SUMMARY:
This essay “Embracing Church Authority: A Call to Faithful Catholicism” emphasizes the importance of adhering to the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly those established by the Second Vatican Council. Here are the main points:
1. Faithful Catholicism: Being a faithful Catholic involves more than just avoiding excommunication; it requires full submission to the Church’s teachings on faith and morals.
2. Authority of the Second Vatican Council: The essay stresses that rejecting the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council is considered schism.
3. Religious Submission: Catholics are required to submit their will and intellect to the teachings of the Roman Pontiff and the College of Bishops, even if these teachings are not proclaimed by a definitive act.
4. Doctrinal Commentary: Saint John Paul the Great’s commentary highlights the necessity of religious submission to the ordinary Magisterium of the Church.
5. Theological Grades of Certainty: The essay explains that the theological grades of certainty are not optional beliefs but require inner assent based on the authority of the Holy See.
6. Rebellion Against Church Authority: Rebelling against the Church’s teachings is equated to rebelling against God, as the Church’s authority is seen as delegated by Christ.
This essay calls for Catholics to offer their religious submission of intellect and will to the authoritative teachings of the Church, emphasizing that this submission is a matter of justice and fidelity to God.
Being a faithful Catholic requires much more than a mediocre measure of remaining within the boundaries of defined dogma. Being a faithful Catholic is much more than avoiding official excommunication.
Let the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith’s July 4th, 2024 statement be a warning to all Catholics that revolt against Holy Mother Church’s teachings on faith and morals:
Refusal to recognize and submit to the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council is a reserved delict of schism.
Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, July 4, 2024, statement. *Declaration of excommunication for Viganò.
Do not allow foolish pride to separate you from the authoritative teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prohibits a rejection of the magisterial authority that the College of Bishops has exercised in the Second Vatican Council:
Moreover, I adhere to religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.[1]
Saint John Paul the Great has given the faithful Doctrinal Commentary on this essential guardrail for our Profession of Faith:
To this paragraph belong all those teachings on faith and morals – presented as true or at least as sure, even if they have not been defined with a solemn judgement or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Such teachings are, however, an authentic expression of the ordinary Magisterium of the Roman pontiff or of the college of bishops and therefore require religious submission of will and intellect.
Saint John Paul the Great, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Profession of Faith, 10.
A revolt of will and intellect against the Holy Mother Church’s teachings on faith and morals deforms the revolutionary’s stiffened heart with the hidden venom of the ancient serpent. Bare minimum accordance with Holy Mother Church’s teachings on faith and morals is a sentimental gesture from a deceptive rebellion that hides behind a cowardly mask of pseudo-loyalty. Self-appointed and self-assured by her right of private judgment, the revolutionary sets herself apart from the Second Vatican Council’s magisterial teachings, apart from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s instruction on religious submission, and apart from Saint John Paul the Great’s Doctrinal Commentary.
The cautionary note that Ludwig Ott offers in his summary of the theological grades of certainty is unheeded by disobedient rebels:
Furthermore, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pontifical Biblical Commission) are not infallible. Nevertheless they are normally to be accepted with an inner assent which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See.
Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p.11.
The theological grades of certainty are not a catalog of beliefs that are divided between Church teachings that you are required to agree with and those that you may elect to reject. A proper framework of the theological grades of certainty orients competent theologians to the points of doctrine that are held by the common and constant consent of Catholics. Each theological grade of certainty contains Catholic doctrine that the faithful should submit their will and intellect. By God’s grace, this submission may be fulfilled with a docile disposition of loving trust in Holy Mother Church’s authentic/authoritative teachings on faith and morals.
The instructions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, such as the religious submission of intellect and will, compel inner assent from the faithful, who must docilely submit their intellect and will to the high supernatural authority of the Holy See. That authority has been established and delegated by Christ. God the Father delegated His authority to God the Son. God the Son delegated His authority to the Holy See. To submit to the authority of the Holy See is to submit to the authority of Christ. To submit to the authority of Christ is to submit to the authority of God the Father. To rebel against the authority of Holy Mother Church is to rebel against God.
This is not a matter of defined dogma. This is the love and fidelity that the children of God owe to their parents. This is a matter of justice. An abnormal and rare exception to the graceful obedience that is due to the Holy Mother Church requires a competent expert in the scientific field of theology.[2] Such an exception is permissible for the sake of clarity but is never a license for rebellion. Any theologian who resists the authority of the mother he is called to love is beyond incompetent.
