Fiducia Supplicans, Infallibility, and a Reflection on Faith

Four weeks after its release, Fiducia Supplicans (On the Meaning of Blessings), the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration on blessings, continues to create controversy. Surprised by the breadth and volume of the backlash, DDF prefect Cdl. Victor Manuel Fernández has given interviews and even put out a lengthy press release “clarifying” the declaration’s intent. But while Pope Francis didn’t directly author the declaration, he still bears ultimate responsibility for the most questionable and controversial act to date of a turbulent pontificate. In light of this, we must ask ourselves: Is religious submission to Pope Francis still justified?

No Anti-Popes or Usurpers Here

Let’s start by defining some terms and clarifying the stakes:

First, Francis is not an “anti-pope.” Anti-popes only exist as opponents to “real” (i.e., validly elected) popes. The only legitimate candidate for that distinction, Benedict XVI, died still openly professing support for his successor (even if he was privately “bitterly disappointed” by Francis). A corollary clarification: Francis is not a “usurper.” The time for the cardinal electors to dispute the validity of Benedict’s resignation was at the 2013 conclave. Instead, they elected a successor in good faith, effectively ratifying the pope’s right to resign. We can critique the Franciscan papacy without resorting to the feverish rhetoric and conspiracy theories of “Benevacantism.”

Second, the Latin Church defines itself by communion with the Bishop of Rome as Supreme Pontiff. Catholics have been defending the primacy of the Successor to Peter for literally centuries; it’s one of the few things that distinguish us from the Eastern Orthodox. Ergo, the reigning Pope cannot be in schism with the Latin Church because he cannot be in schism with himself. By contrast, the Code of Canon Law defines schism as “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him” (CIC 751 [1983]; cf. CIC 1325 [1917]).

As explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1998, religious assent is the “religious submission of will and intellect” (Professio Fidei; cf. Doctrinal Commentary 10). Religious assent is required “when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a ‘definitive manner,’ [the pope or bishops] propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 892; cit. Lumen Gentium 25). Religious assent is considered an extension of the assent of faith required by infallible doctrine.

Trusting the Holy Spirit’s Guidance

There’s the rub: Infallibility—especially papal infallibility—is not a 19th-century doctrinal aberration but rather an outgrowth of the centuries of ecclesial history that came before Vatican I. It’s dictated by the faith necessary to maintain that the Church has not wandered from the true faith or compromised the original deposit over the intervening 2,000 years. It’s implied in Christ’s promise of the Holy Spirit’s guidance (John 13:16) and to be with his church “to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:10). Submission of one’s intellect requires faith—trust, or certitude—in the person or institution to whom one submits.

Hence the desperate efforts to deny Francis’ legitimacy as pope. There is no credible dividing line between the man and the office so long as the man holds the office by right.  Infallibility can’t shelter an anti-pope or a usurper. However, if the theology behind infallibility is right, then a pope who at some point espoused a heresy would be prevented by the Holy Spirit from formally teaching that heresy. The question, then, becomes not whether we trust Francis to avoid teaching errors but whether we trust the Holy Spirit to protect him from teaching errors.

None of this, however, denies that Fiducia Supplicans is problematic. The best that can be said for it is that at least the DDF does not contradict the Church’s perennial teaching on sex and marriage. However, they also don’t convincingly explain how a priest could bless an illicit sexual partnership as a sexual union without contradicting the 2021 responsum ad dubium FS was supposed to supplement. +Fernandez’s own examples require that the sexual nature of the relationship be either done with or irrelevant to the type and circumstance of the blessing the priest bestows. Lo, how the Holy Office hath fallen.

The Most Charitable Reading of Fiducia Supplicans

The most reasonable and charitable Catholic reaction, then, is to read Fiducia Supplicans in the light of the hermeneutic of continuity. In this light, the document does not open a path to validating illicit sexual unions or to extending any kind of blessing that people in such relationships could not have validly received prior to the declaration. Such a reading doesn’t require blindness to the declaration’s flaws. Rather, it takes the document at face value and ignores the subtext it appears to impart via implicature. (My bishop, Most Rev. Michael Olsen of Fort Worth, has taken this path.)

