Papal legate

“ Thus, the power of the Papal chair is far greater than the power of the throne, and Kings owe obedience and submission to Popes. According as the Pope is through God, and in the place of God, so is every thing placed under him; all matters, both temporal and spiritual, belong to his judgment-seat; he shall teach, exhort, punish, improve, condemn, and decide. The church is the divine judgment-seat, and renders account to God of the sins of mankind. She teaches the right way; she is the finger of God. The Pope is the governor under Christ, and over all. ”

“ Such in brief outline is the matured statement of the relation of the pope to the temporal power, a statement which in no way exaggerated the pretensions avowed in the papal curia. Growing out of a confusion of ancient, and a disdain of the lessons of modern, history it aptly reflects the spirit of a time when the church had become immersed in the cares and interests, which she affected to control, of common worldly politics. ”

“ At thought of that papal court congealed in ritual, pride, and authority, Pierre suddenly understood what horror and repugnance such a pastor would inspire. How great must be the astonishment and contempt of the papal prelates for that singular notion of the northern mind, a pope without dominions or subjects, military household or royal honours, a pope who would be, as it were, a spirit, exercising purely moral authority, dwelling in the depths of God’s temple, and governing the world solely with gestures of benediction and deeds of kindliness and love! ”

“ In common with all enlightened opinion, he complained bitterly of the excessive multiplication of exemptions, of the exaggerated extension of appeals to Rome, of the luxury of the Roman court, of the venality of the cardinals, and of the injury done to the traditional hierarchy by the very extent of the papal power, which was calculated to turn the strongest head. In St Bernard’s treatise De consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius III., the papacy receives as many reprimands and attacks as it does marks of affection and friendly counsel. ”

“ Consequently, when it is thus made too plain and palpable to admit of fair denial, that the infallibility of the pope is the chiefest and most fundamental dogma of faith—the foundation of the whole system of papal belief—it is positively obligatory upon us, in this country, to understand its full import and meaning. ”

“ Nay, nay, I warrant you. And so in like wise in this oath concerning the abjuration of the Pope. I will not abjure him in my heart,' said the priest, 'for these words were not spoken unto Peter for nought—'I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven'—and the Pope is Peter's successor. Of this matter,' said the priest, 'I communed once with the Bishop of Canterbury, [13] and I told the Bishop I would pray for the Pope as the chief and Papal head of Christ's Church. And the Bishop told me it was the King's pleasure that I should not. ”

“ It binds the Bishops to the acknowledgment that all men are immediately and directly under the Pope, which means that the so-called papal system is to be made exclusively dominant in the Church, in place of the old episcopal system, or in other words is to displace the latter, as it existed in the ancient Church, altogether. ”

“ The Vatican Council.548
Immediately after Pius IX. had, at the centenary of St. Peter in 1867, given a hint that a general council might be summoned at an early date, the Civiltà Cattolica of Rome made distinct statements to the effect that the most prominent questions for discussion would be the confirming of the syllabus (§ 185, 2) , the sanctioning of the doctrine of papal absolutism in the spirit of the bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII. (§ 110, 1) , and the proclamation of papal infallibility. The Civiltà had already taught that “when the pope thinks, it is God who thinks in him.” ”

“ Yet as far as that dramatic interest is concerned which springs from the play of individual character, and which has such attractions for the modern public, it is almost beyond doubt that the Papacy offers a wider and more varied field than either Republican or Imperial Rome. The long story of the Pontiffs is studded with examples of every form of public and private virtue, of public and private vice. The peculiar mode of papal election has raised to the pontifical chair men from all ranks of society, from almost every European nation, and of all conceivable types of character. ”

“ No council, they urged, could be considered a general one which was called against the will of the pope, because, without the bishop of the Roman or mother church, the council obviously could not lay claim to represent all Christendom. The defenders of the papal power maintained, moreover, that the pope was the supreme legislator, that he might change or annul the act of any council or of a previous pope, that he might judge others but might not himself be judged by any one. ”

“ Then, to see how far the current opinions of that time were favourable to the extension of the regal authority, on this alliance with the papal, we are to reflect, that, however odious the administration of the pope’s supremacy was become, most men had very high notions of the plenitude of his power, and the sacredness of his person. ”

“ The gorgeous and heavy papal costumes only render him more insignificant, and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair, or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold pagoda of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholarlike, and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superiority. They are a dignified and impressive body of men, and their servile homage to the Pope, seems unnatural and disgusting. ”

“ THE FRIARS AND THE PAPACY The friars by their preaching and ministrations did a great deal to call forth a religious revival in Europe during the thirteenth century. In particular they helped to strengthen the papal authority. Both orders received the sanction of the pope; both enjoyed many privileges at his hands; and both looked to him for direction. The pope employed them to raise money, to preach crusades, and to impose excommunications and interdicts. The Franciscans and Dominicans formed, in fact, the agents of the Papacy. ”

“ But if any man, — which Heaven forefend!” proceeds the document, “shall venture to deny this definition, let him be accursed!” (Sessio iv. cap. 4; Mirbt, Quellen, p. 381) . These clauses contain the doctrine of papal infallibility, and make the recognition of that doctrine incumbent on all Catholic Christians. But how are we to recognize whether the decision of the pope is given “in the exercise of his doctrinal office,” or not? No criterion is assigned, and no authentic interpretation has been accorded from the chair of St Peter. ”

“ Viva la Libertad y ayuda á la Libertad! it summoned every citizen to sally forth in arms to defend the liberties of the land. Moreover, he had the power of withholding from execution all papal decrees, and his authority in ecclesiastical matters in general caused him to be popularly termed the married pope. ”

