Category: Roman Catholicism

Americanists All?

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

Sean Michael Winters believes that Pope Francis is a pontiff for the poor who does not fit the neo-conservative Roman Catholic defenders of free markets and political liberalism:

The new pope’s critique of the current world economy has left conservative Catholic commentators in something of a bind. For years, they have denounced “cafeteria Catholics” on the left, those who differ with the Church on issues such as same-sex marriage or abortion rights. Now, it is these conservatives who need to either change their public policy positions or stand in the cafeteria line. “Before, Catholic economic conservatives like George Weigel and Robert Sirico could pretend that Vatican apparatchiks were smuggling traditional anti-capitalist language into papal pronouncements,” says Trinity College’s Mark Silk, who serves on the editorial board of Religion & Politics. “But no one can doubt that this language comes straight from Pope Francis’ heart. That’s what’s freaking the conservatives out.”

Winters thinks that these same conservatives were wrong about Benedict XVI:

To be clear, Weigel, Sirico and other Catholic conservatives have been pretending for some time. When Benedict issued Caritas in Veritate in 2009, Weigel famously suggested reading the text with red and gold pens, excising those parts he attributed to the Vatican bureaucracy and with which he and other Catholic neo-cons objected. And, Father Sirico’s latest book, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, stands in opposition to more than 100 years of papal social teaching in its championing of laissez-faire policies.

Pope Benedict was not shy about voicing his concerns about the world economy. In his last World Day of Peace message, issued on January 1 of this year, Pope Benedict condemned “a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism,” which he lumped together with terrorism and international crime as threats to world peace. Pope Francis is building on what was said by his predecessors going all the way back to Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. What is different about Francis is not the content of the teaching, but the directness of his style.

And when some conservative Roman Catholics claim that Francis is not an advocate or teacher of liberation theology, Winters says it doesn’t matter:

. . . it is true that Papa Francesco does not subscribe to certain varieties of liberation theology, [but] he is also not likely to be found at a Tea Party rally, reading Ayn Rand, or otherwise evidencing much sympathy for the anti-government, pro-capitalist positions common among Catholic conservatives in the U.S..

In short, while conservative Catholics might have been able to parse traditional Catholic social teaching in ways that suited their defense of modern capitalism and globalization, Pope Francis’ words are so direct, so forceful, so precise, they do not invite parsing. “The tradition has long been suspicious of the kind of economics proposed by the Acton Institute,” Camosy says. “For Catholics who are thinking with the Church, growing wealth always takes a back seat to justice—in particular, justice for the most vulnerable. Period.” That period has become, under Francis, an exclamation mark.

This is one of those exchanges, again, of which Jason and the Callers seem to be remarkably ignorant (or willfully silent). Sure, they may know about Winters and Weigel. But the debates among U.S. Roman Catholics, which line up remarkably along the lines of the major political parties, make no difference for their claims about the papacy and the difference the office makes to Christian witness. As they would have it, without a pope, Protestants are left to private opinion. But Jason and the Callers don’t notice that with a pope, U.S. Roman Catholics are increasingly left to not-so-private interpretations of what the pope really means or intends. It is a struggle to define the papacy. Here, I had thought that the papacy was responsible for its own definition and Weigel and Winters were to submit.

The true state of affairs among at least some U.S. Roman Catholics is not whose side the pope is on but that each side tries to claim the pope for its politics. In effect, the social justice and pro-capitalist Roman Catholics may both be guilty of what used to be known of Americanism, namely, letting society set the agenda for the church (instead of the other way around), a heresy condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae. Russell Shaw, who has a recent book on Americanism among Roman Catholics in the U.S., wrote:

Leo XIII’s critique is more substantial than apologists for Americanism care to admit. Much of it, in fact, is pertinent to conditions in American Catholicism today. . . .

Turning to the origins of Americanism, Leo XIII says it reflects a desire to attract to the Church “those who dissent.” Central to it, he adds, is the idea that the Church — “relaxing its old severity” — must “show indulgence” to new opinions, including even those that downplay “the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained.”

Leo XIII’s reply is that how flexible the Church can and should be is not up to individuals but rests with “the judgment of the Church.” Opposing this orthodox view, he notes, is the modern error that everyone could decide for himself, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit today gives individuals “more and richer gifts than in times past” — no less than “a kind of hidden instinct” in religious matters. . . . Better than Leo XIII or anyone else could have known at the time, the opinions condemned in the papal letter have turned out to be widely held among American Catholics today.

That is the case with the notion that each individual member of the Church can decide religious questions for himself or herself and that this remarkable ability comes directly to each one from the Holy Spirit. This opens the door to “cafeteria Catholicism” — a name given to the pick-and-choose selectivity regarding Church teaching on faith and morals now found among many Catholics.

All of which is simply to say it looks very much as if Pope Leo XIII wasn’t wrong to condemn Americanism — he was just ahead of his time.

Can You Imagine a Commentary on Peter's Epistles Written this Way?

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

I am suspicious of folks who draw up lists of things I need to know. Joe Carter does it for Protestants. Now in reporting on the new encyclical, Jimmy Aikin does it for Roman Catholics.

Aside from this annoyance, the striking aspect of Aikin’s post is the notion that an officer, the pope, who is supposed to resolve the confusions of the faithful (and even put an end to private opinions), actually increases speculation and the public expression of private opinion:

4. Does Lumen Fidei acknowledge Pope Benedict’s role in its composition?
Yes. In it, Pope Francis writes:

These considerations on faith — in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this theological virtue — are meant to supplement what Benedict XVI had written in his encyclical letters on charity and hope. He himself had almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own. [LF 7].

5. Does Lumen Fidei sound like Pope Benedict?
Much of it does. It includes many of the characteristic touches and themes of his writings.

