Where the Church is, how she is known, and how she is governed — the marks of the true Church, apostolic succession, and the primacy of the bishop of Rome. The Fathers appeal to the bishop, to the succession from the apostles, and to the witness of Rome; East and West divided over the primacy of Rome; the Reformation found the Church wherever the Gospel is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered; and the First Vatican Council (1870) defined the primacy and infallibility of the pope. Sources span the apostolic age to the nineteenth century; traditions are badged, never refereed.
3 Patristic · 1 Lutheran · 1 Anglican · 1 Reformed · 1 Orthodox · 1 Catholic
“And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
“He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep.”
“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”
“Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of the people also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”
“the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul… For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority.”
“He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
Constantinople IV condemns Photius; it is the last general council held in the East.
East and West divided in the Great Schism. Among the deepest causes was the claim of the bishop of Rome to a universal primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church, which the Eastern churches honoured as a primacy of honour but did not accept as a supremacy.
Lateran I ends lay investiture with ring and crosier — the first council held at Rome.
“Canon 1. Following the example of the holy Fathers, and renewing what the duty of our office requires, we forbid absolutely, by the authority of the Apostolic See, that anyone be ordained or promoted for money in the Church of God. If anyone has obtained ordination or promotion in the Church in such a way, let him lose his rank altogether. Canon 3. We wholly forbid priests, deacons and subdeacons the company of concubines and wives, and cohabitation with any other women, save those whom the Council of Nicaea permitted to dwell with them for reasons of necessity alone — namely a mother, a sister, a paternal aunt, a maternal aunt, or others of that kind.”
“Canon 2. If anyone has obtained by money — the accursed heat of avarice intervening — a prebend, or a priorship, or a deanery, or any ecclesiastical honour or promotion, or any ecclesiastical sacrament whatever, such as chrism or holy oil or the consecration of altars or of churches, let him lose the honour thus ill gotten; and let the buyer, the seller and the go-between be struck with the mark of infamy. And let nothing be demanded of anyone by anybody, either beforehand or afterwards, whether for a meal or under pretext of any custom, nor let him presume to give anything, since that is simoniacal; but let him enjoy freely and without any diminution the dignity and benefice conferred upon him.”
“Chapter 27. As blessed Leo says, although the discipline of the Church, content with the judgement of a priest, does not carry out bloody punishments, it is nevertheless assisted by the enactments of catholic princes, so that men often seek a salutary remedy while they fear that bodily punishment will come upon them. Therefore, since in Gascony, in the Albigensian territory, in the region of Toulouse and in other places the condemned perversity of the heretics — whom some call Cathars, others Patarenes, others Publicani, others by other names — has so far prevailed that they no longer practise their wickedness in secret, as some do, but make their error known publicly and draw the simple and the weak into agreement with them: we decree that they, and those who defend and harbour them, lie under anathema; and under anathema we forbid anyone to presume to keep or foster them in his houses or on his land, or to carry on trade with them.”
