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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2020
How has Pastor Aeternus stood the test of time in the face of Vatican II, the great social leveling brought about by democracy and the mass media, and the severe erosion of confidence in hierarchical institutions, including the Catholic Church?
1 Jeffrey P. von Arx, SJ, “A Post-Traumatic Church,” America: The Jesuit Review (June 22–29, 2015), published online as “How Did Vatican I Change the Church,” https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/post-traumatic-church.
2 Aubert, Roger, “The Catholic Church and the Revolution,” in History of the Church, eds. Jedin, Hubert and Dolan, John, vol. 7, The Church Between Revolution and Restoration (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 46, 50Google Scholar.
3 See Jeffrey P. von Arx, “The Root of the China-Vatican Agreement: Napoleon,” America: The Jesuit Review (September 24, 2018), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/09/24/root-china-vatican-agreement-napoleon.
4 See Kertzer, David I., The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe (New York: Random House, 2018)Google Scholar.
5 O'Malley, John, “The Eve of the Council,” in Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 96–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 O'Malley, “Infallibility,” in Vatican I, 180–224.
7 “Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, to the glory of God our savior, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion and for the salvation of the Christian people, with the approval of the Sacred Council, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.” Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (hereafter Pastor Aeternus), “On the Infallible Teaching Authority of the Roman Pontiff,” paragraph 9. All quotations from Pastor Aeternus in this essay are from https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.
8 The Latin of the final phrase of the definition is: “ideoque eiusmodi Romani Pontificis definitiones ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae irreformabiles esse.” “Non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae” was proposed as an addition to the existing text by ultramontane bishops in the last days of the council to refute explicitly the claims of Gallicanism that before being recognized as infallible, a definition needs to be subsequently juridically ratified by the church. The pope insisted on its inclusion. See O'Malley, “Infallibility,” in Vatican I, 218. For discussions of infallibility before, during and after the council, see RCostigan, ichard SJ, The Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press: 2019)Google Scholar; Keating, Kevin, Papal Teaching in the Age of Infallibility: 1870 to the Present (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018)Google Scholar; and Joy, John, Cathedra Veritatis: On the Extension of Papal Infallibility (Howell, MI: Cruachan Hill Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
9 But see the discussion of “creeping infallibility”: the idea that things that are taught consistently across time by the magisterium, like the illicitness of artificial contraception or the impossibility of the ordination of women, are effectively infallible. See John Allen, “A Long-Simmering Tension over ‘Creeping Infallibility,’” National Catholic Reporter (May 9, 2011), https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/long-simmering-tension-over-creeping-infallibility; George Wilson, “It's Nothing Personal,” Commonweal (February 4, 2016), https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/its-nothing-personal; and Jessica M. Murdoch, “Creeping Infallibility: Amoris Laetitia and Magisterial Authority,” First Things (September 27, 2016), https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/09/creeping-infallibility.
10 “Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman Church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other Church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world.” Pastor Aeternus, “On the Power and Character of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff,” paragraph 2.
11 See von Arx, “A Post-Traumatic Church.”
12 See Larkin, Emmett, “The Devotional Revolution,” in Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism (Catholic University of America Press: Washington, 1976), 1244–76Google Scholar.