For example, it contains many references to history, including early Christian history, Jewish history, and pagan history. It contains references to the thought of historical figures, including the Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. It also refers to the thought of recent intellectual figures, including the Catholic thinker Romano Guardini, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, the agnostic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

6. Do particular passages sound like Pope Francis?
This is harder to judge. He is mostly known for his speaking style, and his own voice for a document of this nature may take time to emerge. One touch that is distinctly Pope Francis, though, is the way he signs the encyclical. Normally popes give their name in Latin, followed by “PP” (a Latin abbreviation for “pope”) and followed by their number. Pope Benedict, for example, signed Spe Salvi by writing “Benedictus PP XVI.” Pope Francis, being the first pope to use this name, does not have a number, so you wouldn’t expect that in his signature. He does, however, seem to prefer not to use the title “pope,” preferring “bishop of Rome,” instead. Thus he leaves out the “PP” in his signature and simply signs the encyclical Franciscus.”

Aikens also tries to read the tea leaves of Vatican politics:

14. Does this encyclical tell us much about how Pope Francis will govern the Church?
Not as much as you might think. Unlike Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, it does not appear to lay out a blueprint for his entire pontificate. This is largely due to the fact that he inherited an almost complete first draft of the encyclical from Pope Benedict. Thus Pope Francis’s second encyclical may actually shed more light on the agenda for his own pontificate. It does, however, contain some intriguing clues, including the emphasis on the role of faith in society, the allusion to marriage as the union of man and woman, and his own personal style, as illustrated by his signature.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a free country and Christian communions since the formation of free countries have had all sorts of trouble reigning in the flock, imposing uniformity, and achieving coherence. Roman Catholics in the U.S. have to try to make sense of their relationship with the Vatican just as Orthodox Presbyterians need to reckon with doings in the PCA and the Free Church Continuing.

But when Jason and the Callers are lauding the papacy as the balm to heal all Protestant wounds, they need to think how this sounds to anyone who is actually following what happens in the Roman Catholic press. (BTW, I wonder if Bryan has been avoiding Oldlife because I gave Jason top billing.)

Postscript: a way to out Jimmy-Aikin Jimmy Aikin is to speculate on Peter’s motives in writing of Paul’s letters that “There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” Was this payback for Paul’s rebuke of Peter? Was it an expression of jealousy for Luke following Paul rather than Peter? Was it a form of writer’s envy? Who asks these questions?

And the Rockets Red Glare

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

So much so that the brightness blinds.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (doing things that would have driven Leo XIII bonkers) is in the midst of rallying Rome’s faithful for another all out defense of religious liberty. As a registered Libertarian Party member (have I ever voted for a Libertarian, I don’t know), who am I to take issue with another communion’s defense of liberty? But as a registered church historian, I am having trouble making sense of the Bishops’ call (which I believe is different from Jason and the Callers’ call).

First, this fortnight coincides with the feast day of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher. Here’s how Timothy Cardinal Dolan explains it:

Our two weeks begin tomorrow, June 21, and include moving feasts, such as June 22, the feast of Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher, both martyrs in England as they prophetically defended the rights of the Church against intrusion by the crown; June 24, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, the one who defended God’s law to a tyrant and lost his head because of his courage; and, of course, Independence Day.

I understand that evangelical Protestants are not as knowledgeable of church history as they should be, but to bring up More and Fisher is to court some of the old antagonisms that divide Protestants and Roman Catholics. Not that evangelicals would be comfortable supporting the English monarchy, but neither were George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards forerunners of the kind of evangelical-Roman Catholic co-belligerency kicked off by Evangelicals and Catholics Together. In which case, at a time when the bishops want to support religious freedom more generally, why invoke saints executed by Protestants or bring back memories of times when Protestants and Roman Catholics both advocated religious freedom but for the sake of excluding the other side (I believe we call that religious suppression)?

Second, invoking martyrs has the effect of making contemporary believers’ look ungrateful (for the blessings of religious liberty) and their pligths look pretty tame. Cardinal Dolan highlights the following as instances of “challenges to religious liberty”:

The HHS mandate, which presumes to intrude upon the very definition of faith and ministry, and could cause believers to violate their consciences

Impending Supreme Court rulings that could redefine marriage, which will present a host of difficulties to institutions and people who stand on their faith-based understanding of authentic marriage as between one man and one woman

Proposed legislation at the national and state levels that would expand abortion rights, legalize assisted suicide, restrict immigrants from full participation in society, and limit the ability of Church agencies to provide humanitarian services

Government intrusion into the rights and duties of parents regarding their children

Overt persecution of believers in many countries of the world

All of these are matters for concern, but in the context of martyrdom they seem trivial. One might argue that these sorts of threats to religious liberty are the road to martyrdom, but that would take a conspiratorial w-w. On the other side, one could also argue that this is part of the bargain that religious believers make with modern liberalism — we don’t get our way on how the government should rule or how our neighbors should live but we get to worship our maker and keep our lives. I suspect Christians in Iran and Egypt would take that deal.

Third, the bishops’ understanding of religious liberty is a historical bait-and-switch. On the one hand, they invoke the founders of the U.S. (fine), but then on the other hand bring up the nation’s anti-Catholic Protestant past without identifying Protestants (smart move) but pinning the blame on government (Roman Catholics used to have a higher view of government than Protestants):

Historically, what have been significant religious liberty issues affecting Catholics in our country?

Equal treatment of Catholic Schools: Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Jesuit settlers from England in 1634. However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from Maryland, as well as the destruction of the school they founded. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely. The American Revolution brought historic changes, and in 1782, Catholics in Philadelphia opened St. Mary’s School, considered the first parochial school in the U.S. In 1791, the ratification of the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, helped Catholics further cement the establishment of Catholic schools.

