Quick Quips: Bulletproof Personal Infallibility

It’s time for some more short observations on topics. I write this set about the rebellion against the magisterium and how we excuse it when we find ourselves in the wrong. We do this so well that whenever the Church teaches something we dislike, we automatically treat it as proof of their error. 

Double Standards Make Us Hypocrites

When it comes to people citing Scripture or Church teaching in a partisan attack, it always gets quoted in a way which condemns an opponent but ignores one's own transgressions. The liberal Catholic points to Scripture or Church teaching about charity and care for the poor, condemning his conservative opponent for hypocrisy. But he ignores them on morality. Likewise, the conservative Catholic points out what they have to say about living rightly, but ignores them on the topic of mercy. 

Both of them take pleasure in accusing the other of being bad Christians but both behave hypocritically. They edit Scripture Church teaching to what pleases them and ignore the parts they violate. Our Lord gets transformed into an endorsement of a theological or political position. The problem is, our faith calls us to be both moral and charitable; both just and merciful. If we only obey the faith we profess when it suits us, we disobey and cause scandal to non-believers who can plainly see our hypocrisy.

This does not mean we treat our faith as a checklist of laws to follow. What it means is we must constantly check our behavior and consider whether we are blind to our own wrongdoing. When we discover wrongdoing, we must seek to amend our lives and make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation when needed. It means we must stop making ourselves into Popes and start listening to what the Church’s teaching authority tells us of right and wrong.

If we fail to do that, our actions declare God’s Word and His Church superfluous. When they agree with us, we don’t need them; when they disagree with us, they’re wrong. Who needs a Church that is unnecessary or wrong? If we want to truly bear witness to our faith, let us seek to live all parts of it out of love for Our Lord.

Casting Pearls Before Swine

When it comes to attacking the Church (whether from an anti-Catholic, a radical traditionalist or a liberal dissenter), there is a widely used tactic. This tactic is to take a personal interpretation of the words of the Bible, the Pope or another magisterial document and treat that personal interpretation as if it was the truth and no other interpretation was possible. When the Catholic defending the faith objects to the interpretation, the attacker claims the defender is willfully ignorant and trying to explain away “the truth.” If the defender speaks imprecisely, they pounce and twist words to portray him as holding a position he never held.  If the defender points out that the attacker is factually wrong, the attacker ignores the refutation and continues repeating the same point until the defender gives up in disgust. When the defender does finally walk away, the attacker claims victory, and says nobody could refute their argument.

In terms of reason and logic, this is a sham. There is no dialogue to find truth. The attacker has made up their mind and is only interested in bashing people over the head. It’s simply a case of harassment. When targeted with this tactic, our response should show people of good will what we believe. We should not get into endless debates with people who confuse interpretation of texts with the texts themselves. They’ll just treat the attacks on their interpretations as attacks on the teaching itself.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

A couple of weeks back, I was visiting my father and we watched some Blue Bloods on Netflix. One of those episodes caught my attention. It involved a police officer accused of brutality. Because his bodycam stopped working during the crucial part of the altercation, activists accused him of turning it off. During the episode, the police chief and some of his staff debated bodycams. The police chief said what he disliked about them was they testified to the fact that people presumed the police officer was lying unless there was proof to the contrary.

In the real world, we can (and do) argue about real police brutality and whether they prove a national problem, a regional problem or individual problems, but the program made a good point. It’s unjust to automatically assume one group is guilty until proven innocent. But I’m not going to argue about the police. I write about the Church and morality, after all. What I want to explore is tying together how the above musings illustrate how we assume the Pope and bishops in communion with him are in error unless proven otherwise. 

When the Pope or a bishop speaks about a moral obligation where we’re in the wrong, we respond by questioning their orthodoxy. When the Pope or a bishop speaks in a way when there is more than one interpretation, we choose the one that agrees with what we think. When we want our bad behavior justified, we pick an interpretation favoring it. When we want to disobey the Pope’s teaching on a subject, we choose the interpretation making him look bad. We never ask whether we’re in the wrong. 

As Catholics, we believe Our Lord founded the Church and gave her His authority. We believe He promised to be with the Church always and protect her from error—so long as we happen to agree with the Church. But once we disagree, we presume the Church is guilty of error unless she uses a precise phrasing saying no more and no less than what we demand as refutation. Of course, we make ourselves the judge of that evaluation, so we are never in the wrong.

When we do this, we become just as hypocritical as the people we denounce for disobeying the parts of Church teaching we follow. We don’t bear witness to Our Lord and we don’t evangelize. Instead we tell people they can do whatever they will, excusing their own behavior and condemning the behavior they dislike. Perhaps the first thing to do to evangelize our nation again is to start with our own repentance.

Persecution: American Style

Western nations attacking Christians don’t normally use the violent, brutal attacks we associate with the term “persecution.” Because of that, it is easy to pretend that Western Christians are not targeted for their beliefs. But that’s the fallacy of relative privation. The fact that attacks on Christians in Country A are far worse than harassment of Christians in Country B does not mean the situation in Country B is not unjust.

In the West, attacks on Christians begin over teachings against popular vices. Foes portray Christian opposition to moral wrongs as hating the people who commit them. Then they accuse Christians of violating an esteemed cultural value out of bad will. These accusations justify laws (or, more commonly, executive action and court rulings) against the alleged wrongdoing of Christians. When Christians insist on obeying their faith despite unjust laws, foes harass them by Criminal and Civil complaints aimed at forcing compliance. 

Political and cultural elites argue that the injustice is just a consequence of Christians doing wrong. If they would abandon their “bigotry,” they would not face legal harassment. The problem is, they accuse us of wrongdoing, but we are not guilty of wrongdoing. We deny that we base our moral beliefs on the hatred of people who do what we profess is wrong. They must prove their accusation. People cannot simply assume it is true.

In response, foes bring up the bigoted behavior of a few who profess to be Christians. The Westboro Baptist Church was a popularly cited bugbear before the group fell into obscurity. They argue that groups like this prove bigotry on the part of Christians. This means that those who deplore stereotypes stereotype us. They claim (and we agree) that people can’t assume all Muslims are terrorists or that all Hispanics are illegal aliens just because some are. But they do use fringe group Christians to argue all Christians are bigots.

To avoid guilt in this persecution, Americans must learn that our believing certain acts are morally wrong does not mean we hate those who do those acts. Yes, some Christians confuse opposing evil with hating evil-doers. You condemn them. But so do we. Just behavior demands you investigate accusations against Christians, not assuming our moral beliefs are proof of our guilt and claiming the only defense is to renounce our beliefs.

Please, do not try to equate our moral objections with America’s shameful legacy of slavery and segregation. We don’t deny the human rights of any sinner—for then we would have to deny them to ourselves—but we do deny that law can declare a sinful act the same as a morally good act. Do not assume we want to reinstate laws and punishments from past centuries to punish sinners. We’re also shocked by what nations saw as necessary to deter crime that harmed society [1]. But saying theft is wrong does not mean we think chopping off the hands of a thief is right. Even when an act is evil, there can be unjust and disproportionate punishments in response.

Also, please do not assume that your lack of knowledge of what we believe and why we believe it means we have no justification but bigotry when we say things are wrong, Just because a foe cannot imagine why we believe X is wrong does not mean we have no valid reason. I can speak only as a Catholic [I leave it to the Orthodox and Protestants to explain their own reasons when it differs with the Catholic reasoning] but we do have 2000 years of moral theology looking into acts, why they are wrong and what to remember for the moral considerations about personal responsibility. Our goal is not coercion or punishment. Our goal is reconciling the sinner with God. That means turning away from wrongdoing and doing what is right.

Foes may say they think our ideas of morality are wrong. But if they believe we are wrong, then they have an obligation to show why they are right and we are wrong—with the same obligation to answer criticisms of their claims that they demand of us. They cannot accuse us of “forcing views on others” and then demand we accept their views without question. That’s not the values America was founded over. That’s partisan hypocrisy worthy of the old Soviet Union, and should have no part in American discourse.

