The Fourth Level of the Magisterium

Benedict XVI, formerly Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1981-2005

THE FOURTH LEVEL OF THE MAGISTERIUM

According to standards presently employed by the Holy See and codified in Canon Law, there are three kinds of magisterial statement, three levels of authoritative teaching which establish the “the order of the truths to which the believer adheres.” [1] They are (1) truths taught as divinely revealed, (2) definitively proposed statements on matters closely connected with revealed truth, and (3) ordinary teaching on faith and morals. A fourth category, ordinary prudential teaching on disciplinary matters, is commonly accepted by theologians and can be inferred from the text of Cardinal Ratzinger’s Donum Veritatis. [2]

…The fourth category of Magisterial teaching, “ordinary prudential teaching on disciplinary matters,” is not mentioned in any document we have consulted except DV, 24-31, [42] where its contents are called “interventions in the prudential order.”

This category would include any of the routine publications of the various organs of the Holy See or the bishops in their dioceses. The key element in this category seems to be its contingency upon circumstances of time and place. Gaillardetz includes the CDF’s condemnations of Liberation Theology in this category. He highlights the essentially prudential nature of the category and calls it “doctrinal only in an analogous sense.” [43]

An external assent, or obedience, is due to the teachings of this category. While the theologian would be wrong to advance that the magisterium would habitually teach error, the possibility of error entering into this level of teaching is stronger than with the previous category.

The categories we have just outlined, drawn as they are from recent pronouncements, reflect a highly developed positive theology of the ecclesial magisterium. Though assigning doctrinal pronouncements to the various categories is not a science whose conclusions are always certain, it is still a real science, one that can be employed in the “calm debate over the acceptance of Vatican II.”

...[1] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei,” 4, L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English, 15 July, 1998, http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfadtu.htm [accessed 16 May 2007]

[2] I do not accept this fourth category, but it will be found in various theologians’ work. Richard R Gaillardetz gives the following names to these levels: (1) Definitive Dogma, (2) Definitive Doctrine, (3) Non-definitive, Authoritative Doctrine, (4) Prudential admonitions and Provisional Applications of Church Doctrine. Cf. Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching With Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium in the Church, Theology and Life Series, Vol 41 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1997), 102.

…[42] While the text of the Instruction does not delimit this fourth level so clearly, Dulles is not the only theologian to see it distinguished here. He specifies that it “appears to be new in the CDF instruction” [Dulles, Cardinal Avery, The Craft of Theology: from Symbol to System (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992), 111].

[43] Gaillardetz, 123.

http://catholicism.org/the-three-levels-of-magisterial-teaching.html

—Brother André Marie, “The Three Levels of Magisterial Teaching,” Catholicism.org, November 10, 2007  

 

DV stands for Donum Veritatis.

SAINT BENEDICT ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

The stipulations of Saint Benedict’s Holy Rule on corporal punishment (see Chapters 23, 28, 30, and 71), which in his day meant one monk flogging another, is an example of teachings of the fourth level of the Magisterium. By virtue of inclusion in the Holy Rule, this religious practice claims divinely inspired spirituality. It purports to be a “charism” of the Holy Spirit.

Nowadays, however, nobody in his right mind whips another person for the sake of their spiritual good. We can only wonder for how many centuries the practice of flogging one another persisted in the Benedictine order since the Benedictines today seem embarrassed to indicate the precise period of its historical practice.