Authority And Infallibility

EWTN, Global Catholic Radio, and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s, and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. When I was a boy, I used to go out to a farm during the summer, and I often noticed how chickens used to peck one another. At that time, I did not know the meaning of it. Then just a few years ago, there appeared an article in Scientific America entitled The Peck Order. Some scientists, much more curious than I was, marked each chicken in the barnyard a little bit differently so he could spot them. And he noticed that there was a kind of a hierarchy and authority, a 400 among the chickens. And that when they lined up to eat, say, chicken 25 that lived on the wrong side of the tracks would always be at the far end, the last one to be fed, or else stay at the end of the barnyard. Then the chickens would begin to try and get into the 400, and chicken 22 would peck 21, and if 21 ran away, then 22 became 21. And this is now known in scientific order as the Peck Order of chickens. We know that it exists among human beings. We peck at one another in the business world to try to get ahead, trample upon one another. Monkeys do the same thing. Monkey trainers will always watch a group of monkeys to discover which one is the leader. Then they train the leader, and all of the others follow. I say that this striving for authority is both in the animal kingdom and in the human order, but when the good Lord came to this earth, he did away with the Peck Order. And he introduced an entirely new principle, that the first should be last, and the most important should be the servant of all. We notice this in two incidents in the life of our blessed Lord. One was the night of the Last Supper. Here the Twelve Apostles were gathered about our blessed Lord, and he took off his outer robe, girded himself with a towel, and began washing the feet of the Apostles. When he finished, he said, You call me Lord and Master, and you do well. I am your Lord and Master, but if I wash your feet, then you wash the feet of one another. And he said among the Gentiles, He who is greatest lords it over the others. He told his Apostles to be the least. Here was the introduction of something new in the order of authority, namely, authority is for service, and particularly those who are low and least. Then he introduced another idea after his resurrection. The scene was alongside of the Sea of Galilee, the Sunday after the resurrection. There were seven men out in a boat fishing, and our blessed Lord appeared on the shore. John was the first to recognize our blessed Lord, and he said, It's the Lord. An impetuous Peter dives into the sea, swims a hundred yards to the shore, but then if you read the scriptures carefully, you'll find that a few verses later Peter is back in the boat again. I wonder why he did that. He helped the others drag in the fishes. I think the reason is that when he came to the shore, he saw our blessed Lord standing near a fire, and that reminded him of another fire. About ten days before, the fire in the courtyard of Caiaphas. Peter then remembered that he had denied our Lord, so he got away from him. When he comes back, our Lord now gives to Peter authority over the Church. Our Lord has called himself the Good Shepherd. He now makes him a shepherd. As our Lord in the scripture is called the Rock in the Old Testament many, many times, so he made Peter the Little Rock of his Church. But what was the condition upon which he conferred authority upon Peter? What did he say before he gave authority, feed my lambs, feed my sheep? Three times he said, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me more than these? But only after Peter said, yes, Lord, I love you. Incidentally, the Greek word which St. Peter used was a very weak word. I love you in a kind of human, natural way. Peter was not going to affirm greater love than he could now actually show. But the point is that authority is not only for service. Authority is to be exercised because one loves. This was the new principle of authority introduced into the world. Service and love. Now a second point. How did our blessed Lord exercise his authority? And how did he propose to continue that authority through the centuries? First of all, how did he exercise his authority? He exercised his authority always through his human nature. If you believed in the divinity of Christ, if you heard him speak, you would hear just human lips moving. But you would say it's the Son of God who speaks. So our blessed Lord taught, he governed, he sanctified through this human nature, through this body of his. It was the instrument of his authority. Just as, for example, I write through a pencil. So he exercised his divine powers and communicated his truth through this human nature which he took from Mary. A step higher. He now proposes to communicate this power, this truth, this authority, and he communicates it to his apostles. And the apostles became his new body. Not a physical body, they sometimes call it a mystical body. And he wills to communicate now his truth, his authority, his power to his apostles, whom he had chosen with Peter as the head. Now our blessed Lord, who had said, I am the truth? Every other teacher said, here's the truth in this code, in this doctrine. Our Lord said, I am the truth. Now to this body of the apostles, to his church, he said, my truth I give to you. He that heareth you, heareth me. He that despises you, despises me. There was no doubt that he was communicating his truth. And his power. He said, all power is given to me in heaven and on earth. He sends them out to teach all nations, to forgive sins, and bidding others to do all things that he had commanded. So that just as once he was communicating his power through his own personal human nature, so now he is doing it through his corporate human nature, which is the church. Now what was this church like at the beginning? Well it was made up of the twelve apostles, with Peter as the head. Our Lord did not first choose Peter, and then the other eleven. He chose the twelve, and then he put Peter at the top. After all, everybody has to have a head. And he made him the rock of the church. So that the apostles are what might be called a college. College of apostles. And Peter, who was the head, was the first vicar of Christ, the first pope. Our Lord said now that this truth and this power that he communicated to them was to continue even to the consummation of the world. But how is it continued? The bishops of the church are the continuators of the apostles. The Pontiffs, the vicars of Christ, the popes, are the successors of Peter. So that today the church is governed by the college of the apostles, the college of bishops, what is called the collegiality of bishops, with Peter as their head. And they can no more do without