The body of the Episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism… at one time the pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great see, at other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellae, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them.
As Newman
emphasized, this is perfectly consistent with the claim that the pope and
bishops “might, in spite of this error, be infallible in their ex cathedra decisions.” The problem is not that they made ex cathedra pronouncements and somehow
erred anyway. The problem is that there
was an extended period during which, in their non-ex cathedra (and thus non-infallible) statements and actions, they
persistently failed to do their duty. In
particular, Newman says:
There was a temporary suspense of the
functions of the ‘Ecclesia docens’ [teaching Church]. The body of Bishops
failed in their confession of the faith.
They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after
Nicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years.
Newman goes
on to make it clear that he is not saying
that pope and bishops lost the power to teach, and in a way that was protected
from error when exercised in an ex
cathedra fashion. Rather, while they
retained that power, they simply did not use it.
In recent
years, some have borrowed Newman’s language and suggested that with the
pontificate of Pope Francis, we are once again in a period during which the
exercise of the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church has temporarily
been suspended. Now, this “suspended
Magisterium” thesis is not correct as a completely general description of
Francis’s pontificate. For there clearly
are cases where he has exercised his magisterial authority – such as when,
acting under papal authorization, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith under its current prefect Cardinal Ladaria has
issued various teaching documents.
To be sure,
there may nevertheless be particular cases
where the “suspended Magisterium” characterization is plausible. Consider the heated controversy that followed
upon Amoris Laetitia, and in
particular the dubia issued by four
cardinals asking the pope to reaffirm several points of irreformable doctrine
that Amoris seems to conflict
with. As Fr. John Hunwicke has
noted, because Pope Francis has persistently refused to answer these
dubia, he can plausibly be said at
least to that extent to have
suspended the exercise of his Magisterium.
Again, this does not mean that he has lost his teaching authority. The point is rather that, insofar as he has
refused to answer these five specific questions put to him, he has not, at
least with respect to those particular questions, actually exercised that
authority. As Fr. Hunwicke notes, he
could do so at any time, so that his teaching authority remains.
Again,
though, it doesn’t follow that the “suspended Magisterium” thesis is correct as
a general description of Pope Francis’s pontificate up to now. However, recently there has been a new
development which, it seems to me, could make the thesis more plausible as a
characterization of the remainder of Francis’s pontificate. The pope has announced that Cardinal Ladaria
will soon be replaced by Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernandez as Prefect of what
is now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).
Fernandez is
a controversial figure, in part because he
is widely thought to have ghostwritten Amoris.
What is relevant to the present point,
however, is what Pope Francis and the archbishop himself have said about the
nature of his role as Prefect of DDF. In
a
publicly-released letter to Fernandez describing his intentions, the
pope writes:
I entrust to you a task that I
consider very valuable. Its central
purpose is to guard the teaching that flows from the faith in order to “to give
reasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns.”
The Dicastery over which you will
preside in other times came to use immoral methods. Those were times when, rather than promoting
theological knowledge, possible doctrinal errors were pursued. What I expect from you is certainly something
very different…
You know that the Church “grow[s] in
her interpretation of the revealed word and in her understanding of truth”
without this implying the imposition of a single way of expressing it. For “Differing currents of thought in
philosophy, theology, and pastoral practice, if open to being reconciled by the
Spirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to grow.” This harmonious growth will preserve
Christian doctrine more effectively than any control mechanism…
“The message has to concentrate on
the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at
the same time most necessary.” You are
well aware that there is a harmonious order among the truths of our message,
and the greatest danger occurs when secondary issues end up overshadowing the
central ones.
There are
several points to be noted here. First,
the pope makes it clear that he wants the DDF under Archbishop Fernandez to
operate in a “very different” way than it has in the past. Second, he indicates that part of what this
entails is that the DDF should focus on “essentials” and “central” issues
rather than “secondary issues.” Pope
Francis doesn’t spell out precisely what this means, but the context indicates
that he regards many of the issues the CDF has dealt with in the past to be
“secondary.” Third, when the DDF does
address an issue, it should not do so as a “control mechanism” that “pursue[s]…
possible doctrinal errors” or “impos[es]… a single way of expressing” the
Faith. Fourth, it should speak “not as
an enemy who critiques and condemns.”
