Category: Are the CTCers Paying Attention?

A 2K Pope

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

This from “On Faith” at the Washington Post:

Second, Pope Francis seems to be making the point that Christ did not come to promote a political agenda. Pope Francis warns against the faith becoming an “ideology among ideologies.” If the church is defined by its political agenda, it will inevitably be divisive and distort the true mission of the church.

An excessive focus on politics and waging a culture war will lead many to define church teaching using secular political labels like liberal and conservative that do not reflect the church’s understanding of human dignity and the common good. Those who identify with the political left or right will feel alienated when their views clash with the church’s social and moral teachings, instead of challenged by the difficult task of ensuring that their political positions reflect Gospel values. Meanwhile, those who share the church’s positions may feel triumphant and look to drive others from the church, instead of drawing them into it.

The core teachings of the Catholic faith revolve around the church’s understanding of God, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel. Pope Francis makes this clear when he states that “the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.” Pope Francis notes, “Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus.”

This focus on the actions, life, love, and redeeming power of Christ and the God that Christ helps us to more fully comprehend is the true foundation of Catholicism, and these teachings should be seen as the core, central teachings of the church. As Pope Francis stated, “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent.”

Now if only Pope Francis can remove Boniface VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XII from the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

I Haven't Seen Jesus in Business Class Either

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Vatican reporters give reasons for thinking Pope Francis is channeling Charles Sheldon, the originator of WWJD:

“You cannot know Jesus without having problems. And I dare say, ‘But if you want to have a problem, go to the street to know Jesus – you’ll end up having not one, but many!’ But that is the way to get to know Jesus! You cannot know Jesus in first class!” Francis said.

On the contrary: “One gets to know Jesus in going out [into] every day [life]. You cannot get to know Jesus in peace and quiet, nor even in the library: Know Jesus.” Certainly, he added, “we can know Jesus in the Catechism,” for, “the Catechism teaches us many things about Jesus. We have to study it, we have to learn it.” Thus, “We know the Son of God, who came to save us, we understand the beauty of the history of salvation, of the love of the Father, studying the Catechism.” Nevertheless, he asked, how many people have read the Catechism of the Catholic Church since it was published over 20 years ago? Yes, you have to come to know Jesus in the Catechism – but it is not enough to know Him with the mind: it is a step.”

The important step however, is getting to “know Jesus in dialogue with Him, talking with Him in prayer, kneeling. If you do not pray, if you do not talk with Jesus, you do not know Him. You know things about Jesus, but you do not go with that knowledge, which He gives your heart in prayer. Know Jesus with the mind – the study of the Catechism: know Jesus with the heart – in prayer, in dialogue with Him. This helps us a good bit, but it is not enough. There is a third way to know Jesus: it is by following Him. Go with Him, walk with Him.” It is necessary, “to go, to walk along the streets, journeying.” It is necessary, said Pope Francis, “to know Jesus in the language of action,” Francis said.

The Anglo-Catholics are looking like the surest defenders of high church Christianity.

An Evangelical Pope

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

As the returns come in, the difference between Rusty Reno at First Things and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post reinforce the notion that the more you want Christianity not to be bound by rules, institutions, or forms — which is to say, you’re an evangelical — the more you like Francis. And the more you want Christianity to provide rules, stability, and patterns for belief and practice — which is to say, you’re an institutional conservative (e.g. ecclesial or confessional Christian) — the more you wonder about Francis.

First the evangelical Gerson:

Rather than surrendering the moral distinctiveness of the Catholic Church, he is prioritizing its mission. In the America interview, he vividly compared the church to “a field hospital after battle.” When someone injured arrives, you don’t treat his high cholesterol. “You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.” The outreach of the church, in other words, does not start with ethical or political lectures. “The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.”

There is a good Catholic theological term for this: the “hierarchy of truths.” Not every true thing has equal weight or urgency.

