Category: Roman Catholicism

A World Without Winners and Losers

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

We saw Philomena last week and I was relieved that the movie did not go overboard in targeting Irish nuns as the tyrants they were (as I’ve heard) before Rome adopted the post-Vatican 2 pose of embracing rather than scolding the modern world. I have heard about nuns from all sorts of cradle — now former — Roman Catholics who experienced a highly charged encounter with Christianity where the stakes for sin and disobedience could be devastating. Philomena illustrates this well in the instance of a girl, reared by nuns in a convent, who has an illegitimate child and who needs — as the nuns explain — to atone for her sin. This atonement means having the child taken away for adoption and then suffering the sorrow of lost contact with the much wanted and much loved child for the rest of her life. It may be my fundie past, but I kept wondering why the nuns did not present this unwed mother with the forgiveness of sins that comes through Christ’s atonement. “Oh, that’s right. They are Roman Catholic and don’t believe in forgiveness of sins the way that Protestants do.” Maybe that’s a simplistic conclusion. Maybe Rome was far more nuanced than that. But when you do believe the Eucharist is a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice, and that it can be said for the dead, as opposed to the Protestant/author-to-Hebrews view that Christ’s sacrifice was once for all and that it atoned for all believers’ sins, the nuns response to unwed adolescent girls makes sense. Not to mention that the film’s depiction makes sense of the former Roman Catholic baby boomers’ understanding that for the church Christianity was all about law and guilt, with little relief to be found except through penance and the Mass.

But the popular understanding of Christianity among Roman Catholics today is not so restrictive or disciplinary. Like the efforts of bishops at Vatican 2 to show a much less judgmental manner, many of the writers at various Roman Catholic websites (minus JATC) present a Christian religion that is so tolerant that it becomes universalistic and humanitarian. Michael Sean Winters, for instance, had this to say in further reflections on Evangelii Guadium:

As predicted, much of the criticism leveled at the pope the past couple of days has painted him as naïve about economic matters. I am not one of those the pope calls on the phone, but I think we all have enough of a sense of the man to know that he would plead guilty to the charge that he is not an economist. Indeed, the fact that this criticism is laid at his feet shows just how far down the slippery slope his critics are. How dare the pope not understand our economic science! How dare he ignore our charts, our data, out statistics! How naïve to suggest that our economic laws should conform to his religious vision! That is precisely his point: As a Christian, we cannot accept an economic system that results in such injustice, in which the few winners get richer and richer and the millions of losers get poorer and poorer. Such a system is unworthy of a Christian understanding of justice.

Francis, however, is after something deeper here too. Yes, injustice should set off alarm bells. But, what is wrong with modern capitalism is not just that the few winners are doing so well and the many losers are doing so poorly. It is that, in the Christian view of the world, no human being is a “loser.” A system that is predicated on there being winners and losers is wrong-headed not just when the differences between the two are extreme, as they are today. It is wrong-headed period. Humans, experienced through the culture of encounter the Gospel invites, are always winners: “To believe that the Son of God as­sumed our human flesh means that each human person has been taken up into the very heart of God” Pope Francis writes. (#178) Shame on those who treat their fellow man as if he has not been taken up into the very heart of God.

Esau, the Canaanites, the Pharisees, Herod, the Judaizers were not “losers”? Has Winters not read the Baltimore Catechism (for starters)?

183. What are the rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment?
The rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment are heaven, purgatory, or hell.

184. Who are punished in purgatory?
Those are punished for a time in purgatory who die in the state of grace but are guilty of venial sin, or have not fully satisfied for the temporal punishment due to their sins.

The fire will assay the quality of everyone’s work; if his work abides which he has built thereon, he will receive reward; if his work burns he will lose his reward, but himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (I Corinthians 3:13-15)

185. Who are punished in hell?
Those are punished in hell who die in mortal sin; they are deprived of the vision of God and suffer dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity.

The he will say to those on his left hand, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

Now maybe Winters was not trying to make an eschatological point. Maybe he only meant that in this world everyone is a “winner” because of God’s providence (as opposed to redemption). Or that everyone should be a “winner.” But if Pope Francis does teach that everyone is taken up into the heart of God, then, boy, were most of the priests and nuns prior to Vatican 2 serving up some big bowls of spiritual and doctrinal wrong. As Roman Catholics used to know, not everyone was equal morally. Not everyone was equal sacramentally. The winners were the saints, the losers where the heretics and schismatics. Those in the middle had to serve time in purgatory. They all knew that being on the wrong side of the church was far worse than being on the down side of the poverty line. Poverty goes away. Even purgatory yields to heaven. But hell is forever.

But Winters is such an economic and sacramental egalitarian that he can’t resist taking a shot at Calvinism:

It is not politic in the world of ecumenical dialogue to make the point, but I shall make it anyway. The world the modern, financialized economy has created bears a creepy resemblance to the soteriological vision of Calvin, does it not? The elect, predestined few flourish while the massa damnata burn in hell. And, there is nothing anyone can do about it. In Calvin’s views on salvation, it is predestination that leaves us helpless. In today’s world, it is the “economic laws” that leave us helpless and, as Pope Francis indicates, invite a “culture of indifference.” The pope is reminding us that we cannot be indifferent precisely because we are Christians called to evangelize.

