Speech in the Vatican Council

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1879

Speech in the Vatican Council.

The dogma of papal infallibility was not adopted in the Council of 1870 without dissent. In a vote taken July 13, of 601 members 451 voted favorably. The others either voted against, or abstained from voting. On the 17th, fifty-six bishops sent a protest to Pius, but signified their unwillingness to vote against his expressed wishes, and determination to return to their homes before the final vote was taken. They did so, and sixty others followed their example. Thus 116 dissenting bishops left; two voted against it in the final vote, July 18.

One of the most important opposition speeches was that of Strossmayer, bishop of Bosnia and Sirmium. The following is from a translation of an Italian version of his speech printed in Florence. Its historical statements are both interesting and valuable:—

Finding no trace of the papacy in the days of the apostles, I said to myself, I shall find what I am in search of in the annals of the church. Well, I say it frankly—I have sought for a pope in the first four centuries, and I have not found him. None of you, I hope, will doubt the great authority of the holy bishop of Hippo, the great and blessed St. Augustine. This pious doctor, the honor and glory of the Catholic church, was secretary in the Council of Melvie. In the decrees of this venerable assembly are to be found these significant words: "Whoever wills to appeal to those beyond the sea shall not be received by any one in Africa to the communion."

The bishops of Africa acknowledged the bishop of Rome so little that they smote with excommunication those who would have recourse to an appeal. These same bishops, in the sixth Council of Carthage, held under Aurelius, bishop of that city, wrote to Celustirius, bishop of Rome, to warn him not to receive appeals from the bishops, priests or clerics of Africa, and that he should send no more legates or commissaries; and that he should not introduce human pride into the church.

That the patriarch of Rome had from the earliest times tried to draw to himself all the authority, is an evident fact; but it is an equally evident fact that he had not the supremacy which the ultramontanes attribute to him. Had he possessed it, would the bishops of Africa—St. Augustine first among them—have dared to prohibit the appeals of their decrees to his supreme tribunal?

I confess without difficulty that the patriarch of Rome held the first place. One of Justinian's laws says: "Let us order, after the definition of the four Councils, that the holy pope of ancient Rome shall be the first of the bishops, and that the most high archbishop of Constantinople, which is the new Rome, shall be the second." "Bow down, then, to the supremacy of the pope," you will say to me. Do not run so fast to this conclusion, my venerable brethren, inasmuch as the law of Justinian has written on the face of it, "Of the order of the Patriarchal Sees."

Precedence is one thing—the power of jurisdiction is another. For example, suppose that in Florence there was an assembly of all the bishops of the kingdom, the precedence would be given to the primate of Florence, as among the Easterns it would be accorded to the patriarch of Constantinople, and in England to the archbishop of Canterbury. But neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, could deduce from the position assigned to him a jurisdiction over his colleagues. The importance of the bishops of Rome proceeded not from a Divine power, but from the importance of the city in which they had their seat. Monsignor Darboy is not superior in dignity to the archbishop of Avignon; but in spite of that, Paris gives him a consideration which he would not have, if, instead of having his palace on the bank of the Seine, he had it on that of the Rhone. That which is true in the religious order is the same in civil and political matters. The prefect of Rome is not more a prefect than he of Pisa; but civilly and politically he has a greater importance.

I have said that from the very first centuries the patriarch of Rome aspired to the universal government of the church. Unfortunately, he very nearly reached it; but he had not succeeded assuredly in his pretensions, for the Emperor Theodosius II. made a law which he established, that the patriarch of Constantinople should have the same authority as he of Rome.—(Leg. cod. de. sacr., &c.)

The Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon put the bishops of the new and the old Rome in the same order on all things, even ecclesiastical. (Can. 28.) The Sixth Council of Carthage forbade all the bishops to take the title of prince of the bishops or sovereign bishop. As for this title of universal bishop, which the popes took later, St. Gregory I., believing that his successors would never think of adorning themselves with it, wrote these remarkable words: "None of my predecessors have consented to take this profane name; for when a patriarch gives himself the name of Universal the title of patriarch suffers discredit. Far be it, then, from Christians to desire to give themselves a title which brings discredit on their brethren." The words of St. Gregory are directed to his colleagues of Constantinople, who pretended to the primacy of the church.

