Category: Adventures in Church History

Experimental Lutheranism

Published on by D. G. Hart60 Comments

The comparisons between Calvinism and Lutheranism continue. One of the most recent comes from James Rogers, who teaches political science at Texas A&M. Rogers concedes that the average evangelical Protestant has a harder time with Lutheranism than Calvinism for a number of reasons.

First, Lutherans are ethnic (psst, so are Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Scottish Presbyterians, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Huguenots, and English Puritans):

Many Lutheran churches began as “ethnic” churches, not even using English in worship. And memories of forced union with Reformed churches in Germany in the early nineteenth century (which prompted much Lutheran immigration to the U.S) also induced isolation from broader American Evangelical culture.

Then we have the problem that Lutherans don’t teach as well as Calvinists do. For starters, Luther didn’t write a systematic theology and Calvin did. But the Lutheran creeds are not as accessible as Reformed:

I think that most modern American Evangelical readers, attempting to read Lutheran confessional documents by himself or herself, will usually get lost more quickly, and give up sooner, than when reading the analogous Calvinist confessional texts.

But what about Luther’s Small Catechism? Luther’s Small Catechism present the opposite problem to our Evangelical seeker, it doesn’t provide enough perspective to engage him. Luther wrote the Small Catechism as the most basic introduction to the faith in an age of widespread ignorance among layfolk. It starts simply enough with the ten commands, “The First Commandment. ‘Thou shalt have no other gods.’ ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Answer. We should fear, love, and trust God above all thing.’”

While the Small Catechism is well suited for the purpose for which it was written, it is not well suited to our modal Evangelical seeker, who already has a passing knowledge of the Scriptures and is looking for deeper answers. While the Augsburg starts too far down the stream for our Evangelical autodidact, the Small Catechism, as it were, starts too early to engage the same person.

In contrast, the Shorter Catechism is highly memorable and even inspiring.

And then Lutheranism suffers from a sacramental bridge too far:

Lutherans believe that God works through the sacrament with the Word, and so God actually confers grace in and through baptism and the Supper. For Lutherans, it is God who works through these means, and not man. Therefore Christians really receive God’s forgiveness through Christ when we are united with Christ in baptism, and receive Jesus’ true body and the blood poured out for our forgiveness in the bread and wine that we receive.

While this may seem to be theological nit-picking, the differences create important differences in the spiritual and ecclesiastical experience of the average layfolk in the two traditions.

Philip Cary wrote several papers a few years back that helpfully contrast the general Evangelical/Protestant understanding of “sola fide” with the role of the sacraments in Luther’s understanding of “sola fide.” Cary characterizes the standard Protestant view of “sola fide” with this syllogism:

Major Premise: Whoever believes in Christ is saved.
Minor Premise: I believe in Christ.
Conclusion: I am saved.

This syllogism implies what Cary calls this the requirement of “reflective faith.”

The hour I first believed, the moment when I can first say “I truly believe in Christ” is the moment of my salvation, of my conversion and turning from death to life. What matters is that moment of conversion, not the sacrament of baptism, because everything depends on my being able to say “I believe.” For only if I know that I truly believe can I confidently conclude: I am saved. . . .

In contrast, Luther’s “sola fide” for Cary is grounded not in the believer’s internal act of will, but in the work of Christ applied to “me” in baptism. Cary characterizes Luther’s syllogism this way:

Major premise: Christ told me, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
Minor premise: Christ never lies but only tells the truth.
Conclusion: I am baptized (i.e., I have new life in Christ).

Cary observes that the “difference is subtle but makes a huge logical difference in the outcome.” First, Christ’s promise is spoken to me in baptism. It is “Christ who speaks the baptismal formula” through the mouth of the pastor (or the lay baptizer in the case of emergency). These words are spoken to “me in particular.”

I see Rogers/Cary’s point, sort of. But what exactly does Christ’s promise in baptism have to do with sola fide? Luther did believe, did he not, that faith was the instrument by which we receive Christ’s righteousness or the way we trust the promises of God. It is one thing for Christ to speak. It is another for that speaking to be true of me. One is the doctrine of Christ. The other is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (who regenerates for saving faith). So how Cary is addressing the significance of sola fide except in a couple of removed steps of theological reasoning, I don’t know.

But the payoff for Rogers, the way that evangelicals might find Lutheranism more appealing, is the way that experimental Calvinists have been attracting Protestants for over four centuries — that is, by really, really, really meaning it. Rogers is on to this when he concludes:

If Lutherans really believe what their theology says about Word and Sacrament, then I think they would be equally passionate about engaging other Christians: When Christians understand what Christ offers in the sacraments, that understanding, and what is actually received, changes their lives because they come into direct contact with the death and new life of Jesus.

That’s all you need to appeal to the young restless. Tell then that ideas (read doctrines) have consequences and that believing those ideas will change your life. Voila! You’re inflamed.

What Must I Think about America to be Saved?

Published on by D. G. Hart211 Comments

Contrary to Jason and the Callers, the fault lines in U.S. Roman Catholicism are not between traditionalists and liberals, but between American exceptionalists and those skeptical about America. Here is how Patrick Deneen describes the division:

On the one side one finds an older American tradition of orthodox Catholicism as it has developed in the nation since the mid-twentieth century. It is closely aligned to the work of the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray, and its most visible proponent today is George Weigel, who has inherited the mantle from Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak. . . .

