The identity of modern Catholics comes with our recognition of a legal jurisdiction. Catholics recognize a legal authority—the pope—under whose governance their religion is to be lived. This central fact of the Catholic religion has not really changed in a millennium, at least. There may have been change in the vigor and directness with which that legal authority has been exercised and in the theological boldness of its assertion. Since 1870, that juridical authority has been robustly defined and, since 1917, codified, as never previously. But the jurisdiction and its exercise have been a constant. Christ the new Moses came to give a new Covenant and with it a new Law. And the successors of Peter remain as his appointed earthly lawgivers. Non-Catholics reject this jurisdiction. Catholics live with and acknowledge it. So Christianity divides.
But is not the pope more than a lawgiver? Is he not a teacher of doctrine? Yes, that is his function—and through the institution of the papacy over time, much teaching has certainly been delivered by the popes. Indeed a degree of teaching about the good of a community may be part of any legislative function, that of popes included. But beyond this, does every pope’s teaching always matter just as teaching? Not always with real effect, and certainly not for every individual pope. For a period from the nineteenth century on, it might have seemed that their teaching was what mattered most about each of the modern popes. But, for example, what, really, did Benedict XV actually teach? Beyond remembering his endorsement of Catholicism generally and (without effect) peace for the duration of the Great War, few would now think of any particular doctrine. He wrote encyclicals, a modern papal phenomenon to which I shall return. But the detail of what Benedict XV personally taught is effectively forgotten by most. He did issue a code of law, however, which, though now replaced, was a pattern for the future. That everyone can remember. And his legal authority was ever being applied both before the code was issued and after it. The exercise of legal authority by popes is a constant, and it impinges on every Catholic. That is the reality of the office as exercised by every individual pope.
But surely, it might be objected, the pope is not only a teacher, but an infallible teacher? That means his teaching must really matter. Yet how often does infallible teaching happen? Theologians have in fact never agreed on a definite list of precisely what papal doctrinal pronouncements are or are not infallible—never, not even immediately after the definition of infallibility itself in 1870. Strange that something of such supposed importance should be so unclear.
Yet, it might still be objected, infallible or not, don’t magisterial papal teachings have some serious level of authority—enough to obligate belief? That alone must make the papal teaching function very significant. And certainly there is doctrine about magisterial authority to that effect, delivered by Vatican I and II. But again we come to the central question—of that doctrine’s application and interpretation. The nineteenth century developed an official theology of the magisterium in much detail, with many levels of teaching authority defined and docketed, and even new terminology for this theology devised by ambitious ideologues such as Joseph Kleutgen. But few ordinary Catholics were much aware of these distinctions at the time, and even fewer are now. And all this classification relies on individual popes’ sharing the official theology and applying it themselves, carefully framing their pronouncements to fit within the system of authority so they can be neatly identified as enjoying a specific level of doctrinal weight. Try applying that theology of the magisterium to a papal pronouncement of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, let alone before, when this theology of authority had not yet been formulated. Popes did not yet know to apply those rules, nor did theologians. To straightjacket the conduct of the papacy of the Middle Ages or Renaissance into an official theology invented in the nineteenth century is to play a parlor game without historical sense.
But popes have always taught, haven’t they? And is that papal teaching not important anyway, just as teaching? Well, some popes do teach in a way that really matters. But many individual popes in the past have not taught much, at least not to a public beyond an immediate audience in Rome itself. The modern papacy is much more consistently voluble on the teaching front, and at a more universal level—but with decreasing effect. This papal teaching function is not really what has most consistently impacted the life of Catholics.
Past papal teaching, when it did occur, was often limited to specific condemnations (though the precise force of these might, as we have seen, remain obscure—despite later official theology’s efforts to define it). Boundaries were set to permissible belief and theological discussion, but perhaps not more. Especially when consistently repeated, on questions collectively found central, these condemnations definitely shaped and continue to shape the beliefs and so too the lives of Catholics. But many condemnations had less effect at the time as doctrine in their own right than they had later when taken up by the Church and given institutional legal force. Take Unigenitus. This strange laundry list of anti-Jansenist doctrinal condemnations once really mattered in the French Church, especially as a legal instrument; pledges of its acceptance were extracted even from the laity on their deathbeds by the authority of bishops as a legal condition of the final sacraments. For ancien régime Catholics, Unigenitus as a legal weapon was very real and consequential, and often deeply distressing. The precise content of its many condemnations mattered far less. And with the cessation of Unigenitus’s legal weaponization, much of its significance likewise disappeared.
