Private judgement?

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Synod 14, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Faith, Obedience, Papacy

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A great deal of fuss has been made about the ‘Dubia’ from the four cardinals to the Pope and his refusal to answer them. Readers of the Catholic press will be familiar with the divisions over Amoris Laetitia. They concern the moral law, the nature of the sacraments and the authority of previous teaching. But it comes down to the question: can remarried Catholics receive Communion if they aren’t living as brother and sister? The Church has always been clear that the answer to this is ‘no’, but it is equally clear that pastoral practice has varied, not least in the sorts of circumstances people find themselves in in a society where late conversions are common and civil divorce very easy. These are new circumstances and for the representatives of the Church simply to insist on a binary answer which would fit all cases, might lead to injustice; but for the Pope not to reply might risk another sort of injustice, in which the faithful look up and are fed stones.

Whatever answer to Pope gave, it would seem unlikely to change the reality at parish level. We are told that the use of contraception among Catholics is common, and yet, if one looks at the lines for Communion and one took them at face value, you’d not suppose that at all – quite the opposite. In the end the individual knows their situation, as does their confessor, and to pronounce in the abstract would simply to be to assert what no one has challenged – which is that the recent Synods did not change the teaching of the Church with regard to communion for the divorced, however much some would like to to have done so, and however much those who would have liked this claim it has. This is a matter on which the teaching of the Church is clear, and where pastoral practice clearly varies. It is not the only such issue.

No doubt those calling on the Pope to say something more have their reasons for so doing, and no doubt the Holy Father has his reasons for not responding. For the individual Catholic, it is hard to see what is unclear. Those who wish for clarity have already found it in pastoral practice, which varies according to what the confessor knows of his flock; this is right and proper. The Church is not a penal colony, it is a field hospital in a world where Sin is injuring and has injured many Faithful. Those who want clarity have it in the age-old teaching of the Church; if they wish to apply it to every individual regardless of circumstances then, to use a word much beloved of the Pope, that would seem a trifle ‘rigid’. So the Holy Father may be showing much wisdom in letting things lie where they are, because in practice, it is the individual conscience which knows where truth lies, and if that conscience is formed well by the confessor, then we can be sure that what is done is what ought to be done.

The Joy of Love: first reflections

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Pope, Synod 14, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, Papacy, The Joy of love

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The long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia – The Joy of Love -is now available on line. For those of us who have had sight of it only now, it will take time to digest – 264 pages are not to be understood on a skim read. The Catholic Herald has a good summary here. What is already clear is that this is not going to stop the entirely predictable reactions. On the liberal side, we are already hearing the false dichotomy – ‘less dogma, more love’. Quite what any Catholic who believes dogma and love are opposites is thinking with is unclear; one can see why an uncomprehending secularist might leap to such a conclusion – it fits, presumably, with their view that the Church is a hypocritical organisation more concerned with rules than with reality; but why a believing Catholic would join them is not clear. It might, perhaps, be something to do with the other entirely predictable reaction from self-styled traditionalists, who deplore what they see as a watering down of dogma and and gut reaction against any call for ‘greater acceptance of non-traditional families’. One thing alone is clear – neither extreme in this discussion is going to like this document – it not only does not give them what they want, it exhorts them to think again; people often dislike that most of all. We have, they tend to think, clear cut views and here they are – why is this man asking us to rethink things we have already decided are settled? The document explains why.

When, in paragraph 3, the Pope says that “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium”, and indeed, that for some questions, “each country or region … can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For ‘cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle… needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied’” (AL 3), that will dismay some who want a simple and clear theoretical line which can be applied in all cases; such people should go back and read why the Pope says this:

Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. This will always be the case as the Spirit guides us towards the entire truth (cf. Jn 16:13), until he leads us fully into the mystery of Christ and enables us to see all things as he does

This is a document grounded in the difficult and practical business of trying to apply God’s love to the mess that so many of us make of our lives in this area. In recognising that one size does not fit all, the Pope is trying to avoid to avoid a sterile contest between demands for change and the general application of abstract norms. He writes:

“The debates carried on in the media, in certain publications and even among the Church’s ministers, range from an immoderate desire for total change without sufficient reflection or grounding, to an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations” (AL 2)

In real life in these areas, things are messy and seldom, if ever, reducible to black and white (AL305), and the church cannot apply moral laws as if they were “stones to throw at people’s lives” (AL305). The Holy Father calls, instead, for a pastoral approach marked by understanding, compassion and accompaniment. This last word, which will, I suspect be met with snorts of incredulity from some, refers back to an approach made familiar by St John Paul II, who reminded us that Christ himself had accompanied us into the most extreme of the situations we can encounter – a cruel and unjust death by torture, and that as the alter Christus it is the job of the priest to accompany us on our journeys so we can be better guided and come to understand what it is God wants of us.

