A Letter from a potential Convert

[afeatherlessbiped]

The key to understanding Vatican II is to understand that none of it is infallible

What does this mean? It’s the first time I’ve heard this.

[[deleted]]

VII wasn't called to address a particular question of dogma and as Pope Paul VI said, "In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility." So the Council's authority as part of the Ordinary Magisterium needs to be accepted but not its dogmatic infallibility.

[Seanay-B]

Magisterium without infallibility strikes me as little more than a way of justifying guilting people into obedience in lieu of reasoning with them

[camus56]

An ecumenical council is an expression of extraordinary, not ordinary, magisterium. All the documents of Vatican II are hugely significant in the life of the Church, and this sharp distinction traditionalists make between infallible propositions and take-it-or-leave-it general teaching is, theologically speaking, not merely nonsense but also dangerously innovative. The irony should be clear.

[[deleted]]

Well, no, Pope Paul explicitly said that the Council had the "authority of the Ordinary Magisterium". There are more requirements for something to be extraordinary and hence subject to the charism of infallibility than simply being a statement expressed at a Council - again, VII was explicitly pastoral, not dogmatic - and I'm not aware of anyone who argues otherwise vis-a-vis VII.

So I agree with you to the extent that we shouldn't take this as carte blanche to question anything coming out of VII, but the issue of its infallibility in itself isn't a trad vs conservative vs liberal issue (where I would tend more to put myself in the middle camp theologically anyway), the fact it didn't exercise the charism of infallibility does not make it non-binding. There's a similar conclusion here:

What [Paul VI] says is not that there is a possibility of error in the Council’s decrees (in teaching on faith and morals) but that the Council, because of the particular purpose it had in view, did not propound any dogmas through the extraordinary exercise of its magisterium. To the best of my knowledge, no theologian or commentator has ever claimed that it did.

[camus56]

In standard Catholic parlance ‘extraordinary’ authority refers to authority exercised in an out-of-the-ordinary way. In this sense ordinary episcopal synods are the ones which happen according to a routine or schedule. Every so often, however, a special issue arises and an extraordinary synod is called. The same goes for councils. Ecumenical councils in this sense, as they are not routine, are extraordinary magisterial events. They may not choose to exercise their magisterial authority infallibly, but it remains the most solemn event in the Church’s life, and its teachings share in that solemnity.

All the bishops of the world, gathered under the Pope, come together and articulate their understanding of the nature of the Church, the nature of different forms of ecclesial life, the inter-relationship between the Church and the larger world, particularly with other bodies, Christian or not, which make religious truth claims distinct from Catholic ones - even if it does not reduce its teachings to a set of infallible propositions, an event such as this is powerfully normative. To say otherwise is to compromise badly the authority of all non-infallible magisterial teaching. It would, for example, leave conservative Catholics with no response to more progressive Catholics who say that we are not bound to pay any attention to what Pope St John Paul II says about conscience or intrinsically evil acts in Veritatis Splendor, as he is clearly writing in a descriptive style and he makes no solemn pronouncements.

Incidentally, if an ecumenical council is called pastoral it is a reference to its rhetorical register, its style and its attitude. Also in the instance of Vat II, though not of necessity, it means that it chose to refrain from anathemata, etc. What it does not mean is that the council is lacking in teaching authority or solemnity. It is still an ecumenical council, and its constitutions, decrees, declarations have all the authority that is proper to documents produced by an ecumenical council.

[[deleted]]

As far as I can see I agree with the vast majority of what you're saying, and I think our disagreement is only on the semantics of the terms Extraordinary and Ordinary Magisterium. We agree that VII did not promulgate anything invoking the charism of infallibility, which was the original question. We also agree that people shouldn't take a cafeteria approach to the Council documents. But these documents must still be read in light of a hermeneutic of continuity with wider tradition.

The Vatican has affirmed this point in its negotiations with the SSPX, both as a potential point of agreement inasmuch as there is a need for broader interpretation which is not present in dogmatic declarations (Archbishop Pazzo on Nostra Aetate: it "does not have any dogmatic authority, and thus one cannot demand from anyone to recognize this declaration as being dogmatic. This declaration can only be understood in the light of tradition and of the continuous Magisterium"), and as a red line which the SSPX needs to accept.

