Well, What Do Liberal Catholics Want?

One of my regular readers—and a good friend—drew my attention to this article by Damon Linker.  You can check out the article at http://theweek.com/article/index/255064/what-do-liberal-catholics-want

What drew my attention was the following paragraph

After reading an endless stream of gushing commentary by liberal Catholics on Pope Francis, I'm beginning to wonder if they ever really cared about reforming doctrine in the first place.

Now I am not sure that Linker knows his Catholicism sufficiently to know what is doctrinal and what is not.  He lumps disciplinary matters like mandatory celibacy in with theological (doctrinal) matters such as abortion and same-sex marriage.  But that isn’t my argument with him.  Frankly, I don’t think “liberal” Catholics have any expectation—or desire—for doctrinal change.  Polls show that while American Catholics stand with the majority of Americans in not wanting a total ban (note the word “total”) on legal abortion, the vast majority of American Catholics believe that abortion is a moral evil in as that it is the deliberate taking of a human life.  Similarly the majority of American Catholics favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, but I don’t know any American Catholics (which isn’t to say that there aren’t some, I just don’t know them) who quibble with the Church’s policy of sacramentally celebrating only the marriages of a man and a woman who are free of previous valid marriages to marry.  Similarly, I don’t know of any serious calls to recognize “second marriages” although many would favor lifting the ban on communion from those married outside the Church.  What “liberal” Catholics have long wanted and now found in Pope Francis, is not a revision of doctrine, but a change of tone.  We had just grown tired of being such an unfriendly Church where any who did not conform to our idea of righteousness were judged worthy of only being cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  We were getting known for what we are against rather than what we stand for—and a negative label is never good for morale.  Nor does this sort of Jansenist condemnatory tone proclaim the Good News (evangelion, Gospel) of salvation. 

The one area where there most likely is a desire for change is the matter of opening the ordained ministries to women.  The two previous popes have declared this to be a theological issue but, frankly, have not been convincing.   Many—including some of the finest theological scholars today—have said this is a matter of discipline and not of doctrine.  The argument is that because the bishop and presbyter (the Latin word for a priest, and better term when talking theologically) sacramentally represent Christ, and Christ was male, the bishop and presbyter must be male to represent him.   Granted the Bishop and the priest sacramentally participate in the Unique Priesthood of Jesus Christ—which is to say that Christ is the only priest in the Christian faith and the bishop and presbyter are sacramental-representations of Christ the Priest.  The bishop or presbyter have no priesthood of their own, but only that of Christ in which they participate.  Of course all the baptized participate in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ by virtue of their baptism—but those who are ordained do so in an unique way proper to and restricted to the Sacrament of Orders.  And granted that Jesus is male.  But is the masculinity of Jesus essential to his being, much less to his priesthood?  What is essential to Christ’s Nature, according to the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon is his humanity, not his masculinity.  But again, we are verging on the theological here and I want to avoid going too far into that field and stay to the historical.  Let us just say that other than the possibility of ordaining women to the ministries of Bishop and Presbyter most “liberal” Catholics are quite content for doctrine to go its slow path of evolutionary development rather than have the Pope—even Good Pope Francis—just start changing the key teachings of the faith willy-nilly.   

Let me also say that as someone who would generally fall into the category of “liberal” Catholic, that I don’t want the Pope to change teachings about contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, or even ordination of women or priestly celibacy.  I want things to be open for study, research, and intelligent discussion.  I am far more interested in a good process than any particularly desired product.  I think we have a lot we need to think about and talk about before we get into substantial change.  Theologians need to reclaim their historic role in moving the discussion forward and not simply providing the rationale for unilateral magisterial decrees.  We need—as we had at Vatican II—bishops making decisions that were enlightened by the theologians.  And we need to involve the faithful in those discussions.  I think Pope Francis and the faithful have learned—and learned instinctively (which is to his credit)—to sing in harmony.  We need for the faithful, the theologians, and the magisterium all to learn how to sing in harmony, realizing of course, that harmony permits descants. 

