On Rome, The Jews And The Fourth Lateran Council

[MitchWitts]

I've been doing a bit a research on the Church and the Jews and it's not very comforting.

 

Granted the Popes never approved of violence of forced conversion, 

 

The Fourth Lateran Council demands that Jews not have authority (including civil) over Christians and that they must wear certain clothing markers and later still the Papal bull "Cum nimis absurdum" demands Jews live in ghettos.

 

What are we to make of this? Are these documents infallible?

[Theoketos]

There are indeed dark periods in the Church. There are some things Catholics and Christians did much worse than that.

 

I am not trying to excuse that behavior, what I am going to write here might make it worse, but this was standard practice by Medieval secular powers of which the Pope was one. It does not really make sense to our modern eyes, but these things often had good intentions. (Such as preventing over eager Christian nurse maids from baptizing the slightly ill infant children of unwilling Jewish parents. This was a constant political problem causing much turmoil.) And these were actions considered moral by nearly everyone during that age, but are still nevertheless unjustifiable.

 

Consider this paragraph from the Catechism.

 

 

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

 

To clear up the issue of infallibility consider;

 

Peter still screwed up after Jesus rose from the dead. So much so that Paul had to publicly correct him. 

 

AND

 

There are many document from many popes. Most are not all the way through infallible and the Church has never claimed them to be so. (Some of them are however.) For the pope (or council in union with the pope) to speak ex-cathedra and thus exercise the charism of infallibility it takes the following four qualifications;

 

1. He must be speaking as the Bishop of Rome.

2. He must be speaking to the Universal Church.

3. He must be teaching on a matter of faith and morals.

4. And he must declare that he is stating something infallibly.

 

5. (I have also heard it said that an "anthama" is to be attached.)

 

 

If you look at the most recent (non-canonization) ex cathedra statement you can see all of the following qualifications.

 

 

 

 

44. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

 

45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.

 

46. In order that this, our definition of the bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven may be brought to the attention of the universal Church, we desire that this, our Apostolic Letter, should

stand for perpetual remembrance, commanding that written copies of it, or even printed copies, signed by the hand of any public notary and bearing the seal of a person constituted in ecclesiastical dignity, should be accorded by all men the same reception they would give to this present letter, were it tendered or shown.

 

47. It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

 

48. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, in the year of the great Jubilee, 1950, on the first day of the month of November, on the Feast of All Saints, in the twelfth year of our pontificate.

~PIUS XII Munificentisimus Deus 

 

 

Most of "Cum nimis absurdum" (if it is a real document) is not an exercise of the Magisterium, but of the Pope's secular power. The doctrine in it is at best an exercise of the ordinary papal magisterium, which can teach error. But it is probably not even that. The ordinary papal magisterium is distinct (by those 4 specific differences mentioned above) from the extraordinary papal magisterium which is ex cathedra and infallible. (cf. Lumen Gentium 28,29)