The Traditional Catholic's Catch-22 of Infallibility

[Mono no aware]

Admin N.B.: this thread neither denies nor questions the dogma of papal infallibility.  It fully acknowledges that papal infallibility is a de fide doctrine of the Catholic faith, solemnly defined at Vatican I.  This thread is simply intended to explore what the implications have been vis-à-vis the split between traditionalists and modernists.



In the decades following the definition of papal infallibility in 1870, the modernist theologians in the Church were actually able to see a silver lining in the doctrine.  They reckoned it this way: if a pope was constrained by having to speak ex cathedra in order to be infallible, then they considered themselves free to question anything outside that narrow scope of teaching—after all, they figured, it didn't meet the criteria for perfect infallibility.  This was, on their part, a clever manipulation of the doctrine, and it allowed them to claim a degree of practical freedom. 

As everyone knows, history records their success: the efforts to quash modernism in the early decades of the twentieth century were ultimately insufficient, such that by the 1960s the wave of modernist ascendancy was enough to carry Vatican II in their favor.  The fifty subsequent years have belonged to the liberal side.

My question is this: do the modernists still enjoy a palpable benefit from infallibility? 

It's not that the conciliar popes have invoked infallibility to gird their liberal teachings.  On the contrary, even traditional Catholics appeal to the fact that the entire modernist program has no infallible guarantee whatsoever: Vatican II was only a "pastoral" council and therefore not binding, and none of the liberal blather uttered by the conciliar popes commands anyone's assent, since they haven't issued any of it ex cathedra.

On the face of it, this would seem to benefit the traditionalist side.  It certainly gives traditionalists permission to ignore the post-conciliar magisterium.  But isn't there a deliberate calculus to this on the modernist side?  By not invoking infallibility, they've created a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for themselves.  Every heterodox utterance can be waved away: "don't worry, he wasn't speaking infallibly."  And true enough.  By declining to teach formally and ex cathedra, they will forever be able to avoid a major schism.

Do the modernists have the advantage here?  They could conceivably keep chugging on forever with this paradigm.  And the traditionalist movement would be left in a holding pattern, condemned to be perpetual ankle-biters: claiming the lack of infallibility to justify their resistance, while remaining impotent in condemning a liberal hierarchy which propagates its creed to 90-odd percent of the faithful, unhindered and with ease.

It seems like the modernists are exploiting infallibility as the ultimate loophole.  It's their escape hatch for everything.



Thoughts?

[Greg]

My thought is that the cat is out of the bag now.  Credibility can only be lost once and they have lost it.

I simply don't believe in infallibility as it was taught to me as a child.  Reality has gotten in the way.

[Mono no aware]

My thought is that the cat is out of the bag now.  Credibility can only be lost once and they have lost it.

I simply don't believe in infallibility as it was taught to me as a child.  Reality has gotten in the way.

Good point.  I forgot that infallibility has been invoked, indeed, by a post-conciliar pope: by Pope Francis when he canonized JPII and John XXIII.

Which only makes it all the more of a Catch-22.  In order to wriggle around that glaring embarrassment, traditional Catholics have resorted to taking the non-consensus and un-traditional opinion that canonization isn't infallible after all.  Just like the modernists in the early 20th century.

[Bonaventure]

You guys have been railing on this for months. Years even.

There's nothing really more to be said. We are in a terrible situation, I personally don't have the answers.

If one wants to keep raising this question over and over, they might as well become Old Catholic or Orthodox. It's as if you're brimming to do so.

[christulsa]

its a mystery.  true, infallibility has limits which can be abused by modernists and trads alike today.  the "sspx position" as it were seems to me to be most conforming to/explaining what the Church teaches about infallibility applied to the paradoxes of the conciliar and post-conciliar magisterium.  in other words to closely apply criticism to documents based on their degree of authority, strictly following a degree of criticism the church allows.  trad writers tend to do that.  the modernists tend to make up their own rules

[Mono no aware]

You guys have been railing on this for months. Years even.

There's nothing really more to be said. We are in a terrible situation, I personally don't have the answers.

If one wants to keep raising this question over and over, they might as well become Old Catholic or Orthodox. It's as if you're brimming to do so.

I appreciate your frustration.  I just want to make it clear, though: I'm no longer tilting against the infallibility windmill.  I've thought about this sufficiently, and I've realized that there's just no way for a Catholic to deny infallibility.  I want to publicly admit, LausTibeChriste was right when he said:

Denying Vatican I? Pure lunacy. Enjoy Orthodoxy boys.

