Infallibility - how do we explain it?

It is not unfamiliar to hear some Catholics these days throwing doubt on the doctrine of infallibility.

What should we say to such people?

I could mention Matt 16:18 ("thou are Peter...etc) and I could mention the Church's own claim to infallibility (Lumen Gentium 25 of Vatican II and Pastor Aeturnus of Vatican I) but I think the point can be answered more simply.

In fact every serious belief system considers itself possessed of a principle of "infallibility" in the sense that it considers its own principal doctrines to be absolutely true. Even Secularists consider it self-evidently true that there is no God or at least that God should have no part in the public affairs of men.

The difference is simply that the Catholic Church defines the scope of its own view of its capacity to teach infallibly rather more scientifically than any other belief system. It thus sets out the boundaries of its own infallibility with some precision, unlike all other belief systems which more or less expect their disciples to "take it as read" that the principal teachings of their belief system are absolutely true.

The circularity involved in saying that doctrine "X" is true because it is true, is so obviously unsatisfactory to any real searcher after truth that the Catholic Church, following the lead of its Founder, took steps to set out clear parameters as to when - and more importantly why - some of its teachings were taught as infallibly true and beyond question.

The advantage that theists have over atheists is that we can appeal to God as a final authority (provided, of course, that He has given His view which, in the case of Christianity, He has, through Revelation).

Atheists are thus only able to say on any matter not clearly knowable by deductive or inductive logic, in effect, "I am right and you better believe me". That is because they do not believe in any higher authority than man and, indeed, often do not much believe in higher authorities even among men. They therefore have no higher authority to which they can appeal in the event of dispute.

Or, as Gilbert and Sullivan put it more succinctly, "when everybody's somebody then no-one's anybody".

In short, one man's view is as good as another's and so, absent respect for logic, truth boils down to having more people on your side than the other guy. In short, might becomes right.

To be fair, many atheists do respect logic. But on any matter that transcends logic alone, such as the existence of God, of spirits, of an after life, of the cause and origin of virtue, vice and free-will, they have no answer other than their own unaided opinions.

Theists have God.

But that is not enough. After all, who knows the mind of God?

We need to know what God says, at least, to us and we need to know with certainty and precision.

God the Father: Creator and Teacher

Step forward the principle of infallibility.

This principle is a logical extension of the idea that there is right and there is wrong, that there is truth and there is falsehood.

Those who deny that truth exists are self-defeating since the very statement "nothing is true", is, itself, being asserted as true, but, if it is true, then there is such a thing as truth and the statement is false anyway.

It is like Bernard Shaw's self-contradictory rule that "The Golden Rule is that there are no Golden Rules". One merely replies to him "including your own Golden Rule?".

Given that there is truth, then, it follows that some things must be true. We can arrive at truth by the use of logic but, as I said above, some ideas transcend logic and cannot be knowable by the same.

How then do we know whether they are true or not?

The only answer can be that someone with greater knowledge than ourselves - greater than all of humanity - must be able to tell us (and, once told, we may then be able to apply our skills in logic to what we have been told). That must mean either a being superior to men, such as a spirit of some sort, or perhaps a being from another part of the Universe or perhaps even from another Universe.

Of the latter two, scientists have only been able to speculate since no human has ever met such a being.

As to the first, we have more concrete scientific knowledge.

We have various religions which claim to have had metaphysical knowledge communicated to them from spirits of one kind or another. So far as I am aware only two claim that such knowledge can be taught and mediated infallibly - the Mormon Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Thus, the majority of religions are nearly in the same difficulty as the Secularist in that they do not have any mechanism by which they can, with certainty or even precision, confirm that any of the teachings taught them by their spirit guides are absolutely true. One is more or less driven back to "they are true because I say they are true".

The difficulty with the infallible organ of the Mormon teaching office is that it freely contradicts itself. "X" is true today but tomorrow it isn't. A more obvious self-contradiction cannot be.

For a truth to be absolutely true, it must always, everywhere and forever, be true. That is logically self-evident.

Thus, as Newman reminds us, doctrine cannot be true if it is not consistent with itself here and now, in the past and in the future.

The Catholic Church claims this consistency and not only invites others to put it to the test, scientifically, but puts itself to such test with regularity and rigour. It also applies the other tests that Newman adumbrates in his Development of Christian Doctrine, viz., preservation of type, continuity of principles, logical sequence, conservation of past principle etc.

