I’ve addressed
the doctrinal controversies in question at length elsewhere and will not
revisit them here. The point for present
purposes is that, whatever one thinks of them, none of these inferences is
sound, because they rest on the false assumption that Catholicism claims that a
pope could not err in the ways Francis is in these cases alleged to have
erred.
The Church’s
teaching, as famously defined at the First
Vatican Council, is as follows:
When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher
of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a
doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he
possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that
infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining
doctrine concerning faith or morals.
It is fairly
widely understood that this does not mean that a pope is impeccable in his
personal moral behavior, or that he cannot err when he speaks on some topic
unconnected to faith or morals, or that he cannot err when he offers a personal
opinion on some theological matter rather than teaching in his capacity as pope. Rather, it is only when speaking as universal
pastor of the Church on a matter of faith or morals that he is infallible.
However, what
is somewhat less widely understood is that even this is not enough for an
infallible ex cathedra statement. As the passage from Vatican I says more than
once, the pope also needs to be speaking to the universal Church on a matter of
faith or morals in a manner that defines
some point of doctrine. And to “define”
a doctrine is more than just putting it forward as binding on the
faithful. As the Second Vatican Council
teaches in Lumen
Gentium, even papal teaching that is not ex cathedra is normally binding (though as I’ve discussed elsewhere,
the Church acknowledges rare exceptions).
To define a doctrine involves, in addition, putting it forward in an absolutely final, irrevocable
manner. When a pope defines some point
of doctrine, he is teaching it in a way that is intended to settle the question for all time and can never be revisited. It only when speaking with this maximum degree of solemnity that a pope
is claimed by Vatican I to be making an infallible ex cathedra pronouncement.
Such
pronouncements are rare, and Pope Francis has never made one. In particular, none of the doctrinal controversies
referred to above involves any such pronouncement. Neither Amoris
Laetitia’s teaching on Holy Communion for those in invalid marriages, nor
the 2018 revision to the Catechism on the topic of capital punishment, nor Fiducia Supplicans’s teaching on
blessings for same-sex couples, involves any ex cathedra statement. None
of these documents is intended to “define” or settle in an absolutely
irrevocable way any doctrinal matter. Hence,
if one or more of them really does contain doctrinal error, that would be –
though regrettable and indeed scandalous – nevertheless compatible with the
doctrine of papal infallibility, because none of them is the kind of
pronouncement that is covered by
infallibility.
Hence, none
of the inferences referred to above is sound.
The fact that these doctrinal pronouncements were issued under the
pope’s authority does not (contrary
to some of Pope Francis’s defenders) by
itself guarantee that they must be reconcilable with tradition, because
they are not ex cathedra definitions. Nor, if they are erroneous, would that entail
that Francis is not a true pope, since (contrary to what some sedevacantists
seem to think) even true popes are not infallible when teaching in the specific manner of the documents
in question. For the same reason – and
contrary to what some Protestants and some Catholics who have lost their faith
suppose – if Francis has erred in these cases, that would not falsify Catholic
claims about papal infallibility, because the Church never claimed in the first
place that popes are infallible when making pronouncements of the specific kind in question, since none of them involves an
attempt at making an ex cathedra
definition.
The teaching of the manuals
It is
important to emphasize that this is in no
way some novel interpretation of papal infallibility manufactured in order
to deal with the controversies that have arisen during the pontificate of Pope
Francis. It is simply the way Catholic
theologians have always understood the matter.
To see this, consider what is said in several standard theology manuals
of the period between Vatican I and Vatican II.
This was, of course, the period when the popes were most keen to
emphasize their power to settle matters of doctrine. And yet the manuals say exactly what I just
said about the conditions on an ex
cathedra statement. It is worth
adding that these are manuals that received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. That does not entail that they are
infallible, but it does mean that what they say was regarded by ecclesiastical
authorities as perfectly orthodox and unremarkable.
