Comments on pontifical infallibility.
Accusation is the language of darkness; the language of light is intercession. (Harold Caballeros, author of De Victoria en Victoria)
The kind reader may find it curious that a Catholic apologist should begin his presentation this way, by quoting a Protestant writer. This is possible because this saying of Harold Caballeros is full of good sense and good faith. I have never read his books; the phrase reached me in essence, through a friend who attends a Baptist church. We were speaking about intercession and my friend read me this beautiful passage that struck me as so exact. God has a way of showing us the path to the mysteries of His purpose, sometimes in paradoxes and other times in marvelous reflections. A classic example of this is the symmetry between Adam and Jesus. The first ate of the fruit of the tree (xylon) of good and evil and bequeathed death to us, while Jesus, in the miracle of the Eucharist, calls us to eat of the fruit of that other tree, the Cross, (xylon) so that we may inherit life. These marvelous symmetries appear constantly in the Sacred Scriptures and in Tradition, and holy men of every age have marveled to observe this hidden weave that reveals the immanent grace of God. And Harold Caballeros’s phrase, the contrast of light–darkness with intercession–accusation, is compelling because it reminds us of the difference between Our Lord, the mediator for all ages, and the Devil, the accuser who accuses our brethren day and night before God.
And what does this have to do with papal infallibility or with the infallibility of the Magisterium of the Church? If the reader will bear with me a little, let us get to the subject.
At the center of all this lies the good faith of the believer. When Jesus Christ promises that the Church founded upon Peter will prevail despite the assaults of evil, He is implicitly saying that this fragile ship, with a man as fallible as Peter at the helm, simply cannot sink, because the power of God stands behind that work, and the evidence of that power is the survival of the ship and the fact that its course is not altered. This is clear to whoever reads the Gospels in good faith. Jesus, the very one who seems to doubt when He says, “And when the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith upon the earth?”, now places the destiny of His Church in the hands of Peter, the impulsive disciple who doubts, denies, draws back, and fails so humanly in one situation after another. In Jesus’s words, “whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed in heaven,” it is not implied that Peter’s possible errors will be replicated in the heavens of God, for such an idea is inconceivable. If we analyze the phrase carefully, we must conclude that heaven has granted a special guarantee, according to which Peter’s actions in what concerns the “feeding of the sheep” will be carefully guided so as to be wholly compatible with the justice of heaven. This arrangement grants the newly founded Church two things: the first is authority, and the second is an absolute assurance that the conduct of its men and women will not endanger the certainty of the Gospel nor the survival of the Church as a whole. Jesus makes this gift evident when He says, “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” Is there anything more astonishing than this revelation, that the apostles and their successors act as the mouth of Jesus in this world? This reminds us of the ancient times of Israel, when the king appointed his vizier or steward by giving him the keys and the royal signet ring. Everything, absolutely everything the king possessed was at the vizier’s disposal, and as was common among the peoples of the East, the vizier was publicly commanded to “bind and loose” in the king’s name, just as Joseph, for example, was in his day the right hand of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Read the story of Joseph in Genesis and observe the ceremony in which Pharaoh grants Joseph the government of Egypt. That ceremony has a truly simple background: Joseph has a supernatural connection with God, and Pharaoh, recognizing that situation, grants Joseph the full power of his kingdom, the power to bind and loose as though Joseph were Pharaoh himself. In the same way, at the right hand of God, Jesus is the undisputed King of the Kingdom of Heaven, and under His infallible direction the Church militant on earth preaches the truth of the Gospel without distorting it, knowing that whatever is bound or loosed will be infallibly guided from heaven; apostolic authority resides precisely in the fact that it has been delegated from heaven and continues in history under heavenly watch, especially in what concerns the teaching of faith and morals. This is how we Catholics reason about the handing over of the keys by Jesus to Peter. We have the advantage of having received from our brethren who lived before us not only the Gospel but also the confirmation of that authority, because it has simply always been there. People pass away, but the Church remains. As one body we have been alive since that day when the Lord Jesus laid His hands upon the fragile, fallible, impulsive Simon Bar-Jonah so that he might be Peter, the rock, who is charged to “strengthen his brethren.” I reckon that Jesus decided to place this enormous responsibility upon a man so evidently fragile so that the glory of his achievements would go to God and not to men. The grace of God is magnified in the weaknesses of men. This is comparable to a football coach who would win the championship with a team made up of terrible players. It is obvious that the glory and fame associated with such an achievement would fall upon the coach! But if, on the contrary, the coach had at his disposal the eleven best players in the league, would it be so meritorious for him to win the championship? Of course not.
