Two views

Vatican II, infallibility and the Church today

James Bogle and John Young

Contents - Jul 2010 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Religious education: the challenge of secularism - Michael Gilchrist Events: Leading US Catholics to visit Australia Archbishop Chaput defends the Pope and the Vatican over abuse lawsuits News: The Church Around the World Newly discovered World War II documents further vindicate Pius XII Book launch: Cardinal Pell's new book 'Test Everything' launched - Michael Gilchrist Trends: The Church in 50 years: John Allen's predictions - Frank Mobbs FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH: What we can know about heaven from Scripture and the Church - John Young Two views: Vatican II, infallibility and the Church today - James Bogle and John Young New apologetics for the new evangelisation Books: THE ABBESS OF ANDALUSIA: Flannery O'Connor's Spiritual Journey, Lorraine Murray - Terri Kelleher (reviewer) Books: CONVINCED BY THE TRUTH: Embracing the Fullness of Catholic Faith, John Fleming - John McCarthy (reviewer) Books: HANDING ON THE FAITH IN AN AGE OF DISBELIEF, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: The challenge: how to spread God's word in a secular culture - Bishop Arthur Serratelli

The issue of the authority of Vatican II crops up with frequent regularity. This is no surprise since it has a direct bearing upon our knowledge of the truth and upon its teaching in the Church today.

My good friend and fellow writer, John Young, revisits the subject (AD2000, March 2010), as he did two years ago (AD2000, May 2008), criticising those who challenge the authority of Vatican II.

He is certainly right to criticise the challengers and he rightly shows the traditional tone of many of the Council documents.

That, however, does not, without more, mean that the teaching of Vatican II is pro-posed infallibly by the Church. True, it repeats much infallible teaching but it makes no definitions itself. Some of its documents are clearly fallible and some are not teaching at all but rather more akin to media statements or statements of public policy in the Church.

Fundamental dogmas

To invest all these documents with the same, equal authority would be quite wrong. It would be more wrong still to invest them with an infallibility that the popes and the fathers of the Council clearly did not intend or propose.

John rightly argued, in his earlier article, against the notion that some of the most fundamental dogmas of Christianity should be questioned because the Councils that taught them didn't have enough bishops in attendance for their decisions to be infallible. Most General Councils only ever had a minority of the world's bishops in attendance.

John next considered the infallibility of the Ordinary universal Magisterium and noted the description that Vatican II gives of it in Lumen Gentium 25. If the bishops, dispersed throughout the world but still maintaining the bond of communion with the successor of Peter, teaching on matters of faith and/or morals, are in moral agreement over time as to one position definitively to be held, then their teaching is infallible.

John Young rightly points out that this is not a question of mathematics but he spoils the effect of so saying by later suggesting that infallibility might be represented by a moral unanimity of, say, two-thirds of the bishops in Council, as if Catholic doctrine were a matter of some kind of Episcopal 'democracy' at a General Council.

This concept of conciliar authority was long ago condemned by the Church.

The Council of Constance in the Middle Ages sought to impose the error of Conciliarism upon the Pope and the Church, particularly in its decree Haec Sancta of April 1415, and with its view that two-thirds ( duarum partium) of the bishops in Council was a guarantor of infallible authority.

These Conciliarist decrees of the Council were later condemned.

The manner of functioning of the Ordinary infallible Magisterium does not imitate modern democratic parliaments where a vote is taken and a majority suffice — not even a two-thirds majority. On the contrary, the Ordinary infallible Magisterium operates by way of a moral consensus over time, not by a one-off majority (or two-thirds) poll of the world episcopate.

The Extraordinary infallible Magisterium, by which is meant the solemn infallible teaching of a papally ratified Ecumenical Council, or the solemn infallible teaching of a Pope (ex cathedra), also does not require a poll of the world episcopate.

So what does give infallible teaching its authority?

