Radulph’s second Proposition is a simple proof that faith and liturgy are defined by authority.
Proposition II
In the Church, authority must be followed above all things
“Catholic authority makes the Church’s faith.”[1] Hence St. Augustine in his book Against the Manichees, placed in the eleventh distinction: “It is well known that in a doubtful matter the authority of the Catholic Church prevails for faith and certainty; from those first founded sees of the apostles right up till today it remains strong through the series of bishops succeeding each other and through the agreement of so many peoples.”[2] “The Church is governed by authority and by general and special Tradition.”[3] Hence Augustine in On Christian Belief, placed in the same distinction:
The Catholic Church, spread throughout the world, is known to exist by three marks: whatever is believed in it has the authority of the Scriptures, or of universal tradition, or at least of its own and proper teaching. And the whole church is bound by that authority, as is the whole church no less by the universal tradition of the Fathers, while each separate church exists and is governed by its private constitution and its proper rites according to difference of locality and the approval of each.[4]
And in another place he says: “I should not believe in the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me to do so.”[5] So whatever is brought forward beyond [what is proposed by Catholic authority] should be dispensed with.[6] Thus the same doctor, whose “doctrine illuminates the” whole Catholic “Church,”[7] in response to Januarius’s questions about the diversity of practices in the Church, writes as found in the twelfth distinction:
All such things which are not found contained in the authoritative pronouncements of the Holy Scriptures, nor decided by councils of bishops, nor supported by the custom of the universal Church, but rather are subject to countless different variations in different places, so that it is scarcely possible to discover the precise causes that led men to establish them in the first place, then wherever the opportunity arises I think they should be dispensed with. For even their causes cannot be found to be contrary to the faith, nevertheless their servile weight so much burdens the exercise of religion, which God’s mercy wished to include only a very few, clearly comprehensible sacramental rites, that the Jews’ condition would be more bearable who, though they do not recognize the age of liberty, are still subject to the sacraments of the law rather than to human presumptions.[8]
On the basis of his authority, in the ecclesiastical Office we are to prefer rites that are, caeteris paribus, brief and simple, especially when the community is small.
[1] Gratian’s rubric: “Valet ad fidem catholicae auctoritas ecclesiae.”
[2] Mohlberg could not identify this material. Cf. CJC, Decr I, 11.9 — Frdbg. I, 25.
[3] Gratian’s rubric for Decr. c. 8, dist. 11: “Auctoritate et traditione generali uel speciali ecclesia regitur.”
[4] CIC, Decr. I, 11.8 — Frdbg. I, 25.This treatise is probably by Boethius. Translated by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Boethius: Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classical Library 74. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 70–71.
[5] Contra epistulam Manichaei 5 (CSEL 25.197.22).
[6] A restatement of Gratian’s rubric for Decr., dist. 12, c. 12: “Resecanda sunt, que neque auctoritate, neque moribus uniuersitatis comprobantur.”
[7] Cf. Resp. 8 in the Commune apostolorum of the Roman Breviary and Walter, Letter (Ch. Dereine, 172).
[8] CJC, Decr. I, 12.2 — Frdbg. I, 30. See Ep. LV, 19:35 (PL 33:221).
Canticum Salomonis 