Reflections on the Ubi v. Ybarra Debate - Part 2

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Contents - Part 1

• Preliminary Reflections

• Critical Reflections:

  • Problems with Debate Subject and Moderation

  • The Autocracy Straw-Man

  • Sophistical linguistic objections

  • “Judging” St. Leo’s Tome at Chalcedon?

Contents - Part 2

• Critical Reflections Continued:

  • Misreading Gasser’s Relatio

  • Erick’s minimal facts approach

  • Selective Skepticism

  • Closing Remarks

Postscriptum on “auctoritas”

Critical reflections continued:

Misreading Gasser’s Relatio

After the First Vatican Council, Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser published an official theological explanation of the council’s definition of papal infallibility—known as the Relatio. This document outlined not only what the Council defined, but the core reasons why.

First, as I noted in Part 1, the Relatio addresses papal infallibility, not papal supremacy (or primacy). So it was largely irrelevant to the actual resolution of the debate between Denny and Erick, which centered on the nature of primacy in the 5th and 6th centuries of the Church.

In any case, during the debate, Denny repeated several complaints he’s raised before against the Relatio.¹ Since I don’t recall exactly which ones he mentioned, I’ll briefly respond to all of them here.

Claim 1: Denny said that the Relatio “did not include the original libellus [i.e., the Formula of Pope Hormisdas] in his three examples [of] belief in papal infallibility”, but only “the version of the libellus from [Constantinople IV (869-870)].”

Response: This is a red herring. If it matters which version is used, then there must be a meaningful conflict between them. But there is no conflict, so the version is irrelevant. Gasser cites Constantinople IV because it incorporated the Formula of Pope Hormisdas into its formal decrees. He offers analysis of the wording and explains the evidential value of it. If Denny thinks Gasser is mistaken in some way, he doesn’t tell us how.

Claim 2: The “language in the original libellus only lends itself to a pro-Vatican I understanding of papal prerogatives if one starts from that viewpoint.”

Response: quod affirmatur, gratis negatur.

Claim 3: Constantinople IV “had only a dozen bishops and legates in attendance” for the [first] session in which the Formula was presented.

Response: For the sake of argument, let’s assume he’s right. Even still, this assertion is another red herring. The Council Fathers had plenty of time after the first session—nine more sessions, in fact—to make any corrections or retractions on the papal claims. Instead, in Sessions 3, 4, and 7 (if not others), the Council Fathers repeat and build on the papal claims from Session 1. More importantly, if a council is valid and authoritative, then it doesn’t matter if it was sparsely attended compared to others.² If Denny rejects that council, he should say so and explain why. If he accepts it, then comments about attendance are mere smoke and mirrors.

Claim 4: Gasser provides only two other “examples” of infallibility beyond Constantinople IV—namely, the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Florence (1438–1445). If papal infallibility is true, then why did bishop Gasser only cite a few councils?

Response: The objection misses the point. Denny fails to distinguish between the exercise of infallibility and the affirmation of it, and between indirect and direct affirmation.³ Gasser makes these distinctions, and further narrows the field by focusing only on a subset of direct affirmations—specifically, “arguments for the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff as those arguments are drawn from the public documents [of the Church].”⁴ His aim was not to list every possible instance of the charism's use, nor even every direct witness to it, but only to show where it had been explicitly affirmed in public conciliar acts. As Gasser’s translator and commentator, Fr. James T. O’Connor, explains, the three councils Gasser cited were chosen precisely for their public, authoritative affirmations and the joint involvement of East and West.⁵

It’s also worth noting that some documents function both as an exercise and an affirmation of infallibility. This is plausibly true, e.g., of Pope St. Agatho’s letter to the Third Council of Constantinople—partly why Gasser cites Florence, which drew on that letter.

In sum, Gasser acknowledged the wider field of relevant evidence, but deliberately restricted himself to a principled and tightly defined subset. And if one such public, conciliar affirmation suffices, then three is more than enough. Imagine dismissing a Supreme Court ruling because it only decided an issue once.

If Denny’s complaint is that two of Gasser’s three cited councils—Lyons II and Florence—are recognized as ecumenical only by the Catholic Church, then the response is simple: so what? Gasser was a Catholic bishop addressing a Catholic council. He cited the sources his Church holds as authoritative. What a Russian Orthodox layman thinks of those sources is beside the point. If he accepted them, then he would have every right to use them—and even one would be enough.

