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VOL. CXXIII
JULY

DECEMBER, 1950

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY" °F AAI^<ICA PRESS

58

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will
deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” 15
The sling which David later took as his sole weapon against
Goliath would be familiar equipment for the modern Palestinian
shepherd. It is a home-made affair, braided by the shepherd him­
self of goat’s hair. Shepherds pride themselves on their deadly
accuracy with the sling. Against wolves and jackals it is their chief
weapon of defense. During the long hours with the sheep, it is
both a recreation and serves for a mechanical sheep-dog. Should a
ram or lambkin wander off a bit from the flock, a rock is dropped
just ahead of him to drive him back with the rest. Strangely the
Jew and Bedouin shepherds have no use whatever for sheep-dogs
except for use at night around the sheepfold to warn against
marauders, whether of the two or four-footed variety.
Christ brings into focus all the warmth and allusion of the shep­
herd heritage of His audience. Note how he first points out the
tender attachment between shepherd and flock ; then, he weaves
into this context a strong allusion to His Divinity ; and finally he
predicts His coming Passion and death : “1 am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me, even as the Father knows me
and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for my sheep.”™
At this point a typical Joannine touch creeps into the parable.
St. John was writing with the Gentiles of Ephesus and Patmos in
mind. He never passes up an opportunity to bring in something
Christ said or did that would be especially encouraging to Gentiles:
“And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must
bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and
one shepherd.”17
To the Jews this same passage would recall Ezechiel’s prophecy:
“I will set up one shepherd over thee.” 18 And to us, it is a prophecy
of the return, some day, of Israel to the one true fold.
Thomas

A. Halley. S.J.

St. Mary’s College
St. Mary, Kansas
«/ Kings 17:35-37.
MJohn 10:14-15.

John 10:16.
M Ezech. 34:23.

THE RELIGIOUS ASSENT DUE TO THE TEACHINGS
OF PAPAL ENCYCLICALS
It is perfectly certain theological teaching that the faithful are
bound in conscience to give a sincere and truly inward assent to
those doctrines which the Holy Father presents to the Church
through the medium of his encyclical letters, even when these doc­
trines are not set forth as infallibly certain statements. In other
words, when some truth which has not been authoritatively pre­
sented to the kingdom of God on earth except in a papal encyclical,
even when that truth is contained in a non-infallible manner in the
Holy Father’s letter, Catholics are distinctly obliged, under penalty
of offending God Himself, not only to refrain from opposition to
this doctrine, but also to accept it as their own firm judgment.
There is no question about this basic fact.1
Indubitably the Roman Pontiff has the right to issue authorita­
tive doctrinal statements which are presented neither as dogmas of
divine faith nor as truths of what has been, since the seventeenth
century, generally called fides ecclesiastica. This divinely given
power, which Franzelin ascribes to his “authority of doctrinal provi­
dence,”2 obviously involves the right to demand from the faithful
an acceptance of these statements by an assent which is firm and
sincere, yet inferior to the assent of divine faith and the assent of
the so-called ecclesiastical faith. Dominic Palmieri and Thomas
Pègues speak of a morally certain assent which must be accorded
to these authentic, yet non-infallible pontifical teachings.3 Ludwig
Lercher describes this internal religious assent as interprétative
condicionatus.4 All agree that the faithful are obligated in con­
science to give at least this type of assent to any teaching which has
1 Cf. the article "The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals,” in AER,
CXXI, 2, 3 (Aug. and Sept., 1949), 136-50, 210-20.
2 Cf. Franzelin, De divina traditione et scriptura, 3rd edition (Rome: Con­
gregatio de Propaganda Fide, 1882), ρ. 131.
3 Cf. Palmieri, Tractatus de Romano Pontifice cum prolegomena de ec­
clesia, 2nd edition (Prato, Giachetti, 1891), pp. 718 ff. ; Pègues, "L’autorité
des encycliques pontificales d’après Saint Thomas,” in the Revue Thomiste,
XII (1904), 512-32.
4 Cf. Lercher, Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae in usum scholarum, 2nd
edition (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1934), I, 519.

