Friday, July 11, 2025

A second Honorius?

Like his predecessor Honorius, Pope Francis failed clearly to uphold traditional teaching at a time the Church was sick from heresy.  So I argue in my contribution to a symposium on Francis in the latest issue of The Lamp.

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36 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 11, 2025 at 11:44 AM

    "and it will vomit out today’s liberalism and modernism too. When it does, the adulation Pope Francis received upon death may prove as ephemeral as that which Honorius enjoyed."
    Liberalism and modernism are here to stay.

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    1. Vini TadeoJuly 12, 2025 at 11:09 AM

      Pawn ideas, like liberalism and modernism, are never here to stay. Once a certain class that holds political interests views it as non-profitable, they will stop enforcing it. So, no, these ideas are not "here to stay." Something so unnatural, forced, and contra humani generii cannot stand on its own legs unless some group of powerful people is holding it still.

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    2. AnonymousJuly 12, 2025 at 2:08 PM

      They're already waning. They peaked with the boomers' ascendancy into positions of power (c. 1995-2020).

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    3. AnonymousJuly 12, 2025 at 7:26 PM

      Sure. Gnosticism never really died. Doesn’t change the fact it was rejected.

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  2. TonyJuly 11, 2025 at 1:46 PM

    C'mon, Ed, quit beating around the bush and tell us what you really think of Francis's artful ambiguity and deliberate muddles. He can't declare you persona non grata now. You needn't be coy about it. ;-)

    Seriously, even if one wanted to defend Francis's problematic statements, questions, and declarations one by one where each one, by itself, is sort-of, kind-of, not entirely wrong, it is still true that clarity of teaching is per se good, and his (apparently deliberate, studied) practice of creating confused ambiguity where none belongs is contrary to role of the pope. At least not so far as we have understood it by the previous occupants of the chair for almost 2000 straight years. Similarly, the constant phrasing of changes as presenting a new church or a "new way of being church" seem to be starkly contrary to the way ALL prior popes viewed their role, even the ones who instituted enormous reforms.

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  3. Vini TadeoJuly 11, 2025 at 7:38 PM

    "But while the Church has often been made sick from heresy, it always recovers. It vomited out Arianism. It vomited out Monothelitism, which is why Honorius’s reputation sank. And it will vomit out today’s liberalism and modernism too. When it does, the adulation Pope Francis received upon death may prove as ephemeral as that which Honorius enjoyed."

    BRAVO, ED. BRAVO! That's one of the (several) reasons I love your work: courage! You always say what needs to be said. Thank you.

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  4. The Great Thurible of DarknessJuly 11, 2025 at 9:58 PM

    Can I suggest actually reading "Saint Paul’s teaching on worthiness to receive Communion" in its context in 1 Corinthians 11 before you start confidently asserting that anyone (much less the Pope) has violated that teaching? Because even the way you phrase it strongly suggests you've completely misunderstood the passage. Paul says nothing about our "worthiness" to receive communion; it is the way the meal is celebrated, not the participants, who are worthy or unworthy. Paul has a lot to say about some eating greedily (or getting drunk) while others go hungry, or not treating the meal with due reverence, and nothing to say about sexual sin (at least not in that passage).

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    1. EricJuly 12, 2025 at 10:23 AM

      You've completely misunderstood the passage.

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    2. T LambertJuly 13, 2025 at 4:10 AM

      Hmmm, let me see. Who to trust? The Church who in her wisdom’l has taught for centuries how to receive the Eucharist or ‘Thurible’, random guy who regularly makes snide, insulting comments to the blog host while consistently misunderstanding the nature of the posts he comments on. Gosh, this is a hard one.

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  5. Miguel CervantesJuly 11, 2025 at 11:15 PM

    Pope Honorius's weakness in the face of yet another Greek heresy was not a denial of the faith. The Greeks who stacked the Council that condemned him historically often did do so however. The Council's papal legates were instructed not to endorse this condemnation but were weak too. Not much of a doctrinal precedent if one wishes to argue that the Church teaches popes can fall into heresy. It has never taught this, and Catholics can freely argue that no Pope will become a heretic.

