deficient in the Christian faith than the Orthodox. But the Church recognizes those of good will who profess a belief in the basic Trinitarian doctrines as Christians with varying degrees of deficiencies of course. Heck, she even recognizes the "traditionists" as Christians despite their varying degrees of deficiency too :)
Monday, February 11, 2019
More on Popes, Heresy, Theology, Church History, Etc.
(Aka "Dogmatic Theology Five Cents, the Doctor is In" Dept.)
This is a response to a response to a thread posted on Saturday. My words will be in regular font while words of sources either block quoted or in light blue font.
I can refute all of what you wrote in response with just one observation: It's simply not true that the Church teaches, or has ever taught, that a pope cannot teach heresy
Actually, that is no refutation because you are flat out wrong. The Church does teach and has always taught that a pope cannot teach heresy. However, to be clear, she has "always taught" this the same way she has "always taught" things like papal primacy, the immaculate conception, and papal infallibility. This is not hard to demonstrate but because of the variegations of Church history, it can be tedious to do so. But since anyone can make sweeping observation claims without backing them up, I will take a few moments and touch lightly on this stuff.
As for your words:
And as to that allocution from Saint Pius which you cited: There's truth in it, but the ultramontanism of it is not authentically Catholic. It's hyperbolic pious piffle that is not grounded in the Scriptures or in the tradition of the Church, and any bishop of Rome who talked that way in prior centuries would have been laughed at and ignored as a pretentious crank, and rightly so.
You sound like the Orthodox who say the same things about papal primacy. They point to the numerous and weighty examples of the popes over the centuries exhorting and commanding obedience to them in matters of faith as "hyperbolic", "exaggerations", "misunderstanding the ancient primacy of honour", and a whole host of similar claims. To apply your claim about Pope St. Pius X's words seriously, you should swim the Bosophorus because at least then you would be honest with what you evidently believe. Pius' words are in substance no different than Clement of Rome telling the Corinthians "[y]e therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts. Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and arrogant self-confidence of your tongue." Geez, what a pretentious crank he was! And do not even get me started on the more forceful claims of his successors in subsequent centuries.{1}
Actual Catholic doctrine, as dogmatized by ecumenical councils and actually taught and exemplified by the broader tradition, is much more modest.
You are wrong. If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know about the Deputation De Fide of the First Vatican Council where the schema that would later be promulgated as Pastor Aeternus would be explained in detail by Bishop Vincent Gasser of Brixen in his authoritative Relatio.{2} One of the subjects discussed there was the question of whether or not a pope could teach heresy. I will get back to this in responding to your later posting further down. Spoiler alert: it does not countenance your interpretation!
My observation from above still stands: Accusing us of resisting Pope Francis and his agenda simply because we do not "like" it is not an argument: It's a conclusory accusation that does not bother to engage the substance of our criticisms. It's intellectually and spiritually lazy.
Actually, you are merely regurgitating claims already dispatched in the earlier response which is a variation of the argumentation fallacy of argumentation ad nauseum and that is quite the definition of laziness{3} on your part to be blunt.
As to claims by the Catholic Church, there are no claims of the pope being able to teach heresy in the early church. The reason is of course because he did not. Originally, there was not the sort of full understanding of what was involved in the papal primacy as we have now but there are pointers and examples both of what was said as well as what was not said. Again, there is no evidence of record of the early church popes teaching heresy. And this was attested to by witnesses at the early ecumenical councils as well as in the Formula of Hormisdas which was a profession of faith prescribed by Pope Hormisdas as the requirement of his communion by the Acadians to end their longstanding schism in the early sixth century -part of which read as follows:
This was the standard understanding in the Church where the pope was concerned for a good thousand odd years. Pope Agatho re-affirmed this understanding after the sixth ecumenical council when he declared the following to Emperor Constantine IV after he dogmatically settled the chief controversy of his time:
For a third witness, a subsequent ecumenical council of the Church in dispute with the estranged Eastern Churches reiterated the aforementioned Formula of Hormisdas in its profession of faith 350 years after it was first promulgated. I could cite a lot more examples but the three above are adequate to make the point that not only did the early Fathers and Doctors did not believe the Roman Church could err but the very idea that a Pope could be a heretic was both foreign and repugnant to them as it should be to any genuinely faithful Catholic.
