Edward Feser's Blog, page 77

Canine theology

In Western culture, the dog is often described as “man’s best friend,” and in Western art, the dog is often used as a symbol for faithfulness.  Suppose, then, that we compare the Catholic faith to a healthy dog.  The analogy might be useful for understanding how other religions appear from the point of view of traditional Catholic theology.  Perhaps non-Catholics will not be amused by the comparisons to follow.  But dog lovers may appreciate them.If Catholicism is like a healthy dog, then Eastern Orthodoxy -- which has valid priestly orders and thus the Eucharist, but which lacks the papacy and rejects the filioque -- might be compared to a dog whose tail has been lopped off.  Protestantism, which lacks not only the papacy, but any valid priestly orders and thus the Eucharist, and departs from Catholicism in many others ways too, is like a dog which has had both its tail and one leg lopped off.   Judaism, which lacks the New Testament, Trinitarianism, belief in the Incarnation, and the rest of distinctively Christian doctrine, but does have a genuinely revealed source of theological knowledge in the Old Testament, is like a dog missing yet another leg.  Religions which at least understand God to be the uncaused cause of the world but which lack any genuine special revelation -- Islam, purely philosophical brands of theism, and arguably the more theistic versions of Hinduism -- are like a dog missing its tail and having only one leg.  (Though insofar as Islam has derived some of its claims about God from Christianity and Judaism, perhaps we can speak in its case of one and a half legs.)

Pantheistic versions of Hinduism, other versions of pantheism, and perhaps Taoism and Confucianism, are on this analogy like a tailless, legless dog.  Agnosticism, perhaps, is like the same dog but with cancer.  Atheism is like the same dog but dead.  Eliminative materialism -- which not only denies any sort of theism or pantheism, but also that there is any such thing as mind, will, or moral value even in the case of human beings, and thus denies that even the image of God exists anywhere in reality -- is like the corpse of that dog after it has been shoved into a wood chipper, like Steve Buscemi in Fargo. 
Where does polytheism fit into this analogy?  That depends.  If it’s a brand of polytheism which affirms the existence of a divine uncaused cause of everything other than himself, but which also claims that there are various lower-case-“g” gods running around… that’s like a dog with fleas.  If it’s a brand of polytheism which denies that there is any such uncaused cause, or even any necessary being with which it identifies the world (as in pantheism)… that’s no dog at all, but just a bunch of fleas. 
Hmm, dogs with fleas, mutilated dogs, cancerous dogs, dead dogs, dogs in wood chippers -- I guess I’ve also offended the dog lovers after all.  Ah well…
Anyway, the point of the analogy, I should make clear, is to represent different levels of knowledge of the divine nature and other kinds of theological knowledge.  I don’t claim for it any relevance at all to the question of whether and how anyone attains salvation.  That’s another issue entirely.  (Perhaps I’d need to use a somewhat different analogy in order to address the question of salvation.  Make the dog a St. Bernard, complete with brandy barrel?)
One application of the analogy is this.  Some who commented on my recent post on the reference of the word “God” seem extremely reluctant to admit that non-Trinitarians can be said genuinely even to refer to the true God when they use that word.  They seem to think it’s an all-or-nothing affair -- either you are talking about the true God with complete knowledge of his nature and perfect accuracy, or you are not even talking about him at all.  That’s like saying that you’ve either got a perfectly healthy and complete dog, or you’ve got no dog at all. 
As I keep pointing out, the critics don’t take this view consistently.  (For example, for some reason, though they’ll allow that Jews and even some pagan philosophers successfully refer to the true God, they deny that Muslims do.)  And as I also keep pointing out, if they wereconsistent, then every single error that even a non-heretical Christian makes about the divine nature would undermine the possibility of successfully referring to God.  (Would they say that even the Eastern Orthodox fail to refer to the true God, on the grounds that they reject the filioque?)  As I also keep having to point out, the question has absolutely nothing to do with whether non-Christians can be saved, with whether other religions exhibit grave moral defects, and so on.  (Successfully referring to God does not entail getting oneself right with Him.)
A dog that is missing a leg or three is seriously defective, but it’s still a dog.  Similarly, a conception of God which is seriously defective does not, merely for that reason, fail even to be a conception of God at all.  Moreover, a dog which is missing all or almost all of its legs is in much worse shape than a dog which is only missing its tail or one leg.  Similarly, to say that an imperfect conception of God can still be a conception of God is by no means to say that every conception is as good as any other.  Some conceptions have, you might say, a leg up on the rest…

Christians, Muslims, and the reference of “God”

The question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God has become the topic du jour in certain parts of the blogosphere.  Our friends Frank Beckwith, Bill Vallicella, Lydia McGrew, Fr. Al Kimel, and Dale Tuggyare among those who have commented.  (Dale has also posted a useful roundupof articles on the controversy.)  Frank, Fr. Kimel, and Dale are among the many commentators who have answered in the affirmative.  Lydia answers in the negative.  While not firmly answering in the negative, Bill argues that the question isn’t as easy to settle as the yea-sayers suppose, as does Peter Leithart at First Things.  However, with one qualification, I would say that the yea-sayers are right.Referring to God

