Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son

30. Whenever the union of the Greek and Latin Church has been discussed, the chief matter of contention has been the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Examination of this point involves a triple aspect, and so is dealt with here under three headings. The first question is whether the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son is a dogma of the Faith. This question has always been firmly answered that there is no room for doubting that this procession is a dogma of the Faith and that every true Catholic accepts and professes this.

Granting that this is so, the second question is whether it is permissible to add the phrase "and from the Son" to the Creed in the Mass even though this phrase was not used at the Council of Nicea or the Council of Constantinople. The difficulty is increased in that the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus decreed that no additions should be made to the Nicene Creed: "The holy Council decrees that it is lawful for no one to produce or compose a Faith other than that defined by the holy fathers who assembled at Nicea together with the Holy Spirit." It has been asserted in answer to this question that it is indeed lawful and very appropriate to make this addition to the Nicene Creed. The Council of Ephesus forbade only additions which are contrary to the Faith, presumptuous, and at variance with general practice, but not those additions which are orthodox and express more plainly some point of faith implied in that Creed.

On the assumption that the first two answers are accepted, the third and final question is whether Orientals and Greeks can be allowed to say the Creed in the way they used to before the Schism, that is to say, without the phrase "and from the Son." On this final point, the practice of the Apostolic See has varied. Sometimes it allowed the Orientals and Greeks to say the Creed without this addition. This allowance was made when it was certain that they accepted the first two points, and it realized that insistence on the addition would block the way to union. At other times this See has insisted on Greeks and Orientals using the addition. It has done this when it had grounds to suspect that they were unwilling to include the addition in the Creed because they shared the false view that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father and the Son or that the Church had no power to add the phrase "and from the Son."

The former approach was used by two popes - Blessed Gregory X at the Council of Lyons and Eugenius IV at the Council of Florence - for the reasons already mentioned (Harduin, Collectionis Conciliorum, vol. 7, p. 698D, and vol. 9, p. 305D). The latter position was taken by Pope Nicholas III when he realized that Emperor Michael was not acting in good faith and was not abiding by the promises he had made in establishing union with his predecessor Pope Gregory X. The evidence for this comes from the Vatican Archives and is printed in Raynaldus, 1278, sect. 7. Martin IV and Nicholas IV acted in the same manner. Although the sources are contradictory about the attitude of these popes to this affair, Pachymeres, who was then writing the history of Constantinople, openly declares that they did not imitate the fair judgment of their predecessors. Rather they required that Orientals and Greeks add "and from the Son" to the Creed, in order to remove doubts about their orthodoxy, "to make a definite trial of the faith and opinion of the Greeks; the suitable pledge of this would be for them to say the same Creed as the Latins."

Pope Eugenius IV at the Council of Florence allowed the Orientals to say the Creed without the addition. But when he later received the Armenians into union he obliged them to include it (Harduin, vol. 9, p. 435B) perhaps because he had learned that the Armenians were less averse to the addition then were the Greeks.

Similarly, Pope Callistus III, when he sent Brother Simon of the Order of Preachers to Crete in the capacity of Inquisitor, commanded him to watch carefully that the Greeks said "and from the Son" in the Creed, since in Crete there were many Greek refugees from Constantinople which had fallen to the Turks two years earlier (Gregory of Trebizond, epistola ad Cretans, in his Graeciae Orthodoxae, quoted by Allatius, p. 537, and confirmed by Echardus, Scriptorum Ordinis Sanai Dominici, vol. 1, p. 762). It may be that the Pope suspected that the Greeks from Constantinople were weak in this dogma of the faith.

There is nothing at variance with the decrees of the Council of Florence in either of the two forms of the Profession of Faith which, as We have mentioned, were required of the Greeks by Gregory XIII and of the Orientals by Urban VIII. Constitution 34, sect. 6, of Clement VIII (veteris Romani Bullarii, vol. 3) and Our constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 1, are both addressed to Latin bishops with Greeks and Albanians who observe the Greek rite living in their dioceses. These people should not be ordered to say the Creed with the addition of the phrase "and from the Son," provided that they confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and that they recognize the Church's power of making this addition. They should be obliged to say the additional phrase, however, it its ommission would cause scandal, if this particular custom of reciting the Creed with its addition prevailed in their locality, or it were thought necessary to obtain unambiguous proof of the correctness of their faith. However, both the fathers of the synod of Zamoscia (heading 1, de Fide Catholica and the fathers of the synod of Lebanon (pt. 1, no. 12) were right to prudently decree, in order to remove every doubt, that all priests subject to them should use the Creed with its additional phrase in accordance with the custom of the Roman Church.