But this does not adequately capture Francis’s deeper insight: the priority of the person. This personalism is among the most radical implications of Christian faith. In every way that matters to God, human beings are completely equal and completely loved. They can’t be reduced to ethical object lessons. Their dignity runs deeper than their failures. They matter more than any cause; they are the cause.

So Francis observed: “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? We must always consider the person.”

This teaching — to always consider the person — was disorienting from the beginning. The outsiders get invited to the party. The prodigal is given the place of honor. The pious complain about their shocking treatment. The gatekeepers find the gate shut to them. It is subversive to all respectable religious order, which is precisely the point. With Francis, the argument gains a new hearing.

Then the Episcopalian-turned-Roman Catholic Reno:

Such comments by Francis do not challenge but instead reinforce America’s dominant ideological frame. It’s one in which Catholics loyal to the magisterium are “juridical” and “small-minded.” They fear change, lacking the courage to live “on the margins.” I heard these and other dismissive characterizations again and again during my twenty years teaching at a Jesuit university. One of my colleagues insisted again and again that the greatest challenge we face in the classroom is “Catholic fundamentalism,” when in fact very few students today even know the Church’s teachings, much less hold them with an undue ardency.

It’s in this context that Pope Francis makes extended observations about the profound pastoral challenge of ministering to gay people today, to which he adds the personal statement that he cannot judge a homosexual person who “is of good will and is in search of God.” He also speaks of other pastoral challenges: a divorced woman who has also had an abortion. These are subtle remarks, and necessary ones.

He sums up this section with statements about the witness of the Church today. They are the ones most often quoted: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.” “It is not necessary to talk about these issue all the time.”

In themselves these statements are obvious and non-controversial. Since my entry in the Catholic Church in 2004, I have heard some homilies on abortion, gay marriage, and even one on contraception. But these are infrequent. For the most part priests expound the mystery of Christ, which, as Pope Francis emphasizes, is the source and foundation of our faith. Without Christ at the center, the Church’s moral teachings can quickly become mere moralism.

But Pope Francis has been undisciplined in his rhetoric, casually using standard modern formulations, ones that are used to beat up on faithful Catholics—“audacity and courage” means those who question Church teachings, the juxtaposition of the “small-minded” traditionalists to the brave and open liberals who are “in dialogue”, and so forth. This gives everything he says progressive connotations. As a consequence, American readers, and perhaps European ones as well, intuitively read a progressivism into Pope Francis’ statements about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. Thus the headlines.

This is not helpful, at least not in the field hospital of the American Church. We face a secular culture that has a doctrine of Unconditional Surrender. It will not accept “talking less” about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. The only acceptable outcome is agreement—or silence. Dialogue? Catholic higher education has been doing that for fifty years, and the result has been the secularization of the vast majority of colleges and universities. Today at Fordham or Georgetown, the only people talking about contraception, gay rights, or gay marriage are the advocates.

Francis is certainly giving new meaning to papal audacity and Roman Catholic conservatism.

The Pietist Pope

Published on by D. G. Hart330 Comments

I was at first dismissive of the lead singer of Jason and the Callers’ invocation of categories I developed in Lost Soul of American Protestantism to explain the current statements from Pope Francis. Not to say I wasn’t flattered or surprised that an arch-Roman Catholic would lean on Protestant categories to defend an institution and person who is so superior to Protestantism. But after reading Francis’ interview, I believe Jason is more astute than he realizes (but not so much here). (He should also realize that he belongs to a flock of interpreters, the members of which seem to have forgotten that it was the papacy itself that was supposed to end the Protestant craze of various interpretations.)