When we speak of infallibility, of the Petrine charism of binding and loosing with royal authority, many ask us why, then, God did not make Peter perfect in every respect before granting him such a responsibility. Here it is worth recalling that the limitation of infallibility to matters of faith and morals is not arbitrary. First of all, in the new covenant God has willed to give us a new Church, one that will not perish, because its office is not “a shadow of the things to come” but the very reality announced through symbols and prophetic types in the Old Testament. The purpose of this new covenant is to make perfect the men and women of the Church, but that perfection is not accomplished at once; rather, it requires that we live in the flesh and contend with sin in the “struggle we have, not against flesh and blood, but against the authority of the air, the powers of this darkness.” That is why the granting of the guarantee of infallibility is a charism of the Church, of the bishops, and of the heir of Peter that applies only to matters of faith and morals. To extend a guarantee of impeccability would be to deny the Church its free will. The Church is not perfect; it is infallible in teaching faith and morals, but it can fail in other things because it is composed of men as sinful as any descendant of Adam. If we say the Church is holy, it is because her mission is holy. The sin inevitable in every human organization is what magnifies the grace of God, who has enclosed this treasure, the Gospel, in vessels of clay and guarantees that He will accomplish His purpose in spite of human imperfections: “my word shall not return to me void.”
Upon recently reading an article that attacks the doctrine of papal infallibility, I noticed several salient points that I will try to analyze separately. The first thing that stands out in this article is the citation made, first of the Catholic Catechism and then of Karl Keating’s book. The citations from the Catechism are, in my judgment, very clear, and the author wants to present them as proof that infallibility is anti-biblical. For this, the author relies on the “allergy” that many have toward Catholic writings. Few know that even before there were any written Gospels, incipient forms of various catechisms circulated in the East and the West in the very midst of apostolic times. That, I know, is another matter altogether, and I invite those who wish to investigate this interesting subject to do so with the greatest impartiality, beginning with the history of the Didache and concentrating on the methods of teaching and dissemination used by the primitive Church.
(In the photograph, Karl Keating as he appeared on the cover of the English-language Catholic monthly “Envoy”)
Mr. Sapia, author of the critique of the doctrine of papal and magisterial infallibility that we are analyzing, apparently quotes to us a part of Keating’s book and then invites us to read the entire chapter 18 of that same book, a chapter that deals with papal infallibility. I attest that I have read the cited chapter several times (in the English version) and cannot find the mentioned quotation. So that no one is left out, I have taken the trouble to translate the chapter that Mr. Sapia cites.[1] This article by Karl Keating seems to me a forceful defense of papal infallibility against the most common objections, and I venture to think that Mr. Sapia’s quotation is, at best, the result of a careless reading of that article and of copying a paragraph with even less care.[2] The quotation deceptively lets the reader believe that Mr. Keating attacks infallibility, when in reality the cited chapter proves false all the accusations that Mr. Daniel Sapia makes in his predictable and very forgettable article.
And it is here that I return to what I said at the beginning, the quotation from Harold Caballeros. I take pleasure in often conversing with members and clergy of the local Protestant churches. Among them I have found Christians of true dedication to the work of evangelization who carry out social and ecclesial works worthy of the highest praise. And it seems to me that other “attacking” Protestants are more interested in tearing down Catholics than in winning new Christians from the secular world. The string of accusations does not stop before the reality of history but rather falsifies, twists, accuses without basis, and shuffles the facts, jumping from one side to another when they are answered with the truth. Jesus was very clear when He warned that whoever remains in falsehood takes his origin from the first liar. And without failing in the charity that is a Catholic’s duty to show to all, I want to ask Mr. Sapia whether he thinks that God needs all these subterfuges to prove His truth. For few have analyzed the problem better than I, and few have been more surprised than I that truth and doctrinal purity should exist where I had already been told that nothing good grew: in the Church of Rome.
I am not going to bother arguing with Mr. Sapia, because Karl Keating clearly demonstrates, point by point, that the problem of Boettner, Hunt, Sapia, et al., is purely a lack of information and of Christian formation. Other, better minds will analyze Daniel Sapia’s article point by point, and I do not doubt they will find it wanting.
Let us return to the subject of infallibility and its properties, and for a change let us see where sketches of the guidance of the Holy Spirit appear in men holding a certain office. I do not cite the texts; I assume the reader knows these passages, and if he does not, let this be a good excuse to reread the Gospels carefully and to pay attention to the daily homilies that are part of every Mass. One learns a great deal by paying attention at Mass.
