Tag: Jason Stellman

Who Me (all about Stellman)?

Published on by D. G. Hart66 Comments

Jason Stellman feels singled out by Peter Leithart’s post about the “tragedy” of conversion. Leithart wrote:

Apart from all the detailed historical arguments, this quest makes an assumption about the nature of time, an assumption that I have labeled “tragic.” It’s the assumption that the old is always purer and better, and that if we want to regain life and health we need to go back to the beginning.

Jason responds:

I would be curious to hear Leithart actually cite a convert who made a statement that betrayed an assumption like “old is always purer and better.” My guess is that the reason he makes no such appeal is that few, if any, of us have actually said something like that. I certainly didn’t.

Right, officer, I wasn’t “breaking the speed limit,” I was actually going 85 miles per hour. If Jason can’t find himself in all of those tendentious posts and comments about the early church fathers (still no mention of an early church pope, mind you), then he still has a strong dose of Calvary Chapel literalism in him. In other words, if he doesn’t think he gains traction in debates by citing the early church — the very church Christ founded, I’ve heard — then he should stick to Balthasar and de Lubac.

To add insult to injury, Stellman lauds the development of doctrine as precisely the vehicle which makes Rome the “conversion-destination” of choice:

I mean, if there’s an ancient expression of Christianity that refuses to grow up or adapt to the times, it’s certainly not the Catholic Church (I’ll leave you to figure out who it might be [*cough-EO-cough*]).

I’ll believe Stellman believes in development of doctrine when he wires his affirmation of high papalism to historic and contemporary efforts to make Rome more conciliar. So far, I have not seen his communion or its members wean themselves away from a version of papal supremacy that went hand in hand with opposition to Italian nationalism, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.

Grow up? Indeed.

Can Jason and the Callers Gain Francis' Blessing?

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

Probably. All they need to do is do what these Roman Catholics did.

Then again, they might be feeling ambivalent, the way these Roman Catholics are, those whom John Allen identifies as having “the older son” problem:

Some Vatican personnel who have tried to do their best over the years in service to the successor of Peter and who may feel a bit demoralized hearing the pope describe their work environment as infested with careerism, “Vatican-centrism,” and the “leprosy” of a royal court.

Some pro-life Catholics who feel like they’ve carried water for the church on controversial and sometimes unpopular issues such as abortion and gay marriage and who now get the sense the pope regards some of their efforts as misplaced or over the top.

Some evangelical Catholics, both clergy and laity, who’ve tried to reassert a strong sense of Catholic identity against forces they believe want to play it down, who now feel the pope may be pulling the rug out from under them. Some leaders in the reborn genre of Catholic apologetics, for instance, weren’t thrilled recently to hear Francis call proselytism “solemn nonsense.”

Then again, Jason and the Callers might be too young in the faith to qualify as older sons.

Postscript: Meanwhile, Jason has become an Arminian since joining the Roman Catholic Church:

So when it comes to salvation and the five points, the paradigm shift from penal substitution to pleasing sacrifice played a big role. Once that shift occurs, limited atonement becomes sort of meaningless. With total depravity, I think a Catholic can affirm the substance of the idea while maintaining man’s free will. Unconditional election isn’t a problem, although Catholics are free to disagree. Irresistible grace can be affirmed, with some qualifications, but perseverance of the saints is untrue from a Catholic POV (since all who are baptized are regenerated, but not all the regenerated are elect to salvation).

But never forget, it’s all about paradigms.

Demanding

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Blustering Bigot Who Can’t String Together a Cogent Argument if His Life Depended On It

Published on by D. G. Hart64 Comments

I sure do hope that charge in the comm box does not mean that I am incapable of putting together thoughts that will at least allow me to purchase food for the cats (down to one feline inside, but the cats in the hood have found our back door to be bounteous). Jason Stellman doesn’t appreciate my bringing up unpleasant parts of Roman Catholic history. He also thinks I misrepresent his position on the nature of the papacy.

