The term Pope St. Celestine uses for “authority” is “auctoritas” and for further information on it, read Prof. Pollman’s article on its usage in Latin Patristics found here. It has nothing to do with an juridical power (“potestas”) but in this case, aside from simply referring to prestige, it refers to the ability to confirm others in their exercises of power. In this case, St. Celestine is simply saying he pre-approves whatever it is St. Cyril needs to be done and he has the full backing of Rome.

Further, this decision to excommunicate Nestorius comes not from Pope St. Celestine alone but from the Roman Synod headed by him.[2] In other words, if Mr. Ybarra wants to prove an instance of universal immediate and ordinary papal jurisdiction, he will need to provide an example of a pope excommunicating a prelate without the assistance of a council because synods deposing, not just breaking communion but actually condemning and deposing, clerics both within their realm and outside of their realm were exceptionally common. Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria deposed Patriarch Domnus of Antioch, Bl. Theodoret of Cyr, Patriarch St. Flavian of Constantinople, Ibas of Edessa, and other clerics at the Robber Synod of Ephesus in 449 and despite Pope St. Leo claiming to have undone the depositions, those depositions were considered valid enough that no small time was spent within the Acts of Chalcedon to canonically reversing them [3], which begs the question: if the depositions are outside of the rights of the synods issuing them, there is absolutely no reason to canonically undo them as canonically undoing them would simply lend credence to their validity in the first place. Even in the case of Domnus of Antioch, St. Leo accepted communion with his successor, Maximus of Antioch and therefore accepted the deposition as valid and this is how the papal legal, Paschasinus, argues. (Acts of Chalcedon, 10:144)

Other examples include the famed Origen of Alexandria who, years after leaving Alexandria and being ordained by a bishop in Caesarea, was deposed from the priesthood by the Synod of Alexandria [4]. Much the same, St. John Chrysostom deposes many bishops throughout what is now Turkey for corruption and simony [5] long before that area was considered part of Constantinople’s patriarchate. We even have an instance from the Acacian Schism in which Pope St. Damasus, supposedly a proponent of papal supremacy, tells Faustus that any bishop in any place and at any time could have deposed Bl. Acacius for heresy [6]. This was not limited to bishops either as Pelagius and Celestius, two laymen, were condemned for heresy by a council in Carthage years after they had left North Africa in 418. In fact, in the seventh session as of the Council of Ephesus and again in the letter of the Council to Pope St. Celestine, the bishops mention Patriarch John of Antioch bringing metropolitans with him who were currently deposed from their sees. Had Patriarch John been the one to depose them, he would not have brought them, which means they were Antiochian bishops deposed by someone other than the Patriarch of Antioch [7]. The examples go on and on but this was nothing specific to the Roman pontiff.

Erick: This particular Pope of Rome happens to be venerated by not just Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but also the Coptic Orthodox Church. And yet, it is of this Pope that Anglican Patristics scholar, J.N.D. Kelly, describes in the following terms:

“In his correspondence and through his legates at the Council Celestine repeatedly asserted, with an unprecedented insistence, the Pope’s claim, as successor and living representative of St. Peter, to paternal oversight of the entire Church, Eastern no less than Western“ (Oxford Dictionary of Pope, Pg. 42)

But this begs the question: what exactly is “paternal oversight”? Mr. Ybarra just uncritically assumes it means “universal immediate jurisdiction.” St. Celestine himself describes it as “solicitude,”[8] a word commonly used by the Popes of Rome to describe their role and it is really simply analogous to the care a metropolitan would have over his synod. The term means “uneasiness of mind, care, disquiet, anxiety,…” Nothing about universal ordinary and immediate papal jurisdiction.

Erick: We can tell from the context here that the St. Celestine believed it was well within his authority as the successor of St. Peter to exercise immediate jurisdiction in the matter with Nestorius. What do I mean by “immediate”? I don’t mean that he decided to isolate himself from his brother Bishops in the process. Quite to the contrary, Pope St. Celestine, just after receiving that first letter from St. Cyril cited above, as already alluded, convened a Council in Rome, and it was through a synodal process that they reached the conclusion that Nestorius’s beliefs were heterodox. Only after this does the Pope write to St Cyril dispatching him with the authority of the See of Peter to carry out the open sentenc eof excommunication. But that also does not mean that the Pope’s authority is not flattened with the Bishops. As president of the Apostolic See, he has the authority to convene and ratify what is even synodally reached, making his primacy of significance.

