Edward Feser's Blog, page 10

Mansini on the development of doctrine

My review of Guy Mansini’s excellent new book TheDevelopment of Dogma: A Systematic Account appears in the May 2024 issue of First Things.

Two problems with Dignitas Infinita

This weekthe Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the Declaration DignitasInfinita , on the topic of human dignity.  I am as weary as anyone of the circumstancethat it has now become common for new documents issued by the Vatican to be metwith fault-finding.  But if the faultsreally are there, then we oughtn’t to blame the messenger.  And this latest document exhibits two seriousproblems: one with its basic premise, and the other with some of theconclusions it draws from it.

Capital punishment

To beginwith the latter, I hasten to add that mostof the conclusions are unobjectionable. They are simply reiterations of longstanding Catholic teaching onabortion, euthanasia, our obligations to the poor and to migrants, and soon.  The document is especially helpfuland courageous in strongly condemning surrogacy and gender theory, which willwin it no praise from the progressives the pope is often accused of being tooready to placate. 

There areother passages that are more problematic but perhaps best interpreted asimprecise rather than novel.  Forexample, it is stated that “it is very difficult nowadays to invoke therational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibilityof a ‘just war.’”  That might seem tomark the beginnings of a reversal of traditional teaching that has beenreiterated as recently as the current Catechism.  However, DignitasInfinita also “reaffirm[s] the inalienable right to self-defense and theresponsibility to protect those whose lives are threatened,” which are themesthat recent statements of just war doctrine have already emphasized.

The oneundeniably gravely problematic conclusion DignitasInfinita draws from its key premise concerns the death penalty.  Pope Francis already came extremely close todeclaring capital punishment intrinsically immoral when he changed theCatechism in 2018, so that it now says that “the death penalty is inadmissiblebecause it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”  But that left open the possibility that whatwas meant is that it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the personunless certain circumstances hold,such as the practical impossibility of protecting others from the offenderwithout executing him (even if this reading is a bit strained).  The new DDF document goes further and flatlydeclares that “the death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of everyperson, regardless of the circumstances”(emphasis added). 

This simplycannot be reconciled with scripture and the consistent teaching of all popeswho have spoken on the matter prior to Pope Francis.  That includes Pope St. John Paul II, despitehis well-known opposition to capital punishment.  In EvangeliumVitae, even John Paul taught only:

Punishment… ought not go to theextreme of executing the offender exceptin cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possibleotherwise to defend society.  Todayhowever, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penalsystem, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

And theoriginal version of the Catechism promulgated by John Paul II stated:

The traditional teaching of theChurch has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of the legitimatepublic authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate withthe gravity of the crime, not excluding,in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. (2266)

In short, JohnPaul II (like scripture and like every previous pope who spoke on the matter)held that some circumstances can justifycapital punishment, whereas Pope Francis now teaches that no circumstances can ever justify capitalpunishment.  That is a directcontradiction.  Now, Joseph Bessette andI, in our book ByMan Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment,have shown that the legitimacy in principle of the death penalty has in factbeen taught infallibly by scripture and the tradition of the Church.  I’ve also made the case for this claim onother occasions, such as in thisarticle.  Hence, if PopeFrancis is indeed teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, itis clear that it is he who is in thewrong, rather than scripture and previous popes. 

If defendersof Pope Francis deny this, then they are logically committed to holding thatthose previous popes erred.  Either way, some pope or other has erred, so that itwill make no sense for defenders of Pope Francis to pretend that they aresimply upholding papal magisterial authority. To defend Pope Francis is to reject the teaching of the previous popes;to defend those previous popes is to reject the teaching of Pope Francis.  There is no way to defend all of them atonce. 

This is inno way inconsistent with the doctrine of papal infallibility, because thatdoctrine concerns ex cathedradefinitions, and nothing Pope Francis has said amounts to such adefinition (as Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the DDF, hasexplicitly acknowledged).  Butit refutes thosewho claim that all papalteaching on faith and morals is infallible, and those who hold that, even ifnot all such teaching is infallible, no pope has actually taught error.  For that reason alone, Dignitas Infinita is a document of historic significance, albeitnot for the reasons Pope Francis or Cardinal Fernández would have intended.

Dignity and the death penalty

The otherproblem with the document, I have said, concerns the premise with which itbegins.  That premise is referred to inits title, and it is stated in its opening lines as follows:

Every human person possesses aninfinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevailsin and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may everencounter.  This principle, which isfully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the humanperson and the protection of human rights… [Thus] theChurch… always insist[s] on “the primacy of the human person and the defense ofhis or her dignity beyond every circumstance.”

The moststriking part of this passage – indeed, I would say the most shocking part ofit – is the assertion that human dignity is infinite.  I will come back to that.  But first note the other aspects of itsteaching.  The Declaration implies thatthis dignity follows from human natureitself, rather than from grace.  Thatis implied by its being fully knowable by reason alone (as opposed to specialdivine revelation).  It is ontological rather than acquired innature, reflecting what a human being israther than what he or she does.  Forthis reason, it cannot be lost no matter what one does, in “every circumstance,state, or situation the person may ever encounter.”  And again, the dignity human beings are saidin this way to possess is also claimed to be infinite in nature.

It is nosurprise, then, that the Declaration should later go on to say what it does aboutthe death penalty.  According to PopeFrancis’s revision of the Catechism, the death penalty is “an attack on theinviolability and dignity of the person.” But Dignitas Infinita saysthis dignity exists in “everycircumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.”  Thatimplies that it is retained no matter what evil the person has committed, andno matter how dangerous he is to others. Thus, if we must “always insist on…the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance,” it wouldfollow that the death penalty would be impermissible in every circumstance.

This aloneentails that there is something wrong with the Declaration’s premises.  For it is, again, the infallible teaching ofscripture and all previous popes that the death penalty can under somecircumstances be justifiable.  Hence, ifthe Declaration’s teaching on human dignity implies otherwise, it is that teachingthat is flawed, not scripture and not two millennia of consistent papal teaching.

There isalso the problem that, in defense of its conception of human dignity, theDeclaration appeals to scriptural passages from, among other places, Genesis,Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Romans.  But allfour of these books contain explicit endorsements of capital punishment!  (See ByMan Shall His Blood Be Shed for detailed discussion.)  Hence, their conception of human dignity isclearly not the same as that of theDeclaration.  Perhaps the defender of theDeclaration will suggest that these scriptural texts erred on the specifictopic of capital punishment.  One problemwith that is that the Church holds that scripture cannot teach error on amatter of faith or morals.  So, thisattempt to get around the difficulty would be heterodox.  But another problem is that this move wouldundermine the Declaration’s own use of these scriptural texts.  For if Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, andRomans are wrong about something as serious the death penalty, why should we believethey are right about anything else, such as human dignity?

At thispoint the defender of the Declaration might suggest that we aremisunderstanding these scriptural passages if we think they support capitalpunishment.  One problem with this suggestionis that it is asinine on its face. Jewish and Christian theologians alike have for millennia consistentlyunderstood the Old Testament to sanction capital punishment, and the Church hasalways understood both the Old Testament passages and Romans to sanctionit.  To pretend that it is only now thatwe finally understand them accurately defies common sense (and rests on utterlyimplausible arguments, as Bessette and I show in our book).  But it also contradicts what the Church hassaid about its own understanding of scripture. The Church claims that on matters of scriptural interpretation, no oneis free to contradict the unanimous opinion of the Fathers or the consistentunderstanding of the Church over millennia. And the Fathers and consistent tradition of the Church hold that scripture teaches that the death penaltycan under some circumstances be licit. (See the book for more about this subject too.)

Infinite dignity?

But evenputting all of that aside, attributing “infinitedignity” to human beings is highly problematic. If we are speaking strictly, it is obvious that only God can be said to have infinitedignity.  Dignitas conveys “worth,” “worthiness,” “merit,” “excellence,”“honor.”  Try replacing “dignity” withthese words in the phrase “infinite dignity,” and ask whether the result can beapplied to human beings.  Do human beingshave “infinite merit,” “infinite excellence,” “infinite worthiness”?  The very idea seems blasphemous.  Only God can have any of these things.

Or considerthe attributes that impart special dignity to people, such as authority,goodness, or wisdom, where the more perfectly they manifest these attributes,the greater is their dignity.  Can humanbeings be said to possess “infinite authority,” “infinite goodness,” or“infinite wisdom”?  Obviously not, andobviously it is only God to whom these things can be attributed.  So, how could human beings have infinitedignity?

Aquinas makesseveral relevant remarks.  He tells usthat “the equality of distributive justice consists in allotting various thingsto various persons in proportion to their personal dignity” (Summa Theologiae II-II.63.1).  Naturally, that implies that some people havemore dignity than others.  So, how could all human beings have infinitedignity (which would imply that none has more than any other)?  He also says that “by sinning man departsfrom the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of hismanhood” (Summa Theologiae II-II.64.2).  But if a person can lose his dignity, how canall people have infinite dignity?

