Category Archives: Church Authority

Protestantism and the Motives of Credibility

Apologetics, Church, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Ecumenism, Scripture, , , ,

In investigating how we come to Faith, we discussed how the key step in the journey from natural faith to supernatural faith is to have “reasons to believe” that God has authentically spoken.    These external proofs of Revelation, when combined with the internal light of the Holy Spirit, help to formulate the content of faith.  The Church calls these reasons to believe motives of credibility (CCC 56) and enumerates three of them: prophecy, miracles and growth.  Only the Catholic Church bears all three of these stamps of authenticity, proving that she is the voice of God.  But these motives of credibility can also be applied in the opposite direction; not only are they signs of authenticity, but their lack is a sign that a given religion is false.

St. Francis de Sales, in his book The Catholic Controversy puts these motives of credibility to the test in refuting the authenticity of the Protestant Reformers.  He points out that throughout Salvation History, every ambassador for God carried with him a “letter of recommendation”.  This letter of recommendation comes in two forms, mediate and immediate. 

The mediate minister is the one who is commissioned by an already established authority and sent by one of God’s authentic ministers.  Scripture is replete with examples, but one will suffice to demonstrate the point.  When Elijah, who was God’s anointed, appointed Elisha as his successor, the latter became the authentic prophet and the voice of God among men through the imposition of his mantle (c.f. 1 Kings 19:16-21).  Likewise, Acts of the Apostles shows numerous cases in which the Apostles (or those who have been given authority by them) sending ministers out to speak in the name of the Church, the voice of God among men.

Someone who is sent immediately is one who received direct divine commission.  Again, we find numerous Scriptural examples including the aforementioned Elijah and the Apostles themselves.  In contrast to the mediate ministers, these immediate ministers must always carry with them two marks: prophecy and miracles.  They must be both prophesied and prophecy themselves.  The Apostles once again are the example par excellence through both being prophesied and prophesying themselves.  They also performed miracles making their message believable.  The interior movement of the Holy Spirit was met with external signs directing them to the true voice of God.

Applying the Principle to the Protestant Reformation

Once this principle is established, St. Francis de Sales applies it to the Protestant Reformers to see if they are truly God’s ambassadors.  It is readily apparent that the Reformers were not mediately appointed.  They rejected the authority of the Church and therefore to argue that they were sent by the Church would be nonsensical.  But what is often argued is that the Protestant Revolt was one from below and that it was the rank and file laity that sent them.  This viewpoint is historically debatable given that it was mostly imposed by princes, but even if we concede that it is true, then it is most certainly not Scriptural.

Hebrews 7:7, “unquestionably, a lesser person is blessed by a greater” carries with it a corollary and that is that a lesser person cannot bless a greater person.  What this means practically is that the laity cannot ordain an ambassador for God.  Even if some of them were priests, sharing only in Apostolic Succession through their Bishop, they lacked the proper authority to act directly against those Bishops.  To say that Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were anointed by the people would contradict a fundamental tenet that the Reformers all had in common: sola scriptura.  Therefore, we cannot say that these same Reformers were mediately appointed.

This leaves us with the immediate option, namely, that they were appointed by God directly. These reformers were obviously not the first in the history of the Church to make claims against the Church.  Heretics almost continuous made similar claims and were all rejected in part because they lacked these two signs of credibility.   So then, if the Protestant Reformers were truly on a mission from God, then we should expect both prophecy and miracles.  Unfortunately, we find neither as Luther and company never performed any miracles nor were they either subjects or objects of prophecy.

This certainly deals a blow to their credibility and should have been enough for many people to reject them out of hand.  But they countered that they were not changing anything , but restoring it.  Anyone who has studied the history of the Church knows that this is a rather dubious claim at best.  But what is indubitable is that they did change one thing: the Priesthood.

Changing the Priesthood

We find two Scriptural examples of a change in the Priestly Office.  First, we have the Levitical Priesthood.  Moses instituted the Levitical priesthood through his brother Aaron (c.f. Ex 28) as a replacement for the original priesthood of the firstborn son of every family.  This changing of the Priesthood was accompanied by a changing of the law given on Sinai. The members of the tribe of Levi were set aside to offer sacrifices for the people, despite the fact that the entire people of God was a “kingdom of priests” (Ex 19:6).

Jesus, the new High Priest, instituted a new priesthood.  It was prophesied that there would be a new priesthood.  This new priesthood would cease to be a hereditary Levitical priesthood but would be of the order of Melchizedek.  This priesthood will never be replaced (c.f. Ps. 110).  To make the point clear, the Book of Hebrews explicitly lays out how Jesus’ priesthood was of the order of Melchizedek and was the replacement for the Levitical priesthood (c.f. Hebrews 7:11-28).  Its sacrifice (a priest by definition must have a sacrifice) is bread and wine (c.f. Gn 14:18-20).  Jesus anointed the Apostles as priests and commanded them to continue this sacrifice perpetually at the Last Supper.

Looked at in this light, we can clearly see then that the Protestant Revolutionaries instituted a new priesthood.  Gone was the Melchizedekian priesthood to be replaced by “the priesthood of all believers.”  Yet, unlike Moses and Jesus, they did not carry the divine letters of credit with them.  The Melchizedekian priesthood was to last forever so these “reformers” were not prophesied anywhere within the divine deposit of faith.  Nor did they perform any miracles.  Thus, we must conclude that they were operating under, at best, their own inspiration.   

Lacking the first two motives of credibility would be incriminating enough, but they also lack the third as well.  The reformers sowed disunity rather than unity, leading to over 200 different “churches” or denominations (the number 33,000 has been greatly exaggerated ).  Unity is evidence of God-protected and inspired institution while disunity is evidence of a man-made institution.  That is why the unity or “one-ness” of the Church remains a mark distinguishing it from all other ecclesial communities.

St. Francis de Sales spent much of his life battling the Protestant reformers, even being exiled from his See of Geneva.  But because of his grasp of Scripture, a love for the Church and a love for those who left the Church, he convinced many Protestants that he had the truth on his side.  We could all learn a valuable lesson from him.

Returning to Our Roots

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One of the recurring themes of the Second Vatican Council was a commitment to return to the sources of the Catholic faith.  Whatever the Council Fathers had in mind by this repeated stressing of the need for ressourcement, the Holy Spirit had His eyes upon the turmoil that was to follow.  Not only would there be a continued proliferation of Protestant sects, there would also be widescale dissent within the bounds of the Catholic Church as well.  Add to that sciences like the Historical-Critical method and the recipe for confusion was complete.  As we approach the 60th year since the calling of the Council, it is time that we take their recommendation to heart and begin to study one of the major fonts of Christian wisdom, the Church Fathers. 

Knowledge of the Church Fathers is woefully lacking among most Catholics and, what little is known, is mainly in the form of apologetical snippets.  Some think it sufficient to  admire the Fathers from afar seeing them as a “great cloud of witnesses”, but not really sure what it is that they witness to.  But, more than just satisfying our nostalgic longings, the Church Fathers, like our human fathers, are vital to our identity as Christians.  A person who has no history, or has forgotten it, is in a very real way less goes through an identity crisis.  Like the amnesiac, they are lost, and, more relevant to the concern here, they are malleable to the suggestions of others who will tell them who they are.  Christians are so easily manipulated into believing falsehoods about the Faith because they do not know their history.  Studying the Church Fathers is the only remedy when Christian identity as a whole is threated.

Revelation as Give and Take

Why is this the case?  Because Revelation is a two-way street.  God is always the Great Initiator, but His communication, to be true communication, must be received.  A message that is neither received nor understood is no message at all.  A second, related principle, is articulated St. Thomas Aquinas, who says that “whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”  With respect to the Church Fathers, we must look at them as the ones who truly received the fullness of God’s Revelation.  It was spoken to them in a manner that they could receive it.  It is meant for us too, but it must, in a sense, pass through their hands.  If we want to receive that same message, a message that was given directly to them, then we should look at the way they understood the message.  Their role, as one author has put it, is to issue the “Church’s great Amen” to Revelation.  They received it and said Amen, which means “I agree” or “I got it.”  By tracing what they believed revelation to be saying, we can then give our own Amen.

Now to be clear, we should not expect our beliefs to be the same as theirs.  Revelation wasn’t given to them as a dead letter.  We should expect it to be made more explicit as it is “received according to the mode of the receivers” in each generation.  As both wisdom based on Christian patrimony and human knowledge grows, we become in a certain sense more receptive to the fullness of God’s revelation.  What they received in seed form, we receive as a sapling or a full-grown tree.  All that we believe explicitly, they believed implicitly.  They give us an unbroken chain to the Apostles enabling us to trace the path from implicit to explicit.  So, rather than trying to go back to what they believed exactly (as some antiquarianizers do), we should make sure we can trace what we believe back to what they believed.

It is the fact that the Church Fathers had the “voices of the Apostles echoing in their ears” (St. Irenaeus) that gives them an authoritative voice in the Church.  They are not infallible like Scripture or the Church, but their authority is more in a constitutive sense.  They tell us what the Apostles meant.  All that we believe today must be traced back through their voices because they link us to the Apostles.  If what is believed today contradicts what they say, then it is most certainly a false doctrine.

An Example

Take for example the Canon of Scripture (for a more detailed explanation of the forming of the Canon read this previous post).  We see as early as 96AD in Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians authoritative quotes from 13 New Testament books along side many Old Testament quotations.  He seems to put them both into the category of inspired Scriptures.  Fast forward 50 years and there is almost universal agreement on which books are to be treated as inspired and used in the liturgy with a few exceptions.  By the fourth century we have an official list of the books of Sacred Scripture that was reaffirmed several times since then.  This example is illustrative because, if we want to know which books the Apostles were handing on and constitute true Revelation, then we should go to the men whose hands were open to receive it and not a former Augustinian monk some 1500 years after the event.

The Church does not maintain an official list of Church Fathers, but if such a list did exist, it would likely contain the names of about 100 men.  She identifies a Father using the criteria that St. Vincent of Lerins, himself a Church Father, articulated in the 5th Century.  He said that the Fathers are “those alone who though in diverse times and places, yet persevering in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, have been approved teachers.”  They are marked by four qualities: sound doctrine, Church approval, antiquity, and holiness of life.  The latter, holiness of life, can never be overestimated.  Saints not only walk the walk, but also talk the talk.  They live rightly because they believe rightly.  Each Father may have made mistakes because they speculated on questions that had not yet been answered, but when they reliably pass on what was unquestionably believed at the time they wrote.  We know this, not because just one of them wrote it, but because many of them did.  They showed the unanimous consent of the Church in her beliefs.  This is why the First Vatican Council said “it is not permissible from anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”

It is with more than a little irony that the prevailing “Spirit of Vatican II” has rejected the Fathers even though the real spirit encouraged revisiting them.  For those who want to defeat that Spirit they would do well to ad fontes!

The Church and the Question of Slavery

Church, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, , ,

History, it is said, is written by the victors.  Whether this dictum is absolutely true or not can be debated.  What cannot be debated is that history is always rewritten by those seeking victory.  Historical rationalization allows the combatants to demonize their enemies, therefore justifying the annihilation of the culture.  Who can doubt that this has been a weapon in the arsenal of the Church’s enemies throughout the last few centuries?  As of late the enemies of the Church have attempted to rewrite the annals of history in order to paint the Church as indifferent, if not positively in favor of slavery.  In order to show this to be a lie, we must arm ourselves with the truth.

We must first set the stage by examining the world into which Our Lord took flesh.  Christianity arose.  Approximately 1/3 of the population of Ancient Rome were slaves.  All manual labor was performed by them.  In the fiefdom of the paterfamilias they were viewed as human property, essentially chattel, and held no rights.  In this regard Rome was no different from any culture prior to the arrival of Christ, including those encountered by the Jews (more on this in a moment).  Slavery was always viewed as acceptable and absolutely no one questioned the institution.  The only places it wasn’t practiced were those places that could not support it economically because the cost of maintaining the slaves was greater than their output.  This is an often overlooked, but nevertheless very important, point for two reasons.

Ending Slavery as a Practical Problem

First, given that slavery was ubiquitous, ending it as an institution would take power—either physical or moral.  This is why when Moses gives the Law to ancient Israel it says nothing condemning slavery but only how slaves were to be treated (c.f. Exodus 21:26-27, Deut 23:15-16).  And how they were to be treated was far greater than any other ancient culture.  This does not make it right or whitewash the immorality of it, but it does see how God was setting the stage for a moral revolution that would eventually topple slavery in the Christian world.  To condemn it would have been to shout into the wind.  He chose not an ethic, but to form an ethos.  And some of the different Jewish sects like the Essenes caught the ethos sooner than others and refused to practice slavery. 

