The Vatican's YouCat Catechism: Soft on All the Key Doctrines

The Vatican's YouCat Catechism: Soft on All the Key Doctrines

Link to article in The Bellarmine Report.

The Natural Law: Too Strict for Janet Smith?

The Natural Law: Too Strict for Janet Smith?

Janet Smith, a well-known, 'conservative' moral theologian, recently published a scandalous article in First Things (June-July 2011 issue), where she tries to justify, in certain cases, the intrinsically immoral act of lying.   Smith rashly entitled her article: "Fig Leaves and Falsehoods: Pace Thomas Aquinas, Sometimes We Need to Deceive." Much worse and more heterodox theses have been proposed by theologians in the last fifty years, but this one is particularly scandalous because it comes from a woman whose  moral teaching had been considered trustworthy by conservative Catholics for decades.  It is also scandalous due to her being a professor at a major seminary.

And hers is not simply an innocent theological mistake.  She acknowledges that she is rejecting the teaching, not only of St. Thomas, but of the whole theological tradition and of the Magisterium of the Church (she even cites the new Catechism), namely, that lying is intrinsically wrong and, thus, can never be justified.  In particular, the Church teaches that the end does not justify the means; it is for this reason that lying for a good end is never justified.  We would not be surprised if this were just another forgotten traditional Catholic teaching of decades past that had been buried together with all other things pre-conciliar: but it is a standard moral doctrine of the "current" Magisteirum, found the teaching of even the recent popes, John Paul II in particular (in Veritatis splendor, for example), something that even the most "moderate" of Catholics would expect her to respect.

So Smith rejects this doctrine while being fully aware that it is the teaching of the Church, and still, she pretends that all is good and that she is not stepping outside of the bounds of orthodoxy.  Not only that, but those of us who disagree with her are automatically "rigorists."  She calls Aquinas a rigorist, but by extension it follows that everyone else, all Catholic moral theologians and ethicists,  Popes, Bishops, confessors, the faithful, even saints, were rigorists.  (Before 1960 she would have been reprimanded by the Church--and rightly so.)

She ends the article by saying:

It is with trepidation and, I hope, with due humility that I disagree with Aquinas and go on record as defending a practice that many moralists I respect think always wrong. Nonetheless, I also respect the practices of cultures, the intuitions of nearly everyone, and what seems to me to be sound reasoning about the postlapsarian nature of signification.

Seemingly in her mind, the intuitions of (post-Englightenment) cultures and the reasoning of (mostly utilitarian) contemporary moral theologians outweigh the authority of the Church and the consensus of the approved Catholic theologians throughout history.  She acknowledges that she is being theologically audacious, but justifies herself by saying that she is doing so with humility. 

See the interesting comments posted at Rorate Caeli regarding mental reservations.

 

Louis Bouyer: Enemy of Traditional Theology

Louis Bouyer: Enemy of Traditional Theology

Fr. Louis Bouyer, Neo-Modernist, not-quite-ex-Lutheran, Conciliar Peritus, unleashes his neo-modernist hogwash and tells Garrigou-Lagrange, Sertillanges, John of St Thomas, and the rest of the tradition of Scholastic Thomists what St Thomas really taught about God and Revelation.

Taken from Bouyer's The Invisible Father: Approaches to the Mystery of the Divinity, pp. 248-257, with comments by Don Paco in red.

Neo-Thomist Equivocations on Thomism

Let us take as an example one of the most venerable productions of the last Thomist, or rather, Neo-Thomist renaissance {note that the term 'neo-Thomist' is a pejorative one}: the long and great book of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Dieu, son existence et sa nature [God: His Existence and His Nature].  In it, the theological teaching of St Thomas is analyzed, carefully taken to pieces and put together again, with a clarity and a fidelity most deserving of praise.  Yet few readers, putting down the book, will have escaped the impression that in it the God of the Bible and the Gospel has been reduced to a caput mortuum [dead head] of frozen abstractions.  And yet its author undoubtedly exemplified in his time that rare combination of theologian and eminent man of the spirit, and it was his constant concern to develop spirituality and theology in tandem.  How then, we must ask, could such a theologian have produced a summa about God frankly so overwhelmingly boring and, more especially, the speculative ramifications of which (practically) never contribute to a genuine enrichment of thought?  {Typical Neo-Modernist critique of everything traditional: "it is boring."  Cf. Von Balthasar, Raising the Bastions.  This is quite telling of their motives and of their unworthiness as theologians or even as churchmen.}