Let me start by rehearsing some points that should be obvious, and which others have already made, but which are crucial for properly framing the question at hand.  First, we need to keep in mind the Fregean point that a difference in sense does not entail a difference in reference.  To use Frege’s famous example, the sense of the expression “the morning star” is different from the sense of the expression “the evening star.”  But these two expressions refer to one and the same thing, viz. the planet Venus.  Similarly, expressions like “the God of the Christians” and “the God of the Muslims” differ in sense, but it doesn’t follow from that alone that they don’t refer to the same God.  By the same token, though the expression “God” is different from the expression “Allah,” it doesn’t follow that God is not Allah, any more than Stan Lee and Stanley Martin Lieber are different men. 
Second, even a speaker’s erroneous beliefs don’t entail that he is not referring to the same thing that speakers with correct beliefs are referring to.  Consider an example made famous by Keith Donnellan.  Suppose you’re at a party and see a man across the room drinking from a martini glass. You say something like “The guy drinking a martini is well-dressed.”  Suppose, however, that the man is not in fact drinking a martini, but only water.  It doesn’t follow that you haven’t really referred to him.  Furthermore, suppose there is a second man, somewhere in the room but unseen by you, who really is drinking a martini and that he is dressed shabbily.  It doesn’t follow that you were, after all, really referring to this second man and saying something false.  Rather, assuming that the first man really is well-dressed, you were referring to that first man and saying something true about him, even though you were wrong about what he is drinking.  And thus you are referring to the very same man as people who know that he is drinking water would be referring to if they said “The guy drinking water from a martini glass is well-dressed.”  Similarly, the fact that Muslims have what Christians regard as a number of erroneous beliefs about God does not by itself entail that Muslims and Christians are not referring to the same thing when they use the expression “God.”
Having said that, it is also true that not anything goes.  As I noted some time back in a post about Peter Geach’s essay “On Worshipping the Right God,” it is possible for someone’s body of beliefs about some thing to be so thoroughly disconnected from reality that he cannot plausibly be said successfully to refer to that thing. 
But exactly when do one’s theological errors cross this line, so that he fails to refer to the true God?  Lydia McGrew says that the reason Christians and Muslims cannot in her view be said to worship the same God is that the differences in the ways they conceive of God are “important” and “sufficiently crucial.”  But this is, I think, too vague to be helpful.  Suppose someone knows that Plato was the student of Socrates but believes the legend according to which Plato was the son of the god Apollo, and also, for whatever reason, thinks that Plato wrote none of the works attributed to him but instead sold gyros and baklava from a cart in Athens.  Such a person has obviously gotten “important” and indeed “crucial” things wrong, but he hasn’t plausibly thereby failed to refer to Plato.  On the contrary, we know he is wrong in part because we take him to be referring successfully to Plato.  We don’t think: “Oh, he’s really referring to some other guy named ‘Plato,’ not the one who was Socrates’ student.”  We think that he is referring to the very same Plato we do, and for that reason that many of the things he says are importantly wrong, since they aren’t actually true of Plato.
Similarly, it is perfectly coherent to say that Muslims are “importantly” and “crucially” wrong precisely because they are referring to the very same thing Christians are when they use the word “God,” and that they go on to make erroneous claims about this referent.  That the errors are “important” or “crucial” is not by itself sufficient to prevent successful reference.  And since Muslims worship the referent in question, it follows that it also is not by itself sufficient to prevent them from worshipping the same God as Christians.
Even errors concerning God’s Trinitarian nature are not per se sufficient to prevent successful reference.  Abraham and Moses were not Trinitarians, but no Christian can deny that they referred to, and worshiped, the same God Christians do.  It might be objected that though they were not Trinitarians, this is only because they did not even knowabout the doctrine of the Trinity, whereas Muslims do know about it and positively reject it.  But this is irrelevant.  From the beginning of the history of the Church, Christians did not accuse others of worshipping a false God merely because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.  For example, those Jews who rejected the claim that Jesus was the incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity were not accused by the early Church of worshipping a false God.  Nor were heretics generally accused of this.  For example, at least some Arian baptisms were considered valid because of the Arians’ use of the Trinitarian baptismal formula, despite the fact that Arians held to a heretical understanding of the divine Persons.  These baptisms could not have been considered valid had the Arian understanding been so radically deficient that “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” failed to refer to the divine Persons at all, but instead referred to false deities.
Failure of reference
This brings me to an example which does involve error of a sort sufficient to make successful reference to the true God doubtful.  In the post on Geach linked to above, I cited the 2001 decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Mormon baptisms are not valid even though they seem at first glance to make use of the correct Trinitarian formula.  The reason for the decision is that the Mormon conception of God is so radically different from the Catholic one that it is doubtful that the words truly invoke the Trinity.  It is not Trinitarianism per se that is the issue, though, but rather the radical anthropomorphism of the Mormon conception of God.  As an article in L'Osservatore Romano summarized the problem at the time:
[T]he Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are not the three persons in which subsists the one Godhead, but three gods who form one divinity. One is different from the other, even though they exist in perfect harmony… The very word divinity has only a functional, not a substantial content, because the divinity originates when the three gods decided to unite and form the divinity to bring about human salvation… This divinity and man share the same nature and they are substantially equal.  God the Father is an exalted man, native of another planet, who has acquired his divine status through a death similar to that of human beings, the necessary way to divinization… God the Father has relatives and this is explained by the doctrine of infinite regression of the gods who initially were mortal… God the Father has a wife, the Heavenly Mother, with whom he shares the responsibility of creation.  They procreate sons in the spiritual world.  Their firstborn is Jesus Christ, equal to all men, who has acquired his divinity in a pre-mortal existence.  Even the Holy Spirit is the son of heavenly parents.  The Son and the Holy Spirit were procreated after the beginning of the creation of the world known to us… Four gods are directly responsible for the universe, three of whom have established a covenant and thus form the divinity.
As is easily seen, to the similarity of titles there does not correspond in any way a doctrinal content which can lead to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The words Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have for the Mormons a meaning totally different from the Christian meaning. The differences are so great that one cannot even consider that this doctrine is a heresy which emerged out of a false understanding of the Christian doctrine. The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix. We do not find ourselves, therefore, before the case of the validity of Baptism administered by heretics, affirmed already from the first Christian centuries, nor of Baptism conferred in non-Catholic ecclesial communities…
End quote.  The Mormon conception of deity, then, makes of God something essentially creaturelyand finite, something which lacks the absolute metaphysical ultimacy that is definitive of God in Catholic theology and in classical theism more generally.  Even Arianism does not do that, despite its grave Trinitarian errors.  To be sure, Arianism makes of the second Person of the Trinity a creature, but it does not confuse divinity as suchwith something creaturely.  On the contrary, because it affirms the full divinity and non-creaturely nature of the Father, it mistakenly supposes that it must deny the full divinity of the Son.  It gets the notion of divinity as such right, and merely applies it in a mistaken way.  Mormons, by contrast, get divinity as suchfundamentally wrong.  Hence their usage of “God” is arguably merely verbally similar to that of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, et al.  They can plausibly be held not really to be referring to the same thing as the latter, and thus not worshipping the same God as the latter.
Now, say what you will about Islam, it does notmake of God something essentially creaturely.  That God is absolutely metaphysically ultimate, is that from which all else derives, that which not only does not have but could not in principle have had a cause of his own, etc. is something Muslim theology understands clearly.  Hence from a Christian point of view Muslims clearly must be regarded as like Jews and Arians rather than like Mormons.  They are in error about the Trinity, but not in error about divinity as such. 
Now, being absolutely metaphysically ultimate, being that from which all else derives, being that which does not have and in principle could not have a cause of its own, etc. -- in short, being what classical theism says God essentially is -- is, I would say, what is key to determining whether someone’s use of “God” plausibly refers to the true God.  If someone affirms these things of God, then there is at least a strong presumption in favor of the conclusion that he is referring to, and thus worshipping, the true God, even if he also says some seriously mistaken things about God.  If someone does not affirm these things of God, then there is at least serious doubt about whether he is referring to and worshipping the true God.  And if someone positively denies these things, then there is a strong presumption that he is not referring to or worshipping the true God.  As Richard Gale once wrote:
The character played by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront said that he could have been a contender, even the champion; but it would be a violation of the meaning of God for him to have said that he could have been God or for God to say that he might have been a two-bit enforcer for the mob.  (On the Nature and Existence of God, p. 5)
Anything that could have been a two-bit enforcer for the mob could not possibly be God.  And anything that is less than metaphysically ultimate, or which is not the source of all things other than himself, or which could have had a cause of his own, could not possibly be God.  If it turned out that what we’d been calling “God” was something which is less than metaphysically ultimate, had a cause of his own, etc., it wouldn’t follow that God really is all these things after all.  Rather, what would follow is that there really isn’t a God after all.
Trinitarianism and reference
But shouldn’t a Christian hold that some reference to the Trinity or to the divinity of Jesus is also at least necessary, even if not sufficient, for successful reference to the true God?  Doesn’t that follow from the fact that being Trinitarian is, from a Christian point of view, also essential to God?   No, that doesn’t follow at all, and any Christian who says otherwise will, if he stops and thinks carefully about it, see that he doesn’t really believe that it follows.  Again, Christians don’t deny that Abraham and Moses, or modern Jews, or Arians and other heretics, refer to and worship the same God as orthodox Christians, despite the fact that these people do not affirm the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus. 
Or consider the following scenario.  Suppose there is a cause of everything other than himself who is one, eternal, immaterial, necessary, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, etc.  But suppose also that it turned out that the Resurrection of Jesus never occurred, that the apostles perpetrated a hoax, etc.  Would this be a scenario in which atheism turns out to be true?  Of course not, and no Christian would say so.  It would be a scenario in which God exists but did not become incarnate in Jesus, did not cause the Church to be founded, etc.
Or consider another scenario.  Suppose it turned out that there is no such thing as a cause of everything other than himself who is one, eternal, immaterial, necessary, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, etc.  But suppose also that there really was a powerful being who sent Moses to deliver the Law to Israel, who sired Jesus and sent him as a prophet, who imparted preternatural powers to him and to the apostles so that they might found a Church, etc.  But suppose that this powerful being was an extraterrestrial and that the events recorded in the Bible were all caused in something like the way Erich von Däniken describes in Chariots of the Gods .  Suppose this extraterrestrial called himself “the Father” and that he had two lieutenants who called themselves “the Son” and “the Holy Spirit.”  Would this be a scenario in which Christian theism turns out to be true?  Of course not, and (I hope!) no Christian would say so.  It would be a scenario in which atheism is true. 
Notice that the first scenario is metaphysically possible even though God is necessarily a Trinity.  For even though God is a Trinity, he could have refrained from becoming incarnate in Jesus, could have refrained from causing the Church to be founded, could have refrained from revealing his Trinitarian nature to us, etc.  Even on the first scenario, God would (the Christian must affirm) be Trinitarian, but we would not know this about him.  Yet this would not prevent us from successfully referring to him or worshipping him.
Now, the (first, atheistic part of the) second scenario is. I would say, not in fact metaphysically possible (even if it is epistemically possible -- that is, we could find ourselves in a situation where we falsely believe that the scenario holds).  The reason it is not metaphysically possible is that it could not turn out (or so I would argue) that there is no such thing as a cause of everything other than himself who is one, eternal, immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, etc.  God, if he exists at all, exists necessarily rather than contingently.  Atheism, if false, is necessarily false rather than merely contingently false.  But this has nothing to do with Trinitarianism per se.  And that is true even though God is essentially Trinitarian.  For it is not by virtue of knowing that God is a Trinity that we know that, if he exists, then he exists necessarily rather than contingently.  Rather, it is by virtue of knowing that he is pure actuality, that he is subsistent being itself, that he is absolutely simple or non-composite, etc., that we know that, if he exists, then he exists necessarily rather than contingently. 
What all this shows is that we need to distinguish between how God has to be and how we have to conceptualize God.  What the doctrine of the Trinity entails is that God could not possibly be other than three divine Persons in one substance.  But it does not entail that we cannot conceptualize God other than as three divine Persons in one substance.  To suppose that, because the doctrine of the Trinity entails the former, it must also entail the latter, is to confuse metaphysics with epistemology.
None of this should be surprising given that, as Christianity itself traditionally teaches, the doctrine of the Trinity is not something which human reason could have arrived at on its own, but can be known only via special divine revelation.  We can know that God is Trinitarian only if we first know that he exists and has revealed certain truths (via a prophet, scripture, tradition, or the teachings of the Church).  Naturally, then, we must be able to conceptualize him in a non-Trinitarian way, otherwise we couldn’t ever get to knowledge of the Trinity.   (Note that this does not entail that he could have failed to be Trinitarian.  Again, to suppose otherwise is to confuse metaphysics and epistemology.)
Aquinas on referring to God
As always when looking for philosophical guidance on matters of theology, we cannot do better than to turn to Aquinas.  On reference in general, he writes:
In the significance of names, that from which the name is derived is different sometimes from what it is intended to signify, as for instance, this name "stone" [lapis] is imposed from the fact that it hurts the foot [laedit pedem], but it is not imposed to signify that which hurts the foot, but rather to signify a certain kind of body; otherwise everything that hurts the foot would be a stone… (Summa theologiae I.13.2)
and again:
Whence a name is imposed, and what the name signifies are not always the same thing.  For as we know substance from its properties and operations, so we name substance sometimes for its operation, or its property; e.g. we name the substance of a stone from its act, as for instance that it hurts the foot [laedit pedem]; but still this name is not meant to signify the particular action, but the stone's substance. The things, on the other hand, known to us in themselves, such as heat, cold, whiteness and the like, are not named from other things. Hence as regards such things the meaning of the name and its source are the same. (Summa theologiae I.13.8)
Aquinas’s example of the stone is, unfortunately, not as clear to modern readers of English as it would have been to his contemporaries.  The idea is that the etymology of lapis (“stone”) derived (so Aquinas wrongly supposed) from its hurting the foot (when it is dropped on the foot, say, or when the foot kicks it).  The literal meaning of lapis (again, so Aquinas supposed) is “that which hurts the foot,” but what we intend to signify thereby is not just any old thing which might hurt the foot -- dropped hammers, bear traps, clumsy dance partners, etc -- but rather stones, specifically.  A modern example might be “housefly.”  What we intend to signify by this expression is not any old thing which might fly around the house -- moths, escaped parakeets, the remote-controlled toy helicopter my youngest son got for Christmas, etc. -- but rather a certain specific kind of insect.
Now, what Aquinas is saying is that in some cases, we refer to things by way of some property they have, or some contingent characteristic they have, or some effect they cause, rather than by way of their essence.  To hurt the foot is not the essence of stone, even if we refer to stones as “that which hurts the foot,” and flying around the house is not the essence of houseflies, even if we call them “houseflies.”  What we intend to refer to by “that which hurts the foot” is whatever has the essence of stone, and what we intend to refer to by “housefly” is whatever has the essence of a housefly.  There is a distinction to be drawn in these cases between that by virtue of which we refer to something and that to which we refer.  (As Christopher Martin notes in the chapter on reference in his book Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations , here Aquinas anticipated a distinction Saul Kripke makes in Naming and Necessity .) 
In other cases, though, we refer to a thing by virtue of its essence.  Aquinas gives heat, cold, and whiteness as examples, and (as Martin also notes) the use Kripke makes in Naming and Necessity of the example of “pain” might be similar to the point Aquinas is making.  Kripke’s idea is that “pain” refers to the sort of sensation we associate with pain, and that the essence of pain just is to be a sensation of that sort.  The sensation is not something that merely follows from pain or is contingently associated with pain.  Presumably Aquinas was saying something similar about heat, cold, and whiteness -- e.g. that being white not only involves having a visual appearance of a certain sort but that this is the essence of whiteness.  (Aquinas’s examples are bound to be controversial in light of the modern physics of temperature and color, but the specific examples are not essential to the point he is making, which is that sometimes we refer to something by virtue of its essence rather than by virtue of some characteristic or effect it has.)
Now, where God is concerned, in Aquinas’s view we refer to him in the first sort of way rather than the second:
Because therefore God is not known to us in His nature, but is made known to us from His operations or effects, we name Him from these… hence this name "God" is a name of operation so far as relates to the source of its meaning.  For this name is imposed from His universal providence over all things; since all who speak of God intend to name God as exercising providence over all… [T]aken from this operation, this name "God" is imposed to signify the divine nature. (Summa theologiae I.13.8)
The idea is that, in this life, we do not have the immediate knowledge of God, or beatific vision, that those in heaven enjoy.  Our knowledge of God is not like our knowledge of pain (if Kripke is right about that) but rather more like the layman’s knowledge of stone or of a housefly, insofar as the layman knows them only by their effects or contingent characteristics rather than (as a chemist or biologist might) by virtue of their essences.  In particular, we know God as that which has universal providence over all things -- that which creates them, sustains them in being at every moment, imparts to them at every moment their power to operate, and so forth. 
Of course, we also know that God’s nature is Trinitarian, because this fact has been specially revealed to us.  But that does not entail that we have immediate knowledge of that Trinitarian nature, the way we have immediate knowledge of the nature of pain (again, if Kripke is right).  We do nothave such immediate knowledge.  To borrow a distinction made famous by Bertrand Russell, we might say that we know God’s Trinitarian nature only by description, not by acquaintance.  Hence, even given divine revelation, the Christian no less than the non-Christian has to refer to God by way of his effects rather by way of direct knowledge of his essence.  And where the most general of those effects are concerned (e.g. God’s creation and conservation of the world in being, as opposed to his causing of miracles), non-Christians can in principle know those as well as Christians can.  Hence non-Christians can refer to God just as well as Christians can.  As Aquinas writes:
Hence it is evident that a Catholic saying that an idol is not God contradicts the pagan asserting that it is God; because each of them uses this name GOD to signify the true God. For when the pagan says an idol is God, he does not use this name as meaning God in opinion, for he would then speak the truth, as also Catholics sometimes use the name in the sense, as in the Psalm, "All the gods of the Gentiles are demons" (Psalm 95:5)…
Neither a Catholic nor a pagan knows the very nature of God as it is in itself; but each one knows it according to some idea of causality, or excellence, or remotion... So a pagan can take this name "God" in the same way when he says an idol is God, as the Catholic does in saying an idol is not God.  But if anyone should be quite ignorant of God altogether, he could not even name Him... (Summa theologiae I.13.10)
The idea here is that it is precisely becausethe pagan in question, no less than the Catholic, can understand that “God” signifies that which is the cause of the world, etc. that the Catholic and pagan can genuinely disagree about whether a certain idol is God.  If the pagan meant by “God” nothing morethan “this particular idol,” then there would be no disagreement.  That is to say, if the pagan were using the word in this idiosyncratic way (i.e. if, as Aquinas puts it, he were “us[ing] this name as meaning God in [merely the] opinion [of the pagan]”), then he would be speaking the truth if he said “This particular idol is God,” because that would amount to saying nothing more than “This particular idol is this particular idol.”  It is because the pagan means more than that by “God” that the Christian can say: “No, that idol can’t be God, given what you and I both know God to be.”
Now, if even an idolatrous pagan can successfully refer to the true God when he uses the name “God” -- that is to say, he really is talking about God even if he has gravely erroneous beliefs about God -- then obviously Muslims, who are as well aware as any Christian is that God cannot be identified with an idol, can successfully refer to the true God, despite their gravely erroneous rejection of Trinitarianism.  And since they worship that to which they refer, it follows that they worship the true God.
A qualification
As I said at the beginning, while I think it is correct to say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, I would add a qualification to that claim.  The qualification is this.  What I have said in this post applies to Christianity and Islam in the abstract and to Christians and Muslims in general.  But it is nevertheless still possible that there are particular individualChristians and particular individualMuslims whose personal conceptions of God differ in such a way that they do not plausibly worship the same God.  To develop a possible example, let’s consider something else Lydia McGrew says in the post of hers linked to above.  She writes:
Christians believe… that the same Being caused the origins of Judaism -- the promises to Abraham, the Exodus, etc. -- and the origins of Christianity -- the resurrection of Jesus, etc.  In that sense, the Christian says that the God of Abraham is the same entity as the God we worship…  But no Christian should believe that the God whom Jesus represented is the same entity who caused the origins of Islam!  On the contrary, we as Christians should emphatically deny this…  [This] distinguishes what the Christian claims about the relationship of Christianity to Judaism from what the Christian believes about the relationship of Christianity to Islam. The point is not that only a Trinitarian can be in some sense worshiping the true God.  Abraham was not a Trinitarian but was worshiping the true God.  But Abraham, we believe, really was in touch with the true God.  The true God really was the source of Abraham's revelations.  The true God was not the source of Mohammad's.
End quote.  Now, I certainly agree with Lydia that a Christian should not regard Muhammad as having had a genuine revelation from God.  But this fact doesn’t do the work she thinks it does.  She is arguing that Christians and Jews worship the same God even if (she claims) Christians and Muslims do not.  Her argument seems to presuppose that by “God,” Jews mean “the source of Abraham’s revelations, etc.,” Christians mean “the one who raised Jesus from the dead, etc.,” and Muslims mean “the source of Muhammad’s revelations, etc.”  Now if that were all that Jews, Christians, and Muslims respectively meant by “God,” then her argument would have force.  For in that case, since Christians hold that the same God both revealed himself to Abraham, etc. and raised Jesus from the dead, etc., but think that God did not give any revelation to Muhammad, they could not regard their God as the same as what Muslims mean by “God.”  The problem is that that is simply not all that Jews, Christians, and Muslims mean by “God,” at least not most Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  For by “God” they also mean “the uncaused cause of everything other than himself, who is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, etc.”  And because there is this considerable overlap in their conceptions of God, it is possible for them to refer to, and worship, one and the same God despite their disagreements, for the reasons given earlier.
However, suppose that some particular Jew, Christian, or Muslim did use the word “God” in the very narrow way Lydia’s argument presupposes.  Suppose, for example, that some particular Muslim said: “No, actually, I don’t much care about all that other stuff.  What I mean by ‘God’ is ‘the source of Muhammad’s revelations,’ and that’s all I mean by the word, and I would still worship God so understood even if it turned out that this source was not the omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good uncaused cause of the world, but something else.”  In that case, I think you could say that that particular Muslim did not worship the same God that Christians do.
But I think you’d be very hard pressed to find a Muslim who would ever say such a thing, just as I think you’d be very hard pressed to find a Christian who would say that he would still believe the Bible even if it turned out to have been written by one of Erich von Däniken’s extraterrestrials.  But perhaps there are Muslims (and Christians and Jews, for that matter) who are so attached to certain contingent claims about God made by their religion that they would rather give up belief in some essential divine attribute than give up those contingent claims.  In that case there could be the sort of conceptual distance between believers that would entail that they are not worshipping the same God.  So to that extent I would qualify the claim defended in this post.  But the possibility does seem to me fairly remote and academic. 

Goodill on Scholastic Metaphysics and Wittgenstein

In the January 2016 issue of New Blackfriars, David Goodill reviews my book Scholastic Metaphysics .  From the review:
Feser[‘s]... purpose... is in bringing Scholastic metaphysics into conversation with contemporary metaphysics... The contemporary partners Feser chooses to converse with are analytical philosophers...
This engagement with contemporary philosophy ensures that the book is more than just an introduction which rehearses the arguments of others. Feser demonstrates a mastery of both the Scholastic tradition he draws upon and the writings of contemporary thinkers, which he uses to provide telling and insightful analyses of key metaphysical notions...The value of Feser’s book is in its contribution to the[se] debates... and the analytical clarity with which he illuminates contemporary debate by using principles developed in scholastic thought.

