DAY 261
CHALLENGE
“Infallibility is a matter of convenience. When it suits Catholic apologists, they declare a teaching infallible, but when it’s embarrassing, they say it’s not. There aren’t objective criteria for when a teaching is infallible.”
DEFENSE
This challenge is false on a number of levels.
First, there are objective criteria for when a teaching is infallible (see Code of Canon Law 749 §§1–2; Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus 4; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 25).
Second, Catholic apologists are frequently in situations where it would be easier if they did not have to defend infallible teachings, particularly ones that are difficult for human reason to grasp (e.g., God is a Trinity of Persons, transubstantiation occurs in the Eucharist) or that are supported primarily by Tradition rather than Scripture (e.g., Mary was immaculately conceived and bodily assumed into heaven). The fact that competent apologists don’t claim that these teachings aren’t infallible reveals infallibility isn’t a matter of convenience for them.
Third, a certain expertise in Catholic theology and how the Magisterium uses language is needed to evaluate whether the criteria for infallibility have been fulfilled. This leads to misunderstandings in this area.
Sometimes Catholic apologists may make mistakes in thinking that a particular teaching is infallible when it is not (or vice versa). However, they naturally tend to have more expertise in reading Church documents than critics of the Church do. Consequently, critics are more prone to misunderstand the status of a teaching.
This tendency is reinforced by the history of Protestant/Catholic polemics and tension between the two groups. It is a natural human tendency, which all must guard against, to commit the straw man fallacy by attacking a caricature of another’s position rather than his real position. As a result, there has been a tendency among anti-Catholics to assume that statements made in historical sources are infallible, when they were not, for purposes of having an easier target to attack. Thus critics have had more of a hermeneutic of convenience when it comes to infallibility than Catholic apologists have.
Fourth, the Church indicates that in cases of doubt a teaching is to be regarded as non-infallible: “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident” (can. 749 §3). Canonically, the burden of proof is on the one who would claim that a particular teaching is infallible.