Jesus was also a teacher. So how about if we realize that we can pay the same kind regards to magisterial teachings of the Church that we pay to Jesus’ teachings like “Call no man father” and “I say to you not to swear at all”?
Because the church is the ultimate authority on vague issues like these verses, and the CHURCH has spoken on the issue of infant salvation/damnation; She has issued documents that make the position clear. THerefore, what is left to interpret?
If you read those passages without the guidance of the Church, you might accidentally think they meant that we should call no man ‘father’ and not swear any oaths. Instead, they actually turned out to mean “Call all priests ‘Father’” and “Go ahead and swear oaths as long as you do so truly.”
That could be possible if we are talking about REMOTE sources of Faith like Scripture and Tradition. But, theologically, our IMMEDIATE sources of faith are the MAGISTERIAL DOCUMENTS. The Dogmas are not subject to re-interpretation in order to find a deeper mystery, they are by their nature irreformable. The magisterial documents like humanae vitae, are they subject to reinterpretation? What about JPII’s Encyclical of ordination of women? Is that subject to interpretation? No, THE CHURCH TEACHES CLEARLY.Maybe at the hands of liberals and modernists whose goal is to reinterpret everything according to their own mind.
In “Humani Generis” (1950; #21), Pope Pius XII declared:
“God has given to his Church a living Teaching Authority * to elucidate and explain CLEARLY what is contained in the Deposit of Faith only obscurely and implicitly… If the Church does exercise this function of teaching, **either in the ordinary ***or the extraordinary way, it is clear how
false is a procedure which would attempt to explain
what is clear by means of what is obscure. INDEED THE VERY OPPOSITE PROCEDURE MUST BE USED.”
Again: Vatican I : "For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward
not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully
protected and infallibly promulgated. Hence, too,
that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.
The Point is the Church teaches clearly. Cogently.
Your problem lies in reading old magisterial texts with the same eye that a Protestant turns on the Bible: you come to a personal decision about what you think it “obviously” means, and then if the Church tells you that your reading is wrong you say, “But it is
obvious and does not NEED any interpretation!!! Therefore I judge what the Church says to be in ERROR and it must be
discarded!!!”
Quite wrong, because Magisterial documents and scripture are not the same thing at all. Magisterial documents clarify an issue that is either implicit or vague in a remote source of faith like scripture, or Tradition.
For example, The magisterium has infallibly defined Jesus’ words in John 3 “Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” to be reffering ONLY to Sacramental water baptism. Not some kind of metaphor, but ONLY Water Baptism.
THerefore, you cannot reinterpret this dogma and try to make it mean other than what it says, as declared by Vatican I: It means what it says, it is not hypothetical, and it is not abstract: It is real and actual, That is, pertaining to reality, everyday life.
In the same way, the magisterial documents of the Church have defined infallibly what kind of people descend to hell to be punished: “THose who die…in original sin alone.”
Since in REAL LIFE there is no other group of people besides infants and mentally handicapped that can EVER fit this description, it is reffering to them.
If you are saying I have the same attitude toward the magisterium as the Protestants have toward scripture: how so? THe Protestants believe the Scripture alone is the sole rule of Faith; But I contend what the Church contends, that Scripture Tradition and the Magisterium are our sources of Faith, The Scriptures and Tradition being our remote sources, and the Magisterial documents being our immediate source of faith.
I am sorry, but you are mistaken about your notion of the Church’s magisterium: Are you saying that the church needs to clarify its magisterium? How is that possible when an act of the Magisterium (Teaching) office of the church is by itself an ACT of clarification? Put simply: THe church means what it says, and I take what it says at face value: I do not seek to twist the words into some kind of false teaching; I only pay attention to the plain sense of the magisterial teaching, which the church WANTS us to do, or it would not release the documents in the first place!
This, I’m afraid, is a mere variant of the
sola scriptura approach, a form of pseudotradition which is nothing if not modern at its core.
Which means you do not believe the Church actually has authority to teach, just offer a well-founded opinion. Teaching is not in need of re-interpretation, or else, why would I not re-interpret the re-interpretating text? Or maybe that one SHould be re-interpreted too, and the next, ad nauseum: You really strip the church of its power if you constantly subject its teachings to review.
