It has long been an unfortunate admission among Catholic Christians that they are not as biblically literate as their Protestant counterparts. Professor Gary Gutting, writing for the New York Times, makes good on this mark in a remarkable piece about why Catholics have no particular reason why they should listen to what “the bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority” have to say. In fact, (he feels comfortable saying for the rest) “Most Catholics…now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept.”
Gutting claims, just because the minority of Catholics believe bishops have divine authority, and the basis for this divine authority is not more obvious than, say, his divine authority, we should be wary of what the bishops require:
“It makes no sense to say that the bishops themselves can decide this, that we should accept their religious authority because they say God has given it to them. If this were so, anyone proclaiming himself a religious authority would have to be recognized as one. From where, then, in our democratic, secular society does such recognition properly come? It could, in principle, come from some other authority, like the secular government. But we have long given up the idea (“cujus regio, ejus religio”) that our government can legitimately designate the religious authority in its domain. But if the government cannot determine religious authority, surely no lesser secular power could. Theological experts could tell us what the bishops have taught over the centuries, but this does not tell us whether these teachings have divine authority.”
Gutting then proceeds to unload the cartridge of biblical illiteracy:
“Ultimately the claim is that this authority derives from God. But since we live in a human world in which God does not directly speak to us, we need to ask, Who decides that God has given, say, the bishop his authority?…In our democratic society the ultimate arbiter of religious authority is the conscience of the individual believer. It follows that there is no alternative to accepting the members of a religious group as themselves the only legitimate source of the decision to accept their leaders as authorized by God. They may be wrong, but their judgment is answerable to no one but God. In this sense, even the Catholic Church is a democracy.”
There you have it. Because bishops’ authority is up for grabs, “above all…in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control,” we should have recourse to our own self-determined authority.
February 17th, 2012 | 11:02 am
He’s a Catholic? He makes an argument for Protestantism. Except that Protestants would give some Biblical citations.
February 17th, 2012 | 11:05 am
Cardinal George made an interesting remark in his newsletter:
February 17th, 2012 | 11:48 am
It’s also kind of depressing that Gutting doesn’t bother to actually engage the issue of the morality of contraception at all. Apparently in Gutting’s world, if the majority of Catholics decided murder was okay, then that would become the “Catholic” doctrine on murder, as well.
February 17th, 2012 | 11:57 am
As an Orthodox Lutheran, I find Gutting’s assertions just as asinine as any Roman Catholic would find them.
February 17th, 2012 | 12:46 pm
Foxes book of Martyrs gives the historical precedence, why Biblical illiteracy is higher among Catholics. In hindsight, it seems to be what determines whether or not You are Catholic or Protestant. Does anyone refer to themselves as Protestant anymore? Wasn’t the “protest” over the right to read the Bible(for ones self) to begin with?
February 17th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
Professor Gutting is a philosopher from whom I have learned a lot, especially in his works in philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. So, I write this with the utmost respect.
Why is it the bishops that have the burden to prove their authority to the dissenting Catholics? Perhaps it is the other way around. Because it is not obvious to me that Gutting is an authority on the assigning of burdens, we can safely ignore his suggestion on the same grounds he suggests that the dissenting Catholics should ignore the bishops.
February 17th, 2012 | 1:08 pm
If Catholics don’t resolve the question of authority, the entire Church is going to dwindle into irrelevance.
February 17th, 2012 | 1:13 pm
I find Gutting’s idea of the source of religious authority archaic.
“It could, in principle, come from some other authority, like the secular government.”
It’s almost as if the one good fruit of the Enlightenment, religious freedom, was never conceived, let alone written as law in the First Amendment.
No one in the U.S. is required to follow the bishops. Given that one doesn’t, I have no ideas why one such would want to claim the mantle of “Catholicism”, other than the historical perception that “Catholicism” holds a certain temporal power.
February 17th, 2012 | 1:17 pm
Blake, Reread the title and consider who is the source of the Bishops’ authority, at least, in Catholic belief. Then reread Matthew 16:18.
February 17th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
“… it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority.”