And it's true.  There are no traditional Catholic chapels holding out against infallibility.  Like you said, that's a position for either the Old Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox.  A Catholic who denies Vatican I makes himself his own pope.  Because once you deny one ecumenical council, where do you decide to stop?  It's pure Richard Ibranyi territory; there's no limit to how far back you can go.

All that said, my OP still stands.  How long can this go on?  Is there an expiration date?  What I'm trying to say is that, granting infallibility, how does anyone get out of this double bind?  If you take the traditional view on infallibility, then JP2 is a saint, and the spirit of Vatican II is sanctified by his canonization. 

But if you take the opposite stance, that anything short of an encyclical labeled Infallibilis Ego can be blithely ignored, then the modernists win.  They've been able to plow through for fifty years with hardly an infallible peep.  In fact, it becomes their go-to excuse for every instance of shepherding the flock astray: "hey, don't sweat it.  He wasn't speaking infallibly."

As far as I can tell, it's a maddening Catch-22.

[Mono no aware]

its a mystery.  true, infallibility has limits which can be abused by modernists and trads alike today.  the "sspx position" as it were seems to me to be most conforming to/explaining what the Church teaches about infallibility applied to the paradoxes of the conciliar and post-conciliar magisterium.  in other words to closely apply criticism to documents based on their degree of authority, strictly following a degree of criticism the church allows.  trad writers tend to do that.

All of that is fine.  But I think it just locks the SSPX into the holding pattern I spoke of in the OP.

the modernists tend to make up their own rules

That they do.  But credit where credit is due: they have been ingenious w/r/t infallibility.  When they didn't have the papacy, they decided that anything which wasn't ex cathedra was fair game for questioning or revision.  Then, when they did take the papacy (and with it a blockbuster ecumenical council), they were more than happy to cede their old position to the traditionalists.  So long as they didn't invoke infallibility, they could dispense their doctrines without schism.  Their claim to still be the true Church is saved by the fact that they haven't had to the nerve to take up the infallible stance.  It's what lets the traditional side persist, but it's also what condemns it to a Sisyphean routine.

[DominusTecum]

You guys have been railing on this for months. Years even.

There's nothing really more to be said. We are in a terrible situation, I personally don't have the answers.

If one wants to keep raising this question over and over, they might as well become Old Catholic or Orthodox. It's as if you're brimming to do so.

Catholics were Catholic before any of them accepted infallibility and before infallibility was defined at Vatican I. They believed that the Church was the one true Church. They were not Orthodox. They had the faith. The faith is more than one single doctrine first defined almost 1900 years into the lifespan of the Church.

I sometimes wonder if it's something like Luther's doctrine of sola scriptura... The Protestants made an idol of the Bible, they tried to make it into an absolute rule of faith, and the whole Protestant edifice collapsed into dust like the tower of babel. Catholics made the same mistake a little later down the line, but they tried to make the papacy the absolute rule of faith, and the result was the same. It doesn't follow that the papacy should therefore be rejected any more than it follows that the Bible should be.

I don't mean to question the inerrrancy of scripture or the authority of the Papacy... only what the consequences might be of making those things the center of our faith.

[DominusTecum]

That they do.  But credit where credit is due: they have been ingenious w/r/t infallibility.  When they didn't have the papacy, they decided that anything which wasn't ex cathedra was fair game for questioning or revision.  Then, when they did take the papacy (and with it a blockbuster ecumenical council), they were more than happy to cede their old position to the traditionalists.  So long as they didn't invoke infallibility, they could dispense their doctrines without schism.  Their claim to still be the true Church is saved by the fact that they haven't had to the nerve to take up the infallible stance.  It's what lets the traditional side persist, but it's also what condemns it to a Sisyphean routine.

On the other hand, it's more than clear that they'd be wreaking havoc just fine without having to search for loopholes in the dogma of infallibility. Look at the Protestant sects.

I don't think there is anything that can stop these demons other than the power of blood. And God, of course.

[Mono no aware]

On the other hand, it's more than clear that they'd be wreaking havoc just fine without having to search for loopholes in the dogma of infallibility. Look at the Protestant sects.

