"Defending the Faith ... " (2) Some more remarks upon the Book

It has always been the role of the Roman Church to resist Heresy and to establish what is, and what is not, orthodoxy. I venture to quote the great Anglican Papalist writer Dom Gregory Dix on this 'rule':

"It is above all as the norm of Christian belief that Rome is the capital of Christendom in [the second century]. It is at Rome and only at Rome, that all doctrinal issues are then finally settled. This is clearly recognised by the non-Roman writers of the second century, from Ignatius of Antioch at its beginning to Tertullian at its close. The former can write to the Roman Church: 'Ye were the instructors of others. And my desire is that those lessons shall hold good which as teachers ye enjoin'. For the latter the Roman Church is the ecclesia authenticae regulae. To Rome comes every second century Christian teacher, intent on securing the approval of that Church for his teachings. To Rome comes Marcion, already under censure in other Churches; but until Rome has condemned him he is still a catholic Christian. It is at Rome that the controversies with the great Gnostic heresiarchs, which fill the latter half of the second century, were primarily thrashed out. It is at Rome that the answer to their claim to a secret tradition and a succession of teachers from the Apostles is elaborated; it is at Rome that the additions to the baptismal symbol which exclude their interpretations of the Gospel are first made; it is at Rome that the incompatibility of their Hellenistic presuppositions with the concrete thought of authentic Christianity is made plain, in a way that it was not plain even to great Churches like that of Alexandria for half a century afterwards. Above all, in the controversy over Montanus, about which we know more than any other in this period, Rome is obviously the centre and focus of the final issue, even though Montanus never left Asia and the Apostolic Churches of Asia were his chief opponents. It is at Rome that the Montanists, excommunicated in Asia, repeatedly seek the communion of the Church; at Rome that Praxeas intercedes against them; at Rome that the Church of Lyons seeks to mediate between them and their opponents; Tertullian the Montanist reserves his wrath, not for the Asian bishops who had excommunicated and sought to exorcise the new Prophets of the Paraclete, but for the Roman bishop whose refusal of communion had finally cut them off from the Church."

PETER! TEACH US! PETRE! DOCE NOS!

When the Four Cardinals issued their Dubia, they begged their Holy Father to resolve the questions they were putting to him And they put their questions into the form of Dubia because that is the formal style in which to ask the Teacher, the Bishop of the Church of the authentic Rule, to give the formal teaching to which, for nearly two millennia, the Church of S Peter has born witness.  

PETRE! DOCE NOS! PETER! TEACH US!

When some of us put together the Correctio Filialis, we put the central doctrinal problems which were troubling us into Latin (English translation accompanies it). We did this to make clear that we were not simply uttering some grumpy journalistic and gossipy criticism of PF. We were, in the formal and precise official language of the Roman Church, putting formally to the Roman Bishop a request for formal teaching on controverted matters. 

We were begging the Successor of S Peter to teach us.

To do this is not to attack the Pope! On the contrary, it is to affirm the centrality to Catholicism of the Petrine Ministry of the Roman Pontiff. 

The people who attack the Pope are the people who imply ... of even state explicitly ... that a Pope can change Catholic Teaching at will. He cannot. As Vatican I infallibly taught, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that, by His revelation, they might publish new doctrine, but so that, with His help, they might devoutly guard the revelation handed down through the Apostles, the Deposit of Faith, and faithfully expound it."(D3070).