Pints With Aquinas - 127: What is papal infallibility? With Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello! Welcome to Pints with Aquinas! My name's Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Tobas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we are joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to discuss papal infallibility. Glad you could make Okay, okay, okay. Grab a drink because Father Gregory and I are drinking. And I'm really glad you could make it. Hey, guess who we have on the show next week. You guess. No.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Okay, I'll just tell you. Dr. Peterved next week tune into pints with aquinas i interviewed dr peter craved it was such a fun and fantastic discussion um honestly i think i'm going to call it pints with peter craved next week because we did discuss thomas aquinas but it was i just took every opportunity i had to ask him every question i've ever wanted to ask him. And it was a fantastic episode. You're going to absolutely love it. Also, I need to let you know that next week, um, we are going to start selling these non-nicite domine pints with Aquinas t-shirts. Non-nicite domine is Latin for, and we're going to discuss that in Peter Crave's episode, actually. Um, nothing not you, Lord. It's what Aquinas said to Jesus when he said, what will you have as your reward for writing so well of me?

Starting point is 00:01:30 These are beautiful t-shirts. We also have beautiful women t-shirts. We have sweaters, long-sleeved shirts. They're not available yet. They're going to be available when I interview Peter Crave next week, and they're only going to be available for about seven days. That's right, Just seven days. So get your geeky Latin t-shirt on.

Starting point is 00:01:49 A great conversation starter. We're keeping the prices as low as we can. Really great quality. You're going to love them. They're super great. The design's awesome. So look out for that as well. Today's episode was really fun.

Starting point is 00:02:00 I'm serious. Go get a drink. Oh, wait. Go. Padre Gregorius. Good to have you back on the show. Delighted to be. Thanks for the invitation. You miss Kentucky?

Starting point is 00:02:14 In many ways, yes. Kentucky is a delightful place where people are happy, and they know what's good in life, and they're very just glad to be catholic and worship jesus so yes and in many ways i do i miss people and now you're in dc which is like the cesspool of all cesspools um not exactly not exactly yeah that might be that might be overly strong i mean there are things about dc that do not recommend it like formerly when i wanted to drive five miles i just you know blocked out eight minutes in my busy schedule and just acted accordingly.

Starting point is 00:02:49 But now I have to, well, plan around it. It's like a day trip. So, yeah, traffic here is punishing. Living in a swamp is unhealthful. And a lot of people here have a lean and hungry look about them as, you know, Caesar once said of Cassius. So, yeah, it's just a different environment. Life on the coast, man. It is not like life between the mountains.

Starting point is 00:03:12 I assure you that. Yeah, I live in Georgia. I mean, Atlanta, essentially. Traffic's also horrible here. I was just in D.C. for that faith and science symposium they did for the Thomistic Institute a few months back. Excellent. Nice. Did you enjoy it? I understood very little.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Oh, gosh. Okay. Yeah, very little. I kept looking around to kind of find somebody and to be like, man, this is going way over my head, am I right? And nobody reciprocated the look, you know? Got it. That may have been i mean that may have been because it was pitched to the science type that is actually you know what to yeah to be less self-deprecating that is exactly what it was because at the end they had like one talk on philosophy and i was like oh this is amazing and then all of the molecular biologists and people were had no idea what was going on i was like yeah, yeah, take that, you mongrels. It was that awesome priest who's written a lot on divine

Starting point is 00:04:07 simplicity who lives in California. What's his name? He looks like Gandalf. Let's think. Father Michael Dodds, perhaps? Yes. Yeah, he's a gem. He's a very nice man, too. He's very good, yeah. Yes, that was great. Are you drinking tonight? I am, yeah. Oh, what are you drinking? I've got a spot of bourbon here, a little Maker's Mart. Very nice. I have decided what the greatest drink in the world is. Okay, let me know. Here we go. It's Lagavulin 16.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Wow, Lagavulin 16. Is that a single malt scotch? Yeah. Wow, great. It tastes like a campfire. It's very peaty. So, it's like seawater meets ash. It is. I buy it about once a year because it's very expensive. Well, I mean, it's expensive. And it's not like Blue Label expensive, but it's expensive. And it's a really good winter drink. I like bourbon the summer but when it gets a little cooler i love pd scotch okay respect thanks man i can i can appreciate that i too like pd scotch i like the smokiness i like the you feel like you're sleeping out in a barn kind of feel um it can be a palate cleanser after you've had a lot of you know corn based spirits bourbon can be a little sweet. So yeah, I dig it. What's it like walking around in a Dominican habit in this time in the

Starting point is 00:05:32 church, the scandals that are going on and all this? Any different? You know, I haven't noticed any significant difference. I haven't been spat on or cursed or vilified. I think to a large extent the Dominican habit is an unknown factor. Like most people treat you like a stranger in a strange land, which is kind of nice because you don't have to do the apologetic work at the outset of most conversations. So I think people have the vague sense that you're something religious, but they don't know what, and they don't associate you necessarily with the Catholic priesthood. They just think you're kind of like a mountaintop monk who stumbled into a city. So it's still possible to have evangelical conversations, and it's not the kind of thing where I'm like, ooh, am I going to get mugged today? Yeah, yeah. Speaking of monks wandering

Starting point is 00:06:17 down from mountaintop cities, can you grow a beard? Is that too personal? That's not too personal. Let's see, let's see, I can grow something approaching the beard. I would say that. Um, so I think, let's see, if you were to join the Friars of the Renewal, would you be embarrassed? Oh yeah. Well, uh, with what you can grow. I would probably be embarrassed initially, but then I would be desensitized by the bad beard culture. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So I wouldn't be too terribly concerned. So St. Dominic grew a beard when he thought that he was going to go on mission to evangelize the Cuman Tartars, which sounds like a spice and a fish cocktail dressing. It does indeed. So what is it? Well, the Cuman Tartars. Yeah, they're like basically barbarians on the eastern coast

