When I went through RCIA, one guy had a really tough time with Papal Infallibility. It took several months for him to articulate what the problem was, but as he went through the program he understood enough to put his concerns into words. I’m going to over-simplify this, but here’s the gist of it: He thought that Catholics would be obligated to believe as a matter of faith if the pope said the sky was green.
Um, no…
Here’s a quote from someone on MCJ: “…the real bar for this Anglican to becoming Roman Catholic is the counter-Reformation doctrines. … But the declaration of papal infallibility and the Marian doctrine which has been infallibly proclaimed are new problems since the Reformation…" This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what infallibility means and how it’s used. The cart has been placed squarely before the horse.
One book I have dedicates an entire chapter to this subject, 16 full pages, with points and counter-points. Anything I can say in fewer than 600 words is going to be a bit lean, but here goes.
An infallible pronouncement does not bring fourth a new doctrine. Read that again: An infallible pronouncement does not bring fourth a new doctrine. An infallible pronouncement is made only when an existing teaching of the Church is called into question. The things pronounced have to have been taught by the Church previously, in some cases for hundreds of years. In reality, there are no “counter-Reformation doctrines," as the ideas existed long before the Reformation. The pronouncement is made to give clarity to the faithful, not to make wider the realm of dogma. The doctrines of the 19th century, particularly the Marian doctrines, were somewhere called into question and the response was made as a dogmatic clarification. If a specific teaching is never brought into question, then there is no need of a proclamation to express it. The popes and bishops spoke infallibly long before 1870. The gift to the Church is the doctrine, not the proclamation of the gift at Vatican I.
As to the doctrine itself, we should say upfront that infallibility in this sense could be both papal and magisterial. It is a charism that belongs to the bishops of the Church, singly in the pope or in communion as the Magisterium. It doesn’t mean that an individual bishop always teaches the truth – in fact, some teach things that are very far from the truth. Instead, it means that the bishops as a group do not teach error.
Infallibility deals only with matters of teaching and morality, and can therefore not affect the refraction of light via the laws of physics (as an example). Neither the pope nor the Magisterium can pronounce that the sun rises in the north, or that pigs have wings.
As to the question of whether or not infallibility exists at all, well, I could do several pages on this. There are historical documents to support the idea of the Church’s infallibility, but quoting or citing the Fathers of the Church in such a way would take too much space for a first post. I’ll stick with a few Scriptural citations instead, all of which point toward the infallible teaching of the Church.
“He that heareth you, heareth me." Luke 10:16“Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." Matthew 18:18
“Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew 16:17-18
“But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth." John 16:13
“…the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." 1 Timothy 3:15
I’ll leave the last word to John Henry Cardinal Newman, from Apologia Pro Vita Sua:
I am brought to speak of the Church's infallibility, as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses.
As usual, this isn’t intended to lay this subject to rest, but to bring up questions that we can discuss and offer clarifications.
References -
Apologia Pro Vita Sua - John Henry Cardinal Newman
Catholicism and Fundamentalism - Karl Keating
Theology for Beginners - Frank J. Sheed
Lumen Gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church)
I was in a discussion with a couple of our separated bretheren over Sola Scriptura. I asked the question... "What men chose the Canon of your Bible". Because a Bible is so much toilet paper unless you explicitly trust the infallibility of those men who selected your Canon.
I have thus far been met with stony silence, obfuscation and subject changing. I have not been able to get a direct answer from either of them
"An infallible pronouncement does not bring fourth a new doctrine."
Thanks for clarifying this. There's something very comforting to me in this bit of information.
"An infallible pronouncement does not bring forth a new doctrine."
Well, wait a minute. The two cases of infallible pronouncements that everybody's heard of -- the definitions as dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption -- elevated what had been (in recent times, anyway) generally accepted theological opinions to the level of dogma. There are at least good arguments that St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the opinion (as it was then) of the Immaculate Conception. In what sense can one claim that the Immaculate Conception was a doctrine of the Church from the beginning if St. Thomas could deny or express doubts about it in the 13th century?
