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Each Catholic and his own Magisterium – Protestantism’s Influence on Modern Catholicism

15 Saturday Aug 2015

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Crisis of Authority

One of the oft repeated jibes made by Catholics against Protestants is that the religion of the latter has no authority. That religion – Protestantism – merely devolves into what each individual church member believes as he interprets his Bible, alone. It is, in the words of the common retort, merely a religion of “each man and his bible.” The Catholic church is superior, according to adherents of this philosophy, precisely because it has a pope and bishops who can authoritatively interpret not only the Bible, but matters of faith and morals, church practice, etc. The Roman Catholic is thereby relieved of much of the uncertainty which is laid at the feet of Protestantism.

Unfortunately, any conscious person with the slightest interest in the subject knows how damaging the Catholic Magisterium actually is to its own denomination. In this earlier post, I reviewed Professor Leslie Woodcock Tentler’s research showing how the Magisterium had destroyed the Church’s sacrament of Confession.

In a still earier writing, I examined Professor Francis Oakley’s discoveries regarding the Catholic Church’s “institutional forgetfulness” regarding the issue of authority for the Roman Church. Professor Oakley showed how modern Roman Catholics are posed an unsolvable riddle when asked the question, who really is in charge?

So how wonderful it is to continue this series of the examination of what modern Catholic thinking is about what the Magisterium ought to be. Professor Gerald Mannion sets the stage here:

“the Magisterium” has become a concept that has generated as much controversy, division, and fear as it has misunderstanding.i

Think of it. The one thing that that differentiated Roman Catholicism from the dark nether world of Protestantism is now a source of “controversy, division and fear”! What is remarkable here is not only the admission itself but that it could be published by a Fellow of the Catholic University of the Louvain!

But what is even more fascinating is how the Protestant concept of the ‘priesthood of all believers” is proposed as the solution:

So it is upon the church entire and not any particular member of it that this gift of the spirit is bestowed.ii

And Mannion cites another notable Roman Catholic scholar, Fr. Francis Sullivan, S.J., in support here:

 Sullivan believes that when assessing the content, worth, and binding authority of any church document that sets down an aspect of the ordinary magisterium, we should ask five particular questions. First, who is the teaching addressed to? Second, what kind of teaching is it? Third, what kind of document is the teaching contained in? Fourth, what particular level of magisterial authority is employed in the teaching? And, fifth, what sort of language is employed in the teaching? iii

No only do Catholics now publicly challenge the idea of an “infallible Magisterium” which has been the bedrock of Catholicism from time immemorial, it now reserves the right to design the criteria by which the Magisterial pronouncements can be judged. To those of who grew up in the Church it’s all fantastic, really!

Each Catholic and his own Magisterium. The new normal and how Catholicism continually changes contrary to itself.

iMannion, Gerald. “A Teaching Church that Learns? Discerning “Authentic” Teaching in Our Times”. The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity.  ed. Michael J. Lacey and Francis Oakley; New York. Oxford University Press, Inc. 2011 Locations 3473. Kindle eBook.

iiIbid., Location 3508

iiiIbid., locations 3544-3553

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George Weigel – Making Heros from Heretics

13 Monday Jul 2015

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It is a source of continuing amazement just how malleable history is for Roman Catholics.  There is apparently no longer even the pretense to objectivity or constancy when representing Catholic history.   Francis Oakley describes this phenomenon as “the empire that the present continues to exert over the past in so much of Catholic institutional thinking” and went on to make this prescient observaton:

Under certain circumstances, moreover, casual forgetfulness (by Catholic institutions) has betrayed a disagreeable tendency to mutate into a proactive politics of oblivion reflective of the Orwellian conclusion that if he who controls the past controls the future, then he who controls the present would be well advised to control the past.1

So it is with great interst that we observe he preeminent Catholic spokesperson of the day, George Weigel reaffirming Oaklley’s thesis in his  recent National Review article    Weigel weighs in on the recent SCOTUS marriage case (Obergefel) by channeling the late Fr. John Courtney Murray.  Weigel captions his article, “What would Father John Courtney Murray say?” and describes the late Fr. Murray as, “one of the intellectual architects of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom and author of what remains today the best Catholic explication of the moral-cultural foundations of the old American democracy, “We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition.””1.  There is no better extant example of historical oblivion than this.

