Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience

John Rist is Professor of Classics and Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Toronto, former Father Kurt Pritzl Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America and has taught (as Regius Professor of Classics) at the University of Aberdeen, at the Patristic Institute in Rome and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His more recent publications include: What is Truth? From the Academy to the Vatican; Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition; Plato and the Discovery of Moral Realism and What is a Person? His latest book, written in collaboration with his wife Anna, is Confusion in the West: Retrieving Tradition in the Modern and Post-Modern World. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1980.

• Preface1. Toward the Syllabus of Errors2. From The Syllabus of Errors to Pastor Aeternus (1870)3. Leo XIII: Top- Down Pastor4. Saint Pius X and the Modernist Dragon5. The 1930s: Fascists, Nazis, ‘New Theologians’, Condoms6. The End of an Era? Pius XII as Past and Future7. Who Changed What at Vatican II?8. The Pope, the ‘Pill’ and the ‘ Woman Problem’9. Celebrity Autocracy: John Paul II10. Joseph Ratzinger: Poacher Turned Gamekeeper?11. Perón Meets Ignatius: The Choice Against Tradition12. Modest Conclusions, Less Modest SuggestionsVery Select BibliographyIndex

In this invigorating study of the modern papacy, Professor John Rist identifies the conjoining of four elements, which have caused serious damage to the Church: the creeping authority of the Pope stemming from uncertainty surrounding Vatican I; the servility and silence of the bishops in response; a revolutionary aspect on the part of the Jesuit order; and the unthinking obedience of a poorly instructed laity. Rist argues persuasively that the authentic truth of Vatican I, that the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to the successors of St Peter to safeguard the Deposit of Faith, must be restored before things become beyond repair on the human level. Chief among his proposals is that the nineteenth century misuse of the term infallibility should be strictly curtailed to its primary meaning, that the Church and the pope must always cling to basic Catholic dogma, and a hierarchy of truths must be recognized.