www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Melkites at Vatican I

Dear brother Stuart,

That question is misleading. It gives the impression that when infallibility is exercised by the Pope, then it somehow leaves the Church.

Personally, I don't view infallibility as the Pope's or the Church's. Infallibility belongs to God alone. The question is, will God grace his Church with infallibility in those times when it is necessary for the teaching and defense of the Truth? From that angle, does it really matter if God grants the Church this grace through the Petrine office or the college of bishops? Let God's Truth be the focus of the matter, not the means through which God makes His Truth known.

Blessings

In theory, as can be read literally from Pastor aeternus, that is the case. It is only in the exercise of the charism, and in various clarifications and explanations made over the years, that it becomes clear the Pope must act within the bounds of the consensus fidei, or what Eastern Christians would call "the Tradition", and then only with the moral unanimity of the Church--expressed by consultation with the bishops. However, none of that is actually in Pastor aeternus.

A clarification on that point would serve two purposes: first, it would make clear the limited role of the Bishop of Rome; and second, it would make issuance of any further ex Cathedra declarations impossible. For if moral unanimity is required, it would mean consultation with all the bishops of all the Churches, and not just the Latin Church. And it is clear that in any conceivable case that such assent would not be forthcoming. At another level, an ex Cathedra declaration is superfluous: if there is moral unanimity on an issue, then there is no conflict, hence no need for such a decree; and if there is conflict on an issue, moral unanimity will not be forthcoming, and a declaration becomes impossible.

It should have occurred to someone at some point that if the Pope is indeed infallible when speaking on matters of faith and morality, there is no need to say so. If you believe that the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete that will lead us into all truth, and that the Holy Spirit flows within the Body of Christ, then when the Popes speaks truly, what he says will be infallible. On the other hand, no set of a priori criteria can make a false statement true.

Ergo, declarations of papal infallibility were unnecessary and created a needless impediment to Christian unity, undermining the very nature of the Petrine Ministry. As an historically and culturally conditioned expression of doctrine, it is linked to a specific time and place (to whit, the rise of the 19th century Nation State and the loss of the Papal States), it can be altered or discarded when the historical situation changes, just as Pope Pius XII quietly discarded the doctrine of the temporal supremacy of the Popes.

Not only were those conditions not placed into Pastor Aeternus itself, but they were explicitly rejected for inclusion in the decree by the Deputation de fide in the Relatio delivered by Bishop Gasser at the council just prior to the vote approving the definition.

I agree.

Dear brother Stuart,

Actually, a form of it is. The historical preamble to the Decree was inserted for the Final Session on Infallibility:
"The Roman Pontiffs according to the exigencies of the times and circumstances, sometimes assembling ecumenical Councils or asking for the mind of the Church spread throughout the world, sometimes by particular synods, sometimes using other helps which divine Providence supplied, defined as to be held those things which with the help of God they had recognized as conformable with the Holy Scriptures and Apostolic Tradition. For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine; but that by His assistance they might inviolably guard and faithfully expopund the revelation delivered through the Apostles, or the Deposit of Faith."
To several bishops of the Minority, this addition was sufficient to address two of the most pressing concerns of the Minority party: namely, (1) the involvement of the Church in the Pope's infallible decision; (2) the primacy and rule of the Church's Tradition in limiting the Pope's decisions.

Though some members of the Minority who previously voted non-placet finally voted placet with the addition, most members of the Minority found it wanting. These wanted a more explicit statement on the role of the Church in a Pope's infallible teaching. As it was, the historical preamble merely made the involvement of the Church normative, but not absolutely necessary (the latter being what most of the Minority wanted).

You have expressed well the reservations of the Majority party - the utter impracticality of consulting the entire episcopate for every dogmatic decree. And what if the agreement was not unanimous? Is the Church lost, then? Even some of the strongest voices among the Minority such as Hefele and Moriarty were keen enough to realize the impasse such a system would produce.

As Bishop Gasser explained, "The dogmatic judgment of the Roman Pontiffs are for the greater part concerned with controversies on faith in which recourse is had to the Holy See." Personally, it makes no sense that after the episcopate submits a theological matter to the Pope for his dogmatic judgment, the Pope must then await for consent from the same body that brought the question to him in the first place.

I propose that if we discard the infallibility of the head bishop of the Church, its mouthpiece, its representative, then we should likewise dispose of the infallibility of the Church --- for I cannot see how the body can be infallible without the head of the body being infallible as well.

Blessings

Dear brother Stuart,

I had started a thread on the possibility of an official clarification on the dogma of papal infallibility at CAF. Here is a link to it. What do you think?

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=381885&highlight=official+clarification

Blessings

P.S. If the Mods think this deserves a completely new thread, perhaps they can create a new one for it.

It isn't superfluous, because it was planned also as a mean of authoritative solving problems coming from the separation of those in authority (the bishops), who hold the office of teaching in many cases in theory only, and the university theologians who teach the faith de facto, and sometimes think they know better.

