Roman Catholic Social Teaching

Downsizing Government

Published on April 27, 2016 by D. G. Hart106 Comments

How do you reform the federal government? Anyone remember Al Gore and Bill Clinton trying to reduce the footprint of federal agencies through Reinventing Government? Peter Drucker liked the effort but knew it was going to fail:

The first reaction in a situation of disarray is always to do what Vice President Gore and his associates are now doing–patching. It always fails. The next step is to rush into downsizing. Management picks up a meat-ax and lays about itself indiscriminately. This is what the Republicans and (as of last December) President Clinton now promise. In the past fifteen years one big American company after another has done this–among them IBM, Sears, and GM. Each first announced that laying off 10,000 or 20,000 or even 50,000 people would lead to an immediate turnaround. A year later there had, of course, been no turnaround, and the company laid off another 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000–again without results. In many if not most cases, downsizing has turned out to be something that surgeons for centuries have warned against: “amputation before diagnosis.” The result is always a casualty.

But there have been a few organizations–some large companies (GE, for instance) and a few large hospitals (Beth Israel in Boston, for instance)–that, without fanfare, did turn themselves around, by rethinking themselves. They did not start out by downsizing. In fact, they knew that the way to get control of costs is not to start by reducing expenditures but to identify the activities that are productive, that should be strengthened, promoted, and expanded. Every agency, every policy, every program, every activity, should be confronted with these questions: “What is your mission?” “Is it still the right mission?” “Is it still worth doing?” “If we were not already doing this, would we now go into it?” This questioning has been done often enough in all kinds of organizations–businesses, hospitals, churches, and even local governments–that we know it works.

Does Pope Francis need Mr. Drucker?

The news that the Vatican has suspended an external audit might appear to be only a minor administrative matter, interesting only to accountants. But as an indicator of the trends in Rome today, it is as significant of Amoris Laetitia. It is, in my view (and I am by no means a financial analyst!), a sign of crisis in this pontificate.

Pope Francis was elected by the College of Cardinals to bring reform to the Vatican, after the “Vatileaks” scandal and revelations of financial corruption had marred the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Three years later, the “Vatileaks II” trial is providing new drama fit for the tabloids, and the most critical step in a sweeping plan for financial reform has been put on hold. Has anything really changed?

There has been no explanation for the decision to suspend the audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was to have been the first external audit ever conducted of Vatican financial affairs. For that matter there has not been any official announcement of the decision, which only came to light when the National Catholic Register reported on a memorandum issued to offices of the Roman Curia by the Secretariat of State. Even Cardinal George Pell, who is (at least theoretically) the Vatican’s top official for financial matters, told the Register that he was “a bit surprised” by the decision.

This is the way the Vatican has worked for ages—and, apparently, the way it still works. A vitally important decision is made quietly: without public announcement, without explanation, without accountability. The Secretariat of State, which supervises the work of all other agencies, countermands an order from other Vatican offices, even if those offices have (on paper) the proper authority in their own particular spheres. . . .

For generations, the top officials of the Curia have answered to no one but the Pope– and even the Sovereign Pontiff, respecting their dignity as Princes of the Church, would rarely ask detailed questions about how they handled their work. Each Vatican office operated by its own rules. So when Cardinal Pell finally conducted a systemic review of Vatican finances, he uncovered a rat’s nest of unsupervised fundraising and spending, separate accounts, no-bid contracts, undervalued properties, and sweetheart deals: the sort of routine corruption that saps the strength of an institution. He prescribed strong medicine, and not surprisingly, some of the patients resisted the treatment.

So now the treatment has been suspended. The old guard has won at least a partial victory; the impetus for Vatican reform has been stalled.

All that social teaching and subsidiarity. Maybe some ecclesial teaching is in order.

Spirituality of the Church with a Dash of Episcopacy

Published on September 3, 2015 by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Caution about the capacity of the apostles’ successors to speak authoritatively about society or even transform it.

Catholic social doctrine is addressed to society, with a view to informing it how it can be more justly organized. This is indeed very important. But, as C.S. Lewis observes in one of his writings, societies, nations, communities don’t go to heaven or hell. Surely the “central mission” of the faith is not the construction of a more just social order–as important as it is to strive for that–but instead the proclamation of truth and the ministry of the sacraments in order to save souls. That is the Church’s highest and most urgent concern.

Here is a nice bit from the excellent Father Ronald Knox, where he is commenting on the temptation of Jesus, where he refused to turn stones into bread:

All through the centuries the Church has had to act in great measure as a nursing-mother to the faithful, not content to be merely their teacher in the faith; providing schools, hospitals, orphanages, tending the sick, relieving the poor, burying the dead; she has drawn a whole network of charitable institutions across the world, vying with one another in the service of men’s bodies. And always, that is not the point. With the other Christianities there is a constant risk that their spiritual message will lose itself in philanthropic endeavor. The movement which began in an access of burning zeal for men’s souls will have been replaced, a century or two later, by a vast organization, religious in name, but merely philanthropic in purpose. With the Catholic Church, so much older than these others, it has never been so. Her message is of the world beyond; on it her eyes are set; she tends, feeds, teaches her children distractedly, only that she may point them to heaven; she will not lose her soul in what the world calls charity.

Maybe the spirituality of the church is a doctrine that only comes in handy when you don’t like the social gospel on tap.

Then again, it makes perfect sense if the really big question is what will happen on that truly great day.

How to Think and Act Protestant

Published on August 18, 2015 by D. G. Hart22 Comments

I know it may be a tired subject for some, but I keep seeing defenses of the Roman Catholic church and hierarchy that could have worked just as well for said defender to remain Protestant. The latest comes from David Mills who offers encouragement for those who are discouraged by what some Cardinals or bishops do or say.