Proponents of this position argue that America was well-founded and took a wrong turn in the late-19th century with the embrace of Progressivism (this intellectual position, closely associated with intellectuals at Claremont McKenna College and Hillsdale College, was briefly popularized by Glenn Beck. It has been developed not especially by Catholics, but by students of Leo Strauss, but has been widely embraced by Catholics of this school). The task, then, is restore the basic principles of the American founding—limited government in which the social and moral mores largely arising from the familial and social sphere orient people toward well-ordered and moral lives. This position especially stresses a commitment to the pro-life position and a defense of marriage, and is generally accepting of a more laissez-faire economic position. It supports a vigorous foreign policy and embraces a close alignment between Catholicism and Americanism. It has become closely aligned with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party.

Those are the Americanists (psst — Leo XIII, yes the very one of Rerum Novarum fame, branded Americanism a heresy; some Old Schoolers would agree). On the other hand:

On the other side is arrayed what might be characterized as a more radical Catholicism. Its main intellectual heroes are the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and the theologian David L. Schindler (brilliantly profiled in the pages of TAC by Jeremy Beer). . . . The “radical” school rejects the view that Catholicism and liberal democracy are fundamentally compatible. Rather, liberalism cannot be understood to be merely neutral and ultimately tolerant toward (and even potentially benefitting from) Catholicism. Rather, liberalism is premised on a contrary view of human nature (and even a competing theology) to Catholicism. Liberalism holds that human beings are essentially separate, sovereign selves who will cooperate based upon grounds of utility. According to this view, liberalism is not a “shell” philosophy that allows a thousand flowers to bloom. Rather, liberalism is constituted by a substantive set of philosophical commitments that are deeply contrary to the basic beliefs of Catholicism, among which are the belief that we are by nature relational, social and political creatures; that social units like the family, community and Church are “natural,” not merely the result of individuals contracting temporary arrangements; that liberty is not a condition in which we experience the absence of constraint, but the exercise of self-limitation; and that both the “social” realm and the economic realm must be governed by a thick set of moral norms, above all, self-limitation and virtue.

Because of these positions, the “radical” position—while similarly committed to the pro-life, pro-marriage teachings of the Church—is deeply critical of contemporary arrangements of market capitalism, is deeply suspicious of America’s imperial ambitions, and wary of the basic premises of liberal government. It is comfortable with neither party, and holds that the basic political division in America merely represents two iterations of liberalism—the pursuit of individual autonomy in either the social/personal sphere (liberalism) or the economic realm (“conservatism”—better designated as market liberalism). Because America was founded as a liberal nation, “radical” Catholicism tends to view America as a deeply flawed project, and fears that the anthropological falsehood at the heart of the American founding is leading inexorably to civilizational catastrophe.

Michael Baxter, identified sometimes as one of the “radicals,” puts the issue this way:

“It has been a greatly providential blessing,” John Courtney Murray, S.J., observed in We Hold These Truths, “that the American Republic never put to the Catholic conscience the questions raised, for instance, by the Third Republic. There has never been a schism within the American Catholic community, as there was among Catholics in France, over the right attitude to adopt toward the established polity.”

However much this statement was true in 1960, it is not true today. Now the politics of the American Republic does raise questions of conscience for Catholics. Now a schism has arisen within the Catholic community in the United States over the proper attitude toward the established polity. The schism is between those Catholics in the United States who identify with liberal politics and those who identify with conservative politics in the secular sphere. The division is pervasive and deep, and it is tearing the U.S. Catholic community apart.

The division between these groups of Catholics is a consequence of Catholics’ performing the role Father Murray assigned to them. He believed that the United States was exceptional among modern states. Unlike France, it was founded on principles inherited from Catholic political theory. This meant that Catholics could carry out the crucial task of transforming public discourse with the principles of natural law and returning the nation to the consensus on which it was founded. Father Murray, a long time editor at America, was aware that this “American consensus” was crumbling in the nation as a whole, but he was confident it would remain intact within the U.S. Catholic community. What he did not foresee, however, is how this consensus would fall apart even among American Catholics; how, in attempting to transform the nation, Catholics would become politically divided and therefore incapable of performing their pivotal role as, in his words, “guardians of the American consensus.” Without that role, his story of Catholicism and the United States falls apart.

An outsider wonders whether these folks sometimes discuss the significance of baptism for justification, how long one can expect to stay in purgatory, the benefits of indulgences, the mystery of transubstantiation, or the power of bishops. It does seem that as big and pretty good and powerful as the U.S. is, its import vanishes beneath the weight of eternal considerations about judgment day.

Even so, Baxter issues a caution that neo-Calvinists, theonomists, and TKNYers should well consider:

The problem is that in setting out to transform politics [me: or cities or culture] in the United States, Catholics have been transformed by it. Like mainline Protestants, they have succumbed to the molding pressures of state-sponsored bureaucratic power—not the overt and direct power of Fascism and Communism or the militant secularism of European democracy (as in France), but the more subtle workings of indirect power, which domesticates any and all subordinate groups by dissolving their ability to resist the authority of the state and by co-opting the well-intentioned efforts of good people, good Catholics, into conforming to the polarized political culture of the nation.