In the end, Gasser didn’t claim to give the exhaustive case for papal infallibility, only a focused one, built on public conciliar affirmations with ecumenical weight. He gave three. That’s not deficiency; that’s economy, and it’s more than enough.

At one point in the debate, Denny asked Erick whether Pope Leo’s Tome was infallible, and then pressed further: why didn’t Gasser cite it as evidence?

Erick, under cross-examination, suggested it may have had something to do with a theory of St. Bellarmine. But this is speculative and beside the point.

Gasser does not cite Bellarmine on Leo’s Tome. More importantly, while he does reference Leo’s Tome, he does not treat it as part of the narrow category of direct, public conciliar affirmations he set out to examine. The Tome was a letter—certainly an exercise of infallibility, but not a conciliar affirmation of it. Gasser’s framework excluded such examples not because they lacked evidential value, but because they did not meet the strict criterion he set: public, conciliar statements with explicit backing from both East and West.

It’s also possible Gasser viewed Chalcedon’s reception of the Tome as having greater evidential weight for proving papal supremacy than for infallibility. Either way, its omission from the short list of evidence was principled, not evasive. Gasser set a clear evidential standard and applied it consistently. Denny may not like the standard, but that’s not the same as refuting it.

Erick’s minimal facts approach

At one point in the debate, Erick noted that to prove his position, he only needed to establish a small set of facts. Thus, he employed what’s called a “minimal facts approach” to the evidence. This is similar to the ways in which Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig argue for Christ’s resurrection.

In what might be the intellectual low point of the debate, Denny appeared to criticize Erick for using the minimal facts approach. He said something to the effect of: “you’re using minimal facts because you don’t have more evidence.”

A minimal facts approach is a rhetorical strategy that aims to build the strongest possible case on the narrowest set of commonly accepted premises. Its value lies in its restraint: it deliberately limits the argument to those facts that both sides already acknowledge—or that are at least very difficult to deny. By doing so, it reduces the cognitive and rhetorical burden on your opponent. The fewer commitments needed to reach your conclusion, the more compelling the argument becomes.

This is particularly effective in debates about papal supremacy. Erick doesn’t need to prove the entire Catholic ecclesiology up front. He can start with what’s widely attested or most easily established. If the minimal facts, taken together, yield the conclusion that Rome occupied a role of papal supremacy, then the strategy has succeeded.

It’s one thing to object that your opponent doesn’t have the minimal amount of facts to begin with. But to assert that your opponent uses the approach “because he doesn’t have more evidence” is to miss the point entirely. The whole power of the method lies in how little it requires. If a judgment can be rendered on the basis of agreed facts, why insist on more, especially when trying to convince a hardened skeptic?

This is exactly how a judge instructs a jury in a court of law. The judge doesn’t say, “Render a verdict only if the prosecution gives you every possible piece of evidence.” Rather, he gives the jury a set of minimal legal criteria: “If you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did X, Y, and Z, then you must return a verdict of guilty.” That’s the threshold. And if those facts are established, then the case is settled—even if the prosecution had much more it could have brought forward.

Now imagine the defense, like Denny, mocking a verdict: “Ha! The jury convicted even though the prosecution didn’t have any more evidence than the minimum!” That would be absurd. The point is not that more evidence wasn’t offered or couldn’t be offered, but that more wasn’t needed. The minimum was sufficient.

So it is with the minimal facts case for papal supremacy. If a small set of basic, historical facts are enough to ground the claim, then no further burden remains. The objection that “you’re only using minimal facts because you don’t have more” misunderstands both the method and the point of the argument. When the minimum gets the job done, that’s not a retreat—it’s a triumph of parsimony and persuasion.

Selective skepticism

The Ecumenical Councils issued decrees on matters that needed authoritative resolution, which by definition means that those matters were not fully settled beforehand. If we follow Denny’s line of skepticism toward Vatican I, we would have to apply the same scrutiny to every Ecumenical Council. For example, the precise formulation of the Trinity—one substance and three persons—was not formally defined until Nicaea. Arians at the time demanded evidence for that articulation from the first three centuries, just as many skeptics today demand patristic proof for the definitions issued at Vatican I. But if the Nicene position had already been clear and uncontested, the Council would have been unnecessary.

