Councils of the Church

The Second Vatican Council was the twenty-first in the series which most Roman Catholics recognize as general councils of the Church. The first eight, beginning with Nicaea, 325 A.D., were held in the Near East, the rest in western Europe, but only one, 1869-70, at the Vatican. The Eastern and Western churches were united only in the first seven - the Eastern Church participated in but did not accept the decisions of the Fourth Council of Constantinople. The Council of Trent, 1545-63, on the heels of the Protestant Reformation, was the nineteenth. The terms "ecumenical" and "catholic" are practically interchangeable; each means universal. But clearly, what Catholics regard as universal is not necessarily what is regarded as universal by the other two major Christian groupings, the Eastern Orthodox and the Protestants."

The Ecumenical Councils claimed for themselves an immunity from error in their doctrinal and moral teaching, resting such claim upon the promise of the presence and guidance of the Holy Ghost. The Council looked upon itself, not as revealing any new truth, but as setting forth the faith once for all delivered to the Saints, its decisions therefore were in themselves ecumenical, as being an expression of the mind of the whole body of the faithful both clerical and lay, the sensus communis of the Church. And by the then teaching of the Church that ecumenical consensus was considered free from the suspicion of error, guarded, (as was believed,) by the Lord's promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against his Church. This then is what Catholics mean when they affirm the infallibility of Ecumenical Councils.

The Councils of Constance and Basle asserted the superiority of the cecumenical council to the Holy See ; and the French theologians placed this proposition among the quatuor propositiones Cleri Gallicani - the so called Gallican Liberties. Other theologians affirmed the contrary, saying that the Pope is superior to an oecumenical council : for example, Eoncaglia, in his learned reply to Natalis Alexander's dissertation ; also, before Roncaglia, the pros and cons had been disputed at great length and with much animation. The Ultramontanes especially relied upon the fact that, at the fifth Council of Lateran, Pope Leo declared, without the least opposition in the Synod, that the authority of the Pope extended super omnia concilia.

During most of the fifteenth century, a struggle for supremacy went on between partisans of pope and council. This was settled in favor of the pope by the time of the Council of Trent. The council is not a parliament. Its acts are not binding unless and until they are approved by the pope. The pope, on the other hand, has adequate authority without the support of a council.

The first Councils of the Church condemned particular errors, and denied particular doctrines of revelation; the Council of the Vatican in 1869-1870 defined the principle of Divine authority upon which the custody and announcement of the whole revelation of faith depend. The former Councils defined what was believed; the Vatican Council defined the motive. Every Council of the Church had been more or less divided by vivid discussions: witness the Arians at Nicea, the Monophysites at Chalcedon, the Nationalist parties at Constance. Every Council has been followed by divisions. Witness again the Arian schism after the Council of Nicea, and above all the Protestant separations after the Council of Trent.