Regardless, anti-Catholic sentiment in the late nineteenth century led to opposition to parochial schools. State governments opposed providing funds to aid students attending parochial schools, which Catholics founded largely in response to the requirement to pray and read from Protestant Bibles in public schools. Some Members of Congress attempted to block all government aid to religiously affiliated schools with the proposed “Blaine Amendment” in 1875. This constitutional amendment was never ratified at the federal level, but many state legislatures adopted similar legislation and amendments. Those “little Blaine” amendments are still in place in the constitutions of about thirty-seven states, and still operate to block Catholic school students from equal participation in government educational benefits.

Anti-Catholic bigotry in presidential campaigns: During the 1884 presidential campaign, candidate James G. Blaine (who proposed the “Blaine Amendment” in Congress) attended a meeting in a church in New York at which a minister chided those who had left the Republican Party by stating, “We don’t propose to leave our party and identify with the party whose antecedents are rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine sat quietly during the anti-Catholic remark. The scene was reported widely in the press, and it cost Blaine in the election, particularly in New York City.

During the 1928 presidential campaign, Al Smith, a Catholic who had been elected governor of New York three times, was the Democratic candidate for president. It is widely believed that Smith’s Catholic beliefs played a key role in his loss of the 1928 presidential election, as anti-Catholic sentiment among the electorate was strong. Many feared that Smith would answer to the pope and not the constitution if elected president.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism became a major issue in the election. Like Al Smith, Kennedy faced charges that he would “take orders from the Pope” and could not uphold the oath of office.

Establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican: In the first years of the United States, the new Republic had contacts with the Papal States. However, in 1867, Congress prohibited the financing of any diplomatic post to the Papal authority. This began a period of over seventy years when the U.S. did not have a diplomatic representative to the Pope, coinciding with a period of strong anti-Catholicism in the U.S. In 1940, President Roosevelt sent a “personal representative” to the Pope who served for ten years. However, when President Truman nominated an ambassador to the Vatican in 1951, opposition mounted, and President Truman abandoned the effort. Presidents Nixon and Carter sent personal representatives to the Vatican. In 1984, President Reagan announced that full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Vatican had been established, and the U.S. has continued to send ambassadors to the Vatican since then.

I hardly approve of this anti-Catholic bigotry in a nation that was supposed to be open to all faiths, but it is a strange narrative of U.S. history that begins with the founders notions of religious liberty (who were opposed to priestcraft and superstition — read Roman Catholicism) and then moves to the devilish ways (without naming them) that Protestants, who also defended religious liberty (and also opposed priestcraft and superstition), mistreated Roman Catholics. When Ray Nothstine writes that “Recapturing the fullness of religious liberty in America will require . . . a fundamental shift in how we view God and man and his relationship to the state,” he may want to consider how a theologically conservative view of God and man was responsible for Protestants and Roman Catholics persecuting each other.

Carl Trueman recently warned about the host of ways that mythologizing politics or religion polarizes the world. He is certainly right to argue that the religious right is not alone guilty of myth-making. At the same time, mythologizing religious liberty obscures how good our times are compared to those when church members actually died for their faith at the hands of members from the rival church. Not to mention that it obscures the rivalry that still exists (spiritually, not temporally) between those churches.

Update: Some Roman Catholics aren’t purchasing the bargain.

Winding Up Confessional Lutherans

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

A post about Protestants and American conservatism provoked one young, saber rattling, Missouri Synod Lutheran to produce the quote of the day. Aside from its punch, it also shows how hard the “hermeneutic of continuity” is to buy for anyone outside Rome and why that hermeneutic looks so self-serving.

By the way, the videos are priceless.

“Rome is the last large and strong bastion against modernity (philosophically understood) in the West.”

This and other comments purport that “Rome” (our metonym of choice for the RCC) is a monolith. It’s very important — an article of faith, in fact — for the Roman Christian to affirm that it is. But the so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” which (it is claimed) gives univocity to the lone Latin see’s pronouncements over the course of two millenia, wedding the “spirit” of Unam Sanctam, Exsurge Domine, and the Tridentine Canons and Decrees with that of Vatican II, is a philosophical and epistemological unicorn. It isn’t apparent to anyone who isn’t required to believe it. Moreover, it would make Ruth Bader Ginsburg blush.

Also implicit . . . is the thesis that it is the mission of the Church to transform the world. While this is a thesis that could be argued (though not one that I agree with), it is not one that I should be assumed. So, too, with the assertion that one can “make a somewhat similar claim about Rome”, i.e., a claim comparable to that of the Old South being the “last non-materialist civilization in the Western World.” If one can make that claim, I, for one, would like to see it made and developed. For now, I’ll just say that I’m not sure an institution which came up with the idea of the “parvity of matter” as a way of grading sins can ever be in that contest.

The Lutheran critique of Rome is that it got to the point where it was not a faithful conservator of the tradition that was entrusted to the Church, and that there was no exclusive promise from Christ to all of Rome’s bishops for all of time that Rome a) was infallible and supreme among the apostolic sees, or b) would necessarily remain a faithful conservator simply by dint of being Rome. So far, that’s also the Eastern critique. But this critique has only to do with theology, and I’m trying not to go too far down that path.

That having been said, the foregoing presumption on the part of RCs with respect to theology seems to breed similar presumptions with respect to politics, culture, &c. Since Rome claims to have ever been the Church itself which other ecclesial bodies can only separate from or rejoin, it likes to claim that every culturally sanative influence which the Church has ever had on the world (the “culture,” if you wish) has been its influence. Benedict of Nursia? Surely he was not just a Western Christian — no, he must have been a Roman Catholic and a devoted papalist. Augustine of Hippo? Boniface of Mainz? Patrick of Ireland? The same claim is made. Were you a Christian in the West before 1517? Then you must have been a Roman Catholic. Were you a Christian in the first century? Roman Catholic. Yet it make just as much sense (and just as little) for me to claim that all of these men were “Lutherans.” But Rome continues to do this all the time today — with all of the abovementioned saints (and many more), as well as with any number of luminaries ranging from C.S. Lewis to Shakespeare. “That person is just too wonderful to have not been a Roman Catholic!” But you can’t take the historical developments of one era and then use it as your heuristic guide for cherry-picking all of your favorite dead people for your team. I call shenanigans.