Finally, let me just add that as a “liberal Catholic” I would hope that any substantial change in Church discipline and any significant development in doctrine would not come from the Chair of Peter  acting unilaterally but from a Universal Council.  What would really seal the Vatican II revival of Francis’ pontificate is the calling of the next Council.  Remarkable things happen when the Holy Spirit gathers the Church and is allowed to “do her (Pentecost) thing” 

The Foundation of the Anglican Church II

Plan of a Christian Church from

the Roman Period found at

Silchester, England. A curious

feature of this church is that it faces

west rather than east as was the more

normal practice

  In speaking of the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church, one of the things of which we need to be precise is the term “English.”  When you see the Latin word for English—Anglicana (Anglicanus, a, um), you can see why.  Anglicanus and its English derivative “English” refer to the Angles—a Germanic people who, along with two other Germanic peoples, the Saxons and the Jutes, began to migrate to the British Isle in the fifth century.  In other words there were no English (Angli, Angles) in England until sometime between 400-500 AD.  We usually refer to the people who lived in the southern half of the Island before the Anglo-Saxon migrations (or, some would say, invasions) as the Britons.  (The northern half of the Island populated by the Scoti and the Picts.) Thus when we talk about the Church in Britain in this period of Roman domination we would not refer to it as the Ecclesia Anglicana or the English Church.  But there were no “Roman Catholics” in Britain at this period either.  There were simply the Romano-British Christian communities.  There were bishops at what is today London, York and Lincoln. Other cities and towns such as Colchester, Bath, Carlisle or Verulamium, which flourished in the Roman period probably had their Christian communities as well, each with its own bishop.  Certainly by the beginning of the fifth century (400 AD) the predominant religion in Britain would have been Christianity.  And as Britain was part of the Roman Empire, Christians there would have been aware of the Church of Rome and its Bishop.  They almost certainly would have included the name of the Bishop of Rome in the diptychs signifying that they were in communion with the Church and the bishop of Rome.  But they weren’t “under” the bishop of Rome in any sense. 
Let me digress for a moment to tell you about the diptychs as this is an important feature—and a feature we still follow today—for the unity of the Church.  The diptychs were two panels hinged together on which were written the names of the living for whom prayers were offered on the one side, and the names of the dead to be commemorated in the prayers on the other.  On the side of the living would be included the names of the prominent bishops and Churches of Christendom.  The priest or deacon would read out these names during the prayers so that hearing the names of the leading bishops, a travelling Christian would know they were in a catholic (note the small “c”) and not some breakaway sect or heretical faction.  Today, at Mass, we include the name of the Pope and the local Bishop in the Eucharistic Prayer.  Thus when I am at Mass away from home, and I hear the Pope’s name I know I am in a Catholic Church and not an Episcopalian or a Lutheran Church where the Liturgy is very much the same.  (Don’t be smug. I know devout Catholics who have been to Episcopal or Lutheran Eucharists and not known they were in the wrong pew.  This can be particularly tricky if there is a language barrier.)   
While these Churches in Britain were in communion with the Roman Church they were in no way “under” the Roman Church or its Bishop, whom we may now refer to as “the Pope.”  (It would not be precise historically to call the bishop of Rome “the Pope” before Leo the Great, (pope 440-461) or certainly before the Constantinian settlement, c. 315. But that is another subject entirely.)  Each of these Churches would have elected its own bishop in the traditional way—an assembly of the laity along with the clergy—with the election confirmed by the bishops of the surrounding communities.  That bishop, once elected, would have governed the local Church without reference to outside authority other than that of any council of the bishops of his region that might be held, or an Ecumenical Council called by the Emperor. 
The coming of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the fifth century uprooted but did not destroy these British Christian communities.  At the beginning of the fifth century, Roman troops were called home from the far-flung corners of the Empire to protect the city of Rome from the various invaders that threatened it.  Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, threatened by Attila in 452, sacked again by the Vandals in 455, and finally sacked once more by the Ostrogoths in 546.  (We won’t deal here with later sacks.)  Once the Roman troops had withdrawn, these Germanic tribes saw room for expansion in the rich and fertile British Island.  As they moved in, the native British population shifted more and more to the west and to what is now Wales to escape them.  The Germanic peoples were pagans of the old Germanic religion with Wotan and his buddies from the Ring of the Nibelung.  In places like York and London and Eboracum (York) Christianity held on by a thread but the centers of Christianity shifted to the west and south west and to Wales with the surviving Briton population.  This was the Britain of Arthur and we know little about it with any certainty, but at the very time Christianity was most vulnerable, reinforcements to the faith came from the west in the Celtic missions. And that is for next time.

