Audio only:
Joe tackles 3 of the supposed “contradictions” addressed by Redeemed Zoomer in his recent video.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and as many of you may already know, Redeemed Zoomer recently released a video where he laid out 14 examples of what he believed were Catholic contradictions. Four of them were claims that he made where the Catholic church he said had contradicted itself and infallible declarations. Now, Trent Horn has already done a fantastic reply looking at all 14 of those, but it’s really hard to do justice to 14 largely unrelated topics and give them the time and attention they deserve. So I’m not going to even try to do that. I’m going to go deep on three of the issues that he presented. So on the list of infallible contradictions, I’m going to leave alone for now and if you want me to cover these issues, let me know here in the comments or better yet over in shameless joe.com on my Patreon.
Leave it in the comments there. If you want me to cover some of these other alleged contradictions, I can get into that. But again, I’m going to link to the Trent’s video at the end. It’s fantastic, but on the alleged infallible contradictions he’ll, four, the question of salvation outside the church, the history of icon veneration and the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Protestant baptism, I’m going to leave those three alone and focus on the strange history of conci and the question whether popes or ecumenical councils have the last word. If there’s a conflict between the two, those are the four that he views as infallible. The other ones, he doesn’t claim that they’re like a silver bullet. Oh, the church infallibly contradicted herself. That would be the end of Catholicism, but here’s got 10 others where he views a contradiction that he at least thinks undermines the church’s authority.
So that’s going to be things like the history of secretive confession, the death penalty. Can Catholics participate in non-Catholic worship usury? We’re going to leave all of those alone and focus on a much more obscure one for many of you, which is when you go to receive communion, should you receive the host or should you receive from the chalice or both? And a contradiction he alleged occurred in history and we’ll get into that. And then more of the last five that he had were about the Pope’s political authority and universal jurisdiction, divorce and remarried people receiving communion, religious liberty. We’re going to leave those alone and focus on whether the mass must be in the common language. And the reason I’m doing this is largely this. I think Trent does a great job on covering the broad 14. These were three areas where I thought I think we could go deeper on these and show that the argument is maybe a little weaker than you might imagine if you don’t know the sources very well.
Now I want to lay out a standard by which I think you can judge this reply and then a standard by which I think you can judge redeem Zimmer’s original video. So I love Austin at Gospel Simplicity. He is one of my favorite Protestant YouTubers and he lays out a fivefold standard for what a good reply video looks like, and I want you to hold me to this. You can decide if it’s good or bad based on whether it meets this criteria. So number one, I should show an understanding of the central thesis and not just focus on unrelated rhetoric or minor points. Number two, focusing on arguments rather than the character of the opponent. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. I like redeem zoomer. We’ve sparred in the past, but I think he’s a good faith guy. Number three, looking at seeking the truth together, not simply defeating an opponent.
So I’m going to try not to just say debunked in all caps or something at any point. Number four, focusing on the question content at hand, not unrelated questions and content. Number five, as a Christian working with fellow Christians to seek unity and truth, I think those are great criteria to look for in this episode and in any response videos or back and forth that you see because it’s really easy on YouTube and just the online space in general to not live up to that. Now what about maybe standards you can hold redeem Zoomers contradiction video to? And here I think again, this is going to be true of contradiction videos in general. A week ago I released an episode on the Islamic dilemma where the Quran contradicts, I mean it lays out a standard that disproves itself without revisiting the whole thing. Basically the Quran says if we want to know it’s true, we should look to the Torah and the gospel.
When we look to the Torah gospel, we see that Islam is false and so it’s self refuting intentionally. I didn’t look to the secondary and tertiary sources because a Muslim doesn’t have to accept those secondary and tertiary sources. I’ve known other people who have done a bolstered case where they look at all these other times and places where it seems like there are more contradictions I tried to stick with, okay, just at the highest level, what are we going to get? Because if you’re claiming, Hey, this Catholic doesn’t follow Catholic teaching, that’s not an argument against the Catholic church. Just like if they say this Muslim doesn’t know the Quran very well, that’s not really an argument against Islam. So if you’re going to make a contradiction video, if you’re going to argue, hey, this thing is actually self-refuting, that is a high bar to lay out for yourself.
So I want to just acknowledge that at the outset and then one of the comments that I received on that video, I want to show why I think we have to be careful with it because Hassan, I don’t even know who this person is, just one of the YouTubers or one of the YouTube commenters, excuse me, claimed that one of the lies which made Christianity done for is the idea that God is one in three at the same time, but any Trinitarian knows. Sure, that looks like a contradiction at the outset to say, oh, how can God be one and three, but if you’ve done any work, okay, well it makes sense that there could be three divine persons and one divine substance that might be mind blowing, but it’s not contradictory. So we should have a high standard for what it takes to be a contradiction and we should strive in the spirit of charity to say, is there a way of interpreting these where it’s not contradictory? Because if you don’t take that standard, you can make anything look ridiculous, Christianity, you name it, but I just say hold me to the standard of charity and understanding his argument and hold redeem zoomer and anyone making contradiction videos to the standard of are you looking to the actual sources and is this a real contradiction or just a surface level contradiction that when you dig in, it actually turns out there’s an explanation for it and redeem zoomer for his part lays out this standard for himself.