On the former, I understand the discomfort of having to answer for historical events you may not have known about. But if you want to play fair while making a case for the superiority of Rome, then you need to do something with the less than desirable parts of Rome’s existence.

On the latter, I don’t think Jason’s position is all that complicated. The Jason-and-the-Caller line is that Protestantism cannot settle its diversity because it has no infallible or authoritative mechanism. In other words, Protestants don’t have a pope or magisterium. Got it. So Jason thinks he has overcome the dilemmas he faced while considering the relative claims of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism on Scripture and church authority.

But by siding with the papacy and the theory of an infallible successor to the apostles in the eternal city, Jason did not seem to see where that decision put him. On the one hand, he seems to want a papacy that only orders the confusion that afflicts Protestantism. He doesn’t apparently want a papacy whose authority will extend to these proportions — as the cohesive not only for the church but for all of European society and possibly the world:

4. And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that “the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right.” But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? For this reason, men of the kind pursue with bitter hatred the Religious Orders, although these have deserved extremely well of Christendom, civilization and literature, and cry out that the same have no legitimate reason for being permitted to exist; and thus (these evil men) applaud the calumnies of heretics. For, as Pius VI, Our Predecessor, taught most wisely, “the abolition of regulars is injurious to that state in which the Evangelical counsels are openly professed; it is injurious to a method of life praised in the Church as agreeable to Apostolic doctrine; it is injurious to the illustrious founders, themselves, whom we venerate on our altars, who did not establish these societies but by God’s inspiration.”5 And (these wretches) also impiously declare that permission should be refused to citizens and to the Church, “whereby they may openly give alms for the sake of Christian charity”; and that the law should be abrogated “whereby on certain fixed days servile works are prohibited because of God’s worship;” and on the most deceptive pretext that the said permission and law are opposed to the principles of the best public economy. Moreover, not content with removing religion from public society, they wish to banish it also from private families. For, teaching and professing the most fatal error of “Communism and Socialism,” they assert that “domestic society or the family derives the whole principle of its existence from the civil law alone; and, consequently, that on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and especially that of providing for education.” By which impious opinions and machinations these most deceitful men chiefly aim at this result, viz., that the salutary teaching and influence of the Catholic Church may be entirely banished from the instruction and education of youth, and that the tender and flexible minds of young men may be infected and depraved by every most pernicious error and vice. For all who have endeavored to throw into confusion things both sacred and secular, and to subvert the right order of society, and to abolish all rights, human and divine, have always (as we above hinted) devoted all their nefarious schemes, devices and efforts, to deceiving and depraving incautious youth and have placed all their hope in its corruption. For which reason they never cease by every wicked method to assail the clergy, both secular and regular, from whom (as the surest monuments of history conspicuously attest), so many great advantages have abundantly flowed to Christianity, civilization and literature, and to proclaim that “the clergy, as being hostile to the true and beneficial advance of science and civilization, should be removed from the whole charge and duty of instructing and educating youth.”

So, without a rightly ordered society in which the church stands at the head (and we know who stands at the head of the visible church), we have only ruin and turmoil.

That is why the church needs to continue to assert its authority:

8. Therefore, in this our letter, we again most lovingly address you, who, having been called unto a part of our solicitude, are to us, among our grievous distresses, the greatest solace, joy and consolation, because of the admirable religion and piety wherein you excel, and because of that marvellous love, fidelity, and dutifulness, whereby bound as you are to us. and to this Apostolic See in most harmonious affection, you strive strenuously and sedulously to fulfill your most weighty episcopal ministry. For from your signal pastoral zeal we expect that, taking up the sword of the spirit which is the word of God, and strengthened by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will, with redoubled care, each day more anxiously provide that the faithful entrusted to your charge “abstain from noxious verbiage, which Jesus Christ does not cultivate because it is not His Father’s plantation.”7 Never cease also to inculcate on the said faithful that all true felicity flows abundantly upon man from our august religion and its doctrine and practice; and that happy is the people whose God is their Lord.8 Teach that “kingdoms rest on the foundation of the Catholic Faith;9 and that nothing is so deadly, so hastening to a fall, so exposed to all danger, (as that which exists) if, believing this alone to be sufficient for us that we receive free will at our birth, we seek nothing further from the Lord; that is, if forgetting our Creator we abjure his power that we may display our freedom.”10 And again do not fail to teach “that the royal power was given not only for the governance of the world, but most of all for the protection of the Church;”11 and that there is nothing which can be of greater advantage and glory to Princes and Kings than if, as another most wise and courageous Predecessor of ours, St. Felix, instructed the Emperor Zeno, they “permit the Catholic Church to practise her laws, and allow no one to oppose her liberty. For it is certain that this mode of conduct is beneficial to their interests, viz., that where there is question concerning the causes of God, they study, according to His appointment, to subject the royal will to Christ’s Priests, not to raise it above theirs.”12

