infallibility Archives - Held By His Pierced Hands

I May Be a Sedevacantist, But I Don’t Have to Like It

I was once in Paris and ducked into a church. Services were just about to begin but I couldn’t tell if it was a Catholic church. Given the iconostasis and abundance of icons, I thought it might be an Eastern Catholic Church, but everything was in Cyrillic so I couldn’t tell for sure if it was Catholic or Orthodox. I looked all around the narthex for something written in French and was about to walk out, discouraged at the unanswered question, when I saw a picture of Pope Benedict.

“Oh,” I thought, “this is my church.” So I went in and sat down. I don’t know what I’d do today–when you’re a sedevacantist, everything’s a little off.

First of all, and if nothing else, the pope serves as an easy way to identify the Church. “Where Peter is, there is the Church,” St. Ambrose said 1500 years ago, and it’s still true. Want to know if the Polish Catholic Church is in fact a Catholic Church? Ask if they’re in union with the pope.¹ Want to know if the Latin Mass you’re about to attend is legit? Ask a parishioner if there’s a pope.² Want to know which Church is the Church of Christ? Find the one that at least claims an unbroken line to him.

You see, Jesus was pretty clear about founding a Church.³ And he was pretty serious about his followers being undivided⁴ and knowing true doctrine.⁵ So I think it’s fair to say that he would have done whatever it took to keep his people united and free from error. How could he have accomplished this?

With Scripture alone? This results in thousands of different denominations preaching wildly different doctrines.
With a college of equal bishops? The Orthodox have tried this and, from an outside perspective, it seems to bring them divisions and doctrinal ambiguity.
With one leader? Oh, that’d be the Pope.

What the papacy provides us is what we really need: continuity and continuation of the Church, easy identification, and protected teachings.⁶ Through the Holy Father, we have apostolic succession, ensuring that this is the same Church that can trace itself back to Peter. Through his smiling face (whatever it may look like next), we can tell in any country whether or not this is our Church. Through his infallibility and the infallibility granted the bishops in union with him, the true faith is protected by the Holy Spirit. Without a Pope, none of this is guaranteed. And I’d argue that the denominations that don’t have a pope know, at some level, that they’re missing these.⁷

To my mind, it’s really the infallibility issue that matters. If there is no infallibility, there is no truth and if there is no truth, there is no Church. One might argue that all truth can be found in the Bible. I will choose to stand with Blessed John Henry Newman and say:

It is antecedently unreasonable to suppose that a book so complex, so systematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the nature of the case, interpret itself. Its inspiration does but guarantee its truth, not its interpretation.

Even assuming that one could have a Bible without a Church, the interpretation of Scripture is so varied that those denominations that do not submit themselves to an infallible interpreter number in the tens of thousands. Those that do accept an infallible authority number two. Newman puts it quite succinctly: “The gift of inspiration requires as its complement the gift of infallibility.”

In the end, we either have one pope or a billion. Either there is one infallible teacher who bases his claim to infallibility on Christ himself or each man is his own infallible teacher, regardless of 2 Pt 1:20. James Cardinal Gibbons points out how ludicrous this is:

“You assert for yourself, and of course for every reader of the Scripture, a personal infallibility which you deny to the Pope, and which we claim only for him. You make every man his own Pope. If you are not infallibly certain that you understand the true meaning of the whole Bible…then, I ask, of what use to you is the objective infallibility of the Bible without an infallible interpreter?”

Now, whatever you may say about sinful popes (and there have been some impressive ones), no matter how bad they got, they never changed Church teaching. The worst of the Renaissance popes, with his (alleged?) harem and blatant nepotism never issued a papal decree that beautiful women must sleep with him nor permitted polygamy nor even suggested that the pope should be allowed to marry. No doctrine was ever changed to what was more convenient or pleasant or politically expedient. Think, friends. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, why were these corrupt men with absolute power corrupt only to a point? Why were they corrupt only as regards their personal conduct and not when it came to doctrine? Is it possible that the preservation of the faith is a matter of grace?

If you’re the only one of the first 49 popes not to be a Saint, it’s possible you did something wrong….