While allowing that “inevitably with any work of such broad scope not every perspective can be included, nor can every debate be entered into,” Goodill suggests that there are two issues I might have pursued further.  First, he says:
Feser rejects Wittgenstein’s rejection of metaphysics and his return to the ordinary.  Along with this he also argues that: ‘the Scholastics would not agree that it is to “grammar” that we must look to resolve (or dissolve) metaphysical problems’ (p. 221).  Here Feser stands in opposition to those analytical philosophers who have drawn a line of continuity from Plato through the scholastics to Wittgenstein’s grammatical remarks.  Most notably, G. E. M. Anscombe draws attention to the intimate relationship in Plato between the development of metaphysics and grammar, and argues that Frege and Wittgenstein stand within this tradition.  More recently William Charlton has argued that grammar is central to metaphysics.  An engagement with such views would be helpful in substantiating Feser’s claim that grammar did not figure when the scholastics sought to resolve metaphysical questions.
This is an interesting response to my remarks in the book about Wittgenstein, and I agree that those remarks should be qualified.  So let me do so here.
“Grammar,” in the technical Wittgensteinian sense, has to do with those implicit rules of language which determine the bounds of meaningful usage.  These rules are normative rather than merely descriptive, and a proposition which expresses a rule is therefore to be distinguished from an empirical proposition.  The proposition that stones are material objects would be a “grammatical” proposition in this sense, whereas the proposition that stones can be found in riverbeds would be an empirical proposition.  To deny that stones can be found in riverbeds would be to say something false, but it would nevertheless be to say something perfectly intelligible, something which could have been true.  But to deny that stones are material objects would, in Wittgenstein’s view, not be intelligible.  It would be nonsensical, insofar as the proposition that stones are material objectsis for him partially constitutive of the proper use of the term “stone.”  We know that stones are material objects, not by virtue of empirical investigation (as with the proposition that stones can be found in riverbeds) but rather just by virtue of mastering the use of the word “stone.” 
“Grammatical” rules in this sense are thus like the rules of a game.  To say, in the context of a game of checkers, that a game piece with another stacked on top of it is a King is to give expression to one of the rules of the game.  It is not like saying that player A’s King is on a red square.  Falsely to say the latter (when the King is actually on a black square, say) is to make an empirical mistake.  But to deny that a game piece with another stacked on top of it is a King is not to make an empirical mistake.  It is simply to misunderstand what checkers involves. 
Now, for Wittgenstein, a metaphysical theory like Berkeley’s idealism is like that.  When Berkeley denies that a stone is a material object and says that it is actually a collection of perceptions, he is, in Wittgenstein’s view, making a “grammatical” error.  He is like someone who denies that a checkers game piece with another stacked on top of it is a King.  “Grammar” in the sense of the study of the constitutive rules of language can for the Wittgensteinian thus help us to expose the errors made by bad metaphysical theories.  As Wittgenstein says, “essence is expressed by grammar” and “grammar tells what kind of object anything is” (Philosophical Investigations §§371, 373).
There are at least three ways to read what Wittgenstein is up to here, which I will call the anti-realist, realist, and neither anti-realist nor realistreadings.  They can be described as follows:
1. Anti-realist: On this reading, Wittgensteinian “grammar” merely describes how we happen linguistically and conceptually to “carve up” reality.  In principle, though, we might carve it up in some radically different way.  “Grammar” captures necessary features of reality only in the sense that, giventhe language and conceptual scheme we happen to have, certain ways of describing things are ruled out as nonsensical.  However, our language and conceptual scheme as a whole is contingent, and could in theory be replaced by some alternative and incommensurable language and conceptual scheme.
2. Realist: On this reading, Wittgensteinian “grammar” captures not merely how we happen, contingently, to “carve up” reality, but how reality itself must be.  It tells us not just what is necessarily the case given our conceptual scheme, but what is necessarily the case full stop.  We cannot so much as even make sense of the idea of a radically different and incommensurable conceptual scheme, because we cannot so much as make sense of reality being any different than the rules of “grammar” tell us it is.
3. Neither anti-realist nor realist: On this reading, the anti-realist and realist readings of Wittgenstein are themselves precisely instances of the sort of thing Wittgenstein is trying to overcome.  For both involve a dualism of language and conceptual scheme on the one hand and reality on the other, and disagree merely about whether the former corresponds necessarily to the latter.  But this kind of metaphysical picture is itself a product of what Wittgenstein would regard as “grammatical” confusion.  In our ordinary linguistic usage and “form of life,” the question of whether language and conceptual scheme as a whole “correspond” to reality doesn’t even arise.  Wittgensteinian philosophy is about getting us back to this state of pre-metaphysical innocence (as it were), and not about taking sides on any version of the metaphysical realist/anti-realist dispute.
Now, people who think that Wittgenstein is a kind of relativist, or that his criticisms of various metaphysical theories are a matter of “conceptual analysis” which takes for granted mere “folk” notions which might end up being overthrown by science, are adopting interpretation 1.  But this interpretation, I would say, badly misreads Wittgenstein, and I think most Wittgensteinians would agree that it badly misreads him.
In fact, I think that Wittgenstein and most of his followers intend interpretation 3.  In my view, though, the trouble with interpretation 3 -- or to be more precise, with the position that interpretation 3 rightly attributes to Wittgenstein --  is that it is unstable and tends to collapse into either the position described by interpretation 1 or the position described by interpretation 2.  There is just no such thing as returning to a state of pre-metaphysical innocence (short of a lobotomy, anyway) because metaphysical speculation is not some pathology that arises when language “goes on holiday,” but is rather the natural manifestation of our essence as rational animals.  Give man sufficient time and leisure, and he will become a metaphysician.  The only question is whether he will do it well or badly.
If there is any value in Wittgenstein’s “grammatical” investigations, then -- and I certainly think there is -- then they will in my view have to be construed in terms of interpretation 2.  Now, again, there are good ways and bad ways of doing metaphysics.  I would say that what Wittgenstein was primarily reacting against were some bad ways -- namely, the ways represented by continental rationalist metaphysics, “naturalized” metaphysics of the sort inspired by British empiricism, idealism, Kantianism, etc. -- and that he mistook them for metaphysics as such.  But all these approaches, which share certain key post-Cartesian assumptions, differ greatly from the classical approaches represented by Platonism, Aristotelianism, and the Scholastic thinkers who built on those traditions.
Aristotelianism in particular (and systems which incorporate it, like Thomism) take there to be a profound continuity between common sense and metaphysical speculation.  Metaphysics goes well beyond common sense but it does not subvert it, at least not in any radical way.  This continuity puts Aristotelian metaphysics much closer to Wittgenstein and his concern for ordinary language and the “form of life” it represents than other metaphysical systems are.  Because of this closeness, I think that Aristotelians and Thomists are bound to find useful insights in Wittgenstein and his followers, and that Wittgensteinians are bound to find the work of Aristotelians and Thomists more congenial than that of other metaphysicians.  It is unsurprising, then, that there are thinkers who have drawn inspiration from both traditions (e.g. Anscombe, Anthony Kenny, P.M.S. Hacker).
Now, when I said what I did in Scholastic Metaphysics about Wittgenstein, I had interpretation 3 in mind.  And since that section of the book was not about Wittgenstein per sebut rather about defending Scholastic metaphysics against a certain kind of objection, those remarks sufficed for my purposes.  But they certainly don’t represent the entirety of my views about Wittgenstein, and Goodill is correct that it would be quite wrong to claim that Wittgenstein has nothing to offer the Scholastic. 
Finally, Goodill also writes:
Furthermore, although this is a work in metaphysics, some account of the relationship between metaphysics and logic in scholastic thought would both aid thisHere too I agree with Goodill.  I do briefly touch on such matters at the end of the book, where I discuss analogy, but much more could be said.  Doing so, however, would require treatment of issues in philosophy of language and logic that would go far beyond the aims I had in mind in writing the book; indeed, it would require a book of its own.
There are several issues here to be disentangled.  First there is the general question of the relationship between modern logic and the traditional logic presupposed by older Scholastic writers.  Writers of an earlier generation such as Henry Veatch had something to say about this, but the subject really needs an up-to-date Aristotelian-Thomistic treatment that engages in depth with contemporary analytic philosophy.  (David Oderberg has made a start in his anthology on logician Fred Sommers.)
Second, there is the gigantic topic of Aquinas’s position on the analogical use of language -- how properly to understand it (a matter of dispute among Thomists), the critiques by Scotists and others, and how all this relates to work in contemporary philosophy of language.  Important work on these issues has been done by writers like Joshua Hochschild.
Third, there is the question of how specific Scholastic ideas and arguments in metaphysics reflect distinctive logico-linguistic assumptions.  Gyula Klima has perhaps written more on this subject than any other contemporary philosopher.
What is really needed, though, is book-length work that ties all this together in a systematic way.

Yuletide links

End-of-semester grading, Christmas shopping, and the like leave little time for substantive blogging.  So for the moment I’ll leave the writing to others:
Times Higher Education on the lunatic asylum that is Jerry Coyne’s combox.
Crisis on campus?  The president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University speaks truth to pampered privilege: “This is not a day care. This is a university.”
At Public Discourse: Samuel Gregg on David Bentley Hart and capitalism; and Jeremy Neill argues that the sexual revolution will not last forever.
Traditional logic versus modern logic: What’s the difference?  Martin Cothran explains.  (Also, an older post by Cothran on the same subject.)
Spiked interviews Roger Scruton about politics, marriage and Islam.
The millennials are lost to liberalism, right?  “Not so fast” say Don Devine at The American Conservativeand Jamelle Bouie at Slate.
“A master without a masterpiece”: Woody Allen, according to Stefan Kanfer at City Journal.
After the Synod, what will Pope Francis decide?  At the Catholic Herald, Fr. Raymond de Souza recommends that we listen to what the pope’s friends are saying.  At First Things, Ross Douthat describes the crisis of conservative Catholicism. 
Thomas Pink and Martin Rhonheimer debate religious liberty and how to interpret Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae.
A Q&A with Candace Vogler on virtue, happiness and the meaning of life.
The National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin asks: How Islamic are Islamic terrorists?
At the Boston Globe, Niall Ferguson compares the attack on Paris and the sack of Rome.
Stephen L. Brock’s The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch has recently been published.
Catholic philosopher Dennis Bonnette on Adam and Eve and modern biology.
“Nice ‘n’ Sleazy”: Terry Teachout on Frank Sinatra, at Commentary.
New books reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: Nicholas Jolley’s Locke's Touchy Subjects: Materialism and Immortality ; David Svoboda’s Aquinas on One and Many ; and Hanoch Ben-Yami’s Descartes' Philosophical Revolution: A Reassessment .
Philosophers and frequent co-authors Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum on how to write collaboratively.
It’s been 35 yearssince the release of Steely Dan’s Gaucho-- and since the accidental erasure of the lost, lamented, legendary track “The Second Arrangement,” which now exists only in a demo version or two, along with a recent live version.

Should a Catholic vote for Ben Carson?

During the second Republican presidential candidates debate in September, Ben Carson said that instead of invading Afghanistan after 9/11, President Bush should have used the “bully pulpit” and
declare[d] that within five to 10 years we will become petroleum independent. The moderate Arab states would have been so concerned about that, they would have turned over Osama bin Laden and anybody else you wanted on a silver platter within two weeks.
Frankly, I think this is a completely nutty position.  I can understand why someone would have opposed the invasion of Iraq.  I can understand why someone would have opposed any attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan, or even a prolonged occupation.  But not even a brief punitive strike?  Not even the hunting down of bin Laden and his gang?  That is what justice would call for, not to mention prudence.  And how exactly was Carson’s policy supposed to have worked?  How is Bush supposed to have guaranteed “petroleum independence”?  What exactly is the mechanism by which moderate Arab states would have gotten the Taliban to turn over bin Laden?  “Half baked” is too kind, and I was amazed that this response didn’t hurt Carson with Republican voters more than it did.
But as to why Carson would take such a position, I’m no longer puzzled.  It was only after the debate that I found out that Carson is a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Given his conservatism on moral and religious issues, I imagine he is fairly devout.  Now, Adventists are not necessarily pacifist, but there is a tendency in that direction, and historically they have opted for conscientious objection to military service.  Carson has to my knowledge not publicly linked his position on matters of war to his Adventism, but it is hardly implausible to suspect that there is a connection.  (Note that I am not supposing that all Adventists would necessarily agree with Carson on this issue.  The point is just that his preference for an extremely mild response to 9/11 is the sort that one might expect from someone having the traditional Adventist attitude toward matters of war and military service.) 

If no one has asked him about this, someone should.  Nor could he reasonably object to such a question.  He has famously said that he would oppose a Muslim becoming president.  Hence he implicitly accepts the principle that a candidate’s religious convictions are relevant to deciding whether or not one should vote for him. 
But leave aside questions about war and foreign policy, important though they are especially in light of current events.  There is another aspect of traditional Adventist doctrine which should be of no less concern to Catholic voters considering whether to vote for Carson, and Protestants too. 
Adventism has always put heavy emphasis on biblical prophecy concerning the last days, and ties this closely to its advocacy of observance of the seventh day rather than Sunday.  Its understanding of these subjects has been shaped by the teachings of Ellen G. White, whom Adventists regard as a prophetess.  White taught that the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon” described in chapter 17 of Revelation, that the papacy is the first “beast” described in chapter 13, and that the United States is the second beast of that chapter.  According to White, in the last days the United States will ally itself with the papacy and on its behalf enforce Sunday observance, which, White claims, will constitute the “mark of the beast” of Revelation.  Protestants will be part of this Catholic-led persecution of seventh-day observers.
Lest you think this all too bizarre to be a fair representation of White’s views, and that they must be susceptible of a more moderate interpretation, consider the summary of White’s teaching given by the recently published Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, edited by Denis Fortin and Jerry Moon, two professors at the Adventists’ own Andrews University.  Its article “Babylon in Eschatology” says:
Ellen White agreed with many of the Reformers in declaring that the “Church of Rome” is “the apostate Babylon”… This interpretation was further expanded in 1843-1844 when Adventists left those Protestant churches that had rejected the first angel’s message and regarded them also as Babylon…
Babylon is characterized by corruption and apostasy… Babylon attempts to control the consciences of individuals and to suppress religious liberty.  It seeks to form a universal confederacy of apostate powers and satanic forces… and persecutes God’s remnant…
[S]he included in Babylon both the Church of Rome… and lamblike Protestantism…
In its article on the “Mark of the Beast,” the Encyclopediasays that:
[White] held that the Sunday legislation that will bring on the mark of the beast will be initiated by the United States, whose example will then be followed by other nations of the world.
And in its article on the “Roman Catholic Church,” it reports:
[White] understood Catholicism as a static institution and further explained how, in spite of showing good will toward Protestants, it will never change… She also expressed concern that Roman Catholicism in America will ultimately attempt to control governments and people’s consciences, as it once did by deceiving Protestants into believing that it has changed.  Hence both Roman Catholicism and an apostatized Protestantism will “clasp hands” “in trampling on the rights of conscience”…
She also makes a distinction between the Catholic Church as a system and individual Roman Catholic believers… Repeatedly she emphasizes that there are many conscientious Christians in the Roman Catholic Church… and that Adventists should avoid antagonizing Catholics by making harsh comments in publications and public meetings…
As these last remarks indicate, White advocated taking a soft rhetorical tone in public and with individual Catholics, but also thought that what she regarded as the essentially satanic character of the Catholic Church as an institution would never change, no matter how gently the Church packaged its own teaching.  Changes to the Catholic Church could never be more than cosmetic. 
White is very clear about all of this in her book TheGreat Controversy , which is worth quoting at some length:
To secure worldly gains and honors, the church was led to seek the favor and support of the great men of earth; and having thus rejected Christ, she was induced to yield allegiance to the representative of Satan -- the bishop of Rome…
[T]he pope… demands the homage of all men. The same claim urged by Satan in the wilderness of temptation, is still urged by him through the Church of Rome, and vast numbers are ready to yield him homage. (p. 50)
[A] movement to enforce Sunday observance is fast gaining ground.
Marvelous in her shrewdness and cunning is the Roman Church.  She can read what is to be. She bides her time, seeing that the Protestant churches are paying her homage in their acceptance of the false sabbath, and that they are preparing to enforce it by the very means which she herself employed in bygone days…  
Its millions of communicants, in every country on the globe, are instructed to hold themselves as bound in allegiance to the pope.  Whatever their nationality or their government, they are to regard the authority of the church as above all other. Though they may take the oath pledging their loyalty to the state, yet back of this lies the vow of obedience to Rome, absolving them from every pledge inimical to her interests…
And let it be remembered, it is the boast of Rome that she never changes. The principles of Gregory VII and Innocent III are still the principles of the Roman Catholic Church.  And had she but the power, she would put them in practice with as much vigor now as in past centuries… Rome is aiming to re-establish her power, to recover her lost supremacy.  Let the principle once be established in the United States, that the church may employ or control the power of the state; that religious observances may be enforced by secular laws; in short, that the authority of church and state is to dominate the conscience, and the triumph of Rome in this country is assured.
God’s word has given warning of the impending danger; let this be unheeded, and the Protestant world will learn what the purposes of Rome really are, only when it is too late to escape the snare. She is silently growing into power… She is piling up her lofty and massive structures, in the secret recesses of which her former persecutions will be repeated. Stealthily and unsuspectedly she is strengthening her forces to further her own ends when the time shall come for her to strike… (pp. 580-81)
End quote.  Now, contemporary Protestants are used to regarding talk of the papacy as the Antichrist and of the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon as a throwback to the 16thcentury.  Many of them don’t take it seriously, and find it hard to believe that anyone else still does.  But Adventism, a sect which is historically much more recent and far from the mainstream of Protestantism, takes it very seriously.  And while -- following White’s advice -- Adventists these days sometimes take a softer rhetorical tone when publicly discussing Catholicism, the substance of their view does not seem to have changed.  On its official website, in a statement on its attitude toward Catholicism, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church assures the reader that it “reject[s] bigotry,” but also says:
We cannot erase or ignore the historical record of serious intolerance and even persecution on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic system of church governance, based on extra-biblical teachings such as papal primacy, resulted in severe abuses of religious freedom as the church was allied with the state.
Seventh-day Adventists are convinced of the validity of our prophetic views, according to which humanity now lives close to the end of time. Adventists believe, on the basis of biblical predictions, that just prior to the second coming of Christ this earth will experience a period of unprecedented turmoil, with the seventh-day Sabbath as a focal point. In that context, we expect that world religions -- including the major Christian bodies as key players -- will align themselves with the forces in opposition to God and to the Sabbath. Once again the union of church and state will result in widespread religious oppression.
It is not difficult to see in this merely a more gingerly formulated summary of the basic teaching of White’s The Great Controversyquoted above.
A recent article in Adventist Review, a magazine published by the church, argues that the style and substance of Pope Francis and other recent popes should not lead Adventists to give up their traditional views about Catholicism and the papacy.  In fact, says the author, a kinder, gentler papal approach is exactly what we should expect of the beast of Revelation, who deceives precisely by lulling people into trusting him.  He also cites Ellen G. White’s warnings about how “poverty and humility” can mask a “studied aim to secure wealth and power… and the re-establishment of the papal supremacy.”  Another Adventist writer proposes that “Pope Francis represents the first beast of Revelation… whereas President Obama represents the second beast,” and insinuates that Obama might aid Francis in imposing Sunday observance (!)
Needless to say, this is crackpot stuff, and the two articles just quoted from, which seek to uphold traditional Adventist teaching on this subject, indicate that there are these days some Adventists who doubt it.  But it is so deeply woven into Adventist theology that it is hard to see how a consistent Adventist coulddoubt it.  Says the writer of the first article: “If we actually want to revise our interpretation on this point, we would have to dump our complete understanding of end-time events.”  And as a Catholic Answers article on Adventism notes:
There is a "moderate" wing of Adventism that is more open to Catholics as individuals (though still retaining White’s views concerning the papacy). In fact, White was willing to concede that --in the here and now (before the end times) -- some Catholics are saved. She wrote that "there are now true Christians in every church, not excepting the Roman Catholic communion…”
Unfortunately, this one tolerant statement is embedded in hundreds of hostile statements.  While this aspect of her teaching can be played up by her more moderate followers, it is difficult for them to do so, because the whole Adventist milieu in which they exist is anti-Catholic. The group is an eschatology sect, and its central eschatological teaching, other than Christ’s Second Coming, is that the Second Coming will be preceded by a period in which the papacy will enforce Sunday worship on the world.  Everyone who does not accept the papacy’s Sunday worship will be killed; and everyone who does accept the papacy’s Sunday worship will be destroyed by God.
End quote.  Whether and how Adventists might modify their traditional position, though, what Catholic voters need to ask is whether Ben Carson believes all this stuff.  Does he regard the pope as “the representative of Satan” and the first beast of Revelation?  Does he believe that the “Catholic Church as a system” is the “Whore of Babylon”?  Does he believe that the United States will be the second beast of Revelation and that it will at “the end of time” ally itself with the papacy to enforce Sunday observance and otherwise persecute true Christians?  And does he believe that “humanity now lives close to the end of time”?  Does he believe that Catholics, especially the most devout Catholics, “though they may take the oath pledging their loyalty to the state, yet back of this [follow a] vow of obedience to Rome, absolving them from every pledge inimical to her interests”?
Someone should ask Carson these questions, and demand that he answer them directly.  Carson has been asked about his Adventism on at least one occasion.  On the subject of Catholicism, he said: “I love Catholics. My best friend is Catholic. I have several honorary degrees from Catholic universities.”  But that does not answer the relevant questions at all, since as noted above, Adventist doctrine has to do with the Catholic Church as an institution.  That Carson speaks well of individual Catholics, as even White herself did, is no evidence whatsoever that he does not buy into the traditional Adventist doctrines about the “Whore of Babylon,” the beast, etc.  How do we know that Carson isn’t merely following White’s advice to accentuate the positive when making public statements about Catholicism?
Carson was a bit more direct when asked about the traditional Adventist understanding of the last days.  He said:
I think there’s a wide variety of interpretations of that. There’s a lot of persecution of Christians going on already in other parts of world. And some people assume that’s going to happen every place. I’m not sure that’s an appropriate assumption… If you look at what’s going on today with persecution of Christians, particularly in the Middle East, I believe that’s really more what’s being talked about.
This is a little better, but still vague and tentative.  Carson was also vague when asked about his views concerning the last days in another interview, in which he answered:
You could guess that we are getting closer to that. You do have people who have a belief system that sees this apocalyptic phenomenon occurring, and that they’re a part of it, and who would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they gain them…
I think we have a chance to certainly do everything that we can to ameliorate the situation, to prevent -- I would always be shooting for peace. You know, I wouldn’t just take a fatalistic view of things.
What Carson ought to do is directly and straightforwardly to answer very specific questions like the ones I put forward above.  Why does this matter?
Let me say first that the reason I think it matters is notbecause views like the ones described above are bound to be “offensive” to Catholics.  There are too many people in public life as it is who whine incessantly about “insensitivity,” and in my view Catholics should not be among them.  To make an issue of Carson’s views about Catholicism merely as a matter of identity politics, hurt feelings, etc. would be a waste of time.
That the views described above are simply nutty is more to the point.  Good judgment is, needless to say, something you want in a president.  If Carson adheres to doctrines like the ones described, that would certainly be evidence that he lacks good judgment.  
But the main point for Catholics is that it is hard to see how a president of the United States who sincerely and deeply believed doctrines like the ones described above could fail to be influenced by those doctrines in a way Catholics should be very concerned about.  If a president seriously believes that the United States is in danger of forming an alliance with the papacy for the purpose of oppressing true Christians (!), and that devout Catholics are bound to follow the papacy in doing so even if they claim loyalty to their country… would such a president even consider appointing a devout Catholic to the Supreme Court, or to any other high office?  If the U.S. government is in tension with the bishops of the Catholic Church -- as it has been in recent years, over the issue of the HHS contraception mandate -- might a president who accepts the doctrines of Ellen G. White not think this is a good thing?  For wouldn’t that make it less likely that the feared oppressive alliance of the United States and the papacy will occur any time soon?   After all, the issue of the HHS contraception mandate more or less affects only the Catholic Church.  Hence mightn’t such a president, when balancing the Adventist concern for religious freedom against the threat to religious freedom he thinks is posed by the Catholic Church, decide that defending the rights of the Catholic Church is not a top priority?  And if such a president seriously believed that we are near the “end of time” and that the papacy will be the gravest threat to true Christians at the end of time, what sort of relations might he have with the Vatican?
Carson has said that for a Muslim to become president, he would “have to reject the tenets of Islam.”  Does Carson reject the tenets of Ellen G. White?  He can hardly blame Catholics for wanting to know.