Redeemed Zoomer:
Unlike Joe Hess Meyer, I don’t judge other denominations based on the average street level understanding of them. I judge them based on the official confessions.
Joe:
Now I think when you actually hear his argument against Catholicism, you’ll hear that he frequently doesn’t live up to his own standard. I find him doing right away things like this.
Redeemed Zoomer:
Bishop Robert Baron famously told Ben Shapiro that not only Jews but atheists of goodwill can reasonably hope to be saved.
Joe:
But while Pope Leo and Ben Shapiro might both occasionally wear skull caps, only one of them is viewed by the Catholic church as infallible. In all seriousness, Bishop Robert Barron might’ve said something off the cuff in an interview with Ben Shapiro that was inaccurate and not a great way to answer a question that doesn’t undermine the authority of the Catholic church or the Catholic claim in any way. That’s just not how Catholic teaching is established. It’s fine to say I believe the claims of the Catholic church and sometimes people, whether it’s Bishop Baron or even Pope Leo himself when asked a question, might give an off the cuff answer that is inexact, inaccurate, maybe misleading. There’s no contradiction there as just the nature of being human and answering questions off the cuff. So I think by R Z’s own standard, we’re going to want something better than that.
Now in fairness, he offers some other things as well, but we’re going to want to distinguish some of the wheat from the chaff because there’s a lot of these areas where he makes these claims that don’t seem to be very well sourced. For instance, he seems to think that the Catholic view is that the entirety of ecumenical counsels, everything they say is infallible, which is not the Catholic claim. I’ll show you a couple places that he says this. One of them he just vaguely cites to Cardinal Dolan and Father Francis Sullivan alleging that they taught that Vatican two was infallible.
Redeemed Zoomer:
Catholics may also try and say that Vatican two is somehow not infallible. While this is a controversial opinion opposed by major Catholic theologians like Francis Sullivan and Cardinal Dolan even granting the possibility that this is true, Catholics today are still bound to submit to something Vatican two that contradicts previous infallible teaching.
Joe:
Trent mentioned this in his reply as well, but I have no idea where he’s getting either these claims about Sullivan or Dolan. I looked for Cardinal Dolan to see if he’d said anything that approached this and AI was confused for his part. Father Sullivan says the exact opposite. He actually wrote an entire book on the magisterium in different levels of teaching authority in the church and he makes it very clear that the second Vatican council is an ecumenical council. But whereas Trent and Vatican one exercised the supreme teaching authority of the Episcopal College, which fullest extent by solemnly defining documents of faith, which is to say acting in this infallible way, Vatican two chose not to do so. It had the authority to do so if it had wished and chose not to. So he explicitly doesn’t argue yet they’re doing the kind of dogmatic definitions that Vatican one or Trent are doing. So I’ll leave it up to RZ to clarify where he’s getting these claims, but they don’t seem to be true. So with that said, let’s turn to the first of the alleged contradictions that the mass must be celebrated in the vernacular, and this was if you’re following his list, this was his very last one, contradiction number 14, he worded it must the mass be in the common language, and here’s how he presents the alleged problem.
Redeemed Zoomer:
One of the biggest controversies in modern Roman Catholicism is the traditional Latin mass. The mass used to normally be said in Latin, but ever since Vatican two, most Catholic parishes have used the Novus Ordo, which is in the common or vulgar tongue and allows for things like Protestant music and other liturgical liberties. There are a minority of parishes that still do the traditional Latin mass, but they’re to some degree suppressed by the church, especially under Pope Francis. However, the Council of Trent strongly condemned not simply holding the mass in the vulgar tongue but insisting on it. Trent says, if anyone sayeth that the right of the Roman church, according to which a part of the cannon and the words of consecration are pronounced in a low tone is to be condemned or that the mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue only or that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice for that is contrary to the institution of Christ, let him be anathema. And once again, this is not a dogmatic contradiction, but it definitely is a change in the spirit of Catholicism from Trent of Vatican two.
Joe:
So redeem Zeer seems to believe that the Novas Soto has to be said in the vernacular and even the way he words it must be said in the common language and that’s just factually untrue. The Pope pointed out recently that no, you can say mass in Latin right now in the Novas Soto, I mean Novas Soto is in Latin. I mean those where those words come from. And so if we’re looking at official sources, now granted it’s the Pope giving an interview, so still not like the highest level of authority, but we’re going to get to more clear church teaching on this point. It’s just not true that you have to say the mass not in Latin. And the reason that this matters is because the alleged contradiction is that the Council of Trent condemns the idea that the mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue, only that it can only be celebrated in the vernacular, but that’s not what Catholics have ever taught.