59

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

been authoritatively presented to the Church solely through the
medium of a papal encyclical.
A tremendous and increasingly important amount of religious
teaching has been presented to the Church in papal encyclicals, and
authoritatively only in these documents, especially during the past
half-century. Hence it seems clear that theologians should do every­
thing within their power to describe and explain the assent due
to these doctrines as accurately and as adequately as possible. Such
a description and explanation manifestly involve answers to two
basic questions. First, what one among the existent theological
censures would apply to the denial of a teaching which is proposed
authoritatively only in a papal encyclical, and which is presented in
a non-infallible manner in that document? Second, against which
one of the infused virtues does the denial of such a teaching offend?
Completely satisfactory responses to these two questions would be
of immense benefit to students of sacred theology. Together they
would certainly constitute a definite and important advance in
theological science.
The present paper intends merely to open the way to what can be
a definitely fruitful discussion of these questions by pointing out
some of the salient difficulties inherent in the subject-matter and by
indicating probable answers. Ultimately acceptable solutions to
these problems can manifestly come only through the corporate
work of many theologians and only after certain prior questions
have been taken into account.
In setting out to answer the question about the theological cen­
sure that would apply to the denial of a doctrine which has been
presented authoritatively only in an encyclical and which is pro­
posed in a non-infallible manner in this encyclical, we encounter a
rather serious difficulty at the very beginning. The early theological
explanations of the various doctrinal censures or notes took no
direct cognizance of non-infallible teaching emanating from the
ecclesia docens. They were, as a class, more interested in explaining
the various qualifications in terms of the logical nexus between the
teachings to which these censures were applied and statements of
Catholic dogma. They made no consistent effort to tie these qualifi­
cations up with the various ways in which the ecclesia docens ac­
tually presents its teachings in Our Lord’s kingdom on earth. Since
by far the majority of theologians who have dealt with this subject

THE RELIGIOUS ASSENT

61

down through the years have chosen to follow that same tendency,
the teaching on the theological censures, even as it stands today, is
not directly and perfectly geared to the treatise on the Church’s
Magisterium.
The practice of reproving certain teachings authoritatively but
with a qualification less severe than that of heresy has been common
in the Catholic Church since the fourteenth century. Thus Pope
Clement V, speaking in the name of the fifteenth oecumenical coun­
cil, that of Vienne, reproved every doctrine or position rashly as­
serting or insinuating “that the substance of the rational or intel­
lectual soul is not truly and of itself the form of the human body”
as something “erroneous and hostile to the truth of the Catholic
faith.”5* In the same paragraph, however, it is asserted that a per­
son who holds or defends this position pertinaciously must be con­
sidered as a heretic. Thus, as far as the terminology of this document
is concerned, the condemned proposition ceases to be merely er­
roneous and becomes heretical by reason of the pertinacity or ob­
stinacy of the man who puts it forward.
Pope John XXII, in his constitution Gloriosam ecclesiam, con­
demned five statements contained in the teachings of the Fratricelli.
Four of these he qualified as errors. A fifth he listed as a blas­
phemy.® The same Pontiff in his constitution Cum inter nonnullos
qualified another proposition as something which from that time
forward would rightly be qualified as erroneous and as heretical.7
He characterized certain statements of Marsilius of Padua and of
John of Jandun as “contrary to the Scripture, hostile to Catholic
faith, haereticos seu haereticales, and erroneous.”8 Furthermore,
in condemning certain theses which had been proposed by Eckhart,
Pope John XXII characterized some of them as heretical and others
as “ill sounding, temerarious, and suspect of heresy.”9 Pope Urban
V stigmatized each of three propositions taken from the teachings
of Denis Foullechat as “false, erroneous, and heretical.”10
Astonishingly enough, the theologians who dealt with the ques­
tion of doctrinal censures paid comparatively little attention to these
fourteenth-century qualifications. They referred rather to the ac5 In Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum (DB), 16th edition (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1928), n. 481.
« DB, 485-89.
8 DB, 500.
10 DB, 575-77.
7 DB, 494.
» DB, 529.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

