Mithrandylan-
The 3rd point in your commentary: Nothing is to be taken as dogmatically declared or defined, unless it is manifestly known to be such.
This applies to solemn definitions AND to the ordinary magisterium. Point 3 goes further and says that any 'article of faith' is either in scripture or tradtion, as preserved by the Church. Preserved means that it existed long before and the Church is "keeping it intact". As Cardinal Neumann quoted the "Pastoral of the Swiss Bishops" on Papal Infallibility (which quote received the pope's approval):
The ordinary magisterium,
by definition, does not define. It teaches (ordinarily and universally). That which is dogmatically "declared or defined" is, by necessity, something that belongs to the
extraordinary magisterium. But as Augustine says,
there is no intrinsic difference (between the extraordinary and ordinary magisterium) "as they derive from the same source,
viz., the divine promise and providence, and have the same object and purpose" (pp. 323-24). But let's remember why this all came about in the first place; we were not so much arguing about the
ordinary magisterium as we were the
extraordinary magisterium, inasmuch as it consists in and is exercised through an ecuмenical council presided by the pope. So this particular paragraph of the canon does not illumine that matter at all.
Cardinal Newman (quoted by Pax Vobis) said: “(Infallibility) in no way depends upon the caprice of the Pope, or upon his good pleasure, to make such and such a doctrine, the object of a dogmatic definition. He is tied up and limited to the divine revelation, and to the truths which that revelation contains. He is tied up and limited by the Creeds, already in existence, and by the preceding definitions of the Church. He is tied up and limited by the divine law, and by the constitution of the Church. Lastly, he is tied up and limited by that doctrine, divinely revealed, which affirms that alongside religious society there is civil society, that alongside the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy there is the power of temporal Magistrates, invested in their own domain with a full sovereignty, and to whom we owe in conscience obedience and respect in all things morally permitted, and belonging to the domain of civil society.”
There's a right way and a wrong way to understand this. Newman is far from an expert on papal infallibility, and I'd like to see the alleged approbation of this quote (not Newman saying it was approved, and not some secular or modern author saying it was approved-- I'd like to see the approval itself. I looked and could not find it, but only allegations of it). Now here's why:
Infallibility is not a post-hoc adjective that we use to describe something that we already knew was true. That's fallacious and circular, and infallibility simply becomes a synonym for "true". It is true that whatever is protected by infallibility is true, but that is simply
because infallibility is the actual protection against
even the possibility of error in teaching. It is a divine operation, an assistance
guaranteed to the pope in certain instances. And this guarantee
to the pope was defined by Vatican I not because people were saying that
councils weren't infallible, or that the
ordinary magisterium wasn't infallible; rather, there were dissidents who claimed that the pope had no special privelege
of himself to be infallible
without a council, or
without the agreement of all the bishops. That is why the seminal canon at Vatican I concludes:
Vatican I, Ch. 4, § 9
"Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable."
The point simply being that even the Gallicans and the German bishops at Vatican I who stirred pots and dissented from this truth were
not confused about whether or not a council or the ordinary magisterium were infallible when united with the pope; rather, they were in disagreement about a very narrow point: whether or not the pope could, without any consensus on the part of the bishops, declare and define something "by himself." Vatican I says he can. And this makes sense the more and more we look at what the books have to say about infallibility. The pope is the lynch-pin of infallibility; without him, not a council nor the ordinary magisterium is infallible. Consider what Parente has to say:
These requisites verified, the pope enjoys that same infallibility which Christ conferred on His Church. Are there perhaps two infallibilities? No! Only one is the infallibility given by Christ to His Church, i.e., that same infallibility conferred on Peter and his successors, which is said to be given to the Church because it was bestowed for the good of the Church and is exercised by its head. As man's life is one but derives from the soul and is diffused through all the body, so infallibility is diffused and circulates in the whole Church, both in the teaching Church (active infallibility) and in the learning Church (passive infallibility), but dependently on the head who can exercise it by himself (ex sese) in such a way that his definitions are irreformable, i.e., not subject to correction, even without the consent of the Church (Pietro Parente, Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, 1951, p. 143, emphasis added)
So when we look at Newman, we need to be careful to understand him in an orthodox way. If I recall correctly, the letter in question was him writing to a fellow Oxfordian who was still an Anglican, and Newman wrote somewhat deprecatingly of papal infallibility by way of attempting to show his friend that it isn't the same as inspiration or new revelations (which he is of course correct about). But when he describes the pope as
limited in what he can define, let's be really clear that the only thing this can mean is that the pope is quite literally
divinely protected (
by infallibility) from even
the possibility of teaching error. It doesn't mean that he can teach or define error and everything's OK because error isn't "covered by infallibility." That's a perfectly circular argument. Rather,
if he's pope, it means that
he'll never teach error. Full stop. It doesn't mean he'll teach it "non-infallibly," as the
very nature of infallibility precludes him from teaching it at all. Note that this really has very little to do with Vatican I, which simply treats
ex cathedra papal teachings. Again, no one has ever (until after Vatican II, really) disputed that infallibility protects the pope at councils and as a teacher of the ordinary magisterium. So Vatican I isn't all that pertinent to the conciliar pontiffs who, I'm sure you'd agree, don't really define anything at all (except the awesomeness of the revolutionaries like Wojytyla and Roncalli, of course). We don't only care about what a pope "declares and defines" since popes very infrequently declare or define; in fact it's only happened twice in the last two hundred years. If our faith was limited only to that which was declared or defined by a pope in a solemn judgment outside of a council, the Catholic faith would be shorter than a grocery list. But it isn't (that short).
