Protestant asks: When would Catholics know they’re in a false Church?

teve “Pur­ple” Hays asks the ques­tion at Fail­ablogue. (He calls it Tri­ablogue, for opti­mistic rea­sons known to him alone.) I am hap­py to answer Mr. Hays’ ques­tion, which he puts like this:

Hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, what would the mag­is­teri­um have to do for devout Catholics (or Catholic apol­o­gists) to con­clude that the Roman Catholic church nev­er was the one true church found­ed by Jesus Christ? Can the mag­is­teri­um ever do any­thing, in prin­ci­ple or prac­tice, to dis­cred­it Roman Catholi­cism? … What’s the stan­dard of fideli­ty?

Yes, there is. Mr. Hays says he is ask­ing the ques­tion only as hypoth­e­sis. I believe him and am hap­py to give an answer only in hypoth­e­sis.

Let us say that Pope Fran­cis or some future pope—Honorius LXIII, if you please—wrote an encycli­cal enti­tled “On the Total Deprav­i­ty of Mary.” That would be a clear con­tra­dic­tion to the dog­ma of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion defined by Pope Pius IX. But it would also be a con­tra­dic­tion to the teach­ing that popes can not for­mal­ly teach error. So either Hon­o­rius LXIII is wrong or Pius IX is wrong, but one of them taught error; and that would dis­cred­it the Catholic Church and make it clear that it is not in fact the Church found­ed by Jesus Christ. The only way out of it would be the unsat­is­fac­to­ry way of say­ing some­thing like this: The Catholic Church is the Church found­ed by Jesus Christ, but he nev­er intend­ed that it could not teach error. So all these errors are just hap­pen­stance, and I can still rest assured that what­ev­er the Church teach­es, I can take it or leave it, Jesus wants me to be here. That would be unsat­is­fac­to­ry, because at that point one should nat­u­ral­ly ask: Well, what if some oth­er church has a truer doc­trine? Does­n’t Christ want me to fol­low the truth? I should be there instead of here.

Or say that a future Pope John Paul XCIV were to teach that Christ is two per­sons in one divine nature. That would be a Chris­to­log­i­cal heresy—the oppo­site of the true dog­ma: Jesus is two natures (human and divine) in one divine per­son. If a pope taught some­thing like that, Catholics would be faced with the same prob­lem raised by the first exam­ple.

It is my posi­tion that no such state of affairs could ever come about. It is impos­si­ble for the Church to teach error because the Holy Spir­it pro­tects it from doing so.

•••

Mr. Hays knew I was going to say that. He writes:

In my obser­va­tion, Catholics take the posi­tion that the pope can’t change dog­ma. The pope can’t change the deposit of faith. The pope can’t ele­vate a heresy to the sta­tus of dog­ma. The pope can’t make a moral teach­ing that con­tra­dicts nat­ur­al law de fide doc­trine. How­ev­er, the hier­ar­chy can say or do any­thing short of that with­out dis­cred­it­ing Roman Catholi­cism.

And that, in fact, is the cor­rect answer. Christ guar­an­tees Catholics this one thing: The Church will not teach error. If, then, the Church were to teach a heresy—or if it were to teach some­thing in plain con­tra­dic­tion of itself—I would know that some­where along the way I made a mis­take about what Christ intend­ed, and I should search about for a church that is truer to what Christ want­ed from a church.

But Mr. Hays thinks a Catholic could worm his way out of even that. “[A] tena­cious Catholic apol­o­gist,” he writes, “might find a loop­hole by say­ing that if a pope were to do that, it would­n’t dis­prove Catholi­cism; rather, it would dis­prove the claim that he was speak­ing ex cathe­dra.” Mr. Hays finds this hypo­thet­i­cal posi­tion unsat­is­fac­to­ry for two rea­sons:

• “If a pope can­not change dog­ma even when he intends to speak ex cathe­dra, even when he uses ex cathe­dra for­mu­las, then it’s impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy when or if a pope is speak­ing ex cathe­dra. If papal intent and ex cathe­dra for­mu­las are insuf­fi­cient cri­te­ria, then there’s no way to ver­i­fy an ex cathe­dra pro­nounce­ment.
• “It ren­ders Catholi­cism unfal­si­fi­able, which means that even if Catholi­cism is actu­al­ly wrong, Catholics are nev­er be in a posi­tion to know it’s wrong. In that event, they have an unshak­able com­mit­ment to a false reli­gion.”