Some willsay that what Aquinas is talking about in such passages is only acquireddignity rather than ontological dignity – that is to say, dignity that reflectswhat we do or some special status we contingently come to have (which canchange), rather than dignity that reflects what we are by nature.  But that will not work as an interpretationof other things Aquinas says.  Forinstance, he notes that “the dignity of the divine nature excels every otherdignity” (Summa Theologiae I.29.3).  Obviously, he is talking about God’sontological dignity here.  And naturally,God has infinite dignity if anything does. So if his ontological dignity excels ours, how could we possibly haveinfinite ontological dignity? 

Aquinas alsowrites:

Now it is more dignified for a thingto exist in something more dignified than itself than to exist in its ownright.  And so by this very fact thehuman nature is more dignified in Christ than in us, since in us it has its ownpersonhood in the sense that it exists in its own right, whereas in Christ itexists in the person of the Word.  (Summa Theologiae III.2.2,Freddoso translation)

Now, if thedignity of human nature is increased by virtue of its being united to Christ inthe Incarnation, how could it already be infinite by nature?  Then there is the fact that Aquinas explicitly denies that human dignity isinfinite:

But no mere man has the infinitedignity required to satisfy justly an offence against God. Therefore there hadto be a man of infinite dignity who would undergo the penalty for all so as tosatisfy fully for the sins of the whole world.  Therefore the only-begotten Word of God, trueGod and Son of God, assumed a human nature and willed to suffer death in it soas to purify the whole human race indebted by sin. (De Rationibis Fidei, Chapter7)

To be sure,Aquinas also allows that there is a sensein which some things other than God can have infinite dignity, when he writes:

From the fact that (a) Christ’s humannature is united to God, and that (b) created happiness is the enjoyment ofGod, and that (c) the Blessed Virgin is the mother of God, it follows that theyhave a certain infinite dignity that stems from the infinite goodness which isGod. (Summa Theologiae I.25.6,Freddoso translation)

But notethat the infinite dignity in question derives from a certain special relation to God’s infinite dignity– involving the Incarnation, the beatific vision, and Mary’s divine motherhoodrespectively – and not from humannature as such.

Relevant tooare Aquinas’s remarks on the topic of infinity. He says that “besides God nothing can be infinite,” for “it is againstthe nature of a made thing to be absolutely infinite” so that “He cannot makeanything to be absolutely infinite” (SummaTheologiae I.7.2).  How, then, could human beings by nature haveinfinite dignity?

Some mightrespond by saying that Aquinas is not infallible, but that would miss thepoint.  For it is not just that Aquinas’stheology has tremendous authority within Catholicism (though it does have that,and that is hardly unimportant here).  Itis that he is making points from Catholic teaching itself about the nature ofdignity, the nature of human beings, and the nature of God that make it highlyproblematic to speak of human beings as having “infinite dignity.”  It is no good just to say that he is wrong.  Thedefender of the Declaration owes us an argument showing that he is wrong, or showing that talk of “infinitedignity” can be reconciled with what he says.

Possible defenses?

Onesuggestion some have made on Twitter is that further remarks Aquinas makesabout infinity can resolve the conflict. For in the passage just quoted, he also writes:

Things other than God can berelatively infinite, but not absolutely infinite.  For with regard to infinite as applied tomatter, it is manifest that everything actually existing possesses a form; andthus its matter is determined by form. But because matter, considered as existing under some substantial form,remains in potentiality to many accidental forms, which is absolutely finitecan be relatively infinite; as, for example, wood is finite according to itsown form, but still it is relatively infinite, inasmuch as it is inpotentiality to an infinite number of shapes.  But if we speak of the infinite in referenceto form, it is manifest that those things, the forms of which are in matter,are absolutely finite, and in no way infinite.  If, however, any created forms are notreceived into matter, but are self-subsisting, as some think is the case withangels, these will be relatively infinite, inasmuch as such kinds of forms arenot terminated, nor contracted by any matter.  But because a created form thus subsisting hasbeing, and yet is not its own being, it follows that its being is received andcontracted to a determinate nature.  Henceit cannot be absolutely infinite. (Summa TheologiaeI.7.2)

What Aquinasis saying here is that there is a sense in which matter is relatively infinite, and a sense in which an angel is relatively infinite.  The sense in which matter is relativelyinfinite is that it can at least in principle take on, successively, one formafter another ad infinitum.  The sense in which an angel is relativelyinfinite is that it is not limited by matter. 

But thereare several problems with the suggestion that this passage can help us to makesense of the notion that human beings have “infinite dignity.”  First, Aquinas explicitly says that things “theforms of which are in matter, are absolutelyfinite, and in no way infinite.”  For example, while the matter that makes up a particular tree is relatively infiniteinsofar as it can take on different forms adinfinitum (the form of a desk, the form of a chair, and so on) the tree itself qua having the form of a tree isin no way infinite.  Now, a human beingis, like a tree, a composite of form and matter.  Hence, Aquinas’s remarks here would implythat, even if the matter that makes up the body is relatively infinite insofaras it can successively take on different forms ad infinitum, the human being himself is not in any wayinfinite.  Obviously, then, this wouldtell against taking human nature tobe even relatively infinite in its dignity.

Furthermore,it’s not clear how the specific examples Aquinas gives are supposed to berelevant to the question at hand in the first place.  The sense in which he says matter isrelatively infinite is, again, that it can take on different forms successivelyad infinitum – first one form, then asecond, then a third, and so on.  But ofcourse, at any particular point in time, matter does not have an infinite numberof forms.  So, how would this provide amodel for human beings having “infinite dignity”?  Is the idea that they have only finitedignity at any particular point in time, but will keep having it at laterpoints in time without end?  Surely thatis not what is meant by “infinite dignity.” It would entail that even something with the least dignity possible atany particular point in time would have “infinite dignity” as long as it simplypersisted with that minimal dignity forever!

Nor does theangel example help.  Again, the sense in which angels are relativelyinfinite, Aquinas says, is that they are not limited by matter.  But human beings are limited by matter.  So, thisis no help in explaining how we could be even relatively infinite in dignity.

Another,sillier suggestion some have made on Twitter is that we can make sense of humanbeings having “infinite dignity” in light of set theory, which tells us thatsome infinities can be larger than others. The idea seems to be that while God has infinite dignity, we too canintelligibly be said to have it, so long as God’s dignity has to do with alarger infinity than ours.

The problemwith this is that the “infinity” that is attributed to God and to his dignity(and to human dignity, for that matter) has nothing to do with the infinitiesstudied by set theory.  Set theory isabout collections of objects (such as numbers), which might be infinite insize.  But when we say that God isinfinite, we’re not talking about a collection any kind.  We’re not saying, for example, that God’sinfinite power has something to do with him possessing an infinite collectionof powers.  What is meant is merely thathe has causal power to do or to make whatever is intrinsically possible.  And his infinite dignity too has nothing todo with any sort of collection (such as an infinitely large collection of unitsof dignity, whatever that would mean). Set theory is simply irrelevant.

Anotherdefense that has been suggested is to appeal to Pope St. John Paul II’s havingonce used the phrase “infinite dignity” in anAngelus address in 1980. Indeed, the Declaration itself makes note of this.  But there are several problems here.  First, John Paul II’s remark was merely apassing comment made in the course a little-known informal address of littlemagisterial weight that was devoted to another topic.  It was not a carefully worded formaltheological treatment of the nature of human dignity, specifically.  Nor did John Paul put any special emphasis onthe phrase or draw momentous conclusions from it, the way the new Declarationdoes.  For example, he never concludedthat, since human dignity is “infinite,” the death penalty must be ruled outunder every circumstance.  On thecontrary, despite his strong personal opposition to the death penalty, healways acknowledged that there could be circumstances where it was permissible,and that that was the Church’s traditional teaching.  There is no reason whatsoever to take theAngelus address reference to be anything more than a loosely wordedoff-the-cuff remark.  Moreover, even ifit were more than that, that wouldnot make the problems I’ve been setting out here magically disappear.

Some havesuggested that the Declaration’s remark about the death penalty does not infact amount to saying that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong.  What it entails, they claim, is only that itis always intrinsically contrary to human dignity.  But that, they say, leaves it open that itmay sometimes be permissible to do what is contrary to human dignity.

But thereare two reasons why this cannot be right. First, Dignitas Infinita doesnot say that what violates our dignity is unacceptable except when such-and-such conditions hold.  On the contrary, it says that the Church “always insist[s] on… the defense of [thehuman person’s] dignity beyond everycircumstance.”  It says that man’s“infinite dignity” is “inviolable,”that it “prevails in and beyond everycircumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter,” and that our respect for it must be “unconditional.”  It repeatedlyemphasizes that “circumstances” are irrelevant to what a respect fordignity requires of us, and it does so preciselybecause it claims that our dignity is “infinite.”  Asserting that human dignity has such radical“no exceptions” implications is the wholepoint of the Declaration, the whole point of its making a big deal of thephrase “infinite dignity.”

Second, theDeclaration makes a special point of lumping in the death penalty with evilssuch as “murder, genocide, abortion, [and] euthanasia.”  It says: “Here,one should also mention the death penalty, for this also violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.”  Obviously, if the death penalty really doesviolate human dignity under every circumstance in just the way murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, etc. do,then it is no less absolutely ruled out than they are.  And obviously, the Declaration would notallow us to say that there are cases where murder, genocide, abortion, andeuthanasia might be allowable despite their being affronts to human dignity.

