The Difference Between Legitimate Disagreement and Illegitimate Dissent

It is clear in Catholic doctrine that Church teaching is authoritative, as it comes from Christ, and is reliable to lead to truth, as it is guided by the Holy Spirit, and that therefore Catholics are required to assent to it.  The Church can teach in both a definitive manner and a non-definitive manner.  When the Church teaches definitively, Catholics are obliged to accept the teaching definitively and absolutely.  When the Church teaches with less than full definitiveness, Catholics are obliged to accept the teaching to the degree and in the form required by the intention of the teacher.  The Church has spelled out this schema in many places, such as in the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) document Donum Veritatis (1990):

When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement and solemnly declares that a teaching is found in Revelation, the assent called for is that of theological faith. This kind of adherence is to be given even to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium when it proposes for belief a teaching of faith as divinely revealed.

When the Magisterium proposes "in a definitive way" truths concerning faith and morals, which, even if not divinely revealed, are nevertheless strictly and intimately connected with Revelation, these must be firmly accepted and held.

When the Magisterium, not intending to act "definitively", teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of Revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. This kind of response cannot be simply exterior or disciplinary but must be understood within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith.  (#23, footnotes removed)

The CDF, in its Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei (1998), articulated that "teachings set forth by the authentic ordinary Magisterium in a non-definitive way . . . require degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression" (#11).  This language was echoing the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, #25, which said this:

Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

In modern times, those who have wished to dissent from some of the authoritative teachings of the Church in defiance of the Church's authority have sometimes attempted to justify their defiance by redefining "submission of mind and will" into something like "respectful consideration."  In their view, one must consider seriously the Church's non-definitive teaching, but one must not trust it implicitly.  One must use one's own private judgment to evaluate that teaching, and then one is justified in rejecting that teaching if it fails that private investigation.  Thus, whereas, with definitive teaching, the rule of belief is the Church's teaching, the rule of belief with regard to non-definitive teaching is not the authority of the Church but the agreement of the Church's teaching with one's private, independent judgment and confirmation.

A classic example of this kind of dissent is seen in the attitude of the Society of St. Pius X, which was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to continue what Lefrebre regarded as "authentic" Catholic faith and practice in opposition to what he considered to be the errors and deviations of the modern Church after Vatican II.  Lefebvre and his followers wanted to reject portions of Vatican II on the grounds that the Council did not intend to affirm anything in the form of a solemn, definitive declaration, but only under the authority of the "ordinary" magisterium, which they held to be subject to their private judgment.  But that loophole had already been cut off by the Council itself, as well as by Pope St. Paul VI, such as in his General Hearing of January 12, 1966:

There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification the Council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions engaging the infallibility of the ecclesiastical Magisterium. The answer is known by whoever remembers the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964: given the Council’s pastoral character, it avoided pronouncing, in an extraordinary manner, dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility.  But it has invested its teachings with the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium, which ordinary magisterium is so obviously authentic that it must be accepted with docility and sincerity by all the faithful, according to the mind of the Council as expressed in the nature and aims of the individual documents.  (Pope St. Paul VI, General Hearing, Wednesday, January 12, 1966, following the translation found here by Dr. Jeff Mirus)

Pope St. Paul VI, in a letter to Archbishop Lefebvre in 1976, reminded him of this fact:

Again, you cannot appeal to the distinction between what is dogmatic and what is pastoral to accept certain texts of this Council and to refuse others.  Indeed, not everything in the Council requires an assent of the same nature: only what is affirmed by definitive acts as an object of faith or as a truth related to faith requires an assent of faith.  But the rest also forms part of the solemn magisterium of the Church to which each member of the faithful owes a confident acceptance and a sincere application.  ("Pope Paul VI's Letter to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre", found on the Word on Fire website)

Now, it is true that non-definitive magisterial teachings can contain in them elements of varying degrees of authority.  The less formal, more "casual" (for lack of a better word) nature of the format of these teachings allows for such a mix.  Sometimes there are elements of non-definitive teachings that are provisional in nature, tied to the circumstances of the times and therefore subject to change as circumstances change, and sometimes there are incidental observations that the mind and the will of the magisterial teacher does not intend to put forward as authoritative teachings binding the minds of the faithful.  The Church tells us to use common sense, combined with good reading and listening skills--as well as asking for clarification if necessary--when we listen to non-definitive teachings and decide what response they call forth from us.  Sometimes magisterial decisions, particularly practical or prudential decisions, involve elements that can even invite respectful criticism from the faithful.  When the "mind and the will manifested" of the magisterial teacher allows such respectful criticism, it is legitimate and not a form of dissent from or defiance of the authority of the Church.  The CDF made this point explicitly in Donum Veritatis: 

The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable must be the rule. It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions. Here the theologian will need, first of all, to assess accurately the authoritativeness of the interventions which becomes clear from the nature of the documents, the insistence with which a teaching is repeated, and the very way in which it is expressed.  (#24, footnote removed)

One must therefore take into account the proper character of every exercise of the Magisterium, considering the extent to which its authority is engaged. It is also to be borne in mind that all acts of the Magisterium derive from the same source, that is, from Christ who desires that His People walk in the entire truth.  (#17)

But there is a fine line between legitimate criticism, within the bounds the Church has allowed, and dissent from Church teaching that involves defiance of the Church's authority.  Sometimes that line can be hard to see, and certain forms of expression can have the effect of obscuring that line.  For example, in 1968, the Catholic bishops of the United States issued a pastoral letter entitled "Human Life in Our Day".  Part of the impetus for this document was to defend Pope St. Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was very unpopular in "progressive" circles and was drawing a great deal of dissent.  But in the course of this pastoral letter, the US bishops tried to lay out some boundaries for legitimate dissent and criticism.  They said that professional theologians could, in limited circumstances, dissent from certain non-infallible magisterial teachings, provided they do so with great care and caution, respect for the consciences of others, in an appropriate manner, etc.