Thus, the Catholic Church is among the first to admit that truth not knowable by logic requires a higher teacher than humanity, posits such a teacher in God, admits that His teaching is of no use unless communicated to mankind, witnesses to the fact of His having done so, teaches that it happened by means of God assuming human form and so teaching men, His teachings later being partially collected in writings called "The Books" (ta Biblia in the Greek of its time) and the power to interpret "The Books" being imparted by this God-in-assumed-human-form to His formally-appointed successors, particularly the chief of them, St Peter, and his successors, the chief bishops of the Catholic Church.

The bishops of the Catholic world gathered together in General Council at the Vatican

This arrangement appears to be almost unique in the annals of human history. That gives it a claim upon our attention, if nothing more.

Of course, Catholics will claim, like most other belief-systems, that our system is absolutely true. But we have an added advantage. We can show how we arrive at such absolute truth, with precision and with certainty. They cannot - at least nothing like to the same degree.

The Chief Bishop (Father or "Pope") has been appointed by God, when God visited men, as the authentic interpreter of The Books. In interpreting The Books, he can, logically, also interpret what it means when it records the moment when God appointed him and his successors as its interpreters.

The chief bishops and their advisers (or councils of bishops) have done precisely that.

They have done so in very precise, scientific and legal language so as to provide the very certainty and precision that I mentioned was lacking from most other belief systems.

Not only that but they have done so in a manner that leaves no room for doubt or uncertainty, knowing that men are entitled to know exactly what the God-appointed interpreters mean by particular teachings. They have used legal formulae to "define" and to "exclude", to say "we define" and to say "let the opposite view be anathema". This provides clarity and certainty of the most consummate kind.

Any fool can bumble, guess, procrastinate or prevaricate. A real teacher must be able to teach clearly, precisely and with authority.

Such the God-appointed Catholic "interpreters" have done and continue to do.

We can access and read their clear teachings at our choice and at our leisure.

The more recent include Pastor Aeturnus of the First Vatican Council and Lumen Gentium 25 of the Second Vatican Council.

The first of these even uses the same precise, clear and defining formula to set out the bounds of the same certainty. It teaches thus:

"It is a divinely revealed dogma that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is:

1. when acting in the office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians;

2. he defines;

3. by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority;

4. a doctrine concerning faith and/or morals;

5. to be held by the universal Church

possesses through the divine assistance promised to him in the person of Blessed Peter, the infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine concerning faith and/or morals, and that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are therefore irreformable of themselves and not because of the consent of the Church (ex sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae). But if anyone presumes to contradict this our definition – which God forbid! - anathema sit."

[Conc. Vat. I, Const. dogm. Pastor Aeternus, Ch.4, Denzinger-Schoenmetzer 1839 (3074)]

This is admirably clear and scientifically precise.

No other belief-system has this admirable degree of clarity and scientific precision in setting out the limits of its own teaching authority.

Note that the Council teaches that it is a "divinely revealed dogma" and that those who contradict the definition are to be held anathema.

It is, indeed, a high degree of precision which is here displayed. No-one need be in any doubt about this teaching. Any man can quite readily say to himself that he does or not believe this teaching and thus is - or is not - a believer in the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Pope St Gregory the Great writing depicted with a white dove representing the Holy Spirit inspiring him
(the popes wore red until Pope St Pius V, a Dominican, continued to wear his white Dominican soutane, establishing the tradition of popes in white soutane)

Any man can apply this yardstick to any teaching emanating from any Catholic source and can readily see whether or not it is taught infallibly and thus is (or is not) an integral part of the Catholic faith.

For instance, the Catholic Church has infallibly taught that the Virgin Mary, the Jewish and human mother of God-in-assumed-human-form (whom we call Jesus Christ, from the Greek Iesous Christos, and the Hebrew, Y'shua Moshiach, meaning "anointed saviour"), was taken up to heaven, body and soul, upon her death.

Equally, for instance, the Catholic Church has never taught, let alone infallibly, the doctrine that some races are inferior to others.

One can thus readily apply the relevant criteria to any idea, teaching or proposition.

Those who seek to deprive the Catholic Church of its charism of infallibility thus do a tremendous disservice not only to the Church but also to human civilisation as a whole by eliminating the admirable clarity and scientific precision which the Church applies to itself, unlike any other belief system.