Hyperbole?

The bestdefense that some have made of the Declaration is that the phrase “infinitedignity” is mere hyperbole.  But thoughthis is the best defense, that doesnot make it a good defense.  First of all, magisterial documents shoulduse terms with precision.  This is especially true of a document comingfrom the DDF, whose job is precisely to clarifymatters of doctrine.  It is simplyscandalous for a document intended to clarify a doctrinal matter – especially onethat we are told has been in preparation for years – to deploy a key theological term in a loose and potentiallyhighly misleading way (and, indeed, to put special emphasis on this loosemeaning, even in the very title of the document!)

But second,the idea that the phrase is meant as mere hyperbole is simply not a natural readingof the Declaration.  For it is not justthat special emphasis is put on the phrase itself.  It is also that special emphasis is put onthe radical implications of thephrase.  We are told that it is preciselybecause human dignity is “infinite”that the moral conclusions asserted by the Declaration hold “beyond all circumstances,” “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and soon.  If you don’t take the “infinite”part seriously, then you lose the grounds for taking the “beyond allcircumstances” parts seriously.  They gohand in hand.  Hence, the “hyperbole”reading simply undermines the whole point of the document.

That thisextreme language of man’s “infinitedignity” has now led the pope to condemn the death penalty in an absolute way – and thereby to contradictscripture and all previous papal teaching on the subject – shows just how graveare the consequences of using theological language imprecisely.  And this may not be the end of it.  Asked at a pressconference on the Declaration about the implications of man’s“infinite dignity” for the doctrine of Hell, Cardinal Fernández did not denythe doctrine.  But he also said: “’Withall the limits that our freedom truly has, might it not be that Hell is empty?’This is the question that Pope Francis sometimes asks.”  Asked aboutthe Catechism’s teaching that homosexual desire is “intrinsically disordered,”the cardinal said: “It’s a very strong expression, and it needs to be explaineda great deal.  Perhaps we could find anexpression that is even clearer, to understand what we mean… But it is truethat the expression could find other more suitable words.”  When churchmen put special emphasis on theidea that human dignity is infinite,then there is a wide range of traditional Catholic teaching that they are boundto be tempted to soften or find some way to work around.

High-flownrhetoric about human dignity has, in any event, always been especially prone toabuse.  As Allan Bloom once wrote, “thevery expression dignity of man, evenwhen Pico della Mirandola coined it in the fifteenth century, had a blasphemousring to it” (The Closing of the AmericanMind, p. 180).  Similarly, JacquesBarzun pointed out that “[Pico’s] word dignitycan of course be interpreted as flouting the gospel’s call to humility and denyingthe reality of sin.  Humanism isaccordingly charged with inverting the relation between man and God” (From Dawn to Decadence, p. 60).

Somehistorians would judge this unfair to Pico himself, but my point is not abouthim.  Rather, it is about how modernpeople in general, from the Renaissance onward, have gotten progressively moredrunk on the idea of their own dignity – and, correspondingly, less and lesscognizant of the fact that what is most grave about sin is not that itdishonors us, but that it dishonors God. This, and not their owndignity, is what modern people most needreminding of.  Hence, while it is notwrong to speak of human dignity, one must be cautious and always put the accenton the divine dignity rather than onour dignity.  I submit that sticking aword like “infinite” in front of the latter accomplishes the reverse of this. 

And I submitthat a sure sign that the rhetoric of human dignity has now gone too far isthat it has led the highest authorities in the Church to contradict theteaching of the word of God itself (on the topic of the death penalty).  Such an error is possible whenpopes do not speak ex cathedra.  But it is extremelyrare, and always gravely scandalous.

Western civilization's immunodeficiency disease

Liberalismis to the social order what AIDS is to the body.  By relegating the truths of natural law anddivine revelation to the private sphere, it destroys the immune system of thebody politic, opening the way to that body’s being ravaged by moral decay andideological fanaticism.  I develop thistheme in anew essay over at Postliberal Order.

Ed Piskor (1982-2024)

This week, cartoonistEd Piskor committed suicide in the wake of the relentless online pillorying andovernight destruction of his career that followed upon allegations of sexual misconduct,of which he insisted he was innocent. Piskor’s work was not really to my taste,but I often enjoyed the CartoonistKayfabe YouTube channel he co-hosted. I was always impressed by the manifestlove, respect, and appreciation he showed for the great comic book artists ofthe past. These are attractive and admirable attitudes to take toward thosefrom whom one has learned.

Piskor’ssuicide note is heartbreaking, and includes this passage:

I have no friends in this life anylonger. I’m a disappointment to everybody who liked me. I’m a pariah. Newsorganizations at my door and hassling my elderly parents. It’s too much.Putting our addresses on tv and the internet. How could I ever go back to mysmall town where everyone knows me? Some good people reached out and tried tohelp me through this whole thing but I’m just not strong enough. Theinstinctual part of my brain knows that I’m no longer part of the tribe. I’mexiled and banished. I’m giving into my instincts and fighting them at the sametime. Self preservation has lost out.

This episodevividly illustrates how diabolical is the moment through which we are currentlyliving, when the lust to defame others and stir up a mob against them – always atemptation to which human beings are prone – has been massively exacerbated bysocial media. I don’t know if Piskor was indeed innocent, but neither do thosewho hounded him to the point where he lost hope. May God have mercy on his souland on his family.

The illusion of AI

My essay “TheIllusion of Artificial Intelligence” appears in thelatest issue of the Word on Fire Institute’s journal Evangelization & Culture.

Wishful thinking about Judas

In a recentarticle at Catholic Answers titled “Hopefor Judas?” Jimmy Akin tells us that though he used to findconvincing the traditional view that Judas is damned, it now seems to him that “wedon’t have conclusive proof thatJudas is in hell, and there is still a ray of hope for him.”  But there is a difference between hope andwishful thinking.  And with all duerespect for Akin, it seems to me that given the evidence, the view that Judasmay have been saved crosses the line from the former to the latter.

Scriptural evidence

The reasonit has traditionally been held that Judas is in hell is that this seems to bethe clear teaching of several scriptural passages, including the words ofChrist himself.  In Matthew 26:24, Jesussays of Judas: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!  It would have been better for that man if hehad not been born” (RSV translation).  (Mark 14:21 records the same remark.)  It is extremely difficult at best to see howthis could possibly be true of someone who repented and was saved.  It makes perfect sense, though, if Judas wasdamned.  Matthew also tells us thatJudas’s very last act was to commit suicide (27:5), which is mortally sinful.

The evidenceof John’s gospel seems no less conclusive. Praying to the Father about his disciples, Jesus, once again referringto Judas, says that “none of them is lost but the son of perdition”(17:12).  It is, needless to say,extremely hard to see how Judas could be “lost” and of “perdition” and yet besaved. 

Then thereis the Acts of the Apostles.  It reportsthat Peter, referring to Judas’s death and the need to replace him, said: “Forit is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation become desolate, andlet there be no one to live in it’ and ‘His office let another take’”(1:20).  This implies the opposite of ahappy fate for Judas, and a later verse confirms this pessimisticjudgment.  We are told that Matthias wasselected “to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judasturned aside, to go to his own place” (1:25). As Haydock’scommentary notes, the reference appears to be “to his own place ofperdition, which he brought himself to” (p. 1435).

Commentingon Christ’s remark in Matthew 26:24, Akin suggests that it may have beenintended as a warning rather than a prediction. On this interpretation, Jesus was merely saying that it would be betterfor his betrayer not to have been born ifhe does not repent.  But this leavesit open that Judas did indeed repent. And in fact, Akin claims, we have evidence that Judas repented in thevery next chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which tells us:

When Judas, his betrayer, saw that hewas condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chiefpriests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” (27: 3-4)

But thereare several problems with this argument. The first is that it simply is not plausible on its face to suppose thatChrist’s words were meant merely as a warning rather than a prediction aboutJudas’s actual fate.  That it would bebetter for the damned not to have been born is true of everyone who might fail to repent – you, me, Judas, and for thatmatter, Peter, who also went on to betray Jesus (and who, we know, did indeedrepent).  And yet Christ does not make thisremark about Peter or about anyone else, but only about Judas.  Theobvious implication is that the words apply to Judas in a way they do not applyto anyone else, and that can only be the case if he was in fact damned.

A secondproblem is that Akin ignores the other relevant biblical passages.  In John’s Gospel, Christ says that Judas is“lost” and a “son of perdition.”  Thoseare peremptory remarks about what isthe case, not about what would be thecase if Judas did not repent.  Moreover, he says these things to the Father, not to Judas or to anyother disciple.  Hence they can hardly besaid to be warnings to anyone.  Thenthere are Peter’s remarks in Acts, which imply an unhappy fate for Judas andwere made after Judas’s death, sothat they too cannot be mere warnings about what would happen if he did notrepent.

A thirdproblem is that the passage cited by Akin has traditionally been understood tobe attributing to Judas a merely natural regret for what he had done, not thesupernatural sorrow or perfect contrition that would be necessary forsalvation.  This is evidenced by whathappens immediately after the passage cited by Akin: “They said [to Judas], ‘Whatis that to us?  See to it yourself.’  And throwing down the pieces of silver in thetemple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself” (27: 4-5).  As Haydock’s commentary notes, Pope St. Leoremarks, accordingly, that Judas showed only “a fruitless repentance,accompanied with a new sin of despair” (p. 1311).  Haydock notes that St. John Chrysostom also interpretsthe passage from Matthew as attributing only an imperfect repentance to Judas.

