Sorry I haven't blogged the last few days, but my old laptop died late last week. I was typing along and suddently hit the Black Screen of Death. Not the blue one, the totally black one that you can't even kinda reboot after. Since then I've been struggling with getting a new laptop, data transfer, and getting the new one set up right. (Still working on that. Can't get a couple of programs installed properly.)
I thought I'd offer a few (late) thoughts on George Weigel's piece on NRO on Caritas in Veritate.Weigel has received a lot of criticism for the piece, some of it justified, some of it not.
Let me begin by saying that Weigel is certainly right and dead on the money about much of what he says.
First, this encyclical is a problem child. That's widely known and can be clearly seen just from what the Vatican has said about it publicly in the run up to its release. We knew that before it even came out.
Once it did come out, the matter was abundantly confirmed.
It's clear that the encyclical was, as Weigel indicates, intended as a 40th anniversary commemoration of Paul IV's encyclical Populorum Progressio, which means it should have come out in 2007.
But it didn't. It's two years late.
Why?
The Holy See has acknowledged that it was delayed because of the global economic crisis, but if memory served that really didn't hit, not with encyclical-delaying force, until 2008.
It also was delayed because, unlike his previous encyclical Spe Salvi, which B16 wrote all on his own with virtually nobody knowing about it, the pontiff had people from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace drafting it and, as Weigel says, he wasn't happy with the drafts and kept rejecting them.
How many drafts were rejected is unknown, but once the financial crisis happened, Pope Benedict rejected the then-current draft as simply inadequate to the world situation.
Which is quite revealing. Thank God he pulled that version! Presumably it would have been bolder, more moralizing, less nuanced, and more leftist. It would have been terribly embarassing for the Church to have such a document representing its views in the middle of a world financial crisis or to have it released just before the crisis.
All of this fits with Weigel's narrative of the previous drafts of the encyclical being filled with loopy leftist stuff from the PCJP and Benedict struggling to whip the thing into shape.
And look how long it took!
If this was meant to be in print in 2007 then, given how things work around the Vatican, it must have been in production in 2006 at the latest, and possibly 2005–the same year Benedict became pope. Agreeing to do this encyclical (plausibly, as Weigel says, at the suggestion of the PCJP) must have been something that happened very early in Benedict's reign.
What we're looking at is an encyclical that has been under construction for virtually all of Benedict XVI's four-year reign.
That's a problem child, and we should expect it to show signs of that kind of history.
And it does.
Pope Benedict's ultimate response to the drafts he was getting was to try a hybrid solution in which he drafted certain parts himself but left others alone or only modified them (notably by putting in qualifiers to tone down things the PCJP had proposed).
The result is a patchwork that, as Weigel says, can be marked "gold" where Benedict is speaking and "red" where the default positions of the PCJP are on display. Weigel is totally correct about this. Anybody with an ear for Benedict's voice (meaning a knowledge of his own distinctive theological themes) and a knowledge of the views common at PCJP, can instantly distinguish between the two voices in reading the document.
It's enough to make you think that the source critics have more going for them than you thought.
There's also another kind of passage that Weigel identifies but doesn't assign a color to, so let's use our third primary color and call it dark blue.
Why dark blue? Because these passages are very hard to undertand, even at present incomprehensible. It may be the PCJP talking, or Pope Benedict, or someone else, but whoever is talking, they're not making themselves easily understood.
Reading the encyclical I was struck over and over by passages that just left me scratchi
ng my head. They weren't Benedict's usual style, and I don't know who wrote them. Some may be so difficult precisely because they are hybridized passages with more than one hand at work.
However that may be, they're definitely there. An example is one Weigel treats well:
[A]s when the encyclical states that defeating Third World poverty and underdevelopment requires a “necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.” This may mean something interesting; it may mean something naïve or dumb. But, on its face, it is virtually impossible to know what it means.
Weigel assigns this to the red category, but on my division it's dark blue because it's just hard to tell what it means in concrete terms other than people ought to be nice to each other in some way. It seems to be an attempt at soaring rhetoric that doesn't so much uplift the reader as cause him to pop right up out of the experience of reading the text and start wondering what the text means.
Regardless of who wrote them, there are many passage in the encyclical that are just dense and hard to make sense of. (Which means they likely aren't Benedict, because he tends to be clearer.)
So far Weigel's take on the encyclical is on course. There is the kind of tension between different viewpoints at the Vatican, including the one that predominates at the PCJP, the encyclical is a fusion of ideas of Benedict's and the standard PCJP positions, and there was a big unhappy behind the scenes process for this encyclical's production.
It may even be reasonable to say that at a certain point Benedict threw up his hands and let the PCJP have its way on some things even though he wasn't entirely happy with the way they came out.
Benedict might well feel that there is still room for improvement in the encyclical, though he obviously felt it was "good enough" at this point to be released.
And that's where Weigel goes wrong.
Weigel depicts the pope as allowing the PCJP passage to stay in the encyclical just so Benedict could maintain peace inside the Vatican.
Nonsense.
Pope Benedict has no problem telling people "no" or undertaking decisions that leave others at the Vatican absolutely mortified. (Summorum Pontificum, anybody? Lifting of the Lefebvrite excommunications–even apart from the Holocaust-denying tendencies of one of the bishops?)
And then there's the fact that he's apparently been saying "no" to the PCJP about this very encyclical for the last several years.
Maybe they wore him down of a few things that he would have liked to have come out better, but he was entirely capable of saying, "You know, guys, I really appreciate the work you've done here, but given the current state of things, I think it best that we shelve this idea."
