Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/24

 FATHERS

FATHERS

the bishops were orthodox. In the third they were often found wanting. In the fourth they were the leaders of schisms, and heresies, in the Meletian and Donatist troubles and in the long Arian struggle, in which few were found to stand firm against the insidi- ous persecution of Constantius. It came to be seen that the true Fathers of the Church are those Catholic teachers who have persevered in her communion, and whose teaching has been recognized as orthodox. So it came to pass that out of the four " Latin Doctors" one is not a bishop. Two other Fathers who were not bishops have been declared to be Doctors of the Church, Bede and John Damascene, while among the Doctors outside the patristic period we find two more priests, the incomparable St. Bernard and the great- est of all theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas. Nay, few writers had such great authority in the Schools of the middle ages as the layman Boethius, many of whose definitions are still commonplaces of theology.

Similarly (we may notice in passing) the name "Father", which originally belonged to bishops, has been as it were delegated to priests, especially as min- isters of the Sacrament of Penance. It is now a form of address to all priests in Spain, in Ireland, and, of re- cent years, in England and the United States.

IIciTras or IldTrTros, Pope, was a term of respect for emi- nent bi.shops (e. g. in letters to St. Cyprian and to St. Augustine, — neither of these writers seems to use it in addressing other bishops, except when St. Augustine writes to Rome). Eventually the term was reserved to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria; yet in the East to-day every priest is a "pope". The Aramaic abba was used from early times for the superiors of religious houses. But through the abuse of granting abbeys in commendam to seculars, it has become a po- lite title for all secular clerics, even seminarists, in Italy, and especially in France, whereas all religious who are priests are addressed as " Father".

We receive only, says St. Basil, what we have been taught by the Holy Fathers; and he adds that in his Church of Caesarea the faith of the holy Fathers of Nicaea has long been implanted (Ep. cxl, 2). St. Gregory Nazianzen declares that he holds fast the teaching which he heard from the holy Oracles, and was taught by the holy Fathers. These Cappadocian saints seem to be the first to appeal to a real catena of Fathers. The appeal to one or two was already com- mon enough ; but not even the learned Eusebius had thought of a long string of authorities. St. Basil, for example (DeSpir.S.,ii, 29), cites for the formula "with the Holy Ghost" in the doxology, the example of Ire- noeus, Clement and Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius of Rome, Eusebius of Cajsarea, Origen, Africanus, the preces lucernarice said at the lighting of lamps, Athenagoras, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, Meletius. In the fifth century this method became a stereotyped custom. St. Jerome is perhaps the first writer to try to establish his interpretation of a text by a string of exegetes (Ep. cxii, ad Aug.). Paulinus, the deacon and biographer of St. Ambrose, in the libellua he presented against the Pelagians to Pope Zosimus in 417, quotes Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen, and the decrees of the late Pope Innocent. In 420 St. Augustine quotes Cyprian and Ambrose against the same heretics (C. duas Epp. Pel., iv). Julian of Ec- lanum quoted Chrysostom and Basil; St. Augustine replies to him in 421 (Contra Julianum, i ) with Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Am- brose, the decrees of African councils, and above all Popes Innocent and Zosimus. In a celebrated pas- sage he argues that these Western writers are more than sufficient, but as Julian had appealed to the East, to the East he shall go, and the saint adds Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Synod of Diospolis, Chrysostom. To these he adds .lerome (c. xxxiv) : " Nor should you think Jerome, because he was a priest, is to be de- spised", and adds a eulogy. This is amusing, when

we remember that Jerome in a fit of irritation, fifteen years before, had written to Augustine (Ep. cxiii): " Do not excite against me the silly crowd of the ignor- ant, who venerate you as a bishop, and receive you with the honour due to a prelate when you declaim in the Church, whereas they think little of me, an old man, nearly decrepit, in my monastery in the solitude of the country."

In the second book "Contra Julianum", St. Augus- tine again cites Ambrose frequently, and Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Chrysostom; in ii, 37, he recapitulates the nine names (omitting councils and popes), adding (iii, 32) Innocent and Jerome. A few years later the Semipelagians of Southern Gaul, who were led by St. Hilary of Aries, St. Vincent of Li5rins, and Bl. Cassian, refuse to accept St. Augustine's severe view of predestination because "contrarium putant patrum opinioni et ecclesiastico sensui". Their opponent St. Prosper, who was trying to convert them to Augustinianism, complains: " Obstinationem suamvetustate defendunt" (Ep. inter Aug. ccxxv, 2), and they said that no ecclesiastical writer had ever before interpreted Romans quite as St. Augustine did — which was probably true enough. The interest of this attitude lies in the fact that it was, if not new, at least more definite than any earlier appeal to an- tiquity. Through most of the fourth century, the controversy with the Arians had turned upon Scrip- ture, and appeals to past authority were few. But the appeal to the Fathers was never the most imposing locus theologiciis, for they coukl not easily be assembled so as to form an absolutely conclusive test. On the other hand up to the end of the fourth century, there were practically no infallible definitions available, except condemnations of heresies, chiefly by popes. By the time that the Arian reaction under Valens caused the Eastern conservatives to draw towards the orthodox, and prepared the restoration of orthodoxy to power by Theodosius, the Nicene decisions were beginning to be looked upon as sacrosanct, and that council to be preferred to a unique position above all others. By 430, the date we have reached, the Creed we now say at Mass was revered in the East, whether rightly or wrongly, as the work of the 150 Fathers of Constantinople in 381, and there were also new papal decisions, especially the tractoria of Pope Zosimus, which in 418 had been sent to all the bishops of the world to be signed.

It is to living authority, the idea of which had thus come to the fore, that St. Prosper was appealing in his controversy with the Lerinese school. When he went to Gaul, in 431, as papal envoy, just after St. Augus- tine's death, he replied to their difficulties, not by re- iterating that saint's hardest arguments, but by tak- ing with him a letter from Pope St. Celestine, in which St. Augustine is extolled as having been held by the pope's predecessors to be " inter magistros optimos". No one is to be allowed to depreciate him, but it is not said that every word of his is to be followed. The dis- turbers had appealed to the Holy See, and the reply is "Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" (Let novelty cease to attack antiquity!). An appendix is added, not of the opinions of ancient Fathers, but of recent popes, since the very same monks who thought St. Augustine went too far, professed (says the appendix) " that they followed and approved only what the most holy See of the Blessed Apostle Peter sanctioned and taught by the ministry of its prelates". A list therefore follows of " the j udgments of the rulers of the Ronrian Church ", to which are added some sentences of African councils, " which indeed the Apostolic bishops made their own when they approved them". To these inmolabiles sanctiones (we might roughly render " infallible utter- ances ") prayers used in the sacraments are appended " ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi " — a fre- quently misquoted phrase — and in conclusion, it is declared that these testimonies of the Apostolic See