Jason may not realize it, but his church once thought that the health of Europe depended on the papacy’s authority. This was not simply a question of restoring the unity of the church in its teachings and practices (spiritual). This was the protection of Christendom (temporal). In other words, the papacy Jason backs is the one that followed for the better part of a millennium the Christ-the-transformer-of-culture model (not the exilic, pilgrim model he once advocated).

But times are different (though John Paul II and Benedict XVI did a lot of speaking about Europe’s intellectual and moral crises). The papacy does not have the power it once had, whether because it lost is temporal power or simply owing to turf battles within the church. Nor does the church Jason picked have the clarity that it once did. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church is facing a crisis of authority (even if you’d never hear that from Jason and the Callers). Here is how one of the contributors to The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity put it:

A second important difference from the Leonine church is evident in the [Second Vatican] council’s opening to the ecumenical and interfaith relations and with it the continued softening of the traditional belief that there is no salvation outside the church. If that doctrine suggested service to a jealous God, trimming it suggests an appropriate emerging sense of theological and historical humility. For Leo, it was fundamental that “those who refuse to enter the perfect society or leave it are separated forever from life eternal.” In the Decree on Ecumenism (1964), on the other hand, heretics and schismatics have become “separated brethren.” They “have a right to be called Christians and with good reason” to be “accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.” While all the elements necessary for salvation are said to “subsist” in their “fullness” in the Catholic Church, “which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic,” it is nevertheless true, according to Lumen Gentium, that “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines.” In other words, there is no sacred monopoly on holiness and truth, a teaching that Leo would have regarded as undermining the basic mission of the church. As Karl Rahner made the point, there has been a growing recognition that “many whom God has, the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have.”

The transforming response to the new universalism is evident here as well. The late Avery Cardinal Dulles concluded a recent review of the development of church teaching on the question of who can be saved with these observations: “Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think he wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted.” Theologically speaking, while Dulles holds that all grace is mediated through the one, triune God, he does not insist, as Leo felt he had to do, that is it mediated exclusively through the one true church. The post conciliar church reads history and culture differently from the way the Leonine church read them. (79-80)

And they tell us there is one holy catholic and apostolic paradigm.

So the problem, and I apologize for sounding condescending, is that Jason has bitten off more than he can chew by arguing for the superiority of Rome’s ecclesiology to Protestantism’s. If he wants a magisterium that can objectively and authoritatively settle disputes in the church, he is going to get a church that also condemns all aspects of modernity as 19th century popes did because those aspects of modern life were creating disputes within the church and hurting the souls of believers. If Jason wants a spirituality of the church papacy, he is not going to find it (until the recent post-Vatican II past) because the spiritual weight of the papacy was always at odds with creating space for the political apart from the faith (which is why it took until Vatican II for Rome to embrace religious freedom and separation of church and state). In other words, a papacy with the kind of clout that would reign in the faithful with denunciations of Americanism and Modernism was also a papacy intent on asserting or recovering its temporal power (because temporal power gave the church freedom to assert its spiritual authority).

