Would it make any difference if the word "living" is removed? It seems to me you are taking issue with that word because of the connection with Fr. Bainvilles' dissolution of the EENS dogma, which everyone knows I am a strict believer of (if not, just glance at my signature). The Magisterium, this is, the teaching Church composed by the Pope of Rome (Vicar of Christ) and Bishops (apostolic succession) in union with him, constitute the Rule of Faith for Catholics.
My point is that this Magisterium of the Church cannot err via a general council. An error of such magnitude is impossible. If it indeed happened, then this very fact as a sign, an indication, that the authority which promulgated it is illegitimate. That is the whole point.
"The deeper understanding" of dogma was already condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae:
In Human Generis, Pope Pius XII is explicit about the Magisterium being the Rule of Faith:
As Catholics, we now that Christ established a Magisterium in order to keep intact the deposit of revealed truths for all time. Also, we know that this Magisterium cannot teach anything other than what pertains to this original deposit of Faith (Scripture & Tradition). Therefore, the Magisterium cannot contradict itself because that would be a failure of the Magisterium.
The Magisterium has to be viewed from the perspective of the Christ and His Church rather from that of individual churchmen.
The term, “living magisterium,” as far as I have seen, was a neologism coined by Fr. Bainville, a neo-modernist. The analogies offered to describe divine revelation are typically either of a living tree or a river to represent how divine revelation develops and changes within a form. The rule of faith then becomes the pope who is the oracle for divining the hidden and novel meanings. The pope becomes a Gnostic cipher.
Pope Francis developed this “living magisterium” theory a few months ago quoting the scripture text, “Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old” Matt 13:52. What is particularly malicious about Pope Francis is that he has made a quantum leap in the Neo-modernist war against the faith taking it from the more theoretical to the everyday practical application. The previous conciliar popes beginning with John XXIII opening of Vatican II posited a disjunction between dogma and its verbal expression. Francis says:
"It is not enough to find a new language in which to articulate our perennial faith; it is also urgent, in the light of the new challenges and prospects facing humanity, that the Church be able to express the “new things” of Christ’s Gospel, that, albeit present in the word of God, have not yet come to light. This is the treasury of “things old and new” of which Jesus spoke when he invited his disciples to teach the newness that he had brought, without forsaking the old (cf. Mt 13:52)."
…… I would like now to bring up a subject that ought to find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a more adequate and coherent treatment in the light of these expressed aims. I am speaking of the death penalty. This issue cannot be reduced to a mere résumé of traditional teaching without taking into account not only the doctrine as it has developed in the teaching of recent Popes, but also the change in the awareness of the Christian people which rejects an attitude of complacency before a punishment deeply injurious of human dignity. It must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity. It is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor.
Pope Francis, Oct 2017
The death penalty is just a beginning. What Francis has done with the divorced and civilly remarried to overturn all Catholic morality by making the subjective motive the primary determinate of the moral act rather than the objective act itself. All this is only possible because Catholics have been sold on the idea of a “living magisterium” where the pope, as the rule of faith, can boldly reconstruct the entire gospel in his own image.
Compare Francis exegesis with this excerpt from Cornelius a Lapide’s Great Commentary:
“Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old” Matt 13:52.
Things new and old. This is a proverb, signifying every kind of food, substance, or goods necessary or useful for sustaining a family. Some of these things are best when new, others when old. Hence the proverb, “New honey, old wine;” i.e., honey is best when fresh, but the oldest wine is the best. Hence too the verse in Pindar’s ninth Olympic Hymn, “Praise old wine, but the flowers of new Hymns.” The meaning is—As the father of a family provides for his household things new and old, i.e., everything necessary and useful, so ought a Gospel teacher to bring forth, at suitable times, according to the capacity of his hearers, various discourses, knowledge of every kind; and especially to take care to teach them the new and unknown mysteries of the Gospel, by means of old examples, such as parables and similitudes, which his hearers can take in. Moreover, some of the ancients, as SS. Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Hilary, and Bede apply old and new to the Old and New Testaments. For that is the best preaching when the New Testament is confirmed and illustrated from the Old, and proved to be in all points typically agreeable to it. For the Old Testament was the type of the New; the New Testament is the antetype of the Old.
What has happened is the Magisterium, making the pope as the rule of faith, has been turned on its head treating it as if it were his personal attribute.
Remember that Infallibility, as an attribute of the Church, proceeds the Magisterium and it is proximate cause. The Church was founded by Jesus Christ. He called it “His” Church. He founded it upon Peter but the nature of the Church, a divine institution, is established by God. Therefore it has the attributes that properly belong to God alone.
It is the Church that is Infallible. It is only with certain churchmen under certain circuмstances who can participate in the Church’s Infallibility. The term, “Magisterium,” properly speaking, applies to churchmen engaging the Church’s attribute of Infallibility to teach in the name of God without the possibility of error.
It would be best to do away with the thinking of the pope as infallible, or the pope with the bishops of the world at a given time as infallible, or the pope in council with the bishops of the world as infallible. They are not infallible in act but only in potency. They can be, because under these conditions they have the potential to act infallibly by engaging the Church’s attribute of Infallibility. And this can only happen as Vatican I defined, when there is intent to define a doctrine of Catholic faith or morals as a formal object of divine and Catholic faith that is binding upon all Catholics in the world. In the end, Infallibility is only a temporary and accidental attribute of churchmen under dogmatically specified circuмstances.
Also, when examining Infallibility from the perspective as primarily an attribute of the Church, it is evident that it is and can only be one thing speaking with one voice. The term “universal” includes the necessary attribute of time. When the pope, or the pope with the bishops of the world, or the pope with the bishops of the world in council enter in the Act of Infallibility, they are participating in the one timeless universal attribute of God just as popes and bishops throughout the history of the Church have done before them.
The analogy of divine revelation as a living tree or a river with material changes within a constant form is improper because divine revelation can only be communicated through the perception of material things. When the matter is in constant flux, the thing itself cannot be known. With this theory, ecclesiastical traditions by which the faith can be known and communicated to others must undergo constant material change. The mind forms concepts and extracts universal truths from these material perceptions. If the matter itself becomes wholly indeterminate, the faith cannot be known and communicated to others. This is why our ecclesiastical traditions are the subject matter of Dogma and have been incorporated into the Tridentine profession of faith.
A better analogy of divine revelation consistent with the Church Fathers would be a football that is to be handed off or passed on to others, always diligently guarded and protected until the final goal is reached. That this will happen is certain, and this in the end, when the attribute of Indefectibility is dogmatically defined, will be its evidence.
As the Neo-modernists have divided Dogma from its verbal expression (i.e. dividing the matter from the form), Sedeprivationism divides the matter and the form of the papal office necessarily causing a substantial in its nature. Like Neo-modernists they are dividing what are in fact essential attributes of things thereby changing their essential nature. Dogma is the proximate rule of faith and provides everything for a faithful Catholic to confront the errors of heretical authority without doing damage to revealed Truth.
Drew