That kind of thing happens all the time at the Vatican, and Pope Benedict certainly has the wherewithal to shelve an idea that he thinks isn't working.
Also problematic is Weigel's apparent implication that the "red" passages of the encyclical do not represent Benedict's thought.
I think it's fair to say that they may not always have the same intensity in Benedict's mind as the "gold" passages that he felt needed to be in there and inserted on his own personal initiative. But even if some of them are of lesser importance to Benedict or even if he isn't happy with the precise way they ended up being worded, surely they correspond to his thought in at least a general way. (And possibly a much, much stronger way than that.)
So I think Weigel is simply mistaken with this implication.
This is not some minor speech that the pope had ghost written and that he read maybe once before he delivered it in public. In documents such as that the pope might, indeed, pass over something by accident that doesn't really reflect his thoughts.
This is an encyclical for crying out loud!
The pope–and his chosen experts–have been over every single word of this. The pope has spent years wrestling with this thing and personally critiquing the drafts from the PCJP. This thing has been scrutinized by the pope and his chosen experts so thoroughly that anything appearing in the document at this date is something Benedict has made his own.
He or may not be entirely happy with the result, but it's his now, and–to come to the last problem I want to mention with Weigel's essay–it's just insulting to the pope to suggest that the contents of numerous passages in his encyclical do not, at least in general terms, reflect his own views.
I mean, really.
The PCJP is de
finitely a dicastery that can be subject to legitimate and forceful critique, but Weigel simply goes too far in making them out as the villain. In the process he, certainly unintentionally, insults Pope Benedict by portraying him as a man so weak as a Vicar of Christ that he can be bullied by a mid-range dicastery into including in an encyclical (one of the most authoritative papal teaching moments) things that don't even reflect his thought.
Or so it seems from what Weigel wrote.
Perhaps he will clarify.
He's usually very insightful, and I'd love to see him interact more with this encyclical.
Why dark blue? Because these passages are very hard to undertand, even at present incomprehensible. It may be the PCJP talking, or Pope Benedict, or someone else, but whoever is talking, they’re not making themselves easily understood.
I believe we have found our mystery source!
The alleged “dark saying” seems, rather clearly, to indicate that the world may well need forms of economic activity productive of a kind of collective MORAL *expectation* regarding precisely how much should be considered the “minimum” in terms of any given “1st world” nation’s contribution to over-all human development.
Said expectation certainly *wouldn’t* imply the obtaining of either a moral or legal injustice on the part of any nation which did NOT follow through on said expectation — but it /would/ make said nation subject to a kind of “peer pressure” from other 1st world nations regarding the genuine commitment of the “negligent” nation toward an authentic worldwide development on the part of manknd (a development, of course, which — objectively speaking — is itself only fully appreciated in the light of the integrally unicitous Gospel of Jesus Christ).
I suspect the reason why a lot of Americans have trouble swallowing this Encyclical is that it represents yet another “official” reminder of the Church’s ever-growing appreciation of the need for taking into account that /increase of man’s ever-growing global interconnectivity/ when determining *the common good pertaining to– including the rights and obligations thereof — any given nation*. Said interconnectivity, with its prospects for unheard-of worldwide unity *does* harbor, it is true, dangers reminiscent of Babel and/or Orwell’s/1984/, but the Church (pre- and post- Vatican II) has LIKEWISE seen the very same as potentially serving as the raw material for a truly /worldwide/ version of an even-greater, more-authentic historical Christendom, viz., a purer, more perfect integral human development.
“necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.”
Taking a wild flying guess at this: maybe it means not basing everything on the bottom line and maximizing profits. Like not shutting down the local plant and relocating to China because you can pay the workers there (relative) buttons, if it isn’t a matter of “we do this or else we go belly-up” but rather “we do this and our stock options will double in value!”
This may be slightly off topic, but why on earth is there a pontifical council for justice and peace, + what do they actually do? As far as I can see it doesn’t do anything related to the mission of the Church, unlike the council for Christian unity, the CDF (with the PCED under it), CDWS and Congregation for the Cause of Saints.
This encyclical is a “hard saying” for over-consuming, capitalist America. Now the Right is as bad as the Left… picking and choosing what to accept even though it is taught by the Vicar of Christ. Profit is good, but it isn’t the end-all-be-all.
Jimmy,
Excellent lead article.
Several sites recently pointed to “the” vice president of Goldman Sachs lauding the encyclical but when a search is done, it is a man used to an advisory role and connected to the Archbishop of Lambeth on religious-business questions and to a Yale center for business ethics….so he would praise it more than the average business employee might. He might have been hired to address such problems at Goldman.
Catholics are not bound to love every papal writing. In some centuries, it would have meant you endorsing perpetual slavery (Romanus Pontifex 1454) or at minimum accepting burning at the stake for heretics (Ex Surge Domine 1520).
I read it all. Duty done…I already try to siphon some profits to a Chinese orphanage for abandoned sick infants and prior to that had other like missions and hence I’ve been into a “quota of gratuitousness” for quite some time (I actually have a yearly quoto for decades now…but now I have a fancy name for it).
Tim
What is over-consuming varies from case to case. Is Benedict’s possibly Prada/possibly personal cobbler shoes and Serengeti sun glasses and grand piano and bullet proof BMW perfect consuming and a woman buying granite topped kitchen counters after 40 years of family life in the USA overconsuming because no one donates to her as the BMW was donated to the Pope. Japan’s economy has suffered from underconsuming for years now and they are so polite that they still pay 19% of the UN’s bills. Hard area to judge.
