A fair question deserves a fair answer. Recently, one such question was posed on X by a certain Eastern Orthodox account named Ancient Masculinity (AM) who posts regularly on being a strong and faithful Christian man. With the addition of the name, we can appropriately add that in addition to deserving a fair answer, it deserves an equally masculine one: powerful, direct, and conquering.
He asked the following:
If the pope is divinely protected from teaching error when defining doctrine (per Vatican I), how do you reconcile historical cases where popes either taught or signed on to heresy (e.g., Honorius I and Monothelitism, Liberius and semi-Arianism) or formally contradicted earlier papal teachings?
First, let’s observe what is right about this question. AM rightly points his readers to the First Vatican Council’s teaching on the pope’s power of teaching as the standard that Catholics must adhere to. If a pope were to make an attempt to teach infallibly something truly erroneous, then we would have a contradiction to a fundamental and dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. AM seems to believe that certain events have occurred in history that truly exemplify such a contradiction.
Before offering the reconciliation that AM asks for, let us first nail down precisely what Vatican I stated about the infallible teaching power of the Roman pontiff.
We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma: that the Roman pontiff, when speaking from the Cathedra, that is, when he acts as pastor and doctor of all Christians, defines by his supreme apostolic authority a doctrine on faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, is endowed . . . with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be instructed in defining doctrine on faith or morals.
We notice immediately that the council bishops were careful to specify the limited conditions wherein the pope teaches infallibly. That might appear to be artificial, but this concept of conditional infallibility or inerrancy is embedded into the beliefs of all Bible believers.
Let me explain.
Everyone who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture agrees that the apostles were empowered to write infallibly when writing Scripture. And yet, those who believe the same are also forced to admit that the apostles could make errors. Who could forget the blunder made by St. Peter when he rebuked the Lord, telling him that he would not be murdered in Jerusalem (Matt. 16:22)? Jesus Christ said not just that Peter was in the wrong, but that Satan himself was speaking through Peter! Even after the commission of Peter as the chief apostle and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, we see that St. Paul had to confront Peter to his face in Antioch when the latter communicated by his actions that Gentiles had to become Jews to enjoy fellowship in the Christian community, and led a whole party of Jewish Christians to take part in the same distortion (see Gal. 2:11-13). Despite these facts, all Christians who hold to the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture believe that Peter wrote two epistles that were God-breathed and therefore infallible. Ergo, conditional infallibility.
Having made that case, we can return to the three conditions that Vatican I defined for when the Roman pontiff speaks infallibly. First, he has to be speaking ex cathedra (“from the Cathedra”), which means he intends to teach from his authoritative position as the successor to the apostle Peter. Second, he has to be acting as pastor and teacher of all Christians. Last, he has to intend to define a doctrine on faith and morals to be held as binding by the universal Church.
AM points to the situations of Pope Honorius and Pope Liberius as contradictions. But are they?
Honorius
In the case of Honorius, you have a pope answering a theological inquiry that came from Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople. Honorius does not authoritatively define any doctrine; rather, he tries to command a halt to deciding one way or the other on the theological question of whether Christ has one or two wills.
Debates are had as to whether Honorius truly erred by asserting, though not officially defining, that there is one will in Christ. Even so, the Sixth Ecumenical Council (that is Constantinople III) ultimately condemned Honorius’s letter as containing the error of Monothelitism. This penalty was ratified by the then-reigning pontiff, Pope St. Leo II. And so, while there are chances (even good ones!) that Honorius might have intended something different from the error of Monothelitism by what he wrote, the official records of the Church have it that he was guilty of holding to this error and also guilty of propagating it in his reply letters to Sergius.
In this worst-case scenario, we are still lacking three of the three conditions for papal infallibility. Honorius was not speaking ex cathedra on a matter of doctrine (faith or morals). He was not acting as pastor and teacher of all Christians, since he was replying to a patriarch on behalf of an Eastern question. And lastly, Honorius made no authoritative doctrinal definition for all to submit to. Causa clausa.
Liberius
In the case of Liberius, you have a pope who was taken against his will into the custody of the then-Arian emperor, Constantius II, and signed on to an “Arian” creed.
Now, before we get too confident in the famous story of Liberius’s “apostasy,” we should be mindful that there are conflicting sources from the time as to precisely what creed the pope signed on to. Some sources identify it as a full-blown Arianizing creed, whereas others identify it with a creed that is substantially orthodox, though lacking the precise language of the Council of Nicaea (325)—i.e., the Greek word homoousios, which means “same essence” or “same substance.”
As with Honorius, let’s go with the worst-case scenario: Liberius signed on to an authentically Arian creed. Even in this case, we are lacking three of the three conditions for papal infallibility. First, Liberius’s signature to a heretical creed is not an official act that proceeded forth from the papal cathedra, because he signed it under duress (i.e., against his will). Secondly, by the same token, he could not be occupying the role of pastor and teacher of all Christians. And lastly, the heretical creed was not imposed on the whole Church.
Interestingly enough, the great Eastern star of Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Great (d. 373), reported the very worst-case scenario as described and yet was able to interpret the event with a careful consideration of the context—and he exonerated Liberius’s orthodoxy in the process. He writes:
They endeavored at the first to corrupt the Church of the Romans, wishing to introduce impiety into it as well as others. But Liberius, after he had been in banishment two years gave way, and from fear of threatened death subscribed. Yet even this only shows their violent conduct, and the hatred of Liberius against the heresy, and his support of Athanasius, so long as he was suffered to exercise a free choice. For that which men are forced by torture to do contrary to their first judgment ought not to be considered the willing deed of those who are in fear, but rather of their tormentors (History of the Arians 5.41).
Causa clausa.
Finally, have any popes formally contradicted previous popes? Well, yes. We have many examples of that. We just covered one above, where Pope St. Leo II affirmed two wills in Christ, whereas Pope Honorius, his predecessor, stated only one will. However, as we’ve been saying, Honorius did not fulfill the conditions for an infallible and irreformable definition on faith or morals, and thus his statement retained a fallible, and therefore reformable, character.
Until this point in history, there are no examples of a pope formally exercising the three conditions for papal infallibility and thereby contradicting another pope who did the same. Anyone who states otherwise will have to bear the burden of demonstrating it.
Ancient Masculinity’s original question, after all the facts have been laid out on the table for all to see, is unnecessary. There are no irreconcilable contradictions between the Church’s teaching on papal infallibility and the failures of past popes. As shown, it is not simply because no contradictions have existed between one particular pope and another, or that no pope has erred. On the contrary, it is a historical fact that popes have contradicted one another and have erred in some sense. However, in light of the nuanced dynamic of the Church’s understanding of papal infallibility, there are no contradictions between two popes who have taught anything on faith or morals via their ex cathedra mode of teaching, nor has any pope issued something erroneous on either faith or morals in that same mode.