The common reading of this text is not a misreading at all. One could, without violence to the text simplify it this way:
This is the common interpretation. One can cite other statements and Magisterial documents all one wants but those don’t cancel out this statement. The statements can be harmonized but both points have to be acknowledged.
Let me also say, welcome to the forums!
Concerning the above, I’d qualify your simplification:
the clause “not from the consent of the Church” is modifying the adjective “irreformable.” In other words, that which makes an exercise of papal infallibility irreformable is “not from the consent of the Church.” This is not only perfectly in line with Marduk’s position - remember, he said that the pope’s judgment on such a matter does not depend for its validity on the judgment of other bishops - but is actually necessitated by the nuances of the rest of the context of Vatican I.
In the history of the Church, both from the Catholic and Orthodox perspective, there were times when what was not clearly a majority view (due to the presence of heresy) became recognized later as dogma. Why would papal infallibility (if such exists) be required to act differently than the infallibility accorded to the college of Bishops but not always recognized until later? Your interpretation would demand more of the papal exercise than the exercise by the episcopate.
That’s an excellent point, and as with the previous one, I don’t find it to be in tension with the interpretation Marduk has laid out here. Remember, he clarified that
both of these are true: (a) papal infallibility must be exercised in conformity with the faith of the Church (the
sensus fidelium) and is not separate from but rather a participation in the infallibility of the Church, yes,
but also (b) the
judgment in an exercise of papal infallibility is the Supreme Pontiff’s; truth is not determined by consensus. As Marduk said above, the pope
can exercise the Church’s infallibility personally, but it is still
the Church’s infallibility in which he participates - not some kind of monarchical and independent exercise.
Having read about the background debates at Vatican 1, I finally understood that it is not the “definitions” that is the subject of the clause “not from the consent of the Church,” but rather the term “irreformable.” The definition’s quality of irreformability - i.e., its infallibility, it’s quality as God’s Truth - is not from the consent of the Church.
Hey, cool! I swear, I wrote that first part of my reply
before I read this part of yours.
In my opinion, anyone who understands English grammar, syntax, and sentence structure should be able to tell from the English translation of that passage that the phrase “not from the consent of the Church” is modifying the adjective “irreformable” … but then again, I was an English major.
Me thinks that sometimes Rome speaks out of both sides of her mouth. I think that when Rome says “supremacy”…they mean “supremacy.”
Mickey, what do you think “supremacy” means? It means “highest” or “above all others.” Thus it really has - or ought to have -
no connotations of absolute power…
The fact that it means “highest” makes it quite clear that
at the very least, the
word “supremacy” is quite consistent with the way in which the early church functioned, in which the bishop of Rome was treated as a sort of “court of final appeal.”
As
twf pointed out, the Coptic Orthodox routinely apply the adjective “supreme” to their patriarch of Alexandria. Marduk’s doing the detail work, but if you want simple, you can have simple: just as the pope of Alexandria is “supreme” over his patriarchate, so the bishop of Rome, as the successor of Saint Peter, is “supreme” over the Church Universal… understood properly, the concept becomes so much less controversial and less scary.
That is the point. It takes long dissertations and linguistic acrobatics to explain the nuances. On one hand you’ll have something on paper from Rome which seens to explain things clearly, but then we hear that it really does not mean this at all! The “nuances” must be analyzed.
No, the documents mean what they say, but you’ve clearly misunderstood a selection
if you take it in a way that
contradicts what the Catholic Church
authoritatively teaches elsewhere. It’s not about linguistic acrobatics, it’s about context.
Sometimes one’s misinterpretation can be simply grammatical: i.e. failing to understand what the phrase “not from the consent of the Church” modifies in the passage being discussed just previously.
Other times the problem can be one of connotations: i.e. the notion of “supremacy” communicating to English-speaking minds far more micromanaging than the word itself actually conveys.
In both of these examples - and they are representative - you have not “linguistic acrobatics” but simple clarification and, perhaps, contextualizing.
), who among us - Orthodox or Catholic - would presume to claim that the truth of those dogmas - their irreformability - depended on the consensus of Israel?