 

 

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[1] Of course, remember that France as a secular nation did not abolish the guillotine until 1980, so perhaps we shouldn’t think we’re so far ahead of those times as we would like to think?

Thoughts on Catholic Moral Teaching and Law

When people attack the Catholic Church and her teaching on morality, they point to laws in past eras that were brutal by our standards. They argue that these past laws show that the teaching that "X is a sin” caused brutal punishments. That presumes law and morality are the same, which is false. Not all sins are against the law, and sometimes law interferes with moral behavior. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction:

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and suchlike.

 

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, STh., I-II q.96 a.2 resp. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne,).

In other words, Not every sin was against the law in Christian societies. Morality distinguishes between right and wrong behavior. Morality tells what we must do or must not do regardless of what the law says. If theft is wrong, then we must not steal even if the law allows it. But while morality deals with what we must or must not do, law deals with what penalty we give when people violate morality in such a way that harms human society. Morality does not change over time, but laws can change over time.

Morality does not change from saying “X is good” to “X is wrong.” Theft was wrong a thousand years ago, is wrong today, and will be wrong a thousand years from now. Even so, law from a thousand years ago based on the morality that theft is wrong was different than the law today and the law based on that morality a thousand years from now will be different from the law today. We can and must adjust law when situations merit a gentler response, provided that gentler response is just.

For example, the use of the Death Penalty is not unjust by nature. But when society and technology advances to the point that the criminal can be safely contained without using it, then we can adjust the law so the death penalty is not easily applied. The change of the law does not mean Church teaching on the death penalty is wrong. It means we can adjust the law when the death penalty is not needed to protect the innocent from the criminal.

That’s assuming that the law is based on morality. Sometimes it comes from the vicious customs of a society. For example, slavery, lynching and segregation in the United States, Even though America began as a Christian nation, they adopted vicious customs which had been already condemned by the Church. For example, the Church condemned the reemergence of slavery in 1435—long before the Europeans encountered the New World. Despite this fact, unjust laws continued to treat blacks as property and even some Catholics in the United States owned slaves (just as how some Catholics support abortion today).

Often times, laws stayed in place from before a nation became Christian. Burning at the stake was a pagan Germanic practice. So were trials by ordeal. Catholics did not invent them. Should Christians have changed them? Yes. Do they show that some high ranking Catholics did wrong things? Yes. Do these things show that Catholics were worse than others? They absolutely do not! What they tell us is Christians can be as blind to cultural vices as everyone else.

When it comes to crafting or reforming law, we need to remember three things:

1. We must be aware of objective right and wrong. 
2. We must know which wrongs harm society.
3. We must assess the proportionate penalty for doing wrongs that harm society.

The Church does these things. She teaches us what right and wrong are. She warns us of wrongs harming society. She also speaks out against laws that are unjustly harsh or lenient. Unfortunately today, just as in the past, some Catholics have not kept these things in mind and instead passed laws which fail one or more of these criteria. But what people overlook is that the Church also expands our moral knowledge. In applying it to new situations, the Church brings us to deeper understandings we did not have in past centuries.

We cannot create just laws by eliminating our Christian moral roots. We can only create them by being vigilant, studying why things are right or wrong and finding just ways of protecting society from harm.

Pope Francis, Mercy, and Misrepresentation

Introduction

Those who think the Pope’s emphasis on mercy supports laxity—whether critics or people who wrongly hope for change of teaching—misunderstand what mercy is. I find that Bishop Robert Barron has a good response, rejecting that view:

Many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness.

Barron, Robert (2016-03-31). Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism (Kindle Locations 199-201). Word on Fire. Kindle Edition.

His response is a good one. Jesus showed mercy to sinners. He did not tell the that their sins did not matter. The Pope doesn’t tell people that their sins do not matter either. What the Pope does say is it is not enough to tell people what is wrong. We also have to help them get back to what is right.

The Error of Contrast

While I reject the misrepresentation of Pope Francis, I do understand how they got to that point. His predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, had to take on a world openly hostile to the Catholic moral teaching, especially on sexual morality and the sanctity of life. These two Popes spoke to the world, showing why its values were harmful. The world, in response, misrepresented these Popes as caring only “about rules” while ignoring human suffering. They downplayed what these Popes had to say about mercy and love.

The error people make about Pope Francis is they assume his emphasis on bringing sinners back to a true relationship with God is contradicting his predecessors instead of complementing them. His critics and those who wrongly hope he is changing teaching and practice fall into the either-or fallacy. They assume Popes either emphasize teaching or emphasize mercy. The problem with looking at things this way is you will equate mercy with laxity instead of with love, and as Bishop Barron points out, "Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner.” [*]

Our problem in looking at mercy as laxity is it is like wearing a defective pair of glasses. It distorts what we see until we take them off. People have to go past their perception of what they think is there and seek what really is. That means becoming self-aware of our flaws and learning more about the depth of our Catholic teaching, instead of assuming that what we know is that depth.

Confusing Interpretation With Assumption of Meaning

People who don’t do this have gone badly wrong about Pope Francis. They see quotes like “Who am I to judge?” and “I could say ‘yes,' and that’s it” [†] but do not see those words in context. They use “Who am I to judge?” to claim the Pope sees same sex activity as morally acceptable, and “I could say ‘yes,’ and that’s it” as encouraging the divorced and remarried to receive the Eucharist.

But theology doesn’t work that way. You can’t just take a single verse of Scripture or a line from the Pope’s words and contrast it with a single line from an earlier document. That ignores context. Nothing taught by the Church exists in a vacuum. Whether it is an anti-Catholic citing “Call no man father” (see Matthew 23:9) or a person citing footnote 351 in Amoris Lætitia, or a Papal Press Conference, one cannot build a claim around one quote. We have to investigate context and intention to see how it is intended.

Peter Kreeft described it this way in a Socratic dialogue:

Socrates: I think you are confusing belief with interpretation.

Flatland: No, I'm just saying we have to interpret a book in light of our beliefs.

Socrates: And I'm saying we must not do that.

Flatland: Why not?

Socrates: If you wrote a book to tell other people what your beliefs were, and I read it and interpreted it in light of my beliefs, which were different from yours, would you be happy?

Flatland: If you disagreed with me? Why not? You're free to make up your own mind.

Socrates: No, I said interpreted the book in light of my beliefs. For instance, if you wrote a book against miracles and I believed in miracles, and I interpreted your book as a defense of miracles, would you be happy?

Flatland: Of course not. That's misinterpretation.

Socrates: Even if it were my honest belief?

Flatland: Oh, I see. We have to interpret a book in light of the author's beliefs, and criticize it in light of our own.

Socrates: Precisely. Otherwise we are imposing our views on another.

Peter Kreeft. Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ (Kindle Locations 749-755). Kindle Edition.

So, if Pope Francis does not intend for his teachings to justify things people accuse him of justifying, they are making an error by assuming their belief is what he meant.

Exploring context does not mean “explaining away what he said.” It is investigating whether an opinion about the Pope’s intention is accurate If it is not, we must stop repeating the allegation as if it were true. That’s why we can’t accept the rushed mainstream media and anti-Francis blogs as true. By quoting things without considering the context, they cannot provide a trustworthy analysis of what the Pope intends.

Amoris Lætitia, Evangelii Gaudium and Footnotes 

Let’s look at one example where people are arguing about What It All Means when it all revolves from one point taken out of context. That item is Footnote #351 from Amoris Lætitia. People are arguing over one point in that footnote:  "I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid., 47: 1039).” People who interpret that as justifying Eucharist for the divorced/remarried (whether they favor it or oppose it) argue that the Pope was talking about the divorced and remarried in ¶305. From that, they accuse him of changing teaching or practice. But ¶305 is not dealing with changing rules about Sacraments. It is about priests not just reciting rules and assuming that all people in the same situation share the same level of culpability. It is about considering the culpability of the individual.