In order to better understand either the tragic or comic nature of Weigel’s prounouncements it will be helpful to review who John Courtney Murray was and how the Roman Catholic Church actually treated him during his lifetime.

A simple Google search will allow the reader to ascertain the bare facts or Murray’s existence. He was born in 1904, was highly educated at an early age, became a Jesuit priest in 1933 and went on to earn advanced degrees in Rome.  And Murray’s area of special interest was how Roman Catholics could make sense of the American political system.  Why did that require the efforts of so great a scholar?  Because the American political system was described as “very erroneous” by Pope Leo XIII. and condemned as heresy.  (Google ‘Heresy of Americanism” and you will find lots of information.)  So how, exactly, were Americans to exist under a political system condemned by the pope?  Enter, John Courtney Murray.

Whle it is beyond our present scope to outline Murray’s thought on the topic, it is necessary to describe how vehemently and vociferously the Roman Catholic Church opposed his work and used every trick possible to thwart Murray in his teaching, speaking and writing.

Americans in the first half of the 20th century were well aware of Catholic doctrine regarding church-state relations.  They were also well aware of the disaster that this doctrine had wreaked on Italy, Spain and other heavily Catholic countries.  Fr. Murray, realizing this, understood that ecumenical cooperation was indeed necessary for Catholic progress in the U.S.  In 1943 he sought permission to address an ecumenical group at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Such permission was denied by the auxiliary bishop for the Catholic archdiocese of New York.  Later speeches given by Murray were shadowed by professors from the Catholic Univeristy in America and from other Catholic seminaries. The end result was that the Vatican working through American Catholic universities had Murray’s books pulled from the shelves and, working through Murray’s Jesuit superiors, had his speeched banned and his further printing contracts cancelled.  Murray was essentially forbidden to speak or write further because of his “heretical” views and became persona non grata to the Catholic world.  Murray was predictably banned from attending the Second Vatican Council

There is one more very interesting twist to the story and that has to do with the rise of America’s first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.  Murray was well known to the Kennedy clan and, if memory serves, was actually sought out as an adviser to the then Senator’s Presidential campaign.  That fact put theVatican in an extremely precarious position. If they persisted in forcing Murray into the Gulag, it would look bad at precisely the time a Catholic was poised to become President of the most powerful country on earth.  Realizing the terrible optics that Rome had created for the American political situation, Cardinal Spellman had to intervene to get Fr. Murray out of his ghetto and on to the Vatican Council – which he did.  However, Murray was not in attendance until the Second Session of Vatican II.  (Oh, to have been a fly on the Vatican wall at that time!)

So I hope the reader will see with me that when Weigel goes on to muse about how Murray might have “counseled the bishops” of America, he is engaging in the worst sort of anachronism.  Murray was not even allowed to “counsel” college students let alone bishops.  When Weigel begins his essay, “What would Father John Courtney Murray say?” he exits the bounds of Catholic propriety by openly contradicting the Magisterium.  And when he refers to Fr. Murray as the “architect” of anything with regard to the Vatican Council II, he ignores how the Vatican did what it could to preclude his very presence.

Maybe some knowledgeable Catholics will stand up and correct Weigel before he draws more discredit to Catholic historical research.

====================================================

1 Oakley, Francis.  History and the Return of the Repressed in Catholic Modernity: The Dilemma Posed by Constance in “The Crisis of Authorityin Catholic Modernity” ed. Lacey, Michael J. and Francis Oakley.  New York: Oxford University Press; 2011.  Kindle Location: 677

1 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420711/obergefell-catholic-church?target=author&tid=900911

The Supreme Court and the Roman Catholic Magisterium

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Catholicism, Christianity, Founding Fathers, SCOTUS

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Last week’s Supreme Court rulings present an excellent example in the damage the Roman Catholic Magisterium can wreak on society. It will be remembered that in on case before the Court (the Burwell,or Obamacare case) the Court held that the word “State” did not really mean “State” but something else. In the second case (the gay “marriage” case) the Court said that the protections of the 14th amendment applied to those who wanted to marry the same sex – even though every State of the Union at time of the adoption of the amendment defined marriage as only occurring between opposite sex couples. How can that happen?

