Hi, Patricius...I don't know how much the following will help. I just posted it on another forum and then saw your post here. God-incidence, perhaps?
Before I post it, though, I'll reiterate what some others have said: Definitely get hold of
Upon This Rock by Steve Ray (try
www.ignatiuspress.com). [
ignatiuspress.com).] Also
Jesus, Peter and the Keys, published by Queenship Publishing -- one of the editors is an Eastern Catholic, BTW. Last but not least, I highly recommend
The Divine Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and Modern Eastern Orthodoxy: Letters to a Former Catholic, by James Likoudis, a greatly expanded version of an earlier monograph, available from the author at jlikoudis@cuf.org. It answers a
lot of the historical questions. Also, I recommend corresponding with Mr. Likoudis; he's a sweetheart, very cordial, and also very learned. He's always more than willing to answer questions fully and irenically.
Now here's that thingy I promised to post....It's by Eastern Catholic Father Hal Stockert:
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Papal Infallibility
Fr. Hal Stockert
Note 27 (of 40) by AVATAR on April 28, 1993 at 23:03 Eastern (2979 characters).
I hope you aren't betting any big money, Vic, on "downplaying" the Petrine privilege and Papal Infallibility. That strikes me more as a statement of wish than a thoughtful assessment of the future.
Whether or not it has been used "only twice" is, to my mind, taking a ludicrously narrow view of the doctrine, which has been used in fact all the way back to Clement at the very least, who was successor to Peter while the Apostle John was still alive. To have limited it to the two formal pronouncements of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption is to have done the entire doctrine an injustice.
There is also this question - either the Doctrine is of divine origin or it is not. If it *is* of divine origin, then the idea of deliberately choosing to downplay it by human beings strikes me as verging on the heretical. If it is NOT of divine origin, then the pronouncement of it by both Vatican I *and* Vatican II would seem to have the consequence of rendering null and void the very premise of the Church's infallibility itself.
No - while I sense an eagerness to dispense with the Petrine Infallibility (though I cannot for the life of me understand WHY a Catholic would wish it...one might as well wish that desperately that one's insurance policy won't pay off when catastrophe has struck!), I'm afraid the hope is a forlorn one.
What *will* happen, I suspect, and to some degree already HAS happened, is that there is already a de facto schism in the Catholic Church in the United States. Schismatics and Orthodox Catholics are still sitting in the pews in the same parish churches on the same Sundays and holydays, and it's very difficult indeed to tell which are whom unless you know each of them individually and well - but in the end I am prepared to bet real money (which means something like yen or marks, not dollars <hh>) that shrimps will whistle before the Catholic Church, apart from that informally schismatic group among Catholics in America, rejects that doctrine, or even *begins* to "downplay" it.
This deals in large measure with the issue John raised a few notes ago. I'll try to take that issue up shortly and try to tie it to this issue as well.
But beware of false irenicism. Remember the prophet: "The fool cries in his heart, peace!, peace! when there is no peace." That refers as well to ecumenical affairs as it does to international affairs. If there is to be unity, it can ONLY be on the basis of a full recognition of the Truth as God has revealed it - NOT on the basis of one side *or* the other denying what it must in conscience hold to be so. "Hier stande ich. Ich kanne nicht als." Neither Catholics nor others, Protestant or Orthodox, do the other any favors by pretending not to be true things which must be. They only degrade each other by the implicit lie. And risk damning their souls by the willingness to do so.
Note 33 (of 40) by AVATAR on May 2, 1993 at 18:11 Eastern (9231 characters).
Vic, your last note mystified me more even than did your first - the one where you referenced what was quite plainly an anxious desire that for some unimaginable reason the charism of the Church known as the Petrine mission would for some reason be minimized. I raised the question, and you indicated that [emphasis yours] your hope was that it would be minimized *among Catholics*, while acknowledging that it poses something of a stumbling block for non-Catholics.
That mystifies me entirely. WHY would it be desirable to "minimize" it "FOR CATHOLICS"? One would have thought that if it were to bring a benefit by being "minimized" it would be to minimize it with regard to those who are yet unwilling to enter the full union of the Church. What benefit it would bring to CATHOLICS to minimize it is left quite unexplained - except that it is quite clear that you, at least, find it a stumbling block for yourself as well as non-Catholics might.
I have no problem at all with speculation. I was trained for it, years ago. But speculation *ought* to have some grounding in reality; it ought to have at least the function of trying to determine either the nature of something that already exists, or to determine the consequences of something yet indefinite in terms of outcome "if we do this..."
There are limits to speculation, and those limits are set by the hard bounds of reality. Else we might concern ourselves with questions like "Can heffalumps *really* fly?" and insist that they are of a magnitude equal to that of whether or not the hungry truly need to be fed, or whether or not God does, in fact, exist, or whether or not there IS, in fact, any such thing as gravity.
I have seen in this contemporary society with which I find myself surrounded a compulsion to do just that - speculate without basis on things that are not remotely grounded either in reality or in magnitude of their comparison to other things. One might as well spend one's lifetime speculating on whether or not Geritol really works. It is a problem others have described in volume after volume, related to functional illiteracy, but vastly more damaging and vastly more difficult for a person to find himself guilty of....for lack of a better term I call it "functional innumeracy." Define that as the inability or unwillingness to properly determine the proportionate gravity of things in relation to other things. Hangnails, for example, are grievously less deserving of our compassion than, say, Parkinson's, or quadraplegia, or Spina Bifida. Yet there are those who would ignore the others entirely in favor of hangnails, provided only that the hangnail be theirs.
