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Magisterium (OSV Encyc. 1997)
Jesus Christ is the light of the world (Jn 8:12), the Savior of all mankind (Jn 4:42). He spent the three short years of his public life teaching his followers. He was their "Magister", their Teacher; for them he had "the words of eternal life" (Jn 6:68).
For each person, the one really important thing is to meet Jesus, to be enlighted by him, to follow him. Even with failures, our efforts will be fruitful if they are directed toward believing our Lord's Revelation and doing his will. We will be on the right track, even though we often run it badly. But if we mistake his words or his will, we may apparently run well, but off the track.
We will be saved then if we freely follow Jesus, trying to listen sensitively to his words, and to put his teaching into practice. But where can we find that teaching? How and with what certainty can we know it? The Protestant believes Christ's saving words are to be found only in Scripture. The Catholic believes that they are also to be found in Tradition and in the Magisterium - or official teaching - of the Church.
Christ's teaching in Scripture is usually very clear. At times nevertheless he deliberately formulates it in parables, and has to explain its meaning and application apart to his Apostles. On occasions we find the Apostles failing to understand his words, or even scandalized at his teaching (Lk 18:24; Mt 19:10, etc.). When the exact meaning of a teaching or precept contained in Scripture is not clear, the human mind, unaided, is likely to give it very different interpretations. If these are contradictory, they obviously cannot all be true.
For instance, when Our Lord said at the Last Supper, "Take, eat in memory of me", did he literally mean what he said? Did he really give his own body and blood to be eaten? Was it just a meal, or also a sacrifice that he was offering and wished to be perpetuated throughout the ages? Did Jesus want all of his followers to be able to truly eat his flesh ("unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you": Jn 6:53), as Catholics believe? Or should his work and intention be reduced to the general belief of Protestants: the Eucharist is a simple memorial of the last Supper, no more; the bread a mere symbol of Christ's love? After the words of Consecration in a eucharistic celebration, is the bread (and wine) changed? Is it now truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, with only the appearances of bread remaining, or is it still just bread, that momentarily evokes Christ's love (cf. CCC, 1374-1377)?
As is obvious, the two interpretations contrasted here are mutually exclusive. If one is right, the other is wrong. Both Catholics and Protestants are aware of this. The examples could be multiplied indefinitely. Was Jesus really born of a Virgin? Did he truly rise from the dead? Is he truly God incarnate? Did he found a visible, hierarchical Church and endow it with the charism of infallibility in teaching the way of salvation?
Did Jesus want his teaching to be subject to contradictory interpretations? It would seem not. Yet knowing men as he did (cf. Jn 2:25), he also knew that by themselves they tend to interpret even the clearest truth or message in differing ways, finding it hard to agree together about the truth or to hold to it firmly if it is entrusted to them.
Knowing this, what did Jesus do? Catholics believe that he did what one would expect. Instead of leaving his teaching to men, to make what they liked or chose of it, he himself stayed - invisibly, but with divine power - to preserve the integrity and clarity of that teaching.
It was precisely to ensure that his work of salvation - doctrine, sacraments, sacrifice - should be preserved in its totality and be available without any corruption to each generation and each person, that he set up his Church, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (I Tim 3:15; cf. CCC 2032). He promised to be always present in his Church ensuring that whatever she teaches as doctrine of salvation will be protected and guaranteed in heaven, that whoever listens to his Church will in fact be listening to Jesus himself. The scriptural confirmation of this could not be more explicit. "All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..., teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:18-20). "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 16:19; cf. Mt 18:18). "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me" (Lk 10:16).
Living presence of Christ. What emerges from these passages is the actual living presence of Christ in the Magisterium of the Church, the teaching office she received from her Founder. That is why Vatican II teaches that "the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office ["Magisterium"] of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ" (DV 10).
The teaching of Jesus coming to us in the complementary sources of Scripture and Tradition, as interpreted by the Magisterium, is the heritage of each Christian. Each one therefore has a strict right in justice to receive this teaching: "the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected" (VS 113; cf. cc. 213; 762; CCC 2037). Similarly, the pastors of the Church, to whom the passing on of this doctrine has been specially entrusted, have a particular obligation to respect this trust and to hand it on to the people they serve (cf. c. 760).
The Church has the right to teach; and the obligation. She too, like the Apostles, must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). No fear of human criticism, opposition or hostility can stop her in this divinely given commission. The Catechism insists that "the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates" (890).
The work of the Magisterium is not only to preserve intact the message of Christ, but also to spell out how it applies to issues which are not mentioned in Scripture. After all, each age (and very particularly our own modern age) tends to bring up questions of belief and behavior that Our Lord did not explicitly deal with. Did he wish to leave us without any means of knowing his mind on population questions, on drug-taking, on the right or wrong use of medical treatment that can prolong or shorten a sick person's life? No. When the Church's Magisterium teaches clearly on these and other "modern" issues, her teaching is protected and guaranteed by her Founder (cf. CCC: 2032ff; 2051). To such magisterial teaching those words of his also directly apply: "whoever listens to you listens to me" (cf. CCC 87).
Organs, exercise, response. The teaching of the Magisterium can be "solemn" or "ordinary". Each expresses the mind of God, and each therefore calls on our believing response. The solemn Magisterium is usually exercised through a formal proclamation by the Pope (with or without the participation of the whole Catholic Hierarchy) or by an Ecumenical Council. The ordinary Magisterium is that exercised by the Pope alone or by the bishops teaching in communion with him, "when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a 'definitive manner', they propose... a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals" (CCC 892).
