Christian dogma defined in Vatican Council I by Pius IX on the impossibility of error on the part of the Pope when he defines “ex cathedra”, a truth of faith or morals. (See Primacy of Peter 6 and see Church Notes 6)
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
DecEc
A
Infallibility is a major theme in the ecumenical debate and within the Catholic Church, where there are rejections or reinterpretations so profound that in practice they are denials. It takes us to questions of history, dogma and hermeneutics. The word “infallible” means immune to error. It is a negative term, but it points to something positive: it is said that the Church (and within it some people and organisms) is infallible to the extent that it is guaranteed to remain in the truth of the gospel.
We will start with Christ: he is infallible. Since he looks at God as man and from humanity, and he looks at humanity as God and from God, Christ shows unfailing faith and infallible testimony. The Church, which is constituted by the gift of her Spirit and has the guarantee of her presence in her midst (Mt 28,20), is equally indefectible in faith and infallible (ITim 3,15). The Church participates in the infallibility of Christ, who in turn reflects the divine attribute of infallibility. The Church that is invisible by virtue of the indefectibility of his faith is not an abstraction but the concrete people of God. Infallibility must be seen in the context of the biblical notion of truth: it is not an abstraction, but is part of the mission given by Christ to his Church.
The Church is infallible believing and teaching. In the first place, as Saint Thomas points out, the faith of the Church cannot be false. The faith of the Church is sustained by the Spirit, who grants the supernatural gift of the appreciation of faith (>Sensus fidei) to all the people of God (LG 12). Secondly, it is the conviction of the Church since New Testament times that she teaches the truth without error, to the point that those who reject her normative teaching must be excluded (> Heresy, > Excommunication). It is said that if God did not endow the Church with an infallible faith, the rigorous demands made on the believer would be unbearable (cf. Gal 1,6; Mk 16,16; Lk 10,16). Although the Church community as a whole is thus infallible in its beliefs, that is, in the acceptance and profession of its normative faith, individuals in particular are not.
It is the conviction of the Catholic Church that God will keep the whole community in the truth as long as it looks to him with adoring faith and to the world with his message and in his name. God will also share his infallible truth with official teachers in the performance of his office. People can err in matters of faith, both individually and as teachers of the Church. Since the times of >Irenaeus there was the conviction that what was taught in all the Churches could not be false. Vincent of Lérins (+ before 450) summed up this conviction of the Church in the lapidary affirmation that universality, antiquity and unanimous consent are guarantees of truth (quod ubique, quod semper, quod omnibus). Soon some >councils were considered normative for the faith. Some of them later became known as ecumenical councils, but there were also other local councils, such as the Second Council of Orange (529), which were also touchstones of orthodoxy. During the first millennium, the universality of the teaching and certain meetings of bishops, with the consequent papal approval, were received (>Reception) by the Church as binding and free from error. The conviction arose that the radical revision of this universal teaching or fruit of the councils was impossible.
In the terminology of the 19th century, this was called the ordinary and extraordinary exercise of the >magisterium, respectively. These two forms of teaching, namely those of bishops scattered throughout the world or gathered in council, have been considered infallible to this day, a conviction reiterated by Vatican II. But in the case of the ordinary magisterium, it is not enough that a truth be taught universally; it is also to be taught as definitive (tanquam definitive tenendam, LG 25).
In ancient ecumenical councils a papal legate or legates were usually present and then, after some time, the pope approved their doctrine. In the Middle Ages the question of the guarantee of truth was raised when the pope taught alone. Saint Thomas Aquinas affirmed infallibility in a certain sense when he taught that the pope could propose a creed to be confessed by the whole Church. But the roots of this doctrine went back further. During the first millennium there was an almost universal conviction that the Roman Church had never been wrong. Since the time of Pope Gelasius I (+ 496) we find approximations to the affirmation that the Roman Church cannot err. Before this, with the popes Damasus I (+384) and Siricius (+399), we find the idea of an almost mystical presence of Peter in the papacy. This idea was very much alive during the pontificate of Leo I and, although it was somewhat diluted later, he never died completely, resurfacing at times with great force, as in the time of > Gregory VII; on solemn occasions the popes still see themselves as attached to Peter, as his successors, carrying out their role in the Church.