Let’s begin
with Scheeben’s 1874 Handbook
of Catholic Dogmatics, Book One, Part One. Commenting on papal authority infallibly to
judge matters of doctrine, it tells us that “only those propositions or
considerations which the judge evidently intended
to determine peremptorily are to be regarded as judicially determined and
thus infallibly true” (p. 331, emphasis added).
That is to say, unless the pope intends to settle a matter in a
peremptory or final way, his pronouncement is not of an ex cathedra nature.
Accordingly, Scheeben says, “it is possible, notwithstanding the
continuing operation of his authority, that the pope extra iudicum [i.e. not ex
cathedra] should profess, teach, or attest something false or heretical” (p.
144, parenthetical remark in the original).
Brunsmann
and Preuss’s 1932 Handbook of Fundamental
Theology, Volume IV, tells us the following:
An ex-cathedra decision…
implies the unmistakable intention of the pope to utter a definitive and
binding doctrinal decision and to oblige the Universal Church to accept it with
absolute certainty. Hence if the pope,
even in his capacity as supreme shepherd and teacher, were to recommend to all
the faithful a certain doctrine regarding faith or morals, even if he commanded
that doctrine to be taught in all the schools, this would be no ex-cathedra definition, because no definitive doctrinal
decision would be intended. The case is
similar with regard to decrees issued by the Roman congregations, when they (as
happens with the S. Congregation of the Holy Office, over which the pope
himself presides) condemn a doctrine, and the decision is confirmed by the
supreme pontiff and published by his authority.
Such decrees are not per se infallible… If and so long as there is a
reasonable doubt whether the pope intends a definition to be ex cathedra, no one is in conscience bound to accept it
as such. (pp. 49-50)
Notice that
Brunsmann and Preuss not only note that a papal pronouncement does not count as
ex cathedra if it is not intended as
“definitive” and as settling the matter with “absolute certainty,” but also
offer specific examples of teaching that would, accordingly, not count as ex cathedra. Even a doctrine that a pope in his capacity
as universal teacher commends to all the faithful and commands to be taught, or
a doctrine taught with his approval by the Holy Office (now known as the
Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith), would not count as ex cathedra unless there were an “unmistakable intention” and no “reasonable doubt” that he intended
it as an absolutely final and irrevocable doctrinal definition.
Ludwig Ott’s
1955 Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
says:
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. 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. (p. 10)
The condition of the Infallibility is
that the Pope speaks ex cathedra. For
this is required… that he have the intention of deciding finally a teaching of
Faith or Morals, so that it is to be held by all the faithful. Without this intention, which must be made
clear in the formulation, or by the circumstances, a decision ex cathedra is
not complete. Most of the doctrinal
expressions made by the Popes in their Encyclicals are not decisions ex
cathedra. (p. 287)
Ott here
reiterates the points we’ve already seen in the other manuals, and adds that
“the ordinary and usual form” of
papal teaching, including “most of the
doctrinal expressions… [in] Encyclicals,” are not infallible.
Salaverri
and Nicolau’s 1955 Sacrae
Theologiae Summa, Volume IB
notes that “to speak ex cathedra,
according to Vatican I, implies that the Roman Pontiff teaches something… defining it as something that must be held,
that is, obliging all to an absolute assent of the mind and deciding the matter with an ultimate and
irrevocable judgment” (p. 216, emphasis in original). They add that “the manifest intention of defining something is required” (p. 219,
emphasis added). In other words, and as
the other manuals note, unless a pope explicitly tells us that he intends to
settle some doctrinal matter in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, we
don’t have an ex cathedra definition
and thus don’t have an infallible pronouncement.
Van Noort’s
1957 Dogmatic Theology, Volume II:
Christ’s Church comments on the matter at length:
The pope, even acting as pope, can
teach the universal Church without making use of his supreme authority at its
maximum power. Now the Vatican Council
defined merely this point: the pope is infallible if he uses his doctrinal
authority at its maximum power, by handing down a binding and definitive
decision: such a decision, for example, by which he quite clearly intends to
bind all Catholics to an absolutely firm and irrevocable assent.
