Pillars and posts

As I canvassed the news both secular and ecclesial today, I found myself thinking about how much people seem to be driven "from pillar to post"—to use one of my favorite old catch-phrases. When not distracting ourselves with forms of entertainment or consumption, we often agonize, be it in practice or theory, about polarities of goods in tension with each other. Most of us have experienced that in trying to balance such goods as work and family life, pleasure and duty, fulfillment and self-sacrifice. Politics are almost defined by perennial tensions between the public good and private interests, between principle and pragmatism. In both the personal and the political spheres, we find ourselves wanting this-or-that set of good things which, in the circumstances, are mutually incompatible; often we end up cynically resigned to choosing the lesser of evils, assuming we even have managed to fashion for ourselves a satisfactory account of what the lesser evil actually is. It gets no easier in religion.

Specifically, I want to focus on two topics where the oscillation between polarities seems especially intractable: ecumenism and, for want of a better term, the examination of conscience.

Lately I've seen much in both the blogosphere and the MSM that basically dismisses ecumenism as hopeless. I don't think that's just because the media generally and the Internet particularly tend to magnify differences between people. I find the despair seeping back into every branch of Christianity, all across the theological spectrum. Rather than encourage les autres by multiplying examples, I shall summarize my recent experience, including on this blog, with just one example: this thrust of the rapier from the unnamed blogger at Just Thomism:

Catholic- Protestant ecumenism is like a very odd dinner party where everyone sits around saying polite and edifying things while waiting for the other guest to die.

I couldn't help chuckling, of course. Who could? And I like that blog for the most part. I have been meaning for weeks to add it to my roll, and just have; that post in particular evinces the author's usual depth and wit. Perhaps that's one reason why JT's words are quoted with appreciation even by Prof. Brandon Watson at Siris, one of the most truly and soundly ecumenical bloggers I read and interact with, as well as one of the smartest. And in the combox to the Siris post, a fellow with the handle "Ahistoricality"—another dang-smart blogger with whom I've had good interaction in the past—remarks: "What a great line! True of almost all inter-religious dialogue, at least sometimes: Having been on the Jewish end of Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian dialogues...." This, I reiterate, is from ecumenically-minded bloggers. I hear much the same in the flesh from many thoughtful religious folk who are not church professionals. And of course one must not forget that Philip Johnson's words remain as true as ever: in America, land of almost infinite religious diversity, "anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice." The general cynicism and despair seems almost palpable.

Why do I consider this phenomenon an instance of being driven from pillar to post? Well, because amid all the despair, the "polite and edifying things" said in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue are, quite often, not only true but known to be true. Not heartfelt? Often. Platitudinously expressed? All too often. But still, true. Even the Unitarians used to have it two-thirds right. We needn't believe in "the neighborhood of Boston," and most of us probably wouldn't want to live there; but we do need to believe in "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man," and most of us still do. Of course the PC crowd has spoiled that phrase for everybody: nobody wants to befoul the language by uttering the expression "the parenthood of God and the siblinghood of humankind." But most of us have not forgotten the underlying truth; and it is our awareness of that truth which both motivates and justifies continued ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, even when those activities seem to have no prospect of solidifying such unity as the truth calls for. As Vatican II and all the popes since have made clear, Catholics have a duty to persist in dialogue not just with all the major religions, but with other Christians especially and with the Orthodox above all; for the Body of Christ is one, so that all who profess the name of Christ should be "of one mind and heart" in what they profess and how they live. And most Catholics recognize that—even those who believe "ecumenism" is basically hopeless, which many more do now than did 20 or 30 years ago. So the pendulum swings between openness and repulsion, hope and despair. Right now the swing seems to be on the downside.

I notice a similar trend in how religious people evaluate, or fail to evaluate, where they are on their individual spiritual journeys. At her new blog Charlotte Was Both, Amy Welborn names the the polarities-in-tension as "complacency" and "scrupulosity." A good many truly sincere disciples fall too deeply into one for fear of falling too deeply into the other. Almost any seriously committed religious person has a sense of how that dynamic works on the personal level, if not in themselves than in their co-religionists. Amy does a great job of describing the various forms that can take; but the occasion for her post was political: the US bishops' most recent collective statement on how American Catholics should carry out their civic duties, especially as regards voting. I've perused that statement; it's pretty sound in theory. But in practice not much will actually be done. I don't have time to rehearse all the reasons why, but the most important reason is that, among the minority of Catholics disposed to read or hear about such things to begin with, only another minority harbor any real desire to internalize them. To do so would disturb the complacency of the many and exacerbate the scrupulosity of the few, and not many of us really want to deal with that. People are tired of being driven to pillar to post already; one more pillar and post is just not on for them. There's only so much they can handle as they pursue goods which cannot, at least for long, be enjoyed together. So they either avoid the issue by slipping inertially into a complacency they know, deep down, to be false; or they become scrupulous, obsessive and pharisaical, like physicians who either can't see the need to heal themselves or, if they can see the need, can't do the deed because their own dire self-diagnoses spook them out.

Freud asked: "What do women want?" While he was still capable of real humor, Mel Gibson once did a funny movie pretending to give some answers. But the real answer is not hard to learn. Women want what men want: all good things. But we all want also to ignore several facts that are inescapable in this vale of tears: not all good things can be had together; some can only be had by giving up any prospect for the others; and we're never going to get it all "right" all the time, or even most of the time. As I used to tell my students, when I had students: "The challenge of freedom lies less in choosing between good and evil than in choosing between good and good." A great deal of modern society's restlessness, lack of time, frustration, and anger could be diminished if we learned to accept that we can neither have it all nor get quite right all that we do have. And we can only learn to accept that if we approach God as little children, who trust implicitly that their parents will sooner or later give them all that really matters. He is our peace, our center between the pillars and the posts. Only in such peace can we be truly free.

We're all getting married: the new theological synthesis

The title of this blog is a triple pun. In the broadest sense, it suggests that human life itself is sacramental: a vast reality that helps to constitute God's design for us precisely by signifying that design. In a more specific sense, it refers to the sacrament of the Eucharist: by consuming the Body and Blood of Christ, we have life eternal. In another, it alludes to such magisterial documents as Humanae Vitae, Donum Vitae, and Evangelium Vitae. I make such allusion because I believe it is the "life issues," those surrounding sexuality and procreation, that are the main spiritual salient today. And those issues are closely bound up with the only worthwhile theological synthesis on the horizon today. That's why I wish Benedict XVI's "apostolic exhortation" Sacramentum Caritatis had been entitled Sacramentum Vitae instead. Nobody asked my opinion, of course; but my broader intuitions are by no means on the margins.

To papabile Cardinal Angelo Scola and to a small but growing number of educated Catholics, the most important theological development in the Church over our lifetime has occurred around the theme of "the nuptial mystery." David Delaney over at Cosmos, Liturgy, Sex thinks so too; in fact, his summary and critical discussion of the new synthesis reminded me of that fact, and his post is all the more useful for being relatively brief. Of course the development is not complete. But it ought to be cultivated; and if God so wills, I want to be one of the people cultivating it. (There's always the problem of how to pay child support while doing something like that, but "for God all things are possible"—even a solution to that problem!) What I want to do here is explain why I believe that nuptial-mystery theology ('NMT' for short) is so important. Perhaps that will motivate somebody with more leisure than I have at present.

The theme itself is not altogether new, and would be too speculative if it were. It's right there in the New Testament, where Jesus speaks of himself as the Bridegroom and where Paul develops the basic idea further, especially in Ephesians. Some of the Fathers, such as Augustine, waxed eloquent about the Church as Bride of Christ and the sacrament of marriage as an expression of the one-body relation between Christ and the Church. Thus the basic idea of NMT is not hard to state, even though the mystery is not fully fathomable. Christian marriage, an indissoluble union in one body which Jesus instituted through the Church to restore what was "in the beginning," is a sacramental expression of God's relationship with his people: specifically, of Christ the Bridegroom with his Church. As Bride, the Church forms with the risen Christ "the whole Christ," i.e. his Mystical Body. And as Eastern Christianity has long recognized, that reality is itself an expression of God's own inner life as a Trinitarian communion of persons. How does Catholic NMT present that?

What relevantly characterizes that life is the perichoresis of the divine Persons: their mutual inherence in complete, self-giving love. Each person empties himself, as it were, into the others so that none retains anything for himself and yet each is infinitely glorified by virtue of being filled with the gift of the others. Thus within God, an unfathomable dynamic of pouring-out-and-receiving takes place necessarily and without limit, yet eternally, i.e. without taking time. So patterned, the divine energeia are both the living of divine life ad intra and the life God bestows ad extra on angels and humanity, by creating them to become "partakers of the divine nature" (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). On the human level, the sexual complementarity of man and woman is a naturally sacramental expression of that destiny. What is distinctive about man's physiognomy symbolizes the pouring-forth of each of the divine persons in perichoresis; what is distinctive about woman's symbolizes the reception by each divine person of that pouring fourth. The more general differences between men and women, which we are gradually coming to understand better through research into the brain and hormones, form a fuller natural reality in harmony with that basic reproductive one. Such natural realities in turn make them supremely fit to be a sacrament of God's relationship with his people.