Looking at Catholic dogma, you may well think that it is corrupted. But if you’re a Christian, you accept the dogma of the hypostatic union.⁸ Consider that in the early centuries of the Church there were no fewer than three heretic popes. Liberius was an Arian, Honorius was a Monothelite, and Vigilius was selected as pope specifically because he was a Monophysite. Yet none of the three taught heresy from the See of Peter. Despite personal conviction, they upheld the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith handed down to them.

To put it in more worldly terms, imagine you somehow gained control of an organization whose central tenets you disagreed with. Let’s say, for example, that someone heard that I’m a nomad, was really impressed, and gave me the New York Yankees. Now, because I love God, America, and baseball, I hate the Yankees.⁹ So if you gave me total control over the club, well, I’d make them play baseball in devil horns and tutus. Or if I were going for subtle and mature, I’d just start inflating the contracts of burnt-out superstars and stop paying the rising stars much of anything. I’d gradually age the Yanks out of the game–clever, huh?

"Seriously? This was your evil plan?" — “Seriously? This was your evil plan?”

But those heretic popes? Nothing of the sort. Even surrounded by all their heretic buddies, they changed nothing–some even say that Vigilius became orthodox¹⁰ when he was consecrated Pope. There was no reason in the world for these guys not to tweak things just a little to make their heresy of choice required belief for all Christians. There was, however, a reason out of this world.

Nobody’s claiming the pope is impeccable or that he’s omniscient. We’ve studied history, too. We’re saying that it’s that much more impressive that, not being impeccable or omniscient, our 265 popes have handed down a Church that–if nothing else–has outlasted every empire it came up against without once compromising its teaching.

Now, you don’t have to be obsessed with every pope like some of us.¹¹ And you don’t have to have action figures and medals and scream like a 12-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert every time you think about him.¹² And you know what? Depending who the next pope is, you don’t even have to think he’s particularly charming or brilliant or holy. Just as long as you respect him as the Vicar of Christ–not Christ himself but his steward–and accept his infallibility. Given that this is what it means to be Catholic, it doesn’t strike me as terribly hard.

It won’t be too long before we have another pope, friends. His is one of the hardest jobs in the world, with Satan and secularism gunning for him. Let’s do him the honor of starting to love him even now, regardless of whether he’s a traddy or a liberal, a man of expensive tastes or an uncultured boor. Whether he’s got a doctorate in theology or liberal arts or nothing at all, he’ll be better educated than Peter. And even if he weren’t, Jesus made it very clear with his selection of Peter as our first pope that he can use any man to do great things as the Servant of the Servants of God. I’m confident that our next pope will be as incredible as his (recent) predecessors, but just in case, remember: this is our Father. Whatever people might have to say about him, we love him and defend him. Whatever we might have hoped for in a pope, we rejoice in the man God gives us. Pray for him and the Cardinals–the conclave starts Tuesday!!

Nope. First clue that your church is not the Church established by Christ: it was founded in Scranton. [↩]
Okay, so this is confusing right now when we’re all sedevacantists, but in a week this litmus test should work again. [↩]
Mt 16:18-19 again. [↩]
Jn 17:21 [↩]
Jn 8:32 [↩]
Props to Karl Keating for fleshing this out in Catholicism and Fundamentalism. [↩]
With the exception of the Orthodox and apostolic succession, but the latter two are iffy even then. [↩]
Jesus is fully God and fully man, one person with two natures, like us in all things but sin. [↩]
Stay with me Yankee fans. I’m a Braves fan–your titles outnumber ours, what, 27 to 1? Gloat for a minute and then come back to pity my futile little act of defiance. [↩]
Note the lower case “o”–it just means right belief, not an Eastern Church. [↩]
Guilty. [↩]
Guilty on all three counts. My JPII statue/action figure was way ugly, though, so it doesn’t even really count. [↩]

There’s Nothing New About Infallibility

Shoot, friends, it’s been a while. I’ve been speaking up a storm in Michigan (chastity) and Toledo (true manhood) and Cleveland (prayer) and the idea of blogging was just too exhausting. You can basically go to my whole retreat on prayer via YouTube, though–does that make up for it?