To understand this better, one needs to review American history.

This country was founded squarely on Protestant principles. According to one historian, “80 percent of American Christians in the colonial period…were significantly influenced by John Calvin’s teachings.” And those teaching would have included the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. In addition to proclaiming the infallibility of God’s written Word in providing moral guidance to God’s people, this doctrine elevated the importance of the written word and minimized the importance of outside interpreters. The further influence of this theology emphasized the importance of covenants, or written contracts. The Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians – “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6) – is one example of this line of thinking. This is also why the Supreme Court was given a little thought in the founding era of this country. After all, if judges who had been trained in Calvinism, Covenant theology and Sola Scriptura would surely rely on the written law and not on a “penumbra of rights” or other ephemeral things. When the Congress passed a law that says “States” that is what they meant.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, reacting against Protestantism departed from this ancient Christian teaching. According to the Catholic Catechism, the bishops of the Catholic Church have been given“(t)he task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God”. (CCC para. 85 ff.) And while the catechism says that the Magisterium “is not superior” to the Scriptures the fact remains that the final word belongs to human beings and their subjective interpretation. That is why so much of Catholic theology is built on the teaching of men and not the teaching of the Bible.

So here’s the connection with last week’s SCOTUS opinions.

6 of 9 justices on today’s court are Roman Catholics. Having been raised in a tradition which defers to a human body that gives “authentic interpretation” to the laws, its’ only natural that they relied on their own judgment, rather that the written law. After all, Catholic theological history is littered with contradictory doctrines and topsy-turvy teachings precisely because of this.

So when a court dominated by Roman Catholics says, “States” means something else and they invoke an amendment that was passed by states that all defined marriage a heterosexual union in support of homosexual “marriage”, they are only doing what the Magisterium has been doing for time immemorial. One can think of papal pronouncements against slavery all the while Jews were enslaved in the Papal States. Or one is reminded of the Magisterium’s decree that Councils are superior to popes in 1418 which was reversed in 1870 by a Council that anathematized anyone who believed thusly! Or Pope Leo’s making “official” the teaching of Thomas Aquinas which included that a fetus is not immediately human contrasted by today’s Magiesterial hysteria about life beginning at the “moment of conception”.

The Founding Fathers were suspicious of this behavior so as to even prevent Catholics from voting in this new country. Now that Catholicism has gone mainstream, and that there are 66 million American Roman Catholics, this behavior, although shocking, is entirely understandable. America has found its Magisterium!

How Roman Authority Destroyed Confession

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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crisis

As I continue this exploration of the nature and effects of Roman Catholic authority, it should be remembered that the very idea is sometimes an attraction to those outside of the Catholic church. Protestants who are poorly catechized on this topic find the bold claims of Rome to be a safe harbor in a world of change and conflict. But, as we saw in my previous essay, Rome cannot come clean with regard to the very locus of its own authority. And, worse still, the historical record makes clear that the contradictory nature of Rome’s claims along with its claims to consistency render any assertion to authority moot on Rome’s own grounds.

Now we turn to how the authority of Rome actually harms the church. We will look at how the exercise of authority by Rome has virtually elimiated one of its own sacraments. We begin with what used to be referred to as Confession, later the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Professor Leslie Woodcock Tentler of the Catholic University of America has done extensive primary research in the dioceses of the United States. One of her specialties is inquiry into the practice of sacramental confession in American Catholic parishes. Professor Tentler notes that at the turn of the twentieth century it was common practice for American Roman Catholics to “go to confession” annually. This changed in 1905 when the pope issued a decree that the faithful should receive communion as frequently as daily. Because Catholics have historically tied the reception of the Eucharist with a previous visit to the confessional, the number of confessions heard in American parishes blossomed.

