Tea at Trianon: The Infrequency of Infallibility

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, May 9, 2022

The Infrequency of Infallibility

From Crisis:

So, what does qualify as an infallible utterance? If each time the pope thinks or speaks it does not automatically follow that here is God himself thinking or speaking, then when does it follow? The answer, of course, is only when what comes out of his mouth is an ex cathedra pronouncement, meaning “from the chair,” and thus invested with the full authority of Almighty God himself.

It has got to be a most solemn and extraordinary utterance indeed; which is to say, on a matter of faith and morals, not on the outcome of an election or the state of the economy. The pope’s views, say, on climate control or immigration policy, may be interesting and worth hearing, but they are hardly infallible, which means it is not obligatory for Catholics to believe them. Unlike the Law and the Prophets, they have not been issued from on high.

And, more to the point, they ought not to be uttered unilaterally, as though the pope were himself the Church and not the chief witness to her faith. The definition laid down at the Council did not authorize the pope to teach apart from or over against the Church but precisely alongside her. Not to believe that had been the extreme ultamontanist position, in which the pope need not consult or take counsel with anybody.(Read more.)