E. Gilson, with such Thomists in mind, was perfectly right in saying that one can’t see the forest for the trees, and that this is an inevitable result of their systematic effort to separate what is philosophical from their master’s theology, so as to reorganize and rebuild it, purportedly, according to its own innate exigencies.  It is at the very least surprising that disciples, beyond the Angelic Doctor, of Aristotle himself should have forgotten that order is of being.  Instead, they imposed an order on Thomas’ thought which was not his own, and thereby turned it into something quite different from his, even if (which is supposing a good deal, given such manipulating) the individual pieces were fully respected.  {Note that the neo-modernist finds Gilson to be on his side.}

It was not in fact by chance that St Thomas never separately systematized his philosophy {never mind about his commentaries on Aristotle!  They don’t count because they do not represent St Thomas’ philosophy, only Aristotle’s...} that he never detached it from Christian theology but always developed it within the latter.  However purely rational philosophical developments should be and remain, for St Thomas it was quite certain that they did not thereby become independent of the situation of the thinker producing them.  If the one philosophizing is a Christian, this will have an effect on his thought, even if, while philosophizing, he uses nothing but rational concepts and procedures accessible, at least in principle, to any and every man even unenlightened by revelation.  {Agreed, but St Thomas's philosophy can be found in his Commentaries on Aristotle exactly in that way: in a non-theological context.  Only there, in fact, does it follow its own properly rational principles.  The philosophy contained in the Summa is formally theology, and only materially philosophical.  This is something that Gilson and his followers are willingly blind to.}

The result is that when John of St Thomas, the first to do this, transformed Thomism by developing philosophy independently of and prior to the theology dealing with the Christian revelation, he inevitably created a different philosophy and a different theology, however careful he was to use nothing but elements taken straight from his master.  Even when he is scrupulously precise in repeating St Thomas’ words and key phrases, they no longer say the same thing.  {Bouyer, on the other hand, can't even use St Thomas' words themselves, because they would prove that he is in error.}

That this is true of “John of St Thomist” theology, {note the audacious ad hominem, a mockery of traditional Thomistic theology} right from its very beginning, is revealed by that theologian’s understanding of what, following St Thomas, he calls a “theological conclusion.”  According to him it is possible, even while adhering to a strict application of syllogistic reasoning, to have two kinds of theological conclusions—one flowing from two revealed premises, the other from one revealed and one philosophical premise.  And this latter kind by its very nature will widen the field, if not precisely of revelation as such, at least of the knowledge we can draw from it.  This may appear at first sight to be a quite innocuous and legitimate development of St Thomas’ idea of a theological conclusion.  In fact, it transforms it to the point of being unrecognizable.  The whole meaning of theological endeavor is at a stroke radically altered, and at the same time even our very conception of revelation.

For St Thomas there are not and cannot be theological conclusions which are not already comprised within revelation.  A theological conclusion is and can only be a revealed doctrinal affirmation of which one has established the logical relationship it has with other doctrinal affirmations of the same species.  The whole of theology moves within faith and so within revelation.  To suppose that it can evade it in order to increase its scope (!) is no longer to understand anything about revelation itself, {thus, pretty much all of post-Tridentine theology, which is founded on this doctrine, is unable to understand revelation} as if theology could ever flatter itself of having gone so far beyond revelation as to be able to complete it.