So there’s no contradiction between Trent saying the mass doesn’t have to be in the vernacular, and the church today is saying the mass doesn’t have to be in the vernacular. That’s not a contradiction at all. In fact, if you read the general instruction of the Roman missile, it talks about this change where Trent considered creating the mass at that point in the vernacular and decided against it. But it’s worth getting into the weeds here just slightly if I may. So this paragraph 11 of the germ, the general instruction of the Roman missile, it says many were pressing, this is at Trent for permission to use the vernacular in celebrating the Eucharistic sacrifice, but the council weighing the conditions of that age considered it a duty to answer this request with a reaffirmation of the church’s traditional teaching according to which the Eucharistic sacrifice is first and foremost the action of Christ himself and therefore its proper efficacy is unaffected by the manner in which the faith will partake of it.
Now notice what’s happening there. The fathers at Trent are aware of all the reasons you might want the mass to be in the vernacular and they’re sympathetic to them. They’re worried about the arguments the reformers are making, which makes it seem like the mass is only as valid as our contribution to it, and this undermines the priestly efficacy of Christ’s action in the mass. This is ultimately a participation in the sacrifice being offered by Jesus Christ. And so they don’t want to make the switch at that point in that context because they know that this is kind of a powder keg situation with the reformation. And so the German goes on to say the council for his reason stated in firm but measured words and then this is a direct quote from Trent, which matters a lot, although the mask contains much instruction for people of faith.
Nevertheless, it did not seem expedient to the fathers that it be celebrated everywhere in the vernacular. So very clearly it is laying this out as a prudential decision. It didn’t seem expedient. It’s not saying it is a matter of 2000 years of Catholic faith that we can never celebrate the mass in the common language. It’s not saying that at all. So there’s no dogmatic point that is at issue here at all. They just decide prudentially, it doesn’t make sense to move to the vernacular right now when that’s going to be read a certain way through the lens of the reformation. Then the germ points out by the time you get to the second Vatican council, things have changed quite a bit and so the fathers of Vatican two decide, well, okay, we seem like we’re in a different enough situation. And so here I want to quote from the germ directly, since no Catholic would now deny the lawfulness and efficacy of a sacred right celebrated in Latin, the council was also able to grant that the use of the vernacular language may frequently be of great advantage to the people and gave the faculty for its use.
So a thing that they had considered permitting before they now permit because the circumstances had changed and critically the circumstances changed because they were no longer worried anyone would claim the thing that redeemed zoomer is claiming that the mass has to be in the common language. So the actual contradiction is not between two Catholic sources, but between what the Catholic church actually says no Catholic would now deny the lawfulness and efficacy of a sacred right celebrated in Latin with redeemed zoomer claim that the Novas Ordo is celebrated only in the common language. So that’s the contradiction, but it’s not between the Catholic church and herself, it’s between R Z’s description of the Catholic church and what the Catholic church actually says in her documents. So using the standards redeem zoomer lays out for himself. I think we can say these kind of contradictions just simply are not contradictions. He’s just factually mistaken. Okay, now onto the second contradiction, this idea about communion in both kinds. Here he’s going to make a citation to an alleged quote from Pope Gallius arguing that you actually have to receive both the host and the chalice at mass.
Redeemed Zoomer:
Over the centuries, people began worrying that they would accidentally spill a drop of wine. Pope Gallius the first condemned this growing practice saying, we have ascertained that certain persons receiving only a portion of the sacred body abstained from the cup of the sacred blood. Such persons without a doubt are to be held bound by a certain superstition. Pope Gallius also said that division of one in the same mystery or sacrament cannot come about without a great sacrilege.
Joe:
This is an old claim that was made against the Catholic church and it’s been debunked many times. Let’s go through several of the problems with it. Number one, there is no citation that he gives in terms of like, show me the source where Glas actually says this. He just claims he says it. And this is a problem because as Father FC Husbeth pointed out back in I believe the 19th century, he said The authenticity of this epistle of Galatians is very doubtful. It’s not found in his genuine works. We don’t find it quoted before the 12th century. Those are big red flags. So we don’t actually know that Galacia said anything like this. It might have been someone else and then later ascribed to him. Nevertheless, it’s clear somebody said that you need to offer both. You need to receive both. That then raises the second problem that in context, because this is taken up into Ian, into his works on Canon law, which is how we have it today, and Ian clearly understands it to be about priests.
We don’t have the original source. We have Ian believing that it applies to priests. Now why does that matter? Because unlike the laity, the priest is bound to receive both the host and the chalice. And again, if you read the general instruction of the Roman missile, it makes this explicit. It’s most desirable. The faithful just as the priest himself is bound to do, receive the Lord’s body from host consecrated the same mass, and that in the instances when it is permitted, they partake of the chalice. So these are nice for the laity. They’re not required. In fact, you’re not required to receive communion at all When you go to mass, a lot of people go to mass and they have not properly prepared or they’re in a state of mortal sin, et cetera. They’re not required to receive under either form. The church is not saying when you go to mass you are required to receive.
