Thoughts on Difficulty vs. Doubt Regarding the Holy Father

Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of religion; I am as sensitive as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines, or to their compatibility with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a particular answer is the true one. 

 

John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1865), 264–265.

Blessed John Henry Newman spoke of having difficulties with the Church, but that this never led him to doubt. I think his distinction is a good one: We can have difficulties on understanding a Church teaching, the actions of the Church, or the behavior of a churchman without falling into doubt about the authority of those who lead and teach. I have defended St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. But this does not mean I openly praise everything they have done. There are some things I wish they handled differently. But those actions have never led me to doubt that the Holy Spirit guides and protects the Church from teaching error, or to doubt the Church teaching on the authority of Popes.

For example, I wish Saint John Paul II had not elevated certain individuals to bishoprics, I wish he had not kissed that Quran, I wish he had treated Assisi 1986 like a conference. I wish Benedict XVI had not used the example of “a gay prostitute with AIDS” in the Light of the World interview, and had not lifted the excommunications of the SSPX bishops. I wish Pope Francis would put a moratorium on press conferences, and I wish he would address conflicting interpretations of Amoris Lætitia. All of these things led to confusion in the Church. However, these difficulties have never led me to doubt their orthodoxy. Nor have they led me to doubt or explain away their authority when they exercised it differently than I preferred.

I think this is the difference: The person with difficulties may struggle at times when a Pope does something that seems disruptive. But he doesn’t reject the Pope in some degree, or seek to deny his authority at some level. However, the person with doubts does allow himself to do these things. That doesn’t mean the doubting Catholic is a schismatic—though doubt can lead there. But the doubting Catholic thinks the action of the Pope cannot be reconciled with his own understanding of what the Church should be, and seeks a solution to justify setting aside Church teaching or obedience to the Pope.

I think another insight from Blessed John Henry Newman fits here:

I will take one more instance. A man is converted to the Catholic Church from his admiration of its religious system, and his disgust with Protestantism. That admiration remains; but, after a time, he leaves his new faith, perhaps returns to his old. The reason, if we may conjecture, may sometimes be this: he has never believed in the Church’s infallibility; in her doctrinal truth he has believed, but in her infallibility, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he held all that the Church taught, he replied he did; but he understood the question to mean, whether he held those particular doctrines “which at that time the Church in matter of fact formally taught,” whereas it really meant “whatever the Church then or at any future time should teach.” Thus, he never had the indispensable and elementary faith of a Catholic, and was simply no subject for reception into the fold of the Church. This being the case, when the Immaculate Conception is defined, he feels that it is something more than he bargained for when he became a Catholic, and accordingly he gives up his religious profession. The world will say that he has lost his certitude of the divinity of the Catholic Faith, but he never had it.

 

John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1870), 240.

I think he makes a good point that goes beyond converts to the Church. The Catholic who recognizes the divinity of the Catholic faith, established by Our Lord and passed on to us by the Apostles, recognizes that it remains the same Church in AD 33, AD 117, AD 1057, AD 1517, and AD 2017. Our understandings of the Faith deepens over time, which can lead the magisterium to make new definitions or change how teachings are best applied to carry out the Great Commission.

I think his point about the Catholic who accepts what the Church teaches up to this point and the Catholic who will accept the authority of the Church whenever she teaches or changes discipline is vital in recognizing the difference between difficulty and doubt: Do we believe that Our Lord, who established the Church and promised to be with her always, continues to do so? Or do we think the problems we have with the Church means the Church has gone wrong to some extent? I think we must recognize that if we reach the point where we think the Church, in exercising her authority, is wrong or can’t be trusted, we have gone from difficulty to doubt about God protecting His Church.

When facing things that trouble us, we have an obligation not to let our difficulty become a doubt. As the Catechism puts it:

2088 The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith: (157)

Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.

 

Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 506–507.