Discerning the Spirit (or swallowing Him feathers and all)

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Since I managed to attract the experimental Calvinists’ attention with a few questions about the need to read the Bible in a way that inflames readers, maybe the glowing ones can help with a question I posed once before but never received a convincing answer. (BTW, isn’t it a good thing if someone simply — sorry for the adverb — reads the Bible? Am I inadequate if I don’t guzzle the words of life? And for those who cite the Psalms to defend an earnest reading of Scripture, I sure wish they could keep in mind that this desire came at a time when Bibles were not exactly handy — cheap or widely distributed.)

Here’s the question, if earnestness is so desirable, even necessary (?), why does it not prevent the likes of Jonathan Edwards from seeing the problems of a four-year old who goes through what Phebe Bartlet did to obtain the effects of a conversion? The fans of Edwards generally gloss over Phebe’s conversion, but Edwards did not since it was a prime example of the positive benefits of the awakening in Northampton:

She was born in March, 1731. About the latter end of April, or beginning of May, 1735, she was greatly affected by the talk of her brother, who had been hopefully converted a little before, at about eleven years of age, and then seriously talked to her about the great things of religion. Her parents did not know of it at that time, and were not wont, in the counsels they gave to their children, particularly to direct themselves to her, being so young, and, as they supposed, not capable of understanding. But after her brother had talked to her, they observed her very earnestly listen to the advice they gave to the other children; and she was observed very constantly to retire, several times in a day, as was concluded, for secret prayer. She grew more and more engaged in religion, and was more frequent in her closet; till at last she was wont to visit it five or six times a day: and was so engaged in it, that nothing would at any time divert her from her stated closet exercises. Her mother often observed and watched her, when such things occurred as she thought most likely to divert her, either by putting it out of her thoughts, or otherwise engaging her inclinations; but never could observe her to fail. She mentioned some very remarkable instances.

She once of her own accord spake of her unsuccessfulness, in that she could not find God, or to that purpose. But on Thursday, the last day of July, about the middle of the day, the child being in the closet, where it used to retire, its mother heard it speaking aloud; which was unusual, and never had been observed before. And her voice seemed to be as of one exceedingly importunate and engaged; but her mother could distinctly hear only these words, spoken in a childish manner, but with extraordinary earnestness, and out of distress of soul, pray, blessed Lord, give me salvation! I pray, beg, pardon all my sins! When the child had done prayer, she came out of the closet, sat down by her mother, and cried out aloud. Her mother very earnestly asked her several times what the matter was, before she would make any answer; but she continued crying, and writhing her body to and fro, like one in anguish of spirit. Her mother then asked her, whether she was afraid that God would not give her salvation. She then answered, Yes, I am afraid I shall go to hell! Her mother then endeavored to quiet her, and told her she would not have her cry, she must be a good girl, and pray every day, and she hoped God would give her salvation. But this did not quiet her at all; she continued thus earnestly crying, and taking on for some time, till at length she suddenly ceased crying, and began to smile, and presently said with a smiling countenance, Mother, the kingdom of heaven is come to me! Her mother was surprised at the sudden alteration, and at the speech; and knew not what to make of it; but at first said nothing to her. The child presently spake again, and said, There is another come to me, and there is another, there is three; and being asked what she meant, she answered, One is, Thy will be done, and there is another, Enjoy Him for ever; by which it seems, that when the child said, There is three come to me; she meant three passages of her catechism that came to her mind.

After the child had said this, she retired again into her closet, and her mother went over to her brother’s, who was next neighbor; and when she came back, the child, being come out of the closet, meets her mother with this cheerful speech; I can find God now! referring to what she had before complained of, that she could not find God. Then the child spoke again and said, I love God! Her mother asked her, how well she loved God, whether she loved God better than her father and mother. She said, Yes. Then she asked her, whether she loved God better than her little sister Rachel. She answered, Yes, better than any thing!

So many problems here, among them publicizing a piety that is a tad self-righteous — “I love God more than my parents do.” If any minister today wrote about a four-year old conversion in this manner, chances are his session or consistory would advise against publication, and the parents might ask for the pastor to stay away. Who wants to see a four-year writhe out of spiritual anguish (who wants to see a twenty-two year old writhe during conversion?)? But Edwards gets a pass because he is — well — Edwards. Yet, what kind of discernment did he show in his observations about Phoebe or having them published internationally as evidence of the awakening’s benefits? Furthermore, is this lack of discernment what comes with a quest for zeal? As long as someone is moved, quickened, earnest, we don’t raise questions about the manifestations of that zeal?

Some people seem to think I need help. I am asking for it.

Lutherans Did Not Spook Machen

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

Thanks to Gene Veith for the reminder:

Moreover, even among those who, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, hold that the Bible is not only an infallible rule of faith and practice but the only infallible rule of faith and practice, there have been great differences of opinion as to what the Bible teaches.

