It is sometimes said that if you have to insist on your authority, you don’t have it. We hear much, as we should, of the importance of love. I say, “as we should” because God is love. If His love does not warm our hearts to inspire love then something somewhere has gone very wrong and we may need to find the human equivalent of the “reset” button. But while we may, nay must, for He commands it, love our enemies, lines need to be drawn. While we may love our enemy, we cannot agree with him that the line of conduct he wishes to take is correct if it runs contrary to sound doctrine. We may do our best to reason with him, but love commands the opposite of our approving of any such conduct.
However it might concern us, we cannot deny the individual the freedom to make his or her own decision; but taken to extremes, that is without some degree of reasonableness on both sides, you can end by annihiating all real unity. Any religion which operates on the basis of unlimited pick and mix is a well-being philosophy pretending to be a religious one. Equally, on the other side of the question, an assertion of Church authority can result in the annihilation of the individual – historically, quite literally. Any religion which can only maintain a hold on its adherents by the use of force is a political system pretending to be a religious one, and has nothing to do with Christ and His teaching.
What Christianity has aimed at is a situation in which the authority of the Church nurtures the spiritual judgment of each individual to grow in conformity with God’s will, but in practice this via media has seldom been achieved, and a survey of the current situation suggests that mankind’s tendency to prefer extremes continues to prevail. Even within the Catholic Church there is a range from those who condemn Vatican II and long for the days of Encyclicals which condemned “modernism”, through to those who feel free to reject the idea of miracles and the bodily resurrection. I still recall the shock of a fellow parishioner when he realised that, as he put it, I believed “that stuff in the Creed literally.”
The life of the soul is meant to be nourished by cooperation between external gifts of Grace to which the Sacraments give us access, and the internal action of our faith. The former are not magic charms, neither are they substitutes for our own efforts; faith without works is, after all, in vain. But equally, the idea that our own efforts and our own reason can, by themselves supply what the Sacraments are there to give is equally vain, if not a sign of vanity. Grace works with and on our own faith.
There are boundaries, and one of the functions of a Church is to patrol those boundaries. In an age of relativism this is difficult, not least because some of those whose job it is to police them do not believe in the necessity for their existence. But without them, what remains of bonds of unity?
All Along the Watchtower 
“Any religion which can only maintain a hold on its adherents by the use of force is a political system pretending to be a religious one, and has nothing to do with Christ and His teaching.”
Although I enjoyed your post and agree mostly the above sentence seems to me to undermine the ability for a Church which claims to proclaim and hand down the Teachings from Christ Himself who has Mediate Authority would only water down and in time perhaps destroy the whole . . . like a bit of leaven taking over the whole lump of dough. It is not only important to remain true (and enforce that truth in its leaders and amongst the laity) if we are even going to survive at all. Have we not seen that 70% of our people and 45% of our priests no longer believe that the Eucharist is anything more than a symbol . . . identical with our Protestant fallen-away brothers? It is like trying to be a father and only rewarding good moral behavior in his children but ignoring bad behavior and expecting that (in time) they will abandon poor behavior and opt for good behavior. I think that is a recipe for a narcissistic approach to the faith that is determinant on the rationale of the person. That destroys entirely the communion of the faithful or the unity of a family. So is a stick appropriate at times? . . . excommunications, dismissals from ministry and severe recusals. Even the apostles and early fathers did that and in fact it is part and parcel of 2000 years of the Catholic Church. It seems to me that the practice of ignoring the principles of our faith is what brings division and makes of our family, factions that are opposed to one another. It truly is a matter of abandonment to Divine Providence which we are to be led . . . and how do we do this if do not “maintain a hold on our adherents by use of force” such as the consequences as mentioned above which have always been practiced within our Church? Isn’t that how we have not only survived by shown to those who were disciplined that we love their souls more than we sorrow for their suffering with various Church Doctrines? It sounds to me like a recipe for religious indifference, or worse anarchy?
I truly believe that this is the biggest problem which has entered the Church since VII and the catalyst for all the in-fighting, bickering and breakdown of belief which see in our present day.
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But it is simple, surely? One can compel conformity, but no one can compel belief. We have no idea how many Catholics have always held that view of the Eucharist. It maybe that many always have, but kept quiet about it. As I say, the Church must say what the boundaries are, but if it attempts to make people believe, it goes where Christ did not.
