There is a claim put forth, namely in Warren Carroll's Building of Christendom as well as other Catholic sources, that the episode of Vigilius' doctrinal vacillations during the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553 A.D.) do not touch upon infallibility or the office of the papacy as such. But for an impartial observer, this thesis seems to be difficult to maintain. Here is why.

Vatican I makes this precise statement about the nature of the jurisdiction of the Apostolic See as well as ex cathedra statements:

“The sentence of the Apostolic See (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon[54]. And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman Pontiff…”

“…when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.”

Having this content in mind, we can observe a couple things. First, the claim is put forth that the final judgment of the Apostolic See is to be reviewed by no one. Second, under specific conditions of doctrinal promulgation, the Pope’s statement will be 1) preserved from objective error and 2) irreformable of itself, independent from the consent of the Church (and therefore from “consensual mitigation” of the Council itself). In short, what the bishops ultimately think is irrelevant, it appears, according to this ecclesiological model. When the statement is made with the proper conditions, there is neither appeal from nor reform of its contents.

All this in mind, when Vigilius retracted his Judicatum (his original doctrinal judgment surrounding the events of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which was in agreement with the East) for the Constitutum which refused to condemn outright Theodore of Mopsuestia in his entirety, the Letter of Ibas to Maris, and some writings of Theodoret of Cyrus, he promulgated this Constitutum with these words:

"We ordain and decree that it be permitted to no one who stands in ecclesiastical order or office to write or bring forward, or undertake or teach anything contradictory to the contents of this Constitutum in regard to 'The Three Chapters,' or after this definition begin a new controversy about them. And if anything has been already done or spoken in regard to 'The Three Chapters,' in contradiction of what we here assert and decree by any one whatsover, this we declare void by the authority of the Apostolic See."

Not only was this judgment incorrect in light of the Council’s final doctrinal judgment, as Vigilius' later recantation of this vacillation shows, but the bishops ignored this and proceeded to anathematize anyone who put forth wrong opinions about Chalcedon and who refused to anathematize the Three Chapters in the precise sense they both originally and ultimately anathematized them.

Though Vigilius was not explicitly named among those excommunicated/anathematized, it seems apparent that this anathema referred to him (at least if he wouldn't recant) because from what I understand the 61st excommunication/anathema in Vigilius’ Constitutum was directed at those who were doctrinal adversaries of the Letter of Ibas, and the excommunication/anathema of the Council after the Constitutum and the above statement of invoked authority of the Apostolic See with pertinence to Ibas applied to anyone who did not condemn that letter sufficiently (i.e. Vigilius).

So we appear to have two excommunications against each other, one which seems to have the elements necessary for an ex cathedra statement, and the other which is an act of the "consensus" of the Council against the judgment of the Apostolic See. It was that "consensus" which in the end won the doctrinal definition of the Council, which Vigilius eventually retracted and assented to, and which both Catholic and Orthodox today call an infallible definition.

True, there is nothing extraordinary about a Pope according to Roman Catholic ecclesiology asserting an opinion and then retracting it. The problem, however, is that his Constitutum went beyond a mere opinion. It was specifically invoked with the authority of the Apostolic See for the universal Church. What is the concise Roman Catholic answer to this?