The point of the Magisterium

The point of the Magisterium

quote from: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/is-certainty-a-bad-thing-certainty-infallibility-and-the-reformed-tradition/#

“Some Reformed Christians of my acquaintance object to the Catholic doctrine of an infallible magisterium on the grounds that “there is no infallible list of infallible pronouncements,” or “Catholics disagree on the status of such-and-such a dogma,” or “where is the infallible interpretation of such-and-such a verse?”  What such objections amount to, it seems to me, is – “If you cannot give me an infallible answer to every question I have, then your infallibility is of no use.”

All of these objections miss the mark. The point of the extraordinary Magisterium (councils and ex cathedrapronouncements) is not to give an infallible answer to every question, but only to intervene on those questions that the Church deems essential to the faith. There are many issues on which the Magisterium has refused to dogmatize. (See the Congregatio de auxiliis, for example). There are others for which the ordinary teaching of the church is deemed sufficient.”

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38825 comment 379 below:

"I suggested that your characterization of Protestantism would be accurate only if you qualified it with ‘conservative’. To support that, I noted that “plenty of liberal Protestants would deny we can be sure that Jesus Christ is the final and definitive revelation of God Himself.” You replied: “Plenty of liberal Catholics would deny the same.” But that tu quoque doesn’t help your case.

It should not have been, but apparently is, necessary for me to highlight the relevant difference. Nobody claims, because nobody can claim, divinely bestowed authority to speak for and to Protestantsas such. Accordingly, your characterization of Protestantism is no more accurate normatively than it is empirically. But the pope and the bishops together do claim divinely bestowed authority to teach Catholics and speak for them as Catholics. So, while your point about liberal Catholics is true empirically, it is false normatively. With respect to divine revelation, Catholics can and do believe whatever their judgment dictates; whether that should be so or not, it is simply an empirical fact. But that is not what makes a Catholic a Catholic. What makes a Catholic a Catholic is that he believes, if only implicitly, whatever the Church teaches irreformably, with her full authority. If he conscientiously disbelieves something the Church so teaches, he is a bad Catholic by the only authoritative criteria there are for being Catholic, and many such people cease to consider themselves Catholic altogether. But if a Protestant conscientiously disbelieves something his church teaches, that does not make him a bad Protestant. He can and often does simply join another Protestant church that shares his beliefs. By thus following his own judgment, he is a good Protestant, not a bad one. So the fact that there are as many liberal Catholics as liberal Protestants does not put Catholicism and Protestantism on an epistemic par. Catholicism as such has authoritative norms for distinguishing orthodoxy from heresy; in Protestantism as such (as distinct from this-or-that Protestant church), there are no such norms. One church’s heretic is another church’s orthodox believer, and that’s that.

Addressing me, you write:

You use two terms: identity and interpretation. You seem to suggest that they are both “up for grabs.” I must confess I fail to see how the identity of divine revelation is up for grabs. I see how its interpretation is, but not its identity. Certainly there are Protestants who deny that Christ is the final revelation of God, as there are Catholics who do so. But that would not be a legitimate, officially endorsed position in any Protestant denomination.

You have misunderstood me once again, though perhaps I was being unclear. When I say that the “identity” of divine revelation is up for grabs among Protestants, I mean this: By their own principles, Protestants cannot claim that what counts as Scripture and/or Tradition, and thus as media of divine revelation’s transmission, can be identified without error. Thus, e.g., even R.C. Sproul, a rock-ribbed conservative Protestant, holds that Protestants have “a fallible canon of infallible books.” That entails that Christians only identify the canon as such fallibly. But if that’s the case, then there’s no reason in principle why books cannot be added to or subtracted from the canon if our conscientious, prayerful judgment calls for that. Indeed, if no body of Christians is divinely protected from error, then one cannot consistently hold that the belief that “the canon,” whatever it is, is divinely inspired is itself without error. On Protestant principles, the belief that the canon is divinely inspired might be just as wrong as the belief that the canon should be thought to consist of just these books and no others. Thus the very identity of divine revelation is up for grabs, even when few choose to grab.

You wrote:

Well, I knew as I typed that EO would probably be an option for you. I find it amazing that you say you could not be Christian and Protestant. If the Magisterium suddenly said: wait a second, contraception is OK, and you became disillusioned by their claim to be an authoritative infallible interpreter of revelation, you could not imagine that God has not in fact supplied such? That what he has given us are the Scriptures? That insisting that God gave more than these might be (I only say “might”) a case of being wiser than God?

