QUOTATION: The Magisterium

The teaching office of the apostles’ successors does not represent a second authority alongside Scripture but is inwardly a part of it. This viva vox is not there to restrict the authority of Scripture or to limit it or even replace it by the existence of another – on the contrary, it is its task to ensure that Scripture is not disposable, cannot be manipulated, to preserve its proper perspicuitas, its clear meaning, from the conflict of hypotheses.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Holy Spirit as Communion”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Assent

Nor must it be thought that the things contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves require assent on the plea that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things are taught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true to say, 'He who hears you, hears me.'

--Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis

QUOTATION: The Church and Her Authority

When we speak of the Church—allow me this parenthesis—let us think of what she truly is. Let us not have an attenuated conception of her; let us not picture to ourselves a mere spiritual administration. Let us remember that she is herself a mystery, that she is the Mystical Body of Christ, a living person, at once divine and human, whose head is Christ and all of whose members the Holy Ghost joins together, the great Contemplative who aspires to beget all men unto eternal life, and all of whose movements—so far as the Church herself is concerned (whatever the human frailty of individuals may be)—proceed from divine wisdom and the most pure gifts of grace. We shall not then bargain over the terms of our allegiance, we shall not follow her like peevish children who have to be dragged along; we shall understand that her doctrinal authority is not limited to defining solemnly what one cannot deny without being a heretic, but extends, on the contrary, according to all the degrees and all the nuances that what one calls the ordinary magisterium of the Church admits of in the tone of its voice and the authority of its affirmations, to all that concerns the integrity of faith in souls.

--Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, 1958

QUOTATION: Ecumenical Councils

In Ecumenical Councils there are many lively debates and a profound search for the truth through reasoning, theological argument and council interventions; however once a subject has been debated, it is up to the Council Fathers – that is, the Bishops and especially the Pope who is the Chief of the Bishops – to decide, to reach a conclusion, to determine the mind of the Council. Once their determination has been made, everyone should acquiesce in it and accept it, not because of the arguments that were advanced in favor of the final determination, or the research that preceded it, but rather because of the authority of the Holy Spirit. Invisibly presiding at Ecumenical Councils, the Holy Spirit it is who really judges and determines by means of the mouths of His servants who have been established by Him as the Pastors of Christendom. All the reasoning, theological argument and council interventions are made, as it were, in front of the Church; while the actual decisions and determinations of the Council Fathers are made in the sanctuary, where the Holy Spirit does speak through the mouths of the visible heads of the local churches, just as Jesus Christ promised.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: The Rule of Faith

It always was, and is today, the usual practice of Catholics to test the true faith by two methods; first, by the authority of the divine Canon, and then, by the tradition of the Catholic Church. Not that the Canon is insufficient in itself in each case. But, because more interpreters of the Divine Word make use of their own arbitrary judgment and thus fall into various opinions and errors, the understanding of Holy Scripture must conform to the single rule of Catholic teaching—and this especially in regard to those questions upon which the foundations of all Catholic dogma are laid.

--St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith

QUOTATION: Faith

No one can be a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church declares in God's name, is God's word, and therefore true.

--Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Vatican II Doctrine

Whatever were our opinions about the Council's various doctrines before its conclusions were promulgated, today our adherence to the decisions of the Council must be whole hearted and without reserve; it must be willing and prepared to give them the service of our thought, action and conduct. The Council was something very new: not all were prepared to understand and accept it. But now the conciliar doctrine must be seen as belonging to the magisterium of the Church and, indeed, be attributed to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

--Pope Paul VI to the Roman Curia, 23 April, 1966

QUOTATION: The Duty of Bishops

Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation.

--Pope Paul VI

QUOTATION: Dissent

It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a ‘good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the bishops of the United States and elsewhere.

--Bl. John Paul II, Meeting with US Bishops at Our Lady Queen of Angels Minor Seminary, Los Angeles, Sept 16, 1987.

QUOTATION: Bishops

Bishops, who are the successors of the Apostles, and priests, who according to their proper office cooperate with the Bishops, have been charged with announcing and teaching that gospel which Jesus and His Apostles first announced and taught, and which this Holy See and all the Bishops united to it have preserved and transmitted pure and inviolate through the centuries. The holy pastors, therefore, are not the inventors and the composers of this gospel, but only its authorized custodians and its divinely constituted heralds.

--Pope Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentem, 1954

QUOTATION: Assent of Faith

Our belief in the teachings of the Church de fide must be an absolute and unconditional one, but we should not imagine that our fidelity to the Church's theoretical authority is satisfied merely by acceptance of ex cathedra pronouncements. We must also adhere wholeheartedly to teachings of the Church in matters of morality, even if they are not defined ex cathedra. The teachings of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, for example, is binding because its content had always been part of the teaching of the Church; in it we are confronted with the theoretical authority of the Church embodied in the tradition of the ordinary Magisterium. It is not a mere practical commandment of the Church, like the commandment to go to church on Sunday.

--Dietrich Von Hildebrand

QUOTATION: The Powers of the Church

He who made everything and who governs by a prudent arrangement wanted order to flourish in His Church. He wanted some people to be in charge and govern and others to be subject and obey. Therefore, the Church has, by its divine institution, the power of the magisterium to teach and define matters of faith and morals and to interpret the Holy Scriptures without danger of error. It also has the power of governance to preserve and strengthen in the true doctrine those whom it welcomes as children and to make laws concerning all things which pertain to the salvation of souls, the exercise of the sacred ministry, and divine worship. Whoever opposes these laws makes himself guilty of a very serious crime.


--Pope Gregory XVI, Commissum Divinitus, 1835

QUOTATION: Orthodoxy and Communion

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum,  On the Unity of the Church. 1896.