The mere fact that there exists an entire corpus of traditional literature debating and discussing what recourse the Church has against a manifest and unrepentantly heretical pope goes to show that the mind of the Church has always envisaged the possibility of a pope being such.
Actually, this is also false. The mind of the Church did not always [envisage] the possibility of a pope being such as the examples from above well demonstrate. However, there did come to be some literature on this matter which requires explanation and here goes:
The literature you speak of had its origins chiefly in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation.{6}
The aftermath of the Protestant circumstance shook the church's foundations in ways that were unprecedented. Unlike the schism between west and east which was centuries in the making{7}, the breaks by the Protestants were sharper and more sudden in nature. This shook the Catholic Church to its core and in the process of looking for answers, the question began to be floated about what if this movement were to seat one of its own in the Chair of Peter, what would happen then? That is when the theological titans of that age began to posit various hypotheses to try and explain this.
In this environment, theologians like Tommaso Cajetan, Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suarez, John of St. Thomas, Melchior Cano, Albert Pighus, and others floated various hypotheses of what one would do in the event of a heretical pope. However, the floating of a hypothesis does not mean you per se concur with it. The Church all along witnessed to the converse hypotheses by the fact that she never proclaimed anyone who professed the idea that a pope actually could teach heresy as a Doctor of the Church or elevated such persons to the altars via canonization. Furthermore, most of the proponents of heretical pope hypotheses attempting to explain what would happen if a pope was to teach heresy personally abhorred the very notion and did not believe it themselves. Suarez did not believe a pope could teach heresy, thought the very idea was inconceivable, and that the position that he could not do so was pious and probable, to be held{8}, but not certain in his time. Because he did not view it as certain, he attempted to set forth some hypotheses on the matter. Pighus believed it was impossible period either to teach heresy or even for a pope to be a private heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri adhered to the Bellarmine position.
Suarez's attempted hypothesis was condemned in 1692 by Pope Alexander VIII when he proscribed the 4 Gallican Articles one of which was a variation of Suarez's pro-offered hypothesis. Similarly the hypothesis of Cajetan was no longer defendable formally after that time though Bellarmine claimed it could not be defended in his view prior to that.{9} Bellarmine went further than most and believed not only that a pope could not teach heresy but that it was pious and probable to believe that he could not even be a secret or internal heretic. The first of his beliefs (that a pope could not teach heresy) is what was known in his treatise on the subject of the Roman Pontiff as the fourth opinion. Bishop Gasser explained it in his Relatio as follows:
In actuality, the principle had already had been settled prior to the sixteenth century but the chaos of the Protestant Reformation resulted in greater probing of this issue than had previously been the case{10} but the end result was the same as before except it is much better understood now. And while one can piously and probably hold that even in the recesses of his inner person a pope cannot be a heretic or believe anything heretical, Church teaching from what I can tell{12} only extends to the formal acts as pope: he cannot teach heresy period. By logical extension, he cannot be in schism from the Church either. Nor can he apostasize. Claims to the contrary{13} put those who make them in the company of the Acacian schismatics and others to whom as Pope St. Agatho put it are the heretics [who] have pursued it with false criminations and with derogatory hatred.
I thought about concluding this piece with Pope Agatho's words but in the interest of providing you with some comfort, will point you to an area where it is much safer to opine on these matters; namely that of lesser errors{14} and matters of the prudential order. The Church has stated the following in a very important Instruction that I recommend that you read when you can: Donum Veritatis from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published back in 1990. To wit:
Nevertheless, the views you have expressed up to this point in time are not orthodox ones. Hopefully you will consider the above material very carefully and revise your statements to be within the boundaries of acceptable Catholic orthodoxy.
