[Forest Keeper]

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State. (emphasis added)

Well, there's the rub. On ALL matters of faith and morals, my understanding is that the Catholic view is that the ONLY ones fit are the "larger and more complex organization". On anything we discuss around here, like going to Heaven or hell, isn't that pretty much everything? :)

[Mad Dawg]

You know, this would go a lot quicker if you'd just say, "Correct as usual, King Friday," and shut up. I once suggested that to my wife and daughter. They didn't go for it either. I just don't understand it.

I answer: ON the one hand, yeah, the catechism is a big book. But on the other, in the wide range of doctrine and morals stuff about which one might have an opinion, the Big Cheeses only speak (I think; I am no historian, so this is an ignorant impression which wiser heads may reliably correct) when controversy (like the Trinity, two natures in one person, etc.) gets so rough that a resolution is called for OR when popular pressure is very strong.

I think I have offered before the analogy of a solution out of which solid matter slowly precipitates. All these notions float around, like "Jesus is Lord," "Jesus is the Son of God," "Christ is present in the Sacrament," "The canonical books are the NT and, you know, all those other books," and finally, somebody says that we have to nail down what we mean by that, BECAUSE a lot of people are saying, "Well, He's Lord (or Son), yeah, but in THIS way, not in THAT way," or "Nope, not Maccabees," or whatever.

SO it's like the controversy gets kicked up the subsidiarity ladder to a body of sufficient, so to speak, "jurisdiction" (Hey! looka me! Lawyer talk!) to decide and bring the controversy to an end.

(It's helpful to me to remember that not every polity in the world has the crisp division between judicial, legislative, and executive branches that we have.)

So, as the Supremes are the court in which a question ends up when two appellate courts disagree, so when there is widespread and strong disagreement among the "churches" (that is, the dioceses) well either the Holy Father has got to "declare and define" or a council has to be convened.

And when that's happened, Roma locuta, causa finita.

[ This not only cracks me up, but it also may give some sense of the "on the ground" reality of this: Rome said, "Girl altar boys are okay." This had been a vexed issue.(I don't know which chunk of "Rome" said that or how authoritative it was supposed to be, but the return address was "Vatican City".) So our then Bishop, Walter the Pink, who was very much in favor of girl altar boys, actually said, "Roma locuta, causa finita." Fine.

[ Then, within a few months, J2P2 said that there weren't going to be, there couldn't be, lady priests. The manner of hi saying this was discursive and firm, and somebody else with the same return address said, "This should be regarded as 'infallible'." (Of course "should be regarded" is the kind of language that gets my attention: why not just say, "This IS infallible"? )

[Anyway, Walter the Pink says s bunch of stuff about how this is a complicated and controversial issue and we haven't seen the last of it and blah blah blah. So evidently the causa was no more finita than the "Ordinary" wanted it to be, at least in that bishop's alleged mind anyway.]

So most of the stuff we discuss is going to refer to the "final decision", which can only be made "at the top". We can't say that the powers of the state in eminent domain are delineated firmly until the Supremes have decided Kelo (and, as in that case, sometimes not even then.)

It seems to me to be a matter of common sense that, for a matter to be "settled" (and thus fit matter for Catholics to say, "This is the teaching of the Church") is has to be settled by the entity with final jurisdiction.

It may be that we Catholics over-state the divisions in Protestantism. It gets my attention that the very word is sufficiently vexed that the Episcopal Church used to call itself Protestant and now doesn't and that some Protestants would say of some other western "ecclesial assembly" not in communion with the see of Rome, that they are not REALLY Protestant. But if the First Baptist Church of Esmont (a small community near hear) has one opinion on a matter of faith and morals and the Green Mountain Baptist Church of Porters (a community within a half mile of Esmont) has another, who can say, authoritatively, "This is what Baptists believe and teach: ..."?

In any event, I would prefer "supreme or final jurisdiction" to "supreme power".