“… likened unto a foolish man, which
built his house upon the sand… and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”
(Matthew 7:26-27)
“Except the Lord build the house, they
labor in vain that build it…” (Psalm 127:1)
This article has a lot to do
with precedent. Precedent can be a good
thing or a very bad thing. What is a
“precedent”? According to dictionary.com, it is:
“Any act, decision, or case
that serves as a guide or justification for subsequent situations.”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes it as:
“Something done or said that
may serve as an example or rule to authorize or justify a subsequent act of the
same or an analogous kind.”
You get the picture. What happens today will be the example,
teaching, or law of tomorrow.
But as you may know, some
terrible things have developed in our world due to bad precedents. For example, the Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion in 1973 was definitely an
evil precedent. Every Catholic knows
this. Another tragic example of a bad
precedent is the reversing of our
First Amendment right to freedom of religion in America. It is a shame that some of our highest courts
have betrayed us. See this article:
But there is another bad
precedent that we find within the Catholic Church, and it has to do with its
teachings on the papacy (i.e., the office of the pope). This precedent has disturbing implications
for Catholics. The truth is that there
have been some forgeries of documents in history that have greatly affected the
shape of the modern day papacy, and they have made it what it is today. One of those forgeries is called the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, to which later
were added other forgeries (the Donation
of Constantine and the Liber
Pontificalis). These were later
mixed with yet another forgery provided by a monk named John Gratian. These, taken all together, came to be known
as Gratian’s Decretum, which created
a historical precedent, greatly influencing the Catholic teaching of “papal
primacy.” See this article for details:
Now, Catholics will admit
that these documents we mentioned (and some others) were indeed forgeries. But some Catholics will try to downplay the effects of these forgeries. They’ll say yes, these were forgeries, but
it’s not a big deal, since they didn’t have much of an influence or impact on
the Catholic teaching on papal authority.
They’ll say that the earliest church taught this same thing, but in seed
form, and that it just naturally “developed” into what we see in the papacy
today.
But there are others who are
painting a very different historical picture.
Please carefully read these accounts of Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic historians, scholars, and
theologians who have a different take on the influence that these forgeries had
on the doctrine of the papacy...
Richard W. Thompson
Former teacher, lawyer,
judge, and U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Richard W. Thompson (who was reported to
be Catholic, but we have not been able to confirm this) in his study of
Catholic forgeries and their influence on the papacy, observed:
“Such times as these were
adapted to the practice of any kind of imposture and fraud which the popes and
clergy considered necessary to strengthen the authority of the papacy… But they
were unsuited to these times, in that they did not furnish a sufficient shelter
for the corruption and imperialism of the popes, and did not sufficiently lay
the foundation for their claim of dominion over the world. Something more was necessary; and the means
for supplying this were not wanting. It
consisted of the False Decretals, which
are now universally considered to have been bold and unblushing forgeries. Yet, forgeries as they were, they constitute the cornerstone of that enormous system
of wrong and usurpation which has since been built up by the papacy…” (The Papacy and the Civil Power, Page 372
– emphasis added)
He further stated:
“… but all that he [Pope
Innocent III] did was prompted by but one motive – that of raising the papacy
above all the thrones and governments of earth.
This, with him, was an all-absorbing and controlling passion. The canon
law, founded, as it then stood, mainly upon the pseudo-Isidorian, Gregorian,
and Gracian forgeries, had already
been constructed and construed with this end in view; and, therefore, the
personal interest, no less than the ambition of Innocent III., led him to
preserve all these forgeries with care, so that, in the course of time, the
‘pious fraud’ might become sanctified by time, because perpetrated in the name
of St. Peter! The result he hoped and
sought for has been accomplished.” (Ibid. page 419, emphasis added)
Philip Schaff (Protestant)
Well known historian and
theologian, Philip Schaff, wrote:
“… and the later notorious Pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The popes, to be sure, were not the original
authors of these falsifications, but they used them freely and repeatedly for
their own purposes.” (Philip Schaff, History
of the Christian Church, Volume 2, page 288)
And also:
“… in the middle of the ninth century, a mysterious book
made its appearance, which gave legal expression to the popular opinion of the
papacy, raised and strengthened its power
more than any other agency, and forms to a large extent the basis of the canon
law of the church of Rome. This is a
collection of ecclesiastical laws under the false name of bishop Isidor of
Seville… hence called the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals’.” (Ibid., Volume 4, page
268, emphasis added)
Everett Ferguson
(Protestant)
Author, scholar, historian, and Professor emeritus at
Harvard, Everett Ferguson, writes concerning the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals:
“There were other forgeries of a similar kind at this time,
but this collection became the most
influential forgery in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. It became the basis of the claims for the
papal monarchy in the later Middle Ages.” (Church
History, Volume One: From Christ to the Pre-Reformation: The Rise and Growth of
the Church in its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context – pages
379-380 – emphasis added)
And also:
“The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals had been firmly woven into canon law by the
eleventh century…” (Ibid. page 403 – emphasis added)
Aristeides Papadakis
(Orthodox)
This Orthodox historian and Professor of Byzantine history
writes:
“Although the Orthodox may not have known that
Gregorian teaching was in part drawn from the forged decretals of
pseudo-Isidore (850’s), they were quite certain that it was not based on
catholic tradition in either its historical or canonical form.” (The Christian East and the Rise of the
Papacy, page 166)
Abbe Guette
(Orthodox)
Former Catholic priest, Abbe (Rene-Francois) Guettee who
converted to the Orthodox faith, wrote about the impact of the false decretals
and the change they caused in the Catholic papacy in his book, The Papacy:
“The false decretals make as it were the dividing point
between the Papacy of the first eight and that of the succeeding
centuries. At this date, the pretentions
of the Popes begin to develop and take each day a more distinct character.”
See here:
[Note: This was a
major reason that the Eastern (Orthodox) Church split from the Western (Roman
Catholic) Church in 1054 A.D. According
to Protestant historian William Webster, “The Eastern [Orthodox] Church never
accepted the false claims of the Roman Church and refused to submit to its
insistence that the Bishop of Rome was supreme ruler of the Church. This they knew was not true to the historical
record and was a perversion of the true teaching of Scripture, the papal
exegesis of which was not taught by the Church fathers.”]
See here:
Paul Bede Johnson
(Catholic)
Paul Johnson, author, journalist and church historian
writes:
“Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries played a major role in the evolution of the
related ‘Power of the Keys’ theory.” (A
History of Christianity, emphasis added)
See the online version here:
Richard McBrien (Catholic)
Catholic priest, professor of
theology, scholar, and author, McBrien, says:
“The ‘Donation of
Constantine’ was included in the False Decretals… and Gratian’s Decretals…
compiled by the monk John Gratian. By
the middle of the fifteenth century, the document’s authenticity was
questioned… but in the meantime this document and the other spurious sources
exercised enormous influence on
medieval thought.” (Lives of the Popes,
page 58 – emphasis added)
Peter De Rosa (Catholic)
A former Catholic priest who
had access to the Vatican’s library records, De Rosa had this to say in his book:
“… the documents forged in
Rome at this time were systematized in the mid-1100s at Bologna by Gratian, a
Benedictine monk. His Decretum, or Code of
Canon Law, was easily the most influential book ever written by a Catholic. It was peppered with three centuries of
forgeries and conclusions drawn from them, with his own fictional
additions. Of the 324 passages he quotes
from popes of the first four centuries, only eleven are genuine.” (Vicars of Christ, The Dark Side of the Papacy,
page 60 – emphasis added)
Concerning the “Index of
Forbidden Books,” De Rosa writes:
“The forgeries which had contributed to creating the papal
system, such as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, the fabricated texts that
fooled Gratian and Thomas Aquinas, were protected by the Index, at least until
1660 when a French scholar started telling the truth about them. Naturally, he, too, was put on the Index.”
(Ibid., page 174 – emphasis added)
And further:
“[Pope] Gregory [VII] went
way beyond the Donation of Constantine.