Notes:
{1} I will not even go over how the Protestants reject Catholic doctrinal claims in the same fashion on a whole host of issues!
{2} There is no more authoritative exposition on the correct interpretation of the contents of the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus than Bishop Gasser's Relatio.
{3} Intellectually as well as spiritually.
{4} From the Formula of Hormisdas (circa 519 AD)
{5} From the Tome of Agatho (circa 681)
{7} The 1054 date is really more a fiction than a reality insofar as the schism of the Churches really only crystallized into permanence with either the Sack of Constantinople or the Fall of Constantinople (depending on how you interpret the evidences).
{8} Read: most likely.
{9} Cardinal Bellarmine died more than seventy years prior to Pope Alexander VIII's condemnation of the 4 Articles.
{10} Bishop Vincent Gasser of Brixen: From the Relatio of Vincent Gasser delivered to the Deputation De Fide (circa July 1870)
{11} The same thing happened with other apostolic beliefs which were settled early on and were later challenged in the cauldron of controversies. For example, the status of the Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible was definitively settled by the Council of Carthage in 418 AD but challenged anew by the Protestant Reformers only to be re-addressed by the Council of Trent. Likewise, the idea that the supreme authority in the Church was the Pope was challenged by the conciliar movement that arose in the aftermath of the Western Schism (even hijacking the Council of Constance in the process) only to be put down again at the Council of Florence.
{12} Though one could I suppose piously and probably believe things extend further, my only interest is in what the Church teaches as required on this matter and that does not go beyond formal teaching.
{13} Read: the sort of claims you have up to now been making.
{14} This does not preclude from the possibility that there could be lesser papal errors in doctrine than heresy, schism, or apostasy of course. And by logical extension, there could thus also be errors in prudence viz church discipline and general administration of course.
{15} Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian Donum Veritatis, Section 24 (circa May 24, 1990)
(Aka "Dogmatic Theology Five Cents, the Doctor is In" Dept.)
This is a response to a response to a thread posted on Saturday. My words will be in regular font while words of sources either block quoted or in light blue font.
I can refute all of what you wrote in response with just one observation: It's simply not true that the Church teaches, or has ever taught, that a pope cannot teach heresy
Actually, that is no refutation because you are flat out wrong. The Church does teach and has always taught that a pope cannot teach heresy. However, to be clear, she has "always taught" this the same way she has "always taught" things like papal primacy, the immaculate conception, and papal infallibility. This is not hard to demonstrate but because of the variegations of Church history, it can be tedious to do so. But since anyone can make sweeping observation claims without backing them up, I will take a few moments and touch lightly on this stuff.
As for your words:
And as to that allocution from Saint Pius which you cited: There's truth in it, but the ultramontanism of it is not authentically Catholic. It's hyperbolic pious piffle that is not grounded in the Scriptures or in the tradition of the Church, and any bishop of Rome who talked that way in prior centuries would have been laughed at and ignored as a pretentious crank, and rightly so.
You sound like the Orthodox who say the same things about papal primacy. They point to the numerous and weighty examples of the popes over the centuries exhorting and commanding obedience to them in matters of faith as "hyperbolic", "exaggerations", "misunderstanding the ancient primacy of honour", and a whole host of similar claims. To apply your claim about Pope St. Pius X's words seriously, you should swim the Bosophorus because at least then you would be honest with what you evidently believe. Pius' words are in substance no different than Clement of Rome telling the Corinthians "[y]e therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts. Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and arrogant self-confidence of your tongue." Geez, what a pretentious crank he was! And do not even get me started on the more forceful claims of his successors in subsequent centuries.{1}
Actual Catholic doctrine, as dogmatized by ecumenical councils and actually taught and exemplified by the broader tradition, is much more modest.