That basic idea of NMT ramifies directly into ecclesiology. The inner structure of the Church herself, her hierarchy or "sacred order," is fundamentally nuptial. That is why woman, as such, is actually a clearer expression of humanity's relationship with God than man. As members of the Body, we are collectively "female" in relation to God as incarnate in the man Jesus Christ. That is why Christ's union with his Church is well signified by marriage. But the sacred order of the Church also explains why only men can be individual icons of the male Christ giving himself to his Bride—both in the sacrament of marriage and in the sacerdotal priesthood of Christ as distinct from the generic priesthood of believers, even though each priesthood is a kind of share in Christ's one high priesthood. Rather than go on further here, I refer readers to my post The Ecclesiology of the Body for an explanation of the ecclesiological aspects of NMT. For now I shall content myself with reiterating that the divine constitution of the Church is itself sacramental: it helps to bring about the reality it symbolizes, which is that we are all getting married to Christ. The only question is whether our dispositions will let the marriage be happy or miserable.

Now as Fergus Kerr has pointed out, resistance to NMT has developed on two fronts. Some of the more traditional thinkers, still convinced of the normativity of neo-scholasticism in theology, dismiss NMT as woolly-minded mysticism that only distracts from what needs renewed emphasis in theology. Some of the more progressive thinkers, who might be thought to favor how NMT points much more to human experience than neo-scholasticism has, nonetheless are deeply disturbed by how NMT can be and has been used, especially by John Paul the Great's "theology of the body," to bolster some of the well-known prohibitions in the Church's traditional teaching about sexuality and marriage. Of course, neo-Cath that I am, I'm inclined to believe that such resistance from both the Right and the Left is an excellent sign. NMT is a powerful, overarching, and authentic theological synthesis still in the process of development. Let us pray that it has the effect intended by the Holy Spirit.

Making sense of the plain sense

For a couple of weeks now, I and several other Catholics have been engaging Brandon Watson of Siris on the question whether there is such a thing as "the plain sense of Scripture." I don't know Brandon's ecclesial affiliation, and he has never come out with it, not even during any of our many discussions over the past year. Like many Protestants, he believes one can and should speak of a plain sense; but unlike some, he speaks of it only by analogy of attribution. Thus the plain sense of Scripture is what the plain reader (or hearer; for Scripture is not only for the literate) can discern, under the Holy Spirit's guidance, as the meaning intended by the Spirit. Now with the proviso that the term 'plain sense' be employed in that way, I find myself in agreement. I can make good sense of the expression 'plain sense of Scripture' so construed, even as I can make no other good sense of the assertion that there is a plain sense of Scripture. Brandon's approach is fully consonant with what Vatican II said, in Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio, about how "elements of sanctification and truth" are found outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church among Protestants who revere Scripture. But given that Brandon's rendering makes good sense in the way indicated, there remains a vitally important question.

The question is what difference the interpretive authority of the Magisterium makes, or could make, as a medium of the Spirit for "the plain reader."As evidenced especially in the comboxes, Brandon seems to believe that the difference is only one of relative completeness. Thus, you can get a lot of saving truth out of Scripture without the Magisterium's interpretive guidance, but you can only get all you can if you accept and utilize such guidance. That too, I should think, is true. But if one leaves matters at that, one is giving short shrift to a fundamental point about the Magisterium's role, one that John Henry Newman recognized well back in the 19th century.

St. Thomas Aquinas argued thus:

Neither living nor lifeless faith remains in a heretic who disbelieves one article of faith.

The reason of this is that the species of every habit depends on the formal aspect of the object, without which the species of the habit cannot remain. Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth. Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith. Even so, it is evident that a man whose mind holds a conclusion without knowing how it is proved, has not scientific knowledge, but merely an opinion about it. Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will. Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.

That is essentially the same point Newman was to make centuries later about the contrast between "faith" and "private judgment." The latter, whether individual or corporate, yields only "a kind of opinion in accordance with" one's own will; by contrast, the habitus of faith can only be enjoyed by one who reads Scripture while adhering "to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible and divine rule." Newman's point was that the Protestant as such is only exercising private judgment when they read Scripture while rejecting the interpretive authority of the Magisterium. They do not have the habit of faith, even when what they come to believe by reading Scripture is true and "of faith." They have only opinions—even when the content of the opinions coincides tolerably well with that of the faith-once-delivered. And I hold that position myself, as evidenced in my essay Faith, Private Judgment, Doubt, and Dissent.

One might well ask how that position compatible with Brandon's point and the teaching of Vatican II, both of which I also accept. At least I've asked myself that question. After some thought, here's my answer.

The key lies in Aquinas' distinction between "obstinate" heresy and mere "error." An "obstinate" heretic is one who both persists in rejecting the authority of the Magisterium and can be held morally accountable for that persistence. One who either does not so persist, or if they do so persist cannot be held blameworthy for persisting, is merely "in error." Now I agree with that as well. But I doubt I would agree with Aquinas— or indeed with most Catholic theologians between the time of Augustine and the mid 20th century—about the precise conditions one would have to meet in order to count as morally blameworthy for persistence in heresy. In that stance I follow Vatican II, which in UR explicitly denied that people brought up in non-Catholic Christian traditions can be presumed morally blameworthy for not being Catholic. Given that denial, it is possible for Protestants who, as such, are merely "in error" by virtue of rejecting the authority of the Magisterium in relation to Scripture, to begin developing the habit or virtue of faith partly by virtue of their Spirit-guided reading of Scripture. How?

It is well known that the major branches of Protestantism are divided from each other chiefly by virtue of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. Catholic apologists, including yours truly, often cite that as evidence of the need for Tradition and the Magisterium to condition the interpretation of Scripture. Yet despite the bewildering variety, I have found that remarkably many Protestants interpret Scripture as the Magisterium does on what are perhaps the most important points: the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, the Atonement, and the bodily resurrection of Christ. Given all the variety that obtained even in the early Church, as well as the variety that obtains today in Protestantism, that fact calls for explanation; and to my mind, the explanation is ready to hand. The reason so many Protestant interpretations cohere with the Magisterium's on the most important points is that the Magisterium, throughout the first millennium and before the definitive East-West schism, authorized the correct interpretations in light of Tradition and thereby solidified a traditional hermeneutic for reading Scripture on those points. Many well-disposed Protestants, whatever their disagreements with both the Magisterium and each other, remain beneficiaries of that hermeneutic. Thus the sound doctrinal core one can find in some versions of Protestantism is the historical product of how Tradition and the Magisterium have always conditioned the interpretation of Scripture. That core embodies an implicit reliance on "the teaching of the Church as to an infallible and divine rule." And that is what enables the faith of some Protestants to be more than just opinion, so that they can begin developing the habit or virtue of faith despite being "in error" (as opposed to being "obstinate" heretics). It is just that phenomenon that Fr. Al Kimel, in an article now lost to the blogosphere, last year called the "parasitic Catholicism" of some Protestants. The phrase itself understandably raised some hackles, but the substantive point was essentially the one I have just been making.

That point is confirmed for me by my experience with many Protestants in RCIA, when I was in charge of that process for a parish. Many of them said what a reader of this blog, a former Jehovah's Witness now in RCIA, has e-mailed me to say:

I spent many many years learning and teaching heresy. But even in the midst of that heresy, the actual Bible reading that I engaged in left an indelible mark.

When I attended a Catholic Mass for the first time (a little over a year ago), everything about the service resonated with me. All the seeds planted by the Holy Spirit in those years of reading the scriptures were finally watered. It was an overwhelming experience.

When I read Catholic literature or study the Catechism, scriptures come back to my memory. They inundate me. I have also learned that this experience is not unique. Friends who are Catholic converts from Protestantism have told me that they had the same experience.

Reading the scriptures without fully understanding the scriptures (or while holding a totally wrong understanding of the scriptures) still serves a very real purpose. All that truth gets stored up in one 's heart, and when the message coming in matches the message that has been stored in that way, the chorus of truth is like a beautiful orchestra playing in concert.

The Church today encounters this sort of thing all the time among her adult converts. It is salutary that, beginning with the formal teaching of Vatican II, she has gone beyond Aquinas, beyond even Newman, to recognize how "elements of sanctification and truth" outside the visible boundaries of the Church can lead those inhabiting the periphery to develop the virtue of faith. It is that virtue which impels them to Catholic unity even when they do not realize it. Fortunately, some do come to realize it and act accordingly.

The more immediate lesson here is not that the Catholic Church is purely optional for salvation. She is necessary, not optional: by the will of the Lord, whatever access to truth and holiness people have is mediated through the Church, including her Tradition and Magisterium. Those who cannot be blamed for failing to recognize that can be and are often led by the Spirit to understand and learn from the "plain sense" of Scripture. But the plain sense, of which Brandon speaks by analogy, is only granted by the Spirit through the mediation of the Church's Tradition and Magisterium. What is "incomplete" about the plain sense of Scripture, if one stops with that sense, is that insofar as one fails to recognize its dependence on such factors, one cannot learn everything comprised by that sense. Thus one cannot fully develop the virtue of faith, as distinct from acquiring true opinions.