When there is question of theological dissent from non-infallible doctrine, we must recall that there is always a presumption in favor of the magisterium. Even non-infallible authentic doctrine, though it may admit of development or call for clarification or revision, remains binding and carries with it a moral certitude, especially when it is addressed to the universal Church, without ambiguity in response to urgent questions bound up with faith and crucial to morals. The expression of theological dissent from the magisterium is in order only if the reasons are serious and wellfounded, if the manner of the dissent does not question or impugn the teaching authority of the Church and is such as not to give scandal.  (Found here on the EWTN website, taken from L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 12 December 1968, page 6 and 19 December 1968, page 5)

It has been observed that this last sentence is very ambiguous and could lend itself to being made use of by dissenters who wish to dissent from teaching the Church intends to bind them to, dissenters like Archbishop Lefebvre and his SSPX movement.  (Although, in the case of Humanae Vitae, the dissent was rather from the more liberal, "progressive" side of the Church.)  Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin discusses this in his book Teaching With Authority (El Cajon, CA: Catholic Answers Press, 2018).  He provides an interesting commentary from Cardinal Avery Dulles on the apparent subjectivity of the US bishops' criteria for legitimate dissent:

Cardinal Avery Dulles remarked that these conditions "proved difficult to apply.  Who was to say whether the reasons were well-founded?  How could one establish that the authority of the Magisterium was not being impugned when its teaching was being denied?  How could scandal be avoided when theologians were openly saying that the pope's teaching was wrong?"  [The Dulles quote is from The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System, 2nd ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 113.]

"Human Life in Our Day" was issued in 1968.  Since that time, the Church has issued several documents clarifying further the assent required of non-definitive teachings, including the CDF document we've quoted from a few times now, Donum Veritatis, and also the CDF commentary on the Professio Fidei, also quoted from earlier.  Donum Veritatis in particular focuses a good deal of attention on the illicitness of "dissent", while at the same time distinguishing it from legitimate dialogue and even criticisms that can sometimes be made with regard to magisterial pronouncements.  The US bishops, in 1992, issued another document entitled The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishops: A Pastoral Reflection (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1992).  In this document, the bishops are much more careful to make clear that dissent to Church teaching is not acceptable and that the Catholic faithful are required to assent to the non-definitive teaching of the Church with "submission of will and intellect."  They distinguish various forms of refusal of assent to non-definitive teachings--non-acceptance, private dissent, and public dissent--and they make it clear that all three are unacceptable.

    Perhaps, a more common experience of nonacceptance in the Church today is the withholding of assent to what is identified as nondefinitive teaching. . . .  While these manifestations of nonacceptance may fall short of outright rejection, nevertheless they remain nonacceptance, the withholding of the religiosum voluntatis et intellectus obsequium [religious submission of mind and will] due to the ordinary magisterium of the Church. . . .

    Quite distinct from the withholding of assent is the private, individual judgment that conclusively rejects the ordinary, nondefinitive teaching of the Church.  Such a judgment constitutes private dissent and is not consistent with that religiosum voluntatis et intellectus obsequium due to church teaching.  Even though dissent of this kind remains private, nevertheless it is unacceptable. . . .

    Sometimes the nonacceptance of nondefinitive teaching passes beyond the nature of a "difficulty" and becomes a judgment that an authoritative teaching is false.  This, of course, is quite different from a critical judgment about the adequacy of expression or the conceptual limitations of a particular teaching. . . .

    Bishops cannot be indifferent to the public denial or the contradiction of church teaching, especially by those whose position confers public influence.  Public dissent, especially in the form of advocacy for alternative positions, seriously impairs the Church as a communion of faith and witness.  (Teaching Ministry, pp. 17-19, footnotes removed)

The document recognizes that the "ordinary, nondefinitive teaching of individual popes and bishops may contain assertions that fall short of the full truth of the gospel and may be in need of development and amplification.  Interventions in the prudential order may even be in need of correction" (p. 15).  "At times . . . professional theologians or other competent persons may conclude that the search has not been completed or that what has been asserted is still imperfect, and their acceptance will be qualified accordingly" (p. 15).  Scholars may discuss difficulties in professional journals, etc.  However, "[t]these considerations presume that theologians and scholars are willing to take the necessary steps to overcome their difficulties and abide by an authoritative intervention on the part of the magisterium should it consider one necessary" (p. 18).

    Finally, the disposition toward the teaching authority of the bishop on the part of those who are dissenting must be taken into consideration.  If an individual or group dissents, but retains the disposition to abide by a final judgment of the magisterium on an issue, the possibility of obsequium religiosum remains.  On the other hand, if dissent is expressed in absolute terms and there are no signs of docility toward the Church, that possibility may well be foreclosed.  In that case, the bishop may initiate the process leading to the possible imposition of a canonical penalty (cf. c. 1371.1).  (p. 19).

(I should mention that this document, as well as Donum Veritatis and many of the other documents I've mentioned, are rich with pastoral suggestions regarding how to deal with people who struggle with certain Church teachings, sometimes in good conscience.  I cannot do justice to this aspect of the documents, or other important nuances, as well as the significant amount of good practical wisdom these documents contain, in such a short article as this.)

In conclusion, as we said earlier, we can indeed, at times, criticize and even disagree with some of the things the bishops and the Pope say.  But the real question is, Who determines the degree and form of assent required in any particular case?  The erroneous dissenters make themselves and their own judgment the determining factor in deciding what they are required to assent to and to what degree they are required to assent.  But the Church teaches that it is the bishops and the Pope who make that determination.  This is the fundamental point and the fundamental difference between legitimate diversity and criticism and illegitimate dissent and defiance.  We don't get to subject the teachings of the bishops and the Pope to our own judgment and decide, even against their intentions and requirements, what we will agree with and what we will disagree with.  We must assent to their teaching according to their manifest mind and will.  We must accept even non-definitive magisterial teaching as inherently reliable, so that we will not subject it to our judgment and disagree with it if the "validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable" (Donum Veritatis, #28)  So while there can sometimes legitimately be disagreement with some things the Pope or bishops say, there can never be dissent from magisterial teaching, in the sense of refusal to accept magisterial teaching to the extent that it is intended as authoritative and binding.  Whenever and to the extent that the bishops and/or the Pope make use of their magisterial authority with the intention to give to the Church an authentic, official teaching, leading the people of God into truth or showing them how to stay faithful to the truth, that teaching must be assented to.

For more, see here, here, and here.

Why the Traditionalists Are Wrong

I then urge my fellow Catholics to re-learn these lessons that they have taught me so many years ago. It is not sufficient to rally against the protestants’ errors, if you do not remain vigilant to not fall in the same traps, even if the bait is different.

Trying to uphold Tradition while fostering dissent from the pope is just as untenable a position as trying to defend Scripture while fostering defiance to the scriptural authority of the petrine and apostolic faith. It is a paradoxical endeavor. No good will come out of it. Because one of the more traditional tenets of our Catholic faith is precisely the obedience due to our pope.

~ Pedro Gabriel, "Sola Traditio", Where Peter Is, 2/8/18

The Traditionalists are wrong for one, simple reason:  Although they peg themselves as the defenders of the historic Catholic faith, their distinctive position in fact contradicts and opposes the Catholic faith.

