What Can The Pope Do?

[mardukm]

I see that 100% of respondents voted for:
Canonical obligation to teach according to Divine Law and Sacred Tradition.

Yet some of these same respondents voted that the Pope has the right to reject the orthodox advice of orthodox bishops for an ex cathedra decree AND the right to veto the orthodox teaching of orthodox bishops in an ecumenical council.

Whoever it was that voted for all three options, can you please explain the rationale behind your votes? It is altogether inconsistent to vote for all three options, is it not?

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[Formosus]

I voted the last four because that is the only way that Papal authority makes any sense in the context of history. The Pope is not a totalitarian dictator that can do whatever he wants whenever he wants with the Church.

 

[mardukm]

I voted the last four because that is the only way that Papal authority makes any sense in the context of history. The Pope is not a totalitarian dictator that can do whatever he wants whenever he wants with the Church.

Thank you, brother! Sometimes, I feel all alone in my Oriental understanding of the papacy, what with the positive extreme views of some Latins and the negative extreme views of a few Easterns. I am glad that our current Holy Father has explicitly stated (in an old book analyzing Vatican 2 before he was Pope) that collegiality is a legitimate expression of the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church.

At this point I would like to present to our readers what Vatican I, Vatican 2, and our canons say about the Pope’s divine and canonical obligation to uphold and defend the authority of his brother bishops:

Vatican I:
This power of the Supreme Pontiff is far from standing in the way of the power of the ordinary and immediate episcopal jurisdiction by which the bishops who, under appointment of the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28), succeeded in the place of the apostles, feed and rule individually, as true shepherds, the particular flock assigned to them. Rather his latter power is asserted, confirmed, and vindicated by this same supreme and universal shepherd in the words of St. Gregory the Great: “My honor is the honor of the whole Church, My honor is the solid strength of my brothers. I am truly honored when due honor is paid to each and every one.”

Vatican 2:
The pastoral charge, that is, the permanent and daily care of their sheep, is etrusted to them fully; nor are they to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiff; for they exercise the power they possess in their own right and are called in the truest sense of the term prelates of the people whom they govern. Consequently, their authorty, far from being damaged by the supreme and universal power, is rather defended, upheld and strengthened by it, since the Holy Spirit preserves unfailingly that form of government which was set up by Christ the Lord in His Church.

Canon 45 of the Eastern Code:
The Roman Pontiff, by virtue of his office, not only has power over the entire Church, but also possesses a primacy of ordinary power over all the eparchies and groupings of them, by which the proper, ordinary and immediate power which bishops possess in the eparchy entrusted to their care is both strengthened and safeguarded.

Canon 331 of the Latin Code:
By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only has power over the universal Church, but also has pre-eminent ordinary power over all particular Churches and their groupings. This reinforces and defends the proper, ordinary and immediate power which the bishops have in the particular Churches entrusted to their care.

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[rad314]

At this point I would like to present to our readers what Vatican I, Vatican 2, and our canons say about the Pope’s divine and canonical obligation to uphold and defend the authority of his brother bishops:

Well done.

Things become so much simpler when you just know what you’re talking about, don’t they?

I’m reminded of a quote attributed from Artemis Ward: “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”

 

[Genesis315]

Here’s a little thing from the CDF in 1998 on the primacy that might also be helpful to this discussion (I only recently discovered it):

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFPRIMA.HTM

 

[rad314]

Brother Marduk,

I assume that you are referring exclusively to issues of faith and morals and not on issues of discipline and administration (of which there is no gift of infallibility attached).

One thing that must be remembered is that the Dogma of Papal Infallibility states that when the Pope makes an ex cathedra statement, that the Pope will not teach error. It is a negative protection. Nowhere is it a Church teaching that the Pope will teach the truth, only that what he doesn’t teach in his capacity as Pope will be true. It may be a subtle difference for some, but it is the crux of the issue.

I recently offered this explanation in another thread.

The Holy Spirit guarantees that the Church will not teach error. Everything the Church teaches is true. That doesn’t mean that everything that is true was ever taught by the Church, is now taught by the Church, or ever will be taught by the Church. It means that at no time can the Church teach something that is false. The Church teaches more now than she did 1500 years ago and almost certainly less than she will 1500 years into the future (barring the Second Coming, of course). Note that something doesn’t ‘become true’ when the Church starts to teach it; it was true all along. The magisterium is the Church’s authority to teach infallibly. The Church exercises that authority in two ways, through the ordinary (universal) magisterium and through the extraordinary magisterium. When the pope teaches a matter of faith or morals and all (or substantially all) of the bishops teach the same thing, that is an exercise of the ordinary magisterium. There are two forms of the extraordinary magisterium: 1) a formal teaching relating to faith or morals promulgated by an ecumenical council (a council made up of all or substantially all of the bishops in communion with the pope) and confirmed by the pope and 2) an ex cathedra declaration on faith or morals by the pope. (For details you can start with the documents of Vatican I and Vatican II.)

I’ve also found that people commonly misunderstand the ‘deposit of faith’, thinking that it’s the Church’s current body of teachings. But those people typically don’t understand the ‘development of doctrine’, either. You usually find them saying, in effect, that the Church teaches error because what she teaches today isn’t identical to what she taught at some arbitrary point in the past.

 

[mardukm]

I feel the integrity of this poll has been compromised. It was stated in the beginning that this poll was only intended for CATHOLICS (i.e., those in communion with the bishop of Rome). However, I noticed that two of the pollsters did not vote for the last option. These pollsters, I do not doubt, were not Catholic. Since the last option is a most basic tenet of the Catholic Faith, it is unbelievable that a true Catholic in communion with the bishop of Rome could have failed to vote for that option.

I hope those non-Catholics who are reading this thread-poll will not be misled by those invalid pollsters.

 

[mardukm]

Can someone who voted for the first option reconcile that choice with the facts stated in post#23 of this thread?

And can someone who voted for the second and third options somehow reconcile that choice with simultaneously voting for the last option?

Blessings,
Marduk