Evangelii Gaudium ¶47 (referenced in Amoris) happens to be about the fact that even Catholics who are living in opposition to Church teaching are not cut off entirely from the Church, and should join in at the level which is allowed to them. This section of Evangelii has its own footnote which references two early Christian Fathers on one not staying away from the Eucharist just because he is a sinner. [§]. But we can know Pope Francis does not use these citations to justify reception of the Eucharist. In his press conference returning from Mexico, he spoke this way:

Integrating in the Church doesn’t mean receiving communion. I know married Catholics in a second union who go to church, who go to church once or twice a year and say I want communion, as if joining in Communion were an award. It’s a work towards integration, all doors are open, but we cannot say, ‘from here on they can have communion.’ This would be an injury also to marriage, to the couple, because it wouldn’t allow them to proceed on this path of integration. And those two were happy. They used a very beautiful expression: we don’t receive Eucharistic communion, but we receive communion when we visit hospitals and in this and this and this. Their integration is that. 

In other words, when asked what he meant by integration, he explicitly said that it did not automatically mean “Eucharist.” When Pope Francis speaks of a path, he means exactly that. It’s a path back to reconciliation with God. That path calls priests and bishops to go beyond citing rules and helping sinners reconcile with God through a process. Some people may be in situations where they can receive the Eucharist.

Here’s an example. When the synod process began, I met many angry women on Facebook. They were angry because they were unjustly divorced by their husbands, and thought it not receiving the Eucharist was unjust. As the comments continued, we discovered something. Some of those women had never  remarried. They stayed away from the sacraments because they thought divorce alone barred them. They were amazed to discover they were never denied the Eucharist to begin with.

Not everybody is in an easy fix situation. But not all situations are impossible to reconcile with people of good will seeking to make things right. Even in situations where the person will not change their relationship, the Pope says not to give up on them. They’re still part of the Church even if their situation prevents them from receiving the Eucharist. As he wrote in Amoris Lætitia ¶309,

The Bride of Christ must pattern her behaviour after the Son of God who goes out to everyone with- out exception”.358 She knows that Jesus himself is the shepherd of the hundred, not just of the ninety-nine. He loves them all. On the basis of this realization, it will become possible for “the balm of mercy to reach everyone, believers and those far away, as a sign that the kingdom of God is already present in our midst”. 

In that parable, the shepherd was not content with the 99 sheep that did not stray. He went after the 100th sheep that strayed. That is what this chapter of the Apostolic Exhortation is about. Not permitting sin. It’s about finding and helping those who did stray back to the flock.

Conclusion: Avoiding Eisegesis and Circular Reasoning

To accuse the Pope of promoting “Communion for the Divorced and Remarried,” a person must start with a preconceived notion that the Pope intends to do this.It’s begging the question, assuming something is true when accusers need to prove their claim. With this fallacy, every bit of “evidence” against the Pope entirely depends on the accusation being true—which is what we insist they prove first before we accept it. If one does not read personal assumptions into the Pope’s words and actions, what he says and does is entirely in keeping with his predecessors and what the Church has always taught.

People believe the Pope is heterodox because they interpret his words as changing the Church teaching in a break from what cannot change. The problem is, they interpret his words as being a break from unchangeable teaching because they believe the Pope is heterodox. That’s arguing in a circle. Each part depends on the other, but neither part stands on its own. Mistrust of the Holy Father builds into a monstrous falsehood that destroys people’s trust in God protecting His Church. We must reject this spurious reasoning that undermines the Holy Father and stop claiming his calls for mercy are calls for laxity.

 

______________________

[*] (Barron, Robert (2016-03-31). Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism (Kindle Locations 615-616). Word on Fire. Kindle Edition).

[†] Some Catholics have taken the translation of the Italian word Punto as finality ignoring everything he said after.

[§] Footnote 51 of Evangelii Gaudium reads: 

Cf. Saint Ambrose, De Sacramentis, IV, 6, 28: PL 16, 464: “I must receive it always, so that it may always forgive my sins. If I sin continually, I must always have a remedy”; ID., op. cit., IV, 5, 24: PL 16, 463: “Those who ate manna died; those who eat this body will obtain the forgiveness of their sins”; Saint Cyril of Alexandria, In Joh. Evang., IV, 2: PG 73, 584–585: “I examined myself and I found myself unworthy. To those who speak thus I say: when will you be worthy? When at last you present yourself before Christ? And if your sins prevent you from drawing nigh, and you never cease to fall—for, as the Psalm says, ‘what man knows his faults?’—will you remain without partaking of the sanctification that gives life for eternity?”

 

 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, Apostolic Exhortation (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013).

The Surreal World of Radical Traditionalism

Introduction

Membership in the Catholic Church is different from memberships in other religious groups. Unlike other religious bodies that simply insist on members accepting the authority of holy books or certain practices, the Catholic Church also insists her Pope and bishops are the successors to the Apostles and have the same authority which Our Lord gave to the Apostles. To reject the authority of the Pope and bishops is far more serious than a Presbyterian rejecting the authority of his minister. The Presbyterian can go to another denomination or to another church within his denomination and still be Protestant. But a Catholic who denies the teaching authority of the Pope and bishops has damaged their relationship with the Church we profess was founded by Christ.

That’s a serious matter. The person for whom membership in the Catholic Church is important, must justify rejecting the authority of the Pope and bishops in communion with him by arguing that he is not in opposition to the Church. Rather he is being faithful in larger matters. The people who do this have different motivations and political leanings. Some try to argue that the Church teaching is harsher than Our Lord ever intended and this justifies disobedience. But others claim that they follow the Catholic teaching as it was always practiced, claiming that the Church fell into error beginning with St. John XXIII and will be in error until the Church rejects Vatican II and all the changes which followed. This is the position of Radical Traditionalism.

Making Distinctions

Before continuing, we need to make some distinctions. A radical traditionalist differs from the Catholic who simply prefers the pre-Vatican II form of worship and devotion (commonly called “traditionalist.” [†] The traditionalist may wish the Church handled things differently, but recognizes the magisterium today has the authority to decide on these matters and seeks to obey despite misgivings over their prudence. The radical traditionalist rejects the authority of the magisterium when that authority challenges something they hold dear.

We need to remember that while all radical traditionalists are traditionalists, not all traditionalists are radical traditionalists. So we need to be careful not to assume that a Catholic who prefers the extraordinary form of the Mass must be guilty of disobedience. All A = B does not mean All B is A.

[Just because All A is B does not mean All B is A]

Radical traditionalists have many different factions. It ranges from people who stay within the Church while sniping at the Pope and bishops to those openly denying that the Pope is the Pope. Because of these factions, criticisms of the errors from the extreme side of radical traditionalism won’t apply to the “mainstream” versions, but all versions prefer their own interpretations to any teaching they disagree with. They claim to be the survival of truth within the Church while the Pope and bishops fall into error. They never assume that they fell into error. 

Begging the Question through Invented Theologies

To justify his claim, the radical traditionalist invents a theology that works this way. Based on the opinions of a few theologians who defended the Papacy in the 16th and 17th centuries, they claim that if a Pope teaches heresy his teachings cannot bind (some even claim this means he is no longer Pope). From that assumption, they argue that a difference exists between what the current Pope said and what the Church taught in earlier centuries. From that claimed difference, they claim the current Pope is a heretic. From this, they conclude with the argument that they can ignore (or sometimes, depose) the Pope.

The problem with this argument is this: It is the Begging the Question fallacy. The radical traditionalist takes as given several things which they have to prove before we can accept their claims as true.

1. They have to prove that the theological positions in the writings of certain saints were more than just theological opinions.
2. They have to prove that their interpretation of past Church documents are accurate and in keeping with magisterial interpretation
3. They have to prove that their citation of past Church documents have the proper context
4. They have to prove that their interpretation of Pope Francis is the same as his intention
5. They have to prove that what Pope Francis intends to say is in fact error that contradicts past documents.
6. They have to prove that they have authority in making these determinations.

They do none of these things. Instead they beg the question, appealing to their own non-magisterial interpretation against the magisterial interpretation of the Pope and bishops. But no matter how many arguments they make over how the Pope goes against an obscure document, they all assume exactly what they have to prove: That they, not the Pope, have properly understood the document. But only the Pope and bishops in communion with him can judge how to best apply past teaching documents to today’s situations. Not the layman. So, no matter how eloquent the radical traditionalist might be, they simply offer opinions, not authoritative teaching.

