De Ecclesia Christi

« 1°. The same truth of the union of the primacy over the universal Church with the Apostolic Roman See is demonstrated from the definitions of the Councils and the professions of faith. 2°. From the doctrine premised it follows that the mode of union is such that, by a distinction of reason, succession in the Roman See is the visible sign of succession in the primacy, while in reality the one Roman See has been raised to the dignity and power of the primatial See over the universal Church. Further, 3°. there follows the theological truth that the primacy is never to be separated from the Roman See and transferred elsewhere, not even by the supreme power of the successor of Peter himself; 4°. and that such a translation can be effected by any other power, whether ecclesiastical or secular, is a doctrine that has been condemned, and it is connected with errors against the divine constitution of the Church itself. »

I. We have so far seen the doctrine, asserted and preached always and everywhere in the Church, of the union of Peter's primacy and of its perpetual inheritance in the Roman See of Peter. For a clearer and more pressing demonstration, and at the same time for a more certain deduction of the solution by which the other question, about the separability of the primacy from the particular Church and Roman See, is cleared up, we shall now consider the formal definitions and professions of faith themselves, insofar as in them the union of the primacy with the Roman Church and the perpetual succession of the Roman Bishops are contained no less in the primacy of Peter than in the episcopate.

a) The definition of the Council of Florence reads thus. « Likewise we define that the holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world, and that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and the true Vicar of Christ and head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians; and that to him, in blessed Peter, was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church; as is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical Councils and in the sacred canons » (1).

Therefore what has been defined is not only, in general, the right of the Roman Pontiff to the primacy over the whole world, but specifically the right and mode of succession. He who succeeds in the holy Apostolic See of Peter, and is therefore the Roman Pontiff or successor of Peter in the Roman episcopate, by that very fact is successor not only of Peter as bishop but at the same time of Peter as prince of the Apostles, and therefore the true Vicar of Christ and head of the whole Church. For to the Roman bishop himself, that is, to each of those who are legitimate Roman bishops, in blessed Peter, who as the first root represented the whole series of successors (the series, I say, composed, at least for the present order, of all and only the successors in the Apostolic Roman See), full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The definition of the Council of Vatican is explicit. « The holy and most blessed Peter... up to this time and always lives and presides and exercises judgment in his successors, the Bishops of the holy Roman See founded by him and consecrated by his blood. Wherefore whoever in this¹ chair succeeds Peter, he, according to Christ's own institution, holds the primacy of Peter over the universal Church... If therefore anyone shall say that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord himself, or by divine right, that blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the same primacy, let him be anathema » (Const. Pastor aeternus, ch. 2).

b) This unity of succession in the particular episcopate of the Roman Church of Peter and in the full power of Peter over the universal Church is no less expressly declared, while the Roman Church itself is defined to have received and to hold the primacy over the Catholic Church namely through its bishop, who is the successor of Peter, prince of the Apostles.

So reads the profession of faith prescribed by Clement IV and Gregory X, and put forward by the Greeks at the Second Council of Lyons, for union with the Catholic Church. « The holy Roman Church itself holds the highest and full primacy and principate over the universal Catholic Church, which it truly and humbly acknowledges to have received from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, prince or head of the Apostles, of whom the Roman Pontiff is the successor, together with the fullness of power. » At the Council of Constance, by Martin V, proposition XLI of Wyclif was condemned: « it is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman Church is supreme among the other Churches. » In the form prescribed by Pius IV « for making the profession of orthodox faith according to the arrangement of the Council of Trent, » and in the same words in the other form prescribed by the Holy See for the Greeks, all Catholics pledge: « I acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolic Roman Church as mother and teacher of all Churches, and to the Roman Pontiff, successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience. » Finally, in the Council of Vatican (Const. Pastor aeternus, ch. 3) it is defined: « We teach and declare that the Roman Church, by the disposition of the Lord, holds the principate of ordinary power over all other Churches (1), and this² power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate, to which all pastors and faithful of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and all together..., are bound. »

From these definitions and professions of faith, the Roman Church itself holds the primacy, the principate of power over all other Churches, over the universal Church, is mother and teacher of all Churches; but all this it has in its bishop, because he is the successor of Peter, prince of the Apostles, that is, successor in that very principate. Hence you see that in the Vatican definition the principate of ordinary power of the Roman Church is said to be nothing other than the jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff, and in the Lyons and Tridentine professions that the highest and full primacy of the Roman Church, its motherhood and magisterium of all Churches, are founded on this, that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and therefore Vicar of Jesus Christ. The subject of supreme power is the bishop of the Roman Church alone, who, succeeding Peter, prince of the Apostles, in the episcopate of this Church, by that very fact succeeds him in the principate over the universal Church. On account of this unity of succession according to two distinct reasons, « the holy Roman Church itself truly and humbly acknowledges that it received the highest and full primacy and principate from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, of whom the Roman Pontiff is the successor »: namely, through its own Pontiff, successor of the prince of the Apostles, it received the primacy not only by final reason, by which the primacy was instituted for the good both of the whole Church and of the Roman Church, but in some manner formally, insofar as the primacy is united with the Roman episcopate, and thus succession in the primacy is inserted, through the continuous series of its own bishops, into the Roman Church itself. « You ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop » (Cyprian, letter 69, to Florentius Pupianus, p. 123).

