Nuremberg Declaration

A German Old Catholic* theological statement. It was drafted by fourteen German Catholic professors, including Johannes Friedrich,* Ignaz von Döllinger,* and F.H. Reusch,* at a meeting in Nuremberg in 1870 which J.F. von Schulte of Prague had called to protest the decrees of the Vatican Council. It declared: (1) Vatican I* was not a true ecumenical council because it was neither free nor morally unanimous; (2) chapters three and four of the dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus (which defined the primacy of the pope in the church and asserted that papal statements when made ex cathedra are infallible) were not dogma because they had not been universally believed and taught; (3) papal infallibility would stir up conflicts between church and state, Catholics and non-Catholics; and (4) an unfettered general council should meet in Germany. The thirty- three academic and clerical signatories of the manifesto constituted the nucleus of the Old Catholic movement.