The Pope and Bishops, Not the Radical Traditionalists, Interpret and Apply Church Teaching

Once we recognize this, we can say about the radical traditionalist, “The emperor has no clothes.” He or she can't pass judgment on the Pope or bishops, or call them heretics. As St. John Paul II pointed out, radical traditionalism has a fundamental flaw. They have

...an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth".

 

But especially contradictory is a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops. It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his Church. 

 John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei #4

So, in the eyes of the Church herself, the person who rejects the authority of the Pope and bishops in communion with him is starting in error and ending in error. They can rage against the Pope for writing about social justice or how to help people in an invalid marriage, but their accusations of heresy have no authority. Canon 1404 tells us, “The First See is judged by no one.” Not a Council, not a personal interpretation of past Church documents.

Forgetting God’s Hand in the Church

Radical traditionalists falsely accuse other Catholics of “papolatry” when these Catholics insist on hearing the Pope and ignoring their accusations. They accuse us of believing the Pope cannot sin and of being blind because we say to the radical traditionalist, “You’re the one who is wrong.” But they forget what we remember: God is with His Church and protects her from teaching error. That’s vital. If the Church can bind error or loose sin, we can never know when she was right. We could only say we think she was right when we happen to agree.

But if God’s promised to be with the Church always (Matthew 28:20) and that the gates of hell will not prevail (Matthew 16:18), then we can have faith that He will protect the Church from allowing sin or forbidding moral obligations before God. That protection does not mean that old laws from the Papal States or certain condemnations given will be just. Those are not things that God protects from error. But God does command us to obey His Church (Luke 10:16, Matthew 18:17). Even if an individual Pope's personal behavior goes against our moral teaching, that does not remove his authority of binding and loosing (Matthew 23:2-3). 

The radical traditionalist has some bizarre ideas. He accepts that God prevented bad Popes like Benedict IX, John XII or Alexander VI from using their teaching office to justify their sins. But he assumes that Pope Francis uses his teaching office to approve error and sin left and right. So does God protect His Church or doesn’t He? The Catholic faith tells us He does, and Popes before 1958 [*] insisted on obedience to even the ordinary magisterium of the Church. For example, Pope Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis:

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”; 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.

 

 Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals: 1939–1958 (Ypsilanti, MI: The Pierian Press, 1990), 178.

We can have faith in God to protect His Church or we can deny that He does. But God insists we obey the Church, and the Church has consistently taught that this obedience is not limited to a certain era. So we have a choice. We can either have faith that God will protect His Church from teaching error or we can pretend He does not when we dislike Church teaching. But God obliges us to obey the Pope when he intends to teach. We must obey God rather than men. God decrees we obey His Church. So to obey His Church is to obey Him and to reject His Church is to reject Him. Given that the radical traditionalist seeks excuses not to obey the Pope, we must say that their theology is counterfeit and has no authority over and against the Pope and bishops in communion with him..

 

_____________________________

[†] It’s important to make that distinction. Traditionalist ≠ Radical  Traditionalist. The traditionalist who faithfully follows the Church under the current Pope should not think I am indicting them alongside the radical traditionalist.

[*] The radical traditionalist usually believes there was a radical change in the Church beginning with the pontificate of St. John XXIII

Seeking Truth: The Foolishness of "That's Just YOUR Opinion"

I find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I come across people who write off Catholic teaching with some variant of “that’s just your opinion.” I shake my head because rationally that means we can write off their views of right and wrong on the same grounds. If one rejects a Christian’s arguments on these grounds, one can reject the arguments of an atheist on the same grounds. Under those assumptions, we can’t find truth about anything and we can only use legal or physical force to compel anyone to accept something. It’s ironic that people who claim to champion reason and enlightenment should promote a throwback to “Do what I say or I will bash you with my club!"

It’s not surprising that people believe this tripe. I recall a teacher in High School once give us a couplet: "Opinions are never right or wrong. Opinions are only weak or strong.“ The couplet confuses “opinion” with “preference” or “feeling,” leading to people thinking that a religious view on abortion is no different than a preference for a flavor of ice cream. Many dictionaries give that interpretation to opinion as well. But that is only one of the meanings.

An opinion on matters of right and wrong, as Merriam-Webster describes it, “implies a conclusion thought out yet open to dispute.” This means that the value of the opinion depends on how it matches reality. A person may dispute what another says about right and wrong, but the value of the dispute also depends on how it fits reality. This means when people disagree on moral obligation, we have an obligation to investigate what is right, not simply dismissing what we dislike.

The problem is, the modern rejection of Christian morality is not based on truth or facts. Opponents distort Christian teaching and opponents accuse us of bad will (bigotry, etc.). Since opponents misrepresent our teachings and motives, they do not refute us. Nor do they prove we hate people belonging to certain groups popular with political and cultural elites. What they do is slander us, whether they do so out of ignorance or out of hostility.

To avoid slander or misrepresentation, people must investigate claims to see if a claim is true. If it is not true, we must stop repeating it. If it is true, we must act in accord with it. For example, when a culture learns that human beings are equal regardless of ethnicity, it can no longer treat some ethnicities as less than human. That means we must abandon slavery, segregation and racial hatred.

Those are obvious examples. Few people support those evils any longer. But people forget that today’s elites defend today’s evils in the same way that elites in past centuries defended slavery and segregation. For example, abortion denies the humanity of a fetus in the same way that slavery denied the humanity of a certain ethnicity. On the other hand, people assume moral objections against behaviors are the same thing as racism in the past. For example, some people see the Church opposing “same sex marriage” as the modern version of racism and segregation. But the Church does not see people with same sex attraction as less than human, nor justify mistreatment (legal, physical or in other ways) against them. 

What the Church does do is deny that de facto unions are the same thing as marriage, so we should not treat them like marriage. In making this denial, the Church offers definitions about the purpose of marriage and family. A person might disagree with how the Church defines these things, but one has to show that the Church speaks falsely in order to refute her. But proving that is not done by shouting words like “homophobe” or “bigot” (the common response).

Reason demands we examine the truth of claims and not shout down things we dislike hearing. If Catholics oppose abortion on the grounds that the unborn child is a human person, then accusing Catholics of being “anti-woman” is speaking falsely. If Catholics oppose “same sex marriage” on the grounds that marriage between one man and one woman open to the possibility of raising children is the basis of the family, it is wrong to use epithets like “homophobe” and “hateful."

Before anyone asks, yes, this means Christians must also use reason and examine truth, not shouting down opponents. Yes, some Christians do make the rest look bad by rashly judging motives and misrepresenting arguments. That is not how God calls us to behave. We must refute falsehood with truth, not with the tactics of those who hate us. An educated Catholic, faithful to the teachings of his Church will deplore the tactics of the Westboro Baptist Church as being unjust. If a Catholic should embrace those tactics, he does wrong.

But because the Church does oblige us to behave rightly, blaming the Church for those who behave wrongly is unjust. There is a difference between Catholics behaving hypocritically by ignoring Church teaching and Catholics behaving badly because they follow Church teaching. Assessing where blame lies calls for us to discover the truth in a situation, not merely assuming an unpopular opinion caused bad behavior.

But, doing that will force people to recognize that their accusations against the Church are false. That’s why people will continue to treat Catholic teaching as odious opinions instead of seeking the truth about us.

On Objecting Celebrities, Hypocrisy, and Charges of Intolerance

In recent days, we’ve seen Bruce Springsteen, Brian Adams and Ringo Starr cancel concerts in states which have religious freedom laws. The argument used is that they object to intolerance (or a similar descriptor) in the law and will not give concerts there so long as these laws exist. Putting aside any questions of sincerity [*] some have raised, what we have is a moral argument. These musicians believe that something is morally wrong and refuse to play where people could misinterpret their actions as supporting something they believe is morally wrong.

