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:
“In fact what America expects of its citizens and what the Catholic Church expects of the faithful are sometimes so different that they lead to an enormous ker-KLUNK between democracy and theology.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Eddie Felson: Church of the Good Hustler.
Charlie: Looks more like a morgue to me. Those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on.
Eddie Felson: I’ll be alive when I get out, Charlie.”
—Sydney Carroll, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Rossen. Eddie Felson (Paul Newman)
“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)
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)