Category: Theology

I don’t normally read political sites and blogs, but this weekend I was surfing around the Web and ran across an exchange between several folks (Stephan Kinsella, Scott P. Richert, Thomas Storck, Thomas Fleming, and Thomas Woods) regarding different economic theories and the extent to which they correspond with authentic Catholic social teaching.

In the course of the discussion, one of the participants (Stephan Kinsella) claimed that the others believed papal encyclicals on economics are infallible. This provoked and objection and a subsequent retraction of the claim. So far so good. They’re not infallible. In fact, the subject matter of such encyclicals is only indirectly related to the deposit of faith, and thus they have less relative weight compared to encyclicals whose contents are directly related to the deposit of faith.

Unfortunately, in the course of the discussion one one of the participants (Scott P. Richert) said the following:

Papal infallibility is widely misunderstood by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Infallibility has been invoked by popes only twice: by Pius IX, in defining the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin in 1854 (16 years before papal infallibility itself was actually defined at Vatican I), and by Pius XII, in defining the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in 1950. That’s it: Leo XIII, in Rerum novarum, and Pius XI, in Quadragesimo anno, did not invoke it [source].

It is certainly true that papal infallibility is widely misunderstood, but I regret to say that this statement falls into a common misunderstanding of it: namely, the idea that it has only been exercised twice. This claim is commonly made by dissident Catholics who wish to minimize the practical impact of the doctrine of papal infallibility, and the claim has been so commonly made that even many orthodox Catholics have absorbed it and repeat it in good conscience.

But it isn’t true.

Papal infallibility has been exercised far more than two times. In fact, it had been used many times prior to 1870, when it was defined by the First Vatican Council. This was the clear understanding of the council, as shown–for example–by reading the later Archbishop Gasser’s relatio to the council fathers. This was a briefing given to the bishops at Vatican I to ensure a common understanding of the proposals regarding papal infallibility they were voting on. It is reprinted in the excellent book The Gift of Infallibility (which is the best book on the subject), and in the course of the relatio, Gasser alludes to the numerous times papal infallibility had been used before the Council.

Papal infallibility continues to be widely used. In fact, the current pontiff has used it more than any of his predecessors. The reason is that papal canonizations of saints are infallible. In the course of performing a canonization, the pope states “we declare and define that Blessed N., is a saint” (example). This triggers the Church’s gift of infallibility, which Vatican I teaches “the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals” (source). Consequently, the verb “define” has come to be used as a trigger word for infallible papal statements. If you see a pope say “we define” or “I define,” it is a signal that he is making a definition and thus exercising the Church’s gift of infallibility. (This is not the only way in which he can do this, but it is the standard way.)

The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption thus are not the only two exercises of papal infallibilty in history. They are arguably the only two dogmatic definitions (i.e., definitions of dogmas; saint canonizations being definitions of what are known as dogmatic facts rather than dogmas per se) in the last hundred and fifty years, but they are far from the only two in history.

A reader writes:

I have a friend who’s father is (nominal, cultural) Catholic and mother is
Protestant. For some reason she was never baptized as an infant. She has since
come to faith in Christ and wants to be baptized. But she does not believe the
Catholic Church is Christ’s church, and so does not want to be baptized in it.
However, her father will not allow her to be baptized in a Protestant church.
She is 19, but she is a student still dependent on her parents.

If you were in my position, what would you advise her to do? Should she disobey
her father and get baptized in a Protestant church? Should she get baptized in
a Catholic church even though she does not desire to be Catholic? Should she
simply seek out the nearest river and have a layman baptize her?

This is a problematic situation on several fronts. The young woman is a legal adult now, and this makes her father’s refusal to let her be baptized in accordance with her conscience problematic. On the other hand, the girl’s desire to be baptized outside of the Church is itself intrinsically problematic.

To deal with your questions in reverse order:

4. I can’t recommend that she have a Catholic layman baptize her since laymen are only permitted to baptize in emergency circumstances, and it doesn’t sound as if she is in one. I also can’t recommend that she have a non-Catholic layman baptize her since what she should do is investigate the Catholic faith.

3. She can’t be baptized in the Catholic Church without believing in the Catholic faith, so this isn’t an option either.

2. If, after investigating the claims of the Catholic Church, her concience tells her that she should be baptized in the Protestant church then she is obligated to follow her conscience.

1. What I would do is encourage her to set aside the situation with her father and look at the question of whether the Catholic faith is true. I’d assure her of my conviction that the Catholic faith is true and offer to provide her with material to help her investigate this subject and to help her get answers to questions she may have.