Those who often try to change history forget that Christianity is a historical religion.  What this means is that God acts within specific cultures and in specific times.  Without understanding the cultural context, we will fail to miss the principles upon which His commandments are founded.  Any criticism of St. Paul for example must first include the cultural context in which he wrote.  To label his household codes (c.f. Col 3:18—4:1; Eph 5:21—6:9) as anything other than revolutionary is to trivialize what he is saying.  He demands that the slaves be treated justly (implying they are people with rights and not property) and that they will have to answer for how they treat their slaves.  While it might be implied that just treatment would include freeing them, he does not explicitly call for this.  This may insult our modern sensibilities towards anything other than absolute freedom, but it is because if the slaves were treated well by their masters, especially in the harsh Roman culture, then they might actually be better off remaining with their masters.  Many of them would have had nowhere else to go.

There is one particular case in which St. Paul did call for the release of a slave because he did have a better place to go (see Philemon 8-14).  Onesimus was a slave who stole money from his master, Philemon, and escaped to Rome.  When he ran into hard times in Rome, he found Paul whom he met at his master’s home in Colossae.  They developed a friendship and Onesimus was baptized.  At this point, Paul tells him he must return to his master and gives him a letter to present to his master.  This is the point where we must read the letter carefully to see what St. Paul was saying.  He tells Philemon that “although I have the full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I rather urge you out of love”.  Paul is saying that he could order Philemon to release Onesimus because it is “proper” (i.e. slavery is wrong).  But instead he wants him to release him out of love for his Christian brother.  The only reason he sends him back is so that “good you do might not be forced but voluntary.”  He wants to give him the opportunity to do the right thing for the right reason based upon a fully Christian ethos.

And based upon the history of the Church, Philemon responded just as St. Paul had hoped.  First, because the letter was saved for posteriority, that is, Philemon would not have saved a letter and distributed it if he did not comply with it.  Secondly because we find in the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles that Onesimus was ordained by St. Paul as the bishop of Macedonia.  Onesimus is the first beneficiary of the revolutionary view of mankind set in motion by the God made man.

The Impossibility of Judging Christianity by Its Own Principles

The second reason why we cannot overlook the fact that slavery was ubiquitous in the ancient world is that, in truth, without Christianity slavery would never end.  If we flash forward 1000 years to the end of the first Christian millennium we find that slavery is non-existent in the Christian world.  This condition continued through the Middle Ages so that by the 15th Century all of Europe is slavery free except for the fringes in the Iberian peninsula (under Islamic control) and in certain areas of Russia.  The Muslims were indiscriminate as to who they enslaved—black or white it did not matter.  Once they were run out of Spain and Portugal they went to Africa and joined in the already indigenous slave trade, that is, Africans enslaving and selling into slavery other Africans.  Again, another often overlooked fact that the African slave trade was already an institution long before the Europeans arrived in the late 15th Century. 

With slavery practically eradicated in Christendom, then how did slaves end up in the New World?  The Spanish and Portuguese Christians, living under an Islamic regime for nearly 700 years, had grown accustomed to it.  So when labor proved itself both lacking and necessary in the New World, the Spanish, Portuguese and eventually English turned to chattel slavery once again.  They did this against the very clear and repeated condemnations from the Church.  Beginning in 1435 with a bull Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugenius IV demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days or face automatic excommunication.  Over the next 450 years, the Popes unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of any peoples (see this link for a complete list).  With fists full of mammon covering their ears, many of the so-called Catholics simply ignored the Church’s teachings, especially because there was no real way of enforcement.

And herein lies the reason why the facts cannot be overlooked.  The Church’s teaching on slavery as intrinsically evil has been and always will be unchanging.  St. Paul’s Magna Charta of Christian brotherhood in Col 3:26 is forever established.  In this regard Christianity cannot be judged because to judge it, is to judge it based on its own principles.  Put another way, only Christianity taught the evil of slavery and so you cannot judge the principle by the principle itself.  What you can judge and absolutely should judge is Christians themselves for failing to live up to these principles.  For that, many Christians themselves have failed miserably to protect the dignity of their fellow men.  Parents sometimes are blamed for the actions of their children when there is a bad upbringing, but the clarity and insistence of the Church on this issue makes it clear that it was the children themselves who went astray.  What must be absolutely clear is that without the Catholic Church, millions, if not billions of people, would be in physical chains today.  No matter how the usurpers of our post-Christian society may try to paint the issue of slavery, that is a truth they must ultimately contend with.

On Adding to Scripture

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The great 19th Century Catholic convert from Anglicanism, Blessed John Henry Newman, once pronounced that “to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”  The Beati was describing his own path to the Catholic Church based on historical study.  But his point was not just that once you study the Church Fathers you will necessarily turn to Catholicism, but that there is an “utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity.”  He thought the “safest truth” in the centuries old debate between Catholic and Protestants is that “the Christianity of history is not Protestantism.”  A “safe truth” because the sola scriptura of Protestantism is, in principle, a rejection of history (which is just another word for Tradition) in favor of the Bible alone.  Protestantism turned Christians into a “people of the Book.”

Of course, Protestants will counter that this is the only way to protect against the corruption of God’s saving words.  Catholics have added to these words, something that is explicitly condemned in Scripture (Rev 22:18).  For Newman and for Catholics as a whole, they would plead guilty as charged.  Otherwise Scripture is doomed to become a dead letter.  But if it is “living and active” then to be living means, according to Newman, “to change, and to change often.”  In other words, Newman is not only defending what Catholics call “the development of doctrine” but is saying it is an absolutely necessary component of Christianity.

To come to this conclusion, Newman looks at the nature of ideas and the human mind.  Ideas when they pass before different human minds are considered under different aspects.  These different minds will draw different truths from these ideas.  So for an idea like “the sky is blue” two different minds may run along the tracks of different trains of thought and come to two different, though equally true, doctrines.  One may turn to the “color” of the sea and conclude that water is merely reflecting the sky.  Another may turn to the composition of the atmosphere and conclude that it filters light such that it turns the black of space into blue.  Living ideas, that is, ideas that are constantly “carried forward into the public throng” will constantly have new lights shed upon it.  Relevant to the point at hand, if Scripture presents ideas, and these ideas are living in the sense that they are consumed by public minds then you should expect that there be development.

A Bridge Too Far?

That last statement might seem like a bridge too far until we observe the behavior of Catholic and Protestant alike.  They argue about interpretation.  Neither side says “the Bible says this” and leaves it at that.  They argue about the meaning of what the Bible says.  The Biblical ideas meet two separate minds and two separate doctrines emerge.  It is inevitable.  In other words, if you even begin to argue about the interpretation of Scripture then you are already admitting the principle of development.  This is why I said that without development Scripture becomes a dead letter.  It simply says something like “Christ was born in Bethlehem” and says only that thing, not allowing us to draw any conclusions.  Scripture becomes collection of “God facts” of which we simply intellectually assent and then summarily ignore. 

Otherwise, once the ideas of Scripture pass before our minds, we will make judgments upon them and thus develop them in our minds.  Or, as Newman says, “it is characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before them. No sooner do we learn that we judge; we allow nothing to stand by itself.”  It is human nature for ideas to have consequences.  Divine ideas, spoken to man, are no different in this regard. 

All of us have had the experience of encountering a certain passage of Scripture and each time that we do realizing completely different things.  That is because no single term can exhaust all the contents of an idea.  This is especially true of God Who has the power to use an economy of words to convey more content than mere human words can.  As St. Justin Martyr said of Christ, “His sayings were short and concise; for He was not rhetorician but His word was the power of God.” 

Moving from Implicit to Explicit

Take for example Hebrews 11:6, what St. Thomas calls the credibilia—”But without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”  In this one sentence all Christian doctrine is contained implicitly.  Everything we believe, all that is in Scripture and Tradition, is connected to this waiting to be made explicit.

It is this movement from explicit to implicit that is described by the theory of the development of doctrine.  In truth Scripture leaves many important and vital questions unanswered.  In other words, Scripture is not wholly explicit.  There are always further implicit truths contained in every explication.  Newman uses the example of the fact that Baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins.  But what happens to those who sin after Baptism?  If that question is to be answered then there must be either additional revelation or development.  Our Lord Himself came to fulfill and not abolish the law and the prophets implying a rate of gradual growth in doctrine.  At what point can we say that growth ceased?  At Pentecost, at the Council of Jerusalem, on Patmos with John the Apostle, at Chalcedon when the Biblical Canon was closed, at Wittenberg, or what?

The development of doctrine itself is a biblical principle.  Christianity is not some esoteric philosophy but instead a historical religion.  The Bible itself reveals a plan of progressive revelation.  As an illustration Newman points to the seemingly unimportant meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek and the importance placed upon the ancient priest and his sacrifice of bread and wine in the Letter to the Hebrews.  Does this development cease in that letter or does it continue to progress down to our own day in the doctrine of the Eucharist? 

Once we establish that development is necessary then there is a strong antecedent argument in favor of an authority checking those developments.  To give Revelation without securing it against corruption is not to really have given it at all.  This is his argument in favor of the authority of the Catholic Church as the guardian and preserver of Revelation.  St. Paul and St. John show that heretics, like ravenous wolves, were active in the Church.  As the ideas of Scripture develop over time we should expect more heresies, not less, than the Apostles did. How can Revelation be protected without further doctrinal development, development that not only condemns but clarifies?  The moment you admit the development of doctrine, you must admit an authoritative Church. 

The question then, is not whether there will be development, but how to decipher between authentic development and corruption.  A living Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, is the only possibility for doing this.  After all, revelation that has been corrupted is not revelation at all.  It is lost to history.  And this is why Newman thought that Protestantism suffered not only from being unhistorical, but also untrue.

Christ the King and Theocracy

Church and State, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Politics, ,

In the opening lines of his letter to the Roman Christians, St. Paul reveals to them how the wrath of God is being revealed in the decadent Roman society in which they are immersed.  It is not through powerful astronomical events, famines or plagues (although it could be) but instead God “gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error…They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them “(Romans 1:26-32).  Sometimes the punishment for sin is, put simply, the sin itself.

Only the man who willingly choses to wear blinders would miss the obvious parallels to our own day.  The punishments listed by St. Paul match up perfectly with the primary social ills that plague us today.  The fact that these act as punishment for sin might explain why so many are enslaved and very little headway is made towards eradicating their widespread practice through moral reasoning.  These are the grounds upon which the so-called “culture wars” are fought.  Thus it is especially important to pay attention to the root sin that causes it all.  St. Paul says that the Gentiles were being punished “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Romans 1:28).

At the heart of culture, is cult.  Liturgy both forms and redeems culture.  This seems to have been forgotten, but it was something that Pope Pius XI was keenly aware of.  In his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, the Pope acknowledged that “the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring and the manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1).  By instituting a solemn feast, the Pope was calling down from heaven particular graces upon the Church in order to help her fulfill her mission in today’s world.

Christ the King and the Mission of the Church

And what exactly is that mission?  To keep clear the path for the reign of Christ.  But this mission is often eclipsed by an irrational fear of creating a “theocracy”.  A theocracy is exactly what must be created.  Or, perhaps to use a word less charged with meaning, a confessional state.  The delegation of the authority, because it is given to fallen, yet presumably redeemed men, will be diffused between Church and State, but there should be absolutely no opposition between the two.  Christ is both king of Church and State because all power in heaven and on earth was given Him (c.f. Mt. 28:18).  It is His power that the Church wields, and it is that same authority by which the State draws its legitimacy.

That Christ must rule even the State has been forgotten so immersed have we become in the error of “Separation of Church and State”.  Unaware of the waters we are swimming in, Pius XI thought it helpful to develop the “logic” of Christ’s Kingship.

Within an ethos of individualism, we often think of Christ as ruling individual men.  While that is true, it does not go far enough.  Man is by nature a social animal and thus you cannot rule over individual men while not also ruling over those individual men when they come together in society.  One might concede this to be true and then say “that is why we have the Church.”  Again, true, but again, not far enough.  While his spiritual reign has a certain primacy, His reign is also temporal.

Likewise, when we speak of the Kingship of Christ, we often refer to Him ruling over the hearts of mankind.  It impossible to rule over the hearts of men without ruling over their worldly affairs.  We are not disembodied angels, but men, body and soul composites.  Finally, while the consummation of His reign will not reach fruition until the end of time, all of time should see it growth in that direction.  Once the Feast was moved to the end of the Liturgical Year, rather than in October as Pius XI first promulgated it, there was a tendency to associate His Kingship with the end of the world.  This led to a lowering of the bar so that the goal became for Christ only to rule over the hearts of men.

What Separation of Church and State Has Wrought

It is the separation of Church and State that has led to society’s forgetting God.  In other words, the separation of Church and State is a denial of Christ’s Kingship.  The only way to win the culture war then is to restore the rightful King to His throne.  Again, there should be a separation of powers, but they must be pulling in the same direction.  In this model the State becomes a means to the salvation of mankind as it removes every temporal impediment within its sphere of influence.  By recognizing His Kingship, a Kinship that is His by right as Redeemer, He acts upon those temporal things that positively aid men’s salvation and sanctifies them.  By sharing in His temporal Kingship, the temporal leaders earn a grace of state that empowers them to rule more justly.

