When is Magisterium Infallible?

Critiquing a Sedevacantist on the Magisterium
The Michael Lofton Show | 16.I.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkofwxWIjl8

0:05 Before I see who it is, my guess is, it's not a Conclavist ...

3:18 I would say, secundary objects actually are objects of supernatural faith.

I'd like you to show a pre-Conciliar source for your criticism.

By the way, while St. Thomas distinguishes between primary and secondary object of faith (supernatural virtue), he divides it differently from you, making lots of things in the Bible on his division secondary, as they are not the salvific truths themselves, but the circumstances in which they are revealed.

5:21 I see you invoke one other scholar saying the Ordinary Universal Magisterium can teach non-definitively.

The point made would be:

• whatever status explicit or implicit the actual individual participants in the universal magisterium at any given point intend or express, the status changes because it is "universal" ... this is not a who, it is the exceptionless totality of a who
• unlike when a doctrine is only held by Pope and most bishops, even vastly so, the actual exceptionless quality of the agreement makes a difference making the status definitive.

The opposite view seems to be a cop-out to make room for heretical statements like:

• Mankind is way older than the generations of Luke 3 indicate
• Joshua thought he was commanding Sun and Moon to stand still, but God made sure it was the Earth that stopped rotating
• You could make a parallel about Jesus as Man and Jesus as God about exorcisms (Church of Sweden progressives in the 19th C. did so [unclear, see link])
• Taking more back of a consumed in use commodity (food or money) than was lent with no justification other than the time is a licit way to conduct loans.

In each of these cases, the consensus of centuries makes for a longstanding Universal Ordinary Magisterium, and if you want to push the heresies, it's obviously convenient to pretend the Church wasn't teaching that definitively.

The opposite attitude was shown in Trent Session IV, the formulation "tenuit atque adhuc tenet" where a magisterial statement to be such cannot be in overt conflict with all the past of the Church.

[The idea of "Authentic Magisterium" is, as he said, "Merely Authentic Magisterium", that criticism is pertinent.]

To conclude, what you say about the Merely Authentic Magisterium, no, it cannot teach heresy. Including not yet defined heresy.

The teaching of heresy auto-deposes from magisterium. In the case of Nestorius, Pope St. Coelestine I confirmed this, 430, and this before a solemn condemnation of Nestorianism in 431.

When you say "the Ordinary Universal Magisterium" is a "who" or a "subject" I think you take the "Pope and Bishops" as operative for the who.

However, for Ordinary Universal Magisterium, there is, like for Universal and Peaceful Acceptance (sth your and my line of Popes have lacked since 1950 at least), a circumstance beyond the general "Pope and Bishops" namely, the lack of opposing voices among the bishops (and for acceptance, the faithful).

This circumstance is providential, not a structural automatic occurrence, and as such constitutes a how.

You could pretend from your pov that Pope and Bishops teach Evolution. Well, Bishop Williamson doesn't, the Sede bishops don't always (though one of them went for Deep Time), Pope Michael I who became a bishop in 2011 didn't, and since Thuc consecrated the antipope (to which I once adherred) "Gregory XVII" of Palmar, and that man rejected even Deep Time, I think it's safe to say Thuc rejected at least Evolution. That's how your position cannot be Ordinary Universal Magisterium even if it were Pope and most Bishops.

However, for centuries past, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the Ordinary Universal Magisterium has taught that not just mankind but the material universe as such was created no further back than the genealogy of Luke 3. This is because you do not find one opposing voice within the ranks of the magisterium or otherwise among Church Fathers. This circumstance is providential, and therefore this view is infallible.