The next momentous event with regard to this sacrament in the United States, at least, was the 1930 promulgaton of the encyclical, Casti Connubii, by Pope Pius XI. Here, the pope sought to address the matter of Christian marriage and what he perceived as the faithful’s ignorance of the matter. The growth in the frequency of confessions mentioned aboved provided a natural means by which to effect his new emphasis.

Why was Casti Connubii so important? Precisely because the pope’s anxieties were well placed: like their European brethren, American Catholics prior to 1930 heard relatively little about birth control, even in the confessional…. Casti Connubii signaled an end to the era of “good faith ignorance.” Confessors were suddenly expected to be proactive: to question married penitents who gave reason for suspicion (or, for a time in the Archdiocese of Chicago, simply because they were married) and to condemn the sin in unyielding terms when it was confessed. i

Professor Tentler notes that this had two deleterious effects on the faithful: it made the practice of going to confession “excruciatingly difficult” for those Catholics practicing contraception and it made devout Catholics into subversives so as to to get past the priest’s demand for a “firm purpose of amendment”.

It further had the consequence of distancing the priests from their local flocks. Only those priests who were well known for toeing the papal line would be tapped for advancement. And those who knowingly allowed for the exercise of a congregant’s conscience in the matter were ostracized.

However, the situation was to change in a few short years with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council.

Several cataclysms erupted the details of which are beyond the scope of this writing but they should be well know to Catholics. The first was the juxtaposition of raised hopes and a heavy handed encyclical. During the Council, the pope had established a committee of devout, lay Catholics to make recommendations on the Church’s practice. There was apparently great hope in the work of this group. However, they were unserriptiously co-opted by bishops and cardinals toward the end of their tenure and their work was made void with the proclamation of Humanae Vitae. Many Roman Catholics felt rightly betrayed by Roman authority.

The second convulsion that occurred simultaneously was the result of the more “pastoral” approach of this new council. There came to be what Professor Tentler calls “a personalist theology of marriage”. This meant that the everyday Catholic could engage her conscience when deciding whether or not to confess her use of contraception to her priest. Previously the confessor was to “enforce” the Church’s teaching but the times. The whipsaw effect of this now-the-priest-is-enforcer vs. now-he’s not simply drove the stake deeper into the heart of this “sacrament”.

There also was the matter, to educated Catholics at least, of how the rhythm method of contraception could be promoted by a church that for centuries had condemned the practice as a matter of grave sin.ii

The amalgamation of these factors and others showed Roman Catholics just how capricious their Magisterium was. Further, their exaggerated claims to constancy in teaching over time having been disproven by the very contradiction that the rhythm method had laid bare the false claims of Rome’s authority.

Professor Tentler, once again,

Church authority, our leaders seem to believe, is credible only if one can point to a history of changeless teaching. One must at all costs maintain the fiction, which everyone knows it to be, that the teaching church is never wrong.iii

Roman Catholic authority with respect to the very sacrament of confession has rendered itself irrelevant. And, “Irrelevant institutions, by definition, lack authority.”iv

Even though exact statistics are unavailable, some today think that as few as ten percent of Roman Catholics in the U.S. go to confession – and then only monthly.v

What we have seen in this brief expose, is that Rome’s authority, far from being a safe harbor of certainty in a world of change is a destructive force. In the matter under examination, we have seen how the contradictory teachings and the contradictory manner of applying those teachings has had the effect of nullifying a sacrament of the church.

What more needs to be said to dissuade those considering joining Rome?