From GodTube: what to find in Lost City

A reader sent me this video of a new Benedictine foundation, Clear Creek Monastery in Lost City, Oklahoma. I'm putting it out there for two reasons.

First, though I myself have visited several places like this before, the same cannot be said of a lot of Catholic men out there. Please view it and pass it on to somebody you think would use it well. Also, I'm hoping to encourage Belmont Abbey, where I regularly attend Mass, to produce something like this. It couldn't hurt and could only help.

It's so good to know that places like this keep springing up. What a beautiful contrast with much of what passes for life.

Oops, they did it again...

Well, once again a few Catholic women have got themselves "ordained" as priests, this time in St. Louis yesterday. Archbishop Raymond Burke, my favorite American hierarch, has issued the usual threat of excommunication, and for all I know has already carried it out. He's the sort who would. Now every time a similar event occurs, people ask me to comment. Last year I did, once, at the now-defunct version of Fr. Al Kimel's blog Pontifications. But usually I don't. Is it news anymore that an alternative church is forming which consists of people who very much want to be Catholics but very much do not want to obey the duly constituted authority of the Catholic Church about matters of faith? We've seen that movie before, e.g. in the formation of the Anglican Communion. And the remakes only get wackier over time. So why am I commenting now?

What piqued my interest was the irony of the ordination ceremony's being hosted by a Jewish synagogue. The rabbi thereof, Susan Talve, is an intriguing character. I first learned about her from a men's-rights activist I know who has been the object of her tender feminist mercies before. The woman obviously has no respect for Jewish tradition, let alone Catholic. But she was at least ecumenical. Her cooperation with the Archdiocese about such matters as immigration and care for the poor had been exemplary. But she apparently considers good relations worth sacrificing for the sake of the Womanpriest cause. You might ask why one should be surprised given, e.g., that the Anglican Communion sacrificed any prospect of corporate reunion with the Catholic or Orthodox churches over this very same issue. The answer would appear simple: in the eyes of WO advocates round the world, it's all just a simple matter of justice. Women should not be denied their right to the priesthood, just as immigrants and the poor should not be denied their rights. God is an equal-opportunity employer, and his current executive staff ought to recognize that. Simple, right? Wrong. At issue is the very nature of priesthood itself. And in this case, the Satanic perversion thereof hearkens back to the one contested by the OT restriction of the Levitical priesthood to males. Hence the Jewish angle in St. Louis.

In the ancient world, the Israelites were exceptional in having an all-male priesthood. Many of the religious cults surrounding them had priestesses; some utilized ritual prostitution. The Canaanites, the Greeks, the Romans—all had priestesses. In the eyes of faithful Jews, priestesses were a pagan abomination; the Old Testament was actually rather countercultural on this point; and today, those Christian bodies which can plausibly claim apostolic succession are similarly countercultural. Now once the Second Temple was destroyed, the priestly class could no longer perform its functions; religious leadership devolved strictly to the rabbis. One would think it would then have been conceivable for women to be "ordained" as rabbis; but that never happened until the 20th century, and it is not going to happen in Orthodox Judaism. If you want female rabbis, you go Reform or maybe not-so-conservative Conservative; in other words, you go the Jewish version of liberal Protestant. Susan Talve is a perfect illustration of that; and within Christianity, it is among the various permutations of liberal Protestantism that you get women's ordination. None of these people accept either the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood or, more generally, the authority claimed by the Catholic Church. Why, then, do Talve and other supporters of the two new Womanpriests, who themselves no more accept the authority in question than their supporters, seem to buy the premise that these women are "Catholic through-and-through?"

That phrase comes from Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary and well-known Evangelical author. Unlike Talve, he carries some intellectual weight. And his line on WO is pretty much standard, middle-of-the-road evangelical. Thus:

If one has an overwhelmingly OT vision of ministry, informed largely by Leviticus, then it is understandable that one would argue-- 'ministry involves priesthood, in the OT only men could be priests, ergo, no women can be ordained to such a post'. I understand this logic perfectly well, my problem is that it is a logic grounded in the old covenant, and not in the new covenant where we have a very different vision and praxis of ministry.

For one thing, in the NT ministers are not priests offering sacrifices, and they are not called priests. The only priesthood in the NT is the high priesthood of Christ in heaven (see Hebrews) which is said to eclipse and make obsolescent all OT priesthoods, including the Levitical one. It is hard to escape that this is the core message of the discourse found in Heb. 3-10. The only other priesthood mentioned in the NT is the priesthood of all believers (see 1 Peter), and I do mean all believers. What Peter is talking about there is that all Christians have an obligation to intercede for others and to offer true worship to God, and as Paul was to say, to present themselves as living sacrifices to God (Rom. 12). What Peter is not talking about is a class of clergy between Christ the high priest and us, the laity. In fact the whole clergy--laity distinction is not found in the NT. The LAOS is the whole people of God, whether they are ministers or not. There is a sense then in which we are all laity, and we are all priests. What the NT does not authorize is a new class of priests, much less an all male priesthood to lead the Christian flocks.

Taken on its own terms, that makes a certain kind of sense. For if all believers are priests in the sense specified, in such wise that there are no priests in the Church as distinct from laity, then "ministry" is merely a range of services to the laos that some members of the laos are "called and gifted" to perform. There is no basis for restricting ministry in that sense to men alone even on the premise that priesthood in the older, more limited sense is, or was, for men alone. Not even the Catholic Church restricts ministry in that sense to men alone, which is why it can be that, arguably, the bulk of ministry in that sense is performed by women even in the Catholic Church. But the sense all that makes only sets the stage for the larger nonsense.

Even supposing the standard evangelical view makes sense in its own terms, it makes no sense in those terms to say that anybody, and therefore women, can be "ordained" to the priesthood. If there is no priesthood beyond the priesthood of believers, then to be "ordained" is simply to be commissioned by the community of believers to do godly things for that community in its name. To be thus ordained is not to share in the high priesthood of Christ in any way in which believers in general do not. Jews, and hence Reform Jews, do not even believe in the high priesthood of Christ at all. How, then, is it even possible for people like Ben Witherington and Susan Talve to think it's such a good idea for Catholic women to be "ordained" to the Catholic priesthood? They don't even think there is a priesthood in the sense that such women claim to aspire to.

In Witherington's case, it gets wackier still. Of the synagogue venue for the ordination, he says:

Yet in some ways this was a very appropriate place for such an ordination to transpire, since these womens' vision of ministry is right out of the Hebrew Bible-- they want to be priests, offering the sacrifice, in this case the sacrifice of the mass.

This is so silly that my jaw drops. Susan Talve is not a priest; her synagogue is not a temple and contains no altar; she does not see her function as that of priest; and as a Reform Jew, she does not believe a cultic priesthood is in any way necessary for the welfare of God's people. Moreover, Witherington's own theology rejects the very idea of a cultic priesthood for Christians. Yet he sees a Reform synagogue as an even possibly "appropriate place" for Catholic women to be "ordained" to a cultic priesthood he considers fraudulent? What reduces otherwise intelligent people to such nonsense?

The only possible answer is that they, like the Womanpriests themselves, are less interested in making sense than in undermining the historic, irreformable Catholic doctrine of the sacerdotal priesthood in general. There could hardly be better evidence for the claim that women's ordination in the Catholic Church does precisely that.

Getting up to scientific speed

John Farrell, author of The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, has an excellent post up about Catholic attitudes toward science. I call it a post even though it originated as a full-length article he wanted to get published in some-or-other Catholic periodical. As he laments, none were interested. 'Tis a pity, since what he says and recommends is much needed. I shall say just a brief bit about why.

Among Western astronomers, the first heliocentric theorist was Nicholas Copernicus: a Catholic priest. The founder of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a Catholic priest. The formulator of the Big-Bang theory in cosmology, so widely accepted today, was Georges Lemaître: another Catholic priest. Yet nowadays the Catholic hierarchy has a deserved reputation for scientific cluelessness. Farrell amply demonstrates why there is no reason why such ignorance should persist, and every reason why it should be dispelled.

Veterans matter

Like the fact that God matters, the fact that veterans matter is known to most people whose behavior indicates that they actually don't believe it matters very much. On this Veteran's Day I want to explain briefly why they should believe it matters very much.

Veterans include not merely the many who have given their lives serving and protecting the rest of us, but those who have come home to varying degrees of success or failure. Many veterans come home to live reasonably productive lives; but the percentage of homeless, mentally ill, and substance abusers who are veterans is substantially higher than the percentage of veterans in the general population. It's no secret why: the experience of lethal combat leaves many psychically scarred for life, just as many others are also physically damaged for life. The psychic scars are only exacerbated by how a lot of veterans are treated once home. That includes a good number of justly decorated veterans. If you do nothing else today, see this three-part video about "The Marlboro Marine" whose photo memorialized the retaking of Fallujah.

Both our dead veterans and our scarred-for-life veterans remind us that freedom is not free. But they should also remind us that all those who pay a high price for others deserve our utmost respect and love: hard-working parents; spouses who remain faithful in the most trying circumstances; those who truly care for the elderly or infirm under their care; clergy in it for service rather than a salary; police and other "first responders"; good teachers; indeed all those who put the welfare of others ahead of their own. Our society is not good at tendering respect and love to such people. Out default cultural stance is to admire the rich and famous for being that, while we take the true heroes for granted. A society like that cannot long survive, and will make the sacrifices of its veterans vain.

There he goes again

Garry Wills is at it again, this time about Catholics on the abortion issue in public life. He's so far gone that he doesn't even know when he's embarrassing himself. Last year I exposed another ill-informed tantrum of his for what it is, but apparently I was preaching only to the choir. This time, Greg Popcak has done my work for me. Let's hope his fisking of Will's current tantrum has a wider effect.

A sort-of-quotable for the day

I just finished reading a provocative chapter from a recent book by Catholic writer Dinesh D'Souza, who recently acquitted himself quite well in a debate with militant atheist Christopher Hitchens. I became acquainted with D'Souza's incisive wit when I listened that debate, which I had chosen to listen to because I had once been briefly tempted to admire Hitchens as one of the few people with the courage to hate Mother Teresa openly. In the chapter from D'Souza's book, I found a gem I want to cull for the purpose of fashioning a quotable quote.

Here's the gem:

Traditional religion is the mainstream, but it is not the only form in which religion appears today. There is also liberal religion. One can hardly speak of liberal Islam, as liberalism is essentially a nonexistent force in the Muslim world. But there are liberal Jews, whose Jewishness seems largely a matter of historical memory and cultural habits. Here in the West, there are lots of liberal Christians. Some of them have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church’s missionaries to the world, they have become the world’s missionaries to the church. They devote their moral energies to trying to make the church more democratic, to assure equal rights for women, to legitimize homosexual marriage, and so on. A small but influential segment of liberal Christianity rejects all the central doctrines of Christianity. H. Richard Niebuhr famously summed up their credo: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

And here's the brief paraphrase of mine that supplies our quotable for the day:

"A liberal Christian is one more interested in being the world's missionary to the Church than in being the Church's missionary to the world."

Worse, or just better exposed?

I wonder: are priests as a class getting worse, or is it just that clerical sins are now more often exposed?

First, in 2002, we had the huge blowing of the cover off the sexual abuse of (mostly) young males. Nearly all the pending cases now are many years old, though no less sad for that. Yet since then there's been a steady trickle of discomfiting reports. In 2004 there was Fr. Ryan Erickson, who committed suicide and was later identified by the judge of jurisdiction as a double-murderer. This year there was the priest charged with indecent exposure for jogging outdoors in the nude; it seems that wasn't the first time his behavior had been found questionable. Now we have a priest arrested on charges of stalking Conan O'Brien. Apparently the two had been classmates at Harvard, so there might or might not be more to this than meets the eye. And I'm leaving out not a few other reports from around the world. What is going on?

I've known hundreds of priests in my lifetime. The vast majority seem to be good men striving for holiness and serving God's people. Nonetheless I was sexually abused by one, and rejected a number of others for being either aggressively gay, heretical, or both. Given the image of the priesthood many laity had before Vatican II, it would seem that there is more vice and just plain weirdness in the priesthood today than there was then. But I am not so sure that's the reality.

If St. Peter Damian is any guide, things were pretty bad around the turn of the first and second millennium. If things had been much better around the time of the Protestant Reformation, little reform would have been necessary. Perhaps these things just go in cycles. Or perhaps things never really were much better than they are today. The sins and crimes of priests might just be better reported, as almost everything today is, at least when scandal is involved. Scandal, after all, is a good generator of ad revenue, especially when sex is involved.

I suppose we can't really know, and I doubt it really matters. What matters is that Satan never sleeps, and among his chief objects of interest are people whose lives are formally dedicated to God's service. (I sometimes think that my not having such a vocation is what gives me any real hope of salvation.) That reality has not changed. Given that people dedicated to God's service are people, we should not be surprised by the consequences.

Theology to go II: eating the meal

Last Monday the 5th, I praised Prof. Stanley Fish for presenting the problem of evil as he did in a New York Times blog post. His work was one of those relatively rare instances where one can nourish oneself on "theology to go" with something better than the intellectual equivalent of greasy, artery-clogging fast food. But objections to my arguments were inevitable, and one "Tony M" registered a major one in the combox to my post. Here I want to reply to it.

As additional background, it's worth noting Prof. Scott Carson's most recent contribution to the subject. Unsurprisingly to me, Tony also posted his objections to that in Scott's combox, and in due course I shall return to where he left the matter there. But first I should address myself to what he said directly to me.

From my own paper on the subject, it follows that a sufficient "defense" against the problem of evil (PoE), where PoE is understood as a logical conundrum, is twofold: (a) in general, God can bring a greater good out of evil; and (b) it cannot be established that whatever degree of good God can bring out of the evil in this world could also have been brought about without that evil. If that is correct—and I believe it is—then PoE does not succeed in posing an insuperable logical conundrum for classical theism. For if nobody can establish that God could have brought about at least as much good without the evil in this world as he can with it, then the fact of evil cannot be cited to show that classical theism is committed to an account of God whereby divine omnipotence and perfect goodness are mutually incompatible.

That was the basis of my initial reply to Tony. I claimed that he had merely assumed that rational creatures could have attained "the same" condition of blessedness in a world without evil as the one they can attain in this one. I made that claim because I believed, antecedently, that such a proposition cannot be established by argument and can thus only be assumed. Here is Tony's rebuttal (emphasis added):

This is precisely what I was trying to show. The point is not to "prove" that I can come up with a way to achieve every good, in a way that does not involve evil, that occurs in this world as a follow-on of some evil in this world. Such a task would be gargantuan and speculative at best.

My point takes it from the other end: Each specific good achieved in this world, to be good as such, is not defined in terms of evil. Otherwise one would say that evil caused the good, which is nonsense. Therefore, each specific good could come about in a way not through evil. If such a way is not inherently contradictory to God's nature, then He could do it that way.

The only issue left, then, is whether the sum total of all goods (as distinct from each good separately) in this world could exist without evil. While this might seem virtually impossible to us, the question is not whether it is to us, but to God. Again the answer lies in omnipotence: it IS possible to God, if it is not inherently contradictory to His nature.

Initially, I had not seen Tony's argument as an argument because I had taken for granted that it was question-begging, i.e., that it assumed as a premise precisely what he needed to establish. I still think his argument does that. Now that I have in hand a version of his argument that can be conveniently analyzed, I shall show why I still believe it does that.

I gladly concede that if "each specific good could come about" without evil, then each specific good's coming about without evil would not be "inherently contradictory to God's nature." So if it were also the case that each specific good could come about without evil, then PoE would be an insuperable logical conundrum for classical theism. And that's just what Tony argues, or appears to argue. Yet before we get to what Tony considers "the only issue left," we need to consider his argument that "each specific good" could come about without evil.

His argument is by reductio: to deny that each specific good can come about without evil is to imply that, in some cases at least, "evil caused the good, which is nonsense." But to assert, in general and without qualification, that it's "nonsense" to say that evil "causes" good is ambiguous at best. To be sure, in one sense of 'cause' it would be nonsense to assert, as a general truth, that evil causes goodness. Whatever goodness is understood to be in perfectly general terms, evil is, in equally general terms, a privation of it; and if 'cause' be taken to mean efficient cause—i.e., 'agent of production'—it would indeed be nonsense to say that anything is caused by its privation. That is why, in some concrete instances, it would be nonsense to say that evil causes good. E.g., it would be nonsense to say that the virtue of courage is "caused" by cowardice. Moreover it would be false, if not entirely nonsensical, to say that the evils one develops the virtue of courage by facing courageously are thus causes of one's courage—if by 'cause' one means 'efficient cause'. Evils never produce virtues of themselves. Nonetheless, evils often occasion virtues, in such a way that they are in fact the occasions for a person's development of this-or-that virtue. Evils can thus be among the means God uses to help people become better people; and in that sense, evils can be numbered among the "causes" of goods. Nor would it be nonsensical to say that evils which do not occasion the development of virtue in those who undergo them never occasion "good" anywhere else. Severe birth defects, for example, do not occasion the development of virtue in the infants who inherit them; but they can and do occasion such development in those who care for such infants, and later for the infant if and when they develop the capacity for free choice, and thus reach the level of moral responsibility. So, while it is clear that the very concepts of good and evil rule out asserting that evil, in general, causes good in a certain sense of 'causes', in the case of many specific goods one can and ought to say that evils occasion good, in such wise that God uses them as occasions for helping people become better people. And that matters for Tony's purpose, since it is "specific" goods that he is specifically talking about. Accordingly, what he needs to show is not merely that it would be nonsense to assert, in general and without qualification, that evil causes good; on that much, we can agree. What he needs to show is that, consistently with his nature, God could have so created that (a) few or no specific goods are occasioned by evils, and (b) such a created world could have been as "good" if not better than ours. Unless and until he shows that, his argument does not establish his conclusion, which is that each specific good could come about in a way not through evil.

Now (a) would not be difficult to show. But as Tony implicitly recognizes in the very first paragraph of the comment of his I've quoted, (b) simply cannot be shown. What that fact in turn shows is that this particular debate is really about where the burden of proof lies.

At issue is whether classical theism can overcome the problem of evil as a logical conundrum. Tony seems to believe that the burden is on classical theists to show that such good as God's omnipotence can bring about in the world God has created is greater than such good as God's omnipotence could have brought about by creating a world without evil. In other words, what the classical theist needs is a theodicy, which I have said is neither possible nor desirable. And given how Tony has framed the issue, theodicy is impossible whether desirable or not—from which he concludes that the classical theist lacks a logical defense against the problem of evil. But that is simply to beg the question. For, given how Tony has framed the issue, nobody can show what he claims the classical theist needs to show; but that could just as well be evidence that, by demanding from the classical theist what is clearly impossible, he has misframed the question in such a way as to beg it. And my critique of his argument indicates how he has done exactly that.

As further evidence for that claim, I offer what he said to Scott in the latter's combox: "No, you have to make the case that pain is not evil in the sense that the PoE requires , and this requires looking at just what kind of evil the PoE requires." From the prior discussion in that combox it seems pretty clear that, for Tony, the mere existence of a world in which sentient creatures necessarily undergo pain as well as pleasure is an evil "in the sense that PoE requires." That belief is a large part of what once motivated St. Augustine to be a Manichean before his conversion to Catholic Christianity, and I recommend a reading of his Confessions to see how he overcame it. But my immediate concern is with Tony's assumption about where the burden of proof lies. As is also plain from his criticism of my view, his assumption remains so, and thus his argument begs the question.

The "plain sense" muddle

Although I admit to disappointment over how the recent blogosphere debate pitting Dr. William Witt against others, including yours truly, about the very idea of "the plain sense of Scripture" fizzled out, discussion did continue among the (mostly) Catholic participants under the gentle prodding of Prof. Brandon Watson and Fr. Al Kimel. The most recent go-round has been between among Brandon, Jonathan Prejean, and Scott Carson, with Fr. Kimel weighing in forcefully in Brandon's combox and otherwise encouraging the participants. I've hesitated to speak further because I thought I'd said all I had to say on the topic; but having pondered the direction taken by the discussion, I think I might have something worthwhile to add.

Brandon wrote:

Protestants and Catholics actually agree on the key thing here: namely, that the authority of Scripture is the authority of God, that the authoritative teacher of the meaning of Scripture is the Holy Spirit, and that without Him there is nothing but darkness. The difference arises in that, from the Protestant point of view, Catholics too easily conflate the interpretive act of the Holy Spirit with human interpretive acts, and, from the Catholic point of view, Protestants have an incomplete view of the work of the Spirit in the Church's interpreting of Scripture. As long as the dispute never seriously engages with this point, it is self-perpetuating, because it will never have any effect except the raising of even more light-obscuring dust.

I appreciate Brandon's concern to emphasize the similarity more than the difference. But I cannot really agree with his description of the difference. As is so often the case among philosophers, the disagreement is not so much over the answer to the question as over the content and import of the question itself.

I just don't think it's the case that, "from the Protestant point of view, Catholics too easily conflate the interpretive act of the Holy Spirit" in the reading of Scripture with "human interpretive acts." To my ears, a far more typically Protestant criticism is that Catholics too easily conflate the Church's interpretive acts with the interpretive acts of the Holy Spirit, when the Church's are presented as authoritative. The criticism is not so much that Catholics conflate God's interpretations with man's, but rather with the Church's; most Protestants would not mind seeing more individual interpretive acts by Catholics, unconstrained by the Church but somehow discernible as Spirit-led. As for "the Catholic point of view," I should say as a Catholic that the problem with a Protestant approach to interpreting Scripture—insofar as such a thing is both identifiable as such and distinct from a Catholic approach—is not so much its incompleteness as the baleful and inevitable consequence of that incompleteness.

When we interpret the Bible as individuals, our interpretations will always be "incomplete" and non-authoritative, even if our interpretation is Spirit-led, as it sometimes is. Even Catholics can and do read the Bible that way, more than they once did but still, perhaps, not as much as they should. We thus gain spiritual insight as readers of God's word. But lectio divina of that generic sort is authoritative for others only insofar as it is in harmony with interpretation that is authoritative for other, identifiable reasons. Even when we read the Bible as members of a church with some sort of tradition, a churchly interpretation cannot be considered authoritative for and binding on believers if the church in question no more claims infallible teaching authority than any individual within it. That is why I believe Jonathan is right when he says: "[I]f there's no authoritative interpreter, then there is no authoritative character of what is interpreted." For Protestants who acknowledge an infallible rule of faith, the Bible is it; and the only "authoritative interpreter" of the Bible is the Holy Spirit inscribing his wisdom in our hearts as we read and hear the Word with docility and prayer. But appeal to an authoritative interpreter of that kind is simply idle as a way of adjudicating among conflicting interpretations that are doctrinally significant. Each side can and will claim the Holy Spirit for itself; absent appeal to an identifiable tradition and a visible teaching authority, nothing other than subjective intensity and academic opinions can be offered as evidence for one side or the other. As a way round that, some Protestants, claiming "by their fruits ye shall know them," are prone to appeal to what outstanding Christians would say; but given that the testimony of Catholic (and Orthodox) saints and doctors usually fails to weigh with such people, I am unimpressed with their appeals to this putative consensus.

Now Brandon's account of "plain sense" gains such force as it has by suggesting that a distinctively Protestant way of reading Scripture, which the Catholic would indeed consider incomplete, can nonetheless yield insights to which the Holy Spirit is leading the ordinary person. He says:

...the plain sense of Scripture is a fairly minimal doctrine -- it just says that Scripture has a literal text open to ordinary people; and as it is usually used, it suggests that someone reading the literal text can, without profound education, be led through that text by the Holy Spirit to Christ, and to deeper intimacy with him.

But as a way of making the idea of "the plain sense of Scripture" both clear and plausible, that seems to me at best unhelpful. Having earlier denied that "the literal sense open to ordinary people" is, necessarily, that which the human author(s) intended, Brandon must say that the plain sense is what the Holy Spirit enables the ordinary person reading Scripture, precisely as such, to discern. But such a "literal" sense seems not at all as distinct from a "canonical" sense that can often go well beyond what the human author(s) intended. It is of course quite possible for ordinary believers to discern such a thing by reading Scripture; but it is equally possible for them not to. And that, in a way, is the key point. Discerning such a thing by reading Scripture on one's own as a fallible individual, or as part of an ecclesial community that does not claim infallible teaching authority, can enable one to discern what is of faith; it can even be Spirit-led; but it can only elicit assent by faith if the sense of Scripture one so discerns is in fact recognizable as authoritative for other reasons. That is why Vatican II teaches, in Dei Verbum §10, that the Magisterium is the only "authentic" interpreter of Scripture. The teaching does not mean that only the Magisterium can come up with interpretations that are true or helpful; as a matter of fact, the Magisterium will sometimes adopt interpretations arrived at without its intervention. The teaching in question means that only the Magisterium can authenticate, and thus render authoritative and binding, what Brandon calls "the plain sense" as the sense intended by the Spirit.

Frankly, I still don't understand what work the idea of "the plain sense of Scripture" is supposed to do, other than cutting out that proverbial middleman in Rome. But the result, for reasons I've often adduced in the past, is unreliable. Without reliance on both Tradition and the Magisterium in one's reading of Scripture, what is so often thought to be the plain sense is not so plain as all that.

The devil in the electricity?

Lacking energy for an academic exercise as well as patience for Internet polemic, tonight I shall just offer a news item as food for thought.

For weeks now, appliances and furniture throughout a Sicilian village have been catching fire for no apparent natural cause. Those in charge are talking "the Devil." Ordinarily I don't bring up things like this or even think about them much; in my experience, regular priests are as likely as atheists to think one dotty for doing so, even though the former are too careful to say so openly to a man of my education. Perhaps many such things just are tabloid stuff, not to be taken seriously. But the Vatican's chief exorcist, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, takes this one seriously. And he is a man to be taken seriously.

Do you share his attitude? If so, why? If not, why not?

Theology to go

At his New York Times blog "Think Again", Professor Stanley Fish has done the religious blogosphere a small but important service. It is rare to find, under the auspices of the secular press and the newspaper of record no less, a discussion of the deepest theological issues that is both digestible and intelligent. That's just what his post is, and it's badly needed as a way of getting a wider audience to think clearly. The combox shows that, in about one in five cases, he actually succeeds—a better percentage than usual. I want here simply to focus attention on the two most important issues he got people thinking about.

After the sound intro focusing on the idea of original sin, his post is mostly a summary compare-and-contrast of the divergent paths taken by two prominent secular thinkers: religious-studies professor Bart D. Ehrman and philosopher Antony Flew. The former lost his youthful faith in face of the problem of evil; the latter lost his youthful atheism in face of the question why the world exists at all. Those are the two issues on which I spent the most time when I taught the philosophy of religion. I've written about the former issue here; and I adumbrate my philosophical case for God's existence largely as an answer to the latter question. In each case, I find the chief intellectual obstacle to theism to be conceptual, and I find that observation confirmed by Fish's post and combox. What do I mean?

As a logical conundrum, the problem of evil hinges on what one takes the concepts of omnipotence and perfect goodness to entail. If one takes omnipotence to entail that any statement of the form "God can _____" is true, then the problem of evil is logically insuperable. If one takes perfect goodness to entail that a perfectly good agent would eliminate, or at least reduce, undeserved suffering if and when they can, then likewise the problem of evil is logically insuperable. But those facts by themselves are no evidence that classical theism is logically indefensible. For if either Judaism or Christianity is true—Islam being a separate case—then the concepts in question need not and should not be taken to entail either. The question then becomes what they should be taken to entail. That's where the discussion ought really to begin, and that's where each religion must be understood on its own terms, with full and respectful attention to religious experience and ordinary praxis as well as theological propositions.

My own conclusion is that theodicy—i.e. a satisfying explanation of why God presides over so much undeserved suffering—is neither possible nor desirable given the principles of divine revelation itself. Some people agree but conclude that that is a reason for rejecting classical theism. I respond that they are mistaken about the possible scope of explanation. In my article I make clear why, and conclude that while theodicy is a non-starter, defense is quite feasible. One can show that the problem of evil is not logically insuperable; for the concepts of omnipotence and perfect goodness need not, and should not, be understood in such a way as to generate a logically insuperable problem. Our limitation is that we cannot explain why the facts constituting the problem of evil jointly obtain in the first place. But that should not be considered a defect of classical theism. It is simply a limitation that any finite mind runs up against.

I said that people who reject theism in face of the problem of evil are "mistaken about the possible scope of explanation." What I mean is that they expect explanation where there is no reason to believe that the sort of explanation that would satisfy them is either possible or desirable. In the case of arguments for God's existence, the intellectual problem is also about explanation, but the mistake is the opposite one.

People cannot help asking the question why the world exists at all. Even the postulated Big Bang does not answer that question. One can always ask why the primal explosion occurred at all and why there was even a supremely dense primordial bomb to explode in the first place; and someday, physics might be able to answer those questions. The real question is why there is any totality of contingent entities at all; and that is not a scientific question. If there is any answer to it, that answer would have to cite something not of that totality, something supremely intelligent and purposeful that exists purely a se, "of itself." That could never be an object of scientific inquiry, which is why the taunt "Who made God?" is just silly. But the taunt shows what the problem here is: many people's idea of what could count as an explanation of the world's existence is too narrow, just as many people's idea of what would count as an explanation of evil is too broad. The problem in the case of establishing God's existence is scientism: the assumption that only what can explained scientifically is ultimately explicable at all. Needless to say, there can be no scientific argument for scientism itself, and scientism leaves the question "Why does the world exist?" unanswerable in principle. That is a needless constraint on explanation.

It is this peculiar juxtaposition of equal but opposite errors about the scope of explanation that accounts for most intellectual rejection of classical theism. In the case of the problem of evil, explanation is demanded where none is available, even in principle; in the case of arguing for a Creator, explanation of the needed sort is ruled out on shaky epistemological grounds, leaving a natural and vitally important question unanswerable in principle. I believe the explanation for that peculiar juxtaposition is spiritual pride and immaturity: the effects of original sin, which is the topic Fish opened with. That's what we need to be talking more about.

I am Zacchaeus

Today's Gospel should cause all of us believers to identify with Zacchaeus. We start out small, greedy, and with some curiosity about Jesus. If, motivated by that curiosity, we receive Jesus into our homes and hearts, we will be led to repentance and salvation. Too often, however, we do not receive him even though we think we do. That kind of self-deception prevents spiritual growth.

Thankful for our baptism and confirmation, for our entire incorporation into the life of the Church, we like to see ourselves as basically "good enough" folk who will squeak past the pearly gates eventually by just being more or less who we are. In a few outstanding cases, that might even be true. But it rarely is, and to suppose that it is in our own case is often tantamount to refusing Jesus' self-invitation. For in the spiritual life we are always going either forward or backward; and if imagine that where we are is good enough, we are going backward. We need to recognize how much we, sinners all, have cheated ourselves and others of divine love, and to display God's mercy by making up for that fraud fourfold. I have only slowly been managing the former, and I've barely even begun doing the latter. Some days, it seems like one step forward and two back.

I'd rather imitate the exuberance and generosity of Zacchaeus, who knew just how bad he was but was not ashamed to accept Jesus, who didn't rub it in. Otherwise my penance will be needlessly long.

An anniversary note

In yesterday's post, I alluded in passing to the fact that this year, 2007, is the one hundredth anniversary of Pope St. Pius X's encyclical against Modernism: Pascendi Dominici Gregis. In this post I want to raise the central issue addressed by that document, because I believe it is every bit as relevant today as it was then. Of course I make no excuse for how a lot of people suspected of Modernism were treated in the Church for several decades thereafter; what the persecution mostly accomplished, besides destroying numerous vocations, was to drive underground issues that came up before, during, and after Vatican II. But I firmly believe that Pius X was absolutely correct about the substance of the ideas he condemned. For that reason, I present the following long quotation from Pascendi for comment, breaking up a long paragraph for easier reading.

It may be, Venerable Brethren, that some may think We have dwelt too long on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was necessary, both in order to refute their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas, and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories but in a perfectly organised body, all the parts of which are solidly joined so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We have had to give this exposition a somewhat didactic form and not to shrink from employing certain uncouth terms in use among the Modernists. And now, can anybody who takes a survey of the whole system be surprised that We should define it as the synthesis of all heresies? Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate the sap and substance of them all into one, he could not better succeed than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have done more than this, for, as we have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion. With good reason do the rationalists applaud them, for the most sincere and the frankest among the rationalists warmly welcome the modernists as their most valuable allies.

For let us return for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue that leads the intellect to God is barred, but the Modernists would seek to open others available for sentiment and action. Vain efforts! For, after all, what is sentiment but the reaction of the soul on the action of the intelligence or the senses. Take away the intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses, becomes their slave. Vain, too, from another point of view, for all these fantasias on the religious sentiment will never be able to destroy common sense, and common sense tells us that emotion and everything that leads the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth. We speak, of course, of truth in itself - as for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of sentiment and action, if it serves its purpose for the jugglery of words, it is of no use to the man who wants to know above all things whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall.

True, the Modernists do call in experience to eke out their system, but what does this experience add to sentiment? Absolutely nothing beyond a certain intensity and a proportionate deepening of the conviction of the reality of the object. But these two will never make sentiment into anything but sentiment, nor deprive it of its characteristic which is to cause deception when the intelligence is not there to guide it; on the contrary, they but confirm and aggravate this characteristic, for the more intense sentiment is the more it is sentimental. In matters of religious sentiment and religious experience, you know, Venerable Brethren, how necessary is prudence and how necessary, too, the science which directs prudence. You know it from your own dealings with sounds, and especially with souls in whom sentiment predominates; you know it also from your reading of ascetical books - books for which the Modernists have but little esteem, but which testify to a science and a solidity very different from theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation of which the Modernists give no evidence. Is it not really folly, or at least sovereign imprudence, to trust oneself without control to Modernist experiences?

Let us for a moment put the question: if experiences have so much value in their eyes, why do they not attach equal weight to the experience that thousands upon thousands of Catholics have that the Modernists are on the wrong road? It is, perchance, that all experiences except those felt by the Modernists are false and deceptive? The vast majority of mankind holds and always will hold firmly that sentiment and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by reason, do not lead to the knowledge of God. What remains, then, but the annihilation of all religion, - atheism?

Certainly it is not the doctrine of symbolism that will save us from this. For if all the intellectual elements, as they call them, of religion are pure symbols, will not the very name of God or of divine personality be also a symbol, and if this be admitted will not the personality of God become a matter of doubt and the way opened to Pantheism? And to Pantheism that other doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly. For does it, We ask, leave God distinct from man or not? If yes, in what does it differ from Catholic doctrine, and why reject external revelation? If no, we are at once in Pantheism. Now the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation holds and professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man. The rigorous conclusion from this is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism. The same conclusion follows from the distinction Modernists make between science and faith. The object of science they say is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now what makes the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion with the intelligible - a disproportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the man of science.

Therefore if any religion at all is possible it can only be the religion of an unknowable reality. And why this religion might not be that universal soul of the universe, of which a rationalist speaks, is something We do see. Certainly this suffices to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong into atheism.

Ever ancient, ever new...arguments: Part II

Yesterday I replied to a few criticisms of my position on faith and reason made by The Ochlophobist, Owen White. Today I want to take up his criticism of a typically Catholic approach to Orthodox-Catholic ecumenism that I share. I shall do so partly because the substance of his position is quite representative of Orthodox thinking on the topic, and yet partly because it is framed in a more moderate, fair-minded, and erudite fashion than is customary for such criticisms.

What Owen presents as his main point is one that I actually agree with. He gives contemporary, on-the-ground examples of what a reunified Church might look like, and concludes:

The purpose of this post is not to reflect on East/Orient relations. I simply use that issue as an example of how an actual ecumenical reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church might occur. We should note that this means of reunion is slow and organic. There is no guarantee that the reunion will take place.

I agree with that because nothing which might be decreed at the highest ecclesiastical levels would have much practical effect without the kind of thing Owen talks about. One is, after all, reminded of the fates of the reunion councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1438-43). There must be an evolution of real human attitudes—one parish, one monastery, and one person at a time—before any official "reunion" would matter. And it is mainly at that level that my hope for reunion lies. It is by the intercession of the Mother of God, using the slow evolution of human attitudes as raw material and probably a crisis as a catalyst, that concrete reunion will occur if at all.

That said, however, I don't think Owen's criticism of professional Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism follows. Of course I agree with him about what's become of the WCC and the NCC, and about much of the spiritual consumerism that passes for ecumenism at the local level. In fact I often agree with Owen, and not just about those particular criticisms. But here's the problem (emphasis added):

Both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism believe that the Church is undivided and that the manifestation of this undividedness is revealed in the icon of their own ecclesia. For Romans this is centered in the Petrine See and for Orthodox it is rooted in the unity of Orthodox faith, as evidenced in the theological and liturgical unity of our bishops...

The RCC has very specific ways in which it deals, theologically, with the Orthodox. We are a "true, particular Church" not in communion with the see of Rome, in their view. I have been engaged in arguments concerning that designation in the past and will not do so again here. The Orthodox liturgical texts make it quite clear that we believe that Rome has added to the deposit of faith. Orthodox have varied views with regard to the assurance we might have of grace in Roman sacraments. It is not my intention to debate that question either. Ask your bishop. What I wish to address is the question of RCC/EOC dialogue and ecumenism. In my opinion we should stop promoting dialogue as a means of accomplishing unity, unless we mean unity via conversion, or simply a desire to better know the other side. This dialogue is generally so infected with modernist sentiments and activist hyperactivity that it inevitably distorts both sides, and initiates a process in which both Churches must in a sense submit to an intellectual order that we then must presume is higher than the Church. Thus, through these modern forms of historical criticism and sociological and psychological theories we might be able to posture hints of reunion or a pattern of interaction which might facilitate reunion, etc. In doing this we make the Church the pawn of social sciences. This is not an honest means of reunion and it undermines the Church's own claims. For the EOC and RCC to reunite there must be a broad mutual recognition, from Pope and Patriarchs to Italian grandmothers and the lowliest of ochlophobes that we share the same faith. Such a recognition is not mutual. We Orthodox are often castigated by Catholics because we are the side that does not recognize the RCC as having an Orthodox faith. I haven written on this matter numerous times before and will not cover it again here.

I have argued before that for reunion to occur one of the two Churches must stop being who she is. Catholics deny this is the case for Orthodox, thinking as they do that they require much less from us than we would of them in order for reunion to occur. But accepting various Catholic dogmas as non-heretical, accepting the universal jurisdiction of the Pope, and accepting RCC praxis as Orthodox would change the whole ethos of the Orthodox Church, as we have seen in the cases of the eastern rite Catholics and to a lesser degree in those varied Western Rites more or less forced into the Roman Rite over the ages. I have been to score upon score of Catholic churches in my lifetime (including a number of eastern rites), and I have never there witnessed the icon of the Body of Christ that I have witnessed, time and time again, in various jurisdictions of Orthodoxy. I am only one person, but most Orthodox I know with experience in the RCC say the same thing. This is one reason virtually all Orthodox would demand things of Rome before they could accept Rome as Orthodox, and why those changes would have to be in place for some time, to settle as it were, before communion could be restored. But again, all of this is beside the point really. Such is not going to happen.

Hmmm. I happen to have read every document published in English by every Orthodox-Catholic theological conference that I'm aware of, and I just don't detect in them the sort of "modernism" and "Church of the social sciences" that Owen decries. And I say so as a Catholic who accepts Pope Pius X's condemnation of "Modernism" exactly a century ago, which many Catholics today would do well to read. So on that score, I just don't know what he's talking about. But that hardly matters, since the bottom line lies elsewhere.

The bottom line is actually the top line in the last paragraph of his that I quoted: "...for reunion to occur, one of the two Churches must stop being who she is." And that's because doing what Catholics see as the relatively little Orthodoxy would have to do to achieve reunion would "change the whole ethos of the Orthodox Church." And what's the evidence for that?

To judge from the terms in which Owen first discusses it, the evidence is what's happened with both "eastern rite Catholics and to a lesser degree in those Western rites more or less forced into the Roman Rite over the ages." Now, what's happened in the case of those "Western rites" is liturgical: over the ages, the Roman Rite has become the normative form of liturgical celebration even in those sectors, such as the Celtic Church or the Church of Milan, where another ancient yet more indigenous form had been the norm. Personally, I dislike that fact and would love to see a reversion; but as a purely practical matter, that is unlikely even if Rome gives broad permission for it; there's just been too much cultural homogenization in those sectors to permit much native interest in such a thing. But that is irrelevant for purposes of argument. What's relevant is what I take it Owen means in regard to Eastern-Catholic rites: viz., the degree to which their liturgies and disciplines have been "Latinized."

Now I've been to Russian-Catholic, Byzantine-Catholic, and Chaldean-Catholic liturgies, and I saw little evidence of "Latinization" in them. What I saw outwardly resembled the Greek- and Russian-Orthodox liturgies I've attended much more than the Roman Rite, whether Tridentine or Novus Ordo, and in the latter case whether vernacular or Latin editio typica. And those Eastern-Catholic churches were and are in communion with Rome. Certainly there have been cases when Eastern-Catholic liturgies have been unduly Latinized, and I decry that. Rome apparently does too, since she actually encourages the Eastern-Catholic churches to recover their ancient traditions. But none of that seems to matter in the end to most Orthodox. What matters, apparently, is not whether Rome does or does not enforce Latinization on any particular church at any particular time; what matters is that, given the universal jurisdiction of the papacy, she could do so at any time.

Now if the question of the "ethos" of Orthodoxy were allowed to hinge on that point, then despite Owen's denial immediately after the paragraphs I've quoted, the question really would boil down to one of "power" pure and simple. Yet, to give him credit, he doesn't really believe it does boil down to that. For him, the question is more basic and, to me, more interesting than that.

Thus:

We should note that if we believe that the Orthodox Church is the Church in her fullness now as ever, then we must admit that the Papacy is not essential to the Church. If the Papacy is not essential to the Church then there is no theological need for the Pope to play any specific role. If, in the event of a reunion, the Church restored the Papacy to her ancient honor that would be a matter of canonical arbitration. There would be no need for it, even in the event of reunion. To say that the Papacy must have such an honor is to say that the Church lacks an essential office now, and she does not. It might be nice to have a Papacy. It might be useful to have a Papacy. It is not, from an Orthodox point of view, a needful thing to have a Papacy.

If the fear is that "the whole ethos of the Orthodox Church" would have to change in the event of reunion, so that the Orthodox communion would "cease to be what it is," the above seems to explain why. From that point of view, to admit that the papacy must have some substantively meaningful form of primacy in a reunited Church would be tantamount to admitting that the Orthodox Church is not "the Church in her fullness now as ever." But that is less a matter of "ethos" than of ecclesiology, and anything that would change in the ethos would only do so if necessitated by the change in ecclesiology, which in most cases it wouldn't be, at least from Rome's point of view. Of course it is easy to understand why such an ecclesiological concession would be unacceptable to Orthodox believers as such. Don't they think of the Orthodox communion as "the" Church, and thus as the Church of Christ in her fullness, just as the Catholic Church does regarding herself? And if they do, then why would they see any reason to believe that reunion with the Catholic Church would supply them with anything essential that they now lack?

All the same, I don't believe that, logically speaking, the matter must remain stuck there. If I'm right, here is the key to breaking the impasse.

As Owen well knows, the Catholic Church views the Orthodox churches as "true, particular churches" whose communion with one another is, nonetheless, not the universal Church in her fullness because it lacks communion with the Church of Rome. But what does Orthodoxy say about the Church of Rome? The general line is that Rome departed from Orthodoxy by arrogating to herself a degree of primacy she had not enjoyed in the once-unified Church, and then certifying by that alleged authority certain doctrines, chiefly the filioque, incompatible with the faith once professed in common. Some Orthodox say that the Church of Rome thus negated her own status as a true church, so that the Roman communion, otherwise known as "the Catholic Church," not only is not "the" Church but is not even, in any substantive sense, part of "the" Church. Such is the theological innovation manifest in the Cyrillian council of 1755's decree that Western Christians, even Catholics, seeking to become Orthodox must be rebaptized. And such remains the position of the monks of Mt. Athos; for that reason I shall call it "the Athonite ecclesiology" ('AE' for short). On AE, the Roman Communion is related to "the" Church in roughly the same way that, on Catholic ecclesiology, the Anglican Communion stands to "the" Church: a mere "ecclesial community," but no longer a true, particular church. Perry Robinson has even gone so far as to say that Rome was "the first Protestant church." But given its relatively recent vintage and, shall we say, flexibility of application, I think we can safely say that AE is not "essential" to Orthodoxy.

