True saints never put their faith in the surety of other saints in an ultimate sense. They put it in the Lord Jesus himself. And that is an infallible truth that is truly ecumenical.
One of the big worries of liberal and progressive Catholic theologians during the thirty-five years of the terms of office of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI was about the tendency among some Catholics to put every form of papal utterance into the category of “infallibility.” “Creeping infallibility!” they would say when anyone defended a position by noting that this was held as true by the current popes. Of course many times the theologians were actually trying to deny truths that were asserted by orthodox Christians of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant persuasion. Abortion, same-sex sexual behavior, and many of the usual so-called “pelvic issues” were what they were mistakenly trying to fit into Christian life.
But they did have a point. As the older manuals of doctrine noted, some teachings of the Church are taught de fide (of the faith) or fides ecclesiastica (of ecclesiastical faith), as dogmas that bind one on pain of sin, while others are taught as well-founded doctrines and others still as common opinions that we cannot say are infallible or even pious opinions that might be believed but are not binding at all. These “theological notes” indicated what kind of authority and certainty a teaching has. Papal speech can run the gamut from dogma all the way down to pious opinion itself. And yet some partisans of popes seem to think that whether it’s from the papal throne or the papal airplane, it’s all dogma. That many of the liberal theologians of the last forty years suddenly began treating every airplane utterance of Pope Francis as if binding on pain of sin does not negate the point. Treating a pope as an always-infallible oracle is not actually Catholic.
In this regard, Pope Francis has been a godsend. Many Catholics of a conservative and faithful temperament have started to think a bit more carefully about what kinds of papal speech are definitive and which are of a lesser kind. One question often asked, and one that might be asked on the feast of All Saints, is whether a papal declaration that someone is a saint is infallible.
The short answer is that Catholics cannot infallibly say that canonizations are infallible, though this position that they are infallible has long been held by a great many. The majority of Catholic theologians since the thirteenth century have taught that canonizations are infallibly declared. This teaching is usually labeled in older textbooks according to the theological note of sententia communis, or the common opinion of the theologians. In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas argued, “Since the honor we pay the saints is in a certain sense a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the Saints [quâ sanctorum gloriam credimus] we must piously believe that in this matter also the judgment of the Church is not liable to error.” St. Thomas himself does not declare the teaching of infallibility in this matter is infallible, however. He simply treats it as a “pious belief” or a theological opinion. His argument is the one that most advocates for papal infallibility use: namely, that if the Church were wrong about the facts in a canonization, it would mean that the Church has taught error.
In this argument, it is admitted that though the sanctity of a given person is not part of divine revelation—neither part of faith nor morals—it is a “dogmatic fact,” one that is necessary to the application of a dogma. The Catholic Church does teach that she has a “secondary infallibility” that applies to authoritative teaching of such facts connected to revelation. Examples commonly given are whether a council of the Church is actually ecumenical and thus binding on the whole Church or whether a given person was actually a legitimate Pope. So, to apply the doctrine of the saints’ glory, St. Thomas argued, we need to believe in the infallibility of the Church in this matter.
Some theologians argue that the truth of a saint’s really being a saint is a dogmatic fact because his or her work is so valuable to the Church in her work of defining the truth that to doubt whether such a figure is a saint would cast doubt on the truths the Church taught. Examples of this might be St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas. Or it might be that a figure is so widely venerated (like one of the Apostles) that to deny the sanctity of the individual would mean the Holy Spirit had allowed the Church to be wrong for virtually her entire history. In this case, there would be a dogmatic fact involved. However, in the case of most saints, whose teaching and person are not widely known and certainly not depended on by the Church in any way, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Some argue from a document of the Church’s doctrinal office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1998 commentary on the theological Oath of Fidelity, which lists canonizations as dogmatic facts infallibly taught. But this document, signed by Joseph Ratzinger and Tarcisio Bertone, does not include the customary formula—“The Supreme Pontiff approved this and ordered it to be published”—that makes such documents authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church. It is thus a theological commentary of two brilliant theologians, but not binding on the faithful.
The other argument often commonly made is that in the declaration of canonizations, there is the language of an extraordinary act of the papal magisterium. The translation of the current formula is thus: “For the honor of the blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and our own, after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define blessed [Names inserted here] to be saints, and we enroll them among the saints, decreeing that they are to be venerated as such by the whole Church, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Some people see that “declare and define” language and assume that it is the same as a dogmatic declaration. But the difficulty with this argument is that Popes don’t just declare and define dogmas. Nothing in this declaration commands anybody to believe anything or profess it as true, nor does anything here declare that not believing it makes one a heretic, separates him from the Church, or anything similar to that. This kind of language missing from canonizations is present in extraordinary declarations of infallible teaching, as in St. Pius IX’s 1854 definition of the Immaculate Conception, which says, “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
Some people have pointed to the prayers added by Pope Benedict XVI to the canonization services as indicating infallibility. The presenter of the saint to the pope says, “Most Holy Father, Holy Church, trusting in the Lord’s promise to send upon her the Spirit of Truth, who in every age keeps the Supreme Magisterium free from error, most earnestly beseeches Your Holiness to enroll these, her elect, among the saints.” To which the pope replies, “Let us, then, invoke the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life, that he may enlighten our minds and that Christ the Lord may not permit his Church to err in a matter of such importance.” But it’s important to note that a prayer that the Church may not actually make an error in declaring this person a saint is a far cry from a declaration that what follows cannot be in error.
The end result of this question is that, though many apologists and theologians claim infallibility for canonizations, their view is not required for a Catholic. Catholics are also free to believe that saints are not declared infallibly. Canon 749, §3, states, “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated.” It doesn’t seem manifestly demonstrated at this time that the infallibility of canonizations is infallible. This doesn’t mean that one has to believe that errors are common in canonizations. It just means that in these declarations, it is possible that there is an error.
Theologian William Diem has written that the Catholic Church’s claim to infallibility in these matters doesn’t guarantee that the person is actually in heaven or even existed; instead, it “guarantees only that the person’s life as it is known is worthy of emulation and glory, leaving intact the fact that our knowledge of such things is necessarily limited and only probable.”
Some people might be bothered by such an admission. For me, a clarity about what the Church can know with certainty is very important. Catholics make big claims about their Church’s authority in matters of faith; there is no need to make claims that do not need to be made. The trust that many Catholics would like to see revived in their Church would be well served by both confident authority in teaching that is definitely de fide and that which is the common teaching but not binding on pain of any sin.
True saints never put their faith in the surety of other saints in an ultimate sense anyway. They put it in the Lord Jesus himself. That is an infallible truth that is truly ecumenical.
This essay was first published here in October 2021.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image, uploaded by Svklimkin, is a photograph of mosaics of saints in the Church of the Savior on Blood, Saint Petersburg, Russia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.