Let me be more specific, however.  When I speak of "Traditionalists" in this context, I am thinking of those self-proclaimed advocates of historic Catholic Tradition who dissent from the teaching of the Church and disobey her authority in certain areas.  I do not have in mind those of the faithful who simply prefer more "traditional" modes of worship, pious practices, etc., such as the Latin Mass or communion on the tongue, but who are also faithful and obedient to the authority of Church and do not oppose any of her teaching or disobey her rules.  There is nothing wrong with this obedient form of "traditionalism".

According to the Catholic faith--the faith of the Catholic Church--the preservation and guardianship of the divine revelations rests on the three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.  Scripture is the Word of God written.  Tradition is the Word of God passed down by the Church in other ways--preaching, teaching, living, and worshipping.  The Magisterium consists of the college of bishops together with the head of that college, the Bishop of Rome, who is the Successor of St. Peter.  Scripture and Tradition are the sources of the divine revelation, while the Magisterium is the God-guided guardian and interpreter of that revelation.  Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium are all necessary to properly preserve, interpret, and apply the divine revelation.  As the analogy of the three-legged stool suggests, all three are essential.  By God's guidance and grace, all three are in harmony and work together to convey the revelation of God.  They cannot be pitted against each other.  To pit one against the others is to destroy the very foundation of the Catholic epistemology.

Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2, 42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort.

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.  (Dei Verbum, 10, footnotes removed)

As I mentioned above, the Magisterium consists of the entire college of bishops united to the Pope.  Magisterial authority resides in the Pope as the Successor of St. Peter, in the entire college of bishops united with and in agreement with the Pope, and in the individual bishops so long as their teaching is in agreement with the rest of the college of bishops and with the Pope.

But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head. The pope's power of primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. For our Lord placed Simon alone as the rock and the bearer of the keys of the Church, and made him shepherd of the whole flock; it is evident, however, that the power of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter, was granted also to the college of apostles, joined with their head. This college, insofar as it is composed of many, expresses the variety and universality of the People of God, but insofar as it is assembled under one head, it expresses the unity of the flock of Christ. In it, the bishops, faithfully recognizing the primacy and pre-eminence of their head, exercise their own authority for the good of their own faithful, and indeed of the whole Church, the Holy Spirit supporting its organic structure and harmony with moderation. The supreme power in the universal Church, which this college enjoys, is exercised in a solemn way in an ecumenical council. A council is never ecumenical unless it is confirmed or at least accepted as such by the successor of Peter; and it is prerogative of the Roman Pontiff to convoke these councils, to preside over them and to confirm them. This same collegiate power can be exercised together with the pope by the bishops living in all parts of the world, provided that the head of the college calls them to collegiate action, or at least approves of or freely accepts the united action of the scattered bishops, so that it is thereby made a collegiate act. . . .

Bishops, as vicars and ambassadors of Christ, govern the particular churches entrusted to them by their counsel, exhortations, example, and even by their authority and sacred power, which indeed they use only for the edification of their flock in truth and holiness, remembering that he who is greater should become as the lesser and he who is the chief become as the servant. This power, which they personally exercise in Christ's name, is proper, ordinary and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately regulated by the supreme authority of the Church, and can be circumscribed by certain limits, for the advantage of the Church or of the faithful. In virtue of this power, bishops have the sacred right and the duty before the Lord to make laws for their subjects, to pass judgment on them and to moderate everything pertaining to the ordering of worship and the apostolate.  (Lumen Gentium, 22, 27, footnotes removed)

Just as Scripture and Tradition are divinely protected so that they convey the revelation of God faithfully and accurately, so the Magisterium is given by God divine protection so that it faithfully proclaims the truth of God without error.  Therefore, all magisterial teaching is authoritative and requires assent from the Catholic faithful.  And the faithful are also required to submit to the rules and decrees of the Magisterium.

Bishops, with priests as co-workers, have as their first task "to preach the Gospel of God to all men," in keeping with the Lord's command. They are "heralds of faith, who draw new disciples to Christ; they are authentic teachers" of the apostolic faith "endowed with the authority of Christ."

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith."

The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates.  (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 888-890, footnotes and number-headings removed)

Among the principal duties of bishops the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place. For bishops are preachers of the faith, who lead new disciples to Christ, and they are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice, and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith. They bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.  (Lumen Gentium, 25, footnotes removed)

All the Christian faithful are obliged to observe the constitutions and decrees which the legitimate authority of the Church issues in order to propose doctrine and to proscribe erroneous opinions, particularly those which the Roman Pontiff or the college of bishops puts forth.  (Code of Canon Law, 754)

(For more on the unfailing reliability of all magisterial teaching, see here.)

I sometimes refer to the dissenting Traditionalists as "semi-Protestants", because they, like Protestants, oppose the teaching authority of the Church in favor of their own private (non-magisterial) interpretations of certain aspects of Scripture or Tradition.  The difference between Protestants and Traditionalists is that Protestants take Scripture and oppose it to Tradition and the Magisterium, while the Traditionalists tend to take both Scripture and Tradition and oppose them to the Magisterium.  So they are not Protestants, but they are akin to Protestants, in that, like Protestants, they break up the three-legged stool of Catholic epistemology by pitting some of the legs against others.  (I highly recommend Pedro Gabriel's article, "Sola Traditio", quoted in the quotation at the top of this article, for its masterful way of making this point.  And here is another one I wrote up.)  Since the Catholic faith puts forward the three-legged stool as its foundational epistemology, the Traditionalists, like the Protestants, are opposed to the Catholic faith in this area, and are therefore wrong.

One of the most important and influential founders of modern Traditionalism was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  In 1976, Pope St. Paul VI sent a letter to Lefebvre, exhorting him to give up his disobedience to magisterial authority and return to submission to the Church.  He urged him to cease to treat himself as the ultimate interpreter and guardian of the Church's Tradition and to return to trust in the Magisterium which Christ himself appointed for that purpose.  I would urge all Traditionalists, all those influenced by Traditionalism, all those tempted or swayed by it, and all those interested in it, to take the time to read through this letter.  It embodies in a powerful way the Church's response--the response of the Successor of St. Peter, the ultimate guardian of the true faith appointed by Christ--to the whole Traditionalist enterprise.  His words are not just applicable to Archbishop Lefebvre or to the specific movement he directly founded, but they apply to all forms of Traditionalism.  They constitute a powerful, heartfelt, and authoritative exhortation to all the Catholic faithful to give our full assent and trust to Christ himself to define the faith of his Church, and therefore to the ministers he has appointed as the authentic guardians and interpreters of that faith.  You can find the letter here.