Here, almost comically, he reveals he does not understand what it takes to prove his point: just as if you wanted to prove that pigs can fly, you need to present a pig that can fly, Mr. Ybarra needs an example of a pope, without a synod, deposing another bishop to prove that the pope can, without a synod, depose another bishop. Simple, right? Apparently not. If you cannot provide that example, it is simply another synod (albeit with more prestige) deposing another bishop. In order to show us that the Pope has always had immediate, as opposed to a mediate or an appellate, jurisdiction in the Church, he has to show examples of the Pope doing the type of things immediate jurisdiction allows him to do, such as circumventing synods to depose clerics. This was one of the key tenets of the 11th century Dictatus Papae and what made is so shocking to the rest of the Church: that the pope does not require the assistance of other bishops to depose a bishop[9].

In addition, Mr. Ybarra shows he does not know what “immediate” means in Catholic canon law when he writes: “What do I mean by “immediate”? I do not mean that he intended to isolate himself from his brother bishops in the process….it was through a synodal process that they reached the conclusion that Nestorius’ beliefs were heterodox.” That would constitute “mediate jurisdiction” as it is mediated via a synod. “Immediate jurisdiction” means the pope has the same type of access to a believer that a person’s local bishop has and the pope can exercise it without hinderance. When the pope decides not to take an immediate channel to that person (say they are a raging heretic) but goes through that person’s bishop, he is exercising mediate jurisdiction. On the other hand, in his failed attempt to define “immediate jurisdiction,” Mr. Ybarra accidentally gives a hat tip to the fact that the Pope is the president of the synod and his ratification is, under normal circumstances (i.e. that he is not in heresy) required just as the ratification of the other patriarchal sees.

Erick: The 10 day stipulation which the Pope gave for Nestorius to recant of his error expired on December 17th. However, before notice of this had reached the Emperor Theodosius II, the latter had issued a summons for a Synod to be assembled in Ephesus on November 19th for the examination of Nestorius’s doctrine against the standard of the holy fathers. Thus by the time the letters sent by St. Cyril and St. Celestine reached Constantinople, by four messengers, the Imperial summons to convene at Ephesus had already been spreading abroad. Of course, Nestorius himself had not heeded the threat of excommunication from the Pope, believing the Council could afford him opportunity to defend himself. John, Bishop of Antioch, urged him to submit to the Pope’s letter. Also, when Nestorius reached Ephesus, the Bishop of Ephesus, Memnom, locked the doors of the churches to Nestorius. Apparently, they understood the Papal letter of St. Celestine to have been effective.

Mr. Ybarra leaves out several details here. First, after the Roman Synod met and issued a condemnation of Nestorius, they sent out letters to various sees. Second, Mr. Ybarra leaves out that the Alexandrian Synod then met and added its own condemnation to that of Rome’s so it is a double condemnation they are reacting to and in a city (Ephesus) that stands for what Nestorius refuses (the veneration of the Mother of God) so there is far more at play than just “Rome spoke.” Third, St. Cyril, without asking anyone, attached his famous “12 Anathemas” to the sentence of the Alexandrian Synod and then added that to the dossier that included the sentence from Rome [10]. As J.N.D. Kelly points out:

“After holding a synod at Alexandria, he dispatched a third, more lengthy epistle to Nestorius appending twelve anathemas which he required him to subscribe […] Cyril’s action in promulgating these [the 12 anathemas] was most ill-judged. The Pope had never asked for a fresh definition to be drafted, and the form he gave them could not fail to shock and alienate moderate Antiochenes.”[11]

McGuckin follows him:

“When the Roman verdict was communicated to Alexandria, it was the occasion for Cyril to convoke his own synod of Egyptian bishops. They formally repeated in November of the same year, the condemnation of Nestorius’ doctrine, and whereas the Roman synodical letter had not made a Christological exposition, Cyril remedied the defect and ensured that his own church would supply one.

“This he did in two forms. The first amounts to his Third Letter to Nestorius, which is a general statement of the Alexandrian position to which Rome itself had given its assent. The second was to raise storms of controversy, for he appended to the letter a list of twelve propositions to be formally renounced by Nestorius (the Twelve Chapters, or Anathemas) if he wished to avoid the sentence of condemnation from the churches of Rome and Alexandria. Cyril made acceptance of the anathemas a condition of Nestorius’s readmission to communion, and therefore designed the exposition of Alexandrian Christology propositionally in the most direct fashion, in primary colours as it were, specifically determined to deny the major premises of Nestorius’ thought, and to allow him no room for verbal manouevring.

