Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? . . . And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. (Matthew 21:42, 44)
Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. (1 Peter 2:6-8)
Jesus appointed the apostles to succeed him as the leaders of his Church. The apostles, in turn, appointed bishops to continue the succession of leaders to the end of time. St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, died in Rome and left his apostolic authority to the bishops of Rome. Since that time, as Catholics know, the Bishop of Rome has had a special role in leading the people of God. The First Vatican Council articulates this thoroughly:
And since by the divine right of Apostolic primacy, the Roman Pontiff is placed over the Universal Church, we further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all causes, the decision of which belongs to the Church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, and that none may re-open the judgment of the Apostolic See, than whose authority there is no greater, nor can any lawfully review its judgment. Wherefore they err from the right course who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman Pontiffs to an Ecumenical Council, as to an authority higher than that of the Roman Pontiff. (Vatican I, Session 4, Chapter 3, as found in The Vatican Council and Its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, Second Edition, by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster [New York: D & J Sadlier, 1871], 234-240, edited and footnotes removed by Mark Hausam, found here)
. . . [T]he Holy Roman Church enjoys supreme and full Primacy and preeminence over the whole Catholic Church, which it truly and humbly acknowledges that it has received with the plenitude of power from our Lord Himself in the person of blessed Peter, Prince or Head of the Apostles, whose successor the Roman Pontiff is; and as the Apostolic See is bound before all others to defend the truth of faith, so also if any questions regarding faith shall arise, they must be defined by its judgment. . . .
Therefore the Bishops of the whole world, now singly, now assembled in synod, following the long-established custom of Churches, and the form of the ancient rule, sent word to this Apostolic See of those dangers especially which sprang up in matters of faith, that there the losses of faith might be most effectually repaired where the faith cannot fail. . . .
And indeed all the venerable Fathers have embraced and the holy orthodox Doctors have venerated and followed their Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error according to the divine promise of the Lord our Saviour made to the Prince of His disciples: I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.
This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was conferred by heaven upon Peter and his successors in this Chair, that they might perform their high office for the salvation of all; that the whole flock of Christ kept away by them from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished with the pasture of heavenly doctrine; that the occasion of schism being removed the whole Church might be kept one, and, resting on its foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell. (Chapter 4)
So we see that the Apostolic See of Rome, in the person of the Roman bishop--the Pope--has always had the unique task of keeping the people of God on the right track. It has been St. Peter's task to strengthen his brethren (Luke 22:32). God preserves the Apostolic See from error, so that it will always lead the people of God aright. It is a sure beacon of truth in a world of confusion, lit by the light of the Holy Spirit. In light of what we know about how God's messengers are typically received, then, we might expect that what the Popes of Rome have to say to us will not always be something everyone wants to hear.
Our current Pope, Pope Francis, presents a very interesting, and even ironic, example of this. He has said many things in his six years as pope that have scandalized many. But some conservative-leaning Catholics have been concerned that Pope Francis has, to some degree, betrayed his calling and has set aside his duty to speak the truth even when it is unpopular. They feel that this is the time for the Pope to be confronting the liberal point of view that has been seeking to dominate our culture--to stand up against contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, and all those other things in which modern culture contradicts Catholic teaching. To be sure, the Pope has spoken against these things, but some conservatives feel he has not done enough. Instead of making these sorts of things the central focus of his message to the culture, he has instead spent most of his time harping on liberal themes like climate change and protecting the environment, the plight of migrants, the injustice of the death penalty, concern for the poor, atheists going to heaven, etc. He has muddied Catholic teaching regarding marriage by compromising with the culture, allowing "nuances" in pastoral discipline regarding people in "irregular unions"--that is, objectively adulterous relationships. He's muddied Catholic teaching on the death penalty by worrying about things like the "dignity of criminals." He doesn't speak out enough against homosexuality, instead confusing people by saying things like, "Who am I to judge?" The Pope is supposed to be a scandalon--a rock of offense, aggressively speaking truth against the evils of our day--but Pope Francis has put that aside, instead seeking to "build bridges," "engage in dialogue," "seek common ground," "emphasize mercy," etc. Far from combatting liberalism, his theology seems rather to be a constant stream of liberal themes and concerns. Where's the scandalon? Instead of being a rock of offense, Pope Francis seems to have capitulated to modern culture, sucking up to the liberals and therefore receiving their respect and praise. Or so these conservative Catholics tell us.
