CathInfo.com

A non-infallible papal act can contain ambiguity or even imprudence without implying that the protection of the Holy Ghost has failed; likewise, indefectibility does not require that every pastoral decision across decades be optimal. To say that any concession of error destroys indefectibility is maximalism, but to say that the Church herself has crossed into a different substance is equally un-Thomistic, because indefectibility pertains to the Church’s essence, not to the fluctuating quality of governance.

The real Thomistic position is neither exaggerated obedience nor metaphysical rupture. It is best described as doubt and resist. Doubt, meaning the intellect recognizes unresolved tensions in non-definitive teaching and refuses premature certitude. Resist, meaning fidelity to prior doctrine and traditional praxis when prudence judges newer expressions to be harmful or unclear. This differs from modern “recognize and resist,” which can imply constant polemic, and it also differs from sedevacantist certainty, which resolves tension by denying the visible structure. Thomism would insist that one may question prudential or disciplinary developments without attributing bad faith, and may defend tradition without constructing conspiratorial narratives about predetermined outcomes or theatrical disputes.

The Thomistic framework also corrects the claim that most of the papal magisterium could become spiritually destructive while the Church remains herself; such language confuses the fallibility of particular expressions with the indefectibility of the Church’s formal teaching authority. Yet it also rejects the opposite exaggeration that every papal utterance enjoys a quasi-infallible protection. Tradition distinguishes levels of authority precisely so that Catholics are not forced into either blind acceptance or total rejection. In this sense, “doubt and resist” is not a compromise but a disciplined application of classical theology: hold fast to what has been defined, suspend judgment where authority speaks without defining, and refuse to turn prudential disagreements into accusations of hidden plots or absolute ruptures in the Church’s being.

I'm not sure why you're attributing this to the Summa, since it's not there in such detail.  That's one of the reasons Vatican I had to make certain definitions.  We didn't get increasing clarity regarding Catholic ecclesiology until Trent and St. Robert Bellarmine, and then with Vatican I.

So, in reacting against the errors of R&R, the SVS go too far in the opposite direction, by exaggerating the scope of papal infallibility to almost absurd lengths.  SVs claim to be manualists, but I have challenged them to provide a single citation from a Catholic theologian who exaggerates the scope of papal infallibility as much as the SVs do ... and not a one has ever been produced.

In fact, I recently silenced Verrechio after he claimed that Msgr. Fenton taught that, but he was clearly pulling passage out of context and completely ignoring passages where Fenton says the exact opposite of what Verrechio claimed he did.  I happily supplied those citations and silenced him on that thread.  But of course he won't reconsider, since they have too much psychological investment in the mental framework they've constructed for themselves, which ironically has turned into a self-imposed cage on their own minds.

Now, while SVs exaggerate the scope of papal infallibility, R&R have no problem claiming that the 99.9% of the non-stricly-infallible Magisterium are fair game, anyone's guess, hit or miss, and capable of becoming complete trash, fit only to be used as bird cage liner, and that it can destroy souls.  That's to assert a defection of the Church in her mission to save souls.  And that's to say nothing of having promulgated a Rite of Public Worship that harms souls and offends God.  And that's to say nothing of the absurd army of questionable-at-best "saints" they've raised to the tables of the Novus Ordo.

Alas, in this debate, both sides miss the forest of indefectibility for the trees of infallibility, and the reason the SVs can't allow an admisssion that even a single sentence of papal Magisterium can be in error is because ... if one can be in error, how about two, or three, or twenty-five?  Then one can extrapolate to a mere difference of degree between a few errors to many errors, and you can't explain or quantify how many errors would be "too many" and therefore be tantamount to a defection of the Church.  Is it 10, 20 50?

That's absolutely an incorrect perspective on this entire Crisis and it has cause the errors on both extremes that are extering a polarizing dynamic on the entire Traditional movement.

This is one of the cases which theologians mean when they say the Pope (homo privatus) as a private individual, may err in a matter of faith; that is, when he is considered simply as a man, with merely his own human conception of a doctrine of the faith. As Pope, as supreme teacher of the Catholic Church, he cannot err, when, by virtue of the assistance of God, promised and vouchsafed to him, he solemnly defines a truth revealed by God, and prescribes it to be held by the Universal Church. It is clear that there are in the one person of the Pope two different active powers: first, the ordinary power of thinking and viewing things; and, secondly, the solemn defining power for the whole Church.

Thank you for this very interesting and instructive post Maria.

I've always had the impression in my reading that theologians oppose "the pope as a private individual" to the pope when he is speaking infallibly. I'm glad to see some concrete evidence of this.

Yes, he is definitely Holy Ghost inspired

This is what Cardinal Manning says about Bishop Fessler on p. 85 of "The True Story of the Vatican Council" for those interested:

The Bishop of S. Polten, in Austria, Monsignor Fessler, was appointed by Pius the Ninth to be Secretary to the Vatican Council. Through his hands every authoritative docuмent passed; by him it was countersigned and distributed to the Council. He was necessarily present at every Public Session and every General Congregation. He was cognisant of the acts and decisions of the Cardinal Presidents. No one possessed such means of accurate and certain knowledge.