Your article is highly interesting. I would like, in the hope that it hasn't been discussed already, to tender an question/objection and a nitpick.

(1) Is there any evidence that the mediaevals understood "submission to the pontiff" ín the same sense you do? Because taken at face value it sounds like Boniface is saying "no going to Heaven unless you do everything I tell you", which kinda goes against what Christ said regarding salvation. What did mediaevals do with the apparent contradiction? Did they have the nuanced opinion you have? Were they politely ignoring the Pope whenever they put on miracle plays ending in Christ judging the sheep and the goats? Did they just leave it for someone else to figure out? Inquiring minds want to know.

(2) It's Pope Nicholas III that Dante meets in Hell; Nick indicates he's expecting the pleasure of Boniface's company in a few years, tho.

James A.
Godescalc | Homepage | 10.01.07 - 1:53 pm | #

1) If I meet any medievals, I will ask them. Till then, we've basically got the document. We do know that converting Orthodox were not required to be baptised and that Orthodox sacraments were considered valid.

The question is not, what did medievals think? The question is "Is Lumen Gentium intrinsically irreconcilable with Unam Sanctam?" I think it obvious it is not.

2) I stand corrected.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 10.01.07 - 1:58 pm | #

Intrinsic irreconcilability of U.S. & L.G.may be the most important question for Catholics and other interested parties today. But the question of whether the mediaevals could have reconciled U.S. and the Gospels is still not trivial, because if they couldn't, then Benedict VIII was de facto pitting his authority against that of Scripture, and presenting people with a choice between accepting his words and accepting Christ's. If that was the state of mediaeval Poping, that's a pretty good argument for the Reformation (and a modern Protestant could still conceivably use Unam Sanctam as an argument against the Church and dismiss your understanding of "submission" as trying to weasel out of the contradiction.) Hence my question, which I realise may have seemed a little arbitrary.

Thanks for the answer, anyway.
Godescalc | Homepage | 10.02.07 - 4:26 pm | #

Intrinsic irreconcilability of U.S. & L.G.may be the most important question for Catholics and other interested parties today.

Actually, it's really only a modestly important question for *anti*-Catholics (they usually go for less abstruse issues). It's not important for Catholics because, as I have shown, the documents are not intrinsically irreconcilable with either Scripture or each other.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 10.02.07 - 4:36 pm | #