None of these people would think of themselves as Protestants. And yet there is no logical barrier between their epistemology and the epistemology of Protestants. Perhaps a good way to bring this out is through a fictional dialogue between a Catholic dissenter and a Protestant. So below you will find an imaginary conversation between Herbert, a Catholic hyper-traditionalist, and Linus, a Reformed Protestant.
Herbert: Hey Linus! Did you get the letter I sent you the other day?
Linus: You mean the one with the pamphlets about the Catholic Church and why I should join it?
Herbert: Yup, that's the one!
Linus: Yeah, I got it. I've been meaning to get back to you about it. Have you got time for a conversation now?
Herbert: Sure! So what did you think of the arguments?
Linus: Well, I'm not convinced. I'm kind of alarmed by some of the Catholic teachings. For example, you guys believe in all kinds of unbiblical things, like praying to saints and to Mary, purgatory, the papacy, images of Christ, etc. We don't find any of these things in the Word of God. And some of them blatantly contradict the Word of God. So how can we believe in them?
Herbert: You're assuming the doctrine of Sola Scriptura--that the Bible alone is our infallible authority. But the Catholic Church holds that authority is a three-legged stool involving Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Scripture is the inspired Word of God, but the Word of God has also been passed down infallibly in the Church's Tradition. And God has promised his guidance to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church--the Pope and the college of bishops united to the Pope--so that they are protected from error in interpreting God's revelation. So it's kind of question-begging of you to declare things like prayers to the saints off limits simply because they aren't found in the Bible or don't match your own interpretation of the Bible. You are assuming that Sola Scriptura is the right way to interpret Scripture. But how do you know it's the right way? The historic Church, before the Reformation, didn't hold to Sola Scriptura but rather followed the view the Catholic Church has always held and still holds today.
Linus: Yes, I know that's the Catholic view. I find that view kind of alarming.
Herbert: Why?
Linus: You seem to be putting an awful lot of trust in men. Catholic leaders are only human, after all. Even the Pope is only human. He can make mistakes. How can you put implicit trust in any mere human being?
Herbert: Sure, Church leaders are human beings, but they are guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from error. The writers of Scripture were mere human beings as well, and yet you trust the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God.
Linus: Yes, I see your point. But the Catholic Church has contradicted itself in its teachings over the years, so how can we trust it implicitly? For example, the Church used to be against the death penalty, but now Pope Francis has taught that the death penalty is wrong.
Herbert: Not everything the Pope or the bishops say is correct. Some teaching is infallible, but some teaching is fallible.
Linus: Are you saying that you think Pope Francis is wrong about the death penalty?
Herbert: Yes, I think he is wrong. His new teaching contradicts what the Church has believed for thousands of years.
Linus: Wow, I didn't expect you to say that! But I'm confused. Isn't Pope Francis's teaching on the death penalty official Church teaching? Didn't he even put it into the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Wait a minute. Let me look it up. . . . Ah yes, here it is. Pope Francis amended the Catechism to include his new teaching. Here is the new #2267:
2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, section #2267, revised version)
It even says "the Church teaches"! Sounds like official Church teaching to me. And aren't Catholics bound to accept official Church teaching?
Herbert: Well, yes, to an extent. For example, #752 in the Code of Canon Law says this:
Can. 752 Although not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act; therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it. (Catholic Church, Code of Canon Law, Canon 752, embedded links removed, found here on the Vatican website)
Linus: OK, then how can you justify disagreeing with Pope Francis's new teaching on the death penalty?
Herbert: We are to submit with mind and will to the non-infallible teachings of the Popes and bishops, but that doesn't mean we just accept everything they say blindly. Non-infallible teachings, as you can see by the very word non-infallible, can be wrong. Since they can be wrong, we have to use discernment and test them when they come out. We should certainly defer to them and accept them whenever we can, but, if they contradict what we know to be the truth, or if they contradict previous definitive Catholic teaching, we have an obligation to refuse to accept them. We must put faithfulness to Catholic Tradition above blind obedience to any human authority.
Linus: So Popes and bishops can err. Can councils err too?
Herbert: Local councils can err. And even Ecumenical Councils can err when they are not teaching infallibly. For example, the Second Vatican Council was an Ecumenical Council, but it deliberately avoided teaching anything definitive or infallible, and so its teaching is not absolutely guaranteed to have gotten everything right. We should certainly defer to it, but we must not accept all of it blindly. I think Vatican II did a lot of good things and taught some important truths. But it might be argued that it planted some seeds that have led to some problematic fruit.
Linus: I recall reading about some organization--the Society of St. Pius the something or other, I think, I can't remember the exact name--they rejected some of the teachings of the Church after Vatican II, and didn't they get into trouble over it?
Herbert: Yes, and I'm not saying I agree with everything the Society of St. Pius X--that's the society you're talking about--says. But you're right that Pope Paul VI and other Popes have chastised the SSPX for some of its refusals to accept certain modern Church teachings. What I'm saying is that, even if we have to get chastised by the Pope or the bishops, it is better to have that happen than to betray the traditional teachings of the faith when the Pope or the bishops are teaching error. We have to say with the apostles, "We must obey God rather than men."
Linus: Hmm . . .
Herbert: What is it?
Linus: Well, I'm just trying to understand your position. It doesn't sound all that different from mine as a Protestant. I mean, the Protestant Reformation started out as a movement within the Catholic Church. The Reformers were trying to recover teachings of the Word of God the Church of the sixteenth century had obscured or contradicted. They believed in deferring to the authority of the Church and doing everything they could to maintain unity, but they also recognized that the leaders of the Church were human and could err, and that they could not be trusted in blindly. In the end, if there was conflict, the Reformers knew that they had to go with the Word of God over the teachings of men, even if those men were leaders in the Church. Isn't that precisely what you're saying as well?
Herbert: No, no, it's completely different. The Protestants rejected the teaching of the Church as authoritative. They put their trust instead only in their own private interpretations of Scripture.
Linus: But isn't that what you're saying as well? You've said that you can't just blindly trust in the Church. Sometimes the Popes and the bishops can be wrong, and when that happens, you have to go with God's Word over against what the human leaders of the Church are saying. That's all the Protestants were saying as well. They didn't deny that one should defer to the Church, should put a lot of stock in what the teachers of the Church are saying, etc. They only held that one cannot trust blindly or implicitly the Church's human teachers, and that that might mean sometimes that there is a duty to resist them to uphold the Word of God.
Herbert: But we don't believe in Sola Scriptura--that the Bible alone is infallible. We believe that the Tradition of the Church is infallible as well.
Linus: Where, exactly, do we find the Tradition of the Church?
Herbert: In the teachings and practices the Church has accepted through the centuries.
Linus: But you've said that the teachers of the Church can be wrong. I assume you would accept that the laypeople in the Church can be wrong as well.
Herbert: Of course.
Linus: Well then, how do you know the Tradition of the Church is reliable, if it's just what the teachers of the Church teach and what the laypeople believe and practice? If the teachers can be wrong, then their teachings can be wrong. If Tradition is nothing more than "the teachings of the Church", then it can be wrong.
Herbert: Tradition is more than just the teachings of the teachers of the Church. It's the teaching of the apostles handed down through history by the Church.
Linus: But if the teachers can make mistakes and teach errors, how do we know they passed down the teaching of the apostles correctly? For example, you say, I think, that the apostles taught that people should be anointed with oil at baptism, even though there's nothing about this in the New Testament. So you believe this was mandated by the apostles simply because the early teachers of the Church said it was. Right?
Herbert: Right.
Linus: But, as you've said, the teachers of the Church can be wrong. So how do you know that it isn't the case that it became a popular belief early on among the teachers of the Church that the apostles had mandated oil in baptism, and yet this popular belief is in fact incorrect, because the apostles mandated no such thing? After all, I think the early teachers of the Church said some odd things sometimes. Didn't Tertullian, for example, who was a very early Church teacher, teach that it was an apostolic tradition that people shouldn't take a bath for a week after being baptized? You don't think that was a real tradition from the apostles, do you? And the Fathers disagreed about alleged traditions. There was some disagreement on when to celebrate Easter, as I recall, with some claiming an apostolic tradition one way and some claiming one another way.
Also, it seems to me that some of your traditions are relatively newer and weren't held in the early Church, like the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception--the idea that Mary was kept free from original sin at conception. That wasn't held by everyone in the early Church, was it? So then, how do you know it is true, if you have it only on the authority of Church teachers who can err?