Conservative? It all depends on what you’re conserving. As a Lutheran, I see it as the duty (yea, the Great Commission) of the Church to conserve the deposit of faith and carry it to the ends of the earth. Rome, on the other hand, says that doctrine is “developing.” Hmmm. Yet Rome’s faithful become indignant right along with the best of them when liberal jurists claim that the US Constitution is a “living document” whose doctrines are developing.

There’s a reason God Himself wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets and instructed His prophets to follow suit. Man’s purportedly sacred “living traditions” become perverse without fail. As with politics, so, too, with theology. Rome is not conservative; they’ve just reserved for themselves the singular right to be liberal. As far as I’m concerned, the Roman Catholic Church is simply a denomination that started in 1563 with the close of the Council of Trent. A very rich denomination with a very mixed past, but just a denomination. RCC =/= CC.

What this means for individual Roman Catholics is another thing. I’m not impugning any individual’s bona fides as a Christian or a conservative. That’s none of my concern here. But neither can anyone simply assert carte blanche that the Church of Rome is the world’s arch-conservative institution, or even the oldest . . . . And I won’t lie, I think it’s important to take a pin to Rome’s balloon on some matters. The spirit of the Borgias still lives, and it must be kept at bay. The Lutheran quarrel with Rome is actually quite friendly, all things considered…

Again, Rome is no monolith. Exhibit A and Exhibit B. Remember that next time you hear Gregorian chant and feel either jealous or smug.

The Audacious Case of Edgardo Mortara

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

David I. Kertzer’s book on the amazing case of a little Italian Jewish boy abducted by the authorities of the Roman Inquisition (if no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, how much more surprising the Roman Inquisition) is a page-turner, filled with intrigue, personal and political. It was such an absorbing narrative that movie moguls had planned to turn the story into a film, starring Anthony Hopkins as pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) and Jauvier Bardem as Momolo Mortara, Edgardo’s father.

In some ways it was a small story about a single Jewish family’s experience with the papacy’s temporal rule within the Papal Legations. Canon law confined Jews to ghettos, which is where the Mortaras lived in Bologna. Canon law also specified that Christians should not interact with Jews, nor should Jews employ Christian girls as servants. Here the Mortaras (along with most Jews and Italian Christians) looked the other way and this is where the family’s son became vulnerable. For canon law also specified that a Christian of any rank, from humblest servant to noblest Cardinal, should baptize an infant in near-death circumstances, even against the will of parents. The Mortaras’ servant in 1852 baptized the infant Edgardo when she thought he was going to die. He survived. Canon law also stipulated that by virtue of baptism a person was a Christian and forbade Christian children from being reared by non-Christian parents. Consequently, in 1858, when the Roman Inquisition learned of a Christian child in a Jewish home, authorities instructed the papal police to take Edgardo (age six) from his parents and rear him in a home for catechumens.

Edgardo’s parents’ lives were never the same. Momolo, the father, spent the rest of his life trying by every legal means to recover his son. This meant neglecting his business and depending on charity. The international Jewish community rallied to the Mortaras for both humanitarian and political reasons. Momolo spent almost the last year of his life in prison and on trial, accused of of murdering another Italian Christian servant girl. Kertzer argues convincingly that the death, for which Momolo was found not guilty, was actually a suicide. But thanks to the anti-semitism that prevailed in Christendom, authorities were more inclined to attribute the death to Momolo than to the deceased Italian Christian. Only a month after being freed from prison, Momolo died of natural causes, the unnatural end to an unbelievably tragic life. I would have paid $9 gladly to see Bardem portray this tragic figure.

But the case of Edgardo Mortara took on international significance – not only among Europe and North America’s Jewish communities – but among Europe’s rulers because it exposed the illiberal and pre-modern character of papal rule in a sizable portion of what would become the nation of Italy. For instance, Napolean III in France, who provided military protection to a fairly weak papal regime (at least in the temporal realm), wanted to see Jews in Italy receive the rights of citizens – you know, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity don’t exactly square with Jewish ghettos and forced evangelistic sermons that church law required Italy’s Jews to hear every Sabbath after attending synagogue (often the priests would use the text expounded earlier by the rabbi). Meanwhile, France and Austria had holdings in Italy that Italians wanted for their own nation. As a result, the case of Edgardo became a crucial episode in the unification of Italy (1870). If the papacy could lose its temporal power, then occupying foreign forces would lose some of their reason for rule in Italy and then perhaps the people of Italy could achieve a unified nation.

But Pius IX, who still holds the longest tenure of any pope, and who started his tenure in 1846 with sympathies for republicanism, dug in his heels and became one of the Vatican’s most conservative figures. The revolutions of 1848 spooked him. Out went thoughts of political liberalization and in came a vigorous assertion of papal authority (both temporal and spiritual). Pio Nono would not even consider giving up Edgardo to his parents (despite all sorts of circumstances that suggested the servant girl had made up the story of the boy’s illness and baptism). With papal rule crumbling and Pius’ political allies unwilling to prop up the papacy one more time, the pope made Edgardo a special case and adopted the boy as a ward of the papacy.

It is a story ripe for the big screen.