The credit crisis started in the summer of 2007, and recessions began later that year, though that was only fully confirmed in hindsight.
I found the sight of Mr Weigel engaging in a source criticism deconstruction of an encyclical within hours of its release to be most unedifying. It seemed much more of a piece with the management of daily talking points than with Catholic reception of a teaching. The fact that the encyclical was preceded by a classic weeklong talking point campaign of preparatory spin in certain American Catholic quarters only firms this reaction up further. And the fact that the deconstruction took the form of the You See The Pope Really Agrees With ME! argument is another point in its disfavor.
Catholics are not bound to love every papal writing.
This is not entirely correct. Catholics are bound to give a religious submission of mind and will to every exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium:
Can. 752 “While the assent of faith is not required, a religious submission of intellect and will is to be given to any doctrine which either the Supreme Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising their authentic magisterium, declare upon a matter of faith or morals, even though they do not intend to proclaim that doctrine by definitive act. Christ’s faithful are therefore to ensure that they avoid whatever does not accord with that doctrine.”
Lumen Gentium 25: “… This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and sincere assent be given to decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated.”
As Jimmy points out, an encyclical is “one of the most authoritative papal teaching moments.” Encyclicals are owed considerable respect, and each and every one, when speaking on a matter of faith, morals, or discipline, must be given a submission of the mind and will – regardless of what one thinks about it.
So in that sense, Catholics are always bound to love every encyclical.
The examples given (slavery and the burning of heretics) are common anti-Catholic bullets thrown out without proper analysis and proper context to discredit the papacy, either as a moral institution or as an institution claiming infallibility; neither holds up to scrutiny. If further discussion on this point is desired, I will be happy to discuss the encyclicals in question.
Peace, and God bless,
Shane
Bill,
You posted “Catholics are not bound to love every papal writing. In some centuries, it would have meant you endorsing perpetual slavery (Romanus Pontifex 1454) or at minimum accepting burning at the stake for heretics (Ex Surge Domine 1520).”
The Chicken recently posted about Catholics’ duty to accept encyclicals, quoting the Catechism:
“Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a “definitive manner,” they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful “are to adhere to it with religious assent” which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.”
Shane’s comment wasn’t posted when I made my last post, and his post is far better written, so I’ll defer to his analysis and say a hearty “Amen.”
Tim,
What you and Shane are doing is making this encyclical which touches on many disparate observations in the form of self correcting generalties (not doctrine)….you are making that equal in doctrine or morals to “Humanae Vitae” which latter encyclical certainly does fall under Lumen Gentium 25’s “religious submission of mind and will”… but we know that even that document (HV) permits of struggled not rash dissent which latter concept is no where in the catechism but is in moral theology tomes affirmed by the Church by imprimaturs for seminaries and post dating Lumen Gentium 25 and is even in the most conservative tomes like that of Germain Grisez’s “Christian Moral Principles” page 854. All of that is why no Pope in your lifetime denounced both Fr. Karl Rahner nor Fr. Bernard Haring for struggled not rash dissent from Humanae Vitae. Other theologains like Curran and Kung were actually dechaired from teaching for much broader reasons: Kung was against infallibility which is defined and Curran said certain gospel ideals could never be reached.
Catholic writers on the net lump the two dissimilar groups and denounce them all the time. The very Popes who knew Rahner and Haring personally did not denounce them because they know that Lumen Gentium 25’s “submission” phrase is not complete and is completed within moral theology tomes that post date LG 25. A theologian Yves Congar had noted that about Councils that such passages could be incomplete as was the famous one on no salvation outside the Church from Pope Eugenius within a council and now his concept was vastly broadened by Vatican II as Vatican II’s LG 25 was in fact broadened by the Moral Theology tomes mentioned and will be someday in a future council. Three bishops at the council asked for an emendation on LG 25 due to these problems but were simply referred by the Theological Commission at the council to the moral theology tomes.
In short, I do not have to believe in an authority above the UN and over all political bodies since it is new and not stated with great formality and LG 25 had mentioned oft repeated as one sign and nature of the document as another sign.
Shane
ROFLOL….If you can defend Romanus Pontifex which affirmed “perpetual slavery” then you cannot defend section 80 of “Splendor of the Truth” which condemns all slavery as intrinsically evil while it also condemns the torture as intrinsically evil which “Ex Surge Domine” refuses to condemn. You and your ilk are forever defending the non infallible because you want the non infallible to be infallible anyway. You in short want perfect security in all documents and that is a child’s world and nowhere stated as Catholic belief.
Shane and Tim,
The Council and thus Lumen Gentium 25 (“religious submission of mind and will”) according to Pope Paul VI was not infallible itself…. and watch, he’ll repeat LG 25’s note on docility while he says it is not infallible:
“In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility, but it still provided its teaching with the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium which must be accepted with docility according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and aims of each document.”
— Pope Paul VI
General Audience, 12 January 1966
Now Pope Paul is saying that it is not infallible and then he is agreeing with you about docility but he just said that as part of an audience which like Vatican II is not infallible. So two non infallible writings are promoting docility which is traditional but non infallible. Ott’s Intro to the Fundamentals agrees with the docility but it notes something that you folks are not saying:
” With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable.”
Bill,
What is your position on the encyclical then? Do you just disregard it because it doesn’t conform with your worldview? I see the same arguments about HV from the liberals.
Also, you misunderstand my position. I’m not saying the encyclical is infallible. I AM saying that we, as lay Catholics, have a duty to assent to it, like it or not. The theologians can do what they do best, but Joe Catholic needs to quit transforming himself into his own Magisterium and do the right thing… SUBMIT to the Vicar of Christ. I am certain that no lay Catholic will see the fires of hell for submitting to the Magisterium.