These differences do not concern merely one or two small details, but they are so extensive that they have led to the establishment of various systems of doctrine, each of which, be it remembered, claims to be the system taught in the Bible.

The Lutheran system is one system; the Arminian system, widely held in the Methodist churches until it gave place to the completely destructive Modernism which generally holds sway there now, is another; the Reformed system (often called, chiefly by its opponents, the Calvinistic system) is still another.

Which of these systems of doctrine, which of these ways of interpreting the Bible, does the ordination pledge require ministers and elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to hold?

There can really be no doubt about the answer to that question. The ordination pledge requires the candidates to hold distinctly the Reformed or Calvinistic system. That is the system which is set forth with a clearness which surely leaves nothing to be desired in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, which are the Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Be it noticed that the candidates do not subscribe to the Reformed system of doctrine merely as one allowable system among many allowable systems. They do not even merely subscribe to it as the best system. But they subscribe to it as the system that is true.

Being true, it is true for everyone. It is true for Methodists and Lutherans just as much as Presbyterians, and we cannot treat as of no moment the differences which separate us from Methodists and Lutherans without being unfaithful to the Word of God.

Does that mean that we cannot have Christian fellowship with our Methodist or our Lutheran brethren? It means nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we can have very precious Christian fellowship with them.

At that point I want to utter a word of personal testimony. I just want to say that in these struggles of the last few years against blatant unbelief in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., one of the most precious gifts that God has given me––and I have no doubt but that many of those with whom I have been associated would say the same thing- has been the Christian fellowship that I have enjoyed with many of my Lutheran brethren, especially those of the “Missouri Synod.” How often, when I have felt tempted to be discouraged, has some message come to me from them bidding me be of good courage and remember that the battle is the Lord’s! How often have I in turn rejoiced when I have thought of the way in which that noble Church [I mean the Missouri Synod] cultivating Christian learning at its great Concordia Seminary and bringing up its people truly in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, has stood firmly against the unbelief and indifferentism of the day!

Will those brethren be offended if they read what I have written regarding my devotion to the Reformed Faith and my belief that it is the system of doctrine taught in God’s Word?

I feel rather sure that they will not. You see, one of the things that unite me so closely to them is that they are not indifferentists or interdenominationalists, but are profoundly convinced that it is necessary to hold with all our souls to whatever system of doctrine God’s Word teaches.

I wish indeed that they were adherents of the Reformed Faith, as they no doubt wish that I were a Lutheran. But I stand far closer to them than I should stand if they held the differences between the Reformed and the Lutheran system to be matters of no moment, so that we could proceed at once to form an “organic union” based upon some vague common measure between the two great historic branches of the Protestant Church.

And Here I Thought the Greatest Cost was the One Christ Paid

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

Brian O’Neel thinks that the process of making saints has slighted the church in the U.S.:

My conviction is born out of a project on which I’m working. I am building a database of every saint and where each is buried. This catalogue is grouped by country, then by city and then by location.

So far, Italy has 82 pages. France, the next biggest country, has 34; and Germany, with the third greatest total, has 13. Korea — which has had the faith for less time than we have — has the fourth highest total of saints by country.

The United States has six and a half pages. Not bad, you think, right? Except that many of the entries on the U.S. document are shrines and places with reliquary chapels (e.g., St. Anthony’s in Pittsburgh). Or they are places that have had the benefit of getting a Roman martyr’s remains gifted to them or have a relic, such as of St. Anne or Blessed John Paul II.

There are a few such places on the aforementioned lists, granted. By and large, however, the above registers are comprised of homegrown saints.

Is it really possible we have no more saints in our nation than those already noted? Has not every diocese produced a saint? The questions are rhetorical. Of course each has. Of course we have more. It is possible — probable, even — that the Church Triumphant gains a new American every day. Unfortunately, we don’t know of them.

He goes on to explain why local saints are preferable to foreigners:

. . . it’s one thing to imitate or pray for the intercession of St. Anthony, who lived in Padua, Italy, in the 13th century. It’s another to do so with someone who lived in your back yard, who visited the places you know, who touched the things you can still touch.

And certainly, with the experience of nearly 500 years of Catholicism on these shores (the Gospel first came to what is now the United States in 1542), we have more than enough examples of holiness to increase the known number of American saints.

Even if the U.S. has lots of saints (or potential ones), do American parishes and dioceses have the cash?

Granted, many practical impediments exist to beginning such an undertaking. Candidly, the biggest of these is the cost.

Causes of saints are hugely expensive. There are witnesses to depose, evidence to collect, out-of-pocket expenses to reimburse, occasional stipends, if not salaries, to disburse, not to mention printing of prayer cards and brochures and other expenditures. All of this can cost between $250,000 to $1 million, spread out over many years.

Indeed, part of the expense comes from the fact that it often takes decades, even centuries, to pursue someone’s canonization. (For this reason, please don’t throw away those fundraising solicitations you get in the mail from, say, the Bishop Frederick Baraga cause.)

Not to worry, though. The Early Church Fathers were all over prayer cards and fundraising.

Competing Paradigms and Church Politics

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

First, a paradigm that Bryan Cross has not considered — the Italian one:

Anyone who knows the inner reality of Catholic life is well aware that at the retail level, there’s always a sort of negotiation that goes on between what the rules say and what actually happens. It’s not about hypocrisy or disobedience, but adapting universal norms to the infinite complexity of real-life human situations.