Has Winters not seen the headquarters of the OPC? Does he really mean to suggest that Calvinist churches have the kind of wealth, art, and architecture that Vatican City does (as if all that display was made possible by games of bingo)? And is Winters really unfamiliar with the Aquinas’ teaching about predestination?

Maybe he is. But it could simply be that in order to square his economic egalitarianism with Christianity, Winters needs to dumb down the gospel and eternal life so that they conform to expectations about a just and equitable economy:

Who cares if Pope Francis knows his economics? He knows that at the heart of the Gospel is good news for the poor. He did not need to consult a team of economists to write Evangelii Gaudium: His focus group consisted of only four people, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In point of fact, the poor in the gospels included not just those on poverty rolls but also the pretty well off — tax collectors, centurions, and other sinners. And their blessedness was not going to come with middle-class income. It was going to come from the house that Jesus was going to prepare.

This doesn’t mean that Pope Francis or Winters are wrong to be alarmed by income inequality. It does mean they both have some work to do to explain why economic justice is synonymous with the gospel. It also means, contra Winters, that Pope Francis should know that economics is different from theology, wealth from salvation, poverty from damnation. But if you make that sort of 2k distinction, then the pope may need to stick to his own sphere of spiritual authority and theological truth. If not, then all the people who consult the book of nature and figure out the “science” of economics have some right to criticize papal economics. This is not Christendom, after all.

Obsessive Confession Disorder

Published on by D. G. Hart453 Comments

Jason Stellman may think I am obsessed with Jason and the Callers, but every time he root root roots for the Vatican team, he winds up jeering at his former teammates. So when he tries to vindicate Roman Catholic ecclesiology, he dissects the Confession of Faith:

Consider first the realm of ecclesiology (which is related to Christology most obviously because the Church is the Body of Christ). In Protestantism, there is no single visible church, there is no single visible entity that can serve as an analogue to the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. While the people of Galilee and Judaea could have pointed their fingers and said, “That is Jesus Christ, right over there sitting under that tree, see him? No, not that guy, the one to his left. Yeah, him.” Protestants today cannot point to anything and say, “This is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church right here. No, not that one, this one.” In Protestantism, the church becomes more or less visible depending on the circumstances, fading in and out, as it were, of one’s field of vision:

This catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular Churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them (WCF xxv.4).

But why dismiss Protestants when he could simply exalt and magnify his own magisterium (which has all that supremacy and infallibility)? Here is what Jason’s Catechism has to say about visiblity:

779 The Church is both visible and spiritual, a hierarchical society and the Mystical Body of Christ. She is one, yet formed of two components, human and divine. That is her mystery, which only faith can accept.

This might appear to vindicate Jason’s point about Protestantism lacking a single visible church. But then Vatican 2 raises its traditionalist-defying head. And what we find is that the singularity of Rome pre-Vatican 2 is subdued, thus leaving Jason to quote the Confession of Faith against HIS OWN understanding of the church:

Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ.

The brethren divided from us also use many liturgical actions of the Christian religion. These most certainly can truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community. These liturgical actions must be regarded as capable of giving access to the community of salvation.

It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.

Nevertheless, our separated brethren, whether considered as individuals or as Communities and Churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life – that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim. For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is “the all-embracing means of salvation,” that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, in order to establish the one Body of Christ on earth to which all should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God. This people of God, though still in its members liable to sin, is ever growing in Christ during its pilgrimage on earth, and is guided by God’s gentle wisdom, according to His hidden designs, until it shall happily arrive at the fullness of eternal glory in the heavenly Jerusalem. (Decree on Ecumenism)

For the bishops at Vatican 2, the issue was not visibility but unity.

And if Jason spent as much time looking through the teaching resources of his magisterium and less combing Protestant teaching to which he objects, he might also find a rebuke to his own dealings with Protestants:

The way and method in which the Catholic faith is expressed should never become an obstacle to dialogue with our brethren. It is, of course, essential that the doctrine should be clearly presented in its entirety. Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers loss and its genuine and certain meaning is clouded.

At the same time, the Catholic faith must be explained more profoundly and precisely, in such a way and in such terms as our separated brethren can also really understand.

Moreover, in ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians standing fast by the teaching of the Church and investigating the divine mysteries with the separated brethren must proceed with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another, they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists a “hierarchy” of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith. Thus the way will be opened by which through fraternal rivalry all will be stirred to a deeper understanding and a clearer presentation of the unfathomable riches of Christ. (Decree on Ecumenism)

So again, why doesn’t Jason get on board with the kinder gentler version of Roman Catholicism that has only been around for as long as he has been alive? OCD?

So Many Genres, So Many Interpreters, So Many Opinions

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

The returns on Pope Francis’ recent “writing” are still being written, but a piece last week puts EVANGELII GAUDIUM (The Joy of the Gospel) in perspective. It is not an encyclical, the most authoritative form of papal communication. It is rather an apostolic exhortation:

Apostolic exhortations are often based on deliberations of synods of bishops, and this one takes into account the October 2012 synod on the new evangelization. But last June, Pope Francis informed the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops, which is normally responsible for helping draft post-synodal apostolic exhortations, he would not be working from their draft.

