Posts tagged Papal Infallibility
The Modern Cult of the Pope
Feb 10th
There is a blog I like to follow, run by a Catholic layman of Mexican roots living in California and highly interested in questions of folk religion and Catholicism at its most “natural”. The name of the blog is Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity. The article that particularly interests me today is On Papalotry. Between those who deny the Pope entirely and those who worship him, we indeed live in unbalanced and spiritually dangerous times!
The article is to some extent inspired by this article concerning the Pope and his relationship with the Church. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave a complete caricature of authority in the persons of Hitler and the clown-emperor Mussolini. I am personally persuaded that John Paul II was an extremely devout and spiritual man – but he was also a showman. When the Holy Father was in England in 1982, I remember him preaching in a football stadium about the evils of contraception and abortion – and he received standing ovations and hysterical screaming from the very young women who were probably at that very time discovering their sexual liberation! The words spoken were of no importance to the crowd, but the figure saying them!
I remember buying a copy of the Encyclical Laborem Exercens, the great social teaching of John Paul II in the wake of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. I don’t think I got beyond the first page of this turgid and barely comprehensible language (I was reading the English translation of course). I find the language of Benedict XVI refreshingly easier to follow and read, much like that of Popes like Pius XII, except that he no longer uses the royal “we”.
In my article on Erastianism, I sketched the development of Papal power throughout the second millennium in particular, and I make no secret of the fact that I would have been an “inopportunist” had I been involved in the 1870 Vatican Council. Like Newman, I would have been opposed to a formal definition of Papal infalliblity in those historical circumstances, but would have pressed for what happened, the infallibility of the Pope being limited to his Extraordinary Magisterium when defining a dogma of faith ex cathedra. In the Petition the TAC Episcopate sent to the CDF in October 2007, this was stated:
- We accept the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, which is a ministry of teaching and discerning the faith and a “perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity” and understand this ministry is essential to the Church founded by Jesus Christ. We accept that this ministry, in the words of the late John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, is to “ensure the unity of all the Churches”. We understand his words in the same Letter when he explains to the separated churches that the Bishop of Rome “when circumstances require it, speaks in the name of all the Pastors in communion with him. He can also – under very specific conditions clearly laid down by the First Vatican Council – declare ex cathedra that a certain doctrine belongs to the deposit of faith. By thus bearing witness to the truth, he serves unity”. We understand that, as bishops separated from communion with the Bishop of Rome, we are among those for whom Jesus prayed before his death “that they may be completely one”, and that we teach and define matters of faith and morals in a way that is, while still under the influence of Divine Grace, of necessity more tenuously connected to the teaching voice of catholic bishops throughout the world.
- We accept that the Church founded by Jesus Christ subsists most perfectly in the churches in communion with the See of Peter, to whom (after the repeated protestation of his love for Jesus) and to whose successors, our Divine Master gave the duty of feeding the lambs and the sheep of his flock.
- We accept that the most complete and authentic expression and application of the catholic faith in this moment of time is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its Compendium, which we have signed together with this Letter as attesting to the faith we aspire to teach and hold.
- Driven by these realizations, which we must now in good conscience bring to the attention of the Holy See, we seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment. We seek the guidance of the Holy See as to the fulfilment of these our desires and those of the churches in which we have been called to serve.
The tendency of adoring the Pope is a recent development no older than the mid nineteenth century, and a considerable amount of pressure was applied on the Fathers of Vatican I to define an understanding of Papal authority that would have gone far beyond the limits of Tradition and Catholic orthodoxy. I have read Döllinger’s The Pope and the Council. It is a most illuminating book, but I stop short of denying a dogma that was defined by an Ecumenical Council and which curbed the excesses of both the Gallican remnant and the extreme infallibilists. The moderation of this definition is what I find most comforting and expressive of the power of the Holy Spirit in these solemn moments of the Church’s history.