We’ve had, at this point, 266 Popes. A handful of these have been morally bad. A couple may have privately held error. But despite the existence of bad Popes—and I deny Pope Francis is one—they never taught error. We need to ask ourselves why. Popes like John XII show we can have Popes who care nothing for serving God and the Church. But they didn’t issue any decrees exempting themselves from keeping mistresses or nepotism. How are we supposed to believe that 265 Popes avoided teaching error, but suddenly Pope Francis broke that streak?

Doubts that try to make that argument actually undermine the Church they hope to protect. If one argues Pope Francis is a bad Pope who teaches error, that person will have no reply—without resorting to the Special Pleading fallacy—to the challenge, “How can you say previous Popes did not teach error?” If one argues (and I have encountered some who do), “Francis refused to accept God’s guidance,” then that one has to answer how Benedict IX, John XII, Liberius, Honorius I, etc., managed to accept God’s guidance despite acting wrongly elsewhere. But if God did protect the Church from our acknowledged bad Popes, then the doubter must explain why He chose not to with Francis. It is only when one says, “God always protects the Church from teaching error,” that they can avoid this dilemma.

This is why I have said it is more plausible to believe the Pope’s detractors have it wrong, than it is to believe that the Pope is teaching error. To believe the Pope teaches error, one must doubt Jesus protects the Rock on which He built His Church. That doesn’t mean we won’t have difficulties with what Popes do. There will be gaffes and misunderstood actions. God protecting Popes from teaching error when they use the teaching office doesn’t mean God protects them from sinning or being a bad administrator of the Church. We don’t have to defend the dark spots in the history of the Papal States, or ill-advised concordances. But when the Pope acts in teaching, or administrating the Church, we are bound to give assent (see CIC 747-754). The only way to avoid refusing obedience or fearing the Church can bind us to accept error, is to work to overcome doubts.

We should consider the words of Monsignor Ronald Knox, who pointed out the underlying point that addresses our problems:

Here is another suggestion, which may not be without its value—if you find yourself thus apparently deserted by the light of faith, do not fluster and baffle your imagination by presenting to it all the most difficult doctrines of the Christian religion, those which unbelievers find it easiest to attack; do not be asking yourself, “Can I really believe marriage is indissoluble?  Can I really believe that it is possible to go to hell as the punishment for one mortal sin?"  Keep your attention fixed to the main point, which is a single point – Can I trust the Catholic Church as the final repository of revealed truth?  If you can, all the rest follows; if you cannot, it makes little difference what else you believe or disbelieve.

(In Soft Garments, pages 113-114. Emphasis added).

And that is the ultimate question: Can I trust that the Church is this final repository? Can I trust that God will protect the Church, under the current Pope, from teaching error? If we can, we can trust God to protect the Church with each Pope. But if we doubt these things, the rest which we profess to believe is on shaky ground indeed.

The Church and the Self-Centered Catholic

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On the Outside Looking In: Thoughts on Misinterpretation

Introduction

I was reading a book on how Westerners misinterpret the Bible. It made the point that we have cultural blinders which lead us to give meaning to things that were never originally intended. Ironically, the book gave an unintended example of this when talking about the Protestant Reformation trying to recover the original meaning of words:

Viewed from one perspective, the Protestant Reformation began as an effort to correct a mistaken assumption about equivalency in language. Over time, the Roman Catholic church had developed a doctrine of confession that included works of penance, such as reciting a certain number of prayers (think “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers”) and, most disturbing, the purchase of indulgences to assure forgiveness of sins. By the late Middle Ages, church leaders insisted this system is what Jesus had in mind when he called sinners to repent—that do penance was equivalent to (meant the same thing as) repent. 

 

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 76.