Instead, the pope said, he planned to write an “exhortation on evangelization in general and refer to the synod,” in order to “take everything from the synod but put it in a wider framework.”

That choice surprised some, especially since Pope Francis had voiced his strong commitment to the principle of consultation with fellow bishops and even suggested that the synod should become a permanent advisory body.

This writer adds:

Popes through the centuries have issued their most important written messages in one of 10 classic forms, ranging from encyclical to “chirograph,” a brief document on a highly limited subject. But most of these are typically formulaic texts that do not express the distinctive voice or charism of the man who issues them. . . .

A category of document that Pope Francis has not yet produced, but in which he is likely to make a major contribution, is that of apostolic constitutions. These are usually routine legal documents establishing a new diocese or appointing a bishop. But they can also address exceptional matters, as did Pope Benedict’s 2009 “Anglicanorum coetibus,” which established personal prelatures for former Anglicans who join the Catholic Church.

An apostolic constitution especially relevant to this pontificate is Blessed John Paul’s 1988 “Pastor Bonus,” which was the last major set of changes to the church’s central administration, the Roman Curia. Planning a revision of that document was the one specific task Pope Francis assigned to his advisory Council of Cardinals when he established the eight-member body in September.

Another consequential type of papal document is an apostolic letter given “motu proprio,” i.e., on the pope’s own initiative. Such letters are used to set up new norms, establish new bodies or reorganize existing ones. Pope Benedict issued 18 of them in the course of his eight-year pontificate — most famously in 2007, when he lifted most restrictions on celebration of the Tridentine Mass; and most recently in February, when he changed the voting rules of a papal conclave less than a week before he resigned from office.

Not only do we need to keep an eye on the distinction between discipline and doctrine, but we need to pay attention to papal genres.

Whether any of this adds up to changes, reforms, winners, or losers is all the chattering bloggers’ guess. Sean Michael Winters appears to be pleased that Francis took a shot at Roman Catholic traditionalists. From the apostolic exhortation:

This worldliness can be fueled in two deeply interrelated ways. One is the attraction of gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuine evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity. (94)

Winters also likes the idea of decentralizing Vatican authority:

The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion. The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position “to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit”. Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach. (#32)

Whether this will please Jason and the Callers, or whether this will be chalked up to more papal audacity is anyone’s guess.

I myself am wondering, though, what Francis means by the gospel. The word sinner appears only two times in the 51,000-word document. The same goes for righteousness, and both of these words come directly from biblical quotations. Sacrifice appears five times, but only once in connection with Christ’s death on the cross:

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. Moved by his example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world. But we do so not from a sense of obligation, not as a burdensome duty, but as the result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives. (269)

This may explain why Francis appeals to the Second Vatican Council four times, and never mentions Vatican I or the Council of Trent. But so far, Bryan Cross is treating the exhortation as business as usual — a chance for more ecumenical dialogue. He doesn’t seem to realize that confessional Protestants would be more willing to talk — not to agree — if we knew where Rome stood, that is, if Francis still used the language of infused righteousness and original sin cleansed by baptism.

Meanwhile, I read about a new book on papal encyclicals of the social teaching variety, mentioned by Peter Leithart. The post concludes with this sentence: “The Church’s aim, [John Paul II] insisted, is not to add another ideology to the public square; the task is one of ‘imbuing human realities with the Gospel.'” What recent popes don’t seem to consider — in the light of modernism both Roman Catholic and Protestant — is whether human realities obscure the gospel to the point that, say, the gospel is little more than affirming the dignity of the human person — as if sinners don’t need to hear something about the depravity of the human person and their need for a savior. Old hat, I guess.

In 29,000 out of 30,000 Denominations This Would Get You In Trouble

Published on by D. G. Hart132 Comments

Apologists for Rome do like to number the many communions that Protestantism has provoked. At the same time, Protestants hear a lot about the superior mechanisms that Rome has for maintaining unity within a universal church.

Less do we hear from the apologists — other Roman Catholic sites on the interweb are not so bashful — about the troubling views of priests, theologians and bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. Here are a couple of recent examples that caught the eye of this vinegary Old School Presbyterian:

Will hell be empty?

Michael Voris recently came out with a video entitled simply “Fr. Barron is Wrong”, challenging the popular priest-evangelist on his repeated statements in favor of the theory proposed by the late Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dare We Hope? that it is acceptable for Christian to have good hope that Hell may be empty. Voris rightly notes that Christ Himself says some souls will definitely go to Hell on numerous occasions, and that the Church’s alleged “silence” on the definitive presence of anyone in Hell is not due to any support for the empty-hell theory, but due to the fact that the definitive presence of any one soul in Hell is not part of Divine Revelation and therefore outside the pale of the Church’s competence to define. Therefore, the fact that the Church has never “proclaimed” anyone in Hell provides no rationale whatsoever for asserting that Hell is empty.