The Church, with Christ as King, rules the spiritual realm, answering only to Christ Himself.  The civil authority is subject to the Church but only insofar as the Church issues judgment upon those temporal things that could hinder the progress in the supernatural realm. This is the basis of what was called the “indirect power of the pope” by which the Church can intervene in temporal affairs in order to safeguard the interests of the divine life.

In short, recognition of Christ’s kingship means that Church and State have a unified goal—the salvation of men.  When a wall of separation is erected, the State, because it has rejected the True King and is governed solely by men, will always attempt to keep the Church out.  It does this by offering salvation to its citizens through utopic solutions.  Short of that it will offer them “bread and circuses” to but a wall of separation between their bodies and spirits.

Pius XI was not the only Pontiff to recognize this problem.  In his Encyclical on the Constitution of Christian States, Leo XIII said “The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself… it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God ”(Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 24-25).  And his solution?  “The people have heard quite enough about what are called the ‘rights of man’. Let them hear about the rights of God for once” (Pope Leo XIII Tamesti Future).  The Feast of Christ the King is the constant reminder of that exhortation.

Where We Got the Bible

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In an age marked by an exaggerated ecumenism, there is a tendency to paper over important differences that, once argued and resolved, could readily become a means of true unity.  Take for example the question of “how many books there are in the Bible?”  This question is not really one of personal faith, but historical fact.  Still it tends to be largely ignored because the facts are not really known on either side.  For this reason it is instructive for us to examine the history of the canon of Sacred Scripture.

To properly speak of a “canon” of Scripture, there are some necessary distinctions that need to be made.  First, the word canon is a theological term that was first used in the Fourth Century AD.  Prior to that the term Scriptures was used to distinguish those books that were inspired from those that were not.  This is important because, as Vatican I taught, the Church in recognizing the canon, was not bestowing inspiration upon certain books, but acknowledging that those books contained in the canon were inspired.  So properly speaking the Church did not “decide” the canon but merely recognized that the books contained in it were inspired and was tasked with preserving and protecting them.

Judaism and the “Canon” of the Old Testament

Second, there was no set canon within Judaism at the time of Our Lord.  Judaism was not a monolithic religion and different sects had different beliefs as to which books from the Hebrew Scriptures were inspired.  The Sadducees, for example, believed only that the five books of Moses were inspired (which is why Our Lord reprimands them for not knowing the Scriptures when they denied the resurrection in Mt 19).  The Pharisees on the other hand included other books, but disputed over the status of Ecclesiastes, Esther and the Song of Solomon.  The Essenes, the group from whom the Dead Sea Scrolls have been excavated, accepted even more, including some that are not found in any of the Christian Scriptures.

The point is that there was no accepted central authority within Judaism that could canonize the Scriptures.  This is one of the things that they thought the Messiah would do (c.f. John 4:25).  This dispute over which books were considered Scriptures lasted well into the second century and beyond.  This point is also important to consider because of a popular myth, perpetuated mainly by Protestants (especially Norman Geisler) that there was a Jewish council at Jamnia around the year 100 that closed the Jewish canon.  The end result was a canon of 22 books; the same set found in most Protestant Bibles.

If they did not recognize the Messiah whose role it was to discern the Scriptures, then by what authority could they have declared a fixed canon?  Furthermore, there is absolutely no historical evidence for such a formal council.  It appears that this was made up by H.E. Ryle as a defense of the Protestant subtraction of books from the Christian canon.  More on this in a moment.

What the Jews did begin to do, although in nothing like a formal way, was create a wall around their Scriptures in order to fend off the evangelization efforts of the Christians—Greek speaking and Greek Bible-reading Christians specifically.  So naturally one of the ways they would do this was to de-emphasize or even accept those books written in Greek.  It was for this reason that Christians, starting with St. Athanasius began making distinctions between what he referred to as “canonical” and what he called “other books.”  The “other books” were simply those books, that though considered to be inspired by the Christians, were not useful for evangelizing and argumentation with Jews.

How do we know that these books were considered inspired, even though not listed among Athanasius’ canon?  Because they were all approved to be used within the liturgy.  This is an important point that cannot be overlooked.  Books that were used in the liturgy were considered to be sacred and authentically the Word of God; lex orandi, lex credendi—the law of prayer is the law of belief.  In an age where literacy was low encounters with the Scriptures happened regularly in the liturgy.  Even if they were not able to read, they were still well versed in the Word of God for this reason.

It was the usefulness of the two groups of Scriptures that led St. Jerome to wrongly make the canon-deuterocanon distinction, positing that the latter were not inspired.  This conflating of usefulness with inspiration was an error that persisted even into the Middle Ages.  There are no degrees of inspiration, it either is or it isn’t.  But there are degrees of usefulness.  It is clear that Genesis has greater use than Tobit, but that does not mean the latter is not inspired.  It was in light of this that the Church spoke definitively as to which books were canonical and could be read in the liturgy at the Council of Carthage in 418.  This same list, which included the so-called deuterocanonical books, was reaffirmed throughout the centuries including at the Council of Florence almost 80 years before Luther drove the nail into his 95 theses.  The “Counter Reformational” Council of Trent merely reaffirmed the list and declared it to be a belief that was to be definitively held.  A solemn declaration had become necessary because for the first time since the third Century someone had challenged the contents.

Luther’s Role

Martin Luther did not actually remove books from the Bible as is commonly thought.  To do so would have been far too radical.  What he did do though is revive the canon-deuterocanon distinction.  His German translation reformatted the Bible so that the books in question appeared in the back of the Old Testament texts. Eventually he labeled them Apocrypha, prefacing them with a note that these were“books which are not held equal to the holy Scriptures and yet are profitable and good to read.”  The logical question is why he would have included them in the Bible to begin with unless they were actually in the Bible.  Why not remove them altogether?  Instead he pulled a little bait and switch by a common heretical trick that remains down to our day—gradualism.

This highlights the difficulty with the “Jewish Council” defense or anything like it.  Why would you remove books from the Christian Bible based upon Jewish authority?  Given the choice between 1500 years of Christian practice and dubious Jewish authority, why would you choose the latter?  For Luther and his progeny that was a red herring.  Books, in his view, should be included in the Bible only insofar as they confirm his authority.  He is very clear about that.  At first he quoted the books of Wisdom and Sirach in his own apology against indulgences.  But when those books were shown to reveal other things he didn’t agree with, he did not argue but instead questioned their authority.

Blessed John Henry Newman once quipped that to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant.  While he meant that once we study the Church Fathers it becomes clear that they were Catholic.  But his dictum can be taken in a deeper sense in that once we study the history of the Bible we come to see that the Protestant position regarding the contents of Scripture is wrong.  For a group of Christians who believe only in the authority of Scripture this is highly problematic to say the least and Catholics in charity owe it to them to set the record straight.

Light in the Darkness

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At the close of the Great Jubilee Year of 2000, Pope St. John Paul II drafted a blueprint for the Church in the next millennium in his Apostolic Exhortation Novo Millennio Ineunte.  Through his Petrine office, the Pope played the prophet by emphasizing that the Church must  “shine ever more brightly” in the third millennium.  Not prone to echo merely pious sentiments, the Holy Father’s words are a clarion call to us Catholics living in dark ecclesial times especially by reminding us that Church’s luminosity is nothing more than a reflection of the light of the face of Christ in every historical period.  Darkness sets in then when we have “not first contemplated His face.”  Confronted with scandalous silence piled upon scandalous actions, many Catholics feel abandoned by the Church.  But once we allow the prophetic character of JPII’s program for restoring the Church’s luminosity to invigorate our lives we realize that it is not the Church that has abandoned us, but we the Church.  By failing to contemplate the face of Christ we are incapable of “letting our light shine before men”(c.f. Mt 5:16).  But if we listen to what the Successor of Peter told us almost 20 years ago, we can find a path back to the light.

Before outlining his program, we would be remiss if we ignored an important point that the Holy Father makes: “We are certainly not seduced by the naive expectation that, faced with the great challenges of our time, we shall find some magic formula. No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you!” (NMI, 29).  Notwithstanding, the program is not something new but a revitalization of those practices that are at the heart of the Christian life.   These things are pathways to the face of Christ.

The Plan…

The first is a commitment to a holiness that is devoid of any mark of “minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity” (NMI, 30).  We must each strive to attain a “high standard of ordinary Christian living” by which we judge everything on a scale of sanctity.  What I mean by this is that we live in a detached manner asking whether each and everything we do is contributing to our holiness.  God is, by His loving Providence, is providing at each and every moment means to grow in holiness.  We need only say yes and fully embrace what He has planned to give us from all eternity.

The “scale of sanctity” is related to the second pillar of the saint’s program: grace.  Fidelity to grace is the key to growing in holiness.  The pursuit of holiness is not enough because it is not something we can ever obtain on our own.  It depends solely upon how much sanctifying grace we are given.  As the word grace (gratis) suggests it is pure gift.  What that means is not that we must sit back and wait for it, but that we must be active in receiving the gift.  Receptivity and passivity are not the same thing.  We must have the docility to receive it in the manner in which God intends to give it to us, but also seeking out those encounters in which God bestows those gifts.

The remaining three pillars are related to those encounters.  The first is the rediscovery of the face of Christ in the Sacrament of Penance (c.f. NMI, 37).  Mercy is for the contrite and it is through the Sacrament of Penance in which our contrition and Christ’s mercy meet.  In an age in which sin remains bound by self-appointed victimhood, freedom is found by approaching the mercy seat of the One Who became a willing victim for us.  These true encounters with Christ, mediated by a Priest, should be frequent enabling us to see them as necessary even when our sin is not grave.

Likewise, the Sacrament of the Eucharist must be restored to a primacy of place.  The Pope “insist[ed] that sharing in the Eucharist should really be the heart of Sunday for every baptized person” (36) but we should be willing to go further and make the sharing of the Eucharist the heart of every day.  By contemplating the face of the suffering and resurrected Christ in the Eucharist, we are being conformed to Him Mass by Mass.  If we really believe that Christ is present and the source of all life, “where else would we go” but to Mass?  Our Lord will not be outdone in generosity so that when we generously make ourselves available for Daily Mass, we find it harder and harder to stay away.

Marked by the communal prayer of the Eucharist, we must also contemplate the face of Christ in prayer.  Prayer, especially mental prayer, is the ordinary means God uses to gift us with His grace.  Reading the signs of the times, especially the “widespread demand for spirituality,” the Pope called upon the Faithful not only to pray, but to be educated in the art of prayer.  This meant going the great spiritual masters of the Church like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.  More explicitly the Holy Father is saying that rather than looking elsewhere, especially in New Age spirituality, for “methods” of spirituality, that we should all re-connect with the mystical tradition of the Church.  All too often Catholics are told to pray, but in truth do not know how to.  Therefore parishes should become not just places of prayer, but schools of prayer where prayer is taught.

…And the Difference it Makes

While this plan will help individual Christians, it isn’t immediately apparent how it will help the Church.  Holier lay people aren’t going to fix corrupt prelates, especially when those prelates sit in the high places of the Church.  To see things this way however is to make a very worldly mistake, namely, seeing the Church as an institution and not as an organism.  The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the extension of the Incarnation throughout time (c.f Mt 28:20 and this previous post).  The Church is holy because Christ is the Head.  The Mystical Body is holy because it has the Holy Spirit as its soul.  All those who share the indwelling of that same Spirit are members of that body.  But it also has members that have become diseased and are no longer capable of acting as parts of that same body. And just as a body has varied means to heal diseased parts of the body, so too the Church has the same power because it is always the Person of Christ who acts, even if He uses other members of the body as instruments.

Holy Members of the Church, both Militant and Triumphant, are healthy members of the Body that act to heal the diseased members of the Body.  They represent the true hierarchy of the Church.  The hierarchy of the Institutional Church, a hierarchy that will disappear, is meant only to be a sign of the true hierarchy.  Sometimes it fails as a sign and that’s when it is incumbent upon the true hierarchy to step up—not to lead the Institutional Church per se, but to be translucent members allowing the light reflected from the face of Christ to shine through them.   And if we put St. John Paul II’s plan into action and seek his intercession, that will be enough to heal the Church and be a light to a desperately dark world.

God’s Choice?

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As criticism continues to mount against Pope Francis amidst this time of ecclesiastical turmoil, a growing number of peacemakers have emerged, who, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, are quick to offer the reminder that “he was chosen by the Holy Spirit.”  One can certainly appreciate the attempt to maintain unity.  Especially because the Pope is the most visible sign of Catholic unity.  But this path to peace is a theological dead end.  The Pope is not “chosen by the Holy Spirit”, at least in the sense that the peacemaker means it.  Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI was once asked whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope to which he replied:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined…There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

In his usual pedagogical succinctness, the Pope Emeritus gives us several important reminders, not only on the election of the Pope, but also on the nature of the Church, especially in times of crises such as we are currently facing.