By ex cathe­dra, I think Mr. Hays means “infal­li­ble”; and, con­trary to his insis­tence here, we cer­tain­ly do know when a state­ment is infal­li­ble. I’ll give you two of them:

• The dog­ma of the Assump­tion is infal­li­ble.

Pay atten­tion to the lan­guage in Munif­i­cen­tis­simus Deus:

By the author­i­ty of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apos­tles Peter and Paul, and by our own author­i­ty, we 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.

This is an infal­li­ble teach­ing.

• The exclu­sion of women from the priest­hood is infal­li­ble.

Pay atten­tion to the lan­guage in Ordi­na­tio Sac­er­do­tal­is:

[I]n order that all doubt may be removed regard­ing a mat­ter of great impor­tance, a mat­ter which per­tains to the Church’s divine con­sti­tu­tion itself, in virtue of my min­istry of con­firm­ing the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no author­i­ty what­so­ev­er to con­fer priest­ly ordi­na­tion on women and that this judg­ment is to be defin­i­tive­ly held by all the Church’s faith­ful.

This is an infal­li­ble teach­ing.

And here I’m going to say some­thing I’ve said before, but which Mr. Hays may not have heard from a Catholic apol­o­gist. But pay atten­tion, because I’m going to back it up by ref­er­ence to four Mag­is­te­r­i­al texts.

If a future pope were to issue an encycli­cal—or even just preach a homi­ly—with the title “On the Total Deprav­i­ty of Mary,” any Catholic who said, “Well, this is not infal­li­ble, it does­n’t have the mag­ic words, so the pope may be a per­son­al heretic but I can dis­re­gard it because he’s not teach­ing it infal­li­bly: that Catholic would be dead wrong.

Here’s why: When a pope says some­thing as an exer­cise of the Magisterium—encyclicals and hom­i­lies and Wednes­day audi­ences count—it does not mat­ter whether it meets the tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria of infal­li­bil­i­ty or not. It is author­i­ta­tive and Catholics must give it reli­gious assent.

How do I know that? I know it for four rea­sons:

Lumen Gen­tium says so. (This is in par. 25.)

In mat­ters of faith and morals, the bish­ops speak in the name of Christ and the faith­ful are to accept their teach­ing and adhere to it with a reli­gious assent. This reli­gious sub­mis­sion of mind and will must be shown in a spe­cial way to the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um of the Roman Pon­tiff, even when he is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme mag­is­teri­um is acknowl­edged with rev­er­ence, the judg­ments made by him are sin­cere­ly adhered to, accord­ing to his man­i­fest mind and will.

The Cat­e­chism says so. That’s in CCC 892:

Divine assis­tance is also giv­en to the suc­ces­sors of the apos­tles, teach­ing in com­mu­nion with the suc­ces­sor of Peter, and, in a par­tic­u­lar way, to the bish­op of Rome, pas­tor of the whole Church, when, with­out arriv­ing at an infal­li­ble def­i­n­i­tion and with­out pro­nounc­ing in a “defin­i­tive man­ner,” they pro­pose in the exer­cise of the ordi­nary Mag­is­teri­um a teach­ing that leads to bet­ter under­stand­ing of Rev­e­la­tion in mat­ters of faith and morals. To this ordi­nary teach­ing the faith­ful “are to adhere to it with reli­gious assent’ which, though dis­tinct from the assent of faith, is nonethe­less an exten­sion of it.”

The Pro­fes­sion of Faith says so (text here):

I adhere with reli­gious sub­mis­sion of will and intel­lect to the teach­ings which either the Roman Pon­tiff or the Col­lege of Bish­ops enun­ci­ate when they exer­cise their authen­tic Mag­is­teri­um, even if they do not intend to pro­claim these teach­ings by a defin­i­tive act.

