The Traditional Catholic's Catch-22 of Infallibility

[Hat And Beard]

The parentheses are an old internet thing.  I remember them from the early days of AOL chatrooms.  When you put the name of someone (or in this case, an institution) in parentheses, it means you're giving them a "virtual hug."

That may have been the case back in the day, but now it's used by alt-right/white supremacists to denote that someone is Jewish or Jewish influenced.

But surely on this forum, the parentheses indicate a hug.  After all, a user was recently banned for having a National Socialist as his avatar (which reminds me, I need to inquire as to what constitutes an acceptable avatar).  So presumably any whiff of "anti-Semitism" is unwelcome, no?

If you didn't know you didn't know, but I'd say using those parens for the hug thing is akin to using both middle fingers to wish peace to someone. 

[attiret]

But surely on this forum, the parentheses indicate a hug.  After all, a user was recently banned for having a National Socialist as his avatar (which reminds me, I need to inquire as to what constitutes an acceptable avatar).  So presumably any whiff of "anti-Semitism" is unwelcome, no?

That poster was allowed to spread his views here for a looooooong time. An uncomfortably long time...

[Mono no aware]

If you didn't know you didn't know, but I'd say using those parens for the hug thing is akin to using both middle fingers to wish peace to someone.

Perhaps it's more like how the inverted peace sign means "piss off" in England.  I'm not sure what the roots of that gesture are, though.  I do know that the "V" sign means victory.  Maybe turning it around originally meant "here's the opposite of victory for you" or "I got yer victory right here, pal."

[St. Columba]

Pon, as to the original post, we should bear in mind a couple of things, I think.  First, infallibility did not just being in 1870.  The Church always had it as a constitutive element of her divine charter from the get go.  Some aspects of it's own infallibility were merely clarified at Vatican I.

Second, there is the intimately related notion of indefectibility (which was also part of the Church from the get go) and all that that implies.  For example, the modernists, and everyone else in Church history for that matter, have had to contend with the fact that the Church can never impose harmful disciplines on the faithful, in a universal manner, in any age.

Anyway, I really like reading your posts Pon.  Thanks!   

[Mono no aware]

Pon, as to the original post, we should bear in mind a couple of things, I think.  First, infallibility did not just being in 1870.  The Church always had it as a constitutive element of her divine charter from the get go.  Some aspects of it's own infallibility were merely clarified at Vatican I.

Second, there is the intimately related notion of indefectibility (which was also part of the Church from the get go) and all that that implies.  For example, the modernists, and everyone else in Church history for that matter, have had to contend with the fact that the Church can never impose harmful disciplines on the faithful, in a universal manner, in any age.

Anyway, I really like reading your posts Pon.  Thanks!

I confess, it's sometimes a struggle for me to see, historically at least, how papal infallibility was "a constitutive element of the Church's divine charter from the get go," but I do see, without any trouble whatsoever anymore, that Vatican I proclaimed it as such incontrovertibly, and any Catholic in the wake of that council must simply bend the knee, kiss the ring, and say "modo credo, Sancte Pater," like Bishop Fitzgerald.  Rome has locuted, and anyone in disagreement is simply anathema.  It's "like or lump it," and I'm embarrassed I used to think there was somehow a third option there.

Indefectibility is interesting.  I've been thinking about indefectiblilty and dogmatic sedevacatism recently.  I may start a different thread on that one.  And thank you kindly for the positive comment on my posts.

[Chestertonian]

Greetings, Chester.  The parentheses are an old internet thing.  I remember them from the early days of AOL chatrooms.  When you put the name of someone (or in this case, an institution) in parentheses, it means you're giving them a "virtual hug."  I'm not really much of a hugger myself, but I've noticed a resurgence of the practice on this forum, so I decided to join in with the prevailing spirit of jollity.  "I'm throwing my arms around Suscipe Domine," to paraphrase the great poet.

It's good to hear your son is doing well.  I've followed some of your "being disheartened with Catholicism" threads (to give them a basic category name) and I can only say that "I feel your pain."  I wonder if you might be feeding yourself too steady a diet of post-Tridentine spirituality.  It might not be of any help—but it may not hurt, either—to re-acquaint yourself with the more philosophical and mystical strains of pre-Reformation spirituality; say, Clement of Alexandria or Meister Eckhart.  Sometimes it's worthwhile to consider the bigger picture rather than to focus strictly on the more mundane and sentimental aspects.  I have always thought that the essay, "The Veil of the Temple," by Marco Pallis, is instructive in both illuminating and delineating the exoteric and esoteric sides of the same coin, Christianity.  Anyway.  Just a suggestion.