You are wrong. If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know about the Deputation De Fide of the First Vatican Council where the schema that would later be promulgated as Pastor Aeternus would be explained in detail by Bishop Vincent Gasser of Brixen in his authoritative Relatio.{2} One of the subjects discussed there was the question of whether or not a pope could teach heresy. I will get back to this in responding to your later posting further down. Spoiler alert: it does not countenance your interpretation!
My observation from above still stands: Accusing us of resisting Pope Francis and his agenda simply because we do not "like" it is not an argument: It's a conclusory accusation that does not bother to engage the substance of our criticisms. It's intellectually and spiritually lazy.
Actually, you are merely regurgitating claims already dispatched in the earlier response which is a variation of the argumentation fallacy of argumentation ad nauseum and that is quite the definition of laziness{3} on your part to be blunt.
As to claims by the Catholic Church, there are no claims of the pope being able to teach heresy in the early church. The reason is of course because he did not. Originally, there was not the sort of full understanding of what was involved in the papal primacy as we have now but there are pointers and examples both of what was said as well as what was not said. Again, there is no evidence of record of the early church popes teaching heresy. And this was attested to by witnesses at the early ecumenical councils as well as in the Formula of Hormisdas which was a profession of faith prescribed by Pope Hormisdas as the requirement of his communion by the Acadians to end their longstanding schism in the early sixth century -part of which read as follows:
The first means of safety is to guard the rule of strict faith and to deviate in no way from those things that have been laid down by the Fathers. And indeed the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ: "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church" cannot be disregarded; these things which were spoken are demonstrated by the results, for the Catholic religion has been preserved ever immaculate in the Apostolic See.{4}This formulary was signed onto by the churches in the west and the bulk of the churches in the east as well. The words are clear and unequivocal: the Catholic religion has been preserved ever immaculate in the Apostolic See. This would be an impossible claim to make if the Popes of Rome had ever taught heresy, could ever go into schism, or could ever go into apostasy. And as a Profession of Faith, it would fit the criteria of a dogmatic judgment by Pope Hormisdas or what would later be called an infallible pronouncement.
This was the standard understanding in the Church where the pope was concerned for a good thousand odd years. Pope Agatho re-affirmed this understanding after the sixth ecumenical council when he declared the following to Emperor Constantine IV after he dogmatically settled the chief controversy of his time:
And therefore I beseech you with a contrite heart and rivers of tears, with prostrated mind, deign to stretch forth your most clement right hand to the Apostolic doctrine which the co-worker of your pious labours, the blessed apostle Peter, has delivered, that it be not hidden under a bushel, but that it be preached in the whole earth more shrilly than a bugle: because the true confession thereof for which Peter was pronounced blessed by the Lord of all things, was revealed by the Father of heaven, for he received from the Redeemer of all himself, by three commendations, the duty of feeding the spiritual sheep of the Church; under whose protecting shield, this Apostolic Church of his has never turned away from the path of truth in any direction of error, whose authority, as that of the Prince of all the Apostles, the whole Catholic Church, and the Ecumenical Synods have faithfully embraced, and followed in all things; and all the venerable Fathers have embraced its Apostolic doctrine, through which they as the most approved luminaries of the Church of Christ have shone; and the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed it, while the heretics have pursued it with false criminations and with derogatory hatred.{5}Can you believe that St. Agatho: river of tears, prostrated mind, fully embraced and followed in all things, etc? Gee, what a pretentious crank he was huh?
For a third witness, a subsequent ecumenical council of the Church in dispute with the estranged Eastern Churches reiterated the aforementioned Formula of Hormisdas in its profession of faith 350 years after it was first promulgated. I could cite a lot more examples but the three above are adequate to make the point that not only did the early Fathers and Doctors did not believe the Roman Church could err but the very idea that a Pope could be a heretic was both foreign and repugnant to them as it should be to any genuinely faithful Catholic.
The mere fact that there exists an entire corpus of traditional literature debating and discussing what recourse the Church has against a manifest and unrepentantly heretical pope goes to show that the mind of the Church has always envisaged the possibility of a pope being such.