The book went on to argue that this was not what early Christianity meant by repenting. The problem is, this is also not what Catholicism means by repenting. The section started with an error and wrote on what Martin Luther was “saving” people from. Except he didn’t.  The authors wrote about how Catholics in the Middle Ages confused the concept of penance with the Greek word for repenting. Except we didn’t. They wrote about how we created this in medieval times. Except we haven’t. The Orthodox churches also have the concept of the sacrament of penance, and some of them have been separated from us since the 5th century

The problem with the authors is they assumed that the distorted vision of Catholicism they received was true, and created a view of Catholicism which had nothing to do with us. They had cultural blinders that caused them to misread us. Catholics have never believed in indulgences being sold, let alone for the forgiveness of sins! When it comes to the Latin word Paenitentia, the meaning is: regret (for act); change of mind/attitude; repentance/contrition (William Whitaker, Dictionary of Latin Forms). Properly going through the sacrament of confession requires us to regret our actions, change our attitude, and intend to do right in the future. In other words, the same meaning as the Greek metanoia. There was no error of understanding on the part of Catholics. There was an error of understanding on the part of those on the outside looking in because they assumed they knew without investigating whether it was true.

I bring this up not to ridicule these Protestant authors, but to illustrate a point: We too can go wrong if we either assume others think like us, and focus on what we think it means, and we can go wrong if we get so distracted by the differences that we miss the point behind those differences.

Missing the Meaning

The further we are removed from the original meaning, the more likely we are to diverge from what was meant. These can be linguistic, cultural, historical, or many others. Once we include history, we add the difference of time to the difference of language and culture. What people experienced in AD 17, 517, 1017, 1517 and 2017 are widely different. Laws, government, customs and the like would change over time even in one region. Once we go to a different region in a different time where they used a different language, and there are many ways we can go wrong if we forget these differences exist. 

For example, when an English speaking critic reads a transcript of Pope Francis today, there is a difference of language requiring a translator and there is a difference of culture between a member of the clergy who lived in Latin America and a lay blogger living in the United States. If the critic does not take these differences into account, the odds are good that the critic will get things wrong. For example, when the Pope spoke of a large number of marriages possibly being invalid, and of some couples living together being closer to the true meaning of marriage than some married couples, people went berserk. They assumed he was talking about 21st century American marriages and justifying cohabitation. He was not. He was talking about vicious customs in South America where people sometimes face insurmountable difficulties getting married while others treat the sacrament of matrimony as merely part of the celebration.

In other words, people assumed his words against vicious customs which they never witnessed were about marriage in the United States—which has its own set of problems. They forgot about these differences and thought that what he said must be directed at them. They missed the meaning because they were blind to differences facing Catholics in different parts of the world.

We can learn, despite these differences. But we need to learn the intended meaning, and not assume the people of different times, cultures, and languages think like 21st century Americans. Otherwise we risk attacking the Church because we think the Church is “attacking” moral values when she is in fact responding to cultural problems. For example, the radical feminist who sees “patriarchy” everywhere or the radical traditionalist who sees “modernism” everywhere because they assume that their interpretations are the norm, refusing to consider the possibility of their own error.

Missing the Point

On the other hand, we can go wrong by being distracted by differences of cultures. Sometimes these differences involve the existence of things we today know are morally wrong. We’re offended by the fact that a saint from another century speaks about them as if they were normal, and miss the point he was trying to make. 

For example, in reading some of St. John Chrysostom’s homilies, I’ve come across the reference, in one of his homilies, to the slave market. At this time, the Roman Empire was about a thousand years old and had slaves for the entire time. This can be quite jarring. Because of our experience with the ugliness of  slavery, segregation, and racism in the United States, we are rightly appalled at the evils. So, the fact that a Saint talks about slavery in a matter of fact manner can be shocking. But if we stop at the differences, without understanding them, we miss some real insights.

St. John Chrystostom makes reference to Our Lord being a noble at a slave market asking us (the slave) if we will choose to serve Him. In the 21st century, our egalitarian views balk at this image of Our Lord buying slaves. But in doing so, we risk missing the point that would have been clear to 4th century Greeks. St. John Chrysostom was invoking an image the people of Constantinople could understand with the differences of social rank

That Our Lord, in the role of the noble, offers to purchase (redeem) us from the slave market of sin and asks if we are willing to serve Him showed a difference between God and man that our egalitarian views might misunderstand. Recognizing an image of Jesus as a Noble Lord, us as the lowly slave, and the purchase price being His own blood, we can see an image showing how great God’s love for us is when He is so far above us and is willing to pay so great a price for us if only we will serve Him—a choice that is not forced on us.

