Dale Tuggy quotes a famous passage from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola:
To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed.
This is a favorite of skeptics looking for a proof text demonstrating the manifest irrationality of the Catholic understanding of the Church’s authority. Dale does not seem to be making quite so strong or aggressive a claim, but he does regard Loyola’s position as “unreasonable” insofar as it amounts (Dale tells us) to the view that “tradition trumps sense perception.”
But that’s simply not what Loyola said. For one thing, he says nothing about “tradition” in the passage quoted. He speaks instead of what the “Hierarchical Church” decides. True, when the Church formally pronounces on some matter in a fashion that requires the assent of the faithful, she always does so in light of tradition. But tradition per se is not what is at issue in this passage. What is at issue is the epistemological status of the Church’s pronouncements themselves. That narrows things considerably, because while the Church does pronounce on many things, and while it is by no means only those pronouncements presented as infallible to which the faithful are expected to assent, the range of actual pronouncements is still narrower than the deliverances of tradition. (For example, there is support for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in tradition, but you will not find a formal pronouncement on the matter until relatively recently, which is why Aquinas was in his time free to disagree with it.)
Secondly, the subject matter of those pronouncements always concerns those areas in which the Church claims special expertise, namely faith (theological doctrine) and morals – namely, matters which are relevant to “the salvation of our souls,” in Loyola’s words. The Church does not claim special expertise or authority in purely secular matters. This is just basic Catholic theology, with which Loyola was of course familiar. The stuff about black being white if the Church decides it is meant as hyperbole – which should be obvious to any charitable reader, and certainly to anyone who knows that the Church has never claimed any special expertise in the physics, physiology, or philosophy of color perception per se.
Thirdly, Dale suggests that what (he claims) Loyola says about sense perception would seem to entail as well that tradition “would also trump a strong intuition of falsehood – as when a set of claims appears self-inconsistent.” That makes it sound as if Loyola’s view, and the Church’s, is that we ought to ignore what we know about logic if it seems to conflict with Church teaching. But as I have emphasized in my recent posts on the Trinity, the Catholic position is that even where theological mysteries are concerned, apparent logical inconsistencies can be and should be exposed as illusory. The Church rejects any attempt to pit revelation against reason, whether motivated by skepticism or by fideism. She teaches that while there are theological truths that cannot be arrived at by unaided reason, these truths nevertheless must not and do not conflict with reason. We must accept both the Church’s teachings on faith and morals and logic, and if there seems to be a conflict the theologian has a duty to show why this appearance is illusory.
Fourthly, the Church’s teaching about the epistemological status of her own pronouncements on matters of faith and morals is itself grounded in reason. She doesn’t say, in circular fashion, “You must accept what the Church teaches vis-à-vis faith and morals. Why? Well, we just told you why – because that is itself something the Church teaches!” The Catholic position rather follows from the Catholic understanding of divine revelation. As I have also emphasized in my recent posts on the Trinity, the Catholic view is that the occurrence of a divine revelation is something that should be and can be confirmed via its association with miracles, where the occurrence of the miracles in question itself can and should be confirmed by rational arguments. Still, if such revelation is to be efficacious, it cannot come to us merely in the form of a set of prophetic oral teachings passed on from generation to generation, or a book, or the declarations of a series of councils (though of course it can and does include these). For by themselves such sources of revelation are inherently subject to alternative interpretations, and being mere words on a page they cannot interpret themselves. In particular, they cannot tell us what they mean when the meaning is not entirely clear, and they cannot tell us how we are to apply them to new and unforeseen circumstances. Hence, if a revelation is to be efficacious, it must be associated with an authoritative interpreter. And since the human lifespan is relatively short, that interpreter cannot be identified with some particular individual human being if the revelation is to be efficacious over a period of centuries. It has to be embodied in an ongoing institution, and ultimately in an executive office whose occupants have supreme authority to have the final say in matters of controversy. Moreover, divine assistance must preserve this authority from error just as it preserved the original revelation from error; for if the authority can err in its interpretation and application of the revelation, the latter will, once again, be of no effect, even if free of error itself. In short, you can’t have an infallible Bible or infallible ecclesiastical councils without an infallible institutional Church and an infallible Pope. Without the latter, the interpretation and application of the former become arbitrary in principle, as every private interpreter becomes an authority unto himself. (I expand on this “arbitrariness” theme in this 2003 piece.)
Obviously this is bound to be controversial, and various details and qualifications would need to be spelled out in a complete treatment of the issue. The point for our purposes here is that the Catholic position is grounded in an argument about how a divine revelation given at some point in history has to be transmitted and applied if it is going to be transmitted and applied effectively. (If you want a more detailed presentation of the argument, see Mark Shea’s book By What Authority? for an excellent recent popular exposition.)
It should be clear, then, that the Church – and Loyola, in summarizing the Church’s view of her own authority – are not saying “tradition trumps sense perception,” nor, contrary to what skeptics suppose, are they advocating a shrill fideism. The claim, stripped of hyperbole, is rather: “Given the Catholic understanding of revelation – an understanding the Church herself insists is and must be in harmony with reason – we are obliged to assent to the Church’s formal pronouncements on matters of faith and morals rather than to any private interpretation that might conflict with those pronouncements.” Whether or not one agrees with this claim, it is hardly the jarring call to irrationalist dogmatism skeptics make it out to be.
Now, Dale might respond: “That’s fair enough as far as it goes. But what happens when we apply Loyola’s principle, as you claim it should be understood, to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation in particular? In at least that case, isn’t the result pretty much the view I attributed to Loyola – namely, that we ought to reject what sense perception tells us when it conflicts with tradition, or at least with the formal pronouncements of the Church?”
But that is not the result; or, if the result is that we ought to reject what sense perception tells us, this is so only in a loose, innocuous, and uncontroversial sense. To see how, consider Jim and Bob, who are identical twins with similar personalities. You approach someone you take to be Jim, begin a friendly conversation, and after a few minutes say “Well, I’m late for a meeting. Nice chatting with you, Jim!” He responds: “I’m not Jim, I’m Bob!” If we conclude that your senses deceived you, are we committing ourselves to a shockingly irrationalist skepticism about sense perception? Are we endorsing a bizarre Bob-oriented fideism according to which “Bob’s say-so trumps sense perception”? Obviously not. Indeed, strictly speaking, it wasn’t really your senses that deceived you in the first place. The man you were talking to really does look like Jim; your senses told you as much, and they were right. The trouble is that you drew the wrong conclusion from this fact, because you failed sufficiently to consider that Bob looks and acts the same way.
Something similar can be said of one’s sense perception of the Eucharist. One might judge that it is bread that one is looking at, touching, tasting, etc., even though it is not bread at all, but the Body of Christ. But to say that one’s senses are deceiving one in this situation is to speak loosely. As in the case of Jim and Bob, strictly speaking your senses are not really deceiving you at all. They told you that the accidents of bread were present, and they really were present. (Aquinas thinks so. Why? Precisely because “it is evident to sense” that they are.) The trouble is that you drew the wrong conclusion from this fact, insofar as you assumed that the presence of the accidents entails that the substance of bread must be present as well. That is to say, you failed to consider that the accidents might still be present even if the substance is not. As in the case of Jim and Bob, what is going on here is not that what sense perception tells you should be “trumped” by something else. It is, in both cases, something far more mundane – the senses are accurate as far as they go, but haven’t given you the whole story, and since you failed to realize this you drew a mistaken conclusion. This happens all the time, and hardly only when non-Catholics come to Mass.
“But I don’t buy the metaphysics and theology underlying the doctrine of transubstantiation!” you exclaim. Fine, but that is irrelevant to the point at issue, which is that there is nothing in the doctrine per se, nor in the Church’s claim about her teaching authority, nor in Loyola’s colorful statement of that claim, that entails some bizarre pitting of tradition against sense perception. If one wants to reject the doctrine, or the Church’s claims about her own authority, shouting “You claim that tradition trumps sense perception!” is not a good reason to do so.
Dale offers a further consideration against the Catholic position, as expressed by Loyola. He says: “Suppose, contrary to fact, that Mother Church had long, strongly asserted that uneaten, consecrated wafers never rot. Then, you’re cleaning up the church, and find a wafer that you remember the priest dropping during Mass some months ago. It is rotten – covered with bread mold. You can feel, smell, and see the rot. Surely, you can (and will) reasonably believe that the wafer is rotten.”
Apparently Dale thinks this hypothetical scenario poses a problem for the Catholic view of the Church’s teaching authority. But it’s hard to see how. Consider another hypothetical scenario: Suppose, contrary to fact, that the Bible had asserted that all Volkswagens are poached eggs. Then, you’re cleaning your Volkswagen one day, and you happen to notice that it is not a poached egg. You can feel, smell, and see that the Volkswagen has no poached egg-like qualities at all, and many qualities that are incompatible with its being a poached egg. Surely you can (and will) reasonably believe that the Volkswagen is not a poached egg.
Now, having formulated this scenario, would you rush to the computer and write up a blog post entitled “Protestantism: The Bible trumps sense perception”? Would you think you’ve discovered a powerful objection to the authority of the Bible? Presumably not; in any event, I doubt Dale would think you had. For the argument seems to be: “We can make up a story where the Bible asserts something at odds with a veridical sense perception. Therefore the Bible is not in fact authoritative.” And this argument is clearly no good. Quite obviously, what matters to assessing the Bible’s authority is what it actually says, not what we can imagine it saying in some weird story we’ve made up. But this argument seems parallel to Dale’s implicit argument against Loyola’s view of the Church’s teaching authority. If the one argument has no force, then, neither does the other.
Comments (151)
Well, I don't know. Suppose that a person taught that the Bible is not merely free of all error but is also infallible, and _must be_ infallible. Then, such a weird hypothetical could be relevant, as a legitimate type of ad hominum--"What would you do if the Bible taught that cars are poached eggs?" or "Are you required by your faith to assert that it is logically impossible that the book you call 'the Bible' should contain some bizarrely false claim?"
Now, it seems to me (rushing in where angels fear to tread) that one could ask _that_ sort of question legitimately of a Catholic: Are you required, for example, by your faith to assert that it is logically impossible that the Pope should ever in later years declare ex cathedra that female ordination is valid, given that the Church has previously so clearly taught that female ordination is invalid? In other words, is the Catholic required to assert that it is logically impossible that the Church should later teach something that would create a logical contradiction with something else the Church has taught earlier? But how could such a thing be logically impossible, since it seems so readily conceivable? Or must we reject entirely any kind of conceivability requirement for possibility? Or is the impossibility of some different sort rather than logical impossibility? Is the Catholic merely required to teach that such a thing will not happen? And so forth.
That seems to me like a more interesting direction to take the "black is white" discussion.
Posted by Lydia | February 26, 2010 4:58 PM
If we conclude that your senses deceived you, are we committing ourselves to a shockingly irrationalist skepticism about sense perception?
I don't see any relation here to the doctrine of transubstantiation. To make a similar comparison you would be conversing with Jim and everyone involved acknowledges it is Jim, and then somebody else would call him Bob and he undergoes a complete psychological metamorphosis, having no memory whatsoever of being Jim a few moments ago. The conclusion wouldn't be that your senses are deceiving you, it is that Bob has a split personality.
Posted by Step2 | February 26, 2010 7:26 PM
Lydia,
In fact there already have been contradictions in teaching. For example, it used to be taught that the civil state should be Catholic, and that there was no such thing as an individual right to practice a false religion. Now it is taught that religious liberty is an individual right and that all states should allow for it. Spain was even ordered by Rome to change its constitution and declare itself to be no longer a Catholic state.
I suspect that if women priests are allowed some day, most Catholics would just say that it was never really forbidden, but just rather discouraged.
Posted by George R. | February 26, 2010 8:00 PM
But, George, you're Catholic, right? So how can you say that? I mean, I'm not trying to be a snot, honestly, but doesn't what you have just said mean that the Church has erred in official teaching? And isn't that contrary to Catholic doctrine?
Posted by Lydia | February 26, 2010 8:19 PM
Lydia,
Ignatius believed that “to be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it.” But what if the Church were to teach that the color black is now white, ought Catholics believe it? I say no. Would I then be a Catholic? No, but neither would the Church be divine.
Now I have said above that contrary teachings have been taught. Have I thereby denied the Catholic faith? Yes, unless the contrary teachings came from two different churches.
Posted by George R. | February 26, 2010 9:00 PM
Oh. I understand. I think. You're a Lefebvrist or something? Is that it?
Posted by Lydia | February 26, 2010 9:30 PM
Ironically, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin believed that the Bible infallibly taught geocentricity. I suppose, then, I can start a blog entitled, "The Reformers: sense perception supports the Bible, and they're both wrong." :-)
Posted by Francis Beckwith | February 26, 2010 11:56 PM
I think Frank means that the Protestants and Catholics made the same error regarding geocentricity. Somehow infallibility didn't save either side from this error (and others).
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 27, 2010 12:32 AM
I can tell already that there is some confusion about the nature of Magisterial "infallibility." Nobody claims that the Church is infallible *full-stop*. Rather, the infallibility only extends to a particular set of pronouncements on faith and morals. Critics often point out superficial discrepancies in teaching on other matters as though this provided clear evidence of internal contradiction in Church teaching. Many of these putative "contradictions" actually involve things such as a)cases where there were a plurality of different views prior to the definition of certain doctrines. Hence, the disagreements took place prior to Church rulings which later narrowed down the space of admissible positions b)alterations of church disciplines such as the administration of penances, which involved changes in *practice*, not changes to authoritative teaching c)non-authoritative pronouncements by church officials that reflected erroneous beliefs on matters extraneous to faith and morals. Obviously, we can find cases where people in positions of authority have made erroneous pronouncements. The question is whether they did so under the presumption that they *were* exercizing infallible authority and were doing so on matters where the Church *claims* it can exercize infallibility. Absent those conditions, alleged counterexamples show nothing.
I am not going to argue here that *every* alleged discrepancy can be accounted for as one of these three. That would be like claiming that I can resolve every prima facie hermeneutical tension in the Bible. (Although I would say that both the Bible and The Magistereum can be vindicated ultima facie) My point for now is that a *lot* of the standard arguments against the Magistereum tend to conflate different sorts of "changes" in Church teaching. Once the infallibility claim is properly qualified, many of these arguments lose their force.
Posted by Untenured | February 27, 2010 10:12 AM
I'm not at all arguing that some actual contradiction has taken place in the teachings of the Catholic church that are ostensibly infallible. That would be an historical claim which, while I might suspect it to be true, I lack the time and qualification to argue. George R. says that that is true; I'm not defending that ground. Instead, I'm taking the lazier, easier philosopher's route of making a thought experiment: Is it, on the Catholic view, _logically impossible_ that there should be such a contradiction in the future, where we specify ex hypothesi that the contradiction is between statements that are clearly both made in the external manner that Catholics take to indicate infallible teaching? How can such a scenario be logically impossible? And if it isn't logically impossible, what would a committed Catholic do if it happened?
Posted by Lydia | February 27, 2010 10:25 AM
Lydia,
I would think the answer is this: It is not a logical impossibility in the sense that Hume means when he describes certain things as simply not conceivably true, e.g., that A is not A. But it is an impossibility in the sense of water sometimes flowing up and sometimes down--it's imaginable, but it's contrary to the nature of things as we have thus far encountered them, and to reason as it is given to us.
Whatever the case (and I'm sure one of W4's resident theologians will correct me), your "what-if" seems to be a necessary question for any honest Catholic. Speaking strictly for myself, if it could be demonstrated to my satisfaction that the Church had propounded both A and not A on a core issue of faith and morals--if it did declare ex cathedra that female ordination was licit (and therefore that we had always been at war with East Asia)--then I would conclude that the Church simply was not what She claimed to be and become a Protestant. To be a Catholic is not to preclude this outcome as a logical impossibility per se, at least according to my non-expert understanding of Catholic ecclesiology. I'm open to the idea that the Church contradicts Herself as a purely theoretical proposition, but only in the same sense that a Protestant so views the fallibility of Scripture. If I woke up in a vat of goo and discovered that I had been living in the Matrix, reason would force me to conclude I had been fundamentally mistaken about what the world was like, but I really, really doubt that's going to happen.
Perhaps one of my co-religionists here can correct me, but that's always been my understanding of the question.
Posted by Sage | February 27, 2010 11:51 AM
I have heard arguments such as those put forth by Untenured before, and they are just not convincing. If the Church always taught A, and now she teaches not A, then she has contradicted herself; and she is thereby not infallible. It doesn’t matter if the teaching was never defined ex cathedra; for when the pope defines something ex cathedra, that definition is added to Church teaching; it doesn’t move from the non-infallible section of Church teaching to the infallible section.
Take geocentricity. IMO, the credibility of the Church depends on the truth of that position. Even the atheists sense this. That’s why they’re always bringing up the “Galileo” issue. I suspect that Untenured wouldn’t agree, because he claims the Church can be fallible in cases that involve “non-authoritative pronouncements by church officials that reflected erroneous beliefs on matters extraneous to faith and morals.” But it's more complicated than that. In the Galileo case the Roman Holy Office, whose Prefect was the Pope himself, ruled that Galileo’s opinion that the sun does not move in a diurnal motion around the earth was formally heretical. The Hierarchical Church had decided, to use Ignatius's phrase. So are we as Catholics to reject this decision and instead believe that not only did the Roman Holy Office rule incorrectly in a matter of heresy, but it was even ruling on something that was outside its jurisdiction, being “extraneous to faith and morals?”
I’ll allow that the Holy Office can theoretically rule incorrectly in a matter of heresy, but it would have to be a result of something really wrong with the Holy Office itself. And there was nothing wrong with the Holy Office in the 17th century.
Of course, there is no real reason why a Catholic should not accept the Galileo decision, just as St. Ignatius would have surely done. But timid Catholics invariably reject it on the pretext that it was not ex cathedra.
Posted by George R. | February 27, 2010 12:30 PM
Lydia,
Not logically impossible, IMO. It's rather:
Any de fide proclamation the church WOULD do is true.
The truth of such subjunctive conditionals does not generally entail the logical necessity.
Or: Any de fide proclamation the church IN FACT did, does or will do is true.
------------
I think no proposition of the two mentioned above has to be 100% PROBABLE on the available evidence (either public or private). But there are differences on this among Catholics.
Even if some of them has to be 100% probable, 100% probability does not generally entail logical necessity.
-----------
What if one found some evident contradiction in the Catholic teaching? Well, then he could believe the teaching is false. Is such an attitude inconsistent with being a committed Catholic now? I do not see that.
Alex Pruss and Trent Dougherty once discussed the commitment to believe: to believe no matter what should befall. This commitment looks like a promise to believe (and to act on that belief). Trent seemed to me to assume that such a commitment does not entail the belief that in no possible circumstances one would not change his mind or that any circumstance in which he would change his mind has for him 0-probability. Like promising my wife a love no matter what will in fact happen does not entail (at least not obviously) I'm claiming that I would love her even in case I found out she's a mere hallucination or that I am 100% sure she's not a mere hallucination. I see no flaw in this view.
Posted by Vlastimil | February 27, 2010 12:51 PM
"... the Galileo affair does not threaten the Catholic doctrine of infallibility, because the Church doesn’t claim that tribunals possess that gift; only that popes, and ecumenical councils in agreement with them, do."
Dave Armstrong; for more search http://socrates58.blogspot.com
Posted by Vlastimil | February 27, 2010 12:58 PM
Who was ever claiming the Church as a whole to be infallible? One should be obedient to the Church, yes, but only the pope and councils presided by him have claimed to be infallible. What do you think the pope is doing when he pronounces on things ex cathedra? Just restating infallible teaching? Then why would it be special? Take the case of Mary's Immaculate Conception. That was a heated debate between various monastic orders until it was finally declared. Merely because elements in the Church contradict each other does not mean that the pope is not infallible.
"Take geocentricity. IMO, the credibility of the Church depends on the truth of that position. Even the atheists sense this. That’s why they’re always bringing up the “Galileo” issue. I suspect that Untenured wouldn’t agree, because he claims the Church can be fallible in cases that involve “non-authoritative pronouncements by church officials that reflected erroneous beliefs on matters extraneous to faith and morals.” But it's more complicated than that. In the Galileo case the Roman Holy Office, whose Prefect was the Pope himself, ruled that Galileo’s opinion that the sun does not move in a diurnal motion around the earth was formally heretical. The Hierarchical Church had decided, to use Ignatius's phrase. So are we as Catholics to reject this decision and instead believe that not only did the Roman Holy Office rule incorrectly in a matter of heresy, but it was even ruling on something that was outside its jurisdiction, being “extraneous to faith and morals?”"
Technically, due to relativity and the fact that no reference frame is preferred, it could be said the Earth stands still and the Sun moves, but so could the contrary. However it was extraneous to faith and morals and therefore was not an infallible statement. Also note the fact that his opinions were declared "formally heretical." That means that they were declared heretical in the form that they were offered. If restated, they would have to be ruled again on.
Vatican 2 said this about papal infallibility: "[The pope] enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter." (emphasis mine). I do not know whether you affirm Vatican 2 or are a schismatic, but it isn't as if the whole "faith and morals" thing was just invented by Catholic apologists.
Posted by Woppodie | February 27, 2010 1:01 PM
George R., do you believe in geocentrism? Is that what you're saying?
Vlastimil, I recall your once mentioning the Dougherty-Pruss discussion. I have my doubts as to whether concluding that the Church had contradicted herself would be best analogized to discovering that your wife is a hallucination, though I understand why someone might make the analogy.
It seems to me that in order to decide that the Church has contradicted itself one must make an individual (private?) judgement that 1) a certain text means A, 2) another text means ~A, and 3) both texts have been promulgated in an official and supposedly infallible form by the Catholic Church. This seems to be something very much like private judgement, which is exactly what the Ignatian position deems inconsistent with Catholic commitment.
I think the reason that it is deemed inconsistent is because the Protestant can, with some justice, say something like this: If you could, in principle, use your private judgement to conclude that two statements by the Church made after the close of the canon contradict one another, why are you not permitted, in principle, to use private judgment to interpret Scripture and to conclude that an ostensibly binding and/or infallible statement by the Church after the closing of the canon contradicts Scripture, which is itself (by Catholic teaching) supposed to have "come from" the Church?
The thing is that promising to love your wife doesn't mean promising to _believe_ anything or not to _conclude_ anything. In theory, you could still love your wife even if you concluded that she was crazy, unfaithful, wrong about everything she says, and so forth. The peculiarly _epistemic_ nature of the commitment to the Catholic church can't really be reflected in a marital analogy.
Posted by Lydia | February 27, 2010 1:09 PM
Sage, thanks for your straightforward answer. It has rather a "Protestant" sound to me. :-) I'll be interested to see what others think.
Posted by Lydia | February 27, 2010 1:27 PM
Of course I believe in geocentrism.
Let’s see: All the Fathers of the Church believed in geocentrism. St. Thomas and all the Doctors of the Church believed in geocentrism. The Bible teaches geocentrism. The Roman Holy Office condemned heliocentrism as “formally heretical.”
On what good grounds, then, does a Catholic not believe in geocentrism? I know. Because of stellar parallax was confirmed. But stellar parallax does not disprove geocentrism, just as oscillation in a turning wheel does not disprove the existence of an axle.
Posted by George R. | February 27, 2010 1:50 PM
George,
Geocentrism is false. We now know many things about how the solar system works that the ancients did not. Therefore, on this point the fathers were wrong, despite their unanimity. Thomas was wrong. The "Holy Roman Office" was wrong. Believing in heliocentrism should not have been condemned as a heresy, even though the Bible itself was written from a geocentric point of view.
Whether we are Protestants or Catholics, we might have to re-assess how we view religious authority (both Biblical and ecclesiastical), and especially what we think the epistemological implications of that authority really are. That re-assessment is decidedly uncomfortable, but it is necessary -- and morally obligatory for all those to whom God Himself has given a mind.
I am not saying modern science is always correct. I am convinced it is not Nor am I saying that we ought to prefer it to other ways of knowing. But sometimes it is right and traditional religious views are wrong. We must deal with it.
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 27, 2010 4:13 PM
How do I know if something the church teaches is a question of "faith or morals"? Why wasn't the church's opposition to religious liberty a teaching on faith and morals?
How about the old Pontifical Biblical Commission which rejected the claim that the Pastoral epistles were not written by Paul. The current pope rejects Pauline authorship and accepts mainstream critical views.
The contemporary Catholic view on these questions strikes me as question begging.
Posted by Neil Parille | February 27, 2010 7:41 PM
Between militant atheism enforced by a "liberal" state and religious liberty, religious liberty is preferable. Between religious liberty and state support for Christianity in Christian nations, the latter is preferable. The Church can't err or go back and the Syllabus is 100% correct.
Posted by Roach | February 27, 2010 7:53 PM
As for a sun or earth centered solar system, um, doesn't relatively say they revolve around one another. They can't be said to revolve one way or the other other than from some third position point of view. So I know it's clever and all to embrace Newtonian physics and what- not, but it's not accurate. It's just pop-science.
Posted by Roach | February 27, 2010 7:55 PM
"I think Frank means that the Protestants and Catholics made the same error regarding geocentricity."
Not quite, pilgrim theologian. But I'll give you this one as a Lenten sacrifice. :-)
Posted by Francis Beckwith | February 27, 2010 8:52 PM
Oh. I understand. I think. You're a Lefebvrist or something? Is that it?
That's a possibility, though he never answers. Or maybe he's a sedevacantist. Or maybe he's just off his beam.
But timid Catholics invariably reject it on the pretext that it was not ex cathedra.
This is a pretext? Or maybe you think it was an exercise of the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, as happened with, say, Humanae Vitae, and which it might have been if the Church had done what you think it did. But it didn't. The Church never formally condemned Galileo as a heretic, nor heliocentrism as a heresy. Some of the fascinating details can be found here: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0005.html
Lydia, Sage says that "if it could be demonstrated to my satisfaction that the Church had propounded both A and not A on a core issue of faith and morals...then I would conclude that the Church simply was not what She claimed to be and become a Protestant." The difference twixt me and him is that if I found out such a thing, I probably wouldn't be a Christian at all.
I assume Ignatius' hyperbole refers to those matters on which the Church is competent. If not, well then he was not in himself infallible, and so his remarks pose no problem except for those foolish enough to take them at face value.
Posted by William Luse | February 27, 2010 8:53 PM
In response to Lydia’s original question: Keep in mind that the claim is that the Holy Spirit, who is divine and thus inherently infallible, preserves the popes from such errors, where the popes qua men are not inherently infallible. It is only by virtue of the grace of their office that they have the infallibility they have, and only with respect to certain pronouncements.
So, obviously it is not logically impossible for any individual man qua man to utter a heresy while speaking what he intends to be an infallible statement on faith and morals. But it is logically impossible for a man qua pope to do so, since what it is to be a pope is to be guided by the Holy Spirit in such a way that one is preserved from error in the relevant circumstances. If some purported pope does so anyway, that would just mean he wasn’t really a pope; and if in that case there is no independent reason to doubt that he was really a pope (e.g. evidence that he was an imposter disguised as the pope, or was not validly elected, or some such thing), a critic of Catholicism could reasonably take the event as evidence that there never really were any genuine popes and that Catholicism is false. For he could reasonably take the event in question as a case where all the requirements Catholicism has traditionally set out for an infallible pronouncement were met, and yet error still resulted.
But no such thing has ever happened, and I think any Catholic must be committed to the empirical claim that it never will happen. And there are so many things wrong with what George has said about the religious liberty and geocentrism examples that I don’t know where to begin, though I would recommend to those who are interested that they read what Fr. Brian Harrison has written on the former issue. Suffice it to say that George is evidently not a follower of Archbishop Lefebvre but a sedevacantist – that is, someone who holds (as Lefebvre did not) that John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have all been anti-popes and that the chair of Peter has actually been vacant since the death of Pius XII. Except that, given what he says about geocentrism, maybe he thinks it has been vacant for centuries. How he would square that with Christ’s words about the gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church, I have no idea.
Posted by Edward Feser | February 27, 2010 8:54 PM
Frank,
I know that's not what you meant -- it's what you SHOULD have meant (wink).
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 27, 2010 9:24 PM
What,has the Church officially revoked the condemnation of Galileo and his opinions, Ed? No, I don't believe it has. What's more, there is no proof that geocentrism is false. So maybe you can tell me why I am wrong to side with the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and the Bible on this issue. Or is it just because the world thinks it's foolish?
As for the conciliar church's position on religious liberty, what do you suppose Pope Pius IX would have thought of this?
Bill Luse,
No, the Church never formally condemned heliocentrism; but an important part of the Church (the Holy Office) did so, in conformity with the Teaching of the Church which held that the Sun moved diurnally around the Earth.
It is important to remember that this issue was a big, big thing at the time. The Church was outraged at the actions of the heliocentrists. Pope Urban VIII called Galileo's book "the worst harm to religion ever conceived." So we might ask ourselves what was it that Urban saw that we moderns don't?
Posted by George R. | February 27, 2010 9:51 PM
Roach writes:
Um, no, that's not what relativity says. On a geocentric view, Pluto, at a mean distance from the earth of about 39.5 AU, would be moving at roughly 28 times the speed of light. This does not get the Einstein seal of approval.
Posted by Tim | February 27, 2010 10:46 PM
"...there is no proof that geocentrism is false."
George,
Affirm geocentrism if you think you must -- but do not say "there is no proof that geocentrism is false." The case for it is powerful, even overwhelming. In other words, to ask, as you did, "[W]hat was it that Urban saw that we moderns don't?" is to ask the wrong question. The right question is, "What do we see that Urban did not?" The answer is: the truth. We've learned lots of things about the world, in general, and about theology, in particular, that the ancients and the doctors never knew.
According to William, heliocentrism was never condemned; you say it was. So, what's a guy to believe?
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 27, 2010 11:37 PM
The Roman Holy Office condemned heliocentrism as “formally heretical.”
George, have you been taking the anti-Catholics word for what was condemned, again? From what I have been able to find out, what they actually condemned was his heretical interpretation of Scripture , and, especially, his statements that Scripture contained errors. Now, this is very much not the same thing as condemning his physical theory about the relationship of the Earth and Sun.
As for religious freedom: if you read Vatican IIs document Dignitatis Humanae correctly, it affirms everything that established earlier teaching held, and rejects nothing that earlier teaching rejected. But, as development on doctrine, it clarified that the use of state authority to suppress other religions had a limit built into the meaning of the state and human nature. No flip-flop present. As for the Vatican telling Spain to change its constitution, yes that apparently happened. But nobody thinks that a juridic directive has any definitive relationship to infallibility of doctrine. A juridic decree simply isn't a "teaching" at all, so it cannot constitute a teaching in conflict with Tradition. (In my opinion, the Vatican's state department just got in the hands of whining weasel lefties (as did the liturgy committee), and went in a direction absolutely NOT intended by the Council. Hardly a result of a change in Church doctrine.)
But that's all water under the bridge. If the Catholic Church has been teaching heresy for decades, then it is not the Church, and there isn't the Church, and Christianity is in vain.
Lydia, there is no grave difference between the KIND of authority that rests in Scripture or in an infallible papacy: in both cases, God decides to use created tools in a manner that raises them up above their normal capacities, for His own purposes, by guaranteeing them a perfection that they could never have simply within their own created natures alone. So if God can form an error-free body of teaching with a written document (written by a series of men) (and using human languages with all their defects), then He can do it in Popes, who are another series of men.
And whatever problems or difficulties COULD theoretically arise with the papacy are automatically problems that could theoretically arise with the Bible.
Posted by Tony | February 28, 2010 12:00 AM
According to William, heliocentrism was never condemned; you say it was. So, what's a guy to believe?
Yeah, 'cause if two guys in a combox can't settle it on a Saturday evening, it's anyone guess where the truth lies. A crap shoot. The proverbial riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
Except that George has now admitted to Bill Luse that "the Church never formally condemned heliocentrism" -- George's own words. And the veracity of the Church's formal pronouncements was what the original post was about. So, believe Bill.
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 2:16 AM
So maybe you can tell me why I am wrong to side with the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and the Bible on this issue. Or is it just because the world thinks it's foolish?
Well, you know me, George, always looking for ways to conform myself to the world wherever I can. But tell me this: In 1741 the Holy Office allowed for the publication of (most of) Galileo's works, including some of the heliocentric stuff. In 1757 the Congregation of the Index declined to renew the 1616 decree against views advocating the earth's movement. In 1822 Settele was given permission to publish a work defending Copernicanism. A few years later Galileo's Dialogues were removed from the Index. Now, were the "important parts of the Church" involved in these actions (including the Holy Office) complicit in heresy, in your view? Do you think the popes under whom these actions were taken were anti-popes? If not, we might ask ourselves, what was it that these people saw that George R. doesn't?
what do you suppose Pope Pius IX would have thought of this?
If what Cardinal George meant was that "religious groups must have the right to exercise their influence in the public square" as a matter of natural right, in every circumstance, with respect to what the Church regards as false or heretical religious ideas, and even in the context of a Catholic state, then Pius IX would most definitely have condemned such a position. But I don't know that that is what George meant. Anyway, the continuity of Catholic teaching does not require reconciling Pius IX with what a cardinal said in a speech somewhere.