But their action is ironic. The laws they protest are laws aimed at blocking legal action targeting Christians for refusing to take part in something they think morally wrong. In other words, sincere or not, to oppose religious freedom laws they appeal to the same moral argument that these laws protect. That leads us to the problem: Why are these laws seen as necessary? Because recent laws and judicial activism refuse to accept the right of religion to conscientious objection. Activist judges and lawmakers claim moral obligation in religion is discrimination against people who reject moral obligation in religion. Such actions result in governments dictating to the Church what religious beliefs they can hold.

Activists justify their actions through false accusations and misrepresentation, accusing Christians of bias and hatred against individuals committing acts their religion teaches is wrong. They invoke the infamous segregation laws in American History, conjuring up images of “Whites only” businesses. The problem is, nobody asks whether Christian businesses want segregation type “rights.” Activists assume this link exists and accuse Christians of “bigotry.” But if bigotry is not our motive, then the charge is false. Yes, I am sure activists can come up with examples like the Westboro Baptists and Christians who think that Christian teaching justifies mistreatment. But it does not follow that all Christians support the actions of extremists. 

People need to investigate why Christians believe certain actions are wrong, not assume that bad will is the only possible motive for their beliefs. Assuming bad will on the basis of a few extremists is just as bigoted as assuming all Muslims are terrorists or all African Americans are felons—it assumes that the worst behavior by some proves guilt by the whole. Only when one proves that a repugnant practice follows directly from Church teaching can one accuse the Church of bigotry.

I won’t talk on the teaching of non-Catholics here. That would be speaking outside of my area of knowledge. My concern is for defending the Catholic understanding of moral responsibility, under attack from a number of opponents—generally revolving around sexual morality. The Catholic teaching on sexual morality starts with a proper understanding of what sexuality is for. We believe God designed the sexual act as part of a lifelong relationship between one man and one woman, open to the possibility of the transmission of life. Actions which violate this design are a misuse of the sexual act.

When the government tries to coerce Catholic institutions and businesses into providing services or hiring people that go against their moral obligation to pursue good and oppose evil, the government is violating our religious freedom by trying to dictate which of our beliefs are allowed or forbidden. But since the Constitution technically forbids government interference in this way, they accuse us of intolerance, claiming we discriminate against women or people with same sex attraction. Since certain forms of discrimination are forbidden and repellant, the tactic is to use the Guilt By Association fallacy—arguing that our religious beliefs are the same as racial prejudice.

Proving our “guilt” (which we deny) means the government has to prove prejudice exists. Accusing us of prejudice is an unproven charge. Believing an action is morally wrong is nothing like hatred of a member of an ethnic group because of his skin color. Believing objective truth exists and believing people must live according to it is not bigotry. If activists believe we are wrong, then let them prove it and offer proof for their own beliefs of right and wrong. If anybody looks, they can find explanations for what we believe and why we believe it. But people who oppose us think it is enough to say “You’re wrong!” to us, while demonstrating they have no idea what we believe or why.

If we are angry, if we dispute you in Facebook or on forums, we act because we resent people telling lies about us and our beliefs. We do not hate women or people with same sex attraction. We do not discriminate against them. We believe certain actions are wrong and try to live according to those beliefs. We oppose mistreatment of people who do wrong. Pointing to how law worked in the Middle Ages and Renaissance indicts the whole world, not just Christians of the time, and has nothing to do with what is good or evil. Elites certainly cannot equate our behavior with religious intolerance in the Middle East.

Denying our right to do as we ought before God (remember, we deny that the “But what about…?” accusations apply to us) is not defending civil rights. It violates our civil rights as Americans. When celebrities and businesses institute boycotts trying to force us to change, they are the ones guilty of what they accuse us of doing. They literally saw off the branch they sit on, invoking the freedom they attack.

They should consider this well. Once they attack the laws designed to protect the right to refuse doing something morally wrong, they’ve removed the laws that protect their own moral concerns. Then they’re at the mercy of a government with no sympathy for their objections. Think about it.

 

_________________________

[*] For example, these musicians gave concerts in countries where homosexuality is illegal. Questions about why they didn’t take a stand there go unanswered.

Do We Heed the Call to Mercy?

To avoid accusations of harboring sympathies, I’ll start off by saying that the recent antics of certain radical traditionalists openly rejecting Pope Francis and disavowing Cardinal Burke over Amoris Lætitia was wrong. Effectively it was an elevation of oneself over the authority God gave His Church. I’ll also say that the politically liberal Catholics who support and promote things directly condemned by the Catholic Church are wrong for the same reason. Neither group practices the Catholic faith properly because both groups reject something crucial—the fact that the Church teaches with the authority given by Christ.

Now that I made clear that I have no sympathy for rebellion against the Church (in this day and age, people forget it quickly), I want to cover something we might be doing wrong in responding with these people. That response is one of ridicule and contempt shown for those at odds with Church teaching. The other day, I posted this meme in different pages on Facebook:

I received some responses that missed the point. Some said it was an “easy dilemma” and that most people, even those who trust in themselves would quickly choose one of the buttons without hesitating. I think some would find it easy. But that wasn’t the point. What we must consider is the case of a person who long believed the Church was from God but suddenly find themselves at odds with her. They feel trapped in an impossible situation: The Church teaches something they believe they cannot accept. Their reason and emotions battle for control of their will—to choose whether to admit “I am wrong” or to refuse to bend, deciding “the Church is wrong."

Personally, I have never been in that situation, and pray that I never am. But we should all remember the words of St. Paul: “Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). If we have struggled in the past, let us remember how hard it was. If we have not struggled, let us not think it is easy.

I don’t say we must accept their errors. What I say is to look at what Pope Francis said in Amoris Lætitia:

The Bride of Christ must pattern her behaviour after the Son of God who goes out to everyone without exception”.  She knows that Jesus himself is the shepherd of the hundred, not just of the ninety-nine. He loves them all. On the basis of this realization, it will become possible for “the balm of mercy to reach everyone, believers and those far away, as a sign that the kingdom of God is already present in our midst”. [¶309]

He was writing about those who were in irregular marriages needing outreach and compassion. But I believe this applies to other sinners as well. The radical traditionalist and the Catholic who calls evil “good.” Our Lord warned us, in the parable of the merciless servant:

³² His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. ³³ Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ ³⁴ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. ³⁵  So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

 

 New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Mt 18:32–35.

Admonishing the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy. But if we are harsh and harden sinners in their views or drive them to despair, we have not shown mercy, no matter how eloquent we are (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

So this is my thought. When we view the scandals of the radical traditionalist or the “pro-choice” Catholic, are we seeing them as lost sheep in need of rescue? Or are we seeing them as mortal enemies? I believe God calls us to choose the first action. I don’t say this will be easy. I’ve had to block some individuals on Facebook because their abusiveness was spiritually harmful and I think I was justified in doing it. But sometimes we mock these people instead of pray for them. That’s not in keeping with how we should behave.

Some people may be abusive, offering us slander for our attempts to make Our Lord’s way known. We cannot change how others treat us, but we can change how we treat others. It’s hard. I get satisfaction over vanquishing abusive attackers with devastating witticisms. But do I act as a missionary for God when I behave this way? I doubt it.

I don’t intend to judge any individual here. Lord knows I’m guilty here too. I didn’t have any bloggers or Facebook pages in mind when I wrote this. I just write this because I felt we need to look at what we say and do and how others might receive those words and actions. Even if those we dialogue with reject us, there may be others hearing or reading the exchanges. How we behave might be the only witness to what a Christian is called to be—or it might be a false witness that turns people away from the truth, thinking it is of no value.

I’m just saying we should consider the witness we bear in our behavior and choice of words.

Misreading Amoris Lætitia: When Catholics Don't Know that they Don't Know

Imagine this scenario. A doctor heading a prestigious medical association produces an official document involving health and dealing with helping people afflicted by difficult situations. In response, a group of people show up on the internet, denouncing this document, accusing him of incompetence, and claiming his article goes against all medical knowledge that preceded it. Would you accept the opinions of these people on their say so? Or would you look into their qualifications to comment on the matter before accepting their views over the head of the medical association?

What if you found out that these critics have been hostile to this doctor from the start, had no medical background, and constantly took his words out of context? What if you discovered these critics based their criticisms on the belief that they knew more about medicine than the head of this medical association? Could any sane person accept the words of these critics over the words of this doctor?