We respond in faith to what is taught by the solemn or extraordinary Magisterium. "The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes truths contained in divine Revelation or having a necessary connection with them, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith" (CCC 88). The definition of a dogma of faith is the highest and most guaranteed exercise of the Magisterium, and has the consequence that whoever denies such a dogma commits the sin of heresy.
Lumen Gentium (no. 25) says that our response to the ordinary Magisterium must involve a "religious assent of mind and will" ["obsequium religiosum"]. The new Catechism notes that while this assent is distinct from the assent of faith, "it is nonetheless an extension of it" (CCC 892). It clearly could not be pleasing to God that we be bound to give "religious assent" to something erroneous. Therefore the guarantee of truth which accompanies the teaching of the ordinary Magisterium is as real, although it is not as full, as that accompanying the Magisterium termed solemn or "extraordinary".
While various degrees of response to the Magisterium are possible according to the way in which it is exercised, no response is adequate unless it is rooted in faith. One accepts magisterial teaching because of one's belief that God guarantees it, not because of the "reasonableness" of the doctrine in question. We believe that in the Godhead there are three distinct Persons but one God (dogma of the Blessed Trinity), not because we understand how this is (we do not), but because it is taught as a revealed dogma by the Church's living Magisterium. Similarly, because of faith and not of any other proof, we believe that grace gives us a real "participation in the life of God" as his adopted children (doctrine of our divine filiation; cf. CCC 1997).
Attitudes and possibilities must be carefully understood here. It is true that one could reject a proposition taught by the ordinary Magisterium without falling into heresy strictly speaking. But it incorrect to hold that one can dissent from it without detriment to one's faith. Dissent in such cases involves a person in an attitude that is displeasing to God, because in withholding the response of mind and will ["obsequium"], one shows a lack of faith in Our Lord's presence and action in guiding the authority he has set up in his Church. For the words of Jesus (and we repeat once more a key passage from the Bible), "whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me" (Lk 10:16), are also to be applied to the ordinary Magisterium.
While one cannot legitimately reject a proposition taught by the ordinary Magisterium, it is possible to maintain a certain reserve in its regard, in the sense that while admitting that the teaching in question is certainly what God wants us to accept, one holds that, not being cast yet into the final form of a dogmatic definition, it may be subject to further, though accidental, refinements of meaning: always "in the same sense and along the same lines of understanding" ("eodem sensu, eademque sententia": St. Vincent of Lerins). This is not "dissent" but a legitimate theological attitude. The truth proposed is accepted, even though one perhaps sees different ways of further clarifying its content, so as to arrive at a fuller understanding.
Propositions of the ordinary Magisterium can therefore be made clearer. But they can never turn out to be mistaken. The reason is always the same: if the Church had been teaching error, then Christ would have failed in his promises to her and would have contradicted himself.
Theologians and Magisterium. In the ongoing task of probing, clarifying and illustrating the power and beauty of the truth which Christ bequeathed to us, theologians have an important role to play. Nevertheless, they are no less subject to the Magisterium than the rest of the faithful. In fact, if the theologian is humble and aware both of the greatness of the subject he is investigating and of his own human limitations, he or she will look specially to the Magisterium for orientation, knowing that only the Magisterium has the charism that protects the human mind against error and the falsifying effect of pride, in probing divinely given truth.
The relationship between the Magisterium and theological research is at times debated today as if it were a mere question about rightful academic freedom. But that is not the real point of the debate, nor can its scope be reduced in such a way. The issue is not of theologians' freedom to think what they like, but of the rights of the faithful to know the Mind of Christ. The theologian may think what he believes or chooses to believe; no one takes away that freedom (though he may lose his Catholic identity if he freely embraces theses incompatible with the faith). But he has not the grace to know (and less still the power to guarantee to others) whether his viewpoints are in conformity with the Mind of Christ or not. Only the Magisterium has the special charism required for that.
St. Matthew tells us that Jesus "taught as one who has authority, and not as the scribes" (Mt 7:29). Today also one would expect whoever teaches in the name of Christ to speak not uncertainly but authoritatively, not offering tentative and shifting views, but truths that are clear in their formulation and application. Teaching in Christ's name must be authoritative in a further sense. It should have the proper credentials. The matter of who "has the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16) is to be decided on the basis of credentials: not academic degrees, but charismatic gifts. Only the Magisterium has that charismatic credential of divinely given grace. The credentials of the Magisterium, in other words, are given by Christ. It teaches not in its own name nor as claiming more expert knowledge, but in virtue of a special divine grace and protection, given for the sake of the whole body of the faithful.
In ways that are both mysterious and clear, Jesus sends his grace and light to every single person (Jn 1:9). But many fail to recognize his voice or to respond to it. If we already have the fortune to be Christians through Baptism, we need to keep our heart and mind open to his will, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus: "Lord, what do you want me to do?" (cf. Acts 22:10), for he will speak to us in vain, if we are not ready to respond.
The Church is for us both "Mother and Teacher" - "Mater et Magistra" (cf. CCC: Part 3, Ch. 3, Art. 3). Her Magisterium is a logical consequence of the Incarnation; a particular expression of Our Lord's loving promise to "with us always" (Mt 28:20). Protecting divine Revelation against our human limitations, the Magisterium is a special gift of God. Our attitude toward it should therefore be one of heartfelt gratitude. Not to lose the sense of possessing a divine gift in the Magisterium is essential if our pilgrim way on earth is to be characterized by the joy of seeing clearly "the way" that is Jesus, and hearing clearly his "words of eternal life".