Doubt might perhaps arise whether the other censures, such as “Wicked,” “Unsound,” “Unsafe,” and mere condemnations without any particular qualification, impose the duty of admitting the falsity of the condemned doctrines as at least morally certain, or whether it is enough to abstain from maintaining them. As a rule, however, we must not be content with the latter.
III. The Church’s judgment is also infallible when condemning doctrines and propositions in the sense meant by some determinate author. This infallibility is already contained in the infallibility of the censure itself when no distinction can be drawn between the meaning of the words and the meaning intended by the author. But, where this distinction can be drawn, the infallibility of the judgment concerning the author’s meaning is at least virtually contained in the infallibility of the censure itself. The Church sometimes condemns an author’s propositions in the sense conveyed by their context, and sometimes formulates propositions conveying the author’s meaning. In the former case the censure applies to the context as well as to the proposition; in the latter case there is a twofold censure, one on the propositions as formulated by the judge, and another on the text as containing the sense of the propositions. In neither of these cases would the censure be infallible, if it were not infallible in determining the sense of the author. For this reason the Church does not give a separate judgment to establish that a particular text conveys a particular meaning; she simply attaches the censure to the text as it stands.
These various distinctions were of great importance in the Jansenistic controversy. The Jansenists admitted that the five propositions censured by Innocent X. were worthy of condemnation, but denied that they were to be found in their master’s works.
SECT. 35.—DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA
I. The truths which God has been pleased to reveal to mankind were not all communicated in the beginning. As time went on, the later Patriarchs had a larger stock of revealed truth than those who preceded them; the
