From the desk of the pastor for March 15, 2025

In the summer of 1869, bishops from across the world began making their way to Rome. Pope Pius IX had summoned them to the First Vatican Council — the first ecumenical council of the Church in three centuries.

To understand Vatican I, we must understand the world that produced it. The nineteenth century had unleashed forces that deeply threatened faith and order. The French Revolution had toppled the old union of Church and society. Rationalism and scientific materialism were eroding traditional belief among the higher classes. Nationalism was redrawing maps and, in Italy, directly menacing the Papal States.

Pius IX, who had reigned since 1846, had watched the tide turn. Once a reformer himself, he became increasingly convinced that the modern world needed not accommodation but a firm, clear voice of authority. In 1864 he had issued the Syllabus of Errors, a document that alarmed liberals but galvanized Catholics who felt the Church needed to plant its flag firmly against the spirit of the age.

The Council he convened on December 8, 1869 — the Feast of the Immaculate Conception — was meant to be that flag. Nearly 750 bishops gathered inside St. Peter's Basilica. From the beginning, two questions dominated everything: What is the nature of faith in relation to reason? And what is the authority of the pope?

On the first question, the Council produced Dei Filius in April 1870. Against both fideism (the idea that faith has nothing to do with reason) and rationalism (the idea that reason alone is sufficient), the Council taught that faith and reason are compatible and complementary. God can be known through reason by reflecting on creation, yet divine revelation opens truths that reason alone could not reach.

The doctrine of papal infallibility — the teaching that the pope, when speaking formally on matters of faith and morals for the whole Church, is preserved from error — was already widely held among Catholics. Making it a defined dogma was controversial because a significant minority of bishops worried about the message it would send to the world.

On July 18, 1870, the vote was held. Of those present, 533 voted in favor, 2 voted against, and roughly 55 had left Rome rather than vote against the pope. The dogma was promulgated. The pope, the Council declared, possesses "that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed." Here it is worth noting what infallibility is not: it does not mean the pope is sinless, always wise, or beyond criticism in his ordinary actions. It applies only in very specific, formal circumstances — and it has been formally invoked only once since the Council, when Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary in 1950.

Within weeks of that historic vote, the Franco-Prussian War broke out. French troops withdrew from Rome, and Italian nationalist forces entered the city. Pius IX suspended the Council indefinitely. It was never formally reconvened, leaving much of its intended work unfinished. That work would wait nearly a century, until the Second Vatican Council. That story will have to wait for a future article.

In His Sacred Heart,

Fr. John