This gets me to my big intellectual problem with papal infallibility: It seems to require a lot of post-hoc rationalization. Popes before 1870 could make infallible dogmatic pronouncements, even if they didn't know they were doing so, didn't claim the charism of infallibility. Hence questions about Pope St. Sixtus III and his chumminess with both Pelagius himself and some Nestorians, or all those Borgias, or the popes and antipopes during the Avignon schism. They never made an infallible dogmatic pronouncement that was wrong? Infallibility entails a claim not only about popes since Leo XIII, but also about his 200-some-odd predecessors, all the way back to St. Peter, and everything they ever taught to be the dogma of the Catholic Church. There's just an awful lot we don't know and will never know about an awful lot of those men and what they may have taught to be Catholic dogma.
Now, I'm convinced that the Church does have some charism of infallibility, on the basis of the verses from Scripture that you mention among other reasons, but I'm just not persuaded that the First Vatican Council got it right (or even not wrong, which is I guess all they need).
(BTW, I'm an evangelical Anglican. And I don't know how to reconcile the problems I described above with the development over the first few centuries of the Church's history of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation as embodied in the Athanasian Creed, which I do accept and believe. The Protestant claim that the Trinity and Incarnation are demonstrable from Scripture and good and necessary inferences therefrom, but the Immaculate Conception, for example, isn't, has a limited amount of persuasive force for me, but it's the best argument I've heard.)
I'm sorry I hooked you into that mess, Mark. :(
RL,
Thanks for the comment. I think I can answer your concerns, but I'm not going to be able to do it today. I keep having to tell people to wait, but I currently need 28 hours in the day to break even...and there's already a hefty list in the posts-to-write file. Sorry.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but the doctrine of infallibility does not mean that any and every action that any Pope ever did, or will do, was not, or could not be, without error. Rather it applies to pronouncements on doctrines.
There were extraordinarly wicked Popes who were concerned with only secular ends, as well as Popes who were kidnapped and replaced by medevial kings in past history. As I understand it, this doctrine does not pretend that such things were not without grave error. And, significantly, I'm not aware of doctinal errors, or any significant doctrines at all, being promulgated by those wayward Popes. Maybe I don't know enough history; please let me know if I'm wrong and alien theological doctrines were not just discussed or privately held, but were offically pronounced in those dark days.
Who will appoint the next Archbishop of Canterbury? Most likely the now Prince Charles...excuse me while I throw up. This is not to get off the subject, but in Anglicanisim the divine right of Kings is de facto recognized, which seems to be a greater doctrinal error. I'll take Papal infallibility over the divine right of kings. It seems sometimes like we Protestants ought to be looking for the logs in our own eyes.
If by their fruits you will know them, then the papacy, when not being taken over by force by medevial kings and such, and certainly in modern times, has produced remarkable leaders. Contrast this to the Episcopal General Convention theological freak shows, in our democratic and literate era, as of late. Compare a random papal encyclical to whatever the Presiding Episcopal Bishop writes: lucid, intelligent, insightful, and steeped in Godliness on one hand, and a vapid C- essay from a state college gender studies program on the other. It seems so very odd that a democratically elected bishop, elected by a literate and free people, is invariably an insignificant flea compared to the not-so democratically elected bishop of Rome. Maybe Catholics trust God to appoint a bishop while we smarties in the Episcopal church trust ourselves...and get precisely what we deserve.
One last comment: it is unfortunate that the counter-reformation goes by that name. It sounds like it was to counter (i.e., to undo) the protestant reformation, while it was really a simultaneous reformation of the Catholic church from within. Until I did some research I just thought it was an attack on the Protestants and that the Catholics carried on business as usual.
Tony,
No sweat.
Chas,
Maybe Catholics trust God to appoint a bishop while we smarties in the Episcopal church trust ourselves...and get precisely what we deserve.
That's exactly the case. As an example, look at the pontificate of John Paul I. He was elected, but it was seen as a continuation of the old ways - another Italian that would continue the Church pretty much as it had been. When he died two weeks later, it was seen as the Spirit telling the College of Cardinals to do something more dramatic - to find someone to change the world. In a very few votes we got John Paul II.
Well, wait a minute. The two cases of infallible pronouncements that everybody's heard of -- the definitions as dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption -- elevated what had been (in recent times, anyway) generally accepted theological opinions to the level of dogma. There are at least good arguments that St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the opinion (as it was then) of the Immaculate Conception. In what sense can one claim that the Immaculate Conception was a doctrine of the Church from the beginning if St. Thomas could deny or express doubts about it in the 13th century?
RL,
I'm going to quote Karl Keating to save a wee bit of time. Pardon any typos as I'm really pressed just now.
