doctor of the Catholic Church; as also to the Church itself and to the Apostolic See.'[1]
Now, in this approbation the Church approved the doctrine of St. Augustine, not only in the sensus qualis but also in the sensus quis; that is, it approved not only a possible theological sense which was orthodox, but the very and grammatical sense of the text. It was therefore a true doctrinal judgment as to a dogmatic fact.
For, as Cardinal Gerdil argues, the doctrine of St. Augustine was proposed by the Church as a rule of faith against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian errors. 'When it is said that the doctrine of St. Augustine in the matter of grace was adopted by the Church, it must not be understood in the sense as if St. Augustine had worked out a peculiar system for himself, which the Church then adopted as its own. … 'The great merit of St. Augustine is, that with marvellous learning he expounded and defended the antient belief of the faithful.'[2] The Church infallibly discerned the orthodoxy of his writings, and approving them, commended them as a rule of faith.
If the Church have this infallible discernment of the meaning, grammatical and theological, of orthodox texts, it has eodem intuitu the same discernment of heterodox texts. For the universal practice of the Church in commending the writings of orthodox, and of condemning those of heterodox authors, is a part of the doctrinal authority of the Church in the
