I believe the venerable Inigo Montoya said as much, in response to the overuse by his diminutive Sicilian counterpart of the word “inconceivable”.

Here, Joshua A. Miller overuses the word “infallible” in much the same way, in a desperate attempt to shoehorn a letter written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who is now Pope Benedict XVI, but who was not Pope at the time of the letter’s writing) into the mold of an infallible statement.

He does more than that as well, reiterating various facts (legitimate and distorted) in a sometimes sober, sometimes dishonest look at the history of Pope Benedict’s relationship to the sexual abuse scandal, and even links to one of my previous posts on the matter, which briefly discusses the homosexual aspect of the problem. To briefly re-iterate, about 85% of all abuse cases involve priests abusing principally adolescent boys. There’s many issues at work there, and homosexuality is obviously one of them.

Except, perhaps, to Mr. Miller:

Not so obvious to me, but this is why Ratzinger’s desire to prevent “isolating” such unfortunates has a troubling double meaning: for homosexuals, it means welcoming gay Catholics to participate so long as they acknowledge that homosexual activity is a sin. For pedophiles, it means preventing the intervention of temporal authority.

Homosexual activity is a sin, as is all sexual activity which occurs between any two persons who are not a validly, sacramentally married (to each other, natch) (male) husband and (female) wife. Any sexual activity which falls outside that category is sinful, regardless of the respective sexes of the participants. And on the obligations of the unmarried, straight and gay alike, the Church makes her teaching clear: you are welcome to participate, but part and parcel of participation is acknowledgment of sin committed and commitment to avoid further sin in that regard. Repent and sin no more, and all that.

Not that the Church will drive out from her midst those who do sin a bit more…Reconciliation is not a one-time-only sacrament. But equally, the fact that one can repeatedly confess new instances of the same old sin doesn’t mean one is okay staying mired in that same old sin. This may be a distinction which is too hard for some to grasp.

Anyway, Miller goes on for a bit about “Father H.”, and gets onto the “Ratzinger knew” bandwagon as well. Jimmy Akin has already dealt with a lot of that misinformation, as has Father Z., so I won’t attempt to repeat or expand upon the work of these fine men. I would, however like to take a bit of a look at Miller’s attempt to shoehorn a particular papal letter into the realm of the infallible, because I don’t think it works at all.

Actually, I know it doesn’t, solely on account of the one critical Catechetical paragraph that Miller misses in his citation of Catholic doctrine — paragraph 890:

The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.

It’s that very last bit — “matters of faith and morals” — on which infallibility hinges. The Pope can write anything, in any format, about any matter, and say almost anything…and that won’t make it an infallible statement. In like manner, the bishops can issue any joint statement they might care to…and that won’t make it an infallible statement. Not every papal action is infallible, nor is every action undertaken, supported or ratified by a majority of the bishops. Only in “matters of faith and morals” — a very discrete, finite, narrow category — are such pronouncements infallible, and then only if other conditions are also satisfied.

Miller quotes this letter as his clincher, but misses that the letter itself is merely echoing another Catechetical teaching — paragraph 892:

Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a “definitive manner,” they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful “are to adhere to it with religious assent” which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

Note again the “faith and morals” criterion, which specifically (in this case, since we are here talking about the infallibility of the body of bishops) must lead to a “better understanding of Revelation” in regard to those specific matters. Revelation, as the Church understands it, can refer to both Scripture and Sacred Tradition — to the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the Church which flow therefrom.

Miller goes on to cite a 1986 letter and a 1975 letter penned by Ratzinger which he asserts contain infallible pronouncements on the matters discussed above, specifically pedophilia and homosexuality. He also states that these statements contradict one another:

When the Bishops in the 1975 declaration invoked the “constant teaching of the Magisterium,” they were not simply invoking the “ordinary magisterium,” which can be mistaken or fallible. They invoked the “ordinary universal magisterium,” which is infallible, even though Ratzinger did this before he took the office of Pope. Merely by representing the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, then Archbishop Ratzinger could not lay claim to infallibility for his recommendations, which though signed by the Pope would only constitute “ordinary Magisterium.” But by piggybacking on the “universal ordinary Magisterium” of the 1975 declaration, Ratzinger borrows their general claim to infallibility for his specific prescriptions. By invoking the ordinary universal magisterium, Ratzinger chastises all those who would question his words in that 1986 letter, either in the diagnosis or in the treatment.

So Ratzinger, in 1986, infallibly advocated the treatment of sexual abuse with a multipronged approach that addresses “all levels of spiritual life” as a substitute for temporal criminal investigations, which would only “isolate them.” This, then, is not simply a matter of eliminating bad apples: it is an institutional crisis in which the Church will be forced to choose between fundamental commitments.

Except that it’s not, since we’ve yet to establish that one or both letters pertain specifically to “matters of faith and morals”; both letters seem (especially given the parts from them that Miller himself has chosen to highlight in bold text) to be procedural critiques more than doctrinal or moral prognostications. To be fair, both do contain elements of moral teaching, specifically (again at least in the parts Miller has chosen to highlight) concerning pastoral irresponsibility. But in general, the letters are not focused on “matters of faith and morals” in the direct sense…and so cannot reliably be said to be infallible pronouncements even if other necessary criteria for that designation are invoked or satisfied thereby.

In short, then: Miller is wrong, principally because his understanding of infallibility is incomplete. To be fair, it’s not as woefully incomplete as the average Jack Chick fan’s understanding…but that isn’t exactly a complementary observation anyhow.

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Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: Aberrant Sexuality - Catholicism - Crime and Punishment - Men and Women - Sex | Tags: Christ, God, homosexuality, Inigo Montoya, Jack Chick, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Joseph Ratzinger, Joshua A. Miller, Magisterium, pedophilia, Pope Benedict XVI, sexual abuse, the Bible, the Church