Sometimes it is hard for us to see something because we are looking in the wrong direction. Pope Francis appears to have abandoned his duty to be the scandalon. But has he? Has he put aside and neglected the truths that we need to hear today, the truths that cause those on the wrong path to stumble? In fact, his teaching has been very controversial, and it has caused a lot of stumbling. But it's not been primarily the liberals who have done the stumbling. It's been the conservatives. For years, some conservatives in the Church have built up an idea in their minds of what Catholic teaching is all about. They have watched American and western culture move further and further away from orthodox Christianity. They've watched the rise of the sexual revolution, with all the immorality, corruption, and heartbreak it has brought. They've watched acts of homosexual sexual relations go from being shunned to being celebrated and paraded. They've watched our society embrace the "culture of death" in so many ways--with euthanasia, contraception, abortion, etc. And they've watched the Church take a bold stand against all of these things. In many of these areas, they've seen the Church take up a common cause with political conservativism, with the enemies being the liberals. In watching all of this, some of them have fallen into the difficult-to-detect, subtle shift from recognizing that Catholic teaching has common cause in some areas with political conservativism to nearly identifying Catholic teaching with political conservativism. They have learned to think of the conservatives as the "good guys" and the liberals as the "bad guys". They've promoted the Republican Party and despised the Democratic Party.
But Catholic teaching transcends the political divides of our culture. It may sometimes agree with the conservatives, but it is not conservativism.. It may sometimes oppose the liberals, but it is not anti-liberalism. This subtle near-identification of Catholic teaching with conservativism has led to a blind spot in the vision of some conservative Catholics. They've praised the Apostolic See when it has stood up against the errors of the liberals. They've attacked liberal Catholics who have refused to accept Church teaching about things like contraception, women priests, and homosexuality as "cafeteria Catholics"--that is, as Catholics who only follow the Church when the Church happens to agree with what they already think, but who are ready, when conflict arises between Church teaching and their own ideals and values, to rebel against the Church in order to cling to their own ideologies. And they have been right to point out the inconsistencies of these liberal Catholics. But--and here is the irony--at the same time they've been attacking the liberals, they've fallen into the very same trap themselves. Pope Francis has provided the scandalon that has brought their own "cafeteria Catholicism" to light. When liberals attacked Pope St. Paul VI's great encyclical Humanae Vitae, with its stand against modern liberal errors in the areas of family and sexual ethics, they criticized them and accused them of refusing to trust God's leading of his Church and the Pope to shine the light of truth into the world. But Pope Francis's main focus has been not on the errors of the liberals--though he has attacked these quite clearly and not infrequently--but on errors more often committed by modern political conservatives. According to him, the liberals have in fact been right about some things. They've been right to emphasize injustices against the poor, migrants, and other oppressed classes. They've been right about the need to focus attention on protecting the earth and its environment. They've been right in emphasizing the virtues of compassion and mercy. Pope Francis believes that what our culture especially needs more of is mercy and compassion. He also believes that this is something the Church badly needs.
