I Don’t Have a Problem With Your Eyes. It’s Your Interpretation That Bothers Me

Depending on one’s outlook, this article might be seen as correcting misconceptions about my approach to fidelity vs. dissent, or it might be seen as “doubling down” on inflammatory comments made against concerned Catholics.  So, let’s talk about the issues.

Issue #1: To Accurately Speak of What Is or Is Not

When Catholics accuse the Pope of something, the first question is whether the accusations are true. That means asking whether the facts are true of course. But it also means asking whether the motives attributed to the facts are true. 

Using Aristotle’s definition of truth, we have to ask whether what accusers say is saying of what is, that it is. If it is not, the accuser does not speak the truth. That doesn’t automatically mean that the accuser is automatically proven guilty of lying. Someone can sincerely believe that a false statement is true. But if they say something false, they do harm regardless of the culpability. Therefore, when someone makes an accusation against the Pope, we have an obligation to determine whether or not it’s true. If it’s false or unproven, we must not pass it along.

Issue #2: I Don’t Have a Problem With Your Eyes. It’s Your Interpretation That Bothers Me

That brings us to one of the popular albeit—in my opinion—stupid quips passed around by Catholics on social media about the video of the ceremony that took place  In the Vatican gardens. Because some people in native garments^§ seemed to prostrate themselves before the image popularly known as Pachamama, certain people declared it was worship of an idol. When this was questioned, certain Catholics came forward with the quip^# “Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your own lying eyes?”

The quip is supposed to mean that we’re brazenly saying that the “obvious” evidence is wrong. Since we all saw the video, we can’t deny it was an act of pagan worship. The problem is, the question is not what the people did. The question is whether the critics properly interpreted the visuals. 

For example, when St. John Paul II visited Papua-New Guinea, he was greeted by indigenous Catholics who performed one of their cultural rituals. But some of his critics accused him of taking part in a “pagan ritual.” Yes, we all saw the same visuals. But the interpretation was false. This brings us to the Amazon Synod.

Yes, we saw the video too. We saw people who wore strange clothing and did strange things before a strange object. But what has to be proven is that a group of pagans brought an idol to the Vatican gardens and intended to worship it. It’s not enough to say it might be true. The Church has never condemned anyone on the basis of unproven accusations^†. So where are the anthropological experts that identify the individuals as pagans, identify the image as an idol, and the activity as an Amazonian type of worship? Not only did nobody interview the people involved, but the accusations seem to have one indigenous chief who is an Evangelical as the source of the claims. But since when do we accept the word of one outside the Church as an expert of those within the Church? How would this person describe ordinary Catholic practices?

Some of you might say “But the Pope called it Pachamama!” But that doesn’t work. The Pope used the common Italian media label—a label applied with none of the required experts evaluating it. Think of it this way. We often use common but inaccurate terms for things because that is what everybody knows them by. “Sunrise and sunset” being one major example. Or we refer to the antics launched by men like Martin Luther as the “Reformation,” even though we do not believe that his actions “reformed” anything.

Combine this with the fact that the Pope explicitly denying that this was an idol, and that it was an act of worship^¥. Combine it with the fact that the Vatican explicitly denied that the Pope intended to identify the image as literally being Pachamama. Combine it with the fact that those who brought the object said they bought it in a craft market and used it as a symbol for the indigenous people, not an image from the indigenous people. Either the critics have to prove a deception, or withdraw their charges. But don’t say that the video proves it—because the interpretation for the motives of the actions is very much under challenge.

Issue #3: Rash Judgment

The Church, in teaching against false witness, has some strong things to say about rash judgment. Rash judgment assumes a fault without proof for it. As I pointed out in Issue #2, there is no proof for these accusations against the Pope and the Synod. Instead, people judge according to the meaning they put on what they saw and repeat what others claim it means without verifying that the person doing the criticism is an expert on both Catholic theology and indigenous Amazon culture.

This is important. People may cite Father A, Bishop B, or Cardinal C as thinking it was an act of idolatry. But are they speaking with expertise on how indigenous Catholics in the Amazon do things? Or do they think of how American and Western Europeans do things and react negatively? This has to be asked and answered.

This cuts both ways of course. That’s why you’ll never see me accuse Father A, Bishop B, or Cardinal C of promoting heresy or schism^*. I focus on dangerous attitudes in the hope of getting people to ask questions rather than make rash assumptions.

Issue #4: Nego Accusatio^{^}—The Credibility Gap of Accusers

One of the problems I have when critics tell us that the Pope is committing an error is that those making the claims have been consistently wrong. Small excerpts of long statements are taken out of context and people accuse the Pope of holding things he has actually opposed. Remember the 2015 Synod on the family? The critics said that the Synod would allow same sex “marriage” and contraception. Remember how everyone interpreted “Who am I to judge?” as promoting homosexuality? Remember how they accused him of planning to allow women priests, married priests and women deacons? 

These were all false accusations, regardless of whether the people spreading them did so intentionally or through gullibility. Whenever the full transcripts of what the Pope says have been made available^@, the supposedly outrageous soundbites turned out to be very nuanced statements that assume Catholic orthodoxy as a basis. The Pope simply was pointing out that sometimes the practices have fallen into a legalism that spends more focus on keeping notorious sinners away from sacraments than actually reconciling them to the Church. 