There is, it seems to me on a first reading, much wisdom here, but it will, as is the case in such matters, satisfy neither those who insist black and white is black and white, or those who want to turn the Catholic Church into the Anglican Church. The words of the final paragraph need to be heeded:

no family drops down from heaven perfectly formed; families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love. This is a never ending vocation born of the full communion of the Trinity, the profound unity between Christ and his Church, the loving community which is the Holy Family of Nazareth, and the pure fraternity existing among the saints of heaven. Our contemplation of the fulfilment which we have yet to attain also allows us to see in proper perspective the historical journey which we make as families, and in this way to stop demanding of our interpersonal relationships a perfection, a purity of intentions and a consistency which we will only encounter in the Kingdom to come. It also keeps us from judging harshly those who live in situations of frailty. (AL325)

Those who insist dialogue is a tool to wear down the faithful (a direct quotation from something posted recently) should hesitate before taking on themselves sole responsibility for being ‘the faithful’, and they might also ask at what point we sinners stop talking to each other, and Holy Mother Church stops talking to us. Yes, for sure, it is easier if a Father simply says here are the rules, obey them or go, but that looks terribly like a form of child abuse, and seems far from the way of Jesus with sinners. The religious authorities of his day were, from their own point of view, right to condemn him for keeping fellowship with whores and tax collectors and other sinners, but Jesus knew where he was needed most – as does his Church. I daresay, on closer inspection, there will be much to be mulled over and discussed – and from a constructive dialogue, much good can come. From a dialogue of the deaf, from those determined to reduce this rich document to a few bullet points to ‘prove’ either that the Pope is not a Catholic, or that he is not really a liberal, little that is good will come.

This is a rich, stimulating and illuminating document, which we should read with prayer for better understanding, both of it, and of how the Church can accompany all of us on our journeys. Am I going to agree with all of it? Am I going to find some of it ‘too vague’? I suspect the answers are ‘no’ to the first, and ‘yes’ to the second. But I am not going to fail to do what the Pope wants, which is to read it carefully and reflect on it and to learn from it too. As the Pope says:

“I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness.”

If that is what the Spirit is leading the Holy Father to believe, we should, I think, reflect prayerfully before we reject that approach for the certainties we think we have.

There is a good summary here by Dr Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s, Twickenham.

Here is Peter?

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Pope, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy

In an age of relativism men and women still need to appeal to an authority. The major difference for modern men and women is that that authority is their own interpretation of what Scripture means and, as we know, the reading of Scripture to one’s own damnation began early enough for St Peter to warn us of false teachers and the turning of the word to one’s own purposes. This, of course, Catholics believe, is why Jesus did not write a book, but founded a Church; the Church, which tells us what Scripture is, also knows how to read it. A Protestantised sense of Christianity sometimes leads questioners to ask what the Church says about verse x or verse y, but this is to misunderstand how Scripture is to be read and has always been read in the Church.

It is precisely because verses can be read out of context that the Church reads, and advises us to read, Scripture in the context of which it is a part – that is Holy Tradition. It is not accidental that modern liberals read it otherwise, because they know that to read the Bible in the tradition of the Church is to give massive weight to the past, and, being self-consciously modern, they reject the past and prefer what? They prefer what the old Church of England prayer book rather splendidly called ‘the devices and desires’ of their own hearts, and we know the heart was ever deceitful.

But in this world, change is constant, and in a Church guided by the Spirit to an ever deepening and widening knowledge of the infinite faith, it is not to be expected that things will stand still or that the Church will be pickled in aspic. Once it was commonly held that the Jews were damned and that the primary duty of Christians was to convert them or shun them; this is no longer what the Church holds, and for many of us this is a good thing. The theological underpinnings of this can be found in Nostra Ataete, but the spiritual underpinnings came first, and come from Christ’s own teaching on the importance of mercy. We do not go wrong if we follow this; we do if we forget that repentance on the part of the sinner is part of the process of mercy; those who do not believe in sin have a problem here, which they seem to ignore by ignoring its existence. It is here that more conservative-minded Catholics can be tempted into an occasion of sin by becoming irritated with the sleight of hand at play.