If nothing else, you gotta be impressed that we know all their names in an unbroken line back to St. Peter. Unless you think the Masons made them up or it can all be traced back to a murderous albino, in which case you’ve got other issues.

But before I got distracted by the 2 week snowstorm with a total accumulation of practically nothing, I promised y’all some info on the papacy. When last we met, we realized that Peter’s authority was totally Biblical. But does that necessarily tell us anything about Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus…Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and his successor? Not to mention their 254 confreres?

As always, it’s important to remember that the Bible is not a catechism–it’s not trying to be exhaustive, nor do any Christians actually believe that all truth is explicit in Scripture. Take, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity. While Scripture supports it, it wasn’t until the Council of Nicaea in 325 that anyone really knew for sure that our God is one God in three persons, distinct but not separate.¹ And I’d bet my life that nobody who was completely unacquainted with Christianity, no matter how intelligent, could sit down with a Bible and discern that doctrine. For that reason and for so many others (notably the fact that there is no Bible without the Church), theologians have always looked to Scripture and Tradition. Forget the claim to an infallible Magisterium²–it just stands to reason that “primitive” Christians would have a better idea of what Jesus intended than believers who are 2,000 years removed from him.

In fact, the recovery of early Christian doctrine is just what the Reformers were going for. So when I bring up early Christian writers, bear in mind that these aren’t just Catholic guys saying Catholic things. These are the leaders of the Church, often just a few generations removed from the Apostles, telling us what was handed down to them. These are the same guys that Luther and Calvin were reading when trying to reconstruct Bible Christianity.

So whether you’re Catholic or Protestant, it matters what these old dudes think. Two or three comments praising the bishop of Rome over the course of centuries might not mean much. But if we start to hear about the primacy of Rome from all sides…well, we’ve got to wonder why everybody in the early Church recognized the pope’s authority when even Catholics these days tend not to. Without further ado:³

St. Irenaeus was the disciple of Polycarp who was the disciple of John (the Beloved Apostle), which makes him three degrees from Jesus. Already in the second century, he’s talking about Peter handing on his office to the second pope.

But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition (Against Heresies 3:3:2 [inter A.D. 180-190]).

In case you didn’t want to read that whole block of text, he’s telling us that the Church finds unity and sure doctrine under the church of Rome.

St. Cyprian of Carthage was a third century North African bishop, sovereign over his diocese in a time when there was little communication with Rome, especially for Christians. Cyprian could easily have set himself up as the ultimate authority, particularly as people were questioning the ligitimacy of a newly-elected pope.

“The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever things you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, they shall be loosed also in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18–19]). … On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were also what Peter was [i.e., apostles], but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. So too, all [the apostles] are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?” (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4; 1st edition [A.D. 251]).

“Cyprian to Antonian, his brother. Greeting … You wrote … that I should forward a copy of the same letter to our colleague [Pope] Cornelius, so that, laying aside all anxiety, he might at once know that you held communion with him, that is, with the Catholic Church” (Letters, 55[52]:1 [A.D. 253]).

“Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter, whence apostolic faith is derived and whither no errors can come?” (Letters, 59 (55), 14, [256 A.D.]).

When he’s talking about the chair of Peter, that’s the authority of Peter’s successor.⁴ Then, of course, he tells us that the pope is, in essence, the Church and that anyone who rejects him rejects the Church. Remember that at the time there was only one Church, so to Cyprian’s mind, rejecting the Pope is rejecting Christ. And then there’s that little matter of infallibility in the last line….

St. Ambrose of Milan: “It is to Peter that he says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church’ [Matt. 16:18]. Where Peter is, there is the Church. And where the Church is, no death is there, but life eternal” (Commentary on Twelve Psalms of David 40:30 [A.D. 389]).
.
I don’t need to explain that, do I?

St Jerome was a lot smarter than pretty much everyone and also rather cantankerous. The story goes that he studied in Israel so as to learn Hebrew. While he was there, he discovered that the Jews used only 39 books in the Bible. “Jesus was a Jew,” he thought, “so he must have used the same canon.” He translated those 39 and not the deuterocanonical books that were widely accepted by Christians. Pope St. Damasus I, who can’t possibly have known more about Scripture than Jerome, essentially says, “Thanks very much for your opinion. Translate the other seven, too.” Cranky, brilliant, proud Jerome writes this a few years later:

“I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark of Noah will perish when the flood prevails” (Letters 15:2 [A.D. 396]).

