Garry Wills—whose latest book raises a call against the priesthood—claims that he can remain a Catholic while espousing the common doctrines of low-church Protestantism, without the theologically nuanced arguments that most low-church Protestants make. And he throws out the book of Hebrews. In the video below, Stephen Colbert takes him back to catechism class.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013, 11:02 AM
February 13th, 2013 | 11:21 am
Thanks for this Nathaniel. It’s almost like watching Chesterton and Bernard Shaw. Although their debate on the Eucharist seems a bit caricatured… de Lubac’s “Corpus Mysticum,” anyone?
February 13th, 2013 | 11:30 am
I have just begun the book, and Wills is making a much more powerful case than is possible on The Colbert Report. He is making the point that the early Christian communities were extraordinarily egalitarian and did not have priests or sacraments. As I understand it, eucharistic meals were simply meals consisting of all kinds of food (as opposed to ceremonies where someone “consecrated” bread and wine). The earliest “bishops” did not ordain priests, nor did they preside at eucharistic meals in the role of priest.
I think there is a consensus among New Testament Scholars that Paul didn’t write Hebrews, which of course does not mean it is not part of the New Testament canon.
February 13th, 2013 | 12:08 pm
Amazing. One wonders why he even bothers to call himself Catholic.
February 13th, 2013 | 12:23 pm
I am a Reformed Protestant with strong sympathies to about half of what Wills was saying. I still found his performance silly and his protestation of being a Catholic farcical. Why doesn’t he just go to a Baptist church and call it a day?
February 13th, 2013 | 1:38 pm
Why doesn’t he just go to a Baptist church and call it a day?
Derek: Because then he couldn’t go on the Colbert Report and sell books as a Catholic.
February 13th, 2013 | 1:40 pm
Has Wills never heard of quantum entanglement?
I never trust Colbert, he is a Democrat mocker of righteousness, so I don’t know how to take him on these things.
As to Wills, as an M.Div, and now a Lutheran, I find his views both ahistorical and outside the pale of orthodoxy and the Church catholic (far larger than the rebel Roman patriarchate)
February 13th, 2013 | 1:42 pm
Hello David,
He is making the point that the early Christian communities were extraordinarily egalitarian and did not have priests or sacraments.
It does appear that way.
And there are people who have argued this position for many years. They’re called “Protestants.” And I say that with all respect, because they have the integrity to call their position “Protestant.” Unlike Gary Wills.
February 13th, 2013 | 1:42 pm
Yes, David Nickol, many have made those points on down the centuries. For example, the idea of a “spiritual” communion, as distinct from transubstantiation, has been proposed by Berengarius of Tours in the 11th c., then again by the Protestant Reformation, and now again by “progressive” Catholics such as Wills.
Arguments against the office of bishop, all-male priesthood, etc. are also centuries old and common among Protestants.
It’s slightly absurd how Wills presents what is essentially mainstream Protestantism as “radical” and “challenging.”
February 13th, 2013 | 2:14 pm
What a surprise. Wills is a Protestant and not a Catholic. Colbert got this one right.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:17 pm
David, Wills cherry picks. I am sure you think he makes his case as you agree with him. Wills just denies anything that doesn’t fit his own conceptions. An amazing lack of integrity and he should give his prize back.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:17 pm
As someone who has no sympathy for anything Gary Wills was saying, let’s start with Augustine.
It is absolutely misleading to try to portray Augustine as someone who did not believe the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ:
“That Bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ.” (Sermons 227).
Go here for more quotes:
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetcis/num30.htm
Or that the office of the priesthood was simply made up with no warrant in scripture is bogus:
“The English word “priest” is derived from the Greek word presbuteros, which is commonly rendered into Bible English as “elder” or “presbyter.” The ministry of Catholic priests is that of the presbyters mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 15:6, 23). The Bible says little about the duties of presbyters, but it does reveal they functioned in a priestly capacity.
They were ordained by the laying on of hands (1 Tm 4:14, 5:22), they preached and taught the flock (1 Tm 5:17), and they administered sacraments (Jas 5:13-15).”
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/where-in-the-new-testament-are-priests-mentioned
And the idea of a hierachical clergy is already in place by the early 2nd Century as witnessed by Ignatius of Antioch:
“In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a church.” (Letter to the Trallians 2:1–3 [A.D. 110]).
