Do we need an infallible list of infallible propositions? Fr Palmieri responds

The ‘need for epistemic certainty’ is the basis of a common objection today: here is Fr Palmieri’s answer.

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The ‘need for epistemic certainty’ is the basis of a common objection today: here is Fr Palmieri’s answer.

Editor’s Notes

The following objection is sometimes levelled against Catholics by certain heretics or schismatics:

“[I]f we can’t know when the Pope is speaking ex-cathedra, then it really doesn’t matter how infallible he actually is because it can never become practically helpful unless you can know, with unmistakable certainty, every time the Pope does so. If we are still left in a state of debate, then we are left where we originally were before we sought the Pope’s help.”¹

The lack of an “infallible list of infallible statements”, we are told, means that infallibility and the papacy are both dead letters.

In the course of considering a number texts from Fr Domenico Palmieri relevant to the “recognise and resist” movement, we also found and translated the following response to this objection – showing that it is far from new.

Note: The Latin text from Fr Palmieri has been translated into English with the assistance of AI, with each line subsequently checked against the original by a human, and edited in the process.

In the following treatment, let us notice the following two points:

1. Fr Palmieri rejects the need for such clarity, and explains why it is utterly irrelevant.

2. His comments on the alleged need for a “diligent inquiry” prior to a dogmatic definition completely destroy certain arguments which seek to explain why post-conciliar canonisations are not infallible.

You can read more about Fr Palmieri here.

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Tractatus de Romano Pontifice cum Prolegomeno de Ecclesia

Fr Dominico Palmieri SJ

Editio Altera Aucta Et In Nonnullis Emendata
Prati, 1891, pp. 700–1

Available at Archive.org

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1. The See and the Seated: Fr Dominic Palmieri SJ against Gallican theology of the Papacy

2. ‘They miserably deceive themselves who think they can adhere to the Roman See while resisting the Pontiff’ – Fr Palmieri SJ

3. ‘Stripped of jurisdiction by God’ – Fr Palmieri SJ on the Pope Question

4. The Pope is ‘not to be publicly contradicted’ – Fr Palmieri on the non-infallible magisterium

5. What Fr Palmieri ACTUALLY says about resisting the Pope

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THESIS XXXI: Infallible definitions

Those are foolish who, after the Vatican definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, demand a further conciliar definition to teach us the manner in which decrees of the faith must be issued by the Roman Pontiff in order to be held by all as of themselves irreformable. And it is altogether false what some suppose: that the certitude of the faithful concerning an infallible definition of the Roman Pontiff depends, as upon a condition, on their prior knowledge of the means which the Roman Pontiff employed in preparing himself for the act of defining.

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