(LifeSiteNews) — The crisis facing the Church today requires us to examine carefully the Church’s teachings on the papacy. The science of theology is the primary source to which we must refer to find solutions to the crisis. But the theological science is supported by a number of other disciplines. One of the most important of these is history.
The life of Pope St. Damasus I, whose feast the Church celebrates today, helps us to see what the role of the Supreme Pontiff is within the Church.
St. Damasus is an historically important figure. In him we see the emergence of the papacy as a major institution in Roman civic and political life. When Damasus was born around the year 304, the Church was suffering under the persecution of Emperor Diocletian – the greatest persecution so far in the Church’s history. Yet when he died, in 384, Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. A few years earlier, Emperor Theodosius the Great, through the edict “De fide Catholica,” had made Catholicism the official religion of the Roman state.
In this decree Theodosius specifies that the authentic Christian religion is that delivered to St. Peter, preserved by faithful tradition, and taught by Pope St Damasus I:
It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness.
Election to the Roman Pontificate
Damasus was probably born and grew up in Rome. He was elected pope in 366 and reigned until his death in 384. His election was marked by a schism, with a minority faction backing an alternative candidate called Ursinus. The party of this antipope, who later publicly professed the Arian heresy, tried to undermine Damasus by making false accusations against him, including of adultery. The Emperor Gratian investigated the matter and declared the charge against him baseless. A synod of 44 bishops met to examine the accusations, found the saint to be innocent, and excommunicated his accusers.
St. Jerome thought very highly of Pope Damasus, calling him “a man of the greatest worth; a man whose equal could not be found, well versed in the holy Scriptures, and a virgin Doctor of the virgin Church.”1
St. Damasus used synods in Rome to condemn heresies
St. Damasus defended and preserved Catholic doctrine against the heresies sweeping through the Church at that time. A primary means of doing so was by holding synods in Rome. Through multiple synods, such as those held in the years 368, 369, 377, 381, and 382, he condemned heresies and taught the Catholic faith. In particular, he condemned a sequence of Christological heresies, which in different ways denied Catholic doctrine on the manner in which the divine and human are united in Christ. For example, at the Roman synod of 382 he anathematised 24 heretical propositions relating to the nature of Christ.
In 381 he sent his legates to Council of Constantinople, and approved its decrees, making it the Fourth Ecumenical Council of the Church. Constantinople I promulgated the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed to expand the Nicene creed in order to safeguard it from heretical interpretations.
In 382, again through a synod held in Rome, he defined which books of scripture were canonical. He commissioned St. Jerome to produce a new translation of these books into Latin. This translation, the Vulgate, is still used by the Church today.
A letter from St. Jerome to St. Damasus from Egypt, at a time when heresies were multiplying, gives a beautiful account of the status of the Roman Church as supreme teacher of the faith, itself unstained by heresy.
St. Jerome wrote:
I think it my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul. I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ. The wide space of sea and land that lies between us cannot deter me from searching for ‘the pearl of great price.’ ‘Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ Evil children have squandered their patrimony; you alone keep your heritage intact. The fruitful soil of Rome, when it receives the pure seed of the Lord, bears fruit an hundredfold; but here the seed grain is choked in the furrows and nothing grows but darnel or oats. In the West the Sun of righteousness is even now rising; in the East, Lucifer, who fell from heaven, has once more set his throne above the stars. ‘You are the light of the world,’ ‘you are the salt of the earth,’ you are ‘vessels of gold and of silver.’ Here are vessels of wood or of earth, which wait for the rod of iron, and eternal fire.
He continued:
Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the Ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails… He that gathers not with you scatters; he that is not of Christ is of Antichrist.2
This then is the Roman Church known by Catholics for centuries: supreme and unsullied by heresy or heretics. As Pope St. Damasus I himself taught in a decree of 382:
[T]he holy Roman Church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of other churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, who says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall have bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall have loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ [Mt 16:18–19]. The first see, therefore, is that of Peter the apostle, that of the Roman Church, which has neither stain nor blemish nor anything like it.3
FOOTNOTES
1. Quoted by Dom Gueranger, in The Liturgical Year: Volume I.
2. Letter of Jerome to Pope St Damasus, 376.
3. Decree of St Damasus, 382.