Let no man deceive you by any means:
for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first,
and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God,
or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God,
shewing himself that he is God.
2 Thessalonians 2:3,4
"The Donation of Constantine which was used by at least ten popes to justify their claims to temporal power contains this very title:
“. . . as the Blessed Peter is seen to have been constituted vicar of the Son of God [vicarius filii Dei in the original Latin] on the earth, so the Pontiffs who are the representatives of that same chief of the apostles, should obtain from us and our empire the power of a supremacy greater than the clemency of our earthly imperial serenity is seen to have conceded to it.”
The Donation was purportedly a letter written by Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester I. In the letter Constantine supposedly gave temporal power to the pope. We know for certain that the Donation was in existence as early as the ninth century but was used beginning in the eleventh century to justify the outrageous temporal claims of the papacy.
The authenticity of the Donation of Constantine was first questioned in the fifteenth century with the advent of historical criticism. Nicholas of Cusa had serious reservations about the Donation and around 1450 it was proved to be a forgery and a fraud by the scholarly work of Laurentius Valla. Notably, the Vatican did not appreciate Valla’s work as can be seen by the fact that the Office of the Inquisition officially placed his work on its index of forbidden books in 1559.
Roman Catholic apologist, Patrick Madrid, has brushed aside this evidence by stating the obvious, that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. Madrid therefore concludes that it cannot be used as an official and authorized statement of the Roman Catholic Church.
Though it is true that the Donation was a forgery, it is also beyond dispute that the Donation was panned off as authentic and official by various popes and Roman Catholic theologians for hundreds of years to sustain the temporal power of the papacy.
Though a forgery, it was used as an official document by these popes to sustain their claims to temporal power.
---If they used it knowing full well that it was a forgery then they were guilty of deception.
---On the other hand, if they did not know that the Donation was a forgery, what does this say about their infallibility?
It is significant that Gratian’s Decretals (published in 1140 and deemed official by the Roman
In more recent times the title has been applied to the pope by Cardinal Edward Manning in his book The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ (1862). In the first statement, Manning indicts the Roman Catholic nations of Europe of his day for their failure to defend the temporal power of the pope:
“’See this Catholic Church, this Church of God, feeble and weak, rejected even by the very nations called Catholic. There is Catholic France, and Catholic Germany, and Catholic Italy giving up this exploded figment of the temporal power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.’ And so, because the Church seems weak, and the Vicar of the Son of God is renewing the Passion of his Master upon earth, therefore we are scandalized, therefore we turn our faces from him.” (pp. 140, 141).
After mentioning the growing temporal power of the papacy under Gregory I, Leo III, Gregory VII and Alexander III Manning elevates the idea of the temporal power of the pope to the level of ‘a dogma,’ ‘a law of conscience,’ ‘an axiom of the reason,’ and a ‘theological certainty’:
“So that I may say there never was a time when the temporal power of the Vicar of the Son of God, though assailed as we see it, was more firmly rooted throughout the whole unity of the Catholic Church and convictions of its members. . .” (p. 231).
Manning explained why European nations enjoyed stability in the past as compared with the disarray of Europe in the times when he wrote:
“It was a dignified obedience to bow to the Vicar of the Son of God, and to remit the arbitration of their griefs to one whom all wills consented to obey.” (p. 232, emphasis mine)
Lucii Ferraris in his prestigious encyclopedia, Prompta Bibliotheca, also applied the title Vicarius Filii Dei to the pope (1890 edition volume 6, p. 43, Column 2).
In his immensely popular book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 3, Pope John Paul II explained what he understood to be the source of the power of his office:
“The leader of the Catholic Church is defined by the faith as the Vicar of Jesus Christ (and is accepted as such by believers). The Pope is considered the man on earth who represents the Son of God, who ‘takes the place’ of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity.”
Notice that John Paul II not only affirmed that the Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ who “represents the Son of God,”but he also explained what he meant by the word “represents” when he said that he “takes the place” of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity.”The expression “takes the place” is the exact English equivalent of the Latin word “Vicarius”.
Stephen Bohr
