John Henderson
The word “Church” is often used ambiguously and it is important to define in what sense we are using the term when discussing the relationship between the post-conciliar crisis of faith and the Church's attribute of infallibility. Most of us Catholics have learned an Act of Faith that is substantially the same as what follows:
The word “Church” is often used ambiguously and it is important to define in what sense we are using the term when discussing the relationship between the post-conciliar crisis of faith and the Church's attribute of infallibility. Most of us Catholics have learned an Act of Faith that is substantially the same as what follows:
O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; I believe that Thy divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived. Amen.
It is clear from the
Act of Faith that dogmas are
the truths which the “Church teaches” that must be
believed because “Thou [God] has revealed them, Who canst neither
deceive nor be deceived.” Dogmas are the only truths that can be
believed on the authority of God revealing. Vatican I teaches:
By divine and catholic faith, all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium.
We
are said to believe dogmas
by “divine faith”
because of the authority of God revealing;
by “catholic faith”
because they are proposed
by the Church as being
“divinely revealed, whether
by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium.”
The ex cathedra
definitions of popes, the canons of Ecumenical Councils, and the
articles of Creeds are all “solemn judgments” proposed by the
Church as being divinely revealed dogmas.
Teachings that have never
been defined by a solemn
judgment but which have been held
by Catholics always and everywhere as being divinely revealed are
also dogmas that
are knowable as such
because they have been taught by the Church's “ordinary and
universal magisterium.” Dogma
is the Catholic's rule of faith and this is proven by the definition
of a heretic as a baptized person who refuses to believe one or more
dogmas of
the faith. If a
teaching is not a dogma, then no Catholic is bound to believe it with divine faith and it
would be wrong to speak of it as being a “teaching of the Church”
if we are using the word “Church” in the same sense in which it
is used in the Act of Faith. If we use the word “Church” in this
sense, then the false
teachings
of the modernists who have controlled the hierarchy for the last 50+
years do not present the slightest problem as regards the Church's
attribute of infallibility because their teachings are their own and
not the Church's. Their teachings cannot be believed with “divine
and Catholic faith” because they have never been proposed as being
divinely revealed by solemn judgment (The last time that a pope
defined anything ex
cathedra
was when Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950.
Vatican II did not include any canons or other definitions and was
merely pastoral). Also, novel teachings, by definition, cannot be
part of the ordinary and universal magisterium because the word
“universal” includes the attribute of time.
The
Church has never proposed by solemn judgement any false teachings.
There
is no reason to become a sedevacantist. All that is needed is a
restoration of dogma as the Catholic's rule of faith.
