Right Church, Wrong Paradigm

Published on by D. G. Hart

In the effort to keep Jason and the Callers honest about church history and how their paradigm fails epicly, herewith an excerpt from a relatively older article from America about the first Roman Catholic presidential candidate (1928), Al Smith, and the flack he took for the Vatican’s opposition to all societies modern. The New York governor, himself, like many a lay Roman Catholic, did not hang on every word of the magisterium. So when asked whether he could support religious liberty and the separation of church and state, his reply was essentially, “sure, why would you ask?” An exchange in the Atlantic Monthly would require Smith to be more eloquent, but he still didn’t see a problem:

Al Smith could hardly deny that union of church and state was the ideal that was enshrined in papal encyclicals. But Smith replied that this ideal applied only to purely Catholic states, and that such states no longer existed anywhere in the world. “I think that you have taken your thesis from [the] limbo of defunct controversies,” Smith told Marshall. Essentially Smith was telling Marshall that the teaching of 19th-century popes about the union of church and state was no longer official church teaching, because the church had quietly dropped it as no longer applicable in the modern world, least of all in the United States.

Even though Smith won the debate about Rome (and lost the election, also about a Roman Catholic), Thomas J. Shelley thinks that Smith’s anti-Catholic interlocutors had a point: “Smith . . . asserted that the teachings of the 19th-century popes on religious liberty were no longer operative (as a 20th-century presidential press secretary might put it), but they could not cite a single authoritative church document to prove their assertion. There was no such document. . .”

Said document would be forthcoming with the Second Vatican Council:

For the first time in its long history, in the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” the Catholic Church stated unambiguously that “the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs…. The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and through reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed. Thus it is to become a civil right (No. 2).”

Never before had the highest authorities of the Catholic Church expressed such unqualified approval of the rights of conscience of every individual. Prior to Vatican II the official teaching of the church was that error should not be accorded the same rights as truth. The “Declaration on Religious Liberty” stated: “[T]he right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it” (No. 2).

Shelley concludes with a concession about the historical sleight of hand that is required of Roman Catholics living after Vatican II:

When challenged by reporters or fellow politicians, Al Smith was fond of replying, “Let’s look at the record.” To some extent, as Charles Marshall [Smith’s Protestant critic] insisted, both Governor Smith and Father Duffy [Smith’s clerical advisor] fudged the record of the Catholic Church on religious liberty in 1927. A kinder critic might say that they anticipated the record by almost 40 years. In any event, the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” provided the authoritative pronouncement for which Father Duffy was grappling when he declared, “We are Catholics and we are Americans, and to both loyalties we stick.” “The Declaration on Religious Liberty” eliminated a longstanding source of suspicion and friction from American political life, and for that happy development not only Catholic politicians, but all Americans can be grateful to the Second Vatican Council.

What happened at Vatican II had never happened before. What paradigm do you need to recognize novelty, not only among Protestants, but also among Roman Catholics?

13 thoughts on “Right Church, Wrong Paradigm”

  1. “A kinder critic might say that they anticipated the record by almost 40 years.”

    Nascent Lay charism, waiting to be discovered and brought to light per DOD.

    I can almost do this in my sleep anymore.

    And HOC not HOD on your historical assertions.

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  2. Dr. Hart,

    Did you get approval from the infallible lay interpreters of the Magisterium to post this? There are a few hanging out at the other blogs you mention if you need that assurance.

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  4. …Aaannnddd Bryan Cross responded to this same line of argument in multiple threads at CtC. I think they need to make another featured article where they bring together all of your “arguments” into one place and address them. That way, people can just link it to you when you keep repeating yourself.

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  5. I like Smith’s use of the word “limbo”. Nice touch.

    I’ll assert my Vatican II granted religious freedom and ask that the Callers stick their call where the sun don’t shine.

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  7. You fail to understand that it is only doctrines, extremely narrowly defined as such (there are maybe two of these in history, or five, or seven) where there is infallibility. For all the rest — Peter was a flip-flopper — none of it matters. Wheat and chaff. So what if the papacy is mostly (99%) chaff? The foundational promise to “the Church” from Christ (Matt 16:18). They are only accountable for those two (or five, or seven) things.

    But in those two (or five or seven) infallible pronouncements, those “certain conditions”, whatever they are, mean everything in the life of the believer! Fullness of the faith!

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  8. @Brian —

    I’ve followed Bryan’s writings since before CtC formed. No he has not addressed the issue of the church’s relationship with politics and the role of church of state. And I should mention I debated this issue with him directly on his personal blog. The reason Bryan hasn’t done it is because Bryan, and the CtC apologetic more generally don’t want to engage with the messyness of historical details. They want a make a philosophical case. So they end up doing things very much like Aristotle’s claims that males have more teeth than females.

    DgH has been pounding on the issue of the church flipping in the last 200 years away from a motif of Christiandom, that is the duty to create a Christian state, and towards something more like the American model of a state that is religious indifferent. I focus earlier in the 10th-17th centuries where the church was unequivocal that secular leaders had a duty to employ state terror to maintain the purity and the authority of the church.

    If they want to engage the history that would be good.

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  11. Robert, this is more like the catholicism I grew up in. IOW, he’s more like Vat II and less like Ratzinger. What’s more interesting for the internet ecumenism, is all the ‘interpreting’ that goes on. NCR is giving it’s take on what it means, CtC, First Things, RCers in the pew and in mainstream media. IOW, there’s a lot of OPINION being proffered. And that’s just from the RCers that take the pope seriously. There’s a whole group who find the fascination with the Pope off-putting and inconsistent with both the conciliar tradition and the intention of Vat II. Oddly enough, Frances tends toward this bent, that’s why he’s reforming where Ratzinger tended to embrace all the trappings of the office. We’ll see how long Frances goes down this road, most of the time people in power tend to both move to the center and consolidate their power.

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  12. Sean,

    His comments do sound awfully more consistent with Vatican II than with the things I hear from Protestant converts. For the life of me, I don’t understand the convert-syndrome in RC. I mean, I can understand being excited about a new choice/change, but at least since Vatican II, the RC seems to have gone out of its way to convey the message “Be RC if you want to. If not, it’s okay, God still has a way for you to get in the kingdom.” Seems that said message would dampen the new convert’s enthusiasm overtime unlike, say, evangelicalism or even a religion such as fundamentalistic Islam that are insistent on one way of salvation. But with these Protestant converts to Rome, I just don’t see it happening. Why?

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  13. Robert, y’all gotta tell me. Based on what I’ve read from these guys from the propositional emphasis to the conservative family values they let show now and then to the big family pride and latin-rite tendencies(both old school RC hallmarks), I’d say they’re protestant fundamentalists from the FV, homeschooling contingent all the way to the Kellerite PCA mealy-mouthed. When Bryan does exegesis it’s not terribly impressive, he misconstrues the edenic covenant in his engagement with Horton, which I assume is at least partly left over from incomplete training in seminary I suppose.

    As ironic as it seems, particularly considering CtC’s ‘culturally appraised’ apologetic, their big whiff is that they WEREN’T raised at the RC dinner table or around the hearth. They seem to not really understand or embrace the RC culture since Vat II and again, ironically, true to their fundamentalist protestant roots, are going to be unassailably propositional in a pageant and rite religious expression(mass) and reformers of their own communion. For a group that wants to take pride in their ‘humility of submission to holy mother church’ they’re also pretty narcissistically intent on carving out their own corner, while telling the cradles what a sorry lot they’ve been over the past 50 years. High handed and arrogant readily come to mind.

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