This in fact supposes that, according to John of St Thomas and those who have followed him, revelation is nothing but an accumulation of externally juxtaposed propositions, to which one can further add philosophical propositions, thus aspiring to enrich revelation by philosophico-theological hybrids.  It is of course this which purportedly justifies the separation of philosophy and of the theology concerned with the revealed datum, and the reconstruction of the first prior to the second, with, consequently, the naive expectation of “developing” the objects of revelation by artificially inseminating them with external philosophical propositions.  {Bouyer, you are disgusting.}  But at this point one is miles away from genuinely Thomist views of theology as the science of God, having its whole basis on his word.  One has in the first place lost sight of St Thomas’ strong sense of revelation as the communication of a single mystery {barf!} that of God himself, an organically coherent mystery {double barf!} which speculation can attempt to inventory, to analyze and synthesize but never exhaust, and even less indulge in the grotesque pretension of adding something to it to complete and develop it {Apparently, Bouyer never read the first question of the Summa: “Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason ... as extrinsic and probable arguments...” ST I.1.8 ad 2}.

Traveling on such a road—and this has been the mentality, more or less of Baroque Thomism, not to mention modern Neo-Thomism—one inevitably comes to prolong this now bloodless religious philosophy into a correspondingly depreciative theology of revelation.  Such a theology ceases to be able to vivify by the vision of faith, and at the same time refine and reform our merely human concepts, and it increasingly tends to yield to the disastrous policy of clearing out the Word of God of everything that cannot be circumscribed by or reduced to pre-formed concepts constructed without reference to the Word.

It is therefore not surprising if such so-called Thomism gives the impression that the philosophico-theological thought of St Thomas is nothing but a gigantic and futile exercise in tautology which, while claiming to explain and develop the statements of the faith, in fact eviscerates and disjoins them.  And it is worth emphasizing that if this can happen in the case of so distinguished a mind and so worthy a  man of the spirit as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, then how much worse it will be when this kind of philosophy and theology is taken up by some college rector whose chief concern is to bring out the “errors” of his colleagues, and either has no interior life or never dreams (quite rightly!) of nourishing it on his theology!

The Existential Character of Authentic Thomism

Once we have become aware of all of this, and drawn the moral, we are in a position to rediscover St Thomas’ God.  He is not simply that first unmoved mover of the universe, blithely indifferent to it, even disdainfully ignorant of its existence, and who in any case is only capable of referring everything outside and within himself to a hideous egoism or egotism expanded to infinite dimensions.  Such was Laberthonnière’s accusation.  The first thing we must realize is what E. Gilson exposed in a history of the Neo-Thomists, far more devastating than anything Laberthonnière ever wrote {Note: Gilson's critique of traditional Thomism is more devastating than that of a declared enemy of Thomism}, and without making the latter’s mistake of believing the Neo-Thomists when they claimed to be unfolding their master.  This is the fundamental misunderstanding which travesties the whole of Thomism from top to bottom and in particular St Thomas’ theology: that of transposing his thought from the most radical existentialism there has ever been to a deadly essentialism {as always, the critics of 'essentialist Thomism' never define either 'essentialism' or 'existentialism'; instead, you are expected to 'feel' what those terms mean}.  How could the God whose essence is to be precisely “Pure Act,” the very act of existing without any limitation, possibly be summed up by concepts?  {Here you are expected to 'feel' that essentialism has to do with ascribing attributes, or 'concepts', to God...  Ooh, those evil Thomists!}

But to realize, in the deepest sense, the significance of this starting-point, one must see St Thomas’ Metaphysics, not as simple, superficially modified Aristotelianism, but as what E. Gilson, fifty years ago, was so bold as to call “the metaphysics of Exodus,” without himself immediately grasping every consequence of that insight [The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 1, London, 1950, p. 51].  {So even Gilson was not as bright a Thomist as Bouyer!}