This is really the ideal way of dealing with the situation. It may be difficult for her to set aside the situation with her father, but God will do his part–in his own time–to help her find her way to the fullness of the Christian faith.

A reader writes:

If your interpretation of Jesus’ statement about Judas is correct [here], then doesn’t that mean that certain parts of the Catechism should be changed, namely §1058 and §1821?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray that “all men” be saved, if we know, on the basis of your gloss, that one of them is damned?

This question has two aspects: One, taking the question at face value, has application specifically to praying that people won’t be damend. This, however, leads to a second aspect which is broader in scope.

Dealing with the first aspect first, I’d say the following:

1. Prayers of this sort can be taken either distributively or collectively. When taken distributively, they are made on behalf of each person as an individual–i.e., may this person not be damned. Taken collectively, they are made on behalf of all individuals as a whole–i.e., may nobody at all in the human race be damned.

The thing is, prayers can be made distributively for the human race that it would make no sense to take collectively. For example, we might pray distributively for each individual in the human race that he not get sick, though we know with certaintity that some people will in fact get sick. We can wish the good of health for each individual. Nevertheless, it is clear (from the fact that some people do get sick) that God does not choose to give this gift to everyone without exception, so it would make no sense for us to make the prayer in a collective sense.

2. Another axis along which questions of this nature have to be parsed is whether they have to do with the future or the past. We can pray that nobody in the future suffer from a particular evil without implying that we are asking the same for all the people who have lived (and suffered from it) in the past.

3. For the prayers you mention from the Catechism not to make sense, they would have to be taken (a) collectively and (b) for all people, past and present. This is one of only several possible combinations, so we already can see that the prayers can make sense on the thesis I’m advancing.

4. In fact, there are reasons to think that the Church does not intend the prayers in the sense described in point #3:

a. The passages both reference Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all men to be saved. They represent the Church’s appropriation of this desire of God’s in its own prayer life. Yet (i) we know that, though he doesn’t wish it, God is willing to let people choose hell, as Scripture and the Catechism both state, (ii) St. Paul certainly believed that some people end up in hell, as illustrated by numerous passages in his writings, and (iii) we still have Jesus’ statement that is most plausibly read as stating Judas’ damnation.

b. John Paul II, who approved the Catechism, is on record (e.g., in his book Crossing the Treshhold of Hope) stating that people are in hell, and

c. It certainly cannot be maintained that the world body of bishops, who collaborated on the Catechism, are all von Balthasarians with regard to this question.

Thus we have reason to read the prayers in question in another light, more consonant with Scripture and Tradition, that the Church is praying for the salvation of every human individually, not that hell to be empty.

The second and larger issue is one we have alluded to in dealing with the first: It is the question of praying for things that won’t happen. There are all kinds of prayers in the Church for things that simply aren’t going to happen–e.g., that there be an end to poverty, hunger, sickness, war, and any other evil you might want to name. To really imagine a world where all these are granted prior to the Second Coming would be to engage in unrealistic utopian hopes at best and to participate in the deception of the Antichrist at worst (see CCC 675-677). The world simply won’t be perfected in that way in this age, and the man who tells us that it can be will be the biggest, evilest snakeoil salesman of history.

Thus when prayers of this sort are made (and, personally, I find myself uncomfortable with this style of prayer), they always have to be made with the recognition that God is not going to banish all such evils from the world, and therefore they must be made with an unstated qualifier like “to the extent that it is Thy will, Lord.”

If they are not taken with some such qualifier then they constitute praying for something that one knows God will not grant, which is foolish or presumptuous, depending on the level of knowledge the person praying has.

A reader writes:

If your interpretation of Jesus’ statement about Judas is correct [here], then doesn’t that mean that certain parts of the Catechism should be changed, namely §1058 and §1821?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray that “all men” be saved, if we know, on the basis of your gloss, that one of them is damned?

This question has two aspects: One, taking the question at face value, has application specifically to praying that people won’t be damend. This, however, leads to a second aspect which is broader in scope.

Dealing with the first aspect first, I’d say the following:

1. Prayers of this sort can be taken either distributively or collectively. When taken distributively, they are made on behalf of each person as an individual–i.e., may this person not be damned. Taken collectively, they are made on behalf of all individuals as a whole–i.e., may nobody at all in the human race be damned.