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Certainly there are always frauds and hypocrites among us. However, we have done our duty if we continue to teach without compromise that which makes you a Catholic and that which makes you a heretic. If you are a man of character you leave on your own. If not then you have no virtue in you.
And yes, no-one can compel you to believe anything even if you mouth it with a gun to your head. And yet, especially in totalitarian states many were ready to die for those beliefs rather than deny those beliefs. I doubt seriously that we had such a problem in the past as we do today where belief in ALL of the teachings of the faith are almost a rarity. Christ commands you but can’t fool him by mouthing the worlds without intent.
And then there are saints who suffered periods where even faith was withdrawn from them (sometimes for years) which purged them from a self-rewarding faith which gives them pleasure in their receipt of consolations from God. Sometimes suffering for the Faith is the only way one can be sure that we have Faith. Be careful for that which you pray for; or it will likely be tested.
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I agree. That’s why I wrote that the Church should not to compel belief.
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I have been away doing an asceticism discipline. So, I hadn’t noticed that you were blogging again. It’s a joy to hear from you again..
I had got the others to move to a different site since we couldn’t invite others to blog and we had been overrun by atheist.
AATW in some ways was as much you as it was Jessica. It’s good to have you here.
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Thank you Phillip. I am glad to be back, and thank you for your kind words.
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This is an interesting post, as is your one about Oak Apple Day. I am a big fan of Charles II and think he was a far superior monarch to Charles I. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg though he was, I think he genuinely cared for all non-conformists, not just Catholics. Had Charles II had his way, rather than the bigotted Parliament, we might have seen real religious tolerance for non-conformist Protestants. I am still glad the Glorious Revolution occurred, for James II was an awful monarch, but it is sad that it was necessary.
As a Protestant I don’t object to Catholicism using church discipline to protect itself. I believe such is necessary to protect its integrity; otherwise, it will cease to be Catholicism. That being said, I would never wish to see a return to the days when people could not openly be Protestant. Martyrdom is a part of our faith, but it is not to be desired.
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Good to hear from you Nicholas. In a way, Charles II’s indifference was a greater public good than the narrow zeal of some of his critics. God does, indeed, work in mysterious ways, and write straight with crooked lines.
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The Lens of bias: Freedom of Conscience and The the World Day of Prayer 1986.
St. John Paul II made the point when assuming the position of the Vicar of Christ that his pontificate would be one that would not impose politically, a rejection of Catholic integralism, but by the freedom of conscience it would propose through the moral formation. For a long time, I’ve had an issue with the World Day of Prayer in 1986 and syncretism; however, I seem to be moving away from that issue. In the context of that particular age of history, in 1986, there were two ideologies: The humanistic theist and the Atheistic State. And so, by bringing those to pray was a bold move that would show that freedom of conscience of forming the general conscience that Man has a natural desire to know God–that the opposite is opposite to the nature of man. So, the Assisi World Day of Prayer, was not syncretism, especially in light of the Amazon synod, but rather it was the expression of the dignity of man, in which all are created in His likeness. Naturally, this doesn’t mean that Christianity shouldn’t evangelize anymore or that John Paul believe all religions to be the same. In fact, this observation is simplistic because it ignores many of his other actions while taken as Pope. These actions were taken when the freedom of religion was utterly denied in Eastern-Central Europe, and so, the Pope acted to say that prayer is man’s natural movement toward the desire to know all causes–it’s rooted in basic Thomistic theology.
The difficulty, now, is that some books and personalities are gaining popularity during the Francis pontificate that seek to caricature all things after the Vatican II council in the lens of the Francis pontificate. I remember reading in one book something of the nature that Pope St. John Paul II was a modernist that still had Catholic Polish piety. After some reflection, it was this statement that led me to this answer. In fact, I use to think that particular person was fairly astute in the Catholic theology, but what it reveals is that it dismisses authentic Catholic theology taught by Pope John Paul II in Veritas Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, Fides et Ratio and his comments on the Christian father being the head of the domestic church.
