Lord Acton, power & papal infallibility

...The Orthodox church has been able to grant laicization without any problems to priests whose wives have died and who wish to remarry...

...It is unfair to impose an angry and frustrated man on a community which would probably be just as happy if he left...

...There is a story, maybe apocryphal, that Lord Acto"n was asked, after Vatican I had ratified Pius IX's doctrine of infallibility, whether he would leave the church...

...The problem is the record of the magisterium...

...PIUS DC and the doctrine of infallibility are important here, because the authority claimed by the magisterium is a kind of aura which surrounds that doctrine...

...At the Council of Florence the magisterium said that Jews and schismatics were definitely damned...

...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...

...Many people believed that it heralded a new spirit in the church, and a move away from the spirit of Vatican I. But we may have been wrong about that...

...It must be seen and finally judged in the light of a tradition which is wider and deeper than the temporary occupants of the Vatican...

...People who believe that freedom is an essential part of Christianity have had some bad signs lately...

...Hot water does beat boiling oil...

...It reveals, over the long haul, the true faith of the church...

...He was convinced that the attempts of institutions to gain, and then to extend their power, were a primary source of human misery...

...What Gospel truth does Rome show by being less compassionate...

...The interests of the Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesiastical government...

...Not only was Edward Schillebeeckx called in for questioning, but a radical French Dominican, Jacques Pohier, was forbidden to exercise any priestly functions because of his unorthodox views...

...But there is a question here which is as important as the question of orthodoxy: does Kiing have a right to draw his inspiration from unorthodox sources, and take it where it leads him...

...Pius IX entered office as a liberal, but came to see in modern thinking a profound threat to Christianity...

...Not, indeed, that any history furnishes, or can furnish, materials for undermining the authority which the dogmas of the Church proclaim to be necessary for her existence...

...In 1854 he declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (the first time in Christian history that a doctrine had been declared independently of an ecumenical council), and later he arranged the agenda of the First Vatican Council, doing everything within his power to secure the votes of the minority who opposed the doctrine...

...That is revealing...

...This, Acton wrote to Dollinger (a former teacher and aleader in the Old Catholic movement initiated by those who were excommunicated because they could not accept the decisions of Vatican I), was corrupting to the conscience and led to a false view of history: "Thus, when Pius V demanded that the Huguenot prisoners should be put to death, he did right, for he was pope, and a saint to boot...

...But we must notice that this is the first time this sort of thing has happened since Vatican II...

...In the past, and with equal gravity, the magisterium has condemned the taking of any interest on money, not for reasons of justice but rather as a violation of natural law...

...Commonweal: 44...

...Historic responsibility has to make up for want of legal responsibility...

...If Rome worries about the orthodoxy of the clerical students Kung teaches, couldn't it require of seminarians a course which would put forward a more orthodox viewpoint, allowing them the liberty to attend Kung's courses as well...

...Many of the leading Catholic writers of this century deny that Gregory XIII approved the massacre of St...

...Pius IX, however, was capable of saying—presumably he believed it—"I am tradition...

...The magisterium of course...

...The Catholic Eastern Rites are not allowed to choose their own bishops or, in the West, to have a married clergy (these problems precede John Paul...

...Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority...

...Pope John Paul II Commonweal: 42 denies laicization to men who, for whatever reasons, do not believe that they can serve as priests and remain good Christians...

...Lord Acton raised questions more than a hundred years ago which still have not been answered well...

...In On Being a Christian he seems ambivalent about the divinity of Jesus, and he does not give enough weight to the importance of tradition...

...How reassured can Orthodox or Protestant observers be, when they see this commitment to human rights and the unity of Christians so easily and confidently qualified within the pope's immediate sphere of influence...

...Despite the lobbying of Acton and others, the majority of bishops at the First Vatican Council agreed with the new definition...

...Wouldn't the Vatican's role as guardian of orthodoxy in the West have been served better if it had issued a statement detailing its disagreements with Kung and—this is essential—the reasons for those disagreements...

...Lord Acton THE RECENT Vatican moves against Hans Kung's theology have overshadowed other Vatican developments which are every bit as significant...

