At the end of a Wednesday evening class last semester, one of my
students approached me to ask a question. After hesitating somewhat, he
proceeded in the following manner: “Professor, I really have enjoyed
your class, but you always teach as though Catholicism is true. You
rarely talk about other religions, of which I was actually hoping to
learn more about.” I reminded the troubled young man that he should
re-read the syllabus, since “Teachings of the Catholic Church” is
actually the official course title. The humorous encounter reminded me
of Walker Percy’s response to the question of why he became a Catholic:
“What else is there?” How ironic, yet typical of most university
students, that someone would be taking a course on Catholicism and
simultaneously be disgruntled that this is precisely what he is
getting.
The history of Catholicism has thankfully shown us that there is a
tremendous pedagogical character regarding the nature of error: it helps
us achieve greater clarity on a particular matter that may have, up to
that point, been otherwise. Moreover, error also helps us to see whether
or not the one committing it has willfully chosen it. It would be safe
to say that the latter is a hallmark of many post-modern Catholics. The
student mentioned in the beginning was, in my estimation, suffering from
a high degree of excusable ignorance; he did not have a full grasp of
what he was asking, and seemed more the result of a cultural that had
groomed him to accept relativism a priori. Others, have fallen away from
the faith, not by an excusable ignorance or happenstance, but by a mode
of living that refuses to conform itself to the demands of the faith.
These preliminary points came to mind last week as I watched the brief exchange between Piers Morgan and Penn Jillette (easily accessible on YouTube).
Morgan, a self-professed Catholic, was questioning Jillette, a
professed atheist, on the significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s
resignation. The exchange between the two is enlightening for the fact
that not only is Morgan so blatantly distorting in presenting authentic
Catholic teaching, but more so because of Jillette’s clearer
foundational understanding of Catholicism’s essence. Notice why this is
so essential: Jillette does not profess to be Catholic, or religious, in
any manner whatsoever; he is simply attempting to give an account of
what the Church actually expects of those who profess the Catholic
faith. On the other hand, Morgan explicitly admits to being Catholic
and, “like many young Catholics, is disgruntled by the Church’s
unwillingness to get with the times and necessary societal changes.” The
key line of the entire brief clip comes at the very end of where
Jillette shoots back at Morgan’s concluding remarks: “That’s not the
Catholic Church.”
There are a number of important points that can be drawn out from
this exchange, each helpful to our understanding of what Catholicism
truly is. I will present three points: the first two are more specific,
and the last is general and overarching:
1) We must distinguish the preambles from the mysteries of the faith.
The preambles of the faith are those truths that can be known by
natural reason apart from the light of faith and Divine Revelation. Some
of these truths would be the fact that God exists, is eternal, one,
immutable, and pure act. These truths about God can be discovered by
philosophical and/or scientific inquiry, but are rooted in our
experience of the very order and reality of natural things. The
mysteries of the faith are those which, in principle, transcend the very
structure of human reason. They do not contradict reason, but exceed
its scope and grasp. That God is a Trinity of Persons, that Jesus Christ
is fully God and fully man, or that Christ is actually present in the
Eucharist, are truths of the faith that cannot be reasoned to, but must
be accepted on faith.
The distinction drawn here can also be seen as it relates to the
Church’s moral teachings. Morgan lambasts Catholicism for not allowing
the use of condoms in Africa, “Where it would saved tens, if not
hundreds of thousands of lives. It can’t be Christian to allow so many
people to die.” Catholicism does teach that condoms are morally wrong in
light of Christian anthropology, but the immorality of using condoms is
more like a preamble than a mystery of faith. According to Morgan, the
Church’s teaching on condoms seems to be something that we are to accept
on faith, like we would the Trinity or the Incarnation (while I like
the first part of Jillette’s response that Catholicism is not a
democracy, he seems to follow the same line of thinking as Morgan when
he utters “even if we can’t understand exactly what God’s plan is”).
Yet this is erroneous, for it would then be claiming that Catholics
alone, through the assent of faith, hold that condom use is immoral.