This is what the late Byzantine scholar Francis Dvornik said about the first Council:

The first task of theological speculation among the Christians was a clearer definition of the relation of Father, Son and the Holy Ghost to each other with regard to their common divine nature.⁶ [emphasis mine]

The conceptual difficulties that called for a clear definition at Nicaea are well known. For example:

Homoousion was indeed used by philosophical writers to signify “of the same or similar substance”; but as the unity of the Divine nature wasn’t questioned, the word carried the fuller meaning: “of one and the same substance”. However, not only is homos ambiguous; the word ousia itself was often taken as equivalent to hypostasis (person), as apparently is the case in the anathema attached to the Nicene Symbol. And therefore the affirmation of the identity of nature might be taken in the heretical sense of the Sabellians, who denied the distinction of person. It was only after many years of controversy that the two words acquired their distinct meanings, and the orthodox were able to describe the Trinity as one in ousia and three in hypostasis or persona.⁷

Closing Remarks

My reflections have gone long enough, and although I have left many good topics on the table, I can’t speak to everything, and must bring it to an end.

At the heart of this debate is a recurring objection: “Where is Vatican I in the early Church?” But this is a rhetorical sleight of hand. The Catholic claim is not that every detail of Vatican I was exactly articulated or universally acknowledged from the day Christ Ascended. The claim is that the essential lineaments of the papal office—its primacy, its normative teaching authority, its role as visible source of unity—were already present and operating, even if not always fully understood or accepted. That is what Vatican I defined. It did not invent the papacy; it defined what had been lived, witnessed, disputed, and defended over centuries.

If the objection is that no single Church Father held the entire Vatican I schema in his head, then it’s a straw man, and a tu quoque waiting to happen. Find us a Father who held the exact Nicene articulation of the Trinity, or the Christology of Chalcedon, or the elaborate iconographic theology of the Seventh Council. You won’t. Aspects of the faith are often lived and guarded in practice before they are clearly expressed in doctrine. The theology follows the fact.

Take infant baptism. It was practiced from the earliest centuries. But the rationale behind it—its connection to original sin, its necessity, its sacramental logic—was only fully articulated later, particularly in Augustine’s debates with the Pelagians. Likewise, the Church’s affirmation of papal infallibility did not spring from abstraction but from centuries of grappling with the Petrine office: its claims, its failures, its function as a center of unity and doctrinal fidelity. Over time, and often in crisis, the Church came to see what it already knew, and gave it form.

This is what we call doctrinal development.⁸ It is not invention, nor mutation, but clarification—drawing out implications latent in the depositum fidei. A true development deepens the Church’s grasp of what has been revealed once for all; a contradiction would be a corruption, not a development. The line between the two is not always neat, in terms of our ability to discern it, but the principle is plain.

So when critics cry, “Where is Vatican I in the early Church?”, the answer is simple: it’s right where Nicea is, where Chalcedon is, where the theology of icons is—in seed, in struggle, in slow, hard-won clarity. If you demand perfect definition at the start, you will be left with few doctrines—if any—by the end.

Far from being a 19th century novelty, we find the idea of development of doctrine clearly expressed in the Fathers. The foremost example is St. Vincent of Lerins⁹, but St. Augustine expounds the idea himself, noting the role that heresies play in driving development:

For by heretics has been vindicated the Catholic Church, and by those that think evil have been proved those that think well. For many things lay hid in the Scriptures: and when heretics had been cut off, with questions they troubled the Church of God: then those things were opened which lay hid, and the will of God was understood.

…

Therefore many men that could understand and expound the Scriptures very excellently, were hidden among the people of God: but they did not declare the solution of difficult questions, when no reviler again urged them. For was the Trinity perfectly treated of before the Arians snarled thereat? Was repentance perfectly treated of before the Novatians opposed? So not perfectly of Baptism was it treated, before rebaptizers, removed outside, contradicted; nor of the very oneness of Christ were the doctrines clearly stated which have been stated, save after that this separation [Donatism] began to press upon the weak: in order that they that knew how to treat of and solve these questions (lest the weak should perish vexed with the questions of the ungodly), by their discourses and disputations, should bring out unto open day the dark things of the Law… This obscure sense see in what manner the Apostle brings out into light; It is needful, he says, that also heresies there be, in order that men proved may be made manifest among you. 1 Corinthians 11:19 What is “men proved”? Proved with silver, proved with the word. What is “may be made manifest”? May be brought out. Wherefore this? Because of heretics.¹⁰ [emphasis mine]

We Catholics must do a better job explaining what development means and how it is founded on Tradition, highlighting how Christians of every stripe (especially Eastern Orthodox) are committed to it whether they like it or not. Until we do, the straw-manning will continue unabated.