Pope Pelagio II. calls John, bishop of Constantinople, who aspired to the high priesthood, "impious and profane." "Do not care," he said, "for the title of Universal, which John has usurped illegally; let none of the patriarchs take this profane name; for what misfortunes may we not expect, if among the priests such elements arise? They would get what has been foretold for them—he is the king of the sons of pride." (Pelagio II. Lett. 13.) These authorities, and I might add a hundred more of equal value, do not they prove, with a clearness equal to the splendor of the sun at midday, that the first of the bishops were not till much later recognized as universal bishops and heads of the church? And, on the other hand, does who does not know, that from the year 325, in which the First Council of Nice was held, down to 580, the year of the second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, among more than 1,109 bishops who assisted at the Six First General Councils there were not more than nineteen Western bishops? Who does not know that the Councils were convoked by the emperors without informing, and sometimes against the wish of, the bishop of Rome? That Hosius, bishop of Cordova, presided at the first Council of Nice, and edited the canons of it? The same Hosius presided afterwards at the Council of Sardica, excluding the legates of Julius, bishop of Rome.

I say no more, my venerable brethren, and I come now to speak of the great argument which you mentioned before—to establish the Primacy of the bishop of Rome, by the rock (pietra). If this were true, the dispute would be at an end; but our forefathers—and they certainly know something—did not think of it as we do. St. Cyril, in his fourth book on the Trinity, says—"I believe that by the rock you must understand the unshaken faith of the apostles." St. Hilary, bishop of Poictiers, in his second book on the Trinity, says—"The rock (pietra) is the blessed and only rock of the faith confessed by the mouth of St. Peter;" and in the sixth book of the Trinity, he says, "it is on this rock of the confession of faith that the Church is built."

"God," says St. Jerome, in the sixth book of St. Matthew, "has founded His Church on this rock, and it is from this rock that the apostle Peter and it has been named." After him, St. Chrysostom says in his fifty-third homily on St. Matthew—"On this rock I will build my Church—that is, on the faith of confession." Now, what was the confession of the apostle? Here it is—"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Ambrose, the holy archbishop of Milan (on the 2d chapter of the Ephesians), St. Basil of Seleucia, and the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon, teach exactly the same thing.

Of all the doctors of Christian antiquity, St. Augustine occupies one of the first places for knowledge and holiness. Listen, then, to what he writes in his second treatise on the first epistle of St. John—"What do the words mean, I will build my church on this rock? On this faith, on that which said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." In his 124th treatise on St. John, we find this most significant phrase—"On this rock which thou hast confessed I will build My Church, since Christ was the rock." The great bishop believed so little that the Church was built on St. Peter that he said to his people in his thirteenth sermon—"Thou art Peter, and on this rock (pietra) which thou hast confessed, on this rock which thou hast known, saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my Church above myself, who am the Son of the living God. I will build it on me, and not me on thee."

That which St. Augustine thought upon this celebrated passage was the opinion of all Christendom in his time. Therefore, I establish—

That Jesus has given to his apostles the same power that he gave to St. Peter.
That the apostles never recognized in St. Peter the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the infallible doctrine of the Church.
That St. Peter never thought of being pope, and never acted as if he were pope.
That the Councils of the first four centuries, while they recognized the high position which the bishop of Rome occupied in the Church on account of Rome, only accorded to him a pre-eminence of honor—never of power or jurisdiction.
That the holy fathers, in the famous message, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my church;" never understood that the church was built on Peter (super petrum), but on the rock (super petram), that is, on the confession of the faith of the apostle.

I conclude victoriously with history, with reason, with logic, with good sense, and with a Christian conscience, that Jesus Christ did not confer any supremacy on St. Peter, and that the bishops of Rome did not become sovereigns of the church, but only by confiscating one by one all the rights of the Episcopate. [Voices—Silence, impudent Protestant! silence!] No, I am not an impudent Protestant! History is neither Catholic, nor Anglican, nor Calvinistic, nor Lutheran, nor Arminian, nor schimastic Greek, nor Ultramontane. She is what she is—that something stronger than all confessions of faith of the canons of Ecumenical Councils. Write against it, if you dare! but you cannot destroy it, no more than taking a brick out of the Coliseum would make it fall. If I have said anything which history proves to be false, show it to me by history, and without a moment's hesitation I will make an honorable apology; but be patient, and you will see that I have not said all that I would or could; and even were the funeral pile waiting for me in the place of St. Peter's, I should not lie silent, and I am obliged to go on.