If we stopped at the level of being offended with the existence and mention of slavery, we’d entirely miss the point of the homily on what Jesus has done for us in relation to what He asks of us.

Yes, sometimes saints in one era say things in a way that seem cringeworthy or excessively harsh in our time. That doesn’t mean the saint was in error or promoting evil. We have to understand the context and meaning if we are to profit from it, rather than be members of the Church of Perpetual Indignation. Otherwise, we risk accusing the Church (falsely) of supporting evils she does not.

Conclusion

The point of both examples is this: If we stop at what we think is meant and don’t actually investigate what the person we were offended with actually intended, then we do wrong. We judge rashly. We accuse them of supporting things they do not. Whether it is accusing the Pope of contradicting Church teaching or accusing a reformation era saint of holding to a heresy, the fault of rash judgment is with us if we do not investigate what the person we think offensive actually means. If we’re scandalized by a Bible verse, a Church teaching, a saint, or a pope, we need to recognize that the Church was not cruising on autopilot, rubber-stamping error when she confirmed the canon, made a teaching or named a saint. 

If we feel like something the Church has affirmed is error, that’s a warning sign that we need to reassess our own interpretation and see what we missed when viewed in context.

Reflections on Regaining a Proper Sense of Ecclesiology

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Because Hell is Real: Reflections on Our Lord Establishing a Church

Last time I talked about God ultimately being in charge, so we could trust Him to protect the Church when things grew beyond our control. This time, I want to talk about the other side of that coin—the fact that God established a Church as the ordinary means of bringing His salvation to the world. Unlike Protestants and Orthodox, Catholics hold that Our Lord established His Church on the rock of St. Peter and his successors. We hold that God gave this Church under Peter, the Apostles, and their successors the authority to bind and loose. When the magisterium teaches, we are obligated to give assent—our full acceptance of that teaching.

Remember John 14:15. Loving Him is keeping His commandments. Remember Luke 10:16. Our Lord makes clear that rejecting His Church is rejecting Him. Remember Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:18. What His Church binds/looses on Earth is bound/loosed in Heaven. Remember Matthew 18:17. Refusing to hear the Church is a very serious matter. Remember Matthew 7:21-23. If we do not keep His commandments, we will be barred from the Kingdom of Heaven.

I stress this because there is a temptation to separate Our Lord from Church teaching—a claim that Our Lord is merciful but the Church is focussed on “rules.” This temptation claims, “God doesn’t care about X.” It accuses the Church of Pharisaism. But what it tends to mean is, “The Church should not judge my sin.” Let’s be clear here. I’m not equating the Church with individuals who insist you do things according to their preferences, like vote for a certain candidate or you’re damned. I’m talking about the authority of the Pope, as well as the bishop and the priest who properly use their authority in communion with the Pope, to make known how we should live if we would be faithful to Christ, our Lord.

One cannot separate God from the Church, because the Church teaches with God’s authority. It is that simple. So if we dislike what the Church teaches on a subject, our issue is with God. Remember, if we accept the fact that God is in ultimate control, and that He has given the Church the authority to teach in His name, then we must accept what the Church teaches, trusting Him to protect His Church from error.

That doesn’t mean God retroactively turns falsehood into truth. It means God prevents the Church from teaching error. When the Church binds, saying a certain action is gravely sinful, then the person who knows this and freely chooses to do it, commits mortal sin. We do not appeal to God as if He were a higher court. Nor can we use the bad behavior of corrupt Churchmen or harsher methods of law enforcement in harsher times to justify disobedience. If we do, God will no doubt remind us of Matthew 23:2-3. Or as St. John Chrysostom commented on it, 

I mean, that lest any one should say, that because my teacher is bad, therefore am I become more remiss, He takes away even this pretext. So much at any rate did He establish their authority, although they were wicked men, as even after so heavy an accusation to say, “All whatsoever they command you to do, do.” For they speak not their own words, but God’s, what He appointed for laws by Moses.

