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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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