II. From all things demonstrated in this and the two preceding theses, it follows how the union of the primacy with the Roman episcopate, or see, or Church, is to be understood.

a) Just as the Church of Jesus Christ was instituted as visible, and thus easily recognizable by certain and constant signs or marks among all the false-named Christian societies as the one and true Church of Christ, so also all the elements that pertain to the visibility of the Church and constitute it as visible must surely be visible. Among these elements the first place is occupied by the visible head itself, the visible foundation instituted by Christ, Peter from the rock, in perpetual succession; therefore, in the very institution of the visible Head of the Church, which was to remain perpetually and by continuous succession, is contained that the succession itself must be visible, that is, easily recognizable by a certain, constant and manifest sign. But from the glorious death of Peter onward, through all the ages of the Church, succession in the Roman See of Peter has always and by all been held and believed as the certain, constant and manifest sign of succession in the primacy of Peter; which he himself, dying, left vacant, as St. Cyprian said, that is, to be held by his successors in order, in all their rights. Therefore, just as the visible sacrament is valid for the perpetual succession of the visible episcopate and priesthood by the prior divine institution, so for the perpetual succession in the visible primacy the visible sign of succession in the Roman See of Peter avails, by a divine ratification at least subsequent upon the fact of Peter. « Blessed Peter, who presided first over the Apostolic See, left the principate of his apostolate to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most holy See, to whom also he himself gave and handed down the power of authority, just as it was granted to him by our Saviour the Lord God, to his successors the Pontiffs by divine command. » In this explanation, drawn from all the ecclesiastical documents cited above, we have distinguished theologians in agreement. « Just as from the reasoning, institution, and end of the Church we have shown it to be necessary that she be visible in the individual and in the particular, says Suárez, so from the institution and end of the office of the Vicar of Christ it is necessary that he be visible to the Church in particular, in a determined see and succession. » Suárez against the English King, bk. III, ch. 13. « The primacy of Peter, that is the universal pontificate or governance of the whole Church, had to be attached to some certain see. For although this primacy by itself (that is, a priori and by its own intrinsic nature) did not demand any particular episcopal see to which it would be attached, yet the fixed succession in this primacy required it (which was itself divinely instituted together with the primacy to endure perpetually), which could and ought to persist for the good of the Church and be easily arranged... Hence Peter necessarily chose some particular episcopate to which the person of the primacy would be attached. He was indeed the founder and ruler of the see of Antioch for some years; but when he thence passed to Rome, he transferred the primacy, undivided from his person, to this place, and retaining the Roman episcopate until death, he transmitted the primacy to his successors in the same see. » Laurent. Veith, On the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, Position VIII, §18; Pet. Ballerini, On the power and nature of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, vol. I, ch. 1, n. 2; the Würzburg Theologians, vol. I, On the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, §170, n. III; Franc. Ant. Zaccaria, On the primacy of St. Peter, ch. 5, n. 7.

b) Further, from those documents especially in which the principate of the Roman Church itself, or of the Apostolic Roman See, is taught, it follows not only that there is a union between the primacy and the Roman episcopate, as between two separate things joined in some third thing, but that there is already one Roman See of the principate over the universal Church, which principate contains within itself the Roman episcopate, as the particular is contained in the universal. Indeed, two sees of Peter are not to be distinguished, of which one would be understood as the supreme pastoral power over the universal Church, instituted by Christ and given to Peter, and another would be the see of the particular Roman Church instituted by Peter, separate from the former, subsisting in itself and joined only by reason of one person who administers both. Rather, since Peter, already instituted by Christ as pastor of the whole Church, not only for himself but for each of his successors in the perpetual series, chose and established this Roman Church as his episcopal see, and so made it the Apostolic Petrine See, by this very fact one Roman See has been constituted, and at Peter's death it was consecrated, by perpetual hereditary right³ as the primatial See, in the dignity and power of the principate over the universal Church instituted by Christ. I shall say this same thing in the words of Bellarmine. « It is to be observed, he says, that the Roman episcopate and the prefecture of the universal Church are not two episcopates nor two sees, except potentially. For Peter, the Pontiff of the whole Church instituted by Christ, did not join to himself the episcopate of the city of Rome, as a bishop of some place joins to himself another episcopate or canonry or abbey; but he raised⁴ the episcopate of the city of Rome to the supreme pontificate of the world, just as when a simple episcopate is raised to an archbishopric or patriarchate. For an archbishop or patriarch is not twice or thrice a bishop, but only once... and the supreme Pontiff, even though he be bishop, archbishop, patriarch and supreme Pontiff, all these things are one in act, and many only in potency. From which it follows that whoever is elected Roman bishop is by that very fact the supreme Pontiff of the whole Church, even if perhaps the electors do not express it » (Bellarmine, On the Roman Pontiff, bk. II, ch. 12). What the great theologian says about « many in potency and unity in act » is to be rightly understood. For it was not necessary, from the nature of the thing and as it were a priori, that Peter should make for himself, as shepherd of the whole Church, this determinate Roman See; so, speaking absolutely, a Roman episcopate subsisting by itself could have been instituted without that elevation to the supreme pontificate of the world. But once the fact is posited, the inferior particular power of the Roman episcopate is already included in one supreme and universal power. Nor were the metropolitan rights over the Roman ecclesiastical province, and the patriarchal rights over the patriarchate of the West, any less already contained in the supreme universal power, when the Pontiffs specially reserved them to themselves⁵, with exclusion of others, or rather by not granting these rights to any other metropolitan or patriarch. For, as we have already seen above, such metropolitan sees or patriarchates derive not from divine but only from ecclesiastical institution, by the direct or indirect concession of the Roman See of Peter, and can subsist only in communion and dependence upon it. Moreover, just as the Pontiff does not always act with the whole intensity of his supreme power, so he can also exercise more restricted acts of episcopal, archiepiscopal or patriarchal jurisdiction, within the limits specially reserved and designated for these rights. In this way those things which Bellarmine recalled are understood as « many in potency, » both in exercise and a posteriori, and a priori through the exclusion of absolute necessity; and they are « all one in act » in the supreme universal power instituted by divine right.