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/bishop-priest-and-deacon
I guess these offices just sprung up out of nowhere with nary a peep of protest from anyone.
I am…
February 13th, 2013 | 2:31 pm
I do think it was a mistake for Garry Wills to present his ideas this way on The Colbert Report. He appeared to be more interesting in shocking people than in informing them. I like Wills, and I like the show, but this was not an appropriate forum for a discussion of Why Priests?
I don’t think, though, that it is helpful to dismiss Wills by saying he’s just a Protestant who doesn’t have the integrity to call himself one, especially if you’re judging from a 5-minute interview on a comedy show. It is the book itself that must be judged, not an interview on The Colbert Report.
I am finding it a “shocking” book, as someone who received a Catholic education in the 1950s and early 1960s, but then I never cease to find careful analysis of the Bible shocking, since I was brought up to think the Bible was a book full of “proof texts.” Of course Colbert was going to cite “You are Peter . . . ,” but I think the time has long since passed when serious New Testament scholars would identify that as the moment Jesus named Peter the first pope.
Can someone be Catholic and deny transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the sacrament of “Extreme Unction” (Anointing of the Sick)? I would say yes, probably, if one feels, despite everything, that the Catholic Church is the organization that best carries on the movement started by Jesus. That would seem to me the absolute core belief required for affiliation with any Christian denomination. Whether or not the pope is infallible, or transubstantiation takes place, or marriage (or holy orders) is a sacrament, or apostolic succession is unbroken seem to me secondary. The earliest Christians, and in fact Christians for the first thousand years, were not required to believe most of the doctrines and dogmas that “conservative” Catholics insist are mandatory today.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:36 pm
@David Nickol
If you want to get a purer sense of how the early Christian communities looked like, I recommend reading the early Church Fathers. There are ample “snap shots” of this time period, without the heavy bias of Garry Wills (i.e. Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Polycarp).
Also i’d challenge the presupposition that the early church has to look exactly like the current church. Although the seeds of the church were present in the beginning, over 2,000 years have passed. We should not expect the two to be mirror images of the other, just as we should not be surprised to see a difference between your baby photos and your face today (Cf. “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” by John Henry Newman).
Peace.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:39 pm
I am a Boston Red Sox fan. I wear a Yankee uniform during all Red Sox-Yankee games and cheer for the Yankees during these games. I am a Boston Red Sox fan.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:41 pm
Kudos to Stephen Colbert. Considering that both men were reduced to sound bites, Colbert gets a gold star. What a fine job! The take: You are not a Catholic if you disbelieve in a central Cathoic teaching, a teaching which divides Christianity to this day.
February 13th, 2013 | 3:26 pm
To borrow from Belloc, Wills is spouting “nonsense on such a scale that it’s becoming difficult to deal with.”
February 13th, 2013 | 3:30 pm
Also i’d challenge the presupposition that the early church has to look exactly like the current church.
Sanctvs,
I have barely begun the book, but I can say that Wills most definitely does not say the Catholic Church should go back to first-century practice such as meeting in homes instead of churches. It was simply impractical as Christianity spread to maintain that kind of organization. What he is saying (at least as I read him so far) is that the priesthood and the papacy were not present in early Christianity in any way, not even in nascent form, and their invention caused a distortion of the movement Jesus began and Paul and the other apostles continued. It takes more than You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church to refute what Wills is arguing. Colbert seemed effective in the 5-minute interview he conducted, but let Wills and Colbert spend an hour or two together, and I guarantee Colbert would be at a total loss. (Of course, it wouldn’t be a fair match.)
February 13th, 2013 | 3:34 pm
You are not a Catholic if you disbelieve in a central Cathoic teaching, a teaching which divides Christianity to this day.
Bev Malona,
Could you be specific about which teaching this is? The priesthood? Transubstantiation? The Real Presence?
February 13th, 2013 | 3:42 pm
And yes, one does need to hold to the core dogmas of Catholicism to call oneself a Catholic.
This is because one of the central tenets of Catholicism is that she is a divine institution ordained by Christ to pass on His teachings.
If you deny even one dogma you are at the same time denying that she is a divine institution founded and protected from dogmatic error by God. The Church then becomes a mere human institution with no real warrant for anyone to hold to any of her teachings.