That’s simply not true. The priest in making the offering is required to receive both because it’s part of the sacrificial action as a priest. So it doesn’t really make sense that Glacis would be talking about the laity because the whole reason why the priest has to receive both is because he’s making a priestly sacrifice. You as a lay member of the congregation share in that sacrifice, but you’re not the one presiding or offering. So that’s a second pretty obvious problem is just like it doesn’t get the sacramental theology right, and there’s every reason to believe given the way Ian is using it and the way this quote was received until the reformation that we’re not talking about the Catholic laity at all. And if we’re talking about priests, there’s no contradiction because priests are still required to receive both because of the nature of priestly offering. I could get more into that, but I don’t want to get bogged down in the details there. But the third problem is as Father Waterworth points out that this appears to be part of a controversy over manism, which is why there’s this reference to superstition.
I dunno if you paid careful attention to what redeem zoomer said. He said over the centuries people began worrying that they would accidentally spill a drop of wine. That is simply not true. That is not what’s happening in the mannequin controversy. Rather as St. Augustine explains, the Manican prided themselves on the fact that they didn’t eat flesh or drink wine. Why? Because the Manne had a disdain for worldly realities and particularly for anything that might be connected with fleshly delight. And so meat and wine were forbidden to them, and Augustine actually mocks them by saying that as Catholics, we look at their abstaining from meat and wine the same way we would look at cattle or birds or worms. Yeah, they don’t eat meat and wine either, but we’re not super impressed by how holy they are. So I just mentioned that as the third thing that he’s not saying.
First of all, he’s not saying the lady are always required to receive, and also we know from the mannequin context that the gal and then also the Leo quote that redeem Zimmer has in the same episode, the context of them is condemning a specific heresy where Manichean priests wouldn’t want to receive both because they didn’t believe that wine was good. That is simply not at all relevant to the controversies that we’re dealing with today. That then leads to the final thing that I think pretty thoroughly debunks the idea that there’s any kind of contradiction here.
Redeemed Zoomer:
Communion of both kinds was the ordinary practice of the early church. There were exceptions such as lacking one of the elements or being unable to receive them, but they were exceptions.
Joe:
So redeem zoomer admits that people in the early church sometimes only received one. They didn’t always receive both. Now that clearly shows that they weren’t just manican or superstitious or it was destroying the validity of the right. Simply not true. The ordinary laity would regularly, maybe not as regularly as later, but there are plenty of instances where they would receive one or the other and not both. I’ll give you a few examples. St Ian of Carthage in his treatise on the laps treatise three gives a reference to a young child. Remember early kids, early kids, kids in the early church would receive communion after they were baptized. And so there was a baby who was too small to speak, who in the context had been consecrated to demons or something by foster parents. A horrible situation and the way they find out is that the baby won’t receive from the chalice, but significantly the baby’s only receiving from the chalice is not receiving the host because a baby can’t receive hosts they can’t chew.
On the flip side, basil, the great points out that it’s unnecessary to point out that in times of persecution you have people who receiving communion in their own hand without the presence of a priest or minister as long as custom permits it. So there would be people who would self communicate with the Eucharist because of persecution they couldn’t receive from the priest. So you have a second. So you’ve got babies receiving under one kind. You’ve got people who can’t have access to a priest because of persecution receiving under one kind, and basil gives a third example of people like monks. Well, what do you call solitary in the desert? These are people who lived like this radical if think about the Desert Fathers or the desert mothers for that matter, men or women who lived in isolation in the desert and they would often not be a priest and they would store the Eucharist in their cell and then they would receive communion by themselves.
So we have all of those examples. Plus you can point to other examples. St. Justin Martyr talks about taking the Eucharist to the sick. Seemingly this is just the host that certainly seems to be the case in all of the ancient accounts of it. So it’s just not true either. Number one, that you were ever required to receive both if you were not a priest or number two, that you’re required not to receive both. Now, there’s no contradiction on this point at all. It becomes much more than norm to receive only under one species later in the church. That’s true. There’s a change in practice there, but none of the theology changes. There’s no contradiction there. So it’s only a contradiction if you believe as RZ possibly does, that you’re required to receive both and that’s simply not true. So again, it might be that redeemed Zoomers theology is contradicted by Catholicism, but it’s not true that Pope Gal or Leo or anybody is actually contradicting the practice of any of the things we just saw were common in the early church for the sick or the persecuted or those living in the desert or children.
So we know there are plenty of these cases where people received only under one kind. So again, it’s not a real contradiction. That leaves us with the third of the three that I’m looking at. And again, if you want more, lemme know which ones you care about. This is a fascinating controversy over the history of what’s called conci. So I’m going to actually let him kind of tee this up because I actually think he does a pretty good job laying out the history of what’s called the papal schism, and so I’ll let him take it from here for a minute.
