Origin from 1870
A dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council, issued at Rome in Latin, defining the pope's universal jurisdiction over the whole Church and the conditions under which a papal definition is held infallible. Those conditions require that the pope speak in his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians, that he intend to define a doctrine, that the subject be one of faith or morals, and that it be proposed as held by the whole Church. It remains binding Catholic doctrine today and is the constitutional basis for every subsequent claim of papal infallibility.
Facts
Law and Effect
Legal DefinitionA papal definition is infallible where four conditions hold together: the pope speaks in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines, the subject is a doctrine of faith or morals, and it is proposed as held by the whole Church. 2 Origins
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The Two Definitions
Pastor Aeternus is short and it defines two things, which are often collapsed into one in popular accounts. The first is jurisdiction. The constitution states that the Roman Pontiff has ordinary, immediate and truly episcopal power over the whole Church and over each of its churches and each of its pastors and faithful, and that this power is not merely a right of supervision but a direct authority. In practical terms that is the more far reaching of the two definitions, because it touches the government of every diocese every day.
The second is infallibility, and the text is narrower than it is usually remembered as being. Four conditions are stated together. The pope must be speaking ex cathedra, that is in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians. He must be defining. The subject must be a doctrine of faith or morals. And the definition must be proposed as held by the whole Church. Where all four hold, the definition possesses the infallibility Christ willed for his Church, and is irreformable of itself and not from the consent of the Church.
That final clause, not from the consent of the Church, was the most contested phrase in the document, because it settles a question the councils of the fifteenth century had left open: whether a general council stands above the pope. It does not.
A Council Interrupted
The council opened in December 1869 with more than seven hundred bishops present and a long agenda. Infallibility was not on the original schedule; it was added by petition, and the debate over it consumed the spring of 1870. The opposition was substantial and it was not primarily doctrinal. A minority that included Bishop Felix Dupanloup of Orleans and much of the German and Austro-Hungarian episcopate argued that the definition was inopportune, that it would harden Protestant and Orthodox positions and expose Catholics in mixed societies to the charge of divided loyalty.
They lost the argument in committee and then declined to fight it on the floor. In a preliminary vote on 13 July, eighty-eight bishops voted against and sixty-two voted for it with reservations. Before the public session on 18 July, most of the minority left Rome. The final count was 433 in favour and 2 against.
What happened next was not planned by anyone in the hall. The Franco-Prussian War broke out four days later, the French garrison protecting the papal territory withdrew, and Italian troops entered Rome on 20 September. The council was suspended on 20 October and never reconvened. Its second constitution, on the bishops and on the Church as a whole, was left undrafted. That absence shaped Catholic theology for ninety years, and Vatican II's Lumen Gentium in 1964 is in large part the completion of the sentence Vatican I did not finish.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
A dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council defining papal infallibility.
Belongs to Tradition
Rejected Here
Anglicanism, Denominations The Articles of Religion deny that the bishop of Rome has jurisdiction in this realm, and the Anglican response to the definition of 1870 was to refuse it outright.
The Assyrian Church of the East recognises no papal jurisdiction over its own patriarchate and does not receive the definition.
Orthodoxy holds that no bishop is infallible apart from the Church, and treats the definition as the point at which the Roman claim became formally irreconcilable with the Eastern understanding of the episcopate.
Lutheranism, Denominations Lutheran teaching holds that the church's authority rests on the gospel and not on an office that can define without it, so the definition is refused rather than merely doubted.
The Oriental Orthodox churches recognise no universal jurisdiction over the episcopate and refuse the definition on the same ground as the Eastern Orthodox.
Element Of
The Maronite Church keeps its Antiochene rite in full communion with Rome and receives the definitions of the Roman councils.
The First Vatican Council defined the pope's universal and immediate jurisdiction and his infallibility when he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church keeps the Byzantine rite in full communion with Rome, so it receives the council's definitions along with the rest of the Roman magisterium.
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