Aquinas on the use of reason vs. authority

From the lapidary mind of Thomas Aquinas [my translation, and minor interpolation; for Latin original see here]:

Quodlibet 9, Qu. 4, Art. 3: 

Whether a teacher determining (or deciding) theological questions should make use more of reason, or of authority.

It seems that the teacher determining theological questions should make use of authorities rather than reasons.

 Argument: For in any science, its questions are best determined by the first principles of that science. But the first principles of theological science are the articles of faith, which are known to us through authorities. Therefore theological questions should be mainly determined through authorities.

Sed contra: But against this it is said in Titus I, 9: “that he might be able to encourage others in sound doctrine and refute those contradicting it.” But those who contradict are better refuted by reasons than by authorities. Therefore, it is more necessary to determine questions through reasons than through authorities.

I respond. It should be said that every act should be carried out as befits its end. Now a disputation can be ordered to a twofold end. For one kind of disputation is ordered toward removing doubt whether something is the case; and in such a theological disputation, those authorities should most of all be used, which are accepted by those with whom one is disputing. For example, if one disputes with Jews, it is necessary to introduce the authorities of the Old Testament; if with Manicheans, who reject the Old Testament, it is necessary to use only the texts of the New Testament; but if it be with schismatics who accept the Old and the New Testament, but not the teaching of our saints, as is the case with the Greeks, it is necessary to dispute with them using authorities from the Old or New Testament and from those doctors which they accept. If, however, they accept no authority, it is necessary, for the purpose of refuting them, to take recourse to natural reasons. [And – Thomas forgot to mention – if one is disputing with a woman, who accepts neither authorities nor reasons, and relies only on her emotions, it is necessary to discreetly withdraw from the disputation, lest she upbraid you and slap you in the face. (Relax, I’m kidding! – obviously that's not true of all women. Still, would that it were true of fewer!)]

But another kind of disputation is for the purpose of teaching in the schools, not for the purpose of removing error, but for instructing the hearers, that they may be led to an understanding of the truth towards which it points: and then it is necessary to rely on reasons which search out the root of truth, and which make one to know in what way (quomodo) what is said is true; otherwise, if the teacher were to determine the question on the basis of bare authorities, the hearer would be assured that the matter is thus, but he would acquire no knowledge or understanding and would depart empty.

And from what has been said, the response to the objection is clear.

Not everything is grace, and on the danger of “little-flower”-ism

I had a moment of discouragement and lassitude the other day. A B12 deficiency maybe? (B12 is the cobalt vitamin; it’s essential, you can’t live without cobalt!) Or perhaps the being so beset by falsehoods, for the most part depressingly unoriginal, mere trite clichés, but still so stubbornly defended by people who seem never to tire of kicking against the goad if you dare offer them something different from what they’re accustomed to hearing. How tiresome!

And then there was Peter Kreeft! And St Therese! Et tu? (Et vos?)

I came across this sentence from the pen of Kreeft:

“Everything is grace”, said Saint Thérèse. This is neither pious exaggeration nor false humility; it is utter realism, the confession of clear and certain fact. (Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners (Ignatius, 2000), p. 116.)

Here’s what he was referring to, reportedly spoken by Therese four months before her death:

If you should find me dead one morning, be not troubled: it’s that Papa the good God would have come quite simply to get me. Without doubt, it’s a great grace to receive the Sacraments; but when the good God doesn’t permit it, it’s good all the same, all is grace.

[“Si vous me trouviez morte un matin, n'ayez pas de peine : c'est que Papa le bon Dieu serait venu tout simplement me chercher. Sans doute, c'est une grande grâce de recevoir les Sacrements ; mais quand le bon Dieu ne le permets pas, c'est bien quand même, tout est grâce.” (Carnet jaune, June 4, 1897)]

Commenting on the passage, in the introduction to his book Everything Is Grace, Joseph F. Schmidt writes:

By her comment that everything is grace, she was sharing her spirituality of the Little Way – the spiritual way of accepting with loving surrender and gratitude all the happenings of life as sent by divine providence. [All the happenings of life? Sent? Not just permitted but sent?] If the experiences of life, even the ordinary and trivial, are received in this attitude of surrender and gratitude as gifts of God, then not just appropriate religious devotions and sacramental activities communicate grace, but surely everything is grace.

(Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC, Everything is Grace (2007).)

Well, maybe. The first thing to note here is that that’s a pretty big “if”: If the ordinary and trivial experiences of life (this applies also to the Sacraments, by the way!) are received in the appropriate manner, then in a sense everything is grace (or rather: an occasion of grace). But unfortunately people – including people who are highly religiously and spiritually motivated and devoted – tend to skip right over the “if” and run instead with just the nakedly false claim: everything is grace.

This “utter realism,” this “confession of clear and certain fact,” as Peter Kreeft would have it, in fact looks like a plain contradiction of Catholic truth. Consider, for example, the following passage from Dei filius, Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic faith:

Unhappily, it has yet further come to pass that, while this impiety prevailed on every side, many even of the children of the Catholic Church have strayed from the path of true piety, and by the gradual diminution of the truths they held, the Catholic sense became weakened in them. For, led away by various and strange doctrines, utterly confusing nature and grace, human science and divine faith, they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith.

Hac porro impietate circum quaque grassante, infeliciter contigit, ut plures etiam e Catholicæ Ecclesiæ filiis a via veræ pietatis aberrarent, in iisque, diminutis paullatim veritatibus, sensus Catholicus attenuaretur. Variis enim ac peregrinis doctrinis abducti, naturam et gratiam, scientiam humanam et fidem divinam perperam commiscentes, genuinum sensum dogmatum, quem tenet ac docet sancta mater Ecclesia, depravare, integritatemque et sinceritatem fidei in periculum adducere comperiuntur.