There are plenty of Catholics who have wound up, for all sorts of reasons, in objectively disordered family and sexual relationships. The conservative critics say that what is most needed is firm and swift punishment. "Tell them to stop sinning, and if they don't, throw them out! Who cares what they've gone through, how they've got into this mess, what their motivations have been, and why they are still stuck! Enforce the discipline. That's all that matters." When Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, asserted that what is especially needed in many of these cases is a kind of nuanced pastoral care that pays attention to all of the complexities of these people's situations and tries to find ways to help them grow in their relationship with God as they struggle forward with getting their lives straightened out, the conservative critics accused him of compromising with evil, abandoning traditional Catholic morality, etc. "What relationship with God?" they've said. "These people can't have any real relationship with God! They're refusing to follow the Church's moral teaching! They need to do the right thing immediately and fully or we should write them off as nothing but sinful rebels and tell them to come back when they are willing to repent!"
When Pope Francis put out his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si, as soon as the conservative critics saw that it dealt with subjects like "climate change," they immediately decided the whole thing was pretty much just a liberal manifesto, and they reacted accordingly, trying to justify why they could write off what the Pope was saying as worthless rubbish they could safely ignore and reject.
When Pope Francis, last summer, stated that the Church has been following a path of doctrinal development that has led to the conclusion that, in the current day, the death penalty is to be regarded as inadmissible because its attitude and practice is inconsistent with the human dignity of criminals, the conservative critics immediately rejected this as a betrayal of Catholic tradition. They asserted that they would continue to teach the admissibility of the death penalty as the real Catholic teaching, whatever the Pope and the revised Catechism of the Catholic Church said. I mean, who does the Pope think he is anyway, to tell Catholics what to believe?! Some of the critics have even published articles and books defending the admissibility of the death penalty as the true Catholic position.
As we mentioned earlier, when God speaks truth into the world, it often produces a negative reaction, for we all like to think we know better. And that negative reaction has not always come from the obvious and notorious "sinners." It has not infrequently come from the ones who have considered themselves the guardians of the pure tradition. The most obvious example of this is the reaction of the Pharisees and the Sadducees to Jesus's teaching. Instead of allowing themselves to be enlightened by what Jesus was saying and doing in light of the promises of the prophets, they opposed and rejected him because he did not fit into the schemes they had adopted as to how things should be. Instead of changing their schemes to accommodate God, they rejected God to preserve their schemes. And they accused Jesus of being the one to abandon the tradition of God. They accused him of being too merciful to the sinners, who, in their view, needed not mercy so much as a good dose of cold, hard moral discipline.
In fact, interestingly, some of the most famous rejections of papal teaching throughout Church history have come from people who have believed that the Pope was being too merciful and not hard enough on sinners. In the middle of the second century, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Firmilian, bishop of Caesaria, led a movement of opposition to Pope St. Stephen because he decreed that all the churches should accept baptism even when it was administered by the hands of heretics so long as the baptism was performed validly. Cyprian and Firmilian accused Pope Stephen of compromising the truth and being lax on heretics. Instead of insisting on the black-and-white truth, they said, Pope Stephen was muddying the waters by bringing confusing nuances into the practice of the Church. Here's a sample of what Firmilian said in his own words, from a letter he wrote to Cyprian:
Eventually Pope Stephen's position won out universally, and all Catholics accepted his practice as the correct one. (When you go against the teaching of the Pope, you're always, by definition, ultimately on the wrong side of history.) Read some of the conservative critics of Pope Francis today, and you will be reminded of the truth of the saying, "There is nothing new under the sun."
The conservative critics of Pope Francis have accused him of abandoning his duty to be the scandalon in the midst of an evil world. But these are Catholics, and so they should remember that Christ appointed St. Peter and his successors to be a beacon of light to lead the Church through the mazes of confusion we encounter in this fallen world. If the Apostolic See speaks out and warns us of errors, should not our first response be to look inside ourselves, to examine our own ideas, to see if we've perhaps become too one-sided, to see if even in our zeal to get things right, we might have missed something? Maybe our construction of what "Catholic teaching" is needs to be adjusted. Would it be so surprising if we all need adjustment now and then by the very power appointed by Christ for his Church to help us make such adjustments?