First I recall the case of Kaiphas (whose name means valley, depression, or low ground), who was High Priest in the year Jesus died. Note that the Jewish High Priests should have held their office for life according to the Mosaic Law. However, this aspect of the law proved politically unpalatable to the Romans, who imposed a system of annual rotation to prevent any Jew from gaining too much influence over the people. Curious is the symmetry between Kephas (the name Peter receives from Jesus, in Aramaic, meaning “rock” or “promontory”) and the name Kaiphas (the name of the High Priest at the time of Simon’s designation as Peter). Kaiphas is appointed by the Roman Caesar and his delegates; Kephas—Peter—is appointed by Jesus. Peter ends up inheriting Caesar’s very city as his see, while Kaiphas loses his life, the city, and the temple as a result of the Roman invasion of Palestine in A.D. 70. Kaiphas, the symmetrically opposite valley of Kephas, the rock upon which the powers of hell shall not prevail.
And yet, the Spirit moves Kaiphas to declare, during the trial of Jesus, “it is better that one man should die so that the people may be saved, than that the people should perish because of one man.” This, we are told in the Gospels, he said inspired by the Holy Spirit “because that year it fell to him to be High Priest.” There you have a curious intervention, the imprint of the Holy Spirit upon the person of an officer of the Church (in this case the priestly system of Israel still in force). And I ask: if this is possible in the case of Kaiphas (whom the Bible does not paint in very flattering colors, to say the least), why are we surprised that Peter should be provided with the ability to bind and loose in matters of faith and morals? I am not an exegete; this brief exposition of “symmetries” is simply an observation made by a Christian who reads the Bible often, nothing more.
For those who have noticed the weaknesses of poor Peter or of other figures who appear in the New Testament, it would be well for them to remember that the Church has been composed of men from the very beginning. We know from the inspired writings and from Tradition that the disciples of Christ quarreled among themselves, longed for preeminence and power, misunderstood the Master, and behaved like asses the moment they were given the chance. And yet from these blunt, old, imperfect tools—from these men full of flaws—the Gospel came into the world and finally was able to conquer the very city of Caesar where it was placed by Jesus to illuminate the world, in a high and visible place. Why are we surprised that those who inherited the office of the apostles are as imperfect as the originals? Why are we scandalized by others’ faults, as if we had not been warned in the clearest terms that fault-finding dissociates us from Jesus? I do not know the answer, but I hope that my friendship and my kindly conversations with Protestant friends may serve to repair a little piece of the breach that separates us.
Let us meditate on this and on the need to act in good faith and to unite rather than tear the Body of Christ. Let us use our charism to alleviate the scandal that so many Christian denominations exist, and not to add fuel to the fire of divisions. Let us be intercessors like Jesus and not accusers like Satan. Let us keep high the name of the eternal family to which we have been called, and let us be known for how reasonable we are. Let us meditate carefully before squawking against what has been Christian truth for thousands of years. Immersed in history and in the truth of the Gospel, we cannot fail to find Jesus.
If the doctrine of papal infallibility troubles some, it is because they have not meditated on it with care and good faith. Without giving much weight to this disorderly exposition of mine, I hope that Karl Keating’s arguments in the attached chapter will be sufficient for those who exercise the good faith of Jesus to take an interest in carefully studying this most important doctrine, central to the development and survival of the Church to this very day.†
Carlos Caso-Rosendi
Notes
- See in this same section Papal Infallibility by Karl Keating. ↩
- Mr. Daniel Sapia cites the following at http://www.conocereislaverdad.org/infalibilidadpapal.htm on the internet (as of February 28, 2003, when this article is written): “What is inconceivable is that they accept that these same sinners were infallible when they spoke ex cathedra—that is, when they made dogmatic pronouncements on faith and morals to the whole Church. These Catholic apologists argue that there is a difference between ‘impeccability in character and conduct,’ something the popes certainly did not have, and ‘infallibility in faith and morals,’ which every Catholic must believe they had.” (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 215-218). Sapia is attributing the words in italics to Karl Keating. A careful reading of chapter 18 of the cited work proves that the quotation is spurious or, at best, carelessly captious, since Mr. Keating, a well-known Catholic apologist, presents a forceful defense of the doctrine of papal infallibility right there. Mr. Keating’s work has been a best-seller for a long time, and to it I owe, in part, my own conversion to Catholicism. ↩
Author: Carlos Caso-Rosendi