Now the claim everything is grace implies either that nature just is grace, or that nature is nothing. In other words, the unqualified claim everything is grace seems to “utterly confuse nature and grace.” Pace Kreeft, it is anything but a “confession of clear and certain fact.”

So should “little” Therese (apparently she was actually quite tall!) – for many the doctor of the 20^th/21^st-century Church par excellence – be condemned as a heretic? Hardly. But some of her writings and sayings – as also in the case of St Paul, so not necessarily in bad company! – are certainly easily liable to be misleading for “unlearned and unstable” minds (see 2Pet 3:16). And this observation about the theological caution required in approaching St Therese is not restricted to this one reported saying.

In his Everything Is Grace book Schmidt notes that Therese was not extraordinarily gifted, as many saints have been. If anything, she was extraordinarily ordinary (if that makes any sense!). In fact, as Schmidt writes, “The one capacity Therese possessed is actually often an obstacle to holiness rather than a contributing factor – namely, a capability to be self-preoccupied and self-reflective.” 

Let that sink in: Therese’s outstanding character trait, that for which is admired and loved, is actually often an obstacle to holiness, namely: “a capability to be self-preoccupied and self-reflective” – which is very near to saying a tendency to be narcissistic. (In the myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own self-reflection… and is transformed (go figure!) into a little flower – as in the case of Therese, the question of how little is debatable.) Schmidt continues: “Therese noticed everything about herself, and she was willing to share that not as a display of ego-centeredness, but as a manifestation of God’s work in her.” However: “The difference between these two attitudes constitutes a very fine line, and the temptation to cross the line is always lurking.”

It seems that Schmidt’s observation here would imply that devotion to St Therese may be spiritually dangerous, especially for those with narcissistic tendencies – not necessarily in a clinical sense, of course, but just in the sense of a tendency to self-centeredness. But since most people indeed have a tendency to self-centeredness, it follows that St Therese may be spiritually dangerous for most people. And this implies also that (widespread) devotion to St Therese (“the little flower”) may be as much a symptom of a (widespread) tendency to narcissism (“little-flower”-ism, we might say), as it is of a sign of the extraordinary sanctity of Therese herself – even if it is true, as Schmidt writes, that “Therese’s glory is that she did not give in to that temptation,” that is, the temptation to cross the line from self-preoccupied and self-reflective to self-centered (and narcissistic).

“Little-flower”-ism (compare the recent term “snowflake” – as Schmidt writes of St Therese, “she suffered a great deal from her excessive sensitivity” – ah yes, don’t we all: je suis Therese!) may also be a manifestation of a sick form of Christianity (or more generally, a sick form of relating to the world) fueled by ressentiment, a phenomenon the real existence of which Nietzsche rightly identified, but which he mistakenly thought was essentially Christian.  Max Scheler (a philosopher admired by John Paul II) was taken by Nietzsche’s insight into the phenomenon of ressentiment and developed an extended, more insightful discussion of it, wherein he argues against Nietzsche’s artificial, animus-filled attempt to make of it a specifically and essentially Christian phenomenon. Against Nietzsche, Scheler argues that ressentiment is neither proper to nor characteristic of Christianity. Instead it is an endemic human tendency and not what Christ or Christianity is really about. Nietzsche, in any case, argued that the Christian ethos was nothing other than “le fine fleur [the delicate flower again!] du ressentiment” – an ingeniously insidious way for all that is base, weak, ugly, deformed, sick, inhibited, downtrodden, and needy (“blessed are the poor and hungry!”), and moreover envious and vengeful, to subvert all that shows up it baseness and aggravates its envy, that is, all that is noble, beautiful, strong, self-sufficient, free, powerful, flourishing. The weak and ignoble does this through the artifice of an essentially nature-despising claim to moral superiority. What is naturally good must be despised, and suffering, self-abnegation, and death must be embraced – claim those who are ignoble and powerless by nature’s standard – in order to pass beyond nature to the kingdom of God. The supposed goodness of nature has been swallowed up, according to this form of moralism, by the depravity of sin, and so nature must be rejected. If there is no goodness in nature, nature must be eliminated. By nature, man is totally depraved (Calvinism, anyone?), so grace becomes everything, that is, “everything (good!) is grace.”

But of course Nietzsche was right to condemn this view, just as the Catholic Church always has – even while individual Catholics remain ever susceptible to confusion on this point, with the result that “they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith” (see above, Vatican I's Dei filius).

So to conclude: No, not everything is grace! Nature is not grace, although nature is good and necessary in its own right, within the plan of divine providence. Grace presupposes nature, and nature is perfected, not eliminated, by grace. And if you're going by the teaching of the Catholic Church, that, I take it, is a “confession of clear and certain fact.”

Fisher of men? Or fisher of people? On Canadian Catholic Fem-speak

At a recent RCIA meeting I attended, we read the following from Luke’s gospel: “Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’” (Lk 5:10)

One of the RCIA candidates sniffed out something fishy about this. She mentioned that she seemed to remember a more classical reading of “fisher of men.” The leader mentioned something about different translations and one person piped in something about the passage used to apply to just men (male men, that is), but now it applies to women too (including female postal carriers)!