February 13th, 2013 | 3:46 pm
It is absolutely misleading to try to portray Augustine as someone who did not believe the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ
Brennan,
Let’s add include a bit more of the quote:
If you believe that Augustine was saying that the bread and wine were literally the body and blood of Christ, does that mean he meant people who receive the bread and wine literally became a loaf?
February 13th, 2013 | 4:08 pm
David writes: “The earliest Christians, and in fact Christians for the first thousand years, were not required to believe most of the doctrines and dogmas that “conservative” Catholics insist are mandatory today.”
I can’t help but wonder what all those early heresies were about.
February 13th, 2013 | 4:15 pm
Derek Rishmawy:
I wonder, do you guys ever get people who say things like, “actually, the pope is the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Christ,” or, “the bread and wine actually are the Real Presence,” but then just stay in your church instead of converting to Catholicism?
February 13th, 2013 | 4:16 pm
If you deny even one dogma you are at the same time denying that she is a divine institution founded and protected from dogmatic error by God.
Brennan,
Which dogma is Garry Wills denying? On the one hand, as I read the book I am unnerved and think to myself, “This is heretical!” On the other hand, I am sure transubstantiation isn’t a dogma. Some form of the Real Presence may be a dogma, but not transubstantiation itself, which is an explanation couched in philosophical terms that I don’t think are widely accepted today.
February 13th, 2013 | 4:43 pm
David,
In a sense, that’s exactly what Augustine was saying. When we receive the Eucharist, we become what we receive. The Body of Christ–the Church, consumes the Body of Christ–the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is how we become physically as well as spiritually united with Christ’s Body–both His physical Body and the spiritual Body that Paul refers to in 1 Cor and elsewhere–the Church.
In both cases, we speak of these things in terms of substance, though physical appearances remain. The bread and wine on the altar retain their appearances but are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. We remain individuals, but through Communion become the Body of Christ. For Augustine, it wasn’t just a metaphor, but a reality as well.
February 13th, 2013 | 4:53 pm
His whole thing about we “eat God, we digest God, …” is bad Theology. Christ only remains so long as the accidents remains so really, Christ is only present until about 15 minutes after receiving Him. After that point, the Real Presence is not there. We’ve received the grace but His substance is gone.
I hope I have not gotten in heresy there. That’s just how I was taught in my Theology classes: “So long as the accidents remain, the substance is there. The moment the accidents are not there, the substance ceases to be there.”
This man is a heretic. In the old days, the Inquisition would be on him rather fast.
February 13th, 2013 | 4:56 pm
. . . but then just stay in your church instead of converting to Catholicism?
I did once hear the story of a woman who was Christian but not Catholic—I don’t remember the denomination—who felt there was something evil lurking in her house (or some such thing) and wanted an exorcism performed by a Catholic priest and only a Catholic priest.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:16 pm
David,
In addition to agreeing with Kris’s comments, I think the answer itself is in the quote you provided from Augustine:
“That Bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins.”
Augustine in the final sentence equates the blood we receive at Mass with the blood Jesus shed for the forgiveness of our sins. I’m pretty sure Augustine did not believe that Christ shed symbolic blood on the cross.
Further, I posted the link (which may not have worked in the previous post) on Augustine’s quotes so anyone can go see for themselves that there are a number of times where St. Augustine shows that he believed the bread and wine become Jesus’ actual body and blood. Here’s one more:
“”The Lord Jesus wanted those whose eyes were held lest they should recognize him, to recognize Him in the breaking of the bread [Luke 24:16,30-35]. The faithful know what I am saying. They know Christ in the breaking of the bread. For not all bread, but only that which receives the blessing of Christ, becomes Christ’s body.” (Sermons 234:2)
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num30.htm
February 13th, 2013 | 5:17 pm
David, seriously? You think that someone can call themselves Roman Catholic and not accept transubstantiation? I know you are not Catholic but I think that is a bright red line. Anyone else?
February 13th, 2013 | 5:42 pm
I believe Brennan has it right. Being Catholic is not a matter of going down a list of Church beliefs and agreeing with some minimum percentage of them. (This is a Protestant way of looking at things, not a Catholic way) The fundamental self conception of the Catholic Church is that it is indeed the Church founded by Christ, guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to be free from error in matters of dogma. If you don’t accept that premise then you don’t accept the Catholic Church.
