Vatican Knowledge Systems

Read "Vatican Panel Discounts Limbo for Unbaptized: Greatest Impact of Change May Be Relief for Parents" by Alan Cooperman, The Washington Post, April 29, 2007.

As I have pointed out in this blog many times, different institutions have different knowledge systems. The Catholic Church, and the system it has evolved over 2000 years to warrant statements of religious belief, is especially interesting. The Church's knowledge system is very old, informing the religious beliefs not only of 1.1 billion Catholics, but of many other Christians and "People of the Book". It has also been successful in adapting to changing social and economic conditions, and the challenges posed by competing knowledge systems.

Perhaps the most famous aspect of the system is the doctrine of Papal Infallibility -- that the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. This doctrine dates from 1870, and the last such pronouncement was in 1950. At this point, the theological argument goes beyond my understanding, but it seems to recognize that teachings of the Church can be in conflict one with another, and that there must be a process for the reconciliation of such teachings or of the understanding of the dogma.

The Wikipedia posting on Papal Infallibility points out that an Ecumenical Council can also be deemed infallible. It was such a council in 1870 that established the dogma of Papal Infallibility.

The current announcement, made after three years of study by a Vatican-appointed panel of theologians, has declared that limbo is a "problematic" concept that Catholics are free to reject.

"We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge," said the commission's report, published last week with the pope's approval.

The common Catholic teaching about limbo rose in the 13th century, and became progressively less popular in the 20th century.

The Vatican commission stressed that there is no mention of limbo in the Bible and that it was never a part of church dogma. Nor, by the way, is the commission's own advisory opinion.

The WP article further clarifies:

A commission member, the Rev. Paul McPartlan, a professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, said that in the run-up to the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965, there were proposals to add limbo to the central teachings of the church.

But the senior bishops who prepared the council's agenda rejected those proposals, noting that the idea that unbaptized babies cannot go to heaven simply did not match the "sensus fidelium," Latin for "the sense of the faithful," McPartlan said.

Thus the Catholic Church's knowledge system, as it deals with religious dogma, combines concepts of absolutely authoritative sources (divine revelation, ex cathedra pronouncements of the Pope, infallible pronouncements of Ecumenical Councils; dogma that members of the church must believe), with learned pronouncements by teams of theologians who have studied the matter in depth, with that which is the sense of the faithful, with a responsibility of the individual members of the church to determine their own beliefs on many matters that are not defined by dogma.

Obviously, the Church's system for the dissemination of its religious teachings includes the training of priests and nuns, who in general are less specialized than its theologians, and the teaching of church members by the clergy.

This is a complex, nuanced knowledge system that works very well. Not surprisingly, since it is at a very minimum the product of 2000 years of evolutionary development in the hands of huge numbers of very gifted people who see its products as of the greatest possible importance.