    Pope Francis was another of the post-Vatican II popes, who were all deeply affected by its slip-ups on how to regard other religions, and its new way of being a church. No discussion of Pope Francis will ever make any sense until the Council's texts and spirit are addressed properly.

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  6. AnonymousJuly 12, 2025 at 5:27 AM

    @Miguel Cervantes: are you saying that an ecumenical council erred? Or is a "slip-up" not an error, and if not, why not?

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    1. Miguel CervantesJuly 12, 2025 at 10:31 PM

      Like the Council of Constance, another Ecumenical Council, Vatican II needs to be cleaned up. There are more than enough passages that might not be heresies, but certainly need official reinterpretation by the Church to ensure they can't be interpreted at variance with Catholic teaching, as they have been, at the highest levels.

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  7. William TigheJuly 12, 2025 at 7:46 AM

    "The Council's papal legates were instructed not to endorse this condemnation but were weak too. Not much of a doctrinal precedent if one wishes to argue that the Church teaches popes can fall into heresy."

    This comment id both silly and irrelevant, as Pope St. Leo II both ratified and promulgated the Constantinopolitan council's condemnation of Pope Honorius. Cf.:

    https://erickybarra.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/the-condemnation-of-pope-honorius-by-pope-leo-ii-a-d-682/

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    1. Miguel CervantesJuly 12, 2025 at 7:31 PM

      The Council's declaration has to be understood in the sense of Pope Leo's confirmation, which has more authority. Pope Leo made it clear in numerous instructions to the Church that Honorius erred by negligence, not by heresy.

      It is not a doctrine of faith that Popes can fall into heresy. Catholics are entitled to argue that the Church never condemned Pope Honorius for heresy, as St. Robert Bellarmine sustained (albeit using some mistaken premises, but that is not to the point). It is wrong to assert that the Church teaches that the Pope can fall into heresy, even as a private doctor. Any such assertion is an extrapolation which can be argued against, and constantly has been.

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    2. AnonymousJuly 14, 2025 at 7:30 AM

      he Council's declaration has to be understood in the sense of Pope Leo's confirmation, which has more authority.

      I don't believe this is correct: the Church has treated dogmatic pronouncements made by an Ecumenical Council and ratified by the pope as being at the summit of the Church's authority to teach, and that a pope's use of the petrine authority to make an infallible pronouncement on his own, while infallible, is not the fullest expression of Her authority.

      Pope Leo made it clear in numerous instructions to the Church that Honorius erred by negligence, not by heresy.

      Neither Feser nor Tighe said he committed heresy. Feser clearly made an effort to be precise so as to not say that. You're defending Honorius against a straw man. And you make yourself ridiculous in insisting that the papal legates were told not to endorse the condemnation, when the pope in fact endorsed the condemnation.

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    3. AnonymousJuly 14, 2025 at 8:21 PM

      George you know that the Pope's ratification is the sense in which the Council must be understood. Your strawmen are full of crowsnests.

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    4. AnonymousJuly 16, 2025 at 4:38 PM

      I am not George, and I did not intend to take issue with respect to your point with "in the sense of", but to your claim of "which has more authority". A pope operating on his own to propose definitively does not exercise more authoritatively than does a pope with the Council to propose definitively.

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    5. Miguel CervantesJuly 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM

      That's a bit of a red herring George. Pope Leo-s interpretory confirmation of Constantinople was obviously the Pope with the Council. The Council's actions and meaning were moot without his approval, which also gives us the criterion by which to interpret them.

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    6. AnonymousJuly 18, 2025 at 7:07 AM

      And "Pope Leo-s interpretory confirmation of Constantinople was obviously" the determination that Honorius was rightly to be censured for failing to clearly and unambiguously upholding the true doctrine about Christ, for his omissions and his waffling language that confused. Which is what Feser said.

      Not George.
      (What is with you and George, anyway?)

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    7. Miguel CervantesJuly 18, 2025 at 6:47 PM

      Splendid. Then we're all in agreement, George. We're really making progress. There's no need for you to comment on everything I write though. You already write enough stuff around here.

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    8. AnonymousJuly 22, 2025 at 5:04 PM

      Oh, I would not comment on everything. Only the wrong stuff, say, 90% . You need not write the wrong stuff, then we'll all be better off.