By all rights, he should have told the pope what for. Instead he submits, telling us that the Pope is the successor of Peter and the one with whom we must be in communion.

Then there’s St. Augustine: “Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken. Case closed.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Of course, there are more. But these are some big names, some writing before the doctrine of the Trinity was solidified and all before the hypostatic union became a household phrase.⁵ For these men, the primacy of the bishop of Rome and even his infallibility, to some degree, are a given. By the time Francis de Sales talks about it in 1596, the whole thing’s old hat.

When he teaches the whole Church as shepherd, in general matters of faith and morals, then there is nothing but doctrine and truth. And in fact everything a king says is not a law or an edict, but that only which a king says as king and as a legislator. So everything the Pope says is not canon law or of legal obligation; he must mean to define and to lay down the law for the sheep, and he must keep the due order and form .

We must not think that in everything and everywhere his judgment is infallible, but then only when he gives judgment on a matter of faith in questions necessary to the whole Church; for in particular cases which depend on human fact he can err, there is no doubt, though it is not for us to control him in these cases save with all reverence, submission, and discretion. Theologians have said, in a word, that he can err in questions of fact, not in questions of right; that he can err extra cathedram, outside the chair of Peter. that is, as a private individual, by writings and bad example.

But he cannot err when he is in cathedra, that is, when he intends to make an instruction and decree for the guidance of the whole Church, when he means to confirm his brethren as supreme pastor, and to conduct them into the pastures of the faith. For then it is not so much man who determines, resolves, and defines as it is the Blessed Holy Spirit by man, which Spirit, according to the promise made by Our Lord to the Apostles, teaches all truth to the Church.

Even if the man who replaces them is a total lout–which is not at all impossible–he will still be the Vicar of Christ, as the bishop of Rome has been for nearly 2,000 years.

It seems, then, that Scripture supports the idea of Petrine primacy and infallibility. The testimony of history is that those closest to Jesus understood that this charism was not limited to Peter but was passed down to his successors. That the pope’s infallibility was absolute and yet strictly limited was clear long before it was officially defined at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Indeed, it seems that a Church without such a leader would be destined for failure, or at least for fracture and falsehood. But that, my friends, is a post for another day. Keep praying for the conclave and the future Holy Father!

**********************

If you want to keep up with where I’m going and where I’ve been, check out this page. And if you’re anywhere west of the continental divide and you want me to come speak, let me know! I’m heading out that way starting in April and have literally nothing planned for May and June. Help me keep busy!

Since I know you always want to know what’s going on with my fingernails, here’s the scoop: I wanted to paint them black because I kind of feel like the Interregnum is a time of mourning, even though the Holy Father didn’t die. But then I painted them black and felt like I was goth and it was 1998 and I couldn’t handle it. So I threw in some purple for Lent (using ideas from my best friend Pinterest) and now I feel like a rock star from the 80s but it took so long that I just can’t bring myself to take it off. It’s a conversation piece, though, and you know I always have trouble coming up with ways to talk about Jesus….

While you’re wasting time on the internet, would you take 30 seconds to vote for my friends at Old Dominion University to win some money for their campus ministry? I had the privilege of speaking to them in the fall and they were engaged and earnest and welcoming–let’s win this thing for them!

Also, my dear friend Ute is hosting a Bible verse photography linkup–click over there to see the verse for March!

I recited this formula to a Jehovah’s Witness a while back. He said, “Well, that’s new!” No, actually. Pretty much nothing the Church says is new. Your whole religion, on the other hand…. [↩]
Teaching body of the Church–the bishops united under the pope. [↩]
Oh, and I probably got all of these from www.catholic.com forever ago. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I first composed this section in a Facebook message to the Protestant student I mentioned in the superpowers post. [↩]
We know this because it doesn’t make any sense to hold fast to a chair of a dead guy. [↩]
What? You don’t mention that daily? [↩]

The Pope’s Superpowers Are NOT in the Bible

I had a Protestant student once who started arguing with me about the papacy. I pulled out Matthew 16:18-19, John 21, and quotations from the Church Fathers, but somehow he still wasn’t on board.