For this test to be a real test, the term “faithful” must have a definite meaning in extension. Now, as Mgr Ronald Knox pointed out, orthodox Catholics have a ready answer: “The fideles, be they many or few, be their doctrine apparently traditional or apparently innovatory, be their champions honest or unscrupulous, are simply those who are in visible communion with the see of Rome. No doubt, in the long run this means the people who are so orthodox that Rome has seen no reason to excommunicate them, so that unity and orthodoxy still react upon one another. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Roman theory does give a test for defining the fideles without the question-begging preliminary of ascertaining who the fideles are, from an examination of their tenets. And in fact there can be little doubt that, in the West, our labelling of this party as orthodox and that as heterodox in early Church history comes down to us from authors who were applying this test of orthodoxy and no other.”
February 17th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
I don’t see what biblical literacy has to do with it. The Bible doesn’t tell us that Catholic Bishops are authoritative teachers. That is the Catholic interpretation of the Bible, but it is not what the Bible says. If indeed Protestants are more biblically literate than Catholics (which is often the case), certainly even the most biblically literate Protestants don’t find in the Bible anything that says Catholic Bishops speak for God.
February 17th, 2012 | 4:10 pm
of note, the new english translation of the mass rightly translates “credo” as “i believe.” of course the content of the creed is of utmost importance, but at the end of the day, it is still “i” who believe. it is still “i” who submits to authority…. etc.
methinks newman explored the tension between the “i” who submits to rome and the act of submission itself, if i remember it correctly…. some sort of toast to either conscience or the pope that cafeteria catholics have used ever since to justify their whims.
February 17th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
David N
Suggest that you read the letters of St Ignatius,
a disciple of St John. He wrote that where the bishops are, there is the church and a lot of other good “stuff.”
February 17th, 2012 | 5:41 pm
Robb76,
Thanks for the recommendation. I have buried deep in my stacks of books God’s Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power–A History of the Jesuits by Jonathan Wright that I hope to get around to some day. The order that taught at my high school (Christian Brothers) were, to some degree, rivals to the Jesuits, and the Jesuit high school (an elite school that drew from all over the city) was a rival to all Catholic schools in the city, but that was a long time ago, and I was not big on school spirit anyway. St. John Baptist de La Salle must have been a fine fellow, but I am reasonably sure St. Ignatius was considerably more interesting.
February 17th, 2012 | 7:43 pm
David – He means the other St. Ignatius – the one who got eaten by lions in the amphitheater.
February 17th, 2012 | 10:35 pm
@David, If the people in question wish to follow a particular Protestant interpretation of the Bible, they are welcome to. But if they wish to claim the name “Catholic”, then I’m afraid they’re stuck with a Catholic interpretation. It’s a brand thing, kind of like Pepsi versus Coke.
February 17th, 2012 | 10:48 pm
David,
“I am reasonably sure St. Ignatius was considerably more interesting”
You have the wrong Ignatius. Robb76 is referring to Ignatius of Antioch (35-108). As the third bishop of Antioch, which was perhaps the most important Christian city after Jerusalem, Ignatius is one of the Church’s best claims to apostolic authority. His letters describing the role of the bishop and the meaning of the Eucharist are important evidence of how the first generation of Christians to know the apostles but not Christ both maintained and revised the faith.
February 18th, 2012 | 9:16 am
Blake, Reread the title and consider who is the source of the Bishops’ authority, at least, in Catholic belief. Then reread Matthew 16:18.
I was referring to their political power here on this Earth.
It is hard to be a beacon when half your flame is ignoring the light.
February 18th, 2012 | 9:42 am
Penguin Classics has a wonderful little paperback, “Early Christian Writings”, including the Didache, Ignatius & Polycarp. The Didache, one of the earliest writing ~50-90 A.D., specifically forbids infanticide & abortion. While the writings of Clement demonstate the authority of the Bishop of Rome.
I believe it’s still available on-line. In my case when it comes to pondering the meaning of some of these things, I still prefer a book over a computer display.
There is a wealth of information, on the internet, about the Apostolic & Church Fathers.
February 18th, 2012 | 10:38 am
“certainly even the most biblically literate Protestants don’t find in the Bible anything that says Catholic Bishops speak for God.”
No, but many biblically literate Protestants do find many things that say that duly appointed church leaders do speak for God, at least up to the point where their pronouncements can be identified as definitively contra-biblical. So it would be entirely consistent for a biblically literate Catholic to find a biblical argument in favor of listening to their bishops, since unless they are highly inconsistent, they do recognize their bishops as due authorities.
