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MAGISTERIUM Jesus Christ
is the light of the world (Jn 8:12), the Savior of all mankind (Jn 4:42).
He spent the years of his public life teaching his followers. He was their
magister, their teacher; for them he had “the words of eternal life” (Jn
6:68). For each
person, the one really important thing is to meet Jesus, to be enlightened
by him, to follow him. Despite our failures, our efforts will be fruitful
if they are directed toward believing Our Lord’s Revelation and doing
his will. But where can
we find Jesus’ teaching? How and with what certainty can we know it? The
Catholic believes Christ’s saving words are to be found not only in
Scripture but also in Tradition. The Magisterium, or teaching authority,
of the Church has as its pastoral duty “seeing to it that the People of
God abides in the truth that liberates” (CCC 890). Christ’s
teaching in Scripture is usually very clear. At times, nevertheless, he
deliberately formulates it in parables and has to explain its meaning and
application privately to his Apostles. On occasions we find the Apostles
failing to understand his words or even scandalized at his teaching (Lk
18:24, Mt 19:10, etc.). When the exact meaning of a teaching or precept
contained in Scripture is not clear, human minds, unaided, are likely to
give it very different interpretations. If these are contradictory, they
obviously cannot all be true. For instance,
when Our Lord said at the Last Supper, “Take, eat in memory of me,”
did he literally mean what he said? Did he really give his own Body and
Blood to be eaten? Was it just a meal – or also a sacrifice that he was
offering and wished to be perpetuated throughout the ages? Did Jesus want
all of his followers to be able to truly eat his flesh (“Unless you eat
the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in
you” [Jn 6:53]), as Catholics believe? Or should his work and intention
be reduced to the idea of the Eucharist as a simple memorial of the last
Supper, no more, the bread a mere symbol of Christ’s love? After the
words of Consecration in a Eucharistic celebration, is the bread (and
wine) now truly the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, with only the
appearances of bread remaining, or is it still just bread that momentarily
evokes Christ’s love (cf. CCC 1374-1377)? Examples
could be multiplied indefinitely. Was Jesus really born of a Virgin? Did
he truly rise from the dead? Is he truly God incarnate? Did he found a
visible, hierarchical Church and endow it with the charism of
infallibility? Did Jesus
want his teaching to be subject to contradictory interpretations? It would
seem not. It makes a vast difference how one answers questions such as
these. Yet knowing men as he did (cf. Jn 2:25), he also knew that by
themselves they tend to interpret even the clearest truth or message in
differing ways, finding it hard to agree about the truth or to hold to it
firmly. Living
Presence of Christ • Thus, instead of leaving his teaching to men to
make what they liked or chose of it, Jesus himself acted (and continues to
act) with divine power to preserve the integrity and clarity of that
teaching. Precisely to ensure that his work of salvation – doctrine,
sacraments, sacrifice – should be preserved in its totality and be
available without any corruption to each generation and each person, he
set up his Church, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tm 3:15;
cf. CCC 2032). He promised to be always present in his Church, ensuring
that what she teaches as doctrine of salvation will be protected and
guaranteed in heaven, that whoever listens to his Church will in fact be
listening to Jesus himself: “All authority on heaven and on earth has
been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . .
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with
you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:18-20); “Whatever you bind
on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19; cf. Mt 18:18); “He who hears you hears
me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Lk 10:16). What emerges
from these passages is the living presence of Christ in the Magisterium of
the Church, the teaching office she received from her founder. Vatican
Council II teaches that “the task of giving an authentic interpretation
of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of
Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office [Magisterium]
of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name
of Jesus Christ” (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum,
10). The teaching
of Jesus coming to us in the complementary sources of Scripture and
Tradition, as interpreted by the Magisterium, is the heritage of each
Christian. Each has a strict right in justice to receive this teaching:
“The right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity
and integrity must always be respected” (Pope John Paul II, encyclical
The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, 113 [1993]; cf. Canons 213,
762; CCC 2037). Similarly, the pastors of the Church, to whom the passing
on of this doctrine has been specially entrusted, have a particular
obligation to respect this trust and to hand on what they have received to
the people they serve (cf. Canon 760). The Church has the right to teach
and the duty. The work of
the Magisterium is not only to preserve intact the message of Christ but
also to spell out how it applies to issues not mentioned in Scripture.