Well, I would argue that the Protestant sects are a different kind of animal than the modernists in the Catholic Church.  Say what you will about Luther, but he had the nerve to take his excommunication and set up his own cult.  He accepted a public delineation between his church and the Catholic Church.

The modernists, on the other hand, can claim the Catholic Church and the Catholic popes of the last fifty years.  They're shepherding a flock of 1-point-some billion from the See of Rome.  Virtually everyone short of a dogmatic sedevacantist concedes that this is more or less the Church.  The modernists are not likely to excommunicate themselves, which is why their regnum can persist, seemingly, indefinitely.

[Bonaventure]

Catholics were Catholic before any of them accepted infallibility and before infallibility was defined at Vatican I. They believed that the Church was the one true Church. They were not Orthodox. They had the faith. The faith is more than one single doctrine first defined almost 1900 years into the lifespan of the Church.

...

Catholics made the same mistake a little later down the line, but they tried to make the papacy the absolute rule of faith, and the result was the same. It doesn't follow that the papacy should therefore be rejected any more than it follows that the Bible should be.

I don't mean to question the inerrrancy [sic] of scripture or the authority of the Papacy... only what the consequences might be of making those things the center of our faith.

I don't think infallibility made the papacy the "center" of Faith, but rhetoric like this is dangerous. I can read it, you're teasing at "infallibility was wrong," or it is somehow the problem with what is going on today. Catholics indeed were Catholic before 1870, but those who rejected papal infallibility, before and after, were of a Gallican and Jansenist bent. With rhetoric like yours, that's where one ends up.

The orthodox Catholics didn't somehow pull a 180 right after Vatican I. They already believed in papal infallibility. Who didn't? The ultrajectines, and the Gallicans, and look where they ended up. Not perfect "trad" churches, mind you.

The great saint of our days, someone like Marcel Lefebvre, guess what, he was an ultramontane unabashedly for papal infallibility.

[Bonaventure]

You guys have been railing on this for months. Years even.

There's nothing really more to be said. We are in a terrible situation, I personally don't have the answers.

If one wants to keep raising this question over and over, they might as well become Old Catholic or Orthodox. It's as if you're brimming to do so.

I appreciate your frustration.  I just want to make it clear, though: I'm no longer tilting against the infallibility windmill.  I've thought about this sufficiently, and I've realized that there's just no way for a Catholic to deny infallibility.  I want to publicly admit, LausTibeChriste was right when he said:

Denying Vatican I? Pure lunacy. Enjoy Orthodoxy boys.

And it's true.  There are no traditional Catholic chapels holding out against infallibility.  Like you said, that's a position for either the Old Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox.  A Catholic who denies Vatican I makes himself his own pope.  Because once you deny one ecumenical council, where do you decide to stop?  It's pure Richard Ibranyi territory; there's no limit to how far back you can go.

Thank you Pon. I appreciate your goodwill, and just went on assuming that this was a backdoor attack, because there has been a lot of BS on the forum of late. People testing moderation as much as they could. I really am grateful for your explanation here. You know I've always appreciated your posts.

All that said, my OP still stands.  How long can this go on?  Is there an expiration date?  What I'm trying to say is that, granting infallibility, how does anyone get out of this double bind?  If you take the traditional view on infallibility, then JP2 is a saint, and the spirit of Vatican II is sanctified by his canonization. 

But if you take the opposite stance, that anything short of an encyclical labeled Infallibilis Ego can be blithely ignored, then the modernists win.  They've been able to plow through for fifty years with hardly an infallible peep.  In fact, it becomes their go-to excuse for every instance of shepherding the flock astray: "hey, don't sweat it.  He wasn't speaking infallibly."

As far as I can tell, it's a maddening Catch-22.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I was of the opinion of some technicality or vacancy got us out of the problem for option two, but I believe that is untenable.

[DominusTecum]

On the other hand, it's more than clear that they'd be wreaking havoc just fine without having to search for loopholes in the dogma of infallibility. Look at the Protestant sects.

Well, I would argue that the Protestant sects are different kind of animal than the modernists in the Catholic Church.  Say what you will about Luther, but he had the nerve to take his excommunication and set up his own cult.  He accepted a public delineation between his church and the Catholic Church.

The modernists, on the other hand, can claim the Catholic Church and the Catholic popes of the last fifty years.  They're shepherding a flock of 1-point-some billion from the See of Rome.  Virtually everyone short of a dogmatic sedevacantist concedes that this is more or less the Church.  The modernists are not likely to excommunicate themselves, which is why their regnum can persist, seemingly, indefinitely.