Jesus does, indeed, not judge the woman taken in adultery. She is guilty under the law of Moses because she was caught in the act, and the penalty was clear. But Christ reminded her accusers that they too were sinners, and interestingly, this effected them to the extent that they backed away from stoning her. Christ told her to go away – and sin no more. He did not invite her to establish a polyamorous community in which all that mattered was that no one got harmed and everyone loved each other.

It is this last part which those Catholics who intone mercy so loudly wish to ignore, and they do anything which smacks of being judgmental; this, at the same time as they judge others as ‘haters’ and ‘intolerant’; since there are few things more intolerant than a liberal faced with conservative views, and few can hate more, there is a comical side to all of this; or there would be if some of our liberals were not touched to the quick by this and if they possessed a self-critical attitude. But you cannot be self-critical if you are the authority, as it is on that mountain of sand your whole position is built.

For the rest of us, we rest of the rock of Peter. It is true, as Newman commented many years ago, that the marshland below the rock is a little humid, but at its summit the atmosphere is serene. What, of course, worries some is what happens if the Pope himself is inclined to take his own views as being preferable to tradition. The recent Synod suggests the answer is he gets told that whilst his opinion is always worth listening to, the teaching of the Church on certain matters does not change.

Development and all that

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, church politics, controversy, orthodoxy

It was said of Churchill that his courage was such that he would have charged a manned battery of guns with just a rifle and bayonet; it might, it was added, be the wrong battery in the wrong place, but he would have attacked it all the same; his political career, with its strange mixture of triumph, disaster and ultimate triumph, illustrates the point well. It was loyal of him to defend Edward VIII, and romantic to imagine there could be a ‘King’s party’ to defend him; but it was also political madness and reinforced the prevelant view that if Churchill had any judgment, it was mostly bad. This is by way of prelude to a final comment, for now, on the disturbances in the Catholic social media over the Synod.

Those Catholic theologians who tried to pull rank on Ross Douthat, have been met by him with a forthright response and, equally predictably, some of them have played the gender card and accused him of going after the one female theologian on the list; given her views, one can see why they preferred to play the man and not the ball. The claim by Massimo Faggioli that Douthat erred in saying development cannot contradict past Church teaching that ‘the true criterion is the Gospel’ is shockingly imprecise from a trained theologian, and makes one glad Douthat did not plead his own pride of caste and advise Faggioli to stick to what he know best. The Blessed John Henry Newman provided seven tests for authentic development, all of which require a teaching to be tested against what the Church has always taught. There are, of course, many, indeed legions, who would say that it is the Gospel which matters and it can contradict the Church; we call those Protestants usually. But perhaps Twitter is not Faggioli’s medium and we have misinterpreted; I hope so.

Douthat is correct, the conservative – that is the traditionalist – side has all the Catholic arguments on its side. I shall not rehearse his arguments, which are given full rein in the piece to which I linked earlier. But all of that said, I repeat what I wrote yesterday – which is that those on that side of the argument must be careful.

There is, in some quarters, a readiness to take any rumour on the Internet as proof that their own fears are right, and then try to frighten others. Thus, Rorate Caeli has decided on the basis of a report of a telephone call that the Pope is going to realise its worst fears; it is usually better to wait to see what is going to happen before trying to stir up discontent. But even if it is right, there is no change in doctrine, just in discipline, and the latter is always subject to change. If one wanted to get really Rigorist here, one might point out Jesus said nothing about annulments, so even having them breaks with what he clearly said; that’s the problem here, there is always someone would is more Donatist than you are. At a time when only the rich and powerful got annulments, the present process worked well enough; in many places now the thing is more in demand, it doesn’t. Proposing to make life less difficult for those faithful who take the difficult decision to seek an annulment (and I have not heard anyone who has sought one say it isn’t difficult, and as one who has, believe me, it is) is not changing doctrine, it is helping the sheep; isn’t that what shepherds are for? I think some people need to calm down and stop looking for heresy where there is none.

We all err, we all stray, we are all sinners. On this issue of the Synod it is clear that any attempt to rig it to get a Kaperite answer (if that is what went on) has not only failed, it has backfired. The Pope cannot now proceed by stealth, he has tried the strength of those who held his position (if it is his position) and the angel with whom he was wrestling has won – as He will always.

What is to be done?

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Synod15

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If we accept the thrust of the argument in Friday’s post (which seems to have garnered a great many re-tweets, for which thanks to those who did so), the question arises, what, if anything, is to be done?