I believe we are witnessing this scenario in the Catholic Church today. A certain faction of Catholics are attacking the Holy Father (who has much more authority than the head of a medical association) on account of his efforts to explore the meaning of Christian marriage and his seeking solutions aimed at helping people who are in irregular marriages find reconciliation or, at the least, encourage them to take part in the life of the Church in ways they licitly can. This faction loves to pull out certain mined quotes from older Church documents, contrast them with Pope Francis, and argue the Pope is a heretic.

The problem with their tactic is, it displays lack of knowledge about the Church applying norms of moral theology to specific cases. The Pope is not introducing something new here. He is not calling for the change of moral norms. He is reminding pastors of the need to investigate each person or couple to see how their situations line up with the moral norms.

Catholic moral theology tells us that for a sin to be mortal, we need three things: Grave matter, full knowledge that it is sinful, and freely choosing to do it anyway. If one of those things is missing, then the sin is not mortal. That doesn’t mean there is no sin or there is no reason to change, and the Pope never claims there is no sin and does call on people to change! I think we have forgotten what a mortal sin is. If we remembered, his words would not shock us.

The Church does teach that sexual sins involve grave matter, and the Pope recognizes this. What he calls pastors to do is discover if the knowledge and will is present. If a couple in an irregular marriage was ignorant of Church teaching or their obligations, then they are not willfully choosing to do what is wrong. Yes, the wrong exists. But the Church is not a proctor only tasked with giving a pass/fail grade to couples’ marriage situations. The Church is obeying a call to go out, find the lost sheep, and bring them back to the fold. That’s not always easy [*]. But Pope Francis hasn’t just made something up. In fact, he brings up the Summa Theologica where St. Thomas Aquinas looks at the lack of knowledge in some people or cultures. I’ll quote a larger section of the article [†] he cites because I think it helps make the Holy Father’s point

The speculative reason, however, is differently situated in this matter, from the practical reason. For, since the speculative reason is busied chiefly with necessary things, which cannot be otherwise than they are, its proper conclusions, like the universal principles, contain the truth without fail. The practical reason, on the other hand, is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects. Accordingly then in speculative matters truth is the same in all men, both as to principles and as to conclusions: although the truth is not known to all as regards the conclusions, but only as regards the principles which are called common notions. But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles: and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all.

 

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.).  I-II q.94 a.4 resp.

Applied to the Apostolic Exhortation, the fact that a marriage is irregular is not disputed. But defects in the knowledge of the people or culture involved may change the level of culpability, and the means of helping them may be different from other cases. Not because the Church is changing her rules, but because society has grown so ignorant of right and wrong that people enter morally wrong situations without knowing they are wrong. The result is, people who do not know this are accusing the Pope of inventing something which was, in fact, long known in the 13th century.

The whole thing is a case of Catholics not only not knowing the answer, but not knowing that they don’t know the answer. The problem is, people who do not know an answer but think they do are less wise than those who do not know and know that they do not know. Socrates put it this way:

“I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.” (Apologia 21d)

 

 Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes Translated by Harold North Fowler; Introduction by W.R.M. Lamb., vol. 1 (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1966).

The person seeking the truth can find it, but only if they search for it. In this case, when we find something unfamiliar in the Pope’s words, we should strive to understand how the Pope means his words. We should not just assume that our preconceived notions as Americans match how the rest of the world thinks. We should not assume our degrees earned as laity qualifies us to match wits with the confessor trained to assess individual cases. I have personally watched pastors give insights into moral theology which went beyond what I learned to earn a Masters in the subject.

We cannot assume that our education or personal reading is adequate in any subject lets us interpret the new information we discover without study. When there are experts in a field, we should learn from them. In the case of the Catholic Church, these experts are the magisterium who decide how to best apply the timeless truths to today’s problems. Magisterium is a key word here. Yes, there are theologians, bloggers, and secular news agencies who distort Church teaching. Their false interpretations do not make the actual teachings of the Pope or bishops false. Our personal reading of Church documents from before Vatican II does not trump the magisterial authority to interpret these documents. In fact, when there is a conflict with official Church documents, we ought to assume our interpretation is wrong. Even in unofficial things like interviews and press conferences where our assent is not required, we ought to recognize the difference of language and culture can be a stumbling block.

I would sum up by saying we must not be overconfident in our own knowledge and skill in interpreting. We should know our limitations and know when we do not know something. When we learn of our ignorance, we must strive to learn from reliable teachers, not those we happen to agree with. In the case of the Catholic Church, the ultimate judges of what is in keeping with our faith are our Pope and the bishops in communion with him. Those who reject the magisterium are not qualified judges and cannot pass judgment on the magisterium.

If we do not know that, we cannot consider ourselves wise as Catholics.

___________________________

[*] For example, Priest-blogger Fr. Dwight Longenecker recently wrote an article (found HERE), giving us three pastoral cases of people in an irregular marriage. He tells us he knows the answers to these questions (I think they may be textbook cases) but does not tell us the answers. Why? Because he wants us to recognize how difficult cases can be, especially when we do not have the training to make these assessments.

[†] My translation is older and so slightly different than it appears in Amoris Lætitia ¶304, but the meaning is the same as what the Holy Father cites.

Are We Ink-Blot Catholics?

Introduction

What are we to make of the factions who are utterly convinced that the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Lætitia is about letting people in sinful situations continue, only disagreeing over whether it is a good thing (the secular media and some liberal Catholics) or a bad thing (some conservative Catholics)? I’ve read the Exhortation myself and find it entirely consistent with Catholic moral teaching, including the task of determining culpability for a specific individual struggling with sin (Pre-Vatican II works call this casuistry but nowadays the term has received a pejorative meaning of rationalizing sin).

Determining personal guilt has always been a difficult assessment, and for a person who is suspicious of Church doctrinal “corruption" or scrupulous, the task of determining culpability can seem like promoting sin. It reminds me of a joke that goes like this:

A psychiatrist is giving his patient an Rorschach test. He holds up the first card with an ink blot and asks the patient what he sees.

“Two people having sex,” the patient replies.

So the psychiatrist holds up a second ink blot and asks the patient what he sees.

The patient again replies, “Two people having sex."

After five more cards with the same answer, the psychiatrist puts down the deck and says, “You seem to have a fixation on sex.”

The patient replies, “Don’t blame me. You’re the one with all the dirty pictures!" 

The joke is the ink blot pictures have no meaning and the patient is the one who made the connection with sex. He blames the psychiatrist for something in his own mind. 

Seeing Sin in Papal Documents

Watching the behavior of certain Catholics on the internet, that joke seems increasingly relevant. Seeing a number of respected Catholic theologians impressed by the writings of the Pope contrasted with a small number consistently insisting these documents are proof of a change in Church teaching, I tend to think the “change in Church teaching” they see is in their own mind. Some carry a hope that the Church will bless what she formerly call sins. Others dread it. But the first step is to understand what the Church says while avoiding interpreting it with preconceived notions.

If a Catholic interprets a Papal document under the assumption that the Pope is trying to “turn back” Vatican II, he will see any insistence that we must be faithful to Church teaching as restrictive. If a Catholic interprets a Papal document under the assumption that the Pope is a secret modernist, he will see any calls for mercy or social justice as part of the modernist heresy. But if the Pope is not trying to turn back Vatican II, nor trying to promote modernism, then these readings are wrong.

Elevating Perceived Personal Holiness over Church Authority

What we have in these cases are people who are certain that they properly understand how to practice the Catholic faith while the magisterium does not. Every attack on a Church teaching (as opposed to a non-binding utterance by a priest or bishop) blames the Church for the disagreement, refusing to consider the possibility of personal error. Here’s where we run into a problem. This judgment of Church teaching is a begging the question fallacy. The individual takes as fact that his interpretation of Scripture or Church documents are free of error. When the Church teaches differently than this interpretation, the individual assumes that the Church teaches error. What the individual doesn’t ask is whether he was the one who got it wrong. If he did, then his “proofs” of Church error are not proofs at all.

