Stephen Keenan's catechism and infallibility prior to 1870

[Gottle_of_Geer]

In the 1850’s, a Catholic priest, Father Stephen Kennan, created a catechism in Ireland that circulated widely in the United States as well. This catechism dubbed “Keenan’s Catechism” had an imprimatur from the bishops in Scotland and Ireland.

In Scotland ? Any bishops there would not have had ordinary jurisdiction over sees, as the Scottish episcopate was only restored in 1878 by the new Pope, after being extinct since 1603. I would guess there were Vicars Apostolic in Scotland before 1878 - but that is only a guess. This forum is excellent for exposing the gaps in one’s knowledge.

It was highly-respected in many Catholic circles and considered a great catechism. It had a question and answer section. On pg. 112 it says the following:

Q: Must not Catholics believe the pope in himself to be infallible?

A: This is a Protestant invention; it is no article of the Catholic faith; no decision of his can oblige, under pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body; that is, by the bishops of the Church.

In the 1870’s when infallibility became a dogma, a required belief of Roman Catholics, this entire Q and A disappeared from Kennan’s Catechism. It was replaced with:

Q. Do you here suppose the teachers individually infallible?

A. The Pope as the constant head of the Church we hold infallible in decisions ex cathedra: but not exempt from falling into personal sin. The various bishops are neither individually infallible or sinless. But we may argue that if the Pope and the various bishop teach any particular doctrine,—men who have had no motive for such, do actually teach the very same truths, then we maintain, by all laws of human evidence or moral certainty, that their combined testimony to the existence of any doctrine infallibly proves its truth. This, however, is not what we contend for here; we maintain our teaching body to be infallible, because God has made them so; as in the Old

This change and obvious editing pointed many opponents of the infallibility doctrines of the Vatican I Council in the direction of the idea that infallibility was an innovation, not something consistently taught since day one of the ancient church. If it was understood teaching, understood dogma, and everyone knew the pope to be an infallible Vicar of Christ who cannot err in teachings of faith and morals, why the sudden change in this catechism? Why would an imprimatur and such respect and wide readership be given to this catechism since it obviously taught, before the council, that popes were not infallible. What’s fascinating is that it even seeks to tell people that this idea was formulated by Protestants lying about the truths of Catholicism?

If you read through this catechism, it teaches Catholicism to a tee. It strikes down Protestantism, rebukes Luther, praises the papacy, teaches what we know today about Mary, sacraments, tradition, scriptures, morality, purgatory, and it is very very conservative. This was no liberal or schismatic text but rather an imprimatured, well-written, and in all respects, Roman Catholic EWTN-style catechism. And yet it refutes papal infallibility…

What say you all on this?

The phrase “in himself” may well be crucial - it is very close to the definition, but subtly different from its detail. The apologias for the definition at the time of the Council & after give some idea of just how varied the theories & explanations of infallibility among the theologians had been.​

I don’t now see a collision between what Keenan’s Catechism & its use, &, its alteration after the definition. Boettner’s book discusses this problem; which is how I first heard of it.

 

[JBogdan]

Yes, you are correct, I missed that. 1932 and 1945 were typos of course.

See *God and Greater Britain *by John Wolffe. It’s a great book.

Although I looked on Amazon’s preview of the book and found some information about the situation with Roman Catholicism in England, I did not see anything that described papal infallibility (actually, the words “infallible” and “infallibility” are not even used in the book if the Search Inside feature is right). I also browsed the pages I could read in the viewer (the section about Catholicism was basically covered between pages 30-47; the viewer displayed 30-32, 36-40, and 46-47) and was unable to locate anything directly supporting the mention you made about papal infallibility.

Added: I was also able to access pages 33 and 41 on Google Books; there was no mention of the words “infallible” or “infallibility” according to the word search feature; moreover, the other two pages I was able to read did not support the mention you made about papal infallibility.