At this point Mark Shea jumped in and accused Voris of smearing Fr. Barron wrongly with his “poison.” It is not my intention here to comment on the antagonism between Voris and Shea; I am more interested in Shea’s comments that the Fr. Barron-Balthasar “Empty Hell” theory is “perfectly within the pale of orthodox speculation” and that “at the end of the day, that’s all you have: two schools of opinion–both of which are allowed by the Church.” Thus, the Balthasarian “Empty Hell” theory is granted a legitimate place on the spectrum of legitimate opinions upon which Catholics can disagree in good conscience, and the traditional opinion that people do in fact go to Hell is also placed on the spectrum as another legitimate “option.”

Do Roman Catholic theologians teach what the church teaches?

An international group of prominent Catholic theologians have called the church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality “incomprehensible” and are asking bishops around the world to take seriously the expertise of lay people in their preparations for a global meeting of the prelates at the Vatican next year.
Church teaching on issues like contraception and same-sex marriage, the theologians write, are based on “abstract notions of natural law and [are] outdated, or at the very least scientifically uninformed” and “are for the most part incomprehensible to the majority of the faithful.”

Addressing next year’s meeting of church leaders, known as a Synod of Bishops, they say that previous such meetings involved “only carefully hand-picked members of the laity.”

Those meetings, they write, “offered no critical voice and ignored abundant evidence that the teaching of the church on marriage and sexuality was not serving the needs of the faithful.”

One reason that many Protestant denominations would not countenance deviation from church teaching and expectations is that they remember the battles with modernism during fundamentalist-like controversies and still understand theological liberalism to be a danger to Christian witness. In contrast, (overkill alert) Rome seems to have forgotten its battles with modernism thanks to the engagement of the modern world called by Vatican 2. In fact, it is curious how much latitude for downright loopy views exists in a church that has a pontiff with remarkable powers compared to a little denomination like the OPC where elders and ministers have as much power in the wider world as a customer service representative at Kroger Super Market.

When will the apologists reasons catch up with their church’s reality? And why don’t Jason and the Callers appeal to the very mechanism that is supposed to protect the church from error?

So how are we to deal with liberalism in the Catholic Church? We ought to pray earnestly for orthodoxy to flourish, support religious orders that are obedient to the teaching of church, support Catholic schools that are obedient to the teaching of the church, volunteer in our parishes and if we encounter truly egregious heterodoxy in our parishes we should contact our bishops.

Whatever Happened, It Deserves to be Mentioned

Published on by D. G. Hart247 Comments

While Bryan Cross and others shrug their shoulders about Vatican 2’s significance, practically everywhere you go in other Roman Catholic venues you find acknowledgement that something changed in the church and it was disruptive. Bryan likens this line of attack to an accusation of bait and switch — such that when he blogs about the virtues of Rome he doesn’t mention the elephant in the room that Vatican 2 became for conservatives and traditionalists (but of course, according to Bryan, conservatives don’t exist — you’re either Roman Catholic or you’re not). Well, try as I might, I am having trouble finding other Roman Catholic apologists or scholars who are as reluctant at JATC (Jason and the Callers) are to talk turkey about Vatican 2.

So in the spirit of the season, here are a few servings:

It is hard, from these standpoints, not to stress the discontinuity, the experience of an event, of a break with routine. This is the common langauge used by participants and by observers at the time — the young Joseph Ratzinger’s reflections after each session, published in English as Theological Highlights of Vatican II, are a good example. It is from this perspective that James Hitchcock calls Vatican II “the most important event within the Church in the past four hundred years,” and the French historian-sociologist Emile Poulat points out that the Catholic Church changed more in the ten years after Vatican II than it did in the previous hundred years. Similar positions are held by people along the whole length of the ideological spectrum. Whether they regard what happened as good or bad, they all agree that something happened. (Joseph A Komonchak, “Benedict XVI and the Interpretation of Vatican II,” 108)

I do find it odd that the very institution that is supposed to govern interpretations within the church — the papacy, the office that protects Rome against Protestantism’s opinions — can’t even control the interpretation of such a central feature in church life.

Then comes this from Eamon Duffy:

On every front, then, the Council redrew the boundaries of what had seemed to 1959 a fixed and immutable system. For some Catholics, these changes were the long-awaited harvest of the New Theology, the reward of years of patient endurance during the winter of Pius XII. For others, they were apostasy, the capitulation of the Church to the corrupt and worldly values of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, which the popes from Piux IX to Pius XII had rightly denounced. And for others, perhaps the majority, they were a bewildering stream of directives from above, to be obeyed as best they could. Many of the older clergy of the Catholic Church found themselves sleep-walking through the Conciliar and post-Conciliar years, loyal to an authority which called them to embrace attitudes which the same authority had once denounced as heresy. Pope John’s successor would have to do with all this. (Saints and Sinners, 274-75)

Bryan is wont to shrug at such quotations from historical works, but I’m not sure how he doesn’t feel the weight of the change of authority — the very authority that he uses to show Protestantism’s inferiority — that Duffy notes. He can hide behind the claim that no dogma changed at Vatican 2. Yet, the line between sin and heresy and dogma and discipline was never so clear that the priests Duffy mentions knew how to sort it out and instruct the faithful on what was no longer required and why it wasn’t even though it had been sinful before not to perform certain acts of obedience.

