Authority and status guide
Catholicism Wiki distinguishes grades of magisterial teaching from canon law, liturgical discipline, approved devotion, theological synthesis, and historical evidence. These are different kinds of classification, not competing positions on one ladder.
Three grades of magisterial teaching
The first three labels follow canons 750–752 and the doctrinal commentary on the concluding formula of the Profession of Faith. A document's title alone does not settle the grade of every sentence in it. The wording, intention, repetition, subject, and prior teaching of the Church must also be considered.
Divine and Catholic faith
A truth revealed by God and proposed as such by the Church's solemn Magisterium or ordinary and universal Magisterium.
Firm and definitive assent
A teaching on faith or morals infallibly proposed as necessary for faithfully guarding and expounding the deposit of faith.
Religious submission of intellect and will
A non-definitive teaching of the pope or college of bishops exercising the authentic Magisterium.
Other kinds of authority and evidence
Discipline, devotion, theological synthesis, and historical fact are not lower rungs on one doctrinal ladder. They answer different questions and are evaluated according to their proper authority and evidence.
Obedience according to the law
Canon law, liturgical law, or another authoritative practical norm. Discipline is binding within its scope but is not thereby an irreformable doctrine.
Permitted, not universally obligatory
A practice received or approved by the Church that assists Christian life without adding to the deposit of faith.
Weight follows its sources
A synthesis, school, or theological explanation. It may faithfully express doctrine without itself constituting a distinct act of the Magisterium.
Judged by evidence
Historical, institutional, or factual material. Its truth depends on evidence rather than a grade of magisterial authority.
How to read an article flag
An article displays at most one teaching label: the strongest grade materially treated in the article. It does not transfer that grade to every sentence. A separate non-doctrinal label appears only when it is needed to distinguish discipline, devotion, theological synthesis, or historical evidence from the teaching grade. “Church discipline,” for example, is not dogma and can be reformed even when it protects an unchangeable doctrine.
Governing sources
- Code of Canon Law, canons 747–755 — the obligations corresponding to revealed, definitive, and non-definitive teaching.
- Doctrinal Commentary on the concluding formula of the Professio fidei — explanation and examples of the three grades.
- Lumen gentium, 25 — the exercise of the authentic Magisterium and the assent owed to it.