Soli Deo Gloria

iTentler, Leslie Woodcock. “Souls and Bodies: The Birth Control Controversy and the Collapse of Confession” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity. New York. Oxford University Press, Inc. 2011 Pages 293-316. Kindle eBook.

ii See John Noonan’s work on contraception where he gently describes this contradiction as “topsy turvy”.

iii Tentler, ibid. Kindle loc. 6621

iv Ibid. Kindle loc. 6633.

v http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2005/11/the_sin_box.html

Contradictory Authorities – the Heart of the Catholic Problem

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by in Authority, Catholicism

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One of the biggest attractions for newcomers to the Catholic faith is the expansive claims that Rome makes to its own authority. Catholic school children are taught – as I certainly was – that the Pope of Rome is the supreme authority of the church. Further, he has a primacy of jurisdiction and not merely honor and that he is the recipient of this power through an unbroken chain of his predecessors going back to St. Peter. And according to the First Vatican Council that this is the “manifest teaching of sacred scriptures” as the church has “always” believed. Pretty heady stuff to be sure and many unsuspecting converts or potential converts are apt to buy it.

Unfortunately, this is decidedly NOT what the Roman church has always taught or believed. In fact, in order to believe this line of thinking, today’s novice Roman Catholics will unknowingly deny or forget the history of their new denomination. As a more eloquent proof of that statement I recommend an exceptionalCrisis of Authority essay by Dr. Francis Oakley to which we will now turn.

It was Yogi Berra who wryly noted that “the past just isn’t what it used to be” and Professor Francis Oakley aptly uses this aphorism to set the stage for his scholarly analysis of the changeable history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Oakley begins by showing how Rome has rested her understanding of doctrine in a highly variable fashion. His first example is the work of John Henry Cardinal Newman (i.e. Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine) while much venerated in today’s Catholic world, shows an historic ignorance of the very idea of “doctrinal development” from earlier eras. Oakley continues by highlighting how Newman’s second “note”, entitled “Continuity of Principle” is not able to describe the types of “radical discontinuity” that exist in the teaching and application of Catholic doctrine. He then cites an example that was brought to the fore by the noted Catholic scholar, John T. Noonan. Judge Noonan has documented how the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception had moved the rhythm method from being “intrinsically evil” to officially approved. The fact that Catholics today can accommodate such a reversal in teaching is owing to the “empire that the present continues to exert over the past in so much of Catholic institutional thinking.”

But worse still,

Under certain circumstances, moreover, casual forgetfulness has betrayed a disagreeable tendency to mutate into a proactive politics of oblivion reflective of the Orwellian conclusion that if he who controls the past controls the future, then he who controls the present would be well advised to control the past.ii

This brings us to the current state of Catholic “forgetfulness” or “politics of oblivion” that is exercised with regard to the Church’s ultimate locus of authority. Although modern Roman Catholics are most likely familiar with the dictates of Vatican I with regard to Catholic authority, they are probably not aware of how those dictates contradict the Church’s history and Tradition.

Oakley puts the matter thusly:

The instance of radical doctrinal discontinuity in question is the great gulf that yawns between the position the general councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449) affirmed concerning the ultimate locus of authority in the universal church and that staked out in 1870 by Vatican I.iii

The Council of Constance was convened to resolve the problem posed to the Church by multiple popes and multiple papal sees. After the death of Gregory XI, the last of the French popes and the first to restore the papacy to Rome, Urban VI was elected. He proved to be violently unstable and physically abusive to those in opposition to him. So the Roman Cardinals removed themselves to the town of Anagni, declared Urban deposed and elected Clement VII in his stead. Thus began the Great Schism of the church with simultaneous Roman and Avignonese popes. The Council at Pisa (1409) tried to dethrone the descendants of both lines and add a third – or Pisan line – with its election of Alexander V. However, none of the popes stepped down so now the numbers of popes had actually increased! Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, under political pressure from the German King Sigismund of Germany and the cardinals, convoked the Council of Constance on November 5, 1414 to resolve the schism.

The Council was widely attended described by our author as “one of the most imposing of all medieval representative assemblies.” In short, nobody of that day would have cause to doubt the efficacy and authority of that gathering. In April of the following year, the Council published its famous decree, Haec sanctus synodus. That decree stated that the Council was a legitimate council which derived its authority directly from Christ. Furthermore, ALL Christians including the pope, were subject to it and future councils under pain of punishment. Acting on its generally accepted authority, the Council quickly deposed all three popes – Gregory XII (Roman), John XXIII (Pisan), Benedict XIII (Avignon) – and elected a fourth, Martin V of the Colonna family.

