Historical Challenges to the Infallibility of the Church, Part Two: Pope Liberius

For the whole series, see here.

Especially when compared to the complexity of the Three Chapters controversy discussed in Part One, this case is a fairly easy one to examine, I think.  There is a lot of history here (you can get all you want of it here, and the same information can be verified in many different places), but I'll just summarize the salient points and then make a brief analysis.

Reigning as Pope from 352-356, Pope Liberius was an ardent supporter of the Nicene cause and of St. Athanasius, who promoted that cause at great cost to himself against the Eastern Arianizing bishops.  The Emperor Constantius, who was a supporter of the Semi-Arian position, persecuted those who supported the Nicene position, and eventually he sent Pope Liberius into exile for refusing to comply with his demands.

While he was there, it is possible that, broken eventually by his exile, he signed some statement which condemned Athanasius, or which embraced Semi-Arianism, or which put forth some ambiguous language which might be interpreted in a Nicene or a Semi-Arian way.  The fact is, no one really knows for sure what Liberius did or didn't do during his exile.  There are historians who have defended all the different possibilities, based on conflicting information from ancient times.

It is noteworthy that St. Athanasius himself, at least at one point, believed that Pope Liberius had fallen and had betrayed the truth, though some think that this is because Athanasius believed rumors that were going around at that time which later turned out to be groundless.  But here is how St. Athanasius himself described what he thought happened to Liberius:

Thus they endeavoured at the first to corrupt the Church of the Romans, wishing to introduce impiety into it as well as others. But Liberius after he had been in banishment two years gave way, and from fear of threatened death subscribed. Yet even this only shews their violent conduct, and the hatred of Liberius against the heresy, and his support of Athanasius, so long as he was suffered to exercise a free choice. For that which men are forced by torture to do contrary to their first judgment, ought not to be considered the willing deed of those who are in fear, but rather of their tormentors. They however attempted everything in support of their heresy, while the people in every Church, preserving the faith which they had learnt, waited for the return of their teachers, and condemned the Antichristian heresy, and all avoid it, as they would a serpent.  (St. Athanasius, History of the Arians, Part V, #41, from the plain text version found on the website of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Whatever happened during his exile, when Pope Liberius eventually returned to Rome, he continued to be a steadfast supporter of the Nicene cause.

So is this a problem for papal reliability and infallibility?  No, because Catholic doctrine teaches that Popes are reliable to the extent that they intend their statements to be accepted and binding.  If Pope Liberius said anything false during his exile (and no one really knows if he did), it was obviously under duress, and so did not express his free intention, and so of course was not authoritative or binding, much less definitively infallible.  It is ironic that Liberius is portrayed by critics as betraying Athanasius, when it is Athanasius himself who gives the answer to the critics:  "For that which men are forced by torture to do contrary to their first judgment, ought not to be considered the willing deed of those who are in fear, but rather of their tormentors."

The very fact that this is one of a handful of what are usually considered by critics to be the greatest historical examples supposed to disprove papal infallibility says something, I think, and not something good, about the strength of the critics' case.