Starting point is 00:06:59 of the civilized European kind of Christendom civilization. So it's kind of like, I suppose, a Dominican tradition to grow a beard when you go on mission so at one point i was assigned for a summer to study spanish in colombia and so i said hey why not i hadn't grown a beard since college and that was a silly excuse for a beard so i tried again and it was better which isn't to say that it was good but it was better less you know less bad exactly yeah yeah when i grow a beard it starts off looking like it's it's promising you know here we go terrorist beard oh come on was that racist was that it felt right no i know exactly what you mean by terrorist beard yeah speaking of racist my wife said something today that was really funny I know I'm jumping all over the place

Starting point is 00:07:46 But when I was a teenager, I was super into kind of new age movement And incense and, you know, stuff in my room And so I was in this kind of nice store the other day And they had incense I'm like, oh, I miss the smell So I bought some incense I said, hey, babe, do you want if I light this? She's like, no, please

Starting point is 00:08:02 She's like, it smells like an Indian shop Not in a racist way, but just... That's pretty bad. I thought you were going to tell me that your wife was pregnant and that she was sensitive to like different odors, but that's not how the story ended. It ended differently. No, with my wife as a racist. I'm going to stop joking about that. But today we want to talk about papal infallibility. Are you for or against it? I'm for it.

Starting point is 00:08:26 Yeah, I think so. Having deliberated over the course of the past, you know, 24 hours in preparation for tonight's chat, I think I'm for it. Yeah. Now, Aquinas didn't write a great deal on this, although what I'm looking at in front of me right now is the supplemental section. Just heads up. Question 40. Are you with me? You know what I'm doing?

Starting point is 00:08:44 Sure. I can pull it up as well. What's not to love about that? Let's see here. Yeah, because he deals with it. Because of course, and I'll let you tell us about this. Papal infallibility was a dogma that was officially defined at the first Vatican Council, yes? Correctamunda. So, why is the Church inventing kind of dogmas this late in the game is the question some people might have and do have. Sure, yeah, naturally. Well, that's a good question. You could also say a similar thing about Mary having been assumed into heaven.

Starting point is 00:09:21 So, with that one, I think you can see how it's not so much an invention as it is the discovery of years of thought, prayer, liturgical practice. So it's like, okay, so either something is or it isn't right. We're not changing reality. We're describing reality. into heaven. It's something that the church decided to weigh in on during a certain time because it thought it prudent and necessary and warranted by the tradition, by the analogy of faith, by her consideration of the scriptures and the testimony of the saints and theologians. And you could say a similar thing, basically, of papal infallibility. Like, it's always been the case that Christ gave this to his church and to the minister of his church, but that it was only formally pronounced or recognized at a certain time and place in history.

Starting point is 00:10:15 What is papal infallibility? We should have started with that. Right. That's an excellent thing to start with. So, as defined, so Vatican I, you know, was interrupted by a war. There was some kind of unification of Italy slash revolution things going on at the time, and so they had a kind of ambitious plan to promulgate a bunch of documents, but they only got to a couple of them. So, they got to Dei Filius, which was the one about divine revelation, and that's where you get some really cool Thomistic stuff about the preambles of the faith and the fact that we can know God exists by reason, which is exciting. Yep. And kind of mind-blowing for some people.

Starting point is 00:10:54 They're like, you said what? Yeah, what's cool, I like to point this out, that Thomas says that belief in God is not an article of faith, strictly speaking. Right. article of faith, strictly speaking. He says one can have faith or belief in what one can't reason to, but that it's technically not. Yeah, that freaks people out when you say that. Kind of blows your mind. He talks about it as a kind of like crossover section. So, there are certain things that we can discover by reason, but those things are, well, they're difficult to discover. He says only the wise, after much time and with admixture of error, are able to come to the knowledge of the fact that God is, that he is

Starting point is 00:11:31 one, that he's simple, that he's perfect, that he's good, etc., or his providence, or the existence of angels. He even thinks that you can argue to that by a kind of fitting argument, or the existence of the human soul. But he says, because these things are so important for our salvation, God reveals them. So there's a kind of overlap between what we can discover by virtue of the light of reason and what God reveals because he's generous and because it's important. But yeah, not to tarry too much over that. I just want to tarry. Very good. Yeah. So there was, as you were saying, the Vatican one was interrupted by a war. Right. So, and then the only other document that was published was Pastor Aeternus, and that's the big-ticket item where papal primacy and infallibility is given adequate expression.

Starting point is 00:12:17 So, basically, it's just saying that it's a divinely revealed dogma, so that's something that we hold with divine and Catholic faith, that the Roman pontiff, so that is to say the bishop of Rome, the pope, when he speaks ex cathedra, which are kind of Latin buzzwords from the chair, so that is to say in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians, so it's in a kind of solemn way. So it's not just like he's offhandedly saying things, you know, the way that he might weigh in on a contemporary issue, or even like the way Pope Benedict wrote books about Jesus of Nazareth. These aren't a solemn definition. He's not teaching as pastor and teacher of all Christians. So, but when he does teach as pastor and teacher of all Christians, he can define by virtue of his apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole church. So, and this is something that's promised to him by virtue of his office as the successor of Peter. So he possesses this charism

Starting point is 00:13:17 or a kind of grace of office called infallibility, such that we need not have fear of him erring, which is great news. I was thinking about just what you said there, that the Pope has to kind of like write in a very solemn way to kind of make it clear that he's speaking ex cathedra. And I thought of that apostolic letter that John Paul II wrote when he said the priesthood was reserved only to men right uh let me see if i can find it here but uh yeah yeah here it is he says so i mean like this again this is the language of of uh infallibility being invoked correct me if i'm wrong but he says wherefore in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself,

Starting point is 00:14:08 in virtue of my ministry, of confirming the brethren, I declare that. So, again, the point is that it's quite clear, isn't it, that when the Pope is invoking infallibility? Yes. Well, so yes. And also, it takes, so on account of the fact that papal infallibility? Yes. Well, so yes. And also, it takes, so on account of the fact that papal infallibility isn't defined until 1870, there is some, you know, work that you have to do of mining the antecedent tradition. So, like, for instance, we often recognize the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as something that's been defined infallibly, but that was like

Starting point is 00:14:45 1854 or around that time, and, you know, the doctrine of papal primacy and infallibility was only solemnly declared at Vatican I. So, again, that kind of testifies to the fact that papal infallibility has always been around. It was only defined at that certain time, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't in force. So, it brings it to our consciousness that this is something that has been operative in the life of the church. And so, we can go back a few years and see how Peter was exercising his office in this particular case of Pius IX and the Immaculate Conception. So, yeah. Yeah. So, I think some people would just, they hear this and they think this just sounds incredibly arrogant. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of the best kind of comebacks.

Starting point is 00:15:32 You know, some would just say this just seems so ridiculous. But again, this is perhaps confusing infallibility with impeccability. Right. No, yeah, and that's a great distinction because it doesn't mean that he himself, as a human person, who, you know, has his own lights by which he proceeds in life, will not fall into error himself personally or will not say something erroneous when not speaking as pastor and teacher of all Christians or himself may live a kind of scandalous life in the case of – you can think of the 16th century or 15th century and some of the Renaissance popes, Alexander VI, Borgia is always cited to this effect. So yeah, it's not something that is invested in him by virtue of his person, but rather by virtue of his office. So it's a grace that accompanies the church as instantiated in a peculiar way in the pope. Have you looked into the orthodox position on this much i haven't actually no you haven't okay i was going to ask you to steel man

Starting point is 00:16:30 their position but maybe that's an unfair question since you haven't looked into it yeah i'm somewhat embarrassed but uh you have to beg off well we can't know everything you know indeed so i'm looking at article six in the just so you know supplemental section question 40 because you know you type infallibility and you don't find anything right but this article is whether in the church there can be anyone above the bishops and he's going to say yes to this so um would it be okay if we kind of read through this and you could help us understand it? Let's do it. All right. What should we do?

Starting point is 00:17:06 Should we either respond to you first or should we do the objections? I think the response would be most fruitful. Okay. So, he says, let's see. Wherever there are several authorities directed to one purpose, there must needs be one universal authority over the particular authorities, because in all virtues and acts, the order is according to the order of their ends. Now, the common good is more godlike than the particular good. Wherefore, above the governing power, which aims at a particular good, there must be a universal governing power in respect of the common good.

Starting point is 00:17:49 Otherwise, there would be no cohesion towards the one object. Hence, since the whole church is one body, it behooves, if this oneness is to be preserved, that there be a governing power in respect of the whole church, above the episcopal power, whereby each particular church is governed and this is the power of the pope consequently those who deny this power are called schismatics or schismatics as causing a division in the unity of the church again between a simple bishop and the pope, there are other degrees of rank corresponding to the degrees of union,

Starting point is 00:18:33 in respect of which one congregation or community includes another. Thus, the community of a province includes the community of a city, and the community of a kingdom includes the community of one province, and the community of the whole world includes the community of one kingdom the end boom yeah right so first upon reading this one of the strangest concepts that he trots out is that of the common good because living downstream of the 20th century i think a lot of folks are nervous by any language that would subordinate the individual to the collective. So whenever we hear like, wait a second, common good, is that something, yeah, yeah, crypto commie or, you know, just unacknowledged totalitarianism. But here,

Starting point is 00:19:20 one of the things that's really helpful to understand is that when St. Thomas envisions the common good or the ordering of political community and church community, he has in mind a particular kind of whole. So Father Aquinas Gilbo, who's a prior of the house here and who has written a bit on the primacy of the common good, he has an excellent little talk that he gave at the University of Virginia, which you can find online on academia.edu, and I would recommend that, but I'm just going to crib some of the things that he says for clarification's sake. So he says, St. Thomas envisions three different kinds of holes. So the first hole would be like an accidental hole, and in the case of an accidental hole, what you have is just, for instance, like a bar of chocolate, right? So if you break up a bar of chocolate, with each break, you have chocolate. It's just a smaller piece. So the form of that hole just kind of gives coherence to whatever that thing is, making it all to be that thing. So like a reservoir, for instance, would be a kind of accidental hole in the sense that it's all water and you can cash out your own

Starting point is 00:20:25 particular share of water and it doesn't endanger the integrity of the whole thing itself. It just kind of takes a bit away. And then you have a substantial hole. And the classic example of a substantial hole would be like a plant or an animal or a person. So in the case of a substantial hole, you've got a substantial form and matter. And that makes one thing such that if you try to divide it, you actually lose the whole thing. So whereas with like a chocolate bar, right? You can break some off. It's delicious. It's chocolate. What remains is still chocolate. You can break some of that off. Delicious chocolate. Yeah, more, et cetera. With a substantial hole, if you break off part of a human, it could be deadly. And then you don't have a human anymore. You have a corpse, right? No longer a human.

Starting point is 00:21:11 And then the third whole that he describes is a whole of order, where the particular parts are ordered to some common good that is transcendent, that exceeds the individual goods of the things involved. And here, this is like the kind of classic description of the political community. So you have people and you have families, and then you have like small civil polities all in the city or the kingdom or the province or however he describes it in this article. And it has an internal common good, which would be the tranquility of order and the virtue of the citizenry. And then you have an extrinsic common good. So in the case of the church, for instance,

Starting point is 00:21:50 it's really clear. The internal common good is just the mystical body, so the communion of the faithful, and the extrinsic common good is God. So in this case, you don't actually have to worry about the totalitarian fear that you're going to be lorded over, because the common good is actually a good for the whole citizenry. It's a good for the whole church, namely the glory of God, the salvation of souls. And each is able to participate it as a transcendent good, because it's not like these kind of particular accidental things, these accidental unities where, you know, whenever you cash out, you're in a certain sense making it your own private thing. With this transcendent common good, it's all,

Starting point is 00:22:31 you know, like you're able to share it in a way that's not diminished in the sharing. So what he's talking about here with respect to the church is that the church has a transcendent common good. It has a unity of order directed towards God, and that is one and undivided. And as a result of which, we ourselves need to have not only our gaze directed thereunto, but we need a kind of governance which coordinates all the many movements of the discrete parts of the church, whether they be the individual lay Catholic, or the priest in his parish, or the religious superior, or, you know, like whatever small ecclesial body you, you know, abide by. So communion, liberation or Opus Dei or whatever.