If anyone would like to read more of my work on these topics, please see my review of Michael Whelton’s book Two Paths, as well as a series of letters back and forth about Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Thanks for reading, and happy Ascension! May God bless all of us as we seek truth and unity together.

1. https://ubipetrusibiecclesia.com/2022/04/21/the-libellus-of-hormisdas-and-the-failure-of-policy/

2. There is some controversy around the legitimacy of the Council of 869-870, though not in a way that supports Denny’s point. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Erick details it in Chapter 24 “Photian Councils and the Papacy (859-880)” of his book The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2022). Here’s a highlight of what Erick says.

The Council of Constantinople in 869 is commonly referred to as the Eighth Ecumenical Council in the West. The debate around it intensified after Francis Dvornik’s influential dissertation on Photius. The short version is this: several sources suggest that the 869 council was annulled by the Council of 879, which was itself ratified by Pope John VIII in 880. However, the data is conflicting.

For instance, Richard Price and Joseph Montinaro argue that the 869 council may not have even been ratified by Pope Hadrian II in the first place. Meanwhile, 11th-century Latin sources indicate that canonists at the time may have regarded the 879 council—which explicitly annulled 869—as ecumenical. Yet we also find Latin canonists from the same period referring to the canons of 869 as ecumenical.

That said, no one at the 879 council annulled 869 on the grounds of rejecting its papal theology. That would be absurd, because the 879 council contains even more explicit affirmations of papal authority than 869 does. The annulment, if it happened, was procedural, not doctrinal. By 879, it had become widely accepted that Photius’s prior excommunication (at 869) had been based on false reports. The purpose of 879 was to exonerate Photius, restore him to the patriarchate, and overturn the perceived injustice of the earlier condemnation. That makes sense, since roughly 95% of the content of the 869 council concerns Photius’s condemnation.

What followed, however, is something of a historical oddity. From the 11th century onward, Rome came to regard 869 as both valid and ecumenical—and no one seems to have commented on the alleged annulent at 879.

There’s some awkwardness on the Eastern side as well. Even after 879, Greek sources do not uniformly refer to that council as ecumenical. Many still count only seven ecumenical councils well into the second millennium. Latin sources do the same. For example, Cardinal Humbert—the man who placed the bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia in 1054—counts only seven ecumenical councils, more than 150 years after 879.

In the end, the councils held in Constantinople in the 9th century (861, 863, 867, 869, 879, and others) remain somewhat shrouded in obscurity. Historians wish we had more evidence.

So, when Eastern Orthodox polemicists cite the alleged annulment of 869 to challenge the Catholic position, Catholics can simply point them to the more explicit papal claims affirmed at 879. Even if one council truly undermined the other, it’s not in the win they think it is.

3. Vincent Ferrer Gasser, The Gift of Infallibility: The Official Relatio on Infallibility of Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser at Vatican Council I, translated with commentary by Fr. James T. O’Connor (Ignatius Press, 2008), p. 30. Specifically, he distinguishes “indirect witness or assent (by reason of its mode of acting)” with “direct assent or witness by explicit words.” The latter can be divided into two: statements of Fathers and public documents of the Church (conciliar decrees).

4. Ibid., 21. Emphasis mine.

5. Ibid., 34-35. See footnote on those pages.

6. The Ecumenical Councils, (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961), 13.

7. Bridge, J. (1910). “Homoousion”. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07449a.htm

8. The concept of doctrinal development and the instances of it are well established. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1978); and John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).

9. See Eduardo Echeverria, “Saint Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine,” in The Faith Once for All Delivered: Doctrinal Authority in Catholic Theology, ed. Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023).

10. Exposition on Psalm 55, vv. 21–22. Translated by J.E. Tweed. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8, edited by Philip Schaff. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801055.htm. For a more modern translation of this passage, see The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Vol. III/17, Expositions of the Psalms, Psalms 51–72. Edited by John Rotelle, O.S.A. Translated by Maria Boulding, O.S.B. New York: New City Press, 2001, 74–75.