Ockham's Infallibility and Ryan's Infallibility

OCKHAM'S INFALLIBILITY AND RYAN'S INFALLIBILITY Professor Ryan very courteously sent me his paper in advance so that I could make this briefresponse. I'm afraid we may be at the point of just reiterating past arguments in a mood of mutual incomprehension . But I will try again for a few minutes to clarify my position. Let me begin with something we can agree on. Ockham's ecclesiology was not that of a nineteenth-century, ultramontane supporter of papal infallibility. Ryan seems particularly concerned to establish this point. But there is no quarrel between us here. I too think that William of Ockham's views were quite different from those of say, Henry Cardinal Manning. My point was something different—that infallibility is a quirky, paradoxical doctrine that can take many forms, including the one propounded by Ockham. Specifically, in the book that originally gave rise to this debate, I was concerned to argue that, if we attribute infallibility to all Roman pontiffs in general, this does not necessarily enhance the authority of any particular reigning pope. If each pope is bound by the official teachings ofhis predecessors in faith and morals (because they stem from an infallible source) then his freedom of action may be severely curtailed in addressing the emerging problems of his own age. His decisions may be rejected if they are seen as conflicting with those ofearlier pontiffs. Even in modern times some ultra-conservatives have accused Pope John XXIII of doctrinal aberration because he supposedly departed from the formulations of his infallible pre-Vatican Council II predecessors. William ofOckham brought exactly the same charge against Pope John XXII. Professor Ryan's differences from me seem to fall into two broad areas. First: the significance of Ockham's arguments in the Opus Nonaginta Dierum. Second: the relation ofOckham's doctine to modern teaching on infallibility. 296BRIAN TIERNEY In the first general area, Ryan says that I have introduced an ambiguity by associating infallibility with irreformability or immutability , and also that Ockham didn't really mean what he said in the Opus anyway. But, as to infallibility and irreformability, it's not I who have invented an association between the two concepts. They were associated already in the dogmatic definition of 1870. Because the pope was infallible , it was asserted, therefore his decrees were irreformable. More important for us, this is also precisely the doctrine of the early fourteenth-century Franciscans that Ockham chose to defend. The Franciscans accused Pope John XXII of heresy because he had contradicted a decree of his predecessor, Nicholas III, about apostolic poverty It could have sufficed for them to argue only that this one particular decree of Nicholas was irrevocable because it happened to express a truth of Scripture. But in fact the first Franciscan denunciation of John XXII expounded a much broader doctrine in 1324. What the Roman pontiffs have once defined in faith and morals through the key ofknowledge is immutable because the Roman church is unerring.1 The immutability was based on the inerrancy; and it was assumed that decrees of earlier pontiffs on faith and morals did express the unerring belief of the Roman church. This Franciscan theory of papal infallibility—what else can one call it?—was at first put forward only by an anonymous, still unidentified friar. So it would not be of much importance except that, when the Minister-General Michael of Cesena broke with the pope in 1329, he accepted this doctrine and used it in his attacks on pope John. Then Ockham in turn defended it when he came to the support of Michael of Cesena. Ryan says that Ockham himself did not originally formulate the Franciscan doctrine of infallibility and irreformability. That is true; but Ockham chose to defend it, and he devoted a good deal of ingenuity to the task. John XXII had shown that the original Franciscan formula about a "Key of knowledge" was vulnerable to attack. So Ockham reshaped the argument in his own words to a form that he considered defensible—resulting in the striking text that Ryan just read 1 This text is discussed in my Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350 (Leiden: E. J...