Potestas docendi is the power to teach, to act as a magister or teacher, whence magisterium, the church’s teaching authority. The pope spoke of it in addressing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 15 January last:
The bishop of Rome, in whose potestas docendi your congregation [that is, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] participates, is bound to proclaim ceaselessly: “Dominus Iesus–Jesus is Lord.” The potestas docendi, in fact, entails obedience to the faith … [Origins 39/34, 4 Feb. 2010, p. 550]
The power to teach is a real power: when it is exercised by those who have it, something effective is done: truth is taught. But in order for teaching to be effective, it must be recognized and responded to with obedience. If it is not, it cannot perform its function. Teaching without an attentive and obedient audience is not teaching but monologue, in much the same way as the exercise of judicial or legislative power in a context where it is widely ignored or disobeyed is impotent. Obedience is not the only thing required of those who recognize the power to teach; but it is the first thing, the essential condition for everything else.
The church possesses the power to teach in matters of faith and morals. The power is exercised in various forms and with various levels of intensity, but it should always prompt, among Catholics, a delightedly ecstatic submissive response to a gift given. Just as the power to teach comes in intensities, so also does the act of submission: the fiercer the embrace, the more intense the response; but whatever the intensity, the gift and the response are always of the same fundamental kind. It is one of the great needs of the church in the present age to make clearer the nature of the relation between the potestas docendi and the oboedientia it calls for; and above all to show the beauty and fullness of the intellectual life when lived within the circle of the gift of teaching and the response of obedience and its incompleteness and imperfection when attempted without that circle.
Here are some resources for the study of this matter:
- Lumen Gentium §25, in which a distinction is made between the degree of assent required in response to the ordinary teaching of the bishops as praedicatores evangelii and doctores authentici, on the one hand (such teaching is to be accepted religioso animi obsequio); and the degree of assent required to teaching given by the Pope definitivo actu, or by the bishops speaking in concord on matters of faith or morals, on the other (such teaching is to be accepted fidei obsequio).
- The International Theological Commission’s document “On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” issued in October 1989, in which some discriminations are made among kinds of teaching and degrees of assent (see, especially, §B.II.1, §B.II.3, and §B.III.3: the ITC notes, as well, that further clarification on these matters would be welcome).
- The Professio Fidei published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1989, which contains a brief statement as to the three principal grades or degrees of doctrine, and the kind of assent that should accompany each.
- The “Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,” issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Feast of the Ascension, 1990, especially §§16-17, §23, in which the threefold distinction mentioned in the Professio is taken up and developed slightly.
- The Apostolic Letter Ad Tuendam Fidem, issued motu proprio by John Paul II in May 1998, in which the Code of Canon Law was modified to accord with the 1989 Professio Fidei, and in which (§§1-3) there is further discussion of the threefold distinction.
- The “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei,” issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in June 1998, in which is given the fullest (to date) exposition of the Professio’s threefold distinction.