 

John Chrysostom, “Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople on the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. George Prevost and M. B. Riddle, vol. 10, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 436.

When the Pope and bishops in communion with Him teach, they do not do so from their own authority, but God’s. If some members of the hierarchy behave unjustly, that does not absolve us from being faithful to the Church under the bishop of Rome. So, if we don’t like the fact that the Church teaches that abortion, contraception, divorce/remarriage, or homosexual acts are sinful, we have to remember that when we know the Church calls these things to be gravely sinful, yet we freely choose them, we sin against God, and don’t just “break a rule.”

But what about Pope Francis? But what about mercy? I answer, his stance is not contrary to the teaching about sin and Hell. His Year of Mercy presumes that we are sinners, and we are in need of forgiveness. But his Year of Mercy was not about dispensations permitting sin. They were about reminding us that now is the acceptable time of salvation, and making the Church available to bring God’s mercy to us. This meant if we would receive God’s mercy, we must repent. This isn’t a radical traditionalist screed. This is Our Lord, Himself telling us, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

Bishop Robert Barron points out the mistakes some make about the Holy Father:

A good deal of the confusion stems from a misinterpretation of Francis’s stress on mercy. In order to clear things up, a little theologizing is in order. It is not correct to say that God’s essential attribute is mercy. Rather, God’s essential attribute is love, since love is what obtains among the three divine persons from all eternity. Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner. To say that mercy belongs to the very nature of God, therefore, would be to imply that sin exists within God himself, which is absurd.

Now this is important, for many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer mattered. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness. Or, to shift to one of the pope’s favorite metaphors, it is to be acutely conscious that one is wounded so severely that one requires not minor treatment but the emergency and radical attention provided in a hospital on the edge of a battlefield. Recall that when Francis was asked in a famous interview to describe himself, he responded, “a sinner.” Then he added, “who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.” That’s getting the relationship right. Remember as well that the teenage Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to a deep and life-changing relationship to Christ precisely through a particularly intense experience in the confessional. As many have indicated, Papa Francesco speaks of the devil more frequently than any of his predecessors of recent memory, and he doesn’t reduce the dark power to a vague abstraction or a harmless symbol. He understands Satan to be a real and very dangerous person.

Barron, Robert (2016-03-31). Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism (Kindle Locations 613-625). Word on Fire. Kindle Edition.

Mercy is not about turning a blind eye to sin. Mercy is about sparing the person from the penalty justice demands. See, we deserve damnation for our sins. But God desires our salvation. So He sent His Son to save us. Yet, we can refuse to accept His mercy, and we do when we choose to do what God forbids. During our life on Earth, God gives us every chance to repent and accept His mercy. But if we refuse to do so, we will face His justice. When the Church teaches something is a grave sin, it’s not because she is obsessed with rules and power. it is because she is concerned for our souls, and wants to save us from the fires of Hell.

Remember that while Our Lord spoke of love and mercy, He also spoke of Hell:

^{13 "}Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. ¹⁴ How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

He’s the one who talked about casting sinners out into the darkness (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30). These are not contradictions or additions to Jesus’ message of love and mercy. They’re warnings about what happens if we reject His commandments. Neither God nor His Church are cruel or judgmental for warning about sin and Hell. They don’t make dire threats to cow us into submission. We’re warned about Hell because it is real and we can go there if we refuse to keep Our Lord’s commandments. 

What we need to remember about the difference between the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) was not that the Tax Collector was a better person. It was the Tax Collector repented, while the Pharisee did not. But not all tax collectors repented—The publicani (tax collectors under contract) were recognized across the Roman Empire as a scourge because of their rapacious ways that bankrupted entire provinces to boost their profits. Likewise, not all Pharisees were unrepentant. Some became Christians, after all. 

The point is, God loves each one of us, and desires our salvation—but that call requires a response. If we demand the benefits, while refusing the call of Our Lord—Repent, and believe in the gospel—we show we do not love Him, regardless of how we profess it otherwise. Instead, we simply want cheap grace. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it:

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 44.