The Foundations of the Anglican Church I

The Galilee of Durham

Cathedral,  site of the tomb

of the Venerable Bede

In the previous posting, I raised the issue of whether the newly discovered remains of Richard III—Shakespeare’s evil hunchback king—should be reburied with Catholic Rites or Anglican ceremonial.  Richard was, after all, a Catholic.   But then Anglicans claim that he was Church of England at a time when the Church of England was in communion with the Roman See.  Was there a Church of England  before Henry VIII and his break?  This is an important question for historians because the legitimacy of the Anglican Church hinges on the question: Did Henry VIII found the Anglican Church or did he take the already existing Anglican Church out of communion with Rome?  If the former, the Anglicans are a sort of religious Johnny-come-lately religious movement; if the latter then they have a legitimate identity as one of the ancient Christian Churches.  Should Catholics work for the conversion of Anglicans and Episcopalians—or is our aim to restore communion between the Churches of the Anglican Communion and the Church of Rome? 
Popular opinion thinks of the Anglican Church as being founded by Henry VIII when he split the Church in England from the Pope so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, having tired of his wife Queen Katherine of Aragon—but that just shows us how little we know about the history of the Church, or rather, how much our understanding of the  history of the Church has been shaped  by religious opinions rather than  historical facts.
The term “Anglican Church” was around for at least three hundred years before ol’ Henry ever got peeved with the Pope and the idea of a Church of England, if not the terminology itself, is even much older.  Certainly the Venerable Bede, a Church historian (673-735) had a very clear idea of the English Church as a body with a distinct identity within Christendom that differentiated it from the Roman Church and the other distinct ecclesial communities that comprised the universal Christendom of his time.  To Bede, the English Church was as different from the Roman Church as was the Greek or the Irish Churches of his day.  Bede, in fact, wanted to smooth over some of the differences in religious practices, but he did not want the English Church to lose its unique identity.  Of course the English Church—that is the Anglican Church for Ecclesia Anglicana means simply that, the English Church—was in communion with the Roman Church  but it was in no way absorbed into it.  While it held the Roman Church and its Bishop (the Pope) in honor, it had its own distinct rites and ceremonies, it chose its own bishops, it held its own synods and councils and it formulated its own canons. At the time of Bede, it was its own Church in full and free communion with universal Christendom represented by the five great Patriarchial Sees of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.  As a Western Church it had its strongest ties to the See of Rome, the Western Patriarchate but like the other Churches maintained its autonomy.  
Christianity had come to England before the end of the second century and perhaps as early as the last decades of the first century.  What is today England and Wales was a province of the Roman Empire and even as the faith had spread to Rome from the Pentecost Preaching of the Apostles, it spread from Rome throughout its empire as merchants and soldiers and government officials and slaves and tourists and sailors moved about the wide empire, settling in countless places and bringing with them the religious beliefs of the Empire, of which Christianity was but one.  There is even an old tradition that Joseph of Arimathea had comes as a missionary after the Ascension of Christ.  Other legends talk about Philip the Apostle sending missionaries to Britain, or perhaps even one or another of the apostles going there themselves.  None of this can be verified, however, and all of these stories have the stuff of legends more than facts about them.  But that is not to say that Christianity may have arrived in Britain even as early as 50 AD, or perhaps a few years before.  We simply do not know the earliest date but we can say that by 150 it is all but certain that there were Christian communities in the Roman towns of Britain.  We know that there were three British bishops present at the Council of Arles in 314. One of these was Restitutus, Bishop of Londinium, today’s London. British bishops were also present at the Council of Sardica (Sofia, in modern day Bulgaria) in 347 and the Council of Rimini (In what is today Italy) in 359.  This tells us that the British Church was not a stand-alone entity but was in communion with the Universal Church represented by the Emperor.  (Yes, it was the Emperor, not the Pope, who represented the oecumene or Universal Oneness of the Church just as it was the Emperor, not the Pope, who had the right and duty to convoke Ecumenical (oecumenical) Councils. Bet you didn’t learn that in fifth grade. 
You see, the “Church” of the first five centuries was not a single Church under a Pope but a communion of local Churches, each with its own bishop, who recognized the authenticity of faith and legitimacy of practice of one another.  There were certain measuring sticks of orthodoxy—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ—as well as a  unity of practices such as the weekly celebration of the Eucharist, baptism as the rite of initiation into the community, and an Episcopal system of leadership where deacons and presbyters assisted the bishop in his ministry. As the centuries moved on the rites of these Churches began to vary more and more in incidentals, but they used, for the most part, the same scriptures in their worship and common patterns, if not the rites themselves, for their liturgies.  By the sixth century these local churches began to coalesce around one or another of the five great patriarchial Sees.  Christians the West, both Europe and North Africa, began looking more and more to the Church and Bishop of Rome for leadership.  Christians in the eastern parts of North Africa looked mostly to Alexandria.  Christians in Greece and Asia Minor—what is today Turkey—as well as southern Italy and Sicily to Constantinople because they were under the political domination of the Emperor there.  Christians in Syria and beyond the Eastern boundaries of the old empire, looked to Antioch.  Christians in the ancient places of Palestine, looked to the Patriarch and Church of Jerusalem.  This period of the history of the Church uniting around the five great Patriarchs is called the Pentarchy.  It surprises us Catholics to think of a period of the history of the Church where the Pope wasn’t running the show but a universal jurisdiction of the Roman See only emerges in the eleventh century.   But we can talk about that at another time; we are getting ahead of our story if we want to focus on England.  Suffice it to say that by the fourth century Christianity was well established in Britain and the Roman Church and its bishop were held in honor but not acknowledged as having direct authority. 