Even for those hopeful of a restoration of Rome’s conservative posture — hard to believe given stories about conservatives’ perceptions of Pope Francis — Vatican 2 was a ecclesiastical bowl of confusion:

Of course, the fact remains that none of the documents of Vatican II are taught ex cathedra. Therefore, none of the teachings of Vatican II are formally pronounced as dogmas by the Second Vatican Council itself. So, very strictly speaking, a person can dissent from Vatican II itself without being a formal heretic. However, to dissent from an ecumenical council is no small matter. To put it informally, one may avoid being a heretic, but still may be a “bad” Catholic.

How did this confusion take root? It can best be explained as rising from the concept of conciliar self-verification. In other words, the Second Vatican Council teaches that the fathers at an “ecumenical council” are teachers of faith and morals, and their “definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith.” The problem is, the ecumenical council making this statement is itself an ecumenical council—and, therefore, is making statements about itself and not making it with the highest authority, i.e., ex cathedra.

In other words, one might say this is the conciliar version of chasing one’s own theological tail. The fallout has been that, for several generations of Catholics, from academics and Church leaders to the laity in the pews, the lasting impression is, “Vatican II said it was okay to disagree with the Pope.”

Thus began the era of “taking sides.” It was as if the Catholic faith became no more than a grand game—Pope and established Church teachings versus the dissenters—and individual Catholics could simply pick which team to root for. Some called themselves liberals (the “left”) while others called themselves conservatives (the “right”). Each group dissented from Vatican II, but for different reasons.

Many liberal nuns in the U.S., for example, continue to sympathize with anti-life groups that claim they are helping the poor by promoting the poor’s right to funds for abortion and contraception. They claim to be supporting social justice by defending, or, at least, sympathizing with, the gay agenda. They are especially vocal in demanding that the Church ordain women to the priesthood—even after John Paul II informed them that the Church teaching on an all male priesthood is infallible and, therefore, cannot be changed.

On the other hand, the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, continues to err on the side of utter conservative rigidity. They reject the Second Vatican Council as a movement of the Holy Spirit, and cling to the minutiae of 500-year-old rituals as necessary, for their own sake. The change of the liturgy from Latin to English, or the vernacular of each particular country, is their most well-known objection.

Therefore, today, 50 years after the opening of Vatican II, the misinterpretation of one of its most salient documents, Lumen Gentium, continues to drive a number of Catholics in the United States into one of two camps, the “right” or the “left.”

So the next time Bryan wants to call conservative Presbyterians to communion, he might want to go through the fine print with those he’s calling.

To Russia with Love

Published on by D. G. Hart12 Comments

John Allen provides a helpful perspective on Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Vladimir Putin. Folks who associate Roman Catholicism with western civilization should take note:

During the long period when Christendom was coextensive with the West, papal diplomats thought largely in terms of which European dynasty offered the best bet for protecting the church’s interests. Later, when economic and cultural change began to knit the world together, the Vatican looked to major European powers as their natural allies. After World War II, Rome put most of its eggs in the basket of the nascent European Union.

Under John Paul II, much of that natural affinity shifted to the United States, in part because of the conviction that church/state separation in America is more congenial to religion, in part because of trends within the EU toward runaway secularism. That pro-American stance, however, was to some extent a marriage of convenience, since many in the Vatican regard the libertarian streak in American culture and the congregationalist impulse in American religion as poor fits for Catholic social ethics and ecclesiology.

With Francis, the Vatican may be positioned to step outside the Western box altogether, crafting partnerships and alliances à la carte based on the dynamics of specific situations.

To date, the most pointed political move by Francis on the global stage was his outspoken opposition to a military intervention in Syria, expressed among other things in the global day of prayer and fasting for peace he called Sept. 7. In that effort, Francis was on the same side as Putin, squaring off against the White House, the Palais de l’Élysée in France, and other symbols of Western power.

To be sure, nobody in Rome, least of all Francis, is likely to confuse Putin with a sort of Orthodox Robert Schuman, meaning a statesman whose policies are primarily shaped by Christian values. The shortcomings of his “managed democracy” vis-à-vis Catholic understandings of subsidiarity and human rights are all too clear.

Yet the point is that when Putin and other world figures look at Francis, they’re less inclined to see a Western leader, but rather the head of a global church with a predominantly non-Western following. When Francis looks at Putin, he’s not automatically inclined to suspicion because he’s not from the historic crucible of Christendom — because, of course, neither is the pope.

Could Jason and the Callers Have a Conversation with Ross Douthat?

Published on by D. G. Hart193 Comments

I know they speak the same language, but they don’t speak the same Roman Catholicism, which means I sense I could actually talk to Douthat about Rome and have a conversation that resulted in understanding as opposed to a lesson in logic or w-w. For instance, he admits that Roman Catholicism is not as hunky dory as the Callers siren songs suggest:

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the church has (as most people know) been locked in a kind of low-grade institutional civil war, between a liberal/progressive/modernizing viewpoint that had its moment in the 1960s and 1970s, and the more neoconservative perspective that set the tone for John Paul II and Benedict’s papacies. (I say neoconservative because this was essentially a quarrel over the meaning and implications of Vatican II’s liberalizing reforms, between factions that had both supported them, with critics of Vatican II confined to the sidelines and the fringe.)