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    9. AnonymousJuly 22, 2025 at 9:11 PM

      Now you're ruining things again, just when we were agreeing again, as we always do.

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  8. Paul D. Van PeltJuly 12, 2025 at 10:15 AM

    And. Just. So. I learned much from Ken Wilber

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  9. AnonymousJuly 12, 2025 at 1:31 PM

    Just let Pope Francis rest boys. All adulation is ephemeral, doesn't matter who you are,even Jesus experienced and experiences that.

    Official doctrine didn't change with Francis, so don't really understand all the emotion behind what didn't happen.

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    1. T LambertJuly 13, 2025 at 4:04 AM

      What “emotion”? These strike me as dispassionate critical reflections. Also, isn’t it good for the church to learn from bad decisions? Or, in all things “just let’r rest, boys. Nothing to concern one’s self with.”

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    2. MaolsheachlannJuly 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM

      Every time someone says something like this-- not just about Pope Francis but about every subject that should be out of bounds, for whatever reason-- my reaction is: "Can you tell us what we are allowed to talk about?"

      Is it ever OK to talk about ephemeral adulation? Does a certain amount of time have to pass?

      Seriously, there are endless reasons NOT to talk about almost any subject. Some of them are good. I thought it was better not to criticize Pope Francis when he was alive. It seems reasonable to do so now.

      As for the emotion-- for all the talk of "one of the disciples betrayed Jesus", it was a great shock for many of us that Pope Francis did and said the things he did. I suppose we had an expectation that the Pope might be guarded from such apparent errors; even the wicked Popes of the past didn't seem to do THIS. Our view of infallibility arguably has to be modified. That also seems worth talking about.

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    3. English CatholicJuly 13, 2025 at 11:13 AM

      > Official doctrine didn't change with Francis, so don't really understand all the emotion behind what didn't happen.

      Well let me see, one good reason for 'all the emotion' might be that he *gave the impression* of changing doctrine to people who weren't looking closely (and that's the vast majority of people), and in so doing may have led millions of souls to damnation.

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    4. AnonymousJuly 14, 2025 at 11:01 AM

      @English Catholic if you really think like that then I think you are too deep in the weeds in theology and most importantly incorrect theology.

      Ultimately Jesus left behind not a doctrine, but a praxis. And it is the following of the praxis that reveals whether we have the renewal of the heart spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah and that we are indeed people of the new and everlasting covenant.

      In my opinion, Francis is one of a handful of popes who have inspired others to follow the praxis of our Lord.

      As Jesus said, loving the Lord with all your heart and neighbor as yourself fulfills the Law and the Prophets, and I think that kerygmatic approach was at the heart of Francis's papacy.

      So while you judge him by his accidence, I judge him by his substance and even Feser for all his knowledge fails to do that.

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    5. TonyJuly 14, 2025 at 5:27 PM

      Jesus also said to his apostles "teach them to do all that I have commanded you." So, while Jesus set them an example to follow, - a praxis, if you will - he also gave them instructions on that, i.e. gave them guidelines on how to apply that praxis in other situations: what love of God looks like in difficult situations. The WORD of God cannot be separated from the person of Christ, and his words were simple in some respects ("be you perfect even as your heavenly father is perfect"), it is complex in other respects ("Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's" is very complex in the details, as it is the foundation of the distinction between Church and State). Hence the ongoing role of teaching that belongs to the Church he founded, and the ongoing role of interpreting his words for current conditions that belongs to the successors of the apostles.

      Being a follower of Christ means being a follower of his instructions to carry forward the Church he built, and to live within that Church.

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    6. MPJuly 17, 2025 at 9:43 AM

      "Ultimately Jesus left behind not a doctrine, but a praxis." - there isn't "praxis" without "doctrine". For we have to know what is included in such "praxis", and that already counts as "doctrine". For example, is "being an active homosexual" compatible with "praxis"?