I was once at a talk given by a senior Vatican official when a questioner said he had a sin he wasn’t ready to confess but still felt drawn to receive Communion, even though the rules say he shouldn’t.

“The law of the church is clear,” the official responded. “You have to go to confession first.” Then the official said, “But now let me talk to you person to person. As a priest, I can’t substitute my conscience for yours. I can’t tell you to go or not to go. You have to make that choice in conscience, always bearing in mind that it must be a well-formed conscience.”

That’s the Italian view of law, which permeates the psychology of the church — law is an aspiration, not an absolute, which must be adapted to individual circumstances.

Second, the people’s paradigm in contrast to their bishop’s or the pope’s:

Medjugorje: On Monday, a commission created under Benedict XVI and presided over by Italy’s powerful Cardinal Camillo Ruini submitted the results of a four-year inquest into the alleged apparitions and revelations of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will be up to Francis to decide what to do, though some felt he tipped his hand in mid-November during a homily in his morning Mass in which he said that Mary “is not a postmaster sending messages every day.” In the Jan. 23 edition of Corriere della Sera, famed Vatican writer Vittorio Messori said it’ll be a painful decision whichever way it goes: If Francs rules the apparitions are false, millions of faithful who flock to Medjugorje will feel deceived and betrayed; if he says they’re authentic, it would be “devastating” for canon law, which leaves to the local bishop the right to judge such phenomena in his diocese, and two bishops in a row have said no. For that reason, Messori predicted the ruling will be that “for now” there’s no proof these events are supernatural rather than the more definitive, “there’s proof they’re not supernatural.”

Last, the transparency paradigm (which isn’t necessarily the one to use with the “millions of faithful” when it comes to apparitions):

This week, Scarano faced another arrest warrant on charges of money laundering, as prosecutors charged he paid around 60 people in cash to write checks to him for roughly 10,000 euro, then used those checks to create a false paper trail to cover as much as $10 million stashed in various accounts, including the Vatican bank. . . .

Faced with the clamor these two storylines are generating, the Vatican response so far has been a deafening silence.

Not so long ago, one could have counted on somebody loudly questioning whether civil investigators were overstepping their boundaries by intruding on the Vatican’s sovereign autonomy. One recalls, for instance, that when former Naples Cardinal Michele Giordano learned his phone had been wiretapped as part of an investigation of a real estate scam orchestrated by his brother in the late 1990s, the cardinal testily snapped, “I could have been talking to the pope!”

It’s also easy to imagine that someone might have implied, if not stated outright, that these investigations are part of a political, media, and judicial campaign to drag the church through the mud, that the charges themselves are false or exaggerated, or that the Vatican’s role in the story is so negligible as to make even mentioning it gratuitous.

This time around, however, Vatican officials seem content to allow the criminal probes to play out without protest or perceptions of interference.

While Francis has not put out a formal gag order, people who otherwise might have been inclined to pop off seem to have gotten the memo: If transparency and accountability are the new watchwords, then doing or saying anything that smacks of obstruction of justice is probably not a good career move.

In But Not of America (part three)

Published on by D. G. Hart58 Comments

Before U.S. Roman Catholics feel too comfortable with the harmony of religion and freedom worked out by the bishops in Fortnight of Freedom or by Tea Party Catholics, they may also want to consider a strain of conservative Roman Catholicism that objects to Americanism and that John Zmirak (a serious Roman Catholic himself) finds troubling. For instance, he has observed these instances of Roman Catholic illiberalism:

– It was a festive evening at the small Catholic college. A hearty dinner followed Mass for the feast of its patron saint. Now the students were gathered with the school’s faculty and leaders for a bonfire and robust songs. The high point of the night was the piñata, which the school’s director of student life hung from a hook. It was full of candy and shaped like a pig. Across it was written, “Americanism.” The student life director held up a bat, and told the students, “Okay, everybody, let’s SMASH Americanism!” The students lined up behind their teachers, their dean, and their college president, to smash whatever it was they thought was Americanism. (They had never been taught what Leo XIII actually meant by that word.)

– At this same school, in an academic discussion, the college dean explained the greater economic success of Protestant countries that embraced capitalism (compared to agrarian Catholic nations) as the “effects of Freemasonry.” The college president quickly corrected him, pointing out another critical factor: “diabolical intervention.”

– That same dean, in a conversation with me, waved off the possibility of democratic reform in America. Moral reform, he explained to me, would only come in the form of a forcible coup d’état, by which “men of virtue” would impose their will “on the people, who will fall in line when they see that they have no choice.” That dean had previously criticized Franco’s Spain for being too lax.

– The historian at a large Catholic university gathered his friends and family on the day that the rest of us call “Thanksgiving.” But his clan called the holiday “Anathema Thursday,” and every year used it to mock the Protestant origins of America by hanging a Puritan in effigy. This same historian teaches those he mentors to call the Statue of Liberty “that Masonic bitch-goddess.”

