By a Feeneyite I mean one who holds that to be in a state of grace it is necessary not just to have an explicit faith in Christ and the Holy Trinity but also to be right about what visible society is the Church founded by Christ (if any follower of Fr Feeney should chance to read this, I apologise if I have characterised his position wrongly.) The passages in St Thomas that raise this question come in his treatment of the virtue of faith, and in particular whether one who disbelieves one article of faith can have supernatural faith in another article. The statement that perhaps most strongly supports the Feeneyite position is in the De Caritate, article 13 ad 6 :-
The formal object itself [formalis ratio obiecti] in faith is the first truth manifested by the teaching of the Church, just as the formal object of a science is the proofs that establish the conclusions; and so just as someone who knows by heart some geometrical conclusions doesn’t have the science of geometry if he doesn’t assent to the conclusion on account of the arguments that prove them… so the one who holds things that belong to the faith while not assenting to them on account of the authority of Catholic doctrine does not have the habit of faith.
The discussion in the Summa 2a 2ae q. 5, a. 3, apparently written a year or two later, is slightly different, though very similar:-
The formal object of the faith is the first truth insofar as it is manifested in sacred Scripture and the doctrine of the Church. Thus, whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and divine rule, to the doctrine of the Church which proceeds from the first truth manifested in sacred Scripture does not have the habit of faith, but holds those things which are of faith by some means other than by faith [he then gives the same illustration about knowing the conclusion of a science and not the proofs.]
The difference is that the treatment in the Summa introduces the Scripture into the discussion of the formal object of faith. That might seem to provide room for one who wanted to argue that for St Thomas it was possible for some person to have faith without explicitly adhering to the Catholic Church; they don’t have the whole ‘rule of faith’, but they have enough of it – the First Truth revealed in Scripture – to make an act of faith.
The problem with this is that a formal object is indivisible. The whole point of talking about formal objects is that they are what make an act a certain kind of act rather than another kind of act. If you could take something away from the object and still have the same kind of act – in this case, an act of faith – then clearly the original object wasn’t the formal object at all. And whenever St Thomas speaks of the formal object of faith, whether or not he mentions Scripture, he always mentions the Church. You can’t take away inhering to the Church as to an infallible rule and still have an act of faith, for St Thomas (in theory you could, but not in the actual order of things willed by God.)
And yet, according to the Holy Office, an implicit desire for membership of the Church can be enough to ground an act of faith. Are these two positions reconcilable? Can someone who is not a Catholic and who has not resolved to become a Catholic nevertheless be adhering to the Catholic Church as to an infallible rule?
I think he can, provided that he admits that the Church founded by Christ is infallible and that it still exists, even though he is confused about where it is. Similarly, one can have trust in the veracity of one’s mother even if one should be unsure which of two identical twins is one’s mother (unlikely, I know, but that doesn’t lessen the force of the analogy.) It is sufficient if one has a definition of one’s mother that per se distinguishes her from every other person (e.g. ‘the woman who gave birth to me’), even if at the moment it does not allow one to pick her out here and now. If both twins make the same statement, for example about when one was born, and one believes it, then one can be said to be believing it on account of the veracity of one’s mother even though one doesn’t know who one’s mother is. On the other hand, if they make contradictory statements, it would not be reasonable to accept either of them for as long as one remained in doubt as to which woman was one’s mother; one would be running the risk of disbelieving one’s mother; one could no longer be said to be adhering to her words as to an infallible rule.
To apply the analogy to Christendom. If someone adheres to a doctrine taught by the Catholic Church and by various separated bodies, it seems possible that one is adhering to it on account of the infallible authority of the Catholic Church, even if one cannot empirically identify the Catholic Church. On the other hand, where the Catholic Church and the other bodies make contradictory statements, if someone assents to the statement made by the non-Catholic body, he cannot be said to be adhering to the Catholic Church as to an infallible rule, and therefore, according to St Thomas, he cannot have faith. John Henry Newman in 1840 wanted to believe everything taught by the Church founded by Christ, only he wasn’t sure where that Church was. But I think it very likely that he had supernatural faith.
Criticisms welcome.
Laodicea 
October 28, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Hmmm. What Aquinas was not sensitive to was future Catholic history and unfortunate aspects of the Church therein and how that could cloud her identity…like the grey rough outside of a geode masks the mineral jewellike beauty within the geode.
Christ said, “By their fruits you will know them”. From a distance, not all the Church’s historical fruits have been indicators of Love to the non Catholic world. The sex abuse scandal is not our first corporate sin.