Before getting around to Mills’ encouragement, here are a few examples of church teaching that Roman Catholics find befuddling. One is the bishops’ guide to voters in the United States, which received this objection:

My eyes glazed over when I first tried to read the entire 44-page text of Faithful Citizenship, when it first appeared on the scene in the fall of 2007. In their instructions to voters, the bishops dutifully call for opposition to abortion. But they mix that admonition with so many other considerations that the overall effect is weak. Faithful Citizenship does not draw the necessary, clear distinction between the issues on which good Catholics might disagree (such as economic policy) and those that are non-negotiable (such as abortion)—not to mention the distinction between issues on which prudent compromise is wise (economics again) and those on which compromise is odious (abortion again).

Faithful Citizenship was itself clearly a compromise of sorts, cobbled together to maintain the peace within the bishops’ conference. The final document was not entirely satisfactory to anyone on either end of the political spectrum, nor did it prevent public disagreements among American bishops during the ensuring election year.

And the net effect? Archbishop Raymond Burke believes that Faithful Citizenship helped ensure the election of President Obama, since the crucial Catholic vote swung toward the Democratic candidate. But that may be an exaggeration; survey results show that most Catholic voters were blissfully unaware of the bishops’ advice, and probably would have ignored that advice even if they had heard it.

Another example is whether the Roman Catholic faithful need to support the arms deal between the U.S. and Iran because the Vatican supports it:

Thus far, however, there has been no change in the Holy See and the U.S. bishops’ steady support for such an accord, even as the Obama administration has been criticized for making too many concessions to Iran to secure a deal that restricts the country’s nuclear stockpiles, centrifuges and research for 15 years.

“The agreement on the Iranian nuclear program is viewed in a positive light by the Holy See,” stated a Vatican spokesman in June, as talks with Iran appeared to be gaining traction, after 20 months of negotiations that involved the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

On Aug. 9, the 70th anniversary of the U.S. military’s dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II, Pope Francis called for an end to all nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago ought to serve as a permanent warning to humanity in order “to repudiate her forever from war and to banish nuclear arms and every weapon of mass destruction,” he said.

Prudential Judgment
The Church had registered its support for the Iran nuclear deal in the months leading up to the conclusion of the negotiations. But it has issued no public statements during the last three bruising weeks on Capitol Hill, as the Obama administration defended controversial elements of the accord, including the fact that it did not permanently dismantle Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.

Now, as the president himself admits the accord will not eliminate the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program or call a halt to its promotion of terrorism in the Middle East, some Catholics have questioned whether the bishops’ stance affirms Catholic moral and social teaching, or whether it remains a matter of prudential judgment on which people of goodwill may disagree.

Asked to comment on this matter, Bradley Lewis, an authority on political philosophy at The Catholic University of America, clarified that the Church’s position on the accord is “a matter of prudential judgment.”

“Our Lord calls on us to be peacemakers, and the making of peace is one of the greatest responsibilities of statesmen, but so is the maintenance of a just peace; and precisely how to do this most effectively is something over which there can be a great deal of disagreement,” Lewis told the Register.

So what is a church member to do? David Mills counsels, “remember the theology”:

It’s “the hardest problem for converts to Catholicism — at least those who are theologically informed,” wrote a scholarly friend who had entered the Church about a decade ago. He felt no buyer’s remorse — he had been an Episcopalian, so how could he? — but the wild statements of Bishop X and Cardinal Y still upset him.

I would have thought the opposite from my friend: that Catholic failings is a harder problem for those who are not theologically informed. To put it simply: theology can make you feel better when every day’s news might bring the story of yet another scandal, which someone you know is going to bring up with glee.

In this case it clearly does. Theology provides an emotionally reassuring distinction between the form and the performance. It tells us exactly what the Church claims for herself and how far she is from claiming any great perfection in her members, from the pope on down.

She doesn’t claim much for herself on the human side. She claims a great deal on the divine side. There’s not a line in magisterial teaching that claims a pope will be a holy, wise, or even a prudent man. It doesn’t even claim he’ll a good man. See among others Alexander VI. What it does claim is that God will use him in certain ways that we can count on. He can even speak infallibly, in certain carefully defined circumstances. Alexander VI could have given an infallible teaching from his mistress’s bed. Strange but true, as the comic strip used to say.

The problem here is that what Cardinal X or Y says is also the theology. Possibly you can distinguish between infallible teaching and Alexander VI’s sexual exploits. But all of these Cardinals and Popes are the vehicles through which theology comes. Protestants are the ones who believe the truth (the Word) transcends the church. That’s how you can remain a Protestant and endure its many problems (until it abandons the gospel). But Mills and other apologists don’t have the pay grade to discern the teachings by which to judge the bishops. That’s the bishops’ task.

Even harder for Mills is the doctrine of infallibility. Did God protect the bishops from error in their voters guide? Has God protected the Vatican from error in its support for the arms deal? Isn’t God protecting the bishops all the time when they speak on everything — including climate change?

But if the church can be wrong about the morality and theology of voting and foreign relations, why can’t the same follow for morality and theology? I know. We’re talking about the Yankees. (Game’s fixed.)

This is not a solution to Protestantism. It only adds to Roman Catholicism’s problem.

Let the Interpretation Commence

Published on June 18, 2015 by D. G. Hart78 Comments

Now that Pope Francis’ much awaited encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, is out, we have the chore not only of assessing the document but also its reception. (I’d also like to know how many authors contributed to this, which offices in the Vatican had input, and how much the making of an encyclical resembles the drafting of a president’s State of the Union Address. But that’s — all about — me and my enjoyment of shows like West Wing and Larry Sanders.)