Starting point is 00:23:12 And those things all need to be coordinated towards the glory of God such that we can strive by common efforts to that end. And so he's saying that it makes sense that there be a visible head of the church to orchestrate that movement so that our profession of so, he's saying that it makes sense that there be a visible head of the church to orchestrate that movement, so that our profession of faith, our use of the sacraments, and our governance would all have an ecclesial unity for the sake of the end. Yeah, it seems to make sense, you know, that you would need a universal authority over particular authorities. I mean, this is why we have generals in armies. This is why we need a commander-in-chief. Right. There's like an episode of The Office, I think, where

Starting point is 00:23:52 they have two bosses for a while. I think Jim has made a boss. And he's saying like, yeah, what's the first thing you do when you want to safely pilot a ship to shore? You appoint two captains, right? Exactly. Yeah. Could be a serious problem. Yeah. Just imagine right now in this time of the church, if all of the bishops had equal authority. Yeah. So that would be cacophonous at least and potentially murderous at worst. So yeah, there is a wisdom and a kind of order to having Peter at the head, both visibly and invisibly, because ultimately it's Christ who reigns over the church, head and members. But he willed that he perpetuate his presence in a peculiar way through the institution of the papacy so as to give concrete unity to our profession of faith, our governance and sacraments. I like how Father Thomas Joseph White puts it in his new book.

Starting point is 00:24:51 I'm going to ask you what it is and embarrass you if you don't know the title since it's in your order. Right. Splendor, what is it? The Light of Christ. There you go. The Introduction to Catholicism. Right.

Starting point is 00:25:00 So he puts it really well. He's like, even though it might seem arrogant at first um really papal infallibility just comes down to this um it's the ability of the church to discern the revelation which god has entrusted to her that's all it is yeah and you say well what's the alternative well then the alternative would be to say that the Church cannot discern. So, there has been revelation from a God who exists to mankind, but we can't know for certain what it is. Which is perilous. Right. Now, at this point, the evangelical will say, that's not our position, if you're trying to character us that way. That's not our position, if you're trying to character us that way.

Starting point is 00:25:49 What we would say is that there's nothing that stands above Scripture, and that Scripture is the Word of God, and Scripture is all we need to teach us the revelation of God. What do you say to that? I guess, and, you know, we'll... Keeping in mind that we have pastors and Protestant listeners. Sure, yeah, naturally. And I think before you get super angry, you know how you hate Protestants. I just wanted to stop it.

Starting point is 00:26:10 Quell that fear. So my approach to this first is often when this comes up in conversation with those who do not espouse the doctrine, my first step is usually to pray with that person, not for the mere sense of diffusing tension, but because if you make a common profession of faith and an acknowledgement of a common worship, then at least you have the ground of saying, yes, we worship the same God. Because I've actually had conversations where I tried to suss out certain things, and then I found myself coming up against roadblocks. And at the end of the conversation, the person wouldn't pray with me

Starting point is 00:26:41 because they said, because you have, you know, you pray to Mary and the saints, you have multiple mediators. And so your Christ is on my Christ. And I was like, whoa, crazy. So I think if you can, you can agree on fundamental things, then you actually have the hope of gaining some consensus as to what this doctrine entails. So I think what you really come up against a roadblock in terms of the Protestant praxis, in my opinion, is that Scripture is not self-interpreting. So the book does not give you a guide to its interpretation. That is to say, a book didn't fall from heaven with an infallible set of instructions. Or you can even think about this at the level of the canon

Starting point is 00:27:26 of Scripture. So what's in and what's out and why? And how do you determine that? Because, for instance, in the first century or in the intertestamental period, the Hebrew canon is not closed. I'm taking this from Brant Petrie. He gives a little introduction to Scripture class. He puts it online. You can buy it. And he says in the first century, the canon of scripture is not close, not at the Council of Jamia, not until really like the ninth century. Is there consistent consensus among the rabbinical tradition as to what constitutes the Old Testament? So you can't just, in the case of Martin Luther, appeal to the Masoretic text and say, we're just going to go back to what was actually written in Hebrew. It's like, OK, that's a standard, but why? To what end? For what purpose? And so too, like, how do you determine which 27 books are in and which books are out? Like, for instance, The Shepherd of Hermas is a

Starting point is 00:28:17 really beautiful early Christian apostolic period writing, or like First Clement is written like 96 AD, right about the same time as the Gospel of John. Why are those not in? You know, you can see the wisdom of excluding certain Gnostic Gospels, for sure, because they're crazy, like Jesus is a petulant man-killer. But why not these things? And you have to rely on the charism given to the Church to discern in her faith, in her sacramental practice, in her governance, what's in and what's out, because the Holy Spirit is active not only in the inspiring of the scriptures, but in the recognition thereof in the ecclesial body. And so, too, you can speak of that more broadly with

Starting point is 00:28:55 respect to the church, because God reveals himself. He makes himself known. But on the side of the individual believer, you need to have some charism of certainty. You need to be able to recognize the revelation of Jesus Christ in a way that is verifiable. Now, I'm not saying that you can prove the faith or you can have an absolutely rigorous argument as to the probity of it, but I am saying that you need, one, faith. So you need to be able to hear God speaking. But in order to proceed in an ecclesial and institutional way along those lines, you need to have some charism. You need to have the assurance of the presence of the Holy Spirit operating in your midst in a way that's actually, you know, can bring unity to the church and foster communion. And so, like,