Consequently even if the pope, and
acting as pope, praises some doctrine, or recommends it to Christians, or even
orders that it alone should be taught in theological schools, this act should
not necessarily be considered an infallible decree since he may not intend to
hand down a definitive decision. The
same holds true if by his approval he orders some decree of a sacred
congregation to be promulgated; for example, a decree of the Holy Office…
For the same reason, namely a lack of
intention to hand down a final decision, not all the doctrinal decisions which
the pope proposes in encyclical letters should be considered definitions. In a word, there must always be present and
clearly present the intention of the pope to hand down a decision which is
final and definitive…
[W]hen he is not speaking ex
cathedra… All theologians admit that the pope can make a mistake in matters of
faith and morals when so speaking: either by proposing a false opinion in a
matter not yet defined, or by innocently differing from some doctrine already
defined. (pp. 293-94)
Van Noort
goes on to give an example of a case where a decree of a sacred congregation
was issued with papal approval but turned out to be doctrinally erroneous:
It should be candidly admitted, we
think, that the sacred congregation did condemn Galileo’s teaching by what was
actually a doctrinal decree.
The opinion of some theologians that the decree… was a purely disciplinary decree… is, in our opinion, difficult to
square with the facts of the case.
Likewise it should be frankly admitted that the Congregations of the
Inquisition and of the Index committed a faux pas in this matter…
The pope was aware of the decree of
the congregation, and approved it as a decree of the congregation. (pp. 308-9)
Van Noort’s
discussion repeats the points made in the other manuals, and adds the positive
explicit assertion that “the pope can make a mistake in matters of faith and
morals” when not speaking ex cathedra,
along with an example in which a Vatican congregation acting with papal
approval did in fact issue a mistaken doctrinal decree.
Again, these
manuals were all written after
Vatican I proclaimed papal infallibility but before Vatican II and the doctrinal controversies that arose in its
wake. Hence no one can claim that they
reflect some more limited, pre-Vatican I conception of papal authority. Nor can anyone claim that they reflect the
polemical interests of post-Vatican II progressives or traditionalists who, for
very different reasons, would want to emphasize the limits of papal power. They are also exactly the sorts of manuals
sedevacantists like to appeal to in support of their position. But in fact they undermine that position,
because they show that the errors sedevacantists accuse the post-Vatican II
popes of would (even if these popes really were guilty of all the errors they
are accused of) be errors of precisely the kind the Church acknowledges can
occur, consistent with what Vatican I says about the conditions on
infallibility.
Again, I’m
not going to revisit here the details of the doctrinal controversies
surrounding Pope Francis. But if the pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the 2018 revision to
the Catechism, or the DDF declaration Fiducia
Supplicans contain doctrinal error, then these would be the kinds of errors
the Church acknowledges to be possible for a pope to make, because none of them
is an ex cathedra pronouncement. Hence they would not falsify Catholicism, nor
would they show that Francis is not a true pope.
A heretical pope?
But what
about the thesis that a pope might lose his office due to heresy, which was
discussed by St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, and others among the
Church’s great theologians? The first
thing to say here is that what is in view in this thesis is formal heresy, not mere material heresy. A material heresy is a claim that is in fact
heretical in its content, whether or not the person who asserts it realizes
that, or would persist in adhering to the claim after being warned that it is
heretical. A person who holds some view
that is materially heretical would not for that reason alone suffer
excommunication and thus cease to be a Catholic. That would happen only as a result of formal heresy, which is a material
heresy that a person persists in despite the attempts of ecclesiastical authority
to correct him. Moreover, we have to be
careful in determining what counts as “heresy,” which in canon law is not just
any old theological error, but specifically the denial of some teaching that
the Church has officially defined. A formal heretic, then, is someone who
obstinately denies some doctrine that the Church has formally defined, despite
the attempt of the Church to correct him.
The thesis
in question is that if a pope were a formal heretic in this sense, he would
cease to be a Catholic, and thus cease to be pope, since a non-Catholic cannot
be a pope. But as I
have argued elsewhere, no one has succeeded in showing that Pope
Francis is a formal heretic. So the thesis
that he might have lost his office due to formal heresy is moot. But even if he were a formal heretic, the
matter is still nowhere near as straightforward as sedevacantists suppose. For one thing, the thesis that a pope could
lose his office for formal heresy is not a teaching of the Church, but a
theological opinion, nothing more.