To be sure, Akinremarks that “suicide does not always result in hell because a person may notbe fully responsible for his action due to lack of knowledge, or psychologicalfactors, and because ‘in ways known to him alone,’ God may help the person torepent.”  That is true, but it does notfollow that we have any serious grounds for doubting that Judas’s suicide, specifically, resulted in damnation.  For one thing, there is no actual evidence from scripture that Judasfound sincere repentance just before the moment of death.  The very idea is sheer ungrounded speculationat best.  But for another thing, and as we’vealready seen, there are scripturalpassages that afford positive evidence that Judas was in fact damned.  And again, that is how they havetraditionally been interpreted.

Evidence from the tradition

Laterauthorities reiterate this clear indication of scripture that Judas isdamned.  We’ve already noted that PopeSt. Leo the Great and St. John Chrysostom do so.  Leo elaborates on the themeas follows:

To this forgiveness the traitor Judascould not attain: for he, the son of perdition, at whose right the devil stood,gave himself up to despair before Christ accomplished the mystery of universalredemption.  For in that the Lord diedfor sinners, perchance even he might have found salvation if he had nothastened to hang himself.  But that evilheart, which was now given up to thievish frauds, and now busied withtreacherous designs, had never entertained anything of the proofs of theSaviour's mercy… The wicked traitor refused to understand this, and tookmeasures against himself, not in the self-condemnation of repentance, but inthe madness of perdition, and thus he who had sold the Author of life to Hismurderers, even in dying increased the amount of sin which condemned him.

Similarly,in The City of God, St. Augustine writes:

Do we justly execrate the deed ofJudas, and does truth itself pronounce that by hanging himself he ratheraggravated than expiated the guilt of that most iniquitous betrayal, since, bydespairing of God's mercy in his sorrow that wrought death, he left to himselfno place for a healing penitence? … For Judas, when he killed himself, killed awicked man; but he passed from this life chargeable not only with the death ofChrist, but with his own: for though he killed himself on account of his crime,his killing himself was another crime. (Book I, Chapter 17)

It is truethat Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa held out hope that Judas repented.  But these Fathers also famously flirted withuniversalism, which the Church has since condemned, and this renders suspect theirunderstanding of the scriptural passages relevant to this particular topic.

In DeVeritate, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

In the case of Judas, the abuse ofgrace was the reason for his reprobation, since he was made reprobate becausehe died without grace.  Moreover, thefact that he did not have grace when he died was not due to God’s unwillingnessto give it but to his unwillingness to accept it – as both Anselm and Dionysiuspoint out.  (Question Six, Article 2.  The context is Aquinas’s consideration of anobjection to a thesis on predestination that he defends in the article.  But the lines quoted reflect assumptions heshares in common with his critic.)

The Catechismof the Council of Trent promulgated by Pope St. Pius V, in itstreatment of penance, says: “[Some] give themselves to such melancholy andgrief, as utterly to abandon all hope of salvation… Such certainly was thecondition of Judas, who, repenting,hanged himself, and thus lost soul and body” (p. 264).  And in its treatment of the priesthood, theCatechism says:

Some are attracted to the priesthoodby ambition and love of honors; while there are others who desire to beordained simply in order that they may abound in riches… They derive no otherfruit from their priesthood than was derived by Judas from the Apostleship,which only brought him everlasting destruction. (p. 319)

The Churchhas also never prayed for Judas’s soul in her formal worship.  On the contrary, the traditional liturgy forHoly Thursday containsthe following prayer:

O God, from whom Judas received thepunishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession, grant us theeffect of Thy clemency: that as our Lord Jesus Christ in His passion gave toeach a different recompense according to his merits, so may He deliver us fromour old sins and grant us the grace of His resurrection.  Who liveth and reigneth.

Furtherauthorities could be cited, but this suffices to make the point that it hasbeen the common view in the history of the Church that Judas is in hell.  Indeed, so confident has the Church beenabout this that the supposition that Judas is damned has traditionally beenreflected even in her catechesis and herworship. 

Now, thiswould be extremely odd if there really were any serious grounds for hope thatJudas is saved.  As the Code of Canon Lawfamously reminds us, “the salvation of souls… must always be the supreme law inthe Church” (1752).  And Christ famouslycommanded us to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44).  How then, consistent with Christ’s teachingand with her supreme law, could the Church for two millennia fail to pray forJudas’s soul if there really were any hope for his salvation?  The Church also assures sinners that there isno sin, no matter how grievous, that cannot be forgiven if only one is trulyrepentant.  What better illustration ofthis could there possibly be than the repentance of Christ’s own betrayer – if indeed he really had repented?  And yet the Church has not only never heldJudas up as a sign of hope, but on the contrary has pointed to him as anillustration of what awaits those who refuse Christ’s mercy.

The only evidencefrom the tradition Akin cites in defense of his own position are some remarksfrom Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.  In particular, he notes that John Paul oncestated that it is not “certain” from Matthew 26:24 that Judas is damned.  And Benedict, Akin notes, once remarked thatit is “not up to us” to make a judgement about Judas’s suicide.

But this ishardly a powerful response to the case from scripture and tradition that I’vesummarized.  For one thing, John PaulII’s remark was not made in the context of a magisterial document, but ratherin the interview book Crossing theThreshold of Hope.  It is merely theexpression of his opinion as a private theologian.  Moreover, it is merely an assertion about Matthew 26:24 and failsto address the considerations that indicate that the passage does indeed show that Judas isdamned.  Nor does John Paul address theother relevant scriptural passages, or the evidence from the later tradition.

BenedictXVI’s comment was made in the course of a generalaudience, which has a low degree of authority compared to therelevant passages from scripture, the Fathers, and the rest of the traditioncited above.  Moreover, Benedict alsoacknowledges that “Jesus pronounces a very severe judgement on [Judas],” andgoes on to contrast Judas’s fate with Peter’s:

After his fall Peter repented andfound pardon and grace.  Judas alsorepented, but his repentance degenerated into desperation and thus becameself-destructive.  For us it is aninvitation to always remember what St Benedict says at the end of the fundamentalChapter Five of his “Rule”: “Never despair of God's mercy”.

Needless tosay, these remarks from Benedict tend to supportrather than undermine the traditional view that Judas’s suicide shows that hehad succumbed to the sin of despair.

“So you’re telling me there’s achance?”

It may seemfrivolous, when dealing with so serious a subject, to allude to a crude comedyfilm like Dumb and Dumber.  But it contains a line that is so apt that Iwill take the risk.  In a famous scene, JimCarrey’s character asks a girl he has a crush on how likely it is that shemight someday reciprocate his feelings.  Shesays the odds are “one out of a million.”  To which he replies: “So you’re telling methere’s a chance!  YEAH!!”

What she actuallymeans, of course, is that the odds are so extremely low that, practically speaking,there is no chance at all.  But thelesson he draws is that, because she didn’tquite say that there is zero chance,he has reasonable grounds for hope. 

Jimmy Akinis a smart guy for whom I have nothing but respect, so I am certainly notlikening him to the Jim Carrey character! But on this particular issue, it seems to me that he, like others whohave resisted the traditional view that Judas is damned, are committing anerror similar to the one that character commits.  Because, they suppose, the evidence fromscripture and tradition doesn’t strictlyentail that Judas is damned, they judge that it is reasonable to hope thathe is not.  In effect, they look at whatthe evidence is saying and respond: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”  And like Carrey’s character, they thereby entirelymiss the point.

Jesuit Britain?

Did SpanishScholastic thinkers influence British liberalism? Youcan now access my Religion andLiberty review of Projectionsof Spanish Jesuit Scholasticism on British Thought: New Horizons in Politics,Law, and Rights , edited by Leopoldo J. Prieto López and José LuisCendejas Bueno.

Mind, matter, and malleability

Continuing ourlook at Jacques Maritain’s ThreeReformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, let’s consider some arrestingpassages on the conception of human nature the modern world has inherited fromDescartes.  Maritain subtitles hischapter on the subject “The Incarnation of the Angel.”  As you might expect, this has in part to dowith the Cartesian dualist’s view that the mind is a res cogitans or thinking substance whose nature is whollyincorporeal, so that it is only contingently related to the body.  But it is the Cartesian doctrine of innateideas and its implications that Maritain is most interested in. 

For aScholastic Aristotelian like Aquinas, though the human intellect is immaterial,it is unfurnished until sensory experience gives it contact withmind-independent physical reality.  Evenwhen it rises to the highest of the metaphysical heights and comes to knowsomething of the immaterial and divine First Cause of all things, it does soonly on the basis of inference from what it knows about matter.  An angelicintellect, by contrast, is completely separate from matter and thus fromsensory organs.  Its knowledge is builtinto it at its creation.  And since it isGod who then furnishes it, there is, naturally, no chance of error so long asthe angel wills to attend to what it knows.