In other words, the point of anchorage and the spring-board for this whole metaphysic is the mysterious saying of the burning bush: “I am who am.”  This must not be hastily translated in the way that St Augustine did in his Soliloquies, still wrapped up as he was in the cocoon of his Neo-platonism: “I am the beinng who is always and forever.”  This is to stay with a platonizing essentialism, even though its contours have been practically pushed out of sight.  {Read: Augustine was moronic 'essentialist' who did not understand God.}  The phrase must be taken as St Thomas took it with a rigor no previous Christian thinker had approached: “I am what I am; I am the only one who can define the infinite, ever actual fullness of his existence.” {Note that this is Bouyer’s own amateurish expression, not St Thomas’.  And it falls desperately short of the Gilsonian existentialism which it tries to convey.  A better rendering would be: "I am he whose essence is to exist."}  This is what St Thomas meant practically every time he spoke of Ipsum Esse.

Yet at the same time one must emphasize the point so few recognize, namely, how laughably illusory {traditional Thomism is laughable now} are all those well-intentioned attempts to introduce more logic into St Thomas {Are you implying, Bouyer, that St Thomas cannot be improved or given more logical rigor?  Are you denying that philosophical and theological thought should develop?}.  We see Sertillanges, for instance, disarmingly doing his open best to expurge from St Thomas’ system any platonic left-overs, especially the theory of ideas...

The facile acceptance, then, of the commonly-used method of exposition introduced a discordance into Thomist theology.  To this we must add the congenital weakness of any theology which allows itself to turn, at least apparently, into a collection of questions, however ingeniously arranged.  {The scholastic method is bad?  Sorry, but I got the opposite impression from Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XII, etc., etc.}  It will inevitably come to treat the Word of God or revelation, as it will be called, as a stack of juxtaposed propositions which it will be the whole task of theology to put in logical order.  Experience has shown ad nauseam the effect of such an arrangement on pupils, if not on the master himself.  Docility to it has the disastrous result of dissipating the mystery of God and our freely-given association with his life, or at least of concealing it under a spider’s web of abstractions.  First, these last are superimposed upon the harmonious play of imaged expressions found in the Word of God.  Then, and soon, they replace them in fact, if not in principle...  {Of course, Bouyer could not leave out his Protestant residue: traditional Thomism is no good because it is un-biblical.}

Correspondence with Fr. Harrison on the New Catechism

Correspondence with Fr. Harrison on the New Catechism

Posted with Fr. Brian Harrison's permission.  The correspondent's name was omitted for privacy.

Dear Father Harrison,

Does the Catechism of the Catholic Church represent an authentic work of the ordinary Magisterium that requires at least the religious assent of mind and will?  In other words, can a Catholic simply reject a teaching contained therein, without sinning?  Thank you.

In Jesus and Mary,

[signed]

----------------------

Dear [name],

     I would say that when the Catechism presents a teaching that is already backed up by previous papal and/or conciliar statements, we have the duty, obviously, to give our assent to what it says in the measure due to those prior teachings.
     On the rare occasions when the Catechism departs from existing doctrine - as it does when it says in #1261 that we are allowed to hope for the salvation of infants dying without baptism (and it clearly means all of them) - I would not say we are bound to give our assent. Even supposing the existing doctrine were a non-infallible one that might theoretically be capable of reversal by a future Pope or Council, a mere Catechism seems a doubtful instrument for officially changng a doctrine. We don't know how much specific attention and prayer for guidance (if any) Pope John Paul II gave to that specific item (#1261) of the Catechism. After all there are about 2,000 items in the Catechism and the Pope cannot have personally studied all of them in depth. Some of them he may not even have been aware of! So the Catechism has a very different status from an encyclical wherein the Pope carefully goes out of his way to pass judgement on some controversial doctrinal issue (e.g., Humanae Vitae or Evangelium Vitae, both dealing with disputed human life issues, or Ordinatio Saceredotalis, ruling out women's ordination).

     Blessings,

     Fr. Harrison

----------------------

Thank you, Father.

It is unfortunate that the average Catholic must be knowledgeable of papal and/or conciliar documents, i.e., he cannot simply take everything within the CCC as true Church teaching in spite of Pope John Paul II's declaring the CCC to be a "sure norm".  I guess it's not so "sure" after all.