Ludwig Ott ends his summary of the theological grades of certainty with three references for the reader to avoid immature rebellions against the authority of the Church’s teachings on faith and morals. The three references that Ott entrusts to his students are as follows:
But, since it is a matter of that subjection by which in conscience all those Catholics are bound who work in the speculative sciences, in order that they may bring new advantages to the Church by their writings, on that account, then, the men of that same convention must recognize that it is not sufficient for learned Catholics to accept and revere the aforesaid dogmas of the Church, but that it is also necessary to subject themselves to the decisions pertaining to doctrine that are issued by the Pontifical Congregations and also to those points of doctrine that are held by the common and constant consent of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions, so certain that opinions opposed to these same forms of doctrine, although they cannot be called heretical, nevertheless deserve some other theological censure.
(Pope Pius IX, Tuas libenter, Denzinger-Hunermann 2880)
[The eighth error of the modernists] 8. They are free from all blame who treat lightly the condemnations passed by the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the other Sacred Roman Congregations.
(Saint Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, Denzinger-Hunermann 3408)
[There are some who] have not received or do not receive such decisions with the proper submission, even though they are approved by the pontiff.Therefore, We see that it must be declared and ordered as We do now declare and expressly order that all are bound by the duty of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Pontifical Commission, both those that have been given up until now and those that will be given in the future, just as to the decrees of the Sacred Congregations that pertain to doctrine and have been approved by the pontiff; and that all who impugn such decisions as these by word or in writing cannot escape the stigma of disobedience and temerity or on this account be free of serious guilt; and this in addition to the scandal whereby they offend and the other ways they are liable before God, mostly by pronouncing rashly and erroneously on these matters.
(Saint Pius X, Praestantia Scripturae, Denzinger-Hunermann 3503)
Those who behold the Mother Christ gave them to honor do not seek bare minimum Christianity. They submit to Holy Mother Church with loving obedience to her teachings on faith and morals, regardless of their theological grades of certainty, because they seek to be much more than bare minimum Catholics. The faithful offer their religious submission of intellect and will to the authoritative teachings of Holy Mother Church. Their interior assent does not demand that the Holy Mother Church’s teachings must be defined as dogma to merit the minimal honor of Her children.
If you profess to be Catholic, if you profess the fullness of Christianity, then you must appropriately respond to all of your Mother’s teachings. To offer a proper response, you must recognize its highest expression from the Universal Church, from the body of Christ you profess to belong to. The totality of the Bishops that assembled in the Second Vatican Council authoritatively teaches on faith and morals. The spirit of obedience is the appropriate response to this expression of Christ’s authority:
The Council of Trent teaches that the Bishops are the successors of the Apostles (DH 1767ff.), and so does the First Vatican Council (DH 3061). As successors of the Apostles, they are the pastors and teachers of the faithful (DH 3050ff.). As official teachers of the faith, they are endowed with the active infallibility assured to the incumbents of the Church teaching office.
Two forms of the activity of the teaching office of the whole Episcopate are distinguished – an extraordinary form and an ordinary one.
(a) The Bishops exercise their infallible teaching power in an extraordinary manner at a general or ecumenical council. It is in the decisions of the General Councils that the teaching activity of the whole teaching body instituted by Christ is most decisively exercised.
It has been the constant teaching of the Church from the earliest times that the teachings of the General Councils are infallible. Saint Athanasius says of the Decree on Faith of the Nicene Council: “The words of the Lord which were spoken by the General Council of Nicaea, remain in eternity” (Ep. ad Afros 2). Saint Gregory the Great recognizes and honors the first four General Councils as much as the Four Gospels; he makes the fifth equal to them (Ep. I 25)…..
(b) The Bishops exercise their infallible teaching power in an ordinary manner when they, in their dioceses, in moral unity with the Pope, unanimously promulgate the same teachings on faith and morals. The First Vatican Council expressly declared that the truths of Revelation proposed by the ordinary and general teaching office of the Church are also to be firmly held with “divine and catholic faith” (DH 3011). But the incumbents of the ordinary and universal teaching office of the Church are the members of the whole Episcopate scattered over the whole earth. The agreement of the Bishops in doctrine may be determined from the catechisms issued by them, from their pastoral letters, from the prayer books approved by them, and from the resolutions of particular synods. A morally general agreement suffices, but in this, the express or tacit assent of the Pope, as the supreme head of the Episcopate, is essential.[3]
A truthful profession of faith must conform to the magisterial authority of Holy Mother Church. This authority has been exercised by the whole Episcopate, by the ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, that is ratified by the Vicar of Christ. This authority is the delegated authority of Christ. If you seek to follow the living teachings of Jesus, if you profess to be obedient to the authority of Christ, then you must submit your will and intellect to the teachings on faith and morals that are expressed in the Second Vatican Council.
Faithless Catholicism refuses to recognize and submit to the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council.
[1] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Profession of Faith.
[2] Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p.11.
[3] Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp.321, 322.