The confusing aspect of papal pronouncements is how much authority they have. Is Peter Kreeft’s Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Church Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church the place to start? If so, it looks like everyone who is under the pope’s rule needs to get on board:

Even doctrines not explicitly labeled infallible can be binding on Catholic belief because “[d]ivine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter,…when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a ‘definitive manner,’ they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium teaching … of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful ‘are to adhere…with religious assent’ (LG 25)” (CCC 892). Wise and good parents do not explicitly label everything they say to their children as “infallible”, yet wise and good children trust them. Similarly, we should trust Holy Mother Church, the Church of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, the Church with a two-thousand-year-long-memory, much more than we trust our own opinions.

The sign the Church attaches to an infallible teaching is Christocentric: “When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine ‘for belief as being divinely revealed,’ and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions ‘must be adhered to with the obedience of faith'” (CCC 891). (101-102)

That sets the bar pretty high and may explain why not all Roman Catholics were fans of John Paul II or why some thought he did not adhere to the spirit of Vatican II.

But maybe people disregard papal pronouncements because popes say too much and it becomes easy to regard papal teaching as mere chatter:

First, the Big Question. Why? Why is the Catholic Church entering into the fray of doubtful global warming science? Why now and why with such shrill apocalyptic exaggerated rhetoric? Why strident calls for supranational government control at the same time the actual evidence for doom grows weaker and weaker?

Consider this. Used to be in the West when the Catholic Church spoke, people listened. Reporters and politicians would come calling before writing articles or making decisions and ask, “What say you, Mr. Bishop?” And the people, when they heard what the Church had to say, listened. They considered. Sure, they sometimes rejected, perhaps even more often than they heeded. But the Church was an influence. And it liked being one.

Not so now. The West has these past fifty or so years assumed an adversarial stance towards our ancient and venerable institution. The press, politicians, and people no longer care what the clergy has to say on designer babies (i.e. eugenics), abortion, homosexual acts, same-sex “marriage”, you name it. Not when a recalcitrant Church disallows female priests, divorce, and every other thing the secular salivate over.

Some who disregard the papacy on matters like the environment think papal infallibility only goes so far and that when popes speak about matters like economics and politics they are just another guy talking (think Joe Biden). From John Zmirak‘s Bad Catholics’ Guide to the Catechism:

Q: What about when the pope writes or speaks on politics and economics?

A: Most of the time, those topics involve specific disputes about how to apply moral principles, statements of fact or arguments over what’s prudent. Infallibility can’t apply to any of those. When he’s writing on those subjects, the pope is just an ordinary man — although in most cases a wise and learned one, whose ideas we should take seriously. For instance, when Pope Paul VI wrote in Populorum Progressio that the right way for rich countries to help poor ones was to tax their citizens and send money to Third World governments, that was a suggestion worth considering. But faithful Catholics can disagree. Many have noted that there is now an extensive track record of such foreign aid, and all too often it ends up in Swiss bank accounts or being spent to prop up corrupt regimes. Pope Paul VI made a prudential judgment, and faithful Catholics are perfectly free to reject it. The same applies if a pope speaks out on immigration policies, welfare programs or Middle Eastern politics.

Q: A lot of Catholics seem to disagree with what you just said. They suggest that the Holy Spirit picks who’s elected pope, then protects his everyday statements and policies from error.

A: The Church has never said any such thing — out of deference to the First Commandment, and perhaps to avoid becoming the laughingstock of even Catholic historians.

If the Holy Spirit directly picked the popes without human agency, we’d have to ask why He picked so many illegitimate children of previous popes; so many cardinals who bribed their way to the throne; or — my favorite example — the pope who so hated his predecessor that he dug up the old pope’s corpse and tried it for heresy, before dumping it in the river. We’ve done much better with choosing popes since the Council of Trent, but the process never became magical. Sometimes the cardinals pick a weakling, a coward or a bully. Popes do have original sin. The Holy Spirit oversees the process, of course, but allows a lot of room for human freedom and folly.

The pope can’t infallibly predict the weather, draw up the U.S. budget or tell us which wars are just or unjust. Think of the five “crusades” which Pope Martin V launched against cities full of Christians for “heresy.” Popes misused their authority so often and so egregiously that it helped cause the Reformation.

Q: What about when the pope does teach about faith and morals, but doesn’t invoke the divine-infallibility veto you’ve spoken of?

A: Catholics view every other papal pronouncement in context — the context of previous solemn church teaching on an issue. So if a pope reiterates some previous teaching, with roots in the Bible and the councils of the church, we defer to his interpretation. If he says something that seems new, we judge it against those previous teachings and are free to disagree — respectfully, of course. You shouldn’t mock the nakedness of your father. But you don’t have to bring him another skin full of wine.

If one pope contradicts another, or either contradicts a council, you can rest assured that none of the statements is infallible, and the issue is still open for debate.

Q: Are there examples of popes speaking fallibly at cross-purposes with one another?

A: Lots of them. I’m sure that I’ve already tested your ecumenical patience, but if you’re really interested, read this piece. In it, I explore conflicting papal statements on slavery, lending at interest, torture and religious freedom.

Q: Those aren’t petty issues.

A: No, they aren’t. But the Church has never pretended that Jesus made each pope a magical fountain of new divine revelations and brilliant policy ideas. We do the church no favors by inflating the papacy’s claims like a balloon. Our history is full of needles which could pop it.

Okay, Protestants are confused, but so are Roman Catholics.

For that reason, why does Rod Dreher react so strongly to Jeb Bush’s understanding of Roman Catholicism:

I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Bush said. “And I’d like to see what he says as it relates to climate change and how that connects to these broader, deeper issue before I pass judgment. But I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.”

