Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
10th December 2014
As
the 2015 Synod looms ahead laden with the unknown and [many] problems, a prime
question is up for discussion. What is
the authority of ecclesiastical documents which may be produced by the ordinary
Magisterium of a Pope or Synod?
The
progressives, or better the neo-modernists, attach an infallible character to
all the acts of the present Pontiff and to the results of the next Synod,
whatever they may be. They say – we need
to obey these acts, since, as in the
case of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope or the bishops united to him,
cannot fall into error. On the other hand, the progressives themselves deny
infallible value to the teachings of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae of Paul VI,
and affirm that traditional morality in the marital field needs to be up-dated, adapting to the
“experienced convictions” of those Catholics that practice contraception,
artificial insemination and non–marital cohabitation.
In
the first case they appear to acknowledge the infallibility of the Ordinary
Universal Magisterium, identifying it with the living Magisterium of the Pope
and Bishops after Vatican II; in the second case they deny the infallibility of
the true concept of the Ordinary Universal Magisterim, expressed through the
Tradition of the Church, according to the famous formula of Vincent of Lerins:
quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.
We
find ourselves faced with an evident overturning of the truths of faith
regarding the ecclesiastical Magisterium.
The doctrine of the Church teaches in fact that when the Pope, alone or
in union with the bishops, speaks ex cathedra, he is certainly infallible. But
for a pronouncement to be considered ex cathedra, some requisites are
necessary: 1) he must speak inasmuch as he is Pope and Pastor of the Universal
Church; 2) the matter in which he expresses himself must regard the faith or
traditions; 3) on this object he must pronounce a solemn and definitive
judgment, with the intention of binding all of the faithful.
If
even only one of these conditions is missing, the Pontifical (or Conciliar)
Magisterium remains authentic, but it is not infallible. That is, it does not
mean that it is wrong, but it means simply that it is not immune from error; it
is, in a word - fallible.
We
need to add however, that the infallibility of the Church is not limited to the
extraordinary case of the Pope, who, alone or in union with the bishops, speaks
ex cathedra, but it is extended also to the Ordinary Universal Magisterium.
To
clarify this point, let us turn to an article by Padre Marcelino Zalba (1908 –
2009), on the Infallibility of the Ordinary Universal Magisterium and
Contraception, which appeared in the January – March 1979 issue of Cardinal
Giuseppe Siri’s magazine “Renovatio” (pp.79-90).
The
author who was considered one of the
most trusted moralists of his time, recalled that other two noted American
theologians, John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, in 1963, precisely five years
before the promulgation of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae by Paul VI, had studied
the level of certainty and truth that should be attributed in the theological
field to Traditional Catholic Doctrine regarding the intrinsic and grave
immorality of contraception (John C. Ford S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Contemporary
Moral Theology, vol. 2, Marriage Questions, Newman, Westminster 1964, pp.
263-271).
According
to the two Jesuit theologians this is a doctrine that needed to be considered
normative for the conduct of the faithful.
It would be in fact inconceivable that the Catholic Church aided by the
Holy Spirit in the conservation of doctrine and evangelical morality, would
have affirmed explicitly in numerous interventions that contraceptive acts are
a grave objective violation of the law of God, if it were not so in
reality. With an erroneous intervention,
the Church would have been the cause of countless mortal sins, contradicting
the promise of the Divine assistance of Jesus Christ.
One
of the two moral theologians, Father Ford, in collaboration with the
philosopher Germain Grisez, examined this problem in depth in a subsequent
work: Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium (“Theological Studies” , 39 (1978), pp.
258-312). They concluded that the
doctrine of Humanae Vitae should be considered infallible teaching, not in
virtue of the act of promulgation (which was less solemn and categorical, for
example, than Casti Connubii by Pius XI), but given that it confirmed the
Ordinary Universal Magisterium of the Popes and bishops in the world. Though
not being in itself infallible, Humanae Vitae became so when, in condemning
contraception, it reaffirmed a doctrine perennially proposed by the Ordinary
Universal Magisterium of the Church.
The
constitution Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council, ascertained, in chapter
3, that there can be truths that must be believed, with Divine and Catholic
faith in the Church, without the need of
a solemn definition, since they are expressed in the Ordinary Universal
Magisterium. The conditions necessary for the infallibility of the Ordinary
Universal Magisterium are that it concerns a doctrine with regard to faith or
morals, taught authoritatively in repeated declarations by the Popes and
bishops, with an unquestionable and binding character.
The
word universal is meant not in the synchronic sense of an extension of space in
a particular historical period, but in the diachronic sense of a continuity of
time, in order to express a consensus that embraces all epochs of the Church
(Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Illustrative
Doctrinal Note of the conclusive formula
of Professio fidei, 29th June 1998, nota 17).
For example, in the case of birth control, since the 3rd century the
Church has condemned artificial methods.
At the beginning of the 19th century when this problem surfaced again,
the declarations by bishops, in union with the Pope, stated, at all times, as
definitive and binding doctrine of the Church, that contraception was mortal
sin. The explicit declarations of Pius XI, Pius XII and of all their
successors, confirmed traditional teaching.
Paul VI in Humanae Vitae confirmed this doctrine of the Ordinary
Magisterium, “based on the natural law as illuminated and enriched by Divine
Revelation (n. 4) rejecting the pontifical commission’s conclusions, which had
studied this problem as these “were at variance with the moral doctrine on
marriage constantly taught by the Magisterium of the Church” (n. 6).
The
position that Father Zalba, Father Kelly, Father Ford and Prof. Grisez make
regarding contraception may be extended to artificial insemination, unmarried
cohabitation or the divorced and remarried. Even in absence of extraordinary
declarations by the Church on these moral issues, the Ordinary Universal
Magisterium of the Church has declared itself in a coherent, constant and
binding manner throughout course of the centuries: it is to be considered
infallible. Moreover in the moral realm, praxis may never be in contradiction
with what the doctrine of the Universal Magisterium has established
definitively.
Quite
different is the matter regarding doctrinal innovations included in the
documents of the Second Vatican Council. In those cases not only is an ex
cathedra act missing by the Pontiff in union with the bishops, but none of the
documents were exposed in a dogmatic manner, with the intention of defining a
truth of the faith or morality and of binding the assent of the faithful. In those documents there can only be some
passages infallible where the perennial doctrine of the Church is confirmed.
Catholic, in fact, is that which is universal, not what is in a given moment
“in every place” believed by everyone - which can occur at a Council or a Synod
- but what is perennially everywhere believed by everyone, without
equivocations and contradictions. The hermeneutic debate still in progress on
the innovations of the Vatican II texts confirms their provisional and
disputable character, in no way binding.
How
can blind and unconditional obedience to the fallible innovations of the Second
Vatican Council and of the Synod on the Family which claim to contradict the
infallible teachings of the Ordinary Universal Magisterium of the Church on the
theme of conjugal morality be expected?
[Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana]
[Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana]