...Or, one moral aberration is got rid of by another...

...The cases of Pohier, Schillebeeckx, and King are not as severe as many earlier examples, and John Paul II has not shown himself to be authoritarian in the fashion of Pius IX...

...and these are only a few examples of the magisterium's sure way of saying the wrong thing...

...Perhaps this latest crisis, and the decent response of some Catholic writers (though far from all...

...There is still another problem, underscored by the case of August Hasler: the insistence that an unorthodox priest accept the lay state, and the denial of that state to priests who want to live as laymen, makes priesthood a kind of status—an inversion of the Gospel approach to service...

...Whatever authority therefore expresses that knowledge of which she is the keeper must be obeyed...

...among other things, the power of the papacy enabled the church in the West to survive the barbarian invasions, a problem not faced by the Eastern churches...

...the Holy See is not separately infallible...

...In the Vatican declaration Kung's views on infallibility are challenged before his ambivalent views on the divinity of Jesus and the place of Mary are even mentioned...

...But this doctrine certainly must be examined critically: it is the single biggest stumbling block to the unity of Christians...

...It was used in time for evil as well as good: popes called for holy wars, instituted the Inquisition, and / February 1980: 43 established the Index of Forbidden Books...

...Under the influence of the Jesuit editors of Civilta Cattolica he began to believe that papal infallibility was necessary to Catholicism...

...Acton believed that it was necessary for the papacy to acquire a certain amount of power...

...and the questions raised by the latest uses of Vatican power were given their sharpest form during the debates which surrounded the First Vatican Council...

...As the doctrine of papal infallibility gathered support during the yeatg following the Reformation and the Enlightenment, so did Catholic opposition to it...

...The church "exists expressly for the purpose of preserving a definite body of truths, the knowledge of which she can never lose...

...Now that the temporal power of the papacy is gone, the strength of the magisterium lies in a continued defense of the doctrine of infallibility...

...the church has weathered worse times...

...The magisterum has denied the liberty of conscience, and has refused the right of non-Catholics to religious freedom...

...an ecumenical council is also allegedly free from the possibility of doctrinal error...

...It was an article of his faith as an historian that the church must the studied as objectively as any other institution, and he saw the definition of infallibility as an attempt to put the church and its teachings beyond objective scrutiny...

...According to Vatican I, the pope can speak without error, even when he speaks separately from a church council, as long as he speaks ex cathedra...

...Acton foresaw this problem, too: if infallibility came to...

...That Council was the first to refrain from using the words anathema sit...

...Was it because of Kung's popularity that he was not suspended from the priesthood...

...and scholars are once again made to feel that they must toe a line, or—taking the more traditional Catholic coursetalk a kind of code which will not, in the words of the old compilations of heresy, "offend pious ears.'' The message of this pontificate seems to be that nothing much changes, and that this is not only the same church, but the same sort of church, which produced Pius IX and gave him power...

...It is not the concern for orthodoxy which bothers me, but the way which it has been implemented...

...That spirit, and that humor, may sustain us more than anything else...

...In addition, the Vatican ordered laicization proceedings begun against Father August B. Hasler, author of How the Pope Became Infallible...

...QUESTIONS STILL NOT ANSWERED Lord Acton, power, & papal infallibility JOHN GARVEY The human element in ecclesiastical administration endeavors to keep itself out of sight, and to deny its existence, in order that it may secure the unquestioning submission which authority naturally desires, and may preserve that halo of infallibility which the twilight of opinion enables it to assume...

...Some of Kung's thinking is arguably unorthodox...

...Baptism, after all, is the basic sacrament, and the person seeking laicization wants to remain in communion with the church of his birth, life, and (he hopes) death...

...How do we get this proper understanding...

...It is ironic that this has happened during the reign of a pope who is clearly concerned about human rights, and who has made dramatic ecumenical moves toward the Orthodox church...

...Seriously questioning its right to define doctrine without challenge or even consultation, or its ability to do so in the past, is likely to get a theologian into hot water...