Much of the nonsense was to a large extent corrected by the constitution of Vatican II Lumen Gentium (of course with the Nota Praevia Paul VI had inserted to correct the “gallican” and liberal tendencies among the conciliar Fathers). Over the past couple of hundred years or so, Popes have been great and devout men, and this has served to nourish the myth of an impeccable figure who did not share the common human condition of fallibility and sinfulness. What happens when we get an immoral or a heretical Pope? This speculation is of actuality in sectarian groups of radical traditionalists called sedevacantists. Theologians have been divided over the question of whether a bad Pope tacitly abdicates and can thus be physically removed by the Cardinals or bishops, or whether one has simply to put up and shut up until he dies. I find the speculation pointless, and no more productive than the sterile arguments of some for obscure quotations of Hooker and the 39 Articles most Anglicans consider of historical interest only!
The myth of the “impeccable” Pope was, for some exploded, for others reinforced, in the wake of Vatican II. The most notable event that profoundly disturbed the life of Catholics was the new rite of Mass issued in 1969 by Paul VI. Other events and teachings also led to the increasing polarisation between conservatives and liberals / progressives. For some time in the late 1980’s, I took an interest in the idea of Western Rite Orthodoxy and its parallel in the “classical” Anglican Continuum, and was attracted to the idea of Western Catholicism modelled on the ecclesiology and spirituality of Eastern Orthodoxy. There appear to be successful Western Rite Orthodox communities in the USA, slightly less marginal than the Anglican Use in the Catholic Church, but on the whole, Anglicans are not well accepted in Orthodoxy. The Old Catholicism of the old archdiocese of Utrecht, French Gallicans like Bossuet and Dupanloup and German intellectuals like Döllinger can be very attractive in theory, but it is exactly that, a theoretical religion devised by intellectuals, and of no relevance to ordinary people. In more recent years, the Union of Utrecht is entirely modelled on Ms. Schori’s Episcopal Church (ugh!) with the radical feminist and LGBT agendas. In considering “non-Roman” Catholicism as an attractive option, I perhaps reacted against having been in my twenties and thirties during the pontificate of John Paul II, the super star Pontiff presiding over a Church that was less and less favourable to a traditional ecclesiology and liturgical life.
When confronted with the writings and opinions of some Anglicans showing their critical attitude in regard to the TAC, my reaction is “saw the film, read the book and went there…”.
The election of Benedict XVI has brought us to a more realistic view of the Papacy, something he himself wanted from the moment of his election in April 2005. I think he is a devout, pleasant and highly cultivated person, but what interests me in Benedict XVI is the content of his teaching and observations on the current situation. Those who worshipped John Paul II are now condemning Benedict XVI for delivering exactly the same moral teachings and “hard sayings”. Of course the Holy Father could die before having neutralised the influences that would bring us back to the 1970’s. We might get an out-and-out evil Pope. Anything can happen. But, I refuse to worry about it.
I think few of us in the future Ordinariates will be tempted to be Pope-worshippers. We are Anglicans and accustomed to intellectual criticism and going into things open-eyed. We do need to remain lucid, not suspicious or fearful but bringing our way into helping the Church to have a more balanced attitude about the Pope and authority in the Church.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Feb 8th
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a “supernatural sense of faith” the People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s living Magisterium, “unfailingly adheres to this faith.”
890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms:
891 “The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful – who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter’s successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium,” above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine “for belief as being divinely revealed,” and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions “must be adhered to with the obedience of faith.” This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.
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.
From a comment on a blog discussing Anglicanorum coetibus:
“Papal Infallibility for me is the dogma that prevents me from joining the Roman Catholic Church.”
In my work with potential converts to the Catholic faith, I can’t remember how many times someone has told me, “I just can’t accept ______” (fill in the blank). It might be the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, papal infallibility, transubstantiation, or some other Catholic doctrine. My response is always, “Tell me what you think the Church teaches about that.” When they tell me, it’s not surprising they’re having trouble accepting it. I wouldn’t be able to, either.
Taking just the matter of papal infallibility, it’s remarkable how many people confuse it with impeccability, thinking we’re claiming that the Pope can’t sin. Or they imagine that it applies to every single thing he says, and every random thought that crosses his mind. Frequently, people have a too-narrow idea of it, not understanding that it belongs to the whole Church, and flows from an adherence to the Magisterium.
Some people think it gives a kind of super-power to the Pope, when in reality it limits him simply to teaching the truth.