P.S. One of the common tactics of Traditionalists is to attempt to pit past statements of the Magisterium against current statements of the Magisterium in order to claim obedience to the Magisterium while disobeying what it actually teaches today (like a child who disobeys mother's commands today in favor of mother's commands yesterday, thereby claiming to be an obedient child in the very midst of disobedience).  This tactic is addressed in the letter from Pope St. Paul VI that I linked to just above:

. . . a single bishop without a canonical mission does not have in actu expedito ad agendum, the faculty of deciding in general what the rule of faith is or of determining what tradition is.  In practice you are claiming that you alone are the judge of what tradition embraces. . . . You say that you are subject to the Church and faithful to tradition by the sole fact that you obey certain norms of the past that were decreed by the predecessor of him to whom God has today conferred the powers given to Peter. That is to say, on this point also, the concept of “tradition” that you invoke is distorted. . . . It is up to the pope and to councils to exercise judgment in order to discern in the traditions of the Church that which cannot be renounced without infidelity to the Lord and to the Holy Spirit—the deposit of faith—and that which, on the contrary, can and must be adapted to facilitate the prayer and the mission of the Church throughout a variety of times and places, in order better to translate the divine message into the language of today and better to communicate it, without an unwarranted surrender of principles. . . . Hence tradition is inseparable from the living magisterium of the Church, just as it is inseparable from sacred scripture.

As Pope St. Paul VI says, there are certain unchangeable elements in the Church's teaching and practice, but there are other elements that are subject to legitimate differing prudential applications by the Church at different times and in different places.  This is something Traditionalists often confuse and distort.  Another thing they often do to support their positions (intentionally or unintentionally) is to take snippets of older Magisterial teaching out of context in order to make it look like it opposes later teaching.  Sometimes this out-of-context-quoting can be egregious, and so I want to briefly call attention to a couple of examples in order to provide a bit of a warning to those who might be influenced by the Traditionalists.  Caveat Emptor!  Let the Buyer Beware!

These two illustrations come from a Traditionalist friend of mine, who was recently trying to argue that communion received in the hand (rather than on the tongue) is inherently wrong and opposed to the reverence required in receiving the Eucharist.  In order to support her position, she gave a long string of short snippets of quotations from earlier documents.  One of those documents was from the Council of Trent.  Another was from Pope St. John Paul II.  Starting with Trent and then moving on to John Paul II, I will give the snippet she provided, and then I will provide the fuller contextual quotation, so readers can see how my friend took her quotations totally out of context to making them say something completely different from what they were originally saying.  Readers who observe what my friend has done will hopefully be made wary when in discussions with other Traditionalists in the future who may try to sell such misleading "information".

Upon being challenged that she was relying on her private interpretations of earlier magisterial writings instead of submitting to the Church's interpretations, she replied, "[I]t is not I that claims it ... As my original post says it, it comes from the Council of Trent among others like these," and then followed her string of quotations.

Here is her quotation from the Council of Trent:

The Council of Trent (1545-1565): "The fact that only the priest gives Holy Communion with his consecrated hands is an Apostolic Tradition."

And here is more of the original context of this quotation:

Now as to the use of this holy sacrament, our Fathers have rightly and wisely distinguished three ways of receiving it. For they have taught that some receive it sacramentally only, to wit sinners: others spiritually only, those to wit who eating in desire that heavenly bread which is set before them, are, by a lively faith which worketh by charity, made sensible of the fruit and usefulness thereof: whereas the third (class) receive it both sacramentally and spiritually, and these are they who so prove and prepare themselves beforehand, as to approach to this divine table clothed with the wedding garment. Now as to the reception of the sacrament, it was always the custom in the Church of God, that laymen should receive the communion from priests; but that priests when celebrating should communicate themselves; which custom, as coming down from an apostolical tradition, ought with justice and reason to be retained. And finally this holy Synod with true fatherly affection admonishes, exhorts, begs, and beseeches, through the bowels of the mercy of our God, that all and each of those who bear the Christian name would now at length agree and be of one mind in this sign of unity, in this bond of charity, in this symbol of concord; and that mindful of the so great majesty, and the so exceeding love of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave His own beloved soul as the price of our salvation, and gave us His own flesh to eat, they would believe and venerate these sacred mysteries of His body and blood with such constancy and firmness of faith, with such devotion of soul, with such piety and worship as to be able frequently to receive that supersubstantial bread, and that it may be to them truly the life of the soul, and the perpetual health of their mind; that being invigorated by the strength thereof, they may, after the journeying of this miserable pilgrimage, be able to arrive at their heavenly country, there to eat, without any veil, that same bread of angels which they now eat under the sacred veils.  (Council of Trent, Thirteenth Session, Chapter VIII, taken from the Hanover Historical Texts Project website at Hanover College, page number removed)

As you can see, the original quotation from Trent was not addressing communion on the hand vs. the tongue at all, but was only asserting that communion is to be given to the people by the priests, while the priests administer communion to themselves.

Here is my friend's quotation from Pope St. John Paul II:

Pope John Paul II: "To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained." (Dominicae Cenae, 11)

And here is more of the original context of the quotation:

In some countries the practice of receiving Communion in the hand has been introduced. This practice has been requested by individual episcopal conferences and has received approval from the Apostolic See. However, cases of a deplorable lack of respect towards the eucharistic species have been reported, cases which are imputable not only to the individuals guilty of such behavior but also to the pastors of the church who have not been vigilant enough regarding the attitude of the faithful towards the Eucharist. It also happens, on occasion, that the free choice of those who prefer to continue the practice of receiving the Eucharist on the tongue is not taken into account in those places where the distribution of Communion in the hand has been authorized. It is therefore difficult in the context of this present letter not to mention the sad phenomena previously referred to. This is in no way meant to refer to those who, receiving the Lord Jesus in the hand, do so with profound reverence and devotion, in those countries where this practice has been authorized.

But one must not forget the primary office of priests, who have been consecrated by their ordination to represent Christ the Priest: for this reason their hands, like their words and their will, have become the direct instruments of Christ. Through this fact, that is, as ministers of the Holy Eucharist, they have a primary responsibility for the sacred species, because it is a total responsibility: they offer the bread and wine, they consecrate it, and then distribute the sacred species to the participants in the assembly who wish to receive them. Deacons can only bring to the altar the offerings of the faithful and, once they have been consecrated by the priest, distribute them. How eloquent therefore, even if not of ancient custom, is the rite of the anointing of the hands in our Latin ordination, as though precisely for these hands a special grace and power of the Holy Spirit is necessary!

