¹ Creative Fidelity Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium, (New York: Paulist Press, 1996)Google Scholar. “The Doctrinal Weight of Evangelium Vitae,”Theological Studies, 56 (1995): 560–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Secondary Object of Infallibility,”Theological Studies, 54 (1993):. 536–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Reply to Germain Grisez,”Theological Studies, 55 (1994): 732–37Google Scholar; Magisterium, (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), esp. pp. 119–52Google Scholar.

² “The Infallibility of the Ordinary Universal Magisterium: A Critique of Some Recent Observations,”Heythrop Journal, 39 (1998)Google Scholar. More recently in response to Richard Gaillardetz's reading of Sullivan: “Reply to Richard Gaillardetz on the Ordinary Universal Magisterium and to Francis Sullivan,”Theological Studies 64 (September 2003): 598–609CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, of related interest:“Christ, the Moral Law, and the Teaching Authority of the Magisterium,”Irish Theological Quarterly 64 (Spring 1999): 17–28Google Scholar.

³ Gaillardetz, Richard, “The Ordinary Universal Magisterium: Unresolved Questions,”Theological Studies 63 (September 2002): 447–471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ “Reply to Lawrence J. Welch,”Theological Studies 64 (September 2003): 610–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., 615.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Sullivan admits that there are good reasons for thinking that the Pope meant to invoke the infallibility of the ordinary universal magisterium in EV, nos 57, 62, 65. See his Creative Fidelity, 159. Nevertheless Sullivan still thinks that “questions remain.” For further discussion of this point see my “The Infallibility of the Ordinary Universal Magisterium: A Critique of Some Recent Observations,” 33, n.24.

⁸ Sullivan, Creative Fidelity, 160.

⁹ “Reply to Lawrence J. Welch,” 611.

¹⁰ Ibid. Sullivan seems to have changed his views, at least to some extent, on how to interpret teaching of the Council of Florence. In his book, The Church We Believe In, Sullivan asked whether the Catholic Church changed its mind on the question of the necessity of being in the church for salvation because there seems to be a contradiction between Florence and the Second Vatican Council which affirmed (Lumen gentium, 16) the possibility of salvation for those who “through no fault of their own do not know of the gospel of Christ or his church.” Sullivan asked: “Is there any way of reconciling these positions?” He gave this answer:

So what has changed does not really seem to be doctrinal. Some 4 years later Sullivan substantially repeated this point even more fulsomely as part of his very fine study of the doctrine Extra Ecclesiam nulla Salus, entitled Salvation Outside the Church?Tracing the History of the Catholic Response, (Paulist Press: New York, 1992) 199–204Google Scholar. I believe Sullivan's earlier and careful interpretation of Florence is sound. There is something after all that both Florence and Vatican II teach: the necessity of the Church for salvation. The dogma that was really being taught at Florence was not the judgment that non‐Christians were culpably outside the Church. It is true, the bishops no longer judge all non‐Christians to be culpably outside the Church, but this judgment was really extrinsic to the underlying dogma that was taught. Was this judgment about the culpability of non‐Christians a doctrine? It is hard to see how it was. Such a ‘judgment’ seems to pertain more to the incomplete and imperfect formulation the Church can sometime express in its teachings. If anything, Florence demonstrates more the historicity of dogma than it does to serve as an example that of how one should not appeal to the past consensus of bishops about a doctrine if the bishops are now no longer agreed in teaching that doctrine. Sullivan in Salvation Outside the Church, observes: “These limits of the cultural, geographical, psychological horizons of medieval Christians are historical factors which profoundly conditioned their expression of the doctrine of the necessity of the church for salvation.”

¹¹ I mentioned in my article in Theological Studies that Sullivan himself seems to recognize there can be times that a prior consensus has been lost but is still binding and needs to be restored and received again. In one of his articles on the magisterium, Sullivan points out how papal definitions (extra‐ordinary magisterium) can sometimes be “… needed to overcome a threat to the Church's unity in the faith and bring about a consensus, or restore one that had been lost.” See Dictionary of Fundamental Theology s.v. “Magisterium,”(New York: Crossroads, 1994): 619.

¹² For instance, Anastasius (730–54) Constantine II, (754–66), Nicetas I (766–80) and Paul IV (780–84). The latter later recanted his iconoclasm.

¹³ “Reply to Lawrence J. Welch,” 614. Sullivan refers here to the fact that I took issue with his claim that canon 749.3 (No doctrine is to be understood to be infallibly defined unless this fact is clearly established as such) which is applicable to defined dogmas should also be applied to undefined dogmas and definitive teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium. I argued that it is better not to apply canon 749.3 and its requirement of manifeste constiterit to undefined dogmas and definitive teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium in a univocal way because it is a juridical term that refers to the formulation of defined doctrine. To use the term univocally introduces a confusion about how definitive teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium are known and recognized. There is a distinction, I pointed out between “teaching something”(ordinary universal magisterium) and “teaching by way of defining”(extraordinary magisterium). One has to look for something different in the effort to identify the infallible and definitive teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium. Sullivan in reply acknowledges that it is obvious that “the criteria by which one can know with certainty that a doctrine has been defined are different from those by which one can be certain that a doctrine has been taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium.” Still, Sullivan judges that “the difference between the criteria is irrelevant.” See “Reply to Lawrence J. Welch,” 614. I admit that these teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium must be recognizable in some way. But there is a difference between “manifesting by defining”(extra‐ordinary magisterium) and “manifesting by leaving clues”(ordinary magisterium). I am glad that Sullivan thinks this is obvious but I do not believe it is obvious to every theologian. It is all too easy to think that the infallible teachings of the ordinary universal magisterium should look like the infallible teachings of the extra‐ordinary magisterium and thus conclude that therefore there must be very few of them.

¹⁴ It is worth repeating a point here that I am made in footnote 8 of my Theological Studies article: Prior to Evangelium vitae Richard McCormick claimed that most theologians disputed the idea that the Church even had the authority to teach about abortion infallibly let alone that the Church had done so through the ordinary universal magisterium. Some 11 years prior to Evangelium vitae Richard McCormick, arguing against Grisez, wrote “They [theologians] simply disagree‐‐as most would and should‐‐with Grisez that the immorality of direct abortion is infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium. More generally, they deny that such particular norms are the proper object of infallibility.” See “Medicaid and Abortion,”Theological Studies(December 1984) 715–721, at 720. In another telling passage McCormick also claimed “Rahner's analysis would deny the very possibility of infallible teaching where direct abortion is concerned. And it is safe to say that this is the common conviction of theologians.” Ibid. Emphasis mine. If McCormick was correct about the fact that many theologians believed that particular moral norms cannot be the proper object of infallibility, then what EV teaches, about direct abortion, murder and euthanasia as being taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium, has enormous consequences for contemporary Catholic moral theology.