I do think that the situation in the Catholic Church today, where the entire hierarchy publicly contradicts the official teaching of the Church they claim to faithfully believe in, is unique in the entirety of human history.

[Jacafamala]

Admin N.B.: this thread neither denies nor questions the dogma of papal infallibility.  It fully acknowledges that papal infallibility is a de fide doctrine of the Catholic faith, solemnly defined at Vatican I.  This thread is simply intended to explore what the implications have been vis-à-vis the split between traditionalists and modernists.

In the decades following the definition of papal infallibility in 1870, the modernist theologians in the Church were actually able to see a silver lining in the doctrine.  They reckoned it this way: if a pope was constrained by having to speak ex cathedra in order to be infallible, then they considered themselves free to question anything outside that narrow scope of teaching—after all, they figured, it didn't meet the criteria for perfect infallibility.  This was, on their part, a clever manipulation of the doctrine, and it allowed them to claim a degree of practical freedom.

They actually cared? I never knew that.

As everyone knows, history records their success: the efforts to quash modernism in the early decades of the twentieth century were ultimately insufficient, such that by the 1960s the wave of modernist ascendancy was enough to carry Vatican II in their favor.  The fifty subsequent years have belonged to the liberal side.

Right.

My question is this: do the modernists still enjoy a palpable benefit from infallibility?

My thoughts: they (Francis and company) won't touch it (infallibility) with a ten foot pole. It's better for them that way, because if they don't bother with it, the rest of the world (sleeping Catholic) doesn't know nor care.

It's not that the conciliar popes have invoked infallibility to gird their liberal teachings.  On the contrary, even traditional Catholics appeal to the fact that the entire modernist program has no infallible guarantee whatsoever: Vatican II was only a "pastoral" council and therefore not binding, and none of the liberal blather uttered by the conciliar popes commands anyone's assent, since they haven't issued any of it ex cathedra.

On the face of it, this would seem to benefit the traditionalist side.  It certainly gives traditionalists permission to ignore the post-conciliar magisterium.  But isn't there a deliberate calculus to this on the modernist side?  By not invoking infallibility, they've created a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for themselves.  Every heterodox utterance can be waved away: "don't worry, he wasn't speaking infallibly."  And true enough.  By declining to teach formally and ex cathedra, they will forever be able to avoid a major schism.

Absolutely!

Do the modernists have the advantage here?  They could conceivably keep chugging on forever with this paradigm.  And the traditionalist movement would be left in a holding pattern, condemned to be perpetual ankle-biters: claiming the lack of infallibility to justify their resistance, while remaining impotent in condemning a liberal hierarchy which propagates its creed to 90-odd percent of the faithful, unhindered and with ease.

Francis won't last forever. He is old. Don't get me wrong, I do pray for him but by the grace of God, we will have better leadership next time.

It seems like the modernists are exploiting infallibility as the ultimate loophole.  It's their escape hatch for everything.

Who besides trads and neo-cons even cares anymore? If the modernists just ignore that (infallibility) than everyone else will, too.



Thoughts?

Modernists ignore it.

[Mono no aware]

All that said, my OP still stands.  How long can this go on?  Is there an expiration date?  What I'm trying to say is that, granting infallibility, how does anyone get out of this double bind?  If you take the traditional view on infallibility, then JP2 is a saint, and the spirit of Vatican II is sanctified by his canonization. 

But if you take the opposite stance, that anything short of an encyclical labeled Infallibilis Ego can be blithely ignored, then the modernists win.  They've been able to plow through for fifty years with hardly an infallible peep.  In fact, it becomes their go-to excuse for every instance of shepherding the flock astray: "hey, don't sweat it.  He wasn't speaking infallibly."

As far as I can tell, it's a maddening Catch-22.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I was of the opinion of some technicality or vacancy got us out of the problem for option two, but I believe that is untenable.

Right.  I think I know what you mean by "vacancy."  I'm not a sedevacantist, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like dogmatic sedevacantism is the only position that slices through this particular dilemma: it's the only stance that says, unflinchingly, "the conciliar church is absolutely and positively not the Catholic Church."  Whatever other problems it has, it dispenses with this problem and saves the infallibility of the pope.  (As to why the pope is MIA for fifty years, that's their own Catch-22).