Of Blasphemy and worse things. Part 2
Feb. 15th, 2022 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
homeopathic_meditationsI have come to think that, in my deconstruction of what heresy is, I have left aside at least one important part. I have talked about why Tradition is so very important for the Catholic Church, and how dogma is only a subset of all the Tradition we have inherited from our forefathers. Because having to match the same cumulus of core beliefs through millennia of history is hard, it stands to reason that this core should be the bare minimum possible. And in this way, each generation is given some wiggle room to adapt to the changing conditions of the World as it is.
But something I missed last time was that I provided an example about one Tradition that, as tightly held by the Church as it is, was never declared a dogma: the male only priesthood. It is in a way comforting (at least to me) to think that this thing is not set in stone but our best answer so far, and that there may be good reason why this has been so for so long. Today, I want to discuss the other side of the coin: what happens when you are required to believe some theological proposition in spite of your better judgment. And for this, I have chosen a dogma which is really not my favorite: The Infallibility of the Pope.
First, let’s dispel a common strawman: this infallibility does not apply to everything the Pope says or thinks. The Pope knows of astrophysics about as much as your average merger lawyer or, as it stands, your average welder; this last one having the advantage of having the least eloquent arguments to disguise his ignorance. In short, Infallibility applies to the narrow subject of Catholic doctrine, not human arts, sciences or endeavors.
So, every half informed Catholic knows that “in matters of faith and morals, the Pope makes no mistakes”; moderately better informed Catholics even know that the former statement is prefixed with the qualificator “when speaking ex catedra”, which means infallibility only applies to formal declarations (i.e. the Pope is free to express mere theological and ethical opinions, coming solely from his human intelect). This is what causes me to have a strong visceral rejection to this dogma: it is not that it is false but that, unless you further believe the Will of the Pope is tightly constrained, it is pointless and potentially dangerous.
Consider this obviously false premise. When, say, Pope Francis was first acclaimed, the soul (and mental sheath) of the man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio got yanked out to whatever afterlife was in store for him. His physical and subtle bodies (including his personality) got taken over by Saint Peter’s soul, who would occupy the driver’s seat with the Holy Spirit coming along as copilot. As one of the Blessed in the Triumphant Church, St. Peter/Francis would be immune to the normal human greed, pettiness and obliviousness that would result in the misuse of the Gift that is Papal Infallibility, and a very good shepherd would continue to be ensured for the Militant Church, as had always been for the last two millennia. Why is this obviously not the case? Because the Pachamama incident would not possible have happened under St. Peter’s watch, not to mention the Crusades, the Holy Inquisition and a number of other abhorrent (and/or merely reprehensible) things that the papacy has rubberstamped through history.
So, we have this obvious single point of failure. The Papal Office has a communication channel, through which the current holder receives Divine Revelation mean to be shared by all the Church. However, such holder retains his human will and typical motivations. One would expect that man to be a man of God, to live a pious life, and to do his very best to communicate the reveled messages as closely as the original as his human abilities permit, but again history teaches us there were anti-Popes, and also Popes that, while lawfully elected, lived vain and unworthy lives as despots and ruthless politicians. It is not too far fledged to imagine, let’s say Alexander VI (aka. Rodrigo Borgia), milking the Infallibility dogma for everything it was worth if it had been available to him in the 15th century. Ft. Antonio Fortea, a big influence of mine, is of the opinion that any such attempt would result in the offending Pope collapsing and dying before he finished uttering his fake revelation; sinner me, I am skeptical that would happen, though less so that when I began researching to write this essay. Suffice it to say that if you look up the number of Popes who reigned for 5 weeks or less (the shortest one died of stroke within 3 days), even after accounting for political assassinations the concept of “preemptive strike” comes to mind. This is not a theory to easily dismiss out of hand.
On the other hand, Papal Infallibility is pretty “new” as dogmas go. Decreed only since the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), it is suspect that Christians needed no enforced orthodoxy in this regard for 1900+ years since the death of St Peter. It must be remarked that you cannot simply add to the corpus of immutable doctrine (Deposit of Faith) that is considered truth by every Child of God who ever lived (or will live). The bishops and theologians who defined Papal Infallibility had to research arguments that support (and refute) this claim through the centuries, starting but not limited to the Gospels (think of Matthew 16:18 “upon this rock I will build my Church”). It has been widely believed that the Apostles had this Gift from the moment they received the Paraclitus, and that it was also granted to St. Paul at some point after his conversion. However, Peter’s is special because it was tied to the office (Vicar of Christ, later bundled for historic reasons to the Bishop of Rome title), not to the person exclusively.
From a purely mundane perspective, I have held the opinion that the historic change that brought the need to declare this dogma was the religion wars that plagued Europe since the 16th century; it is as if the Church’s leadership needed to put a lid on the bottle from where all those Bible reading genies were coming out, asserting their free interpretations and their new doctrines. The bag being out of the bag already, I do not think anyone not already convinced will refrain from checking other options just by the threat of anathema in this particular regard. Also, it is not as if there haven’t been any 20th century bishops who break ties with the Holy Seed over matters other than doctrine (the case of Mons. Lefebvre comes to mind)… but I digress.
