It is important to recall the Catholic understanding of Infallibility:
Infallibility is the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit, the "Spirit of Truth", who indwells the Catholic Church and graces it to teach unerringly the truths of Divine Revelation and the Moral Law of God. It is the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, and the Bishops in communion with him, the visible head of the entire Church, who were exclusively constituted by Christ, the Invisible Head of the Church, to safeguard, preserve and correctly teach the supernatural mysteries contained in the "deposit of faith" revealed by Christ and "handed down from the Apostles".
Christ did not leave behind a fallible Church that could succumb to the Gates of Hell.
When the brilliant Oxford convert John Henry Newman researched the Scriptures and the writings of the Greek, Latin, and Syriac Fathers of the Church to discover the nature and hierarchical structure of the Church established by Christ, he rightly noted:
"The essential idea of Catholicism is the impossibility of the Catholic Church erring in its dogmatic teaching."
As a property or attribute of the visible Church, Infallibility guarantees the truth of every dogma and doctrine the Church officially teaches. In other words, the Infallibility of the Church is the only guarantee that a seeker of truth:
- can obtain certain knowledge of the contents of the Christian Religion; and
- that what Christ's unique visible Church officially teaches IS TRUE.
The Church's Infallibility lodged in the entire Church but identified and concretized in the bishops of the Church united to their head and center of unity, the Pope, assures the believer not only that the Church has not erred in its official teaching but cannot err in future doctrinal judgments on faith and morals. Any ecclesiastical body incapable of infallibly guarding the "deposit of faith" cannot be the Church Christ founded. A Church which is not infallible as an authoritative teacher of Truth and the very Voice of Christ-God is simply not worthy of belief and trust.
Moreover, any Christian community which rejects the very idea of a visible Church instituted by Christ with the charism of Infallibility (as all Protestants do; for them the Church is an invisible spiritual entity), has clearly departed from the faith of the ancient Church as expressed by the Fathers of the Church, the first 7 Ecumenical Councils, and the Popes of the first Millennium who professed repeatedly in the face of schisms and heresies afflicting the Eastern Churches their Petrine primacy of universal authority and jurisdiction over the entire Church of East and West.
In his book "His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches" (2009), the Ukranian Orthodox theologian Fr. Laurent A. Cleenewerck attempted to provide a coherent 'eucharistic ecclesiology' for Eastern Orthodoxy that would serve as an "alternative model for the [Catholic] concept of Petrine primacy and succession" set forth in the teaching of Vatican Councils I and II. [My extensive Review of this work can be found in Academia.edu/JamesLikoudis].
His arguments against the Catholic understanding of the nature of the Church and Papal supremacy and infallibility are essentially repeated in a recent article "Reflections on the Infallibility of the Church: The implications of Eucharistic ecclesiology for a transition from intellectual to soteriological infallibility". In short, together with other Orthodox theologians he adheres to the "Eucharistic theology" of Fr. Nicholas Afanassief who held that there is no need for a Papacy of universal jurisdiction since the Church has no existence apart from that of the local churches which compose it, and their existence was founded on their central liturgical action, the Eucharist.
In meeting to celebrate the Eucharist, the Church becomes visible in the person of the presiding bishop whose "local church is identical" with all the other local churches because they are the same indivisible Church (the one Body of Christ). It may be noted here that the positive elements in Fr. Afanassief's "eucharistic theology" were known to the theologians drafting Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium).
The theologians of "eucharistic theology" (including Fr. Cleenewerck) are correct in noting that the Church cannot be separated from the Eucharist and that the Eucharist is a principle of unity in the Church. Catholics fully agree. But the Eucharistic Christ is not a visible authority in the Church. Christ in the Eucharist does not issue dogmatic definitions and decisions and settle administrative, canonical, jurisdictional, and doctrinal disputes among Patriarchs and bishops. The fundamental weakness of this "Eucharistic ecclesiology" is that it excludes the existence of a supreme authority serving the Unity and Catholicity of the Episcopate.
Starkly missing among the Eastern Orthodox is the visible and final teaching authority necessary to manifest the Church's indivisible hierarchical Unity as established by Christ, the Invisible Head of the Church. "Eucharistic theology" exalts "the ontological equality of each bishop (none can have greater authority over another) and declares each bishop to be a successor of Peter". But such an "alternative model” only results in the rejection by Fr. Cleenewerck and his colleagues of the historical reality of a visible "world-wide Universal Church" established by Christ.
Similarly dismissed is the Infallibility of the Church's Teaching Episcopate as expressed in the dogmatic decrees of Ecumenical Councils. Radically undermined is the position of the many Orthodox prelates and theologians who for centuries after the Schism with Rome continued to profess belief that their communion of Patriarchal sees constituted the Universal Church and that its hierarchy was infallible in its dogmatic statements. Moreover, it should be noted that the Creed sung in Orthodox churches professes belief in "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church", NOT churches.
The present confusion and doctrinal incoherence among Eastern Orthodox concerning Infallibility became openly and publicly revealed when 19th and 20th century Russian Slavophile theologians followed the protestantizing "sobornost" lay theologian Alexei Khomiakhov to outrightly dismiss the infallibility of the Church's episcopal hierarchy. For these Russian Orthodox, the subject of Infallibility is the entire body of the Church with all its members constituting the teaching office of the Church. If a Council's dogmatic teaching is not received by the people in general, it is null and void. Thus, was contrived a convenient rationale for Orthodox to reject the Reunion Councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) which sought to end the Schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
Interestingly, this innovative theology so destructive of the visible unity of the bishops of the Church had its impact also on the more traditional Greek church. Fr. Cleenewerck quotes a distinguished Dean of the School of Theology at the University of Athens who stated in all sincerity that he was totally unaware that "infallibility was an article of faith in our Church."
Catholics should emphasize in their dialogues with Eastern Orthodox that an Episcopate lacking a visible head and center of Unity and communion established by Christ for His Church in the successor of Peter, that it makes NO sense for Eastern Orthodox to speak of their communion as continuing the "Undivided Church" of the first Thousand years. If an "Undivided Church" exists today (and it does), it exists where an indefectible center of Unity serves to give the Church its organic and corporate and undivided Unity. It is the Catholic Church (with its immoveable Rock-foundation in Peter's See at Rome) that clearly remains the "Undivided Church" mirroring the Undivided Unity of the Holy Trinity professed by the Fathers of the Church.
Further, Our Lord instructed us to "Hear the Church". We cannot hear the Church if it has no visible head and voice that can speak with Christ's infallible authority and express the consensus of all the bishops of the Church on matters of faith and morals. One of Fr. Cleenerwerck's significant admissions in his irenic article is that acceptance of the thesis of a "a world-wide Universal Church" (which he, in fact, does not accept) logically results in "some concept of papal infallibility".
About Dr. James Likoudis
James Likoudis is a recent recipient of an honorary Doctoral degree from the Sacred
Heart Major Seminary (2020) and an expert Catholic writer and apologist. He is the
author of a trilogy of books dealing with Catholic-Eastern Orthodox issues,
ecclesiology and relations, including his recent "The Divine Primacy of the Bishop
of Rome and Modern Eastern Orthodoxy: Letters to a Greek Orthodox on the Unity of the
Church." He has written many articles published by various religious papers and
magazines. His most recent book "Heralds of
a Catholic Russia" recounts the spiritual pilgrimage of twelve Byzantine
Orthodox followers who returned to Catholicism and full communion with the See of Rome,
as the "Pearl of great price".
He can be reached at: jameslikoudis1@gmail.com, or visit Dr. James Likoudis'
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