The Opinionator

Papal Infallibility

As a serious Catholic I am intrigued by the notion of papal infallibility.  To some, this means that everything the pope utters must necessarily be without error. He has omniscience in all matters.  As we used to say at my Catholic college, "the pope's pencil is the only one that does not have an eraser."

To others, papal infallibility comes into play when the pope, officially speaking "ex cathedra," from the chair of Peter, as chairman of the board, declares that something is a matter of faith. Papal infallibility was affirmed officially by the church in 1870.  An example of infallible dogma is the 1854 doctrine about the assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is a matter of Catholic fact, that Mary was bodily taken to heaven when she died.

The more I study and think about this question the more I realize that the reality of the matter is somewhere in between paragraph one and paragraph two.  I am naturally inclined to question everything that is not infallibly defined, but the church's teaching authority over the centuries suggests that many moral positions should be accepted as "truth" and not questioned.

For instance, the church teaches that life begins at conception and therefore abortion is wrong and will always be wrong.  This is not the current "position" of the church; it is a manifestation of the natural law and will be around forever. On the other hand, the church used to prohibit the eating of meat on Friday.  In 1966 it changed this rule, and then it was O.K.  This had nothing to do with dogma, it was a church rule and it can be changed.

Incredibly, I have found that some people see the meat on Friday change as evidence that tenets of the church can be changed and that we may see the day come eventually when abortion will be O.K. or when the practice of artificial birth control will be set aside.  While the distinctions between these two kinds of religious beliefs are abundantly clear to me, they are not to others.  I would put the question of whether to ordain women as priests in the category of no meat on Friday.  This could happen some day, and it would have nothing to do with natural law or the eternal order of the universe.

The issue where the distinction between paragraph one and paragraph two is not very clear regards homosexuality.  While it is easy for many to define homosexual acts as sinful, just as are heterosexual acts between unmarried individuals, it is much more complicated to condemn the homosexual lifestyle and to view same sex marriage as some kind of attack on sacramental matrimony. In Boston the church has disallowed adoption by same sex couples and they quote some kind of papal writing that a homosexual relationship is "gravely disordered."  That apparently falls under the rubric of church moral teaching and is expected to be accepted by all Catholics. It is treated like the fact of Mary being taken bodily to heaven.  I have a large problem with this.  Who decides what we must believe and what we can consider optional? It seems to depend on the issue at hand and I find that some who want to discourage disagreement and dissent are too quick to invoke the authority of the church rather than a real argument to defend their point of view.

Shortly the pope will be issuing something which is called a motu proprio.

This is a papal decree in which the pope answers a question or clarifies something.  In the one about to come out, the Holy Father will make it easier to use Latin in Catholic worship services.  Key phrases will be changed to be closer to their Latin origins and the Church will no longer require the approval of the local bishop to say Mass in Latin.

To some, this will be an overdue reform of the excesses of the 1962 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.  To others, this will be an embarrassing reversion to conducting the liturgy in a language no one understands.  We should be able to have it both ways, but my guess is that critics from the left who think a foreign language can block piety, will be ascribed a near demon-like status by conservative Catholics who have long opposed "the changes."  These liberal dissenters will be accused of being out of step with the "Magesterium" which is the aggregate teachings of the church over the centuries.  Years ago we referred to this as the "deposit of faith."  I am not sure what has caused this framing change, but I suspect that the word "Magesterium" promotes the idea of the church as teacher and we as compliant disciples.