The Infallible Authority of the Church

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This was posted, not merely as a refutation of the thinking of people like Mario Cuomo and other pseudo-Catholics, but also as a simple catechetical lesson from years ago - and the glory of this is that it is still as applicable today as it was then. Perhaps, for some, it may even be more easily understood.

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From "The Faith of Our Fathers":
The Church has authority from God to teach regarding faith and morals; and in her teaching she is preserved from error by the special guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The prerogative of infallibility is clearly deduced from the attributes of the Church already mentioned. The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Preaching the same creed everywhere, and at all times; teaching holiness and truth, she is, of course, essentially unerring in her doctrine; for what is one, holy, or unchangeable, must be infallibly true.

That the Church was infallible in the Apostolic age, is denied by no Christian. We never question the truth of the Apostles' declarations (Gal 4:14, 1 Thess 2:13); they were, in fact, the only authority in the Church for the first century. The new Testament was not com­pleted till the close of the first century. There is no just ground for denying to the Apostolic teachers of the nineteenth century in which we live, a pre­rogative clearly possessed by those of the first, espe­cially as the divine Word nowhere intimates that this unerring guidance was to die with the Apos­tles. On the contrary, as the Apostles transmitted to their successors their power to preach, to baptize, to ordain, to confirm, etc., they must also have handed down to them the no less essential gift of infallibility.

God loves us as much as He loved the primitive Christians; Christ died for us as well as for them: and we have as much need of unerring teachers as they had.

It will not suffice to tell me: "We have an infalli­ble Scripture as a substitute for an infallible aposto­late of the first century," for an infallible book is of no use to me without an infallible interpreter, as the history of Protestantism too clearly demonstrates.

But besides these presumptive arguments, we have positive evidence from Scripture that the Church cannot err tn her teachings. Our blessed Lord, in constituting St. Peter Prince of His Apostles, says to him: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt 16:18) Christ makes here a solemn prediction that no error shall ever invade His Church; and if she fell into error, the gates of hell have certainly prevailed against her.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century affirm that the Church did fall into error; that the gates of hell did prevail against her; that from the sixth to the sixteenth century she was a sink of iniquity. The Book of Homilies of the church of England says that the Church "lay buried in damnable idolatry for eight hundred years and more." The personal veracity of our Saviour and of the Reformers is here at issue, for our Lord makes a statement which they contradict. Who is to be believed, Jesus or the Reformers?

If the prediction of our Saviour about the pre­servation of His Church from error be false, then Jesus Christ is not God, since God cannot lie. He is not even a Prophet, since He predicted falsehood. No, He is an impostor, and all Christianity is a miserable failure and a huge deception, since it rests on a false Prophet.

But if Jesus predicted the truth when He declared that the gates of hell should not prevail against His Church, - and who dare deny it? - then the Church never has, and never could have fallen from the truth; then the Catholic Church is infallible, for she alone claims that prerogative, and she is the only Church that is acknowledged to have existed from the beginning. Truly is Jesus that wise Architect mentioned in the Gospel, "who built his house upon a rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." (Matt 7:24, et seq)

Jesus sends forth the Apostles with plenipotentiary powers to preach the Gospel. "As the Father," He says, "hath sent Me, I also send you." (John 20:21) "Going therefore, teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." (Matt 28:19-20) "Preach the Gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15) "You shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

This commission evidently applies not to the Apostles only, but also to their successors, to the end of time, since it was utterly impossible for the Apostles personally to preach to the whole world.

Not only does our Lord empower His Apostles to preach the Gospel, but He commands, and under the most severe penalties, those to whom they preach to listen and obey. "Whosoever will not receive you, nor hear your words, going forth from that house or city, shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city." (Matt 10:14-15) "If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican." (Matt 18:17) "He that believes shall be saved; he that does not believe, shall be condemned." (Mark 16:16) "He who hears you, hears Me; he who despises you, despises Me; and he who despises Me, despises Him that sent Me." (Luke 10:16)

From these passages, we see, on the one hand, that the Apostles and their successors have received full powers to announce the Gospel; and on the other, that their hearers are obliged to listen with docility, and to obey not merely by an external compliance, but also by an internal assent of the intellect. If, therefore, the Catholic Church could preach error, would not God Himself be responsible for the error? And could not the faithful soul say to God with all reverence and truth: You have commanded me, Lord, to hear Your Church. If I am deceived by obeying her, You are the cause of my error.

