Every exercise of infallibility is brought out into act by an intense and varied operation of the Reason, both as its ally and as its opponent, and provokes again, when it has done its work, a reaction of Reason against it.... Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment ... It is a vast assemblage of human beings with willful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the Beauty and the Majesty of a Superhuman Power ... but ... brought together as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining, and moulding, by an incessant, noisy process, of the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes.

—John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua,
[1864] (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 194.

This explanation, in its essence, moreover, is the best key to reality itself. In order that this creed remains the same and that it be taught in different times, languages, and places, there exists within Christianity’s very founding structure an authority whose central function it is that this creed remain itself in all its official explanations of itself. It is not empowered to add to, change, totally redefine or subvert what is handed down. Chesterton recognizes, moreover, that the "present seat of authority for proclaiming that creed" is itself a fascinating and obviously very useful question. A mistake about the location of this authority certainly would have large and lasting consequences about the validity and nature of the authority itself.

Chesterton has one more off-handed yet most insightful reference in Orthodoxy that relates to this topic of the importance of religious authority. In the chapter entitled, "The Suicide of Thought," Chesterton re marks that, at one level, the whole world depends on a slim strand of will. There would be no next generation, for example, if everyone chose not to beget or chose to jump into the sea. Likewise, a whole generation could cease to think if it began to doubt the capacity of intellect to know things, began to doubt that the mind is governed by reality and capable of knowing it. At first sight, we might not think that this situation, which has in many ways come to pass in our time, is related to the question of the need for religious authority or its present location. Yet it is striking that almost a hundred years after Chesterton wrote, it is the Pope who writes Veritatis splendor, a general, counter-cultural statement on precisely the need for truth and how it relates to reality and thus to the way we live.

"The peril is," Chesterton writes, "that the human intellect is free to destroy itself... It is idle always to talk of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason itself is a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."1 We cannot find anything clearer than this statement that "reason itself is a matter of faith." It shows that our thoughts relate to reality. We consistently act as if they do. If we did not assume this relationship, we would be simply paralyzed. We would act as if nothing mattered but our thoughts. Sooner or later even the skeptic must ask himself why anything follows from anything else, "even observation and deduction." Once we begin to doubt our capacity to know anything outside of our minds, we have no check on our minds. Reality be comes merely what we think with no criterion by which to decide whether what we think is true or not.

It is precisely this realization that we can deny that our mind has any relation to reality that gets religious authority into philosophy as a kind of check on philosophy’s own concept of itself. "There is a thought that stops all thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed." As always, Chester ton has an uncanny way of seeing the truth in things in a manner the very opposite from what we are usually told about them. creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defense of reason."

The scope of religious authority is not directly reason, except when it is a question of reason’s denying the very instrument of reason. Without the validity of reason, faith cannot be itself. And the religion that does not attend to mind, in this crucial area, will end up, like mind, concocting wild and strange pictures of man and the world. Chesterton thus implies that that religious authority is the true religious authority that, as a matter of fact, recognizes the crucial importance of the mind and its relation to reality, to what is. Needless to say, this is a very strict and perceptive criterion.

Infallibility, in Newman’s sense, to recall the beginning passage, can and should deal with the reasons that intellect brings against revelation. What an infallible authority cannot deal with is the suicide of reason, the denial that reason can know anything true of reality. Revelation is directed to reason and would have nothing to which to direct itself if its very instrument were declared to be unreliable. Reason also sees, as does religious authority, that the ultimate and only sure escape of reason from the fact of revelation is when reason, as a kind of last resort, denies itself, denies the validity of its own functioning, precisely in order not to have to admit anything of revelation.

"Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity," Chesterton acutely observed, "end by flinging away every freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church" (139). Rather than admit that revelation makes reason more reasonable, and therefore admit that there is something to it, however it is to be explained, there will be men who see that they must deny the very faculty of reason, to deny its capacity to function as it is made to do. Thus, what comes to be hated most in religious authority is not its affirmation of supernatural or revelational principles, but its clear defense of reason on reason’s own grounds, including especially in the area of ethics and how we ought to live.

