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THEOLOGIANS & THE MAGISTERIUM
By: Joseph Cardinal Siri
From “Il Dovere Dell’Ortodossia”
and originally published in RENOVATIO XV (1980), fasc. 1, pp. 5-8.
Christ did not entrust the power of the Magisterium to theologians. He entrusted it exclusively to His Church and within Her personally to Peter and to his successors.
The Magisterium conserves all of divine revelation, she interprets it, she untangles it, she explains it, she proposes it, and she defends it. This is what Christ has established.
Why? Divine reasons are not fully known to us, as they touch the infinite. Some things we know, some we intuit. It is certain that to exercise the Magisterium He did not impose upon His Church the duty to become an academic, nor that His popes should have a degree. He asked of them “Fidelity.” As to the remaining required, Our Lord will attend to. Fidelity will not endure without humility. But, it is required. Our Lord would also have provided for this, because He constituted the Magisterium as infallible.
No one could ever think that a doctrine consigned to men could endure beyond the first generation. Even He did not think so, Our Lord, securing it by other and higher strength: infallibility.
To the theologians Jesus Christ directly did not entrust anything. This is a necessary point of departure about which we are to be totally clear, if we want to establish clear terms and exact limits or the mutual rapore between theology and the Magisterium.
A certain mandate, under certain conditions, can be given to theologians by the Church. And that mandate is to study, to learn thoroughly, to deduce, to defend, to explain and render more accessible to the faithful that which was revealed.
It is to be thought of as a “commission”, the results achieved in the performance of that “commission” are to be judged by, assumed by, approved by and canonized only by the Church. Only at this point does the work or service of theologians acquire value, and only because the Church validates these results. It is necessary to examine with absolute clarity the conditions under which the theologians can conclude this ancillary exercise.
Here are the conditions that are revealed throughout the entire history of the Church. NO invention. In fact they have nothing of their own of value to reveal to the world. Naturally, often, inquiry, in-depth, can begin with a hypothesis. But hypothesis is not fact until it is demonstrated to be so. And here not only is it required to be demonstrated but it must also be received as such by the Church, the infallible teacher....
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