Tim
What are you assenting to in the encyclical…his “quota of gratuitousness” is my concept of alms from profits for decades previous to the letter. I call it alms like the Bible does. And I give framed pictures gratis to an orphanage for ghetto youth which is both solidarity and gratuitousness….and I give them through my pastor to shutins. I affirm the idea because I and countless Christians and non Christians have been doing it under another name.
The Pope really wants to reach people who are not doing that but a shorter letter that was clearer would have done it and an actual meeting with business leaders would have been better still. The Pope really wants to meet the greedy and exhort them but a long document will not reach that group. And the encyclical is valuable for young Catholics in high school who can be selfish due to their peer world. Christ wrote nothing…nada… and met with people including those who would kill him someday. Writing is important on doctrine but this is exhortation and exhortation is better done in person.
The UN part and the higher authority over all the world part is utopian…UN soldiers have been accused of sexual molestation in Africa/ they watched for four years on our dime as trucks delivered rockets to Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria/ the UN compound ignored US Army warnings about their block in Iraq as to security needs…they were then attacked and left that week/ and Dafur was years of unobstructed rape/ and Benedict sees the new authority guaranteeing the security of all. The thinkable is not identical with the possible.
Shane
Don’t put any work into saying slavery was alright in 1454 even if perpetual due to historical context because John Paul’s section 80 said it was evil irrespective of “circumstances” which is about context so do not do a long piece on circumstances then and now. Both documents cannot be correct simultaneously.
Mr. Bannon,
With all due respect, your post reads like the all too common rationalizing away of the need to submit to Church teaching. Please don’t misunderstand: my purpose is not to accuse you of this. You alone know, in the depths of your heart, whether or not this is your intention. Rather, my desire is only to make you aware of the tone of your post that you may either recognize this – if it is in fact not your intention to dissent – or be admonished – if dissent is in your heart.
Now as far as your reply goes, there are several problems. First, you argue against the declaration of Lumen Gentium by a variety of means, each of them individually flawed in its own way:
– First, you say that the Church’s official teaching fails to take into account that concept of faithful dissent which is found in works of moral theology receiving the Imprimatur.
~~~~~The problem with this is simply that moral theology books, Catholic seminaries, and Imprimaturs carry no weight of official Church teaching. The document of ecumenical councils – not to mention the Code of Canon Law, where the same teaching is presented as a positive ecclesiastical law – always and without exception trump such things. Church teaching comes from the Magisterium, not from anyplace else. In fact, the evidence of this is easily found in that books with Imprimaturs have contained clear violations of Church teaching. Need I even mention the heresy that has been taught in Catholic seminaries in the past decades?
~~~~~Moreover, the Church’s official teachings do contain reference to faithful dissent, perhaps most notably in the CDF instruction On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian
– Second, you put forth the common claim that the second Vatican Council was not considered by Pope Paul VI to be infallible and so was not, apparently, binding.
~~~~~This is too long a point to devote a specific rebuttal to here, but sufficiently sound work can be found here: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/treatise6.html andd at part 2 here: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/treatise7.html
~~~~~That being said, one need not even rely upon Vatican II and Lumen Gentium, as other unambiguously authoritative sources say the same thing. For example, the Code of Canon law, as I quoted above, explicitly asserts that religious submission of intellect and will is required to all magisterial teachings, whether they are intended to be infallible or not. This canon (752) binds all Latin rite Catholics even if we were to completely ignore every word of Vatican II.
-Third, you make an argument based on the fact that some bishops at Vatican II objected to Lumen Gentium‘s teaching on religious submission of mind and will.
~~~~~Again, what matters is the document that finally was promulgated by the pope. This document has the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium. The objections of any number of bishops does not. Are we free to dissent from the Divinity of Christ because some at Nicaea voted against it?
-Finally, you quote Pope Paul VI in both saying that Vatican II contained no infallible teachings and that one must accept it with docility.
~~~~~The point here is that Pope Paul VI asserted that the Council must be accepted even though it made no infallible statements. This is precisely Tim and my point. Surely you do not intend to say that Pope Paul was so unsound of mind so as to make contradictory statements even in the same sentence! Again, this point is the entire argument: even if an official magisterial document has no infallible statements contained therein, it nevertheless must be submitted to by Catholics.
——-
Now, regarding the the papal encyclicals dealing with slavery and the burning of heretics, I will comment only very briefly.
First, it is without any dispute that the definition of the word “slavery” has shifted considerably since the time of Romanus Pontifex. Whereas today it exclusively refers to the unjust enslavement of persons such as for example occurred in the American south, in the past it was a much more general term, with the modern understanding of slavery being known as chattle slavery. Historically, everything from chattle slavery to indentured servitude to imprisonment for crime or in time of war were identified with the term “slavery.”
In the case of Romanus Pontifex, the slavery is very much expressed in the sense of prisoners of war. Now the war at question in that case was one which some may consider problematic. It was a war of evangelization, if such a term can be used, against the “enemies of Christ.” In any case, the endorsement was not of chattle slavery, and indeed the Magisterium had condemned this form of slavery only 20 years earlier. In fact, throughout history the Church condemned chattle slavery, a decent enough list of such instances being available here: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907fea2.asp
The other – and more important by far – aspect of this issue is that in the document in question, the pope was not issuing and teachings or Church disciplinary rules. Rather, he was discussing giving his personal permission to King Alfonso to do various things, and although Pope Nicholas claimed to be doing so in his “apostolic authority,” the fact is that the permissions he was giving have nothing to do with apostolic authority and were, truth be told, far more political in nature.