Whether a pope really could become a formal heretic, and, if so, whether
he would lose his office, are matters that have been debated but never settled,
either by theologians or by the Church.
Here is what
Van Noort says on the matter:
Thus far we have been discussing Catholic teaching. It may be useful to add a few
points about purely theological opinions…
Theologians disagree… over the question of whether the pope can become a formal
heretic by stubbornly clinging to an
error on a matter already defined. The
more probable and respectful opinion, followed by Suárez, Bellarmine and many
others, holds that just as God has not till this day ever permitted such a
thing to happen, so too he never will permit a pope to become a formal and
public heretic. Still, some competent
theologians do concede that the pope when not speaking ex cathedra could fall
into formal heresy. They add that should
such a case of public papal heresy occur, the pope, either by the very deed
itself or at least by a subsequent decision of an ecumenical council, would by
divine law forfeit his jurisdiction.
Obviously a man could not continue to be the head of the Church if he
ceased to be even a member of the Church. (pp. 293-94)
Salaverri
and Nicolau write: “Theologians concede that a general Council can licitly
declare a Pope heretical, if this case is possible, but not to depose him
authoritatively since he is superior to the Council, unless it is clearly
certain that he is a doubtful Pope” (p. 217).
Note first
that both manuals are tentative about whether it really is even possible for a
pope to become a formal heretic, though some theologians do allow that this is
possible. There are two lessons to draw
from this that are relevant for present purposes. The first is that the Church does permit
theologians to entertain and debate the possibility that a pope may not only
err, but even fall into formal heresy. This is important for properly understanding
the doctrine of papal infallibility, because it shows that the Church is very
far from claiming that everything a
pope might say on matters of faith or morals is infallible. Second, though, the common opinion is that
even if a formally heretical pope is possible in theory, it is highly unlikely
that divine Providence would allow this ever in fact to occur. And this reinforces a point that should be
obvious in any event, which is that a Catholic ought to be extremely cautious about accusing a pope of formal heresy, as
opposed to some lesser degree of error.
But it is,
in any event, not up to just any old Catholic with a stack of theology manuals
and a Twitter account to make this determination. Note that the manuals make reference to the
action of a council against a pope
guilty of formal heresy. For to whom
does the task fall to warn a pope that he is in danger of such heresy? And who has the authority to decide that,
after having been warned to no avail, his heresy is obstinate and thus has in
fact passed from being material to being formal? If just any old Catholic could claim the
right to do this, the result would be precisely the sort of chaos that the
institution of an authoritative hierarchical Church is supposed to
prevent. Hence the common view is that, if a pope were to fall into formal
heresy and if he were to lose his
office as a result, the latter could only occur after some authoritative
ecclesiastical body had made the juridical
determination that he had in fact fallen into formal heresy and ipso facto lost his office.
Yet even
this, as I
have argued elsewhere, would by no means solve all the problems that
arise in such a scenario. And this
reinforces the point that we are dealing here not with any actual teaching of the
Church, but with highly controversial and problematic theological theories,
albeit ones the Church permits us to speculate about. And it is merely on such speculative theories, rather than on official Catholic doctrine,
that the sedevacantist position is grounded.
Ex cathedra heresy?
So far we
have been discussing papal teaching that is not presented in the first place as
if it were an irrevocable ex cathedra
pronouncement. But what if a pope
attempted to teach some heresy in an ex
cathedra way? Is this possible even
in theory? Sometimes Catholics say
things to the effect that were a pope ever to try to do this, God would strike
him dead before he could carry it out.
Interestingly, though, Scheeben treats the matter as being more
complicated than that. He writes:
Infallibility in itself does not
absolutely rule outthe possibility that the judge of
last resort may place… a formally invalid act of judgment. In this sense, therefore, many theologians in
the Scholastic period were able to deem the judicial infallibility of the pope
consistent with the possibility that he, out of wantonness or fear, might place
personal acts, even with the claim of his authority, which should not be
regarded at the same time as acts of his authority or of his See and hence,
without prejudice to the infallibility of the latter, could be erroneous.