February 18th, 2012 | 3:11 pm
pentamom,
I think my point is very simple. A Protestant, a Catholic, and an atheist can all be biblically literate and yet have different opinions of how the Bible should be interpreted. Mike Melendez directs our attention to this saying of Jesus:
Many Catholics would identify this as the moment Jesus named Peter the first Pope of the Catholic Church. Whether or not a Catholic or a Protestant believes Jesus instituted the papacy at that moment is not a matter of biblical literacy. To me, in any case, biblical literacy is knowing Jesus said that and perhaps knowing that there is a play on words there, with “Peter” meaning “rock” in Aramaic. But a Protestant and a Catholic can be equally biblically literate and still disagree about whether Jesus instituted the papacy and named Peter the first pope.
Bart Ehrman’s textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings is widely used in college courses by both Catholics and Protestants. No one could question Ehrman’s biblical literacy. But he started as a fundamentalist Christian, became somewhat of a liberal Protestant, and is now an agnostic. He did not become less biblically literate when he became an agnostic.
February 18th, 2012 | 8:21 pm
One thing the Bishops could do to restore their leadership is to follow the lead of Bishop Thomas Tobin in Rhode Island who finally had enough with Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s challenge to the Church’s authority on matters related to abortion and other matters of importance to lifestyle liberals. Tobin forced Kennedy to toe the line and essentially pushed him out of office. Unless the Catholic rank and file see Pelosi, Cuomo, Kerry, Biden, et al., obey the Church’s teachings or depart the faith, then the disintegration will continue.
February 19th, 2012 | 11:19 pm
Very true. This is why the Bible informs us that it, like all prophecy, is not a matter of private interpretation.
February 20th, 2012 | 8:47 am
This may sound silly and unrelated but I think it is highly relevant; retconning. Retroactive continuity (aka retconning) is related to the word ‘cannon’ as it is used in fictional epic stories like Star Wars, Star Trek and many long running comic books. For example, consider The Empire Strikes Back. When Luke leaves Yoda, the ghost of Obi Wan Kanobi frets “that boy is our last hope”, Yoda says to him “no, there is another”….all rather mysterious. We learn later in Return of the Jedi that the other is Leia, who happens to be Luke’s twin sister. All well and good except in the newer movies we know that Obi Wan was there when Luke and Leia were born. So why did he seem like he totally forgot about her later on?
The most obvious explanation for this is that this is a work of fiction created by a single human and he got it wrong. It’s a mark of discontinuity breaking the coherence of the narrative story. That discontinuity reveals that we are looking at a work of fiction; we say a sign of a poor author of fiction is glaring and obvious breaks with continuity. But we admit that even a good author can screw up. In fact we know that Lucas originally planned to have ‘the sister’ being another character that would have been introduced over a series of movies after Empire. Instead when it was decided to end the story with just another movie, Leia was chosen as the sister in order tie up the plot points quickly (which is, BTW, why even though she is supposedly Luke’s sister and a Jedi that fact seems to have no real importance on the way the story turns out…it also explains the oddly creepy romantic interest between Luke and Leia in the original movie and the infamous kiss at the beginning of Empire…an interest that is totally dropped before any major character even knows about the relationship. Leia ends up falling for Han, even though he seems incapable of getting her out of any trouble, Luke is the only one who ever actually saves her).
So there you go, you have an ‘odd element’ in the story clearly explained by the necessities of story telling…the author creates his story, changes his mind on some element but must strain to find a way to explain stuff he already put before his audience. But what’s interesting is that when people really like the illusion of the fictional universe created by the story, they will fight to keep it. Hence dig enough into the commentary about the Star Wars universe, and you will find very detailed arguments for why there is no discontinuity. You will find theories that ‘the other’ was really about Darth Vader redeeming himself….Yoda felt it was possible, Obiwan didn’t. Why, for example, is that theory even presented? It is certainly rather awkward. If the two were having this argument why not just say it directly? If Yoda was operating on this theory, why didn’t he mention to Luke in the last movie that ‘confront Vadar’ didn’t mean he necessarily had to kill him…ohhh and don’t take old Ben too seriously when he says if you aren’t willing to kill your father then the Emperor has already won….?
Well the reason the awkward explanation gets more play than the one that is much more objectively true is that the awkward explanation allows the fan to maintain the illusion that Star Wars is a real, consistent, coherent universe. The awkward explanation works if you’re not a fan of Star Wars but of Lucas. If you wanted to know his creative process, his style of story crafting, then the awkward explanation may work for you. If you fell in love with the movies as a kid before you even knew who Lucas was, then the awkward explanation is that last thing you really want. It breaks the illusion and says the thing you really loved as real was just a bunch of effects crafted to fool you.