In scrambling to recover the DDF’s fumble, +Fernández has admitted that bishops are free to exercise “prudence and attention to the ecclesial context and to the local culture” in applying Fiducia Supplicans. This includes, as Fr. Raymond de Souza notes, “declaring the Dec. 18 document a dead letter in practice,” which many bishops and national conferences have done with varying levels of pungency. After all, bishops are also successors to the apostles and not just “branch managers of ‘Catholicism, Inc.’” (to use Abp. Charles Chaput’s pithy expression). The document is not likely to long survive the end of Francis’ papacy.

Nevertheless, it’s tiresome and dispiriting to be episodically forced to remind others that infallibility doesn’t cover every papal utterance and every curial document. Like Caesar’s wife, the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith—of all offices!—should be above and beyond suspicion of heresy. And more recent revelations have given further evidence of +Fernández’s shockingly bad judgment, destroying what little credibility he had left as Francis’ chief theological advisor. Which, in turn, only reflects on Francis’ poor judgment of character and theological imprudence. “How,” you might wail, “do we willingly submit our intellects to such a feckless, inconsistent autocrat?”

The Tragedy of Papa Bergoglio

There is a purely negative sense in which we learn from bad examples. Much of Francis’ papacy consists of over-corrections for what he perceives as an undue emphasis on sin and judgment over mercy and compassion. This in turn reminds us that mercy and compassion are necessary because sin is still a reality. The fact of over-correction itself also speaks to the necessity of balance, not only in our theological education but in pastoral praxis. Because of its incoherence, Fiducia Supplicans speaks to the need for clear reasoning and against the modern tendency to mistake verbal cleverness for wisdom.

As +Fernández is finding out now, you don’t write so that you can be understood, but rather so that you can’t be misunderstood.

But it won’t do merely to accentuate the negatives. +Chaput argues that Francis’ critics are often unjust. “His commitment to the poor, his emphasis on mercy, his passion for accompanying the lost and alienated, and his willingness to reach out to the margins—all these things are gifts to the whole Church. They deserve our gratitude and praise. So does his teaching on issues like gender, the sanctity of life, and bioethics … much of which is ignored by the mainstream media.” For myself, I appreciate the fact that he recognizes the danger secular ideologies pose to authentic religion.

Edward Feser refers us to the case of Pope Honorius (r. 625 – 638), whose failure to effectively combat the Monothelitist heresy led to multiple condemnations. But what gets overlooked is that the Church survived Honorius, just as she had earlier survived Anastasius II (r. 496 – 498) and later survived Adrian VI (r. 1522 – 1523). The Holy Spirit protects the Church over the centuries not because our leaders are holy and wise but because our leaders are as flawed as we are. As Hilaire Belloc put it, “no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”

The Church will survive Francis, too. He has his faults, but he is hardly the raving heresiarch that his more melodramatic opponents paint him to be. Like Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the tragedy of Papa Bergoglio is that he means well. And meaning well isn’t enough. Nevertheless, for now, and in the absence of any legitimate means of deposing him, Francis remains the Supreme Pontiff. He may not be the best we’ve ever had, but I doubt he’s the worst. Let’s try listening to what he’s trying to teach rather than trying to cram it into some heretical pigeonhole.

Conclusion

Trusting in the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as passivity or complacency, which would be testing God by not doing for ourselves what we can when we should (Matthew 4:7; cf. Deuteronomy 6:16). But everyone has limits to what and how much they can properly do, which is where the freedom of weakness lies. For most of us, our work lies in living the gospel message and spreading it to the next generations of faithful Catholics. We have enough troubles to solve on our own without borrowing problems we can do nothing about. Leave those to God.

That includes Fiducia Supplicans, its authors, and the pope who signed off on it. Our duty also includes praying for Pope Francis, all our bishops and clergy, and “all people in irregular situations, that they may come to understand the truth, and live the truth with integrity and peace. … [We] must all pray and ask for prayers for ourselves, for those who deliberately mislead, and for those who are misled through ideological manipulation of [Fiducia Supplicans]” (+Olsen). For we are all sinners, and we all need some kind of grace to strengthen us in faith and virtue.