III. From all that has been discussed, someone may perhaps conclude that the union of the primacy with the Roman episcopate already exists in such a way that it is a dogma of Catholic faith that the separation and transfer of the primacy to another See cannot be effected even by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself.

1°. These three things are without doubt of Catholic faith: α) that Christ instituted in Peter the power of primacy over the universal Church; β) that he instituted this primacy to remain perpetually as the visible foundation and rock placed by Christ the principal rock, and therefore belonging to the divine constitution of the Church itself, for as long as this Church, indefectible, shall stand until the consummation of the age; and consequently that together with the primacy was instituted a perpetual succession in it, so that always (in a morally continuous series) one visible and recognizable successor of Peter should be in the visible Church; γ) that these successors in the primacy are the Roman Pontiffs, to whom alone the legitimate succession of Peter actually pertains, and always has pertained. See above the definition of the Council of Vatican.

That the first and second dogmas are contained in the very words of the promise and institution made by Christ to Peter, as they have always been understood in the Church of God everywhere, and that from them, without assuming any proposition not revealed, they can be deduced by simple analysis, you have seen demonstrated in the preceding theses. The third is nothing but the concrete expression and application of each preceding dogma. The words of Christ God, by which he promised and instituted the primacy and perpetual succession in it by continuous series (You are Peter... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven... Strengthen your brethren, feed my sheep), do not express only an abstract truth, nor regard indeterminate persons; they were spoken concretely and directly to the person of Peter and to each of his successors in the whole series. They are not merely theoretical and speculative words, but practical words, effecting what they signify in Peter and in his successors, whom Christ, keeping each one in mind, was addressing. Now, either these successors in the primacy of Peter are none, and the words of eternal truth would not now be true; or they always were, and in the present order are, the only successors of Peter in the Apostolic Roman See. For by the constant fact, evident through the most universal tradition, those alone were always practically acknowledged and are acknowledged, and theoretically proclaimed and are proclaimed, by the very fact that they succeed Peter in the Roman See, as successors in the primacy, which Christ, by efficacious divine words, instituted in Peter together with perpetual succession. Therefore the words of Christ, at least for the present order, implicitly comprehend and announce as successors in the divinely instituted primacy all and only the Roman Pontiffs; and that truth is explicitly applied and proposed as credible and to be believed by an evident fact from the most universal tradition. Therefore, by Catholic faith, the divinely instituted primacy and its perpetual conservation, and the succession of individuals in it, must be believed; and no less must the succession of Roman Pontiffs in the same be believed, at least for the present order. « So that it may be certain to the Church, says Suárez, that in such a See the institution made by Christ and revealed in Scripture has been and is still being fulfilled, it is enough that the application, so to speak, of that institution and dignity to such an episcopate be sufficiently proposed to the same Church through evident tradition and continuous and most notorious use... Just as therefore the visible Church is believed to be the Church (the true Church of Jesus Christ) not only by human faith but also by divine faith, because the sensible signs by which it is seen are not the reason for believing, but propose it as evidently credible that she is the true Church which God revealed would always be in the world; so it must be believed not only by human but also by divine faith that the Roman Pontiff is the visible head of this Church in the place of Christ, because those signs by which we show this head make it evidently credible that he is the one whom Christ, by virtue of his institution, constituted as his Vicar. In this way we say that the assertion laid down is of faith, and is sufficiently contained in Scripture, with the addition of the tradition of the Church » (Suárez, against the English King, bk. III, ch. 13). Indeed this very dogma of the succession of Roman Pontiffs in the primacy divinely conferred on Peter, for himself and his successors, has been expressly declared and defined in the decrees and professions of faith described above in this thesis (n. I). Now then, after what we have just said, notice please that in the Florentine definition the last clause serves not only to confirm the fullness of power instituted by Christ in the primacy, but also contains the mode by which the revealed doctrine of succession in the primacy is applied and shown to refer to the Roman Pontiffs. « We define... that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles... and that to him, in blessed Peter, full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ; as is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical Councils and in the sacred canons. » For it is contained in these acts and canons, or in the universal tradition, both the declaration of right concerning the fullness of power and the showing of the fact of succession, by which the right is shown to pertain, and to be applied, to the Pontiffs of the Roman Church alone.

2°. Now, if these things are so, must not also the fourth dogma we mentioned be believed simply as of faith: that the union of the primacy with the see and Church of Rome is so absolute and already belongs to the very unchangeable constitution of the Church, that the primacy cannot be separated and transferred elsewhere, not even by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself? We reply that this dogma has not so far at least been defined as of faith; yet it is a theological truth, which is legitimately deduced from the manner in which the dogma itself of the primacy of the Roman Pontiffs, or of the Roman Church, is enunciated in ecclesiastical documents.

a) The first part of this proposition is granted by those very weighty theologians who vigorously defend against Dominic Soto the inseparability of the primacy from the Roman See; but when the question concerns separation by the supreme authority of the Church, which resides in Peter's successor himself, they use milder modes of speaking. Of the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself, I say, I understand both Soto, who (4 dist. 24 q. 2 a. 5) defends that separation can be effected by the authority of the Church, and those other theologians who impugn Soto's opinion; for if the question were about inferior ecclesiastical power, I think Soto would not have defended that view, and his opponents would have used a severer censure.

