Introduction In the first three parts of this series, we have seen that: The Catholic Church is a perpetually visible society which must therefore consist of members whose identity is discernible by the senses;The sacrament of baptism is necessary and sufficient for constituting an individual as both a subject and a member of the Catholic …
Continue reading Membership of the Church: Part IV – Schism & Excommunication
“Have they forgotten who these Romans are, whose faith was praised by the Apostle himself, and in whom 'error cannot find access’?”St Cyprian [1] This essay continues my response to Professor Roberto de Mattei’s call for the Catholic world to “unite […] on the basis of the Tradition of the Church.”[2] Throughout this series I …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei IIIb: Magisterial Heresy? Trust in the Church
What is a Father of the Church? What authority do Doctors and theologians have in the Church? And what of the role of the liturgy? This is the second half of Vacant's long Chapter III. The first half considered how the ordinary magisterium teaches directly and explicitly, and how it makes use of secular learning. …
“How many examples are there in theology of problems that seem unsolvable, simply because they start from badly-posed questions.” Dom Paul Nau OSB[1] This essay continues my response to Professor Roberto de Mattei’s call for Catholics to rally around the Church’s tradition and to form a “new more compact front for orthodoxy.”[2] To this end, …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei IIIa: Magisterial Heresy? The Rule of Faith
Chapter III of Vacant's work is long, and so the WM Review is publishing it in two parts. This first part addresses the express teaching of the ordinary magisterium, and the second will consider its implicit and tacit teaching acts. This part also describes the ways in which the Church makes use of natural sciences …
The WM Review continues our translation and publication of this nineteenth work on the ordinary magisterium. As we already noted, the author J.M.A. Vacant was the initial director of the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique and was a seminary professor. This short work was awarded the prize for the theological competition in La Controverese, judged by …
We are pleased to present another section from this study by J.M.A. Vacant, in which he addresses the concept and the authority of the ordinary and universal magisterium. We previously published Chapter VI of this work, on the Pope's personal exercise of this magisterium. Fr Vacant was a professor of the Major Seminary of Nancy, …