Starting point is 00:29:40 the ability to discern the scriptures through the course of tradition and the ability to discern the church's teaching through the operation of the magisterium are all part and parcel of receiving the gift of Christ's revelation. Now, I'm just trying to think what an evangelical might say to that. They might say something like, we're not disparaging tradition, nor are we saying that God doesn't work in and through His church so that the church as a whole can come to know certain things. But that's a long, that's a far cry from what's come to be understood in the Catholic Church as papal infallibility.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Right. Maybe I'm wrong. Push back there, because I'm just thinking on the spot here. I mean, maybe that's not at all the case. I guess in that case, so just for my advantage of having a fruitful argument with the individual person, I would probably take them at their particular objections to things stated and see, because you can't prove the faith, obviously, in the strict sense, nor can you infuse faith in the heart of others except through an act of preaching

Starting point is 00:30:44 accompanied by actual graces and the grace of justification in the strict sense, nor can you infuse faith in the heart of others except through an act of preaching accompanied by actual graces and the grace of justification in the end. But you can, you know, remove barriers, remove obstacles, remove misperissions. So I think some of the objections come with, like, okay, so the papacy, where do we see, you know, like, I might do some scriptural arguments as to where the papacy occurs, you know, in Matthew 16, and how, like, 16 and 18, there's a kind of parallelism but a distinction according to Peter, etc. You might even do something along the lines of like just taking it on their turf and say, well, how would you justify your belief in sola scriptura, for instance? and then just do it at the level of, okay, how can you abide by this and show that there are certain leaps that are being made there, which to Catholic eyes seem just as untenable as some of the leaps

Starting point is 00:31:32 that Catholics are accused of having made. Yeah, for me, I've always found that argument that you just sort of laid out very convincing, right? You've got Pope, what is it, Pope Damasus I in 382 at the Council of Rome kind of laying out the Council of Rome, kind of laying out the canon of Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, same books that we accept today. And if we can't accept the sort of, the Church to be able to teach infallibly

Starting point is 00:31:58 in regards to Sacred Scripture, then how do we know Sacred Scripture is inerrant? It's pretty good. I think it was Scott Hahn who said, the Bible isn't an instruction manual for a church still in shrink wrap, but rather the church, the Bible rather presupposes a church already in existence. Right. I find myself pretty convinced by that because I think to myself, okay, if I was to lose the Catholic faith,

Starting point is 00:32:23 if I was to leave the Catholic faith, I'm sure we have people listening right now who, because of the scandals going on, perhaps because of Pope Francis' silence and what they think of him, they might be tempted to leave the Church. And I think to myself, okay, if I was to leave the Church, where would that leave me? Suppose I left the Catholic Church, but I was still a believer of Christ, in Christ, and these sorts of things. It's like, what am I going to do now? Am I going to go back over the last 2,000 years, look at all the disputed points in theology, and decide for myself what is right? Just on a very practical level, like, I'm not capable of doing that. Like, I don't have the time to do that, I don't have the intelligence to do that. And if the Church is right, that there is this magisterium, that it would seem to make sense that we can, you know, my grandma, Margie Harris, who's one of the most beautiful

Starting point is 00:33:09 women that ever lived, that she could believe the same Catholic faith that Father Gregory Pine does, who studied this at great lengths. Yeah, and I think, like, what you describe is basically true of faith in general, in the sense, well, like, you can kind of look at it from the perspective of a natural analogy like if you had to verify everything upon which you operate um it would be not only exhausting but completely impossible so for instance you know you you open a map of washington dc or northern georgia and you want to navigate your way to a particular destination let's just say that your cell phone has been destroyed, all GPSs are off the table, and you've forgotten where everything is. And you open up a map. Bad day. Cataclysmic day. You open up a map, and you look

Starting point is 00:33:55 at wherever you're going, I don't know, Decatur, and you have to believe that it is in truth of fact where it is located on said map if you're going to be able to actually leave your house. Because if you're just gripped by the existential dread that maybe all cartographers are liars, then you can't turn left out of your driveway or right. You just have to sit there and burn gas and just mope about. Because you have to trust that this guild of cartographers, to speak in like antiquated 14th century terms, is truthful, that they're self-regulating, or otherwise they wouldn't sell maps because people would wise up and just stop it. That's true of so many disciplines. You have to trust what has come before you in order to proceed

Starting point is 00:34:36 apace. And so the church's really robust understanding of tradition is a huge consolation, because not only have these things been charted, but they've been charted by wise, holy, and often good people, which is super encouraging because not only have you been, I don't know, seen through to the end, but you've also been loved through the end by your forebears. So it's not like you're just set adrift on an ocean of whatever, like doubt. But by faith, you have access to a God who speaks truly, who inspires humans in a kind of communion, who love you unto your end. And so, you know, you can make that claim more broadly for faith in general, but it applies in a really beautiful and rigorous way to the Catholic faith because of what we hold about tradition.

Starting point is 00:35:22 Have you read much of the Church Fathers on this issue? of what we hold about tradition. Have you read much of the Church Fathers on this issue? Or the Pope of Rome? I have read some, no. I should just say no, because then that'll... Yeah, I went asking for the questions. What do you think about today, you know, because we've pointed out what papal infallibility is, you know, what it isn't, perhaps, you know, that it's really a negative charism,

Starting point is 00:35:43 right? Would that be fair to say that it prevents the Roman pontiff from leading the Church into error, in that sense, that it's a negative charism? So, like, I don't know. Do I like that language? Yeah, I think it's kind of a negative. Sometimes it's talked about as active versus passive infallibility. So, like, the Church is infallible in her objective definitive teaching regarding faith and morals. So, there's actually, like, there's pronunciations being made, and you have certainty of the truthfulness, the voraciousness of those things. And yeah, there is a sense in

