And you can take it as read that it is now on the official “banned” list, together with all the heretical opinions therein.
As I commented earlier on this blog, since Fr Peter Dresser is a priest of the Diocese of Bathurst, his bishop, Patrick Dougherty, is the one who is responsible for any disciplinary measures. It seems to me that he has done this admirably in the following statement:
Media Release – 10th November 2008
An unpublished book written by Father Peter Dresser, Parish Priest of Coonamble in the Diocese of Bathurst, has been receiving a certain distribution and publicity.
With regard to the Divinity of Jesus, the Virginity of Mary and the Resurrection of Jesus, Father Dresser has re-affirmed to me, and intends to endorse by a public statement, his adherence to these and to all the teaching of the Catholic Church. In the book, however, such foundational truths of our Christian Catholic Faith were not affirmed: readers could rightly conclude that some were denied and that the views expressed about them were heretical.
The watering down or emptying out of Christian teaching is not the path towards rendering Catholic doctrine more deeply known by people of faith or acceptable to sceptical people.
Whatever Father Dresser’s stated good intentions and motives, stances taken in this book with regard to Jesus Christ and Mary are not acceptable: they are alien to Christian authenticity and to the fulfillment of the teaching mission of priests.
+ Patrick Dougherty
Bishop of Bathurst
The important things to note are:
1) “With regard to the Divinity of Jesus, the Virginity of Mary and the Resurrection of Jesus”, Fr Peter has “re-affirmed” to his Bishop, “and intends to endorse by a public statement his adherence to these [doctrines] and to all the teaching of the Catholic Church”.
Is this “public statement” the one issued yesterday? In which case, it is fair to say that one could hope more specific recantation of the specific errors in his published writing and radio interview.
2) “Whatever Father Dresser’s stated good intentions and motives”, the “stances taken in [his] book with regard to Jesus Christ and Mary are not acceptable: they are alien to Christian authenticity and to the fulfillment of the teaching mission of priests.”
Spot on, your Lordship. By publishing this book, Fr Dresser has specifically abused his priestly “teaching mission”.
3) “Readers could rightly conclude that [in this book] some [foundational truths of our Christian Catholic Faith] were denied and that the views expressed about them were heretical.”
That seems a fair judgement. Although I don’t know what the “could” means. “Would” would be more to the point.
4) And finally: “The watering down or emptying out of Christian teaching is not the path towards rendering Catholic doctrine more deeply known by people of faith or acceptable to sceptical people.”
Which is just what Pope Benedict said in his General Audience last Wednesday. Hint to theologians: Your task is to explicate and clarify the doctrines and dogmas of the Faith, not to “go beyond doctrine and dogma” (vis a vis the Starship Enterprise) to some point of your own fantasy.
To Dissenting Priests
“It is your duty to fix the lines (of doctrine) clearly in your minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defense of those opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing in your ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of the other.”
–from Christian Apologetics by C.S. Lewis, Easter 1945.
(Reprinted in God in the Dock pp. 89-90)
Spot on, Sharon!
Your problem, David, is that you assume Benedict has superior access to “Truth” to everyone else on the face of the planet. Many are coming to doubt that today. These man are as much driven by ego (more a factor with JPII than Benedict I would submit) and their pains and anxieties as all the rest of humankind. They are often trying to bolster the institution (trying to maintain its place of prestige in the world) as “seeking ultimate truth”.
I repeat again this sycophantic version of Catholicism that you seem to propose in the long run does not get people to heaven. It satisfies a temporal emotional need for certitude and security. It is NOT what faith and Catholicism is ultimately all about.
Blessings, Brian Coyne
Thank you for diagnosing “my problem”, Brian. My psychologist has trying to figure that one out for years without success.
Thanks too for your blessings.
All that considered, I simply point to the Bishop of Rome as the most authoritative voice within the Catholic Church today. I would challenge even you to suggest a more authoritative voice.
However, anyone who reads the scriptures in the Faith of the Church (yea, verily, even the most humble layman or laywoman) – or, for that matter, simply in GOOD faith – can see that three things are evident:
1) the Gospels unanimously bear witness to both the visible and bodily appearance of the Risen Jesus AND to the empty tomb (unless we discount the latter witness as unreliable because witnessed to by mere women rather than, for eg., a pope)
2) that the Scriptures themselves witness to the apostolic awareness that Jesus was God (long before the Council of Nicea) – an awareness that is intimately linked to the encounter with the risen Jesus.
3) that Matthew and Luke, at least, both regarded the birth of Jesus as a VIRGIN birth, and not the product of sexual relations with Joseph or any other man (again, long before the Council of Nicea).
I don’t need the Pope to tell me this. I can read it for myself in the scriptures. The Pope, however, simply confirms the faith which the Church has always held on this matter. As if it needed confirming…
And as for this being a “sycophantic version of Catholicism”, I could find for you the most anti-Catholic, anti-Roman, anti-Papal Protestant, and he would tell you the same:
Jesus is God. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He bodily rose from the grave.
And, oddly enough, those three things ARE exactly what faith and Catholicism “is ultimately all about”.
David,
I appreciate your perspective about the authority of the Pope. I was brought up on all those matters and they are deeply embedded in my skull. If you have been following the discussions on Catholica, which I suspect you haven’t, there is another view emerging. It might help explain why so many, particularly in the Western world, have become disenchanted with this sycophantic version of Catholicism that elevates the Pope over the Body of Christ. Yes, certainly the Church (the entire body of the faithful) might lay some claim to Christ being with us until the end of time — even perhaps some claim to infallibility. This “game” of elevating our pontiffs to the point where they are lauded as demigods or Gods is not only unfair to them, it is unfair to the Body of Christ and to humanity at large. Whose commandment or teaching is it, precisely, that God speaks exclusively only through the Roman Pontiff? When was that neat innovation introduced into the corpus of Catholic teaching, precisely?
When are we going to wake up as to why so many have walked away? When there is only a rump of 5% still listening? When Hell freezes over? Or when we are all standing before Almighty God in judgment, including a few of these Popes who “had all the answers”, and we are asked what level of responsibility we would like to shoulder for driving so many out of the institution?