Zmirak goes on to credit Protestantism with the sort of liberties that Americans enjoy (if not take for granted):

In one of God’s little ironies, as Russell Kirk showed in The Roots of American Order, it was largely Protestants who championed the rights of Christians against the State, while Catholics endorsed old Roman, pagan conceptions of the State and its nearly limitless prerogatives. After the Reformation destroyed the Church’s political independence, popes saw little choice but to baptize, and try to morally inform, the absolutism of monarchs. (The nadir was reached when Catholic kings — who already picked all the bishops in their countries — forced the pope to suppress the Jesuits, who had eluded their royal control.) In the wake of the French Revolution, any talk of liberty seemed tainted by the blood of murdered priests, nuns, and Catholic peasants. The fear of revolutionary violence was enough to make Pope Pius IX side with the tsar and his Cossacks against the freedom-loving Catholics of Poland, and with the British Crown against the Irish.

He concludes with an expression of gratitude for the Enlightenment rarely countenanced in conservative circles (non-mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic):

We ought to be deeply thankful for the heritage of the Enlightenment — because the American anti-Catholics of the 19th and 20th century were dead right about one thing: Catholicism minus the Enlightenment equals the Inquisition. Do I exaggerate? Consider the fact that during the Spanish occupation of New Orleans, before the Louisiana Purchase, an officer of the Inquisition was interrogating heretics and collecting torture equipment — which he never got the chance to use, thank God. (The Inquisition did take root in Florida, and continued in Cuba until 1818.) Protestants in Spain were subject to legal restrictions as late as the 1970s. The great defender of Pius IX and Vatican I, Louis Veuillot, summed up what was for centuries the dominant Catholic view of religious liberty:

“When you are the stronger I ask you for my freedom, for that is your principle; when I am the stronger I take away your freedom, for that is my principle.”

As Americans, too, we must be self-critical, and acknowledge that in their reaction against the paternalism of the past, men like John Locke made grave philosophical errors — and unwittingly poisoned the ground of human dignity where the roots of freedom must rest. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker do an excellent job of explaining Enlightened errors in Politicizing the Bible, as does Edward Feser in his classic The Last Superstition. In Tea Party Catholic, Samuel Gregg shows in detail how freedom-loving Catholics can reintroduce the critical truths about human nature that our Founding Fathers overlooked. Such constructive criticism of the Enlightenment project, which we might call “reparative patriotism,” is essential to preserving the lives of the unborn and the integrity of marriage, among many other things.

It is one thing to say that John Locke and Thomas Jefferson had flawed views of human flourishing. It is quite another for Catholics — given our long, unhappy heritage of paternalism and intolerance — to reject the Enlightenment wholesale; to pretend that religious, political, and economic freedom are the natural state of man, which we can take for granted like the sea, the sun, and the sky. These freedoms are the hard-won fruit of centuries of struggle, and many of our ancestors were fighting on the wrong side. If we expect to preserve our own tenuous freedom in an increasingly intolerant secular society, we must make it absolutely clear to our non-Catholic neighbors that we treasure their freedom too. Denouncing the Enlightenment a mere fifty years after our Church belatedly renounced intolerance, at the very moment when men as level-headed as Archbishop Chaput and Cardinal Burke are warning that Catholics face the risk of persecution, and we desperately need allies among our Protestant neighbors… can anyone really be this reckless?

Another point you’re not going to hear from the Callers.

You're All Over the Place!

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Speaking of surveys, I took a quiz at Tea Party Catholic and the results are hardly surprising:

Your thinking seems to be eclectic–on some issues favoring centralized state solutions to social problems, on others leaning towards free-wheeling libertarianism. Check out Tea Party Catholic for a principled, consistent response that honors human dignity while promoting the common good.

NOW THAT YOU’RE DONE..

To learn more about what the American Founders and the Catholic Church say about limited government, a free economy, and human flourishing, check out Tea Party Catholic by Samuel Gregg.

# Question Selected Answer This is…
1 You consider the founding of the United States … A noble experiment in political, civil, economi… Tea Party Catholic
2 When you read that unemployment rates have rise… All those taxes and regulations we impose on bu… Tea Party Catholic
3 A Spanish-speaking evangelical Protestant churc… Good! Hispanics who turn Protestant will probab… Individualist / Libertarian
4 Your local Catholic charity is being told that … Isn’t religious liberty basically about freedom… Individualist / Libertarian
5 You consider the Social Security system that cu… An economically unsustainable government scheme… Tea Party Catholic
6 You think that government-sponsored programs fo… Demanded by Catholic social teaching and simple… Liberal / Leftist
7 When you hear the phrase “Human Flourishing,” y… Happiness entails making sure we all have enoug… Liberal / Leftist

Granted, many of the questions were hard for a Protestant to answer. But if you put the “Tea Party” before “[Roman] Catholic,” you are likely opening yourself up to people outside the bonds of fellowship with the Bishop of Rome.