There's no reason to think that the bishops would all agree on everything. Having Aquinas argue against a point of doctrine is a hefty thing, I'll admit, but over the ages the doctrine solidified in spite of his arguments against it. We would look at this as the Spirit in action, slowly working It's way in the world and the Church. It doesn't mean that Aquinas as an individual can't have a contrary opinion, but that contrary opinion doesn't mean that the overall teaching wasn't accepted by the Church in general (and the bishops and pope in particular).
Does that make any sense at all? Does it address your question?
Mark,
Thanks for the response and by all means take your time. I appreciate the efforts you're undertaking here, they're helpful to me.
The Karl Keating quote muddies the waters for me a bit, I think. It seems to suggest that a pope isn't making an infallible pronouncement (i.e., an ex cathedra statement on a matter of faith or morals) unless he consciously intends to do so. Certainly that has to be true at some level, but it would seem difficult to tell on which side of the line a particular statement by a particular pope would fall, especially if the pope lived long before the doctrine of infallibility was a dogma or even a generally accepted theolgoical opinion. I would assume that Leo the Great believed he taught with the authority of Christ (and I would agree with him), but I rather doubt he would have said of any particular statement he ever made, "That was an ex cathedra pronouncement on a matter of faith or morals." The category "ex cathedra pronouncements on matters of faith or morals" just didn't exist before a certain point in history. Perhaps one could say that the Church's understanding of the nature of the Magisterium was incomplete at that point (and no doubt it's still incomplete, in the sense that it's open to further refinement in the future).
I think the nub of it is this: If we agree that all popes, from St. Peter straight down to Benedict XVI, might have made ex cathedra pronouncements on matters of faith and morals (even if they wouldn't have labeled them as such at the time), then where and what are they? They're not written down in a book anywhere (as the teachings of the ecumenical councils are), but the Church proposes that not a one of them has ever been erroneous. Not even Pope Liberius's condemnation of St. Athanasius (which was forged, or coerced, or not an ex cathedra statement, etc.)
As for novelty: It seems highly unlikely to me that St. Thomas would have written against a doctrine that he understood to be the teaching of the Church. That's really all I'm saying: Accepting any variety of doctrine of infallibility necessarily entails accepting that what was a theological opinion on which well-informed and faithful Christians might differ yesterday is today the teaching of the Church. That's not necessarily to say that no doctrine of infallibility is plausible (otherwise, as Tony suggested above, why does my Bible have a table of contents?), just that it isn't quite accurate to say that "an infallible pronouncement does not bring forth a new doctrine."
Mark,
Just found you and your site...a true God-send. I'm a thirty-year veteran of the Episcopal Church priesthood and have been praying and reading my way through this decision since General Convention 2003. As a Delegate at GC 2006 I found the answer as to whether to stay or swim. My jump into the water becomes official August 9, 2006 with my first and formal visit with the Chancellor/Assistant Bishop of our archdiocese. Please keep me in your prayers and please keep writing. You have a new and devoted disciple. Thanks for all your work. PPP
PPP,
Happy to be of service. May the grace of Christ always be with you. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.
Mark
"As for novelty: It seems highly unlikely to me that St. Thomas would have written against a doctrine that he understood to be the teaching of the Church. That's really all I'm saying: Accepting any variety of doctrine of infallibility necessarily entails accepting that what was a theological opinion on which well-informed and faithful Christians might differ yesterday is today the teaching of the Church. That's not necessarily to say that no doctrine of infallibility is plausible (otherwise, as Tony suggested above, why does my Bible have a table of contents?), just that it isn't quite accurate to say that 'an infallible pronouncement does not bring forth a new doctrine.'"
It seems to me that you might try thinking of it another way. There are an awful lot of ideas floating around among Christians. Some of them belong to the Apostolic Tradition and some of them don't. As you indicate, there can be disagreement about which ideas belong to the depositum fidei and which don't, even among the learned and exalted and sainted.
Without an ultimately infallible authority, the Church would have no guarantee that it could distinguish between those ideas that come authoritatively from the Apostles and those which don't. Thus, in certain cases, the faithful might have their belief confirmed with the official approval of the Church as being part of the depositum; in other cases, their belief might be counted out; in yet other cases, the Church might take no position as yet.
Newman wrote about this, in Apolgia, I think, but I don't really have the time to search it out.