Gregory of Valencia, against Soto's arguments, kept within the following disapproval: « although⁶ these things can be subtly disputed in favour of Soto's opinion, it certainly seems to me that that opinion, in a matter so grave, is too singular, and indeed not sufficiently safe » (Analysis of the faith, bk. VII, ch. 12). Suárez sets the question aside, in the sense we have stated, as a hypothesis: « Whatever be the case with that question which is disputed by theologians, whether the Supreme Pontiff can separate the primacy from the Roman See, and either place it in another episcopate or leave it separated from every particular episcopate, I think it certain that, while no Supreme Pontiff has done this, the universal Church cannot, the Papacy being vacant, accomplish it; because an inferior power cannot change what has been constituted by a superior; and because, just as the primacy was given to Peter alone, for himself and his successors, so it pertains to him alone, or to the Supreme Pontiff, to determine the Pontifical See (in the hypothesis which Suárez permits, that the determination has not yet been made irrevocably), and to prescribe the mode of its election and succession » (bk. III, ch. 19, against the English King). Bellarmine speaks more cautiously and clearly: « The privilege of Peter is attached to the city of Rome, as long as Peter's successors keep their See at Rome. For if by divine command the See were transferred elsewhere, the Roman bishops would no longer be bishops of the whole Church; if, I say, the See itself were transferred, so that those who are now Roman Pontiffs should be called bishops of some other place; for the mere absence of the Pontiffs from the City is not said to transfer the See. And these things are said on the hypothesis; for we do not believe it will ever happen that the See be transferred elsewhere » (bk. II, ch. 12, On the Roman Pontiff). Concerning the supreme power of the Church that is in the Supreme Pontiff himself, the more temperate mode of speaking is also to be understood, which Benedict XIV expressly uses, appealing to Gregory of Valencia, Suárez and Bellarmine: « although it can in some sense be said that the supreme monarchy of the Church is annexed to the Roman See by human right alone, because indeed the union, connection and binding of the two arose from the fact of Peter, nevertheless the opinion of those who asserted that the said connection is by human right to such an extent that it can be dissolved by the Church (namely by the supreme power of the Pontiff in the Church), and one separated from the other, does not seem to be able to be sustained » (bk. II, ch. 1, n. 1, On the Diocesan Synod). See also Peter Ballerini, Vindications against Febronius, ch. 8, §2; Laurentius Veith, On the Roman Pontiff, sect. I, §19.⁷

b) The other part of our proposition, that the primacy must never, not even by any supreme power, be separated from the See and Church of Peter at Rome, has so manifest a foundation in the definitions and professions of faith described in this thesis, and in the doctrine of the Pontiffs and other Fathers proposed in the preceding thesis, that it is rather necessary to warn that this truth is not held by theologians as certain of faith, than that it could be doubted to be a theological truth supported by very weighty arguments and documents.

α) Surely in that hypothesis the universal and constant reasoning and teaching of the whole Church of all ages would have to be changed. The whole ecclesiastical tradition, which shines most brightly not only in decrees of legislation through the power and key of jurisdiction, but in definitions and professions of faith through the infallible magisterium and the key of doctrine, would not be immutably true for every age, but only hypothetically, as long as the very foundation and object of the definition and profession of faith, which is supposed mutable, remains unchanged. But all that tradition, all those definitions and professions of faith, state the truth absolutely, and in them there is no trace of that merely hypothetical truth and mutability of the object. They therefore state an immutable truth; nor is a value and meaning merely hypothetical, and a mutability of the object, drawn from those most sacred documents, but it is attributed to them without solid reason, which is surely impious.

Let us suppose the primacy translated from the Roman See of Peter and already joined to another See, Naples, Paris, or Cologne. Then for that supposed future age it will no longer be true what has been defined, and what until that time had to be believed by all by Catholic faith: « that the Roman Pontiff himself is (not only was at some time) the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles and head of the whole Church »; and therefore at that time it will not be anathema, « whoever says that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the primacy »; nor will it any longer have to be professed, « that the Roman Church, by the disposition of the Lord, holds (not only has held, but without limitation of time) the principate of ordinary power over all others, » and that this is nothing other than « the jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff, to which pastors and faithful, both singly and all together, are bound. » What was to be believed until then in the Lyons and Tridentine professions will have to be changed: « the holy Roman Church itself holds the highest and full primacy over the universal Church; » « I acknowledge the Roman Church as mother and teacher of all Churches, and to the Roman Pontiff, successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience. » In sum, the true Church of Jesus Christ will no longer be the Catholic Roman Church, but the Catholic Neapolitan or Parisian Church. The absurdity of these consequences, intolerable to Catholic ears, which nevertheless are all necessarily contained in that supposition of a transferred See, demonstrates the immutability of the object which is proposed in the definitions and professions of faith to be believed.