You referred to Papal Infallibility in some very disturbing terms. For one, you intimated that it is not a particularly important function of the Church because it had only been exercised twice....a false statement to begin with, for limiting the charism to two *particular* instances of its exercise and quite flatly denying its other applications throughout the century; implying also that it is something which we are empowered to minimize or maximize as we choose - therefore NOT something of divine origin; further, almost explicit in it is the underlying assumption that it is not only a recent innovation in the Church, but one that had been until recently, diminishing - QUITE IN CONTRADICTION TO THE HISTORICAL FACT THAT THE ENTIRE PRACTICE AND DOCTRINE HAS BEEN IN QUITE THE OTHER DIRECTION - that both the understanding and the implementation of it have GROWN quite consistently throughout the centuries even since the days of Peter's dream on the rooftop of Cornelius' house at Joppa.
I would be worse than foolish to quarrel with the idea that it poses a stumbling block - not only to non-Catholics, but even to Catholics; more, I'll *stipulate*, if it pleases you, that it poses a stumbling block to most AMERICAN Catholics. WHY it does so is rather less simple to deal with. I may be dense, but I'm scarcely stupid enough to deny the reality of what I see written around me daily, what I hear spoken and even *preached* around me daily - however blatant the distance between them and authentic Church teaching as voiced in one way or another in virtually every Council in the history of the Church, either explicitly or implicitly. Slow, to be sure. But not stupid. But it only poses a stumbling block to those for whom obedience itself is a stumbling block. Nobody else.
It is not quite that simple to cast out the stumbling block - for you have yourself a dilemma which requires explanation, if only to yourself. First of all, it would be wiser to dispense with the term "Papal" infallibility, for it is a misnomer laid on the Church mostly by enemies of the doctrine, not by its proponents, and not by the Church itself. For it is the CHURCH which is infallible, and the Papacy is infallible when it speaks *for* the Church. It is infallible, *not only when it [the papacy] speaks 'ex cathedra' in an extraordinary manner, as during the declarations of the dogmas of Immaculate Conception and Assumption, BUT WHEN EXERCISED IN ITS ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES OF DAILY TEACHING, GUIDANCE AND INSTRUCTION.* For the Papacy speaks in the name of the Church then, too, and not only during those two quite extraordinary circumstances listed. So much so, in fact, that NO COUNCIL, including the first, even *considered itself* to have exercised that charism of the Church - Infallibility - unless and until its decrees and canons have been ratified and approved by the pontiff of its time! Therein, of course, lies the importance of Canon Law, since most of the function of the law is to instruct on what and how the doctrines of the Church are to be taught, and who is to be responsible for those instructions....responsible to GOD.
Your dilemma is simple to state; much less simple to resolve if you approach it in the way your note here did.
A) If the Church is infallible BY DIVINE ORIGIN, and the Papacy shares in that infallibility when it teaches in the name of that Church - whether under ordinary circumstances or under extraordinary, then BY VIRTUE OF WHAT POWER OR BY VIRTUE OF WHAT RIGHT DO WE, THE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH, BEGIN TO DETERMINE THAT IT OUGHT TO BE "MINIMIZED" IN ITS EXERCISE?
B) If the Church is NOT infallible as a matter of divine origin and gift, then the Church has been guilty of having taught error; and the guarantee of infallibility never HAS applied to the Church in any way that Catholics have *ever* taught. I suspect non-Catholics will accept this option without much difficulty. The Orthodox would have a harder time of it, but they might gulp hard and swallow it - though I venture to say (as a matter of personal opinion and experienced guesswork) that a future Council which completes the work of defining Church infallibility as Vatican I did, and Vatican II continued, the final result will be far closer to the position of the Orthodox's position than most Latins are prepared to accept - even American Catholics.
If there is a tertium quid with which to work, I fail to see it.
There is a final point to be made in dealing with the doctrine of the Church's charism of infallibility - that, if it is true that the Church *has* that guarantee, then obedience to that teaching...EVEN IN MATTERS WHICH ARE *NOT* DEFINED "BY EXTRAORDINARY MEANS"...is *mandatory* - and mandatory in the sense that every Catholic is bound in conscience and before the Throne of God to *correct* his thinking to bring it into line *with* that teaching. It does NOT suffice to grumble and walk away, mumbling into one's beard as did Galileo, that "they move all the same." Not that Galileo was improper in his muttering, for the subjects in question had little, if anything, to do with infallibility and *everything* to do with politics of the day; but in terms of revelation, of understanding the things that come from God and *cannot* be known directly or sufficiently by the pure light of human reason, this obedience, this willing submission and correction of oneself, is of the utmost importance, not only to the Church, but to you and to me....for the very salvation of our souls and the attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven.
If we're going to "speculate" about what might happen "if" the Church's charism of infallibility were to be minimized, it seems to me wisest first to speculate on *whether or not we CAN minimize it*. And only *then* concern ourselves with whether or not we will like the outcome.
Indeed, I would hazard the suggestion (and I'm sure it *is* hazardous in this day and age!) that we Catholics have spent far too much time and effort *already* concerning ourselves with what WE would like to see the Church do, say, and demand of us....when, in fact, we should have been much MORE concerned to determine what CHRIST would like of US, in the things we think, feel, say and do....
I've seen *damned* little of *that* this last 35 years.
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