The Fourth Lateran Council: a Time of Change in the Catholic Church

The Fourth Lateran Council.  Rome, 1215.

    The history of the Catholic Church is filled with a plethora of incredible figures and so many remarkable events which are of great inspiration and are often impossible to forget. One event in the history of the Church that was of incredible importance in bringing about significant changes in extremely positive ways was the Fourth Lateran Council. With this, under the power of the Holy Spirit working through perhaps the greatest pope, Innocent III (who convoked the council), the secular ideas and rules which had once been pressed upon the Church were now under submission of the Church in its reformation. According to Alan Shreck, the Fourth Lateran Council was the most successful and most impacting councils of the Church.  

  

    Pope Innocent III, in an effort to help many recover from the terrible sadness from the failed crusade, he regained power quite successfully. Papal power was at its peak and reformation in the Church was remarkable. In an introduction to the Papal Encyclicals online, one reads, “[d]uring the pontificate of Innocent III... there appears to have occurred much growth in the reform of the church and in its freedom from subservience to the empire as well as in the primacy of the bishop of Rome and in the summoning of ecclesiastical business to the Roman curia. Innocent himself, turning his whole mind to the things of God, strove to build up the Christian community. Spiritual things, and therefore the church, were to have first place in this endeavour; so that human affairs were to be dependent upon, and to draw their justification from, such considerations.” The introduction goes on to say that “Christian disasters in the holy Land probably provided the occasion for Innocent to call the council. Thus the pontiff ordered a new crusade to be proclaimed. But he also used the crusade as an instrument of ecclesiastical administration, combined with reform of the church, namely in a fierce war against heretics which he thought would restore ecclesiastical society.”

 

     Fr. John Vidmar, O.P., writes in his book The Catholic Church Through the Ages: a History that the Fourth Lateran Council “emphasized the individual’s response to the Gospel, drawing a relation between the vertical (pietas) and horizontal (caritas) which affected everyone.” Essentially for the first time, the lay faithful were given more direction, more explanations were presented, and the Church made changes for the greater community. In an online article in the Catholic Encyclopedia regarding the Fourth Lateran Council, the following is stated: “[T]he pope himself opened the council with an allocution the lofty views of which surpassed the orator's power of expression.... After this discourse, followed by moral exhortation, the pope presented to the council seventy decrees or canons, already formulated, on the most important points of dogmatic and moral theology.”
 

    With over 400 bishops gathered, and more than 800 abbots and priors, as well as other representatives, Catholic reformation came about and it has influenced us for centuries. It was at this council that the religious men gathered presented the Church with the annual duties to go to Confession and to receive Holy Communion. Furthermore, the term “transubstantiation”was approved as the official explanation for the “action of the Eucharist” (Vidmar, p. 154) at the Consecration of the Mass, making it clear that while the accidents of bread and wine remain the same, the substances change into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The seven sacraments instituted by Christ were reaffirmed at seven after much question on the precise number, and this council improved the state of the clergy in that it "demanded better ministers,” as Fr. Vidmar explains, and it approved the orders of Franciscans and Dominicans after hesitancy and scepticism. In addition, we received clarification on the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the Albigensian heresy was condemned. 

     Because of the bishops and all gathered in this remarkable council, we encounter in the Catholic Church a great revision, explanations and clarity on so many practices within the Church, the building of a closer community, and religious freedom. Let us remember this important event that took place in the year 1215, this council which so greatly influenced the Catholic Church and changed the course of history forever. 

Works Cited

Shreck, Alan. The compact History of the Catholic Church, Ohio: Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press, 

    2009. Print. 

Vidmar, O.P., John. The Catholic Church Through the Ages: A History. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2005. Print.

Leclercq, Henri. "Fourth Lateran Council (1215)." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 
    1910. Retrieved 17 Oct. 2012<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09018a.htm>. 

Introduction and translation taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner. March, 2012. Retrieved    
    17 October 2012. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum12-2.htm