In Jesus and Mary,

[name]

----------------------

Dear [name], 

      Things aren't really as bad you suggest below, first of all because any doctrinally questionable statements in the Catechism of the Catholic Church would be very rare, and secondly there are thousands of references to Scripture and Magisterium in the CCC footnotes, so the reader can usually see that the statements in the main text are backed up by previous Church and biblical teachings, even if he's not familiar with those sources.

     However that English translation of the Pope's words that you cite is actually an exaggeration. In the Latin text of John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution, it doesn't say anything meaning "sure" - a word which in English gives the impression of something completely certain - totally guaranteed.

     The words translated "sure norm" are "firmam regulam". "Regula" means rule, norm, criterion, so translating it "norm" is OK. But the adjective"firmus" in Latin means "firm", trusty","solid", "stable" - pretty much like "firm" in English. No classical or ecclesiastical Latin dictionary I can find (not even the long entry in the authoritative 'Lewis & Short') gives "sure" or "certain" as one of the meanings of firmus. Calling the CCC a "sure norm" gives the  impression that the Pope is guaranteeing it will never make a mistake. 

     So a more accurate translation would call it a "safe", "reliable" "solid" or "trustworthy" norm (for learning and teaching Catholic doctrine). We all use these words to describe something or someone we can depend on at least nearly always - let's say 99% of the time, but not necessarily 100%.

     The Catechism contains 2,865 articles. So 28 of them would constitute 1% of the total.  I doubt very much that one could find even that many articles containing any doctrinal statement that might even appear to depart from existing Church teaching, or be difficult to reconcile with it. 

        The bottom line here seems to me that what the Pope really says in the key declaration of his Apostolic Constitution promulgating the CCC -namely, that it provides a "solid" or "trustworthy" norm of Catholic doctrine - is quite compatible with the possibility that there could be a few, but only avery few, statements in it that might turn out to be doctrinally questionable.

       God bless,

       Fr. Harrison

------------------

Related books on Amazon.com:

             

Why there cannot be a "Theology of the Body"

Why there cannot be a "Theology of the Body"

From St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, I.75.prooem.

"[W]e now proceed to treat of man, who is composed of a spiritual and corporeal substance. We shall treat first of the nature of man, and secondly of his origin. Now the theologian considers the nature of man in relation to the soul; but not in relation to the body, except in so far as the body has relation to the soul. Hence the first object of our consideration will be the soul. And since Dionysius (Celestial Hierarchy, Ch. 11) says that three things are to be found in spiritual substances---essence, power, and operation---we shall treat first of what belongs to the essence of the soul; secondly, of what belongs to its power; thirdly, of what belongs to its operation...."

Division of the Treatise on Man (ST I.75-102)

I. The Nature of Man, in relation to the Soul (I.75-89)

--A. Essence of the Soul (I.75-76)

----1. The Soul Itself (I.75)

----2. The Soul's Union with the Body (I.76)

--B. Powers of the Soul (I.77-83)

--C. Operation of the Soul (I.84-89)

II. The Origin of Man (I.90-102)

Dare We Hope...? -The Testimony of St. Paul

Dare We Hope...? -The Testimony of St. Paul

Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), shown to the right in his post-conciliar Jesuit habit, was a Swiss neo-modernist theologian and exponent of the nouvelle theologie, who was forced to leave the Society of Jesus due to his views and was even under suspicion by the Holy See during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. Unfortunately, neoconservatives (perhaps due to his beautiful writing style and apparent piety) tend to think that von Balthasar was a conservative and that his thought is faithful to the deposit of Revelation.

One of his most controversial theses is in the area of eschatology. He published a famous book, Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?: With a Short Discourse on Hell, where he argues that nothing in the deposit of faith forces us to believe that there is anyone in Hell (i.e., that Hell is empty), and consequently that we can hope for the salvation of all men (universalism).