...In Acton's view, the whole of tradition is the only guardian of orthodoxy...

...Or is there a fear that Kung's arguments are really more persuasive...

...Father Feeney was excommunicated in this century for defending too vigorously this earlier but presumably true opinion of the magisterium, which was declared with all the solemnity required to make it, by Vatican I's definition, an infallible statement...

...He answered, "Just because the Pope has changed his religion, I see no reason to change mine...

...A traditional answer to observations like this is that, properly understood, the Council of Florence didn't really mean what it said about Jews and schismatics...

...This is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the requested laicizations of those who want them are now being routinely denied, as they were not under Paul VI...

...Is a specific legal discipline really more important than thivdesire...

...Ironically, much of this opposition came from groups who strike us today as conservative, such as the Jansenist movement, and some support for infallibility came from liberals who saw in a strong papacy the only alternative to the absolute demands of the modern state...

...This spirit, which falsifies history and corrupts morals, is the crying sin of modern Catholicism, and it reaches high enough...

...A council is not a priori ecumenical...

...The one has to await a sanction...

...Equally revealing is the argument that because the magisterium has spoken about infallibility, Kung's task should be "to conform to the doctrine of the magisterium.'' The magisterium has spoken, Q.E.D., you should stop thinking...

...Aquinas did, from Aristotle and the Muslims, both wild sources in their day, and he also had opponents in the hierarchy...

...The good news is that conversation between us has not vanished utterly...

...be an accepted doctrine, he wrote, "the chances of union with the Greeks, themeansof discussion with the Protestants, would vanish utterly, and Catholicism would forfeit its expanding power...

...one theologian is reported to have refused any support for Kung because he has a book coming out and doesn't want to jeopardize its chances) will give us the courage to continue to look objectively at such ideas as infallibility, which is currently defended without reference to those historical ideas which contradict it...

...But there is a deeper unfairness: the man who applies for laicization has shown his good will toward the church...

...the other has repeatedly erred...

...Acton's approach to history—to all of history, not just the church—was profoundly conservative...

...But the true limits of legitimate authority are one thing, and the area which authority may find it expedient to attempt to occupy is another...

...If there is any presumption it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases...

...His theology is in some ways a recent version of nineteenth century liberal Protestantism...

...The doctrine of papal infallibility was, as a result, made a formal part of the Catholic system...

...This is some of what was at stake, and Pius IX didn't hesitate to use excommunication against Italian liberals who disagreed with him about the temporal power of the papacy...

...Granting that at Vatican II, and for years before, there was no simple defense of ecclesiastical murder, and granting that Acton's examples do not involve statements which are officially declared to be ' 'matters of faith,'' the fact is that the assumption of many Catholics, and certainly the assumption of the Vatican, is that the Vatican should be trusted in matters of faith because it is the Vatican...

...Bartholomew, or that heretics have ever been put to death at Rome...

...But the growth of papal power was hardly an unmixed blessing...

...There were too many contradictions in Catholic history to allow the declaration of infallibility, Acton thought...

...Who is to tell us how black can mean white...

...There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it...

...Now the most severe exposure of the part played by this human element is found in histories which show the undeniable existence of sin, error, or fraud, in the high places of the Church...

...The magisterium is not, by itself, a safe guide...

...The magisterium does not always claim infallibility, but it ordinarily demands obedience...

...All of this was noted by the nineteenth century British Catholic historian Lord Acton*, an opponent of infallibility who remained in the church despite the fact that he could not accept the doctrine...

...he wishes to remain a member, and simply wants a change in status...

...Since Charles Borromeo approved the murdering of Protestants by private persons, it is better to approve it than to call his canonization into question...

...An open letter to Vatican I puts all of this in an interesting context: there the revolutionary leader Mazzini says that even if the Council declares the pope infallible, the revolution will still take the papal states...

...His most famous words deserve to be placed in their context, a letter he wrote to his friend MandellCreighton: "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong...

...But there is no institution from which this knowledge can be gained with immediate certainty...

...His popularity certainly has to do with the outcry which attended the Vatican's attempt to revoke Kung's credentials...