To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained, one which indicates an active participation in the ministry of the Eucharist. It is obvious that the Church can grant this faculty to those who are neither priests nor deacons, as is the case with acolytes in the exercise of their ministry, especially if they are destined for future ordination, or with other lay people who are chosen for this to meet a just need, but always after an adequate preparation.  (Pope St. John Paul II, Dominicae Cenae, 11)

As you can see, my friend completely distorted this quotation in order to make it look like it is saying the exact opposite of what it actually says.  (Actually, I'm sure she didn't twist this quotation herself.  She simply took it from some Traditionalist website without bothering to check its accuracy.)

You've been warned!  Watch out for such behavior from Traditionalists (or from anybody, for that matter)!  Caveat Emptor!

Published on the feast of St. Angela Merici

Disobedient Obedience? The Paradoxical Logic of Catholic Hyper-Traditionalism

But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, "Son, go work to day in my vineyard." He answered and said, "I will not": but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, "I go, sir": and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, "The first." Jesus saith unto them, "Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him."

Matthew 21:28-32

Catholic hyper-traditionalists like the Society of St. Pius X want to have their cake and eat it too.  They want to dissent and rebel against the teachings of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, but at the same time they want to present themselves as obedient children of the Church.  Not surprisingly, this leads to some interesting twists in terms of how they justify their position.  I thought that perhaps an analogy by way of a fictional dialogue might be a good way of bringing this out.  Of course, in my dialogue, we are dealing with motherly authority, which has no promise of unfailing divine guidance from God like the Magisterial authority of the Church has according to Catholic teaching.  So if my dialogue shows the absurdity of Johnny's reasoning in this case, how much more would the argument apply when we are dealing with the divinely protected and guided authority of the Church, which God has appointed to "preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error" (Catechism of the Catholic Church #890)?

I'm imagining Johnny as being about seven or eight years old, though I've given him a rather sophisticated vocabulary and reasoning ability in order to explore more nuance than a real, ordinary seven-or-eight-year-old would likely be able to express.

Mom:  Johnny, I would like you to clean up your room before going outside to play today.

Johnny:  No, Mom, I won't do it.

Mom:  What do you mean you won't do it?  I'm telling you to do it.

Johnny:  And with all due respect, I'm telling you I won't.

Mom:  You're directly disobeying what I'm telling you to do.  There is no respect in that!

Johnny:  Actually, Mom, though it may seem like I'm disobeying you, I'm actually obeying you.

Mom:  And how, exactly, do you make that out?

Johnny:  Well, a few days ago, if you recall, we were talking about how our days were going to be structured this summer, and you said that you were going to allow me to go outside each day to play after lunch.  Well, I just finished lunch, so, according to what you said before, I should be allowed to go outside and play now.  Your present command is in contradiction with your previous statement.  Since they can't both be correct, I have to decide which one I ought to follow.  Upon reflection, I have decided that your previous statement makes more sense, and so I have chosen to follow that in preference to your current command.  So, although I am technically disobeying your current command, I'm actually doing it out of obedience to you.

Mom:  But my previous statement doesn't contradict my current command!  I didn't mean that you would always be allowed to go outside and play after lunch in every possible set of circumstances.  I was stating my general intention, but one which could admit of exceptions.  Today, for example, your room is messier than usual, because we didn't have time to clean it this morning, so you need to clean it up now before you go outside to play.

Johnny:  Mom, that may be your interpretation of your previous statement, but I disagree with that interpretation.  You never said that you were intending merely a general policy that would admit of exceptions.  You simply said that you were planning to let me go outside to play after lunch each day.  You didn't use any mitigating language, like the word sometimes, nor did you state any exceptions.  So I have to insist that you are misinterpreting your previous statement, and your current command does indeed contradict that statement.  Now, you have also said before that you are capable of being wrong, and that I always ought to do what is right.  Well, if you are capable of being wrong, then you are capable of being wrong about how you understand the meaning of your previous statement, and about what I ought to do today.  So, in honor of your command to me to always do what is right, I must, respectfully, disobey your command to clean my room.

Mom:  What?!  You can't say I've misinterpreted my own statement!  It was my statement!  I said it!  I'm the one who gets to interpret what it meant!

Johnny:  But you're ignoring what I just pointed out, that you have said you can be wrong sometimes.  So I have to consider the possibility that you might be wrong in your interpretation of your previous statement.  I have to consider your contradictory statements and see which of them makes more sense, and then I have to go with what I think is right--as you have always taught me to do.  So my disobedience to you is actually my obedient tribute to your authority.

Mom:  This is ridiculous!  Johnny, all your bluster and pretense of obedience can't obscure the fact that you are sitting here, right now, explicitly refusing to obey what I'm telling you to do!  You can't pretend that you respect my authority when you are blatantly defying it!  Your pretense of obeying me is based on a twisting of things that I have said in the past, taking my own words out of the context of my own interpretation and giving them your own interpretation instead and then using them to tell me I mean something different from what I'm clearly and plainly telling you I mean!  But you don't get to give the definitive interpretation of my statements.  I do!  They are my statements, after all!  You're not obeying me; you're obeying nobody but yourself.  You're ignoring your real mother and creating a fake, imaginary mother in your head who agrees with what you think you should do, and then using your submission to this imaginary mother as the basis for your claim that you are obeying your real mother!  Yes, I made a general statement before, but now I have clarified further what I meant by it as a new situation has arisen.  Yes, I've said in the past that I can be wrong sometimes, but that doesn't give you a license to take any statement of mine you wish, declare that it could be wrong, and so decide to ignore it unless it agrees with what you already have decided to do.  I did not intend to give you that license when I made the general comment that sometimes I can be wrong.  Again, you are taking my words, ignoring my own stated meaning of them, giving them your own interpretation, and then using them to defy my authority while claiming to be submitting to it.  But your defiance is not removed simply because you try to obscure it with a barrage of convoluted and illogical reasoning and cover it with the veneer of the language of obedience.  I'm glad we're catching this behavior now!  I can't imagine what would happen if you tried to use reasoning like this with some future employer!

Johnny:  Mom, you've always taught me to think for myself.  Now you're asking me to stop thinking and just blindly follow whatever you say?