But it is also a story that Jason and the Callers never consider in their theories of papal audacity and Roman Catholic superiority. For as much as some might think that the notion of the papacy holding two swords, temporal and spiritual, is of the distant medieval past and died with Boniface VIII, in fact, Pius IX was still committed to this part of church teaching (and revealed truth, by the Vatican’s reckoning). Kertzer reminds readers of how long this idea lived and that Italy’s existence depended on the pope being stripped of temporal power:

The autonomy of national churches – championed in the past not only by secular rulers who were hostile to control from Rome but also by major sectors of the Catholic population and clergy in France, Austria, and elsewhere – was during this Restoration period increasingly challenged by the growth of the “ultramontane” movement. The ultramontanes argued that local churches everywhere should come under the strict control of the Holy See. They sought to bolster the power and the prestige of the Pope, and they championed the supremacy of Church law over secular legal principles. In all this, they fought not only the liberal movement but their opponents within the Church as well, those who, from the ultramontanes’ perspective, were poisoned by Enlightenment ideas that were at odds with the Church’s mission.

The Pope’s refusal to return Edgardo to his family became a sacred cause for the ultramontane forces, involving the prestige and authority of the papacy as well as the supremacy of divine law over modern ideas of individual rights and religious equality. (130-131)

Kertzer explains that this view of papal authority was not simply the construction of French conservatives but also the pope who was not coincidently responsible for establishing the Immaculate Conception of Mary and papal infallibility as Church dogma:

The Pope was not above a conspiratorial view of the forces lined up against him. No organized opposition to papal rule was permitted in the Papal States, and so he had some grounds to worry about conspiracies, which from the time the Restoration began had plagued the papacy. Those opposed to the temporal power of the pope were not only branded agents of the devil but cast together in one large, godless cabal run by the Freemasons. A Civilta Cattolica article illustrates the Pope’s thinking. The minister of a great power, the journal reported, had come to plead for Edgardo Mortara’s return to his parents “in the name of the needs of modern society.” “What you call modern society,” the Pope replied, “is simply Freemasonry.” . . .

Pius IX told the French journalist that he would risk his life to defend the papacy’s temporal rule, “because temporal power is necessary for the Church’s freedom, and the full freedom of the Church is necessary for all Catholic society and for all humankind.” Painfully aware of the superior political strength of the forces lining up against him, the Pope ruminated: “Undoubtedly, order will one day be restored. But after how much time? And at the cost of what catastrophes!” (157-58)

This case of a six-year old boy was a big deal – for the Mortara family, the Vatican, Italy, Europe, and the world. (Who will retrieve the screenplay and re-sign the actors?)

Giving A Whole New Meaning to Church Universal

Published on by D. G. Hart187 Comments

While Jason Stellman is trying to exegete his way back to Trent, I wonder in what part of the Bible or early church fathers you would read a statement like this from Pope Francis (yesterday):

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

“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.”

Now I guess conservative Protestants are not supposed to notice affirmations like this. So far Jason and the Callers have not been as fired up about Francis as they were in the initial after glow of the Conclave. Then again, their blogs do go to sleep sometimes.

Still, how exactly do you pull tradition, the church that Christ founded, and conservative Christianity out of this? Have the Protestant converts to Rome really accepted the notion that Roman Catholicism is above liberalism, as if modernism doesn’t happen there, as if Pascendi Dominici Gregis was foisted on the Vatican by William Jennings Bryan and William Bell Riley?

Between Francis’ apparent sympathies to liberation theology and his universalism, the task of selling Rome as the conservative answer to Protestant disarray is going to be almost as hard as making a movie about Edgardo Mortara.

Is the OPC the Church Hans Kung Has Been Waiting For?

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Kung is hoping that Francis will be like his namesake and repudiate the power, wealth, and intrigue that has afflicted what he calls the “Roman system.” If the current pope follows Francis of Assisi, then he will take a path different from Innocent III:

In fact, Francis of Assisi represented the alternative to the Roman system. What would have happened if Innocent and his like had taken the Gospel seriously? Even if they had understood it spiritually rather than literally, his evangelical demands meant and still mean an immense challenge to the centralized, legalized, politicized and clericalized system of power that had taken over the cause of Christ in Rome since the 11th century.

Innocent III was probably the only pope who, because of his unusual characteristics, could have directed the church along a completely different path, and this would have saved the papacies of the 14th and 15th centuries schism and exile, and the church in the 16th century the Protestant Reformation. Obviously, this would already have meant a paradigm shift for the Catholic church in the 13th century, a shift that instead of splitting the church would have renewed it, and at the same time reconciled the churches of East and West.

But Kung wonder if the papacy can retrace its steps and take a path not taken. If it does, it will need to measure up to three standards:

Poverty: The church in the spirit of Innocent III meant a church of wealth, pomp and circumstance, acquisitiveness and financial scandal. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of transparent financial policies and modest frugality. A church that concerns itself above all with the poor, the weak and the marginalized. A church that does not pile up wealth and capital but instead actively fights poverty and offers its staff exemplary conditions of employment.

Humility: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of power and domination, bureaucracy and discrimination, repression and Inquisition. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of humanity, dialogue, brotherhood and sisterhood, hospitality for nonconformists; it means the unpretentious service of its leaders and social solidarity, a community that does not exclude new religious forces and ideas from the church but rather allows them to flourish.

Simplicity: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of dogmatic immovability, moralistic censure and legal hedging, a church of canon law regulating everything, a church of all-knowing scholastics and of fear. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis of Assisi means a church of good news and of joy, a theology based purely on the Gospel, a church that listens to people instead of indoctrinating from above, a church that does not only teach but one that constantly learns.

It is hard to look at the Eternal City of Rome, follow the rites and ceremonies of the Cardinals, notice the monarchical associations of the papacy, and find the attributes that Kung desires. But if you take a gander at the OPC, by no means the runt of the Reformed Protestant litter, you would find a church with little wealth (by Roman Catholic standards). As for pomp and circumstance, the selection of a moderator for General Assembly has no smoke (or mirrors unless you consider Roberts Rules ceremonial.

For simplicity the OPC does pretty well, at least if you look at the worship services of most congregations. An attachment to proper exegesis and correct doctrine still dominate liturgical and aesthetic sympathies.