In Defence of Scholasticism

My article “In Defence of Scholasticism” appears in the 2015 issue of The Venerabile (the cover of which is at left), which is published by the Venerable English College in Rome.  Visit the magazine’s website and consider ordering a copy.  Among the other articles in the issue are a piece on religious liberty by philosopher Thomas Pink and a homily by Cardinal George Pell.  The text of my article, including the editor’s introduction, appears below:Editor's note: Two of the Second Vatican Council's documents dating from 1965 - Gravissimum Educationis, the declaration on Christian education, and Optatam Totius, the decree on priestly training - recommend the doctrine and method of St Thomas Aquinas to the Church. While the former contains an explicit call for "questions... new and current [to be] raised and investigations carefully made according to the example of the doctors of the Church and especially of St Thomas Aquinas" (§10), the latter insists that those training for the priesthood investigate the mysteries of salvation "under the guidance of St Thomas" (§16). As the Church marks the fiftieth anniversary of these conciliar texts, Edward Feser presents a defence of the Scholastic tradition.

Scholasticism is that tradition of thought whose most illustrious representative is St Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) and whose other luminaries include St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), Bl. John Duns Scotus (c.1266-1308), and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), to name only some of the most famous. By no means only a medieval phenomenon, the Scholastic tradition was carried forward in the twentieth century by Neo-Scholastics like Désiré-Joseph Mercier (1851-1926) and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964), and Neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) and Etienne Gilson (1884-1978).
The theological roots of Scholasticism are Augustinian, and this inheritance brought with it a heavy Neo-Platonic philosophical component. However, the philosophical core of the mature Scholastic tradition, at least in its dominant forms, is Aristotelian, with the surviving Neo-Platonic elements being essentially Aristotelianised.
The Scholastic approachScholastic thinkers emphasise a healthy respect for tradition, in two respects. First, they are keen to uphold Catholic orthodoxy. Second, they tend to regard the history of Western thought from the Pre-Socratics through to the medievals as, more or less, progressive. On this picture, Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, the ancient atomists and the other Pre-Socratics introduced most of the key problems and offered erroneous but instructive solutions; Socrates, Plato, and (especially) Aristotle set out at least the outlines of the correct solutions; later thinkers from various traditions - pagans like Plotinus, Christians like Augustine, Jews like Maimonides, and Muslims like Avicenna - built on this foundation and contributed further key insights; and the great Scholastics, such as Aquinas, finally combined these elements in a grand synthesis, preserving what was best, weeding out error, and adding yet further new features of their own. The result was a well worked-out general account of fundamental metaphysical notions such as change, causation, substance, essence, and the like; of lines of argument concerning the existence and nature of God, the immateriality and immortality of the human soul, and the natural law basis of ethics and politics; and, where sacred theology is concerned, an application of these philosophical results to Christian apologetics and to the explication and defence of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the relationship between nature and grace, and so forth.
The history of modern philosophy, on this view, has largely been a gradual unravelling of the fabric of this hard-won achievement, and a return to one or the other of the errors of the Pre-Socratics, whether Parmenides (in the case of Spinoza, say), or Heraclitus (Hume), or the atomists (modern reductionist materialism). The intellectual and moral pathologies of modernity reflect these errors, and their cure requires a recovery of the wisdom of the best classical and medieval thinkers.
It would be a deep mistake, however, to conclude from this that the Scholastic approach is simply dogmatically to reiterate the views of certain favoured writers of the past. As the summary just given itself indicates, the Scholastic attitude is to look for and appropriate truth wherever it is to be found, including a wide variety of non-Christian sources. Nor does the Scholastic suppose that even the greatest thinkers of the past solved every problem, got everything right, or cannot still be improved upon even where they did get things right. The idea is not to keep the tradition frozen in the form it took at some particular point in the past (the thirteenth century, say). The idea is rather that you have to master the tradition before you can improve it, apply it to new and unforeseen problems, and then hand it down to future generations for yet further novel applications and improvements. The Scholastic regards the tradition he inherits as a plant to be cultivated and occasionally pruned, not a fossil to be stuck in a museum display case.
Then there is the heavy emphasis that the Scholastic tradition puts on rational argumentation. It is no good, for the Scholastic - contrary to a common caricature - simply to take a view because Aristotle, or Aquinas, or anyone else happened to hold it. (Aquinas himself famously regarded arguments from human authority as the weakest of all arguments.) One must provide a rational justification, or yield to rival views which do have such a justification. Thus, vigorous disputation has always been a key component of Scholastic method, with arguments from all sides of a particular issue carefully weighed before a position is staked out. And a good Scholastic knows that his own argumentation for that position ought to involve the gathering of evidence from all relevant domains of knowledge, the making of careful distinctions, precision in the use of words, the setting out of explicit lines of reasoning, and adherence to canons of logical inference.
In terms of both its content and its method, then, the Scholastic tradition claims to provide genuine knowledge of a philosophical and theological sort - knowledge which might be systematised and presented in formal treatises, and was so presented in works from Aquinas’s Summa Theologiaedown to the manuals of the Neo-Scholastics. The function of such works is not only to pass on the tradition to future generations of philosophers and theologians, but also to acquaint natural scientists, social scientists, and other academics with the philosophical and theological prolegomena essential for a proper understanding of every other field of inquiry, and to provide the seminarian with the philosophical and theological formation he will need as a priest. The Scholastic manualist thereby aims faithfully to respond to the commission set out in papal documents from Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris to St. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.
Critics of Scholasticism
In the years after Vatican II, however, the Scholastic tradition went into an eclipse from which it is only now starting to emerge. Indeed, that tradition has, among Catholic intellectuals of a certain generation, been routinely denounced - sometimes even by people who are otherwise theologically conservative - with epithets like “Baroque Neo-Scholasticism,” “sawdust Thomism,” and “manualism.” Usually the denunciation is treated as if it were self-evidently correct, with little explanation given of exactly what is wrong with the tradition being denounced. When reasons are given, they are uniformly weak.
Let’s examine them. Recently, Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart rehearsed some of these stock objections, alleging, on the one hand, that the Thomist tradition from the sixteenth century to the twentieth represents “an impoverished early modern distortion of the medieval synthesis.”1 On the other, he assured his readers that:
Thomas was a dynamically original thinker, who today would make as avid a use of Darwin and Bohr as he did of the Aristotelian science of his day; Thomism, by contrast, is a school, which too often clings to its categories with the pertinacity of a drowning man clutching a shard of flotsam.
Notice first the incoherence of these charges. Hart claims that modern Scholastics have “distorted” or departed from the tradition, but also that they dogmatically “cling to” and “clutch” the tradition. So which is it? Such contradictory accusations are very commonly flung at Neo-Scholasticism. On the one hand, Neo-Scholastics are accused of having an inflexible “fortress mentality,” and of being insufficiently sensitive to the concerns of “modern man” or the findings of modern science. On the other hand, they are accused of selling out to modernity in various ways, such as by adopting a modern “Wolffian rationalist” theory of knowledge, or by adopting a “two-tier” conception of nature and grace that allegedly paved the way for modern philosophical naturalism and even atheism.
Neither sort of accusation is just. For one thing, far from sticking their heads in the sand in the face of modern science, the Neo-Scholastics and Thomists of the twentieth century were keen to show how its discoveries are fully compatible with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition (as evidenced by the unjustly neglected works of writers like Vincent Edward Smith, Henry Koren, Andrew van Melsen, James Weisheipl, and William A. Wallace). Nor have modern Scholastics been dogmatic reactionaries in the practical domain. Building on the work of Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, and Bartoloméo de Las Casas, they have argued that Thomistic natural law theory is compatible with individual rights, democracy, and limited government.
The peremptory and sweeping charge that modern Scholastics “distorted” Aquinas is also entirely tendentious and partisan. The usual bases of this charge concern several areas where the interpretation of Aquinas’s views has been a matter of controversy. For example, it is sometimes claimed that Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1539) misinterpreted Aquinas’s teaching on the analogous use of language, and passed this misunderstanding on to the later Thomist tradition. But whether this is so is by no means a settled matter - Cajetan has his defenders to this day - and in any case it hardly marks a dividing line between Neo-Scholastics on the one hand and faithful interpreters of Aquinas on the other. (The late philosopher Ralph McInerny was both a Neo-Scholastic admirer of the manualist tradition anda critic of Cajetan.)
The precise grounds for the accusation of “Wolffian rationalism” are seldom made very clear, but the idea seems to be that Neo-Scholastics have somehow departed from Aquinas’s view that knowledge comes through our sensory experience of the real world, and adopted the modern rationalist tendency to ground knowledge in an order of “essences” grasped a priori. But there is nothing in the work of Neo-Scholastics that entails this. It is true that they have made use of the rationalist’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, according to which all reality is intelligible. But far from being a distortion of Aquinas, this principle is itself implicit in Aquinas, insofar as it follows from Aquinas’s well-known thesis that being (objective reality as it is in itself) and truth (reality as it is known to the mind) are convertible with one another, the same thing looked at from different points of view.
As to the allegation that the Neo-Scholastic understanding of nature and grace paved the way for modern atheism, it is simply aimed at a ludicrous caricature. The charge is that Neo-Scholastics sealed off the “two tiers” of nature and grace in a way that made the former entirely self-contained, so that man has no natural need of God. But this presupposes that the Neo-Scholastic understanding of “nature” is the same as that of the modern philosophical naturalist or materialist, which it most definitely is not. On the contrary, for the Neo-Scholastic, rational demonstration of the existence of God is something of which natural reason is capable, and the knowledge and worship of God is thus part of our natural end. Hence the Neo-Scholastic conception of nature, far from entailing atheism, positively excludes it. It is the conception of nature affirmed by thinkers like Aristotle and Plotinus - pagan theists who regarded the knowledge and service of God as the highest end of human life - and not the desiccated “nature” of a David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Richard Dawkins. What grace adds to nature properly understood is the promise of the supernatural, “face to face” knowledge of God entailed by the beatific vision. And in emphasising the distinction between nature and grace, Neo-Scholastics were concerned, as Pope Pius XII was in Humani Generis, to counter theological doctrines which would “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order” by collapsing grace into nature. A number of important recent works have begun at last to rehabilitate this unjustly maligned aspect of the Scholastic tradition.2
Where matters of ethics are concerned, the Scholastic tradition has been accused of “legalism.” The suggestion is that a law-oriented approach to morality of the sort one finds in Scholastic manuals is a holdover from the nominalism and voluntarism of William of Ockham. Yet law has always been at least a component of a biblically-grounded morality - Moses was hardly an Ockhamite! - and there is bound to be a “legal” aspect to any workable system of ethics. If there are objective moral principles, we need to know how to apply them to concrete circumstances, and working this out carefully and systematically entails that casuistry will be a part of any serious moral theory. There is also the fact that the priests for whom the ethics manuals were largely written needed guidance in the confessional, as did their penitents. That means, inevitably, a way of telling mortal sin from venial sin - grave matter from light matter, sufficient knowledge from insufficient, sufficient consent from insufficient, in all the areas of human life where we find ourselves tempted. This too inevitably gives rise to a system of casuistry. Hence, it is not Ockhamism or “legalism” that leads us to the approach of the manualists, but rather the very nature of the moral life, and also the Catholic sacrament of penance.
Then there are complaints to the effect that the Scholastic approach is “ahistorical” and “out of date.” Such assertions are ambiguous. Is it being claimed that truth is relative to historical epoch and that in the current era Scholastic claims no longer hold true? If so, then this merely begs the question against the Scholastic, who would deny that truth is or could be relative in this way. Is it merely being claimed instead that Scholastic ideas are no longer as widely accepted as they once were? If so, what does that matter? What counts is whether the ideas in question are true. If they are not true, then that would be enough reason to reject them, and their popularity or lack thereof would be irrelevant. But if they are true, then we ought to defend and promote them, and if contemporary intellectuals do not accept them, then it is their views which ought to change, not those of the Scholastic.
Moreover, the claim that Scholastic ideas are “out of date” in this latter sense is itself out of date. Recent decades have seen a revival of interest in Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas within mainstream academic philosophy. While Aristotelianism and Thomism are still definitely minority positions, they are getting a hearing in contemporary philosophy in a way they have not been since the 1950s.3
Finally, it is often remarked that Scholastic works are too “dry” and “ready-made” in their systematicity, lacking sufficient excitement and creativity. (This alleged dryness is the source of the “sawdust Thomism” epithet.) But the complaint is frivolous. Again, what ultimately matters is whether what such works have to say is true, and whether the ideas they convey really are related to one another in the logical and systematic way in which they are presented. No one objects to textbooks of chemistry or history on the grounds that their orderly and systematic presentation of the facts they discuss makes them too “dry” and “ready-made.” How can anyone who believes the Catholic Faith to be true object to there being manuals or textbooks which present the Church’s doctrine in a similarly systematic way?
The need for Scholasticism
In fact, such manuals are crucially needed, now more than ever. As Catholic theologian R. R. Reno has written regarding the abandonment of Scholastic manuals in recent decades:
The Church is not a community of independent scholars, each pursuing individualised syntheses, however important or enriching these projects might be. The Church needs teachers and priests to build up the faithful. To do this work effectively, the Church needs theologians committed to developing and sustaining a standard theology, a common pattern of thought, a widely used framework for integrating and explaining doctrine…
[T]he Church can no more function like a debating society that happens to meet on Sunday mornings, forever entertaining new hypotheses, than a physics professor can give over the classroom to eager students who want to make progress by way of freewheeling discussions… [B]elievers need a baseline, a communally recognised theology, in order to have an intellectually sophisticated grasp of the truth of the faith…
The collapse of neoscholasticism has not led to [a] new and fuller vision... We need to recover the systematic clarity and comprehensiveness of the neoscholastic synthesis, rightly modified and altered by [later] insights… We need good textbooks… in order to develop an intellectually sophisticated faith.4   
It is no secret that catechesis has collapsed in many parts of the Church, and that outside the Church its doctrines are often dismissed as a hodgepodge of irrational prejudices. The neglect of the Scholastic tradition is a large part of what got us into this mess. Its rediscovery will help to get us out of it.
Endnotes
1 David Bentley Hart, "Romans 8:19-22", First Things, June/July 2015.
2 See e.g. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010); Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010); and Bernard Mulcahy, Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henri de Lubac: Not Everything is Grace (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).
3 See e.g. John J. Haldane, ed., Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002); C. Paterson and M.S. Pugh, eds., Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Tuomas E. Tahko, ed., Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Ruth Groff and John Greco, eds., Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism (London: Routledge, 2013); Daniel D. Novotný and Lukáš Novák, eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics(London: Routledge, 2014).
4 R. R. Reno, "Theology After the Revolution", First Things, May 2007.

The Telegraph on Scholastic Metaphysics

At The Daily Telegraph, Christopher Howse kindly calls attention to my book Scholastic Metaphysics , which he describes as follows:

A brilliant new defence of metaphysics… [I]t is a lively read.  The author is Edward Feser, and in 2011 Sir Anthony [Kenny] gave something of a rave review in the TLS to an earlier book by him, The Last Superstition...

Papal fallibility (Updated)

Catholic doctrine on the teaching authority of the pope is pretty clear, but lots of people badly misunderstand it.  A non-Catholic friend of mine recently asked me whether the pope could in theory reverse the Church’s teaching about homosexuality.  Said my friend: “He could just make an ex cathedra declaration to that effect, couldn’t he?”  Well, no, he couldn’t.  That is simply not at all how it works.  Some people think that Catholic teaching is that a pope is infallible not only when making ex cathedra declarations, but in everything he does and says.  That is also simply not the case.  Catholic doctrine allows that popes can make grave mistakes, even mistakes that touch on doctrinal matters in certain ways.Many Catholics know all this, but they often misunderstand papal authority in yet other ways.  Some think that a Catholic is obliged to accept the teaching of a pope only when that teaching is put forward by him as infallible.  That too is not the case.  Contrary to this “minimalist” view, there is much that Catholics have to assent to even though it is not put forward as infallible.  Others think that a Catholic is obliged to agree more or less with every view or decision of a pope regarding matters of theology, philosophy, politics, etc. even when it is not put forward as infallible.  And that too is not the case.  Contrary to this “maximalist” view, there is much to which a Catholic need give only respectful consideration, but not necessarily assent.  As always, Catholic doctrine is balanced, a mean between extremes -- in this case, between these minimalist and maximalist extremes.  But it is also nuanced, and to understand it we need to make some distinctions that are too often ignored.

