Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/880

 INFALLIBILITY

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INFALLIBILITY

These doctrines or facts need not necessarily be re- vealed; it is enough if the revealed deposit cannot be adequately and effectively guarded and explained, unless they are infalUbly determined, (b) As to the organ of authority by which such doctrines or facts are determined, three possible organs exist. One of these, the magisterium ordmarium, is liable to be somewhat indefinite in its pronouncements and, as a consequence, practically ineffective as an organ. The other two, however, are adequately efficii^it organs, and when they definitively decide any question of faith or morals that may arise, no believer who pays due attention to Christ's promises can consist- ently refuse to assent with absolute and irrevocable certainty to their teaching, (c) But before being bound to give such an assent, the believer has a right to be certain that the teaching in question is definitive (since only definitive teaching is mfallible); and the means by which the definitive intention, whether of a council or of the pope, may be recognized have been stated above. It need only be added here that not everything in a conciliar or papal pronouncement, in which some doctrine is defined, is to be treated as definitive and infallible. For example, in the lengthy Bull of Pius IX defining the Immaculate Conception

the strictly definitive and infallible portion is com- prised in a sentence or two; and the same is true in many cases in regard to conciliar decisions. The merely argumentative and justificatory statements embodied in definitive judgments, however true and authoritative they may be, are not covered by the guarantee of infallibility which attaches to the strictly (Jefinitive sentences — unless, indeed, their infallibility has been previously or subsequently established by an independent decision.

Formal controversy on infallibility only began with the Reformation. Among early theologi.ans see Stapleton, Prin- cipiorum fidei doctrinatiuTn demon slratio melhodiea (P.aris, 1579), and Bellarmi.ne, De conciliis et ecdesiu; Idem, De Roniano Pontifice (incorporated in De controversiis fidei). Among mod- em Catholic theologians, see Murray, De Ecclesid, II, 169 sq.. Ill, 778 sq. (Dublin, 1S66), and the pertinent sections in stand- ard manuals like those of Perrone, Pesch, Tanqderet, etc. .\mong Catholic writers in English are Manning, Petri Privi- lefiium: Gibbons. Failh of Our Fathers: RivINGTON, The Primi- iire Church and The See of Peter (London, 1894); Ryder, Cath- olic Controversy (a reply to Littledale, Plain Heasons)-, Chap- man, Bishop Gore and the Catholic Claims (a reply to Gore, Roman Catholic Claims). Salmon, Iniallibility, is the cleverest modern attack on the Catholic position. .Aiiioiig High-Church Anglicans who defend the principle of inf;illit>i!it,\-, while denying papal claims, see Gore, Roman Cntihdu- Clnims. and Hall, Authority Ecclesiastical and Biblical (1908).

P. J. Toner.

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