So if someone says they can’t accept infallibility, or the Marian dogmas, or any other aspect of the Faith, let’s make sure what they “can’t accept” is what the Church really teaches.
Some Thoughts From Newman
Jan 15th
To add to the discussion of the doctrine of papal infallibility, here are a couple of quotes from the Venerable John Henry Newman:
What I believe about the Pope, I believe, as I believe any other doctrine, – because the Church teaches it – but, for me, the Church directs me to the Pope not the Pope directs me to the Church. – from Letters and Diaries, Vol. XXII, p.95
Its communion with the see of St. Peter is not a ‘Note of the Church’. How then do I know which is the true Church? I know it by the tokens of its unity, its apostolicity, its pretensions etc etc. I admit that there are able men who have been led into the Church through belief in the Pope’s prerogatives. But a man need not believe in the jus divinum of the see of St. Peter in order to submit himself to the church which is in communion with it. This was my own case. I did not distinctly believe in the jus divinum of the Holy See till I joined the Church. I then believed in it as I believed in any other doctrine of the Church, because she was the Church, the oracle of Christ. I believed in the seven sacraments forthwith, because she taught them de fide; and for the same reason I believed in the jus divinum of the Papacy forthwith. – from Letters and Diaries, Vol. XX, p.308
A Quick Note on Papal Infallibility
Jan 15th
Here is a succinct and recent article – http://www.catholic.com/library/Papal_Infallibility.asp
Keeping this as simple as possible, we find that the Pope to the Church is like a rudder to a boat. When we look at what is happening in the Anglican Communion, the Lutherans in the various northern European national churches, Protestants, liberals and so forth, we see the real and urgent need for a shepherd, a teacher, a guide, a Father in God.
This whole situation somewhat reminds me of 1945 when Mussolini was dead, Hitler was on the point of being defeated in Berlin and taking his own life. Europe and its totalitarian ideologies were in ruins. Someone remained to give hope and sanity to a broken world – Pius XII. Everyone looked to the Holy Father, including the Jewish people whose lives (as many as possible) he saved. I’m sure you can easily see the parallels with the ravages of liberalism and “revisionism” since the 1960’s and 1970’s – the very institutions those ideas were intended to reform are collapsing and imploding.
We are certainly going to be better off under the good authority of the Pope than under the dictatorship of relativism and the tyranny of the arbitrary. Even if we only look at things this way, I see nothing unreasonable about this Papal authority being of God. The fact remains that the Papacy was instituted by Christ, and the evidence of it is clearly written in the New Testament and the Tradition of the Church.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Papal Infallibility, and the TAC
Jan 15th
Writing for the National Catholic Register, Pat Archbold addresses the issue of papal infallibility as a stumbling block to the acceptance of Anglicanorum Coetibus on the part of many Anglicans.
A hermeneutic is a hard thing to shake.
We all have our own hermeneutic, a lens through which we view the world, which can either serve to distort or clarify. The impression that I have is that William Lind may be wearing bifocals. He sees certain things with clarity while other things are distorted.
Lind writes at The American Conservative about the disintegration of the Anglican Communion and how Pope Benedict’s offer to Anglicans might be the first step in a “counter-reformation.”
With delightfully witty tone, he decries the abandonment of orthodoxy in favor of a wholly new religion of its own invention.
Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion.
He excitedly details the Pope’s offer to Anglicans and acknowledges the Pope’s shrewdness in creating separate ordinariates to shield them from the whims of liberal bishops and the bad taste of the “snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass.”
While Lind is delighted with much of what is in Anglicanorum Coetibus, he worries about one giant fly in the ointment that might doom the entire enterprise to failure, the Catholic Faith.
One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, a 19th-century Roman innovation. The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail.
Leaving aside his ahistorical assertions, Lind sees papal infallibility as an obstacle to unity. Apparently lost on Lind is that papal infallibility as exercised by the Pope is the source of unity. Without the office of the Pope and the necessity of visible communion with it, all of Christianity would be the giant “theological mud puddle” that he rightly derides in his own Communion. The difference then would be that there would be nowhere to turn to achieve the unity and orthodoxy that he desires.
