[Mrs. Don-o]

OK, no prob. (Suppressing the temptation to grin and wink.)

There are different sources of infallibility. For instance:

• Natural reason can tell us two things infallibly about God, but not much more than this:
  • That God exists (as the uncaused Cause)and
  • That He is supremely powerful and supremely intelligent (since He designed and brought into being all that is.)

• Supernatural Revelation:
  • The Church: Scripture (the Canon), the Church was empowered by the Holy Spirit, over a period of time, to reach certain conclusions about which of the whole collection of ancient and highly-regarded writings could be affirmed as canonical. There was a certain amount of sorting --- Book of Malachi (yes), Book of Enoch (no), Gospel of Luke (yes), Gospel of Thomas (No) etc. As with most questions, it was pretty much settled in practice before it was proclaimed as an official "list".

  • The Church: Scripture (Intepretation), Sacred Scripture teaches us many infallible things (way too many to list here.) This evokes the question "Who interprets?" and that leads to three levels of teaching authority.
    • Ordinary and Universal Magisterium: what all the Apostles and their successors, though scattered around the world, have always taught. This would include, e.g. the Apostles' Creed.
    • The Extraordinary Magisterium (Conciliar) what was determined by particular Councils called to resolve particular disputed questions. The first example of that would be the Council of Jerusalem; they came up with a list (“that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood”); and other early Councils came up with doctrinal lists, e.g. the Nicene Creed;
    • The Extraordinary Magisterium (Papal)what the Pope definitively ruled on a question of faith and morals.
  That last one is by far the rarest, and was only, to my knowledge, invoked 4 times in the past 200 years, to define: (1)Papal infallibility itself; (2)the Immaculate Conception of Mary; (3)the Assumption of Mary; and (4) the ministerial priesthood, as a ministry open to men only.

You can see that the vast bulk of infallible doctrines come from the canonical Scriptures --- preeminently what was given by Christ Our Lord Himself --- and their authoritative interpretation by the Church (“Whoever hears you, hears Me.”)

Various people have tried to make great BIG lists, and one of the most interesting to you might be the list made by Ludwig Ott in his “Fundamentals of Catholic Doctrine” (1952), a marvelously concise 520-page one-volume summary.

[Here’s where I’m really grinning and winking: it’s more concise, anyhow, than the 12 volumes of “The Fundamentals” published by Protestant Fundamentalists approx. 100 years ago. :o)]

You’d think it would all be written down,with bullet points and in searchable electronic form, preferably --- that would be most satisfactory to a person like me ---- but (sigh) I must admit it's not. Think of the incomparably precious things Jesus Christ Himself gave us directly: the vast majority of it was NOT reduced to a definitive list:

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

Amen.

[CTrent1564]

Mrs. Don-0:

Very good post. what it shows is that Theologians have latitude in theological opinion as long as it does not contradict any defined Doctrines/Dogmas. So what Papal statements are “infallible” is ultimately only infallible when Rome “says they are infallible”. Individual Theologians may have differences of opinion among themselves on those Papal Statements that the Bishop of Rome has issued a formal documents but He Himself has not invoked the charism of Papal Infalliblity with respect to said Papal documents.

If you read Pope Benedict’s “Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones For a Fundamental Theology”, published by Ignatius Press, you will see that in fact gave Luther a fair hearing in that work pointing out where Luther’s crticisms were valid where he went beyond Apostolic Tradition.