revealed; (f) the teaching of the Fathers when manifest and universal; (g) the teaching of Theologians when manifest and universal.
II. Between the doctrines expressly defined by the Church and those expressly condemned stand what may be called matters of opinion or free opinions. Freedom, however, like certainty, is of various degrees, especially in religious and moral matters. Where there is no distinct definition there may be reasons sufficient to give us moral certainty. To resist these is not, indeed, formal disobedience, but only rashness. Where there are no such reasons this censure is not incurred. It is not possible to determine exactly the boundaries of these two groups of free opinions; they shade off into each other, and range from absolute freedom to morally certain obligation to believe. In this sphere of Approximative Theology, as it may be styled, there, are (1) doctrines which it is morally certain that the Church acknowledges as revealed (veritates fidei proximæ); (2) theological doctrines which it is morally certain that the Church considers as belonging to the integrity of the Faith, or as logically connected with revealed truth, and consequently the denial of which is approximate to theological error (errori theologico proximo); (3) doctrines neither revealed nor logically deducible from revealed truths, but useful or even necessary for safeguarding Revelation: to deny these would be rash (temerarium). These three degrees were rejected by the Minimizers mentioned at the end of the last section, and all matters not strictly defined were considered as absolutely free. Pius IX., however, on the occasion of the Munich Congress in 1863, addressed a Brief to the Archbishop of that city laying down the Catholic principles on the subject. The 22nd Proposition condemned in the “Syllabus” was taken from this Brief, and runs thus: “The obligation under which Catholic teachers and writers lie is restricted to those matters which are proposed for universal belief as dogmas of Faith by the infallible judgment of the Church.” And the Vatican Council says, at the end of the first constitution, “It sufficeth not to avoid heresy unless those errors which more or less approach thereto are sedulously shunned.”
