When
researching the Catholic dogma of papal infallibility, one Catholic source from
the mid-19th century sometimes crops up as evidence many Catholics
categorically rejected papal infallibility:
Q. Must not Catholics believe the
Pope in himself to be infallible?
A. This is a Protestant invention;
it is not article of the Catholic faith; no decision of his can oblige, under
pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, that
is, by the Bishops of the Church. (John C. Pontrello, The Sedevacantist Delusion: Why Vatican II’s Clash with Sedevacantism
Supports Eastern Orthodoxy [North Charleston, N.C.: CreateSpace, 2015], 253)
The source
for the work Pontrello (and others, such as Robert Zins) references is that of:
Stephen
Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism (New
York: Edward Dunigan & Brothers, 1848), 305-306.
The work is
available online here.
Personally,
I don’t think this is a “knock out” punch to Catholic dogmatic teachings. Why?
Couple of things.
Firstly, Keenan
clearly held to a high view of the pope and viewed him as holding singularly
unique powers and authorities, evidenced by the following in the book:
Q. Did
Jesus Christ appoint any vicar on earth to govern his Church in quality of
visible chief or head?
A. Yes; he appointed for that purpose St.
Peter and his successors.
Q. Did
St. Peter receive more power than the other Apostles from Christ?
A. Yes; as is evident from many passages of
Scripture . . .
Q. What
are the words of the text immediately following? Matt. chap. xvi, 19.
A. "And I will give to thee (Peter) the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it
shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth, it
shall be loosed also in heaven."
Q. Did not
Christ address the same words to all the Apostles?
A. On this occasion, he addressed these words
to Peter alone, which makes it quite
evidence that he intended to confer on Peter a peculiar power; when he
addressed the other Apostles in these words, he did so generally and to all in
common . . .
Q. Did
Peter act as presiding teacher among the Apostles?
A. yes; he decided in the first Council held
at Jerusalem by the Apostles, that the Christians should not be subjected to
the Jewish rite of circumcision; St. Paul, though an Apostle, did not venture
to decide upon it. "Men, brethren," said Peter. "you know that
in former days God made choice among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel;" and
when Peter had made an end of speaking, "all the multitude held their peace;" and even James himself
who was bishop of Jerusalem, where the Apostles assembled, rose only to repeat
St. Peter's decision and to acquiesce in it, (Acts, xv.) . . .
Q. Do
all the faithful owe obedience to the bishop of Rome?
A. Yes; all are bound to obey him as the
vicar of Jesus Christ, the chief bishop of the whole Christian Church.
Q. It
is a grevious sin to refuse submission to the sovereign Pontiff?
A. "Whoever oppose," says St. Paul,
"the lawful authorities oppose the order of the Almighty, and those who
resist such authorities, bring condemnation on themselves." (pp. 152, 153,
158-59, 161-62)
So clearly he
believed in papal authority.
It should be
noted that he wrote his volume in 1848, 22 years before Pastor
aeternus was issued by Pius IX. So, up to this point, it was an allowable
position to call into question certain teachings (anathemas do not work
retroactively). Indeed, at this time, there were many Catholics who believed in
the infallibility of the pope, the councils, as well as the universal ordinary
magisterium, but the debate was which took precedence: the pope or councils? It
appears, when read in context, that Keenan held that councils took priority
over the popes (note that Keenan says the pope is not infallible “in himself”;
perhaps he is speaking of the Ultra-Montantist view that the pope is always
speaking authoritatively, a common strand of thought that has always floated in
Catholic circles, as erroneous it is; on this, see John O' Malley's study, Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church).
Do note the
context of Keenan’s comments. It appears in a section entitled, On the Power of
a General Council, or Papal Consistory, in Temporal Matters" (pp. 305-7)
and addresses the pope’s authority vis-à-vis, not universal laws, but (whether
errant or not) personal commands relating to rulers:
Q. Can
a General Conference frame new matters, or articles of faith?
A. No; a General Council can only explain
what has been already revealed; it
belongs to God alone to reveal new articles of faith.
Q. What
if a General Council, or Papal Consistory, should undertake to depose a king,
or absolve his subjects from their obedience?
A. No Catholic is bound to submit to such a
decree. Indeed, every Catholic may renounce, upon oath, any such doctrine and
this without the last breach of Catholic principle.
Q. Must
not the Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible?
A. This is a Protestant invention; it is no
article of the Catholic faith; no decision of his can oblige, under pain of
heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body,--that is, by
the Bishops of the Church.
Q. Can
the Pope absolve subjects from their allegiance on account of the heresy of
schism of their king?
A. No; such dispensation or absolution is
null; Catholics are still at liberty to deend their king and country at the
hazard of their lives, even against the Pope himself.
Q. Can
Catholics lawfully kill their prince or king if he be excommunicated for heresy
or schism?
A. Such an act is declared by the Catholic
General Council of Constance, damnable and heretical, as well as contrary to
the known laws of God and nature.
Q. Can
the Pope, or any power in the Church, license men to lie, or forswear
themselves,--to injury their neighbors, or destroy their country,--under
pretence of promoting the Catholic cause?
A. Such license can have no other effect,
than to add sacrilege and blasphemy to the commission of the above crimes.
Q. Are
equivocation or mental reservation, allowed by the Catholic Church?
A. No; these are Protestant charges, invented
for the purpose of exhibiting Catholics in odious colors. The Catholic Church
never taught such unworthy doctrines; on the contrary, she disapproves and
condemns them.
During
Vatican I, prior to the dogmatising of papal infallibility and the criteria
thereof, a form of the document that would later be decreed by Pius IX was read
and defended by Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser in the official Relatio which one can read online here.
It did not contain the clause, which
would later be added by Pius IX to the dogmatic constitution, which explicitly
teaches the priority of the pope over the councils and the rest of the Church:
Therefore, such definitions of the Roman
Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable
For a
book-length study on papal infallibility and the consensus of the Church, see
the work by the Jesuit scholar Richard F. Costigan, The
Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility: A Study in the Background of
Vatican I.
From my
reading of Keenan, he, at the time of writing in 1848, did not hold to this
position (as did many other Catholics). However, it would be naïve to read his
comment in the Catechism as a wholesale rejection of papal infallibility, and
without giving the necessary background to the allowable opinions of the time
in 1848 when Keenan wrote (prior to the final, scientific definition from
1870), I do believe it to be problematic to use Keenan’s work against
Catholicism, especially when he did impute to the bishop of Rome such singularly
unique pejoratives as quoted above.
