Dissecting Vatican I’s narrow definition of infallibility. [Part 1 of a series.]

hen the Protes­tant apol­o­gist Wal­ter Mar­tin debat­ed infa­mous athe­ist Mada­lyn Mur­ray O’Hair on a radio show in 1968, he declared: “First we’re going to talk about lan­guage.” He was call­ing out her equiv­o­ca­tion on key terms and try­ing to get her to admit that “in cer­tain con­texts, words always mean the same thing.” O’Hair nev­er did admit it, but that was a price­less line: “First we’re going to talk about lan­guage.”

This post is the first in a series on papal infal­li­bil­i­ty; and because infal­li­bil­i­ty is so wide­ly misunderstood—even by Catholic stan­dards of misunderstanding—we’re going to talk first about how the Church defines it. That’s the only way to have a rea­soned dis­cus­sion about heresy, about apos­ta­sy, about schism, and it’s the only way to have one about infal­li­bil­i­ty.

The Church for­mal­ly defines this dog­ma at the First Vat­i­can Coun­cil, in the doc­u­ment Pas­tor Aeter­nus (July 18, 1870).

A DIGRESSION ON “DOCTRINE” AND “DOGMA.”

A brief paren­the­sis is in order, how­ev­er, before we open those heavy con­cil­iar tomes. Infal­li­bil­i­ty is a dog­ma, and some peo­ple get hung up on what a “dog­ma” is and how it dif­fers from a “doc­trine.” Sim­ply put, a dog­ma is a truth the Church under­stands to have been revealed by God. A doc­trine, though the Church teach­es it with author­i­ty, is not divine rev­e­la­tion.

So for exam­ple, it is divine rev­e­la­tion that Jesus is God (specif­i­cal­ly, the Sec­ond Per­son of the Trin­i­ty): That’s a dog­ma. But the Church’s stric­ture on con­tra­cep­tion is not divine rev­e­la­tion: That’s a doc­trine. You can find the def­i­n­i­tion in the Cat­e­chism §88. These words get mixed up all the time, but it’s impor­tant to use them cor­rect­ly.

DISSECTING A DEFINITION.

That out of the way, we can fling dust in the air and con­sult the fusty texts of Vat­i­can I to find the offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion of infal­li­bil­i­ty:

We teach and define that it is [1.] a divine­ly-revealed dog­ma: [2.] that the Roman Pon­tiff, [3.] when [4.] he speaks ex Cathe­dra, that is, when in dis­charge of the office of Pas­tor and Teacher of all Chris­tians, by virtue of his supreme Apos­tolic author­i­ty, he [5.] defines a doc­trine regard­ing faith or morals [6.] to be held by the Uni­ver­sal Church, [7.] by the divine assis­tance promised to him in blessed Peter, is pos­sessed of that infal­li­bil­i­ty with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defin­ing doc­trine regard­ing faith or morals: and that there­fore [8.] such def­i­n­i­tions of the Roman Pon­tiff are irreformable of them­selves, and not from the con­sent of the Church.

Thus in a sin­gle ser­pen­tine sen­tence, the Church defines infal­li­bil­i­ty. I am always amused by peo­ple who com­plain about the murky jar­gon com­ing out of the Vat­i­can today, as though a sen­tence like the one above is plain and clear. But no. We have no choice but to face this rep­tile and dis­sect it scale by scale.

• Infal­li­bil­i­ty is a dog­ma: It has been revealed by God.

Many peo­ple dis­pute this; even Catholics dis­pute this. I don’t dis­pute it—I will defend it lat­er in the series—but for now I mere­ly point out only that that’s how the Church clas­si­fies its author­i­ty. It’s a dog­ma; it’s divine rev­e­la­tion. Catholics are oblig­at­ed to accept this teach­ing; to dis­pute it would be at least mate­r­i­al heresy. My only gripe with the expres­sion “divine­ly-revealed dog­ma” is that it’s redun­dant. There are no oth­er kinds of dog­mas clut­ter­ing up Church teach­ing; for which we can be grate­ful.

• The def­i­n­i­tion in Vat­i­can I applies exclu­sive­ly to the pope.