Isn’t Jeb simply channeling Al Smith and John F. Kennedy who also had to wade through the thicket of church authority and constitutional requirements? Rod doesn’t think so:

First off, nobody believes that bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, are policy wonks, and nobody believes that they are experts at dictating economic policy. That said, Jeb Bush, as a Catholic, is not free to discard the social teaching of the Catholic Church, under which the new papal encyclical on climate change would appear to fall, because it doesn’t suit his personal beliefs. Note well that Bush doesn’t even know what Francis is going to say in the encyclical, but rejects out of hand that the Church has anything binding to say to him about economics.

Second, how is it that Jeb Bush has been a Catholic convert for 25 years, and doesn’t grasp that Catholic Christianity is not focused only on personal piety, but has a broad social dimension as well? On what grounds does he oppose abortion, then? On what grounds did he fight to keep Terri Schiavo alive as her governor? Does he reject what the Catholic Church teaches about the poor?

Well, given the lack of conformity among Roman Catholics in relation to papal teaching, Rod may well decide to forgive Jeb.

Or it might mean that all of us, including Roman Catholics, have a little Caitlyn Jenner in us. Ross Douthat picked up on Will Wilkinson’s comments on the religious significance of sex change:

One of the enduring puzzles of America is why it has remained so robustly religious while its European cousins have secularised with startling rapidity. One stock answer is that America, colonised by religious dissenters and lacking an officially sanctioned creed, has always been a cauldron of religious competition and, therefore, innovation. The path to success in a competitive religious marketplace is the same as the path to success in business: give the people what they want.

Americans tend to want a version of Americanism, and they get it. Americanism is a frontier creed of freedom, of the inviolability of individual conscience and salvation as self-realisation. The American religion does Protestantism one better. Not only are we, each of us, qualified to interpret scripture, but also we each have a direct line to God. You can just feel Jesus. In my own American faith tradition, a minority version of Mormonism, the Holy Spirit—one of the guises of God—is a ubiquitous, pervasive presence. Like radio waves, you’ve just got to tune it in.

The problem for Roman Catholics, though, is that the condemnation of Americanism as a heresy was part of the church’s social teaching. The intriguing aspect of the release of Laudato Si will be to see how much Roman Catholics, who lamented Caitlyn Jenner, wind up doing their own version of spiritual gender bending to avoid following the infallible Bishop of Rome.

Postscript: as part of Old Life’s service to instruct the faithful, here are a couple of scorecards for evaluating the authority of papal teaching.

First, the layers of instruction:

Dogma: Infallible expressions of divine revelation. Catholics owe these pronouncements the most serious response and consideration, what we refer to as “obedience of faith.” When it comes to ethics, dogma includes the most fundamental aspects of Christian morality (including those that Church has never had occasion to explicitly define as such). An example is the basic responsibility of Christians to act as stewards towards God’s gift of Creation.

Definitive Doctrine: Teachings that are not divinely revealed but are still essential to the protection of divine revelation. These teachings are also exercised with the charism of infallibility, and the faithful properly owe them “firm acceptance.” One example is the canon of Sacred Scripture.

Authoritative Doctrine: Teachings that are connected to divine revelation, but which are neither recognized as divinely revealed nor considered to be infallible. To these, Catholics owe “religious assent,” i.e., “religious submission of mind and will” (Lumen Gentium, no. 25). An example in theological ethics is the “universal destination of goods” which insists that “God destined the earth and all it contains for all men and all peoples” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 69; cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, nos. 171-175).

Prudential Judgments: Instructions through which the pope and/or bishops employ dogma, doctrine, and authoritative secular information to provide guidance on particular issues/circumstances. These instructions do not have the charism of infallibility, but the faithful are called to openly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully consider these teachings as they form their consciences. An example would be a papal judgment about whether a specific structure, institution, or practice upholds or damages the dignity of Creation—especially of human persons and particularly of the poorest and most vulnerable.

By this criteria, Laudato Si is pious advice.

But don’t forget about the genre of papal expression:

Apostolic constitutions (apostolicae constitutiones): solemn, formal documents on matters of highest consequence concerning doctrinal or disciplinary matters, issued by the pope in his own name. They are published as either universal or particular law of the Church. (Examples: the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium; Constitution on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.)

Apostolic exhortation (apostolica exhortatio): a papal reflection on a particular topic that does not contain dogmatic definitions or policy directives, addressed to bishops, clergy and all the faithful of the entire Catholic Church. Apostolic exhortations are not legislative documents. (Example: Familiaris Consortio, on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World.)

Apostolic letter (apostolica epistola): a formal papal teaching document, not used for dogmatic definitions of doctrine, but to give counsel to the Church on points of doctrine that require deeper explanation in the light of particular circumstances or situations in various parts of the world.

Declaration (declamatio): may be a simple statement of the law, which must be interpreted according to the existing law; or an authoritative declaration that is retroactive and does not require further promulgation; or an extensive declaration, which modifies the law, is not retroactive and must be promulgated according to the law.

Decree (decretum): a statement involving Church law, precepts or judicial decisions on a specific matter. It is an ordinance given by one having the power of jurisdiction (such as a bishop within his particular diocese, the head of an office of the Roman Curia, or the pope), acting administratively to promote compliance with the law. A decree announces that a given document or legislative text is in effect.

Encyclical (encyclica epistola – literally, “circular letter”): a formal apostolic letter issued by the pope usually addressed to the bishops, clergy and faithful of the entire Church. Example, Humanae vitae, concerning the Church’s teaching on birth control issued in 1968 by Pope Paul VI.