Herbert: No, no, no! The problem with your reasoning is that you are failing to keep in mind a crucial distinction in Catholic teaching--the distinction between infallible and fallible teachings. As I said before, some of the teaching of the Pope and the bishops is fallible, but not all of it is fallible. Some of it is infallible. When the Pope or the entire college of bishops in union with the Pope give a solemn, definitive judgment on some matter of faith or morals, for example, that teaching is infallible. You've just mentioned an example of this--the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. That doctrine was declared to be a dogma of the Church in an infallible papal pronouncement in 1854.
Linus: How can you tell when something is taught infallibly?
Herbert: The Church has laid out very clearly the conditions under which infallibility operates. You can see this discussed, for example, in the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ from Vatican I, or Lumen Gentium #25 from the Second Vatican Council. The discussion of this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be found in #888-892.
Linus: OK, I see that the leaders of the Catholic Church have taught this. But how do we know they were right?
Herbert: About what?
Linus: About the Pope and the bishops sometimes being infallible, and how that infallibility works.
Herbert: (blank stare)
Linus: Herbert?
Herbert: Well, we know they were right, because they were speaking infallibly.
Linus: But you said earlier that Vatican II was not infallible, and you also said you disagreed with a part of the Catechism, the new part on the death penalty, so that can't be infallible either.
Herbert: Well, Vatican I was infallible.
Linus: How do you know?
Herbert: Well, it was an Ecumenical Council.
Linus: How do you know that Ecumenical Councils are infallible?
Herbert: The Church has always held them to be infallible--but only when they are issuing solemn, definitive judgments.
Linus: Who's "the Church"?
Herbert: All the people, especially the Popes and the bishops.
Linus: And an Ecumenical Council is just a body of the Pope and bishops working together, right? I mean, there's nobody else there, is there, humanly speaking?
Herbert: Yes, that's right.
Linus: So let me get this straight. You are telling me that we know that Ecumenical Councils--that is, gatherings of the Pope and all the bishops--are infallible because the Popes and the bishops have said that they are?
Herbert: Um, yes.
Linus: But you've already told me the Pope and the bishops can be wrong.
Herbert: But only when they aren't speaking infallibly.
Linus: Which is just to say that the Pope and the bishops can be wrong, except when they can't be. And we know when they can't be wrong, because they tell us?
Herbert: Um, yes.
Linus: Well, this seems like sort of an obvious question, but if the Popes and the bishops can be wrong sometimes, how do we know they weren't wrong when they told us that they can't be wrong sometimes? I mean, Pope Francis has told us that we should believe the death penalty to be inadmissible. But you say he's wrong, and that you should resist him on this because "we must obey God rather than men." But then you turn around and tell me that we have to believe Pope Pius IX when he said in 1854 that the Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the faith. You will say that this is different, because he was speaking infallibly. Well, how do we know? Perhaps he thought and claimed to be speaking infallibly, but he was wrong. If Popes can be wrong, how do you know he was right?
Consider an analogy: What if I told you that 2+2=5. I would be wrong, right?
Herbert: Yes.
Linus: Well, suppose that after I told you that, I then told you that I am sometimes infallible, but not always. After about five minutes, my eyes start to go wide, and I say to you, "Hey now, you better listen up! I'm about to say something infallible!" And then I say, "There is definitely life on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri." Are you going to believe me?
Herbert: Well, no.
Linus: Why not?
Herbert: Well, for one thing, because I have no reason to think you are infallible.
Linus: Is that all?
Herbert: Well . . . You just told me that 2+2=5, which I know is wrong. So obviously you're not completely reliable. And if I can't trust you in all that you say, how can I know I can trust you just because you say that some particular statement of yours is absolutely trustworthy and infallible?
Linus: Exactly. You see my point?
Herbert: I suppose . . .
Linus: You obviously don't think the Pope and the bishops are entirely reliable. You think they can lead you into error, and sometimes it is your job to resist them and stand up for the truth in opposition to them. They are not reliable guides. You have to test what they say so as not to be led into errors by them--even dangerous errors. I've heard that some Catholics think that Pope Francis's teaching is so dangerous, it's like a spiritual poison. It's a betrayal of the gospel, and can even lead people to hell. Do you think that?
