lmost everything that a pope says is not. Pope Francis has never—not so far—taught anything infallibly. It’s possible he could, but I doubt he will. Pius X didn’t, Benedict XV didn’t, nor did Pius XI, John XXIII, John Paul I, or Benedict XVI. Pius IX taught the Immaculate Conception infallibly (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854); he also promulgated Vatican I infallibly. Pius XII taught the Assumption infallibly (Munificentissimus Deus, 1950). John Paul II taught the restriction of the priesthood to men infallibly (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994). That’s it, if you enumerate from Pius IX forward.
I know that some will dispute the presence of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on this list. This is not the place to defend my inclusion of it—that will be later in the series. My point for now is that the list of infallible teachings since Vatican I is small. Contrary to what some of my critics want to believe, I am not a “papal positivist.” It was false witness then, it is false witness now, it will remain false witness no longer how long Mr. Sammons’ post remains uncorrected.
NARROW CRITERIA.
Be that as it may, it is worth reviewing the narrow criteria of infallibility, as that dogma was defined in 1870:
- The pope must speak ex cathedra—invoking his authority a supreme teacher of the faith.
- The pope must define a doctrine, or a dogma, concerning faith or morals.
- The pope must bind the entire Church to this teaching.
Almost nothing qualifies. Popes say a lot; you can count on one hand the number of times infallibility has been exercised in 175 years. When Pope Francis said “Who am I to judge?” he was not infallible. Even when you interpret that statement correctly—and most people don’t—he was not infallible. None of Benedict XVI’s social justice encyclicals are infallible. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is not infallible. Humanae Vitae is not infallible. Nothing that John XXIII uttered is infallible. When a pope gives a homily, or teaches at a Wednesday audience, or speaks to a reporter, or engages in small talk during breakfast, or screams obscenities after stubbing his toe, he does not speak infallibly.
It’s possible, of course, that Pope Francis could utter an infallible sentence during breakfast. If he turns to his secretary of state and says, “Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity,” that’s infallible. But it is infallible only insofar as the original source of that teaching is infallible—not because the pope said it while eating an English muffin.
THE POPE IS NOT INFALLIBLE.
It is because of all this that I object to the statement “the pope is infallible.” I’m not splitting hairs. When someone says that, they suggest—even if it’s not their conscious intention—that infallibility is a personal characteristic of the pope. To say “the pope is infallible” grants the pope an attribute of divinity alone, as though Benedict XVI is impeccable or Francis can not err in anything he says.
That is not how Catholics are meant to understand infallibility. It has nothing to do with who or what the pope is, and instead with a gift that the pope exercises under very limited conditions, if at all. When those conditions are met, the pope teaches infallibly—according to Vatican I—through “divine assistance.” Without that divine assistance, the pope could not teach infallibly at all.
The pope is not infallible. God is.
THE ERRORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Back in 2013, the Times wondered, somewhat obnoxiously: “When a pope retires, is he still infallible?” The article, by Rachel Donadio, very briefly gets it (almost) right:
Although in the popular imagination, everything a pope says and writes is often perceived as infallible, in fact, papal pronouncements are only considered infallible when a pope speaks “ex cathedra,” in his capacity as leader of the universal church, on questions of faith and morals.
Someone must have said this to Donadio during her “research” for the article, and she dutifully included it as an aside, as though that gives her cover. Almost nothing else in the article treats that sentence as though it’s actually true or limits the kind of things we say about infallibility. Here, for example, is how she begins:
[Benedict XVI’s resignation has] puzzled the faithful and scholars, who wonder how a pope can be infallible one day and fallible again the next—and whether that might undermine the authority of church teaching.
I confess I’m not sure why anyone should be “puzzled.” This is how it works all the time—even without a resignation or a death, even while the pope remains pope. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII spoke infallibly when he taught that Mary was assumed into heaven. On November 2, 1950, nothing he said was infallible. He was infallible one day and fallible again the next! In fact, Pius XII was infallible (if I can use that expression here for convenience’ sake) on that one day—November 1, 1950—and never at any time before or since. And Catholics treat this as quite normal. If anything is “puzzling,” it’s why the Times was worried about Benedict XVI losing infallibility when he never actually exercised it.
But the way Donadio treats it, you’d think infallibility was a trait of the pope’s—something akin to blood type. How can Ratzinger be O‑positive one day and suddenly O‑negative the next? It’s an odd way to speak of such things, because there was a time on earth when Joseph Ratzinger, when Karol Wojtyła, when Giovanni Montini and Angelo Roncali and Eugenio Pacelli and even Giovanni Ferretti were not yet pope. And no one asked the question in reverse. No one said, “How can Jorge Bergoglio be fallible one day and infallible the next?” If it’s puzzling that Ratzinger should lose infallibility when he resigns the papacy, why isn’t it also puzzling that Bergoglio should acquire it when he assumes the papacy?
