Ecumenical Councils - Infallible?

[Light of the East]

I was scouring the Internet and saw the statement that an ecumenical council is considered infallible. Yet I found this post on another site:

“As with many other such canons, they may be revoked or modified, formally or informally, in the light of changed circumstances and requirements of the faithful and the Church. In practice, many organizational and institutional canons, even of ecumenical councils, have fallen by the wayside or otherwise been superseded in practice even in the absence of formal decisions to rescind them by a later council.”

This is from St. Vladimir's Seminary.

Now if a council is infallible, then how is it possible that a canon can be revoked or modified? You don't modify or revoke truth, but what am I missing here?

 

[ArmyMatt]

canons are guides, not hard rules unless they are still applicable. and those which might have been overturned come back in force if/when we find ourselves in an earlier situation.

as an example, subdeacons are forbidden to wear an orarion according to older canons. the reason was because the orarion used to be a single, square cloth on the shoulder. subdeacons were forbidden back then because their would have been no way to tell the difference between the two ranks. since nowadays, deacons have cuffs and wear and use theirs differently, that canon isn't in effect. but if we'd go back to the older practice, it would be.

the synodal statements and anathemas, however, are not subject to debate.

 

[HTacianas]

I was scouring the Internet and saw the statement that an ecumenical council is considered infallible. Yet I found this post on another site:

“As with many other such canons, they may be revoked or modified, formally or informally, in the light of changed circumstances and requirements of the faithful and the Church. In practice, many organizational and institutional canons, even of ecumenical councils, have fallen by the wayside or otherwise been superseded in practice even in the absence of formal decisions to rescind them by a later council.”

This is from St. Vladimir's Seminary.

Now if a council is infallible, then how is it possible that a canon can be revoked or modified? You don't modify or revoke truth, but what am I missing here?

Father Matt hit on it above. It depends on what canons you are referring to. There is a canon (I forget where) that prohibits priests from entering a tavern. How do we determine the infallibility of prohibiting a priest from entering a tavern? But then the Nicene Creed states "we believe in one God". That is infallible.

 

[ArmyMatt]

if you want another example, there is a canon which says we can't go to the theater because at the time of the canon, the theater was tied in with pagan worship. so something like the movie Ostrov, wouldn't have been on the radar.

 

[abacabb3]

Well, I think we are conflating terms here. The Rudder says explicitly that Ecumenical Councils were superintended by God. The 1351 Palamite Council explicitly states the minutes of the doucil, and not just the decrees, is doctrinally binding. Father Richard Price, the foremost living scholar of ecumenical councils, calls it "conciliar fundamentalism."

This aside, we are not Roman Catholics in that we say that "faith and morals are infallible, disciplines are fallible." Rather, we recognize canonical practices as ideals and in accordance with the canon of st basil and the last canon of trullo, allow "economia" (lit. translation: "discretion") in the applying of canons for the good of individual salvation. And so, canons can be bent, not abrogated, on an individual basis. Canons can also be improved when the are disciplinary (the allowance of married clergy, especially cohabitating married clergy as was the custom in Carthage, was done away with). However, we are not purposely picking and choosing what is infallible and what is canonical.

So when Moses allowed divorce, Christ said, he did so as an economy to man's weakness. Did God not speak through Moses? Was God speaking something fallible? Of course not. The Fallible vs. Infallible paradigm is a false one and it comes from Roman Catholic epistemology.