Several commentators have been concerned about the mainstream media’s highlighting the pope’s apparently lackadaisical views about homosexuality and abortion, such as:

In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

A confessionalist, that is, a churchly Christian who values ecclesial forms and ordinances (preaching, sacraments, prayer) as the means by which the Spirit works, as opposed to a pietist who generally disregards forms and elevates the Spirit over all religious externals or man-made doctrines or liturgies, might have responded to the predicament of homosexuality or abortion by pointing a person struggling with these matters to the regular ministry of the church. For someone like Francis — “is the Pope ecclesial?” could be a new taunt — you would expect him to uphold Rome’s sacramental system of Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penance. Say what you will about the flaws in those teaching and practices from a Reformed Protestant perspective, Rome’s ministry as outlined, for instance, in Trent’s Catechism is as thorough a way of addressing the plight of sinners as someone could imagine.

But instead of upholding the gracious character of the sacramental system, or the mercy that Rome shows in recommending that a person wrestling with sin seek forgiveness and repentance through the ministry of her priests, Francis went in a pietistic direction. That is, he spoke of ways to make the church seem more responsive and charitable.

How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbour. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organisational reforms are secondary­ – that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.

“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage.”

I mention to Pope Francis that there are Christians who live in situations that are irregular for the church or in complex situations that represent open wounds. I mention the divorced and remarried, same-sex couples and other difficult situations. What kind of pastoral work can we do in these cases? What kinds of tools can we use?

“We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner,” the pope says, “preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound. In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

To be sure, Francis does mention briefly the role of the confessor in the life of a woman who has had an abortion:

This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

But the pope’s presentation of the issue is open ended. What should the confessor do? No answer. A woman with a guilty conscience? She needs to work it out with a confessor, but not in a way that would involve the pain of repentance or the acts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction. What happened to the words of Trent which defined contrition as “a sorrow and detestation for sin committed, with a purpose of sinning no more . . . joined with a confidence in the mercy of God and an earnest desire of performing whatever is necessary to the proper reception of the Sacrament”?

In other words, Francis appears to be confused like many pietists, who mistake experience for authenticity. He apparently wants to offer forgiveness to a broken world but does not value highly the very means that his own communion has (and has had for six hundred years) for reaching out to a broken world. It is as if he had read too much Gilbert Tennent and believed that new circumstances required new ministry measures. It is a Roman Catholic instance of pietism’s promotion of feelings and experience at the expense of the outward and ordinary means of grace.

By the way, it is also breathtaking since it is supposed to be either the low church Protestants or the Roman Catholic mystics who are so indifferent to sacraments and ordinances.

Postscript: in a related story, the Vatican press reported on Francis’ efforts to avoid taking a hard line with couples who are cohabiting:

The Pope told priests they should welcome couples that live together and championed the courageous and creative choices involved in going out to the “existential peripheries”, RomaSette says in its article. But the truth factor is crucial here. “The truth must always be told,” not just in the dogmatic sense of the world but in the sense of “love and God’s fullness”. The priest must “accompany” people.

Francis referred to some experience he had in Buenos Aires as examples of creativity. For example, when some churches were kept open around the clock, with confessors or “personal courses” available for couples who want to marry but can’t attend a prenuptial course because they work till late. The “existential peripheries” are the priority. These also refer to the kinds of family contexts Benedict XVI often talked about, for example second marriages. Our task is to “find another way, the just way,” Francis said. . . .

“The problem cannot be reduced to whether” these couples “are allowed to take communion or not because whoever thinks of the problem in these terms doesn’t understand the real issue at hand,” Francis said. “This is a serious problem regarding the Church’s responsibility towards families that are in this situation.” Francis reiterated what he said on the return flight from Rio to Rome after World Youth Day, saying he will be discussing the issue with the group of eight cardinals who will be meeting in the Vatican in early October. Francis added that the issue will also be discussed at the next Synod of Bishops on the Gospel’s anthropological relationship with individual people and the family, so that the whole Synod can look into this problem. “This,” Francis said “is a real existential periphery”.

