The Council Takes Its Authority
from the Pope, Not Vice-versa

 

The conciliar Popes have erected Vatican II as a super-dogma which thenceforth all Popes should obey. They continue on the same path, acting as if the Council were superior to the Popes. It is another erroneous consequence of the doctrine of collegiality as it is understood by Progressivism, to which the recent Popes have all paid tribute.

This position is fundamentally wrong, since the councils neither are superior to the Pope nor are the source of the Pope's authority. Eugene IV condemned this modern development of collegiality when he anathematized the errors of the fathers of the Council of Basel. Indeed, in a letter to the Catholic Princes in 1436, the Pontiff affirmed:

Pope Eugene IV

They [the fathers of Basel] also reformulated two decrees of the earlier Council of Constance, extending them to circumstances and limits beyond the intentions of the members of that assembly, with great danger to the ecclesiastical monarchy and prejudice to the Holy Apostolic See.

They claimed that general Councils do not draw their strength and power from the Roman Church after such Councils are convened by the apostolic authority – as all Catholic Doctors profess and teach. Thus, they deny that the general Councils receive their authority and foundation from the Vicar of Christ, something that none of the faithful or Church Doctors has ever dared to do.

Hence they also expressly and foremost infer the statement that the Roman Pontiff, like any Prelate, is obliged to obey the decrees, ordinances and mandates of the Council and must subject himself to a deserved punishment should he do the contrary, something tantamount to totally annihilating the power of the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ on earth, and placing into the hands of the multitudes the supreme authority that Christ gave to him, which is not only erroneous but entirely foreign to the whole doctrine of the Holy Father.

(Eugene IV, Letter to the Catholic Princes in 1436,
in Raynaldi, year 1436, vol. 28, n. 3, apud A. Baudrillart, entry “Bâle, Concile de,”
Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 2, col. 127)