The thing is, prayers can be made distributively for the human race that it would make no sense to take collectively. For example, we might pray distributively for each individual in the human race that he not get sick, though we know with certaintity that some people will in fact get sick. We can wish the good of health for each individual. Nevertheless, it is clear (from the fact that some people do get sick) that God does not choose to give this gift to everyone without exception, so it would make no sense for us to make the prayer in a collective sense.

2. Another axis along which questions of this nature have to be parsed is whether they have to do with the future or the past. We can pray that nobody in the future suffer from a particular evil without implying that we are asking the same for all the people who have lived (and suffered from it) in the past.

3. For the prayers you mention from the Catechism not to make sense, they would have to be taken (a) collectively and (b) for all people, past and present. This is one of only several possible combinations, so we already can see that the prayers can make sense on the thesis I’m advancing.

4. In fact, there are reasons to think that the Church does not intend the prayers in the sense described in point #3:

a. The passages both reference Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all men to be saved. They represent the Church’s appropriation of this desire of God’s in its own prayer life. Yet (i) we know that, though he doesn’t wish it, God is willing to let people choose hell, as Scripture and the Catechism both state, (ii) St. Paul certainly believed that some people end up in hell, as illustrated by numerous passages in his writings, and (iii) we still have Jesus’ statement that is most plausibly read as stating Judas’ damnation.

b. John Paul II, who approved the Catechism, is on record (e.g., in his book Crossing the Treshhold of Hope) stating that people are in hell, and

c. It certainly cannot be maintained that the world body of bishops, who collaborated on the Catechism, are all von Balthasarians with regard to this question.

Thus we have reason to read the prayers in question in another light, more consonant with Scripture and Tradition, that the Church is praying for the salvation of every human individually, not that hell to be empty.

The second and larger issue is one we have alluded to in dealing with the first: It is the question of praying for things that won’t happen. There are all kinds of prayers in the Church for things that simply aren’t going to happen–e.g., that there be an end to poverty, hunger, sickness, war, and any other evil you might want to name. To really imagine a world where all these are granted prior to the Second Coming would be to engage in unrealistic utopian hopes at best and to participate in the deception of the Antichrist at worst (see CCC 675-677). The world simply won’t be perfected in that way in this age, and the man who tells us that it can be will be the biggest, evilest snakeoil salesman of history.

Thus when prayers of this sort are made (and, personally, I find myself uncomfortable with this style of prayer), they always have to be made with the recognition that God is not going to banish all such evils from the world, and therefore they must be made with an unstated qualifier like “to the extent that it is Thy will, Lord.”

If they are not taken with some such qualifier then they constitute praying for something that one knows God will not grant, which is foolish or presumptuous, depending on the level of knowledge the person praying has.

This is a story you should pay attention to, because even though many haven’t noticed it yet, it’s going to make a BIG splash when it finally comes out.

The Church is preparing a new major catechetical document, tentatively called the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (that would be the CCCC, I guess). It’s meant to be a shorter version of the CCC, correcting one of the biggest problems that the CCC has: It’s too dang long!

A decision was made early in the editorial stage of the 3-C to have it present the faith in a non-technical, organic, at times almost poetic way that knits together Scripture, writings of the Church Fathers and major saints, and the documents of the Magisterium. This had some advantages, including forcing the reader to absorb the faith as an organic whole, without being able to as easily dismiss things that he doesn’t like (e.g., a liberal wanting to dismiss the relevance of Scripture or the Church Fathers to the faith).

The approach also has some disadvantages. One is that it made the 3-C so long that it was hard to get the thing as carefully written and edited as one might desire. Some things were not phrased in the best the way (in fact, some things still aren’t), and so they had to go back and to a bug release than toned up things like the etiology of homosexuality, for example.

The length also resulted in casting the net so broadly that it includes not only major, fixed points of Catholic doctrine that are infallibly defined but much material that, though official, is not nearly on the same level. By presenting the material as it does, the Catechism presents the faith in a “flattened” manner that puts each teaching on an equal level of authority, which isn’t the case. (E.g., some of the material in the social doctrine section is not on the same level as, say, the Trinity and transubstantiation are).

The biggest problem caused by the 3-C’s length is that it is simply too long for most folks to read. (The organic, semi-poetic writing style also makes it a rather difficult read if you aren’t used to wrapping your brain around Magisterial documents.)

The 3-C is still and ENORMOUS gift to the Church, and I am delighted that it was released in my lifetime. It has and will continue to do a tremendous amount of good for Christ’s Church.

