Reading this comment by Mike Liccione reminds me of a psychic who does cold readings. The psychic appears to have uncanny knowledge of the stranger in the audience, whom he’s never met before.
However, the psychic has a hidden earpiece which is patched into a geeky guy in a room offsite with a supercomputer. The computer has facial recognition technology, along with access to every database on earth.
Unfortunately, the psychic loses the satellite uplink at a crucial point in the cold reading. Suddenly he has to bluff his way through the reading.
It’s clear from Liccione’s comment that the church of Rome has no divine foresight. It is having to make things up after the fact, just like any other fallible, shortsighted, uninspired human institution–its pretensions to divine guidance notwithstanding.
The problem arises when the question is how to discern when the ordinary and universal magisterium (OUM) has taught infallibly.
It’s not surprising that the theologically untutored have difficulty with that question, because it wasn’t until Vatican II that the Magisterium itself explicitly addressed the matter at all, in Lumen Gentium §25, and it wasn’t until 1995 that any representative of the Roman Magisterium applied V2′s criteria to a particular case: that of women’s ordination. Theologians themselves disagree about the clarity and significance of such a recent development. But it’s not difficult to show how the issue must be resolved.
If the question which doctrines count as OUM-infallible were always a matter to be left to the individual discernment of the faithful, then the question would essentially be left to private opinion. If it were left at that level, the category itself would be effectively empty. For private opinions, even those of individual bishops and popes, are fallible; so if the question which doctrines are OUM-infallible were left to private opinion, then the doctrines themselves would remain a matter of opinion, which they couldn’t be if they are infallibly taught by the OUM as binding on the whole Church. So if there is such a thing as a doctrine that’s OUM-infallible, the Roman Magisterium has to have the last word about how to apply the criteria for identifying it as such.
As I’ve said, so far there’s been only one explicit statement from Rome to that effect. But there are other signs, such as Evangelium Vitae §57 (1995) and Ratzinger’s doctrinal commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998) that the way to apply the relevant criteria is taking shape.
Development of doctrine in general takes time. Development of doctrine about various doctrines’ level of authority has taken still more time. That frustrates a lot of people because not all questions get answered fast enough to please anybody, much less everybody. But perhaps that’s how prudence would have it.
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/i-love-the-orthodox-too-much-to-be-orthodox-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-bomb-of-holy-orders/#comment-10643
Hays, hah!
ReplyDeleteOne question?
ML: "It’s not surprising that the theologically untutored have difficulty with that question, because it wasn’t until Vatican II that the Magisterium itself explicitly addressed the matter at all, in Lumen Gentium §25, and it wasn’t until 1995...."
When did the internet make facts more accessible to the Third World RCC faithful and vice versa so they all could make split second charges against their unfaithful stick?
The world has become a very small place these days! Before only the rich could travel the world. Now, everybody can fly around and some can now skype around for little and next to nothing in costs!
When all else fails, I suppose rational demons will work!
"So if there is such a thing as a doctrine that’s OUM-infallible, the Roman Magisterium has to have the last word about how to apply the criteria for identifying it as such.
ReplyDeleteAs I’ve said, so far there’s been only one explicit statement from Rome to that effect."
And what one explicit statement is that?
The explicit statement is the following, having to do with the question on priestly ordination of women in the Catholic Church:
ReplyDeleteConcerning the Teaching Contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Dubium: Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith.
Responsum: In the affirmative.
This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith. The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published. Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the Feast of the Apostles SS. Simon and Jude, October 28, 1995.
+ Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect