Tradition and Living Magisterium
The word tradition (Greek paradosis in the ecclesiastical sense;
which is the only one in which it is used here; refers sometimes
to the thing (doctrine, account, or custom) transmitted from one
generation to another sometimes to the organ or mode of the
transmission (kerigma ekklisiastikon, predicatio ecclesiastica).
In the first sense it is an old tradition that Jesus Christ was
born on 25 December, in the second sense tradition relates that on
the road to Calvary a pious woman wiped the face of Jesus. In
theological language, which in many circumstances has become
current, there is still greater precision and this in countless
directions. At first there was question only of traditions
claiming a Divine origin, but subsequently there arose questions
of oral as distinct from written tradition, in the sense that a
given doctrine or institution is not directly dependent on Holy
Scripture as its source but only on the oral teaching of Christ or
the Apostles. Finally with regard to the organ of tradition it
must be an official organ, a magisterium, or teaching authority.
Now in this respect there are several points of controversy
between Catholics and every body of Protestants. Is all revealed
truth consigned to Holy Scripture? or can it, must it, be admitted
that Christ gave to His Apostles to be transmitted to His Church,
that the Apostles received either from the very lips of Jesus or
from inspiration or Revelation, Divine instructions which they
transmitted to the Church and which were not committed to the
inspired writings? Must it be admitted that Christ instituted His
Church as the official and authentic organ to transmit and explain
in virtue of Divine authority the Revelation made to men? The
Protestant principle is: The Bible and nothing but the Bible; the
Bible, according to them, is the sole theological source; there
are no revealed truths save the truths contained in the Bible;
according to them the Bible is the sole rule of faith: by it and
by it alone should all dogmatic questions be solved; it is the
only binding authority. Catholics, on the other hand, hold that
there may be, that there is in fact, and that there must of
necessity be certain revealed truths apart from those contained in
the Bible; they hold furthermore that Jesus Christ has established
in fact, and that to adapt the means to the end He should have
established, a living organ as much to transmit Scripture and
written Revelation as to place revealed truth within reach of
everyone always and everywhere. Such are in this respect the two
main points of controversy between Catholics and so-called
orthodox Protestants (as distinguished from liberal Protestants,
who admit neither supernatural Revelation nor the authority of the
Bible). The other differences are connected with these or follow
from them, as also the differences between different Protestant
sects--according as they are more or less faithful to the
Protestant principle, they recede from or approach the Catholic
position.
Between Catholics and the Christian sects of the East there are
not the same fundamental differences, since both sides admit the
Divine institution and Divine authority of the Church with the
more or less living and explicit sense of its infallibility and
indefectibility and its other teaching prerogatives, but there are
contentions concerning the bearers of the authority, the organic
unity of the teaching body, the infallibility of the pope, and the
existence and nature of dogmatic development in the transmission
of revealed truth. Nevertheless the theology of tradition does not
consist altogether in controversy and discussions with
adversaries. Many questions arise in this respect for every
Catholic who wishes to give an exact account of his belief and the
principles he professes: What is the precise relation between oral
tradition and the revealed truths in the Bible and that between
the living magisterium and the inspired Scriptures? May new truths
enter the current of tradition, and what is the part of the
magisterium with regard to revelations which God may yet make? How
is this official magisterium organized, and how is it to recognize
a Divine tradition or revealed truth? What is its proper r�le with
regard to tradition? Where and how are revealed truths preserved
and transmitted? What befalls the deposit of tradition in its
transmission through the ages? These and similar questions are
treated elsewhere in the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, but here we must
separate and group all that has reference to tradition and to the
living magisterium inasmuch as it is the organ of preservation and
transmission of traditional and revealed truth.
The following are the points to be treated:
I. The existence of Divine traditions not contained in Holy
Scripture, and the Divine institution of the living magisterium to
defend and transmit revealed truth and the prerogative of this
magisterium;
II. The relation of Scripture to the living magisterium, and
of the living magisterium to Scripture;
III. The proper mode of existence of revealed truth in the
mind of the Church and the way to recognize this truth;
IV. The organization and exercise of the living magisterium;
its precise r�le in the defence and transmission of revealed
truth; its limits, and modes of action;
V. The identity of revealed truth in the varieties of
formulas, systematization, and dogmatic development; the identity
of faith in the Church and through the variations of theology.
A full treatment of these questions would require a lengthy
development; here only a brief outline can be given, the reader
being referred to special works for a fuller explanation.
I. Divine Traditions not contained in Holy Scripture; institution
of the living magisterium; its prerogatives.
Luther's attacks on the Church were at first directed only against
doctrinal details, but the very authority of the Church was
involved in the dispute, and this soon became evident to both
sides. However the controversy continued for many years to turn on
particular points of traditional teaching rather than on the
teaching authority and the chief weapons were Biblical texts. The
Council of Trent, even while implying in its decisions and
anathemas the authority of the living magisterium (which the
Protestants themselves dared not explicitly deny), while appealing
to ecclesiastical tradition and the sense of the Church either for
the determination of the canon or for the interpretation of some
passages of Holy Scripture, even while making a rule of
interpretation in Biblical matters, did not pronounce explicitly
concerning the teaching authority, contenting itself with saying
that revealed truth is found in the sacred books and in the
unwritten traditions coming from God through the Apostles; these
were the sources from which it would draw. The Council, as is
evident, held that there are Divine traditions not contained in
Holy Scripture, revelations made to the Apostles either orally by
Jesus Christ or by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and
transmitted by the Apostles to the Church.
Holy Scripture is therefore not the only theological source of the
Revelation made by God to His Church. Side by side with Scripture
there is tradition, side by side with the written revelation there
is the oral revelation. This granted, it is impossible to be
satisfied with the Bible alone for the solution of all dogmatic
questions. Such was the first field of controversy between
Catholic theologians and the Reformers. The designation of
unwritten Divine traditions was not always given all the clearness
desirable especially in early times; however Catholic
controversialists soon proved to the Protestants that to be
logical and consistent they must admit unwritten traditions as
revealed. Otherwise by what right did they rest on Sunday and not
on Saturday? How could they regard infant baptism as valid, or
baptism by infusion? How could they permit the taking of an oath,
since Christ had commanded that we swear not at all? The Quakers
were more logical in refusing all oaths, the Anabaptists in re-
baptizing adults, the Sabbatarians in resting on Saturday. But
none were so consistent as not to be open to criticism on some
point. Where is it indicated in the Bible that the Bible is the
sole source of faith? Going further, the Catholic
controversialists showed their opponents that of this very Bible,
to which alone they wished to refer, they could not have the
authentic canon nor even a sufficient guarantee without an
authority other than that of the Bible. Calvin parried the blow by
having recourse to a certain taste to which the Divine word would
manifest itself as such in the same way that honey is recognized
by the palate. And this in fact was the only loophole, for Calvin
recognized that no human authority was acceptable in this matter.
But this was a very subjective criterion and one calling for
caution. The Protestants dared not adhere to it. They came
eventually, after rejecting the Divine tradition received from the
Apostles by the infallible Church, to rest their faith in the
Bible only as a human authority, which moreover was especially
insufficient under the circumstances, since it opened up all
manner of doubts and prepared the way for Biblical rationalism.
There is not, in fact, any sufficient guarantee for the canon of
the Scriptures, for the total inspiration or inerrancy of the
Bible, save in a Divine testimony which, not being contained in
the Holy Books with sufficient clearness and amplitude, nor being
sufficiently recognizable to the scrutiny of a scholar who is only
a scholar, does not reach us with the necessary warrant it would
bear if brought by a Divinely assisted authority, as is, according
to Catholics, the authority of the living magisterium of the
Church. Such is the way in which Catholics demonstrate to
Protestants that there should be and that there are in fact Divine
traditions not contained in Holy Writ.
In a similar way they show that they cannot dispense with a
teaching authority, a Divinely authorized living magistracy for
the solution of controversies arising among themselves and of
which the Bible itself was often the occasion. Indeed experience
proved that each man found in the Bible his own ideas, as was said
by one of the earliest reforming sectarians: "Hic liber est in quo
quaerit sua dogmata quisque, invenit et pariter dogmata quisque
sua." One man found the Real Presence, another a purely symbolic
presence, another some sort of efficacious presence. The exercise
of free inquiry with regard to Biblical texts led to endless
disputes, to doctrinal anarchy, and eventually to the denial of
all dogma. These disputes, anarchy, and denial could not be
according to the Divine intention. Hence the necessity of a
competent authority to solve controversies and interpret the
Bible. To say that the Bible was perfectly clear and sufficient to
all was obviously a retort born of desperation, a defiance of
experience and common sense. Catholics refuted it without
difficulty, and their position was amply justified when the
Protestants began compromising themselves with the civil power,
rejecting the doctrinal authority of the ecclesiastical
magisterium only to fall under that of princes.
Moreover it was enough to look at the Bible, to read it without
prejudice to see that the economy of the Christian preaching was
above all one of oral teaching. Christ preached, He did not write.
In His preaching He appealed to the Bible, but He was not
satisfied with the mere reading of it, He explained and
interpreted it, He made use of it in His teaching, but He did not
substitute it for His teaching. There is the example of the
mysterious traveller who explained to the disciples of Emmaus what
had reference to Him in the Scriptures to convince them that
Christ had to suffer and thus enter into His glory. And as He
preached Himself so He sent His Apostles to preach; He did not
commission them to write but to teach, and it was by oral teaching
and preaching that they instructed the nations and brought them to
the Faith. If some of them wrote and did so under Divine
inspiration it is manifest that this was as it were incidentally.
They did not write for the sake of writing, but to supplement
their oral teaching when they could not go themselves to recall or
explain it, to solve practical questions, etc. St. Paul, who of
all the Apostles wrote the most, did not dream of writing
everything nor of replacing his oral teaching by his writings.
Finally, the same texts which show us Christ instituting His
Church and the Apostles founding Churches and spreading Christ's
doctrine throughout the world show us at the same time the Church
instituted as a teaching authority; the Apostles claimed for
themselves this authority, sending others as they had been sent by
Christ and as Christ had been sent by God, always with power to
teach and to impose doctrine as well as to govern the Church and
to baptize. Whoever believed them would be saved; whoever refused
to believe them would be condemned. It is the living Church and
not Scripture that St. Paul indicates as the pillar and the
unshakable ground of truth. And the inference of texts and facts
is only what is exacted by the nature of things. A book although
Divine and inspired is not intended to support itself. If it is
obscure (and what unprejudiced person will deny that there are
obscurities in the Bible?) it must be interpreted. And even if it
is clear it does not carry with it the guarantee of its Divinity,
its authenticity, or its value. Someone must bring it within reach
and no matter what be done the believer cannot believe in the
Bible nor find in it the object of his faith until he has
previously made an act of faith in the intermediary authorities
between the word of God and his reading. Now, authority for
authority, is it not better to have recourse to that of the Church
than to that of the first comer? Liberal Protestants, such as M.
Auguste Sabatier, have been the first to recognize that, if there
must be a religion of authority, the Catholic system with the
splendid organization of its living magisterium is far superior to
the Protestant system, which rests everything on the authority of
a book.
The prerogatives of this teaching authority are made sufficiently
clear by the texts and they are to a certain extent implied in the
very institution. The Church, according to St. Paul's Epistle to
Timothy, is the pillar and ground of truth; the Apostles and
consequently their successors have the right to impose their
doctrine; whosoever refuses to believe them shall be condemned,
whosoever rejects anything is shipwrecked in the Faith. This
authority is therefore infallible. And this infallibility is
guaranteed implicitly but directly by the promise of the Saviour:
"Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the
world." Briefly the Church continues Christ in its mission to
teach as in its mission to sanctify; its power is the same as that
which He received from His Father and, as He came full of truth no
less than of grace, the Church is likewise an institution of truth
as it is an institution of grace. This doctrine was intended to be
spread throughout the world despite so many obstacles of every
kind, and the accomplishment of the task required miracles. So did
Christ give to his Apostles the miraculous power which guaranteed
their teaching. As He Himself confirmed His words by His works He
wished that they also should present with their doctrine
unexceptionable motives for credibility. Their miracles were the
Divine seals of their mission and their Apostolate. The Divine
seal has always been stamped on the teaching authority. It is not
necessary that every missionary should work miracles, the Church
herself is an ever-living miracle, bearing always on her brow the
unexceptionable witness that God is with her.
II. The relation of Scripture to the living magisterium, and of
the living magisterium to Scripture.
This relation is the same as that between the Gospel and the
Apostolic preaching. Christ made use of the Bible, He appealed to
it as to an irrefragable authority, He explained and interpreted
it and furnished the key to it, with it he shed light on His own
doctrine and mission. The Apostles did in like manner when they
spoke to the Jews. Both sides had access to the Scriptures in a
text admitted by all, both recognized in them a Divine authority,
as in the very word of God. This was also the way of the faithful
in their studies and discussions; but with pagans and unbelievers
it was necessary to begin with presenting the Bible and
guaranteeing its authority- the Christian doctrine concerning the
Bible had to be explained to the faithful themselves, and the
guarantee of this doctrine demonstrated. The Bible had been
committed to the care of the living magisterium. It was the
Church's part to guard the Bible, to present it to the faithful in
authorized editions or accurate translations, it was for her to
make known the nature and value of the Divine Book by declaring
what she knew regarding its inspiration and inerrancy, it was for
her to supply the key by explaining why and how it had been
inspired, how it contained Revelation, how the proper object of
that Revelation was not purely human instruction but a religious
and moral doctrine with a view to our supernatural destiny and the
means to attain it, how, the Old Testament being a preparation and
annunciation of the Messias and the new dispensation, there might
be found beneath the husk of the letter typical meanings, figures,
and prophecies. It was for the Church in consequence to determine
the authentic canon, to specify the special rules and conditions
for interpretation, to pronounce in case of doubt as to the exact
sense of a given book or text, and even when necessary to
safeguard the historical, prophetical, or apologetic value of a
given text or passage, to pronounce in certain questions of
authenticity, chronology, exegesis, or translation, either to
reject an opinion compromising the authority of the book or the
veracity of its doctrine or to maintain a given body of revealed
truth contained in a given text. It was above all for the Church
to circulate the Divine Book by minting its doctrine, adapting and
explaining it, by offering it and drawing from it nourishment
wherewith to nourish souls, briefly by supplementing the book,
making use of it, and assisting others to make use of it. This is
the debt of Scripture to the living magisterium.
On the other hand the living magisterium owes much to Scripture.
There it finds the word of God, new-blown so to speak, as it was
expressed under Divine agency by the inspired author; while oral
tradition, although faithfully transmitting revealed truth with
the Divine assistance, nevertheless transmits it only in human
formulas. Scripture gives us beyond doubt to a certain extent a
human expression of the truth which it presents, since this truth
is developed in and by a human brain acting in a human manner, but
also to a certain extent Divine, since this human development
takes place wholly under the action of God. So also with due
proportion it may be said of the inspired word what Christ said of
His: It is spirit and life. In a sense differing from the
Protestant sense which sometimes goes so far as to deify the
Bible, but, in a true sense, we admit that God speaks to us in the
Bible more directly than in oral teaching. The latter, moreover,
ever faithful to the recommendations which St. Paul made to his
disciple Timothy, does not fail to have recourse to Biblical
sources for its instruction and to draw thence the heavenly
doctrine, to take thence with the doctrine a sure, ever-young, and
ever-living expression of this doctrine, one more adequate than
any other despite the inevitable inadaptability of human formulas
to divine realities In the hands of masters Scripture may become a
sharp defensive and offensive weapon against error and heresy.
When a controversy arises recourse is had first to the Bible.
Frequently when decisive texts are found masters wield them
skilfully and in such a way as to demonstrate their irresistible
force. If none are found of the necessary clearness the assistance
of Scripture is not thereby abandoned. Guided by the clear sense
of the living and luminous truth, which it bears within itself, by
its likeness to faith defended at need against error by the Divine
assistance, the living magisterium strives, explains, argues, and
occasionally subtilizes in order to bring forward texts which, if
they lack an independent and absolute value, have an ad hominem
force, or value, through the authority of the authentic
interpreter, whose very thought, if it is not, or is not clearly,
in Scripture, nevertheless stands forth with a distinctness or new
clearness in this manipulation of Scripture, by this contact with
it.
Manifestly there is no question here of a meaning which is not in
Scripture and which the magisterium reads into it by imposing it
as the Biblical meaning. This individual writers may do and have
sometimes done, for they are not infallible as individuals, but
not the authentic magisterium. There is question only of the
advantage which the living magisterium draws from Scripture
whether to attain a clearer consciousness of its own thought, to
formulate it in hieratic terms, or to triumphantly reject an
opinion favourable to error or heresy. As regards Biblical
interpretation properly so called the Church is infallible in the
sense that, whether by authentic decision of pope or council, or
by its current teaching that a given passage of Scripture has a
certain meaning, this meaning must be regarded as the true sense
of the passage in question. It claims this power of infallible
interpretation only in matters of faith and morals, that is where
religious or moral truth is in danger, directly, if the text or
passage belongs to the moral and religious order; indirectly, if
in assigning a meaning to a text or book the veracity of the
Bible, its moral value, or the dogma of its inspiration or
inerrancy is imperilled. Without going further into the manifold
services which the Bible renders to the living magisterium mention
must nevertheless be made as particularly important of its
services in the apologetic order. In fact Scripture by its
historic value, which is indisputable and undisputed on many
points, furnishes the apologist with irrefragable arguments in
support of supernatural religion. It contains for example miracles
whose reality is impressed on the historian with the same
certainty as the most acknowledged facts. This is true and perhaps
more strikingly so of the argument from the prophecies, for the
Scriptures, the Old as well as the New Testament, contain manifest
prophecies, the fulfilment of which we behold either in Christ and
His Apostles or in the later development of the Christian
religion.
In view of all this it will be readily understood that since the
time of St. Paul the Church has urgently recommended to her
ministers the study of Holy Scripture, that she has watched with a
jealous authority over its integral transmission, its exact
translation, and its faithful interpretation If occasionally she
has seemed to restrict its use or its diffusion this too was
through an easily comprehensible love and a particular esteem for
the Bible, that the sacred Book might not like a profane book be
made a ground for curiosity, endless discussions, and abuses of
every kind. In short, since the Church at last proves to be the
best safeguard for human reason against the excesses of an
unbridled reason, so by the very avowal of sincere Protestants
does she show herself at the present day the best defender of the
Bible against an unrestrained Biblicism or an unchecked criticism.
III. The proper mode of existence of revealed truth in the mind of
the Church and the way to recognize this truth.
There is a formula current in Christian teaching (and the formula
is borrowed from St. Paul himself) that traditional truth was
confided to the Church as a deposit which it would guard and
faithfully transmit as it had received it without adding to it or
taking anything away. This formula expresses very well one of the
aspects of tradition and one of the principal r�les of the living
magisterium. But this idea of a deposit should not make us lose
sight of the true manner in which traditional truth lives and is
transmitted in the Church. This deposit in fact is not an
inanimate thing passed from hand to hand; it is not, properly
speaking, an assemblage of doctrines and institutions consigned to
books or other monuments. Books and monuments of every kind are a
means, an organ of transmission, they are not, properly speaking,
the tradition itself. To better understand the latter it must be
represented as a current of life and truth coming from God through
Christ and through the Apostles to the last of the faithful who
repeats his creed and learns his catechism. This conception of
tradition is not always clear to all at the first glance. It must
be reached, however, if we wish to form a clear and exact idea. We
can endeavour to explain it to ourselves in the following manner:
We are all conscious of an assemblage of ideas or opinions living
in our mind and forming part of the very life of our mind,
sometimes they find their clear expression, again we find
ourselves without the exact formula wherewith to express them to
ourselves or to others an idea is in search as it were of its
expression, sometimes it even acts in us and leads us to actions
without our having as yet the reflective consciousness of it.
Something similar may be said of the ideas or opinions which live,
as it were, and stir the social sentiment of a people, a family,
or any other well-characterized group to form what is called the
spirit of the day, the spirit of a family, or the spirit of a
people.
This common sentiment is in a sense nothing else than the sum of
individual sentiments, and yet we feel clearly that it is quite
another thing than the individual taken individually. It is a fact
of experience that there is a common sentiment, as if there were
such a thing as a common spirit, and as if this common spirit were
the abode of certain ideas and opinions which are doubtless the
ideas and opinions of each man, but which take on a peculiar
aspect in each man inasmuch as they are the ideas and opinions of
all. The existence of tradition in the Church must be regarded as
living in the spirit and the heart, thence translating itself into
acts, and expressing itself in words or writings; but here we must
not have in mind individual sentiment, but the common sentiment of
the Church, the sense or sentiment of the faithful, that is, of
all who live by its life and are in communion of thought among
themselves and with her. The living idea is the idea of all, it is
the idea of individuals, not merely inasmuch as they are
individuals, but inasmuch as they form part of the same social
body. This sentiment of the Church is peculiar in this, that it is
itself under the influence of grace. Hence it follows that it is
not subject, like that of other human groups to error and
thoughtless or culpable tendencies. The Spirit of God always
living in His Church upholds the sense of revealed truth ever
living therein.
Documents of all kinds (writings, monuments, etc.) are in the
hands of masters, as of the faithful, a means of finding or
recognizing the revealed truth confided to the Church under the
direction of her pastors. There is between written documents and
the living magisterium of the Church a relation similar,
proportionately speaking, to that already outlined between
Scripture and the living magisterium. In them is found the
traditional thought expressed according to varieties of
environments and circumstances, no longer in an inspired language,
as is the case with Scripture, but in a purely human language,
consequently subject to the imperfections and shortcomings of
human thought. Nevertheless the more the documents are the exact
expression of the living thought of the Church the more they
thereby possess the value and authority which belong to that
thought because they are so much the better expression of
tradition. Often formulas of the past have themselves entered the
traditional current and become the official formulas of the
Church. Hence it will be understood that the living magisterium
searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present
thought in order to defend it against attacks or dangers of
mutilation, now for light to walk the right road without straying.
The thought of the Church is essentially a traditional thought and
the living magisterium by taking cognizance of ancient formulas of
this thought thereby recruits its strength and prepares to give to
immutable truth a new expression which shall be in harmony with
the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary
minds. Revealed truth has sometimes found definitive formulas from
the earliest times; then the living magisterium has only had to
preserve and explain them and put them in circulation. Sometimes
attempts have been made to express this truth, without success. It
even happens that, in attempting to express revealed truth in the
terms of some philosophy or to fuse it with some current of human
thought, it has been distorted so as to be scarcely recognizable,
so closely mingled with error that it becomes difficult to
separate them. When the Church studies the ancient monuments of
her faith she casts over the past the reflection of her living and
present thought and by some sympathy of the truth of to-day with
that of yesterday she succeeds in recognizing through the
obscurities and inaccuracies of ancient formulas the portions of
traditional truth, even when they are mixed with error. The Church
is also (as regards religious and moral doctrines) the best
interpreter of truly traditional documents; she recognizes as by
instinct what belongs to the current of her living thought and
distinguishes it from the foreign elements which may have become
mixed with it in the course of centuries.
The living magisterium, therefore, makes extensive use of
documents of the past, but it does so while judging and
interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but
likewise, when needful, distinguishing its present thought from
what is traditional only in appearance. It is revealed truth
always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred,
the present thought of the Church in continuity with her
traditional thought, which is for it the final criterion,
according to which the living magisterium adopts as true or
rejects as false the often obscure and confused formulas which
occur in the monuments of the past. Thus are explained both her
respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her
supreme independence towards those writings--she judges them more
than she is judged by them. Harnack has said that the Church is
accustomed to conceal her evolution and to efface as well as she
can the differences between her present and her former thought by
condemning as heretical the most faithful witnesses of what was
formerly orthodoxy. Not understanding what tradition is, the ever-
living thought of the Church, he believes that she abjured her
past when she merely distinguished between what was traditional
truth in the past and what was only human alloy mixed with that
truth, the personal opinion of an author substituting itself for
the general thought of the Christian community. With regard to
official documents, the expression of the infallible magisterium
of the Church embodied in the decision of councils, or the solemn
judgments of the popes, the Church never gainsays what she has
once decided. She is then linked with her past because in this
past her entire self is concerned and not any fallible organ of
her thought. Hence she still finds her doctrine and rule of faith
in these venerable monuments; the formulas may have grown old, but
the truth which they express is always her present thought.
IV. The organization and exercise of the living magisterium; its
precise r�le in the defence and transmission of revealed truth--
its limits and modes of action.
Closer study of the living magisterium will enable us to better
understand the splendid organism created by God and gradually
developed that it might preserve, transmit, and bring within the
reach of all revealed truth, ever the same, but adapted to every
variety of time, circumstances, and environment. Properly
speaking, this magisterium is a teaching authority; it not only
presents the truth, but it has the right to impose it, since its
power is the very power given by God to Christ and by Christ to
His Church. This authority is called the teaching Church. The
teaching Church is essentially composed of the episcopal body,
which continues here below the work and mission of the Apostolic
College. It was indeed in the form of a college or social body
that Christ grouped His Apostles and it is likewise as a social
body that the episcopate exercises its mission to teach. Doctrinal
infallibility has been guaranteed to the episcopal body and to the
head of that body as it was guaranteed to the Apostles, with this
difference, however, between the Apostles and the bishops that
each Apostle was personally infallible (in virtue of his
extraordinary mission as founder and the plenitude of the Holy
Ghost received on Pentecost by the Twelve and later communicated
to St. Paul as to the Twelve), whereas only the body of bishops is
infallible and each bishop is not so, save in proportion as he
teaches in communion and concert with the entire episcopal body.
At the head of this episcopal body is the supreme authority of the
Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter in his primacy as he is
his successor in his see. As supreme authority in the teaching
body, which is infallible, he himself is infallible. The episcopal
body is infallible also, but only in union with its head, from
whom moreover it may not separate, since to do so would be to
separate from the foundation on which the Church is built. The
authority of the pope may be exercised without the co-operation of
the bishops, and this even in infallible decisions which both
bishops and faithful are bound to receive with the same
submission. The authority of the bishops may be exercised in two
ways; now each bishop teaches the flock confided to him, again the
bishops assemble in council to draw up together and pass doctrinal
or disciplinary decrees. When all the bishops of the Catholic
world (this totality is to be understood as morally speaking; it
suffices for the whole Church to be represented) are thus
assembled in council the council is called oecumenical. The
doctrinal decrees of an oecumenical council, once they are
approved by the pope, are infallible as are the ex cathedra
definitions of the sovereign pontiff. Although the bishops, taken
individually, are not infallible their teaching participates in
the infallibility of tie Church according as they teach in concert
and in union with the episcopal body, that is according as they
express not their personal ideas, but the very thought of the
Church.
Beside the sovereign pontiff are the Roman Congregations, many of
which are especially concerned with doctrinal questions. Some of
them, such as the Congregation of the Index, are not so concerned
save from a disciplinary standpoint, by prohibiting the reading of
certain books, regarded as dangerous to faith or morals, if not by
the very doctrine which they contain, at least by their way of
expressing it or by their unseasonableness. Other congregations,
such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have a
more directly doctrinal authority. This authority is never
infallible; it is nevertheless binding and exacts a religious
submission, interior as well as exterior. Nevertheless this
interior submission does not necessarily bear on the absolute
truth or falsity of the doctrine concerned in the decree, it may
only bear on the safety or danger of a certain teaching or
opinion, the decree itself usually having in view only the moral
qualification of the doctrine. To assist them in their doctrinal
task the bishops have all those who teach by their authority or
under their surveillance; pastors and curates, professors in
ecclesiastical establishments, in a word, all who teach or explain
Christian doctrine.
Theological teaching in all its forms (in seminaries,
universities, etc.) gives valuable assistance as a whole to the
teaching authority and to all who teach under that authority. In
the study of theology the masters themselves have acquired the
knowledge which usually assists them to discern truth or falsehood
in doctrinal matters, they have drawn thence what they themselves
are to provide. Theologians as such do not form a part of the
teaching Church, but as professional expounders of revealed truth
they study it scientifically, they collect and systematize it,
they illumine it with all the lights of philosophy, history, etc.
They are, as it were, the natural consultors of the teaching
authority, to furnish it with the necessary information and data;
they thereby prepare and sometimes in an even more direct manner
by their reports, their written consultations, their projects or
schemata, and their preparatory redactions the official documents
which the teaching authority completely develops and publishes
authoritatively. On the other hand, their scientific works are
useful for the instruction of those who should spread and
popularize the doctrine, put it in circulation, and adapt it to
all by speech or writings of every kind. It is evident what
marvellous unity is attained on this point alone in ecclesiastical
teaching and how the same truth, descended from above, distributed
through a thousand different channels, finally comes pure and
undefiled to the most lowly and the most ignorant.
This multifarious work, of scientific exposition as well as of
popularization and propaganda, is likewise assisted by the
countless written forms of religious teaching, among which
catechisms have a special character of doctrinal security,
approved as they are by the teaching authority and claiming only
to set forth with clearness and precision the teaching common in
the Church. Thus the child who learns his catechism may, provided
he is informed of it, take cognizance that the doctrine presented
to him is not the personal opinion of the volunteer catechist or
of the priest who communicates it to him. The catechism is the
same in all the parishes of a diocese, apart from a few
differences of detail which have no bearing on doctrine all the
catechisms of a country are alike; the differences between those
of one country and another are scarcely perceptible. It is truly
the mind of the Church received from God or Christ and transmitted
by the Apostles to the Christian society which thus reaches even
little children by the voice of the catechist, or the savage by
that of the missionary. This diffusion of the same truth
throughout the world and this unity of the same faith among the
most diverse peoples is a marvel which by itself forces the
recognition that God is with His Church. St. Irenaeus in his time
was in admiration of it and he expressed his admiration in
language of such brilliancy and poetry as is seldom to be met with
in the venerable Bishop of Lyons. The outer and visible cause of
its diffusion and unity is the splendid organization of the living
magisterium. This magisterium was not instituted to receive new
truths, but to guard, transmit, propagate, and preserve revealed
truth from every admixture of error, and to cause it to prevail.
Moreover the magisterium should not be considered as external to
the community of the faithful. Those who teach cannot and should
not teach save what they have learned themselves, those who have
the office of teachers have been chosen from among the faithful
and they first of all are obliged to believe what they propose to
the faith of others. Moreover they usually propose to the belief
of the faithful only the truths of which the latter have already
made more or less explicit profession. Sometimes it is even by
sounding as it were the common sentiment of the Church, still more
by scrutinizing the monuments of the past, that masters and
theologians discover that such and such a doctrine, perhaps in
dispute, belongs nevertheless to the traditional deposit. More
than one among the faithful may be unconscious of personal belief
in it, but if he is in union of thought with the Church he
believes implicitly that which perhaps he declines to recognize
explicitly as an object of his faith. It was thus with regard to
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception before it was inserted in
the explicit faith of the Church.
Hence there is between the teaching Church and the faithful an
intimate union of thought and heart. The teaching authority loses
nothing of its rights; these are limited only from above by the
very conditions of the command which they have received. But the
exercise of this authority is by so much more certain and easy as
the faithful, generally, so to speak, confirm by their adhesion
the decisions of this authority: a dogmatic definition scarcely
does more than sanction the faith already existing in the
Christian community. The better to understand, adapt, and preserve
revealed truth against attacks or errors the masters in the Church
and the professors of theology naturally appeal to all the
resources offered by human science. Among these sciences
philosophy, history, languages, philology in all its forms
necessarily have an important place in the arsenal of the teaching
magisterium. With regard to theological systematization in
particular, philosophy necessarily intervenes to assist theology
better to comprehend revealed truth, the better to synthesize
traditional data, and the better to explain the dogmatic idea. In
the Middle Ages a fruitful alliance was formed between Scholastic
philosophy and theology. It may happen that philosophy and the
other human sciences are at variance with theology, the science of
revealed truth. The conflict is never insoluble, for the true can
never be opposed to the true, nor the human truth of philosophy
and human knowledge to the supernatural truth of theology. But the
fact remains that scientific hypothesis, science which seeks
itself, and philosophy which develops itself sometimes seem in
opposition to revealed truth. In this case the teaching Church has
the right, in order to preserve traditional truth, to condemn the
assertions, opinions, and hypotheses which, although not direct
denials, nevertheless endanger it or rather expose some souls to
the loss of it. Authority has need to be prudent in these
condemnations and it is well known that the cases are very rare
when it may be asserted with any appearance of justification that
it has not been sufficiently so, but its right to interfere is
indisputable for anyone who admits the Divine institution of the
magisterium.
There are then between purely profane facts and opinions and
revealed truths mixed facts and opinions which by their nature
belong to the human order, but which are in intimate contact and
close connexion with supernatural truth. These facts are called
dogmatic facts and these opinions theological opinions. In very
virtue of its mission the teaching authority has jurisdiction over
these facts and opinions; it is even a positive truth, if not a
revealed truth, that dogmatic facts and theological opinions may
also like dogmatic truths themselves be the object of an
infallible decision. The Church is no less infallible in
maintaining that the five famous propositions are in Jansenism
than in condemning these propositions as heretical. A distinction
must be made between dogmatic traditions or revealed truths, pious
traditions, liturgical customs, and the accounts of supernatural
manifestations or revelations which circulate in the world of
Christian piety. When the Church intervenes in order to pronounce
in these matters it is never to canonize them, if we may so speak,
nor to give them an authority of faith; in such cases it claims
only to preserve them against temerarious attacks, to pronounce
that they contain nothing contrary to faith or morals, and to
recognize in them a human value sufficient for piety to nourish
itself therewith freely and without danger.
V. The identity of revealed truth in the varieties of formulas,
systematization, and dogmatic development, the identity of faith
in the Church and through the variations of theology.
The saying of Sully Prud'homme is well known, "How is it that this
which is so complicated (the 'Summa' of St. Thomas) has proceeded
from what was so simple (the Gospel)?" In fact when we read a
theological treatise or the profession of faith and anti-Modernist
oath imposed by Pius X they seem at first glance very different
from the Holy Scripture or the Apostles' Creed. On closer study we
become aware that the differences are not irreconcilable; despite
appearances the "Summa" and the anti-Modernist oath are naturally
linked with the Scripture and the faith of the first Christians.
To grasp thoroughly the identity of revealed truth such as was
believed in the early centuries with the dogmas which we now
profess, it is necessary to study thoroughly the process of
dogmatic expression in the complete history of dogma and theology.
It is sufficient here to indicate its general outlines and
characteristics. That which was shown in Scripture or the
Evangelic Revelation as a living reality (the Divine Person of
Jesus Christ) has been formulated in abstract terms (one person,
two natures) or in concrete formulas (my Father and I are one);
men passed constantly from the implicit seen or received to the
explicit reasoned and reflected upon; they analyzed the complex
data, compared the separate elements, built up a system of the
scattered truths; they cleared up by analogies of faith and the
light of reason points which were still obscure and fused them
into a whole, in whose parts the data of Divine Revelation and
those of human knowledge were sometimes difficult to distinguish.
Briefly all this led to a work of transposition, analysis, and
synthesis, of deduction and induction, of the elaboration of the
revealed matter by theology. In the course of this work the
formulas have changed, the Divine realities have become tinged
with the colours of human thought, revealed truths have been
mingled with those of science and philosophy, but the heavenly
doctrine has remained the same throughout the varieties of
formulas, systematization, and dogmatic expression. It is seen at
different angles and to a certain extent with other eyes, but it
is the same truth which was presented to the first Christians and
which is presented to us to-day.
To this identity of revealed truth corresponds the identity of
faith. What the first Christians believed we still believe; what
we believe to-day they believed more or less explicitly, in a more
or less conscious way. Since the deposit of Revelation has
remained the same, the same also, in substance, has remained the
taking possession of the deposit by the living faith. Each of the
faithful has not at all times nor has he always explicit
consciousness of all that he believes, but his implicit belief
always contains what he one day makes explicit in the profession
of faith. Certain truths, which may be called fundamental, have
always been explicitly professed in the Church either by word or
action; others which may be called secondary may have long
remained implicit, enveloped, as regards their precise detail, in
a more general truth where faith did not discern them at the first
glance. In the first case at a given time uncertainties may have
existed, controversies have arisen, heresies cropped up. But the
mind of the Church, the Catholic sense, has not hesitated as to
what was essential, there has never been in the Christian world
that darkening of the truth with which heretics have reproached
it; these might have seen and they who had eyes to see did see. On
these points disputes have never arisen among the faithful; there
have sometimes been very sharp disputes, but they had to do with
misunderstandings or bore only on details of expression.
As regards truths such as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,
there have been uncertainties and controversies over the very
substance of the subjects involved. The revealed truth was indeed
in the deposit of truth in the Church, but it was not formulated
in explicit terms nor even in clearly equivalent terms; it was
enveloped in a more general truth (that e. g. of the all-holiness
of Mary), the formula of which might be understood in a more or
less absolute sense (exemption from all actual sin, exemption even
from original sin). On the other hand, this truth (the exemption
of Mary from original sin) may seem in at least apparent conflict
with other certain truths (universality of original sin,
redemption of all by Christ). It will be readily understood that
in some circumstances, when the question is put explicitly for the
first time, the faithful have hesitated. It is even natural that
the theologians should show more hesitation than the other
faithful. More aware of the apparent opposition between the new
opinion and the ancient truth, they may legitimately resist, while
awaiting fuller light, what may seem to them unreflecting haste or
unenlightened piety. Thus did St. Anselm, St. Thomas, and St.
Bonaventure in the case of the Immaculate Conception. But the
living idea of Mary in the mind of the Church implied absolute
exemption from all sin without exception, even from original sin;
the faithful whom theological preoccupations did not prevent from
beholding this idea in its purity, with that intuition of the
heart often more prompt and more enlightened than reasoning and
reflected thought, shrank from all restriction and could not
suffer, according to the expression of St. Augustine, that there
should be question of any sin whatsoever in connexion with Mary.
Little by little the feeling of the faithful won the day. Not, as
has been said, because the theologians, powerless to struggle
against a blind sentiment, had themselves to follow the movement,
but because their perceptions, quickened by the faithful and by
their own instinct of faith, grew more considerate of the
sentiment of the faithful and eventually examined the new opinion
more closely in order to make sure that, far from contradicting
any dogma, it harmonized wonderfully with other revealed truths
and corresponded as a whole to the analogy of faith and rational
fitness. Finally scrutinizing with fresh care the deposit of
revelation, they there discovered the pious opinion, hitherto
concealed, as far as they were concerned in the more general
formula, and, not satisfied to hold it as true, they declared it
revealed. Thus to implicit faith in a revealed truth succeeded,
after long discussions, explicit faith in the same truth
thenceforth shining in the sight of all. There have been no new
data, but there has been under the impulse of grace and sentiment
and the effort of theology a more distinct and clear insight into
what the ancient data contained. When the Church defined the
Immaculate Conception it defined what was actually in the explicit
faith of the faithful what had always been implicitly in that
faith. The same is true of all similar cases, save for accidental
differences of circumstances. In recognizing a new truth the
Church thereby recognizes that it already possessed that truth.
There is, therefore in the Church progress of dogma, progress of
theology, progress to a certain extent of faith itself, but this
progress does not consist in the addition of fresh information nor
the change of ideas. What is believed has always been believed,
but in time it is more commonly and thoroughly understood and
explicitly expressed. Thus, thanks to the living magisterium and
ecclesiastical preaching, thanks to the living sense of truth in
the Church, to the action of the Holy Ghost simultaneously
directing master and faithful, traditional truth lives and
develops in the Church, always the same, at once ancient and new--
ancient, for the first Christians already beheld it to a certain
extent, new, because we see it with our own eyes and in harmony
with our present ideas. Such is the notion of tradition in the
double meaning of the word; it is Divine truth coming down to us
in the mind of the Church and it is the guardianship and
transmission of this Divine truth by the organ of the living
magisterium, by ecclesiastical preaching, by the profession of it
made by all in the Christian life.
JEAN BAINVEL
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80228.
(
[email protected]) Taken from the New Advent Web Page
(www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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