Gasser's Relatio: A Reply to Father Brian Harrison

Irish Theological Quarterly

Volumn 63, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 379-392

  Mobbs, Frank ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 79957781930     PISSN: 00211400     EISSN: 17524989     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002114009806300405     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, no. 16 (1990).
2. Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., "The 'Secondary Object' of Infallibility", Theological Studies 54 (3), 1993, 536-550.
3. "The ex cathedra status of the encyclical Humanae Vitae", Faith & Reason 19 (1), 1993, 25-78
4. "Contraception and the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium" Theological Studies 39 (1978) 258-312.
5. "Infallibility and specific moral norms: a review discussion", The Thomist 49 (1985) 248-287.
6. Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1983).
7. Ermenegildo Lio, O.F.M., Humanae Vitae e Infallibilità: Paulo VI, il Concilio, e Giovanni Paulo II (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1986).
8. James T. O'Connor, The Gift of Infallibility: The Official relatio on Infallibility of Bishop Vincent Gasser at Vatican Council I (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1986).
9. Harrison, 26.
10. The Church's infallibility "extends as far as is necesssary for religiously guarding and faithfully expounding the deposit of divine Revelation" (my emphasis). Harrison says Lumen Gentium cites Gasser four times in footnotes, thus according him authority. But all the citations are irrelevant to the question of the Secondary Object.
11. "According to Catholic doctrine, the infallibility of the Church's magisterium extends not only to the deposit of faith but also to those matters without which that deposit cannot be rightly preserved and expounded", as quoted in Harrison, 39.
12. Harrison, 51.
13. Ibid., 54,
14. quoting O'Connor's translation of Mansi 53:327
15. Ibid., 55.
16. Cf. Patrick McGrath's lucid distinction between the infallibility of persons and the irreformability of propositions in his "Hans Küng on infallibility", The Tablet 3 July, 1971, 639-640, 642.
17. "There is found in the definition the principle or efficacious cause of infallibility. That principle or efficacious cause of infallibility is the protection of Christ and the assistance of the Holy Spirit." Gasser, as in O'Connor, 74 = Mansi 52:1225.
18. Cf. Charles Joumet, The Church of the Word Incarnate, vol. 1: The Apostolic Hierarchy (London: Sheed & Ward, 1955), 166, Note.
19. "Dans le domaine de la religion révélé, vue la nature de l'enseignement dogmatique et sa prétention à livrer une doctrine venue du ciel, un garant infaillible est, de toute Evidence, indispensable." "La notion d'une révélation dont on affirme qu'elle est garantie d'en-haut, mais dont on ignore en quoi elle consiste, est un non-sens" (my emphasis). Jean Stem, M.S., "L'infaillibilité de l'église dans la pensée de J. H. Newman", Recherches de Science Religieuse (1973) 168, explaining Newman's views.
20. Harrison, 33 - his emphasis.
21. The bishops are infallible when united in one judgment they "teach as definitively to be held" (tenendam), Lumen Gentium, art. 25, Note.
22. Luis M. Bermejo, Church, Conciliarity and Communion (Anand, Gujerat: Gujerat Sahita Prakash, 1990), 165.
23. Ibid., 130.
24. Harrison, 28
25. Ibid., quoting Cuthbert Butler, O.S.B., The Vatican Council, 1869-1870 (Collins: Fontana Library, 1962), 459
26. "The emphasis is all on the deposit of faith and its safeguarding," commented Cuthbert Butler, O.S.B., in The Vatican Council, 1869-1870 (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1962), as edited by Christopher Butler, O.S.B., 465, Note.
27. Harrison, 40.
28. Harrison, 40.
29. The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by C. S. Dessain and Thomas Gornald (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), Vol. 25, 418.
30. Gaudium et Spes, art. 33 and art. 43 for Vatican II's denial that the Church (magisterium) knows the answer to all moral questions.
31. Harrison, 46 (his emphasis)
32. quoting O'Connor, 47 = Mansi 52: 1215
33. "...elle est offensive des oreilles pies, quand la manière de s'exprimer blesse le respect dü aux choses saintes.", H. Quillet, "Censures doctrinales", Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 2, part 2, (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ane, 1927), column 2108.
34. Pius V condemned the proposition, Definitiva haec sententia, Deum homini nihil impossibile praecepisse, falso tribuitur Augustino, cum Pelagii sit (DS 1954). (The proposition that God has not commanded man to do the impossible is falsely attributed to Augustine, since it belongs to Pelagius).
35. That some Fathers of the Council shared Gasser's view that Popes could be infallible in condemning with minor censures, and could thus bind the faithful to believe that a proposition deserved one censure rather than any other, is well confirmed by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, a leading proponent of papal infallibility at Vatican I, who wrote: "As to the other censures, such as temerity, scandal, offense to pious ears, it is evident that they all relate to the moral character of propositions. It is not credible that a proposition condemned by the Church as rash should not be rash, and as scandalous should not be scandalous, or as offensive to pious ears should not be such, and the like." H. E. Manning, The Vatican Council and its Definitions (New York: Sadlier, 1884), 80.
36. Martin Rhonheimer, "Contraception, sexual behavior, and natural law", Linacre Quarterly 56/2 (1989), 20.
37. Harrison, 52.
38. Germain Grisez made the same point in 1985 in his "Infallibility and specific moral norms: a review discussion", 266. Harrison is reinforcing Grisez's argument.
39. This aspect of the Council's history is carefully examined by William J Levada, Infallible Church Magisterium and the Natural Moral Law: Excerpta ex dissertatione ad Lauream in Facultate Theologiae Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana Facultas Theologiae, 1971).
40. "This emphasis on the depositum fidei as the object of infallibility (while carefully not excluding the secondary object, which itself is defined by its 'relationship' or connection to the deposit) is one of the most notable characteristics of the actual debate on the constitution 'Pastor Aetemus' ", Levada, 48.
41. "The good life is not merely to live according to reason, for that would be to live according to a merely human standard; the good life is to live according to the will of God.", Robert Newton Flew, Jesus and His Way (London: Epworth Press, 1963) n. p., quoting an unnamed author.
42. Monsignor Peter J. Elliott has made an attempt to do so in What God has Joined...The Sacramentality of Marriage (Homebush, NSW: St Paul Publications, 1990), 212-219. However, he has not specified any revealed truth which is contradicted by affirming the proposition Contraception is not intrinsically immoral.
43. Harrison, 54-55.
44. Bermejo, op. cit., 295-312.
45. "And none other than one of the greatest lawyer popes, Innocent IV, sanctioned the use of torture.", Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1972), 254.
46. "Development in moral doctrine", Theological Studies 54 (1993), 662-677.
47. "The violation of the law [of abstinence] is a grave sin...Authors generally think that two complete ounces of meat, not less than that, is a grave amount"., Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol. 2, Precepts (London: Sheed & Ward, 1936), 407.
48. Marcellinus Zalba, S.J., Theologiae Moralis Compendium, vol. 1. (Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1958), 1418
49. See, for example, the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, as in Colman J. Barry O.S.B. (ed.), Readings in Church History, vol. I, From Pentecost to the Protestant Revolt (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960), 441; cf. 451.
50. "Furthermore we declare her [Elizabeth I of England] to be deprived of her pretended claim to the aforesaid kingdom of all lordship...and we command and forbid all and sundry...not to obey her or her admonitions, orders or laws. We shall bind those who do the contrary with a similar sentence of excommunication.", Pius V, Regnans in excelsis, as in Colman J. Barry, O.S.B. (ed.), Readings in Church History, vol. II.
51. The Reformation and the Absolute States 1517-1789 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965), 79.