By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 48
Delving into the magnificent teaching of papal infallibility is very enlightening. In so doing, we raise the veil of Jesus’ magnificent way of guiding His Church amidst the tempests of times and places. Let us raise the veil and see.
This is the full text of the dogma, as defined by Vatican I: “It is a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra — i.e., when exercising his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines, by his supreme authority, a doctrine concerning faith or morals which must be held by the universal Church — he enjoys, through divine assistance, that infallibility promised to him in Blessed Peter and with which the Divine Redeemer wanted his Church to be endowed in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals; and therefore that the definitions of the same Roman Pontiff are irreformable in themselves and not from the consent of the Church. If anyone should presume however to contradict this Our definition — let him be anathema.”
Anathema means excommunication, that is, expulsion from the Church. I can immediately see a non-Catholic Christian or a liberal Catholic up in arms, saying: “This is Church authoritarianism! The Bible says nothing about expelling people from the Church! Jesus was for charity, not judgment!”
Such folks do not know their Bible — all they know are the passages they choose to know to impugn the Catholic Church. In 1 Cor. 5:1-2 St. Paul, for example, exhorts the Church to excommunicate those who commit the sin of incest.
Our good Jesus, who is meek and humble of heart, also gives specific instructions about how to deal with offenses, and which may end in excommunication, if the offender does not repent (Matt. 18:15-18): He must be avoided as a gentile or a tax collector. It’s in the Bible, folks.
The truth about the dogma that is infallibly proclaimed does not depend on the consent of the Church. Even if all bishops of the world were to oppose a dogma infallibly proclaimed by the Pope under the four specific conditions, the assistance of the Holy Spirit is guaranteed: All the bishops would be wrong, and the Pope, right. The buck stops here at his desk.
All the bishops of England but one (St. John Fisher) were excommunicated when they abandoned the Pope as the visible head of the Church and put a womanizing king as the head of their brand-new church. The Pope was right, the bishops were wrong. Although there was no new dogma being proclaimed, the Pope simply reiterated a divine teaching regarding the indissolubility of matrimony.
But we must not forget that the Church of Jesus Christ has Him as Head, and we, the people, as the members. Someone, somewhere must have the gift of infallibility, otherwise, how would anyone know the truth for sure? Luther tried to believe that the Holy Spirit would guide every Christian when he read the Bible — we have seen that this is outright nonsensical, since different Christians come up with different doctrines, and the cacophony of Protestant doctrines is there for all to see.
They say the Pope cannot be infallible — but they can be. When I see so many different creeds contradicting each other under the guise of “inspiration of the Holy Spirit” — as if everyone were a mini-Pope, then I see the true popery: Petty popes popping up like popcorn in plenty of pulpits.
St. Thomas taught that “to think is to distinguish.” So, as thinking people make distinctions, a major distinction must be made here: Strictly speaking, a doctrine is not itself “infallible”; a doctrine is either true or false. Infallibility belongs to the person who proclaims it; by extension we apply the word “infallible” to the doctrines they enunciate.
The apostolic Tradition teaches us that when the Pope speaks infallibly, it is Peter, the first Pope, as it were, who speaks through him. We see a typical example of this in the Council of Chalcedon (451), more than one thousand years before Luther was baptized: “This is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith of the Apostles. We all believe thus; the orthodox believe thus. Anathema to whoever does not so believe. Peter has spoken through Leo” (Act. II: Harduin, II, 306).
It goes without saying that from that century onward the doctrine was universally acknowledged in the practical life of the Church. Remember, there was only one Christian Church on the planet — the Roman Catholic Church. The innovations that came after her are largely the result of man’s itch for novelties.
The doctrine was also confirmed at the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681), and all but defined in express terms by the Council of Florence (1438-1445), which declared that “the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles and the true Vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him, in blessed Peter, there was given by Our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, rule and govern the universal Church” (DS 1307).
Why can’t people see what they can’t help seeing? This is the history of Christianity, not some story invented by a defrocked monk who married a runway nun.
(For a full series of ancient texts regarding papal primacy and jurisdiction, see J.T. Shotwell and L.R. Loomis, The See of Peter, Columbia University Press, N.Y., 1927, 1991.)
No Blind Faith
Here is another important distinction to be made: the twofold mission of the Pope; the twofold teaching authority of the Pope.
If anyone — one hopes out of sheer ignorance — says that the Pope always speaks with his charism of infallibility, he is talking absolute nonsense. The Pope possesses a twofold teaching authority, viz., extraordinary (supreme or infallible), and ordinary.
When he employs his ordinary authority, that is, day by day, in homilies, discourses, addresses to groups of pilgrims or from the window in the Vatican, he is authoritative but not infallible and does not, of course, bind us to an assent of faith or an irrevocable assent. No blind faith is required. We may even disagree with him, if we have good arguments.
Many saints have publicly disagreed with the Pope, beginning with St. Paul himself in Antioch, and St. Catherine of Siena, when she told the Pope to leave Avignon and return to Rome.
Therefore, the ordinary Magisterium does not bind the Catholics solemnly when the Pope speaks in an address intended for a particular audience, or in a teaching contained in an encyclical letter which is only incidental to the main theme.
Next article: Answering objections.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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