tion of the Council of Constance, and of Pope Martin V in con­
firming some of the enactments of this synod. The Council, in its
eighth session, had condemned forty-five propositions taken from
the works of Wycleff, asserting that many of these were mani­
festly heretical, several others erroneous, and others again scan­
dalous, blasphemous, temerarious, and offensive to pious ears.11
Later it rejected thirty propositions ascribed to John Hus.12 Pope
Martin V, in his Bull, Inter cunctas, demanded from persons sus­
pected of Wycleffite or Hussite tendencies the admission that the
statements stigmatized by the Council “are not Catholic, but some
of them notoriously heretical, some erroneous, others temerarious
and seditious, and others offensive to pious ears.’’13
The Cardinal John de Turrecremata who had himself been pres­
ent at the deliberations of the Council of Constance formulated the
first influential description of the censures on a theological rather
than on merely a canonical level. He distinguished seven different
kinds of heretical propositions, each one of which was considered
as opposed to a definite class of Catholic truth.14* As distinct from
these, he spoke of certain statements which, though not heretical in
the absolute sense, were haeresim sapientes quia haeresi propinquae.™ Such statements were conclusions which followed from two
premises, the one an heretical proposition in the strict sense of the
term, and the other a perfectly certain and evident statement of the
natural order.
Turrecremata defined a temerarious assertion (which, incidentally,
he explained just after the propositions savoring of heresy and just
before those characterized as erroneous) as “a proposition stating
as certain something which cannot be effectively demonstrated
either by reason or from authority.”16 As an example of a temerari­
ous proposition he gives a declaration that the world is due to end
at the end of one hundred and twenty years. He defines an er­
11 Cf. Hefele-Leclercq, Histoire des conciles (Paris: Letouzcy et A né,
1916), VII, 224 f.; DB, 581-625.
12 Cf. Hefele-Leclercq, op. cit., 316 fl.; DB, 627-56.
is DB, 661.
i*Cf. Turrecremata, Summa de ecclesia, Lib. IV, par. 2, c. 10 (Venice,
1561), p. 383V.
18 Cf. ibid.
18 Ibid., c. 11, p. 384r.

THE RELIGIOUS ASSENT

63

roneous proposition merely as one which states something false.17
All of the other doctrinal censures have reference, according to 3 urrecremata, to faults which the condemned teachings are likely to
bring about in those who accept them or to the damage they do to
others. Later writers spoke of censures which denounced certam
statements as ambiguous or misleading.
The theologians who followed Turrecremata were inclined to
amplify his teachings about the meaning of that doctrinal censure
by which a teaching is qualified as erroneous. Melchior Cano held
that this censure differed from that of heresy “not as a genus dif­
fers from a species, but as one species of error differs from an­
other.”18 He asserted that a proposition was classified as erroneous
in the strict sense of the term when it contradicted a Catholic truth
of the second order, a doctrine the denial of which involved, not
the loss of faith, but damage to the faith. He believed, furthermore,
that when the learned and competent Catholics are firmly convinced
that a proposition is of faith, but when the Church has not obviously
defined this proposition, its contradiction constitutes an error of
the type stigmatized by this doctrinal censure.19
Francis Suarez developed the teaching about the censure of a
proposition as erroneous to the stage at which it exists in most
theological textbooks today. Suarez carefully explained Cano’s
stand on this question, and admitted that Cano had successfully
distinguished the censure of error from that of heresy. He believed,
however, that Cano’s teachings could not serve to show the dif­
ference between the qualification of error and the other censures
less severe than that of heresy. It was in order to clarify this last
distinction that he offered his own solution to the problem. Suarez
insisted that an erroneous proposition was one which was opposed
to a doctrine which is theologically certain, but which has not the
certitude of divine faith itself. Ultimately such a teaching was clas­
sified as a conclusion derived from a syllogism composed of one
premise accepted on divine faith and one acceptable in the light of
human reason.20 Thus, for all intents and purposes, the proposition
” Ibid.
18 Cano, De locis theologicis, Lib. 12, c. 9, in the Opera theologica (Rome:
Forzani, 1900), III, 82.
1» Cf. ibid., 83.
20 Ci. Suarez, Tractatus de fide, disp. 19, sect. 2, in the Opus de triplici
virtute theologica, fide, spe, et caritate (Lyons, 1621), p. 302.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