One interesting fact that will have a big impact on our discussion is that the last Roman pope, Gregory XII, as part of his agreement to abdicate, requested that he be allowed to end and reconvene the council by his authority. He felt it was improper for him to step down during a council convened by another pope. The council acquiesced and on July 4, 1415 the bull of convocation was read aloud, and Gregory resigned the papacy. Martin V was made the Pope of Rome by the Council. Every pope from that day to this is descended not from Peter, but from the pope appointed by this council.

Professor Oakley notes that the scholarship dealing with the complexities of the doctrine of conciliarism has blossomed greatly in the last century. But there appear to be three issues with regard to the contrast of Vatican I with Constance.

The first issue is the very schism itself.

The question it seems, is would a Roman Catholic in 1378, be able to distinguish between the Roman pontiff – Urban VI – and the newly elected pontiff – Clement VII? Oakley maintains that even those “intimately involved in the whole sorry chain of events” would be “in a state of “invincible ignorance” about which…was the true pope.”

The historical evidence, certainly, does not permit one simply to insist on the exclusive legitimacy of Urban’s title to the papacy (and, therefore, the legitimacy of his successors in the Roman line). If that claim is now enshrined in the current official listing of popes, it should be recognized that it has been advanced quite explicitly on theological or canonistic rather than historical grounds.iv

If the doctrine decreed by Vatican I was evidence of Divine effort, the teaching of Scriptures and of a supreme constancy, how would the schism have occurred at all?

The second issue has to do with the  claim that Constance was not a legitimate council until convened by Gregory.

That claim would tend to negate the force of Haec Sanctus synodus whereby Gregory agreed to abdicate. But Oakley points out that Gregory’s convocation was merely a polite accommodation by the Fathers of the Council in order to smooth the transition to the next pope. It was not a formality that could be confused with doctrine of any sort. Our author cites as further evidence the fact that the Council Fathers had received ambassadors from both Gregory XII and his rival, Benedict XIII as “official papal delegates” thereby displaying their lack of favoritism for Gregory. But more damning than all of that is the fact that today’s popes are descended not from the last “Roman pope” – Gregory XII – but from Martin V who was elected by the Council. What that means is that the claim of Vatican I to an “unbroken succession” from Peter is nonsense.

The third issue that presents itself is that of “conciliar theory itself”.

The high papalists have claimed that the theory was “heterodox in its origins and rapid in its demise” but history has not been kind to that position. Here Oakley turns to the work of Brian Tierney of Cornell University. Tierney showed that the actions of Constance had deep roots in the ancient history of the church, the canon law and from a “vast ocean of commentary” in the “twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.” And that it was not until quite recently – with the resurgence of the new high papalism – that conciliar theory has had any shadow cast on it at all.

The culmination of all this effort is put quite nicely by Professor Oakley:

I concluded, as a result, that we were confronted with an instance in which two legitimate ecumenical councils of the Latin church were in contradiction on a doctrinal issue concerning the very locus of ultimate authority in the church.v

The Nature of the Dilemma

So today’s Roman Catholic is faced with an unresolvable riddle. If the pronouncements of Vatican I are true – that the pope is the ultimate authority beyond which there is no other – then how to explain the fact that the power he assumes is derived from a council? If this “manifest teaching” with the church has “always” held wasn’t held from the 15th century to the 19th, how can we know which is the correct version? And attempting to rely on some sort of “development” theory falls short due to the law of non-contradiction and the nature of the understanding of Catholic doctrine at the time.