The East-West Schism: 1054 and All That

His Ecumenical Holiness,

Bartholomew I, 270^th  

successor of Saint Andrew

the Apostle

Sorry about the recent hiatus—we have had issues with our wireless internet connections over the last few days, but now it’s time to refocus and to return to the subject of the Gregorian Reform.  But before we focus on the Reform itself, let’s take a brief detour here and talk about the East-West Schism since it was at this time that the papal legate Humbert of Silva Candida excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Caerularius and the Patriarch—always a gentleman—returned the compliment.   You may remember from our last posting (August 13^th)  on the Gregorian Reform, the one on German Reform popes, that Leo IX had sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople on a mission that went bad and ended up with the Cardinal (in the pope’s name) and the Patriarch excommunicating each other. 
     Tensions between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople had often been tense.  Contrary to Catholic Mythology, the Patriarch of Constantinople—like the other Apostolic Patriarchs of Jerusalem. Antioch, and Alexandria—had never been “under” the pope or his authority.  As successor to various apostles, they were “brothers” among whom the Patriarch of the West, the Bishop of Rome, stood out as first among equals.  The Council in Trullo (692), a Council which the Eastern Churches recognize as Ecumenical but the Western Church does not (since no delegates from the West were there) determined the precedence to be Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.  The First Council of Constantinople (381), which both the Churches of the East and the West recognize as Ecumenical, had already determined that the Bishop of Rome held precedence over the Bishop of Constantinople.  This was not a matter of jurisdiction, however, but only of honor.  Each Patriarch was supreme authority in his own jurisdiction; indeed each bishop was supreme in his own diocese.  A patriarch could settle disputes among the bishops in his patriarchate.  Each patriarch in his own jurisdiction also was the court of appeal should the clergy have a canonical or doctrinal grievance against their bishop, but the universal Church had a very collaborative structure rather than the hierarchical structure that was to emerge in the Middle Ages.  From the time of the Apostles until the Emperor Justinian (d. 565) the universal Church was a communion of local churches;  by the sixth century, it had become a communion of the five patriarchates which in turn were communions of the local churches that comprised them.  Universal Jurisdiction of the papacy would only be claimed towards the end of the first millennium and even then it did not approach the authority claimed by the popes since the fifteenth century collapse of conciliarism—which is a future topic. 
     That is not to say that everything in the church was all buddy-buddy among bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs—to the contrary. Male animals in nature do not share territory; likewise in the Church there have been squabbles of jurisdiction ever since the beginning.  As Constantinople, the capital of the surviving Roman Empire, grew in importance and Rome, abandoned by its Emperor and bereft of its Empire, declined in its significance, the bishops of Constantinople pushed more and more to be recognized as the first bishop of Christendom.  The bishops of Constantinople were (allegedly) the descendents of Andrew and Andrew was, after all, Peter’s older brother—and the “first-called.”  (Saint Andrew is venerated to this day in the Churches form the Byzantine Tradition as “The First-Called.).  Rome, on the other hand, was jealous of its ancient prerogatives and suspicious of Constantinople’s designs.  The political situation made matters even more tense.  Increasingly after the seventh century, the Emperors in Constantinople were unable to defend Rome from the Lombards and other Germanic tribes as well as from the Saracen pirates who dominated the Mediterranean.  As a result, the popes looked more and more to the Merovingian and Pippinid (Carolingian) Kings of the Franks for protection.  When Charlemagne assumed the title “Emperor” in 800 AD, the Emperor—the “real” Emperor in Constantinople—was furious that this illiterate animal-skin wearing baboon in the West would assume equality with his perfumed and silk-clad dandy self in Constantinople.  Mirroring the political tension between the emperors, mistrust and antagonism grew between the Church in the East (Constantinople) and the Church in the West (Rome).   
