Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/35

 TRADITION

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TRADITION

mission. The authority of the bishops may be exer- cised in two ways; now each bishop teaches the flock confided to him, again the bishops assemlile in council to draw up together and jiass doctrinal or disciplinary decrees. When all the bisluijis of the Catholic world (this totality is to be understood a.s morally speaking; it suffices for the whole Church to be represented) are thus assembled in council the council is called ayu- menical. The doctrinal decrees of an oecumenical council, once they are approved by the pop^i are in- fallible ;us are tfie ex cathedra definitions of the sovereign ))ontiff. .Although the bi.shops, taken in- dividually, are not infallible, their teaching partici- pates in "the infallibility of the Church according as they teach in concert and in union with the episcopal body, that is according a.s they exjjress not their per- sonal ideas, but the very thought of the Church.

Beside tlie sovereign pontiff are the Roman Con- gregations, many of which are especially concerned with doctrinal questions. Some of them, such as the Congregation of the Index, are not so concerned save from a discijilinary standpoint, by prohibiting the reading of certain books, regarded as dangerous to faith or morals, if not by the very doctrine which they contain, at least by their way of e^^)ressing it or by their unsea.sonablene.ss. Other congregations, that of the In(|uisif ion, for example, have a more directly doc- trinal authority. This authority is never infallible; it is nevertheless binding and exacts a religious submis- sion, interior as well as exterior. Nevertheless this interior submission does not necessarily bear on the absolute truth or falsity of the doctrine concerned in the decree; it may only bear on the safety or danger of a certain teaching or opinion, the decree itself usu- ally having in view only the moral qualification of the doctrine. To as.sist them in their doctrinal task the bishops have all those who teach by their authority or under their surveillance; pastors and curates, pro- fessors in ecclesiastical estabhshments, in a word, all who teach or explain Christian doctrine.

Theological teaching in all its forms (in seminaries, universities, etc.) gives valuable a.'^sistance as a whole to the teaching authority and to all who teach under that authority. In the study of theology the masters themselves have acquired the knowledge which usu- ally assists them to discern truth or falsehood in doc- trinal matters; they have drawn thence what they themselves are to provide. Theologians as such do not form a ])art of the teaching Church, but as pro- fessional expounders of revealed truth they study it scientifically, they collect and systematize it, they illumine it with all the lights of philosophy, history, etc. They are, as it were, the natural consultors of the teaching authority, to furnish it with the neces- sary information and data; they thereby prepare and sometimes in an even more direct manner by their reports, their written consultations, their projects or schemala, and their prejjaratory redactions the ofl^icial documents which the teaching authority completely develops and publishes authoritatively. On the other hand, their scientific works are u.seful for the instruction of tho.se who should .spread and popularize the doctrine, jjut it in circulation, and adapt it to all by speech or WTitings of every kind. It is evident what marvellous unity is attained on this point alone in ecclesiastical teaching and how the same truth, descended from above, distributed through a thou- sand different channels, finally comes pure and unde- filed to the mo.st lowly and the most ignorant.

This multifarious work, of ."Jcienlific exposition as well as of popularization and projjaganda, is likewise assisted by the countless written forms of religious teaching, among which catechisms have a special character of doctrinal security, approved as they are by the teaching authority and claiming only to set forth with clearness and precision the teaching com- mon in the Church. Thus the child who learns his

catechi.sm may, provided he is informed of it, take cognizance that the doctrine presented to him is not the personal opinion of the volunteer calechist or of the priest who communicates it to him. The cate- chi.sm is the .same in all the parishes of a diocese; apart from a few differences of detail which have no bearing on doctrine all the catechisms of a country are aUke; the differences between those of one country and an- other are scarcely perceptible. It is truly the mind of the Church received from God or Christ and trans- mitted by the Apostles to the Christian .society which thus reaches even httle children by the voice of the catechist, or the savage by that of the missionary. This diffusion of the same truth throughout the world and this unity of the same faith among the most di- verse peoples is a marvel which by itself forces the recogriition that God is with His Church. St. Ire- n;rus in his time was in admiration of it and he ex- I)ressed his admiration in language of such brilliancy and poetry as is seldom to be met with in the ven- erable Bi.shop of Lyons. The outer and visible cause of its diffusion and unity is the splendid organization of the living magisterium. This magisterium was not instituted to receive new truths, but to guard, tran.s- mit, propagate, and preserve revealed truth from every admixture of error, and to cause it to prevail. Moreover the magisterium should not be considered as external to the community of the faithful. Those who teach cannot and should not teach .save what they have learned themselves; those who have the office of teachers have been chosen from among the faithful and they first of all are obliged to believe what they propose to the faith of others. Moreover they usually propo.se to the belief of the faithful only the truths of which the latter have already made more or less explicit profession. Sometimes it is even by sounding as it were the common sentiment of the Church, still more by scrutinizing the monuments of the past, that masters and theologians discover that such and such a doctrine, perhaps in dispute, belongs nevertheless to the traditional deposit. More than one among the faithful may be unconscious of per- .sonal belief in it, but if he is in union of thought with the Church he believes implicitly that which perhaps he declines to recognize exj^licitly as an object of his faith. It was thus with regard to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception before it was inserted in the ex-plicit faith of the Church.

Hence there is between the teaching Church and the faithful an intimate union of thought and heart. The teaching authority loses nothing of its rights; these are limited only from above by the very conditions of the command which they have received. But the exer- cise of this authority is by so much more certain and easy as the faithful, generally, so to speak, confirm by their adhesion the decisions of this authority: a dog- matic definition scarcely does more than sanction the faith alrea<ly existing in the Christian community. The better to understand, adapt, and preserve re- vealed truth against attacks or errors the masters in the Church and the professors of theology naturally appeal to all the resources offered by human science. Among these sciences philosophy, history, languages, philology in all its forms necessarily ha\e an impor- tant place in the arsenal of the teaching magisterium. With regard to theological systematizalion in par- ticular, philosophy necessarily intervenes to a.ssist theology bett<'r to comj)rehend revealed truth, the better to .synthesize traditional data, and the better to explain the dogmatic idea. In the Middle Ages a fruitful alliance was formed between Scholxstic phi- losophy and theology-. It may happen that philoso- phy and the other human sciences are at variance with theology-, the science of revealed truth. The conflict is never in.soluble, for the true can never be opposed to the true, nor the human truth of philosophy and human knowledge to the supernatural truth of theol-