Of course the expression “fisher of men” always did apply to ‘catching’ males and females, and until feminism came along no one was misled into thinking otherwise by the use of the generic term ‘men.’ As philosopher Michael Levin writes (my comments in square brackets):

We may dismiss the idea that masculine pronouns [or masculine nouns, used in a generic sense] are misleading. Words are misleading when they mislead. If nobody is misled by a turn of phrase, it is not misleading, and there is no one over the age of three who has been fooled by “he” [or “fisher of men”] into thinking that women are unpersons [or into thinking the Jesus intended Simon Peter’s mission to be to adult males only]. It is not possible to produce a woman who believed (until feminists cleared things up) that “He who hesitates is lost” did not apply to her. It is universally understood that “he” is used with the intention of referring to both men and women, and that this intention has settled into a convention. Nothing more is required for a purely designative expression like “he” [or “men”] to mean men and women both. (from Michael Levin, Feminism, Freedom, and Language)

However, now that feminist ideology is increasingly being insinuated into our language, and thence into our thinking, people (apparently!) really are increasingly getting confused about some of the basic intentions and conventions that find expression in the English language, and on the basis of the linguistic confusion we are (apparently!) in danger of passing on to some quite farcically naïve suggestions about the scope of the Church’s mission, past vs. present, as noted above. (I say “apparently,” because one should be cautious about reading too much into what were perhaps mere idle remarks.)

The RCIA candidate responded to the vague comments about different translations by saying, in a somewhat uneasy tone, something like, “Okay, so the Church decided to change the translation.” To which some of the leaders responded with something like, “quite so, and indeed it’s important to remember that the Church is always changing.”

Well, something like that. It might have been more accurate, however, if the RCIA candidate had said (still in a somewhat uneasy tone), “So in formulating the lectionary readings for use in Canada, the Church in Canada has decided to follow the advice of feminist ideologues.” Whereas, by contrast, we find in the US lectionary – a lectionary apparently less under the influence of feminist ideologues (see usccb.org) – “Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’"

Now you might still wonder what happened to the classic “fisher of men” expression. In fact that’s the expression used in the parallel passage in Matthew’s gospel (see Mt 4:19), but in Luke the expression is just “catching men” (the generic ‘men,’ of course – anthropous in Greek and homines in Latin).

You might think that ‘people’ vs. (generic) ‘men’ is perhaps an issue for felicity of expression, for poetry, for tradition, etc., but not necessarily a strictly translation (i.e., accuracy) issue. Granted. So to take a more blatant example of fem-speak in the Canadian lectionary, consider the gospel reading for March 3. From the US bishops’ website we get the following (accurate) translation:

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,

but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?

How can you say to your brother,

'Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,'

when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?

You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;

then you will see clearly

to remove the splinter in your brother's eye.

In the Canadian lectionary we find the following:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye,

but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your neighbour,

'Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,'

when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye;

then you will see clearly

to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye.

Now brother is clearly stronger, richer, than neighbour/friend. Still, slight differences of meaning, surely! Which might invite the question: Isn’t the advancement of feminist ideology more important than fidelity to the revealed word of God? And really that is the question, and those answering it, unfortunately, are divided. In any case, the CCCB seems to have gone with a “yes.” But this “yes” to the advancement of feminist ideology has consequences. We might consider in this connection clericalism and ecumenism.

First, I think the Canadian lectionary is an embodiment of (bad) clericalism. Scripture has been manipulated and filtered by the clerics before being presented to the laity. This is inevitable in a selective lectionary, because it is selective. But what is selected should at least be presented faithfully. Instead the authentic language of the revealed word of God is effectively hidden, seen only by the diligent few who dare to look behind the veil the Church (in Canada) has drawn over the scriptures read at mass. The clerics, and those who advise them, have taken it upon themselves to bowdlerize the word of God and then, at mass, to dishonestly proclaim this feminist redaction as “the holy gospel according to Luke” (for example) – that is, the hypothetical incarnation of Luke as a 21^st-century feminist, who has been enlightened about the prejudicial, exclusionary import of his original language choices in the composition of his gospel.

This issue matters also from the standpoint of ecumenism. This feminist policy/practice, one may suppose, is helpful for ecumenism with other Church communities whose version of Christian faith has (also) been influenced by feminist ideology. For those separated brethren who are actually closer to the authentic Catholic faith, however, who actually have a deep love and respect for the revealed word of God, for the “full gospel”  (notwithstanding their flawed understanding of it), this practice is surely a stumbling block. It must remind them of the old canard about the Church chaining up scriptures.  Ironically churches used to chain up the scriptures because, given their great value, they wanted to prevent their being stolen. It was about protecting a treasure. Now that treasure of the inspired word of God has been distorted by feminist ideologues (in the Church in Canada, anyway) and is handed out in missalettes like cheap candy! Better, perhaps, were it still chained! But the question is whether ecumenism – or more generally evangelization – should be about catching flies with honey (feminist-devised or otherwise) or about seeking authentic Christian unity through true faith in Christ. And the Catholic Church (notwithstanding various national aberrations) of course teaches that it should be the latter.

Put away childish ways

Parenting brings new challenges as time passes. My oldest (or older ones!) is increasingly bright and knowledgeable. He has a good memory and is beginning to have sound basic reasoning skills. One result of this is that he is able to recognize when the younger ones have said something nonsensical and he is apt to pounce on it when this happens. (My favourite, he once replied to something his brother said with, “That is not grammatical. I will not answer.”) Which is good in a way (he’s exercising his capacity to be rational), but not insofar as it’s unkind. So now part of what I have to help him to learn is that they are young (in particular, younger than him), they haven’t had a chance to acquire the same basic reasoning skills yet, and so it’s silly and mean to expect them to think and understand and reason at his level. It’s okay to gently correct them, but they will only ever learn through the benefit of time and patience and loving encouragement from those who are already further along in their intellectual and moral development. You can’t simply point out their errors to them, because they simply are not old enough to have intellectually developed enough to be able to understand and benefit from that kind of correction.