Brian Coyne
http://www.catholica.com.au
Perhaps I should have added…
Whose commandment or teaching is it, precisely, that God speaks exclusively only through the Roman Pontiff? When was that neat innovation introduced into the corpus of Catholic teaching, precisely — before or after Cardinal Newman? LOL
Who is this fool?
The argument is about the very fundamentals of belief – in Our Lord’s true Divinity, Birth from the Virgin, and physical Resurrection (without which our Faith would be in vain, as the Apostle candidly admits) – and it is used as an attempt to have a go at the poor Pope.
I think it’s clear who’s got psychological problems.
I do wish ageing dissenters would stop bleating.
His perversion of the Catholic Faith is anathema.
But as to this subsidiary point so unpleasantly raised:
Everyone knows that the role of the Pope is to confirm his brethren in the faith, lest it be utterly lost by a facile accommodation to the world (look at the Anglican mess for a sad example of what Popelessness entails).
If one doesn’t believe in the Petrine Ministry (as opposed to, say, having doubts about it but holding on), in conscience then one should not remain Catholic, as in such a case the abhorrent sinfulness of going along with what would appear so false and blasphemous an organization, with such therefore wrongful and horrific evil effects down the ages, would impel one to become a modernistic Protestant (since I cannot see the person concerned liking Orthodoxy much either).
If honesty is called for – go and be honest, but don’t pervert Catholicism, especially by superciliously naming oneself a member of some pathetically victim-complex-afflicted pseudo-elite a la the Gnostics of old.
Shame!
How aCatholic indeed!
Repent and have the peace of a good conscience, not the bitterness that is the hallmark of all such “liberals”.
Oh, please excuse my own intemperateness in the last post – I can get very worked up, and write more rudely than I should.
Spot on David. Anyone paying attention to the lectionary at this timne of year could not fail to note that the opening verses of 1 Thessalonians, the oldest writing in the New Testament (ca. 50AD),clearly assume a trinitarian and incarnational faith.
Well, if you’re looking for an anti-Catholic, anti-Roman, anti-Papal Protestant, perhaps I’ll do until a better one comes along, which ain’t likely on this blog, so yes, I’ll tell you the same.
These are men with whom I profoundly disagree, now as a Lutheran, then as a Catholic.
That said, perhaps truth would be better defended than to refuse to those who, whether they do or not aside, would uphold the same truths as you, the intellectual honesty and even courtesy of addressing their positions substantively that you extend to any and all comers in your “ecumenism” and “dialogue”, and perhaps find a basis of refutation other than the age and supposed affect of bitterness and victim complex of their proponents.
You (the two sides) see each other in exactly the same way: attaching yourself to one point in the community of faith’s understanding and seeking to impose it on all other points to which you deny a place in the community.
And that said, I put back on the hat with which I came here, not Lutheran, not Catholic, ex-Catholic. If you’re looking for a sad example of a mess created by facile accomodation to the world, there is no better one than this, in which one post-conciliar un-Catholic version of Catholicism contends with another for the title of a religion which neither affirms and both stomp into the dustbin of history.
I repeat again this sycophantic version of Catholicism that you seem to propose in the long run does not get people to heaven.
It doesn’t? How can you possibly know this, Brian?
It satisfies a temporal emotional need for certitude and security.
The Secularist Heresy that “uncertainty” is somehow a moral good is not rational.
Please provide evidence that it satisfies a temporal emotional need for certitude and security.
I await with bated breath, because I assure you, the certainty I have that:
1. God exists
2. Jesus is God and Man
3. The Catholic Church is the Church he founded
as well as other issues such as abortion being in all cases immoral, provide me with at least as many opportunities for feeling miserable as they do for feeling “secure.”
The Secular Heresy that “uncertainty” is some kind of virtue is merely a ruse. A person can yammer on to his heart’s content about being “uncertain” about anything which the Judeo-Christian tradition has set forth as morally binding, while still being able to feel good about himself that he is not “evil,” merely “uncertain.” Interestingly enough, he is always pretty damn certain about the New Morality (eg divorce, contraception, abortion, ESCR, gay marriage etc are all “good.”)
It is NOT what faith and Catholicism is ultimately all about.
Well, what is it all about, if not the Trinity?
I meant, “Please provide evidence that [David’s sycophantic version of Catholicism] satisfies a temporal emotional need for certitude and security.”
There’s about 86% evidence of the baptised across the face of the Western world, Louise. What further proof do you want? Most people simply don’t believe it anymore. What do you want — for 95% of them to walk out the door, or 99%?
In the alternative: where is your “proof” that David’s version — which I presume fairly well equates to Benedict’s version — guarantees “salvation” (or however you define the end objective of our religious/spiritual quest)?
Cheers, Brian Coyne
I do so love the heirs of the spirit of V II. In 1967 we were told to get with the times or the Church would become irrelavent. Well we got with the times and the Church has indeed become irrelavent. Yet now according to Brian it is the sycophantic church which has led to this falling away of the faithful. He reminds me of my teaching colleagues who unceasingly cry out that it is all the conservatives fault that schools are failing even though the progressives have been in charge for the last 30 years. When oh when will the progressives who took over the Church in the 70’s and 80’s finally admit responsibility for the destruction of the faith instead of blaming all their faults on others.
Damn if this blog doesn’t bring them right out the woodwork. First Wolsey, then (not so) Innocent III. Youda thunk after all that with the whole Philip/Otto thing in the HRE (church, empire, what the hell), the bloody Albigensians, getting Langton on the chair in Canterbury (little blowback there with Henry VII, huh), the Fourth Crusade, and the Fourth Lateran Council, a guy would take a well deserved “from his labours rest”.
Then again, can’t keep the author of De sacro altaris mysterio down — you know the bleeders are wearing BLUE in Advent here and there now?
Hell Lothario, the progressives took over the church in the 70s and 80s (I assume you mean the 1970s and 1980s)? Holy crap, what a comedown from when a pope, say yourself, could say that by divine institution a pope rules everyone and everything everywhere in every time.