What my intention was with the above, was to bring to light the argument against Infallibility, which was constructed, considered and eventually found insufficient during Vatican I. A number of cases were presented where Popes through history expressed obvious erroneous opinions. The one most readers will find most familiar will be the suppression of Galileo’s work, which I will dismiss as a strawman since it pertains neither faith nor morals; but there were genuine cases where different Popes did endorse or express theological errors. You can check this source to look at the full list.
The gravest of this, IMHO, is the 4th century controversy between Pope Liberius vs St. Athanasius. Said Pope had signed (under duress while in captivity, as later was found) the Creed of Sirmium, a mutilated version of the Creed of Nicaea which, by omission, seemed to endorse the semi-Arian heresy. The study of this and other cases bring a number of conditions that enlighten what is Papal Infallibility and how it actually works. From the same source:
I am afraid it would be impossible to confirm this last idea empirically, nonetheless because no Pope worth his salt would be willing to put the Lord to the test in order to indulge a bunch of borderline heretics with such games. We could research the chronicles of past history and look for events that seem to match this hypothesis, but I am afraid this would not hold my interest strongly enough to devote the effort.
In any case, I do believe that the misinformation surrounding this issue makes it irrelevant. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a, not quite Maleficent, but vain and self-serving Pope. What business is in overcoming a divine compulsion to tell the truth under this specific circumstances, when your average laypeople cannot tell the difference between ex-catedra and private opinion. Furthermore, they will never get to check your own words, but rely on third hand accounts by their local priests (or, for the matter, moderately-ish informed blogger). It is therefore important to ask for clarification, and eventually to resist, any novel teaching that seems to go in direct contradiction with the doctrine of centuries past.
But something I missed last time was that I provided an example about one Tradition that, as tightly held by the Church as it is, was never declared a dogma: the male only priesthood. It is in a way comforting (at least to me) to think that this thing is not set in stone but our best answer so far, and that there may be good reason why this has been so for so long. Today, I want to discuss the other side of the coin: what happens when you are required to believe some theological proposition in spite of your better judgment. And for this, I have chosen a dogma which is really not my favorite: The Infallibility of the Pope.
First, let’s dispel a common strawman: this infallibility does not apply to everything the Pope says or thinks. The Pope knows of astrophysics about as much as your average merger lawyer or, as it stands, your average welder; this last one having the advantage of having the least eloquent arguments to disguise his ignorance. In short, Infallibility applies to the narrow subject of Catholic doctrine, not human arts, sciences or endeavors.
So, every half informed Catholic knows that “in matters of faith and morals, the Pope makes no mistakes”; moderately better informed Catholics even know that the former statement is prefixed with the qualificator “when speaking ex catedra”, which means infallibility only applies to formal declarations (i.e. the Pope is free to express mere theological and ethical opinions, coming solely from his human intelect). This is what causes me to have a strong visceral rejection to this dogma: it is not that it is false but that, unless you further believe the Will of the Pope is tightly constrained, it is pointless and potentially dangerous.
Consider this obviously false premise. When, say, Pope Francis was first acclaimed, the soul (and mental sheath) of the man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio got yanked out to whatever afterlife was in store for him. His physical and subtle bodies (including his personality) got taken over by Saint Peter’s soul, who would occupy the driver’s seat with the Holy Spirit coming along as copilot. As one of the Blessed in the Triumphant Church, St. Peter/Francis would be immune to the normal human greed, pettiness and obliviousness that would result in the misuse of the Gift that is Papal Infallibility, and a very good shepherd would continue to be ensured for the Militant Church, as had always been for the last two millennia. Why is this obviously not the case? Because the Pachamama incident would not possible have happened under St. Peter’s watch, not to mention the Crusades, the Holy Inquisition and a number of other abhorrent (and/or merely reprehensible) things that the papacy has rubberstamped through history.
So, we have this obvious single point of failure. The Papal Office has a communication channel, through which the current holder receives Divine Revelation mean to be shared by all the Church. However, such holder retains his human will and typical motivations. One would expect that man to be a man of God, to live a pious life, and to do his very best to communicate the reveled messages as closely as the original as his human abilities permit, but again history teaches us there were anti-Popes, and also Popes that, while lawfully elected, lived vain and unworthy lives as despots and ruthless politicians. It is not too far fledged to imagine, let’s say Alexander VI (aka. Rodrigo Borgia), milking the Infallibility dogma for everything it was worth if it had been available to him in the 15th century. Ft. Antonio Fortea, a big influence of mine, is of the opinion that any such attempt would result in the offending Pope collapsing and dying before he finished uttering his fake revelation; sinner me, I am skeptical that would happen, though less so that when I began researching to write this essay. Suffice it to say that if you look up the number of Popes who reigned for 5 weeks or less (the shortest one died of stroke within 3 days), even after accounting for political assassinations the concept of “preemptive strike” comes to mind. This is not a theory to easily dismiss out of hand.