But the sources of revelation clearly indicate the opposite. The testimony of St. Paul suffices to settle the question (for a come complete treatment of the loci theologici on this point, including the testimony of other parts of Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, etc., see Garrigou-Lagrange, OP - Predestination):

•  “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21).
• “For know you this and understand, that no fornicator, or unclean, or covetous person (which is a serving of idols), hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:5).
• “Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:9-10).
• “For we are the good odour of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish” (II Cor. 2:15-16). 
• “And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them” (II Cor. 4:3).

From this we can conclude that not all souls are saved, and that it has been divinely revealed (de fide).  Clearly, then, von Balthasar's thesis is false and contrary to the faith.  It is heretical, strictly speaking, or at least proxima haeresi  until the Church defines as a dogma that there are actually souls in Hell.  Unfortunately, in the mean time, neoconservatives continue to think that von Balthasar was a conservative who was faithful to the deposit of Revelation.  

Vatican II: Non-Infallible Extraordinary Magisterium

Vatican II: Non-Infallible Extraordinary Magisterium

From Emmanuel Doronzo, OMI - The Channels of Revelation (available thru ITOPL):

Emmanuel Doronzo, OMI on Facebook

Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism

Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism

Link to article by Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP.

George Weigel Dissents from Church Teaching

George Weigel Dissents from Church Teaching

Sed contra: (1) There is what the ever-more unpopular, yet irreformable teaching of the ordinary magisterium has firmly established, namely, that the separation of Church and State is an error, which doctrine is clearly summarized in Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors (note: the following are condemned propositions):

55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.

77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. -- Allocution "Nemo vestrum," July 26, 1855.

78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.

79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.

Further: (2) There is what Pope Gregory XVI says in his encyclical Mirari vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism):

Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.

Further: (3) Pope Leo XIII says in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum (On the Nature of Human Liberty):

There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enact menu.

Further: (4) There is what Pope St. Pius X has to say in Vehementer nos (On the French Law of Separation of Church and State):

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.… Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.... Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error.*

*NB: For the full passage, see the post of 11/15/09, "How We Should Interpret Dignitatis humanae."

Further: (5) There is what Pope St. Pius X said, in his letter to the French State, Une fois encore, after the French State passed a law that declared that the property of the Church in France was now belonged to the State:

16. It is easy to see, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, from what We have just recalled to you, that this law is an aggravation of the Law of Separation [of Church and State], and we can not therefore do otherwise than condemn it.

Further: (6) Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Ubi arcano, explains that:

The Church does not desire, neither ought she to desire, to mix up without a just cause in the direction of purely civil affairs. On the other hand, she cannot permit or tolerate that the state use the pretext of certain laws of unjust regulations to do injury to the rights of an order superior to that of the state, to interfere with the constitution given the Church by Christ, or to violate the rights of God Himself over civil society.

Further: (7) Pope Pius XI reiterates in the same encyclical the teaching of his predecessors when he notes that:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14)

Further: (8) The Second Vatican Council's Dignitatis humanae itself (which is typically cited by liberals and neo-conservatives as authoritatively nullifying or reversing previous teaching on the matter) explicitly says that the Council does not deny, but rather develops, the traditional teaching:

[This Vatican Council] leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.  Over and above all this, the council intends to develop [read here, 'to develop organically'] the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society.

Is Vatican II infallible? (Part 1 of 6)

Is Vatican II infallible? (Part 1 of 6)

A post submitted by Fr. 'Romanus' (edited by Don Paco).

Quaeritur: Is Vatican 2 Infallible?

Respondeo per partes: That’s one of the most crucial issues that traditionalists press in the face of the “neo-conservatives” who accuse them of being heretics for siding with pre-conciliar doctrines when there is an (apparent) contradiction between Vatican II teaching and pre-conciliar popes. Let's break down the issue into several questions (dealt with in different posts).

Is everything that is stated in an ecumenical council necessarily infallible? –No. Doctrines are taught infallibly only when they are:

(a) Defined by the Extraordinary Magisterium as a doctrine that is "to be held" (tenenda) or "to be believed" (credenda) definitively by all the faithful,

(b1) Pronounced by the Ordinary Magisterium as a doctrine that is "to be held" (tenenda) definitively by all the faithful, or

(b2) Taught by the Ordinary Magisterium in consonance with previous Magisterial teaching.

