§ 131. The Preservation of Christian Teaching

The unity of the Church rests on the unity of the faith. If there is no unity of the faith, if the revealed Christian teaching is not preserved by all and each in its full inviolability, then there is no Church either. The organ through which the unity of the Church is preserved is the episcopate (§ 51). This same episcopate, to which the Founder of the Church committed His teaching, that it should proclaim it, and with which He promised to be until the end of the ages, has the first task of preserving the revealed teaching and of bearing infallible witness to its truth. The performance of this task is entrusted to every bishop, for “every bishop, and all together, hold a full portion”;[1] “they all possess an equal power and dignity”;[2] and “they are all equally successors of the apostles” —[3] and accordingly they perform this task, each in the church entrusted to him, either themselves or through their delegates, the priests. But an occasion arises when the common voice of all the bishops must be heard, namely, when disputes about the faith arise which touch the whole universal Church and threaten the purity and inviolability of the revealed truth. This common voice of the whole episcopate is then expressed either at an ecumenical council, or, if it is impossible on account of the circumstances of the time to convene a council, it is expressed in dogmatic epistles, in which the true belief of the Church is set forth, to which the members of the whole episcopate have assented through written communications.

In deciding questions of faith and in determining what is to be believed, the Church in such cases does not issue new dogmas, but only bears witness to the revealed truth and to the unchangeable tradition of the principal local churches, and expresses, in a form suited to the needs of the time, the particular truth concerning which a dispute has arisen in the Church and which some had begun wrongly to understand and, accordingly, wrongly to preach. As the norm for the Church in such activity there has served, and serves, on the one hand Holy Scripture, and on the other—whether a given truth has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.[4] This as regards the issuing of dogmatic definitions occasioned by disputes that arise concerning some article of faith that has not [yet] been disclosed and explained; while as regards the preservation of those truths which have been defined by the Fathers of the Church and at the ecumenical councils, the norm serving the Church is canon 7 of the Third Ecumenical Council, which delivers to anathema everyone who dares in any way to violate the established dogmas.[5]

Dogmatic definitions established by lawful authority are unconditionally binding upon all and each who belong to the Church. Their binding force derives from the very content of these definitions, since they contain nothing new in themselves, but only clarify the handed-down belief, and accordingly they cannot be made dependent in any way upon formalities that might supposedly have had to be observed in the promulgation of these same definitions.[6]