      Now, over the centuries there had been  a number of popes who had been chosen from the East.  In antiquity there had been Anacletus, the second successor to Peter, Telesphorus (+137), Hyginus (+140), Sixtus II (+258)  Zosimus (+418)  among others.  Even as the tension between East and West mounted, Greek and Syrian popes were common—among them (there were more) were Boniface III (+607)  Theodore I (+642) Agatho (+681) Sergius I (+687) Constantine (+715)  Zachary (+752) Stephen III (+772).  The Greek and Syrian popes brought much to the Western Church—the “Kyrie” of the Mass being one contribution.  Nevertheless the tension began to build. 
    858 the Emperor Michael III of Constantinople deposed the Patriarch Ignatius for political reasons and replaced him with a theologian, a layman, Photios.  Under normal circumstances Photios would have made an excellent patriarch—he was both holy and scholarly.   Ignatius had dared to excommunicate the Emperor’s uncle for having an affair with his widowed daughter-in-law.  Pope Nicholas I, as senior patriarch, felt he had a responsibility to speak up for the deposed Ignatius whose rights had been violated.  He did not claim universal jurisdiction but rather acted as the senior patriarch protecting one of the four junior patriarchs. Nicholas excommunicated Photios and the Emperor.  This created a schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.  When Ignatius died, Photios was elected in his own right to succede him and the schism was healed.   But it left a bad mark.  Ironically, according to some historians, Photius’ son succeeded to the papal throne as Theodore II. 
     There were other points of tension that persisted even after the schism had been healed.  The Western Church unilaterally altered the Creed of the Council of Nicea, declaring that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as the Father.  The addition to the creed “and the Son” is known by its Latin phraseology: filioque.  As the western Church began to impose celibacy on the clergy, the Eastern Church maintained a married parish clergy.  The Western Church began using unleavened bread for the Eucharist as Christ had used unleavened bread at the Last Supper; the Eastern Churches kept to the apostolic custom of using leavened bread.  When the Greek Church banned the use of icons—images of Christ, Mary, and the Saints in 730, Pope Gregory III convoked a synod that defended the use of Icons.  This caused many Greek Christians to flee to Rome to maintain their practice of using icons in personal prayer as well as corporate worship.  The second Council of Nicea in 787 affirmed the use of icons, but  the East and West remained suspicious of each other’s doctrinal position

Roots of the Reformation V: Ecumenical Councils and Papal Monarchy

What happens when no one is sure who the Pope is?  What happens if there are two fellows—or even three—parading around in tiaras and extending the foot to be kissed—who is the real pope?  How can you tell?  How do you know?  What happens when you have One Pope in Delia, Kansas and another in Springdale, Washington?  How can you tell who the real pope is? O wait, the Pope in Springdale died.  OK, so we have a Pope in Delia Kansas, and one in Hertfordshire.  (That’s in England.)  Oh—and then there seems to be two more in Brussels.  And apparently thee is one each in Lucerne and Angoulême.  What’s a Catholic to do?  OK, we will leave aside those who have arranged their own conclaves in the back room of a store or whom Jesus personally ordained, consecrated, and crowned in a mystical vision and focus on just three popes:  one in Rome; one in Avignon; and one in Pisa.  That is the situation in which the Church found itself in the fifteenth century, specifically in 1414 when a (Ecumenical) Council opened in Konstanz, Switzerland.  The King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund had summoned the bishops to end a schism which saw three men—all with somewhat sound claims (certainly sounder than the formerly mentioned visionaries and psychotics) to be the legitimate heir of Peter the Apostle.

