How to Write a Grammatically-Correct Infallible Papal Pronouncement

To non-Catholics, one of the most confusing, misunderstood, and even controversial dogmas of the Catholic faith is that of papal infallibility. Catholic theology holds that when five conditions are simultaneously present, the pope is, quite simply, infallible; that is, protected by the Holy Spirit from promulgating falsehood.

These conditions are best summarized as follows: 1) The pope, when 2) he defines 3) a doctrine concerning faith or morals 4) to be held by the entire Church 5) using his teaching authority as supreme teacher of all Christians, speaks infallibly.

This Divine protection, seen as always belonging to the Deposit of Faith and thus always believed at least implicitly, was explicitly defined (note: not invented) at the First Vatican Council in 1870. In the entire history of the Church, it has been formally invoked only twice--in 1854 by Pope Pius IX to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and in 1950 by Pope Pius XII to define the dogma of the Assumption.

Following the theme of this blog, I would like to examine the writing style--in particular the grammar--used by the aforementioned popes in their infallible definitions. Through their sentence structure and choice of words, these pontifical "Modern Catholic Writers" have, in essence, created a standardized grammatical formula to convey to the world with the utmost clarity both their intention to invoke this infallibility and the defined dogma whose veracity is now forever beyond reproach.

Let's first examine Pius IX's infallible pronouncement on the Immaculate Conception. It is contained in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus. Below are the two paragraphs containing the definition itself, color-coded for future reference: (Am I the only one who gets the chills when I read this?)

Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: "We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."

Hence, if anyone shall dare -- which God forbid! -- to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church...

So, we already see a very clearly-defined sentence structure. First, we see an invocation of the authority of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the Church, the apostles Peter and Paul, and--equally important in this context--the pope himself, who is making it clear that he is invoking his teaching authority as successor to those apostles (condition #5). Then, we have the three key words--proclaim, declare, define (condition #2)--followed by the dogma itself, which we can see clearly pertains to a matter of faith (condition #3). The last sentence of the first paragraph leaves no doubt that this dogma is to be believed by the entire Church (condition #4).

According to Catholic teaching, this pronouncement is not--cannot be--wrong. Hence the stern warning in the last paragraph to not put one's own judgement over that of Christ speaking through His Vicar on Earth. Don't mess with Pio Nono!

Now let's fast forward 96 years and five more popes to Pope Pius XII's infallible pronouncement on the Assumption. Once again, we provide the relevant two paragraphs from Pope Pius XII's apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus. Watch for the correspondence!

44. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.
 

Amazing, isn't it! Or am I the only one who things so? In any event, if you're ever elected pope you now know how to write an infallible statement. Just make sure it's true--otherwise, you'll likely be struck dead before you get it down on paper...

Before we conclude, let's briefly examine a papal statement that, in and of itself, is not an infallible pronouncement. Once again, the grammar is the giveaway.

Below is the conclusion of Pope John Paul II's 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (On Ordination to the Priesthood), written in response to demands by some within the church that women be allowed to be ordained priests:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.
 

See what's missing? For one, nowhere to be found is the word "define" (condition #3). It's also quite a stretch to equate the pope's "ministry of confirming the brethren" with his supreme teaching authority as teacher of all Christians (condition #5). If Pope John Paul II had intended to issue an infallible pronouncement, it would certainly behoove him to use the formula described above.

So, the teaching on the impossibility of women's ordination is up for grabs? Actually, not at all. This is a classic example of a pronouncement being infallible while not being an infallible pronouncement. For example, I can make an infallible statement: "Two plus two equals four." Even if the pope himself "pronounced, declared, and defined" that two pus two equals four, it wouldn't be considered an infallible pronouncement because math has nothing to do with faith and morals. But the statement is still true because math says so, and that's the point.

In the case of women's ordination, its impossibility--due to the fact that Christ chose only men as His apostles so as to establish a mystical spousal relationship between His priests and His bride the Church--is already maintained by what is called the ordinary magistarium of the Church (as opposed to the extraordinary magistarium of infallible papal statements and dogmatic councils). This constant teaching of the Church throughout the centuries is also infallible. Thus, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis Pope John Paul II was simply repeating something already infallible, something true because the ordinary magistarium says so, and that's the point.

After all, if Catholics only had to believe those two things--namely, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption--infallibly defined by popes, Catholicism would be one boring (and meaningless) religion indeed.

