Infallibility: A Reply

INFALLIBILITY: A REPLY M ICHAEL VERTIN has written a review article on my Infallibility: The Crossroads of Doctrine.* In the following pages I shall try to clarify what I believe are a number of Vertin's misunderstandings. I shall first summarize my book, and then I shall make a few brief remarks on his criticisms. SUMMARY 1) The Meaning of Infallibility. Human infallibility refers to a certitude in understanding (many would call it a certitude in judg-ment) v.rhich is equal to the certitude that a person has of his/her existence as a human being in the world. 2) Infallibility can be enjoyed only with regard-to universal meanings. The certitude of infallibility can exist and be shared with others only if the aspect of reality which is understood is a universal condition of human existence. Thus, while I have a practical certitude that I am sitting at a typewriter on November 12, 1979, this could not be the object of shared infallible certitude. This concrete fact could be known by others at other places and times only with historical moral certitude. However, universal aspects of existence can be known and shared by all with infallible certitude. Thus, there are universal structures of the human person in relationship to .society which can be infallibly known and shared: each person is open-ended and capable of further growth; the experiential pattern of each person is unique; the uniqueness of each person's experiential pattern, the subsequent uniqueness of each person's total understanding, and the vastness of possible knowledge coupled with the concrete limitations of each person-all these together make inevitable *Michael Vertin, "Infallibility and the Demands of Epistemology: A Review Article," The Thomist, October, 1979, pp. 687-65!'.l. INFALLmILITY: A REPLY 129 intellectual and personal pluralism. These are examples of universal meanings, aspects of reality present to all places, times, and cultures which can be grasped by each individual under appropriate circumstances. These universal meanings may be recurring characteristics of the process by which individuals know and grow, or they may be recurring characteristics of the world in which subjects live-a world which includes other human subjects, the risen Christ, and ultimately the uncreated God. 3) Universal meanings can be grasped explicitly only by those with appropriate experience. Experience is here not limited to sense experience but is defined as the actualization of any human potential. This actualization may be occasioned by external stimuli, by internal movements such as the reflecting upon past experience, or even directly by God (as exemplified by the consolation without cause of St. Ignatius). The totality of actualization undergone over a lifetime is called the experiential continuum. All understanding depends upon one's experiential continuum, and the act of understanding represents a further actualization of that continuum. The potentiality (= possibility) of grasping explicitly that a certain meaning is universal depends upon the possession of an appropriate experiential continuum. Thus, to have the potentiality of grasping that all are conditioned by their environments , one might have to live in a number of environments and witness what happened to the self and others in those environments . This potentiality of grasping becomes an actuality on the occasion of an appropriate insight. Thus, one can actually come to understand explicitly that the self and others invariably adapt to and are changed by the succession of environments .1 1 I italicize the words "potentiality," "actuality," and "actually" because I wish to alert the reader to the fact that these words in this context have no deep philosophic meaning. They arc used in an ordinary English sense. I mention this became one of my mistakes according to Vertin is to use explanatory terms like " potency " and " act " indiscriminately with descriptive terms such us " experiential continuum." However, the terms he refers to are the terms " potentially " and " actually " used in the ordinary English sense exemplified in the text above. ISO PETER CIDRICO, S. S, 4) In addition to the universal meanings accessible to all, there is a universal meaning accessible to those who are initiated into the faith experience of Christianity. That universal meaning is constituted by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his risen humanity Christ...