Chapter X — On the authority of the Supreme Pontiffs, of the holy Fathers, and of the Theologians, both Scholastic and Moralist

I. The authority of the Supreme Pontiffs in settling controversies of morals and of faith wise theologians have illustrated in entire volumes. All Catholics receive and venerate it alike. In this compendium it is not permitted, for brevity's sake, to illustrate this argument at greater length.

II. The Doctors and Fathers of the Church must be distinguished from doctors who are in the Church. The Probabilists and Casuists call one another by the title of Doctor. Nothing is more frequent in their books than this phrase: So the Doctors; so the Doctors commonly. And who are these Doctors? Caramuel, Diana, Gobat, Escobar, Tamburini, La Cruz, Vera Cruz, Sporer, Candidus, La-Croix, and six hundred of the same sort. If these men have received the laurel of the Doctorate in some University — as it is wont to be received very easily — they may be called doctors dwelling in the Church, but not Doctors and Fathers of the Church. Three endowments are required that anyone be numbered among the Fathers and Doctors of the Church: 1. eminent doctrine; 2. signal sanctity; 3. the testimony of the Church. The Doctors of the Church are called, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the salt of the earth and the light of the world: You are the salt of the earth ... You are the light of the world ... so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works. Wisdom dissipates darkness and illuminates minds; sanctity of morals inflames others to the pursuit of virtue; the testimony of the Church approves both the wisdom and the sanctity.

III. As the first Fathers of the Church, and at the same time as divine writers, the Evangelists and Apostles stand eminent, and after them follow the disciples of the Lord, all of whom by degrees are Fathers of Fathers; as St. Augustine says, explaining the versicle of Psalm 44, Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: that is, he says, the Apostles were sent as Fathers. In the place of the Apostles, sons have been born to thee: bishops have been established. The episcopal grade is a singular prerogative, which, joined with eminent doctrine and signal sanctity, constitutes a more excellent Father of the Church; since the episcopate is the chief channel of tradition, through which the uncorrupted doctrine of the Apostles has come down to us.

IV. The Fathers are commonly distributed into three ages. The first age comprehends the first three centuries; the second, the following three; the third extends from the beginning of the seventh century to the thirteenth. The Fathers of the first age are worthy of the greater veneration, the nearer they stood to the primeval origin and fountain of the apostolic traditions. Yet the Fathers of the second age do not for that reason excel with lesser authority, if they have illustrated the Church more copiously with the splendor of a richer doctrine and of heroic virtues. The Fathers of the third age, although inferior to their predecessors in antiquity, erudition, and eloquence, nevertheless, since they have taught the same doctrine as the first, and at times hand it down more compactly and more distinctly, are themselves also to be held in the highest esteem.

V. The chief among the Latin Fathers are Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Hilary, Leo the Great, Prosper, Fulgentius, Gregory the Great. The more celebrated among the Greeks are Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Basil, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, Damascene.

VI. St. Bernard, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure are Doctors and Fathers of the Church on account of their eminent knowledge, their signal sanctity, and the testimony of the Church. Among the ancient Fathers of the Church are not reckoned Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Rufinus: for although their erudition and knowledge be eminent, the Church nevertheless has not adopted them as her Doctors. Great, notwithstanding, is their authority in those things in which they do not depart from the doctrine of the Church. I shall touch in few words upon what is commonly held concerning the authority of the Fathers.

VII. Rule I. Many things are disputed in theology which pertain neither to faith nor to morals, and hence have been neither revealed nor handed down. In such minor questions no one is bound to embrace the authority of the Fathers. Rule II. In those things which pertain to faith and morals, the unanimous consent of the holy Fathers produces a most certain judgment, which no Catholic can call into question. For if all the holy Fathers by unanimous consent were to fall into some error, the Church herself would err — which, as was shown above, cannot happen; and this rule is common, and is confirmed by the authority of the Council of Trent. Rule III. When, in matters of faith, a few of the holy Fathers dissent, that is to be embraced which the rest teach by unanimous consent. Rule IV. The authority of one or another Doctor of the Church is to be held in the greater esteem, the more clearly it is established that they were given by God, by a peculiar providence, in this or that grave controversy for the defense of the Church's doctrine, and were endowed with a more excellent sanctity. With these gifts there shines forth among the ancients St. Augustine, who after St. Paul was given by God to champion the doctrine of grace and predestination against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, and to assert the sincerity of Christian speech against lies and mental restrictions. And what shall I say of that stupendous portent of Christian fortitude, unheard of through the ages, the great Athanasius, who for nearly half a century fought fearlessly and strenuously against the Arians? The doctrine of Aquinas the Pontiffs rightly call the shield and antidote against all heresies.

VIII. Of scholastic theology and the authority of theologians I have discoursed at greater length in Tome I of the Apparatus, book I, dissertation 3, chapters 12 and 13. A few things I shall now touch upon. The office of scholastic theology is to gather into one the doctrine dispersed in the Scriptures, in the Councils, and in the Fathers; to distribute it into treatises; and, once distributed, to explain it by way and reason and right method, and to strengthen the dogmas of faith and morals with the weight of arguments. The first of all to gather the dispersed theology into one body and digest it was St. John Damascene, a Greek by nation, who lived in the eighth century. St. Anselm, in the West, published a body of scholastic theology in the eleventh century. In the footsteps of Damascene and Anselm followed, in the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris, called the Master of the Sentences, who from holy Scripture, the Councils, and the Fathers, and above all from St. Augustine, published the chief treatises of theology. In the thirteenth century many scholastic theologians flourished, among whom stand eminent Alexander of Hales, Blessed Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and not a few others.