If I lost faith in the Catholic Magisterium’s claims for itself–a possibility that is merely notional for me–I would become Orthodox, not Protestant. For philosophical reasons I’ve expounded at length elsewhere, if there is no living human authority which can rightly claim to be divinely protected from error when teaching under certain conditions, then we simply lack any principled means from distinguishing divine revelation from human opinion. What amazes me is that you seem to show no interest in why I believe that.

You say we have “the Scriptures.” But absent the sort of authority I’ve just described, both what qualifies as “the Scriptures” and their degree of authority is revisable in principle, whereas God’s revealed truth cannot be, if it is to be identifiable as such at all. I do not say that because I believe myself “wiser than God,” nor does the Catholic Church. It is precisely because we are so much less wiser than God that we need, and he has given, a clear way to distinguish his truth from our provisional and often errroneous opinions."

from comment 411:

Your analogy for my position would be fitting if I said, or implied, that the identity and meaning of divine revelation is altogether hidden from view without the right interpretive key. But that’s not what I said or implied. I hold that divine revelation is entirely public, but also that its content and meaning cannot be distinguished in principle from merely human thought and action without the right hermeneutical paradigm. In the Catholic schema, the distinctive component of the right HP is an infallible teaching authority that functions as the “sole authentic interpreter” of Scripture and Tradition (Dei Verbum §10).

Divine revelation’s publicity entails that its identity and meaning are available for all to apprehend, should they freely accept the gift of faith. In that sense and to that degree, divine revelation is perspicuous. But it is only partly so, because its identity and meaning as divine revelation can only be apprehended sufficiently by the gift of faith; and on my account, the gift of faith entails implicitly trusting the secondary authorities that God has given us as media of his revelation’s transmission: Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, “which are so linked that none can stand without the others.”

fromm comment 413:

I believe that divine revelation in its most fundamental aspect is a divine Person who entered history as a particular man. That man did not claim to say everything that needed to be said, but promised the Holy Spirit to lead the Church into all truth. But I also believe that the revelation in Jesus Christ is complete, definitive, and final, in the sense that it cannot be augmented in itself, but only in our understanding of it. That’s the concept of development of doctrine I accept. But if “the Church” lacks any living authority of the sort I uphold, then there is no way, even in principle, to distinguish authentic and binding developments of the fixed “deposit of faith” from developments which are only opinions revisable in principle by further evidence or reflection, and which in any case can bind nobody.

below from comment  32       here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/02/on-the-usefulness-of-tradition-a-response-to-recent-objections/#comment-47275

The purpose of the dogma of papal infallibility is the same as the purpose of any other formally defined dogma: to make explicit what had always been the faith of the Church, but which many heretics had contradicted, thus giving many the mistaken impression that the belief in question had not always been the faith of the Church. Thus, for example, Rome’s response to the Marcionite heresy in the mid-2nd century indicated clearly enough what the biblical canon was, and that Roman judgment was readily accepted by the Church as a whole–partly because it had already been the belief of the Church as a whole, and partly because, as St. Irenaeus indicated a few decades later, Rome’s authority was in any case regarded as “pre-eminent” in the Church. The fact that Marcion and his followers, who were many, were excommunicated from the local Church of Rome itself over this issue does not show that the contours of the canon had been a doubtful matter in itself, as opposed to one about which many experienced doubt. There will always be heretics galore, including disputes about the precise contours of the inspired biblical canon, as is shown by the Protestant rejection of the Church’s Septuagint canon of the OT in favor of the Masoretic canon established by the Jews after they had expelled the Christians from the synagogues. All the latter-day dogma of papal infallibility does is make explicit what was always implicit in Rome’s historic exercises of authority over the whole Church. That is useful, but not always necessary. And the fact that the Orthodox churches reject the idea that papal infallibility can be unilaterally exercised casts no more doubt on the dogma’s function than Marcion’s rejection of the canon had cast doubt on Rome’s authority to define it.

from a discussion here comment 99 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

The heart of your position appears in the following argument, from your #94:

As soon as you admit that God’s self-revelation requires mediation to man, other than God’s own self-authenticating authoritative mediation, you are claiming that God is not the ultimate authority. Whatever does that mediating would be an authority higher than God, for it would have the authority to authenticate God.

That is both confused and question-begging. It even counts against your own view of the Bible. Let’s see how.