Actually, this is also false. The mind of the Church did not always [envisage] the possibility of a pope being such as the examples from above well demonstrate. However, there did come to be some literature on this matter which requires explanation and here goes:
The literature you speak of had its origins chiefly in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation.{6}
The aftermath of the Protestant circumstance shook the church's foundations in ways that were unprecedented. Unlike the schism between west and east which was centuries in the making{7}, the breaks by the Protestants were sharper and more sudden in nature. This shook the Catholic Church to its core and in the process of looking for answers, the question began to be floated about what if this movement were to seat one of its own in the Chair of Peter, what would happen then? That is when the theological titans of that age began to posit various hypotheses to try and explain this.
In this environment, theologians like Tommaso Cajetan, Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suarez, John of St. Thomas, Melchior Cano, Albert Pighus, and others floated various hypotheses of what one would do in the event of a heretical pope. However, the floating of a hypothesis does not mean you per se concur with it. The Church all along witnessed to the converse hypotheses by the fact that she never proclaimed anyone who professed the idea that a pope actually could teach heresy as a Doctor of the Church or elevated such persons to the altars via canonization. Furthermore, most of the proponents of heretical pope hypotheses attempting to explain what would happen if a pope was to teach heresy personally abhorred the very notion and did not believe it themselves. Suarez did not believe a pope could teach heresy, thought the very idea was inconceivable, and that the position that he could not do so was pious and probable, to be held{8}, but not certain in his time. Because he did not view it as certain, he attempted to set forth some hypotheses on the matter. Pighus believed it was impossible period either to teach heresy or even for a pope to be a private heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri adhered to the Bellarmine position.
Suarez's attempted hypothesis was condemned in 1692 by Pope Alexander VIII when he proscribed the 4 Gallican Articles one of which was a variation of Suarez's pro-offered hypothesis. Similarly the hypothesis of Cajetan was no longer defendable formally after that time though Bellarmine claimed it could not be defended in his view prior to that.{9} Bellarmine went further than most and believed not only that a pope could not teach heresy but that it was pious and probable to believe that he could not even be a secret or internal heretic. The first of his beliefs (that a pope could not teach heresy) is what was known in his treatise on the subject of the Roman Pontiff as the fourth opinion. Bishop Gasser explained it in his Relatio as follows:
"As far as the doctrine set forth in the Draft goes, the Deputation is unjustly accused of wanting to raise an extreme opinion, viz., that of Albert Pighius, to the dignity of a dogma. For the opinion of Albert Pighius, which Bellarmine indeed calls pious and probable, was that the Pope, as an individual person or a private teacher, was able to err from a type of ignorance but was never able to fall into heresy or teach heresy. To say nothing of the other points, let me say that this is clear from the very words of Bellarmine, both in the citation made by the reverend speaker and also from Bellarmine himself who, in book 4, chapter VI, pronounces on the opinion of Pighius in the following words: 'It can be believed probably and piously that the supreme Pontiff is not only not able to err as Pontiff but that even as a particular person he is not able to be heretical, by pertinaciously believing something contrary to the faith.' From this, it appears that the doctrine in the proposed chapter is not that of Albert Pighius or the extreme opinion of any school, but rather that it is one and the same which Bellarmine teaches in the place cited by the reverend speaker and which Bellarmine adduces in the fourth place and calls most certain and assured, or rather, correcting himself, the most common and certain opinion."{10}To be clear, what Gasser was saying was not merely that it was pious and probable to hold that a Pontiff could not err in matters of faith but that one could go further and believe piously and probably the pope could not even be heretical as a particular person or in his person whatsoever. Bishop Gasser made it clear that Pastor Aeternus was correctly interpreted as teaching what Bellarmine outlined in his fourth opinion or the one Bellarmine himself called the most common and certain opinion. And from the moment the First Vatican Council made Bellarmine's fourth opinion their own, the issue of whether a pope could or could not be a heretic or teach heresy was dogmatically settled as a matter of doctrine in the negative by an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church.