Those theologians considered… the
sole [hypothetical] case of obvious and absolute temerity the one in which the
popewould attempt to define a notorious heresy, or, what amounts to the same thing, to reject a notorious
dogmathat is held without
doubt by the entire Church and thus to require the whole Church to abandon her
faith; for in this case, they said, the pope would behavenot as a shepherd but as a wolf, not as a teacher but as a madman, while
on the other hand the Church or the episcopate could and would have to rise up
immediately as one against the pope, althoughwe could not say that
she was rising up over or even merely against papal authority; rathershe would rise up only against the arbitrariness of the person who
hitherto had possessed the papal authority, but plainly through the
questionable act renounced it and relieved himself of it. (p. 310)
What
Scheeben appears to have in mind by a “notorious
heresy” or the “reject[ion of] a notorious dogma” is the explicit denial of
something manifestly previously defined
as irreformable doctrine. And by the
“attempt to define” such a heresy, Scheeben seems to have in mind a case where
a pope issued a decree like the following: “Using my full authority as
successor of Peter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare
and define by a solemn and irrevocable decree that Jesus of Nazareth was not
the Son of God,” or something similarly manifestly heretical.
Scheeben
does not claim that Providence might ever in fact allow such a thing, but he
does discuss it as an abstract possibility that would not be strictly ruled out
by the doctrine of papal infallibility.
But how could it not be ruled out?
Scheeben’s view (or at least, the view of the Scholastic theologians he
has in mind) is that such an act would be “formally invalid” precisely because it would manifestly conflict
with previously defined dogma. The idea
seems to be that among the conditions on an ex
cathedra definition is that it be logically consistent with previous
definitions. After all, when proclaiming
papal infallibility and setting out the conditions on ex cathedra pronouncements, Vatican I explicitly says that:
The Holy Spirit was promised to the
successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some
new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and
faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the
apostles.
The position
Scheeben is describing, then, would seem to be that an attempt to define a
manifest heresy ex cathedra would be
a kind of misfire, a failure right from the get-go to fulfill a basic condition
on making an ex cathedra definition –
just as a failure explicitly to speak in one’s capacity as pope, or a failure
to manifest one’s intention actually to define a doctrine irrevocably, would be
a failure to fulfill the conditions on an ex
cathedra pronouncement. (In this
respect, the position Scheeben is describing would be analogous to Fr. Thomas
Weinandy’s thesis about the conditions on magisterial teaching more generally,
which I discussed in a
recent post.)
Some might
object to this position (as some have objected to Fr. Weinandy’s thesis) that
it amounts to an appeal to “private judgment,” the very thing Catholics
criticize Protestants for. For if a
Catholic were to judge some papal definition heretical, wouldn’t this precisely
be to rely on his own judgment rather than that of the Church?
But this
objection rests on a crude misunderstanding of the notion of “private judgment.” The Church has never claimed that we have no understanding at all of scripture,
tradition, or past papal teaching apart from what the current pope happens to
say about it. And such a claim would be
manifestly false. You don’t need the
pope to tell you, for example, that scripture teaches that God created the
universe, that he made a covenant with Israel through Moses, that Jesus claimed
to be the Son of God, and so on.
Non-Catholics no less than Catholics can know that much just from reading the Bible and noting how it has always
been understood for millennia. It’s not
as if the text is just a bunch of unintelligible squiggles that we can make
absolutely no sense of unless the current pope tells us: “This is what this
squiggle means, this is what that squiggle means, etc.”
What the
Magisterium of the Church is needed for is to settle matters that go beyond what the text has always been
understood to say – finer points of interpretation, implications for doctrinal
controversies, applications to current problems, and so on. For example, it is open to the Church to say:
“This is what divine creation of the universe amounts to,” or “Here is the
right way to reconcile this passage with that one.” It is not
open to the Church to say: “Actually, God did not create the universe after
all,” or “It turns out that we’ve always been misunderstanding scripture when
we took it to be saying that God created the universe.”
