William Walker Rockwell

“ Waiving the consideration of vital critical questions and accepting Acts xv. at its face value, the assembly at Jerusalem would scarcely seem to have been a council in the technical sense of the word; it was in essence a meeting of the Jerusalem church at which delegates from Antioch were heard but apparently had no vote, the decision resting solely with the mother church. R. Sohm argues that synods grew from the custom of certain local churches which, when confronted with a serious problem of their own, augmented their numbers by receiving delegates from the churches of the neighbourhood. ”

“ The Reform Synods of the 15th century gave a decisive vote to doctors and licentiates of theology and of laws, some of them sitting as individuals, some as representatives of universities. Roman Catholic canonists now confine the right to vote at oecumenical councils to bishops, cardinal deacons, generals or vicars general of monastic orders and the praelati nullius (exempt abbots, &c.) ; all other persons, lay or clerical, who are admitted or invited, have merely the votum consultativum—they are chiefly procurators of absent bishops, or very learned priests. ”

“ Roman Catholic scholars to-day tend to recede from the high ground very generally taken several centuries ago, and Funk even admits that the right to convoke oecumenical synods was vested in the emperor regardless of the wishes of the pope, and that it cannot be proved that the Roman see ever actually had a share in calling the oecumenical councils of antiquity. ”

“ The revolution of 1830 had just inflicted a severe blow on the ecclesiastical party in France, and almost the first act of the new government there was to seize Ancona, thus throwing all Italy, and particularly the Papal States, into an excited condition which seemed to demand strongly repressive measures. ”

“ They have been held most frequently, however, in times of stress and of reform, for instance in the 11th, 16th and 19th centuries; at other periods they have lapsed into disuse: it is significant that to-day the prelate who neglects to convene them suffers no penalty. At present the main function of both provincial and oecumenical synods seems to be to facilitate obedience to the wishes of the central government of the Church.
The right to vote (votum definitivum) has been distinguished from early times from the right to be heard (votum consultativum) . ”

“ It was but a clumsy and temporary expedient, designed to offset the preponderance of Italian bishops dependent on the pope when the council of Constance subdivided itself into several groups or “nations,” each of which had a single vote. In voting, the simple majority decides; yet such is the importance attached to a unanimous verdict that an irreconcilable minority may absent itself from the final vote, as was the case at the Vatican Council.
The numbering of oecumenical synods is not fixed ”

“ The subsequent oecumenical synods of the undivided Church were patterned on that of Nicaea. Most Protestant scholars maintain that the secular authorities decided whether or not they should be convened, and issued the summons; that imperial commissioners were always present, even if they did not always preside; that on occasion emperors have confirmed or refused to confirm synodal decrees ”

“ As the powers granted to the German synods are very limited, many of their advocates have been disillusioned; but the Lutheran churches of America, being independent of the state, have developed synods both numerous and potent. ”

“ Gregory XVI. (Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari) , pope from 1831 to 1846, was born at Belluno on the 18th of September 1765, and at an early age entered the order of the Camaldoli, among whom he rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic acquirements. His first appearance before a wider public was in 1799, when he published against the Italian Jansenists a controversial work entitled Il Trionfo della Santa Sede, which, besides passing through several editions in Italy, has been translated into several European languages. ”

“ Of the four councils held at Nîmes those of 886 and 1284 are relatively unimportant. The synod of 394 adopted seven canons on discipline, which were first printed in 1743 and have not as yet made their way into the great collections. ”

“ J. Hardouin (Harduinus) , Conciliorum collectio regia maxima (Paris, 1715) , 11 tomi in 12 vols. (to 1714; more exact; indexed; serious omissions) ; enlarged edition by N. Coletus (Venice, 1728–1732) , supplemented by J. D. Mansi, Sanctorum conciliorum et decretorum nova collectio (Lucca, 1748, 6 tomi) . Convenient but fallible is Mansi’s Sacrorum conciliorum et decretorum nova et amplissima collectio (Florence, 1759–1767; completed Venice, 1769–1798, 31 vols.) ; facsimile reproduction by Welter (Paris, 1901 ff.) ”

“ In 1800 he became a member of the Academy of the Catholic Religion, founded by Pius VII., to which he contributed a number of memoirs on theological and philosophical questions and in 1805 was made abbot of San Gregorio on the Caelian Hill. ”