I suspect the “progressives” will admit the destruction of the faith was all their fault about the same time when, cross town, the mitre and crosier crowd admits they haven’t taught the faith since the 1970s and 1980s either.
Henry VII, sorry pal, but you know how it is when you get on a good rant.
Henry VIII, Judas at Best Buy, where is that “I know what you mean” function in Vista anyway? No wonder everyone grumbles about Vista.
And, oddly enough, those three things ARE exactly what faith and Catholicism “is ultimately all about”.
Yepper David. They were when I became Catholic in 1997.
They still are.
And they are not the personal property of Benedict or any pope, they are the Truth that has been held from apostolic times on.
I’m very inspired by the young Catholic families here in the US that I’ve come to know since my conversion. From the dustbin of history given to them by their boomer parents they are resurrecting traditional Catholic devotions and practices, such as Perpetual Adoration, etc. God bless ’em!
Hey PE, I hear Vista is no longer Vista — too many bugs (yikes, that’s going to resurrect “The Bugman for PE) — they’re going back to “Microsoft” — or am I thinking about something else ??
Brian,
I didn’t say that “that God speaks exclusively only through the Roman Pontiff”.
Christ is in fact the highest authority in the Church – and indeed the highest HUMAN authority – and yet we need authentic sources to hear the voice of Christ.
Since I am a Lutheran in Communion with the Bishop of Rome, that means that for me, as for any Lutheran or Catholic, the primary place in which Christ speaks is in his word, the Holy Scriptures.
Thus, the Word of God – the Holy Scriptures – is the highest authority in the Church, but as Newman said, a book cannot speak for itself. The bible, like the word of Christ himself, must be spoken through human voices in order to be heard by human ears and received in human hearts.
Thus the question arises: who speaks for the the Word of God (Christ the Logos). The answer is: those he has authorised to speak for him, those of whom he said “He who hears you hears me” (Luke 10:6 from memory?).
For Catholics, that means primarily the bishops. And among the bishops, the first among equals, charged with the preservation of the unity of the faith for the universal Church, is the Bishop of Rome.
There is thus nothing “sycophanitic” about heeding the bishop of Rome’s teaching.
You cannot put up, in opposition to the authority of the Holy Father, the “voice of the Church”, since many millions of the Church do not speak with one voice. Indeed, we must “listen to the Church”, but that throws us back upon the need to listen to those who are authorised (by Christ) to speak in her name, and I am afraid that leads us back to the bishops and the Pope.
Brian: There’s about 86% evidence of the baptised across the face of the Western world, Louise. What further proof do you want? Most people simply don’t believe it anymore. What do you want — for 95% of them to walk out the door, or 99%?
Schütz: You are a product of your times, Brian. You have assumed the first premise of the theory of democracy that power in numbers gives the majority moral authority and access to objective truth. This is simply not so.
Moreover, consider this: If I went to a village of Gooniwigs in darkest Munjabo, and baptised them all without giving them any catechisation whatsoever, and them asked them gave them all type writers, I think it would be reasonable to expect that they would take longer to come up with the Catechism of the Catholic Church than a room full of monkeys would take to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.
My point is, that due to almost a half century of woeful catechisation and preaching, it should not be surprising to us to find that upwards of %80 baptised Catholics haven’t the faintest idea about the fundamentals of the Catholic faith.
Most, however, will have gathered this much: Jesus is God, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and he rose from the dead.
Brian: In the alternative: where is your “proof” that David’s version — which I presume fairly well equates to Benedict’s version — guarantees “salvation” (or however you define the end objective of our religious/spiritual quest)?
Schütz: There is of course no “proof”, Brian. But consider something with which I am sure you will agree. “Salvation” – in any religious or spiritual meaning of the term – cannot be divorced from “truth”. Jesus promised that when we “know the truth” “the truth will set you free”. That is sound. Even modern psychology, which would probably share with you a skepticism about my “problem” (a pathological need for certainty) would agree that “salvation” only comes through true knowledge of yourself and of your situation in life. Spiritual masters have always taught us to know “the true self” in order to find salvation.
So, the Truth will lead to Salvation, no?
The next question is, who can I reliably rely upon to lead me to truth? Myself? That’s the modern answer. As a Christian, however, we would unanimously say “Christ”, for he is, as he said, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life”.
The final question which must be answered then is: How does Christ speak to me? Where can I be assured that I can hear the authentic voice of Christ?
For me the answer is a no-brainer: in the Catholic Church, where Christ’s teaching has been preserved in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church as reliably interpreted by those he authorised to be his apostles and their successors.
Your alternative is some sort of appeal to democracy.
Nope. I don’t buy it.
No, it’s some sort of appeal to community, same as yours.
Except you appeal to a community which by your own numbers 80% haven’t a frigging clue due to the near total abdication of their occupiers of the duties of the office to which you appeal.
So maybe Brian’s deserves a second look.
Except you appeal to a community which by your own numbers 80% haven’t a frigging clue due to the near total abdication of their occupiers of the duties of the office to which you appeal.
Horses arse, says me. Last statistics I saw were that the greying heads of the Call to Action crowd were lamenting that their children weren’t interested in attending Mass. I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!!
Those of us in the remnant (although in the U.S. it’s still a decent sized remnant) who attend Mass weekly or even daily have a pretty good idea of why we do.
Tip of the hat to Brian, but I think he’d make a great Episcopalian.
And that was my point – rather than in pride wishing the Church to conform herself to you, why not move into the sort of ecclesiastical polity that actually does articulate your own views, so that you can be a member of the denomination that is in consonance with your conscientious beliefs?
I would have thought that Coyne would make a fine Anglican.
Obviously I wouldn’t advise people to leave as if they ought ‘seek the truth’ elsewhere, for I believe the Catholic Church to teach the truth in line with her mission received from Our Lord, but IF in conscience one cannot believe in nor assent to the faith proposed by her, and indeed one believes that the faith proposed by her is radically defective and productive of great harm in the world, then logically one should join one’s real co-religionists elsewhere.
