But you are quoting from a non-infallible document asserting that this position is infallible teaching, being from the beginning. Yet, while female pastors/leadership with its direct authority men is unBiblical , yet the NT knows nothing at all of a class of clergy distinctively titled "priests," having a unique sacerdotal function, while Rome allows women in various administrative functions over men.
Meanwhile, another teaching held as infallible is that "the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered," (CCC 882)
And which exercise does not need the sanction of the bishops, while the pope cannot be disposed without his consent. The RC Church thus has no authority whatsoever to deny this autocratic power, and consistent with the claims of the power of binding and loosing, a pope could declare the church now has the power to confer priestly ordination on women, perhaps invoking the many Caths who speak of Mary as a divine priestess.
This would be more extreme than the redefinition of an infallible teaching that V2 engaged in, taking "We declare, say, define, and pronounce [ex cathedra] that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” as meaning that Scripture Protestants, whom Rome used to separate with the sword of men, are now "separated brethren" with RCs, who are
In such a case of papal power confer priestly ordination on women, traditional RCs, many of whom already take exception to aspects of V2, even as heretical, while calling their liberal brethren "cafeteria Catholics," and condemning evangelicals for ascertaining the validity of teaching by examining Scripture, would quickly declare such as heretical.
Which division is just what the papacy is promoted as providing, and requires Caths doing what they condemn others for doing, that of ascertaining the validity of teaching based upon examination of historical established teaching, and or the non-infallible judgment of present prelates.
And while confer priestly ordination on women is extreme and highly implausible, the issue of which teachings require assent is a real issue which pertains to this, and to unity.
RCs are divided over how many infallible teachings (not just by popes) there are, and what they all are, as well as whether assent (at least religious assent) is due to even all encyclicals, while what they mean can also be subject to interpretation. As is canon law regrading excommunication and the application of it.
Some hold that all encyclicals are infallible, and i provide papal teaching which broadly requires assent to all public teaching to the church, while others deny that all encyclicals, esp. the latest of Francis require even religious assent, which excludes public dissent.
Scripture is clear on women having authority over men.
There’s no need for papal anythings, nor official pronouncements from the church. God’s word settles is just fine in far fewer words.
I can appreciate the work you have done on these two responses, totaling ~ 3,400 words, since I tend to send longish ones as well. However, your sources are diverse, the levels of authority mixed, each paragraph requiring adequate definition and distinctions in every instance. All this would probably double to triple the whole "word volume" of the discussion. (Ulp!)
Neither of us has time to write, or read, a 150 paragraph response!
The best I can do is to try to summarize.
”When the Prophet speaks: the thinking has been done.”This basic Islamic concept (“the thinking has been done”) is incompatible with Catholicism, and if it were true that it would find, (if applied to the Pope) “ considerable RC support,” my conclusion would be that those RC’s have not thought about it very carefully.
The Vehementer Nos and Providentissimus Deus quotes on "authority" refer to formal Church doctrines, not positive canonical regulations, not mere disciplines, not essentially temporary or local rulings, and not even papal opinions.
The absolutism is understood to be “within the law of Christ,” since anything which is not conformed to Christ lacks binding force.
We can see this even in the way “we” (you and I) interpret Scripture, in that seeming absolutes are not absolute if they contradict Christ. For instance:
“Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ…” (Ephesians 6:5)
This looks absolute since in instructs slaves that they owe obedience to their masters “as to Christ”; but obviously if a master commanded “Flog that other slave to death,” or “I want you to have sex with me and my brother,” the slave must not obey, since it would entail disobedience to the Moral Law. The same would apply to ecclesiastical superiors: we owe obedience to them, but only insofar as this is conformable to the Moral Law.
Inasmuch as Graham and Stapleton (writers previously unknown to me) refer to what Christ teaches us through the Church, they echo the message of the Gospels themselves:
Matthew 18:17-18
“ If he refuses to listen to them [two or three witnesses], tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Here Jesus confirms the authority of the Church, linking it to the authority of “heaven.”
And again, referring to the seventy disciples He appointed as messengers of the Gospel (Luke 10:17) :
“ He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”
The injunction to "hear" the Gospel isprimary, since any other legitimate authority is dependent on the reliability of the Gospel. Pius XII, of his own encyclicalls, said that they "demand consent,” and yet that itself cannot be an absolute statement, since Pope Francis demurred from it repeated times in his Encyclical, Laudato Si (LS).
Unlike Pope Pius XII, who said in Humani Generis that he wished to provide closure on a topic previously considered “a question of free discussion among theologians.” Pope Francis aimed for the opposite: in LS he is writing to kick open a topic for discussion: this encyclical which was manifestly NOT meant to be authoritative. Here you have it, in Pope Francis' own words (paragraph numbers provided):
(14 )“I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue … We need a new conversation…raising awareness of these challenges…”
(15) “I will advance…proposals for dialogue and action…”
(16) “[This is] the call to seek other ways of understanding… the need for forthright and honest debate…”
(19)”Our goal is… to become painfully aware [of] what is happening to our world…”
(61) “On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion”.
“Dialogue,” “conversation,” “proposals,” “debate,” awareness-raising --- these words establish that the papal intent here is to spark a discussion, not to define some new doctrine.
This bracketing of authoritative claims in LS was, as far as I know, an unprecedented experiment with the concept of Church as one voice in a symposium of many voices. Nevertheless, other Popes have set similar markers to their authority. In 2005 Pope Benedict XVI remarked, "The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know". Pope John XXIII once stated it with a humorous twist: "I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible".
The theologian, like every believer, must follow his conscience, and Joseph Ratzinger (as Archbishop) taught that "over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else," it cannot be allowed to be determinative of truth, and the Catholic is obliged to form it according to Catholic teaching."
Note that this means that even the Pope’s conscience cannot “be allowed to be determinative of the truth,” since the Pope himself is obliged to form his conscience "according to Catholic teaching."