St. John Henry Newman famously noted that during the Arian crisis, “the governing body of the Church came short” in fighting the heresy, and orthodoxy was preserved primarily by the laity. “The Catholic people,” he says, “were the obstinate champions of Catholic truth, and the bishops were not.” Even Pope Liberius temporarily caved in to pressure to accept an ambiguous formula and to condemn St. Athanasius, the great champion of orthodoxy. Newman wrote:
The body of the Episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism…
