Many
Councils have been held, but not all of the them are recognized as ‘General
Councils’. In practice, ‘the ecumenicity of a Council depends
on the after reception of its decisions by the whole Church. Thus', the first Council of Nicaea (325) received
recognition as ‘General’ because its decisions received general
approval, but the Council of Arminium did not.
The Roman Church recognizes eighteen Councils as ‘General’
or Ecumenical, but most of them (like Trent) were purely Roman Councils
and not strictly ecumenical. The Anglican Communion only recognizes
the first six Councils ‘which were allowed and received of all
men’,
and the Greek Orthodox Church accepts only the first seven (including
Nicaea II) as ecumenical. Article
XXI was composed by the English Reformers in 1552, and was then intended
as an explicit declaration that the Anglican Church would not be bound
by the decisions of the Council of Trent.
The
purpose of General Councils has been to state the Church’s belief
on disputed questions, and to determine matters of discipline and order. The qualification for this task is
not that the members of a Council are the elected delegates of the churches,
but that they should be men ‘governed with the Spirit and Word
of God’. The supreme requisite is a sincere desire to
know and do the divine will: ‘If any man willeth to do His will,
he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God’. Spiritual things are spiritually judged, and
possession of the Spirit is the condition for discerning ‘the deep
things of God’. To have
the mind of Christ is for St. Paul the one way of knowing the saving
truth which is in Him. As the history of the Councils fully shows,
these qualities were not prominent in their proceedings, which were
ruled too often by political intrigue and party interests. Composed as they were of fallible men, Councils ‘may err,
and have erred. . . wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to
salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared
that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.’
We regard as errors the decrees of the second Council of Nicaea
(A.D. 787) which sanctioned the adoration of images; that of the Council
of Constance (A.D. 1414) withholding the cup from the laity in the Holy
Communion; that of the Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), defining the doctrine
of Transubstantiation; the belief in Purgatory drawn up by the Council
of Florence (A.D. 1439); and the decrees of the Vatican Councils of
1869 (which declared Papal Infallibility), 1854 (declared Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary), and 1950 (declared the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary). None
of these dogmas satisfy St. Vincent’s Canon as having been believed
and taught ‘everywhere, always, and by all’.