In other words, Romanus Pontifex doesn’t present any teachings on the faith or morals of slavery, nor does it present any Church discipline about slavery. Rather, it gives King Alfonso papal authorization to do a variety of things. What the bull says has nothing to do with the the submission given to Church teaching on slavery, as there is no such teaching.
So far as Ex Surge Domine is concerned, the case is somewhat simpler. That bull condemns the proposition that “to burn heretics is against the will of the Spirit.” This does not mean that God was inspiring any burnings, nor is it an endorsement of burnings as being God’s positive will – that is, as if we were obligated to or supposed to burn heretics – but rather, it condemns the notion that such is intrinsically evil or prohibited by God in and of itself. Veritatis Splednor does condemn torture as intrinsically evil, but not capital punishment, which is what Ex Surge Domine deals with, so the objection on that ground fails. In fact, the Church itself regards capital punishment as not intrinsically evil but usually extrinsically evil – that is, in the context of today’s world – and so there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the statement from the bull. If there were, then there would be a serious problem given God’s many Old Testament commands to slay false prophets and other contemporary heretics. Such cannot be intrinsically evil, for God Himself has ordered it.
Peace, and God bless,
Shane
OK… we’re now officially in over my head. I’ll stick with the “I have to try as hard as I can to assent to an encyclical even if I don’t agree with it because I’m Catholic” position. All these nuances are lost on me (and I would imagine on the vast majority of Catholics), but I am sure the Church was established by Christ with the Pope at its head, is guided by the Holy Spirit, and won’t teach me something that will jeopardize my soul.
You’ll notice I said try to to assent. This isn’t because I think I have more knowledge than the Church… it’s because I’m still a work in progress and some of the things the Church teaches are hard to understand and embrace (like the U.N. thing… it makes me think of black helicopters and a one world government… products of my Protestant upbringing I suppose).
Dear Bill Bannon,
You wrote:
If you can defend Romanus Pontifex which affirmed “perpetual slavery” then you cannot defend section 80 of “Splendor of the Truth” which condemns all slavery as intrinsically evil while it also condemns the torture as intrinsically evil which “Ex Surge Domine” refuses to condemn.
and
Don’t put any work into saying slavery was alright in 1454 even if perpetual due to historical context because John Paul’s section 80 said it was evil irrespective of “circumstances” which is about context so do not do a long piece on circumstances then and now. Both documents cannot be correct simultaneously.
Actually, they can be and the argument goes all the way back to Scripture. In 1Cr 7:21, we read
Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.
Here, St. Paul is speaking of the idea of the toleration of an (intrinsic) evil for a greater good – the sake of charity and peace between slave and master. Slavery can be both an intrinsic evil and yet something tolerated, even perpetually, by the Church for a greater good. The two ideas are not contradictory. As Shane points out, the second sense of toleration of an evil is probably meant in Romanus Pontifex (January 8, 1455).
To show this, read the perpetual slavery clause in it proper context [quote from Wikipedia]:
[
The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father’s mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls. This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work. [The salutary and laudable work being, “by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls”. – my comment and emphasis]
…to conserve their right and possession, [the said king and infante] under certain most severe penalties then expressed, have prohibited and in general have ordained that none, unless with their sailors and ships and on payment of a certain tribute and with an express license previously obtained from the said king or infante, should presume to sail to the said provinces or to trade in their ports or to fish in the sea,
…since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso — to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit — by having secured the said faculty, the said King Alfonso, or, by his authority, the aforesaid infante, justly and lawfully has acquired and possessed, and doth possess, these islands, lands, harbors, and seas, and they do of right belong and pertain to the said King Alfonso and his successors, nor without special license from King Alfonso and his successors themselves has any other even of the faithful of Christ been entitled hitherto, nor is he by any means now entitled lawfully to meddle therewith.
]
The ultimate goal of the perpetual slavery was twofold: 1) to prevent the captured persons from causing trouble and 2) to aid in their spiritual benefit. For a Catholic king, this would be his highest profit, since the conversion of sinners would profit him in Eternal Life.
Thus, the Pope is willing to tolerate the perpetual slavery of the captured persons for the greater good of the world and their souls, since as a slave in a Catholic kingdom, they might convert.
This is exactly the sense of St. Paul, above. Indeed, should they convert, the king would be obliged to treat them as brother in the Lord, as in the case of Philemon and Onesimus,.
The Chicken
When I first read it, all of this gold, red, and blue analysis reminded me of the attempt to break down Genesis into the E, J, and P texts 🙂
The Chicken
Thank you very much for this post, Jimmy. The best I’ve seen on the Catholic blogosphere. Very generous, clear, and charitable. Very Christian criticism.
I look forward to the Gold, Red, and Dark Blue text version to be printed 🙂
Shane
Canon law once included Gratian’s erroneous statement: “All that is beyond principal is usury” (which Rome now rejects) and canon law included the idea for centuries that the child of a slave mother is ergo also a slave (Aquinas gives the actual decretal cites on this in Supplement to the ST/marriage of a slave/easily found at new advent).
Ergo…canon law also does not fall under infallibility. None of your sources for religious submission of mind and will do actually come from an infallible source.