Some wrong­ly think that Vat­i­can II extend­ed infal­li­bil­i­ty to the oth­er bish­ops, but that is not what Lumen Gen­tium 25 says. “[T]he indi­vid­ual bish­ops,” it says, “do not enjoy the pre­rog­a­tive of infal­li­bil­i­ty.” Bish­ops teach infal­li­bly only when they are (1) “in agree­ment on one posi­tion” and (2) they teach in union with the pope. They have no inde­pen­dent charism of infal­li­bil­i­ty. Bish­op Crankberg of the Dio­cese of Inde­pen­dence can’t act on his own and define Mary to be co-redemptrix. Only Pope Fran­cis or anoth­er suc­ces­sor of Peter can do that.

A sec­ond point (I will devel­op this more in a lat­er post) is that ecu­meni­cal coun­cils and Sacred Scrip­ture are also infallible—with these caveats: (1) Ecu­meni­cal coun­cils must be affirmed by the pope before they have an author­i­ty what­ev­er; (2) the Church is the only infal­li­ble inter­preter of Sacred Scrip­ture. This is a much more com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject than a para­graph can con­vey, and I will set it to the side for now. For now it’s enough to point out that Pas­tor Aeter­nus restricts infal­li­bil­i­ty to the pope.

• There are lim­its to the pope’s exer­cise of infal­li­bil­i­ty.

Words mat­ter, and here I get a whole bul­let point out of the sin­gle word “when.” The pope has infal­li­bil­i­ty, accord­ing to Pas­tor Aeter­nus, “when.” Not every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble.

(Inci­den­tal­ly, some of my crit­ics—those who false­ly accuse me of “pap­o­la­try” and “ultra­mon­tanism”—seem to think my posi­tion is that every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble. That is false. I’ve nev­er said that, nev­er believed that, have always said the exact oppo­site, and repeat it now: Not. Every­thing. A. Pope. Says. Is. Infal­li­ble. Time and again I cor­rect my crit­ics, but they nev­er retract their false accu­sa­tions. So it goes.)

Any­way, most of what the pope says isn’t infal­li­ble. If Pope Fran­cis wakes up tomor­row morn­ing and com­plains, “My break­fast is cold,” it’s pos­si­ble his break­fast is hot. If Pope Fran­cis says in an inter­view (as he has) that Luther “did not err,” he is man­i­fest­ly wrong.

• To be infal­li­ble, the pope must speak ex cathe­dra.

Ex cathe­dra is Latin for “from the chair.” A chair is a sym­bol of author­i­ty. From “cathe­dra” we get the word “cathe­dral”; a cathe­dral is where the local bish­op’s “chair” is. Pas­tor Aeter­nus has a very wordy expla­na­tion for what it means for a pope to speak ex cathe­dra (because it has a very wordy expla­na­tion for every­thing). A pope speaks ex cathe­dra “when in dis­charge of the office of Pas­tor and Teacher of all Chris­tians, by virtue of his supreme Apos­tolic author­i­ty.”

I can make all that sim­pler: To be infal­li­ble, the pope has to be express­ly act­ing as teacher of the whole Church.

An exam­ple of this kind of thing (a con­tro­ver­sial one, I know, but I cite it any­way) is Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is. In this doc­u­ment, Pope St. John Paul II reit­er­ates the teach­ing that the priest­hood is lim­it­ed to men. In the penul­ti­mate para­graph, the pope spec­i­fies that he is writ­ing “in virtue of my min­istry of con­firm­ing the brethren.” He cites Luke 22:32—not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the same text that Pas­tor Aeter­nus cites to lend bib­li­cal sup­port to the dog­ma of infal­li­bil­i­ty.

• To be infal­li­ble, the pope must define “a doc­trine regard­ing faith or morals.”

Note the use of the word “doc­trine” here. It is not just dog­mas, but also doc­trines, that can be infal­li­ble. Doc­trines are not divine rev­e­la­tion like dog­mas are, but if the pope solemn­ly defines them, they are still infal­li­ble.

It helps to think of it this way: All dog­mas are infal­li­ble; not all infal­li­ble state­ments are dog­mas. All divine rev­e­la­tion is infal­li­ble; not all infal­li­ble state­ments are divine rev­e­la­tion. It’s not always divine rev­e­la­tion that a pope is defin­ing, though in the case of infal­li­bil­i­ty it is.