Papal infallibility
First let’s get clear about infallibility.  The First Vatican Council taught that:
[W]hen the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.  Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
What the Council is describing here is the pope’s exercise of what is called his “extraordinary Magisterium,” as opposed to his “ordinary Magisterium” or everyday teaching activity in the form of homilies, encyclicals, etc.  The passage identifies several conditions for the exercise of this extraordinary Magisterium.  First, the pope must appeal to his supreme teaching authority as the successor of Peter, as opposed to speaking merely as a private theologian, or making off-the-cuff remarks, or the like.  An exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium would, accordingly, typically involve some formal and solemn declaration.  Second, he must be addressing some matter of doctrine concerning faith or morals.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to purely scientific questions such as how many elements are in the periodic table, political questions such as whether a certain proposed piece of legislation is a good idea, etc.  Third, he must be “defining” some doctrine in the sense of putting it forward as official teaching that is binding on the entire Church.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to teaching that concerns merely local or contingent circumstances.
But there is a further, crucial condition on such ex cathedra statements.  The First Vatican Council emphasized it in a passage that comes several paragraphs before the one quoted above:
For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.
Papal teaching, then, including exercises of the extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching.  Nor can it introduce utter novelties.  Popes have authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received.  They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught.  But they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth. 
Along the same lines, the Second Vatican Council taught, in Dei Verbum , that the Church cannot teach contrary to Scripture:
[T]he living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully…
Pope Benedict XVI put the point as follows, in a homily of May 7, 2005:
The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…
The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.
Though the pope’s exercise of his ordinary Magisterium is not always infallible, it can be under certain circumstances.  In particular, it is infallible when the pope officially reaffirms something that was already part of the Church’s infallible teaching on the basis of Scripture and Tradition.  For example, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , Pope St. John Paul II reaffirmed traditional teaching to the effect that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thereafter confirmed that this teaching is to be regarded as infallible.  The reason it is to be regarded as infallible is not that the papal document in question constituted an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium, but rather because of the teaching’s status as part of the constant and universal doctrine of the Church. 
Now, what makes some constant and universal teaching of the Churchinfallible is itself an important topic, but one that is beyond the scope of this post, which is concerned with the teaching authority of the pope, specifically.  Suffice it to emphasize for present purposes that, precisely because exercises of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium are infallible when they merely reaffirm the Church’s own constant and universal teaching, they too do not involve either the reversal of past teaching or the addition of some novelty. 
Papal infallibility, then, is not some magical power by which a pope can transform any old thing he wishes into a truth that all are bound to accept.  It is an extension of the infallibility of the preexisting body of doctrine that it is his job to safeguard, and thus must always be exercised in continuity with that body of doctrine.  Naturally, then, the pope would not be speaking infallibly if he taught something that either had no basis in Scripture, Tradition, or previous magisterial teaching, or contradicted those sources of doctrine.  If it had no such basis, it could be mistaken, and if it contradicted those sources of doctrine, it would be mistaken. 
It is very rare, however, that a pope says something even in his ordinary Magisterium that is manifestly either a sheer novelty or in conflict with existing doctrine.  Popes know that their job is to preserve and apply Catholic teaching, and thus when they say something that isn’t just a straightforward reiteration of preexisting doctrine, they are typically trying to draw out the implications of existing doctrine, to resolve some ambiguity in it, to apply the doctrine to new circumstances, or the like.  If there is some deficiency in such statements, then, it will typically be subtle and take some careful thinking to identify and correct.  There is in Catholic doctrine, therefore, a presumption in favor of what a pope says even in his ordinary non-infallible Magisterium, even if it is a presumption which can be overridden.  Hence the default position for any Catholic must be to assent to such non-infallible teaching.  Or at least that is the default position where that teaching concerns matters of principlevis-à-vis faith and morals -- as opposed to application of principle to contingent concrete circumstances, where judgments about such circumstances are of their nature beyond the special competence of the pope.
Five categories of magisterial statement
So, when must a Catholic assent to some non-infallible papal statement?  When might a Catholic disagree with such a statement?  This is a subject greatly clarified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) during his time as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  Perhaps the most important document in this connection is the 1990 instruction Donum Veritatis: On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , though there are also other relevant statements.  Cardinal Avery Dulles has suggested that one can identify four general categories of magisterial statement in Donum Veritatis.  (See Dulles’s essay “The Magisterium and Theological Dissent” in The Craft of Theology .  Cf. also chapter 7 of Dulles’s book Magisterium .)  However, as other statements from Ratzinger indicate, Dulles’s fourth category appears to lump together statements with two different degrees of authority.  When these are distinguished, it is clear that there are really five general categories of magisterial statement.  They are as follows:
1. Statements which definitively put forward divinely revealed truths, or dogmas in the strict sense.  Examples would be the Christological dogmas, the doctrine of original sin, the grave immorality of directly and voluntarily killing an innocent human being, and so forth.  As Dulles notes, according to Catholic teaching, statements in this category must be affirmed by every Catholic with “divine and Catholic faith.”  No legitimate disagreement is possible.
2. Statements which definitively put forward truths which are not revealed, but closely connected with revealed truths.  Examples would be moral teachings such as the immorality of euthanasia, and the teaching that priestly ordination is reserved only to men.  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be “firmly accepted and held” by all Catholics.  Here too, legitimate disagreement is not possible.
3. Statements which in a non-definitive but obligatory way clarify revealed truths.  Dulles suggests that “the teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal definitions, falls predominantly into this category” (The Craft of Theology, p. 110).  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be accepted by Catholics with “religious submission of will and intellect.”  Given their non-definitive character, however, the assent due to such statements is not of the absolute kind owed to statements of categories 1 and 2.  The default position is to assent to them, but it is in principle possible that the very strong presumption in their favor can be overridden.  Donum Veritatissays:
The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable must be the rule.  It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.
For this reason,
the possibility cannot be excluded that tensions may arise between the theologian and the Magisterium… If tensions do not spring from hostile and contrary feelings, they can become a dynamic factor, a stimulus to both the Magisterium and theologians to fulfill their respective roles while practicing dialogue…
[A theologian’s] objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments.
However, Donum Veritatis also makes it clear that in the normal case even a justifiably doubtful theologian’s further investigations into the matter will eventually result in assent.  The burden of proof is on the doubting theologian to justify his non-assent, and
Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable.  Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine.
Nor, as Donum Veritatis makes clear, could theologians legitimately express their disagreement in these cases with a polemical spirit, or apply political pressure tactics in order to influence the Magisterium, or set themselves up as a counter-Magisterium.
As William May has pointed out, the most plausible scenario in which “theologians [might] raise questions of this kind [would be] when they can appeal to other magisterial teachings that are more certainly and definitively taught with which they think the teaching questioned is incompatible” (An Introduction to Moral Theology, p. 242). 
4. Statements of a prudential sort which require external obedience but not interior assent.  As Dulles notes (Magisterium, p. 94), Cardinal Ratzinger gave as an example of this sort of statement the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 20thcentury.  Dulles suggests that the Church’s caution about accepting heliocentrism in the 17th century would be another example.  These sorts of statements are “prudential” insofar as they are attempts prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances, such as the state of scientific knowledge at a particular point in history.  And there is no guarantee that churchmen, including popes, will make correct judgments about these circumstances or how best to apply general principles to them.  Hence, while Donum Veritatissays that it would be a mistake “to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments,” nevertheless:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies.  Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.
As the examples given indicate, statements of category 4 generally concern what sorts of positions theologians might in their public writing or teaching put forward as consistent with Catholic doctrine.  The concern is that theologians not too rashly publicly endorse some idea which may or may not turn out to be true, but whose relationship to matters of faith and morals is complicated, and where mistakes may damage the faith of non-experts.  Here what is called for is external obedience to the Church’s decisions, but not necessarily assent.  A “reverent silence” might be the most that is called for, though since Donum Veritatis allows that a theologian might in principle legitimately raise questions about category 3 statements, such questions could obviously be legitimate in the case of category 4 statements as well.  Presumably (for example) a theologian could in principle legitimately say: “I will in my scholarship and teaching abide by such-and-such a decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.  However, I respectfully request that the Commission reconsider that decision in light of such-and-such considerations.”
The examples of “prudential” judgments which Donum Veritatis addresses and which Dulles discusses in his comments on that document are all judgments which are very closely connected to matters of principle vis-à-vis faith and morals, even if the statements are of a lesser authority than statements of categories 1-3.  For example, the prudential decisions regarding heliocentrism and modern historical-critical methods of biblical scholarship were intended to preclude any rash judgments about the proper interpretation of scripture. 
However, statements by popes and other churchmen which lack any such momentous doctrinal implications, but instead concern issues of politics, economics, and the like, are also often referred to as “prudential judgments,” because they too involve the attempt prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances.  Donum Veritatis does not address this sort of judgment and neither does Dulles in his discussion of the document, but it is clear from other statements by Cardinal Ratzinger that it constitutes a fifth category of magisterial teaching:
5. Statements of a prudential sort on matters about which there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics.  Examples would be many of the statements made by popes and other churchmen on matters of political controversy, such as war and capital punishment.  Cardinal Ratzinger gave these as specific examples in a 2004 memorandum on the topic “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles,” wherein he stated:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. (Emphasis added)
End quote.  Note that Cardinal Ratzinger goes so far as to say that a Catholic may be “at odds with” the pope on the application of capital punishment and the decision to wage war and still be worthy to receive communion -- something he could not have said if it were mortally sinful to disagree with the pope on those issues.  It follows that there is no grave duty to assent to the pope’s statements on those issues.  The cardinal also says that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty,” despite the fact that Pope John Paul II, under whom the Cardinal was serving at the time, made very strong statements against capital punishment and the Iraq war.  It follows that the pope’s statements on those issues were not binding on Catholics even on pain of venial sin, for diversity of opinion could not be “legitimate” if it were even venially sinful to disagree with the pope on these matters.  In the memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger also explicitly says that Catholic voters and politicians must oppose laws permitting abortion and euthanasia, as well as abstain from Holy Communion if they formally cooperate with these evils.  By contrast, he makes no requirement on the behavior (such as voting) of Catholics who disagree with the pope about capital punishment or the decision to wage war.  So, papal statements on those subjects, unlike category 4 statements, evidently do not require any sort of external obedience much less assent.  Catholics thus owe such statements serious and respectful consideration, but nothing more. 
Contemporary works of theology written by theologians loyal to the Magisterium often recognize this category of prudential statements to which Catholics need not assent.  For example, in his book The Shepherd and the Rock: Origins, Development, and Mission of the Papacy, J. Michael Miller (currently the Archbishop of Vancouver) writes:
John Paul II’s support for financial compensation equal to other kinds of work for mothers who stay at home to take care of their children, or his plea to cancel the debt of Third World nations as a way to alleviate massive poverty, fall into this category.  Catholics are free to disagree with these papal guidelines as ways in which to secure justice.  They can submit to debate alternative practical solutions, provided that they accept the moral principles which the pope propounds in his teaching. (p. 175)
Germain Grisez suggests that there are five sorts of cases in which assent is not required (The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, p. 49).  The first would be cases in which popes and other churchmen are not addressing matters of faith and morals.  The second are cases where they are addressing matters of faith and morals, but speaking merely as individual believers or private theologians rather than in an official capacity.  The third sort of case would be when they are teaching in an official capacity, but in a tentative way.  The fourth are cases where popes or other churchmen put forward non-binding arguments for a teaching which is itself binding on Catholics.  The fifth sort of case is when they are putting forward merely disciplinary directives with which a Catholic might legitimately disagree even if he has to follow them.
It is perhaps worth noting that the works just cited are works bearing the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  The reason this is worth noting, and the reason it is also worth emphasizing the significance of Cardinal Ratzinger’s memorandum, is that certain Catholic writers have a tendency to accuse fellow Catholics who disagree with papal statements on matters of political controversy of being “dissenters.” For example, it is sometimes claimed that any Catholic who is consistently “pro-life” will not only agree with papal statements condemning abortion and euthanasia, but will also agree with papal statements criticizing capital punishment or the war in Iraq, or endorsing certain economic policies.  The suggestion is that Catholics who reject the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia are “left-wing dissenters” and Catholics who disagree with recent papal statements on capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies are “right-wing dissenters” -- as if both sides are engaged in disobedience to the Church, and disobedience of the same sort.
At best this reflects serious theological ignorance.  At worst it is intellectually dishonest and demagogic.  A Catholic who disagrees with the Church’s teaching on abortion or euthanasia is rejecting a category 1 or category 2 magisterial statement -- something that is never permitted.  But a Catholic who disagrees with what recent popes have said about capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies is disagreeing with category 5 statements -- something that the Church herself holds to be permissible.  Hence, Catholics who condemn their fellow Catholics for disagreeing with category 5 statements are themselves the ones who are out of sync with what the Church teaches -- not to mention exhibiting a lack of justice and charity. 
Papal error
Since the Church allows that Catholics can under certain circumstances legitimately disagree with statements of category 3, not to mention statements of categories 4 and 5, Catholic teaching thereby implies that it is possible for popes to be mistaken when making statements falling under any of these categories.  It is even possible for a pope to be mistaken in a more radical way if, outside the context of his extraordinary Magisterium, he says something inconsistent with a statement of category 1 or category 2.  And it is possible for a pope to fall into error in other ways, such as by carrying out unwise policies or exhibiting immorality in his personal life.  Indeed, short of binding the Church to heresy, it is possible for a pope to do grave harm to the Church.  As Cardinal Ratzinger once said when asked whether the Holy Spirit plays a role in the election of popes:
I would not say so in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope, because there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.  I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. (Quoted in John Allen, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election)
Here are some examples of popes who have erred, in some cases in an extremely serious way:
St. Peter (d. c. 64): As if to warn the Church in advance that popes are infallible only within limits, the first pope was allowed to fall into serious error.  Before the crucifixion, he denied Christ.  On another occasion he avoided eating with Gentile converts lest he offend the more hardline Jewish Christians, leading St. Paul famously to rebuke him.  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
As this action was entirely opposed to the principles and practice of Paul, and might lead to confusion among the converted pagans, this Apostle addressed a public reproach to St. Peter, because his conduct seemed to indicate a wish to compel the pagan converts to become Jews and accept circumcision and the Jewish law… Paul, who rightly saw the inconsistency in the conduct of Peter and the Jewish Christians, did not hesitate to defend the immunity of converted pagans from the Jewish Law.
Pope St. Victor I (189-98): Western and Eastern Christians had long disagreed over the date on which Easter should be celebrated.  Though earlier popes had tolerated this difference, St. Victor tried to force the issue and excommunicated several Eastern bishops over the matter.  For this excessive severity and departure from previous papal policy, he was criticized by St. Irenaeus. 
Pope St. Marcellinus (296-304): During a persecution of Christians, Emperor Diocletian ordered the surrender of sacred books and the offering of sacrifice to the gods.  It is said that a fearful St. Marcellinus complied, and later repented of having done so.  Historians disagree about whether this actually occurred.  However, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
On the other hand it is remarkable, that in the Roman “Chronograph” whose first edition was in 336, the name of this pope alone is missing, while all other popes from Lucius I onwards are forthcoming…
[I]t must indeed be admitted that in certain circles at Rome the conduct of the pope during the Diocletian persecution was not approved… It is possible that Pope Marcellinus was able to hide himself in a safe place of concealment in due time, as many other bishops did.  But it is also possible that at the publication of the edict he secured his own immunity; in Roman circles this would have been imputed to him as weakness, so that his memory suffered thereunder, and he was on that account omitted… from the “Chronograph”…
Pope Liberius (352-366): With the Arian heresy having been endorsed by many bishops, and under pressure from the emperor, Pope Liberius acquiesced in the excommunication of the staunchly orthodox St. Athanasius and agreed to an ambiguous theological formula.  He later repented of his weakness, but he would be the first pope not to be venerated as a saint.
Pope Honorius I (625-638): Pope Honorius at least implicitly accepted the Monothelite heresy, was condemned for this by his successor Pope St. Agatho, and criticized by Pope St. Leo for being at least negligent.  Though his actions are in no way incompatible with papal infallibility -- Honorius was not putting forward a would-be ex cathedra definition -- they caused grave damage by providing fodder for critics of the papacy.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “It is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius.  He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact…”
Pope Stephen VI (896-897): In the notorious “cadaver synod” -- an event which some historians consider the low point of the papacy -- Pope Stephen exhumed the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus, dressed it in papal vestments and placed it on a throne, put it on trial for alleged violations of church law (see the illustration above), found it guilty and declared all of Formosus’s acts while pope null and void, then had the corpse flung into the Tiber.  Formosus’s supporters later deposed Stephen and put him in jail, where he was strangled.
Pope John XII (955-964): E. R. Chamberlin, in his book The Bad Popes, describes the character of Pope John XII as follows:
In his relationship with the Church, John seems to have been urged toward a course of deliberate sacrilege that went far beyond the casual enjoyment of sensual pleasures.  It was as though the dark element in his nature goaded him on to test the utmost extents of his power, a Christian Caligula whose crimes were rendered particularly horrific by the office he held.  Later, the charge was specifically made against him that he turned the Lateran into a brothel; that he and his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; that the offerings of the humble laid upon the altar were snatched up as casual booty.
He was inordinately fond of gambling, at which he invoked the names of those discredited gods now universally regarded as demons.  His sexual hunger was insatiable -- -- a minor crime in Roman eyes.  What was far worse was that the casual occupants of his bed were rewarded not with casual gifts of gold but of land. (pp. 43-44).
Of his demise, J. N. D. Kelly writes in The Oxford Dictionary of Popes: “[H]e suffered a stroke, allegedly while in bed with a married woman, and a week later he died.”
Pope Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-8): Benedict IX was elected through bribes paid by his father.  Kelly tells us that “his personal life, even allowing for exaggerated reports, was scandalously violent and dissolute.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia judges : “He was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter.”
Pope John XXII (1316-34): Pope John XXII taught the heterodox view that the souls of the blessed do not see God immediately after death, but only at the resurrection -- a version of what is called the “soul sleep” theory.  For this he was severely criticized by the theologians of his day, and later recanted this view.  As with Honorius, John’s actions were not incompatible with papal infallibility -- he expressed the view in a sermon rather than by way of issuing a formal doctrinal statement.  But as James Hitchcock judges in his History of the Catholic Church, “this remains the clearest case in the history of the Church of a possibly heretical pope” (p. 215).
Pope Urban VI (1378-89): Urban is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as an “inconstant and quarrelsome” man whose “whole reign was a series of misadventures.”  The cardinals attempted to replace him with another pope, Clement VII -- beginning the infamous forty-year-long Great Western Schism, in which at first these two men, and later a third man, all claimed the papal throne.  Theologians, and even saints, were divided on the controversy.  St. Catherine of Siena was among the saints who supported Urban, while St. Vincent Ferrer is among the saints who supported Clement.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503): This Borgia pope, who had many children by his mistresses, notoriously used the papal office to advance the interests of his family.
Pope Leo X (1513-21): Leo X is the pope who is famously said to have remarked: “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
[T]he phrase illustrates fairly the pope's pleasure-loving nature and the lack of seriousness that characterized him.  He paid no attention to the dangers threatening the papacy, and gave himself up unrestrainedly to amusements, that were provided in lavish abundance.  He was possessed by an insatiable love of pleasure, that distinctive trait of his family. Music, the theatre, art, and poetry appealed to him as to any pampered worldling.
Leo was pope during the time of Luther’s revolt, with which he did not deal wisely.  The Catholic Encyclopedia continues:
[When we] turn to the political and religious events of Leo's pontificate… the bright splendour that diffuses itself over his literary and artistic patronage, is soon changed to deepest gloom. His well-known peaceable inclinations made the political situation a disagreeable heritage, and he tried to maintain tranquillity by exhortations, to which, however, no one listened…
The only possible verdict on the pontificate of Leo X is that it was unfortunate for the Church… Von Reumont says pertinently -- “Leo X is in great measure to blame for the fact that faith in the integrity and merit of the papacy, in its moral and regenerating powers, and even in its good intentions, should have sunk so low that men could declare extinct the old true spirit of the Church.”
Further examples could be given, but these suffice to show how very gravely popes can err when they are not exercising their extraordinary Magisterium.  And if popes can err gravely even on matters touching on doctrine and the governance of the Church, it goes without saying that they can err gravely with respect to matters of politics, science, economics, and the like.  As Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val wrote in his 1902 book The Truth of Papal Claims:
Great as our filial duty of reverence is towards what ever [the pope] may say, great as our duty of obedience must be to the guidance of the Chief Shepherd, we do not hold that every word of his is infallible, or that he must always be right.  Much less do we dream of teaching that he is infallible, or in any degree superior to other men, when he speaks on matters that are scientific, or historical, or political, or that he may not make mistakes of judgment in dealing with contemporary events, with men and things. (p. 19)
[E]ven to-day a Bishop might… expostulate with a Pope, who, in his judgment, might be acting in a way which was liable to mislead those under his own charge… The hypothesis is quite conceivable, and in no way destroys or diminishes the supremacy of the Pope. (p. 74)
And as theologian Karl Adam wrote in his 1935 book The Spirit of Catholicism:
[T]he men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age.  And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ… So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment.  For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it.  Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception…  The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect.  Mediocrity and even defects are possible.  (pp. 248-9)
That popes are fallible in the ways that they are is as important for Catholics to keep in mind as the fact that popes are infallible when speaking ex cathedra.  Many well-meaning Catholics have forgotten this truth, or appear to want to suppress it.  When recent popes have said or done strange or even manifestly unwise things, these apologists have refused to admit it.  They have tied themselves in logical knots trying to show that the questionable statement or action is perfectly innocent, or even conveys some deep insight, if only we would be willing to see it.  Had Catholic bloggers and pop apologists been around in previous ages, some of them would no doubt have been assuring their readers that the Eastern bishops excommunicated by Pope Victor must have had it coming and that St. Irenaeus should have kept silent; or that Pope Stephen was trying to teach us some profound spiritual truth with the cadaver synod if only we would listen; or that Liberius, Honorius, and John XXII were really deepening our understanding of doctrine rather than confusing the faithful. 
This kind of “spin doctoring” only makes those engaging in it look ridiculous.  Worse, it does grave harm to the Church and to souls.  It makes Catholicism appear Orwellian, as if a pope can by fiat make even sheer novelties and reversals of past teaching somehow a disguised passing on of the deposit of faith.  Catholics who cannot bear such cognitive dissonance may have their faith shaken.  Non-Catholics repulsed by such intellectual dishonesty will wrongly judge that to be a Catholic one must become a shill.
The sober truth is that Christ sometimes lets his Vicar err, only within definite limits but sometimes gravely.  Why?  In part because popes, like all of us, have free will.  But in part, precisely to show that (as Cardinal Ratzinger put it) “the thing cannot be totally ruined” -- not even by a pope.  Once more to quote the Catholic Encyclopedia, in its judgment about the outcome of the Great Western Schism:
Gregorovius, whom no one will suspect of exaggerated respect for the papacy… writes: “A temporal kingdom would have succumbed thereto; but the organization of the spiritual kingdom was so wonderful, the ideal of the papacy so indestructible, that this, the most serious of schisms, served only to demonstrate its indivisibility”… From a widely different standpoint de Maistre holds the same view: “This scourge of contemporaries is for us an historical treasure.  It serves to prove how immovable is the throne of St. Peter.  What human organization would have withstood this trial?”

UPDATE: The esteemed Dr. Edward Peters, canon lawyer extraordinaire, kindly comments on my article at his blog.  He argues that, contrary to what I implied in my post, John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis did indeed constitute an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium.  He makes a strong case. 

Papal fallibility

Catholic doctrine on the teaching authority of the pope is pretty clear, but lots of people badly misunderstand it.  A non-Catholic friend of mine recently asked me whether the pope could in theory reverse the Church’s teaching about homosexuality.  Said my friend: “He could just make an ex cathedra declaration to that effect, couldn’t he?”  Well, no, he couldn’t.  That is simply not at all how it works.  Some people think that Catholic teaching is that a pope is infallible not only when making ex cathedra declarations, but in everything he does and says.  That is also simply not the case.  Catholic doctrine allows that popes can make grave mistakes, even mistakes that touch on doctrinal matters in certain ways.Many Catholics know all this, but they often misunderstand papal authority in yet other ways.  Some think that a Catholic is obliged to accept the teaching of a pope only when that teaching is put forward by him as infallible.  That too is not the case.  Contrary to this “minimalist” view, there is much that Catholics have to assent to even though it is not put forward as infallible.  Others think that a Catholic is obliged to agree more or less with every view or decision of a pope regarding matters of theology, philosophy, politics, etc. even when it is not put forward as infallible.  And that too is not the case.  Contrary to this “maximalist” view, there is much to which a Catholic need give only respectful consideration, but not necessarily assent.  As always, Catholic doctrine is balanced, a mean between extremes -- in this case, between these minimalist and maximalist extremes.  But it is also nuanced, and to understand it we need to make some distinctions that are too often ignored.