 

 

Thank you for the Light

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that this week's copy of the New Yorker (August 6, 2012) has a never-before-released short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Apparently, he wrote the story in 1936, and it was recently rediscovered in his papers. While Fitzgerald is remembered as one of the first Catholics to make it into the red-blooded, historically Protestant, American canon, he was what many would consider lapsed because it was a rare thing for him to go to Mass or pray the rosary. However, there is evidence in his letters to his daughter towards the end of his life (1940) that suggests his Catholicism was less of a practice and more of a constant thought, which wavered from background to foreground.* This particular story is witty, undoubtedly Catholic, and one magazine page long. If you're not near a news stand, here's the link: "Thank you for the Light"


*Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up. Online. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 
            1945. 305. eBook. <http://books.google.com/>.

How to delegate like your life depended on it.

 (Because that is totally possible.)

God cannot seriously believe that Mr. Ferraro needs to put more individual effort into his life. That would be ridiculous. If Mr. Ferraro did not delegate, he would be left with no time to enjoy those death-duty-alleviating paintings that hang in his living room. They are gorgeously expensive and just so practical too, and since God made man in his image, it is really quite generous to say that, “it was not unreasonable for [Mr. Ferraro] to return the compliment and to regard God as the director of some supreme business which yet depended for certain of its operations on Ferraro & Smith” (24).  The projection of God as businessman seems only natural, and this ideology revolves around efficiency, where clean accounting books equal clean souls. Well…all I can say to that is, “Mr. Ferraro, you’re daffy, and I don’t mean the funny duck.” Permit me a moment to explain my irreverence of this character. He’s a profoundly misguided Catholic that seriously needs spiritual direction, but he’s far too arrogant to ask for help even when it’s a living room door away! Graham Greene so effectively skewers Mr. Ferraro by using this business-driven mentality in the short story Special Duties to make the man’s failures so ironic as to merit an anti-epiphany.

While first a businessman and always a businessman, Mr. Ferraro religious views take an incarnational twist by believing quite firmly that he and God share the same businessman mindset. While a more humble individual would have pondered upon the awesomeness of being made in God’s image, Mr. Ferraro is not that humble man. He is quite comfortable as he—thank you very much. Everything, from the running of his business to the practice of his religion, is carefully delegated, and from the delegation, Mr. Ferraro can spend more time on becoming more efficient. He focuses on efficiency to such an extent that he loses sense of what it means to be a faithful participant in life and Catholicism. He can never quite let the workplace go. He is married, but his wife lives on the other side of the house. Neither makes the effort to speak to one another beyond a telephone call by proxy. Mr. Ferraro gives the minimum amount of attention to her, and this attitude of giving the least of one’s self echoes in his spirituality. When asked if he would like to have anything additional done for his faith and his wife’s faith, his answer comes out colder than a London winter, “We are taught…to pay first attention to our own souls. My wife should be looking after her own indulgences” (27).  While he may not have abandoned his religion, his own words demonstrate that he has no interest in pursuing a course that would interfere with his own interests. He has no traces of the communal spirit about him as evidenced by his vocal rejection of his wife. Therefore, he opposes the communal nature of Catholicism and breaks down the religious traditions into a systematic, distant enterprise, which he then can outsource to his secretary.

After a case of double pneumonia three years ago, instead of reaching out to his wife or a priest for comfort, Mr. Ferraro hires a new and very particular kind of secretary. How he found her is not revealed by Greene explicitly, but her rather unusual list of credentials is perhaps more revealing of Mr. Ferraro’s lack of sacramentality than of the secretary. He thinks that he knows what holiness is, and his “assistant confidential secretary” Miss Saunders fits the good-little-Catholic-girl stereotype. She has won awards for piety. She has volunteered for the poor. She provides all of her references with bits of religious kitsch like “a little triptych of Our Lady with a background of blue silk” (25). And not only does she have the icons, but she has that special, unassuming look of humility about her with “indeterminate hair and eyes of a startling clear blue” (25). She looked like one of the “holy statue[s]” that she carries about as evidence of her goodness (25). However, despite all of her emissions of piety, there is a hole in her story. The convent school where she was head girl is called “St. Latitudinaria” (25). There are many obscure saints with funny names, and to an outsider to Catholicism, they may seem practically weird, but let me assure you that there has never been a St. Latitudinaria. For all of her pious appearances, Miss Saunders lacks substance, and the fact that the fictional St. Latitudinaria escapes Mr. Ferraro’s notice confirms that while Mr. Ferraro attempts to follow Catholic Church teaching, his minimalistic style hinders him from seeing truth. He has the knowledge but not the understanding to see past his own stereotypes. The holiness that Miss Saunders portrays is like a trick of the light when exposed in the light of day, it is revealed to be a nothing.  Essentially, Miss Saunders’ shallowness mirrors Mr. Ferraro’s own lack of spiritual depth. A façade of holiness revealed to be empty of what could have actually made them half-way decent people. Mr. Ferraro would have done well to learn his saints but that would have meant his own participation, which would have cut into his oh-so-efficient-business.