Even if the Catholic Church were not the true religion (which it is) it would be a retreat into obscurity to prefer it to deprive itself of such admirable clarity and precision and would set at defiance the efforts of men to reach truth with as much clarity and certainty as we can.

Far from being the approach of a scientist it would rather be the retreat by an obscurantist who preferred muddle to precision, opacity to clarity, something which no real scholar, scientist or philosopher, worthy of the name could possibly prefer.

Yet there are some Catholics who would prefer a retreat into obscurity than an advance into clarity. Not liking the clarity that they see, they retreat from it.

Note also that the criteria provided infallibly by Pastor Aeturnus does not restrict an exercise of the ex cathedra teaching authority to any time, place or method, beyond the 5 criteria.

Thus it is an unwarranted restriction upon the application of Pastor Aeturnus to aver, as some do, that the two Marian dogmas promulgated in the last 200 years are the only examples of infallibly taught doctrine over that time.

Pastor Aeturnus provides no such restriction.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Cardinal Newman himself believed that the papal encyclical Quanta Cura of Blessed Pope Pius IX taught doctrine infallibly.

Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman believed that the encyclical Quanta Cura was taught infallibly

Others say that the Pope cannot teach infallibly on his own but only by consent of a General Council.

Such a "conciliarist" view was infallibly condemned by the 4th Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Lyon (1274), the Council of Vienne (1311) and - in the most express terms - by the 5th Lateran Council (1512).

The teaching contained in the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae occasioned much controversy as many thought that it would teach that artificial contraception is morally licit. It taught the opposite, in fact.

Whether it taught so infallibly becomes of lesser importance when we acknowledge that such teaching was already infallibly taught as true by virtue of the ordinary infallible teaching of the bishops dispersed throughout the world.

The infallibility of this so-called "ordinary" infallible teaching office has been taught since the days of the Apostles but was most recently and conveniently re-affirmed in Lumen Gentium 25 of the Second Vatican Council which taught:

"Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held".

There can be no doubt that a moral unanimity of bishops throughout the world always taught, consistently, against the licitness of artificial contraception. This was thus the infallible teaching of the ordinary teaching office long, long before the encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued.

G K Chesterton, defender of infallibility

Many Catholics, however, would rather throw out the baby of clarity of teaching with the bathwater of the teaching on contraception because they have found it inconvenient in their own personal lives. They love vice more than truth.

I need hardly add that the inconvenience of some individual persons cannot be a basis for over-throwing the teaching office of the Catholic Church established, as we saw above, by God himself when he formally appointed his followers to be authentic interpreters of His own teachings.

If God is anything at all, He must surely be forgiving of creatures whom He knows to be prone to sin. Therefore, there is simply no need to re-write His teachings to suit our vices. It is simpler and better just to say sorry for not reaching the set goals.

As G K Chesterton once memorably put it, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried".

More importantly, we do not advance into clarity by retreating into obscurity.

Let us, then, thank God for the gift or charism of infallibility, the guarantor of clarity in teaching or doctrine.

Ecclesia docens
The living voice of the teaching Church

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How do we know the Pope is infallible?

The simple answer is because God said so at Matt 16:18.

That, however, will not satisfy the sceptics.

Now, as a result of my earlier post, someone has asked me this same question.

I anticipated this, hence, in part, my earlier post on the subject.

So here's part of the answer I gave which I hope might be of interest to others.

Belief in the infallibility of the pope is a rational belief and can be proved rationally. However, an argument can be proved rationally and yet still be disbelieved. That is because people are not always rational.

All belief-systems - even atheism - are claimed by their adherents to be true. For a proposition to be true it has to be proved to be true or, at the least, not proved to be false.

Very few people think that the belief-system they choose to believe in is false, or even doubtful. Otherwise they would not believe in it.

This is the simplest form of "infallibility" - self-belief in one's own belief-system.

Now, if a person can be convincingly shown that his belief-system is false then it is a fair probability that he will eventually abandon it.

Catholics are no different in this respect.

Caravaggio. Martyrdom of St. Peter. C. 1601

The doctrine of papal infallibility is closely defined by the very organ which claims to exercise that infallibility viz., the Pope and an Ecumenical Council ratified by him.

The definition of papal infallibility made at the 1st Vatican Council in 1870 states as follows:

"We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals."