During Aquinas’ life and maybe partly due to his affirming execution for heretics in the ST, Pope Innocent IV in 1253 makes the previously imperial secular penalty of burning heretics…mandatory on princes under pain of excommunication ( see ” Inquisition”, newadvent, Josef Blotzer).
Thus began the coercive Catholic history that began to be corrected in 1816 when a Pope banned torture in the papal lands. That’s 600 years of a coercive veneer on the true Church. If one only looks at Church documents and at our missionary saints, Catholicism looks pristine. But does that in real life excepting apologetics people who earn a living in that field. In real life, non Catholics look at fruits…all the fruits as Christ noted.
Japan e.g. knew in the early 17th century that Catholicism “converted” the Phillipines with conquistador power and horses nd armor and centuries later Japan was bombed at Hiroshima by a country it knew to be largely Christian including Catholic. Japan herself was violent but from her point of view, we were no different on that score and both she in the 17th and later China (in the 19th century) experienced violent insurrections of Christians.
As St. Paul evangelized, he carried no such baggage that beclouded the center of the geode. In the 9th century, a Pope condemned torture used to extract confessions but in the 13th, that was reversed by a series of Popes.
Look at a coconut. It is pure white inside but its outer shell looks like a gorilla’s shoulder. From 1253 onward, we did some things that built an ugly shell around what is Holy…the Sacraments and the de fide and infallible dogma and the approved liturgies.
Non Catholics from a distance are not as culpable for not seeing the center of the coconut or of the geode as non Catholics were before 1253…because we have grown this outer shell to which the recent scandal only gave new life.
October 28, 2012 at 7:11 pm
There is quite clearly nothing wrong with executing heretics or invading idolatrous countries as both practices are positively commanded by God in the Old Testament. Our Lord tells the Apostles to obtain arms in Luke and tells them to treat those in the Church who refuse to listen to Church as Jews who have excluded themselves from the Community of Israel in Matthew. If you don’t like the fact that the Church followed through on these teachings then it is the teachings you object to not some supposed scandal.
October 28, 2012 at 9:06 pm
The Jews alone, not Christians, were told to invade the promised land not because the inhabitants were idolaters simply nor because also they were a temptation irresistable to pre grace Jews; but because besides that reality, they resisted four hundred years of lighter punishments (Wisdom chapter 12 informs you of the lighter period) and in addition to being idolaters, their sins were complete only after four hundred years as per Genesis 15:15-16 where God tells that time scheme and reason of completedness to Abraham:
15 “You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.
16 In the fourth time-span the others ( Jews in Egypt…par. mine) shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then.”
Therefore God through the Jews only revealed uniquely a case of sins being complete…filled up… as the point at which He used the Jews to invade and kill them. Christ reveals the identical judgement against Jerusalem and its 1.1 million people killed in 70 AD which constituted the last doom from God as an object of Revelation:
Matt.23:31-32.
“Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now FILL UP what your ancestors measured out!”
The Church was never to be involved in such invasions later after
scripture closes because nowhere does history have the Church even alledging that she knows when any nation’s sins have filled up to the full measure known only to God. And the early dooms required an explicit order by God to fight which God does not give anywhere to the Church after Pentecost. All verbal locutions after Scripture are private revelations which are not binding as matters of Faith.
Your two swords incident is carnal disciples once again not understanding that Christ was speaking about spiritual warfare through a metaphor. Hence right after that incident, Christ rebukes Peter for ctually using a sword at Golgotha saying, ” He who lives by the sword will die by the sword”.
Pre grace ( Jn.1:17) God took drastic measures like the dooms partly because the Jews were weak without sanctifying grace and actually Jews did follow Baal worship later. But after sanctifying grace which Christ brought, Christians are not easily seduced into Shintoism etc. so after grace there are several reasons missing that were present in the original invasions of Canaan: no oppressive temptation nor any revelation of a nation’s sins being filled up…or complete which only God knows of. God may be using one sinful nation against another whose sins are complete right now as He used the Chaldeans against the Moabites in Jeremiah but no human being is privy to such Providence which is no longer revealed.
October 28, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Boniface VIII teaches that the two words represent spiritual power and temporal power. All 4 gospels mention the incident in the garden, but none says that our Lord actually rebuked St Peter. But in any case, what was fitting before the Church had temporal power would not be the same as what would be fitting when once the Church had acquired temporal power.
October 28, 2012 at 10:57 pm
Boniface VIII was not only incorrect as Popes can be in many places of various documents but his interpretation led to another Pope ( Nicholas V) giving the King of Portugal in the 1450’s the right to invade and enslave in Dum Diversas and in Romanus Pontifex ( mid 4th large paragraph).
The passage of the two swords simply has Christ saying the word “enough” in response. Boniface then concluded that Christ meant two swords were enough whereas modern scholars suggest that Christ was using “enough” in reference to the disciples talking because again they were not understanding his spiritual level.
To the rebuke of Peter, here it is in Mt. 25:
51
And behold, one of those who accompanied Jesus put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his ear.
52
Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
Latin America is in many aspects that land mass which was invaded
under Pope Boniface VIII’s theory of the two swords and now 6 of those countries are in wiki’s top twenty highest murder rate counties and four lead the world in cocaine trafficing. Latin TV in my area is highly sexualized. Forty percent of Spain’s budget during the 16th century was silver stolen from Peru and Spain still went downhill ever since. I think Boniface from the next life regrets his theory since his theory was in context meant to control King Philip who in effect shortly after the bull, harried Boniface to death through the Colonna’s et al. Now in Pope Nicholas V’s use of the two swords, a Pope gave unjust powers away to Iberia….not what Boniface intended in context.
October 28, 2012 at 11:09 pm
While it is true that a war of extermination of the kind ordered by God in the Torah would require public revelation, a war to destroy a tyranny guilty of grave violations of the natural law such as idolatry would not require such a warrant. The Church’s law to this day upholds the principle that “The Church has the innate and proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful with penal sanctions.” CIC 1311.
Your interpretation of the two swords is contrary to the teaching of the Church as Boniface VIII solemnly teaches in Unam Sanctam ” We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords’ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’ [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered by the Church but the latter for the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.”
The Church teaches the possibility of just war and of legitimate capital punishment. Idolatry and human sacrifice are clearly grave injustices potentially justifying both. Many Ecumenical Councils have summoned Crusades and endorsed the activities of the Inquisition. Leo X condemned those who assert “that heretics be burned is contrary to the will of the spirit”. You seek to interpret scripture in conformity with the fashions of this age and contrary to the teaching of the Church.
October 28, 2012 at 11:40 pm
Aelianus,
See just above you on Boniface VIII. Capital punishment within one’s country is more justified than the last two Popes acknowledge in their off document behaviour ( John Paul calling it “cruel” in 1999 in St. Louis).
But invasion of evil nations that do not attack you is not supported by the requirements of just war in the same catechism wherein it is held that the other nation must be an aggressor first…no invading for evil life:
2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
– the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
– all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
– there must be serious prospects of success
– the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who…. etc.
October 29, 2012 at 12:21 am
Your consequentialist arguments against the doctrine of Unam Sanctam are irrelevant. It is a solemn definition of Catholic doctrine and must be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic Faith. Idolatry is a grave injury to the community of nations and besides CCC2309 concerns only defensive war. You have completely ignored the endorsement of the Crusades and the Inquisition by multiple Ecumenical Councils whose authority greatly outweighs that of the CCC even if it did support your case (which it does not). You make no answer to the point that your disapproval of the Inquisition is condemned by Leo X. You also ignore CIC1311. Do you have answers to these authorities or do you just quote the documents you imagine can be massaged to fit in with your private views and the spirit of the age?
October 29, 2012 at 1:54 am
The two swords theory within Unam Sanctam does not fall under solemn definition. The subjection to the Pope is true but undiplomatic in that it got Boniface killed by King Philip shortly thereafter and Clement V moved the Vatican offices to Avignon… and Christ said not to throw your pearls before swine lest they trample it under their feet and turn and tear you …which is what Unam Sanctam did and which is exactly what happened to Boniface.
Pope Leo X erred in Exsurge Domine as to article 33 which has been reversed by Vatican II in its passages on non coercion in religious and concience matters. That bull by Leo X fails the infallibility test so it can be overruled by even a pastoral Council because you’ll note Leo does not call to witness the Bishops of the world as demanded by the extra ordinary process of infallibility but Leo only calls to witness Cardinals and scholars.
To your catechism article: ” The Church has the innate and proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful with penal sanctions.” CIC 1311. You used it in the context of warring against an idolatrous nation…check above. It clearly refers to penal sanctions related to the “faithful”… not to idolaters.