Instruction (instructio): explains or amplifies a document that has legislative force, such as apostolic constitutions, and states how its precepts are to be applied. (e.g., Liturgiam authenticam, on liturgical translation, an Instruction on the correct implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.)

Institutio: instituted arrangement or regular method, rules (as in Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani).

Motu proprio (literally, by one’s own initiative): a legislative document or decree issued by the pope on his own initiative, not in response to a request. (Examples: Apostolos Suos; Misericordia Dei.)

Promulgation (promulgatio): the process whereby the lawmaker communicates the law to those to whom the law has been given. (The official effective date on which a document is promulgated may or may not coincide with the date on which a document is actually published.)

Recognitio: confirms the review of documents that are submitted by a conference of bishops to the relevant office (dicastery) of the Holy See. Recognitio is required before the provisions of documents that modify universal law may come into effect. Recognitio thus signals acceptance of a document that may have legislative force. (Recognitio is required for all documents that modify universal liturgical norms, for example.)

Now I’m lost. Can’t we just have the Bible, Confession and Catechisms, Book of Church Order, and Directory for Worship?

Gearing Up for Fortnight for Freedom

Published on June 17, 2015 by D. G. Hart56 Comments

Some people are worried that the church is being airbrushed from history. Case in point, Magna Carta, the 800th anniversary of which occurred on my mother’s birthday:

Clause 39 – “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” – is well-known to educated people, it is less commonly recalled that Clause 1 states “that the English Church is to be free, and to have its full rights and its liberties intact”.

More importantly, the Christian origins and influence of the Great Charter are mostly ignored, a point raised in a new Theos report by Thomas Andrew, The Church and the Charter: Christianity and the Forgotten Roots of Magna Carta.

In particular Andrew addresses the unsung hero of Magna Carta, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, who played a huge part in drawing up the treaty and implementing it.

Some bishops were heroes, some weren’t since also missing from various accounts of the celebration is the recognition that Pope Innocent III condemned Magna Carta in the papal encyclical, Etsi Karissimus in Christo:

On behalf of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by the authority of SS Peter and Paul his apostles, and by our own authority, acting on the general advice of our brethren, we utterly reject and condemn this settlement [the Magna Carta] and under threat of excommunication we order that the king should not dare to observe it and that the barons and their associates should not require it to be observed: the charter, with all undertakings and guarantees whether confirming it or resulting from it, we declare to be null, and void of all validity for ever. Wherefore, let no man deem it lawful to infringe this document of our annulment and prohibition, or presume to oppose it. If anyone should presume to do so, let him know that he will incur the anger of Almighty God and of SS Peter and Paul his apostles.

This should certainly complicate preparations for the 2015 Fortnight for Freedom, June 21 to July 4, 2015, “a time when our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. The theme of this year’s Fortnight will focus on the “freedom to bear witness” to the truth of the Gospel.”

Also complicating preparations are memories of the English Reformation, commonly denied by the anti-Wolf Hall crowd, which did not exactly witness the papacy rally to religious freedom:

Henry VIII, as many will recall, had six wives, whose fates are remembered by the jingle: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

But the description of the first fate is not accurate. What Henry actually wanted from Pope Clement VII was an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a request about as common then as asking for late checkout at a hotel is today.

The problem was that Pope Clement VII was at the time virtually a prisoner of Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, whose troops were occupying Rome. And Charles V was a nephew of: Catherine of Aragon, and . . . well, you can see how it got complicated. In addition, there was a major political struggle going on. Rome’s demands for money were bleeding England dry. Henry’s leading the English church to independence from Rome was actually driven more by politics than by theology.

The motes my friend beholds in Henry’s character may have blinded him to the beams in the papacy. For example, Pope Innocent X. Innocent may have been the brand name of his bath soap, but it didn’t accurately describe the man, who spent most of his papacy satiating his grasping family’s desires and piling up works of art.

And then there was Pope Benedict IX, described by Pope Victor III as vile, foul, and execrable, who sold the papacy in order to marry his sweetheart. And who, except perhaps my friend, could forget Pope Stephen VI? He exhumed the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, and put it on trial, and, following the surely inevitable conviction, amputated three of “his” fingers. And, not finally but we must move on, let us not overlook, let us not, Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, who, and two of whose children, Lucrezia and Cesare, made their surname synonymous with ruthless corruption and sexual debauchery.

Compared to that crowd, Henry VIII was a saint.

All of which is to indicate that constructing a narrative with Christianity — Calvinist or Roman Catholic — on the right and liberating side of history is just that, a construction. Sometimes it was, sometimes not so much. But shouldn’t a church gain high marks not for being on the side of John Locke but for proclaiming the good news of the gospel? Doesn’t spiritual liberty count for anything?

For good measure, constructing the narrative of Christianity and liberty is almost as selective as identifying Roman Catholic social teaching. With the upcoming — oh my it will be great and consequential — encyclical on the environment, plenty of reminders have made the way straight for Pope Francis who will, certainly, only be building on ideas and arguments already stated and affirmed by previous popes.

But here’s a question: why isn’t Innocent III’s condemnation of Magna Carta also part of Roman Catholic social teaching? The pope was, after all, teaching about society. Heck, plenty of popes well before Leo XIII taught about the political order and the duties of Christians. The calls for the Crusades, anyone? Was that a sermon about seeking a better country in the new heavens and new earth? So isn’t the notion of Roman Catholic social teaching a forerunner of what the bishops did at Vatican II — adjusting papal authority and teaching to modern society because those medieval claims about papal supremacy and national illegitimacy were hardly going to fly three centuries after the Peace of Westphalia?

