There are apparently some Catholics for whom the phrase, "from the chair," is still meaningful. However, I suspect that relatively few under the age of 60 would have even heard of it, much less used it.

The expression gained new currency last year in the midst of the controversy over Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ." Gibson is a Catholic, but of a particular kind, one generally unsympathetic with the teachings and reforms of the Second Vatican Council. (He's also under 60, which makes him an exception to the "rule" that I just enunciated.)

A lengthy article about Mr. Gibson was published last fall in The New Yorker magazine, which included his use of the phrase, "from the chair."

The article's author, Peter Boyer, informed Gibson that he himself is a Protestant and asked the actor-director whether his pre-Vatican II world-view would disqualify him (the author) from eternal salvation.

After a pause, Gibson said, "There is no salvation for those outside the church. I believe it." He then referred to his own "saintly" wife, who is an Episcopalian.

"She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff," he insisted. "And it's not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it" (my italics).

"From the chair" refers to an infallible pronouncement by the pope. The chair is the symbol of his --- and of any other bishop's --- teaching authority. Indeed, that is why the main church in every diocese is called the cathedral. It is the bishop's church, in which his chair (Latin, cathedra) is situated.

However, when the bishop in question is the Bishop of Rome, the chair is a special symbol of teaching authority. It is the Chair of Peter, whose successor the pope is.

A pope's teaching authority is not confined to his own diocese, but extends to the universal Church. And when he meets all of the conditions laid down by the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), that authority may be infallible in character.

The conditions are that the object of his teaching must be a matter of faith or morals, that the pope teaches as earthly head of the whole Church (that is where the ex cathedra phrase comes in; he is speaking formally "from the chair"), and with the clear intention of binding the whole Church.

What Catholics of an earlier generation do not seem to comprehend is that very few --- and in most cases, none at all --- of an individual pope's teachings are infallible. Moreover, the Church does not teach, nor has it ever taught, that the only teachings of a pope that a Catholic is bound to regard as authoritative are his infallible teachings.

It is a fact that none --- none --- of the current pope's teachings have been infallible, not a single one in all of his 26 years on the Chair of Peter.

Does that mean that Catholics can safely ignore all of his encyclicals and other teachings given on hundreds of different occasions throughout his pontificate?

Perhaps a handful of liberal Catholics might be tempted to think so. However, theirs would be a minimalist understanding of papal authority. On the other hand, one would expect a more dutiful response from self-described "orthodox" or "faithful" Catholics.

Alas, this same minimalist approach has been at work whenever the pope --- and this pope in particular --- teaches something that conflicts with a conservative Catholic's political or social views.

The principal case in point --- more significant than Mel Gibson's comment about his Episcopalian wife --- has to do with the reaction of politically conservative Catholics to Pope John Paul II's condemnation of the war in Iraq.

Following that papal condemnation, those same Catholics --- on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and in other conservative media --- assumed a kind of pretzel posture as they struggled to keep one foot inside the circle of papal good graces while using the other foot to maneuver the papal pronouncement into a second circle, marked "not from the chair."

For such Catholics, in other words, when the pope condemns a particular war as gravely immoral, he is only voicing his own opinion, but if the subject is sex or human reproduction, the matter is non-debatable, as if "from the chair."

That view not only distorts the church's teaching on papal infallibility, but also minimizes papal authority itself. That is not something one normally expects from the Catholic right.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.