Backward Christian soldiers

Although there are many movements in contemporary ecclesial life which could be labeled with my title, there's one particular, and particularly damaging, idea in fundamental theology that the Catholic Church condemned centuries ago (as a proposition of theologian Michel de Bay) but keeps rearing its ugly head. I mean the idea that it is strictly impossible for God to have created human beings without destining them to become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4)—or, to use more Western and neo-scholastic language, without "ordering" us to "the Beatific Vision." Unless sharply qualified, that idea is simply incompatible with the gratuity of grace—a reality of central importance within the deposit of faith. Even the term 'grace' (from the Latin gratia, meaning 'free gift') means, among other things, what's given gratis and in no way as owed. But the contrary idea has just popped up again on an Orthodox blog with whose authors I have often interacted in the past. I can't resist making some points that need to be made.

In Catholic theology, that idea was taken up again by Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner in the mid-20th century, and has germinated much lesser work since. Fortunately, the idea as most often formulated is, itself, ambiguous in such a way that it can and should be disambiguated into an orthodox and a heterodox version. When that much was pointed out to him, de Lubac dutifully forswore the heterodox version and embraced the orthodox one. But given his philosophical anthropology, so heavily influenced by Heidegger, Rahner could not do the same so readily. It isn't even clear to me that he wished to do so, which is one reason why I've never considered his work in fundamental theology reliable as assigned texts in seminary education. Rahner might be orthodox, but you have to work awfully hard to see how, and he wasn't about to make it easier. For the time being, however, it's easy to disambiguate the idea at issue.

The claim might be

(1) Given that, by eternal decree, God created humanity with the intent of elevating it to a share in his own nature, it is an unalterable fact that that humanity has never existed and never will exist in a state of pure nature apart from grace

or the claim might be

(2) Given what it is to be a created person, i.e. an individual substance of a rational nature, and given the divine goodness, it is logically impossible that God create persons, and thus human persons, without intending to elevate them to a share in his own nature.

My claim, and it is far from being just my claim, is that (1) is orthodox and (2) is heterodox. The reason (2) is heterodox is that it leaves no room whatsoever for the gratuity of grace vis-à-vis nature, and therefore eliminates the very idea of grace as a free gift which God does not owe to us. But (1) does not say that or even imply that. All (1) implies is that, given what God has eternally and freely chosen to do, he has not left himself the option of undoing it. Even though God might not have done it—given what God is and what it is to be human—in fact he has unalterably chosen to offer humanity the free, unmerited gift of becoming partakers in his nature.

Very well: de Lubac's passionate argument for (1) was a much-needed corrective to the medieval and Counter-Reformation theologoumenon of "pure nature." Over time, the idea of pure nature had become an important component of neo-scholastic theology—so much so that, between the two Vatican Councils, most orthodox Catholic theologians were taking it to be indispensable. It was, for example, logically necessary for the widely-accepted theory of limbo, and it seemed to make many points of traditional moral teaching far more persuasive to non-believers, at least potentially, than they would be otherwise. For reasons I won't detain you with, the de Lubacs won the day during Vatican II. Not surprisingly, after the Council the limbo theory withered on the vine and natural-law theory fell out of favor among many Catholic moral theologians. I still think there's a place for both, especially for the latter. But neither now retains the importance in Catholic theology that they once did, and I think that's fine as a needed corrective to the ossified Aristotelianism of post-Tridentine neo-scholasticism.

But people like Photios Jones, of the aforementioned blog, go further. Being Orthodox, of course, Photios cannot be expected to care much about the vagaries of Catholic theological historiography. Perhaps that is why, despite my past protestations, he continues to interpret the Tridentine dogma of original sin as ascribing personal guilt to people who have never done anything morally significant, and to interpret the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as ascribing moral virtue to the Theotokos before she could do anything morally significant. But on the immediate matter at hand, I believe the difficulty to be the same whether one is Catholic or Orthodox. Every responsible theologian has to be able to explain what's gratuitous about "grace" in a sense distinct from what's gratuitous about "nature." Photios doesn't do that and doesn't think he ought to do that. I find that unacceptable.

I think part of the problem is that some theologians, Catholic as well as Orthodox, just don't see what is to be gained by insisting that God's elevation of creation is gratuitous in a sense beyond that in which creation itself is gratuitous. Creation is gratuitous because, not needing anything ad extra for his being or perfection, God nonetheless freely brought forth creatures as an exuberant manifestation and communication of his goodness. That's almost what it means to say that creation was, or more properly is, an act of love on God's part. For some thinkers it's hard to see how God's elevation of rational creatures, angels as well as humans, to a share in his own nature is or even could be gratuitous in a sense beyond that. And in a way they're right: since grace on any responsible account is indeed an "exuberant manifestation and communication" of God himself, we have not distinguished it from creation just on that account. But that is hardly the last word, nor could it be if we are going to preserve the very idea of gratuity in grace at all.

If grace is to be received gratefully as a gift, rather than as payment on a debt God owes us just in virtue of what we are, then what we are, i.e. our nature, has to be capable of a good measure of fulfillment without grace, even though grace brings immeasurably more fufillment. This is not to say that, in the actual world, anybody is going to end up with a "good measure of fulfillment" that is somehow "purely natural" not of grace. That's not how God has set things up. We are all, each of us, called to be "gods" (cf. John 10: 34) who, if we respond to God's call on his terms, will forever enjoy more beatitude than we can possibly imagine while on earth. But the absolutely key point is that it didn't have to be that way. God could have created beings counting as homo sapiens without destining them to become gods and just allowing them all to grow into what a life-loving Aristotelian might think of as the good life. If God had done that, we would not have known what we were missing because we would never have been offered anything more and hence would not have been aware of anything more. Such was the kind of innocent happiness of "pure nature" that Aquinas thought infants in limbo would enjoy. I believe that, if there is such a state at all, it cannot be permanent; infants who have died unbaptized await divinization through the intercession of those who love them. But that is strictly a matter of opinion.

But there's a proposition afoot which is not a matter of opinion. To insist that nature could never have been enough, that not even God could bring about creation without elevation even in principle, is in my view a version of the idea that God must always do the best possible things given what he is and whatever it is he's already done. That idea has a certain philosophical pedigree and appeals to some theologians. But I don't think it's an authentically Christian idea. There is no "best possible world." Given how the world actually is, there isn't even a best possible way it could become. The orthodox doctrine of grace tells us nonetheless that the world, and what it will become, is far better than we deserve.

Contraception and "natural law"

Lately I've noticed that most of the comboxes to my posts turn into what I can only call online graduate seminars. Perhaps that is why the number of blogs linking to this one trends downward even as the comboxes tend to get more and more involved. I have only myself to blame, of course: I advertise myself as an academic, and the issues I most enjoy tackling can generally be explored only by people of like temperament and preoccupations. And so, I hereby surrender and invite another graduate seminar.

The Catholic blogger "John Cassian," who sometimes comments here, has written an interesting post about moral theologian Germain Grisez's 1964 book Contraception and Natural Law. What interests me about the post is not just that JC makes passing reference to my work. Of more general interest is that the post illustrates how even highly educated, orthodox Catholics like JC, who as such care deeply about moral theology, manage to misunderstand the "state of the question" about Church moral norms on human sexuality in general. Much good would be accomplished if that misunderstanding could be cleared up. I offer a modest contribution.

Grisez's book, which was to be followed by several bigger and more ambitious ones, was published during Vatican II fours years before Humanae Vitae (1968) was issued by Pope Paul VI. I read the book in the mid-70s while still a college student. Now in 1963, Pope Paul had removed the controversial question of contraception from the Council's purview and committed it to a study commission pending a final decision by himself. The general expectation was that the majority of the commission would recommend approving contraception, for married couples and for "serious" reasons, as the Anglican Communion had in 1930. That it did. But most people also expected the Pope to accept that recommendation. He did not. The ensuing outrage and damage in the Church remains very much with us today. I have written about the evolution of the contraception issue before: most recently here and here, but especially here.

At its time of writing, Grisez's account of the state of the question was largely accurate. Here's how JC presents what he learned on that score from Grisez:

The chief difficulty among said problems is my perception that, in the popular Catholic mind at least, the Church's teaching on the intrinsic immorality of contraception has split itself into a seemingly irresolvable dialectic. On the one hand, there are proponents of what I would call a "scientific" natural law theory, who oppose contraception on the grounds that "contraception is immoral because it frustrates the natural purpose of the act." Underlying this theory is a certain version of natural law which assumes that natural law is the "scientific" search within a construct called "human nature" for a set of categorical moral norms ,the violation of which defines the limits of human action. On the other hand, there are those who, rejecting the scientific-natural law theory for various reasons, would propose what I call the psychological-therapeutic model. In this view, contraception is forbidden because non-contraceptive sex leads to the fullest state of emotional and personal well-being. Underlying this argument is the notion that ethical norms are most properly founded upon psychological principles. The deficiencies of this dialectic have become more strongly apparent to me over the summer.

That is essentially the same diagnosis offered by theologian James Arraj in a 1989 book which I have cited before, and which itself cites Grisez. But Arraj's prognosis and prescription were not the same as Grisez's. Seeing no way to synthesize the two poles of the "dialectic," Arraj recommended a decisive theological shift to the "personal" side that would entail abandoning the traditional prohibition on contraception. That's pretty much been the majority view among American Catholic theologians since the 1950s. By contrast, Grisez's positive suggestions contributed to that deeper ecclesial meditation and doctrinal development which HV and, later, John Paul II's "theology of the body" ('TOB' for short) so well exemplified. While I do not agree with some of later arguments that Grisez offered in defense of the traditional teaching, he did the Church a great service by advancing the state of the question in a way that helped to spur the further development of magisterial teaching.

On that score, JC himself recognizes both the need and the real possibility of resolving the "dialectic." He even recognizes that TOB succeeds in doing so, at least in principle. I have no time here to expound TOB, which in any case I have done before; but that does not much matter. The problem is that JC doesn't get quite right just how TOB succeeds in doing so. He gets the problem right, but not the solution. Thus:

More interestingly, [sic] is the recent series of catechetical talks given by John Paul II, popularly referred to as the "Theology of the Body" (TOB), and which have enjoyed a popularity among the faithful, though typically in a more distilled and summarized form as exemplified by the work of Christopher West. I would argue that these talks have been misread in three fundamental ways: the first is by the theological academy, which is not so much of a mis-reading as a non-reading, whereby the content of JPII's message is dismissed as not consonant with the various structures of modern theology. The second misreading of TOB is by the traditionalist camp, whereby the persistent personalist language employed by JPII is taken as evidence that the content is nothing other than existentialist nattering, with the ghost of Heidegger given free reign over Church teaching. The third mis-reading tends to follow the psychological-therapeutic model I discussed above, and Christopher West's work is often the most prominent example of this mis-reading (though to his credit, West often shows a more perceptive reading of JPII, and the conflicts between this more perceptive reading and the popular therapeutic understanding are left unresolved.)

However, it is my belief that TOB can be read in a manner more closely tied to JPII's original intent. Such a reading would approach the talks on their own terms, namely as a catechesis explaining the true shape of the goods known through human relations. When seen in the light of a virtue ethics such as Macintyre's or Grisez's, where moral actions are the means by which human goods are freely realized within the community (i.e. Church), then the substance of TOB becomes yet another expression of that constant and unbroken ethic which the Church has proposed from Her founding. In such a reading, the constant reference to the origin of Creation found in TOB becomes a method for revealing the full and supernatural end towards which all human actions must be directed.

JC is right about how both progs and trads dislike TOB. Progs dislike it because it doesn't jettison either the natural-law tradition in general or the traditional prohibition on contraception in particular. Trads dislike it because, situating the natural-law tradition in the context of biblical personalism, TOB seems too new and woolly-minded to them; it just isn't, well, neo-scholastic enough for them. I have even encountered a few well-educated bloggers who criticize TOB for being both naturalistic and personalistic, a juxtaposition which I account as a virtue. But JC is wrong to imagine that TOB needs to be "seen in the light of a virtue ethics such as MacIntyre's and Grisez's." The specific developments of virtue ethics offered by MacIntyre and Grisez are controversial in themselves and differ in important respects even from each other. Having hashed out a lot of this stuff while a graduate student myself in the 1980s, I concluded that, as philosophical opinions which can in no way bind the Church, proposals in contemporary virtue ethics are altogether insufficient for contextualizing TOB and thus improving its reception among theologians.

That's not to say there's no place for virtue ethics in Catholic moral theology. Quite the contrary: St. Thomas Aquinas himself tied the Church's teaching about sexual morality to Aristotelian "virtue ethics," and sound, contemporary moral theologians such as Servais Pinckaers, OP do the same. On such an account, what's "unnatural" and thus morally objectionable about any form of intentionally sterile sex is that it's incompatible with the virtue of chastity—the virtue by which certain of our "concupiscible appetites" are ordered to interpersonal goods. Thus, like sodomy and other sexual sins, contraception is a sin of lust. That is why Paul VI's warning about the social effects of widespread contraception was and remains so relevant. Although said effects are not what make contraception intrinsically evil, they serve as irrefutable evidence of the sort of evil that contraception exemplifies: a vice that spreads and manifests itself more generally, like a bit of poison that spoils a whole pond.

That is not an instance of the sort of "scientific" natural-law theorizing to which Grisez, JC, and so many others have rightly objected. Such theory falls victim to the Humean objection that one cannot, logically, derive an "ought" from an "is"—unless of course the "is" statement is itself a moral truth of the sort one seeks to establish, in which case the argument is at best an enthymeme and at worst downright circular. Absent a fairly rich and personalistic theism, in which the union of man and woman is seen as instituted by God for cooperation with him in bringing forth life, one cannot demonstrate the intrinsic evil of contraception merely by pointing out that such an activity runs counter to the ordinary "course of nature." For the human race itself, as understood by the Church, is not the sort of thing one finds just in the course of nature; and unless informed by a true moral anthropology, one must admit that any behavior which a certain percentage of human beings can be counted on to exhibit—such as violence, overeating, or sodomy—belongs to "the course of nature." So, while "nature" in the sense of Mother Nature must obviously be involved in moral anthropology, a lot more than that must be taken into account to extract much of moral or spiritual significance.

TOB is a brilliant resource for understanding the positive spiritual and social goods of which the vice of lust is a perversion. Its author recognized that contraception, like most other sexual sins, objectifies the other when the real point of sexuality is personal intercommunion and new life through complete, mutual self-donation. From that point of view, it is sexual "virtue ethics" that need to be contextualized for Catholics by TOB, not vice-versa. I hope JC comes to see that. Once he and many like him do, TOB will get the full reception it deserves.

Clubs and vocations

There's an old joke about Washington society: at the University Club, you need money and no brains; at the Cosmos Club, you need brains and no money; and at the Metropolitan Club, you don't need either one. When I lived in DC I thought at first that I belonged in the Cosmos Club—until, like Groucho Marx, I concluded that any club that would have me was, for that very reason, not highbrow enough for my tastes. An analogous problem, I believe, helps to explain the so-called "vocations shortage" in the developed countries.

Giving secularism, materialism, hypereroticism, and heterodoxy their ample due, the fact remains that I've known many admirable Catholic laymen who either have or do exclude themselves from consideration for the priesthood because they consider themselves unworthy. In the abstract, to be sure, they would acknowledge that nobody is worthy, that a genuine "call" comes only with a power to answer and live it that no man possesses naturally. But that truth of pastoral theology is basically seen as irrelevant. For it is generally assumed by practicing cradle Catholics that a man has to be better than most of us, and better in a certain hard-to-define way, in order to be considered "worthy" in the sense meant by Eastern-Christian tradition when the newly ordained are hailed as Axios!

Being "better" in the relevant sense does not mean being somehow more pious, or knowing Catholic teaching better, or even believing it more fervently, than the average Catholic man. I've known some laymen who are both more "pious" and theologically better-formed even than some priests I've known, but who would neither consider themselves nor be considered suitable for the priesthood. Nor is the problem any presumptive lack of willingness on the part of such men to live a life of ascesis and loving service. In the concrete, the sacrament of marriage as the Church understands it often requires living such a life to a greater degree than some priests do, or are even expected to do. I had dinner at a Jesuit residence last weekend and was amazed by how commodious their domestic life is; if this is poverty, I thought, then I for one wouldn't miss wealth. (A couple of the Jesuits there were guys who had known me in high school, and I thought the same about their lives back then!) I've also been inside parish rectories of which much the same could be said. True, most celibate priests are overworked and put under a microscope; but that's only true when they're not at home. When I was married with children, what I did on family time was often harder work than my job and certainly put me under closer scrutiny. Hence an old Irish joke: "Why is marriage a sacrament? Because nobody can crucify themselves."

I think the blockage here comes from a sense that a priest, unlike a layman, should be a transparent icon of Christ. When one meets a genuinely holy priest, his natural virtues are unprepossessing even if they happen to be great. They are not what one keeps one's attention when one meets him. Supernaturalized by the grace of his vocation, the natural virtues of a holy priest point beyond himself to Christ. It becomes evident that it is not the man who lives, but Christ who lives in him. It's not that a layman can't be that; but truth be told, laymen aren't at all expected to be that; largely for that reason, they are not seen to be that save in very unusual situations. Hence and perforce, they are not that.

That is why, when I was younger, hardly anybody saw me as "worthy" of the priesthood and eventually convinced me that I wasn't worthy. Since what they noticed was my natural self, not Christ, they assumed I wouldn't be interested in the priesthood; those who found that I was, assumed that my motives were natural not supernatural and thus unworthy. So, e.g., being theologically better-educated and more orthodox than some priests only earned me the plaudit "smart," and we all know that "smart" guys need to get themselves into lucrative professions. Being more traditional and consistent in my piety than some priests earned me only the shopworn adjective "devout," but that didn't even put me up there with the ethnic grandmothers, who were presumed to be more devout than anybody except the priests, who were presumed to be the most devout of all, even when it took rather little insight to see that they weren't. And of course, nobody with a noticeable sexuality counted as priest or nun material; if they were seriously willing to consider taking a vow of celibacy, that meant they needed a hot date and a psychotherapist rather than the seminary or novitiate. And I think it safe to say that my sexuality was, at least, noticeable.

It took me a long time to realize that that is how I was seen and, by and large, continue to be seen by most good Catholics who have known me in "real" life. Once I did realize it, I quickly noticed that many good Catholic laymen do the same number on themselves without any explicit social encouragement. They have seen only their "natural" virtues and conclude that the best way for them to serve God is to put those virtues to use in pretty much the way other good men do, only with the addition of quietly sanctifying them through the practice of their Faith. Thus, it is thought, one can become holy not only without believing oneself to be holy but also without appearing to be and certainly without talking about it. Such seems to be the picture—again, among most "good" Catholics—of how the laity, i.e. 99% of Catholics, are to live their faith. Those in consecrated life, on the other hand, are supposed to be icons. Unlike the rest of us Catholics, they can and ought to get away with being visibly holy and spending a lot of time talking about as well as living the Faith—even if their theology and piety are virtually indistinguishable from those of Katherine Jefferts Schori. But laymen who carry on with the God-stuff are vaguely (and often not so vaguely) suspect, even if their theology and piety are virtually indistinguishable from the Pope's. Such men are presumed to be eccentrics, or worse. It doesn't help matters that some of them are.

It is this bit of (for want of a better turn of phrase) Catholic collective psychology that helps to explain today's vocation shortage. It is taken for granted that only a rather narrow range of personality-types, which have never been thick on the ground, are plausible candidates for the priesthood. I don't believe that was always the assumption. Perhaps the difference now is that the priesthood, for various extrinsic reasons, isn't the path to social status and respect that it once was, so that Catholic men who could or do succeed in a secular profession are now expected to do so. Whether the change is a good or a bad thing is hard for me to say. But it definitely means that many good Catholic men won't join a club that might have them.

Conservatives for moral relativism?

Never woulda thunk it. But thank God there's less here than meets the eye.

Jason Lee Steorts, managing editor of National Review, has found occasion in the latest Batman movie to wax philosophical. In the spirit of good pedagogy, he even goes so far as to offer "Lessons from the Joker." If he hasn't actually taught a college class in ethics, I'd bet my clunker—all $900 worth of it—that he's taken one. And I rather doubt he liked it. The lesson he peddles now is of the sort that undergraduates learn in such classes despite what the prof thought he was teaching.

JLS's main premise is, to be sure, indisputable. Appealing to reason, no matter how sound in the abstract, is useless for the purpose of motivating somebody who "chooses to be irrational." Similarly, appealing to beauty or love won't work with somebody who's too far gone to care for such values. Now in good Aristotelian fashion, JLS also assumes that moral philosophizing aims, inter alia, to motivate people to be good. So, confronted with somebody who doesn't care about what's reasonable, or at least what's rational to value, moral philosophy is powerless. Here's what JLS concludes:

My friends ask what makes me a conservative, and sometimes I wonder myself, but there is an answer, and it’s that I hate vandals. The problem with vandals is not that they are wrong about a conceptual matter. The problem is that they smash beautiful things. They couldn’t care less about your rules or your God or your conception of the good. You have to stop them with tools that work.

One of those tools is the very large group of souls hiding in the shadows, hearing things get smashed, maybe a little afraid, maybe a little amused, maybe wanting to smash up a few things themselves — but not quite knowing what to think or do. These are people we want on our side. And you know what? A lot of them don’t believe in your rules, or your God, or your conception of the good. They’re not going to, either. They’re going to stop listening when you thunder against “moral relativism.” That’s the world we live in.

But they have preferences, and there are things they find beautiful. If you want them on your side, you need to trust that there is some overlap between your preferences and theirs — and then you need to give them a picture that is right for them. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s neither a stone tablet nor a logical operator.

What it might be is a movie in which a lunatic does something dramatic with a knife and somebody’s mouth, while two groups of ordinary people independently choose to do, not the right thing, but “the right thing.”

JLS's strategy for combatting the Jokers, then, is direct the attention of the squishy middle, the not-quite-so-far gone among us, to the preferences they share with the more-or-less good, more-or-less reasonable people—viz., the Decent Folk Like Us.

Doubtless such a strategy can work—up to a point. So long as residual loathing of the evil and/or the ugly remains latent among people generally, exposure to the actes gratuités of the Jokers of this world can cause some of them to reject what's wicked and/or ugly about what otherwise seduces. In my student days, I used similar means to induce my share of colleagues to execrate certain artists, religious charlatans, politicians, even sexual partners. But is motivating the waverers to share the "preferences" of the DFLU all that moral philosophy is, or should be, about? Is the only sort of moral philosophizing worth bothering with really just an emotional strategem, as the ancient Sophists believed? If so, then all we can do is cause people to recoil from the brink before they start finding the abyss too attractive for our tastes. For in the end, it would all just be a contest of tastes.

In the state of contemporary culture, we have less time for that than many are wont to think. Relativism is not a strategy for combatting the effects of relativism. But JLS seems to believe it's all we've got left to work with. And he produces an actual, philosophical argument for that belief:

Moral absolutes are decision procedures or exclusion criteria applied to all possible cases of action. But no decision procedure or exclusion criterion justifies its own application (in contradistinction to the application of other possible decision procedures or exclusion criteria). A separate level of justification is required, if the application is to be justified; and this is just the level at which we assume that the will is unconstrained (i.e., that it may choose freely among logically incompatible decision procedures or exclusion criteria). Even if we offer it a reason to choose one decision procedure or exclusion criterion rather than another, it will be free to call that reason into question; and so on ad infinitum.

We had discussions like this when I took my first philosophy class. Of course it is possible, in principle, to call all possible n-order justifications into question. Hence it is similarly possible for "the will" not to be "constrained" by any of them—and therefore by any of the precepts they are meant to justify. We can choose to be irrational, which in ethics means choosing to be bad. But so what? It is similarly possible to call into question any attempt to adduce sense-experience as evidence of what physical objects are like, or even that there are such things. For that matter it is possible, in the present sense, to reject the logical principles of excluded middle and non-contradiction. I've known people who are proud of doing that. Some of them had enough intellectual conscience to offer such substitutes as "fuzzy logic" or "mystical experience"; but a few felt no need to offer any substitute other than their own pig-headedness. Bars, dorms, and lunatic asylums are full of people who will reject even elementary common sense so as to avoid conceding a point they dislike. Thus it is always possible to maintain a principled skepticism by "choosing" to reject what is generally taken to be obvious or even self-evident. To be sure, that can be quite reasonable in specific contexts—those contexts, that is, where one actually has good reason to question what people generally take to be obvious. But as a general policy, radical skepticism is not reasonable. It is nihilism. Nihilism is not an argument; it is a tantrum. Even Nietzsche recognized as much—which is why he produced a few actual arguments for favoring the imaginary übermensch over the real God, until too strong a dose of reality drove him into the lunatic asylum.

JLS knows that the purpose of arguments is to persuade the reasonable, not the unreasonable. His mistake is to conclude that, given why moral philosophy cannot persuade the unreasonable, it cannot persuade the reasonable either. Well, it can, and sometimes does. As for the nihilists, those who take unreason as far as they can, the job is to restrain them rather than argue with them—even as God restrains, for the most part, the Great Nihilist Down There. In the meantime reason remains reason, and works on the reasonable.

Humanae Vitae at 40: the joke's on them

When Pope Paul VI's courageous, landmark encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, came out in late July 1968, I was thirteen years old. Providentially, I had just learned "the facts of life." Yet the reaction of most Catholic adults to said document, including those of my parents' circle, was that the exercise was a cruel joke. "We" had been led to believe that the Pill was OK and was going to be OKed, but we were snookered by that dried-up, out-of-touch old celibate in the Vatican. For reasons I needn't elaborate, the Church has not been the same since. Catholicism still lives, effectively, in a state of internal schism across the board--and the majority are not on the papacy's side. The defining moment was the general reaction to HV, just a few years after Vatican II closed.

Cardinal James Francis Stafford, now head of the Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome and then a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has just offered a hard-eyed, unblinking look at what happened. The story is so compelling that I shall let it speak mostly for itself. I shall say only that he is right to point out that the West, clergy as well as laity, did not want and therefore did not get the right response to the final petition of the Lord's Prayer on this topic. Thus we have paid a steep and wide-ranging price for ignoring, even ridiculing, the constant, irreformable teaching of the Church. We have let, in Paul VI's words, "the smoke of Satan" into the Church, and it is choking us.

Indeed, as Mary Eberstadt points out in the current issue of First Things, that pope's dire predictions about what would happen if the contraceptive mentality became widespread have been so thoroughly borne out that the joke is now on HV's opponents. That includes especially feminists, who complain bitterly about male disrespect for women at a time when women, in the West at least, are ostensibly more privileged than ever before. All one can say is that, when sterile sex is deliberately made the norm, then lust sooner or later wins out over love. We see that everywhere today; it's just Human Nature 101. But the funny thing is they still don't get it. As my first wife was fond of saying, illicit sex "fries the brains." Her mother was a Catholic philosopher from whose paper "Contraception and Chastity" (1972) Eberstadt sees fit to quote at length.

By all means read all three articles I've cited, starting with the last. All is not lost: it's a good sign that even a few Princeton undergraduates, in addition to a growing minority of educated young Catholics, now get it. That would have been inconceivable when I was in college. There is still hope. The hope will be justified by a Church that, perforce, will be smaller but purer.

"Why did you doubt?"

Sorry for the hiatus: it's been quite a challenging and eventful two weeks on this end. Much interaction with family of origin (nuclear and extended) as well as family of choice; a new spiritual director with much to say; both accompanied by stirring in the subconscious, chiefly dreams. I rarely remember my dreams; the ones I do remember are the powerful and spiritually significant ones; and there have been two in the past two weeks I've remembered quite vividly. (I say 'subconscious' because I think that where these dreams have been coming from is not precisely coextensive with what Freud termed 'the unconscious', though the latter is clearly involved, as it always is.) I have come away from it all with a renewed sense of vocation. I know now what direction to walk in. I do not doubt any more.

I say so with painful but joyful awareness of the question Jesus asks Peter in today's Gospel as the latter succumbs to fear and sinks into the sea water, the primordial, double-sided symbol of ancient chaos and new life. The answer is so obvious that the question is almost rhetorical. It applies to each of us; for we are all, or almost all, people "of little faith." But it doesn't have to stay that way. Perhaps a little autobiography can explain why.

There are people who know from childhood what direction their walk toward the Lord is meant to take. I've known priests and nuns who knew from the age of reason that they were called thereto; I've known married people who knew when they were barely out of puberty whom they were meant to be with for the rest of their lives. People like that seem to me, spiritually, to walk on water as they walk toward the Lord. It's never been like that for me. From the time I was 15 I've wanted to be in consecrated life of some sort, but hardly anybody around me from that time onward took that aspiration at face value. They assumed it was a pathetic attempt to escape from something called "reality," which to them meant what it does for most men: getting married, begetting babies, and bringing home the bacon. I felt that God was calling me out and forth to something special, but the reaction I got was, in effect, "cut the narcissistic crap and be normal." So as I neared college graduation, I put aside my unconventional dream because nature as well as my milieu urged me to; I was after all dating a woman who truly loved me, and she became my first wife. But despite all that I've promised, done, and failed to do---and my sins have been many--the appeal of consecrated life has never left me. I have failed the test of marriage twice, and I am now morally certain it's because, lacking the faith, courage, and maturity to pursue my true vocation, I did what most around me expected as a matter of course. Having done what I let myself be convinced I ought to do, I blew it because, in spite of the pretense I took as reality, I was not wholehearted about it. And it is impossible to live out the baptismal vocation in the form of marriage if one isn't wholehearted about it, if it isn't what one wants to do without ifs, ands, and buts.

To be sure, there are people who can manage both marriage and consecrated life. For example, I have met Eastern-Catholic and other clergy who have made a good go of both. But as a cradle Latin-Rite Catholic, that option is not open to me; and my personal limitations preclude it in any case. For me it has to be one or the other. I know now which it is to be. My only regret, and it's a big one, is that along the way I failed and hurt the people closest to me. I have admitted that to them and apologized; I still retain obligations to them which I struggle to discharge; and that latter fact could well end up precluding the form of consecrated life I would prefer. That's OK. The way God brings good out of bad is not always the way we would prefer. I know only that I am to dedicate the rest of my life to the direct, explicit, and full-time service of the Lord. How that happens is up to him alone. I surrender accordingly, knowing that I will sink back into the water of chaos only if I foolishly believe that nature must remain stronger than supernature.

America repents

At least praying might help make it so. We do indeed have much to repent of. A friend of mine has composed an ecumenical prayer service for the purpose. It will appeal to those Christians who agree with him about what we have to repent of.

The Immaculate Conception: trying to be erenic

Several friends have called my attention to a pair of posts over at Eirenikon: one called "On Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception," the other "More on the Immaculate Conception in Eastern Orthodoxy." Well, they have my attention.

I like Eirenikon: its Orthodox "editor," to whom I shall refer as "EE" in deference to his wish for anonymity, openly states that his blog's purpose is "Orthodox-Catholic reconciliation." That makes EE almost as quixotic as I and certainly braver, considering the reaction he sometimes gets from his co-religionists. At any rate, the long combox to the first of the two aforementioned posts, a combox that took me nearly an hour to read, tends to confirm that impression. EE's support came from "the West" not "the East"—unsurprising given that the post consisted of a quotation from a Jesuit theologian. Of course that should be balanced by the quotation of which the second post mostly consists; from a Greek-Catholic scholar, it impressively presents evidence for old, established Eastern-Christian belief in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception ('DIC' for short). EE invited refutation of said scholar's point, but did not really get one.

Of course the naysayers had already said their nays in the combox to the earlier post. In response to them, I offer again two old posts of mine: Freedom, evolution, and original sin, and Our "solitary boast". The best point of that might be to take some of the pressure off EE.

Prayers needed

Budding Orthodox scholar Perry Robinson of Energetic Procession, whose critiques of Catholic doctrine prompted me to begin blogging three years ago, is facing a couple of pressing personal challenges at the moment. Their edge is sharpened by his having a growing family to take care of. From my own personal experience, I know how much he needs your prayers right now.

Hang in there, Perry. Prayer for you and yours is an ecumenical no-brainer.

Getting the Church up to scientific speed

John Farrell of Farrellmedia has published a rather bracing article in Faith magazine called "Has the Church Missed the Import of Science?" It should go without saying that I believe the answer to be no, at least if we consider the historic role of Catholic priests in the progress of modern science. Consider just Copernicus, who first promoted heliocentrism as a hypothesis; Fr. Gregor Mendel, founder of modern genetics; and Fr. Georges Lemaitre, who first formulated the "Big Bang" theory in cosmology. But John certainly has a point about the contemporary Catholic hierarchy, who by and large are clueless about scientific developments.

What is to be done? John proposes:

It seems the time has come – and if not now, when? – for the Church to establish an order specifically dedicated to training theologians as scientists – or taking scientists and turning them into first-class theologians, so that they can more closely delve into the modern science of the natural order and its continued importance for Christian theology. A Church with philosophers of firsthand experience in the study of the natural order, would go a long way to helping her regain for the West what Pope Benedict rightly praised in his Regensburg address, that dedication to the importance of reason in its service to Faith.

My favourite example is Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a neuroscientist, who is currently the director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He was in the lab full-time while he was taking night courses in theology and preparing to enter the seminary. The church needs more priests like him, some for example who could head a new faculty dedicated to training scientists in theology and also overseeing the recruitment and scientific training of seminarians and clergy who have the aptitude and the wish to become experts in branches of science.

Does this sound unrealistic? The Belgian Cardinal Mercier, who died in 1926, would not have thought so, I think. Cardinal Mercier not only began the revival of the study of St. Thomas in the late 19th century, with the gratitude and encouragement of Leo XIII, but it was he who noticed the mathematical precocity of a young seminarian, and fellow Belgian, whom he encouraged to study the then revolutionary new branch of physics developed by Albert Einstein. Georges Lemaître not only quickly mastered Einstein’s physics, he took it to the next level by convincing Einstein and his generation that the universe itself was dynamic. In doing so, he laid the foundations of modern cosmology that still guide research to this day. The metaphysical implications of this insight have still to be worked out.

Pope John Paul II liked to repeat Cardinal Newman’s adage that truth cannot contradict truth. The Church should not only not fear the truth of the natural order, it should take the lead in studying it, in championing it. For there is nothing to fear in the workings of the natural order and a lot to be gained from deepening our interpretation of it. If this can be grasped by those who have no faith, why can it not be grasped by those who claim they do?

Fair enough. We don't have enough men like Tadeusz Pacholcyzk, or Stanley Jaki and Michael Heller for that matter. But I'm not entirely convinced that it's up to a new generation of theologian-scientists to get the Church up to scientific speed. You almost have to be a celibate priest, free of family obligations, to do the amount of professional study necessary for attaining competence in both natural science and Catholic theology; and there aren't enough priests of any degree of talent to begin with. Yet there are plenty of laymen out there, John Farrell included, who are doing a creditable job in steering Catholic thought between the shoals of fundamentalism on the one hand and materialism on the other.

The chief obstacle to their success, it seems to me, is academic politics rather than a failure of will on the part of the hierarchy and the Catholic intelligentsia. But even fashions like that come and go.

For the culture-war tactical manual

On this Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, I just thought it appropriate to post this vignette from the pro-life front.

The development of the "development of doctrine"

The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, and presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun's light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory, the Light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated.

(St. Gregory Nazianzen, Orations, 31.26; HT to "Ioannes.")

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But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged n itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same....This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

In like manner, it behoves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits....

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection.

For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

(St. Vincent of Lerins; HT to "e".)

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This Tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16).

(Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum §8.)

Of what use is "the Vincentian Canon"?

Let me say at the outset that I believe there is an important use for the Vincentian Canon. I did not always believe that. I believe it now because, as we shall see toward the end of this post, the Pope does, and I greatly respect his intellect as well as his office. But I don't think that will satisfy my critics. Of that, I should probably be glad. But what's the use of the thing?

On this blog, I have more than once criticized the rather frequent citation of the Vincentian Canon against the Catholic Church, even though the canon itself speaks of "the Catholic Church" as that church whose faith the VC was intended to help identify and clarify. Progressive Catholics, traditional Anglicans, and most Orthodox—i.e. people who, for different reasons, reject the idea that the Roman communion just is the Catholic Church—are wont to task Rome for requiring more of believers than some common doctrinal core that is alleged to have been "held always, everywhere, and by all." And the VC is said to forbid, with great authority, requiring any more of believers than that. Now, my most recent defense of Rome on this subject was occasioned by a critique made by Continuing-Anglican priests Robert Hart and Matthew Kirby, who hold forth at The Continuum. And I answered Fr. Kirby's criticism of my argument by pointing out that the allegedly Roman "doctrine of manifest unity," which he claims fails to meet even Rome's critieria for having been definitively taught, is not in fact the doctrine Rome teaches. Yet as Fr. Al Kimel has pointed out, I neglected to also directly rebut Fr. Kirby's criticism of my remarks about the use of the VC itself. Since I consider this issue very important, I shall now remedy my neglect.

Rather than simply re-quote my argument, which was originally made to a different person in a different context, I shall sum up my position here for greater clarity.

The following from St. Vincent of Lerins (ca. 434 CE), which includes both the VC and an explication of its use, is true:

Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly 'Catholic,' as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality [i.e. oecumenicity], antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.

But the VC is not literally true. It is not literally true that every tenet taught by the Catholic Church has been believed "everywhere, always, and by all," even restricting the universal quantifier "all" to formal members of the Catholic Church. For there have always been heresies aplenty among those who are, or at least started out as, formally members of the Catholic Church. But given that the VC is true all the same, there must be rules of application for the VC which, if followed, exhibit the sense in which the VC is true. St. Vincent indeed states several of them. Yet my main point is that one such rule is implied by St. Vincent's words and must be this: the doctrinally true referent of the term 'the Catholic Church' must always be understood and followed in order for the VC itself to be truly understood and reliably applied.

That is the point which Fr. Kirby criticizes as follows:

...Dr Liccione’s rendering of the Vincentian Canon is in danger of being reduced to a useless tautology, and one that Catholics could not accept inasmuch as it would imply all past appeal to this principle was an invalid circular argument. That is, if it is true one cannot appeal to the Vincentian Canon to judge a controversial doctrinal issue without first successfully determining exactly who or what churches are definitely orthodox and Catholic (so that their consent counts), then one must determine who is on the “right side” of any disputed matter before one can use consensus to determine which is the right side! That really would be incoherent.Indeed, the numbered argument I have given above as, I think, an accurate summary of our friend’s position does not use the Vincentian Canon in consistency with this tautological interpretation. Instead, it attempts to show that, even without knowing a priori who is the OTC, one can use the principle of St Vincent of Lerins to conclusively reject Anglo-Catholicism. Hence, any polemical attempt to deny the right of Anglican Catholics to appeal to the Canon in support of their teaching and identity, such as Manning’s infamous reference to the treachery of an appeal to history or his glorying in the triumph of dogma over history, is unreasonable.

As I understand him, Fr. Kirby is making two criticisms: (1) If I really stuck to my main point, my position would be incoherent; (2) Given why I don't stick to my main point, Continuing Anglicans are free to cite the VC to justify their ecclesiology, which it was my purpose to reject.

Perhaps the best way for me to begin answering Fr. Kirby is to explain just why I have maintained the point he criticizes. My first and lesser reason is that to reject or ignore it is to downplay the context in which, and the purpose for which, St. Vincent wrote. He was writing primarily for a literate minority of Catholics at a time when the Western Empire was disintegrating and the Church, in the East as well as the West, was rife with heresies. St. Augustine, for example, had died in 430 while still fighting, among other evils, Donatism and Pelagianism. In 431, the third "ecumenical council" (at Ephesus), amid street riots and bitter episcopal machinations, anathematized Nestorius and thus caused a schism that has lasted down to this day. We do not know whether St. Vincent, a Western father, knew about that council when he wrote. But his purpose in that tumultuous time was clear: to give thinking Catholics a reliable criterion for determining whether a given controversial doctrine expressed the faith of the Catholic Church (his term, mind you) or not. To insist that one need not know what the term 'the Catholic Church' antecedently refers to in order to apply the VC reliably for such a purpose is to make an argument that St. Vincent did not make and, I would venture to say, would not have accepted. Why that's so is the second and major reason for my position.

Consider how St. Vincent himself goes on to recommend applying his "canon":

What then will the Catholic Christian do, if a small part of the Church has cut itself off from the communion of the universal Faith? The answer is sure. He will prefer the healthiness of the whole body to the morbid and corrupt limb. But what if some novel contagion try to infect the whole Church, and not merely a tiny part of it? Then he will take care to cleave to antiquity, which cannot now be led astray by any deceit of novelty. What if in antiquity itself two or three men, or it may be a city, or even a whole province be detected in error? Then he will take the greatest care to prefer the decrees of the ancient General Councils, if there are such, to the irresponsible ignorance of a few men. But what if some error arises regarding which nothing of this sort is to be found? Then he must do his best to compare the opinions of the Fathers and inquire their meaning, provided always that, though they belonged to diverse times and places, they yet continued in the faith and communion of the one Catholic Church; and let them be teachers approved and outstanding. And whatever he shall find to have been held, approved and taught, not by one or two only but by all equally and with one consent, openly, frequently, and persistently, let him take this as to be held by him without the slightest hesitation.

The methodology St. Vincent recommends in the above paragraph could not even get off the ground if the person applying it did not already know what the term 'the Church'—i.e. the Catholic Church—concretely and specifically refers to. That emerges even more clearly when we attend to what St. Vincent does with the phrase 'the ancient General Councils'.

Which councils did he mean? Surely not the well-attended Council of Antioch in 268, which among other things considered how to speak of the divinity of the Son in relation to the Father. That council sharply rejected using the term homoousios, "of the same substance," to describe that relation; yet fifty-seven years later, the council which is universally deemed the first "ecumenical" council, at Nicaea, adopted that very term to combat the Arian heresy that had arisen less than two generations after the Antiochene council. Even so, by the time St. Vincent wrote his canon, the Arian heresy was still very much alive, despite the efforts of the only other "ecumenical" council to be held before St. Vincent came of age: that of Constantinople in 381, a purely Eastern council which had not yet been acknowledged by Rome as universally binding by the time St. Vincent wrote. So, what does St. Vincent think the authority of "general councils" consists in?

He simply could not have meant that their authority derived from any unbiased student's being able to see, on the basis of other criteria, the conformity of their creeds with what had "been held always, everywhere, and by all." Why not? Because he was recommending that we consult general councils precisely in order to determine what had thus been held, and precisely at a time when some orthodox but controverted doctrines were by no means held "everywhere and by all." On St. Vincent's methodology, then, the authority of "general councils" to determine which statements were "orthodox,"—i.e. which statements truly expressed the faith of the Church—could not, either logically or historically, have derived simply from some clear and general recognition that the statements approved by such councils expressed what had been "held always, everywhere, and by all." It's rather the other way round: the dogmatic decrees of general councils are what enable Catholics to recognize what had been "held always, everywhere, and by all" to begin with.

Given as much, St. Vincent was appealing to the authority of such councils to speak for the Catholic Church as a whole and thus define the faith of the Church as a whole. That authority is not, to be sure, entirely independent of the deposit of faith it claims to hand on definitively, nor did St. Vincent believe it to be thus independent. He knew that the teaching authority of the Church is not above the Word of God but only serves it. By the same token, however, the authority of general councils as convocations of bishops speaking for the Church as a whole had already been, by St. Vincent's time, long acknowledged to be that of the successors of the Apostles. The teaching authority of the Apostles was abundantly clear in the New Testament, and was long understood by Tradition to have been passed down to validly ordained bishops. The authority of the Magisterium to interpret the deposit of faith in an authentic, binding, and definitive manner was already, itself, understood to belong to the deposit of faith. But such authority would be nugatory if its exercise stood under judgment by people who simply decided for themselves whether or not the dogmatic decrees of a given general council conformed to what had been "held always, everywhere, and by all."

This of course immediately raises the question how, for St. Vincent, an authoritative "general council" is to recognized as such. Is it just the sheer number of bishops attending it and approving its decrees? Not exactly: the Council of Rimini (359), called to once again address the Arian controversy that Nicaea had fail to quell 33 years earlier, had more bishops in attendance than Nicaea and ended up approving an Arian creed! That result was what caused St. Jerome to observe: "The whole world groaned in astonishment to find itself Arian." Presumably St. Vincent, who accepted Nicaea, rejected Rimini too. Well then, how are we to know that one big council is to be accepted as authoritative and another not? St. Vincent is silent on that question, although I doubt it is coincidental that Pope Liberius was known to have annulled the decrees of Rimini a few years after it adjourned. Neither do I think it coincidental that Pope St. Leo the Great taught, less than thirty years after the writing we have from St. Vincent, an understanding of the papacy that can only be described as "Vatican I in nuce" (to borrow a phrase from Fr. Kimel). Regardless of the criteria by which we distinguish truly ecumenical councils from latrocinia, however, my point about the role of the former in using the VC stands.

How about when there is no "general council" to settle a question? St. Vincent answers by recommending, in effect, that we diligently seek a consensus patrum. But such a consensus is not to be sought among just any old writers claiming to be Christian; it is to be sought only among "teachers approved and outstanding." Approved by whom? Well, who else than the authorities of the Catholic Church? Outstanding among whom? Among those Catholics who are not Catholics in name only, but who humbly submit their judgments to the Magisterium and those writers whom the holders of the Magisterium recommend. When a consensus is to be found among such approved and outstanding writers on a matter pertaining to the deposit of faith, then we can identify and embrace the faith of the Church as such in their consensus.

An example of how the Magisterium itself employs the VC illustrates what that involves. Consider then-Cardinal Ratzinger's CDF responsum ad dubium on Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, a document of John Paul II's which had ruled that the Church's lack of authority to ordain women priests was a doctrine to be "definitively held by all the faithful."

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

Notice how Ratzinger ended: OS's teaching is to be "held always, everywhere, and by all." That is a clear allusion to the VC, and it is a fair allusion because it had already been said that OS's teaching was "from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church." Knowing that the VC is not literally true as a description, in this or in most other cases, Ratzinger transforms it into a prescription. But it is a prescription founded in large part on the methodologies St. Vincent himself recommends. I am thus led to believe that the VC is useful not as a empirical method of polling the Christians of the past, still less of the present, than as a normative method of ascertaining the faith of the Catholic Church by synthesizing the statements of her duly constituted authorities and those they approve. Such a normative method is highly useful for those willing to accept it. But it would not make sense without the visible, historical Catholic Church, and her teaching authority, taken as givens.

Hence, pace Fr. Kirby, my position is not "incoherent." The way one knows who has the authority to settle controversial doctrinal issues is not, as Fr. Kirby says I say, to first "determine who is on the right side." That would be Protestantism, and I am not a Protestant because I don't believe that such a stance, if generalized, is compatible with the gift of faith. The way one knows who has the authority to settle doctrinal controversies is simply to locate the Catholic Church, which is where the the authority to determine what the right side is abides. Nor do I abandon that position for the sake of using the VC to reject Anglo-Catholicism, while prescinding from the question which ecclesial communion is "the" Church. I believe it is inherently implausible—VC or no VC, Catholic Church or no Catholic Church—to claim to know who and where "the Church" is while rejecting the ecclesiological self-understanding of each of the communions one claims to be branches of the Church. And I believe St. Vincent would support me in that, if he were still concerned with ecclesiological polemics.

La Dowd finally gets it right

In her July 6 column, Maureen extensively quotes an elderly priest on "whom not to marry." To many groups of (mostly) females, he gives a talk on that subject which has been finely distilled by his "decades in marriage counseling." The last line quoted from him in the column is this:

“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.”

This priest is wise indeed. Maureen finally got something right. Makes me think of Romans 5:20. Which makes me think that sacramental marriage is possible after all!

(HT to frequent commenter John Hanson.)

"Why they still don't get it:" replies to objections

As I expected, Fr. Robert Hart and one of his Continuum colleagues, Fr. Matthew Kirby, have replied to my post "Why they still don't get it," where "they" refers to the Continuum. They did so in comboxes both to that post and to one at the Continuum, where my post was re-posted for convenient discussion. I was pleased to see, in the latter combox, contributions by my friends Fr. Al Kimel and Scott Carson; the latter has even followed up with a post of his own, delightfully entitled Have a Hart, whose moderation is commendable. Having been taken to task for my "sanctimonius triumphalism" (Scott's description of what I've been criticized for), I see the moment now to respond to my main critics.

Fr. Hart believes I have misunderstood his position, and accordingly has urged me to study his ample posts relevant to "Roman Catholicism" where, I was assured, my misunderstanding would be dispelled and I would find the refutations of all my arguments. Having duly made the study, I find that most of the arguments he constructs, along with most of his supporting material, are both old in themselves and familiar to me—from the time in college when I was exploring the question whether to be Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic, and from my more recent participation at the now-defunct blog Pontifications, whose newer version Fr. Kimel writes here. I shall clear away some of the kicked-up dust so as to focus what is worth debating.

The dust cloud is what is taken to be the evidence of history. Obviously Fr. Hart does not see historical arguments for "the papal claims" as intellectually compelling; nor do I think he ought to, for I don't either. But given that he has called Joseph Ratzinger "as close to being infallible as any one man can get," I should think Fr. Hart would hesitate to deny that said claims are intellectually defensible. That is as it should be. For neither I, Fr. Kimel, Prof. Carson, the Pope himself, or the many Roman-Catholic minds as great as the Pope's and greater than mine would presume to say that the evidence of history proves the Catholic doctrine of the papacy as that has developed over time. We believe said doctrine to be an article of faith and therefore to be assented to by the gift of faith. While considerations of history, and of reason generally, are and must be relevant to deciding whether to accept said gift and what comes with it, no such considerations could in themselves be decisive and thus compelling; for an article of faith expressing a truth knowable only by divine revelation cannot be subject to rigorous demonstration without ceasing to be an article of, precisely, faith. Much the same could, of course, be said about Eastern-Orthodox ecclesiology from a strictly Orthodox standpoint. In fact, on scholarly grounds alone, a number of mutually incompatible ecclesiological doctrines are defensible—in the sense of not being obviously contrary to purely historical fact—including Fr. Hart's. A matter such as this is not going to be decided by how much data we have in hand or even by how "reasonably" one particular inquirer interprets data that others have too. For even when the parties have the same set of data in hand, they operate within competing theological paradigms for interpreting the data. Which paradigm one adopts is thus underdetermined by the data and shapes how one sees the data. If things were or even could be otherwise, then after nearly two millennia of Church history and several recent centuries during which more and more data have been emerging for scholarly discussion, Christians would have less, not more, dissensus over theology generally and ecclesiology in particular. But in fact we have more than ever. Where, then, are we to look if not to the evidence of history?

Well, it would be a start to ask just what ecclesiologically significant questions the evidence of history fails to adjudicate. One such question is whether to be Protestant or Catholic.

I agree with Newman that "whatever be historical Christianity, it is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this." A respectable case can be made that either Catholicism or Orthodoxy is the faith-once-delivered, even though no set of historical data could objectively suffice to decide between their competing ecclesiological paradigms. But there just isn't anything called "Protestantism" on behalf of which one could make such a case. I think so not because I am an expert Church historian—I am not—but because it seems evident to me that "Protestant" denominations share too little positive doctrinal content with each other for something called "Protestantism" to present a clear doctrinal alternative to the indisputably apostolic communions. Aside from the existence of some sort of deity, and the importance of Jesus in showing us something about the deity, the only point on which they all seem to stand is, well, protest against the idea of any particular, visible church's being protected from error by God when it invokes its real or imagined authority to hand on divine revelation.

Now I have argued, in effect, that Fr. Hart is a Protestant rather than a Catholic. In more than one place, however, Fr. Hart has insisted that he is both Protestant and Catholic. Needless to say, one can reconcile such contraries by going beyond ordinary usage and construing the terms so that they cease to be contraries. That is what Fr. Hart does. But I have no wish to debate lexicography. I'd rather get right to the crux of the matter.

See here, which is a comment of his under one of his RC posts. He begins by quoting another commenter, and then responds.

The fault is not in the Scriptures but in the desire to part with its authoritative interpreter—the Church.

On this point traditional Anglicans are in complete agreement (and I dare say that my lengthy quotations for Hooker have demonstrated this fact). The disagreement is about how we know the infallible teaching of the Church. To the RCC it is by the teaching authority of the Roman Magisterium, whereas to us it is the 1,2,3,4,5 and Scripture, Right Reason and Tradition ("the Church with her Authority"). This, we say, is not embodied in one man, but in the consensus of the Church when it was united in the first millennium, regarding those doctrines that all of us, when really up against it, not only believe, but would die for.

Now all parties to this particular discussion agree that "the Church" is the "authoritative interpreter" of Scripture. All agree that the Church, qua such an interpreter, teaches infallibly when she addresses a point of faith or morals with her full authority. Disagreement, as Fr. Hart points out, arises over the question how we know what is the infallible teaching of the Church. I would add, and I don't think Fr. Hart would dispute, that disagreement also arises over the question what the referent of the phrase 'the Church' really is in this context, with the emphasis on "the". As we shall see, the two questions are closely related and the latter is just as important as the former.

Regarding the first, Fr. Hart has seriously mischaracterized the Roman-Catholic meta-teaching about "how we know." In some of the ipsissima verba, the actual teaching is as follows (emphasis added):

Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit, the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2, 42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort. (7)

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, (8) has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, (9) whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission; and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls. (Dei Verbum §10).

Therefore, Fr Hart's contrast between the role of "the teaching authority of the Roman Magisterium" and "Scripture, Right Reason, and Tradition" depends on a fundamental misstatement of how "the Roman Magisterium" sees the relationship between itself on the one hand and "Scripture and Tradition" on the other. Of course he could defend his view by maintaining that he sees through the teaching, i.e. that knows the real, underlying doctrine of the Magisterium behind the official teaching of the Magisterium itself. I have often observed this tack among those who reject what they believe to be the claims of the Church of Rome. But it is necessarily implausible to claim to know that what the Roman Magisterium means is incompatible with what it says. So the actual teaching should be taken at face value. Yet if it is so taken, then Fr. Hart's intended contrast between the Roman Magisterium on the one hand and "Scripture, Right Reason, and Tradition" on the other is merely a covert begging of the question. As for "Right Reason," no party to the dispute is going to say either that Right Reason is irrelevant or that their own reasoning fails to conform with Right Reason. (Indeed, Roman Catholicism is often accused of relying too much on "reason" as distinct from "faith.") And so I shall leave aside the altogether sterile question whose reasoning conforms to Right Reason. I shall also leave it to Fr. Hart to adjust his position, or at least his arguments, in light of actual Roman-Catholic teaching.

Pending that, if wants to see himself as both Protestant and Catholic, he has to do two things: affirm that something called "the Church" infallibly teaches the faith-once-delivered (the "Catholic" part), yet at the same time deny that any particular, visible church, such as the Church of Rome through her Magisterium, has in fact always done so over time when teaching with its allegedly full authority (the "Protestant" part; though it is not in dispute that all churches have erred when teaching with less than such alleged authority.) That, as I continue to read him, is just what Fr. Hart does, though in a manner I haven't found convincing since I decided, in college, to remain Catholic rather than become Orthodox. And that is the crux of my dispute with him. I do not believe, and have never been able to believe, that the affirmation can be made consistently with the denial.

I've already produced, in my previous post on this topic, an argument for that position that Fr. Hart's colleague, Fr. Kirby, analyzes well into what he calls "a valid and powerful one, granting all its factual premises." For the benefit of readers, the best way to clarify my disagreement with both worthy clerics is to defend the one factual premise of mine that Fr. Kirby rejects and, with it, my argument.

Here is how Fr. Kirby formulates that premise:

Whether one limits one’s survey (i.e., one’s search for Catholic consensus) to the Catholic Church of the First Millenium before the schism between East and West, or the RCC since then, or the EOC since then, or even a hypothetical combination of the EOC and RCC, in each case there is a consistent dogmatic consensus that the unity of the OTC (i.e., "the one true Church") is always outwardly visible and thus that any outward separation of jurisdictions cannot possibly leave more than one of the separated bodies inside the OTC. That is, East and West always have asserted and still do assert a doctrine of manifest unity (DMU) of the OTC.