As the remarks on accommodation and dissolution above no doubt suggest, I have my own strongly-held views about which side had the better of that argument. But like most long, grinding civil wars it has ultimately left everyone a loser — for a host of reasons but most of all because it has divided a religious worldview that’s supposed to be integrated, and undermined that worldview’s ability to offer itself in fullness to people outside the church’s walls. In particular, instead of the capaciousness, the openness to paradox and mystery, the spirit of both/and rather than either/or that’s supposed to define Christian belief, the Catholic civil war has tended to elevate cruder binaries instead – implying that believers need to choose God’s love and God’s justice, between the immanent and the transcendent, between solidarity with the marginalized and doctrinal fidelity, between the church’s social teaching and its moral stance on issues like abortion, between the Christianity as a force for justice in this world and Christianity as a promise of salvation in the next.

Even so, Douthat is hopeful about Francis’ prospects, which seems to me to be what you expect a Roman Catholic to hope:

. . . for my generation of Catholics, wherever our specific sympathies lie, this inheritance of conflict has created a hunger for synthesis – for a way forward that doesn’t compromise Catholic doctrine or Catholic moral teaching or transform the Church into a secular N.G.O. with fancy vestments, but also succeeds in making it clear that the Catholic message is much bigger than the culture war, that theological correctness is not the only test of Christian faith, and that the church is not just an adjunct (or, worse, a needy client, seeking protection) of American right-wing politics. This desire has been palpable in the Catholic blogosphere for some time, and I think you can see it percolating in many of the publications in whose pages the old intra-Catholic battles were so often fought.

And yet, this is a realistic hope based on knowledge of the vicissitudes of Roman Catholic history (recent at least):

. . . for the moment I think conservatives do have legitimate reasons to be uncertain whether the new thing that Francis is aiming at will ultimately be a synthesis and a breakthrough for the church, or whether what we’re seeing is just the pendulum swinging back toward the progressive style in Catholic theology, in ways that may win the church a temporary wave of good publicity but ultimately just promise to sustain the long post-Vatican II civil war.

Douthat would seem to be able to understand that outsiders don’t see Roman Catholicism as necessarily superior to other Christian brands, even while he clearly sees the church as valuable. That is a long way from the Callers where logical certainty and denial of blemishes abide.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Douthat is himself prone to a kind of optimism that is unwarranted. This is because he does not seem to be aware of the power of liberal Christianity’s genie. For instance, he links to a talk by one of Pope Francis’ closest advisers and registers the kind of dissent that pre-Vatican II Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants shared, believers who thought Christianity was fundamentally a spiritual enterprise that worried more about eternal rather than temporal life:

It reads as a kind of sketch of an agenda for the church in the Francis era, and my reaction to it was not that different from some other conservative Catholic bloggers: It struck me as a sometimes-eloquent exposition of part of the church’s mission, part of the Catholic worldview, part of the church’s understanding of itself – but it seemed to stress those parts at the expense of other aspects, other elements, that are necessary for the whole. The Cardinal’s horizons seemed very worldly, his concerns were almost exclusively economic, his vision of the church’s mission in that arena had a political and left-wing and sometimes half-baked and conspiratorial flavor … and while some of his social-justice themes would have been at home in a document from either of the previous two papacies, he seemed to give short shrift to many of the issues and arenas – devotional and doctrinal, theological and liturgical, social and cultural – that lie close to the heart of Catholicism fully expressed and understood.

It felt like an address, in other words, that could have been delivered by a progressive prelate in 1965 or so, before subsequent developments exposed some of the problems with a Christianity focused too intently on the horizontal rather than the vertical, social injustice rather than personal sin, the secular rather than the transcendent. Even as Francis has been eloquently warning against seeing Catholicism as a worldly “ideology” or letting the church become an N.G.O., his friend and ally’s vision seems to risk falling into a version of exactly those traps.

The mainline Protestant churches have had a hard time walking away from the burdens of progressive Christianity. Perhaps Roman Catholic exceptionalism will allow Rome to escape that burden. But modernity is a demanding taskmaster and earlier papal condemnations of modernity, though too blunt for contexts outside Europe, may have had a better measure of the acids that have eroded Christian witness when churches embrace the “modern” world.

Even so, Douthat is a good example of how Roman Catholics might speak to a mixed audience. Jason and the Callers might even consider that Douthat is a convert from Protestantism. But then, perhaps their Roman Catholicism is not the one to which Douthat belongs.

Deciphering Discipline and Doctrine

Published on by D. G. Hart99 Comments

Speaking of the peaceful and Christlike Bryan Cross, I wonder if he needs to be responsible for all the Roman Catholic interwebisites out there since others admit that the distinction between doctrine and discipline can be tough to ascertain.

Here is one relatively simple explanation:

When discussing our Catholic faith, we must understand the difference between doctrine and discipline and be able to distinguish which of the two any particular matter may be.

Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia defines “discipline” as an “instruction, system of teaching or of law, given under the authority of the Church [which] can be changed with the approval of proper authority, as opposed to doctrine, which is unchangeable” (334).

Discipline, then, is man-made and can be changed as often as the Church desires. This is not to say that the authority to enact discipline is man-made. In fact, Scripture itself records the Church’s God-given authority to enact discipline: “[W]hatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:18; see also 16:19). Now, this power to bind and to loose extends beyond discipline, but it certainly includes the authority to enact discipline as well.