It would be nice if error always came up on just one side at a time, if we could neatly package it according to just one specific ideology so that we could always fight on just one front. But, unfortunately, things are seldom so simple. When we're fighting against one error or evil, another error or evil comes up to bite us from another direction. We have to be vigilant to watch in all directions so that we don't become like pendulums, always swinging to one extreme or another, and never able to achieve balance. We need justice, but we also need mercy. Those who have gone astray need moral discipline, but they also need compassion and understanding. Our world is full of so much confusion and heartache today. We are so lost, perhaps more than at any other time in human history. At least the pagan pre-Christian culture was, in a sense, young, ready to be confronted with the fresh new gospel. But, in a sense, we are old. Our culture has arisen out of the wreck of a corrupted and abandoned Christendom. We've come to the end of our rope in many ways. We need to be confronted with the clear light of truth, including, and especially, in areas where we don't want to hear it. But we also need that message to be given to us with the compassion of a parent seeking a wayward child, who understands and empathizes with where we have been and the confusion and pain we have fallen into, and who is able to comfort us and be with us as we try, slowly but surely, to make progress little by little in our moral lives. In our age perhaps more than in any other, we need to hear the "truth spoken in love." Perhaps one of the main tasks of the Apostolic See in the present time is to remind us of this, to keep us from trying to choose truth over love or vice versa. Will we listen to what God is saying through his chosen vessel? "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).
But Catholic teaching transcends the political divides of our culture. It may sometimes agree with the conservatives, but it is not conservativism.. It may sometimes oppose the liberals, but it is not anti-liberalism. This subtle near-identification of Catholic teaching with conservativism has led to a blind spot in the vision of some conservative Catholics. They've praised the Apostolic See when it has stood up against the errors of the liberals. They've attacked liberal Catholics who have refused to accept Church teaching about things like contraception, women priests, and homosexuality as "cafeteria Catholics"--that is, as Catholics who only follow the Church when the Church happens to agree with what they already think, but who are ready, when conflict arises between Church teaching and their own ideals and values, to rebel against the Church in order to cling to their own ideologies. And they have been right to point out the inconsistencies of these liberal Catholics. But--and here is the irony--at the same time they've been attacking the liberals, they've fallen into the very same trap themselves. Pope Francis has provided the scandalon that has brought their own "cafeteria Catholicism" to light. When liberals attacked Pope St. Paul VI's great encyclical Humanae Vitae, with its stand against modern liberal errors in the areas of family and sexual ethics, they criticized them and accused them of refusing to trust God's leading of his Church and the Pope to shine the light of truth into the world. But Pope Francis's main focus has been not on the errors of the liberals--though he has attacked these quite clearly and not infrequently--but on errors more often committed by modern political conservatives. According to him, the liberals have in fact been right about some things. They've been right to emphasize injustices against the poor, migrants, and other oppressed classes. They've been right about the need to focus attention on protecting the earth and its environment. They've been right in emphasizing the virtues of compassion and mercy. Pope Francis believes that what our culture especially needs more of is mercy and compassion. He also believes that this is something the Church badly needs.
There are plenty of Catholics who have wound up, for all sorts of reasons, in objectively disordered family and sexual relationships. The conservative critics say that what is most needed is firm and swift punishment. "Tell them to stop sinning, and if they don't, throw them out! Who cares what they've gone through, how they've got into this mess, what their motivations have been, and why they are still stuck! Enforce the discipline. That's all that matters." When Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, asserted that what is especially needed in many of these cases is a kind of nuanced pastoral care that pays attention to all of the complexities of these people's situations and tries to find ways to help them grow in their relationship with God as they struggle forward with getting their lives straightened out, the conservative critics accused him of compromising with evil, abandoning traditional Catholic morality, etc. "What relationship with God?" they've said. "These people can't have any real relationship with God! They're refusing to follow the Church's moral teaching! They need to do the right thing immediately and fully or we should write them off as nothing but sinful rebels and tell them to come back when they are willing to repent!"
