# Catholic teaching **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 23, 2015, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213 "2015-06-23T03:56:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![denquixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@denquixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/denquixote)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/1 "2015-06-23T03:56:02Z")
Having been brought up in the Catholic faith I have always understood that Papal Encyclicals were delivered ex cathedra or with the imprimatur of infallibility. The recent encyclical on climate change and the obvious connection between that and birth control has caused me to make a preliminary investigation into whether or not Catholic teaching delivered in the form of an encyclical can be incorrect or at any rate be less than infallible. My question for you amateur and professional theologians is “Is the Catholic teaching on birth control subject to revision and further is the current teaching the same in every part of the Catholic world?” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/2 "2015-06-23T04:07:38Z")
No, the contents of an encyclical do not fall under infallibility. There have been only 7 instances of [infallible declarations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations): JPII alone had more encyclicals than that. And yes, teachings on birth control are subject to revision. They’ve changed several times already. The principles behind them (respect to life, path of lesser harm…) aren’t likely to change radically, but the specifics change - for example, any time a new type of birth control comes along. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/3 "2015-06-23T04:16:25Z")
I think your initial belief is mistaken; it’s never been the case, in Catholic teaching, that papal encyclicals have automatically attracted the charism of infallibility. Wikipedia sums up infallibility thus: \*For a teaching by a pope or ecumenical council to be recognized as infallible, the teaching must be: A decision of the supreme teaching authority of the Church (pope or College of Bishops) Concern a doctrine of faith or morals Bind the universal Church Be proposed as something to hold firmly and immutably\* You could quibble over some of the terminology there, but that’s a good enough summary. You’ll notice it says nothing about the form in which the teaching is expressed - encyclical, apostolic exhortation, apostolic constitution, etc, etc. So for any or all of these documents, you’d need to read the document and note the teachings it contains, their subject matter, the terms in which they are put forward, etc, etc, in order to form a view as to whether they meet the criteria for infallibility. Is Catholic teaching on birth control subject to revision? Well, even infallible teachings are subject to revision, since the claims about infallibility have never extended to saying that a particular infallible teaching is the last, best word on the subject concerned; just that it’s not erroneous, which is a purely negative claim. Is Catholic teaching on birth control considered to be an exercise of the charism of infallibility? Different Catholic theologians have different opinions about that, I think. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/4 "2015-06-23T07:44:18Z")
Do any of the documents explicitly invoke infallibility? Is there a phrase which says: “The following is an immutable fact of Faith” or “is Infallible”? I understand that the concept of Infallibility has evolved over the last 2000 years from “of course!” to “under these specific conditions”. Did Vat II (Second Vatican conference, 1962-1965) radically revamp the concept? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/5 "2015-06-23T09:01:55Z")
It’s rare (unheard of?) for a document explicitly to invoke infallibility for itself. Apart from the logical circularity of doing so, it’s such transparent hubris that even the most arrogant pope would be a bit slow to go down that road. Vatican I (1870) defined the doctrine of papal infallibility. Vatican II didn’t touch that, but put much more stress on the teaching authority of the bishops as a whole, as opposed to just the pope. It should be pointed out that infallibility is a (claimed) characteristic of the _church_, and non-Catholic as well as Catholic traditions affirm as much, in various different ways. The particularly Catholic take on this is that this particular charism is expressed through the pope/the bishops. So for a pope, or the bishops, to offer a teaching that attracts in falliblity, it has to be a proclamation of what the church believes, not what he or they believes, or what he or they want the church to believe. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2015, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/catholic-teaching/723213/6 "2015-06-23T12:00:40Z")
It’s my understanding that infallibility has only been invoked/claimed a handful of times, and usually it’s on something that the Church has believed informally for decades, if not centuries. I’m thinking that the last time was the declaration of the Assumption of the B.V M.