David,
I have to confess that as a “cradle Catholic” it is interesting reading the comments of recent converts like yourself and Louise. Evidently, from what you write and how you have named your blog, the big appeal of Catholicism is this belief — or is it a hope? — that there is somewhere in this world where “Truth” is defined Absolutely. The Pope is IT! All else hinges around that. As I wrote on Catholica in recent days (not in relation to you but in relation to the bigger picture of the minority and declining viewpoint you would seem to represent) “for some this belief that the Pope can make no mistakes is now a Credal position and article of faith held at a higher level than the Creed we say at Mass itself’).
My position might only be thought of as “some sort of appeal to democracy” in the same sense that Cardinal Newman’s arguments in the extended series of essays he wrote that eventually formed the published collection “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” might be thought of as “some sort of appeal to democracy”.
For an extended exploration of what I see as an almost life and death struggle going on within Catholicism now as to “where truth resides, who defines what it is, and differing paradigmatic understandings of the role of the Pope” I’d invite you to consider the arguments I laid out in a recent post on Catholica at: http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/forum_entry.php?id=18386. (You might note that essentially what we are discussing here is a continuing discussion on the question I posed to you some time ago. I really am interested in the hows and whys a man like yourself came to Roman Catholicism and you really do seem to believe that the highest credal position is this sense of “the pope has to be right at all costs. He is my guarantee of salvation.” I do not believe that. I believe, if anything is some “guarantee” of my salvation this side of death it is “the Corpus Christi — the Body of Christ — or The Church [meaning the pope and ALL its members].”)
Some call this new phenomenon of “elevating the importance and inerrancy of the Pope” above the propositions of the Creed — ie “I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, etc.” — creeping infallibility. Newman so perceptively saw through all this and that is why he opposed so strongly all the arguments from the UltraMontanists leading up to Vatican I so vehemently. In the end a compromise resolution was adopted at Vatican I but the way some people carry on you would hardly believe today Cardinal Newman had advanced any arguments whatsoever and you could be forgiven for believing that the position adopted at Vatican I was the position of the most ultra-UltraMontanists.
I submit, in all seriousness, David, that your blog is misnamed, or should I say, I actually love the name of your blog and I sincerely believe we ought all do precisely what those words invite us to do “to think with the Church”. But thinking with the Pope is not necessarily the same thing as “thinking with the Church”. Certainly the Pope might think they are both the same thing but self-evidently from the statistics many, in fact most, have lost faith in this new post-Vatican I “article of faith”. As I argued in the post I have provided a link to above: in my argument the Pope is still important, even primal. He’s just not “the only one holding the Royal Telephone”. He’s the one who helps (not Brian Coyne or David Shütz but the entire corpus of the Church) as “servant of the servants of the people of God” discern what God is saying to us all. It’s a different understanding of what “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” means. It’s a different understanding of what St Ignatius was driving at.
Cheers, Brian
If you have been following the discussions on Catholica, which I suspect you haven’t, there is another view emerging.
Right, because if you haven’t been reading Catholica, Mr Schutz, you don’t have the REAL version of Catholicism.
It seems Brian is not so opposed to a supreme pontif as he claims. His only problem is that nobody takes “Pope Brian I” very seriously.
Peter,
it really is boring and childish. I do not claim to have all the answers or even any answers for others outside myself. I do have many core things I believe in and they are largely grounded in Catholic thinking and theology. I do not believe the pope, or the temporal institution is “above error” though in all things. I’m a searcher, like many others — and particularly on those matters whwere I believe many baptised Catholics today are no longer convinced by “the party line” issuing from Rome Central. I do believe “truth” ultimately resides with “the Body of Christ — the entire insitution in communion and discussion” not any particular individual who believes they alone have “the royal telephone” or whom a minority or small choir of conservative supporters believe have some sort of exclusive insight into God’s mind.
Where do you stand? Do you believe God speaks exclusively and only through the Pope and his immediate advisers and supporters? Or do you believe it is more likely God is speaking through all of his Creation? Simple enough question. What’s your answer?
Cheers, Brian
Brian, I think you were answering a question I did not ask. For one thing, I didn’t ask for “proof” of anything.
You said to David:
I repeat again this sycophantic version of Catholicism that you seem to propose in the long run does not get people to heaven.
I asked, how can you possibly know that is the case?
I’m not sure what your reply was actually addressing, in fact.
To reiterate then, if even the doctrine of the Trinity is up for grabs, what is Catholicism all about?
I do not claim to have all the answers or even any answers for others outside myself.
Yes you do. Your view, which you (naturally enough) believe is the correct one, is what you want us all to believe. The views you do have are the ones you want for me and everone else. Why you can’t say so is beyond me. GK Chesterton divided the world into two groups of people: those who are dogmatic and know it; those who are dogmatic and don’t know it. David and I and others fall into the first category, you and others fall into the second.
I do not believe the pope, or the temporal institution is “above error” though in all things.
Neither do I. Nor does the Church. Do you know what the doctrine of papal infallibility teaches?
I’m a searcher, like many others
And do you ever find what you are looking for? Do you ever find the truth and then accept it or do you just keep searching because you don’t like what you’ve found? I’m a finder, myself.
and particularly on those matters whwere I believe many baptised Catholics today are no longer convinced by “the party line” issuing from Rome Central.
Lord, preserve us from Baby Boomerism.
I do believe “truth” ultimately resides with “the Body of Christ — the entire insitution in communion and discussion” not any particular individual who believes they alone have “the royal telephone” or whom a minority or small choir of conservative supporters believe have some sort of exclusive insight into God’s mind.
This is such a bad caricature of the Church’s teaching on authority I can’t be bothered addressing it.
Brian: I have to confess that as a “cradle Catholic” it is interesting reading the comments of recent converts like yourself and Louise.
Is Louise a convert? I didn’t know. She seems to me like many of the faithful young cradle Catholic mums-of-five-plus-kids I know. Strong, faithful, spunky (if one can use that word still today), and committed. A good stick, as I like to say of many of my friends.
I note a comment by one great convert of our age, Fr Richard John Neuhaus, in connection with another great convert, Cardinal Avery Dulles, in his recent column about “younger Catholics and converts to the faith” whose “experience of Catholicism is not that of being adrift but of coming into safe harbor, not that of loss but of discovery.” And hence we tend to be somewhat more enthusiastic about the old girl we know as the Catholic Church.