#youcan’tmakethisstuffupwhenyoucan

Before Constantine?

Published on December 6, 2014 by D. G. Hart12 Comments

Yet further indications of the desire for Christendom, but at least this rendition recognizes that the desire for a comprehensive Christianity can turn into totalitarianism (something that neo-Calvinist promoters of a cosmic Christ rarely possess):

For more than 1500 years the Church was a major influence on Western politics. That is how it should be. Ultimate standards matter, and if the Church doesn’t explain what they are and how to apply them someone else will. It’s not an improvement when her authority gives way to that of journalists, advertisers, TV producers, cultural entrepreneurs, and “ethicists.”

That’s what has happened, though. Catholic social doctrine and the political views of the hierarchy have become a minor consideration even for the great majority of Catholics, who vote as other people do and in response to the same concerns. As a result, the political influence of the Church is gone except in special situations like communist Poland, where she served as a focus of national resistance to foreign domination.

Elsewhere, and especially in the West, she seems to have less and less power of leadership or even resistance. She feels ever less entitled to give offense, and can’t proclaim her teachings without doing so, so she falls silent. Nonetheless, she still wants to play a public role, so she has tried to stay in the game by cooperating with more influential players and identifying herself with their projects. Thus, Church leaders have lined up behind causes such as the UN, the EU, various social welfare schemes, relaxation of restrictions on immigration, and so on. The “servant church” has become a servant of others’ causes.

In some ways there appears to be a solid basis for such cooperation. Both the Church and the main tendencies of modern secular politics want a society that brings humanity into a coherent whole that eliminates conflict, fosters cooperation, and is concerned for the worldly needs of each member. So why shouldn’t everyone join together to bring that about?

The problem is that evil systems also share those goals. The communists supported them, the rulers of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World supported them, and ISIS supports them. Basic principles matter, man does not live by bread alone, and the Church should be very careful when she gives her support to political projects whose leaders are not guided by a Catholic or even humane vision. We need to think politically, and ask who is being empowered and what system of things we are helping to bring into existence.

Politics today is extremely ambitious. The abolition of transcendent standards in favor of technology and human will give it an ultimate significance it never had in the past. Projects such as the EU and Obamacare are part of a movement of comprehensive social reconstruction—“Hope and Change”—that serves our rulers as a religion. That movement is based on an understanding of man and the world that rejects human nature, natural law, and any transcendent standard in favor of Choice, otherwise known as the Triumph of the Will.

The result is that we live in a world that is evolving less toward the Cosmic Christ than the Worldly Antichrist.

But again, where was the notion that Christians should play a role in government before the emperor converted (how convenient, a Christian ruler and now Christians start talking about Christian society)? You certainly don’t find it in the New Testament unless you use fancy pants exegesis that lets today’s readers think they know what the original readers understood in the New Testament.

The Allies May (but the Church Does Not) Have Cops

Published on August 20, 2014 by D. G. Hart45 Comments

If you as an American needed to consider how to evaluate the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, would you go to the Gospel Coalition? But what if you wanted to think about it in a Christian manner? Would you go to the New Republic? Say hello to the world of 2k.

Well, in point of fact, American Christians may go to both websites for perspective on the Mike Brown shooting. As an every-square-inch Christian, Thabiti Anyabwile of the Southern Baptist variety thinks evangelicals need to advocate justice as much as the gospel if they are to avoid going the way of flowers of the field:

Around the country evangelical leaders participate in “racial reconciliation” conversations and repeatedly ask, “How can we diversify our church?” or “How can we attract more African-American members?” Why would diverse groups want to belong to an evangelicalism that does not acknowledge their diversity where it hurts when it matters? You want diversity in your membership roles? How about forgetting your membership statistics and further diversifying the picket lines and protests thronged by the disenfranchised in their just fights? We don’t want to be your statistics—whether wrongful death statistics or church membership statistics. We want a living, breathing, risk-taking brotherhood in the gospel lived out where it matters. Until evangelicalism can muster that kind of courage and abandon its privileged, “objective,” distant calls for calm and “gospel”-this or “gospel”-that, it proves itself entirely inadequate for a people who need to see Jesus through the tear gas smoke of injustice.

It can no longer be the case that to be “evangelical” means to care about either the gospel or justice. Evangelicalism must come to understand that justice and mercy flow inextricably from the gospel—both at the cross of Christ as well as in the daily carrying of our crosses. Micah 6:8 is still God’s requirement of us. And it will not do to position one injustice against another, as if to say we need only focus on one thing, or as if to say until this one “greater” injustice is dealt with then all “lesser” crimes need not be attended. Don’t place abortion in opposition to persecuted Christians in Syria or persecuted Christians in Syria in opposition to the Mike Browns. Can not the evangelical heart and mind expand to care about and act against all these things? Should not we risk a bursting heart in order to live a vibrant Christian life? If we can’t, then we should confess and repent of our hypocrisy and partiality, else be done with calling ourselves Christians. True religion cares for widows, orphans and the like.

But over at the New Republic readers discover not a threat — do this or go extinct — but hope. Similar circumstances in Cincinnati in 2001 to those recently in Ferguson led to reforms of law enforcement that have substantially reduced racial tensions:

After the riots, the ACLU, Cincinnati Black United Front, the city of Cincinnati and police union settled the suit with the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement, which made numerous changes to police protocol. Officers are now trained in low-light situations, like confronting a suspect at night in an alley, as was the case in Thomas’s death. The agreement also created the Citizens Complaint Authority to investigate incidents when officers used serious force. Most importantly, it instructed officers to build relationships with the community by soliciting feedback with residents and using all available information to find solutions to problems before necessarily resorting to a law enforcement response. The ACLU of Ohio, which was one of the signatories of the agreement, hails it as “one of the most innovative plans ever devised to improve police-community relations.”