Descartes’account of human knowledge essentially assimilates it to this angelicmodel.  For him, knowledge of the basicstructure of reality is innate, rather than deriving from sensoryexperience.  This includes knowledge evenof the nature of material things.  Weneed only confine our judgements to accepting those propositions and inferencesthat strike us as “clearly and distinctly” true and valid, respectively, forGod would not allow us to be misled about those.  Error creeps in only when the willoverreaches that limit and embraces some claim or inference that is not clear and distinct.  A purely mathematical conception of matter isa natural concomitant of this account of knowledge, for it alone has therequisite clarity and distinctness.

The problem,of course, is that we are not in factangels; a faculty of infallible judgment is notbuilt into us; and we cannot read offthe natures of mind-independent things from our ideas of them.  Hence, when we interpret human knowledge inlight of Descartes’ erroneous model, we are bound seriously to misunderstandit.  On the one hand, we might fall intoa dogmatism that mistakenly takes a certain successful – but neverthelesslimited and fallible – way of conceiving of the world as if it were an exhaustive and necessary way of doingso.  On the other hand, we might fallinto a subjectivism that despairs of ever getting beyond our own ideas toobjective reality.  Both tendenciesresult from taking our own representationsof the world to be all we really know directly. The first tendency, which takes these representations to be angel-likein their adequacy to reality, yields excessive optimism.  The second tendency, which comes to see thatour representations are notangel-like, yields excessive pessimism.

Kant did nottranscend these two opposite extreme errors of dogmatism and subjectivism, butrather combined them.  On the one hand, he takes what is essentiallyjust a modern, post-Cartesian account of the nature of the mind’s cognition ofreality and dogmatizes it – confining our knowledge of the natural world to what post-Newtonian science has to tell us aboutit, and ruling out altogether any genuine knowledge of what transcends thenatural world (such as the existence of God and the immortality of thesoul).  On the other hand, he takes evenour knowledge of the natural world to be knowledge only of how it appears tous, and not of things as they are in themselves.

The upshot,says Maritain, is that:

With [Descartes’] theory ofrepresentational ideas the claims of Cartesian reason to independence of externalobjects reach their highest point: thought breaks with Being.  It forms a sealed world which is no longer incontact with anything but itself; its ideas, now opaque effigies interposedbetween it and external objects, are still for Descartes a sort of lining ofthe real world… Here again Kant finishes Descartes’ work.  If the intelligence when it thinks, reachesimmediately only its own thought, or its representations, the thing hiddenbehind these representations remains for ever unknowable. (p. 78)

Ironically,though, the sequel is not greater humility but rather a pridefulself-deification.  If it cannot makesense of a reality independent of itself, the modern mind all too often decidesto make itself the measure of reality:

The result of a usurpation of theangelic privileges, that denaturing of human reason drivenbeyond the limits of its species, that lust for pure spirituality, could onlygo to the infinite: passing beyond the world of created spirits it had to leadus to claim for our intelligence the perfect autonomy and the perfectimmanence, the absolute independence, the aseity of the uncreated intelligence… [I]t remains the secret principle ofthe break-up of our culture and of the disease of which the apostate West seemsdetermined to die…

[B]ecause it wants an absolute andundetermined liberty for itself, it is natural that human thought, sinceDescartes, refuses to be measured objectively or to submit to intelligiblenecessities.  Freedom with respect to theobjective is the mother and nurse of all modern freedoms… we are no longermeasured by anything, subject to anything whatever!  Intellectual liberty which Chesterton comparedto that of the turnip (and that is a libel on the turnip), and which strictlyonly belongs to primal matter. (pp. 79-80)

Hence thevarieties of idealism and relativism (perspectivalism, historicism, socialconstructivism, postmodernism,etc.) that have plagued Western thought and culture in the centuries afterKant. 

That’s anold story, of course, and a more complicated one than these remarks fromMaritain let on.  But it’s not what Iwant to consider here.  Rather, whatcatches my eye is the comparison of the modern mind (as it tends to conceive ofitself) to “primal matter.”  What doesMaritain mean by this? 

Primematter, in Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy, is the pure potentiality to takeon form.  Prime matter by itself is not any particular thing atall.  It becomes a concrete particular thingof some kind – water, gold, lead, a star, a tree, a dog, a human body, orwhatever – only when conjoined with some substantial form or other.  And qua pure potentiality for form, it canbecome any of these things.  It is not limited to being a physical thing onlyof a certain kind (as is secondary matter,matter already having some substantial form or other).  (For discussion and defense of the notion ofprime matter, see pp. 171-75 of ScholasticMetaphysics and pp. 310-24 of Aristotle’sRevenge.)

Maritain’s analogyis clear enough, then.  Just as primematter can become anything (or at least anything physical, to be more precise)so too do constructivist and relativist theories make of human nature somethingindefinitely malleable.  But this mightat first glance seem an odd criticism for an Aristotelian-Thomistic philosopherlike Maritain to level against such views. For Aristotle holds that knowledge involves the intellect’s taking on theform of the thing known.  And there is nolimit in principle to what forms the intellect might in this way take on.  Indeed, Aristotle famously remarks in De Anima that, given this power of theintellect to take on the forms of all things, “the soul is in a way all thethings that exist” (Book III, Chapter 8). But if Aristotelians themselves allow that the intellect can in thissense become anything, why is there a problem with the views Maritain iscriticizing saying something similar? And why compare these views’ conception of human nature to prime matter,rather than to Aristotle’s own conception of the intellect?

The answeris to be found by answering another question, namely: What is the differencebetween the way prime matter takes ona certain form, and the way the intellecttakes it on?  The difference is this:When prime matter takes on the form of a dog, the result is a dog. But when the intellect takes on the form of a dog, the result is not a dog.  Rather, it is knowledge of a dog.  WhenAristotle says that the soul – or to be more precise, one specific faculty ofthe soul, the intellect – is all things, he is, of course, speakingfiguratively.  The intellect does notreally become a dog when it grasps the form of a dog.  To be sure, the figure of speech is apt,because, by taking on the form of a dog, the intellect takes on the nature of a dog.  The intellect takes on “dogginess.”  But to take it on merely intellectually is precisely to take it on without actually being a dog.  By contrast, for matter to take on thatnature just is to take it on in the sort of way that does entail being a dog. 

This shouldmake it clear why Maritain’s analogy is appropriate.  Views that take reality to be relative to ourperceptions, our language, our conventions, etc. make human beings out to besomething like prime matter insofar as they entail that what a human being is (and not just what a human being knows) is indefinitely malleable,susceptible of changing with changes in perception, language, conventions,etc.  And, in fact, that is simply nottrue of us.  We are, among other things,by nature rational animals, and no change in our perceptions, language,conventions, or the like can change that in the least.  The most such changes can do is blind us toreality, but without changing reality itself.

The metaphysics of individualism

Modern moraldiscourse often refers to “persons” and to “individuals” as if the notions weremore or less interchangeable.  But thatis not the case.  In his book Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau(especially in chapter 1, section 3), Jacques Maritain notes several importantdifferences between the concepts, and draws out their moral and socialimplications.

Traditionally,in Catholic philosophy, a person is understood to be a substance possessing intellectand will.  Intellect and will, in turn,are understood to be immaterial.  Hence,to be a person is ipso facto to beincorporeal – wholly so in the case of an angel, partially so in the case of ahuman being.  And qua partiallyincorporeal, human beings are partially independent of the forces that governthe rest of the material world.

Individuality,meanwhile, is in the case of physical substances a consequence precisely oftheir corporeality rather than theirincorporeality.  For matter, as Aquinasholds, is the principle of individuation with respect to the members of speciesof corporeal things.  Hence it isprecisely insofar as human beings are corporeal that they are subject to theforces that govern the rest of the material world.

With a wholly corporeal living thing like aplant or a non-human animal, its good is subordinate to that of the species towhich it belongs, as any part is subordinate to the whole of which it is a part.  Such a living thing is fulfilled insofar asit contributes to the good and continuance of that whole, the species kind ofwhich it is an instance.  By contrast, aperson, qua incorporeal, is a complete whole in itself.  And itshighest good, in which alone it can find its fulfilment, is God, the ultimateobject of the intellect’s knowledge and the will’s desire.

Insofar aswe think of human beings as persons,then, we will tend to conceive of what is good for them in terms of whatfulfills their intellects and wills, and thus (when the implications of thatare properly understood) in theological terms. But insofar as we think of them as individuals,we will tend to conceive of what is good for them in terms of what isessentially bodily – material goods, pleasure and the avoidance of pain,emotional wellbeing, and the like. However, we will also be more prone to see their good as something thatmight be sacrificed for the whole of which they are parts. 

Maritainputs special emphasis on the implications of all this for politicalphilosophy.  The common good is more thanmerely the aggregate of the goods enjoyed by individuals.  But because human beings are persons, and notmerely individuals, the common good is also not to be conceived of merely asthe good of society as a whole and not of its parts.  Rather, “it is, so to speak, a good common to the whole and the parts”(p. 23).