Many of these people seek to raise up Pope Benedict XVI as their hero; however, in some point of irony, Benedict XVI is also their antithesis. In the conspiracy theories that assert that Benedict abdicated that papacy due to pressure, he be guilty, at the very least, of a direliction of duty. In fact, much of Benedict XVI’s own theology rejects Thomistic objective theology and supports Biblical historicism–all of which contradict positions held by preconciliar Catholics. There are two aspects in which Joseph Ratzinger can be held up by his traditional supporters. The first is his position on objective truth, this is something that Pope St. John Paul II also expressed and reading his encyclicals, I’d argue that John Paul II was far more Thomistic than Benedict XVI–especially in Veritas Splendor and Fides et Ratio. Despite all of this, best-sellers are being sold that argue–without much analysis of the scholarly work–that Pope St. John Paul II was a modernist with Catholic piety only.
If it was the goal of Pope John Paul II to be a globalist; he went about it pretty poorly. He argued that history was the product of culture. He argued at the United Nations that cultures and nations should be respected and that the fundamental freedom of parents educating their children is a human right. If Pope St. John Paul II wanted a global world, he would have been much more successful siding the USSR and the authority of the state than promoting the uniqueness and diversity of human culture around the world.
The papacy of St. John Paul II will need another 100 years to separate from the ideologies of the camps found in Catholicism. In one camp, he’s framed in the lens of Ratzinger angst and in the other he’s framed as the tipping point to the Francis effect. The irony is that Pope Benedict XVI was probably more the reformer than Pope John Paul II. The strong point of Benedict XVI is his work on the liturgy and his work on the Jesus of Nazareth series (although no preconciliar Catholic would like its conclusions). In fact, the only hat that those who frame Benedict XVI against both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Francis can hang on is his approval of the Latin mass.
Pope St. John Paul II no doubt was a modern theologian–that doesn’t make him a modernist (whatever that actually means). Sure, he explored Personalism and phenominology in his works, but many of his conclusions were guided by Thomism, as he writes about it quite extensively. One conclusion that a person can arrive at the if any conclude that Pope St. John Paul II was a modernist who only had Catholic piety is that those folks must not have read much Pope St. John Paul II.
Pope Benedict XVI, as Joseph Ratzinger, did his duty protecting the faith for the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II. In his theology (other than his liturgical), both systematic and moral, He is the hinge of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Francis. Let’s set the record straight.
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I do sometimes think we make prisons for ourselves here. Newman provided us with seven tests to see if developments of doctrine were genuine. If we reject them, and assert that developments are “modernism” we simply retreat into a fossilised faith which, though it bears the outward marks of Church, lacks the living force of Grace. Peter found it hard to accept that after Pentecost, Gentiles did not have to adopt Jewish customs. The Christian Church was sufficiently like the Synagogue for the first generations to worship together, but it’s vitality took it where observant Jews untouched by the Spirit could not go, and we know that by the end of John’s life, there had been a split.
Not all developments are of the Spirit, but to think there was some preconciliar golden age from which have declined is to erect a false idol. We may select from our limited knowledge of that past, those aspects we admire and think it the truth, but the truth is that in all ages there have been things to admire and things to condemn. It is the nature of polemic to cherrypick. It is the nature of the Spirit to love. If we can do the last, He is in us and we are in Him.
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Yes, Newman’s notes and his river analogy is beautiful. In fact, it was Newman that led me to accept Pope Francis’ change in the Catechism with regard to Capital Punishment. Notice, that Francis didn’t say it was intrinsically evil because that would have been contradicting doctrine. In the notes, Newman indicates that culture can influence the development of doctrine. And so, if the culture tends to become less violent and has the means not need capital punishment, this fulfills the condition of justice and the condition of the protection of society. If the trend of the culture regresses then the death penalty could become admissible again because it’s not an intrinsic evil nor has it been stated as such.
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Very well observed, Phillip. Our Faith influences the culture, of course, and there are times when, as our culture changes for the better, some of the sanctions which were once necessary to protect others are not needed; this was one such.
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Yes. And the concern that Captial Punishment could be a catalyst for other changes is fallacious because it ignores the teleology of Catholic philosophical thought. A development in regards to Captial Punishment would need to consider, as stated, justice as its key and in succession other considerations like protection of society. So, it has no bearing on moral issues where the ends and purpose are different.
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Again, spot on, Phillip. If we fail to allow for true development, we fail to allow for the workings of the Spirit.
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