Madam, – Michael Tatham (March 12th) and several previous correspondents have tried to induce your readers to think that papal infallibility is a most specific phenomenon and has only been used very rarely and in very limited circumstances such as the immaculate conception and bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The BVM and I are close friends and if papal infallibility was confined to those two dogmas I would be a happy man.
But papal infallibility in theory and papal infallibility in practice are two very different things, as any rational and objective observer of Roman Catholicism will tell you. In practice papal infallibility has become a creeping infallibility affecting every aspect of Church life.
One of your correspondents said, for instance, that Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical banning artificial contraception, is not infallible. Why, then, do I continue to this day to meet Catholics who have been refused absolution in confession unless they promise to stop using the pill or condoms or have their contraceptive coil removed?
I recently ministered to a woman who, in good faith and clear conscience, had an abortion and who had been thrown out of her parochial house by her parish priest and told she was excommunicated and could not receive Holy Communion again. Before throwing her out, the priest showed the young woman the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church. He pointed out Canon 1398 to her: “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication”. The priest said that meant she incurred “the loss of the sacraments, public services and prayers of the church, ecclesiastical burial, jurisdiction, benefices, canonical rights and social intercourse”. That sounds pretty much to me to me like infallibility – indeed business class, if not first-class, infallibility!
I can already hear the defenders of the faith protest: “You can’t judge the whole church by one or two priests.” I agree. But I am 33 years in the priesthood and I know by experience that the above attitude is typical of all priests and bishops of the conservative bent. The late chancellor of the Diocese of Down and Connor once told me during a meeting that “the Code of Canon Law is a new book of the Bible.” See what I mean by creeping infallibility?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Pope enjoys infallibility “in virtue of his office”, which Catholics must adhere to “with the obedience of faith”. The bishops too, the Catechism says, enjoy “divine assistance” to which Catholics are to adhere with “religious assent”. With all due respect, I do not think that Bishop Brendan Comiskey can be seen to have enjoyed the divine assistance during his unfortunate reign in Ferns. Nor indeed can I see any evidence that the divine assistance is currently at work in the Diocese of Cloyne.
My late father, an old socialist and old Labour Party man, used to say that if Fianna Fáil ran a donkey in some parts of Ireland it would be elected to the Dáil. In a similar way, if the Catholic Church put a white, purple or black cassock on the same poor old donkey, there are Catholics who would follow dear Neddy to hell. There are none so blind as those who will not see. – Yours, etc,