which Suarez would censure as erroneous was equivalent to the
one which Turrecremata would qualify as savoring of heresy or as
nearly heretical.21
Cano developed Turrecremata’s teaching about temerarious prop­
ositions by asserting that such statements were opposed, not directly
to the faith, but rather to the rule of ecclesiastical modestia. He
classed a denial of Our Lady’s assumption as a temerarious state­
ment.22 Suarez, on the other hand, distinguished two different
sorts of temerarious pronouncements. The first were those of the
type already described by Turrecremata, teachings presented as
certain, but lacking any adequate evidence of certitude or of credi­
bility. The second were those statements opposed to the received
and common authority of the Fathers and the scholastics.23 Suarez'
treatment of this question was destined to remain classical in the
literature of scholastic theology. There have been some develop­
ments, but substantially the position of the theologians today is that
of the great Spanish Jesuit writer.
In line with these explanations, it is clear that the contradiction
of a doctrinal statement contained in a papal encyclical in a noninfallible manner, but asserted authoritatively only in an encyclical,
is something which could be qualified with at least the censure of
error. Obviously this applies to doctrinal statements alone. There
are many encyclicals, primarily commemorative rather than doctri­
nal in content, in which some of the statements, particularly of
merely historical import, are obviously not being imposed authori­
tatively upon the members of Christ’s flock.
Where there are doctrinal statements, as in the case of the social
encyclicals, those which dealt with questions of Church and State,
and others of an obviously dogmatic character, it is perfectly
clear that these statements deal at least with matters connected
with the faith, and that the authority by which they are proposed
is at least on a par with that of the common consent of the Fathers
or of the scholastics. By reason of these very characteristics, all
doctrinal statements contained in the encyclicals must be accepted
21 Cf. Turrecremata, op. cit., c. 10, p. 383v.
22 Cf. Cano, op. cit., p. 90. It is interesting to note that Suarez (loc. cit.),
lists the denial of Our Lady’s assumption as an error according to the prin­
ciples of Cano himself.
23 Cf. Suarez, op. cit., p. 304.

THE RELIGIOUS ASSENT

65

with a firm and sincere inward assent. For this same reason a
denial of such doctrinal propositions may be qualified or censured
as at least temerarious.
Objectively the man who teaches or who accepts such a temerari­
ous proposition is morally at fault. It is important to know against
what particular virtue or virtues this man offends by this type
of activity.
Cano, as we have seen, believed that such conduct was contrary
to the rule of ecclesiastical modesty. The modestia to which Cano
referred seems to be the virtue which St. Thomas classified in his
Summa, theologica as one of the potential parts of the virtue of tem­
perance. This modestia disposes a man towards the proper modera­
tion in those matters in which moderation is not encompassed with
any special difficulty.24
The Carmelites of Salamanca, in their famed Cursus theologicus,
listed the teaching and the holding of propositions censured or cen­
surable as temerarious as acts of curiositas, as offenses against the
virtue of studiositas, one of the “parts” of modestia.2^ The curiosi­
tas of which the Salmanticences speak consists in a failure to mod­
erate, or properly to direct, man’s natural tendency to seek knowl­
edge. St. Thomas teaches that a man who seeks to know truth
which lies beyond the range of his own competence can be con­
sidered guilty of this infraction.26 Those who, on their own initia­
tive, presume to question or to contradict a doctrinal statement
proposed authoritatively in a papal encyclical, even in cases where
the Holy Father does not make a definitive decision, may well be
said to be striving for something manifestly beyond their compe­
tence. No individual and, for that matter, no group of individuals
within the ecclesia discens can be said to have the competence to
dispute with the visible head of the Church militant on a matter
connected with the Church’s deposit of divine revelation.
At least in an indirect manner, however, everv rejection of an
authoritative doctrinal pronouncement contained in a papal encvclical is opposed to the theological virtue of faith itself. That virtue
empowers a man to accept wuth complete certitude and on God’s
24 Cf. Π-ΙΙ, q. 160, a. 1.
25 Cf. their Tractatus de fide, disp. 9, dub. 4, n. 3, in the Cursus theologicus
(Paris and Brussels, 1879), ΧΓ, 436.
26 Cf. II-II, q. 167, a. 1.

