Infallibility: the argument from silence

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 15, 1995 by Paul Surlis

Sometimes the unintended consequences of behavior are the very opposite of what the behavior was instituted to achieve. Unintended good consequences may well flow from recent Vatican attempts to declare settled for all time the question of women's ordination.

Not only will this heavy-handed attempt to smuggle the note of infallibility in where it does not belong give renewed impetus to discussion of priesthood for women, it may also spur renewed critical discussion of infallibility a' nd when it may be said to characterize church teaching. Many issues call for sustained analysis. One is the role of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Is this congregation not part of the civil service of the papacy and therefore without independent teaching authority? Moreover, as part of the administrative apparatus of the Vatican, is this congregation not subject to the episcopal college whose directives it should obey rather than vice versa as is the present situation.

If it is argued that the congregation is merely reporting the weight of papal teaching, then why was something as important as infallibility added as an afterthought to already promulgated teaching rather than being integral to the document containing the teaching.

As to papal teaching and infallibility, it will be recalled that there are only two previous occasions when popes, rather than general councils, formulated teaching with the note of infallibility and on each of these occasions the pope regarded his proclamation as declaring the already existing faith of the whole church rather than creating a new article of faith.

Thus Pius IX consulted the bishops of the church in 1854 before he proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception and Pius XII did the same before the assumption of Mary was defined in 1950. On each of these occasions, the pope consulted the bishops to ascertain the belief of the people of God and was assured of already existing universal acceptance of what was being defined formally. This principle of consultation to ascertain the status of the dogmas in already existing faith is what is missing regarding ordination of women.

In its place, what is presented is a version of an argument from silence: Jesus did not ordain women; since his time the Catholic church has not ordained women; therefore, it is a matter of faith that women cannot be ordained.

From the nonexistence of the practice of ordination of women, one cannot infer the existence of formal teaching maintaining that prohibition as a matter of faith. A false understanding of tradition underlies this mode of arguing. This false understanding may be said to underlie the reasoning of the few theologians who argue that papal teaching on birth control is infallibly taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium (no matter that Paul VI said the teaching was not infallible the day it was promulgated). Material continuity is taken as sufficient condition for infallible teaching regardless of medical, social, cultural and other variables that have influenced what was being taught and how it was perceived.

At work here is a sort of ex opere operato or automatic understanding of how the teaching office functions. It is not unlike the automatic efficacy attributed until recently to how sacraments confer grace regardless of personal dispositions of recipients.

If continuity of teaching over a long period guarantees infallibility, then many other things once taught would now be articles of faith instead of being disregarded relics of ignorance or false teaching. Thus for more than 1,000 years, theologians, bishops and popes taught that engaging in sexual intercourse in marriage pleasure only was a venial sin, but this and similar views are no longer held, much less regarded as infallible.

Lastly, much of the present argumentation by the Vatican on the nonordination of women is premised on what Jesus did or did not do at the Last Supper. But the view is gaining ground that it is an anachronism to speak of Jesus ordaining anybody. In the Judaism of Jesus' time, priesthood was conferred by birth into a priestly family. There was no ordination ceremony in Judaism that Jesus could have used as a model, nor did he need one to commission his disciples to commemorate him and his continued presence in table fellowship similar to that which he made central to his own ministry.

This appears to have been the understanding of the Jesus movement until the second century when imposition of hands began to be the sole way for commissioning to forms of ministry we now call priesthood. And if this is true, there is no basis on which married people, men or women can be excluded from priesthood as we reunderstand it.

Fr. Paul Surlis is associate professor of social studies at St. John's University, Jamaica, N.Y