Several studies have been produced in the last decade showing the
harmful effects of condom use (see in particular the work of Dr. Edward
Green, the director of Harvard’s HIV Prevention Research Project who
defended Pope Benedict’s comments in 2009 that condoms were making the
AIDS epidemic in Africa worse). While it is true that the ban of condom
use is part of the Catholic faith, it is nevertheless clear that one can
discover the harmful (physical and moral) effects of condom use through
the natural light of reason.
Of course, we must not forget another important point that the Church
calls to mind here: due to the limitation of our finite intellects,
laziness, the daily demands of life, and moral disorders, it is not a
guarantee that we will arrive at the preambles of faith (which are the
moral truths referring to the natural law). Therefore, God has made it
that the preambles have also been revealed and can be assented to in
faith.
2) Theology is both speculative and practical, but primarily speculative.
This point was at the core of Pope John Paul II’s first three papal
encyclicals, and the theme of Benedict’s Regensburg Address. At one
point during the interview, Morgan says, “I don’t remember Jesus saying
no condoms, no marriage for priests, no remarriage for divorce, and no
women priests. These never came from Jesus’ own mouth.” Don’t forget
contraception, abortion, and same-sex unions on that list.
Aquinas tells us that theology is primarily speculative because it
has God as its object, meaning that all moral theology and questions
concerning authentic Catholic action must preserve the primacy of truth
before it can be measured in terms of its usefulness for mankind.
Morgan, like many “social justice” Catholics, intentionally places
“orthopraxis” above and in opposition to “orthodoxy.” If truth can only
be established according to right praxis or action, then ultimately
there will be no standard upon which to judge whether or not these acts
are in accord with Catholicism’s understanding of its own essence.
Ratzinger pinpoints the destructive results of such a conception:
Theology
becomes then no more than a guide to action, which, by reflecting on
praxis, continually develops new modes of praxis. If not only redemption
but truth as well is regarded as post hoc, then truth becomes the product of man. (Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stories for a Fundamental Theology, 317)
The principles of Catholic theology are rooted in the very inner life
of God, and must be given to us as a gift in revelation. Therefore, it
is only in this light that we can understand the kinds of acts that can
be truly imitative of Christ. Again, without this understanding,
Catholicism would become a groundless ideology that would juxtapose the
form and content of the faith with its authentic and fully lived
expression.
3) “Falling Away” from the Faith is never by chance. Newman
rightly pointed out that critically wondering about the teachings of the
faith, why the Church teaches a particular doctrine, and how it relates
to my own understanding of things, is not a sign of the faith’s
absence. Even to be doubtful about a particular doctrine whose full
connection we do not see, is not contradictory to the light of faith. Is
this not precisely what is taking place the RCIA process? Rather,
Newman says that if we were not critically thinking about our faith and
its moral, spiritual, and intellectual ramifications, then this would be
a sign of treading down the wrong path. We all know people who have
“fallen away” from the faith, describing it as though similar to the
wind moving them without consent, but nevertheless.
Morgan’s general attitude and intention is not that of someone
seeking to understand the truths of the faith in humble obedience to the
Church, in a spirit of fides quarens intellectus. It is not a
result of ignorance or misinformation, and we can make this judgment
based upon the responses that Jillette makes during the interview. To
make the implicit and illusory claim that the Church is responsible for
killing hundreds of thousands of people is not to be taken lightly. If
that is the case, one wonders why Morgan would even be willing to call
himself a Catholic; an institution capable of that kind of evil
shouldn’t be tolerated, but destroyed. I think Fr. James Schall has
stated well an important truth to take away from the exchange between
Morgan and Jillette, explaining the reason that many Catholics don’t
want to know what Catholicism is:
Though I
think there can be genuine intellectual perplexities about the truth of
faith, things that need to be worked out and usually have been in the
history of Christian thought, I also think that most of what is called
“falling away” from the faith stems from how we are living. Our minds
are generally sharp enough, on reflection, to realize that reason and
faith teach something other than what we are doing. If we are challenged
to justify our living, what we must do is develop an “alternate” theory
of Christianity or morality that justifies our way of living. This is
the first and essential act in falling away. This initial step forces us
by our own logic to justify what is contrary to the essential core of
reason and revelation. Once this step is taken, like falling off the
cliff, the rest is simply down hill and no longer free. (“On Losing the Faith”)