Redeemed Zoomer:
By this point, most people in the Roman Catholic Church believed the Pope was the highest authority in the visible church even above ecumenical councils. However, something happened in the late 14th century to shake people’s confidence in the papacy. The great Western schism, not to be confused with the great schism occurred when a group of cardinals elected a pope in Rome, but then that same group decided the election was fraudulent, so they elected a rival pope in Avon, France where the papacy had been for several decades. This created two rival popes, each ex communicating the other and saying that everyone under the other pope is damned. Nobody was able to know for certain whether they were in the true church Europe split as countries chose which Pope to side with often based on preexisting political alliances with Italy or France. The Council of Pisa tried to resolve this crisis, but it ended up just appointing a third Pope.
Joe:
So at the heart of what Redeem Zoomer is going to claim is that the Council of Constant is an infallible ecumenical council that taught that ecumenical councils are above popes and that Vatican one repudiates this several centuries long understanding by saying, no, actually the Pope is above councils and this gets a lot of the history just factually wrong and pretty easy to observe sort of ways. So I’m going to turn heavily to the work of David Diiv Ray, who is an excellent medieval list. He is at Jesus College at Oxford. He’s got a bunch of books published through Cambridge University Press. I know an Oxford guy at Cambridge. It’s a little bit of a contradiction there, but we’ll leave that alone. But he talks about this Council of Pisa that you just heard, redeem Zoomer reference and how the so-called Council of Pisa, it’s not really a council, and it also didn’t work in his piece on conciliar, he says, practice followed theory at the Council of Peace on 1409, which deposed both claimants to the papacy and appointed his own Pope instead of resolving this situation.
However, this left the church with three claimants rather than two. So this is the background to know 1409, this is going to be a few years before Constance to try to resolve this issue that some people think that the Pope in Rome is the real Pope and some people think the anti Pope in Avignon France is a real Pope Pisa. Some cardinals get together who are mad at Pope Gregory and because they feel like he betrayed them by making new cardinals, it doesn’t really matter why some cardinals from the Roman side and the Avignon side get together in Piza secretly it’s sometimes called the secret council or the secret meeting. It’s not recognized as a valid council. They get together and try to say both sides are condemned, both popes are deposed and we’re electing our new guy and it doesn’t work. And why doesn’t it work?
Well, it doesn’t work for the simple reason that councils don’t have the power to do that. And so now instead of solving the problem, you’ve created a new problem because now the Concious are getting behind this pea in anti Pope. So now you have the real Pope in Rome, you have a fake Pope in Avignon and you have a fake pope in Piza. So then they have the bright idea to do this again, and so then they call the Council of Constance or what they call the Council of Constance, and here’s where a messy situation is going to get messier. Before in what might be a moment of providence, things clean up pretty rapidly. Here’s how redeem zoomer presents Conci in the Council of Constance.
Redeemed Zoomer:
There were some in the church called Conci who still despite being Western, believed councils were above popes and that even Popes must submit to the decisions of ecumenical councils. They had been a minority, but the crisis and instability of the Western schism brought their opinions to the forefront. The Council of Constance was called to resolve the schism and produced Haik sancta an explicitly concious document due to its Concious view, Constance was able to solve the schism and judge between multiple people claiming to be the pope.
Joe:
It’s striking because he claims due to its Concious view, Constance was able to solve the schism and judge between multiple people claiming to be the Pope and that literally does not happen. They never declare who the right pope is. And fascinatingly, he mentions the Council of Constance was called, he just used as a passive voice but called by whom would be a great question. So the so-called council of Constance originally was called by the anti Pope Pope John the 23rd, the Pisan anti Pope. This is the one who, and that makes sense, right? If you are on the Pisan line, if you believe the council of Piza was valid, which the Catholic church doesn’t, and you believe ecumenical councils can depose and call new popes, okay, then it makes sense that John the 23rd would be your guy. If you’re a conci, he’s your guy, you’re going to love Piza because it’s conci.
If you’re not a conci like the rest of the church, then you’re going to say, well, Piza had no authority. So they’re trying to do the same thing they did before, but this time their idea is, okay, if this is going to work, we can’t just declare a new Pope or we’re going to have four popes, we need these other three guys to resign. So anti Pope John the 23rd decides to gather them together at this council so they meet under his authority, but then there’s a twist because that’s in November 14, 14. As it starts to move forward, he doesn’t like the direction this is going, and so he tries to flee in March of 1415 and now they turn on him and now they decide maybe he’s not the real pope and they declare that he’s going to be abdicated. So these sessions are wild and it’s worth kind of pointing that out.
I mean literally the beginning of session one is anti Pope John declaring himself to be the Pope declaring that they want to carry out those things which were decreed the Council of Pisa, which isn’t a real council by our predecessor of Happy Memory Pope Alexander V, who isn’t a real pope. So you have an anti Pope citing to an antico called by another anti pope. That’s the status of the early sessions of the Council of Constance. So sure you can find plenty of things that a non council says that contradict what ecumenical councils say. That’s not going to be hard. And so here’s the standard. I know a lot of you aren’t Catholic and you might just be like, well, this thing calls itself a council. Why is that not infallible? I think I’d say the same thing if you said, Hey, this book claims it’s the gospel of Thomas.