To some extent I often find myself in an analogous situation to that of my oldest son when I am faced with arguments from adults. But the difference, of course, is that these people aren’t little children who are simply too young to have achieved a mature level of intellectual and moral development, they’re ‘full-grown,’ ‘adults,’ who to look at physically you might expect to be mature intellectually also. But in fact they’re pretty clearly not. Their moral understanding and reasoning skills are often an embarrassingly bad combination of ignorance, arrogance, complacency, irrationality, and lack of self-awareness. (Any of these may not be so bad on its own, but when you put them together...?) So what to do? Should I just tell myself something like I tell my son when dealing with his younger siblings? Should I tell myself to treat such people like they’re three-year-olds or seven-year-olds, tell myself it would be silly and mean to try to interact with them as if they were mature adults in their right minds, who have a reasonable basic grasp of differences between true and false, rational and irrational, good and bad, right and wrong, and a grasp of the basic rules and procedures for making those distinctions in practice? Little children, especially if they’re tired, are prone to bursting into tears if they can’t right this second have that random doodad they happen to see their brother playing with. Should this be our default setting for dealing with adults who are attempting to discuss adult topics: speak as if you are speaking to a little child at nap time, who might well be on the verge of a tantrum, or who is simply incapable of sitting still for one minute to ponder and think something through?

But the problem with such an approach is obvious: you can’t speak with little children about adult topics, so when you’re speaking to someone about an adult topic, you can’t address them as you would little children. Insofar as it’s an adult topic, you have to discuss it in an adult way. And anyway, it’s not (as a rule) silly or mean to do so, because there comes a point in a (normal) child’s development (that is, as soon as it is possible!) when you have to become firmer and when tantrums – behaving as if the only thing in the world that should matter to anyone is pandering to my present passions – can and should be treated firmly as being no longer acceptable. Older children and certainly adults deserve and need to be treated as if they are past that point. Otherwise they won’t feel any need to act as if they are past that point, and instead they will forever remain more or less stunted in their intellectual and moral development. 

(Because we live in a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ – a culture wherein non-relativistic views are often derisively dismissed or angrily shouted down – people are generally very complacent and self-satisfied and inclined to be shocked and offended by the very notion of ‘stunted intellectual and moral development’ – as if there exists any real standard, beyond some vague, implicit appeal to currently fashionable conventions, by which to judge our intellectual and moral state as stunted or not! But this is, of course, just a symptom/evidence of that very arrested intellectual and moral development that I’m talking about, and which is precisely characteristic of a ‘dictatorship of relativism.’)

So adults are not little children and we should not attempt to nurture and indulge adults in the way we would a little child. It’s hardly even possible to do so – you can’t order them to have a timeout – but since adults are not little children, it would be wrong anyway to treat them as such. (Adults who abuse positions of power (e.g., in academia, in making policy/law, in media, in preaching, in politicking, in law enforcement, etc.) by treating other adults like children are pretty despicable people.) We have a responsibility, as adults, to respect others, including strangers, including those whose views we find strange, and to try honestly to understand the views of others when commenting on them. In spite of the childish bursts of outrage and self-righteousness with which we might sometimes be overcome , we remain under the obligation to think and behave in a mature way. If all we are is tolerant of childish behaviour, that's not kindness. If we are afraid ever to enter into debate or risk offering a reproof to someone for his self-righteous tantrum, or even for a very sweet and kind person's willful ignorance, that's not kindness. It's spineless. It's negligence. 

That said, if a man remains like an infant needing milk, go ahead and give him some milk; but also try to impress on him that he should be moving on to solid food (see Hebrews 5). “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man I put away childish ways.” (1Cor 13:11)* Awake sleeper! Put away childish ways!

*(Note, St Paul’s remark here comes right in the middle of his encomium to – surprise? – love. People love to talk about love, but they seem seldom to consider that love requires (of ourselves and of others) learning to speak, to understand, to reason in a mature way. Love is not a pure formless reaching out of the will but calls for discipline and training of the intellect so as to know the truth so that love may be indeed true love and not a mere blind passion.)

"Thar she blows!" - The Surprising Spirit of Vatican II

Mass notes – Sunday, September 30, 2018 – 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” Another Sunday, another mass, another homily. This Sunday our priest shows us photos of two similar looking churches, one Catholic and one Lutheran, and among other things he tells us, “Before Vatican II (that wonderful council!) we used to think those Lutherans across the street were missing out on something Sunday morning... Hopefully we’re not so arrogant now!”

Whereby we might conclude: The Lutherans were not/are not missing out on anything. But they were/are missing out on the Eucharist (not to mention four other sacraments). Therefore, in Father’s supposedly Vatican II-enlightened eyes, the Eucharist is nothing.

And yet Vatican II teaches that the Eucharist is the “source and summit (or fount and apex) of the whole Christian life” (Lumen gentium, 11) and that Lutherans are among those who “have not retained the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness” (Unitatis redintegratio, 22). So clearly, according to Vatican II, the Lutherans are missing out on something, something important – and thus, also clearly, so is Father.

What Father gave us was a fine example of the classic “liberal-progressive” (misleading labels, really) hermeneutic of pretending to embrace, advocate, champion Vatican II by warmly praising it, making oblique references to it, and ignoring what it actually says while saying stuff that really contradicts it.

Now Father also said they used to think that the Lutherans were pretty much “wasting their time” Sunday morning. By the lights of Vatican II, that would be going too far, and he could have called that arrogant (or something less judgmental – simply ignorant, perhaps, or ill-informed, or exaggerated), and should have left it at that. But instead he dropped in the clearly false and badly un-ecumenical remark that it’s arrogant even to think the Lutherans are missing out on anything. (Presumably he would think arrogant also anyone who thought he was missing out on anything?) But Father’s claim is clearly an example of false irenicism – in the earthier paraphrase of South Park's Cartman: “God-damn hippies!” – of which Vatican II says:

Nothing is so foreign to ecumenism as that false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers damage and its genuine and certain sense is obscured. (Unitatis redintegratio, 11)

Instead of showing concern for the “purity of Catholic doctrine” (anathema sit!), Father’s claim actually implied that the real teachings of Vatican II are arrogant, even while he pretended that he was just teaching us what those Vatican II teachings are.

