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Magisterium |
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Jesus Christ is the light of the world (Jn 8:12), the Savior of all mankind (Jn 4:42). He spent the years of his public life teaching his followers. He was their magister, their teacher; for them he had “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). For each person, the one really important thing is to meet Jesus, to be enlightened by him, to follow him. Despite our failures, our efforts will be fruitful if they are directed toward believing Our Lord’s Revelation and doing his will. But where can we find Jesus’ teaching? How and with what certainty can we know it? The Catholic believes Christ’s saving words are to be found not only in Scripture but also in Tradition. The Magisterium, or teaching authority, of the Church has as its pastoral duty “seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates” (CCC 890). Christ’s teaching in Scripture is usually very clear. At times, nevertheless, he deliberately formulates it in parables and has to explain its meaning and application privately to his Apostles. On occasions we find the Apostles failing to understand his words or even scandalized at his teaching (Lk 18:24, Mt 19:10, etc.). When the exact meaning of a teaching or precept contained in Scripture is not clear, human minds, unaided, are likely to give it very different interpretations. If these are contradictory, they obviously cannot all be true. For instance, when Our Lord said at the Last Supper, “Take, eat in memory of me,” did he literally mean what he said? Did he really give his own Body and Blood to be eaten? Was it just a meal – or also a sacrifice that he was offering and wished to be perpetuated throughout the ages? Did Jesus want all of his followers to be able to truly eat his flesh (“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” [Jn 6:53]), as Catholics believe? Or should his work and intention be reduced to the idea of the Eucharist as a simple memorial of the last Supper, no more, the bread a mere symbol of Christ’s love? After the words of Consecration in a Eucharistic celebration, is the bread (and wine) now truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, with only the appearances of bread remaining, or is it still just bread that momentarily evokes Christ’s love (cf. CCC 1374-1377)? Examples could be multiplied indefinitely. Was Jesus really born of a Virgin? Did he truly rise from the dead? Is he truly God incarnate? Did he found a visible, hierarchical Church and endow it with the charism of infallibility? Did Jesus want his teaching to be subject to contradictory interpretations? It would seem not. It makes a vast difference how one answers questions such as these. Yet knowing men as he did (cf. Jn 2:25), he also knew that by themselves they tend to interpret even the clearest truth or message in differing ways, finding it hard to agree about the truth or to hold to it firmly. Living Presence of Christ • Thus, instead of leaving his teaching to men to make what they liked or chose of it, Jesus himself acted (and continues to act) with divine power to preserve the integrity and clarity of that teaching. Precisely to ensure that his work of salvation – doctrine, sacraments, sacrifice – should be preserved in its totality and be available without any corruption to each generation and each person, he set up his Church, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tm 3:15; cf. CCC 2032). He promised to be always present in his Church, ensuring that what she teaches as doctrine of salvation will be protected and guaranteed in heaven, that whoever listens to his Church will in fact be listening to Jesus himself: “All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:18-20); “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19; cf. Mt 18:18); “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Lk 10:16). What emerges from these passages is the living presence of Christ in the Magisterium of the Church, the teaching office she received from her founder. Vatican Council II teaches that “the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office [Magisterium] of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ” (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, 10). The teaching of Jesus coming to us in the complementary sources of Scripture and Tradition, as interpreted by the Magisterium, is the heritage of each Christian. Each has a strict right in justice to receive this teaching: “The right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected” (Pope John Paul II, encyclical The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, 113 [1993]; cf. Canons 213, 762; CCC 2037). Similarly, the pastors of the Church, to whom the passing on of this doctrine has been specially entrusted, have a particular obligation to respect this trust and to hand on what they have received to the people they serve (cf. Canon 760). The Church has the right to teach and the duty. The work of the Magisterium is not only to preserve intact the message of Christ but also to spell out how it applies to issues not mentioned in Scripture. Each age (and certainly our own) tends to bring up questions of belief and behavior that Our Lord did not explicitly deal with. Did he wish to leave us without means of knowing his mind on population questions, on drug-taking, on the right or wrong use of medical treatment that can prolong or shorten a sick person’s life? No. It is the right and duty of the Magisterium to teach on just such contemporary questions “to the extent required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls” (Canon 