It is no accident that many of those most alarmed at recent events in Rome are converts. Many of us (for I am one myself) came to the Rock that is Rome as the one secure place in the shifting sands. Some wonder whether Orthodoxy is an option? As one who took that option but went on to cross the Tiber, I am a bad person to ask. I found much to admire and love in the Orthodox tradition, but it is not mine, and I found the ethnic aspects distracting. Moreover, whilst in the countries of its strength, Orthodoxy tends not to encounter the problems with liberalism which we have in the West, those of us in the West know it is encountering them here; you can run, as they say, but you cannot hide.

To those, and there are such, who say ‘leave the Church of Rome’, I would say what Peter said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life?” The Church stands eternal on the Rock of Peter’s faith, and neither preachy Popes, sophistical Jesuits and the forces of ACTA, are going to shift it. This is hardly the first time in its history that the Church has faced existential threats, and there is no point being a Christian soldier and fleeing at the note of the last trump! There are, as the debates over the Synod has shown, myriads of faithful Catholics, not least among our Cardinalate and the episcopacy; and it may well be that at times it is easy to exaggerate the number of unorthodox ones.

What would not be helpful would be to engage with those on the ‘change’ side of the debate in the way some of them have engaged with conservatives. We know their mantra – ‘hard hearts’, want of ‘mercy’, too much concentration on ‘the law’, ‘Pharisaism’ – and we know how how we react to those words; there is no reason to suppose that the other side will be any more converted from their position than we are if we respond in kind. We are to love the sinner, even as we hate the sin, and we are to be mindful that we are sinners too. We no more own the Church than do those whom we oppose – we are all its children, and we all err and stray, and we shold beware the spiritual pride which can come from seeing ourselves as defenders of orthodoxy – it was such who rejected the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures, and it was such who rejected language about hypostases because such language was unknown from the Bible. Whilst, as I argued on Friday, and others have argued, the laity have a place in discussing such matters, so too do trained theologians, and as we get into some of the more intricate aspects of Christology and other dogma, it is as well to have the humility to acknowledge that.

It seems a good rule to me that when in doubt, ask what the Church has always done and stick with it. The temptations to personal infallibility are many, and it is surprising that so many who say they believe in the Fall, succumb to them when it comes to the Faith.

Let me conclude with a confession of my own. Unlike so many who have crossed the Tiber, I am unconvinced by the arguments against women priests, they seem, and have always seemed, embedded in a gendered sense of identity which is, itself, time-bound. But, be that as it may, who am I to put my thoughts against the universal opinion of the Church until yesterday? The same is the case with regard to the process of annulments, where I welcome anything which makes it quicker to discern the answer to the question of whether a marriage was ever valid. Here, it seems, the Church is happy to move in that direction; on the question of the ordination of women, the answer is no. As a Catholic, it is my duty to accept both sets of decision, and not to insist that in some way I am right. That is true of us all.

The real schism

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy

In the aftermath of the Synod on the family, there has been a disruption in the ‘force’ that is the Catholic social media scene. We have had the usual passive-aggressive display from some on the liberal side who, whilst loudly touting the need for ‘mercy’ and an end to name calling, do so whilst condemning their opponents as ‘haters’. From the conservative side, we have had the usual cries about the sky falling in and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse being almost in sight. At the risk of annoying those eminent Catholic theologians who seem to be of the opinion that no one without a PhD in theology should comment on Catholic matters, it is necessary to remind them that the laity are also ‘the church’ and that ‘clericalism’ went out as part of that ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ which they usually laud; did they forget these things, or are they just piqued in their pride of caste by being reminded of some of the madness which their own theology departments produce? (Warning, those with blood pressure problems are not advised to click on the last link).

Schism is a serious word in theology, but here I want to use it in its more common sense of a serious division; but this division has no possibility of being healed or of healing itself; it is to be witnessed across the spectrum of confessing Christianity, and it long ago reached the point of no return. On one side of the divide are those who take Scripture, tradition and reason as their guide – that is they read Scripture though the light of tradition and attune their own reason to the teaching of their own tradition, thus putting a curb on personal infallibility: on the other side are those who read Scripture through an appeal to contemporary experience, and are quite happy to alter the reading found in Tradition on matters of sexual ethics and the ordination of women, if that is what contemporary society wants: on the one hand, an alignment with the past, on the other, an identification with the contemporary. There, are, of course, nuances here, but broadly speaking I cannot think of a large Church which does not have that division running through it.