Almost as soon as the 3-C was released, people began to wonder if it would be good for the Church to release a shorter version of the same thing. I wondered why some publisher didn’t, for example, skim out the “In Brief” sections of the Catechism and publish them as a book (assuming the proper rights could be obtained).

Well, apparently JPII was convined by the arguments for having a shorter version of the Catechism, and thus the 4-C is now in production. The mandate for its composition is as follows:

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church should contain, in a concise form, the essential and fundamental contents of the faith of the Church, respecting its completeness and doctrinal integrity, in such as a way as to develop a sort of ‘vademecum’ [handbook, compendium] that allows people, believers and non-believers, to embrace, in a single, overall glance the entire panorama of the Catholic faith. It will have as its source, model and constant reference point the current Catechism of the Catholic Church which, in keeping intact its authoritativeness and importance, will be able to find, in such a synthesis, a stimulus to be better studied and, more in general, a further instrument of education to the faith [Letter from JPII to Card. Ratzinger].

The story linked above indicates that the consultation process for the 4-C is now finished. It ended April 30th, and so hopefully we’ll be seeing the 4-C get released sometime soon (by which I mean, a year from now).

The new work will be about a seventh of the length of the current work (meaning it’s 70-100 pages long, depending on formatting), will have an appendix with major creeds and prayers, and–best of all–will be in a Q & A format suitable for traditional catechetical use and making it much easier to read.

Yee-haw!

This is a story you should pay attention to, because even though many haven’t noticed it yet, it’s going to make a BIG splash when it finally comes out.

The Church is preparing a new major catechetical document, tentatively called the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (that would be the CCCC, I guess). It’s meant to be a shorter version of the CCC, correcting one of the biggest problems that the CCC has: It’s too dang long!

A decision was made early in the editorial stage of the 3-C to have it present the faith in a non-technical, organic, at times almost poetic way that knits together Scripture, writings of the Church Fathers and major saints, and the documents of the Magisterium. This had some advantages, including forcing the reader to absorb the faith as an organic whole, without being able to as easily dismiss things that he doesn’t like (e.g., a liberal wanting to dismiss the relevance of Scripture or the Church Fathers to the faith).

The approach also has some disadvantages. One is that it made the 3-C so long that it was hard to get the thing as carefully written and edited as one might desire. Some things were not phrased in the best the way (in fact, some things still aren’t), and so they had to go back and to a bug release than toned up things like the etiology of homosexuality, for example.

The length also resulted in casting the net so broadly that it includes not only major, fixed points of Catholic doctrine that are infallibly defined but much material that, though official, is not nearly on the same level. By presenting the material as it does, the Catechism presents the faith in a “flattened” manner that puts each teaching on an equal level of authority, which isn’t the case. (E.g., some of the material in the social doctrine section is not on the same level as, say, the Trinity and transubstantiation are).

The biggest problem caused by the 3-C’s length is that it is simply too long for most folks to read. (The organic, semi-poetic writing style also makes it a rather difficult read if you aren’t used to wrapping your brain around Magisterial documents.)

The 3-C is still and ENORMOUS gift to the Church, and I am delighted that it was released in my lifetime. It has and will continue to do a tremendous amount of good for Christ’s Church.

Almost as soon as the 3-C was released, people began to wonder if it would be good for the Church to release a shorter version of the same thing. I wondered why some publisher didn’t, for example, skim out the “In Brief” sections of the Catechism and publish them as a book (assuming the proper rights could be obtained).

Well, apparently JPII was convined by the arguments for having a shorter version of the Catechism, and thus the 4-C is now in production. The mandate for its composition is as follows:

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church should contain, in a concise form, the essential and fundamental contents of the faith of the Church, respecting its completeness and doctrinal integrity, in such as a way as to develop a sort of ‘vademecum’ [handbook, compendium] that allows people, believers and non-believers, to embrace, in a single, overall glance the entire panorama of the Catholic faith. It will have as its source, model and constant reference point the current Catechism of the Catholic Church which, in keeping intact its authoritativeness and importance, will be able to find, in such a synthesis, a stimulus to be better studied and, more in general, a further instrument of education to the faith [Letter from JPII to Card. Ratzinger].

The story linked above indicates that the consultation process for the 4-C is now finished. It ended April 30th, and so hopefully we’ll be seeing the 4-C get released sometime soon (by which I mean, a year from now).

The new work will be about a seventh of the length of the current work (meaning it’s 70-100 pages long, depending on formatting), will have an appendix with major creeds and prayers, and–best of all–will be in a Q & A format suitable for traditional catechetical use and making it much easier to read.

Yee-haw!