This same clear doctrine of the definitions and professions of faith is also evidently contained in the whole ecclesiastical tradition, from which therefore arises the same unavoidable argument for the immutable firmness by which the Roman See of Peter always is and remains the Apostolic Petrine See, namely heir of all the right and power instituted by Christ in Peter, as we demonstrated in the preceding thesis XI. Hence the things demonstrated there are to be recalled, and there is no need to repeat them here; but I would like you to notice that from those documents the immutable firmness of the principate in the Roman See of Peter is not only deduced by inference but also proclaimed in express words. The bishop of the Roman Church, Celestine, at the Council of Ephesus is called « successor according to the order and locum tenens of Peter, prince and head of the Apostles »; it is therefore of Peter's succession in the Roman Church, and of no other, that what is there said of Peter's successors, as known to all ages, is said or can be understood: « It is doubtful to no one, nay it is known to all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter... up to this time and always lives and exercises judgment in his successors »; which were repeated and cited in this sense also by the Council of Vatican (ch. 2). The power of binding and loosing, which canonical antiquity recognized in Peter from the promise of Christ, Zosimus not only claims for himself, but declares it to be the power of all the heirs of Peter's Roman See, always the same, because he himself has the greatest care of this his Church and has established for it the foundations of his name, so that just as for the perpetuity of the universal Church the gates of hell shall never prevail against it, so for the perpetuity of the privilege of the Roman Church Peter is in his successors: « The same condition of power is given to those who, with him (Peter) assenting, had merited the inheritance of the see; for he himself has care both of all Churches and especially of this one, where he had sat; nor does he suffer anything of its privilege to waver by any breath of opinion (in that Church where he had sat), for which he himself established the foundations of his name, firm and weakened by no disturbances, and which no one rashly attacks without peril to himself... so that the Roman Church may be strengthened as much by human as by divine laws and all disciplines. » The doctrine of St. Leo is the same, concerning the indefectible fellowship of Peter with the eternal priest, both in the Apostolic and in the episcopal dignity in his see, because the solidity of the rock, derived from Christ the rock, remains in Peter's heirs: « there is joined, moreover, not only the Apostolic but also the episcopal dignity of most blessed Peter, who does not cease to preside over his see, and obtains an indefectible fellowship with the eternal priest; for that solidity which he, himself also made a rock, received from Christ the rock, has poured itself into his heirs as well. » Gelasius repeats the same doctrine of the eternal solidity of the Roman See, that by the gates of hell this very see may never be conquered: Christ directed Peter « by a wonderful dispensation to Rome, mistress of the nations... and there, adorned with the glorious effusion of his blood, he rests in an eternal hospice, granting to the see which he blessed that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell, according to the Lord's mission. » In a letter read and acclaimed at the Seventh Council, Pope Hadrian I professes: « the blessed Peter himself, prince of the Apostles, who first presided over the Apostolic See, left the principate of his apostolate and of pastoral care to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most holy See... and the power of authority to his... handed down by divine command to his successors the Pontiffs. »

β) The falsity of the supposition we are attacking appears from another consideration, on the constitution of the Church and on the visible foundation of the Apostolic Roman See. In that hypothesis of a primacy separated from the Church and the Roman See, either this Church and Apostolic See is said to remain still as an episcopal See, now stripped of the rights of the primacy, or it is supposed to have perished entirely.

If the Roman episcopal See still remains, it can in no way happen that it is not an Apostolic See: not only in that historical sense, that the episcopate of this particular Church was founded by an Apostle (as were many other sees founded by Peter, Paul, John and the other Apostles), but an Apostolic Petrine See, that is, raised to be a primatial See over the whole Church by Peter, as he had been equipped by Christ, for himself and for the whole series of his successors in order (κατὰ τάξιν), with the rights and offices of the primacy. For, as we have seen above, there are not two sees, one of the primacy and another of the Roman episcopate; but the one Roman Apostolic See itself was made primatial by Peter, for himself and his successors in order, in the same See; which he, dying, left vacant with all its divinely instituted rights, that is, to be occupied by the legitimate successors in this one Roman See. Hence we have seen that succession in the Roman episcopal See has always and everywhere been held and acknowledged by all, without any controversy, as identical with succession in the primacy over the whole Church, or (with the distinction made according to a twofold reason) as the authentic visible sign of succession in the primacy: whoever succeeds Peter in the Roman episcopate, or in one Roman chair or See, by that very fact and by that alone is, and always has been, theoretically proclaimed and practically regarded as, heir of Peter, prince of the Apostles. As long, therefore, as the Roman See remains, whoever succeeds in it is successor and heir of Peter in the primacy; nor can the right of inheritance be understood in another See, which is not and cannot be made Apostolic Petrine. It is true of any other See, and much more true in comparison with the Roman See, what St. Leo said of the Church of Constantinople in comparison with Alexandria and Antioch: « nor, beside that rock which the Lord placed as the foundation,⁸ will any stable structure be... Let not (Anatolius) disdain the royal city, which he cannot make an Apostolic See » (ep. 104, ch. 3).

The other supposition, that this Roman Church would wholly perish or its See be abolished, is excluded by the constant tradition on the meaning and effect of the promises of Christ. Let the preceding testimonies be re-read, or even those alone which we have adduced in this number, on the firm foundations of Peter's Church; on the indefectible priesthood of Peter in it; on the blessing of Peter upon his see, that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell; on the perpetual session of Peter's successors in the same See. For the confirmation and illustration of these, it should be noted that to the visible mark of the apostolicity of the Church of Jesus Christ it also belongs that there always be in it some See manifestly apostolic, whose series of bishops, never interrupted, indubitably reaches back to the Apostle founder. Indeed, in order that this mark of Apostolicity remain constant and certain for all times, and immutably safe from all danger, it is necessary that this apostolic See not only has never historically failed, but that it be dogmatically established that it cannot fail. « Let them therefore (the heretics) produce the origins of their Churches, unroll the order of their bishops, so running down from the beginning by successions, that the first bishop had as author and predecessor some one of the Apostles or apostolic men who yet persevered with the Apostles. For in this way the apostolic Churches bring forward their registers: as the Church of the Smyrnaeans, having Polycarp placed there by John, relates; as the Church of the Romans publishes Clement ordained by Peter; and so the others likewise exhibit those whom, appointed to the episcopate by the Apostles, they have as transmitters of the apostolic seed... These, though they produce no Apostle or apostolic man as their author, as being much later and finally established every day, yet agreeing in the same faith with the Apostolic Churches, are deemed no less apostolic on account of the kinship of doctrine » (Tertullian, Prescriptions against heretics, ch. 32).

Now indeed, such an Apostolic Church, which manifestly and without interruption exhibits the succession of bishops descending from the Apostle, while also preserving the kinship of doctrine, there is now none apart from the Roman Church of Peter; and all the more is she alone the one to whom the Fathers and Councils, as we have seen, ascribe that solidity, so that she can by no means fail, « according to Christ's mission », and is able to restore other sees, if they have failed, as the patrician Bahanes argued at the Eighth Council. « God has placed his Church in five patriarchates, and has defined in his Gospels that they never at any time fall utterly, because they are the heads of the Church. For what is said, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, announces this: when two fall, they run (the pastors and the flocks of the faithful) to the three; when three fall, they run to two; but when perhaps four fall, the one which remains in the head of all, Christ our God, calls back the rest of the body of the Church again » (Hard. T. V, p. 880). The different mode and the different right by which the five patriarchates or sees are the heads of the Church, and the gospel text brought in for proof, clearly show that this one, or this one See, which Bahanes shows by this twofold argument to be indefectible, can be none other than the See and Church of Rome of Peter. Hence also we have seen above how the Fathers Irenaeus, Optatus, Augustine, Epiphanius and others adduce, as a « compendium of proof » for the truth of the Catholic Church in the profession of faith, and for unity in the communion of charity, the perpetual uninterrupted succession of Roman bishops descending from the prince of the Apostles, Peter. That succession, in the Church of « a more powerful principality, » in the « principal Church, » « with which it is necessary that every Church agree », not only has not failed up to the times of the Fathers; but, on account of the very purpose for which that more powerful principality of Peter's Church was instituted, namely to exhibit visibly the perpetuity of the one and true Church of Jesus Christ, and so to serve as the visible mark of apostolicity, it can at no time fail. Whence also Optatus says that « the first of the gifts » of the Catholic Church is « the one chair, which Peter first sat in. »

I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated what we proposed: namely, that it is a certain theological truth, grounded in the principles and documents of faith, that the primacy is never to be separated from the Church and See of Peter at Rome, not even by the supreme power of Peter's successors.

γ) Some difficulty remains, not as to the truth itself considered in the concrete, in the manner in which we have stated and demonstrated it, but as to the power of separation in the Supreme Pontiff considered absolutely and abstractly, in the manner in which certain theologians consider the divine omnipotence itself, absolutely and abstracting from the other attributes of wisdom, justice and goodness, by which they say God can do many things which, in ordained power (as they themselves put it), that is, with all the divine attributes considered together, he cannot. The difficulty we have mentioned is this. Peter could separate, and in fact did separate, the primacy from his former Antiochene see by transferring it to the Roman See adopted by him afterwards; and no reason appears why he, while living, could not also have transferred it from this Roman See to another. But in the successor of Peter there is altogether the same ordinary power that was in Peter himself, except indeed the extraordinary charisms, not to be passed on to heirs. Therefore, just as Peter could, so the successor of Peter can transfer the primacy to another See. Indeed, whoever denies this, while he seems to exalt the privileges of the See, sets against the power of the one sitting in it a limit contrary to right. The response and explanation of the difficulty is contained in the following. 1°. If what the holy Pontiffs Leo, Gelasius, Gregory, Hadrian and other Fathers preach, namely that Peter, by divine pre-ordinations, had gone before, in the Roman citadel, to the honour of power⁹; that by Christ himself he had been directed by a wonderful dispensation to Rome, mistress of the nations; that the Roman See of Peter, by God's authority, is set above all Churches; that Peter had handed on to his successors in the Roman See, by divine command, the power which he himself had received from Christ; if, I say, all this were understood of a divinely revealed command, and so of the union of the Roman See with the primacy by divine right, which the Apostle Peter had consigned to the Church as a Catholic revelation, at least in practice and by the fact itself: then that perpetual union would itself be of Catholic faith, and it is manifest that, this being supposed, it could not have been and cannot be dissolved by Peter himself or by his successors. But such a truth of Catholic faith we do not, from what has been conceded, assert; nor therefore do we assert a revealed command and properly speaking divine right. Nevertheless, since it is a question of the Apostle and of the prince of the Apostles, and of an institution concerning the whole Church, indeed of an institution intimately connected with the very visible foundation of the Church, which was placed by Christ in Peter and in Peter's succession; from this very nature of things it follows, and is taught also by all the testimonies of the Councils, Pontiffs and Fathers cited, that at least by special supernatural assistance and direction Peter united the primacy with this his Roman See and left the primacy united to his successors in the same¹⁰. 2°. Constituted under this « wonderful dispensation » of God, neither could Peter himself have separated the primacy from his Roman See, not indeed for lack of power considered in itself and absolutely, but by the privilege of apostolic indefectibility in following divine direction, especially as regards such great institutions concerning the whole Church and its very visible foundation, although these be supposed not immediately divine but only of apostolic right. But for the successors of Peter, whatever be the case with power considered in itself and abstractly, the union, considered in the concrete with all its circumstances, made not in transition but in consummation by Peter, as St. Innocent says, and the succession in the primacy constituted by succession itself in the Roman See, must be deemed far more immutable by right. Let the documents cited above be recalled, from which it has been proved that the whole mode of thinking and teaching about the succession of Peter, about the Church and the Apostolic See of Peter, expressed in the definitions and professions of Catholic faith and in the universal tradition of all ages, would in the hypothesis under discussion be changed and turned aside. What greater and, to put it most mildly, more perilous disturbance in the Church of God can be imagined, I do not know. Therefore that translation of the primacy, and that change of the visible sign for succession in the inheritance of Peter, can never, whatever conditions of things and times be supposed, be for the building up of the body of Christ, but would always be to its perpetual and universal detriment. But « the fullness of power is to be able to do all things for the building up of the body of Christ, » and that power is bound by divine norms. And that it may always in act itself be governed by these norms, indefectible divine assistance is promised to the successor of Peter, not only for infallibility in defining matters of faith and morals, but also for the universal¹¹ governance of the Church, insofar as the very preservation of faith and morals depends on it. Therefore the very fidelity of God in his promises makes us secure that never, not even by the supreme power of the successors of Peter, is the union of the primacy with the Apostolic See and Roman Church of Peter to be dissolved.