He had a whole school of forgers under his very nose, turning out
document after document, with the papal seal of approval, to cater for his
every need… Many earlier documents were touched up to make them say the opposite of what they said originally. Some of these earlier documents were
themselves forgeries. Hildebrand’s
school treated all papers, forged or genuine, with a completely impartial
dishonesty… This instant method of
inventing history was marvellously successful, especially as the forgeries
were at once inserted into canon law. By innumerable subtle changes, they made
Catholicism seem changeless. They turned
‘today’ into ‘always was and always will be’, which even now, contrary to the
findings of history, is the peculiar stamp of Catholicism.” (Ibid., page 59 –
emphasis added)
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger (Catholic)
Outspoken Catholic priest,
theologian, and church historian, von Dollinger was a brilliant and gifted speaker. In his book on the papacy, he writes:
“But in the middle of that
century – about 845 – arose the huge fabrication of the Isidorian decretals,
which had results far beyond what its
author contemplated, and gradually, but surely, changed the whole constitution and government of the church. It would be difficult to find in all history
a second instance of so successful, and yet so clumsy a forgery.” (The Pope and the Council, page 94 –
emphasis added)
And also:
“But that the
Pseudo-Isidorian principles eventually revolutionized
the whole constitution of the Church,
and introduced a new system in place of the old,-- on that point there can be
no controversy among candid historians.” (Ibid.
page 97-98 – emphasis added)
And further:
“The pseudo-Isidorian forgery
of the middle of the ninth century has been already mentioned. Rome, as we have seen, had no part in that,
though she afterwards took full advantage
of it for extending her power, the substance of these forgeries being
incorporated into the canonical
collections of the Gregorian party.” (Ibid.
page 142 – emphasis added)
And again:
“The most potent instrument of
the new Papal system was Gratian’s Decretum… His work displaced all the older collections of canon law, and became the
manual and repertory, not for canonists only, but for the scholastic
theologians, who, for the most part, derived all their knowledge of Fathers and Councils from it. No book
has ever come near it in its influence in the Church, although there is
scarcely another so chokefull of gross errors, both intentional and unintentional.
(Ibid. page 142-143 – emphasis added)
And here:
“Up to the time of the
Isidorian decretals no serious attempt was made anywhere to introduce the
neo-Roman theory of Infallibility. The popes did not dream of laying claim to
such a privilege. Their relation to
the Church had to be fundamentally
revolutionized, and the idea of the
Primacy altered, before there could be any room for this doctrine to grow
up; after that it developed itself by a sort of logical sequence, but very
slowly, being at issue with notorious historical facts.” (Ibid. page 76-77 – emphasis added)
And this:
“For the first thousand years
no pope ever issued a doctrinal decision intended for and addressed to the
whole Church… They only became a standard of faith after being read, examined,
and approved at an Ecumenical Council.” (Ibid.
page 78)
And of Thomas Aquinas, von
Dollinger wrote:
“St. Thomas, who knew no
Greek, and, being educated in the Gregorian system, derived all his knowledge
of ecclesiastical antiquity from Gratian, found himself at once in possession
of this treasure of most weighty testimonies from the early centuries, which
left no doubt in his mind that the great Councils and most influential bishops
and theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries had recognized in the Pope an
infallible monarch, who ruled the whole Church with absolute power. He
therefore did what the scholastics had never done before: he introduced the
doctrine of the Pope and his infallibility, as he got it from these spurious
passages, and often in the same words, into the dogmatic system of the
Schola, - a step the gravity and momentous results of which can hardly be
exaggerated.” (Ibid. page 265-266 –
emphasis added)
Conclusion
In all these quotes from
historians, scholars, theologians, priests and teachers, there is a common
thread - and it is that these forgeries have greatly affected the evolution of
the papacy.
Much, much more can be said
about individual popes and the wicked and corrupt lifestyles that some lived,
and their power-hungry endeavors. But
that is not the purpose of this article.
Our purpose here is not to expose individual popes, but rather to
demonstrate the effects and the impact that these forgeries had on the
papacy. And these forgeries have indeed caused the
worldwide church’s view of Catholicism in general (and the papacy, in particular),
to be far too exalted. But the modern
day concept of the papacy is not supported by Scripture, and now we can see
that history is not on their side,
either.
With all the Catholic talk
about Peter being the solid “foundation” of the church and its “rock,” the
papacy is actually built upon years of forgeries and lies; it is built upon a
foundation of sand. (Matthew 7:24-27)