With no wish to sound harsh (I don’t mind being harsh I just don’t want to sound that way), we don’t want any Anglican that is hung up on Papal infallibility. If you desire the full faith, the faith as taught by the Apostles and protected by the Holy Spirit, come on over. If you wish to remain a de-facto Protestant, stay put. We have enough de-facto Protestants in the Catholic Church as it is.
Writing in the context of a Forward in Faith parish in the Church of England, Fr. Giles Pinnock, SSC, Parish Priest of St. Mary-the-Virgin, Kenton, has identified other “hang-ups” for some of his people.
As the vicar of an Anglo-Catholic parish that is presently discussing why we should respond positively to Anglicanorum coetibus, and why some might not want to, I can confirm that papal infallibility is a stumbling block for some.
As are inter alia, in no particular order:
- Humanae vitae
- the Marian dogmas – ie, the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception – ie, ‘how much of all this do we have to believe?’
- didn’t the Pope support Spain against England in past wars (I’m not kidding)
- Bloody Mary’s persecution vs Good Queen Bess putting it all back together (again, I’m not kidding)
- waiting for General Synod to come up with a better way for us to avoid women bishops (missing entirely the point of Anglicanorum coetibus)
- ‘our’ church buildings – although I do appreciate the wrench that many would experience in leaving for the last time a building in which they may have been baptized and married, seen children and grandchildren baptized and married, and from which parents may have been buried
- the Reformation had to happen because of the abuses of the monasteries
- humane and pastoral Anglicanism over against harsh dogmatic Rome
- … I could go on …
These are all fig leaves behind which hides an innate and visceral anti-Catholicism into which generations of Anglicans – particularly English Anglicans – have been indoctrinated in support of an English (or Anglophile) Anglican and anti-Catholic self-identification that is so deep set that it would in many apparently require genetic resequencing to overcome.
While many individual Anglicans — even within the Traditional Anglican Communion — may have “hang-ups” over papal infallibility or the acceptance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a doctrinal standard, a couple of points ought to be firmly established with respect to the doctrine of the TAC bishops themselves.
In the next several days, the Primate of the TAC will release via The Anglo-Catholic several important documents. For the first time, the entire text of the October 2007 “Portsmouth Letter” (in which the TAC appealed to the Holy See for a means to achieve corporate reunion) will be available to the general public. As this document was part of an ongoing dialogue between the TAC episcopate and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to this point, only brief excerpts have been publicized. The release of the entire letter will make very clear the unambiguous position of the TAC.
From one of the excerpts already released, it is known that our bishops have proposed the Catechism as “the most perfect expression of the Catholic faith in the world today,” a faith which they “aspire to hold and teach.” Some have tried to rationalize and “spin” this confession. Perhaps the curious phrase “the most perfect expression” provides some wiggle room? Certainly the TAC bishops could not have meant to accept the recent Marian dogmas or those of papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction?
The coming days will make these questions crystal clear. But for those holding out for wiggle room, I’ll go ahead and burst their bubble. After all, though some have endeavored to ignore the facts, the reality is no secret.
Anglicanorum Coetibus informs us:
§5 The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate.
There is a very simple reason for this requirement in the Apostolic Constitution. The bishops of the TAC themselves proposed the Catechism as the doctrinal standard for a future corporate reunion — and their confession of the doctrines contained therein was unconditional.
Far from the admission of any wiggle room, the full text of the “Portsmouth Letter” makes absolutely clear that our bishops assent, not to the teaching of the Catechism generally, but to specific doctrines — indeed to those doctrines upon which all of the others hang. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church is accepted without reservation. The ministry of the Successor of St. Peter is confessed in terms that would be familiar to a father of the First Vatican Council!
Not only did the TAC bishops assembled — unanimously — approve the text of the letter to the Holy See, the entire college signed their confession in a solemn act. Here is what the same Catechism says of a solemn oath:
2150 The second commandment forbids false oaths. Taking an oath or swearing is to take God as witness to what one affirms. It is to invoke the divine truthfulness as a pledge of one’s own truthfulness. An oath engages the Lord’s name. “You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve him, and swear by his name.”