The Holy Spirit and the Conclave

As Benedict is quick to point out, one need only study history to see that this hypothesis is highly questionable.  History is rife with scoundrels who came to occupy the Chair of Peter.  It is always a good idea to study Church history and remind ourselves of this, especially because most of us have lived under the reign of popes who became saints.  It is only with great intellectual dexterity that we could admit that the Holy Spirit “picked” both these saints and someone like, say, Pope Alexander VI.

One might object that, even if it is a highly informed one, Cardinal Ratzinger was just offering an opinion (“I would say so…”).  The tradition of the Church would suggest otherwise.  Lex orandi, lex credenda—as we worship, so we believe.  The Church, among her various liturgies, has a Mass for the Election of the Pope.   The Church Universal prays that the Conclave will be docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  This implies that they can also operate under the promptings of mixture of other spirits as well.

Free will of the Cardinal electorate then is operative and “anyone” can be chosen.   Yet we are also treading on the horizon of free will and Divine Providence.   The man chosen to be Pope will be God’s choice, but only in the sense that the papal election, like all things, falls under God’s Providence.  We may be certain that the Holy Spirit directly wills the election of a given man as Supreme Pontiff, but through the mystery of Providence will allow another to take his place.

Our Lord told St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church.  What He meant by this was that no matter what, the Church would not fail.  The Barque of Peter may take on water, but it will never sink.  The Holy Spirit will allow the Church to take on water, but will always keep her afloat.  That is the extent of His protection.

This however is not the end of the story because of God’s Providence.  Regardless of whether it is a good Pope or bad, the Church will always get the Pope it needs.  Providence dictates that God will always provide the People of God with what they need.

Reading the Times

There may be a mutiny on the Barque of Peter and the Holy Spirit will pick a strong captain to lead a counter-mutiny, stopping the flow of the water.  Or, He may allow another man who joins the mutiny and ignores the water that continues to flow onto the boat.  Eventually all the compartments are flooded, washing the mutineers overboard.  The end result is the same, the corruption has been washed away and the Church was given exactly what she needed.

In a very real sense then the Pope is always God’s choice but only as an instrument.  As a type of the Church, Israel shows us this.  History continually moved in the direction towards the coming of the Messiah, the only question was whether the king and the people would cooperate.  Israel would flourish, grow fat, play the harlot, be chastised, and continue through the remnant.  This pattern is revealed so that we will come to recognize and expect it in the Church.  Either way history will continue to move towards the Second Coming.

In turbulent times this ought to serve as a great comfort.  The infestation of corruption in the Church is finally coming to a head and God is going to root it out.  He will use Pope Francis as his instrument.  The only question seems to be which type of captain Pope Francis will be.  Either way these scandals should not push us towards despair, but should instill hope into us.  God will not be mocked for sure, but neither will He ever abandon His people. He is always on the lookout for co-redeemers—those people who will pick up the Cross with Jesus and lay down their lives for the Church.  Only acts of reparation will repair the Church and each of us has an obligation to do this.  Every man must come on deck, stem the mutiny and start bailing water or risk being carried overboard.  “Penance, penance, penance!” the Angel of Portugal told us through the children of Fatima.  The time is at hand.  Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

The End of the Death Penalty?

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Today the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had approved a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the use of the death penalty.  The specific paragraph in the Catechism, no. 2267, had included an important qualifier admitting that the State may validly have recourse to its use: “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty.”  The modified version has removed this important qualifier and now says the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”  While this may seem like a relatively small change, at least doctrinally speaking, it is more important than one might think.

The Snowball Effect

First, it means that the preceding paragraph (no. 2266) also will need to be modified.  Legitimate public authority no longer has the right and duty to inflict proportionate punishment to the offense.  I have written about this in greater detail earlier this year, but to summarize, by saying that there are no crimes deserving of death, you ultimately invite injustice through arbitrary punishment.  As I put it back in March, “To say that a mass murderer deserves the same punishment (life imprisonment) as say a rapist is to ultimately destroy the principle of proportionality.  That a mass murderer gets only life imprisonment would suggest that a rapist who, “at least didn’t kill someone” should get less.  This leads to a sort of arbitrariness in punishment, including excess or even no punishment at all.”

This one change creates a snowball effect that can only become an avalanche of change.  The Church’s divinely inspired teachings can be likened to a seamless garment so that if you tug at the smallest string of doctrine the entire thing unravels.  Necessarily the Church’s teaching will then have to change regarding the rights and duties of the State, followed by the rights and duties of the individual and so on.  Before long we are left with a pile of string.

More importantly, the change also signals to the Faithful that the Pope is wrong.  Mind you, I am not saying this particular Pope is wrong (yet) but the Vicar of Christ is, in a very real way, one voice throughout the centuries.  Numerous Popes have taught that there are valid applications of Capital Punishment (including Pius V and his Catechism of the Council of Trent, Pius XII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and all the Popes who, as head of the Papal States, exercised their right and duty in executing criminals as a means of retributive justice), even if they exercised prudential judgment as to when it should be applied.  Now we begin to see why this is about more than just the death penalty.  Either all of these Popes taught error or this particular Pope is now teaching error by abolishing the death penalty.

In what now appears to have been a prophetic utterance, the future Pope Benedict XVI, as Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Faith under St. John Paul II, once said:

“[I]f a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment… he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities… to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible… to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty…”

Given this and the fact that the new version appears to be literally wiping out tradition (recall the paragraph in question makes reference to “the traditional teaching of the Church”), we should be inclined to side with the litany of saints and previous Popes who thought that Capital Punishment could be a just, and therefore licit, means of punishment.  In short, by calling the death penalty “inadmissible” the Pope is contradicting Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.  Rarely used? Fine, that is a prudential matter.  Absolutely immoral or inadmissible?  This is too far, contradicting Tradition and leads to injustice.

It IS all about the Dignity of the Person

The Scriptural justification is particularly relevant in this case because it directly contradicts the wording of the new No. 2267.  While setting up His covenant with Noah, God says “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).  Obviously it is problematic (at best) to say that God has commanded something that the Pope is now calling immoral.  But that is not really the biggest problem with the now “inadmissible” nature of the death penalty.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke when speaking of the new wording said “the key point is really human dignity.”  But dignity is a two-edged sword of sorts.  Notice that the Lord tells Noah that it is because murder is an affront to man’s dignity as made in the image of God that men should have recourse to the death penalty.  In other words, rather than being an attack on the dignity of the person, the death penalty affirms it.  It affirms the dignity of the victim.  You cannot speak of the dignity of the offender while at the same time ignoring the dignity of the victim.  Eventually you do violence to the notion of human dignity until it becomes a term devoid of any real content.  To say that a human person is so valuable that the only proportionate punishment for killing him is to forfeit your own life (the most valuable thing you own) is a great testament to the dignity of the human person.

Perhaps not as obvious is the fact that the death penalty also affirms the dignity of the offender as well.  Edward Feser goes into more detail on this in his book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, but his point is rather salient.  Capital punishment treats the offender not as a victim of his own rage, but as a free moral agent (i.e. made in the image of God).

Mr. Burke is right, the key point is human dignity, but not in the way he meant it.  To fully take the death penalty off the table ends up degrading the value of human life.  It is false then to deem the death penalty inadmissible in all cases and contrary to the Gospel—the power to take the life of a criminal comes from above (c.f. Jn 19:11).  Anyone who says otherwise is contradicting Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

On Finding Wayward Shepherds

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In the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul details his encounter with the first pope upon his visit to Antioch.  The Apostle to the Gentiles called St. Peter to task for withdrawing from the Gentiles and eating only with the Jews out of fear of offending the latter.  Knowing that their faith was weak, St. Peter did not want to scandalize them and so, out of a misguided sense of charity, he pretended to agree with them.  St. Paul was, of course, right.  St. Peter failed pastorally to shepherd his entire flock.  The truth can never be a source of scandal and it is no act of charity to water down the faith.

This event is favorite for non-Catholic apologists for arguing against the primacy of Peter.  After all, they reason, if Peter is the infallible head of the Church then how could Paul question him and find in him in error?  Therefore, the Apostles were all equals and the Catholic doctrines surrounding the papacy are false.  Of course, they read far beyond what happened.  Nowhere does St. Paul challenge St. Peter’s authority to rule, only his exercise of that authority.

Putting aside its apologetical value, this particular passage serves as a guiding light for Church management, especially in times when error is being propagated by those in authority.  One can see the great wisdom of the Holy Spirit in inspiring St. Paul to recount this event because it serves as an example for both prelates and their subjects.  From the perspective of the prelate, we are given an example of humility so as not to disdain correction from those who are “lower” than them.  From the perspective of the lay faithful it provides an example of both zeal and courage to correct those in the hierarchy.

What is Scandal?

First, a word about scandal.  In English this word tends to be understood as referring to an action that leads to public disgrace.  But in the theological sense the word has a more precise meaning.  The word comes from the Greek skándalon which means “a stumbling block.”  Specifically it refers to some action that creates a moral stumbling block for another person.  St. Thomas defines it as “something less rightly done or said, that occasions another’s spiritual downfall.”  The Angelic Doctor goes on to categorize scandal into two types: active and passive.  Active scandal, that which has as its reward a millstone, is “when a man either intends, by his evil word or deed, to lead another man into sin, or, if he does not so intend, when his deed is of such a nature as to lead another into sin: for instance, when a man publicly commits a sin or does something that has an appearance of sin.”  Passive scandal is when “one man’s word or deed is the accidental cause of another’s sin, when he neither intends to lead him into sin, nor does what is of a nature to lead him into sin, and yet this other one, through being ill-disposed, is led into sin” (ST II-II, q.43, a.1).

In short, scandal always pertains to an act that is in some way public in the sense that many people know about it.  One should never make public what was strictly done in private as the accuser would then be the cause of scandal rather than the perpetrator.  What happens in private should both remain and be corrected in private.  But in either case it is an obligation of charity to issue a correction.

The Obligation to Correct

Why is there an obligation?  By way of analogy, St. Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Church helps to illuminate why this is:

“As it is lawful to resist the Pope, if he assaulted a man’s person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled the state, and much more if he strove to destroy the Church.  It is lawful, I say, to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and hindering the execution of his will.”

While the saint mentions the Pope specifically, what he says applies to Bishops, Priests and Deacons.  If you saw a prelate beating a man physically you would stop it and you should do likewise if he is beating him spiritually.  St. Thomas Aquinas goes a step further saying that it is an act of charity not just towards the rest of the sheep but also towards the prelate as well because the scandalous behavior puts the prelate’s soul in great danger.  He, who has been given much, will have to answer for much.

St. Thomas says that “like all virtues, this act of fraternal charity is moderated by due circumstances.”  What he means by this is that we must not only be aware of our obligation, but also the manner in which we exercise that obligation.  While criticizing a prelate does not make you “more Catholic than the Pope” the manner in which you do it should make you just as Catholic as the Pope.  That is we should never forget that the operative word is charity.  This means that there are certain rules that ought to govern our interactions.

The Code of Canon Law (Canon 212) says that the faithful may legitimately criticize their pastors but that it must always be done “with reverence toward their pastors.”  This means that the criticism should first of all be done in private so that the pastor has an opportunity to correct himself.  This maintains the dignity of both their office and their person.

There are times however when the pastor does not correct himself or that meeting with him in private is not possible (not everyone can get a papal audience for example).  It may also be that the act or word poses such a danger to the faithful that a public rebuke is necessary.  In other words, it may be necessary like St. Paul to “withstand him to his face.”  St. Thomas says that if the faith were endangered a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly on account of the eminent danger of scandal (ST II-II q. 43 a. 1 obj.2).  This is why it is important to understand what constitutes scandal and what does not.  In any regard it may be necessary to “correct” the pastor in public out of, not just fraternal charity, but justice because the faithful have a right to the content of the faith in a clear and undiluted manner.  But still it must be done with gentleness and reverence for his office.

Before closing a word about the response of pastors.  Augustine says that Peter “gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects.”  Very often pastors think themselves above criticism from mere lay persons regardless of how qualified those lay persons are.  They remove the emphasis away from the truth as spoken onto the one speaking the truth.  Unfortunately the fraternal charity is not likewise met with pastoral humility.  It is this spirit that causes many lay people to remain quiet not confident enough that they could defend the Church’s position, especially when they are likely to be met with hostility.

In Loss and Gain, Blessed John Henry Newman’s fictional account of the conversion of a man from Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church, the protagonist Redding was drawn to the Church by its consistency.   While he could ask ten Anglican Priests to explain a particular dogma and  get ten different answers, he would get the same answer from ten Catholic pastors.  Those days of consistency are no longer among us, a phenomenon that can only be corrected when the entire Church, lay and clergy, take ownership of the Faith and fear not to correct wayward Shepherds.