“Rome’s vague desire that Nestorius should recant his opposition to the Theotokos doctrine and profess a consonant faith, had left the door open to a large measure of possible adjustment between the different theological positions, given that a broad agreement on single-subject Christology had been secured.”[12]

So no, Pope St. Celestine, St. Cyril, and their allies did not consider the council as “extending” the ten day sentence, they saw it as in force. It was only the heretics who saw it as extended and Mr. Ybarra has oddly decided to accept the view of heretics, we should not be surprised, though because, well… 

Erick: In any case, when St. Cyril came to find out that Nestorius procured an Imperial summons to an Ecumenical Council in Ephesus, he wrote a letter to the Pope inquiring whether the hammer of excommunication is to be considered to have dropped, or should the Council examine Nestorius afresh? A copy of this letter is actually lost, but we have the response of the Pope to St. Cyril’s question:

“We are replying briefly to your holiness…You ask whether the holy Synod [of Ephesus] ought to receive a man who condemns what it preaches; [emphasis mine] or, because the time of delay has elapsed, whether the sentence already delivered is in force. Concerning this matter let us consult the Lord in whose worship we are united. Will he not answer us straightway through the prophet, ‘I do not desire the death of the one who dies’; and through the apostle Paul that he ‘willeth all men to be saved and come to know the truth’? Never is a quick repentance displeasing to God in any man” (Celestine, Epistle 16; E. Giles, Pg. 244)

This shows that St. Cyril himself did not know whether to understand the convening of an Ecumenical Council to have annulled the excommunication of the Pope and allowed for a fresh trial. Unfortunately, the Pope’s letter which makes clear that he intended a fresh trial to be allowed for Nestorius, although on the same criteria already laid down, did not arrive to St. Cyril until it came with the Papal legates to the Council of Ephesus in Session II (they were delayed in travel). Thus, Session I of the holy Synod was convened without knowing whether the Pope was willing to extend the time for the allowance of Nestorius to recant or not.

Not quite. First, St. Celestine never indicates anywhere that he intended a fresh trial and this contradicts what Mr. Ybarra has stated elsewhere in his article. In fact, he and his legates state quite the opposite [13]. Second, the translation Mr. Ybarra is using is actually incorrect. E. Giles obtained the quotation from the Catholic apologist Dom Chapman (the footnotes on the page Mr. Ybarra cites indicate this) and Giles uncritically passes it on. Chapman mistranslates the first sentence of the quotation to try and obscure an embarrassing point: everyone considered condemnation from Rome to have gone through and to be in force. To Rome and Alexandria, Nestorius was already a persona non grata and the council was a chance for more bishops to weigh in on the dispute. The Latin of Celestine is clear and he repeats St. Cyril’s question before he answers:

“Etenim qaeris utrum sancta synodis recipere debeat hominem a se praedicta damnatem: an quia iuduciarum tempus emensum eat, sententia dudum lata perduret.”[14]

Lest I be accused of bias in my own translation, the official translation from the Vatican as contained in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical “Lux Veritatis” follows[15]:

“[You ask] whether the holy Synod ought to receive the man on his condemning the things which he had preached, or whether, because the appointed time had now run out, the sentence long since passed must abide.”

St. Celestine then continues that God never rejects a repentant sinner and that if he repents, he should be accepted by the upcoming council. In the translation Mr. Ybarra’s uses, there is the nonsensical situation of Nestorius somehow condemning what the council teaches (present tense) prior to the council even convening and issuing a dogmatic statement. There is no mention of “pausing” or “postponing” the sentence as Mr. Ybarra asserts. It had gone through and, with the condemnation from Alexandria, was in force until Nestorius recanted and those opposed to Nestorius took full advantage of this while those who sided with him simply ignored it. As McGuckin points out:

“Nestorius must have had great cause for misgiving; from the moment of his arrival the local bishop had refused to communicate with him, and barred his churches to him, treating him like a canonical defendant (as he technically was since the Roman synod had found against him) who had to be heard in council before he could be rehabilitated. On Cyril’s arrival this was the policy the latter also adopted.”

“Memnon [of Ephesus] was undoubtedly hostile to all that Nestorius stood for, but his closure of the churches to him was in strict accordance with ecclesiastical protocol once the results of the Roman synod had been publicly notified…”

“Cyril lobbied extensively himself, but refused to communicate in any way with Nestorius, a public sign that he regarded the Roman verdict as having already settled the matter in hand.”

“The Council then moved on to enquire what was Nestorius’ response to these canonically delivered sentences against him. The Emperor Theodosius, Nestorius relying on him, might well have regarded the decision of the two synods as having been ‘set aside’ by the subsequent convocation of a general council to adjudicate the matter. As all the other bishops knew, however, although it was within the purview of a council to set aside the condemnations if it saw fit, it was not within the right of the Emperor to nullify them in advance, in the way he had presumed.”[16]

Again, it is clear there was no extension to the Roman verdict in the eyes of Pope St. Celestine, St. Cyril, and their allies. For them, the up and coming council would simply be a place to add names to the condemnation of Nestorius and his teachings and it is to that which we turn to next.