Quote:
Originally Posted by nhylan
if there were ever an argument against the infallibility of ex cathedra statements it would be this. GKC is the man on this subject but suffice it to say the Catholic Church is at the very least in serious danger of being unproven or just flat out wrong.
Your words re: me. are kind, but that isn’t necessarily what I’m implying. And Apostolicae Curae was not an ex cathedra statement, though it is one that is required to be affirmed, by all RCs, as was restated, in passing, by (then Cardinal) Ratzinger, in 1998.
What I do mean is that the history of how the affair came to pass is suggestive, in a number of ways. And that the issue of the Dutch Touch remains something of an unanswered conundrum.
And that as an Anglican, I can speculate.GKC
Speculate if you wish but as the Catholic Encyclopedia states the truth of the matter is that, "… it may be safely assumed is that it fixes the belief and practice of the Catholic Church irrevocably. Leo XIII must have meant to signify this when in his letter to Cardinal Richard, of 5 November, 1896, he declared that his “intention had been to pass a final judgment and settle (the question) forever” (absolute judicare et penitus dirimere), and that “Catholics were bound to receive (the judgment) with the fullest obedience as perpetuo firmam, ratam, irrevocabilem”.
Still, as a matter of speculative interest, it may be asked whether the definition is strictly infallible, and the answer may be stated shortly thus. It belongs to a class of ex cathedral utterances for which infallibility is claimed on the ground, not indeed, of the terms of the Vatican definition, but of the constant practice of the Holy See, the consentient teaching of the theologians, as well as of the clearest deductions from the principles of faith.
To understand what is meant it is necessary to bear in mind the distinction between a dogma and a dogmatic fact, the former being a doctrine of revelation, the latter a fact so intimately connected with a revealed doctrine that it would be impossible without inconsistency to assert the former and deny the latter. It may be urged that the Vatican Council merely defined that the Pope when speaking ex cathedra has “that infallibility which the divine Redeemer wished His Church to have in defining doctrine of faith and morals”, without going on to define the range of infallibility which Our Lord wished His Church to have. But it must be remembered
•that the Vatican Council, had it not been forced to suspend its sittings by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, intended to supplement this first definition by others which would have gone into details in regard to the object of infallibility;
•that to suppose that Church authority can define a doctrine to be true, but cannot decide whether it is contained in or denied by any particular writing — such as an ordination rite — is to suppose that the power of defining doctrine is largely nugatory; and
•that since the time of Jansenius there has been a practical consensus theologorum in holding that infallibility does extend to dogmatic facts, a judgment which would undoubtedly bring this Bull within the category of infallible utterances."
So you may have a little wiggle room with the difference between a dogma and a dogmatic fact that was left formally undefined. But the practice of the Church is and has been that every Anglican clergyman must be ordained anew be it conditional or not.
In short, I can phrase it this way to all of our separated brethern. You separated yourself from us so if you want to be with us then you have to come back to us. The Holy Spirit will have it no other way.