“We firmly believe and simply confess that there is one only true God, eternal, immeasurable and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: three Persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature altogether simple. The Father from none, the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit equally from both: without beginning, always and without end; the Father begetting, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial and coequal and coalmighty and coeternal; one principle of all things; creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power from the beginning of time made together out of nothing both orders of creature, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is the angelic and the earthly, and thereafter the human, as it were common to both, composed of spirit and body. For the devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good in their nature, but they made themselves evil of their own doing. Man however sinned at the suggestion of the devil. This Holy Trinity, undivided according to its common essence and distinct according to the properties of the Persons, gave to the human race the doctrine of salvation, first through Moses and the holy Prophets and his other servants, according to the most orderly disposition of the times. And at the last the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, made flesh by the whole Trinity in common, conceived of Mary ever Virgin by the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, made true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one Person in two natures, showed more plainly the way of life. Who, although according to his divinity he is immortal and impassible, the same according to his humanity was made passible and mortal; who also, for the salvation of the human race, having suffered and died upon the wood of the cross, descended to the realms below, rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven — but he descended in the soul and rose again in the flesh, and ascended alike in both — to come at the end of the world, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the reprobate as to the elect: who shall all rise again with their own bodies, which they now bear, that they may receive according to their works, whether these have been good or evil; the one everlasting punishment with the devil, and the other everlasting glory with Christ. There is moreover one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved; in which Jesus Christ himself is both priest and sacrifice, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread having been transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power, so that, to accomplish the mystery of unity, we ourselves may receive of what is his what he himself received of what is ours. And this sacrament no one at all can confect but a priest who has been rightly ordained according to the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ himself granted to the Apostles and their successors. But the sacrament of baptism — which is consecrated in water at the invocation of God and the undivided Trinity, namely of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — rightly conferred by anyone in the form of the Church, profits unto salvation both little ones and adults. And if anyone, after receiving baptism, has fallen into sin, he can always be restored through true penance. Moreover not only virgins and the continent, but also the married, pleasing God by right faith and good works, deserve to come to eternal blessedness.”
Lyons II adds the word filioque to the creed of Constantinople, and effects a reunion with the Greek Church that does not hold.
“With faithful and devout profession we confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one principle, not by two spirations but by a single spiration. This the most holy Roman Church, mother and teacher of all the faithful, has professed, preached and taught until now; this she firmly holds, preaches, professes and teaches. This is the unchangeable and true judgement of the orthodox Fathers and Doctors, Latin and Greek alike. But because some, through ignorance of the aforesaid irrefutable truth, have fallen into various errors, we, desiring to bar the way to errors of this kind, with the approval of the sacred Council condemn and reprove those who shall presume to deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, or who with rash daring shall assert that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from two principles and not as from one.”
Constance ends the Western Schism by electing Martin V — three claimants to the papacy reduced to one.
At Florence a union with the Greek Church is signed. It does not last.
“In the name of the Holy Trinity, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with the approval of this sacred universal Council of Florence we define that this truth of faith be believed and accepted by all Christians, and that all so profess it: that the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and by a single spiration; declaring that what the holy Doctors and Fathers say — that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son — tends to this understanding, that by it is signified that the Son too is, according to the Greeks the cause, and according to the Latins the principle, of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, as is the Father. And since all that is the Father's, the Father himself in begetting gave to his only-begotten Son, save being Father, this very thing — that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son — the Son himself has eternally from the Father, by whom he was likewise eternally begotten. We define besides that the explanation of those words "Filioque" was lawfully and reasonably added to the Symbol for the sake of declaring the truth, and under the necessity then pressing. Likewise, that the body of Christ is truly confected in unleavened or in leavened wheaten bread, and that priests ought to confect the body of the Lord in either one of these, each according to the custom of his own Church, whether western or eastern.”
“The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
“The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.”
“The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof.”
“The Church is a divinely instituted community of men, united by the orthodox faith, the law of God, the hierarchy, and the Sacraments.”
“Thou art constituted the rock upon which, as a foundation, I will build my Church, and that so firmly, as not to suffer the gates (i.e. the powers) of hell to prevail against its foundation… Christ therefore here promises to Peter, that he and his successors should be to the end, as long as the Church should last, its supreme pastors and princes.”
The First Vatican Council, under Pope Pius IX, defined the universal primacy of jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome over the whole Church, and his infallibility when, speaking ex cathedra, he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.
“The same holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things; 'for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,' but that it pleased his wisdom and bounty to reveal himself, and the eternal decrees of his will, to mankind by another and a supernatural way : as the Apostle says, ' God, having spoken on divers occasions, and many ways, in times past, to the Fathers by the Prophets; last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by his Son.' It is to be ascribed to this divine revelation, that such truths among things divine as of themselves are not beyond human reason, can, even in the present condition of mankind, be known by every one with facility, with firm assurance, and with no admixture of error.”
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.