Infallibility confusion

[fineca]

Dear all,

there have been many threads and questions about infallibility. It seems that some think that only the Marian dogmas are infallibly defined, or those plus some other dogmas. But isn’t it so that whatever the Church teaches officially about FAITH and MORALS cannot change and cannot err, and we cannot disagree with it? For example a Catholic cannot go to Communion while believing the Church is wrong in forbidding contraception or that auricular confession is not really necessary or such things, because then one is not in Communion with the Church. Vatican II teaches one must accept the whole order of the Church, otherwise one is not a Catholic in heart but on paper only and will not be saved.
Please confirm this,
thanks,
E

 

[Mommyof02green]

Q: As Catholics, do we have to accept everything the Church teaches?
A: click here.

What is Ex Cathedra?

What is Infallibility?

The teaching of the Vatican Council is to be found in Session III, cap. 4, where it is declared that “the doctrine of faith, which God has revealed, has not been proposed as a philosophical discovery to be improved upon by human talent, but has been committed as a Divine deposit to the spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted by her”; and in Session IV, cap. 4, where it is defined that the Roman pontiff when he teaches ex cathedra “enjoys, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith and morals”.

Is in short the pope is ONLY infallibile when teaching ex cathedra

 

[thistle]

CCC 889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a “supernatural sense of faith” the People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s living Magisterium, “unfailingly adheres to this faith.”

CCC 890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms:

CCC 891 “The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter’s successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium,” above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine “for belief as being divinely revealed,” and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions “must be adhered to with the obedience of faith.” This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.

CCC 892 Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a “definitive manner,” they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful “are to adhere to it with religious assent” which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

 

[Ron_Conte]

there have been many threads and questions about infallibility. It seems that some think that only the Marian dogmas are infallibly defined, or those plus some other dogmas. But isn’t it so that whatever the Church teaches officially about FAITH and MORALS cannot change and cannot err, and we cannot disagree with it?

The Church teaches infallibly in one of three ways:

1. papal infallibility
2. solemn definitions of Ecumenical Councils and similar gatherings
3. the ordinary universal Magisterium (when all the bishops and the pope are in agreement on one position definitively to be held, i.e. an ordinary teaching that has been taught universally by the Church)

All other teachings are non-infallible, meaning that they are subject to possible error, even on matters of faith and morals, or on matters pertaining to salvation, but never to such an extent that any error or set of errors would lead the faithful away from salvation. Even teachings of the Popes or of the Councils are non-infallible, when these are not solemn definitions.

Infallible teachings have the charism of certain truth.
Non-infallible teachings have the charism of certain salvation, i.e. they are a sure path to salvation.

The Church requires the assent of faith to its infallible teachings, because these are certainly true, and the Church requires the religious submission of will and intellect to its ordinary non-infallible teachings, because these are a sure path to salvation, even though there might be some errors on particular points.

Anyone who claims that everything the Pope teaches on faith and morals is infallible contradicts the definition of papal infallibility as taught infallibly by the First Vatican Council, which required other criteria, not merely that the Pope be teaching on faith and morals.

Ron Conte