I do. One of the posters said “For practical purposes, we accept all teaching on faith and morals as truth. That is, we attempt to live it in our lives rather than argue with it, and we teach our children and other Catholics to do the same. However, strictly speaking, only these teachings which have been formally promulgated by council, or the Pope, are infallible”.
Yet in a booklet with an imprimatur of an archbishop I have outlining the Catholic faith, it says the Pope is infallible and he can not err when he solemnly defines a doctrine.
But then on the next pg says what infallibility means is the Church can not err when teaching faith and morals.
So is the booklet with the imprimatur wrong and instead as the poster said it’s only for practical purposes that you just accept rather than argue and that actually only those formally promulgated are infallible?
Or is it that all taught matters of faith and morals are infallible?
Thanks for the well-considered response, with reference to the the booklet you are reading!
First of all, you should be aware that an Imprimatur is not a guarantee that the entire contents of the book are an accurate statement of Catholic teaching. The Nihil Obstat says “there are no objections”, and the Imprimatur says “Let it be printed”. The authority (bishop) is not necessarily agreeing with all the contents.
Nevertheless, the statements you selected are a good representation of church teaching on authority, and are often repeated.
I will admit that I am somewhat out of my depth here, and, indeed the nuances of Church authority (including “infallibility”) are disputed by people more learned than myself.
When we say that the Church will not err on faith and morals we mean, at the very least, that when a solemn decision is made at the highest level (Pope or Council) that it is infallible.
Do we also mean that universal teachings which have not been solemnly promulgated are “infallible”? Most would argue “Yes”, in principle, however the problem is determining exactly what the teaching is, when it has not yet been solemnly decreed. To give an example of “morals”, the Church is infallible in the teaching that to murder is a mortal sin (which really comes from Biblical Inerrancy), however, is it “murder” to wage an unjust war? We have criteria for a just war (in the Catholic Catechism) but are they infallible? Is it “murder” when a chronically abused person strikes back at their abuser?
In another example of “morals” the Church has historically taught that the husband is the head of house, and such can be found in papal letters on the subject (and in the Bible). This teaching was mysteriously omitted from the Catholic Catechism of 1992. In this case it really is hard to determine exactly what the teaching is!
When I posted “For practical purposes, we accept all teaching on faith and morals as truth. …” I meant that, most of the time, in most cases, we don’t go into a fine grained discussion of “is this teaching infallible?”. We believe it, as received, and practice it. For instance, I believe, with 100% certainty, that the Church cannot ordain women as priests, without knowing whether the
Apostolic Letter “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” of Pope John Paul II meets the criteria for infallibility. I would not have disputed this even before the Apostolic Letter, however some did. They were within their rights to argue that the Church has never solemnly decreed on the subject, and to debate the ordination of women. However, when JPII issued his letter the subject was closed, for all time. What was a valid debate before now become out-of-bounds, and subject to severe discipline. Yet JPII did not create a new teaching, he merely stated, with authority, the ancient and universal teaching of the Church.
Every teaching of the Church (eg. the Trinity) has been through this process of: dispute until it is solemnly decreed, with most people accepting the historic teaching without question (eg. “for practical purposes”), a small number disputing it without falling into formal heresy, and then, after it has been solemnly decreed, to dispute it does become formal heresy.
Let’s cut to a very practical example: contraception. The Church teaches that to deliberately impede reproduction with contraception is a mortal sin. Such is the historic teaching of the Church. It is “infallible” through the Ordinary Magisterium and will never change. In the 1960’s we had some dispute about whether “the pill” is actually contraception, with many Catholics arguing that it was not. Pope Paul VI considered the matter and ruled, in Humanae Vitae, that the pill was a contraceptive device and hence fell under the traditional condemnation. We see here some shades of gray and legitimate dispute in a matter of morals, however the infallible teaching remains constant, and it’s application to a particular matter is ruled with authority. This may be contrasted with Protestant teaching which holds few absolutes in matters of morals.
if He speaks Ex Cathedra, which he must draw on his authority as chief Bishop in the office which St Peter held, and the matter is strickly regarding faith and morals, he can bind this as a Truth on the entire Church Universal.
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