On the onehand, the political order is in one respect more perfect than the individualhuman being, for it is complete in a way the individual is not.  On the other hand, in another respect theindividual human being is more perfect than the political order, because qua person he is a complete order in hisown right, and one that has a destiny beyond the temporal political realm.  Hence, a just political order must reflectboth of these facts.  In particular, itmust recognize that the common good to which the individual is ordered includesfacilitating, for each member of the community, the realization of hisultimate, eternal end in the hereafter.  Thus,concludes Maritain, “the human city fails in justice and sins against itselfand its members if, when the truth is sufficiently proposed to it, it refusesto recognize Him Who is the Way of beatitude” (p. 24).

This refusalis, needless to say, characteristic of modern societies, both liberal andcollectivist.  And unsurprisingly, they haveat the same time put greater emphasis on human individuality than on human personhood.  Both do so insofar as they conceive of thegood primarily in economic and other material terms rather than in spiritualterms.  Liberal societies, in addition,do so insofar as they conceive of these bodily goods along the lines of thesatisfaction of idiosyncratic individual preferences and emotional wellbeing.  Collectivist societies, meanwhile, do soinsofar as they regard human beings, qua individuals, as apt to be sacrificedto the good of the species of which they are mere instances.  (It should be no surprise, then, that Burkewould famously condemn “the dust and powder of individuality” even as hecondemned at the same time the totalitarianism of the French Revolution.  For individualism and collectivism are rootedin precisely the same metaphysical error.)

Maritaincites a passage from Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange that summarizes the moral andspiritual implications of the distinction between individuality and personhood:

To develop one’s individuality is to live the egoistical life of the passions, to make oneself thecentre of everything, and end finally by being the slave of a thousand passinggoods which bring us a wretched momentary joy. Personality, on the contrary,increases as the soul rises above the sensible world and by intelligence andwill binds itself more closely to what makes the life of the spirit.  The philosophers have caught sight of it, butthe saints especially have understood, that the full development of our poorpersonality consists in losing it in some way in that of God. (pp. 24-25,quoted from Garrigou-Lagrange’s Le SensCommun)

Among the paganphilosophers, perhaps none is as clear on this theme as Plotinus, who in the FifthEnnead contrasts individuality with orientation toward God: “How is it, then,that souls forget the divinity that begot them?... This evil that has befallenthem has its source in self-will… in becoming different, in desiring to beindependent… They use their freedom to go in a direction that leads away fromtheir origin.”  And among the saints,none states this contrast more eloquently than Augustine, who distinguishes “twocities [that] have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self,even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to thecontempt of self” (City of God, BookXIV, Chapter 28).  This earthly city, inits modern guise, has been built above all by individualism.

Related posts:

Tyranny of the sovereign individual

MacIntrye on human dignity

Liberty, equality, fraternity?

When do popes speak ex cathedra?

Considerfour groups that, one might think, couldn’t be more different: Pope Francis’s mostzealous defenders; sedevacantists; Protestants; and Catholics who have recentlyleft the Church (for Eastern Orthodoxy, say). Something at least many of them have in common is a seriousmisunderstanding of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility – one whichhas led them to draw fallacious conclusions from recent papal teaching thatseems to conflict with traditional Catholic doctrine (for example, on HolyCommunion for those in invalid marriages, the death penalty, and blessings forsame-sex couples).  Some of PopeFrancis’s defenders insist that, since these teachings came from a pope, they must therefore be consistent with traditionaldoctrine, appearances notwithstanding. Sedevacantists argue instead that, given that these teachings are notconsistent with traditional doctrine, Francis must not be a true pope.  Some Protestants, meanwhile, argue that sinceFrancis is a true pope but the teachings in question are (they judge) notconsistent with traditional Christian doctrine, Catholic claims about papalinfallibility have been falsified. Finally, some Catholics have concluded the same thing, and left theChurch as a result. 

I’ve addressedthe doctrinal controversies in question at length elsewhere and will notrevisit them here.  The point for presentpurposes is that, whatever one thinks of them, none of these inferences issound, because they rest on the false assumption that Catholicism claims that apope could not err in the ways Francis is in these cases alleged to haveerred. 

The Church’steaching, as famously defined at the FirstVatican Council, is as follows:

When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacherof all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines adoctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, hepossesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, thatinfallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in definingdoctrine concerning faith or morals.

It is fairlywidely understood that this does not mean that a pope is impeccable in hispersonal moral behavior, or that he cannot err when he speaks on some topicunconnected to faith or morals, or that he cannot err when he offers a personalopinion on some theological matter rather than teaching in his capacity as pope.  Rather, it is only when speaking as universalpastor of the Church on a matter of faith or morals that he is infallible.

However, whatis somewhat less widely understood is that even this is not enough for aninfallible ex cathedra statement.  As the passage from Vatican I says more thanonce, the pope also needs to be speaking to the universal Church on a matter offaith or morals in a manner that definessome point of doctrine.  And to “define”a doctrine is more than just putting it forward as binding on thefaithful.  As the Second Vatican Councilteaches in LumenGentium, even papal teaching that is not ex cathedra is normally binding (though as I’ve discussed elsewhere,the Church acknowledges rare exceptions). To define a doctrine involves, in addition, putting it forward in an absolutely final, irrevocablemanner.  When a pope defines some pointof doctrine, he is teaching it in a way that is intended to settle the question for all time and can never be revisited.  It only when speaking with this maximum degree of solemnity that a popeis claimed by Vatican I to be making an infallible ex cathedra pronouncement. 

Suchpronouncements are rare, and Pope Francis has never made one.  In particular, none of the doctrinal controversiesreferred to above involves any such pronouncement.  Neither AmorisLaetitia’s teaching on Holy Communion for those in invalid marriages, northe 2018 revision to the Catechism on the topic of capital punishment, nor Fiducia Supplicans’s teaching onblessings for same-sex couples, involves any ex cathedra statement.  Noneof these documents is intended to “define” or settle in an absolutelyirrevocable way any doctrinal matter.  Hence,if one or more of them really does contain doctrinal error, that would be –though regrettable and indeed scandalous – nevertheless compatible with thedoctrine of papal infallibility, because none of them is the kind ofpronouncement that is covered byinfallibility.

Hence, noneof the inferences referred to above is sound. The fact that these doctrinal pronouncements were issued under thepope’s authority does not (contraryto some of Pope Francis’s defenders) byitself guarantee that they must be reconcilable with tradition, becausethey are not ex cathedra definitions.  Nor, if they are erroneous, would that entailthat Francis is not a true pope, since (contrary to what some sedevacantistsseem to think) even true popes are not infallible when teaching in the specific manner of the documentsin question.   For the same reason – andcontrary to what some Protestants and some Catholics who have lost their faithsuppose – if Francis has erred in these cases, that would not falsify Catholicclaims about papal infallibility, because the Church never claimed in the firstplace that popes are infallible when making pronouncements of the specific kind in question, since none of them involves anattempt at making an ex cathedradefinition.

The teaching of the manuals

It isimportant to emphasize that this is in noway some novel interpretation of papal infallibility manufactured in orderto deal with the controversies that have arisen during the pontificate of PopeFrancis.  It is simply the way Catholictheologians have always understood the matter. To see this, consider what is said in several standard theology manualsof the period between Vatican I and Vatican II. This was, of course, the period when the popes were most keen toemphasize their power to settle matters of doctrine.  And yet the manuals say exactly what I justsaid about the conditions on an excathedra statement.  It is worthadding that these are manuals that received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  That does not entail that they areinfallible, but it does mean that what they say was regarded by ecclesiasticalauthorities as perfectly orthodox and unremarkable. 

Let’s beginwith Scheeben’s 1874 Handbookof Catholic Dogmatics, Book One, Part One.  Commenting on papal authority infallibly tojudge matters of doctrine, it tells us that “only those propositions orconsiderations which the judge evidently intendedto determine peremptorily are to be regarded as judicially determined andthus infallibly true” (p. 331, emphasis added). That is to say, unless the pope intends to settle a matter in aperemptory or final way, his pronouncement is not of an ex cathedra nature. Accordingly, Scheeben says, “it is possible, notwithstanding thecontinuing operation of his authority, that the pope extra iudicum [i.e. not excathedra] should profess, teach, or attest something false or heretical” (p.144, parenthetical remark in the original).

Brunsmannand Preuss’s 1932 Handbook of FundamentalTheology, Volume IV, tells us the following:

An ex-cathedra decision…implies the unmistakable intention of the pope to utter a definitive andbinding doctrinal decision and to oblige the Universal Church to accept it withabsolute certainty.  Hence if the pope,even in his capacity as supreme shepherd and teacher, were to recommend to allthe faithful a certain doctrine regarding faith or morals, even if he commandedthat doctrine to be taught in all the schools, this would be no ex-cathedra definition, because no definitive doctrinaldecision would be intended.  The case issimilar with regard to decrees issued by the Roman congregations, when they (ashappens with the S. Congregation of the Holy Office, over which the popehimself presides) condemn a doctrine, and the decision is confirmed by thesupreme pontiff and published by his authority. Such decrees are not per se infallible… If and so long as there is areasonable doubt whether the pope intends a definition to be ex cathedra, no one is in conscience bound to accept itas such.  (pp. 49-50)

Notice thatBrunsmann and Preuss not only note that a papal pronouncement does not count asex cathedra if it is not intended as“definitive” and as settling the matter with “absolute certainty,” but alsooffer specific examples of teaching that would, accordingly, not count as ex cathedra.  Even a doctrine that a pope in his capacityas universal teacher commends to all the faithful and commands to be taught, ora doctrine taught with his approval by the Holy Office (now known as theDicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith), would not count as ex cathedra unless there were an “unmistakable intention” and no “reasonable doubt” that he intendedit as an absolutely final and irrevocable doctrinal definition.