Recently, I read two novels that dealt in one way or another with the papacy, with what Catholics take to be "the present location of religious authority." The first was Philip Trower’s A Matter of State (Ignatius, 1998). This novel contains an account of the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 by Pope Clement XIII, an act that is generally considered to be unfair and the result of arbitrary political pressure on the papacy. The other novel was Edward R. F. Sheridan’s Cardinal Galsworthy (Penguin, 1997), which was about the election of the pope to follow John Paul II and was itself a kind of history of the post-Reformation and contemporary papacy.

Moreover, I had written an essay in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, entitled, "Why Do Good Popes Cause More Difficulty than Bad Popes?" (May, 1996). This essay discussed the ironical praise that Machiavelli heaped on Alexander VI, by most accounts the worst pope, over against the often bitter criticism that John Paul II often receives precisely for doing all the right things in ruling and inspiring the Church, for being, in other words, the best pope. In posing the question about good popes and bad popes in that way, I intimated something of John the Apostle’s warning that if the world likes us too much, there is probably something wrong with us. If it hates us, it hated Christ also.

Looking back over the history of the papacy, we can say, however, that the Church during the past two hundred years has in fact had rather good, often excellent, men occupying the office of the papacy. Without denying their differences and varied energies, without affirming that they made no mistakes or showed no weaknesses, we have not recently seen either a really bad pope or a really bad man as pope. Though we are still too close in his time to make a long-term evaluation, I think indeed that John Paul II, whatever his few shortcomings, may well be appreciated as the greatest of all the historical popes. The Popes of the Twentieth Century — Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II — by any standard of comparison with Kings or Presidents, or other rulers or leaders in this century, have been fine and outstanding men. We can say, it strikes me, that religion has generally done a better job at finding a series of good leaders than any other political or cultural institution.

We often hear talk of how historians will "rate" this or that American president, comparing them all, insofar as this can be reasonably done, with one another, their accomplishments and failures. Thus, we find Lincoln, or Jefferson, or Washington, or less clearly Franklin Roosevelt among the best, Grant, Harding, perhaps Andrew Johnson among the lesser lights. I would not presume to "rate" the two hundred and eighty popes on such a scale, but clearly we have had some very great popes but, if we go back in history, some very unsatisfactory ones also. Evidently, the promise to Peter that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church did not necessarily mean that the successive popes would always or even for the most part be either geniuses, saints, or talented administrators. Not a few of them have been quite open sinners, others terrible, venal rulers. There is no reason to think, therefore, in spite of our recent record, that we cannot have some modern version of Julius II, generally given quite a low rating, to clear our minds.

Who knows, after all, whether we might not have been living in very fortunate times with regard to the papacy? Perhaps for one reason or another, the next century may produce a series of immoral men as popes, or ideologues who succeed in barely holding the central line, who confuse many about the meaning of Catholicism? We are told, are we not, that in the end time, even the elect will be confused? We are told that faith can weaken so that only a few faithful remain among us.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, when asked about whether he was optimistic about the inner-worldly future of man: "Actually, I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catho lic, so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat — though it contains (and in legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some examples or glimpses of final victory."2 How seldomly do we hear such sobering and realistic words from religion in these days, however true their warning to us may be. We, inheritors of theories of necessary progress, want to correlate worldly success and religion in such a way that the latter’s main contribution is the success of the former. But faith does not lend itself so easily to this assumption. Indeed it suggests that the worst times religiously may well occur during the best times politically or economically, that it is more difficult to be faithful during prosperity than during poverty.

Actually, I was thinking of these things because of a letter I received from a young man in California, an ex-student of mine, now completing law school, a man seriously concerned about the Church and the integrity of the faith in the world in which he lives. This is what, in all frankness, he wrote to me:

Let me tell you about a question that I ponder occasionally. What happens when some Cardinal, ... who is more concerned with politics than the Faith, at some point becomes the Pope? Where does one go? What does one do then if the person’s tenure is outwardly destructive? Merely a hypothetical? Something which one cannot answer until the situation arises? An event occurring with God’s ap proval and perhaps for some purpose?

I suppose that it can be argued that Popes are human, that the Church has undergone tremendous struggles in its past, yet true Faith has survived. If faced with such a challenge in the future, it would again preserve. Under this scenario, if one remains true to the faith (irrespective of what direction the Pope steers the Church?), then one cannot go wrong? But what happens if the Pope seems to go wrong? What happens when the Pope discourages or forbids important elements of the faith? What does one follow? This seems to me, even if hypothetical, an essential question for Catholics thinking about what the Church as a hierarchical institution means and what is its nexus with the Truth.