When Pope Francis put out his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si, as soon as the conservative critics saw that it dealt with subjects like "climate change," they immediately decided the whole thing was pretty much just a liberal manifesto, and they reacted accordingly, trying to justify why they could write off what the Pope was saying as worthless rubbish they could safely ignore and reject.
When Pope Francis, last summer, stated that the Church has been following a path of doctrinal development that has led to the conclusion that, in the current day, the death penalty is to be regarded as inadmissible because its attitude and practice is inconsistent with the human dignity of criminals, the conservative critics immediately rejected this as a betrayal of Catholic tradition. They asserted that they would continue to teach the admissibility of the death penalty as the real Catholic teaching, whatever the Pope and the revised Catechism of the Catholic Church said. I mean, who does the Pope think he is anyway, to tell Catholics what to believe?! Some of the critics have even published articles and books defending the admissibility of the death penalty as the true Catholic position.
As we mentioned earlier, when God speaks truth into the world, it often produces a negative reaction, for we all like to think we know better. And that negative reaction has not always come from the obvious and notorious "sinners." It has not infrequently come from the ones who have considered themselves the guardians of the pure tradition. The most obvious example of this is the reaction of the Pharisees and the Sadducees to Jesus's teaching. Instead of allowing themselves to be enlightened by what Jesus was saying and doing in light of the promises of the prophets, they opposed and rejected him because he did not fit into the schemes they had adopted as to how things should be. Instead of changing their schemes to accommodate God, they rejected God to preserve their schemes. And they accused Jesus of being the one to abandon the tradition of God. They accused him of being too merciful to the sinners, who, in their view, needed not mercy so much as a good dose of cold, hard moral discipline.
In fact, interestingly, some of the most famous rejections of papal teaching throughout Church history have come from people who have believed that the Pope was being too merciful and not hard enough on sinners. In the middle of the second century, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Firmilian, bishop of Caesaria, led a movement of opposition to Pope St. Stephen because he decreed that all the churches should accept baptism even when it was administered by the hands of heretics so long as the baptism was performed validly. Cyprian and Firmilian accused Pope Stephen of compromising the truth and being lax on heretics. Instead of insisting on the black-and-white truth, they said, Pope Stephen was muddying the waters by bringing confusing nuances into the practice of the Church. Here's a sample of what Firmilian said in his own words, from a letter he wrote to Cyprian:
17. And in this respect I am justly indignant at this so open and manifest folly of Stephen, that he who so boasts of the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession from Peter, [2946] on whom the foundations of the Church were laid, should introduce many other rocks and establish new buildings of many churches; maintaining that there is baptism in them by his authority. For they who are baptized, doubtless, fill up the number of the Church. But he who approves their baptism maintains, of those baptized, that the Church is also with them. Nor does he understand that the truth of the Christian Rock is overshadowed, and in some measure abolished, by him when he thus betrays and deserts unity. [2947] The apostle acknowledges that the Jews, although blinded by ignorance, and bound by the grossest wickedness, have yet a zeal for God. Stephen, who announces that he holds by succession the throne of Peter, is stirred with no zeal against heretics, when he concedes to them, not a moderate, but the very greatest power of grace: so far as to say and assert that, by the sacrament of baptism, the filth of the old man is washed away by them, that they pardon the former mortal sins, that they make sons of God by heavenly regeneration, and renew to eternal life by the sanctification of the divine laver. He who concedes and gives up to heretics in this way the great and heavenly gifts of the Church, what else does he do but communicate with them for whom he maintains and claims so much grace? And now he hesitates in vain to consent to them, and to be a partaker with them in other matters also, to meet together with them, and equally with them to mingle their prayers, and appoint a common altar and sacrifice. . . .