By way of example: I don’t accept the Assumption of Mary because my reason — or a consensus scholars — tells me it happened. I accept it because the Church teaches it, and I accept the Church’s infallible authority in such matters.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:44 pm
Yes, transubstantiation is a dogma. Wills completely denies this by asserting that nothing happens at Mass, period. He also denies the sacramental priesthood which is also dogma. Without a sacramental priesthood there is no Mass.
A better question to ask is what distinctly Catholic doctrine (not just a generic one held by all Christians) does Wills actually affirm?
Here is the dogmatic Council of Trent on transubstantiation:
CANON II.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct13.html
And lest someone think that is from too long ago, here it is reiterated in the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm
If someone wishes to use the term “real presence” that is fine, but they need to mean what the Church…
February 13th, 2013 | 5:49 pm
David Nickol says:
Can someone be Catholic and deny transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the sacrament of “Extreme Unction” (Anointing of the Sick)? I would say yes, probably, if one feels, despite everything, that the Catholic Church is the organization that best carries on the movement started by Jesus.
I say:
This is granted only if one accepts that Christ merely established a movement and was not a law giver. You also must assume that be it time, human limitations, or what have you; there is such incongruity between Christ and his followers and the second generation and beyond that we may only speak of the quality in which a church approximates Christ’s intent.
None of these assumptions are given and I’m sure one could see how either point opens us up to Christological doubts and questioning the orthodox agreement on the nature of God in a way that, say, celibacy doesn’t. At the very least, I’m not sure how Gary Willis keeps any distinctions between sects to determine which best approximates Christ’s Church today if he believes in radical egalitarianism without a strict eucharistic meal or sacerdotal order. I can’t imagine him being a stickler for arguments over justification.
That being said; as perplexing as it may be to see someone in constant protest of the community he freely belongs; you are correct to point out that it is not his beliefs that keep him in or out of the Church- it is that he is in communion with his bishop and the Pope. As long as Rome sees fit to allow him (or anyone) to receive communion, he is still very much a Catholic…which has a certain humor to it when you think about it.
February 13th, 2013 | 6:06 pm
David, seriously? You think that someone can call themselves Roman Catholic and not accept transubstantiation?
bobster,
I think I’m correct here.
Fully accepting the word transubstantiation requires thinking in certain philosophical terms (substance and accidents) that I don’t think is required. The word transubstantiation didn’t come into use until the 11th century, so obviously nobody before then believed in it. I assume belief in the Real Presence is “required,” but if you want to attempt to explain the Real Presence in different philosophical terms, then transubstantiation will not describe your belief, which I presume can still be orthodox. For example, if you believe there is no material reality, but everything that exists is an idea in the mind of God, I don’t think transubstantiation would work as a description of the Real Presence.
There is an interesting survey I found which deals with Catholics’ belief in the Real Presence.
To the question, “Which of the following statements best agrees with your belief about the Eucharist/Holy Communion?” 91% of Catholics who attended mass weekly or more answered, “Jesus Christ is really present in the
bread and wine of the Eucharist.” The same answer was given by 65% who attended mass less than weekly but at least once a month, and by 40% who attended mass a few times a year or less. The others (9%, 35%, and 60% respectively) answered, “Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus, but Jesus is not really present.”
February 14th, 2013 | 12:53 am
If one is given communion, they are Catholic.
February 14th, 2013 | 2:25 am
Anyone with more than a cursory understanding of Will’s work cannot reasonably dispute that he’s a scholar of the highest rank. His rather peculiar intellectual journey ( conservative writer for NATIONAL REVIEW, to liberal book reviewer for THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS) reflects a man who, whether one agrees with his ideological views or not, possesses great intellectual integrity.
Which leaves me scratching my head. Why doesn’t he just leave the Catholic Church? He seems to deny some of what one could argue constitutes some of the essential doctrines of the Catholic Church. So why not continue the pattern of following the argument wherever it leads, and just be a protestant? Could there be something beyond arguments and logic going on here? Fr.Andrew Greeley, the Catholic priest and sociologist, has asserted that many people “like” being Catholic. (he told this, if memory serves me, to a visibly frustrated and former Catholic Phil Donahue wh responded, “What does liking it have to do with it!”)