What's the alternative? Well, there really is no clear alternative one can identify as essential to Orthodoxy, in such wise as to rule out the idea that the schism is one "within" the Church rather than a matter of one ancient church leaving the Church. And herein lies the ecclesiological hope, at least from the Catholic standpoint. I shall first describe that standpoint and then raise a few questions which, from that standpoint, Orthodox would do well to consider.

From said standpoint, the Roman communion is indeed "the" Church, yet the Orthodox churches are properly parts of the Church that, sadly, have defied Peter and thus broken communion with the main body. Thus even as a communion of churches, they exist as church "ectopically" as it were: authentic, and properly parts of the Church, but deficient by maintaining distance from an indispensable principle of communion, namely Rome. The Catholic Church in turn, in which "the" Church of Christ is said to "subsist"—i.e. to exist as a perduring whole—is also impoverished by the fact that churches which are every bit as much church as the Church of Rome exist in only an ectopic relationship with her. Although she is not "deficient" in the sense of lacking some indispensable principle of communion, she is gravely wounded all the same by being unable, in concrete historical terms, to make fully and visibly manifest that unity of Christ's Church which she maintains in herself. (See the most recent CDF responsum on the subject.) And so, from the Catholic standpoint, the schism is one which is ultimately "within" the Church, in such wise that a substantial part of that Church fails to recognize something essential to that unity. That is the sense in which the Catholic Church affirms an "imperfect" communion with the Orthodox Church. The imperfection is caused by a degree of detachment, a "schism," between the whole and certain parts that properly belong to the whole. Such schisms occasionally occurred during the first millennium but were repaired out of a sense of duty to the Lord. The one that occurred at the start of the second millennium has never been repaired. But it ought to be. And from the Catholic standpoint, relatively little is needed to do so.

To be sure, that's not how most Orthodox see the matter; but my concern is how they could, self-consistently, come to see it. Try as I might and have, I have never been able to find anything in Orthodoxy that would rule out its eventually coming to see the schism as one within the Church, even on the premise that the Orthodox Church is the Church. Whether we're discussing the ecumenical councils of the first millennium as distinct from councils of disputed ecumenicity or merely local authority, or liturgical texts that are standard throughout Orthodoxy as distinct from those peculiar to this or that local tradition, I've never encountered anything which would begin to persuade me that Orthodoxy is committed to viewing the schism with Rome as something more than a dispute between two sectors of "the"Church whose differences arise more from historical and cultural exigencies than from irreformable doctrine. In other words, I can find nothing in Orthodoxy that would commit the Orthodox communion irrevocably to viewing Rome as anything worse than the primatial Orthodox church that's exercised her primacy imprudently for too long—any more than I can find anything in Catholicism committing the Catholic Church to viewing Orthodoxy as anything worse than a communion of local churches that, for a good while now, have got a few key issues wrong and thus have refused to maintain communion with the primatial see of the Church. So as far as I can tell, it remains possible, at least in principle, for Orthodoxy to reunite with Rome along the lines of the Ratzinger proposal of 1982, without abandoning the idea that the Orthodox Church is the Church. Rome would come to be viewed among the Orthodox churches as the first among Orthodox churches and, in that capacity, as having brought the rest along to recognizing that fullness of the truth which was the common patrimony all along.

What then of the fear, articulated by Owen, that reunion along such lines would change "the Orthodox ethos" to such an extent that Orthodoxy would "cease to be" what it is? Well, if one assumes that Orthodoxy's negation of Catholic distinctives is essential to Orthodoxy, then that fear is justified. But if I'm right about the ecclesiological issue, then that fear, though fully understandable, is ultimately unjustified because the negations are not irreformable. I've already supplied a negative argument for that claim: there's nothing in Orthodoxy to prevent the evolution of attitudes necessary for reunion along the lines of the Ratzinger proposal. But I also think there's positive evidence for it: the evolution of Eastern-Orthodox attitudes to the "Oriental Orthodox," i.e., those ancient churches which rejected, and continue to reject, Chalcedonian Christology.

I've always been puzzled by the fact that, for a good while now, most EOs are just fine with ecumenical outreach to the OOs, despite the fact that the latter reject that Chalcedonian Christology which Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism profess in common. Indeed, the things I hear EOs saying about their differences with the OOs are strikingly similar to what I hear Catholics saying about their differences with the EOs: the key theological issue is at bottom semantic, we really have so much in common that there's no need to maintain the schism, etc. The cynical, uncharitable interpretation of that fact would be that EOs don't consider such an important Christological divergence insuperably church-dividing among those agreed on the really key point, namely rejection of Rome's claim to primacy. But I reject that interpretation precisely because, being cynical and uncharitable, it is not of the Holy Spirit. I believe EOs are right to reach out ecumenically to the OOs. They are right to believe that the Christological issue is resolvable to the satisfaction of both sides. I also believe that Catholics are right to reach out ecumenically to EOs and that the filioque issue is resolvable to the satisfaction of both sides. My suggestion here is that the spirit of EO outreach to the OO churches not only should, but could, manifest itself in how they approach Catholicism.

Of course if Vatican I remains a "deal-breaker," as it is so often viewed among Orthodox, then the main problem will have been revealed as one about power not the doctrine of God. But I'm more inclined to agree with Owen that it's not about power, but about the legitimate desire to preserve what is good and true in one's own tradition. From that standpoint, Owen's concluding observations on ecumenism are more to the point and merit a response.

He says:

There is no use making a reunion deal if you are incapable of returning home and teaching the faithful exactly how it is that we recognize the RCC as Orthodox. Then you have only signed on paper something which has not been sealed by the Holy Spirit. But there is part of this whole ethos which goes even deeper.

There is something within Orthodoxy which disregards modern notions of human progress, in the sense of Babel and human attempts to seize the Divine on its own initiative. For Orthodox, salvation and grace manifest themselves in human lives through the recapitulation of that life with the life of Christ. We do not evolve from point A to point B in a linear sense of acquiring a greater level of spiritual power, with transitions (punctuated equilibrium, we might say) along the way. For Orthodox, salvation and grace is more akin to something we begin to wear, it is God's clothing us in his mercy. The icon of our life is rewritten as cruciform, as Christ. The question then, for us, is generally not "how to we get from point A to point B?" It is rather, "how are we to be clothed in God's mercy here?" This intuition on the part of Orthodox is quite frustrating for some.

That first paragraph is quite right. Reunion deals signed on paper are only "of the Holy Spirit" when the faithful, or at least a notable bloc of the faithful, are ready to accept them. Reception by the faithful does not make dogmas true, but it is certainly needed in order to see dogmas as true. (More technically: reception is a heuristic condition but not a constitutive condition on dogma.) And in the concrete, the faithful will only become ready in the manner Owen and I agree about. But the second paragraph illustrates what I've come to see as the main obstacle to the needed evolution of attitudes on the Orthodox side: needlessly dichotomous thinking.

Suppose everything he says about Orthodox spirituality in that paragraph is true. I especially like the bit about being "cruciform" and asking "how are we to be clothed in God's mercy here?" But how on earth does it follow that "we do not evolve from point A to point B" in a way that would constitute spiritual progress? Traditional Catholic spirituality, especially among the mystics of the Catholic tradition, is very cruciform. Just study St. Francis or his 20th-century spiritual son, St. Pio, both of whom had the stigmata. Indeed, Catholic spirituality in general is much more focused on the Passion than on the Resurrection; the most widely growing devotion in the Catholic Church today is to the Divine Mercy as manifest through St. Faustina. Yet the Catholic Church is both officially and concretely committed to ecumenism as a divine imperative, ecumenism with the Orthodox being the first and most important item on that agenda. In a church with such a strong tradition of cruciform spirituality, is such a commitment mere "Babel," mere "human initiative" in the grip of a false ideology of progress? Or could it not, just conceivably, be a participation in the wounds of Christ for the sake of that love and unity which he is in himself and which he prayed his Church would manifest? As a Catholic, I can only see it as the latter. I certainly can find no inconsistency. If Owen does find it, which he has by no means demonstrated, then he is mistaking the fatuity and self-absorption of some professional ecumenists with the heart of the Catholic Church.

This false dichotomy between cruciform spirituality on the one hand and collective spiritual progress on the other is but one more manifestation of an attitude I often find among Orthodox and, sadly, a good many tradition-minded Catholics as well. It manifests itself in every other area of theology, and I've often argued against it, especially in my posts on the filioque and the development of doctrine. It is that attitude, more than any other, which will have to change if reunion is to become concretely, as distinct from theoretically, possible.