Starting point is 00:36:14 which error is being warded off, but there's also a kind of positive sense that things are being declared. Mind you, they've been held throughout the course of the church's life and worship, but they haven't necessarily been proclaimed in such solemn state, and as a result, they haven't attracted the same attention and devotion. Like, I imagine that there's a significance to the fact that the Immaculate Conception was defined when it was, and that the Blessed Mother identified herself as such shortly thereafter at Lourdes. You know, there's a kind of grace that comes with it because it communicates to the Church the nature of her own life in a way that previously may have been

Starting point is 00:36:50 less so accessible. So there's a positive element, but yes, it is negative in the sense of it wards off error. You know, we should have said this earlier when it comes to the Church teaching things sort of infallibly. It wasn't, correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't to the Council of Trent that the canon of Scripture was taught infallibly, even though it had been taught in previous sort of councils prior to that. Right. Yes, I think that's often an objection that you hear with respect to the Protestant Reformation. The Church didn't define her canon officially until whatever, Trent ended 1563. I think that, you think that the council that you referred to of the First Council of Rome, 382, I think that was a local synod. Before Hippo and Carthage, which ratified it. Right.

Starting point is 00:37:35 And then I think it came up again. It may have come up again in Florence in like the 1440s, 1442. I think that's right. Yep, that's right. But yeah, Trent was the big heavy hitter. The only reason I bring that up is people might say, well, these, I'm just thinking of the skeptic out there, you know, these later sort of councils were the way for the church to sneak in through the door, you know, with those Catholic teachings. But no, it's like even, it's like the church defines things when there is a kind of dispute over them. then there is a kind of dispute over them.

Starting point is 00:38:07 So, you know, if you live in the first, say, 400 years of Christendom and everybody agrees on the canon of Scripture, there might be little use in defining infallibly what Scripture is until there is actually a dispute regarding it. Right. It's almost as if you would protest too much. You know, you're trying to ram something down people's throats that they're already willing to digest. But then when it is assailed, you know, with like the divinity of Christ in 325 at the Council of Nicaea, or down the line with those first six ecumenical councils, then it becomes necessary

Starting point is 00:38:34 for the removal of scandal, for the instruction of the faithful, for the ruling out of error, to define it in solemn state. Right. so if the evangelical wants to say to us, well, papal infallibility was invented at the First Vatican Council, no, that would be like saying the divinity of Christ was invented by the Church in 325. Yeah, I think that's a really apt analogy. But okay, so it sounds like as Catholics, for the longest time we've been trying to say to our evangelical friends, listen, we don't have to agree with the Pope. In fact things going on in the church today. I don't want to get too kind of polemical and make you, whatever, uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:39:31 But no, not a heck with that. I'm just going to make you uncomfortable. You know, it's almost like we're kind of sending the opposite message, again, to evangelical friends. If people are saying, no, no, no, you can't question the Pope. If you do, it's really less divisive. It's so on and so forth. Have you seen any of that?

Starting point is 00:39:48 Yeah, let me see. I heard a talk recently about the Pope and his teaching office, and the speaker drew a parallel between the situation after the proclamation of Humanae Vitae in 1968 and then the present situation. And it doesn't obtain down the line in every regard. Obviously, we're talking about different things. So in one case, you know, you had at the Second Vatican Council, the question regarding oral contraception was kind of tabled, and then Pope Paul VI had a special council or a special group

Starting point is 00:40:20 or committee of theologians and experts who weighed in on the matter, and they delivered to him their findings, and then he made the judgment about it. But there were, like, leaks, I guess, from what I understand, in the historical register that seemed to indicate that the church was going to come out in favor of contraception, and so there was, like, kind of, people were becoming, I don't know, excited at the prospect of this new development. And then the Pope, you know, gave us Humanae Vitae, which is very clear in its teaching that you can't separate the unitive and the procreative and conjugal love. And that caused this, you know, theological furor, which corresponded with the sexual revolution,

Starting point is 00:40:56 and it led to all this crazy fallout. And in the time subsequent to that, you had a lot of theologians who weren't necessarily attacking the teaching. No, granted, there was a lot of discussion of sexuality that was going on at the time, and certainly that was in the air, in the atmosphere. But you would see conferences sponsored on the authority of the Pope. So it was seen at the time as something necessary from dissenting theologians to undermine the Pope's authority. And granted, that was instrumental to their end of advancing their, perhaps, sexual agenda. But in the present situation, I think there's a kind of fear that by attacking the Pope in certain regards, that you undermine his authority, which could actually

Starting point is 00:41:36 weaken the papacy in a way that goes beyond the present pontiff and kind of down the line, which could do harm to the Church. Now, certainly in the case of, like, you cite the example of Catherine of Siena, where she really, really rails against the pope is with respect to his prudence and the nature of his governance. So she's not saying, like, those things that you define solemnly with respect to faith and morals are wrong, and you need to recant them or recuse yourself or resign or abdicate or whatever. I'm just going to list a bunch of words that are slightly synonymous, but slightly different. She was questioning his prudence. And I think this is, I think that is a valid option for faithful Catholics

Starting point is 00:42:14 to question the prudence of the Pope, but in such a way that doesn't weaken the church entire. And this isn't like looking out for the home team and like taking care of the boys, the kind of backroom deal that, you know, you look after me, I look after you. What we're talking about more so is to recognize the difference between prudential judgments, all right, or maybe less than prudential judgments, and maybe injustice or talking about him at the level of his own particular virtue as that pertains to the church entire, you know? So there's like a peculiar category of prudence that St. Thomas describes called renegative prudence. There's a peculiar prudence that pertains to a governor, to a leader, and one can do that better

Starting point is 00:42:55 or worse, you know? And one can do it maybe because—one can be better or worse at it because he himself is incapable or because he himself is wicked, but that's not a determination that, you know, is necessarily transparent to the average observer. So I make no suggestions with respect to the present, but I'm just saying that, like, I think that's something that we can weigh in on, and that you can, you know, as a lay Catholic, you can apply pressure on the means available to you to try to demand what you perceive as necessary, what are in fact, you know, like, to try to demand what you perceive as necessary, what are in fact good answers to get. But to say, to undermine the papacy as an institution may be ill-founded because to just...