      "In my opinion, Francis is one of a handful of popes who have inspired others to follow the praxis of our Lord." - why only "a handful"? Pretty much all popes have "have inspired others to follow the praxis of our Lord", and probably pretty much all the popes have scandalised some other people (or even the same people in various times and ways). After all, all the popes are humans. I'm pretty sure that you also inspire some people and scandalise some people in the ways that you do not foresee.

      Now, of course, that does not mean that all the popes have inspired and scandalised the people to the same extent...

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    7. David McPikeJuly 20, 2025 at 4:37 PM

      "Ultimately Jesus left behind not a doctrine, but a praxis."
      So this is allegedly a doctrine (or a praxis??) that Jesus left behind? "Amen, I say unto you, I leave you not a doctrine, but a praxis..."? Hmm. I've never come across that teaching. Have to pay better attention I guess.

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  10. AnonymousJuly 15, 2025 at 6:34 PM


    You should clarify what you mean by sick. She is spotless in her doctrines. Memebers can’t be sick from heresy cause then they are not members. Now non church members can and are sick but so what?

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  11. Learning PhilosphyJuly 15, 2025 at 8:48 PM

    Hello Dr.Feser. I would really like to see you bridge the gap between thomistic metaphysics and presuppositional apologetics. With arguments like the prime mover, the atheist or agnostic can basically infinitely find ways to argue against it, as with most other arguments out there, even if they are strong and logically sound. But I'm finding from these Transcendental arguments for God's existence that use presupposition, that there is a way to argue without having to detail with an infinite list of objects that you must keep refuting. For example Dr.Oppy says that logic is a brute fact. This is something that can be attacked. Logic is an immaterial universal thing that cant be justified on a materialist worldview.

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    1. WOLF BRONSKYJuly 16, 2025 at 4:27 AM

      Have you read Aristotle’s Revenge?

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    2. Vini TadeoJuly 17, 2025 at 10:03 PM

      @Learning Philosophy

      Hello there!

      I may not be the best person around here to help you with this question, but I will try my best, as I see that you are asking a sincere and honest question.

      You said, "With arguments like the prime mover, the atheist or agnostic can basically infinitely find ways to argue against it, as with most other arguments out there, even if they are strong and logically sound."

      I don't think I follow your reasoning here. Why exactly do you think that the atheist or agnostic can basically find infinite ways to argue against the First Way or the Prime Mover? I will wait for your answer before delving more into this exact part.

      You also said, "Transcendental arguments for God's existence that use presupposition, that there is a way to argue without having to detail with an infinite list of objects that you must keep refuting. For example Dr.Oppy says that logic is a brute fact. This is something that can be attacked. Logic is an immaterial universal thing that cant be justified on a materialist worldview."

      I think you are on the right track here (even though, for my money, you sound a little bit too Platonic), but you just need a little bit of refinement. As you noticed, arguing that logic is a brute fact (as you claim Oppy does) is quite a bullet to bite. This idea will, at the end of the day, undermine any reasoning for anything at all -- and that, of course, includes any arguments proposed by materialists themselves! But, to add to what you said, I really think what you are interested in is not logic per se, but what we call the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR, for now on).

      I heavily recommend that you read what Ed has to say about PSR in his unforgettable book, Scholastic Metaphysics. I recommend that you read the whole book, but to cut to the chase, you can find the discussion about PSR in chapter 2, section 2.3.3.4 (pp. 137-146) -- and I dare to say that if the way Ed puts the argument cannot convince you of the reality of PSR, nothing ever will.

      Also, it is important to add that if you jump right into the discussion about PSR, you might feel a little bit lost or confused. If that happens, I recommend that you start reading at least from section 2.3 onward, so you can get a grasp of what the discussion revolves around -- since you may find terms like PC (Principle of Causality) and PNC (Principle of Non-Contradiction) and the discussion about it confusing without previous context.

      Hope that helps :D

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  12. David McPikeJuly 20, 2025 at 4:43 PM

    "it will vomit out today’s liberalism and modernism too. When it does, the adulation Pope Francis received upon death may prove as ephemeral as that which Honorius enjoyed."
    And what about the much greater adulation that JPII 'the Great' received, and continues to receive? Presumably that will have to prove ephemeral too, if we are concerned with clarity of magisterial teaching in safeguarding the full deposit of the faith.

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