“ The Papacy itself had made Papal rule impossible to vigorous peoples. With curiously narrow ambition Popes have always preferred even limited temporal importance to unlimited spiritual sway. Two Popes, nay at one time three, had struggled not for the supremacy of religion but for merely personal pre-eminence. Popes had fought Popes, councils had fought councils, and each had called in the friendly infidel to fight the catholic enemy. The catholic sack of catholic Rome had been accompanied by greater lust and more copious bloodshed than the sack of Rome in olden time by northern Infidels. ”

“ According to the Papal theory, the authority of the bishop is an emanation from that of the Pope, who, as monarch, unlimited by any co-ordinate authority, retains in his own hands not only extraordinary but ordinary, not only ultimate but immediate jurisdiction over every subject within the bounds assigned to a bishop. ”

“ Others, while recognizing the supreme authority of the papal magisterium in matters of doctrine, confine the infallibility to those cases alone in which the pope chooses to make use of it, and declares positively that he is imposing on all the faithful the obligation of belief in a certain definite proposition, under pain of heresy and exclusion from the Church; they do not insist on any special form, but only require that the pope should clearly manifest his will to the Church. ”

“ To these sources of power and influence another has yet to be added. The power of the Papacy was the band which bound together the bundle of sticks, that is to say, which sufficed for a long time to outweigh all the jealousies between regulars and seculars, between monks and friars, between dignified and lower clergy, and to bind the whole sacerdotal order into one vast army, with the Pope for its emperor and generalissimo. ”

“ A curious and very objectionable feature of the papal monarchy is, a system of searching espionage which it attempts to establish over society. In addition to the confessors and spiritual guides by which the pope seeks to discover the thoughts, and direct the conduct of his Catholic subjects, he employs a set of men and women who, in the capacity of servants scrutinize the domestic affairs of non-Catholics, mark, their conversation, and communicate-all important facts through their superior, to him at Rome. ”

“ The Pope, which word signifies Father, or Patriarch, of Rome, had from the Apostolic times been always elected, like all other bishops, by the general consent of the flock, both clergy and people; and, after the conversion of Constantine, the Emperor, as first lay member of the Church, of course had a powerful voice in the election, could reject any person of whom he disapproved, or nominate one whom he desired to see chosen, though still subject to the approval of clergy and people. ”

“ He forbade the priests to marry, and demanded that all bishops, who at that time were also temporal princes, should receive their office and their possessions, even their temporal power, not from their worldly overlords, but from his hands. He asserted: "As the moon receives its light from the sun, so emperors and princes receive their power from the Pope. The Pope is the viceregent of Christ upon earth, where the mighty of this world owe him obedience; he alone has the right and the power to appoint them to office, or to depose them." ”

“ It was from these claims that the papal annates, in the strict sense, in course of time developed.
These annates may be divided broadly into three classes, though the chief features are common to all: (1) the servitia communia or servitia Camerae Papae, i.e. the payment into the papal treasury by every abbot and bishop, on his induction, of one year’s revenue of his new benefice. The servitia communia are traceable to the oblatio paid to the pope when consecrating bishops as metropolitan or patriarch. ”

“ The title pope, once used with far greater latitude (see below, section V) , is at present employed solely to denote the Bishop of Rome, who, in virtue of his position as successor of St. Peter, is the chief pastor of the whole Church, the Vicar of Christ upon earth.
Besides the bishopric of the Roman Diocese, certain other dignities are held by the pope as well as the supreme and universal pastorate: he is Archbishop of the Roman Province, Primate of Italy and the adjacent islands, and sole Patriarch of the Western Church. ”

“ I assume that the pope stands for that spiritual bishop who, in the highest way and in the most similar way, occupies the place of Christ, just as Peter did after the ascension. But if any person whatsoever is to be called pope—whom the Western church accepts as Roman bishop—appointed to decide as the final court ecclesiastical cases and to teach the faithful whatever he wishes, then there is an abuse of the term, because according to this view, it would be necessary in cases to concede that the most unlettered layman or a female, or a heretic and antichrist, may be pope. ”

“ The Pope, or Supreme Pontiff, is the vicar of our Lord on earth, his representative—the representative not only of him who is our invisible High-Priest, but of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, therefore of both the priestly and the kingly power. ”

“ Pallium, the, newly elected Pope clothed with, 169. Paolina, the,—where the Cardinals vote,—described, 150, 151. Papacy, the, as an institution regulated by laws, exists only in the season of its creation, 5; schism in the reign of Alexander III., 14–16; the Papacy during the French Revolution, 82 seq. Papal chair, Roman proverb as to the three safest means of reaching, 163, 164. Papal elections, subject of, little understood, and why, 1; points of interest bearing on, 5; mode of, at present in force, 9; not independent of the civil power till middle of eleventh century, 10 ”

“ And further—unlike other powers—it can never be delegated to another. The Pope himself is Infallible, but he cannot transfer nor communicate his Infallibility, even temporarily or for some special given occasion, to anyone else who may, in other respects, represent him, such as a Legate, Ambassador, or Nuncio. ”

“ But that you may know the straightforwardness of the letters, that they have nothing but entreaties to your piety, to give your mind to the unity of the Church, assign to us some one in whose presence these letters may be read to Vitalian.' But if the emperor require to read them himself, you will answer that you have already intimated not such to be the command of the holy Pope. If he say, 'They may have also other charges,' reply, 'Our conscience forbids. That is not our custom. We come in God's cause. Should we sin against Him? The holy Pope's mission is straightforward ”