I agree that there are infallible truths which can be proposed outside of solemn statements - this would be the realm of the ordinary and UNIVERSAL magisterium. What I am debating are the conditions for which the ordinary universal magisterium must operate for such infallibility to apply. It seems odd to me that a solemn decree by the pope must abide by VERY specific conditions whilst many of you argue that the ordinary magisterium does not have to abide by the same conditions. This makes no sense.
Good, good. A solemn decree (as you call it-- I assume we mean the very clear
papal definition of some dogma or another, done by the pope as the pope and without laboring to secure the consensus of all the bishops, e.g., the definition of the Assumption) does have to meet certain criteria to be protected by infallibility, but that's just simply another way of saying that infallibility only "kicks in" to protect
papal definitions under certain conditions. Infallibility itself is the protection from error and as Parente describes (and his teaching is standard; you'll find the same thing in Van Noort of Pohl or any of them) this protection
diffuses throughout the Church. So to your question about when the ordinary and universal magisterium is infallible, the answer is, in a manner of speaking: always. It's very name describes an infallible operation: the unanimous teaching of all the bishops throughout the world united to the pope. When they're all teaching a, b, or c, we can be assured (on the condition of course that there is a
pope and that those teaching are in fact
bishops) that a, b, or c is infallible, because the entire Church cannot teach error, and the entire Church cannot
believe error. If some bishops here or there teach error, or simply teach something that is not taught by the pope nor by the rest of the bishops, by that fact alone we know that it is not ordinary magisterium.
Practically speaking, you're arguing that if the pope makes a solemn definition, that he has to abide by very strict terms in formulating his decree, which is usually a few sentences long. While, if you throw a hundred cardinals in a room and they debate for a few months, they can write a 4 page docuмent which rambles ambiguously, appears to contradict itself, and never says it binds anyone to anything specific, nor does it penalize anyone, yet such docuмent is infallible just because all 100 cardinals were in a room together and signed 'x' saying they were there?
A gathering of the hierarchy does not invoke infallibility anymore than stepping into a confessional makes a confession valid. There are rules to follow and V2 is not comparable to any of the other ecuмenical councils in its form, its process, or its definitions. Again, Nothing is to be taken as dogmatically declared or defined, unless it is manifestly known to be such.
.
We agree on this because
without a pope, not even
a thousand cardinals or bishops, even if teaching the same thing, are infallible. We aren't contending that Vatican II meets the conditions of infallibility because there were a bunch of bishops there, it's really the fact that
the pope was there (if he was there-- which we deny).
The ordinary magisterium has to be just as clear as the pope in their solemn decrees. They can't use the same wording as a papal pronouncement (because they can't invoke their papal authority) but they still must in clear terms declare that 1) what they are saying must be believed, 2) that all must follow and 3) what the penalty is for refusing.
Page 327 of your commentary says that if there is doubt regarding whether or not a statement is infallible then it is not infallble. It specfically says that such statements from the pope or the magisterium MUST follow the rules set forth in V1. If they do not, then they are not infallible.
.
Now Pax, this is just ironic. On page 327, Augustine is summarizing the
rules used by theologians to assess the level of some truth or another, or whether or not a particular formula might be infallible. What use are those rules, from your position, if they are not themselves solemnly defined (and they are not)?
Furthermore, let's keep in mind the overall object and purpose of Augustine in the first place: he's commenting
on the law. He's a canonist, not a theologian (I mean this matter-of-factly, not as a slight). So we need to be wary of what he is stating as a matter of theology and what he is stating as a matter of
law. The two are not always the same. The purpose of Canon 1323 (and onward) is to describe and define the laws that govern the Church's teaching offices, and the implications of these canons will reverberate later in the code when penalties and crimes are discussed. We don't really care about what penalties or delicts were incurred, because our argument is not a canonical one, and while Augustine has some good things to say here, we need to keep in mind that his purpose is never really theological.
Also, I wouldn't get too excited about the fact that he seems to describe the ordinary universal magisterium as "defining," given that other canonists do not (e.g., Bouscaren and Ellis p. 677). I think that in that one particular sentence, he is simply failing to distinguish.