Mom:  It is not an abandonment of critical thinking to recognize that a person has the right to interpret their own statements, and that a person who has authority has the right to explain their own commands, and even to command different things at different times depending on the circumstances.  Look, Johnny, I'm not asking you to ignore what your reason is telling you.  But you have no basis in reason to draw the conclusion that your interpretations of my previous statements are correct and mine are wrong.  Obviously, the fact that they are my statements, combined with the fact that I have authority over you as your mother, implies that you ought to defer to my own reading of my own words.  So unless you can prove that I have blatantly contradicted myself, or that I am confused and don't really mean what I am saying, you can't jump to that conclusion.  You can't dismiss my own perfectly plausible account of the meaning of my own statements in favor of your own interpretations without much weightier justification than simply pointing out ways my words, by themselves, without the context of my own explanatory interpretations, might be understood to mean something else.  You would not want anyone to interpret your statements in that way, and so you shouldn't do it to anyone else either, and you especially should not be doing it to your mother!

For more, see here and here.

The Implicit Protestantism of Catholic Dissent

The category of Catholic dissenters includes strange companions.  There are liberals who dissent from certain Church teachings they regard as inimical to liberal values, such as teachings regarding contraception or homosexuality.  And on the conservative side we have the hyper-traditionalists, like the Society of St. Pius X, who dissent from certain Church teachings, like Vatican II's doctrine of "religious freedom" or the current inadmissibility of the death penalty, on the grounds that they don't fit with their own views of what "historic Catholic teaching" demands.  What unites the hyper-traditionalists and at least the more moderate of the liberal dissenters is that both hold a view of the authority of the Catholic Church that differs from the view of the Catholic Church herself.  The Church claims that all her teaching is divinely guided and protected from error and that Catholics are obligated to submit with mind and will to all official Church teaching.  The dissenters, however, hold that only some Church teaching is protected from error.  They hold that when the Church teaches definitively--such as when the Pope makes an ex cathedra statement or an Ecumenical Council issues solemn anathemas--her teaching is protected from error, but that all her less-definitive teaching is subject to error, can lead people astray and contradict the faith we ought to hold, and must sometimes be rejected and resisted by Catholics who want to be faithful to the "Tradition of the Church" (as they themselves, rather than the Church, define the content of that "Tradition").

None of these people would think of themselves as Protestants.  And yet there is no logical barrier between their epistemology and the epistemology of Protestants.  Perhaps a good way to bring this out is through a fictional dialogue between a Catholic dissenter and a Protestant.  So below you will find an imaginary conversation between Herbert, a Catholic hyper-traditionalist, and Linus, a Reformed Protestant.

Herbert:  Hey Linus!  Did you get the letter I sent you the other day?

Linus:  You mean the one with the pamphlets about the Catholic Church and why I should join it?

Herbert:  Yup, that's the one!

Linus:  Yeah, I got it.  I've been meaning to get back to you about it.  Have you got time for a conversation now?

Herbert: Sure!  So what did you think of the arguments?

Linus:  Well, I'm not convinced.  I'm kind of alarmed by some of the Catholic teachings.  For example, you guys believe in all kinds of unbiblical things, like praying to saints and to Mary, purgatory, the papacy, images of Christ, etc.  We don't find any of these things in the Word of God.  And some of them blatantly contradict the Word of God.  So how can we believe in them?

Herbert:  You're assuming the doctrine of Sola Scriptura--that the Bible alone is our infallible authority.  But the Catholic Church holds that authority is a three-legged stool involving Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.  Scripture is the inspired Word of God, but the Word of God has also been passed down infallibly in the Church's Tradition.  And God has promised his guidance to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church--the Pope and the college of bishops united to the Pope--so that they are protected from error in interpreting God's revelation.  So it's kind of question-begging of you to declare things like prayers to the saints off limits simply because they aren't found in the Bible or don't match your own interpretation of the Bible.  You are assuming that Sola Scriptura is the right way to interpret Scripture.  But how do you know it's the right way?  The historic Church, before the Reformation, didn't hold to Sola Scriptura but rather followed the view the Catholic Church has always held and still holds today.

Linus:  Yes, I know that's the Catholic view.  I find that view kind of alarming.

Herbert:  Why?

Linus:  You seem to be putting an awful lot of trust in men.  Catholic leaders are only human, after all.  Even the Pope is only human.  He can make mistakes.  How can you put implicit trust in any mere human being?

Herbert:  Sure, Church leaders are human beings, but they are guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from error.  The writers of Scripture were mere human beings as well, and yet you trust the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God.

Linus:  Yes, I see your point.  But the Catholic Church has contradicted itself in its teachings over the years, so how can we trust it implicitly?  For example, the Church used to be against the death penalty, but now Pope Francis has taught that the death penalty is wrong.

Herbert:  Not everything the Pope or the bishops say is correct.  Some teaching is infallible, but some teaching is fallible.

Linus:  Are you saying that you think Pope Francis is wrong about the death penalty?

Herbert:  Yes, I think he is wrong.  His new teaching contradicts what the Church has believed for thousands of years.

Linus:  Wow, I didn't expect you to say that!  But I'm confused.  Isn't Pope Francis's teaching on the death penalty official Church teaching?  Didn't he even put it into the Catechism of the Catholic Church?  Wait a minute.  Let me look it up. . . .  Ah yes, here it is.  Pope Francis amended the Catechism to include his new teaching.  Here is the new #2267:

2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. 

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. 

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.  (Catechism of the Catholic Church, section #2267, revised version)

It even says "the Church teaches"!  Sounds like official Church teaching to me.  And aren't Catholics bound to accept official Church teaching?

Herbert:  Well, yes, to an extent.  For example, #752 in the Code of Canon Law says this:

Can. 752 Although not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act; therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.  (Catholic Church, Code of Canon Law, Canon 752, embedded links removed, found here on the Vatican website)

Linus:  OK, then how can you justify disagreeing with Pope Francis's new teaching on the death penalty?

Herbert:  We are to submit with mind and will to the non-infallible teachings of the Popes and bishops, but that doesn't mean we just accept everything they say blindly.  Non-infallible teachings, as you can see by the very word non-infallible, can be wrong.  Since they can be wrong, we have to use discernment and test them when they come out.  We should certainly defer to them and accept them whenever we can, but, if they contradict what we know to be the truth, or if they contradict previous definitive Catholic teaching, we have an obligation to refuse to accept them.  We must put faithfulness to Catholic Tradition above blind obedience to any human authority.

Linus:  So Popes and bishops can err.  Can councils err too?