We ought to remember the words of our first Pope, St. Peter, who warned (in 2 Peter 3:14-16) the faithful about avoiding confidence in personal interpretation:

¹⁴ Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace. ¹⁵ And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you, ¹⁶ speaking of these things as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures. 

 

 New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 2 Pe 3:14–16.

People giving a personal interpretation wrest scripture to their own destruction when they don’t follow those given the responsibility to discern the proper understanding. Why do we then think we can decide the proper meaning of a Church document that opposes the magisterium? When every interpretation opposed to the magisterium depends on a personal reading, these interpretations are not proofs that the Church is in the wrong. First one must prove his personal interpretation is the teaching of the Church as judged by the current magisterium.

The theologian does investigate Scripture and Church documents in studying how to better fulfill Our Lord’s teachings. There is no wrongdoing in investigation. But when the teaching authority of the Church—led by the present Pope—says the theologian errs, then one must either obey the magisterial judgment or rebel against it. In the former case, there is no sin. In the latter case, this is rebellion. If we profess that the Catholic Church is founded by Christ and received from Him the authority to bind and loose, then we can see rebellion against the Church is rebellion against God (see Luke 10:16). 

Conclusion

When any Catholic looks at the affairs of the Church or reads a Church document, he needs to ask himself whether he sees things rightly or whether he sees the Church through preconceived notions. A person who know the Our Lord established the Catholic Church and protected from formally teaching error, then the sins of the members and bad decisions of leaders are not signs of catastrophic failure in the Church. But if a person assumes that the Church can err, then he automatically sees error whenever an unfamiliar concept appears. 

That’s how we become ink-blot Catholics. We hold something preconceived and when the Church says something outside our comfort zone, we assume it must be the fault of the Church for teaching something that she has no intention of teaching at all.

Quick Quips: Rush to Judgment Edition

Claiming a person chose wrong and chose so out of malice is a strong accusation. We must prove the accusation is true before we look for motives why the person acted in a certain way. If we don’t give proof, then our charge is not proven and all our speculation on motive is meaningless. This is why so many news articles and blogs aggravate me. People assume wrongdoing, then make wild accusations over why wrongdoing occurred. Here are some examples from the past week.

Struggling to Pull Defeat Out of the Jaws of Victory

The Vatican released Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Lætitia, today. From what I have read so far (about halfway through), it is an excellent document which explores the meaning of marriage and family before considering the cases of people at odds with the Church teaching. The secular media is remarkably subdued, mostly keeping quiet about it. The text contradicts the predictions or accusations made about “opening doors” to changed Church teaching. Even one of the most notorious anti-Francis Catholic blogs posted a relatively subdued article about this Exhortation.

Even so, certain Catholics, unwilling to surrender their preconceived views have tried to portray this as leaving doors open to error—only disagreeing on whether this was good or bad. Despite the fact that there are no soundbites which sound shocking when taken out of context, some try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by saying certain concepts might be interpreted as leniency and saying “It’s not the fault” of those who are at odds with the Church. That’s a far cry from the cheers or wailing over the synod critics who were certain the Pope would open doors to “same sex marriage” and “Communion for the divorced and remarried,” but they’ll take what they can get.

I must ask: At what point do such people realize they have seized their position so irrationally that they can no longer see reality? If they assume a claim is true and then impute bad will to the Pope, they do wrong in not investigating the truth of the matter.

The Papal Invitation that Wasn't

Perhaps because the media and dissident Catholics can’t spin Amoris Lætitia into screaming “POPE CHANGES CHURCH TEACHING” headlines, they latched on to another headline. Now we see the media talking about the Pope “inviting” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to the Vatican. The Facebook Catholics started arguing about the fact that Senator Sanders is pro-abortion, pro-same sex “marriage,” and pro-socialism and whether it was an endorsement of his politics.

As it turns out, Sanders wasn’t invited to speak at the Vatican and he wasn’t invited by the Pope. One Bishop Sorondo invited him to a conference at the Vatican on the 25th anniversary of the Papal encyclical Centesimus annus. Sanders may or may not meet the Pope while there, but he wasn’t invited for the purpose of meeting or speaking before the Pope. In fact, there’s some question about whether he should have been invited. In other words, the things that would have made the story newsworthy did not happen.

Religious Freedom is Slavery

Earlier this week, while driving to work, I listened to NPR on the radio. In this segment, they interviewed a self-identified “Christian baker” from Mississippi about the just signed religious freedom law. This baker said he didn’t feel threatened by lawsuits and prosecutions aimed at Christians. He said he saw his job as “baking cakes” and not judging who was "worthy to buy” them.

That’s not even remotely the problem here. Christians who feel the need for religious freedom laws don’t want laws giving them excuses to arbitrarily shun people. They want protection from forced participation in something their religion calls morally wrong. The past seven years gave us growing encroachment on religious freedom. People have lost their jobs for supporting the traditional understanding of marriage.

Business owners involved in weddings get sued, fined and prosecuted for refusing to take part in “same sex weddings” or hire a person openly flaunting their contempt for the religious teachings of the denomination they work for. The Supreme Court refused to hear cases about this. Christians who believe they would do wrong by participating want protection from unjust legal action.

To call this concern “homophobia” or “intolerance” is an ad hominem attack against these people. The accusations do not refute these conscientious objections. They merely assume they are wrong and then impute a “motive” for why the person holds them. CS Lewis once spoke about assuming a person was wrong and then jumping to the argument of why the person went wrong.

The problem is that before you can psychoanalyze why a person went wrong, you have to show where he is wrong. In other words, holding that a person is a  homophobe because of his holding position X is jumping the gun—first you have to show that the person is wrong about position X before using terms like “homophobe” to explain why he holds a “wrong" view.

Conclusion

People must investigate whether a claim is false before speculating over why a person holds a false position. Speculation over why the Pope is changing Church teaching, the motive for Bernie Sanders' invitation to the Vatican, or why people in Mississippi are bigots, is pointless if the Pope didn’t change Church teaching, if Sanders’ invitation was wrongly given or if religious freedom supporters aren’t bigots.

Avoiding false witness or rash judgment means we investigate what is true before falsely accusing people of bad will. Investigating first means we just might have meaningful discourse over right and wrong instead of wrongly accusing people of wrongdoing.

When Partisanship Replaces Justice

In the 1888 encyclical Officio Sanctissimo, Pope Leo XIII encouraged Catholic participation in the legal system to change unjust laws. Part of this document asserts:

[12] Effectively the laws give Catholics an easy way of seeking to amend the condition and order of the State and to desire and will a constitution which, if not favourable and well-intentioned towards the Church, shall at least, as justice requires, be not harshly hostile. It would be unjust to accuse or blame any one amongst us who has recourse to such means, for those means, used by the enemies of Catholicity to obtain and to extort, as it were, from rulers laws inimical to civil and religious freedom, may surely be used by Catholics in an honourable manner for the interests of religion and in defence of the property, privileges, and right divinely granted to the Catholic Church, and that ought to be respected with all honour by rulers and subjects alike.

 

 Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals: 1878–1903 (Ypsilanti, MI: Pierian Press, 1990), 154.

I’m struck by differing assumptions compared to the American experience of the last few years. Courts strike down laws passed to defending moral rights, The government vetoes or ignores laws they swore to uphold (without suffering repercussions for dereliction of duty). In fact, executive orders and judicial diktats deny believers the right to promote laws benefiting the common good, and target them for refusing to accept the moral changes the political and cultural elites impose on society.

Leo XIII wrote this to the Catholics in Bavaria during the Kulturkampf encouraging them to use the same system to lift oppression that their opponents used to impose it. That says something ironic about America today. That irony is America today is less just in some legal structures than Imperial Germany was 120 years ago! When legal structures are unjust we can no longer rely on our checks and balances to defend the rights of citizens who hold views unpopular with political and cultural elites.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Americans have an ugly habit of setting aside their system of justice when they deem a targeted group unworthy under the law. The obvious example is that of slavery and segregation. But we could also include the violations of treaties with Native Americans, the Internment of Japanese Americans, the denial of the rights of the unborn, and the targeting of refugees. When Americans want to stop treating a disliked group as an equal, we enforced our laws arbitrarily and passed new laws pushing the disliked group further away. 