February 14th, 2013 | 2:48 am
Let us not forget that Steven Colbert is on Comedy Central. He makes us laugh and I don’t think he was really competing with Wills, although he always does humorously compete for the spotlight.
February 14th, 2013 | 3:39 am
Brennan,
It is not sufficient to quote documents from the Council of Trent to answer this question. Here is an excerpt from Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi by Karl Rahner that begins to formulate the issue:
The point is that just because the Council of Trent defined a doctrine/dogma in terms of Aristotelian and scholastic cosmology does not demand that faithful Catholics subscribe to Aristotelian and scholastic cosmology.
Joseph Martos notes in Doors to the Sacred (written in 1981):
Of course, Garry Wills appears not to be attempting to find more contemporary explanation for transubstantiation, but to abandon the concept altogether. So I am not saying his position can be harmonized with that…
February 14th, 2013 | 3:56 am
I stopped taking David Nickol’s comments seriously years ago, but his latest about being on the one hand “unnerved” that Wills has written something heretical is completely laughable. One only need read a sample of his comments on this site or the Commonweal blog to understand just how off the wall that comment was.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Nickol is wrong about his valuation of NT scholars. Read Raymond Brown or John Meier, to name a few, and see what they have to say. Here’s a clue: there is a lot more continuity and reasoned development than Wills allows for. That’s not surprising, as Wills’ research is more subjective and his agenda more blatant than almost any scholar (on any side) that I have ever read.
February 14th, 2013 | 8:31 am
This video brought to mind the Spiritual Work of Mercy, “Clothe the naked”; also the elegant principle of averting one’s gaze to protect a person from shame.
This morning I read the story of Fr. Vincent Capodanno, Medal of Honor Recipient, who died to bring the sacraments to a dying Marine; a hero, a man of courage, a faithful priest.
February 14th, 2013 | 8:42 am
Could someone clarify something for me: when it is said that the “substance” of the bread and wine are changed to the body and blood of Christ, is this understood to mean that they become literal flesh and blood? Or is that by “substance” it is meant that the function, or purpose, of the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in terms of how they now function for the communicant? I have always understood transubstantiation to mean the latter, that the substance (function/purpose) is changed even though the form (the accidents) are unchanged. So in that sense Christ, the second person of the Trinity, can be and is truly present in the Eucharist. It seems to me that Wills, and others, mischaracterize transubstantiation to mean that the Church teaches that the accidents become literal flesh and blood. Hence, Wills’s talk in the clip about Jesus not saying, “Here, take a chunk of my arm.” Of course he didn’t say that, and the Church does not teach anything like that, or am I missing something?
February 14th, 2013 | 9:12 am
“So why not continue the pattern of following the argument wherever it leads, and just be a protestant? Could there be something beyond arguments and logic going on here?”
It could be because he gets popularity and money. Would he have an audience if he came “out” as the Protestant he is? Does the media clamor for orthodox Protestant spokesmen?
February 14th, 2013 | 9:28 am
“If one is given communion, they are Catholic.”
So if a Satanist gets in line for Holy Communion and receives the Blessed Sacrament in order to use it in a Black Mass they are therefore ipso facto Catholic?
February 14th, 2013 | 9:47 am
“I think I’m correct here. Fully accepting the word transubstantiation…”
David Nickol, you do not necessarily have to use the word “transubstantiation” personally but you do have to accept what it describes. And the Council of Trent gives a description of what it describes in the Canon I quoted above and Catholics must accept that, the word transubstantiation is the theological term used to describe it.
Or as the new Catechism puts it: “1374 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm
That has to be accepted whether or not someone wants to use the word transubstantiation. In other words, you can’t believe the Holy Eucharist is merely symbolic, or in Luther’s belief of consubstantiation.
February 14th, 2013 | 11:01 am
Why doesn’t he just go to a Baptist church and call it a day?
Derek: Because then he couldn’t go on the Colbert Report and sell books as a Catholic.
The editors of the New York Review of Books find it somewhat jejune to employ agnostics to write slithery essays denouncing the Catholic Church. A bogus affiliation is useful for all parties to the transaction. They could commission work from Andrew Sullivan, but Sullivan no longer has the attention span to produce a simulacrum of scholarship and is just too gauche to do the job properly. They could commission work from Damon Linker, but why bother when David Brock’s rate per word is lower?