If one is asked such a question, or such a series of questions, obviously sincerely meant, what does one say? Belloc remarked someplace that what worries us most as we get older is the human side of the supernatural Church. But this was spoken by a man of faith who did not expect the men of authority in the faith always to be perfect.

We know, of course, that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were times in which we had two or three rival popes. We know that the Chinese government today has set up a National Church that cannot freely communicate with Rome or allow Roman appointment of bishops. And of course, there is the whole Reformation drama with its rejection of Papal authority and the Orthodox tradition which does not acknowledge it as Rome does. John Paul II, in Ut Unum Sint, has made every effort to inaugurate steps to repair these still scandalous divisions within the Church. But these situations are, for the most part, ones in which dissenters of this or that element in the Corpus of Catholic teaching have separated themselves to set up different rites or sects or communities that define their own teachings and how they differ from the Roman center.

What is more peculiar since Vatican II is that those who dissent from the Church do not ordinarily leave it to set up their own organizations. Moreover, Rome is rather reluctant to exercise its authority to excommunicate any members, except in a very few notorious cases. One of the consequences of a more tolerant or pastoral exercise of ecclesiastical authority has been the resultant confusion in which very many ideas and practices remain within the Church without being explicitly identified or explained as dangerous to the faith itself. No doubt, the publication of the General Catechism of the Catholic Church, as well as Veritatis splendor and Evangelium Vitae, were designed in part to counter these confusing tendencies within the Church that is supposed to contain an authority that confronts precisely teachings and practices that are out of touch with the essentials of the Creed. The most serious difficulties in the Church, moreover, arise when certain bishops or hierarchies have gradually or suddenly deviated from the articles of faith, often in the very name of faith. Indeed, the fact of heretical bishops at certain points in history was one of the main reasons that Newman gave for his conversion to Catholicism.

The fact is, however, that the question of the "heretical pope," the question that my young friend asked me, was treated to some extent by the great post-Refor mation theologians — Bellarmine, Cajetan, Suarez, John of St. Thomas, and others. The young manletter, as I thought of it, recalled something I had read years ago in Yves Simon’s The Philosophy of Democratic Government, in which, in order to make clear the nature of authority in democratic and republican governments, Simon had to discuss the difference between the theory of rule in the papacy and the theory in civil governments.3 All of this reflection on papal power was itself written against the modern — that is 15th-18th centuries — notion of the divine right of kings, that was developed in France, England, and Austria precisely to prevent any democratic claim of right to a part in deciding who exercises civil power. Also at issue was the question of whether a general council of the Church was over the pope and on what authority as had been claimed at the Council of Constance. Similar ideas about "democratizing" the structure of the Church often occur in liberal Catholic circles today.

Cajetan held that the council was not superior to the pope. But in asking the hypothetical question about a heretical pope, Cajetan cited the opinion that a pope falling into heresy automatically ceases to be pope, so that he does not need to be deposed, just some official sanctioning is needed of the fact that he is deposed. Cajetan, however, thought that a heretical pope was still pope and had to be deposed, just like a heretical bishop. Cajetan’s problem was how find a way to depose a pope without granting this power to a general council, a power he denied to it.

No power on earth is superior to the pope in his office, but, Cajetan thought, there was some instrument that could meet the situation. There are three elements, the papal power, the man (Peter), and the conjunction of the office and the man. The papal power came from God, the man from his parents, and the conjunction of the two from man. This conjunction takes place by election of the cardinals and is unique in the world. The power to depose does not deal with papal power but merely with the uniting of the man, now heretical, by the hypothesis, and the papal power. In this case, man merely "designates" the holder of the power, but does not constitute it. A king, on the contrary, does not have his power constituted directly by God as in the case of the pope, so the political and ecclesiastical cases are different. The pope is a vicegerent of Christ, not of the people.