But we may rest assured that an all-wise Provi­dence who commands His Church to speak in His name, will so guide her in the path of truth that she shall never lead into error those that follow her teachings.

But as this privilege of Infallibility was a very extraordinary favor, our Saviour confers it on the rulers of His Church in language which removes all doubt from the sincere inquirer, and under circum­stances which add to the majesty of His word. Shortly before His death, Jesus consoles His dis­ciples by this promise: "I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever. . . But when He, the Spirit of truth, shall come, He will teach you all truth." (John 14:10)

The following text of the same import forms the concluding words recorded of our Savior in St. Matthew's Gospel: "All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and teach all nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." (Matt 28)

He begins by asserting His own divine authority and mission. "All power is given," etc. That power He then delegates to His Apostles and to their successors: "Go, therefore, and teach all nations," etc. He does not instruct them to scatter Bibles all over the earth, but to teach by word of mouth. "And behold!" Our Saviour never captures the attention of His hearers by using the interjection, behold, unless when He has some­thing unusually solemn and extraordinary to com­municate. An important announcement is sure to follow this word. "Behold, I am with you." These words, "I am with you," are frequently addressed in Sacred Scripture, by the Almighty, to His Prophets and Patriarchs, and they always imply a special presence and a particular super­vision of the Deity. (Ex 3:12, Jer 15:20, etc) They convey the same mean­ing in the present instance. Christ says equivalently, I who "am the way, the truth, and the life," will protect you from error, and will guide you in your speech. I will be with you, not merely during your natural lives, not for a just a century, but for all days, at all times, without intermission, even to the end of the world.

These words of Jesus Christ establish two impor­tant facts:
1. A promise to guard His Church from error.
2. A promise that His presence with the Church will be continuous, without any interval of absence, to the consummation of the world.

And this is also the sentiment of the Apostle of the Gentiles writing to the Ephesians: God "gave some indeed Apostles, and some Prophets, and some Evangelists, and others Pastors and Teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the unity of faith, . . . that we may no more be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the wickedness of men, in craft, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Eph 4:11-14)

Notwithstanding these plain declarations of Scrip­ture, some persons think it an unwarrantable assump­tion for the Church to claim infallibility. But mark the consequences that follow from denying it.

If your church is not infallible, it is liable to err, for there is no medium between infallibility and lia­bility to error. If your church and her ministers are fallible in their doctrinal teachings, as they admit, they may be preaching falsehood to you, instead of truth. If so, you are in doubt whether you are listening to truth or falsehood. If you are in doubt, you can have no faith, for faith excludes doubt, and in that state you displease God, for "without faith it is impossible to please God."(Heb 11:6) Faith and infallibility must go hand in hand. The one cannot exist with­out the other. There can be no faith in the hearer unless there is unerring authority in the speaker - an authority founded upon such certain knowledge as precludes the possibility of falling into error on his part, and including such unquestioned veracity as to prevent his deceiving him who accepts his word.

You admit infallible certainty in the physical sciences; why should you deny it in the science of salvation? The mariner, guided by his compass, knows, amid the raging storm and the darkness of the night, that he is steering his course directly to the city of his destination; and is not an infallible guide as necessary to conduct you to the city of God in heaven? Is it not moreover a blessing and a consolation that amid the ever changing views of men, amid tbe conflict of human opinion, and the tumultuous waves of human passion, there is one voice heard above the din and uproar, crying in clear unerring tones: "Thus saith the Lord?"

It is very strange that the Catholic Church must apologize to the world for simply declaring that she speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Children of the Catholic Church, give thanks to God for having made you members of that Com­munion in which you are preserved from all errors in faith, and from all illusion in the practice of virtue. You are happily strangers to those interior conflicts, to those perplexing doubts, and to that frightful uncertainty which distract the souls of those whose private judgment is their only guide. You are not, like others, drifting helplessly over the ocean of uncertainty, and "carried about by every wind of doctrine." You are not as "blind men led by blind guides." You are not like those who are in the midst of a spiritual desert intersected by various by-paths, not knowing which to pursue; but you are on that high road spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, which is so "straight a way, that fools shall not err therein." (Is 35:8) You are a part of that universal Communion which has no "High church" and "Low church;" no "New School" and "Old School," for you all belong to that School which is "ever ancient and ever new." You enjoy that profound peace and tranquillity which springs from the conscious possession of the whole truth. Well may you exclaim: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." (Ps 132)

Give thanks, moreover, to God that you belong to a Church which has also a keen sense to detect and expose those moral shams, those pious frauds, those socialistic schemes which are so often undertaken in this country ostensibly in the name of religion and morality, but which, in reality, are subversive of morality and order, which are the offspring of fanati­cism, and serve as a mask to hide the most debasing passions. Neither the advocates of free love or of false freedoms (license) find any recruits in the Catholic Church. She will never suffer her children to be ensnared by these impostures, how specious they may be.