Of course, if the Roman Catholic Church cannot come to terms with the true source of its ultimate authority, how can it be trusted to speak authoritatively about anything? And how can it claim for itself any teaching authority when it so blithely ignores or misrepresents history? And how can the pope be trusted to proclaim his own “primacy” it is not truly “manifest” in the Scriptures or historically taught by the Church? How can today’s Catholic’s be under the anathema of believing that no one can go above the pope’s authority, when the very pope who declared the anathema has gotten his authority to do so from a Council?

It is not an easy problem but one that is entirely of Rome’s own making. She needs to come clean and confess that her claims do not stand the test of time and do in fact, change. And until she does, anyone who believes her claims to authority is a willing accomplice the “politics of oblivion”.

iOakley, Francis. “History and the Return of the Repressed in Catholic Modernity: The Dilemma Posed by Constance”. The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity. New York. Oxford University Press, Inc. 2011 Pages 29-56. Kindle eBook.

iiIbid., page 32.

iiiIbid., page 33.

ivIbid., page 40.

vIbid., page 47

A Book Review: Why Catholicism Matters by William Donohue

07 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in Religious Freedom, Roman Catholicism, William Donohue

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Whenever you see Bill Donohue’s name you can be sure that whatever follows is a vigorous defense of Roman Catholicism –  and his new work, “Why Catholicism Matters” is true to form.   But Catholics would be ill-advised to use Donohue’s presentation as part of their own defense simply because it is so poor.  Donohue lets his Catholic friends down by engaging in what can only be described as intellectual sleight-of-hand and by misrepresenting the history and teachings of his denomination in ways that would make any honest scholar blush.

Donohue begins his work by crediting the Catholic Church with everything from creating the university, art, architecture and music.  He says that “were it not for several popes who intervened against those who sought to deny academic freedom, the course of learning in the time to come would have been stifled.” (Page 5)  But what he is apparently unaware of is that these universities effectively replaced the local bishops as the source of doctrine – and the concept of the bishop is central to Catholicism.    But a true scholar has this to say of the effect of the creation of the university upon society and the Church:

“In the thirteenth century the schoolman replaced the bishop and the abbot as the typical exponent of doctrine…What had happened was that the masters had emerged alongside the bishops and the abbots as formative influences in the life of the church.  As a source of doctrine, they had indeed superseded them.”  (Professor Colin Ferguson, “The Papal Monarchy:  The Western Church from 1050 to 1250”; Oxford, 1989.  p. 507)

So Donohue is unwilling or unable to interact with this fact – that the university whose creation he credits to the Church of Rome became an extra-ecclesial body which replaced the bishops as a source of doctrine.  Given Rome’s doctrine of the Magisterium this would seem then to be not such a good thing!

And what, exactly, was taught in these universities?  According to Donohue, “Students learned from Aristotle and Cicero, drawing on their philosophical genius as bedrock for Christian thought.” (p. 5).   So Donohue’s idea of the Catholic contribution to education is that Rome built the universities, not on Christian thinkers or the teachings of Christ, but on two pagans who never even heard of Jesus Christ.
Today’s leading scholar of the Reformation, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch shows how deadly this conflation of paganism and Christianity actually is as it was applied as dogma by the Catholic Church:

“From the fourteenth century, most philosophers and theologians, particularly in Northern Europe, did not in fact believe this [i.e. the doctrine of transubstantiation]  They were nominalists who rejected Aristotle’s categories…it [transubstantiation] ought not be approached through the Thomist paths of reason, but most be accepted as  a matter of faith…Those who remained in the Roman obedience generally did this; but in sixteenth-century Europe, thousands of Protestants were burnt at the stake for denying an idea of Aristotle, who had never heard of Jesus Christ.”  (Diarmaid MacCulloch.  “The Reformation.”  Penguin Books, New York; 2003.  p. 26)

But Donohue’s admiration for both Aristotle and Aquinas puts him in a very difficult spot later in his book.  On page 84 he makes this unsupportable declaration: “The Catholic Church has never had to switch gears; it has never been anything but pro-life.”  (And by pro-life he means the belief that life begins at conception.)  But neither Aristotle nor Aquinas was pro-life in that sense.  Aristotle taught a doctrine of “delayed ensoulment” and Aquinas, because he was an Aristotelian, taught a similar doctrine.   Add to this the fact that as a “Doctor of the Church” the works of Aquinas have been declared free from defect or error by Rome.  Does Mr. Donohue have the gravitas to supplant those credentials or is he just wrong?