Why doesn’t this count against the gospel of Luke? Well, just because something calls itself a gospel or a pope or a council doesn’t mean that it automatically is. We’re going to get back to that in a minute. I think it’s going to undermine the whole claims to Conci redeem. Zoomer claim is, oh, this is what first century Christianity looked like and it’s just not true. Conci is very much a movement of the 15th century, very much a reaction to this papal controversy and they quickly realize it doesn’t work in real life and we’re going to get into all of that. But for now, just fill out the timeline as clearly as I can. So session one is in November of 1414, as we heard it’s called by an anti pope, and at this point it’s not a valid counsel. Session two, that’s where the anti Pope offers to resign.
The hope is that all three of them will resign and then they can have a nice clean papal election and just move forward. And then a couple weeks later he tries to flee session three. This already pretty crazy situation goes further off the rails because the council just is like, well, actually we don’t need a pope at all. So they declare in session three, this sacred council has not been dissolved by the departure of our Lord Pope from Constance. So again, they’re still explicitly referring to the peas and anti pope as the Pope and just like, well, if you’re not going to do it with us, we’re going to do it without you. It’s in this context. While it is very clearly not a valid council, while it’s been called by an anti pope under the authority of an antico that is not accepted by the Catholic church, this is where you get the declaration Sancta, which redeem zoomer thinks, and I think perhaps correctly can’t be squared with Catholic theology. Ha
Redeemed Zoomer:
Sancta from the Council of Constance says this, Synod legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit constituting a general counsel representing the Catholic church militant has power immediately from Christ and that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith and the eradication of the said schism.
Joe:
Now what you just heard from is from session four, which again is happening when it’s been converted by an anti pope and there’s no pope because even the anti pope has fled Constance and this has no authority from any kind of papal support at all at this point. So what happens to change this antico, this non ecumenical council into something that we remember today as the ecumenical council of Constance? Well, in session 13, Gregory the 12th had been holding a rival counsel and it’s not going well either. So you have two councils going really badly. He realizes this situation cannot continue. So July 4th, 1415 Independence Day for the church from three popes, he submits his resignation to the Council of Constance, but first he has them reinvoke so it becomes an actual ecumenical counsel under his authority. And so you see a very explicit shift in the Council of Constance from before the 13th session where it was just claiming the peaces in line is the correct line to now them just saying we’re not going to actually settle the question of whether Pisa or Rome is a true pope.
And this is pretty fascinating. You may remember redeem Zimmer’s claim was due to its conciliate views. Constance was able to solve the schism and judge between multiple people claiming to be the Pope and the reality is the opposite. In order to preserve unity in the church, there was nothing at issue. They don’t need to resolve whether Rome or Pisa was the correct papal line. As long as they can just have a nice clean election, nothing else is going to hang in the ballot. They agree to accept the cardinals from both sides and then they can just move forward. So this was the remedy is just, let’s not get super into the weeds on this as session 13 explains an order that the reunion of the church may be possible and that a beginning may be made which is fitting and pleasing to God since the most important part of any matter is its beginning and in order.
The two obedience, namely the one claiming the Lord John the 23rd was formerly Pope. Remember he’s fled and been deposed now by the council allegedly, but this was when they were still doing their concious thing. Like if you are appeasing and you think councils can depose popes well before the 13th session, they declared John the 23rd deposed and the other obedience claiming the Lord Gregory the 12th is Pope may be united together under Christ his head. So their goal is explicitly let’s get the Pisan and the Roman line together. They then legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit and representing the Catholic church excepts in all matters, the invoking, that’s the important words. So invoking is the beginning of an ecumenical counsel, the invoking, authorizing, approving and confirming that is now being made in the name of the Lord who is called Gregory the 12th by those obedient to him.
In other words, both the peaves in line and the Roman line are able to say, okay, Gregory the 12th, we accept your authority to call this council and that’s what we call session 13. But obviously if it’s convoked here, that’s really session one. We don’t call it session one because that would make this already confusing, complicated situation, more confusing. But we see very clearly from the language of session 13 is the prior 12 sessions weren’t accepted by the Roman line, which is the correct line as valid, but now it is convoked with papal authority. So now instead of having two rival appease in line and a Roman line holding two different councils and making the situation worse, Gregory the 12th reaches out this very humble way tenders his own resignation and also convokes this. So it has the authority of an ecumenical council from that point forward and sure enough they do that and you’ll notice it decrees and declares the Aer said two obedience are joined in united in the one body of our Lord Jesus Christ and of this sacred universal general counsel in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit.
It doesn’t say which line was right. That matters because well number one, it shows redeemed Zimmer’s claim about the history of this is actually just not true. But number two, this explains the whole situation because it means that as a Catholic who follows the Roman line, which is the teaching of the Catholic church, we hear something like Sancta from the first 12 sessions and we say, yeah, they were doing some crazy stuff when they didn’t know who the Pope was and they were deeply in the weeds of Conci and all this before the Roman influence turned this in the right direction. David Diare says the Catholic church has traditionally regarded the Roman line in the great schism. So the fact that the Roman Pope voluntarily resigned before a successor was appointed, made the litter rejection of concious principles possible without inconsistency. The peas and an Avignon contenders were both deposed by the council of Constance.