Doctrine, on the other hand, is the teaching of the Church on matters of faith and morals. All such teaching—or at least the basis for it—was handed down to the Church by Jesus and the apostles prior to the death of the last apostle. Scripture refers to doctrine as “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). As mentioned before, doctrine can develop over time as the Church comes to understand it better—but it cannot change. No one—not even the pope—has the authority to change doctrine.

But what happens when the pope classifies a discipline as a doctrine? And what happens when another pope disagrees?

Another common example within the Church today concerns the changes to the way the Mass is celebrated that were promulgated by Pope Paul VI in the late 1960s. There are some today who question the pope’s authority to institute the liturgical changes he did because they claim that in 1570, Pope St. Pius V defined certain elements of the Mass’s celebration as doctrine. Pius’ directives were promulgated “in perpetuity” and are said by some to be unchangeable doctrine.

In actuality, Pius V’s Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum concerned disciplinary matters, not teachings on faith or morals. Evidence of this is that teaching on faith or morals would not—indeed, could not—allow for such exceptions as “unless approval of the practice of saying Mass differently was given” or “unless there has prevailed a custom of a similar kind” or “We in no wise rescind their above-mentioned prerogative or custom.” Such matters of Church discipline always remain subject to future change by equal or greater authority. In light of this, wording such as “in perpetuity” must be understood as “from now on, until this or another equal or greater authority determines otherwise.” Pope Paul VI certainly held equal authority to that of Pope St. Pius V. Therefore, changes to the Mass under his authority were licit and valid and were an example of disciplinary changes, not doctrinal changes.

If doctrinal and disciplinary matters can be so confusing among Catholics who have the tri-part authority of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium to guide us, how much more confusing must such matters be for our non-Catholic brothers and sisters who rely entirely on their own interpretations of Scripture alone?

So perhaps Bryan could summon up a little more peace and Christlikeness?

Then again, disciplines are binding on the consciences of Roman Catholics, which suggests that to deviate from a discipline is sin:

In addition to teaching authority, Christ gave the apostles authority to govern His Church (Mt 18:16). “Discipline” refers to the exercise of this authority. The Church needs rules to preserve inner unity here on earth, help her members achieve perfection, and provide a protective framework within which doctrinal teaching can be lived. Disciplines, the rules promulgated by the magisterium, provide this (see FAITH FACT on Necessity of Law and Right Order for further discussion). Discipline includes such things as Canon Law, priestly celibacy, and certain liturgical norms, and does not come directly from the deposit of faith but from the prudential decisions of the magisterium. Disciplines are authoritative and binding in conscience for as long as the magisterium affirms them. Disciplinary forms can be changed when the magisterium deems this necessary, i.e., allowing the reception of Communion in the hand. Prudence is to be exercised, however, for disciplines can be closely related to doctrinal concerns. Only the magisterium has the authority to “bind and loose” in the domain of discipline, and this extends to bishops’ conferences and individual bishops in certain circumstances (cf., for example, Congregation for Divine Worship, “Ceremonial of Bishops,” no. 7).

The magisterium can, in addressing the changing needs of the Church, change or modify a discipline or Church law which no longer seems to address a specific need, i.e., veils for women in Church or the 24-hour fast before Communion. The magisterium cannot change dogma or doctrinal truth which originates from the teachings of our founder, Jesus Christ, e.g., divorce, (Mt 5: 32) or homosexual activity (Rom 1:18-32 and 1 Tm 1:10).

My problem may be an inveterate Protestant logocentrism. But isn’t logos close to logic?

Or maybe Bryan functions as his own interpreter of things Roman Catholic:

. . . when Catholics dissent from the teaching of the Magisterium, either about theological doctrines such as transubstantiation or women’s ordination, or about moral issues such as contraception, abortion or the essential heterosexual character of marriage, they separate themselves from the unity of the Church’s faith. Although they do not harm or diminish the unity of the Church or the bond of unity in the profession of one faith by the Catholic faithful, dissenting Catholics do give scandal by their dissent, by obscuring to the world the unity that is to be a testimony of the unity of the Father and the Son, and of Christ’s having been sent from the Father.20 In short, both kinds of disagreement leave intact both the unity of the Catholic faith as well as the unity of the Catholic Church.

Where then does the “Catholics are divided too” objection go wrong? The objection mistakenly assumes that the unity of the Catholic Church is the degree of agreement concerning matters of faith among all who call themselves Catholic or receive the Eucharist, rather than recognizing that the unity of the Catholic faith is determined by the unity of the doctrine taught by the Magisterium. In this way the objection implicitly presupposes that there is no difference in teaching authority between the laity and the Magisterium. It treats Catholic unity through the Protestant paradigm’s way of judging unity, and thus presupposes the falsehood of the Catholic faith.

Silly me. Wrong paradigm.

Whom Are You Going to Believe?

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

Jody Bottom (thanks to our Pennsylvania correspondent)?

