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Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival
THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Resources Online and in Print
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31 Pages
Page 29
Excursus on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius.
To this decree attaches not only the necessary importance and interest which belongs to any ecumenical decision upon a disputed doctrinal question with regard to the incarnation of the Son of God, but an altogether accidental interest, arising from the fact that by this decree a Pope of Rome is stricken with anathema in the person of Honorius. I need hardly remind the reader how many interesting and difficult questions in theology such an action on the part of an Ecumenical Council raises, and how all important, not to say vital, to such as accept the ruling of the recent Vatican Council, it is that some explanation of this fact should be arrived at which will be satisfactory. It would be highly improper for me in these pages to discuss the matter theologically. Volumes on each side have been written on this subject, and to these I must refer the reader, but in doing so I hope I may be pardoned if I add a word of counsel--to read both sides. If one's knowledge is derived only from modern Eastern, Anglican or Protestant writers, such as "Janus and the Council," the Père Gratry's "Letters," or Littledale's controversial books against Rome, one is apt to be as much one-sided as if he took his information from Cardinal Baronius, Cardinal Bellarmine, Rohrbacher's History, or from the recent work on the subject by Pennacchi. [335] Perhaps the average reader will hardly find a more satisfactory treatment than that by Bossuet in the Defensio. (Liber VII., cap. xxi., etc.)
It will be sufficient for the purposes of this volume to state that Roman Catholic Curialist writers are not at one as to how the matter is to be treated. Pennacchi, in his work referred to above, is of opinion that Honorius's letters were strictly speaking Papal decrees, set forth auctoritate apostolica, and therefore irreformable, but he declares, contrary to the opinion of almost all theologians and to the decree of this Council, that they are orthodox, and that the Council erred in condemning them; as he expresses it, the decree rests upon an error in facto dogmatico. To save an Ecumenical Synod from error, he thinks the synod ceased to be ecumenical before it took this action, and was at that time only a synod of a number of Orientals! Cardinal Baronius has another way out of the difficulty. He says that the name of Honorius was forged and put in the decree by an erasure in the place of the name of Theodore, the quondam Patriarch, who soon after the Council got himself restored to the Patriarchal position. Baronius moreover holds that Honorius's letters have been corrupted, that the Acts of the Council have been corrupted, and, in short, that everything which declares or proves that Honorius was a heretic or was condemned by an Ecumenical Council as such, is untrustworthy and false. The groundlessness, not to say absurdity, of Baronius's view has been often exposed by those of his own communion, a brief but sufficient summary of the refutation will be found in Hefele, who while taking a very halting and unsatisfactory position himself, yet is perfectly clear that Baronius's contention is utterly indefensible. [336]
Most Roman controversialists of recent years have admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius's condemnation (which Baronius denies), and the monothelite (and therefore heretical) character of his epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters were not his ex cathedrâ utterances as Doctor Universalis, but mere expressions of the private opinion of the Pontiff as a theologian. With this matter we have no concern in this connexion.
[335] Pennacchi. De Honorii I., Romani Pontificis, causa in Concilio VI.
[336] Hefele. History of the Councils. Vol. V., p. 190 et seqq.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/ecumenical-councils/sixth.asp?pg=29