In a
recent interview, Archbishop Fernandez has commented on his own
understanding of his role as head of DDF, and his remarks echo and expand upon
the pope’s. Fernandez says:
So you can imagine that being named
in this place is a painful experience. This
dicastery that I am going to lead was the Holy Office, the Inquisition, which
even investigated me…
There were great theologians at the
time of the Second Vatican Council who were persecuted by this institution…
[The pope] told me: ‘Don't worry, I
will send you a letter explaining that I want to give a different meaning to
this dicastery, that is, to promote thought and theological reflection in
dialogue with the world and science, that is, instead of persecutions and
condemnations, to create spaces for dialogue.’…
The
archbishop went on to say that he wants the DDF to avoid:
All forms of authoritarianism that
seek to impose an ideological register; forms of populism that are also
authoritarian; and unitary thinking. It
is obvious that the history of the Inquisition is shameful because it is harsh,
and that it is profoundly contrary to the Gospel and to Christian teaching
itself. That is why it is so appalling…
But current phenomena must be judged
with the criteria of today, and today everywhere there are still forms of
authoritarianism and the imposition of a single way of thinking.
Here too
there are several points to be noted.
First, like the pope, the archbishop indicates that he wants the DDF to
move away from the sort of activity that occupied it in the past, but he is a
bit more specific than the pope was. He
cites, as examples, investigations of theologians at around the time of Vatican
II, and the investigation the CDF made of his own views (which, as the
interview goes on to make clear, had to do with some things he’d written on the
topic of homosexuality). So, he doesn’t
have long-ago history in mind, but the recent
activity of the CDF. Furthermore, he
criticizes even this sort of
investigation (and not merely the harsh methods associated with the
Inquisition) as a kind of “persecution.”
Second, the
archbishop says that what the pope wants is for the DDF not only to avoid such “persecutions”
of individuals, but also to refrain from “condemnations” of their views. In place of such persecutions and
condemnations, he wants “dialogue.” Third,
he takes this to entail that the DDF will refrain from “the imposition of a
single way of thinking.”
Taking all
of Pope Francis’s and Archbishop Fernandez’s comments into account yields the
following. The DDF, which has heretofore
been the main magisterial organ of the Church:
(a) will in
future focus on central and essential doctrinal matters and pay less attention
to secondary ones;
(b) where it
does address some such matter, will not approach it by way of ferreting out doctrinal
errors or imposing a single view;
(c) will
emphasize dialogue with individual thinkers rather than the investigation,
critique, and condemnation of their views;
(d) should in
all these respects be understood as playing a role very different from the one
played by the CDF in recent decades.
In short,
this main magisterial organ of the Church will
largely no longer be exercising its magisterial function. It will issue statements about central themes
of the Faith, but it will no longer pay as much attention to secondary
doctrinal matters, will no longer pursue the identification and condemnation of
errors, will no longer investigate wayward theologians or warn about their
works, and will in general promote dialogue rather than impose a single
view. Hence it will no longer do the
sort of job it did under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, let alone the job
that Newman says the bishops failed to do during the Arian crisis. And notice that, followed out consistently,
this means that the teaching of Pope Francis himself (let alone the deposit of
Faith it is his job to safeguard) is not something the DDF is in the business
of imposing. It too would simply amount
to a further set of ideas to dialogue about.
The implications
of these recent remarks are, accordingly, quite dramatic. And while it is possible that the remarks
will be clarified and qualified after Archbishop Fernandez takes office, the
trend of Francis’s pontificate is precisely one of avoiding the clarification
and qualification of theologically problematic statements. But whereas, in the past, this avoidance
pertained to a handful of specific issues, it now seems as if it is being
raised to the level of general DDF policy.
If so, let us hope that this “temporary suspense of the functions of the ‘Ecclesia docens’” does not last sixty years, as the previous one did. St. John Henry Newman, ora pro nobis.