The Holy Spirit gives to the Church exactly what she needs just when she needs it.  No one could have predicted just how vital it was that among the few items that the Fathers of the first Vatican Council were able to finish was to secure a definition of Papal infallibility.  So important was it that He also guided the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council to take up the issue again so that clarity with relation to the Church’s Magisterium as a whole would emerge.  The eyes of divine Providence of course saw the coming of the information age and with it a mingling of the Chair of Peter and the soapbox through an unprecedented access to the Vicar of Christ on Earth via papal plane parleys, book long interviews and regular addresses to various groups, Catholic and not.  In this day and age clarity as to what constitutes a Magisterial act and what does not has become absolutely necessary for every Catholic in order to avoid stumbling into confusion and error.

To begin, it merits a brief mention what we mean when we use the term Magisterium.  Whatever image is evoked by that term, it should begin by seeing it as an organ of the Mystical Body of Christ; an organ that is living and whose object is the promulgation and preservation of the rule of faith.  Keeping with the image of an organ, it is in essence the mind of the Church.  When Christ issued the pedagogical mandate that the Apostles were to “teach all nations” (Mt 28:19), He likewise offered them divine guidance and protection to do so.  As successors to the Apostles, the Bishops under the headship of the successor of St. Peter, the Pope exercise the power to make the mind of the Church known.

The Mind of the Church

On the part of the Faithful, they must “put on the mind of Christ” by putting on the mind of the Church.  Each man is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ only insofar as he conforms his own mind to the thinking of the Church.  From this notion theologians have come up with the term assent.  Assent is an intellectual judgment that a particular proposition is true.  But there are two kinds of assent, notional and religious.  The former is more of an admission that a particular proposition is true, without it actually making any practical difference in the person’s will.  Meanwhile, religious assent, that is “submission of mind and will,” (Lumen Gentium, 25) not only judges that a particular proposition is true, but also leads to correspondence with the person’s actions.  Religious assent is the only possible response to authentic magisterial teaching.

Now we begin to see the scope of the problem—obedience is required of the Faithful to authentic magisterial teaching.  This of course assumes that we will recognize authentic magisterial teaching when we hear it.  But, as we said in the introduction, the validity of this assumption is highly questionable in our age, and unless we take the time to understand what constitutes an authentic magisterial act and what does not then we will likely end up lost.  Many books, as well as a magisterial document Donum Veritatis have been written on the subject, but for the sake of developing a “layman’s” understanding I will avoid getting too bogged down in the details.

First, there are the statements themselves which carry differing weights.  Avery Cardinal Dulles succinctly defines four categories of magisterial acts in his book Craft of Theology (Chapter 8 :The Magisterium and Theological Dissent”).

1. Statements definitively set forth that all Catholics are to accept as divinely revealed, that is contained (at least implicitly) in Scripture and Tradition. We typically call these dogmas of which there are many but a few examples would be papal infallibility itself, the four Marian dogmas and the like.
2. Definitive Declarations of non-revealed truth closely connected to revelation and the Christian life. Examples of this include those teachings of the Church “which concerns the natural law” (Donum Veritatis, 16).
3. Non-definitive but still obligatory teaching of doctrine that contributes to a right understanding of revelation. Examples of this type of teaching would include encyclicals.—encyclicals falls under this heading and has a real, though not unconditional assent on all the faithful
4. Finally there are prudential admonitions or applications in a particular time and place which would include things like Apostolic Exhortations.

Our Mind and Will

The response to the first three is real or religious assent, although for the third the assent is not unconditional.  In speaking of the fourth, Dulles says we are required to have “external conformity in behavior but do not demand internal assent” because “interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church’s Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission” (DV 24).  Any withholding of internal assent must be based not upon one’s personal opinion but instead based upon the rule of faith as found in Scripture and Tradition.  In other words, any disagreement one might have must be based upon the mind of the Church and not one’s own mind.

Prudential judgment in the application of moral principles to the temporal realm are not included in this grouping.  We should respectfully consider the opinion of the Pope and Bishops on the application of Catholic Social Teaching to specific political questions and things like the Death Penalty, but we owe them no further assent. That is because these do not constitute true magisterial acts in the sense we are defining it.  These are, as Cardinal Ratzinger put it, issues for which “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion.”  It is when the “magisterial” statements don’t fall into one of these five categories (the four above plus the application category) that the voice of the magisterium becomes muffled.  With papal interviews, book-length interviews,

daily homilies and addresses to specific groups all figuring prominently in the last three pontificates there seems to be a six category.  While the Pope may have a specific audience in mind, mass communication makes everything he says in a way universal.  The Vatican insists that such statements are “non-magisterial” but there is some question as to whether magisterial-ness can be turned on or off.  It would seem that the path forward for right now is to check those things against the rule of faith.  If they contradict the rule of faith, then they can make no claim on our assent.  If they are in agreement with the rule of faith then they should be viewed as an exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium.  If they do not contradict the rule of faith (this is different than saying they are in agreement) then we do owe a certain level of assent which would depend upon their novelty, that is, how frequently they have been repeated by the Popes and Magisterium of the past.

As is clear by this last paragraph, the Holy Spirit is not yet done bringing clarity to this issue.  In the meantime the best way to part the clouds of obscurity is to learn the content of our faith—“to hold firm to the traditions that you were taught” (2 Thes 2:15).