Andrew Greeley had had his fill of Garry Wills a generation ago and Commonweal was panning his books a dozen years ago. Those are just about the last two stops before you get off the train. I would not assume he has much of a Catholic audience left.
February 14th, 2013 | 11:15 am
I stopped taking David Nickol’s comments seriously years ago, but his latest about being on the one hand “unnerved” that Wills has written something heretical is completely laughable.
Bob,
I guess what I said wasn’t clear. I am not unnerved that Garry Wills has written the book. I find it unnerving—for me— to read. Wills seems hostile and bitter. He comes across as mocking things most Catholics find sacred. I hope I would feel the same about reading an assault on anything widely held to be sacred, but having had twelve years of pre-Vatican-II Catholic education, I instinctively react to reading Wills’ book with a certain feeling of shock. I find transubstantiation extremely difficult to believe in, and it does not trouble me at all to question it. But I would not mock or ridicule it.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Nickol is wrong about his valuation of NT scholars.
I made only two statements about New Testament scholars:
Feel free to dispute what I said, but please don’t imply I said anything more than that.
February 14th, 2013 | 11:37 am
That has to be accepted whether or not someone wants to use the word transubstantiation. In other words, you can’t believe the Holy Eucharist is merely symbolic, or in Luther’s belief of consubstantiation.
Brennan,
I agree. If you are going to frame what happens in Aristotelian terms—in terms of substance and accidents—then you are committed to transubstantiation as it was defined by Aquinas. So consubstantiation must be rejected. But believing in the essential meaning of transubstantiation does not require that an explanation be couched in Aristotelian terms.
February 14th, 2013 | 3:10 pm
a) as someone who received a Catholic education in the 1950s and early 1960s…
b) since I was brought up to think the Bible was a book full of “proof texts.”
OK, I give up. Which was it.
if one feels, despite everything…
How Late Modern/Early Postmodern! One feels rather than thinks.
The word transubstantiation didn’t come into use until the 11th century, so obviously nobody before then believed in it.
The word “scientist” didn’t come into use until 1834, so obviously nobody before then was a scientist.
February 14th, 2013 | 4:30 pm
I suppose it is possible to use a different formulation of Real Presence than transubstantiation and still remain within the Catholic framework of belief. I am not at all sure however that Rahner and other 20th century scholars who explicitly reject transubstantiation have accomplished that. Indeed it seems to me, modern philosophy tends to de-emphasize realities that cannot be perceived through the physical senses.
Regardless of how you do it, to really be a Catholic, you have to admit that a fundamental change occurs in the bread and wine during Mass such that they are fundamentally Christ and fundamentally not bread and wine despite how they appear to human senses.
February 15th, 2013 | 4:45 am
Wills’ op-ed in the NYT on the pope’s resignation was the most bitter and dyspeptic piece of venting one could imagine. From David Nickol’s comments it sounds like the book is in the same vein. No thanks!
February 16th, 2013 | 3:54 am
Hello David,
Can someone be Catholic and deny transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the sacrament of “Extreme Unction” (Anointing of the Sick)?
Let’s ask Bl. John Henry Newman, everyone’s favorite misquoted “doctor of conscience”:
“In the Apostles’ days the peculiarity of faith was submission to a living authority; this is what made it so distinctive; this is what made it an act of submission at all; this is what destroyed private judgment in matters of religion. If you will not look out for a living authority, and will bargain for private judgment, then say at once that you have not Apostolic faith. And in fact you have it not; the bulk of this nation has it not; confess you have it not; and then confess that this is the reason why you are not Catholics. You are not Catholics because you have not faith.” – Discourse 10, “Faith and Private Judgment”
February 16th, 2013 | 11:54 am
“Now, a word to Catholics who follow the dictates of their consciences instead of the dictates of the Vatican. Congratulations, you’re Protestant.” – Florence King
February 16th, 2013 | 2:21 pm
Discourse 10, “Faith and Private Judgment”
Richard M,
It seems to me if one reads certain documents of Vatican II (Nostra Aetate comes to mind), Newman’s attitudes in Faith and Private Judgment come across as not only seriously dated, but arrogant, condescending, and un-Catholic. For example,
It is certainly not the teaching of the Catholic Church today that other Christian denominations and non-Christian religions are “barren, unmeaning, and baseless.” I wonder how the Jewish and Protestant readers of First Things would react to this statement of Newman’s. And this:
It seems to me his entire premise is off base. The first-generation Christians put their faith in Jesus and the apostles—that is, in people—not in an…
February 16th, 2013 | 2:50 pm
“Now, a word to Catholics who follow the dictates of their consciences instead of the dictates of the Vatican. Congratulations, you’re Protestant.” – Florence King
Dan in RVA,
I suppose this wouldn’t be offensive if Catholics making such statements didn’t use the word Protestant in much the same way Muslims use the word infidel.