From what has been said in the preceding paragraphs it follows that the Catholic Church cannot be reformed. I do not mean, of course, that the Pastors of the Church are personally impeccable, or not subject to sin. Every teacher in the Church, from the Pope down to the humblest Priest, is liable at any moment, like any of the faithful, to fall from grace, and to stand in need of moral reformation. We all carry "this treasure (of innocence) in earthen vessels."

My meaning is, that the Church is not susceptible of being reformed in her doctrines. The Church is the work of an Incarnate God. Like all God's works, it is perfect. It is, therefore, incapable of reform. Is it not the height of presumption for men to attempt to improve upon the work of God? Is it not ridiculous for the Luthers, the Calvins, the Knoxes, and the Henries, and a thousand lesser lights, to be offering their amend­ments to the Constitution of the Church, as if it were a human Institution?

Our Lord Himself has never ceased to rule personally over His Church. It is time enough for little men to take charge of the Ship when the great Cap­tain abandons the helm.

A Protestant gentleman of very liberal education remarked to me, before the opening of the late Ecu­monical Council: "I am assured, sir, by a friend, in confidence, that, at a secret Conclave of Bishops re­cently held in Rome, it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council; in fact, that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be repaired in 1869." I told him, of course, that no such question could be enter­tained in the Council; that the doctrinal decrees of the Church were irrevocable, and that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined once and forever.

If only one instance could be given in which the Church ceased to teach a doctrine of faith which had been previously held, that single instance would be the death-blow of her c1aim to infallibility. But it is a marvellous fact worthy of record, that in the whole history of the Church, from the nineteenth (now twenty-first) century to the first, no solitary example can be ad­duced to show that any Pope or General Council ever revoked a decree of faith or morals enacted by any preceding Pontiff or Council. Her record in the past ought to be a sufficient warrant that she will tolerate no doctrinal variations in the future.

If, as we have seen, the Church has authority from God to teach, and if she teaches nothing but the truth, is it not the duty of all Christians to hear her voice and obey her commands? She is the organ of the Holy Spirit. She is the Representative of Jesus Christ, who has said to her: "He who hears you, hears Me; he who despises you, despises Me." She is the Mistress of truth. It is the duty of the human mind to embrace truth wherever it finds it. It would, therefore, be not only an act of irrev­erence, but of sheer folly, to disobey the voice of this ever-truthful Mother.

If a citizen is bound to obey the laws of his coun­try, though these laws may not in all respects be conformable to strict justice; if a child is bound by natural and divine law to obey his mother, though she may sometimes err in her judgments, how much more strictly are not we obliged to be docile to the teachings of the Catholic Church, our Mother, whose admonitions are always just, whose precepts are im­mutable!

"For twenty years," observed a recently converted Minister of the Protestant Church, "I fought and struggled against the Church with all the energy of my will. But when I became a Catholic, all my doubts ended, my inquiries ceased. I became as a little child, and rushed like a lisping babe into the arms of my mother." By Baptism, Christians become children of the Church, no matter who pours upon them the regenerating waters. If she is our Mother, where is our love and obedience? When the infant seeks nourishment at its mother's breast, it does not analyze its food. When it receives instructions from its mother's lips, it never doubts, but instinctively believes. When the mother stretches forth her hand, the child follows unhesitatingly. The Christian should have for his spiritual Mother all the simplicity, all the credulity, I might say, of a child, guided by the instincts of faith. "Unless you become," says our Lord, "as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matt 18:3) "As new-born babes, desire the rational milk without guile; that thereby you may grow unto salvation." (1 Pet 2:2) In her nourishment there is no poison; in her doctrines there is no guile.

Adapted from The Faith of Our Fathers, (1895)
by James Cardinal Gibbons