IX. To resist the concordant judgment of all the Scholastics in matters of faith and morals, if it is not heresy, is next door to heresy, says Melchior Cano. He adds that the multitude of the Scholastics ought not to overwhelm the theologian. Yet the diversity of the theologians must be regarded: for to withstand the common doctrine of the graver theologians is not free of temerity. But against theologians who are eminent neither in sanctity nor in doctrine, however many they be, it is lawful for anyone to contend, provided that both solid reasons and graver theologians, though fewer in number, bring him support.

X. With the sixteenth century waning and the seventeenth beginning, scholastic theology suffered its greatest detriment. And that you may perceive this clearly, you must know that Christian theology is one, embracing these two things: what is to be believed, and what is to be done. It receives various appellations according to different respects. It is called Dogmatic and Positive when it interprets the articles of faith; Polemical, when it vindicates such articles from the cunning inventions of heretics; Scholastic, when it digests all things by way and reason and reduces them to a fixed form of reasoning; Moral theology comprehends both what is to be believed and what is to be done. It explains the articles of faith, and briefly indeed and soberly points out the chief heresies against which Christians must be on their guard. A moral theologian cannot be complete unless he be at once dogmatic, polemical, and scholastic. A theologian of this kind now sits before the tribunal and pronounces judgments — not about the dripping of eaves, not about the boundaries of fields, but about eternal beatitude or eternal misery; now, as master and orator, he teaches, persuades, rebukes; now he draws the sword against enemies both domestic and foreign. The theologian, whether dogmatic or polemical, once his argument has been established, runs his course in his dissertations by an unobstructed way. The moral theologian, on the contrary, continually strikes upon rocks, sandbars, and obstacles: now one circumstance opposes him, now another; on every side lie snares and frauds. Wherefore in the moral theologian, besides polemical, dogmatic, and moral science, there are required an exquisite judgment and a keen mind, a mature and abundant prudence, purity of soul, the government of the appetites, and contempt of earthly things.

XI. Now this most noble nation of theologians was, at the time indicated, divided into two parties: that of the Scholastics, and that of the Moralists. The former, established as it were upon a more eminent bench, claiming for themselves acumen of mind and the art of disputation, look down as from a lofty watchtower upon the Moralists lying in the lowest station, and despise them almost as blockheads and dullards. This is the truth of the matter. In any community whatsoever, those who excel in acumen of mind are deputed to preside over the chairs of the Scholastics and are honored with laurels and degrees; while to the cultivation of the science of morals, to the hearing of confessions, and to the delivery of sermons are sometimes destined those who are unfit for the sublimer scholastic science. And just as many scholastic theologians procured for themselves the greater fame, the subtler and the more futile the questions they stirred up, so very many moral theologians, emulating the glory of the Scholastics, intruded the vainest subtleties and the most inept petty distinctions into Christian theology, and stitched together, like patchwork, an ill-digested heap and arbitrary decisions.

XII. Hence it came about that the illustrious theologians of the age, prejudiced by these abuses, judged that their own glory and their own learning would be ill served if they conferred study and labor upon illustrating the theology called Casuistry. Upon this first absurdity there followed another. For to the adorning of this province there came not a few who were sufficiently strong neither in talent, nor in erudition, nor in prudence. Wherefore it is no marvel if the queen of the sciences lies daily more despised, daily more squalid; if she teems and overflows with quibbles, with captious arguments, with the vainest inventions, alien to evangelical simplicity. This, nowadays, the garrulous old woman, this the doting old man, this the wordy sophist take upon themselves; this they all presume upon, mangle, and teach before they have learned it, says St. Jerome of the handlers of another similar subject.

XIII. Who could sufficiently lament that Christian discipline has in many places come to such a pass of evils, that that supreme and most holy apostolic office of explaining the divine word and of ruling souls is committed to men less vigilant, less learned, less furnished with talent, erudition, dexterity, and therefore with prudence; while to the chairs of disputing, of wrangling, of caviling over matters of almost no moment are raised men perspicacious, erudite, acute, and learned? Ill indeed would the Christian commonwealth be provided for, if the more excellent, the sublimer, the holier ministries — which Christ himself performed, which the Doctors of the Church discharged through so many centuries — were now consigned for their exercise to men less skilled, less learned (what if also less holy?).

XIV. The authority of those who, neglecting the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Fathers, go after others like sheep and birds, as Navarrus and Cardenas say, has no more force than the weight of the reasons they bring forward — if indeed they bring any. That long census of citations is of no weight whatever, when the testimonies of holy Scripture, of the Fathers, of the Councils, and of the graver theologians are wanting.

XV. The knowledge of Canon Law is necessary to the theologian. Exceedingly useful, moreover, are skill in ecclesiastical history — which narrates above all the acts of the Martyrs and Confessors — and the frequent reading of it. For, as the common proverb has it, examples move more than words. That profane history also is of no small assistance to the theologian, Melchior Cano teaches at length. The use of natural reason, moreover, is necessary not only to the theologian, but to every man of sound mind. In theology, however, it must serve divine authority. For in those things which concern faith and morals, human reason has been greatly darkened, and is twisted into error by the tyranny of the appetites, unless it be aided by interior grace and directed by exterior law.