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 2:40 AM
Ed:
William said the church did not condemn heliocentrism. George agreed, but also insisted that the Holy Roman Office DID condemn it. So, is it condemned?
George also pointed to the unanimity of Scripture, the Fathers, and Thomas Aquinas on the point. Regarding that unanimity, George is quite right. So, in light of the rather stark differences mentioned, what's a guy to believe -- and why?
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 28, 2010 7:10 AM
William, I suspect that might be my eventual fate as well, but honesty compels me to admit that I just prefer not even to entertain the idea.
Posted by Sage | February 28, 2010 8:13 AM
Lydia,
"... promising to love your wife doesn't mean promising to _believe_ anything or not to _conclude_ anything."
Does not loving one's wife consists partially in his believing that she exists?
Suppose it does not. Or suppose that even if it does, still, my one's to love his wife is not implicitly a promise to believe in her existence. Anyway, just suppose the matrimonial analogy I introduced above is misleading.
I will even go so far to grant that the existence of one's wife is more probable (on his evidence) than the infallibility of the church! (I hope my scholastically tempered Catholic friends don't get angry here.)
Still, I do not see any clear problem in the commitment to believe the RC de fide proclamations no matter what should (would, will in fact) befall. At least, such a commitment does not obviously entail the belief that in no possible circumstances one would not change his mind, or that any circumstance in which he would change his mind has according to him 0-probability.
Posted by Vlastimil | February 28, 2010 8:41 AM
Sage,
Perhaps the options don't reduce to either Roman Catholic or nothing at all.
Posted by Michael Bauman | February 28, 2010 9:31 AM
Lydia,
I am permitted to do that, in principle, IMO. I am not permitted to renounce Catholicism (loosely speaking). But that does not entail that I am not permitted to renounce Catholicism in case (it is evident to me that) Catholicism is contradictory. Similarly, I am not permitted to disobey the Creator. But that does not entail I am not permitted to disobey the Creator in case (it is evident to me that) the Creator commands some atrocity.
I think the main issue in discussion about the need of a church as an epistemic authority is rather that the Catholic claims that:
any promising argument for the full-fledged Christianity from public evidence (which argument could be appreciated and grasped as a good argument even by laymen) has some kind of infallibility of the church as its probable premise. Without this premise, it's hard to see how we could make a rational reconstruction of epistemic justification of our full-fledged Christian belief.
You deny this because you cannot see how we could defend the infallibility of the church as probable (for one thing, you do not think Christ promised infallibility to his church).
Posted by Vlastimil | February 28, 2010 10:14 AM
Well, Vlastimil, of course I also deny that last statement because I just think it's obviously false. I know for a fact that I don't need infallibility as a premise of _my_ argument for full-fledged Christian belief.
I think what you say here is interesting:
See, that just sounds really Protestant to me. How is that consistent with either the spirit or the letter of what Ignatius says? How is that consistent with the submission of the intellect to the Church as the only authoritative interpreter of Scripture?
Posted by Lydia | February 28, 2010 12:24 PM
Perhaps that's why I never said they did.
Posted by Sage | February 28, 2010 12:35 PM
How he would square that with Christ’s words about the gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church, I have no idea.
To be fair, George R. does seem to think the modern world is a version of Hell. The main problem for him (besides a denial of all science) is that because he made the judgment that the Church contradicted herself in the area of infallible teaching he has to remain permanently schismatic, because the Church's only recourse to resolve the issue is admitting fallibility. Maybe, in the spirit of Lent, he should practice a little forgiveness, even when he doesn't believe it is deserved.
Posted by Step2 | February 28, 2010 3:17 PM
because the Church's only recourse to resolve the issue is admitting fallibility.
No. Like I keep saying, the Church has never claimed in the first place that every official decision issued by a pope or by a bureau within the Church is infallible, and there is nothing in the Galileo case that conflicts with what she does mean by infallibility. Before people fling around purported "gotcha!" examples, they really ought to trouble themselves to determine what the Church means. Here's one place to start:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 3:43 PM
Dr. Feser,
I understand that George R. is mistaken in the example of geocentrism, although it raises some thorny questions about divine guidance if so many were susceptible to error for many centuries, but Vatican II is clearly part of Magisterial teaching and caused a rift for the reasons he has given. So whether those reasons are convincing or not, I don't dispute that he has some reasons to believe that there has been a contradiction in infallible teaching. Once he's made that decision, everything else necessarily follows.
Posted by Step2 | February 28, 2010 4:51 PM
Step2,
George's position on that subject assumes that:
1. There is a genuine, and not merely apparent, conflict between Vatican II and the pre-Vatican II popes vis-a-vis religious liberty.
2. Vatican II's statements on this issue meet the criteria for infallibility.
3. The statements of the pre-Vatican II popes on this issue meet the criteria for infallibility.
If 1 - 3 are all true, we've got a problem, since we'd have a conflict between two purportedly infallible pronouncements. But in fact each of these claims is highly controversial, and George provides no grounds for thinking any of them is true. Hence he has hardly given us "reasons to believe there has been a contradiction in infallible teaching."
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 5:35 PM
@Lydia:
I think it depends on what you mean by "full-fledged" Christian belief. Like you, I don't think we need the Magistereum in order to establish some basic truths of Christianity like the historicity of the resurrection. Similarly, we don't need an interpretative authority in order to recognize the cogency of certain metaphysical proofs for God's existence.
I am not, however, convinced that we could establish "full-fledged" orthodox Christianity in absence of something like The Magistereum. Earlier, Ed mentioned Mark Shea's book _By What Authority?_. There, I think Shea makes a strong case that without some kind of extra-biblical interpretative authority, we lack the theological resources to vindicate orthodox Christianity. There is so much room for reasonable disagreement, the most that Protestants can establish is some kind of "minimal" Christianity that is compatible with all kinds of gauche modern heresies. Hence, the case for full-fledged orthodoxy is hard to make once you decide to go it alone.
Also, I think there are solid theological reasons to accept the Catholic view that The Church is a concrete, historical institution and not merely a "spiritual unity" or some such. On this view, The Church has a divinely instituted hierarchy that is protected from certain kinds of error by the Holy Spirit. If this conception of the Church can be established theologically, then we don't need to conclusively vindicate every *particular* interpretation of scripture handed down by the Magistereum. The case for infallibility can be established independently and not on the basis of having conclusively vindicated every single Magisterial interpretation of scripture.
Now, if *per impossible* The Church pronounced ex cathedra that the gospels don't really say that Jesus rose from the dead or something like that, then this would indeed be a reason to quit relying on its authority and become Protestant. I recognize this as a logical possibility, but I don't see why I should be troubled by it. After all, it's logically possible that we could discover the bones of Christ. If so, this would be reason to quit being a Christian altogether. As best I can tell, then, these kinds of logical possibility are *everybody's problem* even though we Catholics carry an epistemic committment that our Protestant brethren do not.
Does this sound reasonable to you, or am I missing your point?
Posted by Untenured | February 28, 2010 6:02 PM
Well, Untenured, I'm working at a bit of a disadvantage vis a vis my usual rip-roaring style, because I usually try to avoid Protestant/Catholic discussions, and I always try to be particularly careful in them not to push real hard. I'm not even quite sure what inspired me to dive into this one.
But I'm not trying to be cagey or roundabout, either. My point really concerns the question of the "right" to interpret Scripture. I have always considered--and all my contact with educated Catholics has encouraged me to consider--the right of private judgement in the interpretation of Scripture to be a central divide between Protestants and Catholics. The Catholic view, as I understand it, is that the Church's interpretations are authoritative and that faithful individual Catholics aren't supposed to substitute theirs for them.
Now, some Catholics will take this very far. I have had a Catholic argue with me that Scripture does not clearly teach the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and that we can only understand these "ambiguous" Gospel texts on that point by having the Church to help us out! From your comments, I take it that you wouldn't go that far.
But the problem still remains, and it is especially exacerbated by the fact that the teaching ministry of the Magisterium is an on-going thing. It isn't, like the canon, closed. So the faithful Catholic has to consider what might be taught next year or within his grandchildren's lifetimes or whatever. It would be quite a different matter if the Catholic could look at a closed body of magisterial teaching and decide that _in fact_ none of it appears to contradict Scripture. Then signing on to it would be more like a Protestant's signing on to some view of inerrancy of Scripture. But that would kind of defeat the whole point of having a magisterium, I gather.
Now, by imagining a hypothetical situation in which the institutional Church (I'll call it that for purposes of clarity) taught in the future that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and by saying that you would then consider Catholics justified in leaving the institutional Catholic Church, you are saying outright that you think that individual faithful Catholics _do_ have a right to interpret Scripture for themselves, even when this contradicts the express and (we'll imagine for the sake of the illustration) ostensibly infallible teachings of the Church. (Suppose that this teaching were promulgated with the external marks that are supposed to indicate infallibility.)
Isn't that a pretty Protestant thing to say?
I gather that your view is that you can make some kind of cut between what Scripture teaches _so clearly_ that you would be justified in leaving the Church if the Church taught contrary to it. But, of course, many Protestants consider that the Church has _already_ promulgated teachings that are contrary to things Scripture clearly teaches.
The Catholic response to this is usually to criticize the whole notion of an individual ability and right to interpret Scripture without the magisterium. But...well...you see the issue. It seems like, if it gets "bad enough," a Catholic will assert such an ability and right as well. Which I guess just means that it depends on what one considers to be "obvious enough" or "bad enough."
Posted by Lydia | February 28, 2010 6:53 PM
So the faithful Catholic has to consider what might be taught next year or within his grandchildren's lifetimes or whatever.
...
Now, by imagining a hypothetical situation in which the institutional Church (I'll call it that for purposes of clarity) taught in the future that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and by saying that you would then consider Catholics justified in leaving the institutional Catholic Church, you are saying outright that you think that individual faithful Catholics _do_ have a right to interpret Scripture for themselves,
Lydia, the Catholic view is not that the Church can teach any old thing she feels like teaching and that the faithful had better put up with it. Whatever the Church teaches must be consistent with her own tradition, which includes scripture. Thus if the Church taught tomorrow that there are four Persons in the Trinity, or that Matthew isn't really an authentic gospel, or that Christ wasn't really divine, she'd be contradicting tradition and thus falsifying her claims to infallibility. This wouldn't be a case of the individual putting his own personal interpretation against the Church's, but rather the Church herself putting some new interpretation in place of what she had always said. If Catholicism is true, this cannot happen; hence if it ever happens, we'd have a refutation of Catholicism. That was Untenured's point.
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 7:29 PM
Well, not to be a smart aleck, but that gives you some idea as to one reason why I consider Catholicism to be false. :-) Because as a good Protestant, I consider (though I'm not eager to start listing them, which might be an offense against charity) that the Church has already taught things that are not consistent with Scripture, so...
I suppose that was a kind of a predictable thing for me to say, though.
Posted by Lydia | February 28, 2010 8:04 PM
Yeah, it was.
Posted by William Luse | February 28, 2010 8:57 PM
but Vatican II is clearly part of Magisterial teaching and caused a rift for the reasons he has given. So whether those reasons are convincing or not, I don't dispute that he has some reasons to believe that there has been a contradiction in infallible teaching. Once he's made that decision, everything else necessarily follows.
No, Step2, if George (or any Catholic) sees or believes he sees a contradiction, then his duty lies in either (a) seeking and studying to find out what is really being said (and not rely on newspaper accounts or books by authors with an ax to grind) and keep on seeking until he finds information that resolves the problem; or (b) to accept that the contradiction he sees may be apparent rather than real, and that further elucidation can eventually show the lack of real contradiction. Humility requires that the person submit his conclusions to the guidance of a higher authority than himself, and that he accept that this requirement may leave some questions unresolved for a time (sometimes, for a very long time). But being a good Christian has always involved admitting that we don't have all the answers, and God isn't going to _give_ us all the answers in this life anyway.
Posted by Tony | February 28, 2010 8:58 PM
Ed,
But the problem I have is that it is unlikely that the church (or even a liberal protestant group) would say "there are 4 persons in the Trinity." Instead, we get change by 100 qualifications.
For example, the church in the past said things like "the Bible is inerrant" but now says inerrancy covers only the overall message of the Bible or "there is no salvation outside the church" but John Paul 2 appeared to define church so broadly as to include everyone.
I even hear orthodox catholics questioning whether there was a literal Adam and Eve or whether there are people in hell.
Posted by Neil Parille | February 28, 2010 9:21 PM
It takes the Holy Spirit to make people capable of believing in the fundamental truths of the Christian faith in such a way as to effect salvation. I can vouch for this Protestant belief as my conversion to Christianity was practically a textbook example of irresistibly being drawn toward grace against my own will and instincts. Most people don't notice this when they convert mainly because the difference between how they feel on the inside before and after is not as extreme as those of us for whom the change was (and still is) so fundamental that we know it was not by our will.
Posted by Mike T | February 28, 2010 9:25 PM
The first makes sense since translations can never be literally inerrant to the original. I can generally read Spanish and Italian at a modest level and have read chunks of the New Testament in those languages. What is actually written is often not worded quite the same way, even adjusting for linguistic nuances. However, what it conveys in all three is the same.
Posted by Mike T | February 28, 2010 9:31 PM
***If anyone is up to it, and can read Spanish, NIV Bibles that are divided between Spanish and English on each page are easy to find. I have one. It made for some interesting conversations at Bible study when I pointed out mild variations on what the Spanish version of a passage said compared to the English we read ;)
Posted by Mike T | February 28, 2010 9:34 PM
Neil,
Those are all big issues, but the short answer is that I would say that no magisterial statement has actually revoked the traditional teaching on any of those matters. People need to be very careful before claiming that "the Church" has changed this or that. What matters are official binding statements like encyclicals, conciliar documents, the catechism, official statements from the CDF, etc. What this or that "conservative" theologian says, what the pope or a cardinal said in a speech, what even "conservative" chruchmen and theologians don't like to talk about these days, etc. is irrelevant to the question of whether the Church has actually changed her teaching on this or that.
But there's no way we're going to settle this in a combox. So far we've had people raise religious liberty, heliocentrism, inerrancy, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, Adam and Eve, the population of hell, and whatever it is in the Bible that Lydia thinks Catholic teaching contradicts. Each of these is a long discussion of its own. And it shouldn't be assumed that the fact that people say a change has occurred in these areas shows that there really has been one.
Posted by Edward Feser | February 28, 2010 9:50 PM
Lydia,
I do not like Ignatius's formulation. But Edward defends in the post an interpretation which is acceptable to me.
As Bill Luse also said here:
If you think my position is inconsistent with Catholicism, I just do not see that, and the burden of proof seems to be on you. :-)
As for a good argument for full-fledged Christianity without the infallibility premise. I really wonder whether for every de fide proposition (say, in the list http://jloughnan.tripod.com/dogma.htm ) believed even by the Protestant (say, you), there is a promising argument for that proposition not including the infallibility as a probable premise.
Note also that Richard Swinburne, if I'm recalling correctly, although he rejects papal infallibility, assumes even in his historical argument just for the most central claims of Christianity as probable that God preserves the church from error (cf. Swinburne's book Revelation, Plantinga's critique of Swinburne in Warranted Christian Belief, and Swinburne's reply to Plantinga).
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 1, 2010 4:26 AM
Well, Vlastimil, I would say that Tony's response to Step2 concerning GeorgeR's duty in the face of the contradictions he believes he sees as a result of Vatican II is what I had always understood the Catholic position to be. Here it is again, with emphasis added:
You see? So, is Tony wrong? And how would his required procedure apply if the Church taught--or should I say "appeared for all that anyone could tell to teach"?--something that seemed clearly contradictory to Her own earlier teaching or to Scripture, such as we have been discussing? Is his statement not meant to apply to _exactly_ such a case? And does this not highlight what I have been saying all along about the "locked door" a Catholic is behind if he is a faithful Catholic? Or does this prescription not apply if the contradiction is clear _enough_ or bad _enough_?
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 8:56 AM
Response now up
here.
Posted by Dale | March 1, 2010 10:44 AM
Lydia,
In teaching the faithful, the Church presupposes -- naturally -- that what she teaches is true. So -- naturally -- she isn't going to say "And of course, we might be wrong, so here's a third option: reject what the Church teaches and start shopping around for a good Protestant denomination." Really, what do you expect?
BTW, the situation is exactly parallel to what a Protestant believes about the Bible. If you take the Bible to be authoritative, then naturaly your view is going to be that in the face of an apparent contradiction in the Bible you need to "(a) seek and study to find out what is really being said (and not rely on newspaper accounts or books by authors with an ax to grind) and keep on seeking until he finds information that resolves the problem; or (b) to accept that the contradiction he sees may be apparent rather than real." You're not going to put forward as a third option "Or reject the Bible."
That doesn't mean that either the Catholic or the Protestant rules out the third option when he's wearing his philosopher's hat. Both would say "It's logically possible that my religion is false, but I think I can show that it's not and that all apparent evidence to the contrary is illusory." But when the Church teaches the faithful, and when a Protestant preaches from the Bible, they aren't wearing their philosopher's hats. They are assuming, for the sake of the task at hand, that the veracity of the authoritative sources they are appealing to has already been independently established. It is silly to pretend that they ought to flag everything they say in such a context with "...but of course this might all be wrong." In any event, if the Protestant doesn't do so, it is silly to pretend the Catholic ought to.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 11:49 AM
Lydia,
"... does this prescription not apply if the contradiction is clear _enough_ or bad _enough_?"
I would think so. It does not apply to cases where the contradiction is really clear (evident), period. But the Catholic point is that there are no such really clear cases.
I think the the RC teaching is that any past, present and future alleged seeing (evident grasping) that Catholicism is contradictory is merely apparent (not real seeing/evident grasping), and that any past, present and future Catholic with such a merely apparent seeing is not morally permitted to renounce Catholicism because of such a merely apparent seeing. The teaching is not, IMO, that if someone really (not merely apparently) saw that Catholicism is contradictory, he still would not be morally permitted to renounce it.
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 1, 2010 12:10 PM
Contradictions? I don't see no contradictions. This is er, um...a development. Yeah, that's it, a natural development of traditional Catholic teaching. That's all it is. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.
Posted by George R | March 1, 2010 12:37 PM
Ed, I think your point might, might be somewhat relevant to a Protestant who holds to a really strong and fairly unreflective view of Biblical inerrancy (but see the end of this comment). But such a view isn't definitive of Protestant Christianity. On the other hand, the infallibility of the Church _is_ definitive of Catholicism.
Of course I'm not saying that the Church should make such a qualification when teaching the faithful. But I _am_ asking whether Tony's prescription in cases where a Catholic comes to believe either a) that a Church teaching contradicts Scripture or b) that the Church has taught things that contradict themselves is or is not the correct Catholic view. Because if it is, then either
a) that prescribed action applies no matter what the Church teaches, which really does amount to "the faithful just have to take it and shut up"
or
b) the individual gets to decide when something is _clear enough_ or _bad enough_, in which case Catholics who hold this view should not inveigh against private judgement or private interpretations of Scripture, which this second option clearly allows.
I would also add (and I made this point above) that even for the very strong inerrantist, the canon is closed. The teachings of the Magisterium are not a past, closed set of statements. Hence the strong Protestant inerrantist can read through and ponder the Bible and make his commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture based on a text which is not going to be added to. The Catholic cannot do this. This is another disanalogy.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 1:10 PM
I think it also should be pointed out, Lydia, that the Church, unlike the Bible, is governed by men, who are free to lie through their teeth.
Posted by George R | March 1, 2010 1:26 PM
I didn't know you possessed such charity to bite your toungue so, Ed : )
So far as I can tell, the orignal post supplemented by your first combox entry answer every objection that has been raised. I'm not sure that people even read what others write : /
Either the deposit of faith is kept secure for all generations or Christ was not the Messiah, period. Infallibility (of the individual for protestants, or of the Magisterium for a Catholic) is the logical result. And it is indeed worthwhile to dwell on the fact that no Christian, regardless of denomination, gets past some kind of infallibility statement, be it acknowledged or implicit. Either the action of the Holy Spirit is efficacious enough to preserve truth despite the fallibility of men qua men, or there isn't a holy spirit. I really don't see the major victory for any Christian in arguing a point whose major premise amounts to "what if the Holy Ghost isn't actually active in the Church, and Christ wasn't Christ." If that is the case, then the "what" is pretty easy to determine.
Posted by Brett | March 1, 2010 1:57 PM
Doctrinal development. That's all. Nothing to get alarmed about.
Posted by George R | March 1, 2010 2:11 PM
Brett, I flatly disagree.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 3:23 PM
This may be the most shocking comparison of all. The first quote is from an encyclical of Pius VII to the French bishops on the occasion of the new constitution established under the newly restored Bourbon monarchy in 1814. Notice especially the diverse reactions to the news of religious liberty being instituted.
I suggested above that we were dealing with two different churches here. Somebody else then suggested that I may be "off my beam." Maybe that person would like to respond to my comparisons.
Posted by George R | March 1, 2010 3:50 PM
But such a view isn't definitive of Protestant Christianity.
Well what is definitive of Protestant Christianity?
Further up: Because as a good Protestant, I consider...that the Church has already taught things that are not consistent with Scripture, so...
Do you think this because you're a Protestant, or are you a Protestant because you think this?
Posted by William Luse | March 1, 2010 4:06 PM
Lydia,
Would that be with the first, second, or both statements?
Posted by Brett | March 1, 2010 4:24 PM
Nice try, George. You've been asked several times exactly what kind of Catholic you are, but haven't answered. Since a Catholic by definition cannot believe in two Churches, you need to tell me what the true Church is, and where I can find it. Then I'll respond.
Posted by William Luse | March 1, 2010 4:51 PM
Lydia,
It seems to me that your criticisms presuppose a caricature of the Catholic position. No one is claiming that apart from the Church, we couldn't have even an elementary understanding of the words of the Bible -- as if it would just be unintelligible gibberish unless the Church said "Here's what 'in' means; here's what 'the' means; here's what 'beginning' means; etc." That is obviously not the case, since anyone picking it up has a good general understanding of what it says. But it doesn't follow either that the Catholic no less than the Protestant is committed to private interpretation.
Take, by analogy, a system of law which governs a country. The laws are passed by a legislature, interpreted by the courts, enforced by the executive. A supreme court has the final say over what the law means. Now obviously all of this presupposes that the citizens have the basic linguistic skills to understand what the laws mean at a prima facie level; the law doesn't create that understanding but takes it for granted. It would be silly to conclude from that, though, that law is a matter of private interpretation. It isn't: Usually the meaning is clear enough, but when it isn't, the courts and the legislature are the ones who decide, not the individual citizen. Similarly, there are circumstances where an individual citizen might have to "make the call" on the spot regarding what a certain law means and whether or not it applies to a given situation. Am I allowed to fish in this specific river or not? Can I shoot this trespasser if he's on my porch or does he have to be in the house? The law might allow for a certain degree of discretion or leave certain things vague. At the end of the day, though, if a decision has to be made about such things, it is going to be the courts and legislature that does it, not the private citizen. And it would be silly to pretend that these qualifications and complications to a real-world system of law show that it is "really" the individual citizen who determines the law, that it is all at bottom a matter of private interpretation.
By the same token, yes, of course what the Church says about the Bible presupposes a basic understanding of language, principles of logic, etc. And of course there are going to be cases where the individual has to decide how to apply a certain principle taught by the Church. But it simply doesn't follow that the Catholic view "therefore" reduces after all to "private interpretation," any more than the nuances in law referred to above show that it is "really" the individual citizen who determines what the law is.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 5:01 PM
Lydia, these epistemological issues ("Whatever the Church teaches must be consistent with her own tradition, which includes scripture.") are also why I'm not Roman Catholic. I used to think of the doctrine of magisterial infallibility as a barrier to the reconciliation of the universal church, but I'm starting to see that in a sense it might be a bridge due to the work of Cardinal Newman on the "development of Christian doctrine" where he argues that contradictions with prior church teachings are really fuller "developments" of those doctrines.
The fact is that the idea of development can allow the Roman Catholic Church to correct itself on prior errors (without calling it a correction) by calling it a doctrinal development. A part of me doesn't like it, but I care less about making the RCC eat humble pie than for true doctrine to be reached and Christian unity based on that truth.
Contemporary Roman Catholics might not like this fact either, but they must submit to magisterial authority anyway, so at one level it does not matter since they will have to defend the correction as a true development anyway; they certainly have had no problem accepting prior developments of doctrine.
Posted by Albert | March 1, 2010 5:19 PM
George,
Whether there is a true conflict here depends on what "religious liberty" means in each case -- in particular, on what exactly it is the pre-Vatican II popes wished to reject and what exactly it is that Vatican II wished to affirm. Was Vatican II affirming the same thing the pre-Vatican II popes rejected? Here's a good reason for thinking the answer is "No": Dignitatis Humanae itself tells us that it intends to "leave untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ."
True, lots of people these days, including many "conservatives," are not concerned to uphold traditional teaching in this area. But that's irrelevant. What matters is what the official documents actually say.
How exactly one ought to interpret the expression "religious liberty" in both contexts is a complicated issue, and I've recommended that interested readers should look at what Fr. Brian Harrison has said on the subject. But simply quoting the passages you refer to, as if it were uncontroversial whether there is a real conflict here, settles nothing.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 5:20 PM
A Protestant slip: it should read "where he argues that what some believe to be contradictions with prior church teachings are really fuller "developments" of those doctrines."
Posted by Albert | March 1, 2010 5:21 PM
Bill, I'm a Protestant in part because I think that. I have other reasons, too.
Brett, I suppose that if one held to the first one--namely, that the deposit of faith including its interpretation must be "kept secure" to all ages, where "kept secure" means "kept secure with infallibility," then the second would follow trivially from the first. I disagree with both the first statement and, therefore, with the necessity for an infallible interpreting individual or body.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 5:36 PM
Albert, since Roman Catholics will not consider that unification has taken place (and indeed, I can see their point from their perspective) without an acceptance by others of papal and magisterial infallibility, I don't see how developments of doctrine are going to help the cause of unification. They may make de facto doctrine as taught more similar between Catholics and Protestants--as I think has in fact happened--but institutional unification is a whole different thing altogether, and you shouldn't hold your breath. Not that that bothers me. Formal, institutional unification is of very little importance to me, short of the Eschaton, when we'll all find out what we were wrong about.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 5:56 PM
the idea of development can allow the Roman Catholic Church to correct itself on prior errors (without calling it a correction) by calling it a doctrinal development.
That's not what "development" means, Albert. A genuine doctrinal development can refine or extend past infallible teaching, but not reverse it. If it reverses it, what you've got is a contradiction and Catholicism is falsified.
I maintain that that has never happened and never will. I realize that some people will claim it has, but the point is that on the Catholic understanding itself it is not supposed to happen. If you're going to insist that it has, fine, but in that case you're not discovering some strength in Catholicism, but a refutation of it. In particular, and contrary to what you are implying, the Church does not regard "development" as a way of chucking out unpopular past teachings; quite the opposite.
Look, you've got lots of people who really, really want to find ways to reverse past teaching, and try to come up with all sorts of legalisms that would allow them to do so. And they play games with the idea of "development" in order to do it. You've got people on the left who want to chuck out the Church's teaching on sexual morality. You've got certain "conservatives" who want to defend the idea that capital punishment is immoral even in principle. You've got people on both sides who are embarrassed by what the pre-Vatican II popes said about religious liberty and want to consign it to the memory hole. You've got people on both sides who really really want to believe that no one goes to hell, and jump through logical hoops to convince themselves that we may at least "hope" no one does. None of that means anything. It's all fantasy. What matters is what the Church's official documents actually say, and what they actually say allows for none of these desired reversals.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 6:33 PM
Lydia,
keeping secure the deposit of faith "including its interpretation" seems redundant. What is to be kept secure? Mere texts? I don't think that even the strictest formulation of sola scriptura entails that the mere survival of the Bible through the ages shall be Christ's sign that He has not abandoned us.
Securing the faith for all generations would seem to entail at the least continuity. This seems like common ground, in some form most Christian denominations have felt some obligation to root themselves in some form of continuity. But it remains difficult for me to see how one could maintain that continuity has been maintained without making some appeal to authority and infallibility. Again, I don't think everyone would call it "infallibility," indeed, it usually isn't acknowledged, although that doesn’t entail it is any less present. There would have to be some kind of authoritative claim, otherwise claiming continuity really is meaningless, and nothing is gained by claiming it.
I am explicitly taking it for granted that continuity is a necessary characteristic of Christ's promise to the Church. Indeed, if some form of continuity is not acknowledged then the so-called "scandal of particularity" becomes very serious, not for what it implies about B.C. but A.D....
....Frankly, I really don't want to argue with you though, Lydia. The reality is that I'm currently studying in a field dominated by atheists, most of my fellow students don't carry a religious thought in their bodies, and I am just happy to hold conversation with you as a fellow Christian. That might be an offense against my obligation to evangelize; however, I'm tuckered out from defusing common Christian canards all day long.
Posted by Brett | March 1, 2010 7:07 PM
At the end of the last post: that would be canards about Christian belief, not canards propagated by Christians : )
Also, Ed's writing in this column has been pretty sound--and his tone impressively measured. I don't think anything I just wrote really adds to what he has articulated.
Posted by Brett | March 1, 2010 7:10 PM
For the record, I don't hold to any thesis of "continuity" beyond, perhaps, the bare thesis that God will always have a remnant. It might, however, be a very small remnant that is institutionally scattered. Or it might be a remnant that, in addition to correct "mere Christianity," holds _in addition_ various erroneous doctrines as interpretations of Scripture. In fact, I consider this latter state of affairs--the holding of erroneous doctrines in addition to true ones--to be pretty much inevitable both for individuals and for institutional bodies. Rather like the paradox of the preface: I'm quite sure some of my own doctrinal beliefs are wrong. I just don't know which ones they are.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 8:04 PM
Lydia,
Well, the notion of the deposit of faith preserved, latent, beneath the errors of an institutionally scattered remnant may be consistent, but I fear it is too humble a Christianity. Also, in such bare terms it hardly seems necessary to postulate a remnant at all. I suppose then that the faith might fall entirely out of practice for centuries then only later to be rediscovered?
I would follow Chesterton, and argue that it may be consistent, but it is too small. I don't think continuity is too strong a claim, but in fact a barer claim than the Catholic Church actually makes. But that is a doctrinal dispute across which we must simply shake hands and part.
Also, my comment about not wanting to argue was in reference to actual quarrelling. If I wanted to avoid arguing, I'm afraid I would have to avoid this blog altogether.
Posted by Brett | March 1, 2010 8:30 PM
So the pre-Vatican II Church and the post-Vatican II Church are using “religious liberty” in two different senses?
OK. In that case we would expect to see cases where the pre-Vatican II Church said good things about religious liberty in the sense that the post-Vatican II Church was using the term; and we would also expect to see instances where the post-Vatican II Church said bad things about religious liberty in the sense that the pre-Vatican II Church used the term. But we don’t see any such cases. Why? Because there are not two senses of the term “religious liberty.” What was condemned is now praised.
Either the Church has contradicted herself, or one of the sides of the contradiction is not the Church.
That argument only works if DH is a reliable document, which it clearly isn't.
Posted by George R. | March 1, 2010 8:36 PM
the canon is closed
Lydia, what an interesting approach for a Protestant. Luther didn't seem to think so. He went hobbing around with the canon so that it changed. So let me ask, ever so gently: do you use the canon of Scripture that was "closed" for 1000 years before Luther came along?
What I ended my last post with remains as valid for a Protestant as for a Catholic: Humility requires that the person submit his conclusions to the guidance of a higher authority than himself. The fact that a Protestant allows that authority to be wholly encapsulated in a book that is a human work (in addition to being a Divine work), and has to be translated by humans, rather than in humans themselves hardly improves the matter.
Posted by Tony | March 1, 2010 8:38 PM
At least he didn't add anything, Tony. :-) Nor do any Protestants that I know of, including myself, recognize any books written after that more-than-1000-years before Luther time as canonical. Scripture isn't being _added to_ in an on-going manner, as the teaching of the magisterium is, and indeed is intended to be, an on-going ministry. That was my main point. But to answer your question, yes, I think James is canonical.
Posted by Lydia | March 1, 2010 8:56 PM
From the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913: There are, however, a number of States, which in virtue of their constitutions are committed not alone to tolerance and religious freedom, but also to parity. By parity is understood the placing of all legalized or recognized religious bodies on the same footing before the law, all show of partiality and disfavor being equally avoided. Such is the basic principle of the constitutional State, which, while ethically Christian, allows various forms of belief. On it devolves especially the duty of placing no obstacle in the way of the public promotion of religion in sermon and writing and of extending to the religious practices of all denominations the same legal protection, to the exclusion of any compulsory system that would bind the citizens to receive certain religious rites (e.g. baptism, burial) from clergymen appointed by the State. With freedom of belief are intimately associated the personal right of changing one's religion and the right of the parties in the case of mixed marriages to decide as to the religious education of the children. The State must likewise recognize and protect the right of the various denominations to hold property and their right of self-government, in so far as these rights are enjoyed by all legally constituted corporations. Wherever such a State makes contributions or grants from the budget of public ownership, all recognized religious associations must receive equal consideration, unless a particular association, in virtue of a special title (e.g. the secularization of religious property), has legal claims to exceptional treatment. Finally, legal equality must be granted to the adherents of all denominations in both their civic and national capacities, especially in the matter of appointment to public office. Concerning Christian States in which various religions exist, F. Walter, the well-known professor of public law, made the wise observation: "The government as such, entirely regardless of the personal belief of the sovereign, must maintain towards every church the same attitude as if it belonged to this Church. In the consistent and upright observance of this standpoint lies the means of being just to each religion and of preserving for the State its Christian character" (loc. cit., p. 491). Such indeed is the admirable theory; wherever deviations from it occur in practice, they are almost without exception to the detriment of Catholics.
Read the full article (it's massive) here: http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Religious_Toleration
Posted by Woppodie | March 1, 2010 8:56 PM
Nice try, George. You've been asked several times exactly what kind of Catholic you are, but haven't answered.
The bad kind.
Since a Catholic by definition cannot believe in two Churches, you need to tell me what the true Church is...
The one that hates what the 19th-century popes I quoted hated, and loves what they loved.
...and where I can find it.
Ask Our Lady; she'll tell you.
Posted by George R. | March 1, 2010 8:59 PM
George,
I don't see anything in your last comment that doesn't beg the question at issue. I urge you again to read what Harrison has written on this subject, and also what people like Thomas Storck have written on it. These are people who are serious about maintaining continuity with pre-Vatican II teaching, and hold that Dignitatis Humanae , rightly understood, is indeed compatible with it. If you think they are wrong, you need to show that they are, not merely assert it.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 9:04 PM
George,
By "last comment" I trust it is clear that I meant your 8:36 pm comment. All the same, your 8:59 pm comment only provides further evidence that you are not much interested in a serious discussion.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 9:08 PM
Woppodie,
That's pretty interesting. But that there were in the Church antecedents to the Liberals of Vatican II is well known and acknowledged.
Remember, it was just such a constitutional arrangement that Pope Pius VII in 1814 called a "lethal wound" to "the Catholic religion in France." (See above.)
Posted by George R. | March 1, 2010 9:12 PM
Ed, I haven't read the Harrison piece, but I did read DH today, which you might have guessed by my posts. I simply can't imagine how anyone thinks that in DH the Fathers of Vatican II were using "religious liberty" in a different sense than the 19th century popes. But if you think that Harrison or Stork make such fantastics points, why don't you give us a sample of them here?
Anyway, I plan to research Fr. Harrison's argument myself. (It'd better be good.)
Btw, what's with the crack about me not being interested in serious discussion? I know you don't believe that.
Posted by George R. | March 1, 2010 9:26 PM
What I meant by the crack, George, is that in reply to Bill you seem unwilling to give a straight answer, and in reply to me you gave -- at least in your most recent reply -- a question-begging answer. I'm sorry if I caused offense.
Harrison has written a lot on this, including the book Religious Liberty and Contraception. Storck has also written at least a couple of articles on it, and part of his book Foundations of a Catholic Political Order is devoted to it. You can find some of this stuff online if you Google around; for example, I think much or all of Storck's book is posted at his website. Some of their articles are also linked to from here:
http://www.catholic-pages.com/DIR/religious_liberty.asp
The reason I don't summarize their points here is that it would take more than a couple of sentences to do so -- this is a big topic -- and I don't have the time or inclination to get into a big discussion of all the side issues that have come up in this thread -- whether religious liberty, heliocentrism, inerrancy, hell, or whatever. But then, I'm not the one who claimed there was a reversal of teaching here, and it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the person who makes such a claim.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 1, 2010 10:14 PM
Read the entire article. It's somewhat hard to read (I wish they had split it into more paragraphs), but it covers a wide range of issues in regards to that. I don't believe that Pius VII was speaking Ex Cathedra when he called it that, but the situation in France at the time was extremely tense, with the Church emerging from the terrors of the Revolution and the reign of Napoleon, who had marched on Rome and put his infant son as king there. Anything short of a return to the pre-revolutionary status quo would be alarming.
For the "Vatican II liberals", however, I have another quote:
Thus St. Thomas teaches (Summa theol., II—II, Q. x, a. 11): "Ritus infidelium tolerari possunt vel propter aliquod bonum, quod ex eis provenit, vel propter aliquod maum, quod vitatur" (Heathen worships can be tolerated either because of some good that results from them or because of some evil that is avoided).
Is this the same teaching? No. St. Thomas wrote for a united Christendom, unmarred by religious wars. But this does contain the seed which would develop into what Vatican II put down as a right of man.
Posted by Woppodie | March 1, 2010 10:14 PM
Scripture isn't being _added to_ in an on-going manner, as the teaching of the magisterium is, and indeed is intended to be, an on-going ministry. That was my main point. But to answer your question, yes, I think James is canonical.
Ah, yes. I don't add to the bible either, I just subtract from it myself. Not very much, either, just a few dozen words, out of Exodus. Some silly business about "commandments" or other - it's really a minor point. :)
Yes, James. What about 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the Apocrypha in general? My point is that taking away from the canon by reason of a human judgment after 1000 years of stable acceptance of one canon cannot be logically considered less problematic than granting assent to an ongoing "addition" (if that's what the Magisterium did). In either case, a change makes for trouble.
But of course, the Magisterium does not add to what is required to be believed, it merely clarifies what is there already in Scripture. For example, the word trinity is not in Scripture, and the teaching of three persons in one God is not there _in_so_many_words either. So if we believe in the Trinity, it is on account of a clarification that came after the Bible was written. So also with the teaching that Jesus IS a divine person and HAS a human nature: 2 natures, one person. You can't find that explicitly in the Bible. So if it is to be accepted, it is on account of an understanding that what was already contained in Scripture could be drawn out of it for clarity and safety of the Faith. And if this can happen through humans, it can happen through certain humans inerrantly if God so wills it.
Posted by Tony | March 1, 2010 11:31 PM
Edward,
A brief minor issue, if I may.
Which RC document claims that there is no hope that no one (human) goes to hell?
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 2, 2010 2:33 AM
George,
Ed beat me to the Storck link. Here's another if it helps:
http://www.ewtn.net/library/ANSWERS/FR89103.HTM
And another:
http://www.ewtn.net/library/DOCTRINE/RELLIB.TXT
(I apologize for the typos but I didn't commit them.)
Ask Our Lady.
I think I've got just the website for you: http://www.cmri.org/theolog.htm
But then I have a feeling you already know about it.
Posted by William Luse | March 2, 2010 2:51 AM
Lydia,
I'm quite sure some of my own doctrinal beliefs are wrong. I just don't know which ones they are.
That's quite an admission. And I don't mean that in any derogatory way.
Posted by William Luse | March 2, 2010 2:59 AM
Vlastimil,
Here are two:
Apocalypse 20:9-10: "And there came down fire from God out of heaven, and devoured them; and the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."
Matthew 26:24-25: "The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had not been born. And Judas that betrayed him, answering, said: Is it I, Rabbi? He saith to him: Thou hast said it."
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 11:34 AM
"It were better for him, if that man had not been born."
BTW, I think this might be the single most terrifying sentence ever uttered. Especially given Who uttered it.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 11:39 AM
One more BTW. Here is a fine article by the late Cardinal Dulles on the subject:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/the-population-of-hell-23
It is impossible to read what the near consensus among theologians, saints, etc. has been on this topic and not conclude that contemporary optimism is sheer self-deception.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 11:45 AM
OK, one more:
“We should at least have good hopes for the eternal salvation of those who are in no way in the true Church of Christ.” (Condemned proposition, Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX)
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 11:48 AM
@Tony,
Here's an interesting link on the Apocrypha.
http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon4.html
You'll notice that with the exception of the additional material in Esther, the acceptance of the other disputed Apocryphal works is late and gradual. Worth pondering, if ancient-ness is the issue.
Again, my point regarding the magisterium was pretty simple: It is merely that its ministry of teaching is meant to be on-going and hence that a person committing himself to believe its teachings is committing himself to believe things in the future that he cannot examine in the present. That is in contrast to a person who commits himself even to a fairly strong version (stronger than my own, for example) of Scriptural inerrancy, since he can examine the texts to which he is committing himself in that case, as they are already extant. Moreover, the Protestant view is that the individual Christian _is_ or at least _can be_ fully capable of interpreting Scripture for himself. Hence, again, there is an asymmetry between the Protestant who commits himself to believe a Bible that already exists and that he can already read and interpret for himself and a Catholic who commits himself to believe teachings of a magisterium that haven't yet been promulgated. That's really the only point I was making in the comment to which you've been responding, Tony.
The question of the clarity of the teaching of the Trinity or the two natures of Christ in Scripture is obviously a fairly different question. I do not myself at all believe that I need a magisterium to teach me that.
But interestingly, there is a kind of tension here: On the one hand, you _seem_ (though I can't tell for sure) to want to deny the asymmetry I am pointing out above between the already-extant books of Scripture and the on-going ministry of the magisterium. But at the same time you _seem_ to want to emphasize the difficulty in interpreting Scripture for oneself to yield certain doctrines. Yet if Scripture itself is really so occult and difficult as all that, then this only _strengthens_ my point regarding the fact that a person cannot know in advance what he's committing himself to if he commits himself to believe the future teachings of the magisterium. For in that case, the magisterium is _ex hypothesi_ going to be telling him things he couldn't have figured out for himself from reading the Scriptures. Hence their teachings are unpredictable by the mere, submissive layman, who does not have their special charism for interpretation.
Posted by Lydia | March 2, 2010 1:20 PM
Lydia:
They will not, until a "development" of doctrine changes what they will consider. Does that make sense? The likelihood of that happening is not the point (and is arguable anyway); the real point is that it makes such a correction possible, though of course they will not understand it as a correction.Ed Feder:
I know that's not what development means within the Catholic tradition. What I said is just what a Protestant sees (some) "developments" as, which should not be particularly surprising.My point is that in reality if there ever is a development which is a contradiction, there will also be arguments from Catholics that it is not really so. As an example, if you personally ever discovered that Vatican II taught contradictions and so were persuaded that Catholicism is falsified, what do you think other Catholics would do? They would argue that you are just being Protestant, since the Church cannot be contradictory, and it is up to Catholic teachers to show why what the hypothetical Ed Feser sees as a contradiction is illusory. The hypothetical you would disagree, but they would simply declare you are relying on your own authority like a Protestant rather than that of the Church, since if you were relying on the magisterial teaching authority, you would know that the magisterial office is infallible.
The point is that within the Catholic tradition, you cannot question whether a magisterial teaching is wrong in the first place. After Vatican I, such questions are literally meaningless within the Catholic tradition. You can only question the reasons you are wrong and need to conform your thinking to magisterial teaching. This means that whatever the magisterium teaches is treated as true and non-contradictory even if it does teach something that reverses prior teaching. This is simply a necessary consequence of believing in magisterial infallibility continuing through time and additional teachings.
As a Protestant, this means that there is no difference, within the Catholic tradition, between reasoning and rationalization.
Yes, I know ex post facto rationalization is not what Catholics believe is going on.
Posted by Albert | March 2, 2010 2:30 PM
Ack, I typo'ed Dr. Feser's last name. Sorry!
Posted by Albert | March 2, 2010 2:30 PM
Albert, it would be much easier if the teaching Church, when indulging in "development", were to limit itself to new expressions that are clearly conformable to the old teaching, so that there never was any serious issue with apparent contradictions. Wouldn't that be nice? Some people would say that until Vatican II, the Church had done just that.
I won't go that far, but the frequency of apparently contradictory infallible statements is extremely limited. It's not like there are bushels and bushels of them falling all over, you just have to open your hands to find a new one popping up. There are really only about 5 that bear any serious consideration. And of those 5, one is readily resolved with straightforward fact-checking. I will accept that the other 4 require enough nuance or subtlety that an outside onlooker may mistake it for mere rationalization. But that doesn't make it so, any more than using nuances or subtlety to "explain away" apparent contradictions in the Bible - "Thou shalt not kill" and "take him even from my altar and stone him" - constitute mere rationalization.
The point is that within the Catholic tradition, you cannot question whether a magisterial teaching is wrong in the first place.
That's not quite accurate either. A more valid expression is that within the Catholic tradition, you cannot doubt that the magisterial teaching is right, but you can question it and probe it and beat on it until it be explained in a manner that is conformable to all the other truth you hold, and refuse to rest until you have gotten to that point. As long as you don't stop at the first notice of an apparent contradiction and rest there, saying "one is wrong". If that means that you went on looking for the truth far longer than someone else who gave up and said "they contradict each other, no further searching is needed", then that means that you come to a truth deeper and more difficult than they came to. Is there a problem with that?
Posted by Tony | March 2, 2010 3:38 PM
As a Protestant, this means that there is no difference, within the Catholic tradition, between reasoning and rationalization.
Well if that's all you're saying, then fine, I guess "as a Protestant" you could say that. So what? Here's another newsflash: "As a Catholic" I could say that what Protestants say in answer to decisive objections to sola scriptura is mere rationalization. So there!
Also, from an atheist POV, what theists say in response to decisive objections to theism is mere rationalization; from a theist POV, what atheists say in response to decisive objections to atheism is mere rationalization; from a Freudian POV, what anti-Freudians say in response to decisive arguments for Freudianism is mere rationalization; from an anti-Freudian POV, what Freudians say in response to decisive objections to Freudianism is mere rationalization; from a Darwinian POV, what anti-Darwinians say... etc. etc.
What does any of this prove? Nothing at all. So what's the point of saying it?
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 3:40 PM
Lydia,
I find it interesting every time a conservative protestant argues against the Catholic church. This is because they essentially have to adopt all the liberal arguments to defend their position.
So what do you tell people who say that abortion and gay marriage are things that Christendom is going to change on? Do you say they might be right or do you say there is no chance the christian faith will ever accept these things as moral? If you take the second option then you believe in infallibility. You might not admit to it formally but in practice you do. Catholicism is merely a well thought out doctrine of infallibility rather than a vague ad hoc doctrine of infallibility.
Posted by Randy | March 2, 2010 4:00 PM
Tony, I agree with you that the Catholic tradition is not riddled with contradictions. If you thought that my argument was concerning the frequency of false teachings and contradictions within the Catholic tradition, I am sorry for being confusing. Rather, I was trying to explain that because it is literally impossible for the authoritative magisterial teaching to be wrong in the eyes of Catholics, any arguments as to why magisterial teaching is right suffers from precisely the kind of characteristics rationalization suffers from, which is to say that rationalizers aren't concerned with whether they are right, but merely with how they are right, because there is no possibility that they could be wrong. The conclusion is fixed according to what the magisterial office requires. This makes for some interesting possibilities concerning future magisterial pronouncements.
My statement, "The point is that within the Catholic tradition, you cannot question whether a magisterial teaching is wrong in the first place." is correct because I said "whether" and not "how." I agree that Catholics can struggle with the question of how the magisterial teaching is correct, but they may not struggle with the question of whether the magisterial teaching is correct. I understand your terminology of "doubt" and "whether" as getting to the same point, but I thought my language was sufficient.
There is no problem with coming to a truth after much struggle. There are many problems, in my view, with believing you cannot be wrong (about a limited set of beliefs, granted).
With respect to the Bible, I believe it is possible for the Bible to be wrong and I welcome arguments and evidence to that effect. Though I think it unlikely that such reasons are accurate, I am honestly open to being persuaded. Catholics cannot say the same with regard to magisterial teaching.
Ed Feser, the point is that there is a difference between saying, "It is impossible for the magisterial teaching to be wrong, so all our reasoning must eventually conclude that it is right or our reasoning is by definition wrong." and "Let us pursue truth by following all the arguments and evidence (including from tradition) wherever they lead." I think there is a significant difference there, but I guess I could be mistaken.
Posted by Albert | March 2, 2010 6:17 PM
Huh??
Look, what I think _Christians_ or _Christian institutions_ or _Christendom_ as some externally defined entity could someday do is one thing. What I think is _right_ is another thing.
Unfortunately, all too many ostensibly Christian denominations are already making their compromises on abortion and the homosexual agenda. Look at the ECUSA. (Gag.) It would be far bolder than I am prepared to be to say that there is some such thing as "Christendom" that is going to hold out on these abominations until the end of the world. I'd like to think so, but that's an historical proposition I'm not prepared to commit to.
But what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Are you implying that my cynicism about the human tendency to compromise makes me some sort of liberal ethical relativist? Does that mean that I don't think abortion and homosexual pseudo-marriage are really abominations? Of course it doesn't mean that! Of course I think that they are, and that those Christian institutions, countries, etc., that compromise on them are, you know, WRONG. I can't even figure out what argument you think you're making, here, Randy.
Posted by Lydia | March 2, 2010 6:50 PM
Ed Feser, the point is that there is a difference between saying, "It is impossible for the magisterial teaching to be wrong, so all our reasoning must eventually conclude that it is right or our reasoning is by definition wrong." and "Let us pursue truth by following all the arguments and evidence (including from tradition) wherever they lead." I think there is a significant difference there, but I guess I could be mistaken.
Sure there is. But the first is a straw man. I've already said several times that there are empirical circumstances in which Catholicism could be falsified -- that is to say, in which "the arguments and evidence" would lead a rational person to reject it. Some examples would be a situation in which the Church declared that Christ wasn't really divine after all, or hadn't really been raised from the dead, or that abortion, contraception, euthanasia or homosexual acts are OK after all, or that the Bible contains moral and theological errors, or that we do not really have immortal souls, or that there are no genuine theological mysteries. Nor are these far-fetched examples -- they are par for the course within mainline Protestantism. But other examples could be given, and I think any orthodox Catholic theologian or philosopher would agree that this sort of thing would falsify Catholicism. Who it is that holds to this weird "If Catholicism says that God is dead, then it must be true!" notion that you're attacking, I have no idea.
As it happens, I think that the fact that the Church has not gone the way of mainline Protestantism is very powerful evidence of the truth of her claims. She is, humanly speaking, at the lowest ebb in her history, absolutely filled to the brim with heretics, weaklings, and fools who would dearly love to chuck out all or most of the teachings I just mentioned and become "respectable." Even the most conservative churchmen pad their more orthodox statements with as much politically correct boilerplate and half-retractions as they can so as to minimize offense; and on some topics they will say nothing at all. Discipline is nil, and the words "excommunication" and "heretic" are the only things anyone wants to anathematize. Even the Eastern Orthodox have buckled on issues like contraception, and many evangelicals are abandoning a focus on the "social issues" (i.e. resisting sexual depravity and abortion) in favor of "me-too" liberal social policy. Mainline Protestants, of course, long ago ran out of old heresies and immoralities to cave in to, and are constantly struggling to come up with new ones. And through it all the Catholic Church remains, at the level of her actual teaching even in not always in the persons of her representatives, her same old stubbornly, gloriously reactionary self.
Now, I boldly predict that she will remain so a decade from now, 50 years from now, a century from now, a thousand years from now. And if she doesn't -- if she changes her official teaching on issues like the ones I've mentioned -- then I will concede that Catholicism is false. I think all orthodox Catholics would agree with me. They would agree too, of course, that this will never in fact happen. But we are staking our position on a specific empirical prediction. So, I fail to see how you can maintain that Catholicism is set up in such a way that no evidence will ever be allowed to count against it.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 7:46 PM
Well, but look, Ed: It doesn't at all seem to me that Tony in this thread has been way out when he has said that if a faithful Catholic thinks he perceives a contradiction or error in Catholic teaching, he just has to go into a deep ponder and wrestle with the issue, until he dies, but not leave Catholicism. Or so, at least, I understand Tony.
Now, again, I'm not trying to pick on Tony. I've always thought that his _was_ the Catholic position. I'm still inclined to think so. But you seem to be saying otherwise, that if the Catholic Church taught one of the types of things you mention, you could, not to put too fine a point on it, pack your bags and leave. So where's the straw man? Do you not think there are orthodox Catholic theologians and philosophers who would agree with Tony's prescription for the Catholic who thinks the Church has promulgated grave error or contradicted itself?
Posted by Lydia | March 2, 2010 8:15 PM
Hello Albert,
Not every change in Church teaching can, in fact, be "rationalized" as a doctrinal development. If, per impossible, the Church comes out tomorrow and says that there is no such as thing as mortal sin, or reverses itself on the Immaculate Conception, or denies the existence of purgatory, then it will have contradicted itself and Magisterial infallibility will be refuted. Just because some apparent tensions between past and present teachings can be dissolved by regarding the latter as "developments" it doesn't follow that *in principle* anything the Church says can be rationalized this way.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but some of these arguments sound a lot like bad arguments against Biblical inerrancy. Suppose an atheist argues that scripture isn't inerrant because parts of it were written from a Geocentric point of view. Suppose you respond that inerrancy isn't threatened, because claiming the Bible is inerrant isn't the same thing as claiming that any given text within it is literally true in a historiographic or scientific fashion. Just because this move is available, it doesn't follow that any alleged error in the Bible can be "rationalized" or that you are placing the inerrancy thesis outside the reach of rational criticism e.g. Show us Jesus's bones and the gig is up. Likewise, just because Catholics can claim that a development has taken place rather than a reversal, it doesn't follow that Magisterial infallibility is irrefutable in principle or that any logically possible alteration to Church teaching can be considered a development.
Posted by Untenured | March 2, 2010 8:42 PM
Bill Luse,
I read the article by Thomas Storck. He put forth three arguments.
The first was that the phrase in DH “the just requirements of public order” allowed that Catholic states could prohibit public manifestations of false religions on the grounds that they were deleterious to the Catholic culture, which the state has an interest in maintaining. Therefore, DH would allow Catholic states to remain exclusively Catholic. The problem with this argument is that the Catholic culture is not maintained by the state attempting to maintain a Catholic culture, but is maintained by God’s grace which is granted as a result of the state’s obeying Him, which, according to the 19th century popes, included recognizing the “rights” of no other form of religion. But obviously the authors of DH did not intend the phrase “the just requirements of public order” to deny the “right” of religious liberty, so it could be employed to defend the right of the Catholic state to maintain it’s Catholicity.
His second argument was that DH was referring to religious liberty as “a personal human right” only in the abstract. That is, like the right to marry, someone might have it in the abstract, but the concrete condition may not allow it. The problem with this argument is that Popes Pius IX and Gregory XVI called even the (abstract) idea of religious liberty being a personal human right “an insanity.”
His final argument was the one put forth by Ed Feaser, i.e., that DH itself says it “leaves intact the traditional Catholic teaching.” Storck says, therefore, if DH contradicts traditional Catholic teaching then it contradicts itself. To which argument one could respond, “Yeah, so what? That‘s what modernists do. They contradict themselves all the time. Haven't you ever read Pascendi Gregis.” Also, by throwing an orthodox-sounding line in the document, the authors assured themselves of getting a bunch of suckers, i.e., conservative Council fathers to sign on to it.
Of course, much more could be said against these three arguments, but I’ll leave it at that.
Posted by George R. | March 2, 2010 8:43 PM
Well, yes. Of course, as something which can be logically postulated.
Also of course, the Church will never do that, though this "of course" has a different foundation than logical conceivability. The foundation for this "of course" is called faith: that is, trust placed in a trustworthy Person, the founder of the Catholic Church, Christ Himself.
Posted by Zippy | March 2, 2010 8:58 PM
Lydia,
I can't speak for Tony, but I would imagine that what he had in mind are the murky sorts of cases that have come up in this thread -- heliocentrism, religious liberty, and the like, where you've got a complex tangle of issues, statements of varying degrees of clarity, and documents of different levels of authority. In these cases -- the usual sort raised against Catholicism -- the very worst that could be said is that someone could argue that there has been a conflict between would-be infallible statements. There are no cases where a conflict between would-be infallible statements is obvious. Indeed, I think that what is pretty obvious on inspection is that these sorts of cases are not problematic at all -- either there is no real conflict between the statements in question, or the statements in question were never presented as infallible in the first place, or both. But whether you agree with that or not, I imagine that Tony's point (again, if my interpretation of his remarks is correct) could be summed up as follows: Given that you already have independent grounds to believe in the infallibility of the Church and that these murky sorts of cases hardly provide obvious or indisputable evidence of contradiction in the Church's teaching, your duty (if you are a theologian) is to show why any alleged contradiction is merely apparent and (if you are a layman) to trust that the Church and her experts are capable of doing so.
That sort of thing is very different from, say, Pope Hans Küng I calling Vatican III and getting the assembled bishops formally and solemnly to declare Christ a mere mortal and to proclaim gay marriage a sacrament. I'm not saying a falsifying circumstance has to be that dramatic. The point is that it is surely ridiculous to claim that Catholics are committed to saying that there is no circumstance under which their position would be falsified.
What, after all, do you think is the point of standard Catholic polemic to the effect that the Church is the only ultimate bulwark against heresy, that the popes are the guardians of orthodoxy and tradition, etc.? What do you think is the point of people like Newman, Chesterton et al. insisting that "development" can only ever mean the drawing out of what is already implicit in existing teaching and never the invention of something completely new or the reversal of past teaching? What do you think was the point of Benedict XVI emphasizing in his first homily as pope that what his office is about is safeguarding the deposit of faith and not presenting his own ideas? What do you think was the point of the Oath against Modernism? Do you really think that what Catholic apologists have meant all these centuries is "Don't worry, whatever happens -- widespread blasphemy and apostasy, a total collapse of moral standards, etc. -- at least we Catholics have got a pope who can always re-define it all as orthodox and moral"? Please.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 9:34 PM
George R,
I think PhaserDoc sent you to the wrong argument: the better one is by William Most on the same webpage. Really, the whole argument can be seen as soon as one reads the (very narrow and clear) definition that DH gives of religious liberty.
Setting aside the question of development, DH is very explicit that religious liberty means that state power will not be used to coerce conscience. "Liberty" is used in a negative sense. This is very different from the positive claim that whichever religion one chooses, it is (or could be) an equally correct choice. Liberty can either mean "I will not force you to choose X as opposed to Y" or it can mean "It is not better or more true to choose X as opposed to Y". The Church has affirmed the former sense of liberty even while it has always denied the latter.
In order for there to be a real contradiction here, there must either be a long tradition of Catholic thought that holds that one can coerce conscience (which would contradict the idea of religious liberty given by DH); or DH must teach that a multitude of religious choices are all, as a matter of truth, equally correct.
Posted by James Chastek | March 2, 2010 10:32 PM
Well, no, I don't really think that, Ed, though I imagine if I'd ever been a Catholic in the first place I'd probably be more sympathetic to George R.'s position than makes me entirely comfortable (seeing as he's a heliocentrist!).
But here's where I'm going with this: When a Protestant (like me, but usually it isn't actually me) says that some Catholic teaching is false and unbiblical, I hear Catholics going on and on about how you always have to have some other authority, you can't just go interpreting the Bible for yourself, we just have all this Protestant chaos when every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to decide doctrine for himself. You know the sort of thing. The horror and schismatic mess caused by that great evil, private judgment. Thank goodness we Catholics have a bulwark against that kind of thing, because _we_ don't believe in that nonsense about private judgment. We submit to the Church, because we know that we have to. Those Protestants just don't get it.
I have always taken it that talk of that sort flowed directly from Catholic dogma. If you're a Protestant and you start talking to a Catholic or crypto-Catholic about some theological thing, perhaps disagreeing over it, many-a time he'll start saying, "By what authority do you take the opinion that you take?" (That's even, I gather, the name of Shea's book on how hard it is to get even basic, orthodox, Christianity out of the Bible!) And by jove, if you tell him it's from your own interpretation of Scripture, well then, you're likely to be told (or to have it implied) that it's this sort of darned, really bad, individualist arrogance that got Christendom into the mess it's in. This is particularly annoying to a biblically extremely well-educated Protestant Bible college or seminary grad, who usually has highly specific reasons for his opinions and has practiced interpreting Scripture for himself with a good deal of well-justified confidence for years and years. And therefore thinks it absurd for all of us to be going around considering ourselves unqualified to do so.
But now, I'm hearing here that individual Catholics are permitted to decide if the Church has committed, in the future, a sufficiently crazy and egregious teaching of heresy to justify their leaving Catholicism.
Now, in a sense, I'm glad to hear that, because it sounds like a sensible position.
But why, in that case, is there such a problem when we Protestants engage in private judgement and take it upon ourselves to decide what Scripture--or earlier Church teachings--mean and so forth? Why is that so arrogant, _especially_ given that we have never thought in the first place that there is strong independent evidence to take the Catholic Church to be infallible?
You see what I mean? If it's just a matter of private judgment in really _serious_ cases, then you can ask some of my Protestant friends whether they think some of the teachings already promulgated by the Church constitute serious errors! I mean, you know, we Protestants usually do think that. So why are _we_ accused of committing the evil of private judgement and of not realizing how impossible it is really to rely on private judgment, how arrogant that is, how necessary it is to submit oneself to some authority and so forth, when it appears that sensible Catholics have to be willing to go with their own private judgment--both about textual meanings and about what is really serious--in other possible scenarios?
Posted by Lydia | March 2, 2010 10:32 PM
DH is very explicit that religious liberty means that state power will not be used to coerce conscience.
I'll have to look at Most's article, James, but there's much more to the issue than that, at least if "coerce conscience" means "coerce people to become Catholics." As you know, the pre-Vatican II popes did not advocate forcing people to become Catholics. That has never been what the religious liberty controversy has been about, much as some contemporary commentators like to pretend otherwise. Nor did the pre-Vatican II popes oppose, in principle, the toleration of proselytizing on the part of non-Catholics, under certain circumstances. What they opposed was the idea that non-Catholics have a natural right, without qualification, to engage in proselytizing behavior, so that it would be unjust in principle for a Catholic state to prohibit such proselytizing. Those who claim that there is a conflict with Dignitatis Humanae have in mind the idea that DH affirms such a right without qualification. That is the issue writers like Harrison and Storck are concerned to address, and it is an important issue given that the line of pre-Vatican II papal teaching is clear and consistent and concerns a matter of moral principle, not mere prudential application of principle. I think Storck and Harrison are right to hold that careful analysis shows that there is no conflict, but it is a more complicated issue than you seem to be implying.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 2, 2010 11:31 PM
Lydia,
Like I said in an earlier comment, I think it is useful to think in terms of the analogy with the legal system governing a country. Such a system presupposes a basic knowledge of language, the ability to reason logically, and a common sense ability to apply principles to concrete circumstances -- none of which the law itself creates. The individual citizen relies on all of this in interpreting and applying the law. Still, he doesn't make the law, and if there is a dispute about what the law means he doesn't have final say in interpreting it -- it is the legislature and the courts who do all that. Similarly, the Church presupposes in the faithful a grasp of language (in reading the Bible and Church documents), of logic, and of common sense in interpreting and applying her teachings. But this doesn't entail "private judgment" any more than in the legal case.
Now, to extend the analogy further: Suppose there is some ambiguity or unclarity in the law, or even an arguable but not blatant inconsistency. Here the very nature of a legal system requires that the individual citizen leave the resolution of such things to the legislature, courts, etc.; otherwise we've got the chaos that it is the point of the legal system to prevent. But suppose instead that we've got a blatant contradiction in the law: the law says, for example, that murder is illegal, but also that it is OK to hunt and kill redheads. Then the law itself -- manifestly contradicting both itself and the logical principles it presupposes -- becomes the instrument of chaos, and undermines itself. There might be borderline cases, but the basic point is clear: To oppose private judgment, vigilantism, etc. where law is concerned doesn't entail a totalitarian submission of the individual to every arbitrary and irrational decision of the state; but at the same time, to oppose a lawless totalitarianism does not entail anarchism, private judgement, vigilantism, etc. There is an obvious middle ground.
Similarly, when Catholicism condemns private judgment, it isn't saying that the Church is a totalitarian institution that can teach anything it likes, as if she could in theory reverse herself when she feels like it -- that sort of positivistic view of the Church's authority only makes sense against the Ockhamist nominalism and extreme voluntarism that mainstream Catholic thought has always opposed. Rather, just as a government is supposed to safeguard law and order rather than undermine it, so is the Church supposed to safeguard existing teaching rather than undermine it. And just as the legal system may have to refine the law and apply it to unforeseen circumstances while keeping the principles consistent with what has gone before, so too does the Church have occasionally to do the same with doctrine. But if the Church manifestly contradicts herself, she would undermine her authority, just as a government with contradictory laws would. The Catholic doesn't claim that this could never happen in theory, only that it will never happen in fact because of divine assistance. And precisely for that reason, as I have emphasized, Catholicism opens itself up to empirical test. Again, there is a clear middle ground, in this case between the extremes you seem to think are the only two options -- private judgment vs. a totalitarian "anything goes" Church. You know that certain libertarians are just being silly and simple-minded when they pretend, in the political context, that one either has to embrace their radical individualism or totalitarian statism. Surely you can see that it would also be silly to rule out a middle ground position here?
To build yet further on the analogy, BTW, imagine a legal "system" that consisted of nothing but a book of laws, with no courts to interpret them, no legislature to modify them in light of new circumstances, and no executive to enforce them. If you do imagine this, you've got an idea of how Catholics see Protestantism. And again, as with the legal case, the alternative to the lawlessness of private judgment is not the lawlessness of totalitarianism, but the lawfulness of genuine authority.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 3, 2010 1:03 AM
George,
I think James Chastek's comment and Ed's expansion upon it quite good and sufficient, since I was only going to say, rather summarily, that the Chuch's conviction that the state, too, has a duty to truth, and its concomitant refusal to admit to men an absolute right to be wrong, does not devolve, ipso facto, into a denial of liberty of conscience. I really hope you don't want a world in which someone like Lydia is not allowed to practice her faith in peace, and even to publicly proclaim it if a nation's circumstances don't allow the favoring of one faith over all others.
But I surmise something bigger is going on here, to the psychological origins of which only you are privy. You're too smart to think that the one true Church is a church of the past with only dead popes at the helm, so you must think you've found the remnant somewhere else. I wish you well there, but not peace of mind just yet.
Posted by William Luse | March 3, 2010 4:39 AM
Edward,
Thanks!
On human population of hell:
I've discussed this issues briefly with Apolonio Latar, defending it is improbable on Catholicism that no human goes to hell. (http://apolonio.blogspot.com/2007/08/musings-on-narrow-gate-unedited-someone.html ) You seem to claim it is guaranteed. I am not sure.
I know the paper by Dulles. He wrote, inter alia, this:
So is there really no hope? Is a Catholic not permitted to hope? It does not seem to me so.
**************
On Christ on Judah, cf.:
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=70
I guess that Most speaks here about negative canonization of humans, and that the Church has declared some angels are in hell.
***************
You cite this:
First, is the Syllabus infallible? Can it be swamped for a Catholic by other Catholic evidence? Secondly, if it can't, there's an ambiguity in "salvation": does it mean going to heaven or not going to hell? (Don't forget the limbo option.) Thirdly, what about those being "in no way in the Church"? Are they all those without baptism (by water or blood)? If so, is not there a chance to be made (maybe when dying) being in some way in the Church? Esp. given Aquinas's claim: "His [God's] hands are not tied by [or:to] the Sacraments". (Cf. Most, ibid., on this sentence.)
*************
Do you embrace the limbo theory for dead infants?
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 3, 2010 6:08 AM
Corrigendum of the beginning of my previous comment
I've discussed this issue briefly with Apolonio Latar. I was defending that it is improbable on Catholicism that no human goes to hell. (http://apolonio.blogspot.com/2007/08/musings-on-narrow-gate-unedited-someone.html ) You seem to claim that it is impossible on Catholicism that no human goes to hell. I am not sure.
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 3, 2010 6:12 AM
I think your legal analogy is interesting and smart, Ed (that is not snarky--I really think it's a smart analogy), but I think it's in fact a poor analogy. The thing is, I can believe that a given law is unconstitutional while obeying it. If we extend the analogy so that the Constitution is like the Scriptures and laws passed subsequently and court decisions on the constitutionality of laws are like magisterial teachings on faith and practice, the extremely crucial disanalogy is that obeying the law doesn't require me, actually, to believe anything whatsoever. I can believe that something is a very bad and unwise law and/or that it's completely contrary to the constitution while still (grumblingly) going along with it for the sake of order. It would be a different matter if obeying the law meant believing something about ethics: For example, suppose that obeying the 1964 Civil Rights Acts as a business owner meant that the business owner has to believe not only that the act is constitutional but also that gender discrimination is always wrong. _That_ would be a problem.
The faithful in Catholicism have to give the assent of faith to those magisterial teachings delivered in the external way that makes them ostensibly infallible.
It's because of this crucial epistemic issue that the middle ground you are sketching out becomes problematic. It's a much bigger deal to be told that you have to hesitate greatly to _disagree in thought_ with someone's pronouncement than that you have to hesitate greatly to _disobey_ a legal directive. And it also seems to me that allowing disagreement in extreme cases to the faithful, as you are suggesting, does undermine much more in the epistemic case the "arrogance" accusation against Protestants for believing that they are competent to interpret Scripture and to disagree with the Church.
I should add that I have encountered quite often an _argument_ for Catholicism that begins with something like a premise that "Private judgement in theological matters is bad" or even "Private judgement in theological matters is impossible" and proceeds via various premises about which Church is most likely to be the one true Church to the conclusion, "Therefore, you should submit theologically to the Catholic Church."
Now, I think you can see that a _qualified_ first premise to such an argument would make it very hard to make such an argument go through: "Private judgement in theological matters is bad, except where there is a clear contradiction to Scripture" or something like that just isn't going to drive the argument against Protestantism.
Mind you, I'm not saying that you, Ed, have ever made this argument in those terms, but I think you'll recognize it.
Posted by Lydia | March 3, 2010 9:08 AM
One additional disanalogy: The Catholic is supposed to believe that the magisterial teachings are _interpretations_ of the deposit of faith. Not every law that is passed after the Constitution has to somehow "flow from" or be an "interpretation" of the Constitution. The courts do have to interpret the Constitution when deciding whether something is _un_-constitutional, but no one has to believe that local ordinances about dog-walking or whatever, or even state laws against murder, for that matter, are interpretive statements about what was already contained in the Constitution.
But the Catholic has to believe not simply that some Catholic de fide teaching (Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, or whatever) is _not contradicted_ by Scripture but also that it is a _drawing out_ of the deposit of faith, an _interpretation_ of the deposit of faith. That's yet another layer of intellectual assent that has to be given that is not present in most legal contexts.
Posted by Lydia | March 3, 2010 9:20 AM
Hello Lydia,
I think a more simple-minded analogy might help here. I think the case for Magisterial infallibility runs paralell to the case for Biblical inerrancy. Suppose we can reason our way to the conclusion that scripture is divinely inspired. (I think we can) Once we do this, we have good reasons to think it is also inerrant. We are now in a position to trust what scripture says on the basis of its putative inerrancy. Hence, even if I *personally* cannot find any evidence that there are angels, the fact that scripture clearly talks about such creatures gives me a good reason to believe in them. But, if I can't determine for myself whether there are Angels, how do I know scripture is really inerrant? Maybe scripture is fallible and is simply wrong about the existence of angels? Maybe, but if I am justified in thinking it *is* inerrant, then I have reason to accept its claims about Angels on that very basis. Once I have my evidence for inerrancy, I don't have to then test each individual proposition implied by scripture before I can be justified in accepting the entire lot of them. If it's really inerrant, I have no reason to distrust it in cases like ths.
Likewise with the Magiesterium: If I have independent reasons to think that The Church is protected from error, then I can be justified in accepting its deliverances even though I wouldn't reach the same conclusions if left to my own devices. I do not, for instance, think that the case for Purgatory is so obvious that anyone who picks up scripture would end up agreeing with it. But, once I have reasons to think that The Church is who she says she is, the fact that she teaches Purgatory is grounds enough for me to believe in it. Maybe there is no purgatory and the Church is mistaken? Maybe, but if I have reason to think that She is infallible, then this is reason enough to go ahead and accept Purgatory.Once I have my evidence for infallibility, I don't have to then test each individual doctrine before I can be justified in accepting the entire lot of them.
Posted by Untenured | March 3, 2010 10:06 AM
Well, Untenured, but a) I don't think there are such independent grounds for regarding the Church as divinely inspired and b) taking Scripture's (or Jesus') statements that there are angels to be _true_ does not require taking it that they are a true interpretation of something else to which I also have access. I can _look_ at Scripture and see whether Purgatory appears to be contained therein or to be a speculation that goes beyond what is contained therein.
Posted by Lydia | March 3, 2010 11:21 AM
Dr. Feser (and obliquely, George)
"As you know, the pre-Vatican II popes did not advocate forcing people to become Catholics."
Right. But this is to advocate some sense of religious liberty! I think you go too far in saying that the debate has "never been about this", as though, for example, the Church's rejection of conversion by the sword or forced baptisms does not pay a role in explaining the Church's views of religious liberty, even with respect to the subtle question of whether non-Catholic proselytizing can be prohibited in principle. As soon as we admit that there is some sense in which religious liberty has always been allowed , the question in reading DH becomes "given that we all agree that there is a sense of religious liberty that the Church can allow, how do we read DH?". This certainly didn't seem to be the way that George was reading DH, and his reading is not uncommon.
Moreover, If we start with the actual definition that DH gives of religious liberty, it becomes very difficult to see how it could ever be opposed by any reasonable person:
And wait for the qualification they place at the end:
Within due limits! So the definition that the Council Fathers lay down is freedom from coercion within due limits. Where is the tradition advocating that there are no due limits to coercion? Again, this is not proof texting, it's the definition that DH gives of religious liberty. It is very difficult to see how there could be a prima facie contradiction with religious liberty so defined. The reasonable presumption would be that this sense of religious liberty has always been advocated.
Posted by James Chastek | March 3, 2010 11:23 AM
Hello Vlastimil,
You seem to claim it is guaranteed.
Well, I guess I'd prefer to put it by saying that I see no plausible way to avoid the conclusion that at least some human beings are damned. Most's reading of the Judas passage seems quite strained to me; and the passage from the Apocalypse seems to me utterly impossible to interpret in a way consistent with a realistic "hope" that no one is damned.
So is there really no hope? Is a Catholic not permitted to hope?
I think we can hope of any particular person that he is saved -- even of Judas, the beast, and the false prophet, I guess, though such hope really does seem futile given what scripture says. But there's nothing wrong with praying e.g. "I hope Judas repented while he still had a chance and that there's some alternative way -- I know not what -- to interpet your absolutely terrifying words, Lord."
What really seems ungrounded to me, though, given not only the passages I've cited but the whole tenor of Christian thought until the most recent -- and theologically decadent -- times, is the hope that all human beings will be saved. What could possibly ground such hope given the cesspool that much of the world is and has always been? Especially if we concede (as you have) that there is no doubt that the fallen angels are damned? What's so special about human beings that they'll all be saved even though not all the angels were?
Re: "in no way in the Church," I have no doubt that a great many people wll be saved via baptism of desire and invincible ignorance. What strikes me as foolish and absolutely ungrounded is the notion that somehow everyone outside the Church will squeak through by these means -- incuding Uday Hussein, Joseph Goebbels, Lavrenti Beria, et al. I mean, anything is possible in the abstract, but come on...
Do you embrace the limbo theory for dead infants?
Yes; in fact, I don't see any other plausible alternative from a Catholic POV.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 3, 2010 11:50 AM
Ed Feser, your position sounds reasonable to me, unlike the position of not a few other intelligent Catholics I've encountered who actually do affirm the "straw man" position you condemn, so great is their zeal for the Catholic Church. I admire their zeal, though I think of their position as you do. My clarification question for you is: who decides which beliefs/ideas (e.g. Jesus isn't God for an extreme example) allow a rational person to decide Catholicism is falsified (at least on the narrow doctrine of magisterial infallibility) if the magisterium were to teach it in the future? Is it you who should make the judgment or the magisterium? If I am reading you accurately, you would say you are the judge of what is contradictory.
Untenured:
You believe this, so you are still Catholic. Others have come to believe that this has already happened, so they are now Protestant (or Orthodox, etc.). Who decides what belief fall into the set of "cannot be in keeping with prior magisterial teaching" and what belief falls into the set of "is in keeping with prior magisterial teaching." Protestants believe the individual does, but I can't remember the last Catholic before Ed Feser who didn't chastise Protestants as substituting their private judgment for the authority of the Church, inevitably followed by the old "Well how do you know for certain that you're right, if you don't submit to the infallibility of the magisterial office?" Well, how does a Catholic who believes he is the judge of what is reconcilable with prior magisterial teaching "know for certain he is right" without appealing to magisterial infallibility (and so declaring the magisterium to be the judge). Again, I'm not saying that you hold to the magisterium as judge position yourself. But there are many Catholics who disparage Protestants on that basis.I get what you're saying with respect to the comparison with biblical inerrancy/infallibility and I agree with how cumulative evidence builds trust that the Bible is infallible is analogous to how cumulative evidence builds trust that the Magisterium is infallible. The only difference I was pointing out (which was my original point before we sidetracked to this tangential one) is that the character of the defense of an incomplete-because-continuing canon is different from a defense of a complete and closed canon in this way: Catholics await additional teachings from the Church and are bound to defend whatever they are as true; previously, I thought that the additional clause "without recognizing the possibility of falsehood" was the case, but Ed Feser and perhaps others do. Being obligated to defend whatever comes out of the Magisterium before judging the merits of or even seeing the teaching seems to me to be rationalization.
Now, if it really is true that the magisterium is infallible, then the necessary rationalization is immaterial. My original point was not actually to debate magisterial infallibility on a mostly Catholic website, though it is a significant issue, nor even to press the point of individual judgment vs. magisterial judgment. My point was to say that magisterial infallibility, because of its nature of continuing through time, is (in theory) able to "develop" doctrines in such a way as to meet Protestant churches part-way, which Catholics will accept or else leave the RCC just like Protestants did. This is in contrast to how many Protestants view the influence of magisterial infallibility on Church unity as purely negative. It has negative dimensions, I would agree, but it contains within itself the seeds of renewal.
As a side note, if the RCC is wrong on a point of doctrine, I don't think it's quite accurate to say that "Catholicism is falsified," since not all Catholic teaching will be falsified, only the specific doctrine of magisterial infallibility, without which the Catholic Church managed to thrive for 1500+ years.
Posted by Albert | March 3, 2010 12:03 PM
It seems Untenured's point is similar to that of mine in the above February 28, 2010 10:14 AM comment. The Catholic view is that given infallibility, there is a relatively neat and quick way to the full-blown Christian orthodoxy (shared even by theologically conservative Protestants). Without that premise, the way seems considerably less neat and quick, and much, much more thorny (if pervious at all). I wonder whether Lydia concedes this. Anyway, Lydia denies there is a good evidence for that premise.
Lydia,
Three points.
-- Do you concede what I said above in this comment?
-- You said in a comment of yours, addressed to Edward:
But why are you still inclined to do so? What's your evidence that swamps the reservations of Edward et al.? Even if many Catholics you know really believe so (as opposed to mere inattentive talk), it does not mean it's a teaching of the RCC.
-- Last but not the last, in fact, the issue I am most interested in. It's the one Bill Luse highlighted above. You say:
Wow, this is really interesting, and I've been myself tempted to believe so, too.
As for the preface paradox generally: Probabilities often (but not always) dwindle when added, right? That's an axiom of the probability calculus. So why should we maintain confidence in an ever growing conjunction? (I read Henry Kyburg thought we’re not always justified in accepting large conjunctions of our justified acceptances /and even seemed a bit annoyed that anyone would think there was anything paradoxical about that/.)
So, isn't the reason for the preface paradox constituted by the fact of generally dwindling probabilities? If so, why do you think that the fact does not apply to the historical argument (as evinced in your discussion with Plantinga) for mere Christianity, but that it does apply to its doctrinal extensions? Is it because the extensions are too complex? Yet, what is too much is not evident. At least not to me, an avid reader of your critiques of Plantinga's offhand estimates according to which the historical argument for mere Christianity is too complex. Even the doctrinal extensions could be probable. It just depends on the detail features of the body of evidence. You just do not think the body is sufficient to uphold any of the extensions, right? That's the point where the Catholic (like Edward, and me, too) disagrees in his estimate (offhand in my case, and maybe wihsful, too, I admit). Now, can this dispute be settled by a general epistemological argument, as opposed to the detailed historical apologetics?
Finally, isn't there some irony, here? Infidels accuse Christians that their claims are crazy and improbable on the available evidence. (Of course, that's the point of all rational disputes.) Similarly the Protestants wrt the Catholics. But, more specifically, few moths ago I noticed that, e.g., Mozley, in his 19th century book-length critique of Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Docterine, wrote that Protestants often have the advantage of defending thiner body of claims than Catholicism. Thus it has smaller chance to be wrong. This is more specific and relevant to the issue at hand. And it is similar to the sceptical critique of religious creeds on the basis of the so called principle of dwindling probabilities. Now, the irony I have in mind is in fact doubled. (1) The idea of dwindling probabilities has been made widely known in the philosophy of religion and apologetics by Alvin Plantinga, the most famous contemporary analytical theist, who wrote a probabilistic critique of historical arguments for the kernel of Christianity in his Warranted Christian Belief. (2) Plantinga was criticized mainly by you and Tim. Now you seem, however, to employ Plantinga's idea against those conjunctions which are doctrinal extensions of mere Christianity.
Or am I missing something? No caviling. I'm really interested in the issue itself.
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 3, 2010 12:32 PM
Edward,
I am not at all sure Most's reading of the words addressed to Judas is strained.
The angels are special, according to standard speculation (like that of Anselm), by their metaphysical constitution, aren't they? Their decisions (against God) are irrevocable.
The world is a cesspool, right. So, what could be adduced as a ground for the optimistic claim (no humans in hell)? Well, what about God's willing that everyone is saved + human mitigating ignorance (though not invincible)? For more see C. A. Row's fine book http://www.archive.org/details/futureretributi02rowgoog (not Catholic, but the writer is most interesting).
Yet, I concede the passage you cited from the Apocalypse and the impression of the whole bible and tradition are a very, very strong indication of the tragical conclusion (some humans in hell). Indeed, I believe the conclusion is true.
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 3, 2010 12:55 PM
Vlastimil, I have time only to answer one of your questions: The phrase "principle of dwindling probabilities" is just confusing. Sure, Plantinga is _trying_ to exploit the _acknowledged_ fact that the probability of a conjunction of independent propositions is the product of their individual probabilities. (Not the sum, by the way.) Nobody questions that fact about independent propositions and probabilities, and it does in fact form the basis of my paradox of the preface comment about my own theological beliefs.
But Plantinga is critiquing an _argument_ that should proceed by conditioning. Therefore, it is a mistake on his part to try to treat the issue by any reference to the mere fact that the probability of a conjunction is the product of the probabilities of its independent propositions. That's the wrong tool in evaluating the strength of an argument. In trying to use the Theorem on Total Probability, Plantinga ignores the actual evidence for the resurrection. He makes the mistake of estimating (as he thinks, generously) the probability of Theism _without_ considering the evidence for the resurrection and then, without realizing that he is supposed to condition on that evidence subsequently in order to take all evidence into account, he uses the probability he has already estimated for Theism as an upper bound on the probability of the resurrection. That's just an oops. It's just a blunder. As you know, we've gone into all of this in painful detail in multiple places.
But the fact that I note that Plantinga makes this mistake doesn't mean that I think it's _false_ that the probability of a conjunction of probabilistically independent propositions, at one time t, conditional on all evidence at that time, is the product of their probabilities. That's a well-known probabilistic fact. But Plantinga got confused and misused that fact.
Now, of course, I can't actually just multiply the probabilities of all my theological beliefs at this time t in some simple-minded way, because they are going to be pretty darned intertwined, hence in many cases not fully probabilistically independent. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure that there is _enough_ independence among _enough_ of them that the probability of the long conjunction of all of them at this time t is below .5. (I have a lot of theological opinions. :-)) Notice, here, that I'm not modeling an argument. I'm not using the Theorem on Total Probability to evaluate or model an argument. I'm guessing merely that I have enough theological opinions at this moment with enough independence among them that the probability of their conjunction on all evidence at this moment is less than .5.
Posted by Lydia | March 3, 2010 1:16 PM
Hello James,
I think you go too far in saying that the debate has "never been about this",
What I meant is that the debate since Vatican II, the debate over DH, has not been about this. Those who have both claimed that DH contradicts past teaching and have lamented this -- Lefebvre, for example -- have not been advocating forcing people to become Catholics. They have instead been defending the idea that in a majority Catholic country, the state can at least in principle legitimately prohibit public attempts by non-Catholics to proselytize Catholics. And that -- rather than converting non-Catholics by force -- is also what the pre-Vatican II popes were concerned about.
Re: "due limits," the worry of people like Lefebvre has been that the concept of due limits was restricted by DH to include only things like maintaining law and order, preventing gross public immorality, etc., but NOT a Catholic state in a majority Catholic country preventing non-Catholics from publicly proselytizing Catholics, even in principle. I think Lefebvre was wrong and that Storck is right to say that DH does not in fact rule this out in principle, wbut whether one agrees with this judgment or not, that is what the main issue has been in the last century and a half or so, and certainly since Vatican II.
Posted by Edward Feser | March 3, 2010 1:31 PM
Someone asked Ed, and he replied:
I agree with Ed here, but I think it may be important to take note of another Catholic doctrine as well: Heaven is not identically the same in every respect for every person."The degree of perfection of the beatific vision granted to the just is proportioned to each one’s merits."
There are, as it were, many mansions in the Father's house. That there is a special one for infants who die unbaptized is not something I find especially alarming.
Posted by Zippy | March 3, 2010 1:31 PM
Oh, and I agree by the way with Lydia's criticism that Catholics tend to be far too quick on the draw with the notion of "private judgment", as if that were a conversation-ending move. The reason to believe in Catholicism is because it is true, not because of some meta-epistemic trump card. It so happens that the triune structure of written Scripture, authoritative Tradition, and living Magisterium, finding its source and summit in the Eucharistic Liturgy, is superbly capable of preserving the truth of the living Faith through living history: that fixed and finalized bodies of textual symbols in themselves are not nearly so capable of preserving meaning and applying it to new circumstances. That does in my view constitute evidence that Catholic Christianity is true Christianity. But it isn't a conversation stopper.
Posted by Zippy | March 3, 2010 1:40 PM
James Chastek,
You misunderstand the Church’s teaching on coercion. The Church does not prohibit coercion because the person has a right not to believe the true faith. Nor does it prohibit coercion because the person has the right not to be coerced into believing the true faith. It prohibits coercion because a person simply cannot be coerced into believing something against his will; it is psychologically impossible. Moreover, since the sacraments and Catholic practices presuppose belief, these are not enjoined on non-believers -- again, not because a person has the right not to partake of them, but because without faith they would do him no good.
Other actions in the service of the true faith, however, may be coerced. For example, the Jews of Rome used to be compelled to pay homage to the pope once a year. So you see, the so-called right not to be coerced is not a right at all.
Posted by George R. | March 3, 2010 1:43 PM
Let me ask you this, Ed: Would DH allow a Catholic ruler to ban all manifestations of false religion on the grounds that such manifestations are offensive to God?
Posted by George R. | March 3, 2010 2:41 PM
Dr. Feser.
I agree that the debate eventually reaches the level of refinement where it is not over religious liberty, but over the particular actions that can be allowed or proscibed under the rubric of religious liberty (which is a much more restricted claim). But- to take an obvious example at hand- that's not what George R is saying. His claim is that religious liberty was once called bad and is now called good. His opinion isn't crazy, it's been around since VatII, and needs to be dealt with first. But I've said my peace about this now. You can take the last word or not.
George R,
So what is wrong with DH's definition of religious liberty again? Said briefly, religious liberty is no forcible coercion of religion beyond due limits. So what's your proof that the old doctrine was that there must be some forcible coercion beyond due limits? After all, if DH's teaching is false, the contradictory must be true.
Posted by James Chastek | March 3, 2010 4:59 PM
@Lydia & Albert:
I have nothing more to add that hasn't been said already, so I'll not pursue this argument further. It is a pleasure to discuss religious questions with people who understand that they are sensitive to reason and evidence. If I have to explain Christianity 101 to another snottily ignorant secularist, I may have a minor stroke. Thanks for the reprieve.
Posted by Untenured | March 3, 2010 6:14 PM
So what is wrong with DH's definition of religious liberty again? Said briefly, religious liberty is no forcible coercion of religion beyond due limits.
James,
That’s not the definition of religious liberty according to DH. You gave the real definition from DH above:
This was the same type of religious liberty that was sought by the liberals in the 19th century, and which was condemned Pope Pius IX:
Posted by George R. | March 3, 2010 8:40 PM
Dale Tuggy's reply to Edward Feser here:
http://trinities.org/blog/archives/1560
Posted by Vlastimil Vohánka | March 4, 2010 3:05 AM
Untenured, you're welcome. I'm grateful for what you've said as well, because you've disabused me of certain misgivings I've had about the meaning of magisterial infallibility in the Catholic tradition. Good luck with those secularists...!
Posted by Albert | March 4, 2010 10:33 AM
Let me ask you this, Ed: Would DH allow a Catholic ruler to ban all manifestations of false religion on the grounds that such manifestations are offensive to God?
I'll give my answer: Yes, it would allow that. But it would allow that only insofar as such manifestations are offensive to God by reason of causing damage to the common good of which the state has the care . Therefore, at least in principle, a pagan proselytizer in a Christian state could be prevented from proselytizing if his actions disturb the common good.
In my opinion, the common good must be considered to include the fundamental obligation of the state to worship the creator. All creatures have the obligation to pay due honor to Him: in rational creatures that due honor is worship. The state is a rational creature derivatively through human nature. Hence the state is obliged to worship God. Anything that gravely disturbs the Christian state's already existing right worship by detracting from the common understanding of that obligation would, in fact, be offensive to God by reason of damaging the common good, since the common good includes all that pertains to the state's obligation. Then the question would have to be asked whether the damage to the state from tolerating the error would be less or more than the evils which would come through suppressing the error.
Again, in my opinion, the answer to that question would typically be bound up in the issue of to what extent the pagan was using methods and efforts that are offensive to the nature of truth and just persuasion. Usually errors are taught alongside of truths. Every person has a right to express the truths that he holds (truth is a common good), but he has an obligation to do so justly, which means with due regard for all truth. If a person insists on violating that obligation (for example, by misrepresenting what the Church claims), then he loses the right to express even the truth that he holds. And he is obliged to FIND OUT what the Church claims before trying to knock them down, so he cannot rely on unjust representations that he hears from others, merely because they conform to what he would like to believe: such a stance would be undue care of the truth. Hence, it would be quite possible for the state to find that a particular pagan proselytizer is harming the common good by persuading others in a manner that has no regard for the demands of honest persuasion, and then to suppress him - without damage to the principle of religious liberty.
Posted by Tony | March 4, 2010 10:06 PM
Tony,
The public practice of a false religion is offensive to God per se; for it is a violation of the First Commandment. Whether it might also be offensive to God per accidens is really beside the point. Therefore, my question was, “Can a Catholic ruler repress a public violation of the First Commandment simply because it is offensive to God?”
DH clearly says, “No.” For it claims that the human person, in virtue of his dignity, has the inherent right not to be prevented from practicing his religion, even if that religion is false. And if someone has the right not to be prevented from doing something, no one has the right to prevent him from doing it.
So, if a ruler has the right to defend the First Commandment, there can be no such thing as the right to religious liberty. But according to DH there is a right to religious liberty. Therefore, according to DH a ruler has no right to defend the First Commandment. But the Church has always taught that a Catholic ruler has the right, nay the duty, to defend the First Commandment. Therefore, DH contradicts traditional Church teaching. But the Church can not contradict herself. Therefore, that which produced DH was not the Church. But that which produced DH was a church. Therefore, there are two churches.
Posted by George R. | March 5, 2010 11:25 AM
In my view, George R is right. Any appeal to the Catholic church has first to come to grips with the fact that there seems to be more than one claimant to that name. To decide which is the proper one cannot be settled by an appeal to the church, because that appeal begs the question.
Posted by Michael Bauman | March 5, 2010 12:48 PM
Therefore, according to DH a ruler has no right to defend the First Commandment. But the Church has always taught that a Catholic ruler has the right, nay the duty, to defend the First Commandment.
Could you cite the places where, as you say, the Church taught that a Catholic ruler has the duty to "defend the First Commandment"? See, I only recall a few of the older pronouncements about the obligation of the ruler about false worship, and I don't recall them being in that form.
First of all, whatever obligation there was, it was not only because the ruler was Catholic, but also because the STATE was Catholic. Which automatically means that there was in place a custom and culture of true worship according the Christian rite given through the Word, Jesus. Which means that any efforts to disturb that custom and culture would be a matter bearing on the common good. Which doesn't, all by itself, establish the entirety of what DH says is needed in order to justify the state interfering with the public manifestation of a false religion, but it does put us in the ballpark. I am sure more would need to be said, but it wouldn't make any sense to do so until you gave us the actual declaration.
Michael, I am not sure what you mean. Are you referring to the Roman, and Byzantine, and Ruthenian, and Coptic churches? Or do you mean the church of Rome, and of Paris, and of Minneapolis, and of Madrid, etc? In the latter case, these churches are not distinct by substance, but by region. In the former, they are distinct by rite, but not by substance. Or, do you mean the Roman Catholic Church, and the Old Catholic Church, and the Liberal Catholic Church? Please, there is no contest there - the last 2 have absolutely no basis for a claim to the mantle of THE Church.
Posted by Tony | March 5, 2010 10:15 PM
Tony,
I can’t think of any papal pronouncement that expressly declares that. However, the Church used to act on the assumption that the Catholic ruler had a duty to defend the First Commandment.
For example, in the 13th century the Counts of Toulouse were excommunicated for refusing to help eradicate the Albigensian heresy. Also, in the 14th century Pope Clement V, at the Council of Vienne, enjoined the princes of lands in which there were Muslims to forbid the latter to utter the name “Mohammed” in public, lest good Catholics be scandalized and God be offended.
Moreover, during the age of Christendom it was just assumed that heresy was to be considered a capital offense by the State; and the Church encouraged this.
The Scriptures also support the doctrine that rulers are expected to defend the First Commandment. In Exodus, we see God was appeased when Moses ordered all of those who took part in the worship of the golden calf to be put to the sword; about 23,000 Israelites were killed. Also, God was so pleased when King Jehu of Israel slaughtered all the priests of Baal that He promised to extend his dynasty. But probably the greatest scriptural proof that rulers are expected to defend the First Commandment will be evident to anyone who reads through the Books of Kings; for he will see there that all the Kings of Juda were judged either good or bad according to as they were either intolerant or tolerant toward false religions. The judged best, such as Kings Ezechias and Josias, utterly eradicated false religions from their kingdom, and even eliminated illicit forms of worship of the true God. The worst kings were those who actually practiced idolatry themselves; and those who were merely “evil” were those who allowed idolatry to proliferate.
But even common sense alone will tell us that the Catholic ruler should be expected to defend the First Commandment; for we see that public violations of all the other Commandments can be properly prohibited by a ruler. Murder, theft, adultery, even blasphemy and violations of the Sabbath may be legislated against. On what grounds then ought the most important Commandment of all, the very First Commandment, be left undefended? Moreover, the other Commandments are defended for the sake of justice, not just because the common good might be injured. So why shouldn’t justice demand that the First Commandment be defended?
Moreover, Tony, judging by some of the things you’ve written above, I’m thinking you need to reread DH, assuming you've read it at all.
For example, you wrote:
However, in Article 2, after stating that men in fact do have an obligation to seek the truth, DH states:
What’s more, you seem to believe, along with some other people, that DH allows for the suspension of the right of religious liberty in cases where the State and the culture are already Catholic. This belief is utterly erroneous. From DH, Article 6:
And as for your opinion that, since the common good will sometimes require the repression of religious liberty, therefore, DH would allow it, guess again. For the authors of DH, the common good depends on religious liberty. From DH, Article 15:
But can any of this be surprising when we see the authors of DH come within an eyelash of declaring any curtailment of religious liberty to be intrinsically evil? From DH, Aricle 6:
So, not to be impeded in the worship of devils is a sacred right.
Beam me up.
Posted by George R. | March 6, 2010 3:31 PM
George, did you read the Fr. Harrison article? Please do that before going further. Every one of your comments above are answered by that.
For myself, let me just say that DH makes it clear that it is NOT a suppression of religious liberty to suppress the actions of a person who is violating the natural norms of truth in civil discourse by lying about what people have claimed. Nor is it a suppression of liberty to suppress the actions of a person who is violating the public order in his speeches or public worship (see last phrase of your second blockquote, after the bold part). So, no, DH does not defend the right of devil worshipers engaging in human sacrifice, for example.
George, I am no history buff, but from my small knowledge I think a case can be made that no nation that was originally Catholic in medieval times became Protestant without methods and actions that violate the norms of truth-honoring public discourse, and (at least some times) actions that violated the public order, and especially by actions of princes in suppression of the existing Catholic religion for their own purposes or from their own personal flip-flop into Protestantism.
Posted by Tony | March 6, 2010 6:49 PM
If George will permit me to add to what he is saying to Tony: There is no right to do wrong.
Posted by Michael Bauman | March 8, 2010 9:16 AM
There is no right to do wrong.
Agreed. I made that point very forcefully myself in an essay on DH. But equally true: there is no rightful use of authority of the government to suppress wrong when (a) that wrong does not bear on the common good, or (b) when that suppression damages the common good more than the wrong itself damages the common good. That is what DH stands for, in part.
Posted by Tony | March 8, 2010 7:07 PM
Common good is a remarkably imprecise calculus, and cannot suspend principle or obligation.
Posted by Michael Bauman | March 8, 2010 11:43 PM
The common good doesn't suspend obligation, it defines obligation. The whole purpose of the state is to serve the common good. If the state cannot do that imprecise calculus, then it is bound to be paralyzed and useless. It is one of the things that sets a statesman apart from a mere politician.
Posted by Tony | March 9, 2010 7:28 PM
If DH is Catholic, what is this?
Hadn’t these guys ever heard of “the inviolable dignity of the human person?”
Posted by George R. | March 26, 2010 11:02 AM