On Church Authority

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The Holy Spirit gives to the Church exactly what she needs just when she needs it.  No one could have predicted just how vital it was that among the few items that the Fathers of the first Vatican Council were able to finish was to secure a definition of Papal infallibility.  So important was it that He also guided the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council to take up the issue again so that clarity with relation to the Church’s Magisterium as a whole would emerge.  The eyes of divine Providence of course saw the coming of the information age and with it a mingling of the Chair of Peter and the soapbox through an unprecedented access to the Vicar of Christ on Earth via papal plane parleys, book long interviews and regular addresses to various groups, Catholic and not.  In this day and age clarity as to what constitutes a Magisterial act and what does not has become absolutely necessary for every Catholic in order to avoid stumbling into confusion and error.

To begin, it merits a brief mention what we mean when we use the term Magisterium.  Whatever image is evoked by that term, it should begin by seeing it as an organ of the Mystical Body of Christ; an organ that is living and whose object is the promulgation and preservation of the rule of faith.  Keeping with the image of an organ, it is in essence the mind of the Church.  When Christ issued the pedagogical mandate that the Apostles were to “teach all nations” (Mt 28:19), He likewise offered them divine guidance and protection to do so.  As successors to the Apostles, the Bishops under the headship of the successor of St. Peter, the Pope exercise the power to make the mind of the Church known.

The Mind of the Church

On the part of the Faithful, they must “put on the mind of Christ” by putting on the mind of the Church.  Each man is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ only insofar as he conforms his own mind to the thinking of the Church.  From this notion theologians have come up with the term assent.  Assent is an intellectual judgment that a particular proposition is true.  But there are two kinds of assent, notional and religious.  The former is more of an admission that a particular proposition is true, without it actually making any practical difference in the person’s will.  Meanwhile, religious assent, that is “submission of mind and will,” (Lumen Gentium, 25) not only judges that a particular proposition is true, but also leads to correspondence with the person’s actions.  Religious assent is the only possible response to authentic magisterial teaching.

Now we begin to see the scope of the problem—obedience is required of the Faithful to authentic magisterial teaching.  This of course assumes that we will recognize authentic magisterial teaching when we hear it.  But, as we said in the introduction, the validity of this assumption is highly questionable in our age, and unless we take the time to understand what constitutes an authentic magisterial act and what does not then we will likely end up lost.  Many books, as well as a magisterial document Donum Veritatis have been written on the subject, but for the sake of developing a “layman’s” understanding I will avoid getting too bogged down in the details.

First, there are the statements themselves which carry differing weights.  Avery Cardinal Dulles succinctly defines four categories of magisterial acts in his book Craft of Theology (Chapter 8 :The Magisterium and Theological Dissent”).

  1. Statements definitively set forth that all Catholics are to accept as divinely revealed, that is contained (at least implicitly) in Scripture and Tradition. We typically call these dogmas of which there are many but a few examples would be papal infallibility itself, the four Marian dogmas and the like.
  2. Definitive Declarations of non-revealed truth closely connected to revelation and the Christian life. Examples of this include those teachings of the Church “which concerns the natural law” (Donum Veritatis, 16).
  3. Non-definitive but still obligatory teaching of doctrine that contributes to a right understanding of revelation. Examples of this type of teaching would include encyclicals.—encyclicals falls under this heading and has a real, though not unconditional assent on all the faithful
  4. Finally there are prudential admonitions or applications in a particular time and place which would include things like Apostolic Exhortations.

Our Mind and Will

The response to the first three is real or religious assent, although for the third the assent is not unconditional.  In speaking of the fourth, Dulles says we are required to have “external conformity in behavior but do not demand internal assent” because “interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church’s Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission” (DV 24).  Any withholding of internal assent must be based not upon one’s personal opinion but instead based upon the rule of faith as found in Scripture and Tradition.  In other words, any disagreement one might have must be based upon the mind of the Church and not one’s own mind.

 

Prudential judgment in the application of moral principles to the temporal realm are not included in this grouping.  We should respectfully consider the opinion of the Pope and Bishops on the application of Catholic Social Teaching to specific political questions and things like the Death Penalty, but we owe them no further assent. That is because these do not constitute true magisterial acts in the sense we are defining it.  These are, as Cardinal Ratzinger put it, issues for which “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion.”  It is when the “magisterial” statements don’t fall into one of these five categories (the four above plus the application category) that the voice of the magisterium becomes muffled.  With papal interviews, book-length interviews,

daily homilies and addresses to specific groups all figuring prominently in the last three pontificates there seems to be a six category.  While the Pope may have a specific audience in mind, mass communication makes everything he says in a way universal.  The Vatican insists that such statements are “non-magisterial” but there is some question as to whether magisterial-ness can be turned on or off.  It would seem that the path forward for right now is to check those things against the rule of faith.  If they contradict the rule of faith, then they can make no claim on our assent.  If they are in agreement with the rule of faith then they should be viewed as an exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium.  If they do not contradict the rule of faith (this is different than saying they are in agreement) then we do owe a certain level of assent which would depend upon their novelty, that is, how frequently they have been repeated by the Popes and Magisterium of the past.

As is clear by this last paragraph, the Holy Spirit is not yet done bringing clarity to this issue.  In the meantime the best way to part the clouds of obscurity is to learn the content of our faith—“to hold firm to the traditions that you were taught” (2 Thes 2:15).

Defending Death?

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In a previous post, two of the most common arguments for abolishing the death penalty, were examined and put to rest.  In the midst of this presentation, I promised to return to the topic because the arguments themselves are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasoning behind the Church’s position, a position she has held from her beginnings.  When asked where the Church stands on Capital Punishment, most would put forward the “self-defense” defense, a position based upon John Paul II’s explanation in Evangelium Vitae and later included in the Catechism:

“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’” (CCC 2267)

In summary, provided that the threat to society from the person can be neutralized, then the death penalty should not be used.  Given greater and greater security measures, we should expect that the death penalty will eventually be done away with.  Or so the argument goes.  This may come as a surprise to many, but “self-defense” has never been the primary reason why the Church has allowed recourse to the death penalty.  And if it was, this would represent a novelty (i.e. a change in something belonging to the Tradition of the Church).  Instead the Church has taught from the beginning that the death penalty was a valid means of punishment.

“From the beginning?”

Within the classical tradition, punishment has three distinct purposes.  The primary end is the re-establishment of justice.  When a crime is committed, the order of justice is upset and is only restored when a proportionate punishment is given to the offender.  This is why the punishment must always be carried out according to the judgment of a competent authority.  The other two purposes serve only secondary roles.  First, the punishment must be ordered to the correction of the offender himself, that is, it is medicinal in some way to the person who committed the injustice.  Finally, it must serve a social purpose, primarily as a deterrent and isolation of the offender.

We can examine Capital Punishment in light of these three ends to see if it can be applied.  It bears mentioning that this is a different question as to whether it should be applied in a given situation.  This is a question that only the competent authority whose role it is to promote and protect the common good.  We are interested here only in the question of why in principle the death penalty is not immoral.  That being said, we can examine the primary end, namely the re-establishment of justice.  Does the punishment fit the crime?

Almost on an intuitional level we must admit that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only fitting punishment is death.  If this sounds like vengeance then that is because it is.  Vengeance corresponds to the innate desire for justice that is written into human nature and it is a good thing when it is exercised according to justice.  This is why punishment should always be carried out by the competent authority.  If “all authority comes from above” (Romans 13:1) and “vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Dt 32:35) then it is the competent authority that carries out the punishments of the Lord.

Even if you are willing to concede this, you might answer “no, there is no crime for which the fitting punishment is death.”  The problem with this position is first that it contradicts Sacred Scripture.  In the midst of His covenant making with Noah, the Lord says “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).  This is the principle of proportionality.  A principle that even Our Lord did not abrogate in the Sermon on the Mount in which He addresses His individual followers to avoid unjust anger and vengeance while at the same time commanding them to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  There should be no vigilante justice, only those for whom the competence rests (c.f, Romans 13:1-4).  Our Lord teaches how we should respond as victims to violence, not as punishers.  It is with this awareness that the Church has always taught that society may have recourse to the death penalty as a punishment; from St. Paul to Augustine to Aquinas to Pope Innocent III to Pope Pius IX to Pope Pius XII to Benedict XVI.

The second problem is more one of common sense.  To say that a mass murderer deserves the same punishment (life imprisonment) as say a rapist is to ultimately destroy the principle of proportionality.  That a mass murderer gets only life imprisonment would suggest that a rapist who, “at least didn’t kill someone” should get less.  This leads to a sort of arbitrariness in punishment, including excess or even no punishment at all.  We cannot eliminate per se Capital Punishment as a proportional punishment.

Although it is not immediately obvious, Capital Punishment also serves the second purpose of punishment.  It serves a medicinal as well.  St. Thomas says that the death penalty leads to either repentance or puts an end to their sin, both of which are good for the person.  Death is not the worst thing that can happen to us—hell is.  Repentance obviously leads the person away from hell, but keeping a person from sinning even more keeps them from further punishment in hell

Finally, how the death penalty serves a deterrent.  This also needs to further explanation.  Many people take this to be an empirical claim and think that the number of murders is no less in places where there is recourse to the death penalty.  But the claim is more about the law as a great moral teacher.  As a deterrent the death penalty is not a part of someone’s calculation, but represents an overall hatred of murder.  Most people would not commit and murder and one of the reasons why they have such distaste for it is the horror of the death penalty.  Rather than being an affront against human dignity, it actually shows the great worth of human life.  Recall the reason that God gave Noah as to why he should use capital punishment—“in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).

A Novelty?

It was mentioned above that the “self-defense” defense would represent a novelty in the Church’s teaching and would be a break with unbreakable Tradition.  “Still”, one might say, “the Catechism says what it says.”  That is true, except that the paragraph must be read from within its proper context.  The teaching on the death penalty is presented from within the context of punishment, that is, as Capital Punishment.

“The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.” (CCC 2266)

This is merely a summary of the principles of what we said above.  What follows then in the next paragraph is meant to be an application of those principles based on the Holy Father’s prudential judgment.  He thinks that given the current state of the penal system, the ends of punishment—proportionality, expiation and deterrence— can be met with something like life imprisonment, rendering the only issue being whether or not society can be protected from further violence by the perpetrator.  As proof that this is a merely prudential application we need only look to the comments of the future Pope Benedict XVI when he said “While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia” (Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith).  It is both permissible to have recourse to capital punishment and to disagree with how it is applied.  The principle is set but how it is applied, like many things related to the moral teachings of the Church, is debatable.   Put another way, that it can be used as punishment is not debatable, when it should be used is.  As an aside, I should mention as well that, despite taking a lot of flak for it, Edward Feser offers an excellent explanation of why this is an imprudential judgment in his new book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty.

In conclusion, the Church has repeatedly affirmed the validity of the death penalty as a moral option for punishing violent offenders.  Despite a move towards a more merciful approach, this particular doctrine will not and cannot change.  The death penalty should always be on the table.

Sign of Contradiction

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In what has been labeled as a landmark study into various institutional responses to child sex abuse, the Australian Royal Commission targeted two particular practices of the Catholic Church; deeming them as directly contributing to abuse.  There is a certain familiar ring to them with the Commission recommending that the Church remove the canonical seal of Confession as pertains to sexual abuse and make clerical celibacy voluntary.  Many in the media, both Down Under and abroad, have criticized the Church for being too quick to dismiss the recommendations of the Commission.  Of course, the Church has been listening to these “recommendations” for many years now and so has good reason for rejecting them out of hand.  Nevertheless, it is always instructive for us to look at why, particularly the recommendation to change the practice of celibacy, is not a real solution.

To be fair, the Commission was quick to point out that clerical celibacy was not a direct cause of abuse but instead called it “a contributing factor,” especially since it “is implicated in emotional isolation, loneliness, depression and mental illness. Compulsory celibacy may also have contributed to various forms of psychosexual dysfunction, including psychosexual immaturity, which pose an ongoing risk to the safety of children.”  Furthermore, “for many clergy and religious, celibacy is an unattainable ideal that leads to clergy and religious living double lives, and contributes to a culture of secrecy and hypocrisy” (p. 71).