But then when Jason finds out that he does have a spirituality of the church papacy in the post-Vatican II era, he gains a church where popes are still echoing their older temporal power through various “social teachings” while also following a theological proposal like Dulles’ where the church sounds like it would have trouble settling basic theological conflicts (which may explain why so many conservative Roman Catholics associate orthodoxy with a male priesthood and not using contraceptives). In other words, he now has a crisis of authority that makes dispute between Baptists and Presbyterians look like sandbox rivals fighting over a scoop.

So when Jason left Protestantism thinking he had left behind its problems, my sense is that he did not realize just how big the problems were in his new communion. Roman Catholicism’s crisis of authority — going all the way back to Gregory VII’s battles with Henry, through the Avignon papacy and conciliarism, to the nineteenth-century controversies over the Papal States and Rome’s standing among Europe’s ruling class, down to Vatican II and its effort to appropriate communio ecclesiology — is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the earthquakes that erupt from the movement of earth’s tectonic plates. Jason entered a conflict almost a millennium old. If he understood that, he might not be so quick in his assertions of superiority or his claims that his critics “don’t understand.”

The Mulligan Christ Founded

Published on by D. G. Hart56 Comments

The lead singer for Jason and the Callers has tried to come clean on Roman Catholicism’s problems. But Jason doesn’t quite grasp how profound the problem is. It is not simply the disparity between the ideal and the real. It is the dilemma that comes for converts who simply place Protestantism in the leads-to-rationalism-and-skepticism box. How could such a communion as Jason envisions in the Roman Catholic church be reformed? Even more, why would it ever need to be and how would you (whether laity, religious, or bishop) know?

. . . I left behind the whole holding-the-church-hostage-to-my-personal-preferences thing when I ceased being a Protestant. I have only one Mother and I don’t get to choose her, and Christ has only one Bride (albeit an often wart-covered one). So rather than searching high and low for a church that has just the right hymns, just the right leadership, and just the right amount of plausible deniability so as to take credit for the Nicene Creed while blaming others for the Inquisition, I’ll just keep on believing in one holy catholic and apostolic church, blemishes and all.

Really? Even when the church tells you that white is black? Is the church Christ founded merely one big mess that needs one big mulligan?

The problem for Jason is that he will still need to look the other way in Roman Catholic circles or he will be a closeted Martin Luther who lacks the chutzpah to take out a nail and hammer post his list of dislikes on the door of the Tacoma cathedral. In this case, Jason may want to consider the case of Rod Dreher:

The new Catholic just doesn’t know who to trust on moral and theological matters. From the outside, theological conservatives weary of confusion and fighting within Mainline Protestant churches see Rome as a bulwark of stability. It is, but it also isn’t. Once you come in, you’ll find the same fighting over the same issues, but it’s harder to identify who’s who, and what’s what. Just because Rome has a Magisterium does not mean that it is recognized at the local level. I heard or read an older Catholic once who said that the good thing about liberal and conservative Catholic arguments prior to the Second Vatican Council is that both sides recognized a common source of authority, a common set of teachings to which they appealed to support their contentions. After Vatican II, that faded away. It does orthodox Catholics no good to base arguments on teachings that liberal Catholics reserve the right to reject as they see fit, and still consider themselves Catholics in good standing.

I managed to stay pretty well informed by reading on my own, so I knew when a priest or Catholic academic was giving me a line. Most Catholics, I found, really didn’t, because they didn’t have the time or the inclination to study these things, and they believed they could trust all priests and academics who did.

Toward the end of my life as a Catholic, I thought about how often I had to drive home from Sunday mass and tell my older son, who was starting to pay attention to the homilies, that what Father said that day in his sermon was not actually what the Church teaches. It occurred to me that I was teaching my child to distrust the Church — the institutional Church, I mean, which in this case means the clergy — before he learned as a Catholic to trust the Church. That’s messed up. I’ve written before that I allowed myself to become an overly political Catholic (re: Church politics and factionalism), but that often happens to engaged orthodox Catholics because you really don’t know who’s a trustworthy guide within the Church to its authentic teaching and spirituality. That factionalism is a bitter fruit of the deep crisis of authority within the Catholic Church in the postwar era.