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THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

own authority the body of truth which the Church proposes as
having been revealed by God as His public communication to man­
kind. It must be remembered that the Church definitely does not
teach this divine message in the capacity of an entity in any wayseparated from or independent of God Himself. The ecclesia docens
acts as God’s instrument. What the Church teaches is not the
Church’s message but God’s message.
It must be understood, furthermore, that the commission given
to and the responsibility incumbent upon the successor of St. Peter
must not be considered as limited to the bare presentation of the
truths revealed by God and entrusted to His kingdom on earth.
The Prince of the Apostles was empowered and commanded to
act as a shepherd to Christ’s sheep, and to feed I lis lambs and Ilis
sheep. He and his successors are thus obligated to nourish and to
protect the faith of their brethren within the Church. The task
which God has entrusted to them makes it imperative that they
authoritatively discountenance tenets or propositions injurious to
faith or morals even on points upon which they have not as yet
issued definitive and absolutely irrevocable decisions.
Thus we lay ourselves open to very serious misunderstandings
when we fail to appreciate the fact that the teaching of the Church
must be taken as a unit. While it remains perfectly true that not
every individual authoritative statement issued by the ecclesia
docens is to be accepted with the assent of divine faith, we must
remember that all of the doctrinal activity of the Catholic Church
is essentially nothing more or less than the highly complex process
of teaching the content of divine public revelation. All of the sub­
sidiary or preparatory authoritative pronouncements of the HolyFather or of the entire ecclesia docens; all of the decisions given
by the Church’s magisterium on matters connected with the deposit
of revelation rather than with the formal content of that revealed
message, must be considered as a contribution to and as a part of
the process of teaching and guarding the divine teaching delivered
to the Church by the apostles.
When an individual or a group of individuals presume on their
own initiative to deny or to ignore the authoritative doctrinal state­
ments of papal encyclicals, they are at least placed in the position
of rejecting divinely authorized guidance in the direction of the
purity and the well-being of the faith. The fact that some authori-

THE RELIGIOUS ASSENT

67

tative statements of the Church's magisterium are frequently said
to demand an adherence of “ecclesiastical faith,” while others, again,
call for merely “a firm, sincere, and inward religious assent," should
not blind men to the paramount truth that all such pronouncemententer into the effective carrying out of the Petrine commission to
confirm the faith of the brethren.
Thus, to return to our original questions, it would seem that a
rejection of a doctrinal statement proposed authoritatively in a
pontifical encyclical could be considered censurable as ad minus
temeraria. Such an unauthorized rejection on the part of individuals
or groups of individuals within the Church would violate what
Cano termed “the rule of ecclesiastical modestia” and would be op­
posed, indirectly though none the less truly, to the virtue of divine
faith, not in such a way as to destroy that virtue, but objectively to
constitute an offense against it and to harm it.
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

Praise

and the

Preacher

If the preacher permits himself to be carried away by a desire of
praise, his labour and his talent will profit him nothing. For the mind
that cannot bear the foolish criticism of the people becomes discouraged
and loses zeal for preaching. Hence it is very important to be con­
vinced that praise should be despised. For if a man is not convinced
of this, whatever be his talent for oratory, he will not succeed. And
if you consider carefully the case of the man who is without that talent,
you will find that he needs contempt of praise no less than the other.
For if he permits himself to be overcome by the desire of praise, he
will be driven to commit many faults. For as he is unable to equal
orators of repute, he will not shrink from plotting against them and
envying them, and finding fault with them, and doing many other
unseemly things. But he will risk everything, were it even the loss
of his own soul, to lower the reputation of others to the level of his
own.
—Saint John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood (Westminster, Md. : The
Newman Bookshop, 1943. Pp. 114-15).