Starting point is 00:43:34 Do you see faithful Catholics doing that right now in their criticism of the Holy Father? Undermine the institution of the papacy? That you've seen personally.'m not obviously i'm sure it exists but yeah no i've mostly heard just like measured critiques i haven't heard anything that's like axe wielding and like kill the beast type guest on drunk eating um is it the crazy most hyperbolic tweets rise to the surface though right those are the ones that get the most play the most retweets humility doesn't go viral

Starting point is 00:44:08 yeah measured highly qualified sentences with subordinated clauses don't really catch fire yeah if they did trump may not be president right now let's just bring all the controversies in that's it, man. Third grade reading level. That's how he rolled. Well, this is awesome. Well, thank you so much for your thoughts on the papacy. Any final thoughts?

Starting point is 00:44:37 Especially, I mean, we've gone down this road, so I just kind of want to wrap it up a little bit, okay? And it'll have to do kind of like with our trust in in the holy father should it be francis or the next holy father or what have you um you know with this grand jury report that just came out of pennsylvania there's definitely going to be more there's no reason to think there won't be several more and that the kind of scrutiny that the catholic church is undergoing it will be undergoing with with as much intensity for the next decade, say. Would you agree with that?

Starting point is 00:45:07 Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. And so, I would just sort of guess that many Catholics will not make it, you know, so that like in 10 years from now, I'm not the prophet or the son of a prophet, but if I was to wager that there would be many Catholics who are leaving the church right now. It kind of reminds me, you see those memes, it's like, if you can't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best. Something like that I think is kind of going on here. But, you know, what would your advice be to the church in this situation? What would my advice be? So, in the case, like, I, I think again of St. Catherine of Siena, who leveled just devastating rebukes against the church's pastors.

Starting point is 00:46:04 But she herself also suffered for the church, which I think is not insignificant, that as she was ready to criticize the leaders, so too she was really ready to bear the wounds of Christ in her own body. So there are things for which she's famous, namely that by the end of her life, she slept between one and two hours a night if she slept. She subsisted on the Eucharist, and she basically died at the age of 33 from exhaustion. But she took very, very seriously the fact that penance pertains to all. So we can't excuse ourselves. You know, like I think of the story in John 9 when Jesus and his apostles pass by the man born blind and his apostles ask, is he blind from birth because of his sins or those of his parents? And Jesus says something to the effect of so that, you know, the works of God might be made known in him. So sometimes, you know, I don't probe into the reasons why God permits evil to befall. I just know that they make sense when you ask them of

Starting point is 00:46:52 Christ and you meet him at his most vulnerable. So when you're willing to let the passion of Christ play out in your members, and that often entails voluntary penance. So I think it's a time during which we need to not only pray for the church, but fast for the church. And that's terrible because nobody likes fasting, except for people who like fasting. But I think it's time for that. And that's something that you undertake in consultation with your spiritual director. You don't just set about like tying strange cords around your thigh or like wearing hair shirts that tear up your flesh. But I think it's, I don't think that we can kind of dance around the issue. I think it's something that,

Starting point is 00:47:31 we need to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Do you feel like if the bishops do not impose upon us like meatless Fridays, that that could be something we impose upon ourselves? Just something small here, I'm thinking. Sure, yeah. I mean, reclaiming certain elements of the tradition that have kind of gone by the wayside in the 20th century would be excellent. And I think, yeah, fasting for meat on or abstaining from meat on Fridays would be excellent. I think fasting Wednesdays and Fridays are a typical time. As early as the Didache you hear, we Christians fast on Wednesdays and Fridays because the Jews fast on, I think it's Mondays and Thursdays.

Starting point is 00:48:04 There's no further explanation given except for that, which I find especially hilarious. But to fast, I mean, if you can't fast in a kind of stricter, more rigorous sense, to give up snacking or to give up cream in your coffee or to give up dessert or to give up fourth meal, you know, or to give up Taco Bell or Chick-fil-A or whatever, you know, but to give up something so that you feel it because it's a suffering that pertains to us all. And it remains for all of us to exercise said demon through prayer and fasting. Yeah. The nice thing about giving up things like cream in your coffee or whatever is it's not something you can brag about. Yeah. Cause it's kind of pitiful. It's like, it'd be one thing if you were giving up,

Starting point is 00:48:42 I remember I met a priest once who gave up all solids for Lent. So he was just like blending foods and drinking it. You can brag about that. But you can't be like, oh, I hear you. I can't have my French vanilla edible oil in my coffee. Yeah. I gave up my Irish cream, International Delight Creamer. You know, it's just like, oh, gosh, the sufferings I endure.

Starting point is 00:49:06 What would be some advice you would have on fasting? Because this is something that we're hearing a lot about but may not necessarily – I hope those of us who are saying to people you ought to be fasting are actually fasting. That would be good. Yes. So what would be some advice on fasting? Because I hate fasting. Right. So fasting will almost always stink. It does. I don't know that it gets easier. There are certain things, certain practices that one can adopt that you can kind of

Starting point is 00:49:36 have an appetite for. But I think there's a wisdom in it. And you can, from the perspective of St. Thomas's virtue ethics, there's a real, there's a real resonance that just gets me kind of fired up. So, like, think about it this way. Temperance, the virtue of temperance governs especially our desire for food and drink and sexual intercourse because those are the parts of our life that are most instinctual, right? So, think about it. At the level of, like, I need to hand on life. That is to say I need to keep living and I need the human race to keep living. How do I do that? I need to eat and drink and then I need to procreate.