Herbert:  Local councils can err.  And even Ecumenical Councils can err when they are not teaching infallibly.  For example, the Second Vatican Council was an Ecumenical Council, but it deliberately avoided teaching anything definitive or infallible, and so its teaching is not absolutely guaranteed to have gotten everything right.  We should certainly defer to it, but we must not accept all of it blindly.  I think Vatican II did a lot of good things and taught some important truths.  But it might be argued that it planted some seeds that have led to some problematic fruit.

Linus:  I recall reading about some organization--the Society of St. Pius the something or other, I think, I can't remember the exact name--they rejected some of the teachings of the Church after Vatican II, and didn't they get into trouble over it?

Herbert:  Yes, and I'm not saying I agree with everything the Society of St. Pius X--that's the society you're talking about--says.  But you're right that Pope Paul VI and other Popes have chastised the SSPX for some of its refusals to accept certain modern Church teachings.  What I'm saying is that, even if we have to get chastised by the Pope or the bishops, it is better to have that happen than to betray the traditional teachings of the faith when the Pope or the bishops are teaching error.  We have to say with the apostles, "We must obey God rather than men."

Linus:  Hmm . . .

Herbert:  What is it?

Linus:  Well, I'm just trying to understand your position.  It doesn't sound all that different from mine as a Protestant.  I mean, the Protestant Reformation started out as a movement within the Catholic Church.  The Reformers were trying to recover teachings of the Word of God the Church of the sixteenth century had obscured or contradicted.  They believed in deferring to the authority of the Church and doing everything they could to maintain unity, but they also recognized that the leaders of the Church were human and could err, and that they could not be trusted in blindly.  In the end, if there was conflict, the Reformers knew that they had to go with the Word of God over the teachings of men, even if those men were leaders in the Church.  Isn't that precisely what you're saying as well?

Herbert:  No, no, it's completely different.  The Protestants rejected the teaching of the Church as authoritative.  They put their trust instead only in their own private interpretations of Scripture.

Linus:  But isn't that what you're saying as well?  You've said that you can't just blindly trust in the Church.  Sometimes the Popes and the bishops can be wrong, and when that happens, you have to go with God's Word over against what the human leaders of the Church are saying.  That's all the Protestants were saying as well.  They didn't deny that one should defer to the Church, should put a lot of stock in what the teachers of the Church are saying, etc.  They only held that one cannot trust blindly or implicitly the Church's human teachers, and that that might mean sometimes that there is a duty to resist them to uphold the Word of God.

Herbert:  But we don't believe in Sola Scriptura--that the Bible alone is infallible.  We believe that the Tradition of the Church is infallible as well.

Linus:  Where, exactly, do we find the Tradition of the Church?

Herbert:  In the teachings and practices the Church has accepted through the centuries.

Linus:  But you've said that the teachers of the Church can be wrong.  I assume you would accept that the laypeople in the Church can be wrong as well.

Herbert:  Of course.

Linus:  Well then, how do you know the Tradition of the Church is reliable, if it's just what the teachers of the Church teach and what the laypeople believe and practice?  If the teachers can be wrong, then their teachings can be wrong.  If Tradition is nothing more than "the teachings of the Church", then it can be wrong.

Herbert:  Tradition is more than just the teachings of the teachers of the Church.  It's the teaching of the apostles handed down through history by the Church.

Linus:  But if the teachers can make mistakes and teach errors, how do we know they passed down the teaching of the apostles correctly?  For example, you say, I think, that the apostles taught that people should be anointed with oil at baptism, even though there's nothing about this in the New Testament.  So you believe this was mandated by the apostles simply because the early teachers of the Church said it was.  Right?

Herbert:  Right.

Linus:  But, as you've said, the teachers of the Church can be wrong.  So how do you know that it isn't the case that it became a popular belief early on among the teachers of the Church that the apostles had mandated oil in baptism, and yet this popular belief is in fact incorrect, because the apostles mandated no such thing?  After all, I think the early teachers of the Church said some odd things sometimes.  Didn't Tertullian, for example, who was a very early Church teacher, teach that it was an apostolic tradition that people shouldn't take a bath for a week after being baptized?  You don't think that was a real tradition from the apostles, do you?  And the Fathers disagreed about alleged traditions.  There was some disagreement on when to celebrate Easter, as I recall, with some claiming an apostolic tradition one way and some claiming one another way.

Also, it seems to me that some of your traditions are relatively newer and weren't held in the early Church, like the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception--the idea that Mary was kept free from original sin at conception.  That wasn't held by everyone in the early Church, was it?  So then, how do you know it is true, if you have it only on the authority of Church teachers who can err?

Herbert:  No, no, no!  The problem with your reasoning is that you are failing to keep in mind a crucial distinction in Catholic teaching--the distinction between infallible and fallible teachings.  As I said before, some of the teaching of the Pope and the bishops is fallible, but not all of it is fallible.  Some of it is infallible.  When the Pope or the entire college of bishops in union with the Pope give a solemn, definitive judgment on some matter of faith or morals, for example, that teaching is infallible.  You've just mentioned an example of this--the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  That doctrine was declared to be a dogma of the Church in an infallible papal pronouncement in 1854.

Linus:  How can you tell when something is taught infallibly?

Herbert:  The Church has laid out very clearly the conditions under which infallibility operates.  You can see this discussed, for example, in the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ from Vatican I, or Lumen Gentium #25 from the Second Vatican Council.  The discussion of this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be found in #888-892.

Linus:  OK, I see that the leaders of the Catholic Church have taught this.  But how do we know they were right?

Herbert:  About what?

Linus:  About the Pope and the bishops sometimes being infallible, and how that infallibility works.

Herbert:  (blank stare)

Linus:  Herbert?

Herbert:  Well, we know they were right, because they were speaking infallibly.

Linus:  But you said earlier that Vatican II was not infallible, and you also said you disagreed with a part of the Catechism, the new part on the death penalty, so that can't be infallible either.

Herbert:  Well, Vatican I was infallible.

Linus:  How do you know?

Herbert:  Well, it was an Ecumenical Council.

Linus:  How do you know that Ecumenical Councils are infallible?

Herbert:  The Church has always held them to be infallible--but only when they are issuing solemn, definitive judgments.

Linus:  Who's "the Church"?

Herbert:  All the people, especially the Popes and the bishops.

Linus:  And an Ecumenical Council is just a body of the Pope and bishops working together, right?  I mean, there's nobody else there, is there, humanly speaking?

Herbert:  Yes, that's right.

Linus:  So let me get this straight.  You are telling me that we know that Ecumenical Councils--that is, gatherings of the Pope and all the bishops--are infallible because the Popes and the bishops have said that they are?

Herbert:  Um, yes.