In actuality, the principle had already had been settled prior to the sixteenth century but the chaos of the Protestant Reformation resulted in greater probing of this issue than had previously been the case{10} but the end result was the same as before except it is much better understood now. And while one can piously and probably hold that even in the recesses of his inner person a pope cannot be a heretic or believe anything heretical, Church teaching from what I can tell{12} only extends to the formal acts as pope: he cannot teach heresy period. By logical extension, he cannot be in schism from the Church either. Nor can he apostasize. Claims to the contrary{13} put those who make them in the company of the Acacian schismatics and others to whom as Pope St. Agatho put it are the heretics [who] have pursued it with false criminations and with derogatory hatred.
I thought about concluding this piece with Pope Agatho's words but in the interest of providing you with some comfort, will point you to an area where it is much safer to opine on these matters; namely that of lesser errors{14} and matters of the prudential order. The Church has stated the following in a very important Instruction that I recommend that you read when you can: Donum Veritatis from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published back in 1990. To wit:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission.{15}The admission of some particular cases means that the Church's Magisterium takes a more nuanced approach to these matters in the prudential realm than prior statements might appear to say, dealing as they all did with fundamental matters of faith and church communion. While one should not rashly cast a wide net in this area of course, it nonetheless is permissible from time to time for someone properly informed and of the proper spiritual disposition to wade into those water. I would particularly recommend reading carefully if time constraints prevent you from reading the entire document focusing on sections 21-31.
Nevertheless, the views you have expressed up to this point in time are not orthodox ones. Hopefully you will consider the above material very carefully and revise your statements to be within the boundaries of acceptable Catholic orthodoxy.
Notes:
{1} I will not even go over how the Protestants reject Catholic doctrinal claims in the same fashion on a whole host of issues!
{2} There is no more authoritative exposition on the correct interpretation of the contents of the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus than Bishop Gasser's Relatio.
{3} Intellectually as well as spiritually.
{4} From the Formula of Hormisdas (circa 519 AD)
{5} From the Tome of Agatho (circa 681)
{6} I am unaware of any place where St. Thomas Aquinas even discusses the possibility of a heretical pope and there were a number of controversial matters of his day where the subject itself would have been apropos. For that reason, the Angelic Doctor's silence on this matter speaks volumes. (My more limited understanding of Aquinas' work is reinforced by the claim of Dominican scholar Ulrich Horst, OP who has made the same observation.)
{7} The 1054 date is really more a fiction than a reality insofar as the schism of the Churches really only crystallized into permanence with either the Sack of Constantinople or the Fall of Constantinople (depending on how you interpret the evidences).
{8} Read: most likely.
{9} Cardinal Bellarmine died more than seventy years prior to Pope Alexander VIII's condemnation of the 4 Articles.
{10} Bishop Vincent Gasser of Brixen: From the Relatio of Vincent Gasser delivered to the Deputation De Fide (circa July 1870)
{11} The same thing happened with other apostolic beliefs which were settled early on and were later challenged in the cauldron of controversies. For example, the status of the Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible was definitively settled by the Council of Carthage in 418 AD but challenged anew by the Protestant Reformers only to be re-addressed by the Council of Trent. Likewise, the idea that the supreme authority in the Church was the Pope was challenged by the conciliar movement that arose in the aftermath of the Western Schism (even hijacking the Council of Constance in the process) only to be put down again at the Council of Florence.
{12} Though one could I suppose piously and probably believe things extend further, my only interest is in what the Church teaches as required on this matter and that does not go beyond formal teaching.
{13} Read: the sort of claims you have up to now been making.
{14} This does not preclude from the possibility that there could be lesser papal errors in doctrine than heresy, schism, or apostasy of course. And by logical extension, there could thus also be errors in prudence viz church discipline and general administration of course.
{15} Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian Donum Veritatis, Section 24 (circa May 24, 1990)
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