Hahaga yhat must be it... Just o e big group hug

Iappreciate your recommendation and links and will check them out.  Trying to hold on to whatever faith I have left.  Would not be surprised if post tridentine spirituality is what influences the majority of traditional Catholic authors and  preachers

[Mono no aware]

Would not be surprised if post tridentine spirituality is what influences the majority of traditional Catholic authors and  preachers

I would not be surprised either.  It seems indisputable that post-Tridentine spirituality has been the spirituality of the Catholic Church for the past half-millennium.  One of the more interesting things about Eckhart is that he was a Dominican living in the immediate cultural wake of Scholasticism's influence, and yet he completely managed to avoid having his classical philosophy be filtered through the analytical, Aristotelian lens of St. Thomas.  Instead he went straight back to the well of Neoplatonism.

[Prayerful]

Paul VI had enough cunning avoid using mandatory language in Missale Romanum. Later when it became clear that sacrilege was possible, the official translations were given less hesitant, in fact almost dogmatic language and a strict deadline, not found the original. Anyone attached to the liturgy, and well connected like Msgrs Escriva and Charles-Roux were given Indult on easy terms, nominally restricted to the Transitional Missal, but in reality not so restricted. Less well connected priests were bullied into compliance or driven out the priesthood, or the Church. The Great Apostasy followed. Consider now. Cardinal Mueller said Amoris Laetitia is not infallible, so no problem. Many, many will suffer from easily discarded marriages. It's the Conciliar Modus Operandi. Conciliate some, buy off others, and let the rest go to hell, and I mean that in a somewhat literal way.

[Greg]

That's my concern.

I couldn't really give a stuff about infallibility.  Anymore than I care that someone is a "very skilled lawyer" if they are having an affair with my wife.  I might get off a parking ticket but my life is wrecked.

My concern is that the Church on a practical, very real level, is NOT saving souls or helping people lead holier lives, love God and make sacrifices.  Westerners are lapsing wholesale, faith is disappearing and the Church is completely inconsistent with its teaching compared to the past.

What good is being infallible if you are bad?

[Mono no aware]

My concern is that the Church on a practical, very real level, is NOT saving souls or helping people lead holier lives, love God and make sacrifices.  Westerners are lapsing wholesale, faith is disappearing and the Church is completely inconsistent with its teaching compared to the past.

What good is being infallible if you are bad?

I agree—but I think infallibility serves, for many traditional Catholics, as the buttress for a position you hate: the position that says the indefectibility of the Church is "saved" by the fact that none of this wholesale wreckery of the Church was perpetuated by the use of infallible means.  I believe you've referred to this aptly as the "on paper" argument.  Because somewhere, on paper, in an obscure vault in the Vatican, the correct teachings are being preserved.  Meanwhile, one-billion-plus souls are believing a lot of junk to the contrary.  Indeed: in the practical, everyday, common sense understanding of indefectibility, the "on paper" argument seems desperate.

I sometimes wonder if the most grievous tactical error of traditional Catholicism was its reluctance to adopt a "conclavist" model early on.  Sure, we all get a chuckle out of poor David Bawden, but at least he's set up a clear-cut paradigm: that the conciliar sect is not the Catholic Church, and that there is a visible Catholic Church (with a pope) that a person can point to as the true Church.  Fifty years on, and with Francis at the helm, the "recognize and resist" position seems perpetually doomed to a murky idea of where the actual Church is, and an ostrich-like insistence that the "on paper" argument is a good one.

[Gerard]

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.

JPII invoked infallibility when he declared that the Church had no power to ordain women.   Canonizations are not infallible. There has never been a declaration that they are. And logically, you can't have them be infallible.  If Canonizations were infallible that would be the Church receiving new Revelation that can only be divinely given.  So, the dogma of the close of Revelation with the death of St. John the Apostle would be false.  Revelation being closed and simultaneously having an ongoing infallible roll call of the occupants of Heaven is the Catch-22.

Vatican I had to deal with the extreme exaggerations of papal infallibility promoted by the Neo-Ultramontanists on one side and those denying infallibility altogether on the other. 

After the dogma was defined, the Neo-Ultramontanists simply ignored it and continued to promote an incorrect understanding of it, with the now, overly depended upon by trads "manualists".  When you have the term "papal infallibility also extends to...."  You know with only a little common sense that it's crap and it's in defiance of the Council. 