Religious Life at Notre Dame

Published on by D. G. Hart25 Comments

While Jason and the Callers are admiring the early church fathers, here is an observation on their contemporary brothers and sisters from Mark Noll in a review of George Weigel’s, Evangelical Catholicism:

It is mostly inconsequential, but perhaps also of some interest to record how I have read this book against the background of experience at Notre Dame. From that experience I would conclude that there are indeed some Catholics committed to deep church reform who already practice something like Weigel’s evangelical Catholicism. But it also seems obvious that such Catholics make up only one part of a church that in its U.S. expression includes many other Catholics eager to promote their respective visions of reform. This rainbow of reformers includes Garry Wills Catholics, G. K. Chesterton Catholics, Robert Barron Catholics, Joe Biden Catholics, Dorothy Day Catholics, Sandra Schneider Catholics, Opus Dei Catholics, Oscar Romero Catholics, and many more. As someone who has read several works by John Paul II and Benedict XVI with real appreciation, I hope very much that they have set the church on a path that it will follow, but then I wonder why in some conversations at Notre Dame, I as the non-Catholic seem to have the most positive things to say about these two popes.

One of the great privileges of being at Notre Dame has been to witness what can only be called Roman Catholic Christianity at its best, marked by profound understanding of fundamental Trinitarian theology, strong commitment to the Christology of Nicea and Chalcedon, expert deployment of philosophy in service to theology, deep personal piety, and dedicated Christian commitment to a wide range of social reforms. Examples of what to all appearances look like admirable personal religion supported by admirable family, parish, and social religion also abound.

Yet Notre Dame is also a place where a broad array of often incompatible ideals are proposed for Catholic reform, where cafeteria religion seems pervasive for what Catholics choose to do or believe, where students participate in dormitory masses and standard college dissipations with equal fervour, and where no one seems too concerned about vast stretches of nominal Catholic adherence.

Demanding

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

Speaking of the Land of Chocolate, the lead singer of Jason and the Callers has another defense of the magisterium as he understands it. In it is this assertion:

Because in order to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion in a principled way, some visible body must exist with the authority to do so.

This is a frequent claim by ex-Protestants who go to Rome. Protestantism is in chaos and can’t resolve its divisions. Rome has unity and visibility and this is what you need to overcome Protestant fissiparousness. Possibly.

But who says that we need a visible body to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion (not that Jason makes this distinction very clear since he keeps comparing the “interpretations” of the magisterium to the very revelation they are supposed to be interpreting; in other words, it’s one thing for the Bible to be hard to interpret, it’s another altogether for the visible and principled interpretations not to add up)? I know I am as a Protestant a Bible thumper. But I have no idea where Jason would derive this notion from the pages of Holy Writ (unless he wants to hang everything on Matt. 16 and 18 again and again and again).

For instance, the Old Testament saints had a single, visible authority, the Israelite monarchy, and it lasted for all of David and Solomon before splitting into the northern and southern kingdoms. Let’s not forget that the kings were not exactly models of interpretive fidelity.

Then we have Jesus’ own promise to his disciples in John 16 that when he leaves his Spirit will come who will lead the church into all truth. Curious that with Peter right there, Jesus didn’t say, and rest assured, Peter and his successors will lead you into all truth and rightly divide revelation from interpretation.

And then there is Peter’s own counsel to the church in his second epistle where he constantly warns about the danger of false teachers, and warns, and warns, and warns (pastors considering a series on 2 Peter be warned). If Peter knew what Jason pines for, that a visible body was around to distinguish opinion from revelation, why would he write to your average Simon and Hannah about the need to keep a lookout for false teachers? Why not write the first Christians about God’s great provision of the visible church and its capacity to direct the faithful into all truth?

Jason puts this assertion in a post about how grown ups talk. I wonder if he has considered the difference between childish wishes and adult resignation. I mean, some kids insist that Santa exists. What does that prove?

Right Church, Wrong Paradigm

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

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?