747.2; cf. CCC 2032). Functioning of the Magisterium • The teaching of the Magisterium can be solemn or ordinary. Each calls on our believing response. The solemn Magisterium is usually exercised through a formal proclamation by the Pope acting as supreme pastor and teacher or by an ecumenical council teaching in union with the Pope (cf. CCC 891). The ordinary Magisterium is that exercised by the Pope alone or by the bishops teaching in communion with him, “when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a ‘definitive manner,’ they propose . . . a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals” (CCC 892). “The Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes truths contained in divine Revelation or having a necessary connection with them, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith” (CCC 88). The definition of a dogma of faith is the highest and most guaranteed exercise of the Magisterium. Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 25, says that our response to the ordinary Magisterium must involve a “religious assent of mind and will” (obsequium religiosum). The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that while this assent is distinct from the assent of faith, it “is nonetheless an extension of it” (CCC 892). While various degrees of response to the Magisterium are possible according to the way in which it is exercised, no response is adequate unless rooted in faith. So, for instance, we believe that in the godhead there are three distinct Persons but one God (dogma of the Blessed Trinity), not because we understand how this is (we do not), but because it is a revealed truth taught as dogma by the Church’s living Magisterium. Similarly, because of faith and not because of some rational argument, we believe that grace gives us a real participation in the life of God as his adopted children (doctrine of our divine filiation; cf. CCC 1997). Faith is not irrational of course, but our faith essentially is faith in God, not an analogous and merely human faith in human reasoning powers. It is true that one could reject a proposition taught by the ordinary Magisterium without falling into heresy, strictly speaking. But one could not actively dissent from it without detriment to one’s faith. At the same time, it can be possible to maintain a certain reserve, in the sense that something proposed by the Magisterium, not yet being cast in the final form of a dogmatic definition, may be subject to further, though accidental, refinements of meaning: always “in the same sense and along the same lines of understanding” (eodem sensu, eademque sententia: St. Vincent of Lerins). Yet the fact remains that “the freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 36). Theologians and the Magisterium • In the ongoing task of probing, clarifying, and illustrating the power and beauty of the truth Christ bequeathed to us, theologians have an important role to play. They, too, are subject to the Magisterium. Indeed, humility and awareness of the greatness of the subject they are investigating and of their own human limitations lead theologians to look specially to the Magisterium for orientation in their important work. The relationship between the Magisterium and theological research is at times debated today. Ideally, they should “interpenetrate and enrich each other,” for both are in the service of the People of God – pastors obliged to guard unity and forestall divisions, theologians responsible for “participating in the building up of Christ’s Body in unity and truth” (Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 40). The fundamental issue is the right of the faithful to know the mind of Christ, and in this regard it is the Magisterium’s task “to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC 890). St. Matthew tells us Jesus “taught as one who has authority, and not as the scribes” (Mt 7:29). Today also one would expect anyone teaching in the name of Christ to speak authoritatively, offering truths clear in their formulation and application. Teaching in Christ’s name must be authoritative in a further sense. It should have the proper credentials. The matter of who “has the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16) is to be decided on the basis of charismatic gifts. The Magisterium has that charismatic credential of divinely given grace. It teaches not in its own name nor as claiming more expert knowledge, but in virtue of a charism given for the sake of the whole body of the faithful. In ways both mysterious and clear, Jesus sends his grace and light to every single person (Jn 1:9). Yet not all recognize his voice or respond to it. If we already have the good fortune to be Christians through Baptism, we need to keep our hearts and minds open to his will, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (cf. Acts 22:10); for he will speak to us in vain if we are not ready to respond. The Church is for us both “Mother and Teacher” – Mater et Magistra (cf. CCC 2030-2051). Her Magisterium is a logical consequence of the Incarnation, a particular expression of Our Lord’s loving promise to be “with us always” (Mt 28:20). The Magisterium is a divine gift helping us in our pilgrim way on earth to see clearly the way that is Jesus and hear clearly his words of eternal life.
See: Assent and Dissent; Catholic Identity; Church, Nature, Origin, and Structure of; Development of Doctrine; Dissent; Divine Revelation; Dogma; Faith of the Church; Heresy; Infallibility; Ordinary Magisterium; Pope; Sacred Scripture; Sacred Tradition. |
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