Starting point is 00:50:11 So those are the instincts shown deepest within human desire. And as a result of the fall, those are the ones that we feel most vehemently because they're they're twisted, they're disordered. They're no longer subject to the reason and to God and the way that they once were. And as a result of which, they're just clamorous and just intense and just sometimes really troublesome. But spiritual authors will often identify a connection between the desire for food and drink and the desire for sexual intercourse. So you think about it, you know, a lot of the church's problems in the present situation are with respect to unchastity. And so as a church, by giving up food and drink, we're able to correct the passion that is connected to it, which is for sexual intercourse. So you can suffer on behalf of the church

Starting point is 00:50:55 for love of her pastors, you know, for love of her holiness as a way of, you know, active purgation. But in so doing, there is a real connection between the sufferings that you undertake and the sins of the church, which is cool and beautiful. And I just don't think, it doesn't become easy until God's work becomes transparent. So I think that gradually as you become more and more sensitive by acting in accord with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as you become more and more sensitive to God's work in your life, then you begin to have a kind of sympathy with His divine providence, and you see how everything hangs together, and you see how your sacrifices and sufferings

Starting point is 00:51:33 are good for those with whom you are in bonds of communion. And that's just something that happens over the course of the whole of a contemplative life, and it's only, I think, really evident in heaven, because in the vision of God, we will also see our lives and know them as if for the first time. And so, as you fast and as you persevere in that resolve and in a life of prayer and of sacramental practice, you begin to have a deeper sympathy with. It becomes connatural to actually feel God's designs working out in your members. And that fires you in charity and actually makes it desirable to do what's difficult out of love. Not just because it's difficult, but because it's good and worthy and for Christ's church. That's, I mean, step by step, poquito a poquito, but worthy

Starting point is 00:52:19 and good. I think most of us just don't believe it works, it does anything. Like, I think we get the bit about it kind of curbing our concupiscence or our passions, but we don't really believe it does anything. So I was playing Titan Quest on the Nintendo Switch the other day. I don't know what either of those things are. That's okay. I'm glad you don't. I came into the kitchen. I said, honey, I don't want to brag, but there was a town by the Spartans where monsters were killing the people and eating their crops and whatever. I destroyed the monsters and saved the village. And now they have enough to eat through the winter. She wasn't impressed. The point is, I imagine living in a small community like that, right, where you're all kind of dependent on each other, whether you fast and feast and live in community, it was probably a lot easier to understand how fasting could benefit the church as a whole.

Starting point is 00:53:19 But my point is, I just think a lot of people just, we don't believe that it does anything. Right. I think part of that, too just – we don't believe that it does anything. Right. I think part of that too is we don't believe that Satan exists. We don't believe that there are demons who want to drag us into the pits of hell and rejoice. Gosh, life makes so much more sense when you accept that, doesn't it? It does. I think it was – what's his name who wrote Wild at Heart? Oh, John Eldridge.

Starting point is 00:53:44 Yeah. He's like, your life is not a rom-com right like it's not an adventure it is a battle like wake up and smell the ammunition you know kind of thing but quite honestly that is actually exactly right like there is a satan and the demons who hate you intensely and want you to be damned for all eternity. Like, if that's not a scare tactic, this is what the Christian faith teaches. And all of a sudden, it starts to make sense of a lot of the kind of obstacles we keep running into and the scandals that keep appearing and, you know. Yeah. No, I think, I mean, it's a crisis of faith. I think that we

Starting point is 00:54:23 have to admit the fact that some of those who were implicated in scandals had lost their faith, and they didn't believe in what is spiritual, and as a result of which they indulged in what is carnal. And if you don't believe in what is spiritual, then you don't concede, one, that Satan exists and that sin has implications and that you can go to hell and suffer eternal punishment. And two, that there's actually a merit to invisible acts, namely prayer offered in the silence of one heart as you go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father in secret and fasting, which stinks and was complete rubbish and feels like a farcical because you want people to congratulate you as you're eating peanut butter toast for lunch and thinking like, aren't I so swell with like a kind of existential

Starting point is 00:55:04 self-condemnation lurking over your left shoulder. But like these things are actually real, and you're only ever sensitized to the spiritual by living it on the one hand really, and on the second aspirationally. Like it's something that you are, you have to not fake it till you make it, but you have to believe and trust that it's real and that God's promises are true. Otherwise, you begin to drift away from that conviction, and then you lose the faith. So, it's possible to lose the faith, even within the church, even in a hierarchy. Yeah, spot on. Good advice. Well, hey, thank you for being on again. Hey, my pleasure. Delighted. Enjoy DC and all those angry, slouchy people slouchy i'll use

Starting point is 00:55:48 that um yeah and now are you writing are you recording elsewhere where people were like man this guy's amazing that was a brian reagan voice nice where where would they go and follow you listen to you read you what would i i don't think i'm writing or recording anywhere presently but um with aquinas pines with aquinas that's my it's my platform it's my venue um yeah i mean the temistic institute i work at the temistic institute and um i will start you know giving lectures kind of here and there and certainly the podcast will pick those up but they're more so occasional than they are regular and um yeah current publication venues no nothing nothing in the mainstream i'm really just i'm glad to hear you'll be giving some lectures soon that'll be wonderful

Starting point is 00:56:36 hey my life would have changed three uh 180 if i wouldn't lose it 360 but that would 180 if i had of met you when i was 17 years old at high school, and I would have went up to you and I would have said, oh yeah, if God exists, who created God? And then I would have given you this defiant look, like bring it, what do you got? And then you would have wiped the floor with me and I would have given my life to Jesus Christ. There you go. I'd have been like step one, accidentally subordinated series of causes. Step two, essentially subordinated series of causes step two essentially subordinated series of causes step three do you want to get baptized awesome thanks for being with us hey my pleasure thank you so much for tuning into pines with the

Starting point is 00:57:17 quietest this week wasn't that fantastic couple of things i want to say before you go um look we're getting around 20 000 downloads a day now thank you to everybody who downloads the show um i want to say a couple of things number one we're going to begin doing more things on my youtube channel so just search matt frad on youtube and subscribe there also please decide if you haven't already to become a patron of pines with aquinas you get all sorts of free stuff in return uh including you could have been on last week's live stream event that we just had. And it was amazing. And you could have joined it, but you didn't because you weren't a patron.

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Pints With Aquinas - 127: What is papal infallibility? With Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

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