As for comparing yourself and your ideas to those of Cardinal Newman (ANOTHER convert, shock horror!), you have tickets on yourself. Note that his essay was about “consulting the Faithful”, not the UNfaithful.
As for where Truth resides, one may learn a lot from that great sage (who is, sad to say, NOT a convert or a cradle Catholic) Terry Pratchett, quoted elsewhere on this page: “The Truth is out there, but lies are inside your head.”
For the record, and I thought I had stated this clearly enough, but you continue reading this through the lenses of your own bias, the Pope is NOT the guarentee of my salvation. That honour goes to my Lord Jesus Christ. My Lord Christ, however, did not leave me as an orphan, but continues to exercise his authority over me through the one to whom he said: “Thou art Peter”. Permit me to ask how the Lord Jesus exercises his authority in your life, Brian?
If it is any consolation to you, I live with the unfounded fear (well, one of the many unfounded fears that I live with any way) that one day during my life time a pope will be elected with whom I find myself disagreeing at every turn. That will certainly be a deep challenge to my faith – however, note that I have said that it is an “unfounded” fear. Not because I trust the pope, but because I trust my Lord Jesus. As it is, I can’t believe God’s good grace and favour to us in raising Joseph Ratzinger to the throne of Peter to continue the work of John Paul the Great. I know this run of good and wise popes can’t last forever (the Church is a human institution after all) but I do rely on my Lord Jesus to guarentee that none of them will lead his Church astray.
Brian: Do you believe God speaks exclusively and only through the Pope and his immediate advisers and supporters?
Surely I have said a hundred times that I believe my Lord Jesus speaks most definitively through his Word – his Scriptures. If I have recourse to the Church it is because the Scriptures require an interpreter – and for the life of me I cannot find an interpreter with better credentials to speak in the name of my Lord Jesus than the magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Brian: I’m a searcher, like many others
That reminds me of what Geoffrey Robinson said, which was remarkably similar to the line of GKC which Louise quoted, only from the other side of the argument. He divided (very certainly and dogmatically) the world into two kinds of people: those who are searchers and happy to remain so and those who (like me) have a pathological need for certainty and objective truth.
But there is no virtue to being a “searcher” if there is nothing to be found! I too remain a searcher – only of the kind that is fairly certain that I have found the road which will lead me to that which I seek.
Is Louise a convert?
Nyet.
For the record, and I thought I had stated this clearly enough, but you continue reading this through the lenses of your own bias, the Pope is NOT the guarentee of my salvation. That honour goes to my Lord Jesus Christ. My Lord Christ, however, did not leave me as an orphan, but continues to exercise his authority over me through the one to whom he said: “Thou art Peter”.
Well said, David.
Perhaps, Brian, you can tell us what you think of Jesus. Is He God? Is He Lord? Is He just a really nice bloke? Who is He?
Mr Coyne continues to take this discussion off track.
The original argument was about Fr Dresser’s dressing-down for apparently denying precisely those credal statements at the heart of our Faith – the Divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Our Lord in reality and not in semblance.
Then we were diverted onto the whingeing anti-Pope track: apparently one can with impunity dispute even these most central dogmas, because (lo! a false syllogism) the nasty Pope and his mates are sooo mean, they make us cry.
Kindergarten stuff!
As I’m sure PE will ardently agree, IF Vatican I was in error when it said the Pope can speak infallibly ex cathedra (a rare occurrence, BTW), “non autem consensu Ecclesiae”, THEN the Catholic Church’s claim to be the one Church is untrue, and we ought abandon her as the Whore of Babylon.
To say her doctrines are untrue, and yet wish to remain within her, is ridiculous: in such a case, one would be obliged in conscience to find the church that actually does teach what one thinks is the truth – especially because, as Coyne asserts, the Catholic Church is the agent for so much bad in the world (insert here the usual list of issues of sexual morality).
How interesting that moral turpitude and doctrinal deviation are intertwined…
From what he writes, surely Anglicanism (or the Uniting Church) would be more his cup of tea?
But to return to the central issue: of course the Pope is not possessed of a magic telephone to heaven – his role is to act as the conserver and safeguarder of the Deposit of Faith, and to this end we hold to the eminently reasonable doctrine that IF he speaks on an issue of faith and morals, intending to bind the whole Church, THEN (lest he lead us all astray) a purely negative form of infallibility, by God’s grace, comes into play, in that he is prevented by the illumination of the Holy Spirit from teaching falsehood. He may teach poorly, he may teach in a less than perfect manner, but what he teaches will not be false. That is what Vatican I defined. It is actually, as Newman long ago pointed out, a most restrictive definition, no more than the minimum logic demands if his role is in truth to confirm his brethren in the Faith.
Therefore, of course the Pope is not above the Creed: instead, his job is precisely to confirm us in the Faith, and not to let us go astray. The Pope’s task is to make sure that the Church doesn’t deviate from the faith once delivered to the saints.
Does this exclude development of doctrine? Not at all, as so very long ago St Vincent of Lerins explained so well. His task is to ensure that proposed explanations of doctrine are not denials thereof.
Bishops should be the agents of this guardianship in their dioceses, as they are the principal teachers of their flocks. The Pope only comes into play if bishops are unwilling or unable or or divided or confused about how to act.
If our episcopate was, frankly, as united in faith as the Orthodox, we would hardly need recourse to the Pope, who is the emergency backstop as it were; although, for Western Catholics, he is our Patriarch (unfortunate he dropt that title, but it’ll come back, since it does express the truth of his role vis a vis the Roman Rite and Roman Church).
Most importantly, we must drop this hateful attitude of abusing and maligning the Holy Father.
If we really don’t like him and all his works and words and his (to us) empty promises, then we ought follow our conscience and declare that we cannot go along with what appears to us a false and misleading church, and instead seek out the church that seems to teach the truth.
To consult the faithful on matters of doctrine is not to poll a mob so poorly catechized they couldn’t explain anything about the Trinity without lapsing into the crudest tritheism, subordinationism or Arianism. To consult the faithful is to hearken to what people believe who actually hold to the faith as the Church has taught.