Unfortunately, those who are critics of the Pope seem to rely on the sources that have been constantly wrong (whether from bias or simply not knowing what Catholics believe). Perhaps it’s time to start asking ourselves whether we should stop believing those sites who have been consistently wrong about the Pope every time they accused him.

Issue #4: Guilt by Association Fallacy

One doesn’t judge whether an idea is right or wrong based on the people who favor or support it. That’s a logical fallacy. An idea might be good even if unpopular or unsavory people like it. An idea might be wrong even if respectable people support it.

And this also comes into play here. Some critics have pointed to members of the Church who seem to hold heterodox ideas that cheer on the Pope. Yes, these people try to use his actions to promote their own agenda. But it doesn’t mean that the Pope supports their agenda or thinks like them^€. Yes, some people of questionable orthodoxy have expressed support for the Pope. But you’ll find that some people of questionable orthodoxy have expressed support for his opponents too. If the Pope is supposed to be guilty because some people with agendas think they can exploit his words, then those theologians who oppose the Pope stand condemned whenever a sede vacantist expresses support for those who disagree with the Pope.

But that’s absurd. The bad supporters of Pope Francis and the bad supporters of the “Dubia Cardinals” do not make their ideas wrong. But some critics of the Pope are trying to use those bad supporters to insinuate exactly that without proving that the Pope agrees with those bad ideas.

Issue #5: Misusing the terms None, Some, All; Equivocation 

 

There is a tendency to turn “some” into “all” or “none” depending on how a critic wants to portray it. If you want to downplay something, turn his “some people are saying…” into “nobody” or “hardly anyone says.” If you want to make a claim that somebody exaggerates, portray his “some people” into “all” or “most people.” Then you can say that the person expressing concern is “accusing” everyone who disagrees.

So, when the Pope speaks out against a dangerous attitude, some critics interpret his “some” as “all” and say he’s targeting “faithful Catholics.” But let’s face it: if somebody actually champions an attitude he warns against, that person has a fundamental misunderstanding about the Catholic Faith.

A similar error is to misuse a word which can have multiple meanings to benefit the person by using a different meaning than the intended one. For example, the Church uses the term Social Justice to refer to how our Christian  obligations must be applied in society. Christians must not only live rightly personally, but must also work to govern rightly. Unfortunately, the term is also used to mean a certain political platform, usually associated with socialism. As a result, when the Pope talks about Social Justice in different areas, certain critics replace that meaning with the political meaning and argue that the Pope supports whatever the American^£ politicians also invoke the term “social justice.” The result is rash judgment (Issue #2) that accuses the Pope of supporting moral evils that he is on record as opposing. The person who makes these accusations (knowingly or out of ignorance) are causing scandal, not the Pope they fail to understand.

Conclusion: Confusion of Their Own Making

I do not say that all people with difficulties are guilty of this (Issue #5). But certain critics do, and they have stirred up a great deal of confusion, misrepresenting the Pope and bishops to the point that many Catholics believe that the claims made by radical dissenters must have some merit. But we cannot use our lack of knowledge as an excuse for not seeking to learn the truth.

Catholics are to give religious submission of intellect and will to the Pope when he teaches—even if it is not an ex cathedra teaching. This doesn’t mean, “the Pope can do whatever he feels like.” It means that we trust God to protect His Church. If we think that the Pope is “teaching error,” we have the obligation to determine whether our fears are true before making accusations out of them.

If we will not, any ignorance on our part becomes vincible ignorance—the kind we are morally responsible for if we do wrong. It’s not for me to point at you, the reader, and accuse you. I write this simply to warn people about dangerous attitudes and flaws in reasoning that could lead to the devil deceiving individuals into breaking with the Church while convinced they are the “true defenders of the faith.”

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(#) The quote comes from the Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup.

(§) One individual wore what looked like a brown religious habit. If it was one and legitimately worn, it discredits claims that the individuals must be “pagan.”

(†) Heretical bishops (Arians, Nestorians, etc) did accuse the saints of crimes to get them out of their dioceses.

(¥) The worst accusation one could level against him is that he was lied to. 

(*) I might say that a Priest, Bishop, or Cardinal uses rhetoric that troubles me, but I try to keep in mind that actual dissenters might be twisting or misinterpreting their words just as much as they do with the Pope.

(^) “I Deny the Accusation”

(@) Finding transcripts are not difficult. Personally, I go to the Vatican website or Zenit. You just need to remember that it takes time to get them translated and posted.

(€) If one compares Amoris Laetitia with Cardinal Kasper’s The Gospel of the Family, you’ll see the first pages of the latter are similar to what the Pope wrote. But then there is a sharp break where the Pope remains within Catholic teaching while Kasper proposes following the Eastern Orthodox customs.

(£) I am an American, but let’s face it. Sometimes American Catholics badly confuse the Church teaching with politics, thinking that a faithful Catholic will support their own political views, but Catholic moral teaching predated the existence of the United States by almost two millennia.