The Catholic Church and Dogmatic Facts
Jansenists distinguished between "fact" and "dogma". They held that the Catholic Church is infallible in defining revealed truth and in condemning errors opposed to revealed truth; but that the Church is not infallible in defining facts which are not contained in divine revelation, and consequently that the Church was not infallible in declaring that a particular doctrine, in a particular sense, was found in the Augustinus of Jansenius.
Catholic theologians teach that the Church, or the pope, is infallible, not only in defining what is formally contained in divine revelation, but also in defining virtually revealed truths, or generally in all definitions and condemnations which are necessary for safe-guarding the body of revealed truth. Whether it is to be regarded as a defined doctrine, as a doctrine de fide, that the Church is infallible in definitions about dogmatic facts, is disputed among theologians.
The Catholic Church has always exercised the right of pronouncing with authority on dogmatic facts. She has always claimed the right of defining that the doctrine of heretics, in the sense in which it is contained in their books, or in their discourses, is heretical; that the doctrine of an orthodox writer, in the sense in which it is contained in his writings, is orthodox.
Read more about this topic: Dogmatic Fact
Famous quotes containing the words catholic, church, dogmatic and/or facts:
“It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Now folks, I hereby declare the first church of Tombstone, which ain’t got no name yet or no preacher either, officially dedicated. Now I don’t pretend to be no preacher, but I’ve read the Good Book from cover to cover and back again, and I nary found one word agin dancin’. So we’ll commence by havin’ a dad blasted good dance.”
—Samuel G. Engel (1904–1984)
“The churches ... have lost much of their authority over youth because they have refused to re-examine their religious sanctions and their dogmatic preaching in the light of modern physiology, psychology and sociology.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)