For humility, some might think the OPC (the Only Pure Church or the little church with the big mouth) falls woefully short. But two out of three isn’t bad. And we don’t need our General Secretaries to change names.

When This World Elbows Its Way Past the World to Come

Published on by D. G. Hart123 Comments

In addition to reading about Turkey, I also brought along materials that have to do explicitly and implicitly with Roman Catholicism. The explicit source is David I. Kertzer’s The Kidnaping of Edgardo Mortara – the case of the Jewish boy abducted in 1858 by the Vatican that led to the 1870 collapse of the Papal States. But I also brought along some back issues of magazines and that includes several issues of First Things.

Last Friday I ran across two remarkably different statements on the relationship between the Christian faith and the world’s affairs. The first, the classic pre-Vatican 2 perspective, ran like this:

. . . this life has not been given to us so that we can use it to enjoy the pleasures of this world, pleasures that alienate us from God, that pervert the heart, that cloud our judgment, that overwhelm our will, pleasures that unfortunately simply produce agitation, rancor, competition, jealousy, affliction, and unhappiness. (Archbishop of Bologna, Christmas letter, 1858)

The second came in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

All men of good will . . . believe that there are energies in the free human spirit whereby man may fulfill his destiny on earth, which is to be, not God, but the image of God. All men who believe in God are agreed that He is the Master of history. Man, therefore, manifests himself as the image of God chiefly by his intelligent, confident efforts to master the course of historical events and direct it toward the common good of the peoples of earth. (John Courtney Murray’s response to Pacem in Terris, quoted by George Weigel in First Things, February 2013)

Protestants used to call the difference between these outlooks like these a contrast that separates historic Christian orthodoxy. And those differences invariably attended the church’s embrace of a nation’s mission. I have no idea how conservative Roman Catholics account for such changes in outlook — Americanism used to be the explanation. But speaking about the political order — as if the church has that task — does seem to be the precondition for forgetting that the differences between the citizens of City of God and the City of Man cannot be correlated to life in the earthly city.

Unexpected Development

Published on by D. G. Hart272 Comments

Converts to a communion may often display a zeal that old-timers find off-putting. In Reformed circles, we have the phrase “cage phase” to denote the over zealous and new Calvinist who expects every Reformed pastor to sound like Calvin and every congregation to be as rigorous the New England Puritans.

It turns out that Roman Catholics have their own problems with converts. One instance, largely forgotten (perhaps another indication of Vatican II’s epoch-making shift) was the exchange between Orestes Brownson and John Henry Newman. Both were converts, but Brownson, admired by some contemporary conservatives, was not impressed by Newman’s theory of development of doctrine. In fact, Brownson believed it would kill Roman Catholicism (which makes it odd that Jason and the Callers do not regard Brownson as the model convert). Here is a short sampling of what Brownson said about the idea of the development of doctrine:

. . . we could not accept Mr. Newman’s Essay, even ,if its theory were susceptible of a satisfactory explanation. It deserves to be excluded from every Catholic library for its unorthodox forms of expression, as scandalous, even if not as heretical, erroneous, or rash. Words are things, and used improperly by men of eminence, or with inexactitude, become the occasion of error and heresy in others. Not a few of the errors which have afflicted the Church have come in under shelter of loose or inexact expressions, which great and sometimes even saintly men have suffered to escape them. The vain, the restless, the proud, the disobedient, seize on them, ascribe to them a sense they will bear, but not the one intended by their authors, and lay the foundation for ” sects of perdition.” Sometimes even better men are deceived and misled, as we see in the case of Fenelon. One cannot be too careful to be exact in expression, or to guard against innovation in word as well as in thought, especially in this age, in which there is such a decided tendency to abandon the scholastic method for the rhetorical. The scandalous phraseology of the Essay is no charge against its author, writing when and where he did, but is a grave charge against the Essay itself.

Finally, we repeat, from our former article, that we object to the Theory of Developments the very fact that it is a theory. We see no call and no room for theories in the Catholic Church, — least of all, for theories concocted outside of her by men whose eyes are dim, and who have nothing but their own reason to work with. From the nature of the case, they are theories, not for the conversion of their authors, but for the conversion of the Church, — framed to bring her to them, not them to her. They can do no good, and may do much harm. It is natural for us to concoct them when out of the Church, for then we have, and can have, nothing but theories, and can do nothing but theorize ; but, if we are wise, we shall not attempt to bring them into the Church with us. The more empty-handed we come to the Church, the better ; and the more affectionately will she embrace us, and the more freely and liberally will she dispense to us her graces.

Lest anyone miss the implicit significance of this exchange for the future of Roman Catholicism and its conservative (or traditionalist) members, readers should know that some Roman Catholics believe that Newman prevailed and Brownson lost at Vatican II. Here is how one traditionalist puts it:

. . . Brownson foresaw the future danger should Newman’s theory become accepted in the Church. Unless his theory was renounced, Brownson affirmed, it would either ultimately lead Newman himself out of communion with the Church or, much worse, be wrongly absorbed into the Catholic Church (p. 1).

In fact, the latter happened. His “pioneer” work established the idea of the development of dogma as a principle later held by the Modernists. Taken up by the Progressivists, it was consecrated at Vatican II, invoked in both the Declaration of Religion Freedom and the Constitution on Revelation. (2)

Newman alleged he was simply showing that the Catholic Church of his time was in continuity with that of the Apostles and the Fathers. But Vatican II did what Brownson feared could happen – it used this ‘theory’ to justify new advances and actual shifts in doctrine, such as its teaching on religious freedom. Jesuit Avery Dulles singled out Newman as anticipating the thought of Karl Rahner “to the effect that every dogmatic proclamation is not only an end, but also a beginning.” (3)

Someone could object that this work was written when Newman was a Protestant, and, therefore, should be disregarded as irrelevant after Newman’s conversion to Catholicism. The objection would be pertinent if he had rejected its theories or buried it, as Brownson suggested. On the contrary, he offered the work to the public and continued to defend its thesis until the end of his life. Thus, the objection is invalid.

