I was recently reading, The Trial of Jeanne d’Arc—a collection of the actual documents of St. Joan of Arc’s heresy trial. It seemed like the English churchmen involved were using the “Spaghetti Approach” (throw it at the wall and see what sticks). It was a little off-putting seeing some of her responses though. From the sensibilities of a 21st century American, some of her ideas seemed harsh, or even flaky.
But, on reflection, I realized that how a 15th century French woman expresses herself has an entirely different set of cultural baggage from a 21st century American male. Without recognizing those differences, it becomes extremely difficult to interpret the meaning of things.
This led me to think about the ongoing disputes within the Church, especially with the claims of the “break in continuity,” or “error in past teachings” (depending on how one views Church history). I see a problem with confusing one’s perception with what IS. When we ignore our cultural baggage and our preconceptions, we begin to think of our biases as reality and think our interpretations of Scripture and Church teaching are the actual meaning of Scripture and Church teaching.
The meaning of words change over time, and we need to understand the meaning of the word at the time a document in question was written. For example, I occasionally see people treat the Church interactions with the Albigensians as a sort of genocide, because some documents talk about “exterminating” them. The problem is, the word “exterminate” has a different meaning today than in the Middle Ages. In Latin, exterminatus had the meaning of “banish, expel; dismiss.” To translate it in the sense of “exterminate” today (“destroy completely; eradicate”) is to mistranslate it.
Conditions also change over time. The world today is not as it was in the past. We cannot expect a program based on the social and political structures of the 15th century to meet the needs of the social and political structures of the 21st century. But neither should we expect that what the Church rightly condemned in the past means that an underlying good is condemned. For example, European governments in 19th century Europe were notoriously anti-clerical, and claimed to do so for the benefit of humanity. The Church rightly condemned those false invocations of human rights. But that is not a contradiction with the Church defending true human rights later on in history.
I could go on multiplying examples, but the above show that what we perceive to be a contradiction or error may not actually be one. It may be that based on our assumptions and flaws in knowledge, what we perceive to be an error may only be a flaw in how we interpret what is going on.
I think people forget one of those things: Either they forget that the Church teaches things that are objectively true and cannot be contradicted (doctrine and morals), or they forget that they teach these objectively true things with different expressions for different times. The former tends to treat any Church teaching as something which might be overturned if the “right Pope” comes along. The latter thinks that a change in expression is a contradiction of the past. Both assumptions lead to error.
When it comes to the obligation to give assent to Church teaching, I find that some Catholics use the above errors to justify disobedience. The Catholic who thinks a teaching should be overturned will try to find “evidence” of contradiction to justify their own dissent. The Catholic who thinks a discipline should not be overturned tries to find “evidence” of rebuked Popes. Neither considers the possibility of their own failure to understand what is irreformable and what can legitimately be changed.
When the Church abrogates or derogates a certain discipline in her teachings, this is not a contradiction. It is saying, “this is how we can be most faithful to the teaching in this place and time.” It is not “mental gymnastics” to try to discern the objectively true in the midst of the application fitting for that time. It is not Ultramontanism to respect the authority of the Magisterium even when the temporal aspects of a teaching are superseded—it is simply a matter of recognizing the irreformable truth and the reformable discipline that goes with it.
If we can seek to inform our views with the truth, we can avoid the pitfalls of accusing the Church of error, when there is no error.
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