"As the guardians of orthodoxy, the best among [the popes] sometimes
found themselves obliged to resist [heretical] emperors to their face. It was often the great, solitary saints such
as . . . Maximus the Confessor . . . who inspired them with the confidence they
needed to do so. . . . This is a fact belonging to the complex structure of the
ecclesial constellation itself."
Hans Urs von
Balthasar, The office of Peter and the structure of the Church, trans.
Andrée Emery (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1986), 209 (of the German original), as quoted by Adrian J.
Walker, in "Conscience, the emperor, and the pope:
the witness of St. Maximus the Confessor," Communio: international Catholic review 41, no. 4
(2014): 750 (740-750). Thus, St. Maximus does not consider the indefectibility of the Pope a "done deal," but fortifies Pope Martin I for the
martyrdom to which they will both be soon subjected. Also: "John
remains steadfastly ‘other’ than Peter, but he does so precisely in order to
give Peter (and his successors) his, John’s, own ‘greater love,’ which is the
very gift the Prince of the Apostles will need to ‘confirm the brethren’ (Lk
22:32) in the unity of office and love willed by the Lord".
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