Until – surprise, surprise – the 1960’s and the Pill, any practising Catholic would have been amazed if the Pope were impugned in his teachings. It is all too obvious that the many who went astray did so because of a moral fault, and subsequently tried to justify their sin by a retrospective change of belief. They proved themselves unfaithful.
As Coyne again proves, so-called cradle Catholics are too often smug in their ignorance and laziness, thinking they can dispute any and every doctrine, and then have the rudeness to mock at those who actually wish to sentire cum Ecclesia.
The Church consists of two categories: the good and the bad. Now, God knows I’ve got many sins, but I strive to follow the teachings of the Church and not proudly dissent from them. As Schuetz says, Simul justus et peccator, semper paenitens.
Faith is a precious gift – it must be conformed to Revelation as mediated to us through Tradition right down to the actual Magisterium of our own day. To imagine for yourself some other faith is not to be faithful; it is to be a pimp for your own mind.
Who summoned me? (Relax, just having fun.)
Your fear is not unfounded at all, David. And then you will find your Lord Jesus Christ has nothing whatever to do with the popes of Rome.
It’s already happened to a great many people, some still trying to remain Catholic, some gone. John Paul the Great? What a joke. The phenomenologically warmed over universalism this great actor offered in place of Catholicism will itself have a replacement. Speaking of greying heads, look for it in the years when the pope of Rome will no longer be one of the conciliar generation. Then you will pull your Newman out of his grave with the bones of another man and do your damndest to hang on. You will wish you had never heard of the Catholic Church yet its lies will leave you thinking there is no other place to go. Safe harbour? Pig’s bum. You only see a safe harbour because the coastline is different now. You can not have a sense of loss for that which you have not discovered.
These great guarantors of orthodoxy have yet left 80% of their church uncatechised! Watch out, before you know it some upset priest will write a little catechism dercying such a sorry state!
Maybe you guys should put more effort toward them than trying to find Mr Coyne a new church. Neither he nor Fr Dresser deny a bloody thing — except the validity of your effort to make of Vatican II the new Trent.
My apologies. It was Christine not Louise who made the remark about joining the Church in 1997.
As for all the rest, all I can say is that one day I expect we will all have to eyeball God and answer for the choices we made. I’m simply no longer prepared to take the chance of eyeballing God and trotting out the confident certitudes a Pell, a JPII, a Richard John Neuhaus, or you might trot out David. Yes, I do appreciate how confident each of you are that “you have it all sewn up” and that all the rest of the baptised faithful who question your certitudes, or who have gone off to search in fresh pastures, are wrong. One day we will find out who called the game correctly. If you want to place your bet that Pell has read it better than Geoffrey Robinson that’s fine by me. I have made a different bet. I don’t pretend Geoff Robinson has all the answers but I do classify him as a “genuine searcher for answers” and not a “searcher after certitudes or simplicitudes”. Nor does he come across to me as “a man on the make”. Speaking out as he has has not brought any comfort into his life, nor promotions, nor millions of dollars in income. It just brings trouble. Someone else taught us that a long time ago.
Cheers, Brian
In response to Louise: I dare say my views on Jesus are as nuanced and as complex as yours. I have had plenty to say on the subject through the pages of http://www.catholica.com.au. I do believe Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of Man, and all that we say we believe about him in each of the Creeds that are foundational to Catholic belief. Any further questions?
Cheers, Brian
I do wish Mr Coyne would not indulge in, well, what I may well have indulged in- that is, presuming that those he disagrees with (the good Cardinal Abp of Sydney, for instance, and doubtless his auxiliaries et al.) are somehow bad people on the make, apeing piety so as to amass filthy lucre, etc.
This is really very mean-spirited.
As an acquaintance at the very least of several of such persons that he has criticized, I must say I think he is too cruel toward them.
Now, to postulate some distinction between certitude and answers (?!) is to miss the point – or is it…
We are all of us after faith.
What, then, is faith?
It is an infused intellectual supernatural intellectual virtue.
Unformed faith, or belief in the natural sense, is that trust we have in some statement of religious belief being true (such as, that God exists), without having sanctifying grace – this is the faith that a catechumen has before his baptism.
Now, at baptism, we receive as a gift, a supernatural perfection of our soul, effected by the Holy Ghost. This enables us to have supernatural faith, to believe in truths whose apprehension is otherwise outside our ability. It is a good habit, or a virtue, because it enables us easily to believe on an ongoing basis what otherwise be literally beyond our natural capacities. It is an intellectual gift, as it concerns our intellect, being our acceptance as true of what God has deigned to reveal.
To be “seeking answers” in the quasi-New-Age sense, is to seek out truth, but to prescind from the great richness actually revealed to us. This is unduly to restrict ourselves to that unformed faith, I would submit, being as it were unable finally to achieve knowledge of higher things. It is the faith of a philosopher (only). Only supernatural faith can grant us certitude, a certitude in fact stronger than even mathematical or logical certitude – because founded not on ourselves but on God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.
This is true faith.
Faith of course should seek understanding, but not in a carping critical manner, let alone by exercising that destructive hermeneutic of suspicion that vitiates the efforts of many.
The Pope is not the enemy!
How one can go on calling oneself Catholic and yet hate the Vicar of Christ is beyond me. If you have this fundamentally schismatic attitude, go on and fulfil it!
Sharon’s original comment is best: a priest has a duty to preach the Faith that is Catholic, indeed in a personal way born of inner conviction, but NOT at the expense of the official statements of the Church, such as the Creeds, etc. If you do not honestly assent to the Faith as the Church teaches it, it would be hypocrisy to be a priest and teach it, but it would also be hypocrisy to be a priest and teach in opposition to it, because you would be using the pulpit to preach a Faith other than the one you were ordained to propagate and defend.
Coyne is right that Faith and Catholicism is about getting to heaven, but wrong in that he thinks that Catholics loyal to the Magisterium are somehow weak evildoers, as opposed to noble souls who in lordly fashion dispense with what is taught as the Faith.