“I believe all that,” he said, frustrated. “I just don’t believe that he has superpowers.”

I’m pretty sure I laughed in his face.

For those of you who might be new to this pope thing, riding the media bandwagon that’s following all the cardinals around waiting to see who our next pope will be, let me explain something to you: the pope does not have superpowers. He can’t fly or walk through walls. In most areas, he’s just a normal man. The pope can sin–as far as I know, every pope has sinned, some in very impressive ways. The pope can even be wrong on matters of faith and morals.

What makes the pope special (aside from being the leader of the biggest Church/religion/group of people in the world) is what’s called infallibility. When we say the pope is infallible, we don’t mean that he can’t ever be wrong. We mean that he is incapable of error when speaking authoritatively on matters of faith and morals. This might help:

Q: What’s the lowest score the pope could get on a trigonometry test?

A: Zero. Infallibility has nothing to do with trig.

Q: What’s the lowest score the pope could get on a theology test?

A. Zero. The pope can be wrong when he’s not speaking infallibly.

Q: Okay, fine. What’s the lowest score the pope could get on a theology test if he were taking it infallibly?

A: Zero. He could leave the whole thing blank.

Rather unassuming for such an important piece of furniture, don't you think? — Rather unassuming for such an important piece of furniture, don’t you think?

You see, infallibility isn’t a superpower that gives the pope the magical ability to know all things. It’s actually very limited. It only applies when the pope is speaking ex cathedra¹ on matters of faith and morals. Scholars differ as to how many times this has happened, but the general consensus seems to be two. That’s right, twice ever.² Suddenly it doesn’t seem like so much of a superpower, does it? And it doesn’t even guarantee that the pope will say all the right things, only that nothing he says will be wrong. It’s a very limited charism, but an essential one if Christ’s Church is about Truth and not just feeling good.

Despite this limitation, the issue of the papacy remains a huge one for non-Catholics–and, to be honest, for many Catholics as well. The idea of one man having the ability to exercise such authority, of all Christians submitting to one man, and not even necessarily a very holy one at that? Well, folks, if it weren’t so Biblical and Traditional and logical, I wouldn’t be a fan either.

Obviously, our go-to Scripture passage is going to be today’s Gospel,³ Matthew 16:17-19:

Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The Giving of the Keys to St. Peter by Pietro Perugino

The first thing Jesus does here is give Simon a new name–Peter–one that had only been used as a name one time in recorded history up to that point. He gives him the name “Rock” (Peter) to tell us that he is a new creation from this point. Every time we see Simon called Peter (in every Gospel and a number of other books as well), it’s a reminder that Simon was just a fisherman but became something more.

What did he become? The Rock the Church was built on, of course. Why else would Jesus give him the name Rock and then start talking about building the Church on a rock? Certainly, Jesus is the cornerstone, the true foundation of the Church. But it’s no coincidence that he gives Simon the name Rock and then declares that he will build his Church on this rock.

Ancient key — Wouldn’t want to try to slip this into your jeans pocket.

Next, he tells Peter that he will give him the keys to the kingdom. These aren’t the symbolic “keys to the city” that they hand out to people at the end of superhero movies. In the ancient world, a key was a large, heavy object. You’d only really lock your house if you were leaving town for a while and you wouldn’t take your key with you. You’d give it to someone who was staying back home, putting that person in charge of your estate while you’re away.

So the automatic connotation for anyone in the ancient world is that by giving Peter the keys, Jesus is putting Peter in charge in his absence. For the Jews, this is even more clear. Jesus’ language is strongly reminiscent of Isaiah 22, the reading that we often hear as a first reading when Matthew 16 is the Gospel:

On that day I will summon my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah; I will clothe him with your robe, gird him with your sash, confer on him your authority. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one will shut, what he shuts, no one will open. (Is 22:20-22)

Here Eliakim is given the authority of Shebna, master of the palace, symbolized by his being given the key of the House of David. And in case you didn’t catch the connection, that last line is just about identical to Matthew’s binding and loosing. Just as Eliakim had the authority of Shebna, it seems, Peter is given the ability to exercise the authority of Christ.