Ludwig Ott’s1955 Fundamentals of Catholic Dogmasays:

Not all the assertions of theTeaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals areinfallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councilsrepresenting the whole episcopate and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra.  The ordinary and usual form of the Papalteaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, BibleCommission) are not infallible. (p. 10)

The condition of the Infallibility isthat the Pope speaks ex cathedra.  Forthis is required… that he have the intention of deciding finally a teaching ofFaith or Morals, so that it is to be held by all the faithful.  Without this intention, which must be madeclear in the formulation, or by the circumstances, a decision ex cathedra isnot complete.  Most of the doctrinalexpressions made by the Popes in their Encyclicals are not decisions excathedra. (p. 287)

Ott herereiterates the points we’ve already seen in the other manuals, and adds that“the ordinary and usual form” ofpapal teaching, including “most of thedoctrinal expressions… [in] Encyclicals,” are not infallible. 

Salaverriand Nicolau’s 1955 SacraeTheologiae Summa, Volume IBnotes that “to speak ex cathedra,according to Vatican I, implies that the Roman Pontiff teaches something… defining it as something that must be held,that is, obliging all to an absolute assent of the mind and deciding the matter with an ultimate andirrevocable judgment” (p. 216, emphasis in original).  They add that “the manifest intention of defining something is required” (p. 219,emphasis added).  In other words, and asthe other manuals note, unless a pope explicitly tells us that he intends tosettle some doctrinal matter in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, wedon’t have an ex cathedra definitionand thus don’t have an infallible pronouncement.

Van Noort’s1957 Dogmatic Theology, Volume II:Christ’s Church comments on the matter at length:

The pope, even acting as pope, canteach the universal Church without making use of his supreme authority at itsmaximum power.  Now the Vatican Councildefined merely this point: the pope is infallible if he uses his doctrinalauthority at its maximum power, by handing down a binding and definitivedecision: such a decision, for example, by which he quite clearly intends tobind all Catholics to an absolutely firm and irrevocable assent.

Consequently even if the pope, andacting as pope, praises some doctrine, or recommends it to Christians, or evenorders that it alone should be taught in theological schools, this act shouldnot necessarily be considered an infallible decree since he may not intend tohand down a definitive decision.  Thesame holds true if by his approval he orders some decree of a sacredcongregation to be promulgated; for example, a decree of the Holy Office…

For the same reason, namely a lack ofintention to hand down a final decision, not all the doctrinal decisions whichthe pope proposes in encyclical letters should be considered definitions.  In a word, there must always be present andclearly present the intention of the pope to hand down a decision which isfinal and definitive…

[W]hen he is not speaking excathedra… All theologians admit that the pope can make a mistake in matters offaith and morals when so speaking: either by proposing a false opinion in amatter not yet defined, or by innocently differing from some doctrine alreadydefined.  (pp. 293-94)

Van Noortgoes on to give an example of a case where a decree of a sacred congregationwas issued with papal approval but turned out to be doctrinally erroneous:

It should be candidly admitted, wethink, that the sacred congregation did condemn Galileo’s teaching by what wasactually a doctrinal decree. The opinion of some theologians that the decree… was a purely disciplinary decree… is, in our opinion, difficult tosquare with the facts of the case. Likewise it should be frankly admitted that the Congregations of theInquisition and of the Index committed a faux pas in this matter…

The pope was aware of the decree ofthe congregation, and approved it as a decree of the congregation. (pp. 308-9)

Van Noort’sdiscussion repeats the points made in the other manuals, and adds the positiveexplicit assertion that “the pope can make a mistake in matters of faith andmorals” when not speaking ex cathedra,along with an example in which a Vatican congregation acting with papalapproval did in fact issue a mistaken doctrinal decree.

Again, thesemanuals were all written afterVatican I proclaimed papal infallibility but before Vatican II and the doctrinal controversies that arose in itswake.  Hence no one can claim that theyreflect some more limited, pre-Vatican I conception of papal authority.  Nor can anyone claim that they reflect thepolemical interests of post-Vatican II progressives or traditionalists who, forvery different reasons, would want to emphasize the limits of papal power.  They are also exactly the sorts of manualssedevacantists like to appeal to in support of their position.  But in fact they undermine that position,because they show that the errors sedevacantists accuse the post-Vatican IIpopes of would (even if these popes really were guilty of all the errors theyare accused of) be errors of precisely the kind the Church acknowledges canoccur, consistent with what Vatican I says about the conditions oninfallibility.

Again, I’mnot going to revisit here the details of the doctrinal controversiessurrounding Pope Francis.  But if the pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the 2018 revision tothe Catechism, or the DDF declaration FiduciaSupplicans contain doctrinal error, then these would be the kinds of errorsthe Church acknowledges to be possible for a pope to make, because none of themis an ex cathedra pronouncement.  Hence they would not falsify Catholicism, norwould they show that Francis is not a true pope.

A heretical pope?

But whatabout the thesis that a pope might lose his office due to heresy, which wasdiscussed by St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, and others among theChurch’s great theologians?  The firstthing to say here is that what is in view in this thesis is formal heresy, not mere material heresy.  A material heresy is a claim that is in factheretical in its content, whether or not the person who asserts it realizesthat, or would persist in adhering to the claim after being warned that it isheretical.  A person who holds some viewthat is materially heretical would not for that reason alone sufferexcommunication and thus cease to be a Catholic.  That would happen only as a result of formal heresy, which is a materialheresy that a person persists in despite the attempts of ecclesiastical authorityto correct him.  Moreover, we have to becareful in determining what counts as “heresy,” which in canon law is not justany old theological error, but specifically the denial of some teaching thatthe Church has officially defined.  A formal heretic, then, is someone whoobstinately denies some doctrine that the Church has formally defined, despitethe attempt of the Church to correct him.

The thesisin question is that if a pope were a formal heretic in this sense, he wouldcease to be a Catholic, and thus cease to be pope, since a non-Catholic cannotbe a pope.  But as Ihave argued elsewhere, no one has succeeded in showing that PopeFrancis is a formal heretic.  So the thesisthat he might have lost his office due to formal heresy is moot.  But even if he were a formal heretic, thematter is still nowhere near as straightforward as sedevacantists suppose.  For one thing, the thesis that a pope couldlose his office for formal heresy is not a teaching of the Church, but atheological opinion, nothing more. Whether a pope really could become a formal heretic, and, if so, whetherhe would lose his office, are matters that have been debated but never settled,either by theologians or by the Church. 

Here is whatVan Noort says on the matter:

Thus far we have been discussing Catholic teaching.  It may be useful to add a fewpoints about purely theological opinions…Theologians disagree… over the question of whether the pope can become a formalheretic by stubbornly clinging to anerror on a matter already defined.  Themore probable and respectful opinion, followed by Suárez, Bellarmine and manyothers, holds that just as God has not till this day ever permitted such athing to happen, so too he never will permit a pope to become a formal andpublic heretic.  Still, some competenttheologians do concede that the pope when not speaking ex cathedra could fallinto formal heresy.  They add that shouldsuch a case of public papal heresy occur, the pope, either by the very deeditself or at least by a subsequent decision of an ecumenical council, would bydivine law forfeit his jurisdiction. Obviously a man could not continue to be the head of the Church if heceased to be even a member of the Church. (pp. 293-94)

Salaverriand Nicolau write: “Theologians concede that a general Council can licitlydeclare a Pope heretical, if this case is possible, but not to depose himauthoritatively since he is superior to the Council, unless it is clearlycertain that he is a doubtful Pope” (p. 217).

Note firstthat both manuals are tentative about whether it really is even possible for apope to become a formal heretic, though some theologians do allow that this ispossible.  There are two lessons to drawfrom this that are relevant for present purposes.  The first is that the Church does permittheologians to entertain and debate the possibility that a pope may not onlyerr, but even fall into formal heresy.  This is important for properly understandingthe doctrine of papal infallibility, because it shows that the Church is veryfar from claiming that everything apope might say on matters of faith or morals is infallible.  Second, though, the common opinion is thateven if a formally heretical pope is possible in theory, it is highly unlikelythat divine Providence would allow this ever in fact to occur.  And this reinforces a point that should beobvious in any event, which is that a Catholic ought to be extremely cautious about accusing a pope of formal heresy, asopposed to some lesser degree of error. 

But it is,in any event, not up to just any old Catholic with a stack of theology manualsand a Twitter account to make this determination.  Note that the manuals make reference to theaction of a council against a popeguilty of formal heresy.  For to whomdoes the task fall to warn a pope that he is in danger of such heresy?  And who has the authority to decide that,after having been warned to no avail, his heresy is obstinate and thus has infact passed from being material to being formal?  If just any old Catholic could claim theright to do this, the result would be precisely the sort of chaos that theinstitution of an authoritative hierarchical Church is supposed toprevent.  Hence the common view is that, if a pope were to fall into formalheresy and if he were to lose hisoffice as a result, the latter could only occur after some authoritativeecclesiastical body had made the juridicaldetermination that he had in fact fallen into formal heresy and ipso facto lost his office.