Bellarmine and Suarez thought rather that a pope who clearly embraced an heretical doctrine would be ipso facto deposed. No process would be needed. There was also some discussion at this time about whether the pope as a private man as opposed to his official statements could fall into heresy. Other writers, of course, think that whatever the value of such speculations about what to do with a heretical pope if he ever appears, the divine promise will never allow a heretical pope to happen. There were, indeed, some popes — Vigilius, Honorius, and Liberius — who were once said to have embraced heretical or dubious positions. These instances in fact were sometimes used as proof that the papacy was not what Catholics claimed of it because, it was intimated, there were heretical popes. But more recent scholarship has indicated that these questions were ones of too much zeal or of a lack of courage on the part of these popes, not strict "heresy" on a matter of faith or morals.

The new General Catechism of the Catholic Church does not specifically go into all these speculations that might worry us about the theoretic possibilities connected with the abidingness of the divine promise concerning the papal authority. In a sense, we do not sit around worrying about possible heretical popes at some future date, largely because of the uncanny but evident fact that we have not had one. The real worry to the human mind about the papacy does not concern the possible heretical pope, but rather the improbable but consistent line of non-heretical popes throughout history. We worry about a possible heretical pope and leave unnoticed the incredibly long line of orthodox ones. No one could possibly have expected this unbroken, historical line to have worked more or less as it was established to work. We are astonished both that the papacy still exists — there is nothing really to compare with it — and that it teaches the same things about faith and morals. The purpose of the papacy is not to invent something new, but to be sure that something now very old, yet also very new, remains in the world and remains in the world as an active force.

We read in the General Catechism this explanation of the papacy:

The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful." "For the Bishop of Rome, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as a pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered" (#882).

We might ask, on reading this statement of the Church’s conception of its own structure, "why on earth would such an institution ever have been invented?" Surely, we argue, there were better ways to do it.

Yet, as we watch John Paul II in, say, Cuba, or in Denver, or in the United Nations, or in Paris, or in Manila, or in wherever else in the world he has been in our time, almost everywhere, we cannot help but feeling that somehow this odd institution has enabled the basic teaching of Christ to be present in the world in a most unexpected and universal manner. We cannot help but thinking that this is precisely what God intended of this office. Nothing else could be quite so dramatic as a single man, smiling, speaking, touching, walking, praying. The papacy remains a sign of contradiction because of its unique structure.

Cormac Burke has taken up an oft-heard accusation against the institution of the papacy, an accusation that seems to ring so forcefully in these times of relativism and doubts about any truth. This is the charge that the splendor of the papal surroundings, the authority given to the office, these are not rooted in humility and lowliness but in pride and haughtiness. There are, to be sure, those who do not know or do not admit that real people need truth and beauty and guidance. Often there is silly talk about selling, say, St. Peter’s and giving the proceeds to the poor. Such critics do not realize that it is also the poor that visit St. Peter’s and are uplifted and awed in spite of whatever surroundings that they came from. How selfish are those who think the poor do not need beauty as much as they need bread.

"Some persons see pride at work in the Church’s claim to infallibility. But the claim is not proud," Cormac Burke wrote,

it is an acknowledgement of the greatness of what God has done in and through her. Pride instead is a danger for someone who, wanting to follow Christ, nevertheless refuses to admit any infallible organ of teaching instituted by him. Acceptance of the Church’s infallibility is a key test of faith in God’s providence — in this divine way of ensuring access to the message of salvation.4

There is a delicate line between the accepting by a pope of a divine responsibility that does not come directly from him and the rejection of this same responsibility on the grounds that God would not establish such an office, even when it has been long established and has endured the ages.

Where is the present location of this office that assures to reason that it ought not to destroy itself? The fact is that if it does not exist in the Roman papacy, it does not exist at all. There is simply no one else to claim it. Thus, to recall Newman in the beginning, the papacy is "no simple exhibition of religious absolutism." It exists within human nature to allow the "divine purpose" to shine through. Likewise, it exists precisely as a divine way to ensure "access to the message of salvation." This access was not in Christianity first and primarily given through academics or through politicians and business men. It was given to everyone who will accept it through a Church and its structure, a structure that includes an authority founded on Peter. The famous "Gates of Hell" have, paradoxically in our time, prevailed not to eliminate the message of Christ, but through their opposition to reason and revelation as concentrated in the papacy, have worked to spread the name of Christ throughout the world.

Father James Schall, S.J. is on the faculty of Georgetown University and a prolific writer and popular speaker.

Notes