To defend injustice, America invokes hypothetical extreme cases and treats that extreme case as the norm. For example, abortion for the rape victim, or security from possible fifth columnists, terrorists or felons in the case of Japanese internees, Islamic refugees and illegal aliens. America justified segregation on the grounds that African Americans could not adapt to “White Society” and slavery on the grounds that slaves could not adapt to freedom. Nobody asks whether extreme cases are real and whether they justify these actions.

Today, America uses the irrelevant analogy fallacy, drawing attention to a few similarities between scenarios and ignoring the greater differences. Promoting “same sex marriage,” elites claim denying people with same sex attraction the right to marry is the same as denying interracial marriage. Elites invoke the similarity of “denying two people the right to marry” and name themselves foes of bigotry. The forgotten difference is interracial marriage still involves one male and one female. Opposing interracial marriage denied something essential (complementarity of male and female) in favor of something accidental (the ethnicity of the male and female).

The same happens in other cases. Elites justify abortion by arguing the fetus is a "clump of cells,” so we can excise like any other group of cells. The essential difference is the fetus is a separate person, not a mere clump of cells, and we cannot treat a person like any other “clump.” Elites justify the “contraception mandate” by saying women have a “right” to contraceptives. Even barring the fact that Catholics reject that premise, a “right” to something does not mean people must subsidize it.

These examples show how elites set aside justice and law when it benefits their ideology, invoking them only when favorable. This results in a system where the preference of the elite is law, despite what actual law and moral belief of citizens hold. They succeed because they use simple slogans in supporting their own positions and attacking their opponents. Refuting inaccurate slogans takes longer than reciting them. People remember the inaccurate slogan longer. “War on women.” “Freedom to love.” “Reproductive Freedom.” Few know refutations exist for each of them.

This reality frustrates many Christians. People ignore truth and favor slogans.  So we offer simplistic solutions in exchange. “We need better Popes and bishops.” “We need stronger teaching.” “We need simpler explanations.” These aren’t solutions. They’re just opposing slogans.

What we need—if you’ll pardon me for using a slogan myself—are “boots on the ground.” We need Christians in every walk of life explaining what we believe and why it is good. This isn’t going to change people like flicking a switch. Many will ignore us. Many will treat us hostilely. Yet, some will hear. What we say might turn out to be a planted seed. We don’t know if the seed will bear fruit, only God knows the answer to that question. Either each one of us sows the seeds in the face of opposition, or we abandon the Great Commission and surrender the nation to those who oppose truth and righteousness.

Christianos ad leones! Once More, Here We Go Again

From the first century AD to the present, harassment and persecution of the Church by government or cultural elites have followed a pattern:

1. Accuse the Church of obstinately clinging to an unpopular teaching out of hostility and bad will.
2. Attack the Church, using a false accusation as justification for unjust treatment. 
3. Offer to relent if the Church will cede a part of the obedience owed to God to the state.
4. When the Church refuses, increase the attacks and use that refusal as “proof” of unreasonableness of the Church and justification for continued mistreatment.

Sometimes these attacks have been overt, cruel and barbaric. Sometimes they masquerade as enforcement of an ordinarily good law but is misapplied. But regardless of how it is done [*], the State using these tactics is abusing its authority and often betraying the principles it was established under. In most circumstances, the Church in a region has two choices: To endure the persecution while trying to convert the persecutor or to capitulate to the State and consent to doing evil or having evil done in her name. The goal of the state is to force the second option. The call of the Christian is to choose the first option.

In the 21st century, the political and cultural elites of America seems determined to continue this cycle. No, it’s not brutal like the overt attacks on the Church in past centuries. Instead of arenas and wild beasts, it is courts and lawyers and instead of executioners and gulags, it is fines and lawsuits. But the end result is the same: The state usurps the power to compel the Christian to give support for what his religion calls evil. In doing so, America betrays the values she was founded upon. The explicit forbidding of the government to pass laws which interfere with the free practice of religion without a compelling interest (meaning vital for the safety of the country and with the least interference when proven compelling interest exists) has been perverted to the point that the state claims the right to coerce religion into abandoning whatever moral teaching is unpopular with the political and cultural elites.

We see this most recently with the vetoing of (and refusing to enforce) laws that seek to protect the freedom of religion from harassment by the state. The term Religious Freedom is put in Scare Quotes and portrayed as discrimination. The goal is to portray Christians who invoke their constitutional rights of freedom from state coercion as if they were calling for the right to mistreat people they dislike—a charge which is entirely false and one that makes use of the antics of a tiny minority to stereotype their behavior as the behavior of the whole group. In any other case, that tactic would be considered gross bigotry (for example, stereotypes like: all Muslims are terrorists, all blacks are felons, all Hispanics are illegal aliens).

The fact is, the Christian must do what is right before God—which is vastly different from the antics of the Westboro Baptists or suicide bombers—and what is right before God also means seeking the true good of our fellow human beings [†] even if we are harassed or persecuted for doing so. That is why we reject the charges against us. Our teachings and moral obligations are not based on the hatred of the sinner. If that were the case, we would have to hate ourselves as we believe we are all sinners in need of a Savior. People ma call us bigots, but that is nothing more than slander aimed at vilifying us for speaking against the popular vices of a society. Our Church absolutely forbids us from interpreting God’s commands as justifying mistreatment of the sinner [§].

So society has a choice to make. It can choose to try understanding the what and why of Church teaching and thus discover that the reason for our teaching is sound. Or it can choose to ignore the obligation to search for the truth and speak falsely against us. But if America should choose the latter option, she should consider this. The harassment of the Church and denial of religious freedom is ignoring the principles of the Bill of Rights. If society should decide that they are justified in ignoring one part as not being important, then they will have nothing to say if another group should use the same reasoning to suppress a different part of the Bill of Rights on the grounds that they don’t think it important.

I’ll leave you here with a section of dialogue by Dr. Peter Kreeft to consider:

‘Isa: But the main argument, the simplest argument, is just this: if no moral values are absolute, neither is tolerance. The absolutist can take tolerance much more seriously than the relativist. It’s absolutism, not relativism, that fosters tolerance. In fact, it’s relativism that fosters intolerance.

Libby: That’s ridiculous.

‘Isa: No it isn’t. Because … why not be intolerant? Only because it feels better to you? What happens tomorrow when it feels different? Why be tolerant? Only because it’s our society’s consensus? What happens tomorrow, when the consensus changes? You see? The relativist can’t appeal to a moral law as a wall, a dam against intolerance. But we need a dam because societies are fickle, like individuals. What else can deter a Germany—a humane and humanistic Germany in the twenties—from turning to an inhumane and inhuman Nazi philosophy in the thirties? What else can stop a now-tolerant America from some future intolerance?—against any group it decides to oppress? It was Blacks in the Southeast over slavery last century; it may be Hispanics in the Southwest over immigration next century. We’re intolerant to unwanted unborn babies today; we’ll start killing born ones tomorrow. Maybe eventually teenagers. They’re sometimes “wanted” even less than babies!

Libby: You’re getting more and more ridiculous.

‘Isa: Then answer the question: Why not? That’s the question. We persecuted homosexuals yesterday; today we persecute homophobes; maybe tomorrow we’ll go back to persecuting homosexuals again. Why not, if morals are only relative?

 

 Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 98.

 

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Christianos ad leones = latin for “The Christians to the Lions!"

[*] A common logical fallacy used here is the fallacy of relative privation, which claims that because your injustice is not as bad as another injustice, it is not injustice at all.

[†] The true good and the popular vices of a society being incompatible.

[§] At this point, someone will point out the punishments in past centuries as a “proof” against my claims. But that is to miss the point. In societies which had less developed forms of government, such practices were not distinct to one religion or culture. I don’t deny that some Churchmen in authority focussed too much on the civil punishments for sins that happened to be crimes as well, but you will never see the formal Church teaching state  that being merciless is good.