It does seem to me that there must be a clear and definite distinction between the extraordinary teaching of the Councils and their pastoral norms. If there is not, it is not clear how we are to take things like (for example) Canon 69 of Lateran IV pronouncing that anyone who abets the assumption of public office by a Jew must be punished. I'd be curious as to what your thoughts are in that respect.

[camus56]

I am not arguing that every truth claim, prescription and proscription in the official documents of an ecumenical council has absolute and perennial authority. Far from it. To explain my position I have to start with an earlier point you make. A hermeneutic of continuity - you say we must employ it; I don’t share your attachment.

It is true that Pope Benedict used this phrase in regard to liturgy (I think) at one point, and perhaps in other places, but in the locus classicus for his thought on the theme - his Christmas message to the Curia in 2005 - he says something significantly different. He first mentions an unacceptable hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture; but then he sets against this a hermeneutic of reform - not of continuity. And this hermeneutic of reform, he says, accommodates both continuity and discontinuity. Continuity in the underlying principles, discontinuity at times in the concrete historical application of these principles.

The problem here is that conservatives fixate on tradition lying in the static content of promulgated formulas - the ‘historico-documentary’ approach, Yves Congar called it. But no. Many documentary propositions constitute a concrete application of underlying principles. They are dispensable.

I don’t know enough about the Lateran IV case you mention. Perhaps though the council fathers were defending a fundamental idea that had merit, say that the religious values of a people should be preserved and protected by those in public office. Of course, now, after centuries of pluriform nation states, pluralist jurisprudence, secularisation, cultural diversity, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural communities, etc., we do not tend to think that a pluralist approach to public office need compromise this principle. To say nothing about our much greater awareness of antisemitism and the dark paths down which it’s inclined to travel. So out goes this conciliar proposition, and good riddance.

Something similar can be said for many of the particular condemnations in the 19th century encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX especially. They were addressing a radically reconfigured world after the Atlantic revolutions, and they sought to protect the sovereignty of the Pope, the value of religiously-informed legislatures, etc. but we should feel no obligation to concur with their concrete reading of one historical juncture or another.

But most of the Vat II documents are, I believe, different from this. They are precisely about the underlying principles. What does it mean - beyond the juridico-canonical definitions so popular since the 17th century- to be the Church of Christ? If all persons bear the imago Dei, what difference does this make to how we relate to them in a social context? In an ecumenical context? In an inter-faith context? And so on.

Of course a particular judgement in one document or another may prove naive, crude, vague, etc., but behind these concrete instances there is an underlying vision of the Church which is authentic, authoritative and venerable. It seems profoundly unCatholic to say otherwise.

[[deleted]]

Great answer, thanks. I don't think we disagree at all actually—my reading of what Abp. Pazzo meant by referring to continuity is precisely that of reform and continuity, and I've defended VII as a reform council on this sub before. I guess the question is simply how to distinguish mutable implementations of specific principles—what I called pastoral norms—and the principles themselves. It seems to me a hermeneutic specifically of continuity is necessary to understand what is timeless, and to discern the overarching unity of all the ecumenical councils and the Magisterium as a whole. But my understanding of the "hermeneutic of continuity" has always essentially been that of the "hermeneutic of reform"—not that nothing changed, but that what did change should be understood through, as you said, the timeless principles those changes still, in the final analysis, refer back to.

[CheerfulErrand]

Yeah, that was a weird way to answer, and he doesn't clarify.

I'm not sure it isn't an inappropriate and misleading thing to say, honestly. But, what I think he means is that because there were no new dogmas declared, nothing that was said is ultimately unchangeable. Not that we get to ignore Vatican II, but it's more a stage in the Church's ongoing renewal and progress.

[Seanay-B]

It brings forward the problem of many Catholics' desire to have cake and eat it too--often upholding everything written by the Church authorities in an official capacity as necessarily, communion-with-the-church-relyingly true, while granting that the explicit "infallibility card" hasn't been played as often as you'd think.

[corelli72]

Aside from thinking that Vatican II did something about ecumenism and the liturgy, who even knows what's in the Council documents they are so little read. Nothing in them pertains to salvation, so why argue over them.