It is the latter category who pretend to special access to the Divine counsels. They, too, are those driven by ego. Of course, some persons who like Pell, for instance, can be a little embarrassing in their regard for him, as can some votaries of the late Pope, but both groups are at base loyal to the Catholic Faith and accept it voluntarily, often at personal cost.
It is entirely different to spew forth visceral hatred of the Church, her ministers, her teachings, and yet declare oneself a better Catholic for it – such are vipers in her bosom, and snares for the unaware.
And the army of dissenting priests and bishops who so wickedly told people it was OK to disobey Humanae Vitae who led so many into rebellion are most to blame for the great lack of faith and loyalty in the Church.
Personally, I blame Paul VI for being so weak-willed and Hamlet-like as not to act with force and vigor to quell such ructions – if he had, there would not be the de facto schism that has existed since his reign.
As for this notion that truth resides in the Body of Christ – this is a cunning expression indeed!
Nuanced properly, it is true; manipulated falsely, it is wrong.
If all Catholics voted together to define what they believed, I would not trust the result of such a vote for an instant.
This is the fallacy that has afflicted Anglicanism: that a Synod composed of persons of wildly different outlook can define the truth.
No, Truth is a given, given us in Jesus Christ. He passed on His revelation in Holy Tradition, in both the canonical Scriptures and in the traditional teachings of the Church (as instanced by the liturgies, prayer for the dead, and other immemorial elements). Over time, the assemblies of orthodox bishops in communion with him of Rome “rightly divided the word of truth” against all heresies.
Today, so many are almost wholly uncatechized and infected with the spirit of this dark world that they would believe only the most crushingly secular morality, and decline nearly all supernatural truths except in the most subjective and nugatory manner.
If baptized, one is a member of the Body of Christ, but one is not therefore ipso facto possessed of a perfect command of sacred doctrine.
That is why there is the Ecclesia docens and the Ecclesia discens, the teaching Church and the Church that is the recipient of teaching.
What is disguised by the idea of “communion and discussion” is the modern arch-manipulation of “facilitating” discussion to obtain whatsoever outcome one desires in the darkness of one’s heart.
Neither he nor Fr Dresser deny a bloody thing — except the validity of your effort to make of Vatican II the new Trent.
This is a mysterious statement, PE.
Fr Dresser, as far as I can tell has denied that Jesus is God, for example. Brian, as far as I can tell would disagree with both Trent and Vatican II, which just makes things a little problematic.
I think Joshua was merely pointing out that if you don’t agree with the Catholic Church on some core issues, it’s pretty bizarre to remain in such a Church. I wouldn’t myself, because I believe in Truth and that one should act on it. I’m personally not asking Brian or anyone else to leave the Church, I just can’t work out why they remain when they obviously disagree about so much. In that respect, I can see much more logic in your own position, PE, for you have acted on your beliefs.
And Joshua is right abou the moral issues. GK Chesterton, the Apostle of Common Sense, said that the next great heresy would be an attack on morality and in particular sexual morality. And lo! 1968!
He didn’t give it a name as far as I know, but it has a name now: Secularism.
I blame Paul VI for being so weak-willed and Hamlet-like as not to act with force and vigor to quell such ructions – if he had, there would not be the de facto schism that has existed since his reign.
No doubt he could have done a better job, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for the tempest of ’68, which was more spiritual than anything. The Baby Boomers, God love ’em, like to take credit for it, but it was something much bigger than them.
No pope had ever had such enormous opposition, if you take into account the new media. Someone else has noted that he was like a rabbit in the headlights.
I dare say my views on Jesus are as nuanced and as complex as yours.
Um, no, not really what I would call nuanced, actually.
Jesus is God and Man. Think “creeds.”
And Joshua is right about the Truth. The truth is the truth even if no-one has the sense to believe it. It’s not democratically decided. Surely everyone can see that.
Eg either there is a God or there isn’t a God. Now surely if there is a God, then He exists even if no-one believes in Him, yes?
And if there is no God, then He does not exist, even if everyone believes in Him, yes?
So, I don’t really see what the opinions of the majority of baptised Catholics have to do with it.
We keep talking about catechesis and indeed that is what is urgently required now (as well as prayer, assisting at Mass etc). But I don’t think the catechesis was necessarily always that great before.
Both my grandmother and my husband’s grandmother would have been hard pressed to differentiate between say a solemn teaching of the Church (eg obligation to assist at Mass every Sunday) and a discipline of the Church (eg Friday fasting). Now, these were intelligent women, but there were some concepts which they obviously had never been taught, largely because they were not so important prior to the upheavals of recent decades.
When the heresy of Secularism broke upon us like a tsunami and enveloped Western Civilisation in the New Dark Age, that original insufficient catechesis was shown up. It has, undoubtedly, only got worse overall, because the people in charge of such things, on the whole, have been seduced by the heresy of Secularism. The situation is really about as grim as it was during the Arian heresy. People who complain now that things are really bad need to take a longer view, IMO, because the Church has always had to deal with such things.
And those who are proving unhelpful in various ways now would have been equally unhelpful during the Arian heresy.
Joshua,
Thanks for your responses. I am glad I have stirred you up. In the final analysis though I think, to put it mildly, “you are playing with yourself”. I did that for a long time also.
By the way I know a lot of those sort of guys also. I was sitting at dinner with one of them not long ago. I have no doubt that a lot of them are “nice people” and “sincerely intentioned”. Just go read Dr Paul O’Shea’s exploration of the life of Eugenio Pacelli. I feel sorry for the poor bastard for all the “positions of high office” he occupied in the world — imprisoned in this “cultural construct” that he was imprisoned in and then having to face the monster Hitler. The guy was completely out of his depth in the end. Similarly with Paul VI. The information is that he virtually ended up a cot case for the last ten years of his pontificate. He knew in his bones that he’d “got it wrong” over Humanae Vitae. He never produced another encyclical again. Then what do we get this “raving egomaniac” in JPII pretending to be the humblest individual God ever hreathed life into. Give us a break! All of these men are very, very human. In general terms they are also very immature. That’s one of the failings of priesthood that we are discovering today through the sexual abuse scandals. As I wrote today privately to a friend “They’re like little boys from a kindergarten who have been invited to sit in the drivers’ seat of a steam train, or a diesel locomotive, at the local railway station.”