We should think of this when we’re inclined to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Christ. Our Lord established the Catholic Church to be His means of bringing His salvation to the whole world through the sacraments and teaching His way (cf. Matthew 28:19). It is true that as missionaries to the world, we must not be harsh. But as sinners in need of salvation, we must not demand that the Church change to suit us. If we do, we are spurning The Lord who desires to save us. If we spurn Him, and do not repent, we risk facing the reality of Hell.

Ultimately, God is in Charge

As you may have noticed, I'm frustrated by all the sniping and accusations going on between Catholic factions. I find it demoralizing to orthodox Catholics and likely to lead others to think we don’t have anything better to offer them. I’ve written several articles on that theme. Of course, my blog has a small reach, and even if I had a larger one, words alone cannot persuade people to change. It’s a matter of grace. I have no say over who receives grace, nor who responds or rejects Him. This is the point when you see people going in the wrong way, beyond your control: one can either become bitter or one can turn to God and trust Him.

Blessed John Henry Newman described it well in his Grammar of Assent. In talking about the difference between the Catholic who remains faithful and the Catholic who breaks away from the faith:

The reason, if we may conjecture, may sometimes be this: he has never believed in the Church’s infallibility; in her doctrinal truth he has believed, but in her infallibility, no. He was asked, before he was received, whether he held all that the Church taught, he replied he did; but he understood the question to mean, whether he held those particular doctrines “which at that time the Church in matter of fact formally taught,” whereas it really meant “whatever the Church then or at any future time should teach.”

 

John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1870), 240.

Each person, whether a convert or someone baptized as an infant, must choose to trust the Church is infallible because of God, or else he will lose faith in the Church because they don’t believe God protects the Church. To believe God protects the Church means we must not only believe that God protected the Church from error up to this point, but we must also believe God will continue to protect His Church from teaching error, regardless of who the Pope may be, or what condition the world is in.

Yes, we’ll continue to see problems. Church history tells us of crises far worse than the current one. But we either trust Him to protect His Church built on the rock of Peter and his successors, or we will be building on sand, and our faith will collapse. I think, in the end, we need to follow the example of St. John XXIII as told by Monsignor Loris Capovilla, his private secretary. and related by Cardinal Dolan: Every day, about midnight, there St. John XXIII…

“…would kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. There he would rehearse his problems he had encountered that day: the bishop who came in to tell of his priests massacred and his nuns raped in the Congo; the world leader who came to tell him of his country’s plight in war and asking his help; the sick who came to be blessed; the refugees writing for help; the newest round of oppression behind the Iron Curtain. As Pope John would go over each problem, examining his conscience to see if he had responded to each with effective decisions and appropriate help, he would finally take a deep breath and say, “Well I did the best I could….It’s your Church, Lord. I’m going to bed. Good night.” (Dolan, Cardinal Timothy M. Priests for the Third Millennium.)

This isn’t indifference to problems in the Church. Nor is it abdication of responsibility. It is a recognition that we are limited and need to turn to God, entrusting the Church to Him instead of building up an ulcer worrying about what is beyond our control. Ultimately God is in charge. We can either be faithful and give assent to the teachings of the Church while trusting God when we’re troubled, or we can obsess about what we don’t like, gradually losing faith—first in the Church, and then in God who promised to protect her.

Prudential Judgment? Misunderstanding? Partisanship? Willful Rejection? A Reflection

²⁰ You sit and speak against your brother, 

slandering your mother’s son. 

²¹ When you do these things should I be silent? 

Do you think that I am like you? 

I accuse you, I lay out the matter before your eyes. (Psalm 50:20–21).

