V. Balance and Imbalance: The Papacy and the Contested Legacies of the Vatican Councils

Abstract

Toward the end of his magisterial study of Catholic ecclesiological struggles spanning 1300 to 1870 CE, Francis Oakley employed a striking image to illustrate the victory of papalism over conciliarism. After Vatican I, the “solitary horseman” left on a desolate “ecclesiological battlefield” many centuries in the making was “none other than the resilient ghost of Bellarmine.” By this image, Oakley meant that Pastor Aeternus’ twin definitions of papal infallibility and jurisdictional supremacy represented the definitive triumph of the ultramontane school, as typified by the counter-reformation Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. For Oakley—and in this point he echoed a common interpretation—Vatican I consigned conciliar and constitutionalist Catholic ecclesiologies to “oblivion.”