The emphasis on distinguishing mutable versus non-mutable teachings in Catholicism did not become prevalent until the Reformation era, in response to Luther’s attacks on Church authority by pointing out contradictions among councils and popes.[1] While it made sense to invoke this distinction to refute Protestants and other dissenters, historically it had relatively little effect on Catholic faith and practice prior to the Reformation.

In the medieval and pre-medieval periods, all decrees and teachings recognized as coming from the supreme authority in the Church were accepted with unquestioning assent, as such assent was due to the divinely constituted status of the authority, not the content of the decree. This has been preserved in the modern Catholic teaching that even non-infallible acts of the Magisterium demand a religious assent (CCC 892) that is not simply exterior or disciplinary but…under the impulses of obedience to the faith. (Donum Veritatis, 1990, 23) There is an exception for conscience, but this refers to personal circumstances where obedience would cause one to sin. It does not mean simply saying, I cannot agree with this in good conscience, as though obedience were conditional upon your independent concurrence. This would not be obedience at all, since the authority of the Church is accidental to your assent.

A similarly deep reverence was accorded to all canons of the Church. The respect due to them was proportionate to the authority that issued them.[2] So great was this respect that, even when new circumstances made adherence to ancient canons impractical, the popes did not simply abrogate them, but sought some inventive way to keep at least the nominal letter of the law. This can be seen, for example, with the rule that there can only be one bishop in each city. The use of titular dioceses and other devices to attempt to meet this requirement, rather than simply abrogating the canon, shows the great respect even the popes held toward what we would now call mutable discipline.

In my commentaries on the ecumenical councils, I have adopted a similar attitude, affirming what is true and valuable in all conciliar decrees and teachings regardless of their mutability.[3] The latter quality is pointed out only when necessary to resolve a contradiction with some other decree, but otherwise it is unimportant.

With the controversies surrounding the definition of papal infallibility in the nineteenth century, Catholics became ever more obsessed with distinguishing mutable and non-mutable teachings, now under the rubric of infallible versus non-infallible. This was no longer merely an answer to Protestants, but also became a basis for disputes among Catholics, as though teachings of the supreme authority could be prioritized, with non-infallible teachings taken less seriously. This emphasis on infallibility as the basis of authority (rather than the authority of the pope, council or bishop as such) had some ruinous consequences. First, the decrees of the popes became subject to a sort of judicial review by canonists, theologians and other scholars who sought to determine whether a given teaching met the requirements of infallibility, based on language or document type. Yet, as the Fathers of the Vatican Council noted in their discussions, it was impossible to identify any special formula or document type by which past popes exercised infallible teaching authority. It sufficed that the Pope expressed his will, and taught as Pope (which is all ex cathedra means). That is to say, the papal office as such is the basis of authority, and infallibility is just a property of this authority.

Instead, what we see in practice is Catholics of all stripes, including so-called traditionalists and conservatives, invoking criteria of infallibility to sit in judgment of the decrees of the popes or councils. A common tendency is to infer that one may use non-infallibility as an excuse to ignore or dissent from these decrees. Worse, some will use past infallible decrees as a logical trap so that they may accuse popes they dislike of error or heresy. The reasoning is thus:

X was taught infallibly.
The current pope teaches Y.
If I cannot reconcile X and Y, then the current pope teaches error.

This makes oneself the supreme authority, and is utterly contrary to the method of St. Thomas, which takes the Catholic faith as a supposition:

The Church cannot teach error.
The Church teaches X.
X must be true.[4]

Attempts to rationalize this syllogism out of existence by invoking distinctions between infallibility and non-infallibility effectively deny the major premise, redefining the Church as something distinct from the living authority actually in charge. This attitude loses sight of the fact that the current Magisterium is the only authentic interpreter of Sacred Tradition (Dei Verbum, 10; Humani Generis, 18, 21) and thus has sole competency to judge definitively whether past decrees of the Magisterium express this Tradition and are consistent with current decrees.[5] If the current pope says his decree is consistent with past teachings, that counts above any theologian’s opinion, since the latter, not being an authentic interpreter of past Magisterial acts, lacks the competence to assess compatibility. Those who refuse to accept this must resort to a Catholic version of the doctrine of private interpretation, where we use past decrees the way Protestants use Scriptures to accuse the current authority in the Church of error or worse.