This authority is expressed in Isaiah and Matthew as the power to bind and loose. An ability given later to all the Apostles gathered,⁴ this binding and loosing is the power of infallibility, the power to speak with the authority of Christ, individually in Peter’s case and collectively in the case of the Apostles, the first bishops.

Denethor isn’t exactly the ideal Steward of Gondor, but we honor the office, not the person.

Essentially, Peter is the steward of Gondor.⁵ Jesus is the King of Gondor, leaving his kingdom in the charge of his steward. For hundreds of years his line may be gone. In that time, the steward exercises his authority because it was entrusted to him by the king. But he never takes the king’s throne–his chair is smaller and to the side, because while he functions as king, he is not the king. In the same way, the pope has the authority of Christ as head of the Church because Christ gave him that authority. Jesus knew that his Church would need leadership and an infallible voice in his absence⁶ and so he left us with just that in the person of the Pope.

But the argument doesn’t stand or fall on Matthew 16 alone, or even on the new name or the fact that Peter is listed first in every list of Apostles. How about John 21, where Jesus the Good Shepherd tells Peter three times to take care of his sheep? Jesus knows he’s going away for a time and he tells Peter to be the Good Shepherd in his place. Then there’s Galatians 1:18 where super-educated Paul goes to uneducated Peter to make sure that he–Paul–is teaching the right Gospel. He’s not concerned with the other Apostles, just wants Peter’s seal of approval. Sounds like Peter’s more than just an impetuous fisherman.

The argument isn’t really about Peter’s authority, though, so much as it is about his successors’. “Sure, Peter was the leader of the early church,” people will say, “but what on earth does that have to do with Pius and Leo and Johns ad infinitum?”

That, my friends, is a question for another post. Rest assured, the writings of the Church Fathers and the brains we have in our very own heads will make it clear that Peter’s office isn’t just for him but for those who take his place as well.⁷ For now, let’s appreciate the fact that the office of the papacy is entirely Biblical and that nobody has to pretend that the pope can do magic in order to be a Catholic. The Pope’s superpowers are certainly not in the Bible–unless you mean infallibility. Cause that one is.

Tune in…you know…eventually for parts 2 and 3: Tradition and logic. Happy Feast Day!

From the chair, meaning on his authority as the successor of Peter. He doesn’t actually have to sit in Peter’s chair. Speaking of which, happy Feast of the Chair of St. Peter! You still can’t eat meat today. [↩]
Or at least in the modern age. Immaculate Conception in 1854 and Assumption in 1950 if you’re keeping track. [↩]
I’m actually writing this last night and too lazy to bring up the USCCB’s readings page. But our Church is so logical that I know this is the Gospel without even looking. [↩]
Matthew 18:18–can we say ordinary Magisterium? [↩]
If you haven’t read The Lord of the Rings–read the books, not seen the movies–you probably want to skip this paragraph. [↩]
More on this in a few days. [↩]
Acts 1:20–apostolic succession ftw. [↩]

Maybe I’m Not Smarter Than Aquinas?

My father stayed home with us when I was growing up. When he did work, he was a nurse.¹ My mother worked, my last name was hyphenated–is that enough information to let you know that I wasn’t raised with a traditional understanding of gender roles?

Until I was a teenager, I honestly believed that men and women were the same–as in, I thought that women were physically as strong as men. To recap, my dad bench pressed 400 pounds. My mom clearly did not. But my ideology was stronger than my logic and I remained convinced that the only difference between men and women was a minor accident of anatomy.

So when I found myself a Catholic in high school, I had a few bones to pick with the magisterium. The biggest one, of course, was women’s ordination. If women were just as good as men (which I knew the Church taught), why on earth couldn’t they be priests? To my second-wave feminist mind, it was extreme patriarchal mysogyny.

Harry Potter — This is a picture of me being a nerd. Give me a break, I thought the post needed an image.