Yet eventhis, as Ihave argued elsewhere, would by no means solve all the problems thatarise in such a scenario.  And thisreinforces the point that we are dealing here not with any actual teaching of theChurch, but with highly controversial and problematic theological theories,albeit ones the Church permits us to speculate about.  And it is merely on such speculative theories, rather than on official Catholic doctrine,that the sedevacantist position is grounded. 

Ex cathedra heresy?

So far wehave been discussing papal teaching that is not presented in the first place asif it were an irrevocable ex cathedrapronouncement.  But what if a popeattempted to teach some heresy in an excathedra way?  Is this possible evenin theory?  Sometimes Catholics saythings to the effect that were a pope ever to try to do this, God would strikehim dead before he could carry it out. Interestingly, though, Scheeben treats the matter as being morecomplicated than that.  He writes:

Infallibility in itself does notabsolutely rule out the possibility that the judge oflast resort may place… a formally invalid act of judgment.  In this sense, therefore, many theologians inthe Scholastic period were able to deem the judicial infallibility of the popeconsistent with the possibility that he, out of wantonness or fear, might placepersonal acts, even with the claim of his authority, which should not beregarded at the same time as acts of his authority or of his See and hence,without prejudice to the infallibility of the latter, could be erroneous.

Those theologians considered… thesole [hypothetical] case of obvious and absolute temerity the one in which thepope would attempt to define a notorious heresy, or, what amounts to the same thing, to reject a notoriousdogma that is held withoutdoubt by the entire Church and thus to require the whole Church to abandon herfaith; for in this case, they said, the pope would behave not as a shepherd but as a wolf, not as a teacher but as a madman, whileon the other hand the Church or the episcopate could and would have to rise upimmediately as one against the pope, although we could not say thatshe was rising up over or even merely against papal authority; rather she would rise up only against the arbitrariness of the person whohitherto had possessed the papal authority, but plainly through thequestionable act renounced it and relieved himself of it. (p. 310)

WhatScheeben appears to have in mind by a “notoriousheresy” or the “reject[ion of] a notorious dogma” is the explicit denial ofsomething manifestly previously definedas irreformable doctrine.  And by the“attempt to define” such a heresy, Scheeben seems to have in mind a case wherea pope issued a decree like the following: “Using my full authority assuccessor of Peter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declareand define by a solemn and irrevocable decree that Jesus of Nazareth was notthe Son of God,” or something similarly manifestly heretical. 

Scheebendoes not claim that Providence might ever in fact allow such a thing, but hedoes discuss it as an abstract possibility that would not be strictly ruled outby the doctrine of papal infallibility. But how could it not be ruled out? Scheeben’s view (or at least, the view of the Scholastic theologians hehas in mind) is that such an act would be “formally invalid” precisely because it would manifestly conflictwith previously defined dogma.  The ideaseems to be that among the conditions on an excathedra definition is that it be logically consistent with previousdefinitions.  After all, when proclaimingpapal infallibility and setting out the conditions on ex cathedra pronouncements, Vatican I explicitly says that:

The Holy Spirit was promised to thesuccessors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known somenew doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard andfaithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by theapostles.

The positionScheeben is describing, then, would seem to be that an attempt to define amanifest heresy ex cathedra would bea kind of misfire, a failure right from the get-go to fulfill a basic conditionon making an ex cathedra definition –just as a failure explicitly to speak in one’s capacity as pope, or a failureto manifest one’s intention actually to define a doctrine irrevocably, would bea failure to fulfill the conditions on an excathedra pronouncement.  (In thisrespect, the position Scheeben is describing would be analogous to Fr. ThomasWeinandy’s thesis about the conditions on magisterial teaching more generally,which I discussed in arecent post.)

Some mightobject to this position (as some have objected to Fr. Weinandy’s thesis) thatit amounts to an appeal to “private judgment,” the very thing Catholicscriticize Protestants for.  For if aCatholic were to judge some papal definition heretical, wouldn’t this preciselybe to rely on his own judgment rather than that of the Church?

But thisobjection rests on a crude misunderstanding of the notion of “private judgment.”  The Church has never claimed that we have no understanding at all of scripture,tradition, or past papal teaching apart from what the current pope happens tosay about it.  And such a claim would bemanifestly false.  You don’t need thepope to tell you, for example, that scripture teaches that God created theuniverse, that he made a covenant with Israel through Moses, that Jesus claimedto be the Son of God, and so on. Non-Catholics no less than Catholics can know that much just from reading the Bible and noting how it has alwaysbeen understood for millennia.  It’s notas if the text is just a bunch of unintelligible squiggles that we can makeabsolutely no sense of unless the current pope tells us: “This is what thissquiggle means, this is what that squiggle means, etc.” 

What theMagisterium of the Church is needed for is to settle matters that go beyond what the text has always beenunderstood to say – finer points of interpretation, implications for doctrinalcontroversies, applications to current problems, and so on.  For example, it is open to the Church to say:“This is what divine creation of the universe amounts to,” or “Here is theright way to reconcile this passage with that one.”  It is notopen to the Church to say: “Actually, God did not create the universe afterall,” or “It turns out that we’ve always been misunderstanding scripture whenwe took it to be saying that God created the universe.” 

To deny thiswould be to empty of all content theChurch’s claim to her own infallibility. It would be to say, out of one side of one’s mouth, that the Churchalways teaches in accord with scripture and tradition – but then, out of the otherside, effectively to take this back by saying that if the Church ends upcontradicting some teaching that has always been regarded as part of scriptureand tradition, then it must not reallyhave been part of scripture and tradition after all.  That would be an instance of what is known inlogic as a “No true Scotsman” fallacy.  Itwould make the Church’s claim to infallibility unfalsifiable.

Furthermore,as Ihave shown at length elsewhere, the Church has always acknowledgedthat it can in some cases be legitimate respectfully to criticize popes, evenon doctrinal matters.  The Church couldnot have done so if every criticismof papal teaching necessarily amounted to “private judgment.”

So, Scheebenis correct to hold that, if a pope were to try to define ex cathedra a claim like “Jesus of Nazareth was not the Son ofGod,” that would be a manifest heresy, and it would not amount to “privatejudgment” to say so.  On the contrary, itwould be precisely to adhere, not to one’s own private judgment, but to whatthe Magisterium itself has in the past always insisted is irreformableteaching.

But nowanother objection to Scheeben’s thesis (or rather, the thesis he isentertaining) might arise.  For doesn’tthis thesis itself also make thedoctrine of papal infallibility unfalsifiable? For doesn’t it amount to saying that popes always speak infallibly whenmaking an ex cathedra pronouncement –but then going on to insist that if they do utter some error in what purportsto be an ex cathedra pronouncement,it must not really have been an ex cathedra pronouncement after all?

But that isnot in fact what Scheeben says.  What hesays is that if a pope attempts to define excathedra some “notorious heresy,”then in that sort of case it wouldnot amount to a genuine ex cathedraact but rather only to a failed attempt at such an act.  Again, he evidently has in mind cases where apope would deny some doctrine that has manifestlybeen formally defined by the Churchas irreformable doctrine (for example, the teaching that Jesus is the Son ofGod).  But Scheeben does not addresscases where a pope might attempt to define excathedra some heresy that is notnotorious or blatant, but more subtle.  Andhere, one might argue, is where the doctrine of papal infallibility might openitself to falsification even if one accepts the thesis discussed by Scheeben.

Here wouldbe an example.  Suppose a pope were toattempt to make an ex cathedradefinition like one of the following: “Using my full authority as successor ofPeter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define bya solemn and irrevocable decree that the death penalty is intrinsically evil,” or “Using my full authority as successor ofPeter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define bya solemn and irrevocable decree that same-sex sexual activity can be morallyacceptable.” 

Suchpronouncements would not contradict any past formal doctrinal definition – a previous ex cathedra papal pronouncement, a conciliar definition, or thelike.  But they would manifestly contradict the clear and consistent teaching ofscripture and of the ordinary magisterium of the Church for two millennia.  And the Church holds that scripture and theconsistent teaching of the ordinary magisterium cannot be in error on a matterof faith or morals.  Hence, if a popeattempted to make an ex cathedrapronouncement of one of the kinds just described, he would clearly be teachingerror.

Hence, Iwould say, if a pope were to make such a pronouncement, that would falsify the doctrine of papal infallibility.  And I am myself not inclined to agree withthe thesis entertained by Scheeben either. That is to say, I am inclined to say that, if a pope tried to define ex cathedra a “notorious heresy” likethe claim that Jesus was not the Son of God, that too would falsify thedoctrine of papal infallibility.

Since I haveno doubt that that doctrine is true, I would predict that such a thing will neverin fact happen.  The doctrine isfalsifiable in the sense that it makes substantive empirical claims that can betested against experience.  But it haspassed every such test for two millennia, and will continue to do so.

Relatedposts:

Whendo popes teach infallibly?

Popes,heresy, and papal heresy

Whatcounts as magisterial teaching?

TheChurch permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinason St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

Papalfallibility

Theerror and condemnation of Pope Honorius

CanPope Honorius be defended?