2151 Rejection of false oaths is a duty toward God. As Creator and Lord, God is the norm of all truth. Human speech is either in accord with or in opposition to God who is Truth itself. When it is truthful and legitimate, an oath highlights the relationship of human speech with God’s truth. A false oath calls on God to be witness to a lie.
2152 A person commits perjury when he makes a promise under oath with no intention of keeping it, or when after promising on oath he does not keep it. Perjury is a grave lack of respect for the Lord of all speech. Pledging oneself by oath to commit an evil deed is contrary to the holiness of the divine name.
This solemn oath of the TAC bishops is irrevocable. And from October 2007, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has been, at least, the de facto official doctrine of the Traditional Anglican Communion.
As in Fr. Pinnock’s Church of England congregation, there are not a few of our people in the TAC who look forward to union with Rome and ask, “How much of this will I have to believe?” Let us be clear. Whatever happens in the coming months, the decisions to be made are essentially ecclesiastical politics; the doctrinal questions have long been decided. Our bishops have not confessed the Catechism of the Catholic Church with reservations; the Catechism, in its entirety, is commended to the faithful of the TAC by our whole episcopate. This is faith that we “aspire to hold” and that our bishops are pledged to teach.
For those communicants of the TAC who are yet reluctant to accept unfamiliar or difficult doctrines on the authority of the Roman Pontiff, what of your own bishops? You believe them to be the successors to the Apostles and you have a duty to heed the call of your shepherds. These same bishops believe themselves to be led by the Holy Ghost, now to set aside the contentions of the past and to sacrifice for the unity of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. You may not be persuaded by the Bishop of Rome, but will you reject even your own shepherds? Heed the voice of the Spirit speaking through them “ut omnes unum sint.”
Old Catholicism and False Difficulties with Papal Authority in the Church
Jan 1st
One occasionally comes across references to the Old Catholic Church, usually understood as the Union of Utrecht, which is an ecclesial body in communion with the Church of England since 1931 and a member of the World Council of Churches. Historically, Old Catholicism was an amalgam of the Dutch Jansenists who broke from Rome in the early eighteenth century and a number of groups of Swiss and German intellectuals who aligned themselves with the minority “anti-infallibilists” at Vatican I and the Kulturkampf of Kaiser Bismarck.
The title Old Catholicism came more from the Swiss and German liberals rather than from the Dutch, who called themselves something like the Roman Catholic Church of the Old Episcopal Clergy. From the early days of the twentieth century, this movement had its imitators in the forms of long strings of successions of episcopi vagantes. Few of those men had ever belonged to the schismatic Archdiocese of Utrecht or the Germanic liberal and anti-infallibilist groups. Their only connection with historical Old Catholicism is the origin of their episcopal lineages. The subject hardly merits comment.
Historical Old Catholicism was largely based on European liberalism of the nineteenth century and the anti-clerical ideology of the German Kulturkampf. The German and Swiss versions of this break from Rome were very near to the liberal Protestant position of the likes of Harnack and the later Bultmann. It was to be a religion without miracles, mystery or spirituality. The Catholic world accepted the Vatican I definition of Papal infallibility, and the minority position of Döllinger, Strossmayer, etc. was quickly discredited. The biggest mistake of the dissident Archbishop of Utrecht was to consecrate Dr. Reinkens, thus leading to the Union of Utrecht of 1889. However, it was understandable, the dry branch cut off from the tree since 1725 was desperate in its loneliness, and the originally Jansenist Dutch community by then had run out of steam and relevance.
Soloviev observed that Old Catholicism had never been a popular movement. It was a confined circle of intellectuals and bourgeois liberals. The schism was thus inoffensive for Rome and useless for the Teutonic empire of the time. They were given a few churches here and there in Europe, and were joined by a certain number of families. It was not surprising that the Roman Catholic characteristics and disciplines were dropped one by one at the end of the nineteenth century, and by 1910, the venerable Latin liturgy was gone and replaced by simplified vernacular rites. They united with the Church of England in 1931, and thereafter followed all the developments including the banalisation and secularisation of the liturgy, the ordination of women, LGBT inclusion, etc. Only the Polish National Catholic Church resisted the movement and broke away from both the Episcopal Church and the Union of Utrecht.