Another ill consequence of confining authority to infallibility is the lower esteem in which ancient canonical disciplines and traditions are held. After all, they are merely mutable (within the limits of divine and natural law), so they may be revised or replaced like any other statute.[6] Yet we have noted that, for most of history, the theoretical mutability of canons had little detriment to their high esteem and the desire to uphold and preserve them as best as possible. We cannot define by a neat logical rule to what degree or extent we should preserve the ancient canons, so those who use infallibility as their lodestone will be dissatisfied, since the truth is not subject to their critical analysis. Yet St. Thomas applied the same rule of faith for practices of the Church.

The Church cannot teach error.
The Church prescribes X in her practice.
It is not wrong (i.e., contrary to divine or natural law) to perform X.[7]

Again, we start with a faith in the Church—the actual Church, the living authority, not just old documents that cannot talk back or give orders to us, or tell us, This is how I am to be interpreted. Only the living authority can do this. The one who professes obedience only to the dead Magisterium of the past obeys no one, for he can make that Magisterium say whatever he interprets it to mean, and that Magisterium is not here to tell him if he is wrong. Only the living Magisterium can do that, and only those who obey the living Magisterium are obedient in any substantive sense.

Catholic faith requires that The Church cannot teach error be accepted as a foundational premise, following immediately from the promises of Christ. (e.g. Mt. 16:17-18, 28:20; Jn. 14:16-17) It is not a hypothesis to be tested and found satisfactory or wanting. Those who use infallibility to test whether or not the Magisterium is in error lack Catholic faith, having adopted a Protestant basis of authority.

Surely, one may retort, criteria of infallibility are relevant to the question of whether there is error in a teaching. True, but these criteria boil down to whether the proposition truly is a teaching, i.e., a matter of faith or morals, definitively proposed, and whether it truly is of the whole Church, i.e., an act of universal authority. At no point does this allow for the hypothetical possibility that the universal authority may teach error or prescribe a practice contrary to divine law. To use past infallible decrees as a means of testing this hypothesis for the current Magisterium is to deny the Catholic faith, and more absurdly, to deny the authority of the Church from which infallibility derives.

Notes

[1] Luther made this claim at the Diet of Worms in 1521. His argument had force precisely because a clear distinction between reformable and irreformable decrees had not yet been articulated.

[2] This reverence was given not only to canons of ecumenical councils, but also to those of many esteemed regional councils, and even of individual Fathers and saints.

[3] This accords with the ancient and medieval practice of retaining old laws (both civil and ecclesiastical) along with the new, so that the new can be interpreted in light of the old.

[4] This form of argument, by no means unique to St. Thomas, is used frequently, but we are better served by directly citing the core principle:

Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth. Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith.… Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will. (ST, II-ii, 5, 3)

[5] Although Magisterial decrees are intended to be easily interpretable, the limitations of human language guarantee that there will sometimes be ambiguities or controversies, which only the Magisterium can resolve. To make a logical comparison between two decrees, say, A is B and A is not B, one must first ascertain that A and B mean the exact same thing in both decrees. Further, if the decrees were made in different historical eras, it is possible that the is and is not refer to different times or circumstances. Lastly, there may be implicit assumptions or conditions presupposed by the affirmation, which are not present in the negation. All of these determinations are acts of interpretation, which only the Magisterium can perform definitively and authoritatively.

[6] The disciplines of the Church have at best a negative infallibility. The Church can never prescribe in her canons anything contrary to divine or natural law (though she may prudentially permit such), nor may she prohibit the fulfillment of any duty under divine or natural law.

[7] This has many examples, but we refer to the core principle:

The custom of the Church has very great authority and ought to be jealously observed in all things, since the very doctrine of catholic doctors derives its authority from the Church. Hence we ought to abide by the authority of the Church rather than by that of an Augustine or a Jerome or of any doctor whatever. (ST, II-ii, 10, 12)

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