Benedict is cut from a different cloth to PJII and thankfully doesn’t seem driven by this enormous, out-of-control, ego. He does seem driven by anxiety and pain though. He’s much more of the mould of Pacelli — trying desperately to believe in a “cultural construct” that is literally crumbling all around him.
People are not “dumb and stupid”. They can see through all of this. That’s why, over the last century, participation rates of the baptised have effectively reversed themselves — at the start of the 20th Century it was 20% who dropped out in adulthood and 80% who continued practising, and believing, until their death. Today it is actually worse than the reverse of that — and right across the face of the Western world. You live in a fantasy world if you believe “the true believers” are the only ones who “know truth” and the rest of civilisation is “damned to spend Eternity in Hell”. It really is “fantasy land”.
Society today is searching for a new spiritual paradigm — searching for new leaders who can explain “the God and Jesus” story that better corresponds with our “lived perceptions of life”. Civilisation has been through these upheavals before. There is nothing to be afraid of.
As I see it as a journalist and writer I have this sense that we realise no person is God — not even Popes. What we are watching is “the last gasp of the Ancien Regime and the belief that Kings and Emperors were Gods”. We, the entire human family, “struggle for answers”. None of us have “THE Answer” or “The Answers” individually. But, collectively, we can access the answers. This was the great insight of Cardinal Newman in that series of essays he wrote. We (civilisation/human society/the church) does need a mechanism through which we discern what God is saying through this “chaos of communication” that comes “from our Creator-God into the world”. It IS confusing hearing all these different voices. We do need a Primate, and someone who coordinates the entire human effort to “make sense” of all the communication. We do need to pay attention to all “the ancient wisdom that has been learned by our forebears in the long progress of civilisation and human history” and we also need to be hearing “what God is saying NOW”. Jesus Christ is, I believe, the “fullness of revelation”. He is “the complete story — the full model of a Way (to think and act like God [as per the thinking of St Gregory of Nyassa])” that is going to be given to us. While he is “the fullness of Revelation” that does not mean that we yet “fully understand Jesus” or we yet “fully understand his message”.
Cheers, Brian
Brian said: I’m simply no longer prepared to take the chance of eyeballing God and trotting out the confident certitudes a Pell, a JPII, a Richard John Neuhaus, or you might trot out David.
Well, given that it’s all consistent with the teaching of the Apostles, I’m not sure why that would be the case. It is, after all, the more “liberal” Catholics who depart significantly with the teachings of the early Church.
Yes, I do appreciate how confident each of you are that “you have it all sewn up” and that all the rest of the baptised faithful who question your certitudes, or who have gone off to search in fresh pastures, are wrong.
And how would this be different from your own attitude?
I do classify him as a “genuine searcher for answers” and not a “searcher after certitudes or simplicitudes”.
Right. So when you find an answer it’s an “answer” and when we find answers they are “certitudes” and “simplicitudes.” I see.
Nor does he come across to me as “a man on the make”. Speaking out as he has has not brought any comfort into his life, nor promotions, nor millions of dollars in income. It just brings trouble. Someone else taught us that a long time ago.
I don’t get this reference at all.
Suffice it to say, in my own parish where I must endure the homilies of my PP who is inclined to bash anyone who believes in the contents of the catechism, I don’t receive a lot of comfort. Let’s face it, when it comes to “power” in the ordinary life of a pew-warmer, the PP has a lot more than the Pope, whom I never have to listen to if I don’t want to.
Never ceases to amaze me that Catholics at “The Tablet” end of the spectrum can’t grasp this.
How dare you accuse me of intellectual masturbation, you dirty cheap fellow!
Typical of sex-obsessed Baby Boomers to insinuate that priests are immature, or, to put it as crudely as you would, that they're infantilized because they haven't made themselves real men by getting their rocks off! Shame!
If only a minority believe, so be it: it's for God to grant graces and us to cooperate with them.
Your deluded idea that the Church is finished is just what the Anglicans said when the Immaculate Conception was defined (they thought it proof of Rome's senile madness and imminent collapse), and just what Napoleon &c. thought earlier on…
As for this pop psychology nonsense of "lived perceptions", it amounts to nothing.
Go and be an Anglican, let those who actually want to be Catholics get on with it unhindered by pests.
Thank God I've never read aCatholic, my blood pressure would go so high I'd die.
Just to conclude that last post: we also need a mechanism — a church — that facilitates this entire process of “listening to the Divine — of listening to God”, and making sense of it all and articulating it into something rational that we can understand in the limited paradigm in which we can do our thinking. We are natural, not supernatural. Our ways of thinking ARE limited and constrained. We also need a mechanism that “preserves, archives and constantly reminds us of the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and the previous ‘Divine Wisdom and Revelation’ that has been communicated to our forebears. But that “Church”, that “mechanism”, is NOT God. To turn the Church, or the head of the Church, into a type of God is a form of idolatry.
I completely agree with your last statement.
Please don’t think I make the Church an idol: God knows I’ve suffered at the hands of her members and that her teachings can seem a cross, but it is in her that I recognize the Master’s Voice. Hence, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” – I know that the Church teaches what Our Lord teaches, and so to that I must agree.
But that “Church”, that “mechanism”, is NOT God. To turn the Church, or the head of the Church, into a type of God is a form of idolatry.
OK, Brian.
Well, I do not worship the Church any more than I worship my own mother. I love ’em both.
Incidentally, I don’t really see how marriage can prevent men becoming sexual predators, since some sexual predators are married. Not to mention that in this society at least, men marry women, not girls and boys, so, I’m not impressed with that “narrative” Brian. Besides, it’s just another red herring.
And by God, you’ve got a cheek telling Joshua he’s playing with himself! I think if we follow your own position, Brian, we’ll see there’s not a lot of rational thinking there. Lots of blessed “uncertainty” to be sure, but not much else.
And the way we show reverence and worship to Our Lord Jesus Christ is by ignoring the Church He created for our benefit? Right.