This division accounts for much of the tone of the debate over the Synod. Those who adhere to the first position cannot see how those arguing for the dropping of traditional Church teaching on divorce and remarriage can possibly square their view with that of the Church; those who adhere to the second cannot see how the conservatives can possibly square their views with those of the contemporary world. The problem becomes especially acute in global communions such as Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, because those from the southern hemisphere generally do not live in societies attuned to the West’s sexual permissiveness, which means that when they speak to their experience, men like Cardinal Kasper tend to find themselves close to the greatest of modern sins, racism, when they disrespect them; such are the problems with relativism.

The gap between orthodox Christian teaching and Western attitudes on so many subjects is now a chasm, but then so it was in the days when Christianity was fresh in the world. The wider the chasm gets, the more difficult it will be to keep those who want to align the Church with society, and those who want to align it with Tradition, in the same place. We should treat each other with Christian love, and we should, I think, recognise that those who differ from us do so because it is where their consciences take them. That said, sin remains sin, and those who wish to redefine it cannot expect to get their way. There is a dogmatic and doctrinal content to Christianity, and those who want it to be no more than an aid to personal fulfilment are, frankly, better off looking elsewhere. That said, those who know that there is a doctrinal and dogmatic content, would be well to show themselves mindful that Jesus called them to love those who ‘despitefully’ use them. Love and Mercy are not code words for ignoring sin, they are the remedy for it and the cure for its hurts.

The end of the dinosaurs?

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Pope, Synod 14, Synod15

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, controversy, orthodoxy, Synod 15

So,the Synod is over, and there we have it – the final statement which is, we are told a great improvement on the working drafts. Already liberal Catholics are ‘virtue signalling’ by tweeting and writing about ‘mercy’ as though they have just discovered it and think they own it. The spin machine of the German bishops is in overdrive, with claims that they got what they wanted. But one wonders? The Pope chose to make some sour comments about ‘closed hearts’, following the modernist view that an open heart is synonymous with an empty head, which hardly suggest he feels that the liberal agenda is now approved. It is clear what the Pope would like, but a Pope is a Pope, and they come, and they go, and this one has done what one suspects his backers wanted – and their throw of the dice has failed – although they will loudly proclaim otherwise.

There is a generation, which for the sake of convenience, one might call the ’68ers’ – it makes better sense in French where they refer to the ‘soixante huitards‘ – who thought that the tide of liberalism of 1968 marked a decisive change in the direction of history; they thought they were riding that tide. Those who did so in the secular world were right, but their religious counterparts were not so fortunate from the point of view of their careers. It is true that being so many, some of them have reached senior positions in the Church, but John Paul II and Benedict XVI proved stout defenders of orthodoxy, and with a younger generation of Western priests coming through in that mould, and with African and Asian priests of impeccable orthodoxy, the 68ers were running out of time. Benedict XVI’s unexpected abdication led to their being able to get their man in. The two Synods were their throw of the dice – and they have lost. The tide of history was not moving in their direction – they are dinosaurs stranded on sandbanks as the tide goes out.

They will, as is their wont, try to use words to mean what they want the words to mean, and those who agree with them will do the same; but that is hardly a new development – they have been doing it for fifty years – and longer – there is a reason the English use the word ‘Jesuitical’ as a synonym for casuistry. However, the speed of modern social media has meant that attempts to rig the Synod have not only been spotted, but called out and combatted. Those who were worried about a liberal triumph will continue to be, but many of these seem uncomfortable with the very existence of a liberal Catholicism; what is notable here is that even with a rigged Synod, the liberal agenda did not prevail. Given the age profile of the liberals and the fact that the rising generation is the John Paul II one, with heavy reinforcement from Africa and Asia, the demographics are against the German Cardinals. A group who can call for mercy towards those who reject established Catholic teaching, but show none to people who don’t pay their Church tax, and who are presiding over emptying pews in a Continent where the faith is ebbing fast, are in no position to claim to control the future.

Back when these men in their 70s were young, the culture they were in was one in which many were Catholics without thinking about it, and some such went into seminaries in much the same way. Some left in the sixties and early seventies, some stayed on thinking that things would change and that they could help. The passive-aggressive bitterness which marks so many of their utterances is the produce of hope deferred, and it feels almost cruel to tell them that they are a dying breed – but they are. As I commented in a recent piece in the Catholic Herald (not alas on line) the liberal option in religion leads to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic. The Faith, and the Church, will march on, and the soixante huitards will become yet another interesting sociological phenomenon to be studies by those with a taste for such things. Men attached to once-fashionable nostrums have their opinions, God has his Law, and we should be in no doubt about who will prevail.