[Question:]{.underline} Are Catholics bound in conscience to accept all Papal teachings, or just infallible teachings?
[Answer:]{.underline} Clearly Catholics have a duty to obey all Church teachings. However, there are varying degrees of obligation according to the different degree of authority that is attached to the teaching, and to how it is presented. You will find these distinctions in any standard textbook of dogmatic theology.
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Dogmas defined ex cathedra must be accepted under pain of losing the Faith, in such a way that a person who professes the direct contradictory of an act of the extraordinary Magisterium defining such a dogma, is correctly called a heretic.
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Dogmas are frequently taught infallibly by the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Clearly we owe them the adhesion of our Faith, and a person who would knowingly deny one of these would be a formal heretic. The problem, however, is that of determining what really is a part of the Ordinary Magisterium (i.e. that which has always and everywhere been taught), and consequently that which really is infallible. This is the work of theology, but since human judgements are involved errors can enter in. It is consequently often not possible to call a person who denies such a dogma a formal heretic, until such time as his error has been condemned by an act of the Extraordinary Magisterium. This is what was done at the Council of Trent for the protestant errors, for example concerning justification and the sacraments.
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There are other teachings of the Church which are neither a part of the Extraordinary Magisterium nor a part of the Ordinary Magisterium, but which are authentically proposed by the Church. This includes the bulk of the teachings in the Papal encyclicals. Such teachings of the Authentic Magisterium are not infallible, but cannot be discarded for as much. As Pius XII stated in Humani Generis, and as John Paul II has reiterated, such teachings must be accepted with reverential respect. Allow me to quote from Humani Generis:
“Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For…generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine.” (§20).
However, since they do not invoke the full authority of the Church and are not infallible, they can be wrong. Needless to say they can only be rejected or refused if they are in direct contradiction with infallible teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. This is the case with the teachings of Vatican II, which refused to use its charisma of infallibility. It is an act of the Authentic Magisterium, which reiterates many dogmas infallibly taught by the Extraordinary and Ordinary Magisterium, but which also includes novelties, such as religious liberty, ecumenism and collegiality which must be refused because they are in direct contradiction with the Church’s previous teachings. e.g. Pius IX in Quanta Cura & Pius XI in Mortalium animos.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.