Statistics Don’t Lie but People Sometimes Use Them Wrong

Because we live in a world that increasingly relies on empirical observation, it is always helpful to begin by examining exactly how they came to their conclusions.  There can be no doubt that the Church in Australia, like the Church in the United States and the rest of the world, fostered a culture of abuse in the past.  There have been many effective safeguards put in place in the last decade but there is always room for improvement.  Still, there is some extreme speculation in what the Commission is saying.  To say that celibacy is a contributing factor with any degree of statistical confidence, you must be able to compare the incidence with non-celibates, with all other risk and institutional factors (including size) being equal.   To simply report raw numbers and unadjusted proportions comparing the Catholic Church (964 institutions) with Hinduism (less than 4 institutions) is highly misleading and can lead to spurious conclusions (see pp. 45-46).    They mention that the Church had the highest percentage of the total abuse cases, but there is no adjustment in that percentage for the fact that it is by far the largest institution.  It is like comparing the number of murders in Billings, Montana, with those in New York City without making any adjustment for the population size.  Per capita the incidence of abuse within the Church is no higher than other religious institutions, making any claim that celibacy is a contributing factor spurious at best.  In a peer reviewed setting, what they reported in their numbers of victims would have never passed even the most cursory of scrutiny.

They may have data to support this claim, but it would have been remarkable since no other group has found the incidence among priests to be any higher than other religious denominations and some have even found it to be lower.  If you really want to know the truth as to the incidence of abuse, follow the money.  Since the 80s insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance and they have found that the Catholic Church is not at any additional risk than other congregations.  In fact, because most abuse claims involve children, the only risk factor they do include is the number of children’s programs they have (for more on this, see this Newsweek article).

The Unattainable Ideal

There is also a familiar tone to their contention that compulsory clerical celibacy is an “unattainable ideal” for many of the clergy.  In fact, it is similar to the response that Our Lord gave to the Apostles when they questioned Him regarding “becoming a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of God” (Mt 19:12).  It is a calling based on a very high ideal, an ideal that can never be attained unless there is a particular call—”Whoever can accept this ought to accept it” (Mt 19:12).  It is both a free choice and a calling to a high ideal, but God always equips when He calls.

The point is that it is an unattainable ideal for all of the clergy without the necessary graces attached to the call.  But it is still a fallen man who accepts the call and thus the possibility for infidelity always remains real.  But just because some men fail, does not mean that the Church should throw away the ideal.

What this really betrays is a hidden assumption that everyone is making.  Priests are human just like everyone else and when they itch they must scratch.  We do not understand what celibacy is and therefore assume the solution to the problem is an orgasm.  If we can set it so that this orgasm occurs in a licit situation then we will rid the priesthood of this problem.  But again, if that were the case no married men would do something like this.

This is where JPII’s elixir of Theology of the Body comes in.  In man who has been redeemed by Christ, sexual desire is meant to be the power to love as God loves.  Nuptial love is the love of a total giving of self.  It is in the body’s “capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the person becomes a gift—and by means of this gift—fulfills the very meaning of being and existence” (JPII General Audience 16 January 1980).  Marriage and Procreation aren’t the only ways to love as God loves.  These are simply the original models that God gave us “in the beginning”.  Anytime we image Christ in giving up our bodies for others we express the nuptial meaning of the body.

With this in mind we can begin to understand celibacy.  Celibate life can only flow from a profound knowledge of the nuptial meaning of the body.  Anyone who chooses this vocation out of fear of sex or some deep sexual wound would not be responding to an authentic call from Christ (JPII General Audience 28 April 1982).  Celibacy is meant to be an anticipation of Heaven where we are neither married nor given in marriage.  It is a witness to the resurrection of the glorified body.  In other words, those who forego marriage in this life do so in anticipation of the “marriage of the Lamb”.

The Commission simply sees no value in celibacy and therefore is quick to dismiss it.  It is a sign of contradiction and therefore “has to be the problem” even if there is no way to prove it.  They rightly call it an ideal, but then fail to grasp the value of that ideal.  It is an ideal because it is also a sign—a sign that is valuable to the rest of society as a whole.  It serves a complimentary role to marriage and helps to show its true meaning.  It is an anticipation of our future life where our union with Love itself will be more intimate than marriage.  But it also shows the great worth of marriage itself because it is a sacrifice of great worth.

Sacramental Momentum

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At the beginning of his extended treatise on the Eucharist in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas draws a parallel between our corporeal lives and our spiritual lives that helps explain the inner logic of the Sacraments.  Specifically he says “the spiritual life is analogous to the corporeal, since corporeal things bear a resemblance to spiritual. Now it is clear that just as generation is required for corporeal life, since thereby man receives life; and growth, whereby man is brought to maturity: so likewise food is required for the preservation of life. Consequently, just as for the spiritual life there had to be Baptism, which is spiritual generation; and Confirmation, which is spiritual growth: so there needed to be the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is spiritual food” (ST III, q.73, a.1).  While it is certainly a clever way to teach about the need for the Sacraments, to see it as only that would be to miss an important analogical corollary; one that has practical applications for our apostolic approach to those in various stages of conversion.

In mitigating the factions that had arisen within the Corinthian community, St. Paul reminds them of his (and our) role in the conversion of others.  It is by way of cooperation that we participate in the conversion of another, but it is ultimately God Who provides the growth (c.f. 1Cor 3:6-7).  We all intuitively grasp this and realize that our role is secondary (at best) and that only through grace does another person “grow to the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13).  Nothing new has been said so far.  But how that growth is provided is not at all intuitive.  In fact we might be tempted to think it is a mystery and only according to God’s good pleasure.  As Catholics we do know that there is one sure way that God causes growth—through the Sacraments.

 

Sacramental Inertia

This is where St. Thomas’ analogy between our corporeal lives and our spiritual lives fits in.  The analogy is not just about the inner logic of the Sacraments themselves but also represent a progression in our Spiritual lives.  Just as a living person has a natural drive toward food, the person who has been born again in Baptism has a supernatural drive to feed on the Bread of Life.  Just as the child who has been born and has nourished his life with food desires to grow up, so too in the Spiritual life there is a supernatural desire for Confirmation.  What St. Thomas doesn’t say, but which is implied, is that this supernatural desire is contained as a grace within the Sacraments.  Baptism leads to a desire for the Eucharist.  Baptism and the Eucharist lead to a desire for Confirmation.  Baptism and Confirmation lead to an increased desire for the Eucharist.  Each reception of the Eucharist leads to a more fervent desire for the Eucharist itself.  And so, through this analogy we see that within the Sacraments there are graces pushing the recipient towards the other Sacraments, most especially towards the “source and summit” in the Eucharist.  It is like Newton’s first law applied to the Spiritual life—that which is set in motion in Baptism stays in motion through the other Sacraments.

Like all theological truths, this (super)natural progression also has practical consequences, one which we ought to make profit of in our apostolic endeavors.  If we know that an infallible means of growth is the Sacraments and follow St. Paul’s model then we ought to push others towards the Sacraments.  When we meet someone who does not know God at all and is unbaptized, our focus ought to be to lead them to the Baptismal font.  Why?  Because the grace of conversion contains within itself a desire to be baptized.  If the person is Baptized, then our focus ought to be on pushing them towards Confession and the Eucharist.  Why?  Because the Baptized person is already being inwardly pushed towards those Sacraments.  They may not be able to identify the specific impulses, but they will know them when they see them.    Lukewarm Catholic already in communion with the Church?  Push them towards Jesus in the Eucharist Who is the fire that will set ablaze the most lukewarm of hearts.

I knew of a man who did nothing else but invite his Protestant friends to Eucharistic Adoration.  He reasoned that if his Protestant friends really knew Jesus, they would recognize Him when they met Him in the monstrance.  It might not happen immediately, but in many of the cases they kept going with him until it did.  If Jesus is really there, and He is, then it is hard to find a flaw in this approach.

Applying the Law Sacramental Inertia

Our apostolic endeavors are only effective insofar as we cooperate with grace already working interiorly in the person.  By making use of this principle of Sacramental Inertia we are assured that we are on the same page as the Holy Spirit.  The Sacraments become a sort of apostolic blueprint that represent a goal.  In Latin, the Mass ends with Ite Missa Est, literally “she is sent,” meaning that we are sent out into the world to bring others back with us.  Like John the Baptist our goal is simply to point out and bring others to Jesus.  If we really believe the Sacraments are what the Church teaches they are, we will make them our apostolic goals.

One last point merits our attention as well, especially if it seems that the picture I have painted is overly simplistic.  It is no coincidence that the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist (and Confession), as next steps are also the biggest obstacles.  The principle of Sacramental Inertia is not foreign to mankind’s greatest spiritual foe.  They are either mocked by direct attack, counterfeited or else indirectly attacked by attacking the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  We should be constantly aware that the last thing the Devil wants is for a non-Catholic to begin a Sacramental life and he will do all that he can to impede that.  Our approach, when not leavened with prayer and sacrifice, will always become mere apologetics.  The Sacraments are the greatest treasure of the Church and we must always recognize that sharing these gifts is our apostolic goal.

Separation of Church and State?

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In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association written on New Year’s Day in 1802, President Jefferson wrote what, especially in recent times, has become his most often quoted words.  In offering an interpretation of the First Amendment he said,

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State” (emphasis added).

The Catholic Church invents the Separation of Church and State

Jefferson was offering nothing novel.  Christians have been preaching the separation of Church and State for millennia.  If we look at the great cultures throughout history, the idea of a separation between the State and Religious powers was anathema.  Whether it was Egypt or Rome, the Emperors were believed to be gods themselves and religious veneration was due to them.  When Christ uttered His famous “render unto Caesar,” He did so in a culture in which Caesar thought himself divine and the High Priest or Pontifex Maximus of the official Roman pagan religion.  This was the norm throughout the ancient world, except for a single country—Israel.  In Israel, the role of king was distinct from either the priests or the prophets.  The first king, Saul, was anointed by the Prophet Samuel (1Samuel 10) and even King David himself was beholden to the Prophet Nathan who accused him of murder.

Christians have always interpreted Christ’s admonition to “render unto Caesar” as a call to keep this Jewish tradition of separating the governance of the State from the governance of the Church.  On the one hand, we can see why Our Lord thought this necessary simply by looking at man’s nature as both spirit and body.  We live two distinct, although related lives—temporal and eternal.  His utterance baptizes these two distinct powers to govern each of the lives.  Like the body and soul, there is a certain precedence of the spiritual governance over the temporal governance, but still the two should work in a complementary fashion.

Why We Need the Separation

Why the Church and State should remain distinct is not entirely clear until we add into the mix man’s fallen nature.  As an effect of man’s prodigious fall, the body tends to drag the soul down and corrupt it.  When the Church and the State are essentially one, it is the Church bears the brunt of it.  History reveals this repeatedly, especially if we look to the Middle Ages, culminating in Henry VIII’s foundation of the Church of England.  The circumstances may change but the Church always becomes corrupt when it gets too closely tied to the temporal power.

To use an American parlance, the Church/State distinction is a form of checks and balances.  The temporal authority, because he is first and foremost is trying to save his own soul in addition to his subjects, is always subservient to the Church.  The Church would, in turn, make itself the servant of the Imperium in her conduct of temporal affairs.  Each serves to keep the other in line—when the Church oversteps her bounds and gets too caught up in temporal affairs, the State is there to remind her of her mission to souls.  When the State oversteps its bounds and puts the souls of its residents at stake, the Church is there to remind it of its proper place.  While this practice may have been abused, the power of the Pope to excommunicate a rogue Christian King was very effective in bringing about conditions that were good for the soul.

When the two function in this way the citizens of the State thrive and are holy.  The culture becomes Christian, rather than a mere State that happens to have a majority of Christians in it.  The Church recognized the importance of building a Christian society—one in which being a Christian is made easier by the culture—and therefore worked out her understanding of Church/State relations shortly after the time of Constantine.  Pope St. Gelasius I (492-496) who is often credited with “inventing” the separation of Church and State said:

“Christ, mindful of human fragility had discerned between the functions of each power… His reason for so doing was twofold. On the one hand, it is written that no one warring for God should be entangled with secular things. The raison d’être of the royal power was to relieve the clerics of the burden of having to care for their carnal and material wants. For the temporal necessities the pontiffs indeed need the emperors, so that they can devote themselves to their functions properly and are not distracted by the pursuit of these carnal matters, but the emperors, Christian as they are, need the pontiffs for the achievement of eternal salvation.”

The Jefersonian Distinction

Even if Jefferson did not invent the notion of the Separation of Church and State, he did endorse an important twist to it.  What was new about Jefferson’s position—which was subsequently read into the Constitution by Justice Hugo Black—was his belief that a wall of separation had to be erected.  In other words, he thought Church and State should remain completely separate.

Returning to the analogy of the human person, you can no more put a wall of separation between the Church and State than you can between the soul and the body.  To sever the one from the other leads to death—be it the death of the person or of society as a whole.

When the complementary role of Church and State is denied, the State will go unchecked in its power.  When the State finds no authority above it then it simply does as it sees fit without any regard to the moral law or the eternal salvation of its citizens.  In order to pull this off though the State needs to promote “bread and circuses” to keep the populace from focusing on their souls.  The “bread and circuses” can take various forms, but the form of choice today is sexual license.  It is not as if the Church merely disappears in this setting.  The State sets up a new Church, one that is merged with the State.  In other words, when you set up a “wall of separation” it will always end up merging the two.

