ASK FATHER: A point about papal pronouncements and the truth

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I have a question about papal infallibility. I started to think about this when learning more about the council of Florence.

The Filioque is true. It didn’t need either the pope or a council to proclaim it as true. It already was true.

There is an old Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith where he played the devil working for a newspaper. He wrote lies but they became true.

I know this might seem silly but it seems to me that this idea of either a council or the pope saying something and that being what makes the information true is the way people think of infallibility. But for me that can’t be right. Either the information was already true or it wasn’t.

It can not be the case that untrue information becomes true after the pope says so.

In know infallibility is described as the pope being protected from error but how that filters down to people is saying that somehow the pope can make up whatever he wants. Would it not be better to say the information was infallible because it was always true?

Please let me know how I am going wrong on this.

Thanks for the question.  That point about the “Twilight Zone” episode is interesting.   I have felt like we’ve been living in a “Twilight Episode” for that last 14 years or so.

Your instinct is basically correct. Infallibility does not mean that the Pope can make something true by saying it. Truth is grounded in God, who is Truth itself. A doctrine is true because it corresponds to divine reality, divine revelation, or what follows necessarily from revelation. The Church’s infallibility does not create truth. It protects the Church from error when she definitively teaches what God has revealed or what must be held in connection with revelation.

For example, some Pope could change a paragraph or two in the, say, Catechism of the Catholic Church about some question and ground that change essentially upon recent things he himself had said.   Things don’t become true by the fact that they are published in the CCC.  They are based on the truth, and the grounding of that truth is, in the CCC, demonstrated in the footnotes which reference Councils, writings of the Fathers and Doctors, etc., and not just one questionable source.

So, in your example, the Filioque did not become true because the Council of Florence taught it. If it is true, it was eternally true, because it concerns the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit in the inner life of the Trinity  (pace Easterners). That Council did not cause the doctrine to become true. It authoritatively identified, demonstrated, and proposed the truth to be held by the faithful. (Yes, we can have discussions about Filioque and find ways to harmonize Western and Eastern positions… but not in this post!)

This is exactly why the “Twilight Zone” comparison is useful. We reject the notion that ecclesiastical authority can make falsehood become truth. Vatican I teaches that there can be no real contradiction between faith and reason, because God cannot deny Himself, nor can truth contradict truth.  If something is false, no pope can make it true. If something is outside the deposit of faith, no pope can turn it into revelation. The Pope is the servant of revelation, not its author.

Papal infallibility means something more precise. Vatican I teaches that the Roman Pontiff is preserved from error when, speaking ex cathedra, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church. Such definitions are “irreformable of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church,” because the protection comes from Christ’s promise to His Church, not from later approval by the faithful.  The Catechism says the same: the Pope enjoys this infallibility when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful, he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.

This also helps avoid a common misunderstanding. Catholics are not required to believe that every papal statement is infallible, or that the Pope receives new revelations, or that he may define whatever he wishes. Vatican I places limits around the charism: it concerns faith and morals, it must be taught as supreme pastor and teacher of all Christians, and it must be proposed definitively to the whole Church. Outside those conditions, papal statements can have varying degrees of authority, but they are not automatically infallible.

So I would slightly refine your proposed wording. Instead of saying, “the information was infallible because it was always true,” I would say: “The doctrine was true before it was defined; the Church’s definitive judgment is infallible because Christ protects His Church from error when she solemnly defines a doctrine of faith or morals.” That preserves both sides: truth does not depend on papal will, and the Church really does have a divinely protected teaching office.

In short, you are not going wrong by resisting the idea that the Pope can make up doctrine. That resistance is Catholic.

BTW… the TZ episode was called “The Printer’s Devil”, which is an old term for apprentices in print shops who got covered with ink, etc.  Even older is the medieval “printer’s devil” Titivillus, a demon blamed for scribal, liturgical, and verbal faults: dropped syllables, misspelled words, mumbled prayers, inattentive chanting, and mistakes in copying manuscripts. He was imagined as gathering these errors in a sack to present against negligent monks, clerks, and worshippers at their judgment.   Titivillus moved from the scriptorium and choir stall into the compositor’s case.  An infamous printing error blamed on Titivillus was the omission of the word not in the 1631 Authorised Version of the Bible, which resulted in Exodus 20:14 appearing as “Thou shalt commit adultery.

NB: Just because that appeared in an edition of the Bible doesn’t make it true.  Although we don’t yet know what effect “walking together” will make of Amoris laetitiae and Fiducia supplicans.  But I digress.