In both cases, the decisive factor is the ratifying authority of the Pope, the successor of St Peter, to whom was given authority to bind and loose in that famous passage from Scripture: Tu es Petrus et superhanc Petram, aedificabo ecclesiam meam — "thou art Peter [Rock] and upon this rock [Peter] I shall build my church" (Matt 16:18-19).

A diligent search of the Scriptures will show that no such authority was ever given to an Ecumenical Council. It is ratification by the Pope that is decisive.

Similarly, the First Vatican Council, in its degree Pastor Aeturnus, expressly excluded from the operation of papal infallibility any dependence on the consent of the Church ( ex sese non autem ex consensu ecclesiae — "of itself and not by the consent of the Church").

Authority

John suggests that Vatican II's decrees are all infallible because they were later "received" by the world's bishops and thus by the infallible Ordinary Magisterium.

That, too, is misleading.

In fact, the authority of a General Council does not depend upon its decrees being accepted and "received" at a later date by the world's bishops. It is the authority of the Pope which confers authority upon the final decrees of an Ecumenical Council. Council decrees that lack the ratification or the authority of the Pope are a legal and doctrinal nullity.

Such was the case with many of the decrees of the Council of Constance, for instance, and for that reason they were later simply dropped by order of a successor pope.

The other factors necessary to establish the infallibility of a teaching are that it must be a matter of faith and/or morals, taught definitively, to be held by the universal Church.

It is not right, therefore, simply to say that any teaching emanating from an Ecumenical Council or from a Pope must necessarily have been taught infallibly. That would be to embrace a species of fundamentalism unknown to, and alien to, the Catholic faith.

On the other hand, the Ordinary Magisterium operates through a moral consensus of popes and bishops and it teachings acquire the status of infallibility through being regularly and definitively taught over time.

An example of the infallible Ordinary Magisterium is the teaching that the "matter" of the Sacrament of Ordination is a baptised male. Since the early Church, there has been a definitive consensus of the popes and bishops on this teaching which, moreover, concerns a matter of faith to be held by the universal Church.

The teaching was re-affirmed in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II. There can be no doubt that the teaching is, therefore, infallible. God assigns roles to the sexes, the one maternal, the other paternal, and the priestly role is indubitably paternal and not maternal.

Vatican II teaching

What, then, of the teaching of Vatican II?

It is common ground among all theologians that the Council issued no solemn definitions. It did not therefore exercise the infallible Extraordinary Magisterium. Its teaching was that of the Magisterium but its teaching was not an exercise of infallibility. It did not define anything.

That is not to say that its teachings are somehow optional. Far from it.

Teachings of popes and councils, even when not infallible, should be given "religious submission of mind and will" ( Lumen Gentium, 25 and Can. 752) unless, of course, they clearly conflict with hitherto established or infallible Catholic teaching.

Pope John said of his Council, "there will be no infallible definitions" and Cardinal Ratzinger said that the Council, "defined no dogma at all". Pope Paul said similar. Infallible teaching must reflect definitive teaching. This is a requirement for the Ordinary Magisterium as well as the Extraordinary. Vatican II itself teaches this in Lumen Gentium, 25.

That need not surprise us. If a teaching is to be regarded as infallibly taught then it must be clear and well-defined. Vague and ill-defined teaching could hardly be regarded as infallibly taught. In the decrees of Vatican II such definitive teaching was deliberately and expressly avoided. The Council was to be a largely pastoral one.

The position is well explained by Ludwig Ott in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Something less than a definition is not infallibly taught.

In an explanation given by the Council's own Theological Commission and cited by the Secretary of the Council, Archbishop Pericle Felici, in a theological note appended to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, it is stated that "in view of conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present Council, this sacred Synod defines matters of faith and morals as binding on the Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so".

Moreover, the Council itself accepted the fact that it had put forth its teaching without infallible definitions by concluding the decree on the Church with the words decernimus ac statuimus (�"we decree and establish") and not with the word definimus ("we define") or any similar definitive expression. The same formula was used for all the sixteen promulgated documents of the Council.