DOES THE CHURCH’S INFALLIBILITY EXTEND TO DISCIPLINARY LAWS?

I am examining a claim by a sedevacantist that the Church cannot implement evil laws (Novus Ordo Missae) due to its Infallibility, therefore the Pope is not a true Pope etc.

As part of this I've been doing some searches and came across this article by Fr. Peter R. Scott (FSSPX) and also an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on ecclesiastical discipline (referenced by Fr. Scott).

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Fr. Peter R. Scott

SOURCE

DOES THE CHURCH’S INFALLIBILITY EXTEND TO DISCIPLINARY LAWS?

This is a question of the greatest importance for a traditional Catholic in the present crisis in the Church, for in practice he rejects disciplinary laws of the post-conciliar Church. How can he do so if disciplinary laws are infallible? Surely, if they are infallible, then he is obliged either to admit the sedevacantist thesis that there is no pope, or simply submit to them.

However, it is theologically certain that the Church’s infallibility does indeed extend to disciplinary laws, based upon the Church’s own condemnations of the contrary propositions of Protestants by the Council of Trent, of Jansenists and the Council of Pistoia by Pope Pius VI, of Liberal Catholics by Gregory XVI, and of Modernists by St. Pius X in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi. Moreover, it can be deduced from the Vatican I definition of papal infallibility.

Disciplinary laws are, in fact, a part of the secondary object of the Church’s infallibility. The primary and direct object consists in all those truths of faith and morals that are in themselves revealed in Scripture and Tradition, and subsequently taught by the Magisterium. The secondary or indirect object of the Church’s infallibility consists of those truths that are necessarily connected with the deposit of the Faith, in such a way that it cannot be kept in its entirety without them. It includes some speculative truths, such as the immortality of the soul; some practical facts, such as the legitimacy of the Council of Trent as a true ecumenical council; some definitive and final decisions that solemnly use the fullness of the Church’s authority, such as the (traditional) canonization of saints and the approval of religious orders. Disciplinary laws are to be included in the secondary object of the Church’s infallibility, but only indirectly and inasmuch as they are connected with directly revealed truth (doctrine) by the goal that they attain, the salvation of souls. Note that this is rather a negative quality of the pope’s supreme and universal power of government of the Church, namely, that inasmuch as those acts of government are directed towards the salvation of souls, they cannot impose any obligation opposed to divinely revealed Faith and morals.

This infallibility of the Church’s universal disciplinary laws is in no way a positive infallibility, as if the Church’s laws could never be wrong or inappropriate, provided that they are for the whole Church. Clearly, they are often not adapted to present needs, and the fact that they continually change demonstrates this. The most well-known case is that of communion under both kinds, which originally existed in the Roman Rite, but was abolished for very good practical reasons, and for the theological reason that Christ is present whole and entire under either species. The Council of Constance proclaimed, against the heresy of John Hus, that the practice of receiving Holy Communion under one kind “which is observed by the universal Church and approved by the sacred Council of Constance, must be preserved, so that it be not allowed to condemn this or to change it at pleasure without the authority of the Church” (Dz. 668). This is clearly a disciplinary decision, so connected with the revelation on the Real Presence necessary for the salvation of souls, that it itself benefits from the Church’s infallibility.

This was restated by the Council of Trent, when it reiterated the Church’s authority to make laws concerning the administration of the sacraments, while preserving their substance (Dz. 931 ss.). It did the same thing with respect to the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and condemned with an anathema anybody who would affirm “that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church…may be disdained or omitted by the minister without sin and at pleasure, or may be changed…” (Dz. 856). It likewise taught that the Canon of the Mass is free from all error, and condemned with an anathema anyone who says that it contains errors or that it ought to be abrogated (Dz. 953). This is a negative but infallible guarantee if ever there was one.

Pope Gregory XVI spoke explicitly of this teaching in an encyclical to the Rhineland bishops in 1833 (Quo Graviora), condemning the Indifferentism of innovators and Liberal Catholics, wanting to bring about a general reform of all Catholic discipline and government:

When they pretend that all the forms of the Church without distinction can be changed, are they not subjecting to this change those points of discipline which have their foundation in the divine law itself, which are joined to doctrines of faith by so close a bond that the rule of faith determines the rule of action? Are they not trying, moreover, to make of the Church something human; are they not openly diminishing her infallible authority and the divine power which guides her, in holding that her present discipline is subject to decay, to weakness, and to other failures of the same nature, and in imagining that it contains many elements which are not only useless but even prejudicial to the well-being of the Catholic religion? (In Papal Teachings: The Church [Solesmes] p.130)

The infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws can also be deduced from the condemned Proposition 5 contained in the Decree Lamentabili against the Modernists in 1907: “Since in the deposit of faith only revealed truths are contained, in no respect does it pertain to the Church to pass judgment on the assertions of human disciplines” (Dz. 2005). For denying all immutability of truth and religion,

they cry out that the government of the Church must be reformed in every respect, but especially on the disciplinary and dogmatic side. Thus, both within and without, it is to be brought into conformity with the modern conscience, as they say. (Pascendi, Dz. 2104)

It is precisely because the Church’s discipline, its ecclesiastical laws, reflect and express its doctrine that it expresses the Church’s infallibility and need not be reformed in every aspect.