It reflects the same mindset of Cardinal Newman in the piece quoted by Richard M. Newman says people who do not embrace Catholicism are not merely rejecting the Catholic faith. They have no faith at all, not even in the religions they profess, for anyone who had “real” faith would become a Catholic.
It is one thing to acknowledge that Catholics and, say, Lutherans or Evangelicals, in this ecumenical age, have “agreed to disagree” about certain issues, to engage in dialogue, and to find points of agreement. But what Newman is saying is that Lutherans and Evangelicals really have no faith at all.
I know that Cardinal Newman is a major figure in Catholicism, and he was a great man and a profound thinker. But this essay (like, say, the anti-Semitic beliefs of Aquinas) belongs to a different era and must not be seen as representative of Catholic thought today.
February 16th, 2013 | 6:20 pm
Although I enjoy the writing of Florence King in NATIONAL REVIEW, and respect her way with words, I think that the quote of her provided by Dan in RVA oversimplifies the Catholic position. (I don’t know the context she was writing in, so she may be joking; if so, never mind…) There’s a subtle distinction between following the dictates of one’s conscience, vs. the dictates of the Vatican. With Catholics, the dictates of one’s conscience take first priority: after all, it’s one’s conscience that informs one that the judgment of the Vatican is to be obeyed.
February 17th, 2013 | 5:46 am
It’s really not the dictates of one’s conscience vs. the dictates of the Vatican. It’s the dictates of one’s conscience vs. the teachings of Christ.
If there’s a conflict, it might be your conscience that needs reforming and not the other way around.
The Church is the conduit, in her official teachings on Faith and Morals, for Christ’s teachings.
February 17th, 2013 | 6:17 pm
Brennan, good point, well said.
February 18th, 2013 | 9:38 am
The Church is the conduit, in her official teachings on Faith and Morals, for Christ’s teachings.
Brennan,
First, not everything that comes from the Church is an “official” teaching, guaranteed to be true. As I am sure you know, there is a “hierarchy of truths”:
• dogma
• definitive doctrine
• authoritative doctrine
• provisional applications of Church doctrine, church discipline, and prudential admonitions
I think may Catholics were rather taken aback to find out a few years ago that the Limbo of Infants was not an official teaching of the Church. I would hate to have seen what would have happened to me if I had told my grade school nuns I didn’t believe in Limbo!
Second, if you are not Catholic, then the Catholic Church claims to be the definitive interpreter of Christianity, but there is nothing that can compel a person to believe that, or that can prevent a Catholic from sincerely ceasing to believe it. The claims the Catholic Church makes for itself may be true, but there is no conclusive proof so compelling that those who do not become Catholic or who cease to believe can be demonstrated to be wrong.
February 18th, 2013 | 3:31 pm
Hi David,
I agree that not everything that comes from the Church is an official teaching on Faith and Morals. Prudential decisions of the Pope, such as altering the liturgy after Vatican II, are not infallible and can in fact be mistaken or imprudent.
However, there are teachings, such as on the sacraments, the Blessed Trinity, Ex Cathedra pronouncements, contraception, abortion, etc. which are infallible and true whether Catholics or non-Catholics recognize them as true or not.
The claims the Church makes for herself as the definitive interpreter of Christianity is also objectively true whether others recognize it or not.
And while someone of course cannot be forced to believe, or continue to believe it, there is plenty of evidence that has been provided throughout history to show that she is a divine institution founded and maintained by Christ and that her official teachings on Faith and Morals are true.
This would have to do with miracles such as at Fatima, the holiness of the Saints, the nature and unalterability of her official teachings, her apostolic succession, and other evidence.
Granted, scandal, pure ignorance or prejudice against the Church can make it difficult for someone to see the divine nature of the Church. It also has to do with the will. If someone does not want to know or seek the truth then certainly no one can force them.
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