On the other hand, Papal Infallibility is pretty “new” as dogmas go. Decreed only since the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), it is suspect that Christians needed no enforced orthodoxy in this regard for 1900+ years since the death of St Peter. It must be remarked that you cannot simply add to the corpus of immutable doctrine (Deposit of Faith) that is considered truth by every Child of God who ever lived (or will live). The bishops and theologians who defined Papal Infallibility had to research arguments that support (and refute) this claim through the centuries, starting but not limited to the Gospels (think of Matthew 16:18 “upon this rock I will build my Church”). It has been widely believed that the Apostles had this Gift from the moment they received the Paraclitus, and that it was also granted to St. Paul at some point after his conversion. However, Peter’s is special because it was tied to the office (Vicar of Christ, later bundled for historic reasons to the Bishop of Rome title), not to the person exclusively.
From a purely mundane perspective, I have held the opinion that the historic change that brought the need to declare this dogma was the religion wars that plagued Europe since the 16th century; it is as if the Church’s leadership needed to put a lid on the bottle from where all those Bible reading genies were coming out, asserting their free interpretations and their new doctrines. The bag being out of the bag already, I do not think anyone not already convinced will refrain from checking other options just by the threat of anathema in this particular regard. Also, it is not as if there haven’t been any 20th century bishops who break ties with the Holy Seed over matters other than doctrine (the case of Mons. Lefebvre comes to mind)… but I digress.
What my intention was with the above, was to bring to light the argument against Infallibility, which was constructed, considered and eventually found insufficient during Vatican I. A number of cases were presented where Popes through history expressed obvious erroneous opinions. The one most readers will find most familiar will be the suppression of Galileo’s work, which I will dismiss as a strawman since it pertains neither faith nor morals; but there were genuine cases where different Popes did endorse or express theological errors. You can check this source to look at the full list.
The gravest of this, IMHO, is the 4th century controversy between Pope Liberius vs St. Athanasius. Said Pope had signed (under duress while in captivity, as later was found) the Creed of Sirmium, a mutilated version of the Creed of Nicaea which, by omission, seemed to endorse the semi-Arian heresy. The study of this and other cases bring a number of conditions that enlighten what is Papal Infallibility and how it actually works. From the same source:
- The Pope holds multiple offices, as well as being an individual priest, bishop and theologian. None of this carry the Gift of the Paraclitus, but only when he is speaking as Vicar of Christ: and therefore as Supreme Teacher and Lawmaker to all Christians. His decrees are only binding to the baptized (which is relevant, by example, in the argument against abortion).
- Infallibility applies only to positive actions, it is impossible to deduce a dogma out of what the Pope left unsaid/unaddressed.
- Likewise, infallibility applies only when the Will of the Pope is to express a formal teaching, and when he states this Will explicitly and unambiguously in the language of the message. It is customary to prefix the actual teaching with formulas such as “We declare”, “We define”, “We pronounce”; but there is no formal wording that must be present in all cases. This is what ex-catedra refers to.
- When speaking ex-catedra, the threat of anathema ought to be present, at least in implicit form. I confess to find this confusing: Is it that ex-catedra teaching is incomplete/illformed if it does not include the threat of anathema, or is it that by virtue of being well formed the ex-catedra teaching always carries the threat of anathema for those who disobey it?
- As mentioned several times before, only questions pertaining faith or morals are answered by the Paraclitus.
- Furthermore, the Paraclitus conveys not only correct information. At all times the Pope is blessed with sanctifying graces that make it harder, though not impossible, for him to fail in his mission. This is enough to make good Popes stay firmly at the helm and to give pause to weak Popes before jumping headfirst into corruption (it is said that, as controversial as Vatican II was, Pope Paul VI insisted on declaring it as pastoral, not doctrinal, so there’s that).
- But even in the theoretical case of a Maleficent Pope, during the brief ex catedra moments the grace of the Paraclitus is irresistible. I can think of two possible mechanisms through which this may come about: A) when forming the intention to declare a fake dogma, the Pope would be overcome by a mental fog that will prevent him from expressing in a clear language that this is indeed a revelation (breaking the ex-catedra requirement); or B) when trying to utter the fake dogma, the Pope would find himself unable to complete the utterance (think a lapsus linguis, an attack of cough, a momentary distraction, etc) and therefore the fake dogma would be impossible to deduce from the silence.
I am afraid it would be impossible to confirm this last idea empirically, nonetheless because no Pope worth his salt would be willing to put the Lord to the test in order to indulge a bunch of borderline heretics with such games. We could research the chronicles of past history and look for events that seem to match this hypothesis, but I am afraid this would not hold my interest strongly enough to devote the effort.
In any case, I do believe that the misinformation surrounding this issue makes it irrelevant. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a, not quite Maleficent, but vain and self-serving Pope. What business is in overcoming a divine compulsion to tell the truth under this specific circumstances, when your average laypeople cannot tell the difference between ex-catedra and private opinion. Furthermore, they will never get to check your own words, but rely on third hand accounts by their local priests (or, for the matter, moderately-ish informed blogger). It is therefore important to ask for clarification, and eventually to resist, any novel teaching that seems to go in direct contradiction with the doctrine of centuries past.
