This may not in fact be the most important principle or the principle one would discuss first ideally. It is #1 in the sense that it is the first principle discussed on this blog. The principle is:
If a statement present in a draft document is dropped in the final text of a magisterial statement, this in no way implies that the Church thinks that statement to be false.
The first argument for this principle is that the infallibility of the magisterium only means that the Church cannot teach what is false. It does not mean that the Church cannot be silent about something true. Even if the discussion leading up to the final document shows that some authorities in the Church thought that statement to be false, the Spirit’s guarantee regarding Church teaching does not cover discussions prior to the act of teaching, but only the act of teaching itself.
A second argument would apply only to documents produced in the manner of conciliar documents, by multiple drafts voted upon by committees. Someone who favored statement X might vote for a document that dropped statement X because he sees that the new document does not deny statement X. Even if opponents of statement X say during the proceedings that X is false, he may keep silent because he knows that he does not need to speak to insure a correct teaching in the document. That is to say, all of the speeches in the debate leading up to a document could be against statement X, statement X could be dropped from the final draft, and yet a majority of those present could favor statement X all the while.
Now, please tell me what I have said wrongly, what I have forgotten to say, and what principle I should set out in my next post.
We might add that the fact that statement X was present in an earlier draft also does not imply that the Church thinks it to be true.
In general, we should say that the charism of infallibility applies only to the ultimate assertion that constitutes the teaching. The process by which the dogmatic assertion is reached enjoys no such protection. In theory, then, it is possible for a dogmatic council to come to a true conclusion by a completely erroneous argument without violating the principle of infallibility.
Right. So your general statement, “the charism of infallibility applies only to the ultimate assertion that constitutes the teaching,” should be one of the first principles and other principles should be derived from it.
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“Even if the discussion leading up… shows that some authorities in the Church thought that statement to be false etc.” could be put stronger, “that a majority of authorities”. I think this would be the strongest way it could be put, because if, say, “nearly all” thought it was false, then it would be true in a significant sense to say that the Church thinks so (though not that it teaches so).