.
All of the below quotes are from a lengthy article which you can find here: http://the-american-catholic.com/2013/10/19/cardinal-newman-on-papal-infallibility/
These conditions of course contract the range of his infallibility most materially. Hence Billuart speaking of the Pope says,
“Neither in conversation, nor in discussion, nor in interpreting Scripture or the Fathers, nor in consulting, nor in giving his reasons for the point which he has defined, nor in answering letters, nor in private deliberations, supposing he is setting forth his own opinion, is the Pope infallible,” t. ii. p. 110. And for this simple reason, because on these various occasions of speaking his mind, he is not in the chair of the universal doctor.
4. Nor is this all; the greater part of Billuart’s negatives refer to the Pope’s utterances when he is out of the Cathedra Petri, but even, when he is in it, his words do not necessarily proceed from his infallibility. He has no wider prerogative than a Council, and of a Council Perrone says,
“Councils are not infallible in the reasons by which they are led, or on which they rely, in making their definition, nor in matters which relate to persons, nor to physical matters which have no necessary connexion with dogma.” Præl. Theol. t. 2, p. 492.
Thus, if a Council has condemned a work of Origen or Theodoret, it did not in so condemning go beyond the work itself; it did not touch the persons of either. Since this holds of a Council, it also holds in the case of the Pope; therefore, supposing a Pope has quoted the so called works of the Areopagite as if really genuine, there is no call on us to believe him; nor again, if he condemned Galileo’s Copernicanism, unless the earth’s immobility has a “necessary connexion with some dogmatic truth,” which the present bearing of the Holy See towards that philosophy virtually denies.
5. Nor is a Council infallible, even in the prefaces and introductions to its definitions. There are theologians of name, as Tournely and Amort, who contend that even those most instructive capitula passed in the Tridentine Council, from which the Canons with anathemas are drawn up, are not portions of the Church’s infallible teaching; and the parallel introductions prefixed to the Vatican anathemas have an authority not greater nor less than that of those capitula.
7. Accordingly, all that a Council, and all that the Pope, is infallible in, is the direct answer to the special question which he happens to be considering; his prerogative does not extend beyond a power, when in his Cathedra, of giving that very answer truly. “Nothing,” says Perrone, “but the objects of dogmatic definitions of Councils are immutable, for in these are Councils infallible, not in their reasons,”& c.—ibid.
.
I think everything I've said about Newman so far would apply just as equally to these quotes.
.
To summarize:
1. Nothing is to be taken as dogmatically declared or defined, unless it is manifestly known to be such.
2. V2 did NOT declare that ANY of their statements to be infallible. Therefore, they are not.
3. V2 did not follow the rules of V1, which the pope must follow when he defines a doctrine OR when he approves a doctrine of the bishops (i.e. from a council).
4. Infallibility flows from the pope, hence, he must follow the same rules whether he is teaching from his office or if he approves the ordinary magisterium.
5. Councils/papal declarations are NOT infallible in their reasons, or instructions or explanations - only in their clear and distinct teachings.
6. V2 did not bind all the faithful, in any way, shape or form to accept ANY doctrine or dogma. And there is no penalty for ignoring the council.
7. V2 did not define anything doctrinally.
.
1) Agreed that this is what canon 1323 requires when officials of the law are, for some legal purpose or another, attempting to determine the status of some teaching.
.
2) "Declaring infallibility" is not a prerequisite to
being infallible, so disagreed. Niceae didn't declare infallibility, so is it up for grabs, too?
.
3) Well I'd just point to that as proof that he wasn't a pope! You don't really think that this observation-- that "the pope" in convening an ecuмenical council didn't assume the role of the pope-- supports
your position, do you?
.
To the rest, look: what we're discussing here is only an indirect proof of
sedevacantism or
sedeplenism. Let's suppose that for arguments sake we were to cede that Vatican II had no error, or that it did but that somehow it's allowed to for some reason or another-- none of this at all touches on the fact that the conciliar claimants are still (according to our position)
heretics. One needn't
teach heresy to
be a heretic. Now I would not so cede that these men have completely avoided
teaching error; I think each of them have. Paul VI at Vatican I, JP II with the new code and the new catechism, Ratzinger in any number of his books, and Bergoglio virtually any time he opens his mouth. But even were we to somehow manage to dismiss
all of this as not being teaching but simply an expression of their beliefs, the case doesn't get better. For my part, I prefer to treat the matter somewhat more directly (which is why I have, throughout this thread, been arguing that they are
heretics). I think that the other proof (that the teachings and organizational rules, rituals, etc. developed, published, and imposed by these men are heretical and therefore the organization they head is not the Catholic Church and they, by necessity, are not Catholic popes) is a legitimate, but especially with Bergoglio, there's a much simpler way to go about making the case.