The Papacy (This Book Being the Fruit of Those Labors)

1 EDITOR’S PREFACE Réné-Francois Guettée was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at Blois, France in the year 1839. Almost immediately following his ordination he set out on a monumental task conceived in his mind a few years earlier. To research and then write a complete “History of the Church of France”. It was this innocent endeavor that would soon lead him to unexpected discoveries and inescapable conclusions concerning the papacy (This book being the fruit of those labors). With patience and care Guettée skillfully sweeps away the rubble of misconception and fraud that obscured the pristine voice of Church Fathers and their genuine apostolic witness. His impeccable proofs shattering the pretensions and anti-Catholic innovations of Rome whose foundation was evidently no longer Christ. Instead she is shown to have chosen a different cornerstone and a most fallible substitute. He reveals how this former apostolic see once renowned for her orthodoxy would, through worldly arrogance and pride insert her single unaccountable bishop as the principal overseer of the Church, thus negating the ancient apostolic model for governance. Its effect, a continuing denial and illegitimate replacement for the Churches One and True Head. In Chapter V Father Guettée presents a series of letters written by Pope Gregory the Great (6th C). These letters to the Patriarch of Constantinople , John the Faster are responses to what he construes as John’s attempts to be recognized as the Church’s Universal Bishop or Bishop of Bishops. A notion he thoroughly and absolutely condemns as inspired by the devil. (He being the first born of those who attempt by self exaltation to ascend a place not theirs.) Forcefully and with great clarity he vigorously denies such prerogative for any Apostolic See including the one he himself now presides over, Rome. In these pages, the reader will also find in abundance meticulous scholarship and perhaps for the first time insight as to what is genuine Catholic ecclessiology. Father Guettée remains ever faithful to the Vincentian model in his approach. This is a rule eminently Catholic and necessary when examining matters of The Faith. XX: The Notes of a true Catholic (an excerpt from St. Vincent of Lerins Commonitory 5th C) This being the case, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above everything, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time. Confronted by the complete and unfiltered testimony of the Church Fathers and having examined in depth the undeniable historic records, Father Guettée found that Treasure and Pearl of Great Price. (The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church) He would not for the sake of career and promised honors be silenced. For that courage and intellectual honesty we can all be grateful. Kevin M. Kirwan 1999 2 AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION. THE Pope is a king, and pretends to be sovereign pontiff of the Christian Church. We do not propose to occupy ourselves with his royalty. To what advantage ? It will soon fall. Its ruin is decreed by Providence. Foreign bayonets will no more save it than the sophisms of its defenders. If, as is affirmed, these are necessary to uphold the sovereign pontificate, it is but another reason for desiring its fall-because this pontificate is an usurpation. This we proceed to demonstrate in the present work. To reach this end we shall have recourse neither to questionable arguments nor to declamation. Facts drawn from original sources are summoned as witnesses. We take the Roman episcopate at the origin of Christianity, follow it through centuries, and are able to prove incontestably, that during eight centuries the spiritual Papacy, as we understand it at the present day, had no existence; that the bishop of Rome was during three centuries only a bishop, with the same rank as the others; that in the fourth century he received a primacy of honor without universal jurisdiction; that this honor has no other foundation than the decrees of the Church; that his restricted jurisdiction over certain neighboring churches is supported only upon a custom legalized by Councils. As for the universal sovereignty, absolute, of divine right--in other words, the Papacy--facts and catholic testimony of the first eight centuries condemn instead of sustaining it. History reveals to us the Papacy, after several fruitless attempts, taking its birth from circumstances and establishing itself in the ninth century, with its double political and ecclesiastical character. Its real founder was Adrian I Nicholas I chiefly contributed to its development; Gregory VII. raised it to its loftiest pitch. Adrian I. was in fact the first Pope. They who before this occupied the see of Rome, were only bishops, successors, not of St. Peter, as has been declared and repeated to satiety, but of Linus, who was already bishop of Rome when St. Peter arrived in that city, to seal there by his martyrdom the faith he had preached. The defenders of the Papacy commit, therefore, at the outset, one of the grossest historical errors in carrying back the Papacy, that is, the Papal sovereignty, to the origin of Christianity. This error has led them to a thousand others, impelled, as they have been, to seek proofs for the support of this false theory in the history of the Church and in the writings of the ancient fathers. They have thus wrested facts and distorted testimonies. They have even dared to attack Holy Scripture, and by delusive anti-Catholic interpretation, made it bear false witness in favor of their system. It is thus that the Church of Rome was the first to give example of those individual interpretations for which she so bitterly reproaches Protestantism. She was the first to abandon the Catholic rule of the interpretation of the sacred books; she has put aside the collective interpretation of which the fathers of the Church have been the faithful echoes, and upon her own authority she has presumed to discover in Scripture that which the Church Catholic has not found there. She has come thus to arrogate for her usurped sovereignty a divine foundation. She has drawn from this principle all its consequences; the Pope has become the vicar of Jesus Christ, the necessary centre of the Church, the pivot of Christianity, the infallible organ of heaven. These Papal errors were so skillfully disseminated in the western countries that they were there gradually adopted. The protests which they drew forth were indeed continued, but partaking of the spirit of the age, they were not sufficiently pointed; such even as were raised against the abuses of the Papacy, admitted as beyond question a divine basis for that institution. At the present day, these errors have penetrated not only among the clergy and religious men; the rationalists--anti-Christians themselves--admit the idea that the Pope is the sovereign chief of the Christian Church, and that his spiritual prerogatives are derived from Jesus Christ. Many Protestants themselves do not conceive of a Catholic Church without a Pope, and see this church only in the Roman Church.1 We ourselves have been misled by the common error, taught as we had been to regard it as a revealed and incontestable verity. 1 The author thus touches two of the greatest advantages which modern writers, unfortunately, concede to the Papists: 1st, That of identifying historical Christianity with the Mediæval Roman system; 2d. That of calling the Trentine Church the Catholic Church. 3 In embarking upon the extensive researches we were obliged to make for the preparation of the History of the Church of France, it did not enter our thoughts to examine certain questions, which only in an indirect way entered into our subject and upon which we had blindly accepted certain opinions. Hence some expressions too favorable to the Papacy, and some errors of detail in our book. We seize the occasion now offered to give warning of them, in order that our readers may be on their guard against these errors, which, however, will find their correction in the present work. Rome has visited-with her censure the History of the Church of France because it was not sufficiently favorable to her pretensions. We ourselves censure it because too many concessions are there made to Roman prejudices which bad been imparted to us as truth, and which we had not been at the pains thoroughly to examine. Should Providence ever put it into our power to reprint the History of the Church of France, we shall deem it an obligation of conscience to make the correction. This would have been done at the demand of Rome, had Rome condescended to convince us of ,error. We shall do it, however, at the requirement of our own conscience, now more enlightened. No man is infallible; hence, inasmuch as a man dishonors himself by changing his opinions without good reason or pretending such change from motives of interest, in the same degree does he honor himself when acknowledging and retracting errors he discovers himself to have committed. We are therefore disposed to great tolerance toward Roman Catholics who believe in the divine origin of the Papal prerogatives; for we know that this prejudgment is communicated to all of them with the first elements of religious instruction, and that every thing in the Roman Church tends to strengthen it in their souls.

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