Papal infallibility
First let’s get clear about infallibility.  The First Vatican Council taught that:
[W]hen the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.  Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
What the Council is describing here is the pope’s exercise of what is called his “extraordinary Magisterium,” as opposed to his “ordinary Magisterium” or everyday teaching activity in the form of homilies, encyclicals, etc.  The passage identifies several conditions for the exercise of this extraordinary Magisterium.  First, the pope must appeal to his supreme teaching authority as the successor of Peter, as opposed to speaking merely as a private theologian, or making off-the-cuff remarks, or the like.  An exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium would, accordingly, typically involve some formal and solemn declaration.  Second, he must be addressing some matter of doctrine concerning faith or morals.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to purely scientific questions such as how many elements are in the periodic table, political questions such as whether a certain proposed piece of legislation is a good idea, etc.  Third, he must be “defining” some doctrine in the sense of putting it forward as official teaching that is binding on the entire Church.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to teaching that concerns merely local or contingent circumstances.
But there is a further, crucial condition on such ex cathedra statements.  The First Vatican Council emphasized it in a passage that comes several paragraphs before the one quoted above:
For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.
Papal teaching, then, including exercises of the extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching.  Nor can it introduce utter novelties.  Popes have authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received.  They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught.  But they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth. 
Along the same lines, the Second Vatican Council taught, in Dei Verbum , that the Church cannot teach contrary to Scripture:
[T]he living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully…
Pope Benedict XVI put the point as follows, in a homily of May 7, 2005:
The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…
The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.
Though the pope’s exercise of his ordinary Magisterium is not always infallible, it can be under certain circumstances.  In particular, it is infallible when the pope officially reaffirms something that was already part of the Church’s infallible teaching on the basis of Scripture and Tradition.  For example, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , Pope St. John Paul II reaffirmed traditional teaching to the effect that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thereafter confirmed that this teaching is to be regarded as infallible.  The reason it is to be regarded as infallible is not that the papal document in question constituted an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium, but rather because of the teaching’s status as part of the constant and universal doctrine of the Church. 
Now, what makes some constant and universal teaching of the Churchinfallible is itself an important topic, but one that is beyond the scope of this post, which is concerned with the teaching authority of the pope, specifically.  Suffice it to emphasize for present purposes that, precisely because exercises of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium are infallible when they merely reaffirm the Church’s own constant and universal teaching, they too do not involve either the reversal of past teaching or the addition of some novelty. 
Papal infallibility, then, is not some magical power by which a pope can transform any old thing he wishes into a truth that all are bound to accept.  It is an extension of the infallibility of the preexisting body of doctrine that it is his job to safeguard, and thus must always be exercised in continuity with that body of doctrine.  Naturally, then, the pope would not be speaking infallibly if he taught something that either had no basis in Scripture, Tradition, or previous magisterial teaching, or contradicted those sources of doctrine.  If it had no such basis, it could be mistaken, and if it contradicted those sources of doctrine, it would be mistaken. 
It is very rare, however, that a pope says something even in his ordinary Magisterium that is manifestly either a sheer novelty or in conflict with existing doctrine.  Popes know that their job is to preserve and apply Catholic teaching, and thus when they say something that isn’t just a straightforward reiteration of preexisting doctrine, they are typically trying to draw out the implications of existing doctrine, to resolve some ambiguity in it, to apply the doctrine to new circumstances, or the like.  If there is some deficiency in such statements, then, it will typically be subtle and take some careful thinking to identify and correct.  There is in Catholic doctrine, therefore, a presumption in favor of what a pope says even in his ordinary non-infallible Magisterium, even if it is a presumption which can be overridden.  Hence the default position for any Catholic must be to assent to such non-infallible teaching.  Or at least that is the default position where that teaching concerns matters of principlevis-à-vis faith and morals -- as opposed to application of principle to contingent concrete circumstances, where judgments about such circumstances are of their nature beyond the special competence of the pope.
Five categories of magisterial statement
So, when must a Catholic assent to some non-infallible papal statement?  When might a Catholic disagree with such a statement?  This is a subject greatly clarified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) during his time as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  Perhaps the most important document in this connection is the 1990 instruction Donum Veritatis: On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , though there are also other relevant statements.  Cardinal Avery Dulles has suggested that one can identify four general categories of magisterial statement in Donum Veritatis.  (See Dulles’s essay “The Magisterium and Theological Dissent” in The Craft of Theology .  Cf. also chapter 7 of Dulles’s book Magisterium .)  However, as other statements from Ratzinger indicate, Dulles’s fourth category appears to lump together statements with two different degrees of authority.  When these are distinguished, it is clear that there are really five general categories of magisterial statement.  They are as follows:
1. Statements which definitively put forward divinely revealed truths, or dogmas in the strict sense.  Examples would be the Christological dogmas, the doctrine of original sin, the grave immorality of directly and voluntarily killing an innocent human being, and so forth.  As Dulles notes, according to Catholic teaching, statements in this category must be affirmed by every Catholic with “divine and Catholic faith.”  No legitimate disagreement is possible.
2. Statements which definitively put forward truths which are not revealed, but closely connected with revealed truths.  Examples would be moral teachings such as the immorality of euthanasia, and the teaching that priestly ordination is reserved only to men.  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be “firmly accepted and held” by all Catholics.  Here too, legitimate disagreement is not possible.
3. Statements which in a non-definitive but obligatory way clarify revealed truths.  Dulles suggests that “the teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal definitions, falls predominantly into this category” (The Craft of Theology, p. 110).  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be accepted by Catholics with “religious submission of will and intellect.”  Given their non-definitive character, however, the assent due to such statements is not of the absolute kind owed to statements of categories 1 and 2.  The default position is to assent to them, but it is in principle possible that the very strong presumption in their favor can be overridden.  Donum Veritatissays:
The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable must be the rule.  It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.
For this reason,
the possibility cannot be excluded that tensions may arise between the theologian and the Magisterium… If tensions do not spring from hostile and contrary feelings, they can become a dynamic factor, a stimulus to both the Magisterium and theologians to fulfill their respective roles while practicing dialogue…
[A theologian’s] objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments.
However, Donum Veritatis also makes it clear that in the normal case even a justifiably doubtful theologian’s further investigations into the matter will eventually result in assent.  The burden of proof is on the doubting theologian to justify his non-assent, and
Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable.  Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine.
Nor, as Donum Veritatis makes clear, could theologians legitimately express their disagreement in these cases with a polemical spirit, or apply political pressure tactics in order to influence the Magisterium, or set themselves up as a counter-Magisterium.
As William May has pointed out, the most plausible scenario in which “theologians [might] raise questions of this kind [would be] when they can appeal to other magisterial teachings that are more certainly and definitively taught with which they think the teaching questioned is incompatible” (An Introduction to Moral Theology, p. 242). 
4. Statements of a prudential sort which require external obedience but not interior assent.  As Dulles notes (Magisterium, p. 94), Cardinal Ratzinger gave as an example of this sort of statement the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 20thcentury.  Dulles suggests that the Church’s caution about accepting heliocentrism in the 17th century would be another example.  These sorts of statements are “prudential” insofar as they are attempts prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances, such as the state of scientific knowledge at a particular point in history.  And there is no guarantee that churchmen, including popes, will make correct judgments about these circumstances or how best to apply general principles to them.  Hence, while Donum Veritatissays that it would be a mistake “to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments,” nevertheless:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies.  Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.
As the examples given indicate, statements of category 4 generally concern what sorts of positions theologians might in their public writing or teaching put forward as consistent with Catholic doctrine.  The concern is that theologians not too rashly publicly endorse some idea which may or may not turn out to be true, but whose relationship to matters of faith and morals is complicated, and where mistakes may damage the faith of non-experts.  Here what is called for is external obedience to the Church’s decisions, but not necessarily assent.  A “reverent silence” might be the most that is called for, though since Donum Veritatis allows that a theologian might in principle legitimately raise questions about category 3 statements, such questions could obviously be legitimate in the case of category 4 statements as well.  Presumably (for example) a theologian could in principle legitimately say: “I will in my scholarship and teaching abide by such-and-such a decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.  However, I respectfully request that the Commission reconsider that decision in light of such-and-such considerations.”
The examples of “prudential” judgments which Donum Veritatis addresses and which Dulles discusses in his comments on that document are all judgments which are very closely connected to matters of principle vis-à-vis faith and morals, even if the statements are of a lesser authority than statements of categories 1-3.  For example, the prudential decisions regarding heliocentrism and modern historical-critical methods of biblical scholarship were intended to preclude any rash judgments about the proper interpretation of scripture. 
However, statements by popes and other churchmen which lack any such momentous doctrinal implications, but instead concern issues of politics, economics, and the like, are also often referred to as “prudential judgments,” because they too involve the attempt prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances.  Donum Veritatis does not address this sort of judgment and neither does Dulles in his discussion of the document, but it is clear from other statements by Cardinal Ratzinger that it constitutes a fifth category of magisterial teaching:
5. Statements of a prudential sort on matters about which there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics.  Examples would be many of the statements made by popes and other churchmen on matters of political controversy, such as war and capital punishment.  Cardinal Ratzinger gave these as specific examples in a 2004 memorandum on the topic “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles,” wherein he stated:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. (Emphasis added)
End quote.  Note that Cardinal Ratzinger goes so far as to say that a Catholic may be “at odds with” the pope on the application of capital punishment and the decision to wage war and still be worthy to receive communion -- something he could not have said if it were mortally sinful to disagree with the pope on those issues.  It follows that there is no grave duty to assent to the pope’s statements on those issues.  The cardinal also says that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty,” despite the fact that Pope John Paul II, under whom the Cardinal was serving at the time, made very strong statements against capital punishment and the Iraq war.  It follows that the pope’s statements on those issues were not binding on Catholics even on pain of venial sin, for diversity of opinion could not be “legitimate” if it were even venially sinful to disagree with the pope on these matters.  In the memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger also explicitly says that Catholic voters and politicians must oppose laws permitting abortion and euthanasia, as well as abstain from Holy Communion if they formally cooperate with these evils.  By contrast, he makes no requirement on the behavior (such as voting) of Catholics who disagree with the pope about capital punishment or the decision to wage war.  So, papal statements on those subjects, unlike category 4 statements, evidently do not require any sort of external obedience much less assent.  Catholics thus owe such statements serious and respectful consideration, but nothing more. 
Contemporary works of theology written by theologians loyal to the Magisterium often recognize this category of prudential statements to which Catholics need not assent.  For example, in his book The Shepherd and the Rock: Origins, Development, and Mission of the Papacy, J. Michael Miller (currently the Archbishop of Vancouver) writes:
John Paul II’s support for financial compensation equal to other kinds of work for mothers who stay at home to take care of their children, or his plea to cancel the debt of Third World nations as a way to alleviate massive poverty, fall into this category.  Catholics are free to disagree with these papal guidelines as ways in which to secure justice.  They can submit to debate alternative practical solutions, provided that they accept the moral principles which the pope propounds in his teaching. (p. 175)
Germain Grisez suggests that there are five sorts of cases in which assent is not required (The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, p. 49).  The first would be cases in which popes and other churchmen are not addressing matters of faith and morals.  The second are cases where they are addressing matters of faith and morals, but speaking merely as individual believers or private theologians rather than in an official capacity.  The third sort of case would be when they are teaching in an official capacity, but in a tentative way.  The fourth are cases where popes or other churchmen put forward non-binding arguments for a teaching which is itself binding on Catholics.  The fifth sort of case is when they are putting forward merely disciplinary directives with which a Catholic might legitimately disagree even if he has to follow them.
It is perhaps worth noting that the works just cited are works bearing the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  The reason this is worth noting, and the reason it is also worth emphasizing the significance of Cardinal Ratzinger’s memorandum, is that certain Catholic writers have a tendency to accuse fellow Catholics who disagree with papal statements on matters of political controversy of being “dissenters.” For example, it is sometimes claimed that any Catholic who is consistently “pro-life” will not only agree with papal statements condemning abortion and euthanasia, but will also agree with papal statements criticizing capital punishment or the war in Iraq, or endorsing certain economic policies.  The suggestion is that Catholics who reject the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia are “left-wing dissenters” and Catholics who disagree with recent papal statements on capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies are “right-wing dissenters” -- as if both sides are engaged in disobedience to the Church, and disobedience of the same sort.
At best this reflects serious theological ignorance.  At worst it is intellectually dishonest and demagogic.  A Catholic who disagrees with the Church’s teaching on abortion or euthanasia is rejecting a category 1 or category 2 magisterial statement -- something that is never permitted.  But a Catholic who disagrees with what recent popes have said about capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies is disagreeing with category 5 statements -- something that the Church herself holds to be permissible.  Hence, Catholics who condemn their fellow Catholics for disagreeing with category 5 statements are themselves the ones who are out of sync with what the Church teaches -- not to mention exhibiting a lack of justice and charity. 
Papal error
Since the Church allows that Catholics can under certain circumstances legitimately disagree with statements of category 3, not to mention statements of categories 4 and 5, Catholic teaching thereby implies that it is possible for popes to be mistaken when making statements falling under any of these categories.  It is even possible for a pope to be mistaken in a more radical way if, outside the context of his extraordinary Magisterium, he says something inconsistent with a statement of category 1 or category 2.  And it is possible for a pope to fall into error in other ways, such as by carrying out unwise policies or exhibiting immorality in his personal life.  Indeed, short of binding the Church to heresy, it is possible for a pope to do grave harm to the Church.  As Cardinal Ratzinger once said when asked whether the Holy Spirit plays a role in the election of popes:
I would not say so in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope, because there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.  I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. (Quoted in John Allen, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election)
Here are some examples of popes who have erred, in some cases in an extremely serious way:
St. Peter (d. c. 64): As if to warn the Church in advance that popes are infallible only within limits, the first pope was allowed to fall into serious error.  Before the crucifixion, he denied Christ.  On another occasion he avoided eating with Gentile converts lest he offend the more hardline Jewish Christians, leading St. Paul famously to rebuke him.  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
As this action was entirely opposed to the principles and practice of Paul, and might lead to confusion among the converted pagans, this Apostle addressed a public reproach to St. Peter, because his conduct seemed to indicate a wish to compel the pagan converts to become Jews and accept circumcision and the Jewish law… Paul, who rightly saw the inconsistency in the conduct of Peter and the Jewish Christians, did not hesitate to defend the immunity of converted pagans from the Jewish Law.
Pope St. Victor I (189-98): Western and Eastern Christians had long disagreed over the date on which Easter should be celebrated.  Though earlier popes had tolerated this difference, St. Victor tried to force the issue and excommunicated several Eastern bishops over the matter.  For this excessive severity and departure from previous papal policy, he was criticized by St. Irenaeus. 
Pope St. Marcellinus (296-304): During a persecution of Christians, Emperor Diocletian ordered the surrender of sacred books and the offering of sacrifice to the gods.  It is said that a fearful St. Marcellinus complied, and later repented of having done so.  Historians disagree about whether this actually occurred.  However, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
On the other hand it is remarkable, that in the Roman “Chronograph” whose first edition was in 336, the name of this pope alone is missing, while all other popes from Lucius I onwards are forthcoming…
[I]t must indeed be admitted that in certain circles at Rome the conduct of the pope during the Diocletian persecution was not approved… It is possible that Pope Marcellinus was able to hide himself in a safe place of concealment in due time, as many other bishops did.  But it is also possible that at the publication of the edict he secured his own immunity; in Roman circles this would have been imputed to him as weakness, so that his memory suffered thereunder, and he was on that account omitted… from the “Chronograph”…
Pope Liberius (352-366): With the Arian heresy having been endorsed by many bishops, and under pressure from the emperor, Pope Liberius acquiesced in the excommunication of the staunchly orthodox St. Athanasius and agreed to an ambiguous theological formula.  He later repented of his weakness, but he would be the first pope not to be venerated as a saint.
Pope Honorius I (625-638): Pope Honorius at least implicitly accepted the Monothelite heresy, was condemned for this by his successor Pope St. Agatho, and criticized by Pope St. Leo for being at least negligent.  Though his actions are in no way incompatible with papal infallibility -- Honorius was not putting forward a would-be ex cathedra definition -- they caused grave damage by providing fodder for critics of the papacy.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “It is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius.  He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact…”
Pope Stephen VI (896-897): In the notorious “cadaver synod” -- an event which some historians consider the low point of the papacy -- Pope Stephen exhumed the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus, dressed it in papal vestments and placed it on a throne, put it on trial for alleged violations of church law (see the illustration above), found it guilty and declared all of Formosus’s acts while pope null and void, then had the corpse flung into the Tiber.  Formosus’s supporters later deposed Stephen and put him in jail, where he was strangled.
Pope John XII (955-964): E. R. Chamberlin, in his book The Bad Popes, describes the character of Pope John XII as follows:
In his relationship with the Church, John seems to have been urged toward a course of deliberate sacrilege that went far beyond the casual enjoyment of sensual pleasures.  It was as though the dark element in his nature goaded him on to test the utmost extents of his power, a Christian Caligula whose crimes were rendered particularly horrific by the office he held.  Later, the charge was specifically made against him that he turned the Lateran into a brothel; that he and his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; that the offerings of the humble laid upon the altar were snatched up as casual booty.
He was inordinately fond of gambling, at which he invoked the names of those discredited gods now universally regarded as demons.  His sexual hunger was insatiable -- -- a minor crime in Roman eyes.  What was far worse was that the casual occupants of his bed were rewarded not with casual gifts of gold but of land. (pp. 43-44).
Of his demise, J. N. D. Kelly writes in The Oxford Dictionary of Popes: “[H]e suffered a stroke, allegedly while in bed with a married woman, and a week later he died.”
Pope Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-8): Benedict IX was elected through bribes paid by his father.  Kelly tells us that “his personal life, even allowing for exaggerated reports, was scandalously violent and dissolute.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia judges : “He was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter.”
Pope John XXII (1316-34): Pope John XXII taught the heterodox view that the souls of the blessed do not see God immediately after death, but only at the resurrection -- a version of what is called the “soul sleep” theory.  For this he was severely criticized by the theologians of his day, and later recanted this view.  As with Honorius, John’s actions were not incompatible with papal infallibility -- he expressed the view in a sermon rather than by way of issuing a formal doctrinal statement.  But as James Hitchcock judges in his History of the Catholic Church, “this remains the clearest case in the history of the Church of a possibly heretical pope” (p. 215).
Pope Urban VI (1378-89): Urban is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as an “inconstant and quarrelsome” man whose “whole reign was a series of misadventures.”  The cardinals attempted to replace him with another pope, Clement VII -- beginning the infamous forty-year-long Great Western Schism, in which at first these two men, and later a third man, all claimed the papal throne.  Theologians, and even saints, were divided on the controversy.  St. Catherine of Siena was among the saints who supported Urban, while St. Vincent Ferrer is among the saints who supported Clement.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503): This Borgia pope, who had many children by his mistresses, notoriously used the papal office to advance the interests of his family.
Pope Leo X (1513-21): Leo X is the pope who is famously said to have remarked: “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
[T]he phrase illustrates fairly the pope's pleasure-loving nature and the lack of seriousness that characterized him.  He paid no attention to the dangers threatening the papacy, and gave himself up unrestrainedly to amusements, that were provided in lavish abundance.  He was possessed by an insatiable love of pleasure, that distinctive trait of his family. Music, the theatre, art, and poetry appealed to him as to any pampered worldling.
Leo was pope during the time of Luther’s revolt, with which he did not deal wisely.  The Catholic Encyclopedia continues:
[When we] turn to the political and religious events of Leo's pontificate… the bright splendour that diffuses itself over his literary and artistic patronage, is soon changed to deepest gloom. His well-known peaceable inclinations made the political situation a disagreeable heritage, and he tried to maintain tranquillity by exhortations, to which, however, no one listened…
The only possible verdict on the pontificate of Leo X is that it was unfortunate for the Church… Von Reumont says pertinently -- “Leo X is in great measure to blame for the fact that faith in the integrity and merit of the papacy, in its moral and regenerating powers, and even in its good intentions, should have sunk so low that men could declare extinct the old true spirit of the Church.”
Further examples could be given, but these suffice to show how very gravely popes can err when they are not exercising their extraordinary Magisterium.  And if popes can err gravely even on matters touching on doctrine and the governance of the Church, it goes without saying that they can err gravely with respect to matters of politics, science, economics, and the like.  As Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val wrote in his 1902 book The Truth of Papal Claims:
Great as our filial duty of reverence is towards what ever [the pope] may say, great as our duty of obedience must be to the guidance of the Chief Shepherd, we do not hold that every word of his is infallible, or that he must always be right.  Much less do we dream of teaching that he is infallible, or in any degree superior to other men, when he speaks on matters that are scientific, or historical, or political, or that he may not make mistakes of judgment in dealing with contemporary events, with men and things. (p. 19)
[E]ven to-day a Bishop might… expostulate with a Pope, who, in his judgment, might be acting in a way which was liable to mislead those under his own charge… The hypothesis is quite conceivable, and in no way destroys or diminishes the supremacy of the Pope. (p. 74)
And as theologian Karl Adam wrote in his 1935 book The Spirit of Catholicism:
[T]he men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age.  And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ… So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment.  For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it.  Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception…  The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect.  Mediocrity and even defects are possible.  (pp. 248-9)
That popes are fallible in the ways that they are is as important for Catholics to keep in mind as the fact that popes are infallible when speaking ex cathedra.  Many well-meaning Catholics have forgotten this truth, or appear to want to suppress it.  When recent popes have said or done strange or even manifestly unwise things, these apologists have refused to admit it.  They have tied themselves in logical knots trying to show that the questionable statement or action is perfectly innocent, or even conveys some deep insight, if only we would be willing to see it.  Had Catholic bloggers and pop apologists been around in previous ages, some of them would no doubt have been assuring their readers that the Eastern bishops excommunicated by Pope Victor must have had it coming and that St. Irenaeus should have kept silent; or that Pope Stephen was trying to teach us some profound spiritual truth with the cadaver synod if only we would listen; or that Liberius, Honorius, and John XXII were really deepening our understanding of doctrine rather than confusing the faithful. 
This kind of “spin doctoring” only makes those engaging in it look ridiculous.  Worse, it does grave harm to the Church and to souls.  It makes Catholicism appear Orwellian, as if a pope can by fiat make even sheer novelties and reversals of past teaching somehow a disguised passing on of the deposit of faith.  Catholics who cannot bear such cognitive dissonance may have their faith shaken.  Non-Catholics repulsed by such intellectual dishonesty will wrongly judge that to be a Catholic one must become a shill.
The sober truth is that Christ sometimes lets his Vicar err, only within definite limits but sometimes gravely.  Why?  In part because popes, like all of us, have free will.  But in part, precisely to show that (as Cardinal Ratzinger put it) “the thing cannot be totally ruined” -- not even by a pope.  Once more to quote the Catholic Encyclopedia, in its judgment about the outcome of the Great Western Schism:
Gregorovius, whom no one will suspect of exaggerated respect for the papacy… writes: “A temporal kingdom would have succumbed thereto; but the organization of the spiritual kingdom was so wonderful, the ideal of the papacy so indestructible, that this, the most serious of schisms, served only to demonstrate its indivisibility”… From a widely different standpoint de Maistre holds the same view: “This scourge of contemporaries is for us an historical treasure.  It serves to prove how immovable is the throne of St. Peter.  What human organization would have withstood this trial?”