Four Forms of Disagreement

When people disagree on Facebook or other social media, they seem to do so in one of four ways: 

1. Prudential Judgment recognizes that two Catholics, who both strive follow Catholic teaching, might reach different conclusions on how to best carry out that teaching while living in the world. Provided that neither of these Catholics are seeking to evade Church teaching to justify what they want to do anyway, we have no right accusing one of error. There are different ways of engaging the world, including political approaches, after all. 
2. A person can be mistaken but in good faith about what Church teaching involves. Such people need to be corrected of course, but they need to be corrected gently (Proverbs 15:1). People recognize when they are being treated unjustly, and resent it. In resenting it, they might turn away from the truth, thinking our bad behavior is a sign of our being in the wrong. That would be false, but many in the world do reason this way. 
3. There is also the attitude of partisanship, where we treat a disagreement with our political views as if we were rejecting Church teaching on a subject. Under this attitude, a person who votes for X, or disagrees with voting for Y, is considered to be openly rejecting the Catholic faith. But in reality, this person is simply disagreeing with our political views, but not the Church teaching, and we are in the wrong for judging them. 
4. Finally, we have a case a person rejects the Church teaching in favor of a political teaching, saying if the Church disagrees with them the Church is wrong. In this case, the person is doing wrong, for whatever reason. The Church does have the authority to speak out on matters of faith and morals, and this includes when a nation or a political movement goes wrong. For a person to reject Church teaching as “intruding into politics” would be to give to Caesar what is God’s (cf. Matthew 22:21). 

Or, in short, we can describe these situations as: Neither is wrong, the other is wrong but in good faith, we are wrong, our opponent is wrong.

Discerning Between These Forms to do the Right Thing

Unfortunately, combox warriors have a bad habit of assuming the first three things are actually the fourth. Disagreement must be rejection of Church teaching, because we can’t possibly be wrong. The problem is, this is the kind of judgment our Lord condemned in Matthew 7:1. We’re assuming that any disagreement with how we see the world is rejecting truth itself, and assuming that rejection is done willfully. But in only one of these four cases is this true. That means in three of these cases, we are judging rashly, and committing calumny if we accuse them.

To avoid these sins, we have an obligation to discern what they intend to say, and what the Church herself teaches on the subject. Discernment, in this case, does not mean our personal reading of these things, and judging others in light of our interpretation. It means we make sure we understand what troubles us, and make certain it ought to trouble us before taking action. Then we have to make certain our reaction is just and chartable. As St. Francis de Sales as says:

Although S. Paul calls the Galatians “foolish,” and withstood S. Peter “to the face,” is that any reason why we should sit in judgment on nations, censure and abuse our superiors? We are not so many S. Pauls! But bitter, sharp, hasty men not unfrequently give way to their own tempers and dislikes under the cloak of zeal, and are consumed of their own fire, falsely calling it from heaven. On one side an ambitious man would fain have us believe that he only seeks the mitre out of zeal for souls; on the other a harsh censor bids us accept his slanders and backbiting as the utterance of a zealous mind.

 

Francis de Sales, Of the Love of God, trans. H. L. Sidney Lear (London: Rivingtons, 1888), 351.

This is a reasonable warning. The fact that St. Paul could rebuke the Galatians or offer correction to St. Peter is not permission for us to behave rudely to those we think are doing wrong. More often than not there is a risk of responding in sinful anger, confusing it with virtue. So, we have three obligations:

1. To make sure we understand the person who offends us
2. To make sure we understand the teaching we think he/she goes against
3. To make sure any response we make is compatible with Our Lord’s commandments to show love and mercy

If we fail in any of these obligations, we behave unjustly, quite possibly causing harm. If we’re wrong about what a person holds, or wrong about what the Church holds, or wrong about confusing our ideology with the Catholic obligations, we condemn the other unjustly. If we are right, but react without love or mercy, we have done wrong, and quite possibly driven a person away from accepting grace.

Conclusion

As always, it is not my intent to point fingers at any individual, nor to insinuate their guilt. Rather I hope to point out a dangerous attitude showing up in disputes between Catholics on how we should behave. Yes, we need to correct the sinner. But it seems that lately we are assuming guilt, rather than asking whether our assumptions are correct. Even when we are correct, there is a growing habit to behave in a vicious way. We need to stop falsely judging those who have not done wrong, and when we correct those who do wrong, we must correct in charity. Otherwise, people might be driven away from the Catholic faith because of our own behavior, not that of the person we disagree with.