Linus:  But you've already told me the Pope and the bishops can be wrong.

Herbert:  But only when they aren't speaking infallibly.

Linus:  Which is just to say that the Pope and the bishops can be wrong, except when they can't be.  And we know when they can't be wrong, because they tell us?

Herbert:  Um, yes.

Linus:  Well, this seems like sort of an obvious question, but if the Popes and the bishops can be wrong sometimes, how do we know they weren't wrong when they told us that they can't be wrong sometimes?  I mean, Pope Francis has told us that we should believe the death penalty to be inadmissible.  But you say he's wrong, and that you should resist him on this because "we must obey God rather than men."  But then you turn around and tell me that we have to believe Pope Pius IX when he said in 1854 that the Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the faith.  You will say that this is different, because he was speaking infallibly.  Well, how do we know?  Perhaps he thought and claimed to be speaking infallibly, but he was wrong.  If Popes can be wrong, how do you know he was right?

Consider an analogy:  What if I told you that 2+2=5.  I would be wrong, right?

Herbert:  Yes.

Linus:  Well, suppose that after I told you that, I then told you that I am sometimes infallible, but not always.  After about five minutes, my eyes start to go wide, and I say to you, "Hey now, you better listen up!  I'm about to say something infallible!"  And then I say, "There is definitely life on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri."  Are you going to believe me?

Herbert:  Well, no.

Linus:  Why not?

Herbert:  Well, for one thing, because I have no reason to think you are infallible.

Linus:  Is that all?

Herbert:  Well . . . You just told me that 2+2=5, which I know is wrong.  So obviously you're not completely reliable.  And if I can't trust you in all that you say, how can I know I can trust you just because you say that some particular statement of yours is absolutely trustworthy and infallible?

Linus:  Exactly.  You see my point?

Herbert:  I suppose . . .

Linus:  You obviously don't think the Pope and the bishops are entirely reliable.  You think they can lead you into error, and sometimes it is your job to resist them and stand up for the truth in opposition to them.  They are not reliable guides.  You have to test what they say so as not to be led into errors by them--even dangerous errors.  I've heard that some Catholics think that Pope Francis's teaching is so dangerous, it's like a spiritual poison.  It's a betrayal of the gospel, and can even lead people to hell.  Do you think that?

Herbert:  Well, yes, to a degree.  I mean, Pope Francis has taught that Atheists can be saved, and that people who are in adultery can be received into communion.  He's even promoted idolatry, with that Pachamama statue at the Vatican last year.  He's watered down the gospel.  Actually, the whole Church since Vatican II has had some serious problems.  The Mass has been watered down and made irreverent; inappropriate, irreverent practices like communion in the hand have been allowed; prayer has been promoted between Catholics and members of false religions; and many other things.  Although there has been a lot of good in the Church since Vatican II, there has been a lot of evil as well, as our leaders seem more and more to be telling us to turn away from the traditions and practices that the Church has always found to be so very important for the health of the people of God.

Linus:  Well, you're not going to get any argument from me.  I totally agree.  Except that I think you're a bit late to the game.  The Church has had corruption for a lot longer than merely since Vatican II.  The pre-Vatican II Church had mixed in corruptions with the faith as well.  At Vatican I, the infallibility of the Pope was made a dogma of the Church, even though it hadn't been before.  A bunch of Catholics (the "Old Catholics", as they called themselves) refused to accept Vatican I for precisely that reason--they saw that they needed to stand up for the authentic, historic teachings of the faith against the erroneous, novel teachings of men.  And Vatican I wasn't the beginning of the corruption either.  There had been corruption before.  For example, during the Middle Ages, the Church stopped giving the cup at communion to the laity, even though Jesus plainly said "Drink ye all of it" (Matthew 26:27, etc.).  Lots of false doctrines have been introduced into the Church over the centuries, like Transubstantiation, or praying to the saints, or devotion to Mary.  None of this is in the Bible.  These are teachings of men.  That's what the Protestant Reformation was all about.  We love the Church.  We love the Word of God.  We love the true, historic teachings of the faith.  But we refuse to give implicit trust to anything other than the Word of God.  We refuse to give blind obedience to human teachers who are capable of error.  The Protestant Reformers knew that they must obey God rather than men, and so they refused to accept the corruptions that had been introduced into the Church over the centuries, basing their stand firmly on the Word of God alone.  It sounds like you should join us, Herbert, since you seem to fundamentally agree with us that the Pope and the bishops, and councils, can err and even lead the faithful terribly astray.

Herbert:  No!  I am not a Protestant!  I accept the traditional teachings of the Church, like praying to the saints!

Linus:  Why do you accept praying to saints, Herbert?  Praying to saints is not in the Bible.  The Word of God says nothing about it.  It's a tradition of men.  The Bible teaches us to pray to God alone.  That's the only thing we see in the Bible.

Herbert:  The Church has taught this doctrine for centuries!

Linus:  Who cares how long they've taught it?  Do errors become true simply because they've been taught for a long time?

Herbert:  But this is a central teaching of the Catholic faith!  To reject it is heresy!

Linus: Says who?  You just mean that you believe it because the Popes and bishops have told you so.  But, as you've acknowledged, it's Popes and bishops who have sold out the Church in recent times.  Why trust Popes and bishops?  Sure, there have been good Popes and bishops, but even good people who are fallible can be wrong and should not be trusted implicitly.  You're quite right to want to avoid blind belief in human teachers.  So follow through on that and stop believing in things like praying to saints just because human teachers told you to do so.

Herbert:  Well, I think I've had enough of this conversation for now.

Linus:  There's certainly a lot to think about.  Well, until next time, Herbert!  I'll be praying for you, praying that you keep going on the path you're on until you shed not just some but all of these human traditions and teachings and rest in the Word of God alone.

Since Linus has raised some important questions regarding how Catholics can justify their trust in the authority of the Church, I would refer you here, here, and here for further discussion and defense of this.  What I have tried to do here is to point out that, once the Catholic dissenter has departed from Catholic teaching and admitted that the Magisterium can err, he has logically severed his connection to the Catholic epistemology which points towards trust in the Church and her Tradition.  He no longer has access to this point of view, and so, if he will be logical, he must move away towards Protestantism or some other non-Catholic epistemology.  He has no basis in principle to object to what the Protestant Reformers did when they opposed the Church and her teaching in the name of their own private interpretations of Scripture.  What else could they do, since they had accepted that the Church and her teachings could err?  They could no longer trust the Church implicitly, and the only alternative to that is to test everything the Church teaches in the light of some higher standard, some standard that the tester has decided is more authoritative.