To deny this
would be to empty of all content the
Church’s claim to her own infallibility.
It would be to say, out of one side of one’s mouth, that the Church
always teaches in accord with scripture and tradition – but then, out of the other
side, effectively to take this back by saying that if the Church ends up
contradicting some teaching that has always been regarded as part of scripture
and tradition, then it must not really
have been part of scripture and tradition after all. That would be an instance of what is known in
logic as a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. It
would make the Church’s claim to infallibility unfalsifiable.
Furthermore,
as I
have shown at length elsewhere, the Church has always acknowledged
that it can in some cases be legitimate respectfully to criticize popes, even
on doctrinal matters. The Church could
not have done so if every criticism
of papal teaching necessarily amounted to “private judgment.”
So, Scheeben
is correct to hold that, if a pope were to try to define ex cathedra a claim like “Jesus of Nazareth was not the Son of
God,” that would be a manifest heresy, and it would not amount to “private
judgment” to say so. On the contrary, it
would be precisely to adhere, not to one’s own private judgment, but to what
the Magisterium itself has in the past always insisted is irreformable
teaching.
But now
another objection to Scheeben’s thesis (or rather, the thesis he is
entertaining) might arise. For doesn’t
this thesis itself also make the
doctrine of papal infallibility unfalsifiable?
For doesn’t it amount to saying that popes always speak infallibly when
making an ex cathedra pronouncement –
but then going on to insist that if they do utter some error in what purports
to be an ex cathedra pronouncement,
it must not really have been an ex cathedra pronouncement after all?
But that is
not in fact what Scheeben says. What he
says is that if a pope attempts to define ex
cathedra some “notorious heresy,”
then in that sort of case it would
not amount to a genuine ex cathedra
act but rather only to a failed attempt at such an act. Again, he evidently has in mind cases where a
pope would deny some doctrine that has manifestlybeen formally defined by the Church
as irreformable doctrine (for example, the teaching that Jesus is the Son of
God). But Scheeben does not address
cases where a pope might attempt to define ex
cathedra some heresy that is not
notorious or blatant, but more subtle. And
here, one might argue, is where the doctrine of papal infallibility might open
itself to falsification even if one accepts the thesis discussed by Scheeben.
Here would
be an example. Suppose a pope were to
attempt to make an ex cathedra
definition like one of the following: “Using my full authority as successor of
Peter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define by
a solemn and irrevocable decree that the death penalty is intrinsically evil,” or “Using my full authority as successor of
Peter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define by
a solemn and irrevocable decree that same-sex sexual activity can be morally
acceptable.”
Such
pronouncements would not contradict any past formal doctrinal definition– a previous ex cathedra papal pronouncement, a conciliar definition, or the
like. But they would manifestly contradict the clear and consistent teaching of
scripture and of the ordinary magisterium of the Church for two millennia. And the Church holds that scripture and the
consistent teaching of the ordinary magisterium cannot be in error on a matter
of faith or morals. Hence, if a pope
attempted to make an ex cathedra
pronouncement of one of the kinds just described, he would clearly be teaching
error.
Hence, I
would say, if a pope were to make such a pronouncement, that would falsify the doctrine of papal infallibility. And I am myself not inclined to agree with
the thesis entertained by Scheeben either.
That is to say, I am inclined to say that, if a pope tried to define ex cathedra a “notorious heresy” like
the claim that Jesus was not the Son of God, that too would falsify the
doctrine of papal infallibility.
Since I have
no doubt that that doctrine is true, I would predict that such a thing will never
in fact happen. The doctrine is
falsifiable in the sense that it makes substantive empirical claims that can be
tested against experience. But it has
passed every such test for two millennia, and will continue to do so.
Related
posts:
When
do popes teach infallibly?
Popes,
heresy, and papal heresy
What
counts as magisterial teaching?
The
Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances
Aquinas
on St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter