Catholic Open Source CMDDR Project

The home of the Common Magisterial Document Data Repository curated by the Catholic Engineering Task Force within the Catholic Digital Commons Foundation.

What is CMDDR?

The Common Magisterial Document Data Repository (CMDDR) provides a canonicalized list of identifiers for Magisterial documents or Papal documents, speeches, homilies, etc. of the Catholic Church, along with semantic distinctions between the types of documents / speeches.

The Magisterium

The term magisterium is based on the Latin word for “teacher” (magister). In contemporary Catholic usage, it has several meanings.

• the teaching authority which Christ has given to the Church. Here the term refers to the authority itself, not those who exercise it. This usage appears in statements like, “The Church exercises its magisterium when it authoritatively proclaims Christ’s teachings.”
• those who exercise this teaching authority. Here the term refers to the Pope and the bishops teaching in union with him. Collectively, they are referred to as the “Magisterium,” as in “the Magisterium has infallibly taught that God is a Trinity.”
• a particular body of teachings that have been authoritatively proclaimed. This usage appears in statements like, “Humanae Vitae belongs to the magisterium of St. Paul VI.”

For the purposes of this data repository, we will be taking into account the third meaning, in reference to the body of teachings.

Modeling magisterial authority: genre vs. statement

An earlier draft of this repository used a single table that assigned a fixed Magisterial Type and Infallibility to each document genre. That approach cannot be made correct, because in Catholic theology authority attaches to a teaching act, not to a document genre. Francis A. Sullivan, in Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (1996), makes the point directly about councils: “not every statement made by an ecumenical council will express … a ‘solemn judgment’ … the theologian must be familiar with the criteria by which to distinguish dogmatic definitions from the other kinds of statements found in conciliar decrees.” The same document may contain teaching at several levels — e.g. Lumen Gentium is a Dogmatic Constitution that defined no new dogma, while Evangelium Vitae is an Encyclical whose three central moral judgments are taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium.

We therefore split the model into two tables:

1. Genre Registry — properties that are knowable from the act itself (issuer, genre, scope) and the presumptive and maximum authority the genre can carry. This is the canonical taxonomy of document / speech types, and preserves the original registry purpose of the repository.
2. Statement Assessments — the authority actually exercised in a specific paragraph or section, which must be discerned by prudential application to the text. Infallibility and definitiveness live here, never in the Genre Registry.

How to read these tables. A row in the Genre Registry gives a genre’s default register and its ceiling (the highest authority its issuer could exercise through it). The real weight of any given passage is read from the Statement Assessments, which override the genre default at their locus and can never exceed the genre’s ceiling. Most documents (homilies, audiences, prayers, most motu proprios) carry no definitive statements at all and are fully described by the Genre Registry alone.

Register vocabulary

Register	Meaning
Extraordinary	A solemn judgment / definition — an ecumenical council or a pope speaking ex cathedra defining a doctrine. Rare; per canon law nothing counts as defined “unless this is manifestly the case.”
Ordinary Universal	The bishops dispersed throughout the world, in union with the pope, concurring that a teaching is to be held definitively. This mode is itself capable of infallibility without a solemn definition.
Authentic Ordinary	The day-to-day, non-definitive teaching of the pope or bishops. Authoritative and calls for religiosum obsequium, but reformable. Admits many internal degrees.

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Table 1 — Genre Registry

Registry of document / speech types. Default register is the genre’s presumption; Ceiling is the maximum its issuer can exercise through it. Neither fixes the authority of any particular passage — see Table 2.

Genre	Issuer	Scope	Default register	Ceiling (issuer capacity)	Notes
Constitution	Ecumenical Council	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Extraordinary	The council’s most solemn genre. May bear an optional descriptive title (below); non-definitive unless a definition is manifest.
Decree	Ecumenical Council	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Extraordinary	May carry canons/anathemas that are definitions (e.g. Trent); assess per canon.
Declaration	Ecumenical Council	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Extraordinary	Lowest conciliar genre by presumptive weight.
Papal Bull	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Extraordinary	The most solemn sealed form of papal document (lead/wax seal — Latin bulla). May bear one or more of the non-exclusive characteristics listed below the table.
Encyclical	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Ordinary Universal	Can invoke the ordinary and universal magisterium (e.g. Evangelium Vitae).
Apostolic Exhortation	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary	Typically post-synodal, hortatory.
Apostolic Letter	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Ordinary Universal	Can reach definitive language (e.g. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis).
Motu Proprio	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary	Issued on the Pope’s own initiative; often legislative/administrative.
Brief	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary	Less formal papal letter.
Letter	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary
Discourse / Address	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary	Pastoral vehicle; cannot host a definition.
Homily	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary
Prayer	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary
Audience / Catechesis	Pope	universal	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary
Episcopal / Pastoral Letter	Bishop	local	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary	An individual bishop shares in the ordinary universal magisterium only collegially, not through a local act.
Episcopal Homily	Bishop	local	Authentic Ordinary	Authentic Ordinary

Among the conciliar genres, presumptive weight descends Constitution → Decree → Declaration, even though the council’s capacity to define (the ceiling) is the same for each.

Constitution descriptive titles

A conciliar Constitution may bear an optional, mutually-exclusive descriptive title indicating its purpose (or none). The title is descriptive of purpose, not a claim of authority — Lumen Gentium is titled a "Dogmatic Constitution" yet defined no new dogma. Any actual definition is recorded as a Table 2 assessment, never inferred from the title.

Descriptive title	Meaning	Example
dogmatic	Treats doctrine as its primary subject.	Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum
pastoral	Explicitly pastoral, signalling non-defining intent.	Gaudium et Spes
(none)	A plain constitution on a solemn matter.	Sacrosanctum Concilium (liturgy)

Papal Bull characteristics

Rather than being sub-genres, Apostolic Constitution and Dogmatic are non-exclusive characteristics a Papal Bull can bear — a bull may carry neither, either, or both. Modeling them as document-level metadata (not separate genres) keeps the base genre papal-bull stable, so it can be baked into a document’s canonical id without forcing a mutually-exclusive choice.

Characteristic	Meaning	Bearing on authority
apostolic-constitution	The most solemn form of papal legislation — governance, laws, promulgations (e.g. Pastor Bonus, Fidei Depositum).	Formal solemnity; the register of any teaching is still assessed per statement.
dogmatic-definition	Contains an ex cathedra dogmatic definition (e.g. Ineffabilis Deus, 1854; Munificentissimus Deus, 1950).	Its defining statement is Extraordinary / infallible — recorded as a Table 2 assessment.

Munificentissimus Deus bears both: it is an apostolic constitution that also defines a dogma. A bull of canonization bears neither.

On sources: chancery shelves are not a magisterial taxonomy

The document categories on vatican.va — Encicliche, Lettere Apostoliche, Lettere, Motu Proprio, Bolle and the rest — are a chancery filing system. They sort documents by the diplomatic form of the instrument used to issue them, which is not the same question as the authority the issuer exercised. They are first-rate evidence of what forms exist and of how the Holy See itself distinguishes them, and they should inform this registry; they do not govern it.

Two features of those shelves make the point. First, they sort by form, not by weight or audience: Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and a letter erecting a diocese share the Lettere Apostoliche shelf, while the universally-addressed Letter to Artists (1999) sits under Lettere. Second, they are not disjoint — Socialium Scientiarum (1994) is filed both as an Apostolic Letter and as a Motu Proprio, because issuing a document motu proprio is a mode of acting rather than a genre standing beside the apostolic letter. This registry handles that kind of relation with characteristics rather than sub-genres (see Papal Bull characteristics above); whether motu-proprio should follow suit is open.

Our own genre rows accordingly mix two axes: diplomatic form (Papal Bull, Apostolic Letter, Brief, Letter) and content type (Encyclical, Apostolic Exhortation) — an Encyclical being, formally, itself a species of letter (Litterae Encyclicae). That mixture is deliberate and follows ordinary usage, but it means the existence of a vatican.va shelf is never by itself an argument for a genre row, a default, or a ceiling. Each of those has to be argued from the act.

The document registry

Concrete documents live in data/documents/, rendered as registry/documents.md. Identifiers follow mag:{issuer}/{incipit-slug}-{year} and reference popes and councils by their CRPDR rp: and COECDR oec: identifiers. The registry is generated by npm run harvest and checked by npm run validate; see SCHEMA.md.

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Table 2 — Statement Assessments

The discerned authority of an individual passage, keyed by a locus (document-id + section/paragraph). This layer is curated and interpretive: entries carry provenance and may be marked contested. Reformability is derived from Intent (non-definitive ⇒ reformable; definitive ⇒ irreformable); infallibility is computed (Intent = definitive AND issuer capacity is the supreme magisterium).

Locus	Mode exercised	Intent	Object	Assent owed	Reformability	Source / status
mag:vatican-ii/lumen-gentium-1964#*	Authentic Ordinary	Non-definitive	—	religiosum obsequium	Reformable	Vatican II defined nothing “even in the two documents which it called ‘dogmatic constitutions’.”
mag:john-paul-ii/evangelium-vitae-1995#57 (murder)	Ordinary Universal	Definitive	Revealed	fides divina et catholica	Irreformable	Taught “by the ordinary and universal magisterium.”
mag:john-paul-ii/evangelium-vitae-1995#62 (abortion)	Ordinary Universal	Definitive	Revealed / connected	fides divina et catholica	Irreformable	idem; object primary-vs-secondary debated.
mag:john-paul-ii/evangelium-vitae-1995#65 (euthanasia)	Ordinary Universal	Definitive	Secondary / connected	firmly hold (fides ecclesiastica)	Irreformable	idem; secondary object — “in harmony with … my Predecessors”; classification debated.
mag:john-paul-ii/ordinatio-sacerdotalis-1994#4	Ordinary Universal	Definitive	Secondary / connected	firmly hold (fides ecclesiastica)	Irreformable	“to be definitively held”; not ex cathedra per Ratzinger — status debated.

Note the four-rung Assent scale used above and in the schema: fides divina et catholica (revealed dogma) → firmly hold (fides ecclesiastica, a definitively-taught truth not itself revealed but connected to revelation) → religiosum obsequium (authentic non-definitive teaching) → prudential caution (the lowest sub-level of non-definitive interventions).

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Data schema

The machine-readable schema for these two tables — the controlled vocabularies, the genre → document → assessment relationships, the locus identifier convention, and the validation invariants (ceiling bound, derived reformability, computed infallibility) — is specified in SCHEMA.md, with JSON Schema files under schema/ and a worked example under examples/.

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N.B. Both tables are an initial draft and will be refined as the repository’s document set grows. The theological framework follows Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity (1996); see also CDF, Donum Veritatis (1990) §§15–24 and John Paul II, Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998) for the levels of assent.