John XXII and Papal Teaching Authority by James Heft, S.M. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 768 in e:x;amining the abuses in the Church. " Truth is the guiding principle of theology and theological inquiries; devotion and edification, of worship; and of government, expedience. The instrument .of theology is reasoning; of worship, our emotional nature; of rule, command and coercion. Further, in man as he is, reasoning tends to rationalism; devotion to superstition and enthusiasm; and power to ambition and tyranny " (qoted on p. 125). These words appear in the very late, revised preface of the Prophetical Office. Jan Walgrave in his Foreword to Miller's book sees this revised preface as Newman's ' final synthesis ' of the idea of the Church. Miller makes good use of this synthesis. All in all, Miller has written a wonderfully clear, very readable account of Newman's thought. Walgrave calls it the "only complete study of Newman's idea of the church". Yes. But' complete' does not mean that Newman, nor Miller commenting on Newman, presents a systematic treatment. Newman had some brilliant insights on certain aspects of the Church. Miller has mined these out and given us a coherent presentation. If the book is reissued in paperback, and I hope it will he, it would benefit greatly by a subject index. Otherwise, it is :a fine example of bookmanship. Congratulations, Patmos Press. St. Augustine Church Virginia 9430 South Africa THOMAS HEATH, O.P. John XXll and Papal Teaching Authority. By JAMES HEFT, S.M. Texts and Studies in Religion, Volume 27. Lewiston, New York, and Queenston, Ontario: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986. Pp. xxviii + 280. This study contributes both historically and theologically to the discussion of the pope's infallible teaching office. Heft weaves historical and theological data and perspectives into a whole fabric. He provides both eloquent testimony to the incarnational character of Christian claims to truth and a model of that elusive genre known as historical theology. The first chapter takes us back to medieval Avignon, to that troubled century which historian Barbara Tuchman saw as " a distant mirror " of our own. Here we meet Jacques Duese (1244.1334), Pope John XXII, whom David Knowles has described as an " irascible octage· 764 BOOK REVIEWS narian autocrat" and "untiring generator of s,torm 1and lightning." Elected in 1316 as a kind of "caretaker " pope at the age of 72, John XXII lived for eighteen tumultuous years. As the first pope to spend his entire pontificate at Avignon, he sys,tematized and centrialized church finances. He canonized St. Thomas Aquinas, censured Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, and Meister Eckhart, and wias himself accused of heresy during the controversy over the beatific vision near the end of his pontificate. In 1980 Umberto Eco resurrected John to haunt the pages of The Name of the Rose as the unseen villain of the piece. This fictional portriayal finds its historical basis in John's ongoing battle with the Franciscans over their teaching on the absolute poverty ,of Christ and the apostles. It is in the context of the debate on Franciscan poverty that historian Brian Tierney has located the first discussion of papal 'infallibility (Orig·ins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350, 1972). It is with Tierney's interpretation of the historical origins of papal infallibility that Heft wishes to take issue. He challenges Tierney's portrayal ,of John ,as a pope whose understanding of his own sovereignity, derived from medieval canon law, would have made the idea of his own or any other pope's infallibility quite unthinkable. A sovereign pope is not hound by the decrees of his predecessors. An infallible pope can make decrees which are binding on his successors, thereby destroying the concept of sovereignty. Heft argues, like Hans Kiing and August Hasler, Tierney has approached his historical study of the origins of papal infallibility with an ultramontane view ,of what he was looking for. According to Heft, therefore, " Tierney has written the history of the origins of an ultramontane understanding of papal infallibility, that is, one that underplays the material authority of biblical truth as well as the inerrancy of the whole Church, and which overstates the formal authority of the one defining " (200) . In order to make his case, Heft must show...