Does that mean such submission is untrue? No but it means exactly what the Bishops were asking (you misrepresented them) they were asking that the concept be completed not voided because religious submission to the magisterium in 1454 meant that you Shane could purchase a slave ship and ready yourself to assist Portugal in its exercise of that permission and you could excuse yourself by saying it was submission to the Pope and not one Pope but a total of six some of whom confirmed in writing their agreement with Nicholas’ permissions. Look close at the document you say precedes them in the Canary Island case and you will see that it only concerns avoiding enslaving the baptized in the Canary Islands…not the heathen. Later papal bulls against slavery never were from Popes who then ruled against the exceptions which the Theology in the Universities always allowed: just war/born to a slave mother/ voluntary due to debt/ sale by parents in extreme need to feed other children (Tomas Sanchez)/ and penalty for crime. Portugal could abuse the “just war” exception and say that one African tribe captured those they bought in a just war against other African tribes. That is why there was two floors to slavery: papal bulls against/ but exceptions in the schools that could be misused. Only with Leo XIII do we get a near total statement and he by the way was also the Pope who ended the 29 straight Popes….papal involvement with the castrati system which fed the papal churches with castrati since several Popes (Sixtus V) wanted no women singing in Church. The strictest Pope against birth control ever (he..Sixtus V… demanded excommunication…(but repealed quickly by his successor)), he nevertheless by his extremism ended up beginning a papal involvement with sterilization of 9 to 12 year old boys which you’ll note is similar to Sanchez permitting parents to sell children into servitude to feed other children…the castrati were mostly from poor families. Castrati began in the Churches…was furthered by a bull of Sixtus 1589 reorganizing the Sistine choir to include them and opera took them later and ended it sooner than the Church did (1800 versus 1878).
Your excuses for Nicholas giving the right to perpetual slavery in Romanus Pontifex 1454 fails to note its wording which used “perpetual slavery” which makes it the worst and chattel…; perpetual slavery rather than a servant who lives nearby his employer and has Sundays off. And the letter went further and gave the right to rob them of everything which was done by both Spain and Portugal throughout the new world (read Niall Ferguson’s “Ascent of Money” on the Pitosi situation wherein Spain took all the silver of Peru for decades and then read Romanus Pontifex which clearly made that possible for the Portuguese and whose permissions were repeated for Spain by Alexander VI in Inter Caetera in 1494.) Romanus Pontifex was affirmed in writing by Popes but also included a codicil to protect Portugal from future attempts to void it which you will find near the end section. Popes at that time were more ethnic than we are used to: Nicholas was Portuguese on one side, Alexander VI was Spanish and he gave such rights to Spain and Paul III was Italian and he tried to undo their damage in Sublimis Deus 1537 which you can see from his letter’s wording about what they did…but the horse was already out of the barn with a codicil in Romanus Pontifex that voided Paul III in their mind. The non infallible realm as Ott only hints at contains more stressful fights than we like to imagine since we live now in a high stress time when just driving to work can get you in a fatal accident…so we want our past history to at least be ideal but it is not.
Your vision of the extent of the heretical as to imprimatured books means that all of the last five Popes are asleep and Benedict would be far better off using his papacy to check all these heretical books in seminaries.
This is the oddity of internet Catholic extremism which claims to know of so much imprimatured heresy that it can only mean that all five of the last Popes were completely negligent since canon law give them “power” which is “immediate and supreme” and can be exercised over “all the Churches”. Subsidiarity when it fails within reasonable time as to ad hoc problems…must be replaced by Rome’s supreme and immediate power. You guys implicitly not explicitly picture the Popes as being innocent for 50 years as heresy reigns rampant in seminaries.
And if Germain Grisez is a heretic, the Catholic Church has not 1 billion people but about 13 people….and they are all on the internet. He is the highest ranked theologian to my mind that saw Humanae Vitae as infallible in the universal ordinary magisterium but Karl Rahner who edited the Enchiridion Symbolorum for years would have trumped him on that issue since that is what the Enchiridion Symbolorum is about…determining authority levels.
Yet convervative as he was, Grisez in his tome ackowledged that if something is not yet infallible then it is theoretically possible that a person after struggle disagree with it. Haring also and a more famous moral theologian who used to preach the Vatican position for years would be more liberal in the terms he uses for dissent and the extent of the struggle involved (Grisez stated that one must find a higher source than the one dissented from along with prayer,counsel and study…. and Haring simply urged prayer and counsel and study which more takes into account the non scholar which most people are).
Posted by: bill bannon |
Masked Chicken
But we know that slavery is not “intrinsically evil” since God enjoins chattel slavery in perpetuity to the Jews in Leviticus 25:44-46 upon foreigners and says they can leave them to heirs… and Paul would have known that but slavery is “contextually evil” once economies are good enough to allow other solutions to labor. Survivalist economies like that of Leviticus permitted the contextually allowable. Over drinking is the same…it is condemned generally but permitted in Proverbs where there is great sorrow.
Pope Paul III disagrees with you from the year 1537 shortly after Nicholas …when he tried to stop the slavery and pillage that Nicholas incepted AND YOU ARE JUSTIFYING in his own “Sublimis Deus” where he refers to that series of Popes right before him who made slavery possible and holy…here are his words:
“We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, NOTWITHSTANDING WHATEVER MAY HAVE BEEN OR MAY BE SAID TO THE CONTRARY, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ….”
So you and Paul III are at odds and can discuss this on the last day.
Gone til tomorrow…
Mr. Bannon,
To reply to your arguments:
First, I never claimed that canon law is infallible. I did state that it binds Catholics. If there has ever been a canon based upon an erroneous principle, then nonetheless, the canon was binding until such time as it was corrected by the proper authority. Moreover, you are conflating Church teaching with Church discipline and you continue to wrest terms and concepts out of their proper context. The statement regarding usury is one particular example of both of these fallacies. Usury as a general concept is immoral, but changes in society have changed precisely what constitutes usury. Therefore, the Church may have in Her discipline defined usury in a certain way at one time, only to later define it differently. Neither of these amounts to a moral teaching on usury, which involves the much broader ideas of stealing, selling time, and so forth, but only to a contextual assessment of what qualifies as usury given the current state of affairs.