There are 5 conditions set out in this definition.

If this definition is false, it ought therefore to be easy to rebut it by looking at the definitions of popes and Councils over the last 2,000 years of Roman Catholic Christianity.

All one need do is show that one pope or Council made a definition clearly inconsistent with, or contrary to, another such definition.

The problem is that you can't.

It has been tried and no-one has been able to show that the proposition is false.

There have been some close calls e.g. Popes Liberius, Honorius, John XXII and a few others. However, none of these entailed a clear contradiction.

The worst that can be said is that a papal, or papally approved, definition was ambiguous.

Ambiguity is not contradiction.

That is the first test - consistency.

The Altar of the Chair in the apse of St Peter's Basilica,
symbol of the Petrine teaching authority of the popes, given to them by our Lord Himself when He said (Matt 16:18) to St Peter "Thou are Peter, the Rock, and upon this Rock I shall built my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it". Around the interior of St Peter's dome those words are transcribed in Latin: Tu es Petrus, et superhanc Petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.

And it is a remarkable fact that the Catholic Church is the only belief-system in the world that can claim complete consistency of definitive teaching by its definitive teaching authority.

All other major world religions either do not have a teaching authority at all or else have an authority that does not teach consistently.

Round One to the Catholic Church.

And it is a vitally important round because if all other belief-systems fail the test of consistency of doctrine then they are simply not credible as belief-systems. And if the only one left is Catholicism then it has the best claim to be the true belief-system, even if only comparatively.

But consistency is not all. One can be consistently wrong, for example.

In his Development of Christian Doctrine, Cardinal Newman went on to provide a list of 7 truth-tests which he applied to the development of Christian doctrine.

These 7 tests are those which can be readily seen to distinguish a corruption from a true development of doctrine.

By this Newman means, for example, a modern doctrine which clearly contradicts an earlier doctrine which is nevertheless claimed to belong to the same belief-system.

Here is a further example. A sect that claims that its members are the only true Christians but which teaches that faith saves but that virtuous works do not, teaches a doctrine which is not taught by Scripture. Moreover, all relevant historical records show such was not taught by the early Christian teachers. The sect's teaching is therefore a corruption and not a true development.

Cardinal Newman (1801-1890)

Newman's 7 tests of a true doctrinal development are:

(1) preservation of type;
(2) continuity of principles;
(3) the power of assimilating apparently foreign material without corruption;
(4) 'logical sequence' of ideas;
(5) 'early anticipation' of the future, mature form;
(6) conservation of the course of antecedent developments; and finally,
(7) 'chronic continuance'.

He then applies all of these tests to the various forms of Christianity and is forced, against his initial will, to conclude that only the Roman Catholic form of Christianity passes all these tests. Indeed, all the other forms fail the majority of these tests.

He considers all major Catholic doctrines in so doing.

Exactly the same exercise can be done for all the other major world religions and there one finds that none of them meet all, or even many, of the tests of a true doctrinal development.

In a further book, his Grammar of Assent, Newman then looks at what is required for logical assent to any set of metaphysical doctrines and shows, with ineluctable logic, why only the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church merits such assent.

This is predicated on both deduction, as is metaphysical logic, but also upon induction, as all science is. From both forms of logic Newman proves the truth of Catholic Christianity and, indirectly therefore, of the doctrine of papal infallibility.

Formal inference is logic in the deductive sense. For Newman, logic is indeed extremely useful especially in science and in society. However, its usefulness is circumscribed by its initial assumptions.

Informal inference is akin to calculus. In informal inference one reaches a conclusion by considering the accumulation of converging antecedent probabilities. Natural inference is when the individual, in a simple and whole process, grasps the antecedent conditions and conclusions instantaneously. For instance, if one sees smoke, one may instantly infer the presence of fire. Natural inference, in Newman's view, is related to experience or innate ability.

Newman maintained that in real life, converging probabilities in favour of a conclusion are the basis upon which decision-making is made. One might cite statistical surveys, polls and so on as modern examples of such. The greater the accumulation of probabilities, the greater the likelihood of truth. This, too, is how a court of law works in arriving at findings of fact.

From his tests, Newman shows that non-Catholic religions are easily and readily dismissed as logically inconsistent and purely fallible, not infallible.

Complete atheism, however, cannot be dismissed so readily on that basis. It is at least consistent in claiming that there is no God at all.

