The First Vatican Council

In 1854 Pius IX had defined the Immaculate Conception of Mary (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus definition), and in 1864 he had condemned eighty propositions, the last being that the Roman pontiff should reconcile himself with progress, liberalism and modern civilization (Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors prop. 80). On 8 December 1869 he opened a council in St Peter’s at Rome (Manning, True Story of the Vatican Council p. 87). On 24 April 1870 it approved the constitution Dei Filius, which teaches that God can be certainly known by the natural light of reason from created things, and that there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason (First Vatican Council, Dei Filius ch. 2 and 4).

Pastor aeternus followed on 18 July. Its third chapter condemns anyone who denies that the pope has “full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church”, in discipline and government as well as in faith and morals, a power “ordinary and immediate” over all churches, pastors and faithful (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus ch. 3). The fourth chapter says that the Holy Spirit was promised to Peter’s successors not to make known new doctrine but to guard and expound the faith delivered through the apostles (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus ch. 4). It then defines, in Archbishop Manning’s translation of 1871,

that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus ch. 4).

Manning, who sat in the council and supported the definition, gives the votes: in the last preliminary vote 451 for the text, 88 against and 62 for it conditionally. On 17 July fifty-five bishops declared that they would not attend the public session. The next day 533 voted for the decree and two against, and those two submitted at once (Manning, True Story of the Vatican Council pp. 144–146). On 20 September Rome fell (Holy See, biographical profile of Pius IX).

Others refused the definition. The Old Catholic bishops of the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland declared in 1889 that the decrees contradicted the faith of the ancient church, while acknowledging the historic primacy of the bishop of Rome as first among equals (Declaration of Utrecht (1889) art. 2). The patriarch of Constantinople and his synod wrote in 1895 that the Orthodox Church knows no one infallible on earth except the Son of God (Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895 sect. 18). The Anglican bishops at Lambeth in 1878 called the act of 1870 “an invasion of the attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Lambeth Conference 1878, Letter p. 35). The Second Vatican Council repeated the teaching in 1964 and set beside it the teaching office of the bishops in communion with the pope (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 18, 25).