It is confused because nothing can “authenticate God,” and Catholics know that as well as you or anybody else. Whatever the actual, propositionally expressible content of divine revelation may be, it is only on the divine authority by which such revelation is given that one can believe that content to be true. So the question needing consideration is how one recognizes divine authority as such in what has beenalleged to be divine revelation.

Your answer to that question is like that of many other conservative Protestants: the Bible as self-authenticating. But whatever else it may be–such as “the word of God,” which as a Catholic I believe it is–the Bible is a collection of writings produced by men over a period of centuries. The collection itself was put together by men who claimed those writings were divinely inspired and thus inerrant. Thus you already have “mediation” whether you like it or not: a little library called “the Bible,” produced and collected by men, mediates divine revelation to us. But why should we believe those men? It would only beg the question to simply assert: “Because the divine authority of the Bible is self-authenticating as such.” Since that’s exactly what you assert as a presupposition, you beg the question. Yet if no mere human is ever infallible under any conditions, that assertion can only be held and taught as a human opinion, which might be false. Hence it cannot claim divine authority, and thus cannot authenticate the Bible as a medium of divine authority.

Worse still, you make no distinction between those who received divine revelation directly–i.e., some of the people described in the Bible–and those of us who receive it indirectly, through the media of the Bible and Tradition. Those who have lived after the Apostles can only receive divine revelation through such media. Then the questions become: How do we know what data truly belong in those media, and how they are to be interpreted correctly? Unless there is a living teaching authority which has inherited that of the Apostles, and thus the infallible authority of the God-Man himself, no answer to that question can be anything other than a human opinion that has no binding authority. You can talk all you want about “the Holy Spirit,” but that only kicks the can down the road: How do we know who believes and interprets by the Holy Spirit and who doesn’t?

On the Catholic interpretive paradigm (CIP), Scripture and Tradition mediate divine revelation to us, and the function of the Magisterium is simply to ensure that the assembly (ecclesia) of believers identifies and interprets their content reliably, by divine authority. That’s not the only way the Holy Spirit speaks to individual believers, but it is a bedrock, indispensable way. And on the CIP, the mere fact that believers cannot do those things simply as individuals, and need a living teaching authority that is Christ’s, does not mean that the Magisterium is above the word of God. Rather, it is God’s gift to us for the purpose of ensuring that our reception of divine revelation through its media is no mere matter of opinion. If that purpose were left to individuals or sub-groups of believers to achieve for themselves, a mere matter of opinion is all it would be and remain. Yet that’s exactly the position you’ve landed yourself in.

from comment 256 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-49684

(1) Necessarily, whatever teaching is inspired is infallible, but not necessarily vice-versa.
(2) As the directly apostolic record of the once-for-all revelation in Jesus Christ, the written, inspired teaching of the NT is correspondingly once-for-all, so that the body of writings the Church has discerned over time to be such a record cannot be added to or subtracted from.
(3) By the same token, the “sources” of divine revelation’s transmission, i.e. Scripture and Tradition, are infallibly identified and interpreted as such by the Magisterium, not augmented by the Magisterium.
(4) On matters of interpretation, the Magisterium’s infallible teaching nonetheless augments our understanding of the once-for-all revelation transmitted to us through Scripture and Tradition.

from comment 258 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/why-protestantism-has-no-visible-catholic-church/

Yes, it is possible to trust in the providence of God to have led the Church right. But if ‘church’ is picked out on the basis of its agreement with one’s own judgment or interpretation, then “divine providence” becomes the label of divine approval and sanction for whatever one judges to be true in matters of religion. One might as well put “Guided aright by divine providence” on one’s own forehead, (and then put the same with eraseable ink on the foreheads of all those who agree with one’s interpretation of Scripture, and then erase it from the foreheads of those who come to disagree with oneself). That’s why denying that Trent was guided aright by divine providence but claiming that the early Church was guided aright by divine providence in determining the canon, is ad hoc special pleading. It annexes God’s seal of approval to one’s own theological judgments, and withholds from those of persons who disagree with oneself. And that’s self-serving and dangerous, for reasons I hope are obvious.

from comment 80         here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/07/the-accidental-catholic/#comment-86881

 The Church teaches that God protects her from error under certain conditions with respect to faith and morals, not from every possible species of error or under just any conditions.

However: Also from a comment here 225  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/the-quest-for-the-historical-church-a-protestant-assessment/

There are other levels of authority besides infallibility. The Holy See answers a "dubium" on a fairly regular basis. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19951028_dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Here</a> is one example.