One other fascinating part of the Tea Party Catholic website is the timeline of great moments in the history of liberty. This is Whig history for Roman Catholics:

The Edict of Milan 313
The Investiture Controversy 1075-1122
The Magna Carta 1215
The Swiss Charter of Confederation 1291
The Papal Bull Sublimus Dei 1537
The Mayflower Compact 1620
The English Petition of Right 1628
Maryland Toleration Act 1649
The English Declaration of Rights 1689
Charles Carroll of Carrollton 1737
The Boston Tea Party 1773
The U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
Publication of The Wealth of Nations 1776
The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights 1788
Publication of Democracy in America 1835/1840
The Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae 1965
The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism 1982
Centesimus Annus 1991

It is an odd timeline for Tea Party Catholics who are fairly devoted to the papacy because, for instance, the English Bill of Rights not only prohibited Roman Catholics from ascending the throne along denying to English monarchs the possibility of marrying a Roman Catholic, it also included an oath of supremacy that was not cordial to the pope’s own supremacy:

I A B doe sweare That I doe from my Heart Abhorr, Detest and Abjure as Impious and Hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position That Princes Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope or any Authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever. And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.

For a different perspective on the Tea Party Catholic phenomenon, as well as evidence of the political divide among Americanized Roman Catholics, readers should follow Michael Sean Winters series of posts in response to the book behind Tea Party Catholic. Here is one counter-point:

When Gregg turns his pen to history, the results are intellectually sloppy in the extreme. He opens his first chapter with a quote from the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore which he dates at 1893, although the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore was actually held in 1884. Perhaps a typo. More problematically, he writes, “One construal of the American Founding that remains extremely influential is that the American Revolution and subsequent political settlement were primarily shaped and driven by various intellectual impulses associated with eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking.” He acknowledges that there is “much truth to this particular narrative” but insists “there was also a religious dimension to the American Founding.” Well, yes, in colonial America, religion was in the intellectual oxygen. But, it has been 35 years since serious historians have grappled with the multiple, sometimes conflicting, intellectual impulses at work during that period, and much scholarship has focused on the specifically anti-Catholic ferment of much of the “religious dimension” Gregg seems to think will rescue the Founding from being a secular affair. He does not footnote Bernard Bailyn, or Patricia Bonomi, or Pauline Meier, or Rosie Zagarri, or the dozens upon dozens of scholars of that period whose work is well known. No, he jumps to a 1986 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to direct his interpretation of what is, first, a question of historiography, and a complicated one at that. Gregg, sadly, is allergic to complications.

What Can Change and What Can't

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Since infallibility has become a frequent topic of recent comments here, a couple of pieces from elsewhere may complicate the infallibility-means-superior meme of Roman Catholic apologists. It turns out that you can find as many opinions about what the church teaches (and here discipline merges with doctrine, a no-no I thought) as Carter has pills.

First, an optimistic piece from George Weigel about Pope Francis as a conservative:

Popes, in other words, are not authoritarian figures, who teach what they will and as they will. The pope is the guardian of an authoritative tradition, of which he is the servant, not the master. Pope Francis knows this as well as anyone, as he has emphasized by repeating that he is a “son of the Church” who believes and teaches what the Church believes and teaches.

Thus the notion that this pontificate is going to change Catholic teaching on the morality of homosexual acts, or on the effects of divorce-and-remarriage on one’s communion with the Church, is a delusion, although the Church can surely develop its pastoral approach to homosexuals and the divorced. As for the environment and the poor, Catholic social doctrine has long taught that we are stewards of creation and that the least of the Lord’s brethren have a moral claim on our solidarity and our charity; the social doctrine leaves open to debate the specific, practical means by which people of good will, and governments, exercise that stewardship, and that solidarity and charity.

And “the role of women in the Church”? No doubt various Church structures would benefit by drawing upon a wider range of talent (irrespective of gender) than the talent-pool from which Church leaders typically emerge. Still, in an interview with La Stampa before Christmas, Pope Francis made it clear that identifying leadership in the Church with ordination is both a form of clericalism and another way of instrumentalizing Catholic women.

So the church is not going to change, but I didn’t see anything about infallibility or the bodily assumption of Mary not changing. Instead, it looks like morality has an aura of infallibility about it. That makes sense since morality comes from God. But if the papacy hasn’t declared the moral law to be infallible, how would we know that morality is unchanging?

And then there is the back-and-forth among Roman Catholics about what the church teaches on Islam:

Consider an online debate that appeared this summer in Catholic Answers Forum about Cardinal Dolan’s visit to a mosque in New York. The debate centered around the Cardinal’s statement “You love God, we love God, and he is the same God”—a statement, in short, which seemed to echo the Catholic Catechism. The most interesting aspect of the month-long thread was that those who argued that Allah is the same God that Christians worship relied almost exclusively on arguments from authority. Here is a sample:

“It is dogma that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God.”

“He [Cardinal Dolan] has the grace of Teaching Authority. Unless you are a bishop, you do not.”

“You are discrediting Vatican II.”

“One either accepts Her teaching authority, or one does not.”

“This is not up for grabs.”

After plowing through dozens of similar propositions, along with numerous citations of the relevant passage in the Catechism, it was difficult for me to avoid the conclusion that forum participants were relying on the argument from authority because it was the only argument they had.