In other words, this would be a problem for the Catholic church if the Catholic church said the Roman pope was deposed by the Council of Constance, but it doesn’t say that two anti-pop were declared deposed, but sure, an ecumenical counsel can say, this person who’s not the pope is deposed. If you’re a cardinal and you go around claiming you’re a pope, you can be condemned by an ecumenical counsel and stripped of your privileges. That’s kind of how this works, but they can’t have that authority over the actual Pope. So again, there’s no contradiction here. I mean to be sure there’s a contradiction between the Preco, the first 12 sessions where it was an antico, but that’s why we don’t accept those. Now the heart of this is in part that redeem Zoomer believes that anything in an ecumenical council is infallible, or at least he seems to say that. Here’s what he says,
Redeemed Zoomer:
Constance is one of the 21 ecumenical councils of the Catholic church and just like the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and a Syrian Church of the East, Catholics believe that if a counsel is truly ecumenical, then it’s infallible for centuries after it was held, many believed that its Concious decree sancta was binding on all Catholics,
Joe:
But that’s just not true. There’s plenty of things in an ecumenical counsel that are mentioned that are not direct teachings. This is in law, we used to call this dicta. I mean lawyers still do call this dicta. If a court’s explaining how it gets to its conclusion, the conclusion is the thing that’s binding in law how it gets there, they might’ve gotten one of the steps wrong. And so this is actually a mistake that he makes several times and I think Trent very gently calls him out for it. That’s one of the things going on here. But the second is just the fact something calls itself an ecumenical counsel doesn’t make it an ecumenical counsel. Okay, I want to turn back to David Dire because there’s kind of an epilogue to this story that’s really important because remember you just heard redeem Zimmer claim that for centuries after the Council of Constance, the concious decree was treated as binding on all Catholics and specifically this idea that popes are subservient.
Basically the idea of concious, let’s see if that’s true. As David Div Ray says, the schism is really ended with the election of Martin the V in the context of the Council of Constance, that Gregory has tendered his resignation and then after he dies they elect Martin the V. So now you have Martin, and as div ray points out, he doesn’t push for Conci, he does call a council. This council has three different names, but it starts out as the Council of Basel and then this one goes off the rails. Dre’s words quickly spun out of control under, and this one is also crazy and complicated, so I’m just going to keep it as simple as I can. It starts out as a valid council, but then the Pope decides to move it and the people who are at the council who are of a concious bent were like, no, we’re not going to let you move it.
We’re going to have our own kind of thing. And the Pope does in fact move it. It’s now known by its much better known title of the Council of Florence and explicitly condemns those who are using Hank Sota and other pre-session 13 texts of the Council of Constance. In this heretical way, he points out, he says, those leaders of scandal, very few in number, most of them, the lowest rank and reputation and their intense hatred of true peace piling iniquity on top of iniquity lest they should enter into the justice of the Lord scathing when they saw the grace of the Holy Spirit was working in us towards union with the Greeks swerving away from the straight line into a path of error, held a so-called session on the 16th of May last asserting that they were obeying certain decrees. And then he explained these aren’t real decrees because they were passed at Constance by only one of the three obedience after the flight of John the 23rd as he was called in that one obedience at a time of schism.
In other words, the Pope has just said in 1439, yeah, don’t treat these texts from before. It was an actual ecumenical counsel as if these are binding ecumenical decrees. He then points out the errors alleging obedience to those decrees. They the rebel Concious fathers and Basel proclaimed three propositions, which they term truths of the faith seemingly to make heretics of assault and all princes and pres and other faithful and devout adherence of the apostolic sea. He then lists the three. The first one is the idea that the authority of our general counsel representing the universal church is over that of a Pope and anyone else whatsoever, and they cite to the general counsels of Constance and themselves and claim it’s the truth of the Catholic faith and the Pope and the council Father is the Council of Florence accused the conci risks of giving an evil and mischievous meaning to the Council of Constance.
Now, there’s two ways of reading this. One is to say the evil and mischievous meaning is by treating the first 12 sessions as part of the actual ecumenical council, and they shouldn’t. That was the heretical preco like Antico. The other is to say, yeah, we can accept a non conciliar read of these earlier texts even though they weren’t part of a time when they were called by the Pope or anything like that. I lean towards the first, whichever one you fall into. Either way it’s very clear that it is not true as redeem. Zoomer seems to put it that for centuries people thought that Concious read of Hank Soto was correct. I mean, maybe you’d find some French person who thought that, but that’s explicitly condemned by the Council of Florence. That reading of the Council of Constance is rejected by the church in 1439.