It was probably good for me, on the whole, to have all vestiges of clericalism stripped from me, though I hate how difficult I find it to fully trust clergy at all (conflict and betrayal within the Orthodox Church in recent years are part of that, I concede, though they have to do with trust on a non-theological level). Still, I think orthodox American Catholics have a particularly difficult struggle on this front, given how a certain kind of liberal priest and fellow traveler wish to use the authority given them by the Church to undermine the authority of the Church.

So does Jason file away his list, never to be examined again, or does he wind up questioning the father that expects holy submission? I’m not sure Descartes epistemological doubts rival that one.

Divided and Finally Dismissed

Published on by D. G. Hart44 Comments

It looks like Jason and the Callers may be taking back the call to communion. The former is perturbed that Protestants disagree with him. It resembles a wife, who when losing an argument to her husband about a fender bender, talks about all the laundry she does. Unable to persuade us by his logic, exegesis, and historical ignorance, Jason has detected a Protestant intellectual tic:

. . . what I have observed over the past year is that this tendency to distinguish and divide is perhaps most prominent, not so much in the Reformed self-identity as in their overall polemic, exhibited especially in the way they argue against Catholics. And it doesn’t really matter what the issue under discussion actually is. It has taken me several hundred hours of discussion and debate to really put my finger on this tactic, but now that I have identified it, it has become quite predictable and obvious to spot if you know what you’re looking for.

I call it, “Divide and Dismiss.”

So when it comes to exegesis (which Jason still does not understand is what the magisterium does infallibly and so is above his pay grade), theology, and (early) church history, Reformed Protestants exhibit a preference for separateness and ghettoization.

Possibly.

Or perhaps we have brains (I know rationalism). We notice that Roman Catholicism is more than what Jason and the Callers claim it is. We notice that matters in the Vatican and beyond still need reform. We also notice that Protestantism is afflicted with a host of its own problems. But our profession does not include the notion that the church cannot err, and so we are free to notice problems on both sides of the Tiber. This may not make us superior. But it does mean we aren’t covering our eyes, like cheerleaders still going siss-boom-bah when the team is down by three touchdowns in the 4th quarter and the starting quarterback is out with a broken leg.

I understand it’s a little early for Jason to express buyer’s remorse. But his insistence that his communion is superior, more unified, and more virtuous is not an argument but an observation. For example:

The impression one gets from dialoguing with the Reformed is that there are virtually no two portions of Scripture that share the same context, no two church fathers that taught the same things, and no two Catholics from varying backgrounds that confess the same faith.

Such a hermeneutic of suspicion is to be expected from our Reformed brethren, of course, as is their desire to pit one biblical passage, or one church father, or one orthodox Catholic, against another. Division and atomization are their bread and butter, and are part and parcel of their entire worldview w-w (otherwise, how would Protestants justify their existence?). But the message I’d give to my fellow Catholics is to remind them that the knee-jerk tendency to divide and dismiss is not part of the air that we breathe, and there is no good reason why we should countenance such rationalist approaches to the biblical, historical, or ecclesiastical data, or treat this data the way higher critics do the words of Scripture.

Oh brother.

Sorry, but division and atomization is the air that all Protestants and Roman Catholics breathe post 1789. Jason would know this if he spent a little time reading history after 400 AD and looking around at the contemporary Roman Catholic scene (though I seem to recall he liked atomization and division when protesters surfaced in Seattle during the G-8 summit). Without the magistrate to enforce belief, Rome is just one more church listing in the Yellow Pages, along with the PCA and the Latter Day Saints. Meanwhile, the papacy is no more capable of making George Weigel and Sean Michael Winters agree than the PCA General Assembly is able to turn Peter Leithart into a defender of the Confession of Faith.

It is a breakthrough, though, that Jason has acknowledged that Protestants and Roman Catholics are divided. Now that he has dismissed us, we are free to pay attention to the important and cacophonous voices within Roman Catholicism.