Herbert: Well, yes, to a degree. I mean, Pope Francis has taught that Atheists can be saved, and that people who are in adultery can be received into communion. He's even promoted idolatry, with that Pachamama statue at the Vatican last year. He's watered down the gospel. Actually, the whole Church since Vatican II has had some serious problems. The Mass has been watered down and made irreverent; inappropriate, irreverent practices like communion in the hand have been allowed; prayer has been promoted between Catholics and members of false religions; and many other things. Although there has been a lot of good in the Church since Vatican II, there has been a lot of evil as well, as our leaders seem more and more to be telling us to turn away from the traditions and practices that the Church has always found to be so very important for the health of the people of God.
Linus: Well, you're not going to get any argument from me. I totally agree. Except that I think you're a bit late to the game. The Church has had corruption for a lot longer than merely since Vatican II. The pre-Vatican II Church had mixed in corruptions with the faith as well. At Vatican I, the infallibility of the Pope was made a dogma of the Church, even though it hadn't been before. A bunch of Catholics (the "Old Catholics", as they called themselves) refused to accept Vatican I for precisely that reason--they saw that they needed to stand up for the authentic, historic teachings of the faith against the erroneous, novel teachings of men. And Vatican I wasn't the beginning of the corruption either. There had been corruption before. For example, during the Middle Ages, the Church stopped giving the cup at communion to the laity, even though Jesus plainly said "Drink ye all of it" (Matthew 26:27, etc.). Lots of false doctrines have been introduced into the Church over the centuries, like Transubstantiation, or praying to the saints, or devotion to Mary. None of this is in the Bible. These are teachings of men. That's what the Protestant Reformation was all about. We love the Church. We love the Word of God. We love the true, historic teachings of the faith. But we refuse to give implicit trust to anything other than the Word of God. We refuse to give blind obedience to human teachers who are capable of error. The Protestant Reformers knew that they must obey God rather than men, and so they refused to accept the corruptions that had been introduced into the Church over the centuries, basing their stand firmly on the Word of God alone. It sounds like you should join us, Herbert, since you seem to fundamentally agree with us that the Pope and the bishops, and councils, can err and even lead the faithful terribly astray.
Herbert: No! I am not a Protestant! I accept the traditional teachings of the Church, like praying to the saints!
Linus: Why do you accept praying to saints, Herbert? Praying to saints is not in the Bible. The Word of God says nothing about it. It's a tradition of men. The Bible teaches us to pray to God alone. That's the only thing we see in the Bible.
Herbert: The Church has taught this doctrine for centuries!
Linus: Who cares how long they've taught it? Do errors become true simply because they've been taught for a long time?
Herbert: But this is a central teaching of the Catholic faith! To reject it is heresy!
Linus: Says who? You just mean that you believe it because the Popes and bishops have told you so. But, as you've acknowledged, it's Popes and bishops who have sold out the Church in recent times. Why trust Popes and bishops? Sure, there have been good Popes and bishops, but even good people who are fallible can be wrong and should not be trusted implicitly. You're quite right to want to avoid blind belief in human teachers. So follow through on that and stop believing in things like praying to saints just because human teachers told you to do so.
Herbert: Well, I think I've had enough of this conversation for now.
Linus: There's certainly a lot to think about. Well, until next time, Herbert! I'll be praying for you, praying that you keep going on the path you're on until you shed not just some but all of these human traditions and teachings and rest in the Word of God alone.
Since Linus has raised some important questions regarding how Catholics can justify their trust in the authority of the Church, I would refer you here, here, and here for further discussion and defense of this. What I have tried to do here is to point out that, once the Catholic dissenter has departed from Catholic teaching and admitted that the Magisterium can err, he has logically severed his connection to the Catholic epistemology which points towards trust in the Church and her Tradition. He no longer has access to this point of view, and so, if he will be logical, he must move away towards Protestantism or some other non-Catholic epistemology. He has no basis in principle to object to what the Protestant Reformers did when they opposed the Church and her teaching in the name of their own private interpretations of Scripture. What else could they do, since they had accepted that the Church and her teachings could err? They could no longer trust the Church implicitly, and the only alternative to that is to test everything the Church teaches in the light of some higher standard, some standard that the tester has decided is more authoritative.
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