We are not talking very, this is what, 25 years, 20 years after the Council of Constance meets. So again, you don’t really have a contradiction, at least not between the actual council of Constance and the actual Council of Florence or First Vatican Council. So there’s actually not even any need to bring up the first Vatican Council. It’s very popular for some Protestant apologists to claim like, oh, there’s some radical change in papal authority that happens in 1870. But you see right here that Conci is being condemned and as you heard before, conci was a novelty. I mean redeem Zimmer points out. It was not the majority position. It was this heresy that arose during this time when they didn’t know who the pope was. And so papal power was necessarily kind of on the rocks, but conci isn’t just a novelty, it’s also false. It’s not true as redeem.
Zoomer seemed to say that it was the norm for how Christianity worked in the first thousand years. And David Dre again points this out, and the Rebel fathers at the Castle of Basel show this. He says, obviously the council was not elected by all the faithful, no such system was remotely practicable, right? You couldn’t have, it wasn’t like this was a democracy in action. Rather it’s just a council that is in essence just random people. He says, nor was it in essence Council of Bishops. They did not have a majority against other clerics. Moreover, university academics played a central role in its deliberations. The legitimation of the council as decision-making body for the church was arguably rather shaky. Why should priests and university professors stand in for all the faithful? So I give that to say, not only is there not a contradiction here, but this idea that conci is either true or even possible, just it doesn’t hold up.
It doesn’t stand. So ha. Sancta, I would say, isn’t part of the real council of Constance. At the very least, a concious read of the Council of Constance has been explicitly condemned by the church or the Council of Florence. So we don’t have to guess if there’s some kind of contradiction there because in the lifetime of the people that we’re talking about, this clarification came very clearly from the church. And now of course we have greater clarity. The church did eventually say, yes, it’s the Roman line, not the Avignon or the Pisan line. It didn’t matter to resolve that right away because there were no dogmatic doctrinal things kind of at issue. But that’s been resolved as well. So all that’s to say here again, you have what might look like a strong objection because you just hear, oh, ecumenical council of Constance. But the more you delve into the particulars, the more you see it’s not really true.
So remember for a contradiction, you need a high bar. Imagine it like this. If you’re someone who’s not Catholic, imagine somebody points to an alleged biblical contradiction and then it turns out the Bible verse in question is from a corrupted manuscript that sure you can find it in some people’s Bible but isn’t not part of the authentic autographs. You would probably say, yeah, I don’t actually think that’s part of the Bible that might look very convenient for those on the outside, but you would be guided by a basic principle. So as a Catholic, the principle that no, the pope’s actually really important for the validity of a council is not some new theory in 1870, the first Vatican Council, it’s not some new theory at the Council of Florence. It’s not some new theory even at the time of the Council of Constance. Rather, this is one of the reasons we don’t accept so-called second Ephesus, the Robert Council in the first millennium of the church, the fact that Pope Leo rejected what would be an ecumenical council rendered it, not an ecumenical council.
So the Pope has this really vital role to play on that first millennium, excuse me principle. We can say definitively those first 12 sessions of Constance and the entirety of the so-called Council of Pisa, we can reject all of that as being invalid and without appropriate authority. And if you don’t go with that, if you don’t accept that the Pope is needed, then I’d be really curious as to within your own theological worldview and your own view of the church, what would just stop from a random group of bishops or university professors or priests from just declaring themselves an ecumenical counsel. And so I leave you with that question. Not only do I think there’s no real good contradictions here, and again, I’m happy to look at any of the other ones if you want, although I think Trent does a great job. I want to end with a couple observations.
Number one, as I think Trent very accurately points out, if you’re worried about not just infallible contradictions, I think we can safely say there are no infallible contradictions. If you’re worried about contradictions on the fallible teaching authority of the church and you can find a handful of those, but really only a handful, it’s worth pointing out that on this, the track record of the fallible magistrate of the church seems objectively far and away better than the fallible teaching authority within Protestantism. If you’re judging by the standard of how well does it maintain continuity century after century after century, one of the common objections to Catholicism is that it won’t update with the times. So if that’s what you’re worried about and if you’re looking to that for trustworthiness and reliability, that it’s durable, that it’s stable, I think the Catholic Church actually does very well by that standard.
I think Trent does a very good job making that case in the end of his video, which again, I’m going to link to in just a moment. Second, if you’re serious about things like we need a Communical Councils to settle doctrinal issues, I would suggest this is a great reason to be Catholic because the Catholic church alone has had ecumenical councils since the great schism. The East, whether Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy has not had any binding ecumenical councils, Protestantism has not had any binding ecumenical councils. So if you think councils are important and we see conciliar doesn’t work, you’re really left with Catholicism. So if those are things you care about, I don’t think those are reasons to reject the Catholic Church. I think those are reasons to take the Catholic Church seriously. And then finally, if you haven’t already, let me just encourage you one more time to go check out Trent’s video and see him cover all the issues. I didn’t. If there’s anything left uncovered and you want me to tackle it, let me know in the comments here or shameless joe.com for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.