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Updated: September 25, 2025
Let those who are disposed to laugh at this notable "Ecumenical Council of the Hat" consider that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein grave bishops and learned fathers took each other by the beard upon matters of far less practical importance.
"The whole fact, I suppose, is that if there is anything in Succession, Tradition, Infallibility, Church organism and form, it is in the Catholic Church, and our business will be to stop this controversy and call an Ecumenical Council which shall settle these matters according to the Bible, Tradition, and the light of the Church."
With these preliminary explanations and considerations to guide us in our interpretation, we will now give the solemn teaching on the subject, as laid down in the third chapter of the Pastor Æternus, drawn up and duly promulgated by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican; and therefore of supreme authority.
Peter's charge over the whole Church, then, in the judgment of Gregory, had descended to himself, as he wrote to the empress, "though the sins of Gregory, who is Peter's unworthy servant, are great, the sins of the Apostle are none," to justify the treatment he has met with in this assumption by another of the title Ecumenical.
Either of presbyters, sent from the several classical presbyteries within a province, hence called provincial synods: 2. Or of presbyters, sent from the several provincial synods within a nation, hence called national synods: 3. Or of presbyters, delegated or sent from the several national churches throughout the Christian world, hence called ecumenical synods, or universal and general councils.
Thus the whole condition of things became altered; and the calling together of an Ecumenical Council a very simple affair in the infancy of the Church was becoming daily more and more difficult.
This Pontiff denounced the Pragmatic at the Council of Mantua in 1460 as "a blot which disfigured the Church of France; a decree which no ecumenical council would have passed nor any pope have confirmed; a principle of confusion in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Neither the political nor the military nor the ecclesiastical ideals of the early middle ages were based upon nationality, but rather on that ecumenical community of tradition which still made the rule of Rome, whether in Church or State, a living reality. In the thirteenth century the papal tradition was still at its height.
It is to the Pope in ecumenical council that we look, as to the normal seat of infallibility: now there have been only eighteen such councils since Christianity was an average of one to a century and of these councils some passed no doctrinal decree at all, others were employed on only one, and many of them were concerned with only elementary points of the Creed.
In matters of faith it is bound by the decisions of the ancient Ecumenical Councils, but in all other respects it enjoys complete independence and autonomy. * Or Greek Orthodox Church, as it is sometimes called.
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