Western disenchantment was a complicated phenomenon. The general rejection of sacraments in Protestant religious sensibility acted as only one of what Weber (borrowing from Goethe) called the “elective affinities” of modernity. The bureaucratization required by the powerful new nation-states is another of those affinities that helped produce the modern world — as are the prestige of mathematical science (particularly after Descartes), the new social relations created by the rise of the middle class, the enthusiasm for democracy, and the hatred of Catholic religious authority implicit in Enlightenment philosophy. (And often explicit; notice, for instance, the affinities of democracy and anti-Catholicism blending indistinguishably in Diderot’s oft-quoted philosophe epigram, “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”)

Still, the disenchantment of the world quickly came to define the powerful Protestant cultures of Western civilization, and it infected far too many of the Catholic cultures, as well. The “great enchanted garden” of traditional societies, as Weber called it, withered to small growths on the verges and glebes. . . .

Come, leave the city, walk out in the fields, and see the night’s vast planetarium for what it is — the stars dancing in their formal Newtonian quadrillions, in honor of God’s order, even while Aries fears for his golden fleece and Andromeda longs for rescue. The world is graced with magic and wonder, Christ’s sacrifice pours through creation, and infinity lives in a grain of sand. All truths blend toward the one truth. Come, we were blind, but now, if only we open our eyes, we see.

(sort of puts a crimp in Keller’s Holy Urbanism)

Or Paul, the apostle?

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self his being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

You don’t need to turn the world into a sacrament to avoid fleeing it. (By the way, are not Scripture and Tradition supposed to cohere?)

Which Is It? How Do You Know?

Published on by D. G. Hart32 Comments

In reading through documents from the magisterium, I continue to be amazed by how right next to affirmations that Roman Catholics still defend are teachings those same Christians choose to ignore or chalk up to a mulligan for the magisterium. For instance, the same council that codified transubstantiation also weighed in on the place of Jews in Christendom:

1. Confession of Faith: . . . His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us. Nobody can effect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained according to the church’s keys, which Jesus Christ himself gave to the apostles and their successors. . . .

68. Jews appearing in public: A difference of dress distinguishes Jews or Saracens from Christians in some provinces, but in others a certain confusion has developed so that they are indistinguishable. Whence it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians join with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews or Saracens with christian women. In order that the offence of such a damnable mixing may not spread further, under the excuse of a mistake of this kind, we decree that such persons of either sex, in every christian province and at all times, are to be distinguished in public from other people by the character of their dress — seeing moreover that this was enjoined upon them by Moses himself, as we read. They shall not appear in public at all on the days of lamentation and on passion Sunday; because some of them on such days, as we have heard, do not blush to parade in very ornate dress and are not afraid to mock Christians who are presenting a memorial of the most sacred passion and are displaying signs of grief. What we most strictly forbid however, is that they dare in any way to break out in derision of the Redeemer. We order secular princes to restrain with condign punishment those who do so presume, lest they dare to blaspheme in any way him who was crucified for us, since we ought not to ignore insults against him who blotted out our wrongdoings.

But the problem doesn’t go away. Take the descriptions of papal power from the era of Pius IX. First, from the First Vatican Council:

Since the Roman pontiff, by the divine right of the apostolic primacy, governs the whole church, we likewise teach and declare that
he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases which fall under ecclesiastical jurisdiction recourse may be had to his judgment.
The sentence of the apostolic see (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon.

And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman pontiff.

So, then, if anyone says that the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that
this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema.

This understanding of papal primacy also means for Pius IX (down to the Second Vatican Council) that freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state in government are forbidden:

And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that “that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.” From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an “insanity,”2 viz., that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.” But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition;”3 and that “if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling.”

The question is not how does someone reconcile these contradictory statements. The much more substantial issue is how anyone is to know which of these statements is the right one but the other, less liberal one, is just a reflection of the fallibility of human beings. Sure, someone can try to distinguish between the opinions of popes and their ex cathedra statements. But since so many of the modern papacy’s or Vatican councils’ pronouncements contain doctrines that conservative Roman Catholics both affirm and resist, the interpretive lengths to which Rome’s apologists must go exceeds almost any of the hermeneutical gymnastics that Protestants perform.

After all, not many Protestants would be comfortable today (except for the fire eaters who attack 2k) with Joshua’s depiction of Israel’s conquest in the Holy Land. Nor for that matter, do many Protestants who defend inerrancy also teach that we need to keep kosher kitchens because God’s word says it, I believe, that settles it. In point of fact, Paul and other New Testament authors had to struggle mightily with how the church would appropriate God’s dealings with Israel and they gave clear and infallible ways of explaining why much of the Old Testament no longer is binding on those who believe the Bible to be God’s inerrant word.

It seems that the closest Roman Catholics come to such an explanation of how to consider the old teaching in the light of new times is the Second Vatican Council where Vatican officials engaged the modern world and called off implicitly many of the papacy’s previous claims about politics and social arrangements — not to mention the previous condemnations of Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. But I still cannot fathom what Vatican II did to Pius IX’s claims for papal supremacy and infallibility, along with his rejection of liberal political and economic arrangements. That council did not establish either a hermeneutic or a theology that would allow a defender of the papacy, the way Paul tries to defend and distance himself from the law, to say that the Second Vatican Council is the fulfillment of what previous popes had taught and so now the post-Vatican II church can live in the glorious liberties purchased by Paul VI.