Most American Catholics have not read Newman’s suspect theological works, such as the Essay on Development of Doctrine. His fame and popularity rest on his letters and sermons on piety and religious devotion. Let those well-meaning Catholic take the time to read at least Brownson’s criticism of Newman’s Essay, and they may begin to question the orthodoxy of the “oracle from Littlemore.” They may also begin to wonder if the beatification of Newman, rightly called the Father of Vatican II by the progressivists themselves, has the underlying purpose of giving needed impetus to the Council at a time when dissatisfaction with it is significantly increasing.

These tensions within Roman Catholicism may be obscure to recent converts, as difficult to perceive as the real fault lines between conservatives and other varieties of Roman Catholic communicants. For instance, John Zmirac has wondered (a la Brownson about Newman) whether Protestant converts to Rome understand what happened at Vatican II or whether they can find their way to the genuine Roman Catholic liturgy:

7) The Novus Ordo Missae was crafted by an ecumenical committee (including Protestants) that aimed at Christian unity. In a creative compromise, the committee cut large sections from the Mass — those that made it screamingly obvious that the Mass was a sacrifice and a wedding. The committee also trimmed away many rituals designed to underscore those doctrines, adding other practices to boost the role of the laity and undercut the role of the priest.

These changes didn’t vitiate the sacrament, but they did cloud its symbolic and catechetical clarity. They also reduced its dignity, gravity, and beauty. The Dies Irae gave way to “Gather Us In.” Or, as then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “In the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living, process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it — as in a manufacturing process — with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”

8) The most important elements that distinguish the priest’s role from the people’s, and hence Catholic sacraments from Protestant prayer services, are the following: The priest facing the altar; the prayers of the old Offertory (which survive in the First Eucharistic Prayer); the exclusive claim of the clergy (priests and deacons) to handle the Sacrament; the all-male priesthood; and kneeling for Communion on the tongue.

9) Each practice we add to the liturgy that blurs the difference between the people and the priest adds to confusion about what the heck is going on up on the altar. It’s no surprise that after 40 years of liturgical “renewal,” only 30 percent of American Catholics still believe in transubstantiation. More troublingly, those who are receiving Communion rarely bother with the Sacrament of Penance. The old terror of blasphemy that was underlined by gold patens tucked under our chins gave way to a shrug and a smile as we take in our hands a wafer from a neighbor.

10) Dissenters from key Catholic doctrines of faith and morals took ruthless advantage of the hype surrounding the Second Vatican Council and the symbolic confusion sowed by radical liturgical changes — which seemed to signal, like a new flag flying over a country, a new regime in the Church. Maybe a new Church altogether. Some of these dissenters, like Archbishop Rembert Weakland, were also involved in creating the new liturgy itself.

11) That liturgy kept on metastasizing, “renewing” itself seemingly every year. The same bishops who pushed relentlessly for Communion in the hand, extraordinary ministers of Communion, altar girls, and standing for Communion were the men who appointed feminists and pro-gay, pro-contraception, and even “pro-choice” delegates to dissident conferences such as the Call to Action (1976). Such bishops also persecuted adherents of the old liturgy and clergy who preached Humanae Vitae. The same men repeatedly defied Pope John Paul II, who avoided a schism and decided instead to replace them as they retired with more faithful bishops. He mostly succeeded.

All of the above is simply, uncontroversially true. And in saner times, it would be none of a layman’s business. We have enough on our plates pursuing our own vocations and staying in a state of grace, and we really shouldn’t have to shop around for the least sacrilegious parish, or fight with our bishop’s religious education office against nuns who deny the Creed. But here we are, still gasping for breath as the smoke of Satan slowly lifts, and there’s no excuse for pretending the air has been clear all along. The Bride of Christ has been battered, hounded, and hunted by the Enemy — but she’s still standing, as we were promised. Now it’s our task to bind her wounds, repair the rents in her gown, and lovingly comb her hair.

Although Zmirac is no traditionalist, one Trad Catholic has picked up on the problem that Protestant converts post-Vatican II face when trying to adjust to and find a place within Rome’s traditionalism:

Catholic converts from Protestantism bring to the Church a certain mentality that can make it difficult for them to accept Traditionalist arguments in favor of restoring a lot of the discarded “externals” of our faith’s tradition. In the post I used myself as a reference point (being a revert to the faith from charismatic Protestantism) and explained how it took some time for me after my return to the Church to start seeing the beauty of Traditional Catholicism, and perceive that much had been lost by rejecting this beauty. . . . I deny that a convert from Protestantism is not as “good’ as a cradle Catholic; I did say (and I maintain) that a convert-from-Protestantism-mentality does color the way we see things once we return to the Church.

It is interesting, however, that John Zmirak . . . talks about the non-Trad confusion over apparent Trad fixation on “mere externals.” This is, I think, one of the central ideas of Traditionalism – that alleged inessentials were not as inessential as once thought.

I often wonder if Jason and the Callers got more than that for which they bargained. They have a lot to make sense of over there on their side of the Tiber. Here is how Boniface puts it:

Then why bother even pointing out the differences? Because the Catholic Church as a whole – Trad, non-Trad, liberal, mainstream, whatever – is in an identity crisis. Who are we, and what does it mean to be Catholic? What does a Catholic life look like? These questions of identity;,far from being useless and divisive, are I think some of the most important issues Catholics can examine. I tend to take the position that Traditionalism exemplifies a more perfect continuity with the fullness of Tradition than other non-Trad manifestations of the faith, and part of what I do here is defend that proposition against those who take a more negative approach to Traditionalism. We may disagree on what Catholic identity should look like, but let’s not say that these questions are not important; if only our fathers in the 1960’s and 1970’s had more of a concern for Catholic identity, we might not be in a liberal crisis.

