But how does the Holy Spirit protect the Church?

s Catholics, we believe in the inde­fectibil­i­ty of the Church—that the Holy Spir­it will pro­tect the pope, and the bish­ops under him, from teach­ing error. The bib­li­cal basis for this is Matt. 16:18, where Christ tells His dis­ci­ples that “the gates of Hell will not pre­vail” against the Church; and John 16:13, where he says that He will send the Spir­it to “guide you into all truth.” Vat­i­can I affirmed this in Pas­tor Aeter­nus, and Vat­i­can II did so again in Lumen Gen­tium.

But how does that hap­pen? you ask. We can begin an answer by strik­ing off some of the ways the Holy Spir­it could do it but prob­a­bly does not.

• If the pope were about to teach error, the Holy Spir­it could strike him down with light­ning, or a heart attack, or paral­y­sis of the tongue.
• The Holy Spir­it could whis­per every word into the pope’s ear, so that the pope becomes God’s amanu­en­sis.
• The Holy Spir­it could pre­vent any bad or hereti­cal bish­op from being appoint­ed in the first place.
• Before a syn­od or coun­cil, the Holy Spir­it could meet trou­ble­some prelates in a back alley and rough them up a few times to knock ortho­doxy into them.
• The Holy Spir­it could zap all bish­ops, on ordi­na­tion, with instan­ta­neous truth and per­fect abil­i­ty to speak it.

Sat­is­fy­ing as some of these things might be, it is not how the Holy Spir­it pro­tects the Church. The Spir­it is not a magi­cian. Or a scourge. Instead, God acts through human beings, while allow­ing them to retain their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and their free will. It can be messy.

God, for exam­ple, did not dic­tate every word of the Bible to its authors. He could have, but he did not. Instead, he used their per­son­al­i­ties, their writ­ing style, and many dif­fer­ent lit­er­ary gen­res (includ­ing fic­tion and poet­ry), to express infal­li­ble truth in a wide range of ways. But in spite of that (or because of it), St. Paul’s epis­tles are a big syn­tac­ti­cal mess. (And peo­ple say Fran­cis is con­fus­ing.)

Like­wise, the pope emer­i­tus, Bene­dict XVI, reject­ed the idea that the Holy Spir­it hand-picks the pope. God does not whis­per to the car­di­nals, “That one!” Instead he “leaves us much space and much free­dom,” and its role is to be under­stood “in a much more elas­tic sense.” Per­haps God looks upon a new­ly-elect­ed pope and says, “Oh no, they did not.” But he does not aban­don his Church.

As it is with con­claves, so it is with syn­ods and coun­cils. There will be frac­tious­ness and dis­agree­ment and some peo­ple will sug­gest any num­ber of stu­pid things. The Holy Spir­it will not show up, not like­ly, in a flash of fire to con­sume the heretics into smoke and zap the rest with truth.

But what might it do?

Recent­ly a large num­ber of Catholic con­verts, includ­ing Dr. Scott Hahn, signed an open let­ter to the syn­od fathers call­ing on them “to uphold Christ’s teach­ing on the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage.”

But why is this let­ter need­ed? some­one asked me. Doesn’t the Holy Spir­it pro­tect the Church?

Yes. And maybe the let­ter is the Holy Spir­it pro­tect­ing the Church. Maybe the Holy Spir­it prompt­ed the sign­ers to sign. God acts through the Church, and through all its mem­bers.

God heals sick­ness, but he sends doc­tors. God for­gives sin, but he sends priests. God pro­tects the Church, but he sends Catholics. He uses our inter­ces­sions. That God pro­tects the Church from error does not mean we may put our feet up and wait for God to act.

And one of our most impor­tant inter­ces­sions is prayer. Prayer is God at work in us, and through us. Do not fear for the Church, or for the syn­od. But always pray.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Epic Pew, Octo­ber 15, 2015.