Our Debt to Roman Catholicism

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

In his last chapter, Oakley describes what happened to conciliarism after its smack down at Vatican I. Late twentieth-century Roman Catholic ecclesiologists, he writes, have paid less attention to the institutional or extrinsic aspects of church governance to the more theoretical, abstract, and theological. That is one way of saying that exploring the constitutional characteristics of Roman Catholic ecclesiology is forbidden after the triumph of high papalism. Here he quotes one fourteenth-century schoolman, who after describing “the papal power of jurisdiction,” wrote, “But this I only assert. For it is perilous to speak of this matter — more perilous, perhaps, than to speak of the Trinity, or the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, our Saviour.” (219)

Oakley adds:

Such late twentieth-century preoccupations, however, should not be permitted to screen from us the fact . . . that for 700 years and more arguments based on secular political analogies, or arguments simply assuming something of a constitutional overlap between political and ecclesiastical modes of governance, served as a mainstay of eccleiologicial discourse, whether high-papalist or constitutionalist. Hardly surprising, of course, given the marked degree to which in the Middles Ages secular and religious intertwined, and ecclesiology and secular constitutional thinking, whether more absolutist or constitutionalist, constantly influenced one another. So much so, indeed, that the ‘juridical culture of the twelfth century — the works of Roman and canon lawyers, especially those of the canonists where religious and secular ideas most obviously intersected — formed a kind of seedbed from which grew the whole tangled forest of early modern constitutional thought. (219)

In other words, not the Greek polis or the Roman republic but conciliarism was responsible at least indirectly for the constitutional republics of the eighteenth century that sought to place limits on rulers who were prone to appeal to their divine rights.

Oakley goes on to observe the influence of conciliarism among Calvinists:

Neither the English, French, and Scottish resistance theorists of the sixteenth century nor the English parliamentarians of the seventeenth appear to have found anything at all ambiguous about the central strand of conciliar thinking upon which they placed so much emphasis. Nor did the French Huguenots appear to have lost any sleep over their indebtedness to scholastic predecessors for their revolutionary ideas. Quite the contrary, in fact. If Skinner is correct, they may even have seen it as a distinct advantage. For it helped them in their attempt ‘to neutralize as far as possible the hostile Catholic majority by showing them the extent to which revolutionary political actions could be legitimated in terms of impeccably Catholic beliefs. That was far from being the case, of course, with their seventeenth-century English successors. ‘In Stuart England there was much political capital to be made from convicting one’s opponents of popery’, and the sensitivity of the parliamentarians to the charge of crypto-popery and even more of Jesuitry is reflected in their anxious attempts to deflect its force. In relation to the despised doctrine of popular sovereignty [John] Maxwell had charged that ‘Puritan and Jesuite in this, not only consent and concurre, but like Herod and Pilate are reconciled to crucify the Lord’s anointed’. To that [Samuel] Rutherford retorted that Maxwell, having taked ‘unlearned paines, to prove that Gerson, Occam Jac[obus] de Almaine, Parisian Doctors maintanined these same grounds anent the peples power over Kings in the case of Tyranny [as did the Jesuits]’, had by so doing given ‘himselfe the lye’ and inadvertently demonstrated that ‘we have not this Doctrine from Jesuites’. But if not from Jesuits, clearly still from papists. And that charge [William] Bridge was forced to shrug off with the rejoinder that ‘Reason is good wherever we finde it; neither would Abraham refuse the use of the Well because Abimalech’s men had used it, no more will we refuse good reason, because Papists have used it. (237)

Mother Church, Baby Bible, Grandpa Pentateuch

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

Peter Kreeft is writing a series of posts to defend Roman Catholicism against fundamentalism. I am not sure why fundamentalism is a threat but I am still getting up to speed on things Romish.

In his post on the Bible, he has this line:

It is a fault, of course, to ignore Mother Church. But it is a virtue to love Baby Bible, a virtue we should respect and imitate.

