John Lazarus #1
I came across comments re infallible and non-infallible teachings, and that we are required to believe non-infallible teachings as well as infallible ones.
I’m not sure I understand. Can someone expound on this? What teaching, for example, is not infallible, but that I must believe?
Joe 5859 #5
The Church doesn’t generally identify particular teachings as fallible.
It is vital to understand that NO DOCTRINE is ever “fallible”. This is a falsehood now being promoted by one poster in the thread “Ordinary teaching of the Magisterium, but not infallible vs. infallible ordinary teaching of the Magisterium” in the Forum Apologetics/Moral Theology.
The three levels of teaching are:
1) Dogma – infallible (Canon #750.1) to be believed with the assent of divine and Catholic faith.
2) Doctrine – infallible (Canon #750.2) requires the assent of ecclesial faith, to be “firmly embraced and held”.
3) Doctrine – non-definitive (non-infallible) and requires intellectual assent (“loyal submission of the will and intellect”, Vatican II, *Lumen Gentium
25), not an assent of faith. [See the Explanatory Note on ATF by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]
The CCC #88 (1997) clearly combines exactly with Pope John Paul’s *Motu Proprio *(= on his own authority) Apostolic Letter *Ad Tuendam Fidem, *1998 (ATF), which requires the assent of divine and Catholic faith to believe (
credenda sunt) dogmas (a category one truth) (Canon #750.1); and a category 2 truth requires the assent of ecclesial faith, as a secondary truth, “proposed definitively” (
definitive proponuntur) to be “firmly embraced and held” (now Canon 750.2). In fact, the 1983 revision of Canon Law had replaced in #749.3 “dogmatically declared or defined” with “infallibly defined”, thus NOT expressing a limitation of infallibility to dogmas. ATF better enables Canon Law to apply to the understanding of infallibility including the Profession of Faith covering the two categories of infallible doctrine.
Vatican II, reiterated the teaching of Vatican I on papal infallibility, and its documents are readily available [from the EWTN Library (
http://www.ewtn.com/vlibrary/search.asp) or the Vatican Library] for anyone with the will to know what Christ’s Church is teaching, like most of the documents of Vatican I, and the papal documents before and since Vatican II. Anything worth doing, is worth doing well, and I would add if worth knowing, is worth knowing well. Two papal dogmas are infallible – The dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
**Answer by David Gregson of EWTN to me on Nov-22-2002: **
“You are correct in stating that the Pope exercises his charism of infallibility not only in dogmatic definitions issued,
ex cathedra, as divinely revealed (of which there have been only two), but also in doctrines definitively proposed by him, also
ex cathedra, which would include canonizations (that they are in fact Saints, enjoying the Beatific Vision in heaven), moral teachings (such as contained in
Humanae vitae), and other doctrines he has taught as necessarily connected with truths divinely revealed, such as that priestly ordination is reserved to men. Further details on levels of certainty with which the teachings of the Magisterium (either the Pope alone, or in company with his Bishops) may be found in
Summary of Categories of Belief.”
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