By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 41
In our study of apologetics, we have seen that Jesus Christ claimed to be the Son of God, and proved it by His teachings, prophecies, miracles, and above all by His Resurrection. He founded one Church, not many, and endowed His apostles with the power to consecrate the Eucharist, forgive sins, preach in His name, and pass His priesthood to others in the course of time.
In order to guarantee that His teaching would be properly and faithfully transmitted, He endowed His Church with infallibility in her teaching ministry.
Please note that He has never given the gift of impeccability to the Church ministers, but only infallibility in their formal teachings, under very specific circumstances. It is an undeniable historical fact that the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church alone, was the only Church in existence for the first one thousand years of Christian history. The mere idea of “Christian denominations” was completely unheard of by Christians during the first millennium.
In 1054, the Eastern Churches broke away from Rome. History itself records that they were not founded by Jesus Christ side by side with the Catholic Church. Instead, they are branches that broke away from the main vine.
About 500 years later, Martin Luther destroyed the unity of the Church with his Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide heresies.
Again, the many Protestant denominations were not founded by Jesus Christ, side by side with Roman Catholicism. They are branches that broke away from the main vine and later on from themselves.
Since the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ, He endowed her with the gift of infallibility, so that His message might be preached to all men with accuracy and without any error.
Without this gift, she would be at the mercy of ministers, both good and bad, just like any contemporary sect. But we must understand — and very clearly so — the extent and limits of this gift of infallibility, in order to avoid a double error:
To think that the Pope and the bishops are always infallible in everything they teach;
To think that they are never assisted by the Holy Spirit in teaching infallibly.
What are the sources of the Church’s infallibility?
Christ commanded the apostles — and their successors — to preach to the whole of mankind everything He had taught them. He also promised to be with them until the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). And we know that Jesus is faithful to His promises — He can neither deceive nor be deceived;
He promised to send them the Holy Spirit, to be with them forever, to dwell with them and within them, to teach them all things, and remind them of everything He had said to them (John 14:16-16:26). Since Jesus wrote down none of His teaching, everything was done orally, and the apostles faithfully kept the oral Tradition, consigning some of it to writing — the New Testament.
Since Jesus promised His apostles that “when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), the perpetual guidance of the Holy Spirit is named as the source or principle of the Church’s infallibility.
Now comes the million-dollar question: What are the topics, issues, subjects that are covered by infallibility? Since we know that the assistance of the Holy Spirit does not prevent the ministers from falling into sin, where exactly does that assistance exercise its power? Or, to put it simply, can the Pope and the bishops fall into error?
The answer is also simple: Yes, they can. And many have done it, beginning with the first Pope who denied Christ three times in public.
So, they do enjoy the prerogative of infallibility as teachers, not as individual believers. Here an important distinction must be made: The Magisterium of the Church is twofold: ordinary and extraordinary. The ordinary Magisterium is the unanimous everyday teaching of the Popes and bishops, in their encyclicals and pastoral letters, sermons, and so forth. A bishop also teaches the people under his care in his diocese through his priests and schoolteachers and through the catechisms or textbooks which he approves.
This is an important point: Whatever is taught in a diocese in the name of the Church is the direct responsibility of the bishop. The bishops of the Church are not infallible individually but collectively and as forming a united body with the Pope. It is their living union with him that gives them their infallibility.
The extraordinary (or solemn) Magisterium is the teaching of the four Creeds, which summarizes the teachings of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, or expressed by the formal definitions of Popes and general councils. This solemn teaching is made known in a pronouncement, clear and unmistakable, to all the faithful, which excludes any doubt or denial of its content. It is a most effective means to convey an infallible teaching, and to combat widespread error. It is rare, and usually consists of confirming in a definitive way a teaching already continued in the ordinary Magisterium.
Many Church teachings come to us from the ordinary Magisterium, without any need of definition or confirmation by the extraordinary Magisterium.
For instance, the teachings that Jesus Christ is the One and Only Savior of the human race and that He is truly present in the Eucharist are part of the ordinary Magisterium, and need no dogmatic definition. Such teachings come clearly from Scripture and the faith of the Early Fathers. Other teachings of the ordinary Magisterium are:
The human soul is spiritual and not material;
After death there is a particular judgment;
Human beings are entrusted to guardian angels;
The murder of an innocent person is always evil;
One is never allowed to commit a sin so that a good might come out of it;
Jesus Christ is the Founder of the Catholic Church;
There is only one Revelation or Covenant, and no new one will ever supersede that of Christ;
The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of all Christians.
Most of these can be clearly found in Sacred Scripture. A common question I hear from people is this: Where can you find a collection of Church teachings coming from the ordinary Magisterium? The answer is simple, and we shall see it in the next article.
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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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