For the reader, the made-up saint signals that the trusted assistant confidential secretary has been lying since the beginning of her employment. The Convent of St. Latitudinaria was part of her resume after all. Worse though, Mr. Ferraro entrusted this supposedly holy individual with the care of his spiritual business, but unfortunately, spirituality cannot be parlayed out, but he fails to understand this. Interestingly, he genuinely believes in God and has a distinct fear of Him. Otherwise, he would not go to such trouble having indulgences fulfilled in his name. But his understanding of Him is such that he is like God, and God is like him.

So he makes a very private, personal file, which only his assistant confidential secretary Miss Saunders knows the details. The contents of this file are rather unique to a practical businessman like Mr. Ferraro, but at the same time fit him all the more perfectly because in his mind, he and God understand one another. Within the file lies three years’ data of indulgences. Through the help of secretary Miss Saunders, Mr. Ferraro has taken 36,892 days out of his stay in purgatory (28). Miss Saunders goes to the church in a “state of grace”, prays, and leaves, and those prayers at those specific churches are the indulgences that will get Mr. Ferraro out of purgatory more efficiently. Or so he believes. His warped vision of God as a businessman has God keeping a careful log of His children and their activities. For Mr. Ferraro, this means that God is keeping the books as closely as he is, matching him with every column and checking every note. For this businessman, the clarity and upkeep of such personal files as his “indulgence” records are as important as the everyday workings of Ferraro & Smith. More importantly, since God is such a respectable businessman (like Mr. Ferraro), he would recognize the need for delegation through an assistant confidential secretary.

Sadly, Mr. Ferraro cannot escape irony. Those “local” churches, which Miss Saunders traveled to, do not and never have existed. She scribbles in the fantastical St. Praxted in the second column and takes a paid holiday with her lover. The cold realization, “that not even the requirements of the indulgence were met,” washes over Mr. Ferraro when he sees an ill-clad Miss Saunders gently pulled from the window by the familiar arm of a man (29). Mr. Ferraro had invested in Miss Saunders like he had invested in his death-duty paintings. They were meant to help alleviate his anxieties about death. But in the end, they won’t get him through purgatory any faster because he does not realize that indulgences were meant to be performed as a genuine and personal act of faith and love towards God.  Those 36,892 days were intended to make his stay in purgatory short, but now, they mean nothing because all of his calculated precautions have been exposed as just little numbers and notes in a worthless paper file.

Yet here is the joke: Mr. Ferraro does not change. When he sees Miss Saunders in the window, and his reality is shattered, instead of reaching out for advice or comfort from his wife or a priest or even stepping into a Catholic church himself, his end decision, “is to find a really reliable secretary” (29).   Graham Greene teases the reader describing how Mr. Ferraro slips quietly home and sits with his fingers intertwined in “the shape some people use for prayer,” but then the metaphorical door is slammed in the reader’s face by that damning remark for a reliable secretary (29). Considering that Mr. Ferraro seriously thought that Miss Saunders was the epitome of holiness, this anti-epiphany, this realization that Mr. Ferraro has not changed falls somewhere between the comical and the tragic. How on earth does he plan to check for holiness? Look for a halo? Peek for wings? He learned nothing from his experience with Miss Saunders, which makes him a fool, but his own self-deceit is so chilling in that it keeps himself from learning and growing.

A true epiphany would have involved him stepping into a confessional and offering his confusion to a priest, but the reality remains that if Mr. Ferraro would have gone to a confessional in that moment of deciding the next step (between firing and hiring), he would not have known what to say. Words would have escaped him because he firmly believes that he has been done nothing wrong. He does not need to change. Clearly for him, the only right thing to do is to get a better secretary. However, from the reader’s perspective this is just so hopelessly the wrong answer to Mr. Ferraro’s problem because there is no test for devotion other than perhaps martyrdom, which I don’t think that Mr. Ferraro would be up to since it would distract him from his daily tasks of going to work and coming home from work. All in all, at the end of the day Mr. Ferraro is still the same businessman, and tomorrow, he shall have a new secretary.