The trouble with the argument from authority in regard to Islam is fourfold. First, the Church has very little to say about Islam. In fact, the brief statements from the Second Vatican Council make no reference to Islam, Muhammad, or the Koran but only refer to “Muslims.” The same is true of paragraph 841 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which simply repeats the two sentences from Lumen Gentium. The second problem has to do with interpretation. For example, Lumen Gentium states that Muslims “profess to hold the faith of Abraham” but does not assert that they actually do hold the same faith as Abraham. Likewise, Nostra Aetate states that Muslims “revere Him [Jesus] as a prophet,” but does not grapple with the significant differences between the Jesus of the Koran and the Jesus of the Gospels—differences that extend well beyond the fact that the Koran does not acknowledge Jesus as God.

The third problem with the argument from authority as it touches on Islam is that there appears to be some uncertainty about whether Nostra Aetate was meant to be a dogmatic statement. . . .

The fourth problem with the argument from authority is that those who fall back on it often ignore the harsh assessments of Islam offered by earlier Church authorities. For example:

Pope Eugene IV, Council of Basil, 1434: “…there is hope that very many from the abominable sect of Mahomet will be converted to the Catholic Faith.”

Pope Callixtus III, 1455: “I vow to…exalt the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet in the East.”

Pope Pius II, papal bull, 1459: “…the false prophet Mahomet”

. . . The harsh language of earlier Church authorities can be excused on the grounds that Islam was often at war with Christianity. The more conciliatory language of Vatican II can be better understood if we realize that Islam’s aggression against Christianity seemed entirely a thing of the past at that time. But it can be argued that the irenic statements of Vatican II have helped to create a climate of opinion among Catholics that has left them unprepared for the present state of affairs vis-à-vis Islam. And the present state of affairs seems to herald a resumption of the centuries old Islamic hostility toward Christians.

I don’t know how Jason and the Callers come down on the church’s teaching on Islam, but the more I see, the more it looks like the claims made on behalf of infallibility are overblown given the way that ordinary Roman Catholics can (and have to) splice and dice the works of their bishops. At the very least, we see here more evidence that nothing and everything changed at Vatican II.

Church-State Separation Is Good for the Church

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Even Roman Catholics agree:

The danger in democracy is that Christian churches lose their capacity to be genuinely countercultural—or teach the truth that will be neglected “on the street” in middle-class democracy. And so the separation of church and state is to keep the church from being corrupted by excessive concern with endlessly egalitarian justice and the logic of the market. The separation is for the integrity of the church by limiting the claims for truth and morality of the democratic “social state,” which includes the democratic state.

But it’s both futile and even un-Christian to think that there could be, in the modern world, a state that favors or properly appreciates the church. Orestes Brownson, the greatest American Catholic thinker ever, said all the church should need and want from America is freedom to pursue its evangelical mission. That means, of course, that Americans should understand political freedom to be freedom for the church, for an organized body of thought and action. And we can see that the church flourished in America in the relative absence of politicized intrusion or corruption for a very long time.

The danger now, as always, is that the individualistic yet highly judgmental democracy—our creeping and creepy mixture of progressivism and libertarianism—will seek to impose its standards on our countercultural churches. Tocqueville was alive—although maybe not alive enough—to that danger. Who can deny that that the danger is greater now than ever? Today’s issues, Tocqueville would probably say, have their origins in the surrender of our contemplative Sunday to commerce and “seventh-day recreationalists.”

But anyone who thinks today’s remedy would be an established church would do well to remember how the establishments in Spain, Ireland, and Quebec worked out, the hyper-secularist and sometimes nihilistic countermovements in the name of democracy they generated. Those attempts to wield fundamental political influence produced clericalism and a kind of intrusiveness we Americans associate with the Puritans.

Of course, this outlook was not always so agreeable to Rome:

There being, then, an obligation upon the State as such, arising out of the Natural and the Divine Positive Law, to render public Divine worship in accordance with the guidance of the Church, in whose charge Christ has placed the worship due in the present order of things, an obligation also to protect the Church and to promote her interests, the Church clearly has a perfect right to demand the fulfilment of these duties, since their neglect would infringe her right to the benefit proceeding from the fulfilment. To have the further right to command the State in their regard implies that the Church has a right to impose the obligations of her authority in their regard, to exact them authoritatively from the State. Now in purely temporal matters, while they remain such, the Church cannot command the State any more than she can command the subjects of the State, even though these are at the same time her own subjects. But in spiritual and mixed matters calling for corporate action of the State, the question depends upon whether the physical persons who make up the moral personality of the State are themselves subjects of the Church. In case they are, then the Church has in consequence jurisdiction therein over the State. The reason is that owing to the supremacy in man’s life purposes of his eternal happiness, man in all his capacities, even of a civil nature, must direct his activities so that they shall not hinder this end, and where action even in his official or civil capacity is necessary for this ultimate purpose he is bound to place the action: moreover, in all these activities so bearing on this end, since they are thereby spiritual matter, every subject of the Church is under the jurisdiction of the Church. If, then, the physical persons constituting the moral person of the State are the subjects of the Church, they are still, in this joint capacity, subject to her in like matters, namely, in the fulfilment of all civil duties of the State towards religion and the Church. The Church, because of the uselessness of her insistence, or because of greater evils to be so avoided, may waive the exercise of this jurisdiction; but in principle it is hers.