However, atheism fails on other, more obvious, grounds.

St Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican friar called by the Church "Angelic Doctor", probably the greatest of all the Doctors of the Church

These grounds are addressed by St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Contra Gentiles which was aimed at non-Christians.

In this work he sets out his famous "5 Ways" which prove the existence of God. They are all eminently logical, convincing and rational.

The most famous is the argument for an "unmoved mover", predicated upon a regress of motion or causes back to an original "unmoved mover" or "uncaused cause" which men call God.

We see all around us that events have causes. How is it that all events in the Universe have efficient causes but not the main event, the creation of time and space?

If there was a "Big Bang" then what, or who, caused the "Big Bang"?

To say "no-one" or "nothing" is to say that a Universe of causes and effects has no cause and effect.

This is simply not credible.

Start with a Bang?
There may have been a Big Bang but if so, who or what caused it?

We return to "papal infallibility".

Every belief-system has its teachers. All, except the Catholic Church, are either inconsistent at some time and place or else claim no clear authority and do not claim any definitive truth.

Any rational person must thus either go on and try to prove this statement to be untrue or else admit that papal infallibility cannot be impugned as inconsistent or illogical.

That being so then, if he cannot also disprove the logical inconsistency of other belief-systems, he ought, logically, to endorse papal infallibility by reason of the accumulation of evidence that Newman indicates is the basis of assent in the human mind in real life.

Putting it very simply, if the sun rises every day and sets every day then one cannot with absolute certainty say "the sun will rise and set tomorrow" but one may be sufficiently sure as to say that it is a truth that the sun rises and sets every day.

So, too, if one can show that the popes and Councils of the Roman Catholic Church have never, when making a purportedly infallible definition, contradicted themselves or made an internally illogical or contradictory definition, and that over the full length of 2,000 years since the Church came into existence, then one may say, with the same degree of certitude as in the sun rising and setting analogy, that papal infallibility is a true doctrine.

If it is indeed true then we have a final authority on earth for the declaration of truth and must follow it whenever it speaks, as being an organ through which the divine oracle itself speaks.

On the evidence of its self-consistency and passing of the 7 Newmanite tests, anyone who says that it is not true will either have to show how it fails those tests or else admit that he is saying something as sub-rational as that the sun will not rise and set tomorrow.

Now, no-one has been able clearly to show that the doctrine of papal infallibility fails the test of self-consistency or that it fails any of the other tests of a true doctrine.

Thus to deny papal infallibility is akin to denying that the sun will not rise and set tomorrow.

Our Lord washing the feet of St Peter, His first pope,
a painting by Ford Maddox Brown in the pre-Raphaelite school

Indeed, it is still more absurd since it is more probable that there may come a time when the sun will fail to rise and set. The idea that God could so providentially provide that, for 2,000 years, the organ that claims to be His final teaching authority on earth should teach consistently and without internal contradiction or logical error, but that He might allow it to fail at some future time and so amount to a supreme deception, is as absurd as suggesting that the whole Universe is the creation of a malignant arch-demon bent upon deceiving all mankind for no apparent purpose.

There may be some people who believe such an absurdity but few would give such persons much credence.

Even atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens would laugh at such an idea. They prefer random natural selection - not a supernatural deceiver. If they believed in the latter then they would, logically, believe in a a god-figure but, since they are atheists, they do not.

Belief in papal infallibility is thus entirely rational and far more rational than belief in any other belief-system, whether atheist or theist.

Ergo.

Anyone care to have a go at challenging this argument?

Over to you.

The Roman Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, the chief priest and spiritual teacher of God's Church upon the earth, by command of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He personally appointed St Peter as the first Supreme Pontiff of Holy Church

St Peter, the first Supreme Pontiff of Holy Church, pray for us!

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A message for those seeking the truth...

When, as teacher and pastor of all the faithful, he defines a teaching of faith and/or morals to be held by the universal Church...

the Pope is infallible!

... Or you could just disagree and try valiantly to make sense of the 99,000 other Christian denominations who all disagree over what the Bible actually means.

Or just chuck it all and make yourself your own god.

Let's face it. It's a no brainer. No infallible teaching authority means no truth and no certainty.

So why not stick with the obvious right answer?

Simple, really, isn't it?

Papal infallibility for ever!

PS. and fortunately he is rather a nice bloke, too...

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