CCC 2309 is saying all wars must be defensive. It is the Church’s entire just war theory. The crusades were defensive and defending the Holy Land; the invasion of Latin America was not defending anything. Did it missionize? Not as much as you might think. Brazil and Peru still have along with New Guinea the highest number of uncontacted tribes on earth…500 years later.
I’m leaving now unless you need me to answer any other points. I am in the path of hurricane Sandy and will be battening down and possibly living in early darkness if the power goes out. God be with you guys.
October 28, 2012 at 5:01 pm
St Thomas was well aware of scandals within the Church, which have been with us from the beginning (think of Judas). They can indeed reduce or even in theory completely take away the culpability of someone who doesn’t become a member of the Church. Hence I accept the teaching of the Holy Office against Fr Feeney that a non-Catholic who lacks the explicit resolve of joining the Catholic Church can nevertheless be in a state of grace.
The point of the post was to consider whether this teaching of the Holy Office is compatible or not with St Thomas’s claim that the act of saving faith, in the actual order of providence in which we live, always involves some kind of ‘inhering’ or ‘clinging’ to the true Church as to an infallible guide, and that it is never merely an assent to God revealing Himself to oneself personally, as happened with Abraham or with the prophets, nor based simply on the authority on a fallible Church. I have argued that the two positions, of St Thomas and the Holy Office, are compatible, and that they can be realised together when a non-Catholic has the intention of believing everything held and taught by the Church which Christ founded, and, remaining unclear about what and where that Church is, accepts whatever is taught in common by his church and the Catholic Church. He is like the man who does not know which of two women is his mother, and, being convinced of his mother’s veracity, believes whatever both women agree on saying.
Such a person’s attitude is in fact a kind of clinging to the Catholic Church in the dark; whereas someone who positively denied points taught by the Catholic Church could not be said to cling to the Church as to an infallible rule.
October 29, 2012 at 2:15 pm
[Reply to Bill Bannon above] The authorities cited were intended to demonstrate both that the Church has the power to impose coercive penalties on her own faithful and to sanction war in general. All the authorities demonstrate at least one of these two points. The fact that the Church endorses both is contrary to your earlier statements (hence Canon 1311 and the endorsement of the Inquisition by Lateran IV, Vienne etc.). But in your argument there is a still more fundamental problem which relates to the original topic. The Church is not some sort of pantheistic entity which ‘reverses’ its teaching and if it were then there would be no possibility of faith because we could not know what was the infallible transmission of the word of God revealing and what was merely ‘the party line’.
The Bull Unam Sanctam begins ‘Urged by faith we are obliged to believe and to profess….’ The body of the text (not the concluding definition) of Unam Sanctam is confirmed to be ‘sollemniter docuit’ by Pius XII in the 1943 Encyclical Mystici Corporis. It is also cited as requiring firm belief as proposing truths of Catholic faith in the 2002 CDF document Dominus Jesus (itself promulgated with ‘apostolic authority’). Exsurge Domine is stated to be ‘Ad perpetuam rei memoriam’ and addressed to ‘universalis Ecclesia’ the ‘Ecclesia sancta Dei’. You are therefore obliged to submit to its teaching.
The fact that Boniface suffered many temporal misfortunes because of his fidelity to the truth hardly demonstrates that he should have remained silent. The fact that you think it does suggests you have a very strange understanding of the Gospel and its requirements.
The objective of the Crusades was Jerusalem. They were intended to assist the Byzantines but their objective had not been held by a Christian power for many centuries. The Catechism never restricts war to defence. It gives the circumstances in which defensive war would be permissible. Its teaching is explicitly said to be dependant upon the fact that there is ‘no international authority with the necessary competence and power’. The Holy See is an international authority with the necessary competence and in the Middle Ages it also had the necessary power.
Good luck with the hurricane. Will be praying for you.
October 29, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Non infallible sources cannot confirm infallibility. None of your sources that you use to ascribe infallibility to the 2 nd paragraph of Unam Sanctam or Exsurge Domine art. 33 are infallible themselves especially the CDF but including Mystici Corporis whose content on how the Church is Holy was altered by Vatican II by its saying that the Church “follows the path of repentance” whereas Pius XII held the Church innocent of all historical sins like those which flowed logically from Romanus Pontifex’s permission to enslave and despoil in a non defensive war.
Here is Ludwig Ott from the intro ( online) to his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma on the non infallibility of both ordinary papal magisterium ( most encyclicals) and of the CDF:
” With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate, and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra (cf. D 1839). The ordinary and usual form of the Papal teaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible.”