It’s as though Donadio thinks that infallibility is something God, or the College of Cardinals, or the camerlengo, or maybe the senior cardinal deacon, infuses into the pope upon his election. But once infused, that infallibility remains and only death cancels it. Maybe she thinks infallibility is a permanent mark, like baptism.
It’s hard to know what she thinks, or whether she thinks, because she doesn’t explain.
THE ERRORS OF SCHOLARS, PROFESSORS, THEOLOGIANS, PRINCIPALITIES, POWERS.
Donadio is not alone, however, because she cites no less an authority than Ken Pennington—professor of “ecclesiastical and legal history” at Catholic University of America. “What is the status of an ex-pope?” Pennington mused. “We have no rules about that at all. What is his title? What are his powers? Does he lose infallibility?”
Well, infallibility is not something the pope can “lose,” because it’s not something he “has” in the first place. It’s not a possession of the pope’s, or some rare genetic marker in his DNA. It’s not as though, if you performed a gene mapping on the pope, you’d find infallibility.
This is not as complicated as Pennington makes it. According to Vatican I, under x number of conditions, a pope teaches infallibility with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. If he’s no longer pope, he can’t do that. The “bearer” of infallibility is the pope, according to Ott. If you’re no longer the pope, you’re no longer the bearer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re living or dead.
(And once again, I point out that Benedict XVI taught nothing infallibly, and neither has Francis in his ten years as pope. Benedict’s “loss” of infallibility in 2013 wasn’t an issue.)
But Donadio also quotes Diarmaid MacCulloch, the Church historian and author of, among other works, a history of Christianity, a history of the Reformation, and a biography of Thomas Cranmer. He’s no intellectual lightweight; he’s won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. And yet here is how Donadio describes her conversation with him:
That the supreme pontiff can pass authority to his successor at retirement rather than death inevitably introduces more ambiguity to the authority of church doctrine, some scholars say, since it calls into question the authority of the pontiff who promulgated that doctrine. “Benedict actually by resigning has introduced some cracks into that infallibility. It’s bound to relativize doctrine,” Mr. MacCulloch said.
Neither Donadio nor MacCulloch offer any theories as to why that should be. According to Vatican I, the reason infallible teachings are “irreformable” are because the authority for them is God himself. They don’t have authority to the extent that the pope who promulgated them stays pope until death. If the pope resigns, the pope’s teachings don’t somehow become null and void. Vatican I doesn’t say that; canon law doesn’t say that; why Diarmaid MacCulloch should assume that, I confess I don’t know.
And once again I point out: Pope Benedict XVI never taught anything infallibly in the first place, so it’s a non-issue. Every pope since Vatican I who taught something infallibly died still sitting in Peter’s chair.
A PROFESSOR IN ROME GETS IT RIGHT, BUT THE TIMES STILL ENDS WITH WRONGNESS.
Finally, Donadio encounters a professor who knows what he’s talking about. That would be Philip Goyret, who teaches dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Academy of the Holy Cross. I’m happy to report that a professor of dogmatic theology at an academy run by Opus Dei knows what he’s talking about. Here’s what he says:
If after March 1, Benedict XVI loses his head and writes that he declares in an infallible way that the Virgin Mary died before being assumed into heaven, this won’t be an infallible decision, because he’s no longer doing it as pastor of the universal church. It will be his personal opinion. But he’s a very intelligent person and will never do that.
He’s right that you need to be pope to teach infallibly, he’s right that the pope has to declare it “in an infallible way,” and he’s right that Benedict was a “very intelligent person.” How so much truth made it into an article about Catholicism at the New York Times, I confess I don’t know.
But it doesn’t last long, because Donadio ends her article by revisiting Professor Pennington, who says:
I can imagine these unhappy Catholics going to the old pope and saying, “What do you think about that?” I think that this would raise serious issues of where authority and where infallibility and where the truth in the church lies.
Well, they did try to do that, but Benedict wasn’t going to play that game. And the only thing this proves is that, despite the “big red disclaimer” paragraphs about how infallibility only happens under certain conditions, Donadio and her sources still entertain the false supposition that everything a pope says is infallible. A pope doesn’t speak infallibly when someone goes to him and says, “Hey, Benny. Can people use condoms to stop HIV? What do you think?” Reporters do this all the time now. “Hey, Frank. What’s your view on all these LGBT priests?” Or: “What’s your view, Holy Father, on Catholic women having 32 children? Should they do that?” Whatever comes out of the pope’s mouth at that point is not infallible, since the conditions of infallibility are not present. The pope’s answer to a journalist’s question has no bearing at all on “where the truth in the Church lies.”
When people talk about infallibility, I wish they’d stick to how the Church actually defines the dogma, and not to the, ahem, pontifications of professors and the New York Times.
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