Peter as their head than the apostles could have done without Peter as their head. Because our blessed Lord named Peter as the head. Now let's take up the bishops. What are bishops anyway? Well fortunately I'm talking to you through a record, hence you do not know me well and do not judge the bishops of the church by me. But I will tell you what a bishop is. One of his functions is to be something like that curious list of names that appears in the genealogy of the human nature of our blessed Lord in the gospel of Matthew. Remember all the begats in the gospel. Now what was this? This long list of judges and kings and prophets and men of the Old Testament were a kind of a proof that our blessed Lord was the one who was expected through the centuries. These men are unimportant that are mentioned. They were not all good men. Some of them were very imperfect, but they just happened to belong to a family tree. And if you had ever challenged our blessed Lord and said, we know that the one who is to come belongs to the tribe of Judah and also is a descendant of Abraham, our blessed Lord would have pointed to his family tree and he would say, there you are, there is the proof. I can show you my line. That was the purpose. Now you come to the bishops. Who are they and what function do they perform? One of their functions is this. They are witnesses in this century of the fact that the truth which they teach goes back to our blessed Lord himself. And you say, where did you get your authority? Suppose you ask me that. Where did you get your power to be a bishop? Well I was consecrated in Rome by Cardinal Piazza, and I know who consecrated Cardinal Piazza, and I know that the one who consecrated Cardinal Piazza was in turn consecrated by Pope Pius X. And then from Pope Pius X it is easy to go all the way back to Peter. So the bishops in this day and age, you see, fulfill somewhat the same function as this long genealogical line did in proving that our blessed Lord belonged to the royal line of David. Now that's not all of the functions, but this is rather important because, well we have a number of wires here in this room. And suppose the wire to which this microphone is attached was put within six inches of the electric outlet. Do you think that you would hear what I am saying? Suppose we put the wire 1,500 inches from the plug, or one inch. No current. Why? Too far away from the source. So if you want to know where does the truth, where does the authority of the Church come from, you have to be able to follow the line, follow the line of bishops, follow them back to the dynamo, to the seat of power, to the seat of truth. Follow it back to Christ himself. And if anyone starts a church ten years after our blessed Lord is sent into heaven, too late, no power, no energy. That's one of the functions of bishops. Then the bishops, too, remember our call to be shepherds, going back to the authority of our blessed Lord. We do not belong to a peck order. We bishops are supposed to be servants. You laity are not our servants, priests are not our servants, we are theirs. And we are not just administrators, we are shepherds. We can turn into administrators in an affluent, rich country, but that's not what the Lord wants us to be. We are to be shepherds. Furthermore, we are not just the head of a diocese. We are first consecrated for the world, then for the diocese. Then we are related one to another, but just like your arms and your legs and all of the veins and vessels of your body would be useless unless you had a head, we have no authority except in virtue of our communion with the head, who is the vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter. Without this, our authority is in vain. Now you've heard much about the infallibility of the successor of Peter, the Pope. Honestly, if there's anything which people do not understand is this notion of infallibility, I heard one woman saying to another woman one day, oh, she said, you know, the Catholics believe that the Pope is omniscient, he knows all things. And the first woman said, oh, no, that isn't true. They don't believe he's omniscient, but she says they do believe that he is inflammable. Well, that's true. We do believe he's inflammable. And what does infallibility mean? Infallibility is not a personal gift. If you ever visit the Holy Father and you say to the Holy Father, I'm very interested in the stock market, would you tell me if I should invest in General Motors? And suppose he said, yes, I think General Motors is a good investment. Listen, that's no more infallible a statement than what I am making to you. He is infallible only when he functions as the head of the church. And I will mention some other conditions a little later on. Furthermore, infallibility is not a positive gift. It is a negative gift. Infallibility is taken from two Latin words, in and follower, not to be mistaken. Our blessed Lord said to Peter that the gates of hell, that is to say, the judgment of error and sin, would not touch him or his church. It's not a positive gift. He cannot, for example, make an infallible statement on literature or science. Many people think that infallibility is like a faucet, that the Holy Father goes to this great faucet of infallibility, turns it on, and the truths just pour out. No, that's not infallibility. Infallibility is a levy. It's a levy that prevents the river of truth from overflowing and destroying the countryside. The difference between a river and a swamp is that the swamp has no banks or limits and the river has. And to be infallible, the Holy Father must fulfill three conditions. One, he must speak as the head of the church, that is to say, the head of the church composed of all of the bishops of the church. Secondly, he must speak on the subject of faith and morals. And thirdly, he must address himself to the entire church and not to any member of it or not to any one country. Many a pontiff goes through life without making one single infallible decision, not a one. Now this is the authority of the church, and many people wonder, why is it we obey the church? After all, it's hard to obey some human beings that we see, but they are only the gloves inside us, the hand of Christ. We obey them because they are the representatives of Christ. We obey Christ. It gives us tremendous amount of consolation to have divine truths in those things which concern the soul. For the world, well, the authority is they, something anonymous. Everybody follows the styles. Or they say everybody is doing it. Oh, no. Right is right if nobody is right. And wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. And believe me, in this error-infested world, what we really need is a church and an authority that is right, not when the world is right, but one that is right when the world is wrong. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.