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Friday 18 January 2013

EWTN on the levels of infallibility--First Level


Fr. William Most

First level:

  a) Solemn definition. LG 25: No special formula of words is required in 
order to define. Wording should be something solemn, and should make clear 
that the teaching is definitive. Councils in the past often used the form: 
"Si quis dixerit. . . anathema sit." That is: "If someone shall say. . . . 
let him be anathema." But sometimes they used the formula for disciplinary 
matters, so that form alone does not prove. Further, they also could define 
in the capitula, the chapters. Thus Pius XII, in Divino afflante Spiritu 
(EB 538) spoke of such a passage of Vatican I (DS 3006 -- saying God is the 
author of Scripture) as a solemn definition. 

 The Pope can define even without the Bishops. Of his definitions LG 25 
said: "His definitions of themselves, and not from consent of the Church, 
are rightly called unchangeable, for they are pronounced with the 
assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised him in blessed Peter. 
So they need no approval from others, nor is there room for an appeal to 
any other judgment." So collegiality even in defining is not mandatory. Yet 
most definitions of the Popes have been taken in collegiality, that is, 
with consultation of the Bishops. Even the definitions of the Immaculate 
Conception and the Assumption were such, for the Popes did poll the Bishops 
by mail.