Each age (and certainly our own) tends to bring up questions of belief and
behavior that Our Lord did not explicitly deal with. Did he wish to leave
us without means of knowing his mind on population questions, on
drug-taking, on the right or wrong use of medical treatment that can
prolong or shorten a sick person’s life? No. It is the right and duty of
the Magisterium to teach on just such contemporary questions “to the
extent . . . required by the fundamental rights of the human
person or the salvation of souls” (Canon 747.2; cf. CCC 2032). Functioning
of the Magisterium • The teaching of the Magisterium can be solemn or
ordinary. Each calls on our believing response. The solemn Magisterium is
usually exercised through a formal proclamation by the Pope acting as
supreme pastor and teacher or by an ecumenical council teaching in union
with the Pope (cf. CCC 891). The ordinary Magisterium is that exercised by
the Pope alone or by the bishops teaching in communion with him, “when,
without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a
‘definitive manner,’ they propose . . . a teaching that
leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and
morals” (CCC 892). “The
Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the
fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes truths
contained in divine Revelation or having a necessary connection with them,
in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of
faith” (CCC 88). The definition of a dogma of faith is the highest and
most guaranteed exercise of the Magisterium. Vatican
Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 25,
says that our response to the ordinary Magisterium must involve a
“religious assent of mind and will” (obsequium religiosum). The
Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that while this assent is distinct
from the assent of faith, it “is nonetheless an extension of it” (CCC
892). While various
degrees of response to the Magisterium are possible according to the way
in which it is exercised, no response is adequate unless rooted in faith.
So, for instance, we believe that in the godhead there are three distinct
Persons but one God (dogma of the Blessed Trinity), not because we
understand how this is (we do not), but because it is a revealed truth
taught as dogma by the Church’s living Magisterium. Similarly, because
of faith and not because of some rational argument, we believe that grace
gives us a real participation in the life of God as his adopted children
(doctrine of our divine filiation; cf. CCC 1997). Faith is not irrational
of course, but our faith essentially is faith in God, not an analogous and
merely human faith in human reasoning powers. It is true
that one could reject a proposition taught by the ordinary Magisterium
without falling into heresy, strictly speaking. But one could not actively
dissent from it without detriment to one’s faith. At the same time, it
can be possible to maintain a certain reserve, in the sense that something
proposed by the Magisterium, not yet being cast in the final form of a
dogmatic definition, may be subject to further, though accidental,
refinements of meaning: always “in the same sense and along the same
lines of understanding” (eodem sensu, eademque sententia: St. Vincent of
Lerins). Yet the fact remains that “the freedom of the act of faith
cannot justify a right to dissent” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 36). Theologians
and the Magisterium • In the ongoing task of probing, clarifying, and
illustrating the power and beauty of the truth Christ bequeathed to us,
theologians have an important role to play. They, too, are subject to the
Magisterium. Indeed, humility and awareness of the greatness of the
subject they are investigating and of their own human limitations lead
theologians to look specially to the Magisterium for orientation in their
important work. The
relationship between the Magisterium and theological research is at times
debated today. Ideally, they should “interpenetrate and enrich each
other,” for both are in the service of the People of God – pastors
obliged to guard unity and forestall divisions, theologians responsible
for “participating in the building up of Christ’s Body in unity and
truth” (Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 40).
The fundamental issue is the right of the faithful to know the mind of
Christ, and in this regard it is the Magisterium’s task “to preserve
God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the
objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC
890). St. Matthew
tells us Jesus “taught as one who has authority, and not as the
scribes” (Mt 7:29). Today also one would expect anyone teaching in the
name of Christ to speak authoritatively, offering truths clear in their
formulation and application. Teaching in Christ’s name must be
authoritative in a further sense. It should have the proper credentials.
The matter of who “has the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16) is to be
decided on the basis of charismatic gifts. The Magisterium has that
charismatic credential of divinely given grace. It teaches not in its own
name nor as claiming more expert knowledge, but in virtue of a charism
given for the sake of the whole body of the faithful. In ways both
mysterious and clear, Jesus sends his grace and light to every single
person (Jn 1:9). Yet not all recognize his voice or respond to it. If we
already have the good fortune to be Christians through Baptism, we need to
keep our hearts and minds open to his will, like St. Paul on the road to
Damascus: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (cf. Acts 22:10); for he
will speak to us in vain if we are not ready to respond. The Church is
for us both “Mother and Teacher” – Mater et Magistra (cf. CCC
2030-2051). Her Magisterium is a logical consequence of the Incarnation, a
particular expression of Our Lord’s loving promise to be “with us
always” (Mt 28:20). The Magisterium is a divine gift helping us in our
pilgrim way on earth to see clearly the way that is Jesus and hear clearly
his words of eternal life. See:
Assent and Dissent; Catholic Identity; Church, Nature, Origin, and
Structure of; Development of Doctrine; Dissent; Divine Revelation; Dogma;
Faith of the Church; Heresy; Infallibility; Ordinary Magisterium; Pope;
Sacred Scripture; Sacred Tradition. Suggested
Readings: CCC 85-87, 888-892, 2030-2040. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 22-25. Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian. C. Burke, Authority and Freedom in the Church, Chs. 14-16. Cormac
Burke Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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