In the argument, therefore, as it is put forward, both the major and the minor premise must be granted, insofar as in it the power of Peter and of his successors is considered in itself and abstractly. But insofar as it is considered under the indefectible direction and assistance of God, together with all the modes and conditions by which the union of the primacy with the Apostolic Roman See of Peter has been made, and always understood and proclaimed, it must be denied that it could have happened, or could ever happen, that this same union was dissolved by Peter himself or is dissolved by his successors.

Another difficulty was raised by an anonymous writer, against whom Francesco Antonio Zaccaria published a dissertation « on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. » If the divine prerogative of the primacy, he said, is bound in the successor of Peter to the place where this Apostle died, « what will become of that primacy, when Rome, by the prophecies of the prophets and of John, will remain sunk in perpetual abyss? » Indeed Catholic interpreters too deduce from Apocalypse XVII–XVIII that the defection of the city of Rome from the Christian religion will come in the last times, and finally its ruin¹².

The response, insofar as it is required for such uncertain interpretations and suspicions, is this. 1°. It is certain that in those chapters of the Apocalypse, in the literal and immediate sense, the destruction is foretold of the idolatry that persecutes the saints in the Roman empire and of its centre, that great Babylon; but what is read into the text, in a supposedly fuller and higher sense, about the destruction of the city, and much more about its defection, for the future last times, is uncertain. 2°. One must distinguish between the city of Rome considered materially and politically (that is, in its institutions and political men) and the Roman Church. This does not consist of walls and buildings and political institutions, but is « the people of the faithful gathered around the bishop. » The Church, indeed, which in its bishop through the continuous succession of the Roman Pontiffs from Peter, and in its clergy and faithful people from the Apostolic Church founded by Peter, runs on, remains the Roman Church, even if the overthrow of the city of Rome were supposed. Since it has been demonstrated that the successors of Peter in the primacy will always be Roman bishops, by the same reason and in the same sense of morally continuous succession connected with the Church first founded by Peter, it will always be deemed the Roman Church, « the Church in the bishop. » Indeed moral perpetuity of persons, not physical perpetuity of place, is required. Indeed, even if the overthrow of the Roman Church gathered and united, as distinguished from its bishop, were supposed, and there remained only the condition of the Church to be gathered, as it was when the first Roman bishop « entered that forest of roaring beasts and the most turbulent ocean of the deep » (St. Leo, sermon 82, ch. 4), the Roman bishops would nevertheless not cease to be successors of Peter, both in the universal Apostolic and in the particular episcopal dignity (cf. above cited St. Leo, sermon 5, ch. 4). F. A. Zaccaria, loc. cit., ch. 5, n. 6, expressed this order of succession in the primacy and in the Roman episcopate thus: « The primacy of Peter is bound to the place in which this Apostle died only in this sense: that those alone who can be called Roman Pontiffs ought to be regarded as his successors; but the succession of the Roman Pontiffs does not depend on the place where they reside, but on the place where they first sat, to whom they have succeeded in an uninterrupted series. Hence if Rome were overthrown, they would migrate elsewhere, yet they would be Roman Pontiffs, as belonging to the order of the Roman Pontiffs who preceded them »¹³ IV. Much graver is the error which in the Syllabus, Proposition XXXV, was proscribed by the Holy See. But that the poison of that proposition may be more fully understood, it is useful to premise a few things about the principles and doctrines of the Innovators, to which that thesis of John Nepomucene Nuytz is intimately connected.

Already a century ago, when a fierce war against the Apostolic See had begun to be waged almost everywhere, both by atrocious deeds and by impious writings, Febronius (Nicolaus von Hontheim), in his book « on the state of the Church and the lawful power of the Roman Pontiff, » which was proscribed not only by the Sacred Congregation of the Index but also by several letters given to the bishops of Germany by Clement XIII, asserted among other heretical and schismatic errors that « by the authority of the Church the primacy can be transferred to another bishop, e.g. of Milan, of Paris » (ch. 2, §3). By the authority of the Church, however, he understands an authority distinct and separated from that of the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff. This doctrine rests on a heretical principle which, after Alphonsus Tostatus, was introduced by Edmund Richer and the Jansenists, and was, no less than for Febronius, a foundation for assailing the ecclesiastical monarchy and the supreme authority of jurisdiction and magisterium of the Apostolic See over the whole Church. The keys of ecclesiastical power, they said, were given by Christ not immediately to Peter, and through Peter to the Apostles, for themselves and their successors, but were given to the universality of the faithful; and from this universality they were committed to the sacerdotal body of bishops and presbyters, and finally to individual bishops, and among these first to the Roman Pontiff among the bishops. So the power always remains radically and essentially in the universality of the faithful, while in the bishops and in the Roman Pontiff it is only instrumental and ministerial for execution, so that they carry out the acts of power dependently on the body of the faithful, and as ministers, to whom the power has been derived from that same body of the faithful. Richer (On ecclesiastical and political power, ch. 1) lays down this principle: « Christ, in founding the Church, first and more immediately and more essentially gave the keys, or jurisdiction, to the whole Church than to Peter; or, what comes to the same thing, he conferred the keys on the whole Church, so that they would be exercised ministerially through one; since all ecclesiastical jurisdiction belongs primarily, properly and essentially to the Church, but to the Roman Pontiff and the other bishops only ministerially and as to execution. » See Petavius, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, bk. III, chs. 14–16.¹⁴ With these is connected the doctrine of Quesnel and of those Jansenists who defended it in their Hexaples (cf. Mamachi, Origins and Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. V, p. 257). For proposition XC among those condemned in the bull Unigenitus is this: « The Church has the authority of excommunicating, so that she may exercise it through the first pastors, with the consent at least presumed of the whole body. » The principle of Febronius is exactly the same as the Richerian, and even more clearly expressed: « The Church itself principally and radically holds the power of the keys, which is derived from her into all her ministers and the Supreme Pontiff himself, and is communicated to each and all according to their portion... The keys were given by Christ to the whole Church, collectively taken, so that the right of them is exercised by prelates and chief pastors according to the good pleasure and destination of the same Church. » Febronius, loc. cit., ch. 1, §11; ch. 2, §4. See F. A. Zaccaria, Antifebronius, vol. I, Introduction, ch. 4; Antifebronius vindicated, Dissertation I, ch. 2.