Given Jason and the Callers’ covering their eyes to church history — ancient and recent, I am not sure they are up to the task of accounting for such developments. But they sure know they aren’t Protestant (as long as they don’t know about Brownson).

Let the Interpretation Resume

Published on by D. G. Hart102 Comments

Or Jason Stellman has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Jason is still justifying his realignment by trotting out the familiar refrain that sola scriptura doesn’t solve anything, thus making Protestantism the road to ruin and mayhem.

For the confessional Presbyterian, the reason the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches is “not a [true] church” is that its theology disagrees with the interpretation of the Bible espoused by confessional Presbyterians, and therefore CREC pastors are not truly ordained and thus ”don’t have the sacraments.” But of course, this is completely circular: “Our view is that the marks of a true church include properly understanding the gospel [or, agreeing with our interpretation of the Bible concerning what the gospel is], and since the CREC falls short in this regard, it therefore fails to meet our criteria of what a true church must be.” But this is a perfect recipe — indeed a license — for anarchy and schism. Any fallible group of people can now gather together, decide what counts as a true church, and then dismiss from that category everyone else who disagrees with them.

This is why Sola Scriptura — even in its more churchly expressions — ultimately fails. As long as there’s some sincere, Bible-believing Christian who disagrees with the church on some issue, all that will result from an ecclesiastical decision on that issue (even from a church’s highest court) is a never-ending “yeah-huh!” / “nuh-uh!”, he said / she said dispute.

In fact, it’s not just that this may be the result, it’s that it must be, for the irresolvability of any theological controversy is built into the whole Protestant system from the get-go. So even if the proper formula is not Solo but Sola, the “A” at the end still stands for Anarchy.

If Protestants suffer from interpretive discord, what is the affliction that Roman Catholics experience when confronted with the statements of their interpretive authority? For instance, I wonder if Jason believes the following affirmations and denials from various popes (or does he have to explain them)?

From Boniface VIII (1305) on the church’s supreme power which includes wielding both swords:

We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords’ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’ [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.

However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.

From Nicholas V (1455) with global political power trying to arbitrate which Roman Catholic monarch gets to colonize the “new” world and vanquish the Saracens (i.e. Muslims):

The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father’s mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all, wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls. This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work.

Condemnations from Clement XI (1713) which repudiate the Augustinian convictions of the Jansenists:

41. All knowledge of God, even natural knowledge, even in the pagan philosophers, cannot come except from God; and without grace knowledge produces nothing but presumption, vanity, and opposition to God Himself, instead of the affections of adoration, gratitude, and love.

42. The grace of Christ alone renders a man fit for the sacrifice of faith; without this there is nothing but impurity, nothing but unworthiness.

43. The first effect of baptismal grace is to make us die to sin so that our spirit, heart, and senses have no more life for sin than a dead man has for the things of the world.

44. There are but two loves, from which all our volitions and actions arise: love of God, which does all things because of God and which God rewards; and the love with which we love ourselves and the world, which does not refer to God what ought to be referred to Him, and therefore becomes evi

Pius IX’s condemnation of the separation of church and state:

Others meanwhile, reviving the wicked and so often condemned inventions of innovators, dare with signal impudence to subject to the will of the civil authority the supreme authority of the Church and of this Apostolic See given to her by Christ Himself, and to deny all those rights of the same Church and See which concern matters of the external order. For they are not ashamed of affirming “that the Church’s laws do not bind in conscience unless when they are promulgated by the civil power; that acts and decrees of the Roman Pontiffs, referring to religion and the Church, need the civil power’s sanction and approbation, or at least its consent; that the Apostolic Constitutions,6 whereby secret societies are condemned (whether an oath of secrecy be or be not required in such societies), and whereby their frequenters and favourers are smitten with anathema — have no force in those regions of the world wherein associations of the kind are tolerated by the civil government; that the excommunication pronounced by the Council of Trent and by Roman Pontiffs against those who assail and usurp the Church’s rights and possessions, rests on a confusion between the spiritual and temporal orders, and (is directed) to the pursuit of a purely secular good; that the Church can decree nothing which binds the conscience of the faithful in regard to their use of temporal things; that the Church has no right of restraining by temporal punishments those who violate her laws; that it is conformable to the principles of sacred theology and public law to assert and claim for the civil government a right of property in those goods which are possessed by the Church, by the Religious Orders, and by other pious establishments.” Nor do they blush openly and publicly to profess the maxim and principle of heretics from which arise so many perverse opinions and errors. For they repeat that the “ecclesiastical power is not by divine right distinct from, and independent of, the civil power, and that such distinction and independence cannot be preserved without the civil power’s essential rights being assailed and usurped by the Church.” Nor can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, not enduring sound doctrine, contend that “without sin and without any sacrifice of the Catholic profession assent and obedience may be refused to those judgments and decrees of the Apostolic See, whose object is declared to concern the Church’s general good and her rights and discipline, so only it does not touch the dogmata of faith and morals.” But no one can be found not clearly and distinctly to see and understand how grievously this is opposed to the Catholic dogma of the full power given from God by Christ our Lord Himself to the Roman Pontiff of feeding, ruling and guiding the Universal Church.

And Pius XII’s condemnation of evolution (complete with a reassertion of the loyalty that folks like Jason owe to the papapcy):

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

(19. Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.

20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”;[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.)

Now maybe Jason agrees that the papacy holds both swords, the spiritual and temporal, or that the pope has power to grant the colonization of new lands around the world to European powers, or that something apart from grace prepares a believer for faith, or that church and state should be united, or that evolution is false and that the papacy has the power to rule on matters of science.

Or perhaps, he needs to interpret the very words of his source of supreme interpretation. Then again, he can always appeal to the theory and ignore historical reality.