This manner of preaching is hardly in the spirit of Vatican II (is it?), which teaches the great importance of priests speaking truthfully and accurately in the service of genuine ecumenism.

Sacred theology and other branches of knowledge, especially of a historical nature, must be taught with due regard for the ecumenical point of view, so that they may correspond more accurately with the truth of things. It is of great importance that future shepherds and priests should have mastered a theology that has been worked out accurately in this way, not polemically, especially in matters that concern the relations of separated brethren with the Catholic Church. For it is largely upon the formation of the priests that the necessary instruction and spiritual formation of the faithful and of religious depends. (Unitatis redintegratio, 10, emphasis added)

So Father seems to have ignored what Vatican II really says about our separated brethren, the Lutherans. He even seems to have forgotten about the importance of the Eucharist. His is a theology polemically worked out to oppose the very Church he is supposed to serve! (Is this an OFM thing? Or a Richard Rohr (OFM) thing? Father’s favorite(?) Franciscan guru writes, for example: “You do not create your True Self [full consciousness of True Self is salvation in Rohr’s thought], or earn it, or work up to it by any moral or ritual behavior whatsoever. It is all and forever mercy for all of us and all the time, and there are no exceptions.” So no wonder if Father doesn’t evince much regard for “ritual behavior” like the Eucharist.) But again, recalling my previous comments (see here), if one understands the mass to be just a kind of ‘community meal’ (one that’s certainly weirdly orchestrated and poorly catered) presided over by the priest, then naturally the priest or preacher or pastor and his sometimes idiosyncratic views may move to become the centre of attention, the central reality animating the community gathering, and it may become hard to see any value-added in the actual real sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or any loss if you were to go across the street to the Lutheran service. Really, if it’s all about the pastor, chances are the Lutheran pastor will be just as likeable as his Catholic counterpart (maybe more likeable! – and he’ll probably have a wife, who will probably also be lovely), his jokes will be just as funny (maybe funnier!), and the show he runs just as enjoyable (maybe more enjoyable!). At that point we’re into the free-market form of Church, of religious faith experience, which prevails among Protestants.

So in essence our (Catholic) priest shamelessly called anyone who actually believes and embraces the Catholic faith arrogant. (Note that this kind of thing doesn’t necessarily jive well with other rhetoric about “welcoming everyone.”) Now he didn’t actually say that, in those words. It’s just that that was an obvious logical implication of what he did say.  But to be fair, maybe he’s just not good at logic.

But that’s where many people might need to stop and consider in a way they may not have before: What is logic, anyway? What is it good for? Is it mostly an amusingly alien approach to thinking practiced principally by overly sophisticated, emotionally stunted philosophy professors, those ivory tower archetypes of Star Trek’s, pointy eared, strangely eye-browed, ever-amusing Mr. Spock? Or, is logic actually a basic tool of reason, something fundamental to being human, and to becoming a mature and indeed good human being? Well yes, that’s right, you guessed it: it’s the latter!

This fact about logic is well illustrated by Father’s preaching: because he is apparently not good at (or more likely, willfully ignores) logic, he is incapable of other forms of goodness: truthfulness, sincerity, honesty; and he is incapable of avoiding hypocrisy, incapable of effectively preaching the divine word, the logos who became flesh, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the faith of the Church.

[Objection: Is it that he is incapable of these things, or that he just doesn’t want them? Reply: Intellect and will never function in isolation. When someone vitiates his ability to reason well, he also vitiates his ability to want well; if you reject logic so as to render yourself incapable of knowing the good, you correspondingly render yourself incapable of willing the good.]

Now certainly this is true to some extent for all of us who are still sinners. All of us fall short of the glory of God. The problem with a priest who is more fundamentally a disciple of ‘Cosmic Christ’ (i.e., Richard Rohr), than of Jesus Christ, is that he can’t just be a regular Christian sinner, who knows he’s a sinner, who repents of his sins, and tries to sin no more. Why? Because he has really fundamentally rejected Christ, rejected reason and logic, and is instead actively attacking logic – as well as whichever large chunks of scripture and of things like the teachings of Vatican II he dislikes. He is being illogical, but not just being illogical; he is also actively advancing an ideological framework that undermines logic and castigates people who continue to respect and to strive to cultivate logic and respect for truth. He serves a crudely militant post-modernism. He accumulates a life experience that is essentially formed through the lens of his crude ideology, and then he deifies himself and his own experience as the consciousness (admittedly intermittent) of his own True God-self. He can’t distinguish greatness of soul from delusions of his own gnostical grandeur. And insofar as he continues to function as a Catholic priest and represent himself as a Christian, as a Catholic believer, he is unavoidably hard-pressed not to become a liar (about the teachings of Vatican II, for example) and a hypocrite (arrogantly calling those who disagree with him arrogant and immature, for example).

Now all this talk of logic, illogic, lies, and hypocrisy might strike some people as awfully drastic and perhaps melodramatic and overwrought. Which is to say, this kind of frank discussion of reality is apt to make people uncomfortable and fearful. “Help! Conflict! Negativity! Can’t we just look the other way and all get along? Wouldn’t that be the ‘mature’ thing to do? Can’t we just focus on the positives?” Accordingly, discussing this kind of thing is likely to elicit psychological defenses that will dampen one’s discomfort and fear, perhaps through scoffing rationalization, through dismissal of such immature and merciless perfectionism, or through anger or counter-attack. It might take a conscious effort, then, to serenely listen and ponder, in sincere openness and devotion to the truth, trusting that it has the power to set us free. And the truth can set us free.