These new policies have not fixed all of the racial injustices in Cincinnati, but they have improved them. In 2010, the Rand Corporation conducted an analysis of the Cincinnati Police Department and found “no evidence of racial differences between the stops of black and those of similarly situated nonblack drivers.” The report also found that some individual officers “stop substantially more black drivers than their peers do.” But that’s still a big improvement over 2001, when one analysis found that black drivers were twice as likely as white ones to be cited for certain traffic violations.

“Now we have a police department that goes around and talks about it in a positive way and they talk about community-oriented policing,” Iris Roley, who was intimately involved in crafting the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “They brag on working with the community and being transparent. We can look backwards and say we did something, we didn’t just complain and moan. As hard as it was, we did something. The police and the community sat at the table and hammered an agreement out.”

“We didn’t realize it at the time, but we accomplished something historic,” Pastor Damon Lynch III, who was one of the leaders of the 2001 protests, also told the Enquirer.

The contrast between the two posts confirms my suspicion that the church does not have the answer to what ails Ferguson (and lends support to the notion that outsiders must think Christians are daffy about politics). That is, the church doesn’t have a solution based on Scripture to curb police violence or change patterns of police surveillance or alter the court’s treatment of African-American criminals (and a lot of people say that policing policies are a pretty darned important factor in African-American perceptions of their communities and sense of injustice). The church does have the gospel. And if everyone in Ferguson repented of their sins, trusted in Christ, were baptized, and joined a gospel-preaching church, the problem of law enforcement might be only less acute. After all, Massachusetts Bay, a colony dominated by the godly (whom the Obedience Boys love), was not free from conflicts between authorities and civilians or from crime or from witches. But the church does not have the manpower, resources, or even the jurisdiction to tackle race relations in Ferguson, the United States, or planet earth.

Anyabwile is not without a plan of action, though:

So here’s my call: Let there be the founding of a new conservative evangelical body with the aim of (1) providing clear, understandable, biblical theological frameworks for the pressing problems of the marginalized coupled with (2) organized calls to action and campaigns consistent with that framework. Let there be a body tasked with answering, “What does the Bible say about justice and mercy for the vulnerable and weak (of which there are many such groups)?” and stating, “Here then is a biblically-informed campaign for a genuine evangelical church living out that faith.” Let the leaders of the movement stand as leaders in this moment.

This is an odd call even on Anyabwile’s terms because in response to readers who wanted him to wait for the facts in Ferguson to emerge, he doubled-down and said we don’t need to wait for the facts:

Third, even though we don’t know “all the facts,” we do know enough facts to speak. Here are four simple facts to consider for all those who think silence is the response. Fact: Mike Brown is dead. Fact: We will never hear his story or see him speak for himself. Fact: His parents are left to grieve. Fact: He has now to face an eternal Judge and receive recompense for deeds done in the body, never again to have opportunity to hear the gospel and be saved.

Well, if he wants us to follow his call for justice, don’t we need a few more facts? Is it not on the border of unfairness or injustice to try to settle disputes or prosecute crimes without the specifics of the case?

But why he thinks a body of conservative evangelicals can come up with the right response to social crises like these is neither obvious nor persuasive. Roman Catholics have a church that is the biggest in the world, with untold resources thanks to the ~~Vatican Bank~~ Institute of Religious Works and related wealth, and an officer who is not bashful about speaking to pressing areas of human suffering and calling the faithful to prayer, empathy, and even action. And what comes of all those papal pronouncements? Not even the church’s theologians teaching at Roman Catholic universities appear to be willing to follow the Holy Father.

So what would come of Anyabwile’s Alliance of Gospel Justice and Mercy? Without a law enforcement agency, not much. The church does not bear the sword. When magistrates were Christians and worked for Christian states, the church could expect someone to enforce its morality (no chance of enforcing sanctification). But without Christian emperors, kings, or city councils, the church only has church discipline. Pretty important in the grand narrative of things. Pretty weak for the here and now, you know, vessels of clay.

So for now, I recommend letting the authorities in Ferguson, Jefferson City, and Washington D.C. sort this out in consultation and empathy with the people of Ferguson. That does mean having to be patient and trust others who may not look trustworthy. But if the Bible teaches us anything, it is the need to persevere.

Postscript: for additional sources about the Michael Brown shooting, readers may go here, here, and here (thanks to Robert Greene). But be advised — all this world, no world to come.

Do You Need a Degree in Society to Teach Socially?

Published on July 19, 2014 by D. G. Hart11 Comments

Thomas Reese reports on efforts to reform the ~~Vatican Bank~~ Institute of Religious Works and makes a point that may take away the entire premise of the church’s social teaching:

No one enters the seminary with the desire to someday be in charge of church finances. Rather, seminarians want to become pastors. Seminaries also do not do a good job training their students to handle church finances. Priests who do develop expertise in church finances do so on the job. It would be extremely rare to find a priest who took an accounting course, let alone one who has an MBA.

As a result, most priests do not understand basic financial practices. They don’t know the right questions, let alone the right answers. At the same time, clericalism means that they have to be in charge of everything. Even if they want to delegate these financial responsibilities to laypeople, they do not know enough to appoint competent people. The temptation is to appoint someone who is deferential or appears pious and trustworthy.

Granted their ignorance of finances, it is no surprise that priests do not do a good job managing church finances.

