Mark Hausam on Infallibility

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Here is a fairly great article:

How the Infallibility of the Church Works
by Mark Hausam · July 31, 2019
https://wherepeteris.com/how-the-infallibility-of-the-church-works/

How it is true can be exposed by an example: When a man who has followed Baius, Jansenius and Quesnel is confronted with something like the bull Unigenitus, he has no right to just shut up but still in his interior believe Jansenism.

He is obliged to believe Jansenism false, at least as to the condemnations included in the bull he is seeing (for instance Unigenitus).

This means, whoever is Pope has a real right to interior obedience of the faith of the faithful, not just an external obedience of silence.

Now, here is a point:

The fact that non-definitive teaching is not necessarily irreformable is not contrary to its reliability, for the reformable nature of such teaching does not come from any unreliability in the teaching but in the non-definitiveness of the magisterial intention. If the Pope teaches us that X is the best position to hold right now and that we ought to hold position X, but that this is not necessarily the final word on the subject, if later on we find that X is false we cannot be said to have been led astray by the Pope’s teaching, for that teaching did not teach us that X would never be overturned. But the reliability of the Pope’s ordinary teaching obviously precludes that teaching from including ideas that contradict what the Church has previously affirmed definitively–so, for example, heresy cannot occur in papal teaching (or any magisterial teaching), since “heresy” involves the denial of previously definitively taught dogmas–for we already know that such teachings cannot be true and that we should not hold them.

So, suppose "Pope Francis" were Pope. He has presumably taught that accepting evolution and long ages is the best position to hold. Suppose this is not intended to be definitive, in that case even so a Catholic were obliged to believe them, though perhaps in a non-definitive way.

But suppose again these positions are in and of themselves heretic. In that case we have a conundrum:

• do we conclude that, "as Francis is Pope," evolution (of clearly different kinds, like cat and dog from common ancestor) and millions of years and billions of years and a universe billions of lightyears across is to be believed?
• or do we conclude that, as common ancestry of cat and dog, as millions of years, directly or implied by seen distances, are contrary to the Bible and to the constant teaching of the Church, we must conclude "Francis" is not Pope?

I conclude the latter. A logical rule saying two things are incompatible (of themselves, or given a third, like "Pope Francis" words on "magician with omnipotent wand"*) does not of itself tell us which is to be discarded. However, one can look beyond the two, on some third.

St Augustine considered that Genesis 5 and 11 are straightforward history, to be taken as such. While St Jerome seems to have envisaged a possibility of the spirit world, the heaven of angels, being around for a long while before Earth was created, this cannot be applied either to Earth or anything on it or to celestial bodies. No Church Father envisaged in an endorsing way a long history of earth or of any material thing before the creation days. St Thomas Aquinas may or may not have written in his youth (I think he did, before getting to Paris or even Dominican order) Postilla in libros Geneseos** but he did swear an oath on upholding three texts. These are Historia Scholastica (by Peter the Eater), Sentences of Peter the Lombard, and Decree of Gratian. The one I mentioned first is a Biblical history, with sneak views on non-Hebrew history. Christ is born 5199 after Creation and Troy is taken when Eli was judge in Israel.

In other words, Fathers and Scholastics are all of them Young Earth Creationists.

So was Fr. George Leo Haydock, as can be seen from his last words in comment on Genesis chapter III:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.

And bishop Challoner (cited just before) seems to leave no room for considering the sufferings of Cro-Magnon attributable to their being pre-Adamites rather than descendants of fallen Adam:

Thus we have seen how rapidly Moses describes the creation of all things, the fall of man, and the promised redemption. But in these few lines, we discover a solution of the many difficulties which have perplexed the learned, respecting these most important subjects. We know that the world is not the effect of chance, but created and governed by divine Providence. We are no longer at the loss to explain the surprising contrast of good and evil, observable in the same man. When we have attentively considered the Old Adam and the New, we find a clue to lead us through all the labyrinths of our Holy Religion. We could wish, perhaps, for a greater detail in Moses, but he left the rest to be supplied by tradition. He has thrown light enough upon the subjects, to guide the well-disposed, and has left sufficient darkness to humble and to confound the self-conceited and wicked, who loved darkness rather than the light. C.

In other words, if a Neanderthal was both a great technician, mastering glue, and a great sinner, in Belgium if not in Spain, doing cannibalism, while another Neanderthal in Shanidar was a sign of non-utilitarian care-taking, it is because he descends from Adam who both was created in God's image and ate the forbidden fruit.

One could of course imagine, all of them were so in a non-definitive way. Actually, if we go from Mark Hausam to the sources, I don't think there is room for that. For one thing, the mention by Pope St Gregory IX on "per se irreformabiles" has the qualification "nisi quid subreptum sit" (if my memory serves, I do not have Denzinger or Hefele before the eyes right now on the right page). But a teaching which is so constant and geographically universal cannot be "subreptum".

Indeed, when something is so ingrained into the fabric of dogma as original sin and of credibility of faith as a relatively short generational distance between first human sin by Adam and Moses writing it down, one cannot imagine anything like it could be "subreptum".

So, the rule of Mark Hausam is per se good and it should make us discard the papacy of "Pope Francis". Why?

It would be contrary to the justice and truth of God for legitimate authority appointed by him to legitimately bind us to teaching that it would be wrong to hold.

Thank you! However, this poses the problem where the Church is, if not in communion with "Pope Francis" - and the not too popular solution I endorse is, it was saved by the emergency conclave of David Bawden in 1990, from which he emerged elected and having accepted election as Pope Michael.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Audoux Library, Paris
St. Alphons Maria Liguori
2.VIII.2019

* Or, more seriously, "Catechism of the Catholic Church" endorsed by "Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis" in paragraph 283 treating modern "discoveries" on the "age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man" as precisely discoveries, as enrichments of the faith, and even attributing to the "discovering" experts a right to use the words of King Solomon in Wis 7: 17-22 - verses actually referring to inerring knowledge of Bible writers, which the modern scientists are not.

** It's latinity is clearly different from that of mature St. Thomas, but that could be because he had learned Latin first less classically with Benedictines, later more nearly classical with Dominicans.