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).

Development of Loophole?

Published on by D. G. Hart138 Comments

While Jason and the Callers continue to lay it on thick with the Protestantism-equals-individualism-and-anarchy-and-Roman-Catholicism-represents-everything-that-is-glorious-and-certain meme, the history of Roman Catholicism continues to yield considerations that render Jason and the Callers virtually gnostic in their quest for a visible church. Today’s stroll into things to which Jason and Callers don’t pay attention is John Henry Cardinal Newman, the Blessed John Henry Newman by the Callers’ reckoning.

It turns out that Newman was not so keen on Pius IX’s efforts to raise the stature and authority of the papacy. He gave the “audacity of the papacy” a whole new meaning. Look, for instance, at his comments on the Syllabus of Errors:

What does the word “Syllabus” mean? A collection; the French translation calls it a “Resumé;”—a Collection of what? I have already said, of propositions,—propositions which the Pope in his various Allocutions, Encyclicals, and like documents, since he has been Pope, has pronounced to be Errors. Who gathered the propositions out of these Papal documents, and put them together in one? We do not know; all we know is that, by the Pope’s command, this Collection of Errors was sent by his Foreign Minister to the Bishops. He, {277} Cardinal Antonelli, sent to them at the same time the Encyclical of December, 1864, which is a document of dogmatic authority. The Cardinal says, in his circular to them, that the Pope ordered him to do so. The Pope thought, he says, that perhaps the Bishops had not seen some of his Allocutions, and other authoritative letters and speeches of past years; in consequence the Pope had had the Errors which, at one time or other he had therein noted, brought together into one, and that for the use of the Bishops.

Such is the Syllabus and its object. There is not a word in it of the Pope’s own writing; there is nothing in it at all but the Erroneous Propositions themselves—that is, except the heading “A Syllabus, containing the principal Errors of our times, which are noted in the Consistorial Allocutions, in the Encyclicals, and in other Apostolical Letters of our most Holy Lord, Pope Pius IX.” There is one other addition—viz., after each Error a reference is given to the Allocution, Encyclical, or other document in which it is proscribed.

The Syllabus, then, is to be received with profound submission, as having been sent by the Pope’s authority to the Bishops of the world. It certainly comes to them with his indirect extrinsic sanction; but intrinsically, and viewed in itself, it is nothing more than a digest of certain Errors made by an anonymous writer. There would be nothing on the face of it, to show that the Pope had ever seen it, page by page, unless the “Imprimatur” implied in the Cardinal’s letter had been an evidence of this. It has no mark or seal put upon it which gives it a direct relation to the Pope. {278} Who is its author? Some select theologian or high official doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli himself? No surely: anyhow it is not the Pope, and I do not see my way to accept it for what it is not. I do not speak as if I had any difficulty in recognizing and condemning the Errors which it catalogues, did the Pope himself bid me; but he has not as yet done so, and he cannot delegate his Magisterium to another. I wish with St. Jerome to “speak with the Successor of the Fisherman and the Disciple of the Cross.” I assent to that which the Pope propounds in faith and morals, but it must be he speaking officially, personally, and immediately, and not any one else, who has a hold over me. The Syllabus is not an official act, because it is not signed, for instance, with “Datum Romæ, Pius P.P. IX.,” or “sub annulo Piscatoris,” or in some other way; it is not a personal, for he does not address his Venerabiles Fratres,” or “Dilecto Filio,” or speak as “Pius Episcopus;” it is not an immediate, for it comes to the Bishops only through the Cardinal Minister of State.

Development of doctrine, indeed, with a splash of Jesuitical casuistry?