But the problem is, if we have yet to come to know the truth, it’s often because we don’t love the truth, and if we don’t love the truth, if we are actually devoted to undermining truth and the way to truth (logos: the way, the truth, and the life), we are very likely to instead fear and hate and indeed bury the truth, including the truth about our own fear and hatred of the truth! For the word of God, the truth, is sharp, sharper than any two-edged sword, it pierces us, and accuses us of sins against our training (etc.). “I have not come to bring peace upon the earth but a sword!” Thus considered, it is no wonder, it’s actually quite understandable, that the truth so often elicits an allergic reaction, is so often hated and feared and dismissed as unfashionable, impolite, arrogant, irrelevant, antiquated, immature, unmerciful, a manifestation of False Self, etc. So while we should seek earnestly to love the truth ourselves, we can also see the grounds for cultivating a spirit of mercy towards those who want mercy instead of truth, who think that the way to be, say, merciful, or ecumenical, or humble, or mature, or loving, is to tell lies and to scorn logic.

Now it might come as a surprise to some people that a Catholic priest preaching at a Catholic mass is disparaging the Catholic faith and dismissing the faith of his parents, and grandparents, and the fathers and doctors and saints and popes of the Church throughout history, etc., and even his former self, as merely arrogant! So that seems pretty arrogant, and moreover hypocritical. Sure. But is it surprising?

That’s a trickier question, but – lo and behold – it seems Father maybe sort of saw it coming. Accordingly, a major theme of his preaching was about how surprising God always is. God is always surprising us! We should be surprised if we’re not surprised! So (sous-entendu?) if anything Father says surprises you (shocks, disgusts, scandalizes, bemuses, confuses you), that’s God speaking! Well. Maybe.

So yes, the Holy Spirit blows where he wills. And yes, we have all indelibly received the mark of the Holy Spirit in baptism, so that even darling baby Adolph Hitler received the anointing to become priest, prophet, and king. But, just because something was true for Eldad and Medad back in Moses’ day (the Spirit actually empowered them to prophesy – see the first reading for the day, Numbers 11), it won’t necessarily turn out to be true for You-dad, Me-too-dad, and every-dang-body else too! It’s also possible that someone could come along with another gospel, trying to pervert the gospel of Christ (see Galatians 1) – as well as the teachings of that most wonderful of Church councils, Vatican II. Right, Father? Of course!

As for the gospel (see Mark 9), there John asks Jesus if he should stop a man from casting out demons in Jesus’ name, since this man “was not following” with them. So on Father’s interpretation, it seems John was surprised that God would be working through this other guy who wasn’t in their group, hadn’t received any formal commission, etc. More plausibly, perhaps, John may have been surprised that this other guy would be acting in the name of Jesus without being a follower of Jesus. As Chrysostom comments:

It was not as moved by jealousy or ill-will [or merely by surprise, for that matter] that John hindered the one who was casting out demons; rather he wanted that all who invoked the name of the Lord should follow Christ, and should be one with his disciples [think “ut unum sint” (John 17) – clearly also what the Lord wanted]. But the Lord, through those who work miracles, even if they be unworthy, summons others to faith, and through this ineffable grace induces these others to become better; whence it continues: “But Jesus said to them, ‘Do not hinder him.’”

[Non autem zelo, seu invidia motus Ioannes prohibebat illum qui Daemones expellebat; sed volebat quod omnes qui nomen domini invocabant, sequerentur Christum, et essent cum discipulis unum. Sed dominus per hos qui miracula faciunt, licet sint indigni, alios provocat ad fidem, et ipsosmet per hanc ineffabilem gratiam inducit ut fiant meliores; unde sequitur Iesus autem ait: nolite prohibere eum.]  

In Father’s homily the forgotten part of the day’s gospel reading (surprise!) was: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me” – and implied here: you are free to do so – “it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea!” Well! God knows best, but it looks to me like a guy who preaches that those who don’t have the Eucharist aren’t missing out on anything and calls those who think they are missing out arrogant, that guy looks like a good candidate for someone who might be putting a stumbling block before those who believe. And Father is free to believe Richard Rohr and think otherwise; but if we believe Jesus Christ in the gospel, he won’t be free to avoid facing the consequences, in comparison to which our loving Lord tells us to prefer our necks in a millstone at the bottom of the sea. Nice image! It might give one pause.

Stage center, Richard Rohr, OFM

Mass notes: Sunday, September 23, 2018 – 25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This week I think I may have gained some important insight into the hermeneutical presuppositions (i.e., ideology) of the priest (and deacon) at our new parish. This is because he quite forthrightly based his preaching on the thought of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, a New Mexico-(where else?)-based fellow with more than a few disciples, who has been described, probably quite aptly, as a new-age heretic. “Has anyone read his books?” Father asked the pew-sitters. Evidently some people had. “Yes? Yes? Good, good!” Well, hardly surprising, especially in our parish, which comes equipped, since 2015, with a Sacred Garden featuring a labyrinth – usually a good clue that some significant movers and shakers at the parish have moved ‘beyond’ the traditional apostolic Christian faith and on to some form of ‘alternative orthodoxy’ (as Rohr describes his own thought). And certainly Rohr’s books pair well with the scandalous fine collection of Sister Joan Chittister books displayed in the church lobby.