Now let’s add an element that’s even more complicating. Like many, I came of age consuming the 3 original Star Wars movies. To me the story starts with episode 4, not episode 1. Episodes 1-3 were mysteries to those like me, we would have loved to have known what happened but since we had no movies or other material we speculated based on what little we could glimpse from the original movies. Then the new movies came out and most of us felt let down. But why? Was it that they were really not as good as the originals? Yes that’s true. But was maybe part of it was because we had built up certain expectations for what the story would be that we were judging the new movies unfairly because they weren’t going the way we expected? Maybe part of it was arrogance, because Lucas didn’t choose *our* ideas for what happened before, part of us were angry at him and we took it out on the movie? This leads to a troubling problem, we couldn’t watch the movies innocently. Since we knew the three original movies, we knew too much. We knew who would live and who would die. We knew when Obiwan said offhandedly to young Anakin “you will be the death of me” it was more true than he would have guessed. We even knew that Padme was going to have twins, a boy and girl (which seemed kind of odd that no one else in such a technologically advanced universe would have considered a simple ultrasound…esp. for the pregnancy of someone from such an elite ruling class). Because we couldn’t unlearn what we had learned from the original 3 movies, we couldn’t judge all six movies as one consistent story. It will be interesting to learn what the next generation makes of the movies, those that see them in order of the story line rather than seeing the 2nd half of the story first like most of us did. But then they will lack our experience of them, of seeing the 2nd half of the story first, speculating for years about the first half.
So now let’s talk about the Bible and authority. On the one hand, the Catholic Church seems to have a lock on the ‘postmodern problem’ here, which is actually a very old problem. You can’t ‘just read’ the Bible anymore than you can ‘just see’ the Star Wars movies. If you come to the Bible raised with the preconception that it’s divine, then that will effect how you read it. If you come to the Bible as, say, a Hindu or Buddhist, you will see it as representing the origins of ‘those Christians’. If you come to it as a Muslim, you will see it as a less refined version of the Koran. The Church has taken the stance that since you can’t ‘just read’ the Bible, you have to both read it for yourself AND incorporate the way thousands of other people have read it over thousands of years. The Church is acting a bit like Wikipedia. Trying to gleam authority out of millions of different takes down through the ages with the faith that by seeking out some common consensus (aka tradition), they are getting at a deeper truth than any one particular take. In contrast, many Protestants seem to have a rather undeveloped view of these things, the illusion that you can ‘just read’ the Bible and the many differing readings of the Bible that result are due to bad translations or a conspiracy of bad people who just don’t want to admit the truth, or the view that God let’s ‘chosen’ people see the ‘correct reading’ of the Bible and, rather cruelly IMO, let’s those not chosen wallow in confused misunderstandings.
But here’s the other rub, this may just all be ‘retconning’. So many have found comfort in the story, they will conspire to make sure the ‘gears and pulleys’ are never revealed. If they happen to end up in the open, they will make sure that gets ignored and written over. From the beginning, before the 3 newer movies, Leia being Luke’s sister was ‘odd’. Even without knowledge of the prequels, if you scrutinized it you would see evidence of something contrived. If you think about what we should have seen, that would have been it. Yet because so many people loved the movies, it wasn’t seen. It works on us because the movies ‘converted’ such a large group of people; it took a real effort to see it from another angle. The fans end up, not intentionally, conspiring to make up for the flaws of the author(s). This leaves us with a real problem regarding the Bible. The Church has a good, valid point. Sure read your Bible, but understand if you read it for 70 years you are still entering a conversation that is over 2000 years old. You are still like a freshman on the first day of school. Don’t be so sure that what seems quite obvious to you from your reading is actually right. And our time in life is still finite. Studying intensely for 70 years will no doubt make you a well respected professor of the Bible, you’re still only going to scratch the surface of a huge field. You’re not going to do it in your lifetime no matter how much effort you give it. You must accept and deal with that fact as a grownup. The skeptic agrees with this but then turns to Church and has to ask do they really have an edge in addressing this problem or are they a problem, the problem of ‘fandom’ that persists on a grand scale of altering the culture so extensively that it becomes difficult to really see it with clear eyes.
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