Debunking a fake St. Cyprian quote on papal infallibility.

ts addic­tion to fake quo­ta­tions is an indict­ment on pop apolo­get­ics. Did you know that St. Augus­tine nev­er said “Roma locu­ta est; causa fini­ta est”? It’s a handy epistro­phe; it’s a fair enough para­phrase; but it was not what Augus­tine wrote. Here are Augustine’s exact words, from Ser­mon CXXXI. (The con­text is Rome’s con­dem­na­tion of Pela­gian­ism.)

Patrolo­gia Lati­na [here]: “Jam de hac causa duo con­cil­ia mis­sa sunt ad Sedem apos­toli­cam, inde eti­am rescrip­ta venerunt; causa fini­ta est; uti­nam ali­quan­do finiatur error ”

 

Schaff [here]: “For already two coun­cils have [Mileve & Carthage], in this cause, sent let­ters to the Apos­tolic See, whence also rescripts have come back. The cause is end­ed: would that the error might some day end!

“Causa fini­ta est” is in Augustine’s text, but (some) Catholic apol­o­gists attempt to make “causa fini­ta” hang upon “Roma locu­ta,” which is not in the text.

“But Alt!” you say. “St. Augus­tine meant ‘Roma locu­ta est,’ etc. What’s wrong with para­phrase?”

Noth­ing’s wrong with para­phrase as long as it’s clear it is a para­phrase, and just as impor­tant­ly that it’s an inter­pre­ta­tion of what Augus­tine meant. (I agree that it’s what Augus­tine meant, but an apol­o­gist should jus­ti­fy the inter­pre­ta­tion, not just quote the words, and espe­cial­ly not just the pop­u­lar para­phrase.)

Some argue that Augus­tine did not think Rome is the final author­i­ty so much as he thought that Scrip­ture is. He does, after all, begin his ser­mon by appeal­ing to the “true teacher,” Jesus Christ, and the basis of his con­dem­na­tion of Pela­gian­ism is not the words of the coun­cils, nor the words of the pope, but the words of Scrip­ture. Mileve, Carthage, and Rome, this argu­ment goes, sim­ply rec­og­nized the final author­i­ty of Scrip­ture. They did not pos­sess final author­i­ty of them­selves.

It’s a strained inter­pre­ta­tion, but pre­ci­sion mat­ters when you get into apolo­getic dis­cus­sions with skep­tics, and it’s far bet­ter for the debate to be about whether Augus­tine meant “Roma locu­ta est” than about whether he said “Roma locu­ta est.” He did­n’t say it, how­ev­er rhetor­i­cal­ly pleas­ing the expres­sion is.

(I should clar­i­fy here that Mr. Ybar­ra’s arti­cle does keep the focus in the right place: argu­ing that “Roma locu­ta est” is what Augus­tine meant while acknowl­edg­ing that it’s not a quo­ta­tion.)

•••

The case is worse with an entire­ly bogus quo­ta­tion attrib­uted to St. Cypri­an of Carthage, which gets quot­ed and requot­ed across Catholic apolo­get­ics cyberspace—apparently with­out any­one both­er­ing to check out the cita­tion. (In fair­ness, the cita­tion is some­times absent, although that’s prob­a­bly worse.) This fake quo­ta­tion is meant to prove that St. Cypri­an taught papal infal­li­bil­i­ty:

Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence apos­tolic faith is derived and whith­er no errors can come?

Near as I can tell, these words, attrib­uted to Cypri­an, entered the coinage of pop apolo­get­ics in 1988, when the Grand Poohbah Karl Keat­ing includ­ed them in his smash hit Catholi­cism and Fun­da­men­tal­ism. Accord­ing to Keat­ing’s foot­note, Cypri­an wrote this in “Epis­tu­lae 59 (55), 14.”

The cita­tion (if not the word­ing) appears to have its ori­gin in Vol. I of The Faith of the Ear­ly Fathers (1970, p. 232), in which Jur­gens quotes from Cypri­an’s let­ter “To Cor­nelius, Con­cern­ing For­tu­na­tus and Feli­cis­simus, or Against the Heretics.” The num­ber­ing of Cypri­an’s let­ters is dif­fer­ent depend­ing on which edi­tion you are look­ing at. In Patrolo­gia Lati­nae, it is let­ter 55. In CUA and ACW, it is let­ter 59. In Schaff, it is let­ter 54.

But in none of these—PL, Schaff, CUA, ACW, or Jurgens—does Cypri­an say what Keat­ing says he says. (PL is a spe­cial case, because the text for the let­ter is miss­ing and we only are giv­en the “argu­ment.” So I’m not sure what the source text is that Patris­tics schol­ars use, although I have found none who trans­late it any­thing like the ver­sion Keat­ing gives us.)

Here is Schaff:

After such things as these, more­over, they still dare—a false bish­op hav­ing been appoint­ed for them by heretics—to set sail and to bear let­ters from schis­mat­ic and pro­fane per­sons to the throne of Peter, and to the chief church whence priest­ly uni­ty takes its source; and not to con­sid­er that these were the Romans whose faith was praised in the preach­ing of the apos­tle, to whom faith­less­ness could have no access.