I am not competent to know what Newman was up against in England, nor do I know the workings of canon law regarding a Cardinal who dissents from his pope. I don’t have the right paradigm (even if I do have the right chromosomes). But Newman hardly seems like the model of conservative Roman Catholicism, even if he does serve as a model of Roman Catholic reasonableness in the face of the Vatican’s attempt to double-down on its supremacy. In fact, Ian Ker’s biography of Newman gives much more evidence that the Cardinal was hardly the font of conservatism that some contemporary Roman Catholics assert. Just after Vatican I, Newman was figuring out how to reconcile himself to the doctrine of infallibility. According to Ker:

Privately, [Newman] confided to Ambrose St John that he would not know what to say to anxious enquirers if the Pope did in fact take advantage of what was “a precedent and a suggestion to use his power without necessity, when ever he will, when not called on to do so.” He was so concerned, [Newman] admitted, at the danger of an attempt to extend the definition, that “we must hope, for one is obliged to hope it,that the Pope will be driven from Rome, and will not continue the Council, or that there will be another Pope.” (656)

Ker adds that Newman’s hope was that things would get so bad they could not get any worse. In Newman’s own words:

We have come to the climax of tyranny. It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years. It is anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contract him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it. For years years past my only consolation personally has been in our Lord’s Presence in the Tabernacle. I turn from the sternness of external authority to Him who can immeasurably compensate trials which after all are not real. . . (659)

Some have tried to explain Newman’s views, though Jason and the Callers are not among them. It does make you wonder if the development of doctrine notion is really a way to explain away aspects of papal teaching that converts find troubling (a version of Protestantism within the Roman Catholic fold). It also raises questions about whether Newman really is a model for Protestant converts to Rome since you don’t find any of Newman’s reservations about the papacy among the Callers. And then we have the matter of Protestant “interpretation” and Roman Catholic “reception” of infallible teaching. If Jason and the Callers followed Newman’s example, they might be questioning the magisterium as much as Cumberland Presbyterians dissent from the Westminster Assembly.

Cutting Off His Hair to Spite his Head

Published on by D. G. Hart36 Comments

If Jason Stellman is correct in his latest post, then people like himself could not have converted to Roman Catholicism prior to a full-blown theory of papal supremacy (which depending on the historian may not have happened until 1200). His minimalist account of apostolicity leads him to this:

What, then, needs to have occurred in antiquity for the bare historical claim of apostolic succession to be established?

My suggestion is rather minimal: all that needs to have taken place is that from the time of St. Peter until the papacy of Francis, there has always been a leader of the Roman church with full ministerial powers. It doesn’t matter if he used the title of “Pope,” it doesn’t matter if he had a full understanding of the extent of his own authority, and it doesn’t matter if he worked closely with, or more independently from, the other ecclesiastical leaders within his region.

But a leader of the Roman church with ministerial powers would not give you Jason and the Callers since their conversion narratives rest upon their own awareness of a supreme, infallible ecclesiastical authority, fully visible to the whole world, who can decide between what is true and false. Now Stellman proposes an ecclesiastical deism of his own — a time when the Bishop of Rome hypothetically had no awareness of his authority or scope of power. Jason should be thanking the Lord he lives now in the light of a fully developed theory of papal supremacy. Without it, he would not have known of the pope’s wonder working authority.

Stellman makes another curious point, one that fits nicely with his rather gnostic like approach to history — that is, theory completely independent of historical circumstances. He claims that no historical evidence can possibly undermine this theory of papal authority:

And what set of historical circumstances need to have transpired to delegitimize apostolic succession?

Given what I suggest above, such an invalidation would only have occurred if, say, a bishop of Rome died and not only was there no immediately chosen successor, but even the validly ordained body of men with the authority to appoint one decided, for some unknown reason, not to. And after this gap in the line of succession had lasted long enough for all the Church’s bishops to die, some self-appointed man came along who successfully re-established the entire Christian Church by illicitly assuming authority he did not have, and then passing that pseudo-authority along to others (whose heirs are all the current Catholic bishops today) in what turned out to be perhaps the most elaborate hoax ever foisted upon the people of this planet, one that somehow escaped the notice of any historian then or since, as well as duped both the people of its own generation as well as billions of others since.

