[metmom]

Since Catholics believe that the magisterium ordinarily operates under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the presumption should be in favor of the Pope’s declaration. Any such presumption, however, must also allow of the possibility that a Catholic can arrive at a carefully formed and critically tested conviction that in a given case the fallible magisterium has in fact erred. Nobody today denies that there are cases in which official, reformable teaching of the Holy See has in fact been erroneous. As examples, Rahner cites the views of Gregory XVI and Pius IX on liberal democracy, and various statements about the Bible issued in the aftermath of the Modernist crisis. It cannot therefore be assumed that a Catholic who conscientiously opposes the non-infallible doctrine of the magisterium, as it stands at a given moment, is necessarily disloyal.

The magisterium is fallible sometimes? Just how is the average lay Catholic to know when? Do they need someone to interpret their interpretation?

[BlueDragon]

Do they need someone to interpret their interpretation?

Perhaps something like that. But it's easier to just hold on to the fuzzy infallibles...for that also green-lights one to then go a-storming after those who point out some of the evidential, inherent problems with that position.

"Fuzzy" whacks two birds with one stone...maybe more. Clinging to not having to think any more carefully then they may have, the "protectors" can justify to themselves and one another almost ANY attack launched towards critics of any sort rather indiscriminately, using whatever sticks be 'handy'.

The feedback loop has approached near perfection for more than a few. We encounter that sort of thing here daily, no?

Yet within Catholicism is some measure of dissent, which is both well informed, and has been subjected to fairly strict self-restraint. As has been the case down through the centuries...such voices are frequently (but not always?) shunted aside. I do get the impression that more than a few prefer a top-down dictat model, even as in other instance a 'from the bottom up' expression of "faith" is preferred---if those in lower echelon can sway the 'dictat' level into canonizing & furthering the highly questionable.

From CURRENT THEOLOGY - Theological Studies A.R. Jonson, beginning here at p. 97

The Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in collaboration with the Canon Law Society of America issued a thorough analysis of the new profession and oath which charges that they contain an un-traditional extension of magisterial authority. The first paragraph of the profession repeats the formulation of Vatican I and specifies the assent of faith to what is infallibly taught concerning God's revelation. The second paragraph appears to specify a new form of assent to church teaching and deliberately expands the grey zone between what is infallibly taught and what is authentic but reformable doctrine.Infallible teaching requires the assent of faith;whereas authoritative but reformable teaching calls for interior assent, namely, the "religious submission of the will and intellect."

From page 98

Different traditional interpretations about these "secondary" objects of infallibility exist among Catholic theologians. Some hold that the category includes only what is strictly required to safeguard the deposit of faith; others include what is connected with it; others would include the entire natural law. "There are some, for example, who would subsume the teaching of artificial birth control under what is 'definitively' proposed Each of these positions has its advocates, and each interpretation would provide a very different rubric by which this paragraph would be understood and applied."

The new profession extends the object of this assent to include teaching of the magisterium that is deemed necessary support for the matters definitively taught as well as any decision that is made to terminate further debate on a subject. This would appear to go considerably beyond the express intent of Lumen gentium no. 25 and Canon 749, which limit "definitive" teaching to what has been infallibly declared. The CTSA report warns that Vatican I and II refrained from teaching this doctrine, at least explicitly. "Such an act by those making this profession entails a commitment which the Church itself has never taught in a definitive manner".

No consultation with the bishops of the world preceded the formulating and mandating of this new profession of faith. The bishops did not request this extension of authority, which, in the report's view, is not warranted by the New Testament, the Second Vatican Council, or tradition. The report sums up its evaluation:
The novel insistence that theologians hold "an office" that they "speak in the name of the Church, "and that they must be "mandated" or "missioned" by the hierarchy to teach, is read by many theologians both as a theological misinterpretation of the nature of theological work and as another tendency toward excessive centralization and inhibiting control within the Church.

From page 100

This is the form of assent ("to accept firmly and hold") which is ambiguously asserted in the 1989 Profession of Faith. Orsy found it puzzling to say that anything in the realm of falliblility could be proposed as definitive. In addition, if the appropriate response ("to accept firmly and hold") is not an act of faith (which is made to the first category of truths), what does this novel phrase mean? Neither the Second Vatican Council nor the canons of the 1983 Code use such language. 16 Francis A.Sullivan pointed out in this journal that following Lumen gentium no.25 most theologians who do "admit a secondary object of infallibility limit it to what is strictly required in order for the magisterium to defend or explain some revealed truth." The CDF [Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith] Instruction extends the range of this secondary object of infallibility to truths that are "intimately connected" with revelation, not merely those that are necessarily required for its defense.