Father preached on Richard Rohr’s teaching about something like “the four stages of maturity of a spiritual (possibly Christian) community.” Given what he wanted to say, Father naturally took bits of the 2^nd reading from James and from the gospel, Mark’s, as his points of departure: “Where there is envy and selfish ambition [contentio], there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. … Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?” (James 3:16; 4:1) “Jesus asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’” (Mark 9:33-35)

So, Father noted, James was writing to a dysfunctional Christian community; cue Richard Rohr and the four stages of development of maturity in community. I can’t remember exactly what they were – someday I’ll be less occupied with kids at mass and I’ll be able to take notes – but it was something like: (1) honeymoon (“I love these people!”); (2) disillusionment (“These people are selfish, disgusting sinners!”); (3) resignation (“I guess I still have to try to love these selfish, disgusting sinners (after all, technically I’m one of them)”); (4) finally just being kind and cool with everyone (“Just whatever, man, just be, it’s all good! Would you like some more soup?”). Well, something fairly amusing like that anyway. (Father's big on jokes and bonhomie, he's a good guy, not a ‘sourpuss,’ as they say.)

Father’s (Rohr’s) schema seemed a little vague, a little contrived, and perhaps with a hint of the insidious. It’s the kind of schema that is open to being subtly developed in a rather demagogical direction, to where the pew-sitters are encouraged to believe that it just would be ‘immature’ of them were they (1) too in love with their community (I don’t think this possibility is emphasized); or more importantly were they (2) to be critical of sin or challenge doctrinal error – the way that Jesus of Nazareth did.

So, next obvious question: Was Jesus of Nazareth (before he became Richard Rohr's resurrected ‘Cosmic Jesus’) spiritually ‘immature’? Presumably not, Father? But then hopefully you see what I mean when I say the schema seems vague, contrived, and perhaps insidious. Rohr – and presumably with him his adepts – seems to regard himself as mature (or rather, as the veritable icon of a “great advance in human maturity”), daring, great-souled; and subversive, certainly, but not insidious. But of course reality may not be quite what he thinks.

And in fact reality can’t be quite what he thinks, or rather it’s meaningless to talk about quite what he thinks reality is, because Rohr is (at least rhetorically) ‘through the looking glass,’ so to speak, and (claims that) he holds opposites together in the irresolvable tension of his own great soul – or at least that’s what he aims for and recommends to others. A few quotes to illustrate, first from Rohr’s Hope Against Darkness, a book allegedly about “the transforming vision of Saint Francis in an age of anxiety” (poor actual Saint Francis, his name is so abused!):

You could say that the greater opposites you can hold together, the greater soul you usually have. By temperament, most of us prefer one side to the other. Holding to one side or another frees us from the tension and anxiety. Only a few dare to hold the irresolvable tension in the middle. [A hint of “Hegel for Dummies” here perhaps?]

I’m seeing people of great faith today, people of the Big Truth, who love the church, but are no longer on bended knee before an idol. [For example, no longer kneeling for communion? As Rohr and (presumably following Rohr) our deacon say: when you receive communion, you are what you eat, and surely it’s a bit silly to go down on bended knee to worship yourself (your own (Richard Rohr’s own) ‘True Self’)?] They don’t need to worship the institution; neither do they need to throw it out and react against it. [Of course it never once occurred to people before ‘today’ that these were not the only two options!] This is a great advance in human maturity. Only a few years ago it was always [yup, it was always!] either/or thinking: ‘If it isn’t perfect I’m leaving it.’ We are slowly discovering what many of us are calling ‘the Third Way,’ neither flight nor fight, but the way of compassionate knowing. [“The way of compassionate knowing”; i.e., the way of ‘passive’ aggression, of undermining the Church from within? – not, by the way, a strategy discovered “only a few years ago”!]

Then there’s this bit of “irresolvable tension,” i.e., doublespeak (‘Rohr’ is German for pipe or reed, by the way, and one naturally thinks of the Pied Piper in this connection, leading away first the rats, and then – alas! – the children):

Observing nature, we see that diversity is essential to balance, wholeness, and resilience. Ecosystems thrive when a variety of species of plants and animals nourish each other. Diverse environments are much stronger and less susceptible to pests and disease than mono-crop fields. The world is a relational system full of complex inter-dependence among very different creatures. If we want sustainable communities, we must always welcome the “other” [so what about pests and disease? or, say, sexual predators, heretics, charlatans? or “the world”? (see the day's reading from James, in the next verse of which (4:4) James tells us, “adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”) – hmm... we might also welcome some nuance, eh Father?] and learn to see [see? not love?] our neighbor as ourselves. Without it, we do not have community at all, but just egoic enclaves. (taken from Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation website, here)

So diverse ecosystems are wonderful: sure, great! I’m all for that (although, being a practical person, I’m also not a big mono-crop hater). Therefore, we must always welcome the “other.” Why? So that we are strong and not susceptible to invasion by the ever-threatening “other other”! That is, for Rohr (tolle! lege! and by all means dispute if you see fit!), we must welcome the “other” in order to defend against the “pest and disease” that are represented by the traditional, apostolic, Biblical, creedal, magisterial teachings and practices of the Christian faith (yes, including the teachings of Vatican II), as well as against the first principles of philosophy and theology. At least, so it seems!

In saying these kinds of things, Rohr assumes – following the gnostical logic of his own ideology – that his own great soul is the very measure of reality and so, quite consistently, he can patronizingly, smugly, glibly dismiss the “False-Self”-ness of those who might presume to measure him up and find his thought wanting (MENE, MENE, TEKAL, UPHARSIN and all that). So Rohr is an unfortunate kind of guru for a Catholic priest or deacon to be following in his preaching. But it’s also not surprising that such characters should arise from time to time, and raise up disciples to follow them (this is the case of a bug in the Church which in a sense rises to the level of a feature), especially in the kind of narcissistic, clericalist, “self-enclosed circle” of community that Ratzinger warns against in The Spirit of the Liturgy, wherein an incautious priest may tend to be drawn, by the very setup of the physical, ‘incarnate’ space, to regard himself as the centre of attention and who thus feels responsible for sustaining the whole thing by his own overactive, poorly grounded creativity (see Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 80 and my previous related comments on Ratzinger’s thesis here).