You may ask: “But Alt! How do I know when the pope has “defined” some­thing?”

Usu­al­ly, you know because the pope uses the word “define.” For exam­ple, in Munif­i­cen­tis­simus Deus (1950), Pope Pius XII teach­es the Assump­tion of Mary in these words:

[W]e pro­nounce, declare, and define it to be a divine­ly revealed dog­ma: that the Immac­u­late Moth­er of God, the ever Vir­gin Mary, hav­ing com­plet­ed the course of her earth­ly life, was assumed body and soul into heav­en­ly glo­ry.

Like most things in Catholic the­ol­o­gy, it’s a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than that: John Paul II does not use the word “define” in Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is, only the word “declare.” But we can leave it at that for now.

• To be infal­li­ble, the pope must define a dog­ma (or doc­trine) “to be held by the Uni­ver­sal Church.”

You’ll find that kind of lan­guage in Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is. John Paul II writes: “[T]his judg­ment [i.e., the priest­hood is reserved to men] is to be defin­i­tive­ly held by all the Church’s faith­ful.”

You will also find it in Munif­i­cen­tis­simus Deus: “Hence if any­one, which God for­bid, should dare will­ful­ly to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fall­en away com­plete­ly from the divine and Catholic Faith.”

Often, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ecu­meni­cal coun­cils, the Church pro­nounces an anath­e­ma on any­one who denies some par­tic­u­lar dog­ma of the faith. An “anath­e­ma” does not mean, as some false­ly think, that a per­son has been con­demned to Hell. It’s an excommunication—an espe­cial­ly griev­ous excom­mu­ni­ca­tion in which you’re exclud­ed from the Church alto­geth­er, tra­di­tion­al­ly with bell, book, and can­dle. Less­er excom­mu­ni­ca­tions exclude you from the sacra­ments; only an anath­e­ma excludes you from the Church.

(Did you know where that expression—“bell, book, and candle”—comes from? Dur­ing said griev­ous excom­mu­ni­ca­tion, the bish­op would ring a bell, close a holy book, and snuff a candle—usually by dash­ing it to the ground in a litur­gi­cal­ly autho­rized fit of offend­ed right­eous­ness. But I digress.)

• The pope enjoys infal­li­bil­i­ty “by the divine assis­tance promised to him in blessed Peter.”

The pope has infal­li­bil­i­ty because he enjoys “divine assis­tance,” not because he enjoys some super­hu­man per­son­al qual­i­ty. He has divine assis­tance in defin­ing truths of the faith in the same way that the authors of the Bible had divine assis­tance in writ­ing their respec­tive books.

• Because the pope has divine assis­tance, infal­li­ble teach­ings are “irreformable.”

They are irreformable, says Pas­tor Aeter­nus “of them­selves, and not from the con­sent of the Church.”

Sen­sus fideli­um (“the sense of the faith­ful”) is a term in Catholic the­ol­o­gy that refers to teach­ings the Church con­sid­ers true by virtue of “uni­ver­sal con­sent”: This is what all Catholics believe. But what Pas­tor Aeter­nus tells us is that sen­sus fideli­um has no bear­ing on infal­li­ble teach­ings. Because the pope had divine assis­tance in arriv­ing at these def­i­n­i­tions, it does­n’t mat­ter how many of the faith­ful agree or dis­agree. Of them­selves (i.e., being infal­li­ble) they are “irreformable.” They are irreformable as Sacred Scrip­ture is irreformable. Sen­sus fideli­um can’t change John 14:6, or any oth­er verse of Scrip­ture, and it can’t change the infal­li­ble def­i­n­i­tions of the pope.

INFALLIBLE TEACHING VS. PAPAL OPINION.

Vat­i­can I gives us a lim­it­ed def­i­n­i­tion, and we must under­stand those lim­its. A teach­ing is not infal­li­ble just because the pope said it, but because the pope said it in a very spe­cif­ic con­text. John Paul II’s Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is is infal­li­ble, but the arti­cle he wrote for Osser­va­tore Romano call­ing St. Maria Goret­ti a mar­tyr to chasti­ty is just an opin­ion. If we’re going to think clear­ly, we must make dis­tinc­tions. The pur­pose of this post—the first in a series—was to help us start to make those dis­tinc­tions.