Exsurge Domine tells you it is non infallible by its failure to call the proper witnesses for infallibility outside ex cathedra…all Bishops. This citing of non infallible passages as infallible causes groups to split off to the right while the left basically falls rather into heresy as the right falls into schism. Exsurge Domine’s heretic burning is repealed by Vatican II’s denouncing coercion of conscience and coercion of religion. Neither Exsurge Domine nor Vatican II are infallible but Vatican II as a full Council can repeal a non infallible bull of one Pope acting in concert with only Cardinals and scholars not Bishops of the whole world.
Adieu. Neutral readers can print out this whole debate and take it to a priest who they trust…or take it to a nearby Catholic college’s theology department if they are trust worthy. Let such judge for them.
October 29, 2012 at 4:02 pm
When I say these recent texts ‘confirm’ the solemn nature of the teaching of Unam Sanctam I mean that the documents in question agree that the original text is infallible they do not establish it as infallible, it either is or it is not.
Mystici Corporis asserts that the teaching that Peter and the Pope, Christ and the Vicar of Christ constitute a single head of the Church is ‘solemn teaching’. This teaching is in the body of the text of Unam Sanctam not in the concluding definition. You may not feel the need to submit to the teaching of Pius XII but he is a more authoritative witness than you are. Dominus Jesus provides Unam Sanctam as evidence for the assertion that the ‘unicity of the Church’ and the fact that it is ‘a single body of Christ, a single Bride of Christ’ must be ‘firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith’. This teaching is in the body of the text of Unam Sanctam not in the concluding definition.
Any Papal Teaching is infallible if it fulfils the criteria laid down by Vatican I
a) Addressed to the Universal Church
b) On a matter of Faith and Morals
c) Invoking the Pope’s supreme authority
There is no mention of addressing all bishops. This would be sufficient but it is not necessary in itself. In addressing the entire Church Leo X already addresses all bishops. Addressing all bishops is one way of addressing the entire Church. It is the latter which is required.
Vatican II denies the authority of the State to coerce acts of religion it says nothing about the coercive authority of the Church. This was explicitly stated at the Council and was confirmed in response to a formal inquiry prior to the vote.
Once again, you assert that Councils and Pope can ‘repeal’ each other’s teachings. This is a meaningless claim. If one can contradict the other then neither can be certainly correct in which case the more plentiful would have the more authority in which case your position would clearly fall as it has (as you concede) many Ecumenical Councils and Popes over more than a millennium against it. Even on your own account you claim only one Council and a Catechism. As it happens, and as shown above, no authority at all supports your position.
The best you can do is to advice someone to raise the matter with ‘a priest who they trust…or take it to a nearby Catholic college’s theology department if they are trust worthy’. This is hilarious as the entire discussion concerned the identity of that authority who may be trusted to teach the Gospel authentically. You advise Catholics to ignore Ecumenical Councils and Papal Bulls addressed to the Universal Church one of which explicitly says it obliges in faith, and which are agreed by other Papal documents to be solemn teaching obliging in faith. Instead you advise them to submit the authority of a.n. priest or a.n. theology department. What this shows is what has been apparent all along which is that your supreme authority is what is fashionable or what is acceptable to this age. Ultimately your authority is yourself as you qualified your instruction to find a priest or academic with the condition that ‘they trust’ the individual. This points back to the point of Cordatus’s post, one can only have faith if one submits to the authority of God and to the means God has established to transmit infallibly His revelation: the Church. If, as in Unam Sanctam, the supreme pontiff instructs the faithful to believe a certain doctrine under the obligation of faith, and you then refuse, you place yourself outside the number of the faithful. Your complaint that you might suffer persecution like Boniface VIII is true but Christ informed you long ago this was a condition of being His disciple. You complain that following the teaching of the Church will cause division. Christ also warned you of this.
“I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
October 29, 2012 at 8:36 pm
So you want people to listen to you…while not giving your full name….a person who loves the Inquisition… rather than go to their priest or a theology professor with copies of both our posts. Sounds like you are afraid of what they’ll find out from people with a dogmatic degree.
October 29, 2012 at 10:42 pm
Does that mean you have no response to any of the points made above? That it the usual reason for ad hominem arguments. Do you?
October 29, 2012 at 11:08 pm
No response. Read the Assumption and IC formula for what lone infallibility looks like. Read section 62 of Evangelium Vitae on abortion to see a Pope use the “with all Bishops” alternative to ex cathedra. We’re going in circles. Once that obtains…it’s pointless to continue.
October 29, 2012 at 11:24 pm
I assume therefore you have not read the acts of Vatican I? Presumably you do not imagine the definition of the Immaculate Conception was the only ex cathedra definition prior to 1870? Certainly this was not the basis on which the fathers of Vatican I approved the dogma, as is clear from the clarifications given prior to the vote. The points raised above are quite specific I can see no circles only your inability to defend an untenable position. Do you have any knowledge of this topic at all or are you just shooting from the hip?
October 29, 2012 at 3:47 pm
The Pope by himself has as much authority as with the worldwide episcopate. He can certainly teach infallibly through an encyclical letter e.g. Humanae Vitae.
Vatican II didn’t reverse previous teaching on coercion – to say that it did is to contradict the letter of Vatican II (article 1 of Dignitatis Humanae). It spoke of the limitations of the civil power’s innate right to coerce, not of the Church’s authority.
October 29, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Cordatus,
Look at both the Assumption and the IC encyclicals and you will see what the “Pope alone” or ex cathedra wording looks like. They are both on line. It is a formal complex word formula which was present no where in Humanae Vitae which was introduced at its press conference at the Vatican by Msgr. Lambrushini as non infallible…twice stated. Furious Catholics argued that Lambrushini was not authorized to say that but their claim has zero common sense because Paul VI could easily have corrected him in public and had to correct him in public… which a public mistake would demand. Paul VI did no such thing and later his regime rescinded the punishment meted out to US dissenters by their Bishop because canon 749-3 requires manifest clarity as to infallibility if punishment is brought. Tradition rarely has manifest clarity on contentitious issues that major theologians have not supported ( see below).
In google search put the words: Lambrushini Humanae Vitae non infallible. And read bout that incident. Otherwise birth control prohibition is argued to be infallible in the universal ordinary magisterium…Tradition… not in Humanae Vitae except by one Italian theologian Fr. Ermenigildo Lio OFM who was then followed by a priest writer from Puerto Rico, Fr. Brian Harrison. Germain Grisez and a Fr. Ford argued that the infallibility was in the universal ordinary magisterium but Frs. Karl Rahner and Bernard Haring argued against those two.
October 29, 2012 at 8:48 pm
You’re correct about Fr Harrison. I consider his argument irrefutable. Here it is for interested readers:-
http://www.catholic-pages.com/morality/hvinfallible.asp
Among other things, it distinguishes between infallible teachings and solemn definitions. The two are not the same.
Certainly Paul VI should have corrected the Monsignor who gave the notorious press conference. The fact that he didn’t, however, can’t retroactively cause his teaching to have been fallible! Nor can a statement’s being infallible depend on someone saying that it is, or then we would be started on an infinite regress.
October 29, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Cordatus,
People in your circle may never say it to you but what strikes many is that no Pope will put it in the extraordinary form which ends all disputes.
Why don’t they? I suspect the Popes fear the research Vat.II required prior to ex cathedra as it relates to their having to research this problem: that the early saints and Jerome stated that sex is ONLY for procreation. That position is not the position of the Church now. They therefore were against birth control like the modern Popes but not for the reason behind the modern papal position. The early saints took on the Stoic position that existed among the very elite Romans that sex was only for procreation and Jerome tells you he admires Seneca on such topics in “Against Jovinianus”. Augustine is the real beginning of what would become the modern papal outlook with its reasons though he too erred in seeing any deliberate non procreative “asking” for the debt as venial sin…copied literally by Aquinas. It gets complex and it would take a Pope months of sorting out the nuances of who said what when…to move it to the ex cathedra clarity. The massive dissent came in 1968 because those laymen when they attended Catholic school had the Assumption encyclical in 1950….just 18years previous and nuns told them a thousand times how special the Assumption, ex cathedra wording was. That’s all they heard at 12 years old…ex cathedra….ex cathedra…infallible clearly…crystal clear. Then 18 years later when they are 30 years old and Humanae Vitae appears without the ex cathedra word formula….millions of them said, ” what the heck is this…an encyclical introduced as non infallible AND it isn’t ex cathedra which we were taught made the Assumption perfectly believable.”
That, Cordatus, is the matrix of what happened for the more educated. The worker class of the factories etc. may have been different.
October 30, 2012 at 10:56 am
No doubt that last point helps to explain why so many resisted the encyclical. It doesn’t, however, deal with the point made by Fr Harrison and others that the encyclical meets the criteria for infallibility as defined by Vatican I (rather than by nuns).
November 12, 2012 at 9:37 pm
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