Conscience and its Counterfeit, Part 3: Papal Infallibility

This final of three posts will consider how Newman’s teaching about conscience relates to the dogma of papal infallibility. Conscience represents not just a right, but a duty before God to seek and know truth (Part 1). A Catholic view of Church authority is not opposed to the rights of individual conscience; both are authorities which work together in matters of Christian belief (Part 2). Church authority informs and augments this duty, illuminating the human dignity and sacred duty of each believer’s conscience.

In the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman makes an important distinction between nature and grace, reason and revelation. Both are in harmonious relation, but can be confused if their boundaries are not distinguished. Newman roots the Pope’s authority in the philosophically prior authority of nature, natural law, and its governance by Divine Law, which gives conscience “prerogatives” and “supreme authority.” Since we are made with rational wills to choose the good, we shape ourselves into having good moral habits by doing what we believe is right. Therefore, it is always wrong to go against conscience. Assuming that we have discerned something as true, have weighed the matter, and thoughtfully chosen a path, it is wrong to go against our sincere beliefs, even if that belief is later found to be wrong. Otherwise, we would be shaping ourselves to disobey what we believe is right.

C.S. Lewis, in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, shares an example. As a schoolboy, having adopted atheistic views, he nonetheless partook of communion at church while visiting with his father, just to avoid the tense conversation that would ensue if he refused. Years later, he realized that this was wrong—it was a lie, and exposed his weak conscience. If he sincerely did not believe in God, then in good conscience he should not have pretended to participate in worship. It is always wrong to go against one’s conscience, even if we are in error, because it produces in us the bad habit—whether from laziness, or pride, or vanity—to not act in accord with our beliefs. 

Thus, Newman places a very strong emphasis on the natural authority of the conscience that no Pope can give or revoke. This also implies that each of us has a responsibility to properly inform our conscience through study, prayer, and patient pursuit of truth. Even so, we can rarely if ever gain complete clarity on our own. Sin, pride, circumstance, and human fallibility can distort the truth, and so the conscience needs the external support of the Church. 

The Church transmits revealed truths from God that the human mind alone cannot know, like the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity. But it also clarifies moral truths that, in principle, can be found through rational inquiry into nature. No Pope, Bishop, or Council can teach beliefs contrary to the natural law, although revealed truths do elevate and perfect our understanding of those laws. Newman says that the Pope’s authority is founded “on the law of conscience and its sacredness… The Pope, who comes of Revelation, has no jurisdiction over Nature,” no power to alter God’s creation of human nature and moral law. The Pope’s teachings protect the right and duty of Christians to obey the laws of God and the revelations of Christ. Newman is not saying that every single Pope has done this well, or has avoided human errors, sins or mistakes. For example, Pope Julius erroneously opposed St. Athanasius in the Arian controversy. To say that the Pope has authority is to refer to his sacred “office,” not to the particular human in that office. Catholic Christians “are not bound by the Pope’s personal character or private acts, but by his formal teaching.” 

The dogma of papal infallibility, defined by the First Vatican Council (1870), presents a nuanced and technical qualification about this “formal teaching.” It is not the case that the Pope simply is infallible in all he says and does—he is a fallible man among other fallible men. The dogma of papal infallibility is not about what the Pope can do, but about what he can’t do. By a special grace of the Holy Spirit, when the Pope definitively and formally weighs in on challenging questions related strictly to faith and morals—matters necessary for eternal salvation—he cannot teach in such a way as to bind the faithful into believing an error about God’s laws or about the Gospel. 

The Pope is not a walking oracle, nor above the authority of Scripture, tradition, or the Apostolic deposit. The truths proclaimed by bishops and councils do proceed by a “human method” that can include temporary lapses into error. But the teaching on infallibility ensures a special assistance from the Holy Spirit to prevent a Pope from declaring an error as obligatory for Christian belief. Newman asserts, “what Providence has guaranteed is only this, that there should be no error in the final step, in the resulting definition or dogma.”

Properly understood, the dogma of papal infallibility actually protects the individual conscience of each believer. The Pope, by the protecting guidance of the Holy Spirit, will never misuse his authority so as to bind the consciences of Christians to believe an error. In this sense, Peter and his successors are the “rock” which the gates of hell shall not prevail against (Matt. 16:18-19). 

With good British cheer, Newman concludes with a famous “toast” reflecting the primary authority of conscience which the Pope exists to confirm, nourish and clarify: “I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

Papal teaching exists to support believers as they discern how to live an authentic Christian life in the light of God’s law and the Gospel of Christ in difficult historical and personal circumstances. Papal teaching does not exist to coerce or remove the need for personal judgment discerned through study and prayer. The voice of God in our conscience is perfected by listening to His voice in the Church’s teachings.

Let us pray to the Holy Spirit that Newman’s writings on the conscience would spur us to deepen our encounter with God who speaks to us through nature and revelation. Let us pray that He keep us vigilant against deceptions, half-truths, and politicized ideologies, so that we may be salt and light in the world (Matt. 5:13).