Alongside these reflections is the insistence on the fact that the decisions of Rome cannot be reconsidered (since Zosimo, +418, and Boniface I, +422), and that in Rome the apostolic doctrine had been preached uninterruptedly and faithfully. . Leo I’s ideas are well known: he did not consider it necessary to hold a council, since he had spoken clearly in his Tome; for him> Chalcedon did nothing but accept his teachings. In the 6th century the claim began to spread that the first see could not be judged by anyone (prima sedes a nemine judicatur); its origins were dubious—a nonexistent council (Sinuessa)—but it nonetheless became commonplace in canon law, and later in conciliar doctrine.
The conduct of three popes: >Liberius, >Vigilio and >Honorius I, fell short of what was expected of a bishop of Rome. But the complex events of his pontificates were soon forgotten and left no lasting impression on the Western Church, which increasingly accepted the decisions of Rome as an authoritative norm of faith. The see of Peter preserved in the eyes of the Church the doctrinal purity of the faith. It is clear therefore that the aforementioned convictions of Saint Thomas were in line with the ancient tradition, which increasingly recognized the special position of the teaching of the popes and the certainty of their orthodoxy. The roots of papal infallibility are thus much older than a cursory reading of B. Tierney’s well-known study might suggest.
This researcher is right to see a new emphasis on pontifical inerrancy in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, with Peter Olivi (+1298) and Guido Terreni (+1342). The first, for partisan reasons, wanted to force the popes to follow the doctrine of his predecessors: he did not want a future pope to change the approval that Nicholas III had made in 1279 of the proposals of radical poverty supported by the spiritual Franciscans. . He used the expression “> faith and morals” and taught that the pope was an infallible teacher when he spoke “magisterially”. Guido, a staunch papist, taught that the pope could not go wrong in “determining” (determining) on the faith; it is a technical word that means that a controversy or an issue is resolved by the authority in this case of the pope. But, according to this conception, it seems that there would be too many teachings that could be qualified as infallible.
In the Middle Ages, while the idea of the purity of the faith of the Roman see, and also of the pope, was increasingly prevailing, theologians and canonists were clear that a pope could personally fall into heresy, in which case automatically ceased to be pope.
At the end of the 14th century and up to the time of the Reformation there were many factors that contributed to the infallibility doctrine not developing smoothly: the >Avignon captivity, the >Western schism, >conciliarism, the need for reforms at all levels, the protestant rebellion. In the period of the Counter Reformation there were many theologians who defended papal infallibility, but the rise of Gallicanism prevented this doctrine from progressing during the centuries that followed Trent.
In the nineteenth century a declaration of papal infallibility was thought necessary with a view to promoting the spiritual authority of the papacy. Although Vatican I ruled on many issues, it was dominated by the question of infallibility. There was an “infallibilist” group whose leaders were Manning (England), Descamps (Belgium), Senestrey (Germany), and Pie (France). They formed the ultramontane party (>Ultramontanism). Aided and encouraged by Pius IX, this group unceremoniously used their numerical strength to crush the minority, which in practice they regarded as heretics. The minority was headed by Rauscher (Austria), Simor (Hungary), Dupanloup (France), and the historian of the councils Hefle (Germany). The German theologian JJI von >Döllinger (+ 1890), who opposed papal infallibility to the point of incurring excommunication after the council, supplied them with arguments. Although the infallibilist majority defeated the minority view that infallibility was either undefinable or inconvenient, the extremist infallibilists failed in their attempt to have the pope defined as infallible in administrative acts. In the debates the members of the council became aware of the historical difficulties that were posed to the definition; as well as the exercise of power that the definition of the dogma of the immaculate conception by the pope sixteen years earlier (1854) had supposed.
Infallibility is dealt with in the fourth chapter of the constitution Pastor aeternus. The text requires a careful hermeneutic, which includes the exact knowledge of the object of the definition. Above all it must be remembered that it is the Gallican positions that the council wishes to exclude, and this fundamental fact provides the key to the interpretation of the definition. In the chapter that introduces the definition it is made clear that infallibility is an aspect of papal primacy already defined. He appeals to Mt 16,18 and Lk 22,32 and to previous councils: >Constantinople IV, >Lyon II and >Florence. The council goes on to state that it considers it absolutely necessary to make the definition. The vital expressions of the definition are: it is “divinely revealed doctrine” —by…