Augustine on semantic indeterminacy

St. Augustine’s dialogue The Teacher is concerned with the nature of language.  There are several passages in it which address what twentieth-century philosophers call semantic indeterminacy -- the way that utterances, behavior, and other phenomena associated with the use of language are inherently indeterminate or ambiguous between different possible interpretations.  Let’s take a look.  (I will be quoting from the Peter King translation, in Arthur Hyman, James J. Walsh, and Thomas Williams, eds., Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Third edition .)The dialogue is a discussion between Augustine and his son Adeodatus.  Several pages into the dialogue (at pp. 12-13 of the text I’m quoting from) the question arises whether someone can teach another person the meaning of a term without using words or other signs such as pointing one’s finger at a thing, but instead just by way of one’s actions:

Augustine: What if I should ask you what walking is, and you were then to get up and do it? Wouldn't you be using the thing itself to teach me, rather than using words or any other signs?
Adeodatus: I admit that this is the case.  I'm embarrassed not to have seen a point so obvious.  On this basis, too, thousands of things now occur to me that can be exhibited through themselves rather than through signs: for example, eating, drinking, sitting, standing, shouting, and countless others.
Augustine: Now do this: tell me-- if I were completely ignorant of the meaning of the word ['walking'] and were to ask you what walking is while you were walking, how would you teach me?
Adeodatus: I would do it a little bit more quickly, so that after your question you would be prompted by something novel [in my behavior], and yet nothing would take place other than what was to be shown.
Augustine: Don’t you know that walking is one thing and hurryinganother?  A person who is walking doesn't necessarily hurry, and a person who is hurrying doesn't necessarily walk.  We speak of 'hurrying' in writing and in reading and in countless other matters.  Hence given that after my question you kept on doing what you were doing, [only] faster, I might have thought walking was precisely hurrying -- for you added that as something new -- and for that reason I would have been misled.
End quote.  Augustine’s point is that the behavior Adeodatus was proposing as a means by which one may teach the meaning of the word “walking” is ambiguous or indeterminate between the meaning walking and the meaning hurrying.  Nothing in the behavior considered by itself could determine one or the other interpretation, nor could it rule out yet some other possible interpretation (such as jogging or being chased).  Hence exhibiting that behavior could not by itself teach the meaning of “walking.” 
Later on in the discussion (at p. 27), Adeodatus himself reinforces the point with a related but slightly different example:
Adeodatus: … For example, if anyone should ask me what it is to walk while I was resting or doing something else, as was said, and I should attempt to teach him what he asked about without a sign, by immediately walking, how shall I guard against his thinking that it's just the amount of walking I have done?  He'll be mistaken if he thinks this.  He'll think that anyone who walks farther than I have, or not as far, hasn't walked at all.
Here the idea is that by walking six feet (say), you will have done something the meaning of which is indeterminate between the meaning walking and the meaning walking six feet.  Hence if someone asked you what “walking” means and you carried out that behavior in response, he could come away thinking “Oh, ‘walking’ means moving in that manner” but he could also come away thinking “Oh, ‘walking’ means moving six feet in that manner.”  Again, since nothing in the behavior considered by itself could determine either of these meanings or some other meaning altogether, the behavior by itselfcould not suffice to explain the meaning.
Now, you might think that further behavior that provides a larger context for the walking, or gestures, or explanatory utterances, or other elements of the overall communicative environment, will suffice to determine which meaning is intended.  Augustine himself doesn’t pursue the issue much further, but in fact the indeterminacy would afflict all of these other aspects of the situation as well.  This is the lesson of examples like W. V. Quine’s “gavagai” example in Word and Object, and Saul Kripke’s “quus” example in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.  Any collectionof behaviors, gestures, and even utterances, will be ambiguous or indeterminate between different possible interpretations.  Even if you add to the story mental pictures and other images, including inner “utterances” -- as when you call before your mind the way that the sentence “By this action I mean walking!” sounds, or the way the sentence looks when written out -- that will not solve the problem, because those images are also susceptible of different possible interpretations. 
So what does determine what is meant?  Here different philosophers offer different answers.  Quine famously held that there simply is no fact of the matter about what one means by an utterance.  Meaning is not merely indeterminate from behaviorand the like, but indeterminate full stop.  But Augustine would not agree with that.  (Which is a good thing, since, as I have argued many times, the idea that there is no determinate meaning full stop is incoherent.  See e.g. my article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays .) 
But again, what does determinate what is meant?  Augustine doesn’t say much about that -- the indeterminacy of semantic content is not his main topic, after all -- other than to note (at p. 28) that someone who is intelligent will be able to figure out the significance of behavior, a judgment with which his son concurs:
Adeodatus: … If he is sufficiently intelligent, he’ll know the whole of what it is to walk, once walking has been illustrated by a few steps.
Of course this is, in one sense, not terribly informative or helpful, even though it is perfectly true that we typically are able to figure out what is meant by different behaviors.  For we want to know exactly how an intelligent person figures out the meaning, given that the behavior is inherently ambiguous or indeterminate in its significance. 
In another way, though, Augustine’s point is a deep one, even if this is best seen by reading it as an answer to a question that is not exactly the one he was addressing.  Materialist or naturalist accounts of thought and its content typically suppose that they can be explained in terms of causal relationsof some kind.  The idea is that a thought will have the content that (say) the cat is on the mat if it bears the right sort of causal relation to the state of affairs of the cat’s being on the mat.  Spelling out what the “right” sort of causal relation would be is where things get very complicated.  And the main issue is that indeterminacy problems afflict every attempt to spell out the analysis.  For the state of affairs we call the cat’s being on the matcan also be described as a state of affairs involving a domesticated mammal’s being on the mat.  So why does the fact that this state of affairs causes the thought entail that the thought has the content the cat is on the mat as opposed to the content a domesticated mammal is on the mat?  You can add details to the description of the causal relation to get around this problem, but the revised account of the causal relation will in turn face indeterminacy problems of its own.  (An example would be Fred Dretske’s account of semantic content, which I discussed in a post a few years ago.)
At the end of the day, the indeterminacy can only be eliminated by simply conceptualizing the relevant causal relata in this specific way rather than that way.  That is to say, it can be eliminated only when there is an intellect present which can do the needed conceptualizing.  Yet the whole point of the causal theory of content was to explain where thoughts having a certain conceptual content come from.  So any such theory must fail.  It inevitably must presuppose the very thing it was supposed to be explaining.  (This is a point which has been made in different ways by Karl Popper and Hilary Putnam, and which I develop in “Hayek, Popper, and the Causal Theory of the Mind,” also reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays.)
The deep point implicit in what Augustine says, then -- though again, this isn’t really the set of issues he was addressing -- is that the intellect’s grasp of meanings is more fundamental than any behavior, gestures, utterances, aspects of the communicative context, etc. that might be used to teach or express meanings.  Hence you are not going to be able explain the former in terms of the latter.  You are not going to be able to reduce intelligence to patterns of behavior or dispositions to behavior (as the behaviorist holds), or explain it in terms of causal relations between the human organism and aspects of its environment (as causal theories of content hold), etc., because the behavior, causal relations, etc. have whatever semantic associations they have only by reference to an intellect which grasps those associations.  The intellect is itself the central and irreducible element of the semantic situation.  (It is irreducible to inner “utterances” and other mental imagery too.  When I entertain the thought that the cat is on the mat, I might “hear” in my mind the English sentence “The cat is on the mat,” but that auditory image is not itselfthe thought.  See “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought” for more on this subject.)
In this vein, Augustine also notes (at p. 29) that it is a mistake to think that gestures like pointing are the key to understanding meaning.  Pointing one’s finger is, after all, itself just another piece of behavior susceptible of alternative interpretations, and is not in the first place fundamentally about the thing pointed to at all:
Augustine: … I don’t much care about aiming with the finger, because it seems to me to be a sign of the pointing-out itself rather than of any things that are pointed out.  It's like the exclamation ‘look!’ -- we typically also aim the finger along with this exclamation, in case one sign of the pointing-out isn’t enough.
In other words, what pointing primarily does is to call attention to the fact that the one pointing is trying to call our attention to something, and only secondarilydoes it indicate the thing that is being pointed to.  This reflects the fact that the presence of an intellect is fundamental to the semantic situation, and the significance of gestures, utterances, actions, etc. is only derivative.  Imagine a garden hose lying on the ground in such a way that it seems to “point” to a certain tree.  We don’t regard this as genuine “pointing” -- in the sense that deliberately aiming your finger at someone is genuine pointing -- because we know that the hose does not have an intellect and thus cannot be trying to call our attention to something.  We would regard it as genuine pointing only if we supposed some person had come along and arranged the hose that way in order to get us to notice the tree.
It would be absurd, then, to try to explain how intellect gets into the picture by starting with meaningless physical elements and their behaviors, then supposing that some kind of “pointing” arises in sufficiently complex systems -- say, by means of causal relations of some sort -- and then in turn supposing that intellects arise in some subset of these systems which cross some yet higher threshold of complexity.  All of this would get things precisely backwards.  For “pointing” of the relevant sort could arise only where there is already an intellect present, which intends by the “pointing” to call attention to something.
Related posts:
Augustine on the immateriality of the mind
Augustine and Heraclitus on the present moment
Kripke contra computationalism
Oerter and the indeterminacy of the physical
Oerter on indeterminacy and the unknown
Do machines compute functions?
Can machines beg the question?
Da Ya Think I’m Sphexy?