I contend that Catholic teachings are abundantly clear, as to what the faithful Catholic is required to believe or disbelieve. All such teachings are plainly laid out, especially now in the Catechism. Virtually all the important theological issues have already been worked through and worked out by minds far greater than ours, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to work that hard to understand. We simply look it up and believe it, on the authority of the Church. The only things that are up in the air are matters of the utmost mystery, that humans can barely understand at all, such as the internal Catholic predestination debate. But that has no bearing on practical, day-to-day Catholic living anyway.
It’s not necessary to interpret infallibly; it is necessary only to know and believe by faith, based on many cumulative, converging evidences, that there is an infallible authority. One simply accepts that. It’s not a game of philosophy, but of religious faith, grounded in reason and the Bible and historical precedent.
The teachings are authoritative, if they come down to us from papal encyclicals, ecumenical councils, or the Catechism. All the fine-tuning and hair-splitting distinctions are for scholars and theologians and apologists to have fun arguing about; that’s what they get paid to do. But that has little relevance for Joe Q. Catholic.
The Protestant “infallibility regress” argument in apologetics states that the individual Catholic still needs to interpret even an infallible decree. Therefore, he is in no better epistemological position than the Protestant, because he is not an infallible interpreter, and whether decrees are in fact infallible does not overcome the problem (so we’re told).
But this approach fails, because Christianity is not philosophy. One cannot achieve airtight, mathematical certainty in matters of faith. The Catholic authority structure is quite sufficient for us, as it was for the apostles and Fathers.
It’s always easy to take swipes at the Big Red Barn of Catholicism. But the question is: What is the better alternative? Then, when we see how Protestants try to resolve authority problems, it gets truly self-defeating and absurd. That’s not true of Catholicism. It’s not philosophically airtight, but very few things are. Still, our system of theology and ecclesiology doesn’t break down and become logically self-defeating, as all forms of Protestantism do, the more they are scrutinized.
The Catholic is not advocating absolute philosophical certainty (a thing that is generally rare as it is), but rather, the certitude of faith, based on many converging evidences of many sorts.
I deny that it is difficult to determine what Catholics believe and must believe. Anyone who can read and exercise rudimentary logic can understand what the Church teaches, from the Catechism. It’s easy for critics to talk in generalities and try to cast doubt on everything, just as agnostics do with Christianity and the Bible. But unless they get down to particulars and show how the Catholic system fails in those examples and, moreover, demonstrate that they are important enough examples to be relevant to a debate about whether Catholicism or Protestantism has a more coherent and workable rule of faith and authority structure, they haven’t accomplished anything.
One can play philosophical skeptic all day long; it’s a fun game, but irrelevant to the discussion, since Christianity (in any form — not just Catholic) is not a mere philosophy or rationalistic exercise. It is a religious faith and requires a reasoned (not irrational) faith. Faith is not mathematical demonstration.
The premises of the “infallibility regress” argument are absurd to begin with, because it has to assume the untruth (Christianity is mere philosophy and operates totally on that plane where it comes to determination of true doctrine) even to make the argument. Whether the one who argues in this way is aware of it or not, that’s what the premise amounts to. I deny the premise, and I think that anyone who would only examine it more closely would also deny it.
All anyone has to do to understand Catholicism is know how to read and have the faith and willingness to accept what the Catechism proclaims. I think a lack of faith is really the bottom line with Protestants who reject Catholic claims. They don’t have enough faith to believe that God could and does protect a Church, which is a human institution, and Christian apostolic doctrine. They have the faith to believe in the higher, more involved gift of the inspiration of human sinners (Scripture) but not the lesser and far more limited gift of infallibility of human sinners (a pope and ecumenical councils and apostolic succession and sacred tradition). Even that makes no sense. They have great faith in one instance that requires more faith and have none (and outright skepticism) where less faith is required.
We aren’t making the individual the final arbiter of true doctrine, as Protestants do. To posit and believe by faith in an infallible Church makes perfect sense, because Christians already believe in an inspired Scripture, and that Scripture has much indication of an infallible Church. That is consistent.
But to fall back on a mere noninfallible individual believer, who supposedly will figure all this stuff out, or else have to operate in a sort of limbo or agnostic or uncertain state in
their Christian life, is not only absurd and perfectly implausible in the abstract, but chaotic in actual practice, as history has amply shown.
The fact remains that there is no chaos with regard to Catholic doctrine, for those willing to accept what the Church has clearly proclaimed, whereas there is plenty within Protestantism. The “infallibility regress” game falls flat every time, when properly scrutinized. And it is very laborious and time-consuming. Disproving error is always a lot harder than assertion of error.
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