This is apparently a clever way of saying that the church gave birth to the canon of Scripture, a common point that Roman Catholics make against Protestants. But does this line implicitly and unintentionally contain an element of anti-Semitism?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was well in place well before Peter allegedly became bishop of Rome or before Constantine started to convene ecumenical councils (without consulting the bishop of Rome, I might add). Peter himself, Paul, Christ, and all the authors of the New Testament recognized the Old Testament sacred books.

(And one other wrinkle, parenthetically, is why would high papalists back the idea that the early church councils gave us Scripture and then deny the councils authority later when they decree that popes need regularly to convene councils?)

So why write the priests and rabbis out of the formation of the canon? Or why show disrespect to the Hebrew Scriptures, as if they were not authoritative until the Council of Hippo? (Answer: it doesn’t fit the RC paradigm which may turn out to be as authoritative as the pontiff of Rome.) And why not recognize how much longer and agenda setting the Old Testament is for what happens with Jesus and the church? If we are going to play the genealogy game, as Kreeft wants, then lets include the Hebrew saints. Does that mean King Saul is a forerunner of the papacy?

Should I (all about me) Be Hurt?

Published on by D. G. Hart49 Comments

A sampling of various Roman Catholic takes on Protestants:

First (@September 1, 2013 at 8:07 am):

And this is why I have repeatedly said that if the Church were what Protestants claim it to be, then there would be no reason to be Christian in the first place. I very much appreciate that Protestants can manage the cognitive dissonance required to sustain that state of affairs, but let’s be clear that it is cognitive dissonance. Under no circumstances can what was produced by the Reformation be reconciled with the Christian Church of the conciliar era. And if there is no such institution remaining, then Christianity is dead, and we’re all just in denial about the fact. So that’s what your argument, if sound, would really prove, that Catholics and Protestants are both in denial about Christianity having died in the early modern era and that its death throes have taken a very long time. If we’re all in denial about history, then the inexorable conclusion is that history shows following Christianity is a fool’s game, indulged only by the foolish and unwise.

. . . Protestantism has done the same thing that the Brennan-led justices did to substantive due process; it takes what was a solution to a crisis based on internal principles (the use of a council to clarify papal selection) and used that to work the annihilation of the underlying framework. This is why Protestants are all liberals, even the “conservative” ones, just as even “conservative” judges are now operating in a framework built by liberals. Denial of the principles of the Church is built into your origin; what you teach was an invention that is not what the Church is or ever was. You would do the same thing to the Church that the liberal judiciary has done to the rule of law: destroy it by sheer imposition of your subjective opinion. Alasdair MacIntyre and Brad Gregory have warned you, but you aren’t listening.

Then this:

Mormonism is another version of Protestantism. Instead of deleting books out of scripture, they added books to scripture, which the template of Protestantism permitted them to do. Who could deny them? Luther? Calvin? Henry VIII? Wesley? Mary Baker Eddy? It might be noted that none of those individual’s consulted the others on breaking away or seeking a method of holiness.

The template of Protestantism is that one can make up one’s own version of religion to suit one’s self by making the scripture say whatever that individual wants it to say.

And to round out (@August 31, 2013 at 1:27 pm) the anti-Protestantism (emerging among some Americans as the new acceptable prejudice):

If there is so much agreement in the Solas, why are there over 23,000 Protestant communities? Apparently, it makes quite a bit of difference to Protestants.
I can’t speak for the rest of the Catholics, but I’m pretty sure they agree that what matters is that:
a. Protestant doctrine contradicts Sacred Tradition.
b. Protestant doctrine contradicts Scripture.
c. Protestant doctrine contradicts the Teaching of the Church.
d. Protestant doctrine is illogical.
e. Protestantism is ahistorical.
That is why I’m Catholic and not Protestant. Whether Protestants agree with each other is besides the point. Even if they agreed with each other, they would simply be agreeing upon errors.

Are their bishops reading? Is Pope Francis who said:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.