How binding is Cum Primum (1832)?

[chevalier]

Link: ewtn.com/library/encyc/g16cumpr.htm

Explanation: I don’t have any issue with the doctrinal content. I can’t in any way see the Tzar as the legitimate king of Poland, considering Russia was a violent invader, along with the faith-breaking Prussians (break-away vassal state that existed on land stolen from us and turned against us while being vassals) and the treacheous Austrians whose hides we saved at Vienna from the Turks. Partitions of Poland (three partitions: 1776, 1793 and the final one in 1795, all approved by a king and parliament threatened by force). That was an unwarranted invasion and brutal theft of our sovereignty and our land. In 1815, the Tzar got from the Vienna Congress the crown of Poland they had no authority to give away. Then, he violated his own constitution here and we were basically a foreign-occupied country. I find it very regrettable that our pro-independence parties were intertwined with freemasonry. The situation of our native soldiers, having taken oaths to the Tzar that were broken was not to be envied, either. However, I can’t possibly fathom how a Pope could call the Tzar the legitimate authority in Poland.

As far as I know, encyclicals fall within the ordinary Magisterium, but that’s as far as doctrine and morality goes, so as I see it, the binding power of the Magisterium, shouldn’t apply to assessments of political situation. Still, can the Pope’s assessment that the Tzar was the legitimate authority in Poland somehow benefit from the binding power of the Magisterium, making it obligatory on me?

 

[xpistou]

First of all I have to say that I am completely ignorant about Cum Primum.

However, as far as infallibility goes, it is limited to faith and morals. Clearly the political situation in Poland is outside the realm of infallibility.

 

[Just_Lurking]

CCC 2032 The Church, the “pillar and bulwark of the truth,” “has received this solemn command of Christ from the apostles to announce the saving truth.” “To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles, including those pertaining to the social order, and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls.”

 

[chevalier]

To clarify, I know it’s not infallible and even when you have something infallible, it’s the precise doctrine being defined that’s infallible and the justifications and explanations are not, sothe Pope couldn’t have been infallible in his assessments. However, even being fallible, he could still be within the ordinary magisterium, which is binding on Catholic faithful. I’m basically looking for an answer to what extent it can be seen as binding if the Pope writes in a non-infallible encyclical that uprising X was bad because ruler Y was legitimate, especially when it seems a very bizarre idea that ruler Y could possibly be legitimate (was an invader that didn’t even bother to forge any dynastic claim and ruled as an occupying power). Obviously, in WW2 people in Europe were not told not to participate in resistance movements against the 3rd Reich, not to mention that the right to resistance is still on the Catechism (2242-2243) and dates back to middle ages. At any rate, the reason I’m posting in Moral Theology rather than Social Justice is basically because I’m interested more in to what extent such “findings” on which an encyclical’s exhortation is based might be binding (that is that a Pope believed an armed invader to be a legitimate ruler). In “crude” terms, it comes down to whether it can be seen to believe that the Pope got his facts told wrong to him and mistakenly considered a ruler legitimate.

Notwithstanding that there is indeed some theological basis for demanding obedience even to an invader’s authority, like it was with the Romans in Israel (in this sense even a Nazi official’s ordinance about traffic or against petty theft or some such could possibly bind a Catholic citizen of an invaded country to obedience).

 

[Ron_Conte]

The doctrine of obedience to civil authority is based on the teaching (Unam Sanctam) that the temporal authority of civil government is derived from Church authority. The Church has two types of authority, spiritual and temporal. She permits civil government to exercise some temporal authority, under Her supervision. And all proper authority of civil governments, and all authority of the Church, is from God.

But in so far as any civil government has gone astray from truth and justice, from guarding the common good, such a government loses its authority from the Church and from God.

It is a judgment of the prudential order, not a teaching at all, as to which civil governments may have gone so far astray as to have lost their proper authority.

 

[chevalier]

Yes, thank you, I understand and agree with that - but my problem with this particular assessment contained in this encyclical is that I believe the Tzar never had any proper authority in Poland because he was a very recent invader. The continued historical Polish state was partitioned in 1795, later a Polish state under Napoleon’s ally - de facto vassal existed from 1807 to 1815, ruled by a heir of the old Polish crown designated in the 1791 constitution, and suddenly the Pope refers to the annexing Tzar as the *legitimate *king of Poland after he basically stole that crown by sheer force without even faking a dynastic claim. I could live with the idea that any authority is owed obedience or that the particular uprising was bad (yes, it was inspired by a lot of ideologies containing heretical ideas), but the assessment of the Tzar as *legitimate *king totally escapes me.