So, like any good nerd, I began to research–rather belligerently, to be sure. I asked friends and priests; I even read the Catechism on it. Had the internet been more than a mass of awkward chat rooms at the time, I might have had a better shot at figuring it out, but I found myself at the end of my research with nothing more than I’d had at the beginning. It still sounded like this Church I had given my life over to was telling me that women weren’t good enough to be priests. How medieval could you get?

But I’d read Matthew 16:18-19² and John 6 and I knew I was stuck with the Catholic Church. And I knew that if the Catholic Church was true (which I was convinced it was), she had to be right–about everything. You see, the central claim of the Catholic Church is her claim of infallible authority. If she’s not right about everything, she can’t claim to be right about anything. I knew that if I rejected Church authority on this matter, I needed to find a new Church.

So I decided that maybe 2000 years of the world’s greatest minds might–might–actually know more than I did on something. Maybe Aquinas and Augustine and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Chrysostom and all those ecumenical councils actually knew more about God than I did. Maybe the infallible Church I claimed to believe in was infallible on everything, like she claimed, and not just on the things that made sense to me.

In the end, I realized that I trusted the Church more than I trusted myself, which was saying a lot. So I submitted to the Church. I sucked it up and accepted the teaching, not understanding it, because I accepted the Church’s claim of authority.

Six months later, I realized that I not only believed it, I understood it. In submitting to the authority of Christ and his Church, I had made an act of faith, one far greater than my conversion had been. For an arrogant intellectual like me to accept an unpalatable doctrine on faith, not reason, was almost miraculous.

I honestly believe that the Lord withheld understanding from me in order to call me to a deeper faith. Up to that point, everything I believed, I believed because it was logical. I had done the research and learned the arguments and I was completely convinced of every other truth claim the Church made. There was nothing virtuous about my faith: in my mind, it was completely the product of my reason. Catholicism seemed to be a product of my brilliant intellect, and God knew I needed more.

When I found myself up against a doctrine I didn’t understand, a doctrine I couldn’t accept, I had to learn to trust. I had to follow God not because of what he’d proven but because of who he was. I had to submit to the Church not because I had checked out her argument and given it the Meg Hunter-Kilmer seal of approval but because I accepted the Church as a truth-telling thing.³

I think that for intellectuals, this is where the rubber meets the road. Catholicism is supremely logical, but nobody ever became a Saint by reason alone–or even a real believer. You can argue and reason and explain your way almost to the Tiber,⁴ but it takes a leap of faith to swim across.

And this is the downfall for many of the most intelligent people. If you’ve always understood everything, if you’ve been able to give a reasoned explanation of everything you’ve ever believed, it takes a heroic submission of the intellect to step from reason into mystery. There is nothing in the faith that is illogical, but some of it is supralogical. The Trinity is not accessible to our reason, but it’s not contrary to reason, either. It’s above reason. As a smarty-pants, accepting that something that you don’t get might be true is an almost super-human feat. But that’s why we have grace.

The moment I decided (by the grace of God) to accept the Church’s authority was the moment my belief became faith. It’s that faith that’s brought me through confusion and doubt and crisis and left me stronger on the other side, and it’s because I finally decided that I was all in. I believed in the Church more than I believed in myself. She hasn’t let me down yet.

So here’s an appeal to all of you who know better than the Church: you can’t. Either you believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, preserved from error when speaking authoritatively on matters of faith and morals, or you don’t. If you don’t believe in every single thing the Church proclaims to be revealed my God, that’s fine. Either submit anyway or find a new Church. Because if the Catholic Church is wrong, she’s really wrong–and arrogant, and possibly evil. Why would you want to be a part of that?

But if you do–if you believe that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ established in Mt 16:18-19, promising that the gates of hell would not prevail against it–you’ve got to accept everything the Church teaches. Real Presence and contraception and homosexuality and confession and obligatory Mass attendance–all the hard stuff along with the fun stuff.

When it comes to infallibility, you’re either all in or all out. There is no middle ground.

Stay tuned for an explanation of the all-male priesthood–an argument that was made clear to me only after I accepted it as truth. Look for it in a few days.

Before you call him a pansy, you should know that he also bench pressed 400 and trained dobermans and rottweilers. [↩]
And so I say to you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. [↩]
From G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: “This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive.” [↩]
The river that runs through Rome–get it? [↩]