Mass notes: All about Uncle Ted?

Sunday, September 16, 2018 – 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A whole homily about “Uncle Ted” Cardinal McCarrick and sexual abuse scandals in the Church? Is that really what my family and I need to hear about? I’m not saying ignore it, I’m not saying don’t address it, but isn’t the adversary perhaps quite happy that we’re so focused on this sensational news story and thereby distracted from worthier topics of contemplation? Oh well, I’m not in charge: Uncle Ted it is, but let’s not overdo it!

So yes, on this Sunday, visiting at another parish, we got to hear a bunch about “Uncle Ted” and related scandals. It was not very edifying, I thought, but in particular it seemed ironic that in his impassioned homily against abuse and abusers and protectors of abusers, the priest – following the Alberta bishops – elected to quote none other than Pope Francis in denouncing these evils. Heaven forbid that bishops and priests just go ahead and speak out against evil in their own voices, instead of needing to quote the pope!

At the climax of his homily the priest made the emphatic point: “Make no mistake: Jesus stands with the victims, not the abusers!” Oh? But didn’t Christ come to save sinners? Hurt people hurt people. Victims make new victims. Victimizers are/were themselves victims of abuse. So at what point, exactly, does Christ cease to “stand with” a sinner (with me, for example)? (Only) when my sins become a sensational news story? (Only) when they take on an overtly ‘political’ dimension?

Anyway, complications about the problem of evil, the perfection of God’s merciful love, etc., aside, we may well accept the rather banal point that Jesus does not stand with the abusers, at least in the sense that he warns them rather pointedly, “it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around your neck” than to carry on as you do. But also we might note that Pope Francis – the guy the priest had just been quoting – actually has been standing with, defending, promoting the abusers (right up until it becomes overwhelmingly obvious in a given case of patronage that the political cost has become too heavy). And it’s very easy to condemn sexual abuse – it’s like when world leaders step up after an act of terrorism and reassuringly announce to the wondering world that they (still) unequivocally condemn such acts of non-state-sanctioned violence – but as Jonathan V. Last writes, there is a bigger picture:

The abuse itself is terrible, of course. We should say that out loud, because while the details are unspeakable they must be spoken of. Without the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, we would know much less about the evil inside the church. (It is also instructive to note that authorities within the church opposed the release of this report.) But individual priest-abusers aren’t catastrophic to the church in any structural way. Predators will always be among us. It is a human pathology from which not even priests are immune. But the remedy for predation is straightforward: Whenever and wherever such men are discovered, they should be rooted out and punished.

The institutional damage is done not by the abusers but by the structures that cover for them, excuse them, and advance them. Viewed in that way, the damage done to the Catholic church by Cardinal Wuerl—and every other bishop who knew about McCarrick and stayed silent [e.g., Pope Francis?!]—is several orders of magnitude greater than that done by McCarrick himself.

So at this point surely Pope Francis makes a rather poor choice as a go-to for quotes about standing against abuse and not sheltering and promoting abusers.

In order to tie his homily to the day’s gospel, the priest used Jesus’ admonition to Peter, “Get behind me Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.” The preacher claimed an analogy here between Peter and abusive clergy. But it seems to me that sexually abusive clergy are not thinking “as humans do” in the way Peter was; they are thinking as vicious, pathologically perverted humans do, that is, they are thinking in a way that is really inhuman. Peter was not doing this. The rejection of the cross is human. Even Christ prayed that this cup be taken from him, because he was human, he had a real human nature and human will, and to embrace the cross requires a grace-powered act of will to transcend the merely human, that which is naturally human, that is, that which, at a strictly natural human level, is good. Sexual predators of young men, by contrast, are not acting in a way that is properly human, naturally human, in accord with human nature, that is, in a way that is humanly good. Suggesting an equivalence here between Peter and the abusers confuses the important distinction between the natural and the supernatural good. Grace both heals wounded nature and elevates what it heals. Peter’s desire to save his friend, our Lord, from suffering and death was naturally good; Peter just did not yet understand and was not ready to embrace the greater, supernatural good which it was necessary for him to take into account. In contrast, McCarrick’s perverse desires and actions to corrupt young men and in the process to do grave damage to the Church are far from any kind of good, natural or supernatural.

The priest also quoted the morally and intellectually rather more impressive authority of Thomas Aquinas in his homily. He noted that justice, according to Aquinas, is “rendering to each his due” (something to that effect). Great! But then the priest also claimed, I guess on his own say-so, and without further ado: “And what we need is not retributive justice, but restorative justice!” Excuse me? So is the priest claiming that retribution is not anyone’s due? Sexual predators should only be ‘restored,’ not punished? But is that not the very disastrous policy that he had been railing on against: “don’t punish abusers; restore them to ministry in some other parish!”? So I wonder what he could have meant. Jesus, anyway, along with common sense and a host of other witnesses too numerous to list, seems to teach us that justice requires restitution, that retributive punishment is indeed what is due to criminals and sinners. Aquinas too clearly teaches that punishment is retributive, so if the priest, after quoting Aquinas on justice, has some other view, I think he owes his listeners an explanation. And before attempting that explanation he might do well to read some of the Ed Feser’s exceptionally lucid work on the subject (see here for example), so that he is aware of what it is he needs to respond to if he really wants to maintain his anti-retribution position.