You have a Roman claimant, Gregory XII, who traced his lineage back through Urban VI, who was elected pope upon the death of Gregory XI in 1378.  Gregory was the pope who moved the papacy back to Rome at the end of the Avignon papacy.  He was duly elected by the Cardinals—all the Cardinals, French and Italian—and his coronation was carried out with great detail so there would be no doubt of his legitimacy.   Sound like the Pope, doesn’t he?

Problem—five months  later the French Cardinals met at Fondi—a town between Rome and Naples—and elected one of their own, Robert of Geneva Pope, claiming that the election of Urban was invalid because they had been coerced by the Roman mob into choosing an Italian pope.  The charge was true and they had a point.  Of course, the fact that the King of France put the French Cardinals up to this colors the story a bit too.  But if the Cardinals were coerced by fear and the election were not to be a free election, would it be valid?  This is not an abstract question.  There are some fringe groups in the Church that claim that the 1958 and 1963 conclaves were prevented under threats from electing the late Cardinal Giuseppe Siri  (or that Siri was elected and prevented from taking the papal office by outside threats). 

How do you solve the problem of who is pope when you have two of them?  Who has the authority to decide? To break the stalemate?  The theology faculties of various universities including Paris (at the time, the leading theology faculty of Europe), leading theologians of the day (including Jean de Charlier de Gerson and Conrad of Gelnhausen), the town councils of cities across Europe, crowned heads, agreed—it would take an Ecumenical Council to cut the Gordian knot.  A delegation of Avignon-obedience cardinals met with a delegation of Roman-obedience cardinals and agreed upon a Council.  Their respective popes weren’t happy and each called his own rival Council: The Avignon Benedict XIII for Perpignan and the Roman Gregory XII for Aquilea.  Almost no one went to Aquilea or Perpignan, but 22 cardinals, 80 bishops, proxies for another hundred bishops, 87 Abbots, 41 priors or general superiors of religious orders, and 300 doctors of theology or doctors of canon law showed up in Pisa where they proceeded to declare both Gregory and Benedict deposed and elected Alexander V as pope.  The story is a little more complicated, but we will save it for another day.  Neither Gregory nor Benedict would abdicate, so now there were three popes.   

It ended up with Sigismund calling another Council—this one for Konstanz—and the results were somewhat similar except that this time the  Roman claimant, Gregory, sent proxies who convoked the council in his name and then submitted—again in his name—his abdication.  It was a clever, and I suspect sincere, move for it preserved the authority (and thus the legitimacy) of the Roman line even though it lost the papacy for Gregory himself.  In other words, by not refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Council but imposing his “convocation” of it over the Emperor’s original summons, it forced the Council into acknowledging the authority of the Pope—and in this case, the Roman Pope—to call a Council.  It thus disposed the Council to recognize the legitimacy of the Roman claim as neither the Avignon nor Pisan pope had given their authority to holding the assembly.  By abdicating Gregory did not allow the Council to depose a pope; and by abdicating while his rivals would not, he forced the Council to depose them which, again, asserted the legitimacy of the Roman line. 

It sounds like it all wrapped up neatly.  Unfortunately that is not quite true.  They always say that the winners write the history books, but they are wrong.  Whoever writes the history book is the winner.  The war is not won on the field, but in the telling of the story.  The Roman popes told the story pretty much as I have.  The pope convoked the Council.  The pope abdicated.  A new pope was elected.  But many of the Council participants told the story differently.  They had gathered in Council on the initiative of the Emperor at the request of the Church (not the pope, but the bishops, the theologians, the universities, the towns, and others who had petitioned the Emperor for a Council), and in Council they accepted the abdication of the Roman claimant and deposed the two refusniks (to use a term from the late twentieth century), and they elected a new pope.  Note—the cardinals did not elect the pope—the council did.  The conclave consisted of the cardinals present and thirty representatives of the Council. 

Konstanz ended and everybody went home but some went home with the opinion that a Council could depose and/or elect a pope.  In this case, the pope was not the highest authority in the Church.  Others went home with the idea that it takes a pope to convoke a Council and a pope can resign but only anti-popes, that is false claimants, can be deposed.   This argument would go on for a long time—and would cause confusion and division at the time of Luther and the Protestant Reformations.