In addition to these rather egregious philosophical and theological errors, Mr. Donohue makes an excessive number of historical mistakes such that they cannot all be dealt with here.  The most offensive is his attempt to piggy-back Catholicism on the backs of America’s founding when this country was clearly an escape from the Catholic totalitarian states of Europe.  Where he does note that less than 1% of the colonists at the time of our founding were Roman Catholics he fails to deal with the fact that America’s Founders were opposed to Catholicism precisely because it historically led to despotism and not the republican principles the Founders espoused.

Dr. Brion McLanahan documents the sentiments of the Founders this way:

“Amos Singletary said in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention that he was troubled that “there was no provision that men in power should have any religion; and though he hoped to see Christians, yet by the Constitution, a Papist, or an Infidel, was as eligible as they . . . in this instance, we were giving great power to we know not whom.”  (The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution. Regnery Publishing, 2012.  Kindle Location 2700-2703)

The Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Calvinist so the idea that Roman Catholicism had a role in America’s founding is simply untenable.

But the error that is by far the most blatant and deserves to be discredited in the most forceful terms is Donohue’s treatment of Nazism.

Mr. Donohue takes credit for the Catholic Church in the verdicts rendered at the Nuremberg trial of the Nazis:  “Thus the Catholic natural law tradition was vindicated.” (p. 50).  What Donohue obfuscates or ignores was that the Nazis WERE Catholics.  Hitler himself came from Catholic parents and was baptized and confirmed in the Roman communion.  And, likewise his most influential lieutenants!  Later in the text, Donohue goes completely off the reservation when he describes Hitler as an “atheist”.  Apparently it’s an inconvenient truth that once someone is baptized into the Catholic faith, unless they make a specific request outlined in the Canon Law to be witnessed by two deacons, they are forever a Catholic.  Hitler was a Catholic – period.

But more damning for Mr. Donohue and his cause is the influence that Catholicism had on Hitler and the Nazis.  The question has to be asked, where did the Nazis get the idea to put Jews in “ghettos” and concentration camps?  And the only answer is that they got that idea from the Roman Catholic Church.  We now know with absolute certainty that the Church of Rome imprisoned Jews in ghettos throughout the Papal States for 700 years!  That is exactly where Hitler got the idea for the camps!  And the follow-on question, which is equally as tantalizing – is why were ALL the Nazi death camps in Poland the only European country not touched by the Reformation and whose population is entirely Catholic??

And Donohue’s abuse of the record with regard to Nazism leads inevitably to his errant, one-sided defense of Pius XII.  What must always be kept in mind in this discussion is that Pius XII (as Eugenio Pacelli) negotiated the Reichskonkordat with the Nazi’s that gave them their initial prestige.  This was a Catholic-to-Catholic negotiation because Pacelli conducted his negotiations with Franz von Papen who Hitler’s biographer, Ian Kershaw described as “an urbane and well­connected member of the Catholic nobility.” (Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: a biography. London:  W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 2008.  P. 230.  The effect of this concordat was to silence the German episcopacy and forbid it to publicly comment on politics.  So Pacelli (later Pius XII) was the one who lent the prestige of the Vatican to the young Nazis which propelled them to power. To suggest that as pope, Pius would go back on his previous commitments leads to the conclusion that he was not a man of his word, or worse.

A couple of the more humorous errors you can look for in this book are that Gregory of Nyssa was the pope (he was not) and that Galileo was an “astrologer”.   (That last one provided a much needed laugh for which I am grateful!)

If Catholicism needs a defense, this is not it.  And if Catholicism needs a defender Donohue is not him.  If you are interested in defending the Catholic Church, I beg you not to use any information in this book.  You will only serve to embarrass yourself and hurt the cause.

To God alone be the glory!