However, again, the point is rather unimportant, as the issue is not whether or not canon law is infallible. Rather, the point is that canon law is binding, and so if it says that we must give religious submission, then we must. If you would like an infallible source for this, then simply consult Pastor Aeternus.
Second, you fail altogether to acknowledge the fact that Nicholas V’s Romanus Pontifex nowhere makes any teachings on the subject of slavery, nor does it impose any Church discipline – the only two things to which Catholics owe submission in a papal document. Rather, it extends personal permission – one which, though Nicholas seems to have thought he did, no pope has any authentic apostolic authority to give – to King Alfonso to take part in various activities. Even were I to concede to you the argument over chattle slavery, this alone closes the argument. Romanus Pontifex simply does not present any Magisterial statements on slavery of any kind.
That said, I do not concede your arguments regarding the type of slavery which was endorsed. “Perpetual” neither excludes the slavery of imprisonment not that of war. Further, it is clear from the document that, as I mentioned before and as The Chicken further elaborated on, the issue was one of dealing with “Christ’s enemies.” These actions, to put it rather coarsely, directed against non-Christians, a fact which you yourself mention when addressing other papal statements regarding slavery. The issue as a whole is more complicated than the issue of chattle versus other slaveries, but delves into what is intrinsically evil when it comes to dealing with non-believers.
Third, I do not at all understand your argument regarding Imprimaturs, seminaries, and the state of the Church for the past 50 years. No Catholic, whether they fall into the group of the typical orthodox believer or into the more “traditional” Extraordinary Form loving group, denies that the Church went through a period of serious dissent and even heresy over the past 50 years. Countless bishops have been either outright heretical or dissident, and this has in part manifested itself in the form of Imprimaturs on error. In fact, I even further fail to understand how someone expressing such a critical eye towards the authority of non-infallible statements simeltaneously places such importance on Imprimaturs.
Peace, and God bless,
Shane
I realize that Bill Bannon will be gone until tomorrow and cannot answer. First of all, he has managed (sadly, with my help) to highjack this thread with his discussion of slavery which spun off of the idea of how to receive the encyclical (i.e., accord it what status within religion). I will answer his point about Romanus Pontifex since it touches on an important point regarding the status of the new encyclical, but then, I ask that he desist in discussing the supposed inconsistencies of papal pronouncements until a more suitable forum.
Roman Pontifex is not a universal statement by a Pope in matters of faith and morals touching the faithful. It is a procedural document allowing certain concessions. As such, even though it uses the language of perpetual slavery, the pope could, the very next day, by the power of the keys, completely abrogate the entire document. So much for perpetual slavery! Bill Bannon is reading his own definition of “perpetual” into the document which would have been quite foreign to Pope Nicholas. This is the same argument that some SSPXers use to claim that the Tridentine Mass could not be changed by a later Pope. This is quite wrong.
Likewise, the Levitical law was abrogated when Jesus died on the Cross, so the notion of perpetuity of slavery, which was a procedural grant to the Isrealites, was likewise abrogated – or is God not entitled to do so? As such, the true nature, the moral nature of slavery remains, since this was not abrogated in the New Dispensation. This would have been the way St. Paul would have viewed slavery – as a Christian, not a Jew. Arguments about slavery being economic would have been quite foreign to St. Paul, as he never uses an economic argument related to slavery – he uses a moral/fraternal persuasive argument to Philemon. St. Paul saw slavery as an intrinsic evil, allowed in the past by a special grant, which is no longer executed in the New Dispensation.
Since the idea of self-determination is related to free will, one may not deprive one of it by virtue of the seventh commandment against stealing, except for a short period of time for a good reason. Such is also the reason that people may lock up people who may have committed a crime. Locking people up, in general, is an intrinsic evil, but may be tolerated for a greater good.
Certain intrinsic evils, by their very nature, such as abortion, since it cuts off life from the beginning, may never be tolerated, since there can be no proportional good reason to tolerate the great evil.
The new encyclical is a teaching on faith and morals, to some extent, and touches the faithful. Those section that refer to faith and morals are to be held with normal religious assent. Sections where the Church is merely exploring possibilities, such as in parts of section 60:
One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State. Provided it does not degenerate into the promotion of special interests, this can help to stimulate forms of welfare solidarity from below, with obvious benefits in the area of solidarity for development as well.
as far as I know (someone correct me, if I am wrong) do not have to have religious assent because none is asked for in the document, since the Church does not say that other possibilities might not be better or cannot be considered. In fact, if diamonds fell out of the sky and everyone suddenly became rich (not going to happen), this passage would be rendered void.
Thus, affirmative statements have to have religious assent, for the most part. Contingent or speculative statements, as far as I know, by their very nature, do not.
Still, the document, as a whole, must have religious assent, including the assent to the correctness of making the contingent or speculative statements, although the statements, themselves, may be considered as speculative.
The Chicken
JohnH said:
“I look forward to the Gold, Red, and Dark Blue text version to be printed :)”
Actually, I’m kinda working on that.
Jimmy,
May I bet that “quota of gratuitousness” may not be from Benedict per se?