Mardukm:

Remember that ancient canon... a synod can not act without its protos, nor a protos act without his synod.

Alone, neither has full authority; only together do they form the Metropolitan or Patriarchal church.

That's a pretty lame explanation, and were it true, then the Catholic Church would need far more than papal infallibility to get it out of its mess. Besides, the doctrine has never been applied in any of those situations. In the one application of an infallible pronouncement, the Pope chose to declare dogma. . . something that everybody already believed, that was not central to the Christian faith, and which was not a suitable subject for dogmatization in the first place. I tend to think of the pronouncement of the Assumption of Mary as the doctrinal equivalent of a nuclear bomb test: "See, we really can do it, so don't make us do it again!". Like a nuclear weapon, Papal infallibility is something that succeeds only if never used.

Gee, however did we manage for 1800 years without a doctrine of papal infallibility? And how is it that there is far more unity of faith among the Orthodox, who reject the notion of an infallible protos (while not necessarily rejecting the concept of a protos itself)?

This statement makes no sense becuase it implies that infallibility was somehow invented or created out of thin air where nothing was there before.
The argument is that it has always existed, but the need for a solemn definition did not occur until recent times (in much the same way as the Trinity was always believed but didn't need a solemn definition until Nicea and Constantinople).

What's that supposed to mean? It seems that is a personal opinion rather than a fact.

Well, that would be my point: it was invented more or less out of thin air. The historian in me cannot get around the facts of the matter. That various medieval Popes actually denied that Papal decrees could be infallible puts that into sharp contrast with later developments, which, as I said, were due entirely to the historical circumstances in which the Papacy found itself in the middle of the 19th century.

The Orthodox may be at each other's throats on matters of jurisdiction, but there is far more doctrinal uniformity within the Orthodox communion than within the Latin Church. Quite simply, the existence of an extrinsic magisterium is no substitute for the internalization of Tradition. Tradition seems to be a stronger guarantee of belief than any number of papal decrees.

can you give some specific examples?

Historical circumstances drives everything in the Church. Councils are called for historical circumstances. For instance, the Creed was promulgated because of historical circumstances, The canons of the councils were due to historical circumstances. The East and West of the 2nd millenium developed in vastly different historical circumstances, so it stands to reason that the universal primacy became an issue in the west. It's tradition was being attacked in the west. To the east, it really wasn't an issue for them, as they had their own historical circumstances to deal with.

In the early fourteenth century, during the Franciscan spiritualist controversy, Pope Clement V ruled in favor of the Spiritualist faction within the order. But his successor, Pope John XXII, ruled in favor of the Conventuals and required the submission of the Spirituals. The Spirituals then proposed that papal decrees were binding and indefectible (i.e., infallible declarations) which could not be contradicted even by later Popes. This was rejected for the simple reason that no sitting Pope wanted to be bound by the decisions of his predecessors, and it was declared that no Pope could be bound in any way by prior decisions--neither his own, nor his predecessors (Archbishop Vsevolod of blessed memory noted on more than one occasions that this means the Pope's word is no good--and that you wouldn't buy a used car under such conditions). This was reiterated when John XXII declared the Franciscan doctrine of the poverty of Christ was heretical, in effect negating the ruling of Pope Innocent III. Once more the Franciscans tried to argue that papal rulings were infallible, and once more the papacy itself rejected that argument.

Thereafter, the entire issue of papal infallibility disappears from the radar screen, popping up again only in the 19th century as increasingly secular nation-states severed the link between Church and state, and presented the Papacy with a situation in which its authority was challenged both by secular authorities and by an increasingly independent, materialist intelligentsia.

As historian Brian Tierney puts it in his book Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350 (1972),


In fact, two catechisms used in Ireland in the early 19th century explicitly denounced papal infallibility as a myth invented by "Protstants" to dsicredit Roman Catholics.

The fact that papal infallibility was such a contentious issue at Vatican I (to the extent that a majority of the bishops left before final passage of Pastor Aeternus, indicates that the doctrine was far from received truth within the Latin Church. The extent of the resistance to the doctrine shows that there was no moral unanimity behind its adoption. The way in which the infalliblist party constrained free debate and muzzled vocal objections indicates that the decree was not passed by the free and uncoerced vote of the bishops. In short, there's a lot about Vatican I that is quite unseemly at best, and outright disgusting at its worst--a "Robber's Synod" if ever there was one.


True. But some of the acts of a council are transcendent, and others are merely transient. The truths expressed in the Creed of Constantinople (which, inter alia, Rome did not get around to accepting until the Council of Ephesus in 431) are eternal. Pastor aeternus doesn't fall into the same category by a long shot.

Stuart,


The problem with this example is that it deals with a specific group within the Church, and not directed to the Church universal. Infallibility has always been understood within the scope of the universal Church in Christ's promise to Peter that he would confirm his bretheren (Lk 22:31-32). So this example really doesn't demonstrate support for your argument.

But yet wasn't there a large majority of Arian Bishops during Nicea? We both know that the Sensus Fidelium is not based in the concept of a democratic majority.