Do seminarians receive training in international relations, political science, or public health? Why draw the line with finances? After all, when Roman Catholics have a health problem, they go to a physician (for the most part — there is Lourdes after all) not to a priest doctor. And if they have a legal problem, they hire an attorney, not a priest or bishop. So why draw the line with priests? And if priests are ill-equipped to teach in an informed way about society’s problem, how about the bishops? Do they have to study for a Ph.D. in world studies before being promoted? So why do church officials feel compelled to speak what seems like all the time about the news? Isn’t the point of modernity and the differentiation of human existence according to diverse spheres of operation that no one has the competence to speak meaningfully about everything (unless you are a modern w-wist)?

Chalk up another one for the spirituality of the church.

Blame In On the Puritans?

Published on February 27, 2013 by D. G. Hart3 Comments

I am not in the habit of defending the New Englanders. They have lots to answer for (apologies for the dangling preposition). But John Fea’s post on the minimum wage reminded me of how easy it is to cast Puritanism in our image rather than theirs.

Fea quotes from another blog that the language of the minimum wage comes from Roman Catholic Social Teaching:

The term was coined by John A. Ryan, a Catholic priest and the leading figure in the minimum-wage movement. Born to Irish immigrants on a Minnesota farm in 1869, Ryan watched bankers prosper while common laborers struggled to make ends meet. “We must have a more just distribution of wealth,” Ryan wrote in his diary in 1894. “We must have less individualism, more humanity and no absolutely unrestrained competition.”

. . . In 1912, Massachusetts became the first American state to adopt a minimum wage; the following year, eight more states followed suit. But many of these measures were struck down, especially after the Supreme Court voided the District of Columbia’s minimum-wage law in 1923. According to the court, the D.C. measure violated citizens’ “liberty of contract”; it also extracted an “arbitrary payment” from employers.

Nonsense, Ryan replied. The Supreme Court’s decision reflected the “extreme individualism” of America’s “Puritan” heritage, he argued. Americans needed to leaven that tradition with the “social and organic” principles of Catholicism, Ryan added, which emphasized our shared duties to each other.

Ryan’s identification of Puritanism with extreme individualism does not add up since John Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity was almost communistic in its prescriptions for the settlers to care for each other’s needs:

This law of the Gospel propounds likewise a difference of seasons and occasions. There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times. There is a time also when Christians (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their ability, as they of Macedonia (2 Cor. 8). Likewise, community of perils calls for extraordinary liberality, and so doth community in some special service for the church.

Lastly, when there is no other means whereby our Christian brother may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our ability rather than tempt God in putting him upon help by miraculous or extraordinary means. This duty of mercy is exercised in the kinds: giving, lending and forgiving (of a debt).

Question: What rule shall a man observe in giving in respect of the measure?

Answer: If the time and occasion be ordinary he is to give out of his abundance. Let him lay aside as God hath blessed him. If the time and occasion be extraordinary, he must be ruled by them; taking this withal, that then a man cannot likely do too much, especially if he may leave himself and his family under probable means of comfortable subsistence.

Objection: A man must lay up for posterity, the fathers lay up for posterity and children, and he is worse than an infidel that provideth not for his own.

Answer: For the first, it is plain that it being spoken by way of comparison, it must be meant of the ordinary and usual course of fathers, and cannot extend to times and occasions extraordinary. For the other place the Apostle speaks against such as walked inordinately, and it is without question, that he is worse than an infidel who through his own sloth and voluptuousness shall neglect to provide for his family.

Objection: “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” saith Solomon, “and foreseeth the plague;” therefore he must forecast and lay up against evil times when he or his may stand in need of all he can gather.

Answer: This very Argument Solomon useth to persuade to liberality (Eccle. 11), “Cast thy bread upon the waters…for thou knowest not what evil may come upon the land.” Luke 16:9, “Make you friends of the riches of iniquity…” You will ask how this shall be? Very well. For first he that gives to the poor, lends to the Lord and He will repay him even in this life an hundredfold to him or his. The righteous is ever merciful and lendeth, and his seed enjoyeth the blessing; and besides we know what advantage it will be to us in the day of account when many such witnesses shall stand forth for us to witness the improvement of our talent. And I would know of those who plead so much for laying up for time to come, whether they hold that to be Gospel Matthew 6:19, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,” etc. If they acknowledge it, what extent will they allow it? If only to those primitive times, let them consider the reason whereupon our Savior grounds it. The first is that they are subject to the moth, the rust, the thief. Secondly, they will steal away the heart: “where the treasure is there will your heart be also.”

The reasons are of like force at all times. Therefore the exhortation must be general and perpetual, with always in respect of the love and affection to riches and in regard of the things themselves when any special service for the church or particular distress of our brother do call for the use of them; otherwise it is not only lawful but necessary to lay up as Joseph did to have ready upon such occasions, as the Lord (whose stewards we are of them) shall call for them from us. Christ gives us an instance of the first, when he sent his disciples for the donkey, and bids them answer the owner thus, “the Lord hath need of him.” So when the Tabernacle was to be built, He sends to His people to call for their silver and gold, etc., and yields no other reason but that it was for His work. When Elisha comes to the widow of Sareptah and finds her preparing to make ready her pittance for herself and family, he bids her first provide for him, he challenges first God’s part which she must first give before she must serve her own family. All these teach us that the Lord looks that when He is pleased to call for His right in any thing we have, our own interest we have must stand aside till His turn be served. For the other, we need look no further then to that of 1 John 3:17, “He who hath this world’s goods and seeth his brother to need and shuts up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Which comes punctually to this conclusion: If thy brother be in want and thou canst help him, thou needst not make doubt of what thou shouldst do; if thou lovest God thou must help him.

This is not to deny that by the 1920s Americans were not a nation of individualists. But the reasons for that have a lot less to do with the Puritans and more to do with the revivals of the Second Pretty Good Awakening.

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