But it seemed benign at the time when Popes were not raving liberals, and then the modernists took the reigns of power and avalanches of people who were lazily declaring a convenient and false understanding simply floated along, embracing the nonsense, using it as an excuse to leave the Church or simply vagueing themselves away into a lukewarm faith. 

The failure of the "faithful" to truly accept Vatican I and instead adopt its exaggeration brought about the tragedy of Vatican II. 

The so-called "faithful" that simply must gild the lilly and exaggerate the faith whether it be with non-sensical rote adherence to traditions without any understanding of them or apparition chasers or Catholic charismatics are simply a pestilence in the Church that will run out of gas eventually. Souls will of course be lost, but they are simply those who ignore the grace to accept reality and simply want to soldier on with the Church and faith of their imagination.   

God is simply waiting for people to take the Church and faith truly seriously and not the various illusions being foisted over the last century and a half.  He's given everyone enough grace to handle the situation.  Millions of souls could be lost, but that's ultimately their choice and God's Justice at work. 

[Greg]

God is "waiting" for people to take the Church seriously?

The sheep are going to lead the shepherd?

Can't see that ever happening.

[Mono no aware]

Canonizations are not infallible. There has never been a declaration that they are. And logically, you can't have them be infallible.  If Canonizations were infallible that would be the Church receiving new Revelation that can only be divinely given.  So, the dogma of the close of Revelation with the death of St. John the Apostle would be false.  Revelation being closed and simultaneously having an ongoing infallible roll call of the occupants of Heaven is the Catch-22.

Not this old chestnut again, Gerard.  I guess you won't stop trotting it out, but your logic is embarrassing.  No one claims that canonization is a "new revelation."  The doctrine has already been revealed: the communion of saints.  There is a communion of saints.  That is the doctrine.  Canonization simply decrees who, historically, has lived a life of such orthodoxy and virtue as to have been added to the communion.  It's that simple.  And because it's so simple, that's why the theological consensus on its infallibility was rated as "so theologically certain that its negation would be a very grave error."  Virtually every theologian who came before you, disagreed with you.  That's what we call "traditional Catholicism."  What you're peddling is novelty.

It might make for a good "alternative reality" fiction, though.  What if—as you aver is possible—every single canonized saint, from Augustine to Aquinas to Thérèse, was, instead of being in heaven, actually in hell?  What if they had all held to some private heresy?  It's the material for a Borgesian parallel universe.

God is simply waiting for people to take the Church and faith truly seriously and not the various illusions being foisted over the last century and a half.  He's given everyone enough grace to handle the situation.  Millions of souls could be lost, but that's ultimately their choice and God's Justice at work.

As Greg indicated, this is just dumb. It makes a mockery of God's promise of the Church.  Historically, it has always been true that there are going to be heresies and false religions, but the point of the Church is to shine as a visible and universal beacon of truth, so that the confused can be enlightened.  You seem to be saying that the visible Church itself can be the dispenser of falsity, heresy, and confusion; the onus is on the poor soul to do enough internet research to find out the "hidden truth" or burn forever.  That's some kind of perverse ecclesiology. 

Maybe this could be incorporated, though, with the fictional concept of the saints being in hell.  Here's the premise: the saints were all heretics, and the Church teaches duplicity.  But there's a secret dimension, a hidden truth, that only the pure gnostic can find for himself.  Catholicism is not a visible communion, but a rarefied and esoteric underground.  Hmm.  I think I have a short story to write.  It will take place in France.  The enigmatic oracle, who wears an almond white cassock and dwells in the shadows of the Parisian catacombs, shall be named, perhaps, Abbé Gérard.

[Greg]

I have trouble remembering where I left my car keys half the time.

In addition to bringing up six children, running a household and holding down a job, I also have to find the time to save the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church?

[Maximilian]

The failure of the "faithful" to truly accept Vatican I and instead adopt its exaggeration brought about the tragedy of Vatican II. 

This sure rings a bell, like I've heard it before. Oh right, this is the conservative neo-Catholic line on Vatican II.

I think by definition the fact that someone is here on SD means that they reject that position which blames all the problems and errors on "the spirit of Vatican II." Are we now going to transfer the blame to "the spirit of Vatican I"?

We reject the position that says, "The Church held an ecumenical council and afterwards the entire structure collapsed, countless millions voted with their feet and left, and all holiness vanished. But let's not blame it on the council. That would be the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It was only the mythical 'spirit of the council' that was at fault.'"