23. What, then, is to be made of what is written, "Abstain from strange water, and drink not from a strange fountain," [2955] if, leaving the sealed fountain of the Church, you take up strange water for your own, and pollute the Church with unhallowed fountains? For when you communicate with the baptism of heretics, what else do you do than drink from their slough and mud; and while you yourself are purged with the Church's sanctification, you become befouled with the contact of the filth of others? And do you not fear the judgment of God when you are giving testimony to heretics in opposition to the Church, although it is written, "A false witness shall not be unpunished?" [2956] But indeed you are worse than all heretics. For when many, as soon as their error is known, come over to you from them that they may receive the true light of the Church, you assist the errors of those who come, and, obscuring the light of ecclesiastical truth, you heap up the darkness of the heretical night; and although they confess that they are in sins, and have no grace, and therefore come to the Church, you take away from them remission of sins, which is given in baptism, by saying that they are already baptized and have obtained the grace of the Church outside the Church, and you do not perceive that their souls will be required at your hands when the day of judgment shall come, for having denied to the thirsting the drink of the Church, and having been the occasion of death to those that were desirious of living. And, after all this, you are indignant!
24. Consider with what want of judgment you dare to blame those who strive for the truth against falsehood. For who ought more justly to be indignant against the other?--whether he who supports God's enemies, or he who, in opposition to him who supports God's enemies, unites with us on behalf of the truth of the Church? (Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, to Cyprian, Against the Letter of Stephen, AD 256, text taken from the plain text version found here at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Also found, more accessibly, here.)
Eventually Pope Stephen's position won out universally, and all Catholics accepted his practice as the correct one. (When you go against the teaching of the Pope, you're always, by definition, ultimately on the wrong side of history.) Read some of the conservative critics of Pope Francis today, and you will be reminded of the truth of the saying, "There is nothing new under the sun."
The conservative critics of Pope Francis have accused him of abandoning his duty to be the scandalon in the midst of an evil world. But these are Catholics, and so they should remember that Christ appointed St. Peter and his successors to be a beacon of light to lead the Church through the mazes of confusion we encounter in this fallen world. If the Apostolic See speaks out and warns us of errors, should not our first response be to look inside ourselves, to examine our own ideas, to see if we've perhaps become too one-sided, to see if even in our zeal to get things right, we might have missed something? Maybe our construction of what "Catholic teaching" is needs to be adjusted. Would it be so surprising if we all need adjustment now and then by the very power appointed by Christ for his Church to help us make such adjustments?
Therefore the Bishops of the whole world, now singly, now assembled in synod, following the long-established custom of Churches, and the form of the ancient rule, sent word to this Apostolic See of those dangers especially which sprang up in matters of faith, that there the losses of faith might be most effectually repaired where the faith cannot fail.
It would be nice if error always came up on just one side at a time, if we could neatly package it according to just one specific ideology so that we could always fight on just one front. But, unfortunately, things are seldom so simple. When we're fighting against one error or evil, another error or evil comes up to bite us from another direction. We have to be vigilant to watch in all directions so that we don't become like pendulums, always swinging to one extreme or another, and never able to achieve balance. We need justice, but we also need mercy. Those who have gone astray need moral discipline, but they also need compassion and understanding. Our world is full of so much confusion and heartache today. We are so lost, perhaps more than at any other time in human history. At least the pagan pre-Christian culture was, in a sense, young, ready to be confronted with the fresh new gospel. But, in a sense, we are old. Our culture has arisen out of the wreck of a corrupted and abandoned Christendom. We've come to the end of our rope in many ways. We need to be confronted with the clear light of truth, including, and especially, in areas where we don't want to hear it. But we also need that message to be given to us with the compassion of a parent seeking a wayward child, who understands and empathizes with where we have been and the confusion and pain we have fallen into, and who is able to comfort us and be with us as we try, slowly but surely, to make progress little by little in our moral lives. In our age perhaps more than in any other, we need to hear the "truth spoken in love." Perhaps one of the main tasks of the Apostolic See in the present time is to remind us of this, to keep us from trying to choose truth over love or vice versa. Will we listen to what God is saying through his chosen vessel? "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).
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