 

Return of the Church-State of Paganism

Much of the West is returning to paganism in the form of liberalism, worshipping the god of freedom.  Like all pagan gods, it demands child sacrifice, even if is cleaner this time because it is done in utero.  Its churches are universities (really all public schools) and its high priests are the judges.  The State will “tolerate” other religions and grant “freedom of worship” but any public expression, especially when it comes in conflict with the State Religion, will not be tolerated.   The Little Sisters of the Poor may have ultimately won their lawsuit, but that is only a harbinger of things to come.  The next battle will likely come for not complying with the demands of the law for gay marriage.  You must be willing to profess the new pagan creed which many Catholics, even bishops and priests, have shown themselves willing to do.

This is really a project of the Enlightenment, it simply took a few centuries for the Christian roots of Western society to actually die out.  Those roots are now, for all intents and purposes, dead.  We are living in Rome in reverse and the only way we can act redemptively is the way of the Church—martyrdom or an appearance by Our Lady.  Throughout history those are the only two ways that a society has been saved from the clutches of paganism.  Let us pray that as we ready ourselves for the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima that it is the latter.

The Primacy of Conscience

Church Authority, Conscience, Freedom

Could it be that the” primacy of conscience” will lead to its ultimate demise?  With Church leaders like Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago saying things such as: “If people come to a decision in good conscience then our job is to help them move forward and to respect that. The conscience is inviolable and we have to respect that when they make decisions, and I’ve always done that” one has to wonder if it already has.  As Pope Benedict XVI once said, the greatest danger facing the West is the “self-destruction of conscience.”  Conscience is being destroyed from within because we no longer understand what it is.  Therefore it is instructive to look at conscience and see why those who profess the primacy of conscience are misguided.

Thanks, in no small part to the magic of Disney, Conscience is often spoken of as a thing, like the proverbial angel on one’s shoulder or Jiminy Cricket guiding Pinocchio.  Conscience is not, however, a thing but an act of the intellect.  More specifically it is a judgment reason.  Conscience is not just any judgment like whether I should bring along my umbrella or not, but a moral judgment about what one ought to do in a certain situation.  The Catechism, succinctly defines conscience as “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed” (CCC 1777). Rather than being something outside of us, conscience is as Gaudium et Spes defines it, “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man” (GS 16).

Before looking more closely at the idea of the so-called primacy of conscience, it is helpful to examine the underlying cause for its unquestioned adoption.  The moral life seems to present us with a Catch-22.  Either one sacrifices their freedom by obeying an authority or embraces that freedom and becomes one’s own authority.  In other words, there seems to be a great divide between authority and freedom and we must choose one or the other.

Those who embrace the “primacy of conscience” have decided to assert their freedom.  One would be hard pressed to find a single mention of this phrase in any magisterial document.   Those who refer to it often cite the same passage from the Catechism that the author did — namely, a “human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.” While this does put an emphasis on the necessity of following one’s conscience there is a key modifier that can’t be overlooked.  Advocates of the primacy of conscience consistently omit the modifier “certain.”  The Catechism says that we must obey a “certain” conscience so that if we are to speak of a primacy of conscience it is a primacy of a certain conscience.

Fr. John Hardon in his Modern Catholic Dictionary defines a certain conscience as “a state of mind when it has no prudent fear of being wrong about its judgment on some moral issue and firmly decides that some action is right or wrong.”

In other words, a certain conscience has two components.  It is a judgment that follows from sound deliberation and second it refers to the moral law.  It is not a mere moral opinion based on a superficial assessment of a situation nor is it looking for reasons why what we want to do can be justified.  We call that rationalizing.  Instead it is principled reasoning as to how the moral law applies to the situation at hand.

Interestingly, those who appeal to the primacy of conscience rarely ever actually refer to whether they are right or not.  All that matters is whether or not the person acted in accord with it.  Think of Archbishop Cupich’s respect for the fact that the individual has been true to themselves.  Conscience trumps truth. So embedded in our language is this understanding of conscience that we even refer to St. Thomas More as a “martyr for conscience.”  It is as if he merely made up his mind that the Church was right and Henry VIII wrong and dug in his heels.  But St. Thomas More died not as a “martyr for conscience” but, like all martyrs, as a witness to the truth. Herein lies the problem for those who hold the mistaken idea of “primacy of conscience.”   By their logic, both St. Thomas More and someone like Adolph Eichmann who said during the Nuremburg trials that he was only being true to his conscience were equally laudable

Within the Catechism’s definition of conscience, we find the blueprint for the bridge between freedom and authority. Recall that conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act.” By what standard does one determine the “moral quality of a concrete act”? Before we can answer that question, we must clarify what we mean when we speak of “morality.”

Morality, simply put, is the relationship between a human act — i.e., one done with knowledge and freedom — and the use of man’s nature in fulfilling his ultimate purpose, communion with God.  Some acts are in accord with the proper use of man’s nature and lead us to thrive (we call these good) and some are not and cause us to become slaves (we call these evil). Because human nature and its fulfillment are objective, certain goods are common to all men. Reason recognizes these goods as true goods, and commands that they be protected, preserved, and promoted. These commandments of reason comprise the moral law. Therefore, the “moral quality of a concrete act” can be determined by how it measures up to the moral law.   The moral law acts as a bridge between freedom and authority.

archbishop-cupich

It remains to investigate where the moral law comes from.  How can we see obeying a law as not somehow inhibiting our freedom?  The word for conscience in Latin, conscientia, gives us a clue. It is translated literally as “knowledge with.” Conscience is literally the “co-knowledge” that man shares with God.   This shared knowledge about reality shows why conscience has authority.

God governs all of creation by His Divine Providence.  Because He always acts in accord with reason, all things participate in His eternal law.  He has made all things with natural inclination towards those things that will fulfill its purpose or end.  Think of how a tree naturally grows towards the sunlight.  But unlike the tree, man, because he has an intellect and will, can know and choose to participate in this eternal law.  According to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is our participation in the eternal law of God that is called the natural law. Therefore, the natural law comes from within insofar as it is mediated by God through reason. But because it is a participation in the divine law, it has its source outside of man, in God Himself who is the Author of human nature.

It is in light of this understanding that St. Paul refers to the Gentiles, “who have not the law,” as a “law unto themselves” because they “do by nature what the law requires” (cf. Rom. 2:12) without any contradiction of either their freedom or the objective moral law.

The moral law comes to us through our intellect, but because of our fallen condition we also share in the “knowledge of good and evil.” Although our innate desire for the good cannot be extinguished, the darkening of the intellect that accompanied the Fall causes us great difficulty in discovering the good. Our reason, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, must now be “suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations.” The light of God’s truth flows through the Church. The Church informs conscience in much the same way the soul informs the body — giving it life and making it what it is.

St. Thomas teaches that we need revelation in the practical order for two reasons. First, since we are fallen creatures without revelation, the truth “would be known only by a few, and after a long time, and with the mixture of many errors.” Second, because man has a supernatural end, there are certain truths that surpass human reason. The Church, as described in Veritatis Splendor, is at “the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph. 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it” (no. 64). The Church does not impose the truths of man’s proper use of his nature from the outside, but instead proposes those truths to man’s reason so that he may recognize them as true internal values and accept them as his own.  Conscience indeed is primary, but only a conscience that is animated by a desire to become what we were made to be—saints.

Sola Scriptura and Logic

Church Authority, Scripture

Halloween marked the 499th Anniversary since Martin Luther fired the first theological shot of the Protestant Revolution by presenting the Bishop with his Ninety-Five theses.  Since then, Christians have remained divided, even among those that would identify themselves as Protestants.  But one thing that they all agree upon is that the Bible is the sole rule of faith.  Many Protestants are quite vocal in their opposition to the Church on this one point.  For example, Pastor John Piper recently posted to his website, desiringGod.com, an interview he gave in which he addresses the following question from a listener named Dan:

“Dear Pastor John, several of my Evangelical friends have converted to Roman Catholicism in recent years. One key issue has been over whether the Bible is our sole rule of faith. After reviewing some of the Catholic arguments, I’ve come to appreciate their persuasive force. As I’ve engaged Protestants, however, I have not yet found an equally persuasive defense of the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Pastor John, I was wondering if you could please help persuade me.”

Dan had to be somewhat disappointed by Pastor John’s first response because it is one that appears in one form or another anytime the subject is broached.

“If the Bible is God’s word, by definition no human authority or human institution can serve alongside the Bible with equal authority. Neither the pope nor any human counsel or any scholar or priest or pastor or human tradition has the authority of the Bible if it is God’s word. And it is.

Not only that, but the Bible itself nowhere grants to any person or ecclesiastical office an authority equal to its own. There are pastors and teachers which Christ gives to the church (Ephesians 4:11). Their job is not to impart revelation, but to stand on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. And Paul makes plain in 1 Corinthians 14:38 that the authority of those in the church must always give an account to the Scriptures, not themselves. That is the first response.”

When confronted with this or similar arguments, the Catholic will almost always respond with 1 Tim 3:15, “the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”  What normally ensues is a back and forth of different passages with no ground gained on either side.  What I would like to suggest is that the Catholic take a different approach, one that is outlined in the opening chapter of Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation, Verbum Domini, beautifully.

luther-95-theses

Pastor John opens his response by saying “If the Bible is God’s word…”  As Catholics we would not dispute this.  However, as the rest of his response seems to indicate, he is assuming that God’s word is the Bible.  What I mean by this is that, like nearly all his Protestant brethren, Pastor John assumes that the Word of God and Sacred Scripture are the same thing; that Sacred Scripture somehow exhausted all God has to say.

Anyone who carefully reads the Prologue to John’s Gospel will reject this.  John speaks of the “word of God” in various ways.  He is eternal, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1).  God’s Word took “flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) in the Person of Jesus Christ.  His word has been expressed through creation—“the world came to be through him” (John 1:10).  Turning to other books we find that His Word has been expressed “in partial and various ways through the Prophets” (Hebrews 1:1) and through angels (Acts 7:35).  His Word is expressed through the word preached by the Apostles (Mk 16:15).  We could multiply the examples, but what should become clear is that Pastor John and friends are making not so much a theological error, but a logical one.

When we use any two terms, they may equivocal, univocal or analogical.  Equivocal terms are those that have completely unrelated meanings (such as a river bank and a bank where we store our money).  In contrast to this we may use them univocally where the two terms express the same essential meaning.  Between these two poles there is also the opportunity to express the set of terms as having an analogical relationship.  An analogy is where you take two things which are different, but have a certain proportionality to them.  We use analogies with the hope of gaining knowledge of the latter which you don’t know by looking at how it is like a thing you do know.  For example, when we say that “Pastor John is good” and “God is good” we don’t mean exactly the same thing.  But we can gain a knowledge of God’s goodness which we don’t know fully by looking at Pastor John’s goodness which we do.

The Protestant error consists in using the terms “Word of God” and “the Bible” univocally, rather than analogically.  Each of the places we find the “Word of God” expressed throughout salvation history represent degrees or proportions.  The Word of God is eternal and yet is always expressed to man through a limited human language.  This is even the case with the Word Made Flesh.  Our Lord is the fullest expression of the Eternal Word, but not the Eternal Word expressed fully.  Pope Benedict XVI expresses it succinctly when he says that, “[A]lthough the word of God precedes and exceeds sacred Scripture, nonetheless Scripture, as inspired by God, contains the divine word” (Verbum Domini, 17).

benedict-bible

The Word of God has always been mediated through the words of men through the working of the Holy Spirit.  In this way, we can see that all the ways in which God spoke are analogates of the Word Made Flesh.  It is always the Divine Word spoken using human instrumentality.  That is why you cannot pit human authority against God the way that Pastor John attempts to do.  Men who speak the Word of God, speak with the same authority, because the authority comes from God Himself Whose Word is spoken.

This is where Pastor John and many of his Protestant brethren set up Catholic strawmen only to knock them down.  No Catholic believes, nor does the Church teach, that the Pope or any man is above the Word of God.  The Church, as the Body of Christ extended through time, is like Christ’s earthly body, at the service of the Word.  Like Christ’s Incarnated Body, the Church also can speak the Word of God.  To think that the Word of God only is spoken in a book is to deny that it is living and active.

Protestantism doesn’t just differ in its view of authority but in what it means to be a disciple.  Pastor John and many of his friends believe Christians are a “people of the Book.”  But Christians are “people of the Word of God” that is incarnate and living (VD, 7).  It is living because He is alive and has never ceased speaking through the Holy Spirit.  He did not dwell among us temporarily but “with you always, until the end of the ages” (Mt 28:20).  The Incarnation did not cease with His Ascension, He simply took on a new body with a new voice on Pentecost.  It is not mere men who speak in the Church, but mere men whom Christ uses as His voice (c.f Lk 10:16).  He may have nothing new to reveal, but He still speaks.