Cyprien says here that the Roman see is the source of uni­ty; he says that there was no faith­less­ness among Roman Chris­tians in the aggre­gate; he does not say that Rome can not teach error.

CUA is sim­i­lar:

After these things, with a false bish­op appoint­ed for them­selves by the heretics, they dare to sail and to bring let­ters from the heretics and blas­phe­mers to the Chair of Peter and to the prin­ci­pal Church whence sarcer­do­tal uni­ty has sprung, and not to think that those are the Romans whose faith was praised by the Apos­tle preach­ing; to them per­fidy can­not have access.

Again, Cypri­an tells us that Rome is the source of “sac­er­do­tal uni­ty”; he tells us that Roman Chris­tians (as a whole) can not be duped by “per­fidy”; he does not tell us that the Church is inca­pable of teach­ing error.

And here is ACW:

They have had heretics set up for them a pseu­do bish­op, and on top of that they now have the audac­i­ty to sail off car­ry­ing let­ters from schis­mat­ics and out­casts from reli­gion even to the chair of Peter, to the pri­mor­dial church, the very source of epis­co­pal uni­ty; and they do not stop to con­sid­er that they are car­ry­ing them to those same Romans whose faith was so praised and pro­claimed by the Apos­tle, into whose com­pa­ny men with­out faith can, there­fore, find no entry.

Cypri­an teach­es that Rome is “the source of epis­co­pal uni­ty”; he says that Roman Chris­tians will not admit heretics into com­mu­nion with them. He does not say that Rome is inca­pable of teach­ing error.

•••

Ear­li­er today, I told Mr. Keat­ing of the trou­ble I was hav­ing find­ing his quo­ta­tion in the pri­ma­ry texts, and asked him whether he could remember—from the dis­tance of thir­ty-three years—what his source was.

He said he could not remem­ber (which does make sense), but he guessed it might have been Jur­gens.

So I looked at Jur­gens. Vol. I has the very same pas­sage in it, on p. 232, but it does­n’t match Keat­ing; it match­es CUA.

Note that this is the very same cita­tion that Keat­ing uses—“59 (55), 14”—so I don’t doubt that Keat­ing was using Jur­gens, but what’s in Keat­ing is not what’s in Jur­gens; nor is it in any oth­er stan­dard trans­la­tion of Cypri­an’s let­ters. Here’s Keat­ing’s ver­sion again:

Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence apos­tolic faith is derived and whith­er no errors can come?

And that’s not what Cypri­an wrote. To elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the quo­ta­tion is accu­rate but the cita­tion is wrong, I checked the Schaff trans­la­tion of every one of Cypri­an’s let­ters, but I did not find it there either. Nor does Jur­gens have it in any of his quo­ta­tions from Cypri­an.

So where does that word­ing come from? It’s prob­a­bly not pos­si­ble to say; I don’t imag­ine that Mr. Keat­ing made it up, although he was almost cer­tain­ly rely­ing on a bad source (or a bad research assis­tant) and failed to dou­ble and triple check. Evi­dent­ly someone—we’ll nev­er know who—deliberately altered Cypri­an’s word­ing so as to cre­ate a proof-text for papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. Mr. Keat­ing did not ver­i­fy it, his book start­ed a move­ment, and a fake quo­ta­tion spread through the apolo­get­ics sub­cul­ture like a coro­n­avirus.

But Cypri­an did not say it. What he did say is sup­port­ive of Roman pri­ma­cy, but not infal­li­bil­i­ty. One might try to infer infal­li­bil­i­ty out of the gen­uine text; one might claim infal­li­bil­i­ty is the log­i­cal con­se­quence of what Cypri­an does write; but only by argu­ments far too com­pli­cat­ed for pop­u­lar con­sump­tion. Man­u­fac­tur­ing a proof text is eas­i­er. [Update: Also, Hen­ry Karl­son adds on FB, “we know St Cypri­an got into a debate with the Pope [Stephen I] over the valid­i­ty of bap­tism done by heretics. Which shows he did not think the Pope could say no wrong.”]

(N.B., I don’t mean to sug­gest I dis­be­lieve the dog­ma of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. If any­thing, my crit­ics would accuse me of believ­ing it too much: of tak­ing the posi­tion that every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble. I don’t believe that either. I believe exact­ly what Vat­i­can I taught. My only point here is that you should­n’t defend papal infal­li­bil­i­ty on the dubi­ous author­i­ty of fake quo­ta­tions.)

All this is one more rea­son why I say caveat emp­tor when it comes to pop apol­o­gists. A lot of dubi­ous quo­ta­tions get cir­cu­lat­ed and few peo­ple try to trace them back to a pri­ma­ry source. They are repeat­ed on faith (and also, to be hon­est, out of lazi­ness). And they acquire the pseu­do author­i­ty that comes from rep­e­ti­tion.

But this is a les­son that apol­o­gists need to start act­ing more like care­ful schol­ars than like robot­ic regur­gi­ta­tors who mind­less­ly reshare fake quote memes on Face­book.