To Shane and Dissembling Poultry,
Subsequent Popes ratified Nicholas V and other Popes fought it. God never in the Old Testament gives a right to an intrinsic evil like bestiality or witchcraft ergo perpetual chattel slavery is not an intrinsic moral evil….and ps locking up a criminal is not an intrinsic moral evil…it’s a physical evil for the criminal which may be where your confusion is on slavery. God does not give the right to an intrinsic moral evil even in the OT which (moral evil)is the sense of section 80 of Splendor of the Truth which was incorrect on slavery being an intrinsic evil. See section 40 of Evangelium Vitae wherein John Paul expressed a non conventional criticism of some values of the Old Testament as lacking refinement that one finds in the sermon on the mount. He should have looked at Acts 12 wherein the angel leaves the body of Herod Antippas to be eaten by worms….vintage Old Testament which post dates the sermon on the mount…which the angel in question knew. The last words are yours.
Done for good at this end. Thank you for the work out.
Dear Bill Bannon,
At the risk of being drawn in, yet again, you are still mis-stating the issue when you write:
God does not give the right to an intrinsic moral evil even in the OT which (moral evil)is the sense of section 80 of Splendor of the Truth which was incorrect on slavery being an intrinsic evil.
We are talking about God tolerating an evil, not giving a right to an evil. God does have a permissive will. Slavery is, in fact, an intrinsic evil, which had been permissive allowed. Just as divorce is an intrinsic evil, but God allowed it, for a time.
Going to bed.
The Chicken
BILL BANNON:
Gratuitous allegations of dissembling constitute rudeness and are against blog rules. Please desist.
SDG
Actually meant that he was dissembling as to his facial identity just as in “masked chicken” and thankfully he took it that way and I’m glad he did.
The new Encyclical exposes the liberal undertones in the Vatican. The more I read the more it appears as if the Pope has thin veneer of Orthodox belief, but deep down he is a liberal in the classic European sense. The Vatican should spend more time shoring up her core teachings than venturing in areas were it is a muddy mess.
Dear SDG and Bill Bannon,
“Dissembling Poultry” could also refer to my brother, the Cloaked Turkey, so, no harm, no, eh, fowl.
The Chicken
A bit off topic, but what does the lifting of the excommunications of the SSPX bishops mean? My understanding is that there’s still a pretty wide gulf there.
The new Encyclical exposes the liberal undertones in the Vatican.
This is a profoundly interesting statement (which has been made by a great many persons the past few days, not only maccity). The reality is that this new encylical appears to expose liberal undertones in the Vatican to those who believe that the Vatican is conservative in the first place.
The reality is that Christianity is not conservative – nor is it liberal for that matter. It simply is what it is. When people ask me, for example, what my political stance is, I refuse to call myself either liberal or conservative, and rather say that I am “orthodox Catholic.”
As I said, Christianity is not conservative in the modern political sense. Were we to try to define Christianity along the political spectrum, it would be far closer to socially conservative, fiscally moderate.
So for a person who’s been living his or her life believing that Christianity, Catholicism, and the Vatican are politically conservative, reading an encyclical which discusses some of the more moderate to liberal aspects of the faith – that is, the economic aspects – gives the impression that the Church has gone leftist.
That’s not at all the case. The fact is that the Church, when it comes to economics, has always been more to the left. Anyone who thinks this is new unfortunately hasn’t been paying enough attention to the Churches traditional teachings on these matters.
Peace, and God bless,
Shane
Ah, thanks for clarifying, BB. Sorry for the intrusion, carry on.
Dear Yoeman,
A good blog to keep up on the latests SSPX doings from an orthodox Catholic point of view is Fr. Z’s blog.
SDG and Bill Bannon,
No hard feelings. Now, if he had called me, “Dismembering Poultry,” then, things might have been different 🙂
Shane,
You wrote:
The fact is that the Church, when it comes to economics, has always been more to the left.
I’ve always thought that it has been more to the up 🙂
I think we need to get rid of the designators, left and right. Why not do what the air force does and use clock references. The Republican Part is 3:00, the Democratic Party is at 9:00, the Libertarian Party is in another time zone, etc. By that reckoning, the Church isn’t on the clock at all. It is the keeper of the clock.
The Chicken
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was having so much trouble understanding this encyclical, I was beginning to think I was terminally stupid.
Opps. Fr. Z’s blog is here.
The Chicken
Rats. Typepad isn’t working with links really well for me, today. Fr. Z’s blog may be found by typing, What Does the Prayer Really Say into Google.
The Chicken
SDG
No problemo…but these guys wore me out… so the only carrying on we’ll be doing here is by cycling along the NY harbor on a very long pedestrian promenade behind the Statue of Liberty on the Jersey side in Heaven weather…gears 3/7 for sweat and heart beat.
Jimmy, quick note of thanks for elucidating what was so muddy for me.
TMC, did your brother get a cloaking device from a Klingon ship?
Thank you, Jimmy. I pined for months over the release of the encyclical, but have only got about half way through at this point as I am having such a hard time digesting it, not because I have a problem with it, but because of the complexity or ambiguity of some of the ideas. I have been questioning certain things as I have read it, being aware of Weigel’s piece. You have articulated very well some of my own impressions over Weigel’s ideas in regards to the encyclical.
With respect to the “dark blue” passages that Jimmy identified, what is the likelihood that those sections represent awkward translations into English from the original language?
It is always a delight to see orthodox Catholics go into contortions that would astound a yoga instructor so that they can avoid endorsing Catholic social teaching. This all the while condemning cafeteria Catholicism!!!
???
So Chuck, are you endorsing “cafeteria Catholicism”? After all, you seem to enjoy the alleged “contortions” of “orthodox Catholics” over “Caritas in Veritate.”
Thank you very much for this post..