Before closing, I want to mention briefly a hidden danger of a sect of Christianity that defines itself the way Protestantism does.  Protestantism is obviously broad, but it is essentially defined as “not Catholic.”  With this comes not only a tendency to protest all things Catholic, but it also leads to a giant blind spot that causes one not to actually take the time to learn what it is that Catholics believe.  Pastor John’s second paragraph is a good example.

Not only that, but the Bible itself nowhere grants to any person or ecclesiastical office an authority equal to its own. There are pastors and teachers which Christ gives to the church (Ephesians 4:11). Their job is not to impart revelation, but to stand on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

There is a self-refuting quality about this argument.  On the one hand, he says that no ecclesial office has an authority equal to that of the Bible, but then mentions that pastors and teachers are “not to impart revelation, but to stand on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.”  What are apostles other than ecclesial officers (1 Cor 12:28)?  He is describing what Catholics actually believe.  We already believe that public revelation is closed but must still be handed on (or in Latin tradere from which we get the word Tradition).  Therefore, we believe that Scripture and Tradition, both of which are guarded and handed on, “form one sacred deposit of the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, II, 10).

A Right to Privacy?

Abortion, Church and State, Church Authority

During an interview on Meet the Press this past Sunday, Democratic Senator and possible Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine, admitted to being a “Traditional Catholic” who “personally opposes Abortion.”  Despite his personal opposition however he has “taken the position, which is quite common among Catholics — I have got a personal feeling about abortion, but the right rule for government is to let women make their own decisions.”

The Senator is right that his is a position that is “quite common among Catholics,” especially politicians.  But what never gets said is why they are “personally opposed.”  That would seem to be the next logical question that gets asked anytime a seemingly reasonable person says they are opposed to something that other people accept.  Part of the reason why it never gets asked is because the answer is implied when they identify themselves as Catholic.  They are opposed because that is what the Church teaches.  In other words, it is a matter of dogma that Catholics should oppose abortion. As a “traditional Catholic,” Senator Kaine knows that the Church (and American constitutional law) says that religious dogma should not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the state. It is also politically convenient because by suggesting that abortion belongs only in the confessional realm, Senator Kaine is able to play both sides of the field.  He can be personally opposed (and thus satisfying those who are also opposed) while appearing to be very tolerant of other people’s beliefs.

Surely as a “traditional Catholic” who is personally opposed to abortion he would know that the Church does not teach that abortion and contraception are matters of revealed faith.  Just as surely a Catholic who is involved in public life would have read St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae.  If he had he would have known that “[T]his doctrine is based upon the natural law” ( EV, 62) and like all the precepts of the natural law, binding on Catholics and non-Catholics.  In other words, being Catholic has nothing to do per se with whether you think abortion and contraception are wrong.  Pro-life Catholic politicians are just as guilty in this regard of allowing the debate to center around their Catholicism and would do a great service to the movement if they avoided making that connection.

While the “personally opposed, but…” defense has been worn out, it is the second half of the Senator’s response that bears a closer look because it betrays a profound philosophical difference from what the Church has taught us:

“I deeply believe — and not just as a matter of politics, but even as a matter of morality, that matters about reproduction and intimacy and relationships and contraception are in the personal realm. They’re moral decisions for individuals to make for themselves. And the last thing we need is government intruding into those personal decisions.”

Again as a Catholic, the Senator could again turn to Evangelium Vitae and find that the Holy Father anticipated his response when he said:

“Finally, the more radical views go so far as to maintain that in a modern and pluralistic society people should be allowed complete freedom to dispose of their own lives as well as of the lives of the unborn: it is asserted that it is not the task of the law to choose between different moral opinions, and still less can the law claim to impose one particular opinion to the detriment of others.” (EV, 68)

If it is not from the Church that the Senator gets his “radical view” then where does it come from?  It comes from a distorted view of the human person that permeates the modern American landscape.  It has even found its way into our laws through the so-called “right to privacy.”

Tim Kaine

Man by nature is a social being.  He depends upon others for his fulfillment.  Operating under this paradigm, the role of government is to aid in the development of the total person.  A good government is one that helps to create morally good people.  Laws not only protect freedom from the outside but also from the inside by promoting virtuous behavior.  Certainly it is always preferable to foster virtue by non-legislative means since virtue requires voluntary rather than coerced actions, nevertheless law cannot remain indifferent to moral actions because of its pedagogical power.

Operating under this view, there is an emphasis on the freedom to fulfill one’s obligations.  The obligation to protect innocent human life leads to the outlawing of all offenses against human life.  Each man sees himself as his brother’s keeper to a limited extent.

This understanding of man as social by nature is rejected in modern-day America.  Instead man is an individual with absolute autonomy.  He only enters into social relationships by an agreement or contract. Each man enters civil society and gives up only so much of his personal liberty as to facilitate comfortable self-preservation.  Under this view, the role of government becomes protective—protecting freedom from outside interference and from infringement by others.  Anything is legal provided it doesn’t limit the freedom of others.  The emphasis now shifts towards rights rather than obligations.  When two rights claims such as the right to choose and the right to life clash, the government must step in with positive law.  It is always the louder (or stronger) asserter of rights that wins.

Within this atmosphere of radical individualism enters the right to privacy.  This becomes a fundamental right because one must be able to do what one pleases without any outside interference.  This right has been elevated within the annals of the Supreme Court to an unalienable right.  Although it remains rather elusive as to what exactly it means, the Court ruled that the right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

It is “deeply held belief” in the right to privacy that trumps anything else that the Senator might “feel about abortion.”  Accordingly while he thinks that an individual’s private choices regarding intimate and personal matters (like whether or not to bear a child) must have no government interference, this cannot be done without reference to the moral law.  In no other aspect of life do we treat the right to privacy as an absolute right except in contraception, abortion, and homosexual activity.  This suggests that it is merely a smokescreen for judicial (and in the case at hand Senatorial) fiat.

Can the Senator explain why the private use of recreational drugs is a problem?  What about prostitution?  The “right to privacy” remains unprincipled.  This is why the right to non-interference for abortion (Roe v Wade) quickly turned into a right to abortion (PP vs Casey).  The government now interferes by supplying the abortion.  This is why a “personally opposed but” stance does nothing except reveal a lack of personal integrity.  The Senator is far from the neutral observer that he pretends to be.

We need only look to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling as proof of its arbitrary nature and its impossibility to overturn.  Abortion may be a personal decision, but it is certainly not private and no amount of judicial gymnastics can make it so.

He Who Hears You, Hears Me

Church Authority, Magisterium

Each time the secular media picks up a quote from Pope Francis regarding the changing of some teaching of the Church, confusion quickly follows.  The foundation of much of this confusion stems from the fact that very few Catholics understand how the Church exercises her authority.  Many Catholics have the attitude that “the Pope may be infallible, but unless a Pope speaks ex cathedra on a particular moral issue, we are all free to follow our own opinions and do what we want to do.”  Very often what further muddies the waters is the fact that there are a small, though extremely vocal group of revisionist theologians that claim that the Church has never taught infallibly on moral issues.

To help clear up some of this confusion, it is necessary to understand what infallibility is and who has been given this charism.  Infallibility is essentially a negative charism; it is a gift that makes it impossible to fall into error.  It does not mean that those who exercise it are somehow impeccable, but that when and if they speak, they cannot speak in error.  It is as if, in taking a test, the student may not answer all the questions, but those that he does, he gets right.

Why it is given is also important.  It is not meant in any way to add to Revelation but instead protect and preserve it.  The First Vatican Council said

This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this See so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine.

This gift is given to the Church by Christ Himself.  First He gives it to Peter and His successors, when at Caesarea Philippi He tells Peter that “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19).  Later on, He grants the gift to the united Apostolic College (and their successors) (Mt 18:18).  This power to bind and loose means not that Peter and the Apostles with Him can say whatever they want, only that there is Divine protection in what they do bind and loose will be true.  In this way, “binding and loosing” is synonymous with infallibility.

Therefore, the gift of infallibility can be traced to the New Testament days.  However, only gradually (as circumstances required) did it come to be understood more fully what its actual exercise looks like.  This is why the Second Vatican Council sought to explain infallibility in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.

Peter Preaching

First, the Council Fathers sought to address Papal infallibility, declaring that “the Roman Pontiff enjoys in virtue of his office the gift of infallibility…when… by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals.”  Papal infallibility refers not only to the Papal prerogative to proclaim a dogma to be divinely revealed, it can extend to solemn teachings on morals as well (more on this in a moment).  Its scope includes not just strict Revelation, but also to those things connected to it.

As Chapter 18 of Matthew suggests, this is not the only way in which the Church can exercise infallibility.  It may also do so in a collegial manner.  “The infallibility promised to the Church resides also in the body of Bishops, when that body exercises the supreme magisterium with the successor of Peter.”  There is a distinction between the two types of activity in which the body of the episcopate in union with the Pope enjoys infallibility.  The first is the extraordinary form when gathered at a general or ecumenical council.  The second is when they exercise their infallible power in an ordinary manner when in a moral unity with the Pope they “are in agreement that a particular teaching is to be held definitively and absolutely.”  This is what is referred to as the “Ordinary Magisterium.  In other words, the ordinary magisterium does not mean the bishops act in a strictly collegial matter but that they “agree in one judgment” on a certain issue.  Cardinal Ratzinger, in the audience of John Paul II, sought to clarify this point when he said

It should be noted that the infallible teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium is not only set forth with an explicit declaration of a doctrine to be believed or held definitively, but is also expressed by a doctrine implicitly contained in a practice of the Church’s faith, derived from revelation or, in any case, necessary for eternal salvation, and attested to by the uninterrupted Tradition: such an infallible teaching is thus objectively set forth by the whole episcopal body, understood in a diachronic and not necessarily merely synchronic sense. Furthermore, the intention of the ordinary and universal Magisterium to set forth a doctrine as definitive is not generally linked to technical formulations of particular solemnity; it is enough that this be clear from the tenor of the words used and from their context.

Unlike the Extraordinary Magisterium, when the Ordinary Magisterium is exercised it does not depends on particular formulations.  It is enough that it is part of the consensus and is said to be definitively held.

It is most often the case then that it is the exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium that is overlooked.  To say that the Pope has never taught ex cathedra on a moral issue does not mean that the Church has never taught infallibly on a moral issue.  As an example, we see John Paul II refer to the ordinary magisterium in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  In particular, he mentions three specific moral norms related to the killing of innocent life, abortion and euthanasia that are to be held as irreformable and definitive.

This also extends to issues directly related to the natural law as well, since the Church is the “authentic guardians and interpreters of the whole moral law, not only, that is, of the law of the Gospel but also of the natural law” (Humanae Vitae, 4).  This means that the moral teachings that are directly connected to the natural law that the Church has always taught are also included within the scope of infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium.  The Natural Law is based on unchanging human nature and therefore cannot itself change even if its application to different historical circumstances might change.

There has been much debate within the Church regarding the infallibility of the Church’s teaching regarding contraception.  Some of the issue pertains to a statement made during a press conference when Humanae Vitae was released.  However, if we apply the criteria given by John Paul II through Cardinal Ratzinger above, there is no other way to interpret Paul VI’s statement that “The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (HV, 11) is an exercise of infallibility based on the Ordinary Magisterium.  Footnotes in Papal documents are very important because they show the continuity of a given papal teaching.  The footnote attached to this paragraph refers to two papal documents of Pius XI and Pius XII, who in turn refer to Leo XIII and so on.

No discussion of infallibility would be complete unless it also mentioned that the Second Vatican Council also teaches that “The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals… It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God” (LG, 12).

The term sensus fidelium has been attached to the concept that the entire body of the faithful also enjoys infallibility.  This infallibility is, as Pope Benedict reminds us, “not a kind of public ecclesial opinion, and invoking it in order to contest the teachings of the Magisterium would be unthinkable” but depends upon “the guidance of the sacred teaching authority.”  In other words, it not the consensus on some truth that makes it true, but the truth of the doctrine that forms the consensus of the faithful.  We are infallible insofar as we rely on the infallible teaching of the Church.  That is why in a culture where personal freedom is paramount without any connection with truth, there is always the danger of seeing the Church’s exercise of infallibility as mere authority.  But properly understood, the authority is given to the Church precisely to protect us from falling into error regarding who God is and who we are.  In other words, infallibility, rather than somehow limiting our freedom, actually enhances it.  The spirit of the world tells me that divorce is permitted and maybe even a good thing.  The Church infallibly tells me it is not, not to hold me in a bad marriage, but to free me up for authentic love.  When divorce is off the table as an option I am more likely to love my spouse as my own flesh than if I look upon my spouse as a growth that may need to be excised.  We should rely on the Church as the steady guide in forming our consciences because of the presence of her divine Founder.  As Christ told the Apostles in Luke’s Gospel, “he who hears you, hears me.”