The article on Ecclesiastical Discipline in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) explains this negative infallibility in this way:

Inasmuch as in her general discipline, i.e., the common laws imposed on all the faithful, the Church can prescribe nothing that would be contrary to the natural or the Divine law, nor prohibit anything that the natural or Divine law would exact.…It is quite permissible, however, to inquire how far this infallibility extends, and to what extent, in her disciplinary activity, the Church makes use of the privilege of inerrancy granted her by Jesus Christ when she defines matters of faith or morals.

It is both interesting and important to note that the defense of the infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws has always been against heretics, liberals and modernists, enemies of Catholic Tradition. Is it possible that this teaching could be now turned against traditional Catholics, to force us to accept precisely this liberalism and heresy against which the Church’s constant discipline was such an effective bulwark?

If common sense manifestly denies this, there is a reason, and it is contained in the essentially negative nature of this infallibility, which in turn derives from the fact that infallibility is directly a property of the Church’s teaching function, which is of the order of truth, and is only indirectly related to the order of government. It is not a positive characteristic of each law itself that makes it infallible, and it is not because the Church makes a law that it becomes by that very fact infallible, the best possible and unchangeable. This is the common conception of what “infallible” means, but it does not at all apply to disciplinary laws. They are only infallible inasmuch as they do not directly contradict a question of faith and morals necessary for eternal salvation. The Church consequently could not make a universal law, for example, that denies the Real Presence, or that denies the possibility of going to hell. However, it can certainly make bad laws that do not promote devotion to the Real Presence as they ought, or that do not inculcate the fear of eternal damnation as they ought. The Church’s infallibility in no way protects against such laws.

Allow me to quote again the above-mentioned article from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which admits that we can very rightly enquire as to the real extent of this infallibility.

Doubtless, in last analysis all ecclesiastical laws are based on certain fundamental truths, but as laws their purpose is neither to confirm nor to condemn these truths. It does not seem, therefore, that the Church needs any special privilege of infallibility to prevent her from enacting laws contradictory to her doctrine. To claim that disciplinary infallibility consists in regulating, without possibility of error, the adaptation of a general law to its end, is equivalent to the assertion of a (quite unnecessary) positive infallibility, which the incessant abrogation of laws would belie and which would be to the Church a burden and a hindrance rather than an advantage, since it would suppose each law to be the best.

This is a profound observation on the negative quality of disciplinary infallibility. It cannot be some positive quality of an ecclesiastical law, as it is commonly understood to be. It is simply the purely negative fact that the Church’s disciplinary law does not contradict divine or natural law. Consequently, there can be in the Church, and frequently have been, bad laws, laws that are not adapted to the common good, laws that contain all kinds of errors of fact and practice. St. Thomas Aquinas would say that such laws are not laws at all, since they are no longer an ordering of reason to the common good (I-II, 96, 4), and that consequently it makes no sense to speak of their infallibility. However, we can certainly admit that inasmuch as such universal “laws” are promulgated by the highest authority in the Church, that of the Pope, they benefit from this purely negative infallibility of which we are speaking. God would not allow the Pope to make a universal law, related to the salvation of souls, that would contain a direct contradiction to a doctrine of faith and morals. Given, then, that there is an infallibility to the Church’s disciplinary laws, how is this applied to the post-conciliar Church, and can it oblige us to accept the disciplinary revolution that issued from Vatican II?

There can be no doubt that there are a whole range of disciplinary laws introduced in the Church since Vatican II that are doing great harm to souls, that undermine the Faith and that are consequently evil. Obvious examples include the decrees promoting the New Mass, or permitting Communion in the hand, or permitting altar girls, or encouraging liberty of false religions, ecumenism, or Eucharistic hospitality. The list is endless. The first question to be asked is whether they are truly universal, that is, whether or not they impose an obligation on the entire Church. As a general rule, these novel laws do not. Laws that are limited to the Roman Rite are not properly universal, and so consequently the application of these principles concerning the infallibility of disciplinary laws could well be disputed.

However, allowing that they are to be considered as universal, given the predominance of the Roman Rite, the infallibility from which they benefit would in no way oblige us to accept them as just laws. This infallibility simply means that they contain no direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine, on the Real Presence, for example. It does not prevent them from containing grave ambiguities, such as concerning the word “Church,” or the word “Christ’s Presence” or the word “Eucharist.” It does not prevent them from containing grave errors, as for example the laws promoting the freedom of all religions. It does not prevent them doing great harm to souls, and it does not prevent them from being bad laws, and frankly evil, as is the New Mass.

Evil is the absence of the good that is due, that ought to be present. The “presence” of evil, therefore, does not mean that there is a contradiction with a Catholic doctrine. It simply means that the Catholic doctrine is not adequately expressed. The New Mass is an evil law that destroys the Faith in the propitiatory nature of the Holy Sacrifice. The Church’s infallibility did not prevent this legislation from being imposed, not did it prevent even a false definition of the Mass in Article 7. Nor does the Church’s infallibility prevent one from denying its true promulgation as Church law, for it manifestly is not in reality a law of the Church, but a modernist imposition. The Church’s infallibility simply negatively prevents a direct contradiction with divinely revealed Catholic doctrine. The argument, then, of the infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws, is a red herring in the question as to how to react in the present crisis. It is entirely irrelevant as to how we must resist and refuse the disciplinary revolution of Vatican II. It is, to the contrary, the infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws which is precisely the guarantee and assurance that we cannot be wrong in holding firm to the ecclesiastical traditions and laws that maintained the Faith for nearly 2,000 years.