Cardinal Dulles' Magisterium is the first in a series of short, but by no means skimpy, ‘introductions to Catholic doctrine’ in preparation from Sapientia Press. It is limpid and assertoric, in the Scholastic style Dulles has come to favour in his more recent writings. Thus it shows little sign of the theology of revelation as ‘symbolic mediation’ he espoused in his middle years. But it is liberally endowed with the historical sense he has shown ever since his first book (in 1941, on the lay Dominican thinker Pico della Mirandola). It can safely be said that, within its short compass (well over a third of the text consists of an appendix of documents), this study will answer any and all the questions Catholics or others are likely to venture on this sometimes thorny topic. It covers the nature and purpose of the magisterium, its history, the share in it which can be accorded to those who are neither popes nor bishops, its normal organs, its scope, and the response and/or ‘reception’ which its deliverances (with the various degrees of authoritativeness) should find. The book under review does not foreclose all issues. Thus, for instance, if I interpret aright, it inclines to the view that magisterial teaching on contraception is irreformable, while leaving open the possibility that such teaching could be regarded as authoritative but not definitive, at any rate in its present manner of expression.

Some commentators wonder why episcopate and papacy receive the accolade ‘the magisterium’ when most teaching in the Church is actually done by other people altogether. So Dulles is wise to open with a definition which lays this canard to rest. We are speaking here of the ‘authoritative teaching of those who are commissioned to speak to the community in the name of Christ, clarifying the faith that the community professes’. Even Neo-Scholastic divines of reactionary hue, so Dulles shows, have accepted that the body of theologians has a teaching function, but the latter is not a function of attestation of the apostolic deposit in a way that should command the assent of the faithful. The doctrinal role of appeal to the Fathers (some of whom, like St Ephrem, did not belong to the ministerial priesthood) and to later doctors of the Church (some of whom are women), as well as reference in the making of doctrine to the ‘sense of the faithful’ are carefully distinguished from both the schola theologorum and the magisterium attestans. These functions in the Church are diverse and complementary yet integrated in an overall ordering.

In his earlier writings, Avery Dulles sought to establish a pax theologica in the Church by exhibiting – notably through his use of ‘model’ theory – the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to doctrine. In more recent decades, he has written more sharply about the limits beyond which such pacification ceases to be plausible. In the words of Lewis Carroll, not all have won and not all can receive prizes. Now in his ninetieth year, Dulles is not unwilling to take a clear position on issues which, one supposes, were hotly debated in the Catholic Theological Society of America of which he has been president. These include the question of whether, and to what extent, the precepts of the natural law fall within the scope of infallibility, the degree of doctrinal authority, if any, to ascribe to Episcopal Conferences, and the distinction between the sense of the faithful and public opinion in the Church (only the former has a theological value, the London Tablet kindly note). Readers of his 1996 Reflections on a Theological Journey will be aware that what has precipitated the shift in his thinking is the unraveling in the coherence of Church life, worship and thinking for which the present Pope has sought an antidote in the notion of a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’.

The present reviewer found especially helpful the account of the 2000 Vallombrosa Meeting between bishops and Curial officials which clarified the status of magisterial teaching on the reservation of priestly orders to men. This teaching should be regarded as a definitive exercise of the ordinary and universal magisterium in its capacity of defending truths which are necessary for the setting forth of the apostolic deposit. As with other examples of doctrinal development, in some future progress of the Church's mind the teaching could be re-assessed as intrinsically belonging to that deposit, and thus be the object of a dogmatic definition, whether by pope or council. It is, one suspects, by an exercise of pastoral mercy that such alteration of status was not envisaged in the magisterial interventions of the 1990s on this subject.