From these principles it is manifest that the power of the primacy and of the whole ecclesiastical order, as it was instituted by Christ in Peter and the Apostles, is utterly subverted. Nor does Peter, or Peter's successor, preside as the shepherd of the sheep of Christ; he is rather subject to the sheep to be fed by them, and is subject to the Church and to the Council, which they say represents the Church¹⁵, insofar as it has power derived from the Church itself; and that not in union, since neither is it in subordination under the Roman Pontiff, but in distinction and opposition to the Pontiff¹⁶. Dupin (On ancient ecclesiastical discipline, dissertation VI, §1) laid down these as the necessary consequences of those principles: « Therefore the Supreme Pontiff does not have power over the universal Church, although he has it in the universal Church; but on the contrary the Church has power over the Pontiff; and just as on death another is substituted, so she can correct and depose him; not indeed herself by herself, for it is not possible for the whole society of the Church to assemble or judge, but through a general Council, which, since it represents the universal Church, has the whole power of the universal Church united in itself, especially since it has the assent of the universal Church. »¹⁷

At the beginning of this section I said that the doctrine of Febronius on the transfer of the primacy from the Roman See to another episcopate rests on these very heretical principles; hence it comes about that the words in which that proposition itself is stated by Febronius carry an erroneous sense, insofar as he says that « by human authority the primacy was entrusted to the Roman Pontiff. » For it is a dogma of faith, demonstrated above, that by the institution and authority of Christ, and by divine right, the primacy was and is entrusted both to Peter and to each of his successors, the Roman Pontiffs. But when by these sectarians all power of the keys is said to be committed by Christ immediately to the universality of the faithful, so that from this universality it is finally derived to be exercised instrumentally and ministerially by the Roman Pontiff and the bishops, the subject of power by divine institution will be the whole body of the faithful; and hence they could further infer that by human authority (namely of the body of the faithful) the primacy was entrusted to the Roman Pontiff. « Since therefore (the words of Febronius, ch. 2, §3) it remains firm that, as regards the person and place of the successor in the primacy, nothing was provided and established by God, it remains that with the Church, to which, as has been said, the power of the keys and all ecclesiastical authority was handed over, there has stood and still endures the right to determine by whom she wishes one or the other part of the keys to be administered, and so by whom the first office in the Church, and by whom the lower duties, are to be performed in conformity with the institution of Christ. Hence (it remains firm) that, just as by reasons of fitness the sacred primacy was entrusted by human authority to the bishop of the city of Rome, so also by rational motives it can be transferred by the authority of the Church (which he had called shortly before human authority) to another bishop, e.g. of Milan, of Paris, etc. »¹⁸

Now indeed the Nuytzian proposition is the same in sense, and expressed almost in the same words, as that of Febronius; and it either contains the same principles as Febronius or certainly coheres with those errors by which the author aims, as is said in the Apostolic letters proscribing his books (Ad Apostolicae Sedis, 22 August 1851), « to pervert the constitution and government of the Church... For with the greatest wickedness he asserts that the Church is so subject to the civil power that he assigns to the civil power, directly or indirectly, whatever is established by divine institution or by ecclesiastical laws concerning the government of the Church, concerning sacred persons and things, and the judicial forum of the Church. » Indeed he denies that the Roman Pontiff can « be compared to a free prince, » who has the power of acting « in the universal Church; » and so a fortiori his power over the universal Church is denied. From these principles, and even from the very words in which the proposition is expressed, where consent or « the fact of the peoples » is joined as equivalent to a « general Council », it is clear that the Council is understood by Nuytz as without and even against the Roman Pontiff, in the sense of Dupin, Febronius and the other Innovators; not one celebrated and sanctioned by the authority of the Pontiff, without which there can be no true and legitimate general Council. The proposition, condemned in the aforesaid Apostolic letters and afterwards in the Syllabus, is expressed in these words: « Nothing forbids that, by the sentence of some general Council or by the fact of all peoples, the supreme pontificate be transferred from the Roman bishop and city to another bishop and another city. » Thus it falls at least under one of the censures by which the Pontiff, of his own motion, from certain knowledge and mature deliberation, and from the fullness of apostolic power, reprobated and condemned the books of Nuytz, « as containing propositions and doctrines respectively false, rash, scandalous, erroneous, injurious to the Holy See, derogating from its rights, subverting the government of the Church and its divine constitution, schismatic, heretical, favouring Protestantism and its propagation, and leading into heresy and into a system long since condemned as heretical in Luther, Baius¹⁹, Marsilius of Padua, Jandun, Marco Antonio De Dominis, Richer, Laborde and the Pistoians, and in others likewise condemned by the Church, and destructive of the canons of the Council of Trent. »