Pope Saint Liberius. Contra Mr. Michael Davies.

One More Error

Once one starts to examine the real facts concerning Catholic truth and tradition many other arguments used by so-called traditionalists fall to the ground. This is not the place to deal with them in detail but as an illustration one notable example will be taken since it is highly relevant to the issues presently under consideration: the case of the so-called "fall" of Pope Liberius during the Arian crisis. This example has been used by Michael Davies on a number of occasions (e.g. Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Volume One (1979), pp. 369-371; St. Athanasius, Defender of the Faith (1985) pp. 7-9) to paint a picture of Liberius as a person who signed a formula designed to favor heresy and who excommunicated that champion of Catholic orthodoxy St. Athanasius leaving Athanasius to stand alone as almost the sole defender of the Catholic faith. The parallel intended between Paul VI and Archbishop Lefebvre is obvious. The truth is very different.

There is it is true a minority of scholars who have supported Davies position. There are also some who hold the more moderate view that Liberius signed an ambiguous formula genuinely believing that it was a statement of Catholic belief. However according to the majority of scholars Pope Liberius was in reality a firm opponent of Arianism who was himself sent into exile by the emperor because he refused to excommunicate Athanasius or accept a semi-Arian statement on the divinity of Christ. The people of Rome demonstrated in Liberius favor and he was finally allowed to return to Rome where he remained fully orthodox and in full communion with Athanasius.

All that Davies needed to know on the question of Liberius is contained in an article in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia by the great patristic scholar Dom John Chapman. Chapman's account is a moderate and judicious examination of the evidence. His conclusion is worth quoting in full:

"It should be carefully noted that the question of the fall of Liberius is one that has been and can be freely debated among Catholics. No one pretends that, if Liberius signed the most Arian formula in exile he did so freely; so that no question of his infallibility is involved. It is admitted on all sides that his noble attitude of resistance before his exile and during his exile was not belied by any act of his after his return; that he was in no way sullied when so many failed at the Council of Rimini, and that he acted vigorously for the healing of orthodoxy throughout the West from the grievous wound. If he really consorted with heretics, condemned Athanasius, or even denied the Son of God, it was a momentary human weakness which no more compromises the papacy than does that of St. Peter." (Volume IX, p. 222).

There are many other more detailed works which deal with the subject (e.g., Cardinal Hergenroether, Histoire de l'eglise (1880); Canon B. Jungmann, Dissertationes Selectae in Historiam Ecclesiasticam II (1881). Even if Davies had no access to these works, he does have access to the American journal, The Remnant, in which his own articles are published. A more accurate version of the Liberius question is set out in that publication in the issue for 15th September, 1991, p. 10. Yet even after this, Davies allows his pamphlet on the question, St. Athanasius, Defender of the Faith, to continue to be sold without any revision.

This matter relating to Pope Liberius is not a trivial one. Here we have what seems to be a gross calumny on the character of a saint, for that is how Pope Liberius is honored. The formal procedure of canonization had not then been instituted, but Liberius is given recognition in the ancient Latin Martyrology and in the Greek Menology, the Eastern equivalent to the martyrologies of the Western Church. If more evidence were needed, it could be found in the fact that numerous saints referred to Pope Liberius's sanctity and unfailing orthodoxy: for example, St. Ambrose, St. Basil, St. Epiphanius, St. Siricius, and Pope Anastasius I.

http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/Fidelity_archives/SSPX7.htm

Finally, what the history of this period proves is that, during a time of general apostasy, Christians who remain faithful to their traditional faith may have to worship outside the official churches, the churches of priests in communion with their lawfully appointed diocesan bishop, in order not to compromise that traditional faith; and that such Christians may have to look for truly Catholic teaching, leadership, and inspiration not to the bishops of their country as a body, not to the bishops of the world, not even to the Roman Pontiff, but to one heroic confessor whom the other bishops and the Roman Pontiff might have repudiated or even excommunicated. And how would they recognize that this solitary confessor was right and the Roman Pontiff and the body of the episcopate (not teaching infallibly) were wrong? The answer is that they would recognize in the teaching of this confessor what the faithful of the fourth century recognized in the teaching of Athanasius: the one true faith into which they had been baptized, in which they had been catechized, and which their confirmation gave them the obligation of upholding. In no sense whatsoever can such fidelity to tradition be compared with the Protestant practice of private judgment. The fourth-century Catholic traditionalists upheld Athanasius in his defense of the faith that had been handed down; the Protestant uses his private judgment to justify a breach with the traditional faith.

http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Archbishop-Lefebvre/Apologia/Vol_one/Appendix_I.htm

http://theradtrad.blogspot.com/search?q=liberius

http://www.papastronsay.com/resources/PopeLiberius/Rohrbacher.htm

http://www.mwt.net/~lnpalm/librius1.htm


Far too many soi disant traditionalists have been brainwashed by Mr. Davies into thinking that Pope Saint John Paul II was a latter day heretic like Liberius and that Lefevbre was a latter day Athanasius who opposed a putative heretical Pope..

The sorry state of the SSPCX Schism reflects the insights of a famous German:

Joseph Goebbels, foreshadowing the SSPX 

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State SSPX can shield the people trads from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State SSPX to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State  SSPX