Introduction: Today, January 1, marks the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, in the Catholic Church. It is beyond the scope of the present post to present the history of the feast day, as well as to detail the Christological…
Category: The Papacy
Francis Dvornik on Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon
The Council of Chalcedon was convened in A.D. 451 in order to combat the heresy of Monophysitism. While Nestorianism – condemned at the previous Council of Ephesus twenty years prior and historically attributed to Nestorius – held that Christ is…
Rome, Babylon, and 1 Peter 5:13
In wrapping up his First Epistle, the Apostle Peter makes a cryptic reference to his location, stating that, “The church that is in Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you: and so doth my son Mark.”[1] The “Mark” referenced here…
Some Musings on Papal Infallibility
In his work Innocent III and the Crown of Aragon: The Limits of Papal Authority, Damian Smith shares the words that Giovanni Capocci is supposed to have said to that Pope: ‘Your words are God’s words, but your works are…
Theodore Abu Qurrah and the Papacy
Theodore Abu Qurrah was the Melkite Bishop of Haran (Upper Mesopotamia) who lived in the 9th century A.D. As such, he found himself living under Muslim rule. Besides being one of the first Christian authors to write in Arabic, he…