The doctrinal verbosity of the modern papacy is relatively novel and still developing (unfortunately). Instead of terse condemnations, we have ever-increasingly lengthy texts—encyclicals, apostolic constitutions, exhortations, and the like. These began well, with popes (or drafters on their behalf) of genuine intellectual capacity capable of concision. An encyclical of Leo XIII has a clear argument that is followed to well-defined conclusions. It is rarely left obscure what the ordinary Catholic is supposed by that pope to think, and (as important) why. But these impressive and tightly controlled doctrinal arguments are largely forgotten now, except when parties within the modern Church choose to appeal to their very clear intellectual authority (something I have done myself, without apology). Yet even here every competing modern party selects its favorites. The idea of a Leonine magisterium persisting today as a complete corpus with an unchangingly effective doctrinal authority that still forms the belief of Catholics generally is fiction. Perhaps Leo’s magisterium never really so operated even in its day. There was always too much of it for that.
Things get worse when we turn to recent papal documents that are much less intellectually distinguished and controlled. Consider the page-by-page (two hundred fifty-six of them!) rambling ambiguity of Amoris laetitia. What is it, exactly, that we are being taught? What specifically are we now under an obligation to believe? I spent a futile afternoon, which I’ll never get back, trying to work this out. It is not only the authority that is obscure but the basic content. And that seems intentional. We are supposed to get with some general program, the essence of which is a careful avoidance of intellectual definition. Should Catholics ever bother with such a document? How many actually have?
Catholic teaching certainly does exist, as a body formulated collectively by past popes and bishops over time. But it is arguable that in its current form, with today’s officeholders, the magisterium or teaching office is decreasingly functional. It is less and less effective at teaching anyone anything beyond what was already and clearly taught before. When the modern magisterium tries to go further, things lose definition or disappear into controversy. And plenty of the flock have given up listening to the novelties. The main audience would appear to be religion journalists.
Popes and bishops are supposed to be veri doctores et magistri, to whose teaching Catholics are obligated to adhere. But really, troubled by a question of doctrine, what educated Catholic, if he could even expect to be heard and receive a clear answer, would refer to Pope Francis or to the general run of bishops appointed by him for a definitive solution? Anything that pope or the run of his appointees might say would obviously have to be tested. What did Trent decree on this? What references about this can you find in Ludwig Ott? If what a contemporary pope or bishop said were different from the past, as indeed it might very well be, the prudent Catholic would surely take that as a reason to beware. Could a composition such as Amoris laetitia ever plausibly correct Trent, or serve as its authoritative interpretation? There is ever-lessening trust. Councils of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were unprecedentedly full of magisterial pronouncements about the magisterium—only, it seems, for the current magisterium’s operation to become increasingly marginal to Catholic life, at least for now.
Forget his pure teaching. Contrast Francis as lawgiver. That is something else. When it suited, Francis could himself be something of a scofflaw, in his theology and in the conduct of his office. Nevertheless, ordinary Catholics were touched by his legal authority every day, as by that of any pope. His decrees dictated their liturgy and who could celebrate what forms. His decrees determined who would be their bishop and for how long. His jurisdiction and what it recognized determined whether they were truly absolved and married. Indulgenced works, probably more advertised in the Church now than fifty years ago, depended on his legal authority. Even when his legal decrees were evaded or merely discountenanced, that still required some care, as the consequences (treated far more seriously than any mere doctrinal error) could be genuinely unpleasant, even career-terminal, at least for priests and bishops. This juridical authority far outran any doctrinal consensus. What unites Catholics in relatively conservative Britain and America to the effective liberal Protestantism of Catholicism in much of Flanders? Shared orders and a shared jurisdiction—not, perhaps, a great deal more. But that is enough to receive the vital sacraments when traveling in Belgium, if one can stop one’s ears to what comes gabbled through the clerical microphone.
Archives of the many defunct religious houses of Flanders have been deposited with the University of Leuven. Despite what time has erased since the Second Vatican Council in other respects, one reality has not changed. Whole university library floors are filled with past legal communications and decrees linking the Church of the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands and the Curia in Rome. Liturgy and theology alter. The sinews of connecting jurisdiction remain. Amid the public drama of Francis’s obsequies and the conclave that elected Leo XIV, there is a central fact. One sovereign ecclesial legislator is being buried, and another has been elected to take his place.
This essay is part of a symposium on Pope Francis’s life and legacy. Read the rest here.