If Jason actually read church and European history, he might have come across this rather messy time of the Avignon Papacy when the Vatican faced a crisis of such proportions that Europeans began to wonder about the popes’ claims to apostolic succession. As Carl Trueman argued, simply reasserting the papacy’s authority in the light of Protestant diversity does nothing to clear the historical record or make the papacy any more a solution than it was at the time of its greatest power:

Yes, it is true that Protestant interpretive diversity is an empirical fact; but when it comes to selectivity in historical reading as a means of creating a false impression of stability, Roman Catholic approaches to the Papacy provide some excellent examples of such fallacious method. The ability to ignore or simply dismiss as irrelevant the empirical facts of papal history is quite an impressive feat of historical and theological selectivity. Thus, as all sides need to face empirical facts and the challenges they raise, here are a few we might want to consider, along with what seem to me (as a Protestant outsider) to be the usual Roman Catholic responses:

Empirical fact: The Papacy as an authoritative institution was not there in the early centuries.
Never mind. Put together a doctrine of development whereby Christians – or at least some of them, those of whom we choose to approve in retrospect on the grounds we agree with what they say – eventually come to see the Pope as uniquely authoritative.

Empirical fact: The Papacy was corrupt in the later Middle Ages, building its power and status on political antics, forged documents and other similar scams.
Ignore it, excuse it as a momentary aberration and perhaps, if pressed, even offer a quick apology. Then move swiftly on to assure everyone it is all sorted out now and start talking about John Paul II or Benedict XVI. Whatever you do, there is no need to allow this fact to have any significance for how one understands the theory of papal power in the abstract or in the present.

Empirical fact: The Papacy was in such a mess at the beginning of the fifteenth century that it needed a council to decide who of the multiple claimants to Peter’s seat was the legitimate pope.
Again, this was merely a momentary aberration but it has no significance for the understanding of papal authority. After all, it was so long ago and so far away.

Empirical fact: The church failed (once again) to put its administrative, pastoral, moral and doctrinal house in order at the Fifth Lateran Council at the start of the sixteenth century.
Forget it. Emphasise instead the vibrant piety of the late medieval church and then blame the ungodly Protestants for their inexplicable protests and thus for the collapse of the medieval social, political and theological structure of Europe.

Perhaps it is somewhat aggressive to pose these points in such a blunt form. Again, I intend no disrespect but am simply responding with the same forthrightness with which certain writers speak of Protestantism. The problem here is that the context for the Reformation – the failure of the papal system to reform itself, a failure in itself lethal to notions of papal power and authority – seems to have been forgotten in all of the recent aggressive attacks on scriptural perspicuity. These are all empirical facts and they are all routinely excused, dismissed or simply ignored by Roman Catholic writers. Perspicuity was not the original problem; it was intended as the answer. One can believe it to be an incorrect, incoherent, inadequate answer; but then one must come up with something better – not simply act as if shouting the original problem louder will make everything all right. Such an approach to history and theology is what I call the Emerald City protocol: when defending the great and powerful Oz, one must simply pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I know Bryan Cross will counter (Jason doesn’t respond to tough questions these days) by saying this isn’t an argument. It is simply hand waving and doesn’t have the philosophical panache his encounter with the papacy possesses. But the hand waving actually comes almost exclusively from Jason and the Callers. They wave good-bye to history, not to mention good sense, and expect folks to ignore what happened.

Postscript: Nestorian alert! Jason even has the audacity (which seems to go with the papal turf among the Jason and the Callers) to liken the development of papal theory to Christ’s own developing self-awareness as the Son of God:

Insisting upon the criterion that unless a bishop of Rome wrote a treatise outlining a fully-developed doctrine of the papacy then therefore the papacy is a corruption, is to insist upon something that the Church does not even demand. Such an expectation is as silly as saying that unless Jesus of Nazareth could have given a Christologically erudite account of his own divine identity and mission when he was four, then therefore his subsequent claims were late, and thence illegitimate, developments. No, if Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, then there’s no reason why the same could not be true of his mystical Body and its own self-awareness.

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.