Let me explain. The Magisterium of the Church has two functions, called the “extraordinary Magisterium” and the “ordinary Magisterium”:

a. The “Extraordinary Magisterium” includes the teachings of a pope when he is speaking ex cathedra, and the solemn dogmatic or moral definitions and doctrinal condemnations of an ecumenical council (traditionally expressed in conciliar canons and decrees).

b. The “ordinary Magisterium” includes the group of papal and episcopal teachings that are not ratified by a solemn definition, even if these teachings take place within the context of an ecumenical council.

Now, both ordinary and extraordinary functions of the Magisterium are infallible:

“Wherefore, by divine and Catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in Scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the Church as matters to be believed (credenda) as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal Magisterium.” (First Vatican Council, Dei Filius 8.)

However, the criteria for the infallibility of these two functions of the Magisterium are different.

a. Any individual dogmatic definition made by the extraordinary Magisterium is by itself infallible.

b. In contrast, for a certain doctrine of the ordinary Magisterium to be infallible, one of two things must obtain:

(b.1) it must be either a doctrine that is "to be held" (tenenda) definitively and universally by all the faithful--e.g., John Paul II's non-ex-cathedra pronouncement that women cannot receive the sacrament of orders and that this teaching is to be held: "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." (Declaramus Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere ordinationem sacerdotalem mulieribus conferendi, hancque sententiam ab omnibus Ecclesiae fidelibus esse definitive tenendam.)

(b.2) or it must have been taught repeatedly, consistently, and unanimously by the pope and/or the bishops in communion with him.

A priest from the SSPX expressed this last point nicely (although I don’t necessarily agree with everything else he says in the book):

The infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium, whether of the Universal Church or of the See of Rome, is not that of a judgment, nor that of an act to be considered in isolation, as if it could itself provide all the light necessary for it to be clearly seen. It is that of the guarantee bestowed on a doctrine by the simultaneous or continuous convergence of a plurality of affirmations or explanations; none of which could bring positive certitude if it were taken by itself alone. (Fr. Paul Nau, "Pope or Church?" p.18)

So, in short we have three possibilities for infallible magisterial teachings:

(a) The Extraordinary Magisterium solemnly defines a doctrine as one that is "to be believed" (credenda) or "to be held" (tenenda) by all the faithful.

(b.1) The Ordinary Magisterium teaches a doctrine as "to be held" (tenenda) by the faithful.

(b.2) The Ordinary Magisterium has always taught a certain doctrine consistently.

Given these principles, we can now ask, is everything within a council infallible?

In short, no. Councils can contain doctrines that are not: (a) officially defined (Extraordinary Magisterium), nor (b.1) taught as "to be held" (Ordinary Magisterium), nor (b.2) taught in consonance with previous unanimous teaching (Ordinary Magisterium). Obviously, conciliar canons and decrees, which officially and ex professo define doctrine and condemn errors, are infallible and irreformable because they fulfill (a). However, canons and decrees are a very slim portion of the proceedings of any council. For example, the proceedings of Trent occupy shelves after shelves of volumes, whereas its decrees and canons occupy only a few hundred pages. Thus, these parts of conciliar documents do not fulfill (a) or (b.1). But still, normally the conciliar doctrine that lies outside of the canons and decrees—that is, outside of extraordinary pronouncements—is itself part of a broad and unanimous consensus among the different popes, councils, sacred congregations, bishops, etc., and hence fulfills condition (b.2) for infallibility. This is normally the case. (However, Vatican II presents a problem and possibly an exception to all three possibilities—see part no. 5).

See Also:

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 1 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 2 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 3 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 4 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 5 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Part 6 of 6)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Appendix 1)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Appendix 2)

Is Vatican II Infallible? (Appendix 3)