Fr. Kirby goes on to criticize that premise as follows:

The problem is that premise 2 is simply false. There is no binding DMU and there never has been. The DMU, at most, has been a common opinion or sometimes has been asserted or assumed in official but non-infallible teaching contexts. But the actions of the Church (using any of the hypothesised identifications above) and the statements of various of its theologians and bishops (in good standing) in the past have often been manifestly inconsistent with such an absolute position. And I have made this very point before and given the relevant evidence on this weblog in 3 parts.

The problem with Fr. Kirby's criticism, even as he expounds it more extensively in other writings of his that he cites, is that his construal of the DMU fails to observe a crucially important distinction contained within the Roman Magisterium's official teaching, even as the matter is left to opinion alone within Orthodoxy.

By way of stating the content of the DMU, which he rejects, Fr. Kirby says that the One True Church (OTC) "is always outwardly visible and thus that any outward separation of jurisdictions cannot possibly leave more than one of the separated bodies inside the OTC." Regarding Orthodoxy, that seems a fair-enough generalization of the doctrinal state of things. But even though the Orthodox regard their communion as the OTC, they lack consensus on the precise ecclesial status of the Roman communion, otherwise and more commonly known as "the Catholic Church." As Fr. Kirby rightly puts it, "they know where the Church is, but not where she isn't." Admittedly a vocal minority, including the monks of Mt. Athos and Fr. Justin Popovich, sees the Catholic Church as a satanic counterfeit of a church, with papism and (on some versions) the filioque as the fons et origo of all the ills of "the West." But the majority seem to see the Catholic Church, though indeed as heretical and schismatic and thus not part of the OTC, yet nonetheless as possibly quite helpful for her members' salvation. A few are even willing to see the Catholic Church pretty much as the Catholic Church sees the Orthodox communion. What, and how, is that?

A careful reading of Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), along with the "ecumenical" decrees related to it, makes three points clear:

(1) The Catholic Church sees herself as the OTC, i.e. that body in which the Church of Christ visibly and continuously "subsists" as a perduring whole;

(2) All the same, the Orthodox churches in schism with the Catholic Church are "true, particular churches" that are in real but "imperfect" communion with the Catholic Church;

(3) As such, the Orthodox communion "belongs properly" to the Catholic Church, i.e., ought to be in full communion with the OTC.

Without the use of the word 'Orthodox', all of that is reiterated in the CDF's most recent "instruction" on ecclesiology, which I quoted in full and discussed at length here last year.

Pace Fr. Hart, this is not Rome's branch theory. According to branch theory, neither the Roman nor the Orthodox nor the Anglican communion, indeed no visible communion of churches, can rightly claim to be, simply, the OTC. But Rome has time and again insisted, with her full authority, that she is the OTC; and her version of the DMU follows from her ecclesiological self-understanding. Yet, on that version and pace Fr. Kirby, it does not follow that the Orthodox communion is simply "outside" the OTC. Rather, for Rome the Orthodox communion consists of true churches that are in imperfect communion with the OTC. Thus, in relation to the OTC, the Orthodox communion exists ectopically as it were, but still with a real connection of sacramental grace and authentic Christian faith. That teaching was never clearly formulated in Magisterial teaching prior to Vatican II; but the very historical evidence Fr. Kirby cites against what he calls "the DMU" serves rather effectively to show that Vatican II's teaching about Orthodoxy is merely a making explicit of Rome's practical stance toward the Orthodox all along. Accordingly, the problem with Fr Kirby's formulation and rejection of the DMU is that the DMU he formulates and rejects is not the DMU that Rome teaches. It fails to note Rome's adoption of the idea of partial communion, and thus fails to formulate the version of the DMU which she holds and which, accordingly, I hold.

As I indicated above, Fr. Hart has complained that I misunderstand him. Perhaps I have, even though I don't think so. But I think it pretty clear that Frs. Hart and Kirby have misunderstood how Roman-Catholic ecclesiology has developed. By thus misunderstanding my own ecclesiology, they have failed to appreciate the force of my argument against theirs. In this as in so many debates, the hardest work for the antagonists is simply getting clear on what each other means.

Remember this when you hear "ACLU"

“From the dawn of the Republic, America’s quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation’s founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the ‘self-evident truth’ that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God. The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles, and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society that faithfully embodied these noble principles. In that process, which forged the soul of the nation, religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement."

Pope Benedict XVI, on the White House lawn, April 16, 2008

The vocations front

In casual conversation this week with a few local Catholics, I heard more of the old CW about how the growing shortage of priests can be resolved simply by ordaining married men, women, and even the actively homosexual. When I pointed out that the Episcopal Church has been doing just that for years, only to witness a growing shortage of laity, I was assured that the Catholic Church is not the Episcopal Church. My response was what it could only be: "Let's keep her that way." Unlike those who want the Catholic Church to be the Episcopal Church—or as close to it as makes no differenc—the Catholics I spoke with conceded I had a point. And on the vocations front, there are proven ways to keep her from becoming the Episcopal Church.

The most important way is for Catholic families and parishes to be prayerful and orthodox. Both prayer and orthodoxy are equally necessary; for even as spirituality without orthodoxy is gnosis, orthodoxy without spirituality is pharisaism. But when both are present in sufficient measure, the people understand what a great and special vocation the priesthood is and are willing to transmit that attitude to the young men they influence. Dioceses where that process occurs, such as Omaha, St. Louis, and Denver, get ample vocations. The last of those three is even building a bigger seminary. In the solid and growing Diocese of Charlotte, plans to build a seminary from scratch are well advanced.

There are other ways too, but I lack time to get into more detail about them. Here I'd rather focus people's attention on the biggest obstacle to the spread of such ways: the extent to which American cultural values shape the outlook of most lay Catholics themselves.

I just came across a blog called Roman Catholic Vocations, where today's post offers a vignette about the young author's process of discerning a priestly vocation. What most struck me was not the post, however, but the first and, so far, the only comment. It is by "A Simple Sinner," who often comments here too. He wrote:

A dozen years ago before I left for seminary, the most common comment I got from my suburban neighbors when I told them my plans (you know, people who are members of suburban parishes, put their 2.1 kids through the parish grade school because it was a better "private school" and bragged about being buddies with priests...) Don't do that! You'll find a girlfriend!" The message being clear - I wasn't such an unattractive loser that I couldn't do far better than becoming a priest! I later came to suspect that a young man taking a step to be a sign of contradistinction to all that we hold dear in the US - sex, money, fame - is a challenge that bothers people who themselves may feel guilty how NOT seriously they take their own faith. Sure they will put $25 in the collection plate on the Saturday nights they do go to Mass... But give up their granit-counter-top homes, his & hers SUVS, birth control, sex, money? Now that is just plain crazy!

SS is right about one thing: the default assumption is that the priesthood is for losers, so that a young man who could get a girlfriend and a good job doesn't belong in the priesthood. That problem was fully apparent during the aftermath of Vatican II. As a young man in the 70s, one who could and did get girlfriends and could have had a remunerative career if he'd actually been interested in something that remunerates, my interest in the priesthood drew mostly the reaction that SS describes. I'm still interested in the priesthood and, when I express that interest, still draw the same reaction (even before the perennial child-support issue comes up, which it doesn't always). But I don't think SS is quite right to "suspect" that many of the scoffers secretly feel guilty. If I thought they did, I wouldn't be in the least disturbed; for somebody's guilty conscience is a sign that they know, at some level, that they're guilty of something. The real problem is that, among most Catholics, the necessary formation of conscience isn't even taking place.

They don't think of the priesthood as a noble vocation from God at all. That is partly because nobody has told them—at least not in any convincing way—and partly because they have no idea that to adopt sacrificial service willingly as a lifestyle, for love of God and neighbor, is to be divinized. But they don't see as much mostly because all the cultural icons that suffuse their environment send the opposite message. As some wag once asked: "Why does the Devil have all the best tunes?"—a question much more apposite now, if only given the state of Catholic liturgy, than it was a century ago. The gods and goddesses the young know today play sports and movie characters, or at the very least drive BMWs and have lots of sex without consequences. They simply cannot conceive that a life with no sex and hardly any money could be for anybody but a loser.

Nonetheless, I'll venture a challenge in the form of a question. Everybody has been outraged by the clerical sex-abuse scandal. But which scenario is more likely to produce clerical pederasts and their enablers: one in which only losers are thought fit for the priesthood, or one in which real men are admired for following that vocation?