Father Wiebe, your ranking of dogma, doctrine, and discipline sent me back to the books to hone a reply. Your definitions lead me to think that you speak from a Roman Catholic viewpoint; mine differs in that I aim to blend Catholic and Reformed theology. At any rate, I appreciate the stimulus to try to respond with a measure of clarity. To classical Greek writers, my sources tell me, dogma signified a philosophical doctrine or opinion, sometimes a public decree or ordinance, as dogma poieisthai. In the NT-e.g., Luke2:1-dogma refers to a decree, ordinance, decision or command: "And it came to pass, that in those days there went out a decree [edictum, dogma] from Caesar Augustus. Acts 16:4 applied the word to decrees of the first Apostolic Council in Jerusalem: "And as they passed through the cities, they delivered unto them the decrees [dogmata] for to keep, that were decreed by the apostles and ancients who were at Jerusalem." The early Fathers sometimes designated as dogmas the doctrines and moral precepts taught or promulgated by our Lord or by the Apostles. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church developed the view of the depositum fidei (deposit of faith), and through the Council of Trent (1545-63) and the First Vatican Council (1870), the dogmatic assertions of Rome came to be "infallible." My Roman Catholic Encyclopedia defines dogma, briefly, as a revealed truth defined by the Church through her ordinary magesterium or teaching office. To Roman Catholics, dogma depends for its acceptance upon "the infallible teaching office of the Church and of the Roman pontiff"; hence the dogmas are immutable. The article adds: "Dogmatic definitions would be arbitrary if there were no divinely instituted infallible teaching office in the Church." .the authority of the episcopate under the supreme pontiff to control intellectual activity is correlative with, and arises from their authority to teach supernatural truth."In Reformed thought, all dogmas must be tested against the revelation of God in Holy Scripture. As Karl Barth observed: "The Word of God is above dogma as the heavens are above the earth." (Church Dogmatics, I/1,306.) According to Barth, dogmatic inquiry becomes "eschatological" since no human formulation will ever completely agree with the Word of God. For the Reformers, faith was a personal trust and relationship with God through Jesus Christ, not primarily assent to what the church says must be believed as infallible. John Henry Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) questioned the traditions, developments, and continuities of Christian ideas. Dogmatic-or systematic-theologians always reflect a particular community of faith: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, liberal, neo-orthodox, existentialist, etc. 
I consider the long and bloody Reformation a great turning point in civilization. As a "Reformed Catholic," I emphatically cannot accept Rome's claim of "inerrancy granted by Jesus Christ." I mentioned the doctrine of Infallibility. Consider this paragraph, excerpted from the Catholic Encyclopedia: "From the disciplinary infallibility of the Church, correctly understood as an indirect consequence of her doctrinal infallibility, it follows that she cannot be rightly accused of introducing into her discipline anything opposed to the Divine law; the most remarkable instance of this being the suppression of the chalice in the Communion of the laity. This has often been violently attacked as contrary to the Gospel. Concerning it the Council of Constance (1415) declared (Sess. XIII): "The claim that it is sacrilegious or illicit to observe this custom or law [Communion under one kind] must be regarded as erroneous, and those who obstinately affirm it must be cast aside as heretics." Pope Pius XII in 1950 made the Assumption of Mary a doctrine necessary for salvation, stating: "The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." I find no basis, biblical, apostolic, or post-apostolic in support of this doctrine. 

Much taught by the great Church of Rome I have found beneficial and enlightening over the years, for example, the recent words of Pope Paul on Heaven and Hell. In addition to promulgating the dogma of Infallibility, Vatican Council I in 1870 also fixed as an article of Roman Catholic faith the Natural Theology of Thomas Aquinas: that God has revealed himself in two ways, naturally and supernaturally, and that "God can certainly be known (certo cognosci) by the natural light of human reason." Natural Law is anterior and superior to ecclesiatical dogma, and so I find the ordination of a practicing homosexual more damaging than the ordination of a woman.   St.Thomas supported his theology with reference to Romans 1:20-21. While I cannot accept some things written by St. Augustine of Hippo, I find his insights often brilliant and stimulating. Consider this passage; "That, in all times.the Christian religion, which to know and follow is the most sure and certain health.really was known to the Ancients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the time when Christ came in the flesh; from whence the true religion, which has previously existed, began to be called Christian; and this in our days is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having later times, received this name." (The disciples were first called "Christians" at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began to preach there.) As for inerrancy-Roman Catholic or Fundamentalist-I must agree with St. Paul in Corinthians: "Not of the letter but the spirit; for the letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that "Should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies." I would include in that censure some of the dogmatic doctrines of Rome.

Regards, KnoxDuncan X