And Canon 752 says so (text here):

Although not an assent of faith, a reli­gious sub­mis­sion of the intel­lect and will must be giv­en to a doc­trine which the Supreme Pon­tiff or the col­lege of bish­ops declares con­cern­ing faith or morals when they exer­cise the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um, even if they do not intend to pro­claim it by defin­i­tive act; there­fore, the Chris­t­ian faith­ful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.

Any Catholic who says, “That’s not ex cathe­dra, I can dis­re­gard that,” does not speak the truth.

Be care­ful, how­ev­er. Doc­trine can devel­op. Ordi­nary teach­ings that are bound to his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances can change as cir­cum­stances change. But Chris­to­log­i­cal dog­mas, or Mar­i­an dog­mas, can’t just be turned on their head; and it does­n’t mat­ter if a pope turns them on their head in a non-infal­li­ble con­text. Even non-infal­li­ble con­texts bind Catholics, and a pope can’t bind the Church to error. If he does, it’s not the true Church.

•••

But Mr. Hays has led us down this path because he wants to pro­pose a broad­er under­stand­ing of the word “fideli­ty.” Fideli­ty, he tells us, does not just mean propo­si­tions like the two natures of Christ or the assump­tion of Mary. It does not just mean ver­bal for­mu­las like “I here­by define, declare,” etc. “Fideli­ty has a per­son­al dimen­sion,” he says. “If every pope, car­di­nal, bish­op, and priest was an active sodomite,” Mr. Hays says, “the Catholic church would still be [con­sid­ered] a faith­ful church [by those who restrict the con­cept of fideli­ty to propo­si­tions].”

Now, while Mr. Hays is cor­rect about what the word “fideli­ty” means, I hope you see how he has shift­ed the ground of argu­ment. He began by ask­ing what the Mag­is­teri­um could do to prove that the Church was not found­ed by Jesus Christ. But the Mag­is­teri­um can’t be “sodomites” (Mr. Hays’ word) because the Mag­is­teri­um is noth­ing more than the teach­ing author­i­ty of the Church. The Mag­is­teri­um can nei­ther do right­eous deeds or sin­ful deeds because the Mag­is­ter­im does­n’t do things at all. Church lead­ers as per­sons do. And if the pope keeps a gay lover, he’s not engag­ing in this kind of sex as a Mag­is­te­r­i­al act.

We would right­ly say the pope is a hyp­ocrite. We would right­ly say that the pope has been unfaith­ful to the Church and unfaith­ful to his office and unfaith­ful to Christ. We would right­ly say that grave harm and scan­dal had been done.

But Jesus nev­er promised that popes or bish­ops would not be sin­ners, even griev­ous sin­ners. He nev­er promised that the num­ber of griev­ous sin­ners in the Church hier­ar­chy would be lim­it­ed to x per­cent. What he promised was that the Church, in its teach­ing, would keep the deposit of faith. Mr. Hays asked what would have to hap­pen for me to con­clude that the Church was not found­ed by Jesus Christ; he did not ask what would have to hap­pen for me to con­clude that Church lead­ers were unfaith­ful to Jesus Christ. Church lead­ers have been unfaith­ful to Jesus Christ, in every Chris­t­ian church, since always.

The nation of Israel aban­doned fideli­ty to God many times, but I trust Mr. Hays would not con­clude from this that the Hebrews were not God’s cho­sen peo­ple. And even Jesus told his dis­ci­ples that they ought to fol­low the Phar­isees’ teach­ing despite their own per­son­al infi­deli­ty to it:

The Scribes and the Phar­isees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be care­ful to do every­thing they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not prac­tice what they preach. (Matt. 23:2–3)

As the Scribes and Phar­isees sat in Moses’ seat, so the pope sits in Peter’s chair and bish­ops suc­ceed the apos­tles in their teach­ing office. Be obe­di­ent to their teach­ing, but do not do what they do when they’re unfaith­ful to it.

Mr. Hays is cor­rect to broad­en the con­cept of “fideli­ty” beyond mere ver­bal propo­si­tions. But he also con­flates two dif­fer­ent ques­tions: the teach­ing of the Church and the per­son­al right­eous­ness of its lead­ers. I’ll con­clude that the Church is not the Church found­ed by Jesus Christ if it teach­es error, but not if the pope is a sin­ner.