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Attributed to
His Holiness Pope St. Agatho
I vow to change
nothing of the received Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before
me guarded by my God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or
to permit any innovation therein;
To the contrary: with glowing affection as her truly faithful student and
successor, to safeguard reverently the passed-on good, with my whole strength
and utmost effort;
To cleanse all that is in contradiction to the canonical order, should such
appear;
To guard the Holy Canons and Decrees of our Popes as if they were the Divine
ordinances of Heaven, because I am conscious of Thee, whose place I take
through the Grace of God, whose Vicarship I possess with Thy support, being
subject to the severest accounting before Thy Divine Tribunal over all that
I shall confess;
I swear to God Almighty and the Savior Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever
has been revealed through Christ and His Successors and whatever the first
councils and my predecessors have defined and declared.
I will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the rite of the
Church. I will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath,
may it be somebody else or I.
If I should undertake to act in anything of contrary sense, or should permit
that it will be executed, Thou willst not be merciful to me on the dreadful
Day of Divine Justice.
Accordingly, without exclusion, We subject to severest excommunication anyone
-- be it ourselves or be it another -- who would dare to undertake anything
new in contradiction to this constituted evangelic Tradition and the purity
of the Orthodox Faith and the Christian Religion, or would seek to change
anything by his opposing efforts, or would agree with those who undertake
such a blasphemous venture. (Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum, Patrologia
Latina 1005, S. 54)
Footnote:
1 The "alleged" stems from the fact that the accuracy
of this particular form of the oath is under question. It is so that Popes
up to John Paul I took a papal oath, but the form of the oath is
uncertain. The form above is the one most often presented as the traditional
oath, but its accuracy is uncertain. This oath is cited in the book
"The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in
the Roman Catholic
Church"
(link will open in new browser window), written by Dr. Thomas Woods and
Christopher Ferrara. An e-mail exchange with Dr. Woods, wherein I asked him
about his sources, led to nothing authoritative. In other words, though you
should be familiar with the above form of the oath because it is often seen
in traditionalist circles, take it with a grain of salt. |
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