(Excerpts from Chapter 12 - The Church Cannot Err)
Change a couple names - like Kung for Calvin, or Chittister for Luther - and this 16th century passage is applicable this day and age to the American Catholic Council folks.Once when Absalom wished to form a faction and division against the good father David, he sat in the way near the gate, and said to each person that went by: There is no man appointed by the king to hear thee...O that they would make me judge over the land, that all that have business might come to me, that I might do them justice. (2 Kings 15) Thus did he seduce the loyalty of the Israelites. O how many Absaloms have there been in our age, who, to seduce and distort the people of Our Lord from obedience to the Church and her pastors, and to lead away Christian lealty into rebellion and revolt, have cried up and down the ways of Germany and of France: there is no one appointed by God to hear doubts concerning the faith and to answer them; the Church itself, the rulers of the Church, have no power to determine what we are to hold as to the faith and what we are not; we must seek other judges than the prelates, the Church can err in its decrees and rules.
But what more hurtful and audacious proposition could they make to Christianity than that? If the the Church can err, O Calvin, O Luther, to whom shall I have recourse in my difficulties? To the Scriptures, they say. but what shall I, poor man, do, for it i precisely about the Scripture that my difficulty lies. I am not in doubt whether I must believe the Scripture or not; for who knows not that it is the Word of Truth? What keeps me in anxiety is the understanding of this Scripture, is the conclusions to be drawn from it, which are innumerable and diverse and opposite on the same subject; and everybody takes his view, one this, another that, though out of all there is but one which is sound:--Ah! who will give me to know the good among so many bad? who will tell me that real verity through so many specious and masked vanities.
Everybody would embark on the ship of the Holy Spirit; there is but one, and only that one shall reach the port, all the rest are on their way to shipwreck. Ah! what danger I am in of erring! All shout out their claims with equal assurance and thus deceive the greater part, for all boast that theirs is the ship. Whoever says that our Master has not left us guides in so dangerous and difficult a way, says that he wishes us to perish. Whoever says that he has put us aboard at the mercy of wind and tide, without giving us a skillful pilot able to use properly his compass and chart, says that the Saviour is wanting in foresight. Whoever says that this good Father has sent us into this school of the Church, knowing that error was taught there, says that he intended to foster our vice and our ignorance. Who has ever heard of an academy in which everybody taught, and nobody was a scholar? - such would be the Christian community if the Church can err.
For if the Church herself err, who shall not err? and if each one in it err, or can err, to whom shall I betake myself for instruction? - to Calvin? but why to him rather than to Luther, or Brentius, or Pacimontanus? Truly, if I must take my chance of being damned for error, I will be so for my own not for another's, and will let these wits of mine scatter freely about, and maybe they will find the truth as quickly as anyone else. We should not know then whither to turn in our difficulties if the Church erred.
But he who shall consider how perfectly authentic is the testimony which God has given of the Church, will see that to say the Church errs is to say no less than that God errs, or else that he is willing and desirous for us to err; which would be a great blasphemy. For is it not Our Lord who says: If thy brother shall offend thee...tell the Church, and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican (Matt 18).
Do you see how Our Lord sends us to the Church in our differences, whatever they may be? How much more in more serious offenses and differences! Certainly if by the order of fraternal correction I am obliged to go to the Church to effect the amendment of some evil person who has offended me, how much more shall I be obliged to denounce him who calls the Church Babylon, adulterous, idolatrous, perjured? And so much the more because with this evil-mindedness of his he can seduce and infect a whole province; - the vice of heresy being so contagious that it spreadeth like a cancer (2 Tim 2:17).
When, therefore, I see someone who says that all our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have fallen into idolatry, have corrupted the Gospel, and committed all the iniquities which follow upon the fall of religion, I will address myself to the Church, whose judgment every one must submit to. But if she can err then it is no longer I, or man, who will keep the error in the world: it will be our God himself who will authorize it and give it credit, since he commands us to go to this tribunal to hear and receive justice. Either He does not know what is done there, or He wishes to deceive us, or true justice is really done there; and the judgments are irrevocable.
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I conclude then that when we see that the universal Church has been and is in the belief of some article, - whether we see it expressly in the Scripture, whether it it drawn therefrom by some deduction, or again by tradition, - we must in no way judge, nor dispute, nor doubt concerning it, but show obedience and homage to this heavenly Queen, as Christ commands, and regulate our faith by this standard: And if it would have been impious in the Apostles to contest with their Master, so will it be in him who contests with the Church. For it the Father has said of the Son: Hear ye him, the Son has said of the Church: If anyone will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican.
St. Francis de Sales rocks!
