Recently my email yielded a straightforward De profundis from a young reader pleading for reassurances; he needed to know that embracing Catholicism did not require the shutting down of his intellect or the suspension of reason. Relating what he had encountered among the comboxes at a number of Catholic websites, he was left wondering if Catholicism inhibited one’s ability to think for oneself.
“I know the Church puts a high premium on docility, humility and the emptying of self,” he wrote, “but common sense tells me that none of those should involve self-lobotomizing. Please tell me I’m not wrong.”
Though I have no pretensions toward intellectualism, myself, I offered the following response to my young reader, and share it here.
Good heavens, no—you’re very right. While I may not have the brain of an Aquinas or an Augustine, do I seem to you to be in any way conformist or lobotomized? Quite the opposite of what you fear, Catholicism not only invites the application of reason into one’s faith—it rather insists upon it.
I may be a cradle Catholic given a fair grounding in faith thanks to some nuns and family members, but I have still had to bring my whole self into my explorations of the faith, in order to understand it and to conform—imperfectly, but with firm intentions—to its teachings in genuine freedom, rather than compulsion, and freedom is what the faith brings.
For me, every tenet of Catholicism—including the pro-life teaching—has been one I’ve had to really research, read about, and reason out in my head and through prayer—and the prayer part is absolutely essential, because that is where what you are learning becomes bone-deep; it is the “setting agent,” as it were. In this way—using research, reading, reason, and recollected prayer—I have always come down on the side of Catholic orthodoxy; never because she has simply dished it out and I’ve eaten it, but because she has made a sound argument that fed me in my totality: mind, spirit, and sinew.
That doesn’t mean that within the life of faith there is no danger of over-conforming to a mindless degree. People who are too lazy to think (or too lazy to reason, because they fear it) exist in politics and in the churches, too, but submission to Christ (and obedient service to the church) has never been about getting humanity to “fall in line.”
Rather, it is about helping each of us to “fall in love” with Him, and with the mind-boggling hugeness of all we do not know, and with the quest. It is meant to broaden, not deaden, the intellect and strengthen the voice so that one may be unafraid in declaring what one knows to be true, and again, that takes reading, researching, reasoning, and recollection.
There is a paradox at work, of course; we apply our reason to what is founded upon unreasonableness (and faith is utterly unreasonable; it is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”) and then our understanding—slowly hatched open bit by bit, by our own Holy Spirit-prompted willingness to pursue the gift through the giftedness of all who came before—leads us to the point where we can say not only “I believe this,” but “I know this in a way that has passed through my intellect, and been absorbed within my tissue,” in the same way that you can say you know how to button your coat, or put a car into forward or reverse: not because you are mindless, but because you have fully absorbed that learning.
And then you really can be fearless, because what you have learned will have trained you to consider that so much of what we call “reality” is illusory, while the mystery is worth pursuing and dying-for. And if docility—a great bequest—comes, it will originate not from narrow obedience, but from a broadening of trust and understanding of the Bridegroom, who defends and sustains his Bride, the church, unfailingly.
I used to post the saying attributed to St. Gregory of Nyssa at my site: “Ideas lead to idols; only wonder leads to knowing.” It is a phrase that has informed so much of what I understand, and all of my learning. It is possible to lock into faith without wonder, or with a frenzy to conform, but there is little-to-no growth there, only stagnation and sterility. In the language of March Madness, that’s like taking on the ideas of faith and dribbling with them, rather than shooting for the net.
But if we wonder—and Catholicism encourages wonder—then we really do get to the knowing, and that’s humbling, and fascinating—a daily dive into boundless depths.
Look at our saints and you see that the Church’s true exemplars—the apostles, the doctors of the Church—were men and women who were rarely in “perfect conformity” to their times or trends, inside church or outside. They were innovators and reformers, but not unbounded; they were neither like the “Spirit of Vatican II” Catholics—busily decrying everything that came before them as outmoded and unattuned to the times—nor like the staunch traditionalists who seem to believe that perfect fidelity to the past breeds a perfect future. Instead they took everything that came before, and built on it—added to the whole structure of faith, while tidying up what was corroded or decorative without meaning.
Too much time spent in Catholic comboxes is apt to give a distorted view of where the life of faith is meant to lead—it means to give flight, not to weigh down, to encourage suppleness—which permits a tree to bend in a storm—over rigidity, which uproots it.
Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Dorothy Day all called themselves “obedient daughters” of the church. All were intelligent women with a wide and sophisticated view of the world, all were innovators but not unrestricted in scope, who worked within the bounds of the church, whose Christ-led wisdom they had allowed to become bone-set within them. Although they were very different women, of different temperaments and abilities, living in different eras, each one of them would give you the same answers on the big issues of faith, life, sacraments, and redemption.
And considered together, they are perhaps the best argument I could possibly make against any notion that being Catholic means conforming oneself to a narrow path of non-thinking.
Elizabeth Scalia is the Managing Editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos and blogs as The Anchoress. Her previous articles for "On the Square" can be found here.
Comments:
God is completely reasonable, even if at times He is beyond our finite ability to reason. God IS good, that's why He only wills good for us and why certain things ARE actually good, because they are of God. And knowing this, we can forge into the waters unafraid, because we know our reason and our logic will lead us to answers.
We're blessed as Catholics to have a lot of the answers handed to us on a silver platter, but that doesn't mean we can't explore those answers and ask how we came by them. And like children who know that mom is nearby to swoop in and rescue them from harm, we can thus explore boldly and with confidence, knowing we won't get lost and that we do have guidance.
Thank God for the Church!
The Faith, as proposed by the Catholic Church, is profoundly reasonable. If it would be unreasonable to insist on Greenland only being cartography's sick joke on the rest of us, then it is unreasonable to assume the testimony of all those who claim to have experienced the risen Lord to be false, not only since, historically, doing so in many instances cost them their very lives, but also because, like the cartographers, there is no good reason for such people to deceive us. It is reasonable to assume Greenland really exists and that the carpenter from Nazareth rose from the dead and is Who He claimed to be: God.
One could argue that it IS possible to verify Greenland exists and it is not possible to verify the claims of Jesus in a similar fashion. If I, in faith, believe in Jesus and then experience Him in a way that is deeper and more real to me than the experience of Greenland could ever be, then that is more than sufficient verification for myself. Yes, that experience remains inaccessible to one who refuses to make the required act of faith. If one can reasonably take the existence of Greenland on faith without personal verification of its existence, one ought to be willing to take the claims of Jesus on faith. If one does so, and fully intends to keep His commandments, one soon has an experience of Jesus that is more than sufficient verification.
Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them. … My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
--John 14:21-23
It is faithless reason alone that is “self-lobotomizing.”
Best,
(1) There are a great many theological questions on which there is no authoritative Church teaching and a broad spectrum of admissible views. There is therefore enormous scope for theological speculation and debate. The Pope himself prefaced the first volume of his book on Jesus with the statement that he was writing in the capacity of a theologian and that Catholics were therefore free to disagree with his conclusions.
To take another recent example, there has been a vigorous debate among perfectly orthodox Catholics on the question of the morality of journalistic sting operations in which a reporter pretends to be someone he isn't to elicit candid statements. A few years ago, Prof. Robert George and I engaged in a spirited disagreement on the First Things website about the nature of our resurrected bodies. In the pages of First Things magazine itself about five or six years ago, Cardinal Schoenborn and I clashed very visibly on the subject of biological evolution and the role of chance in the world.
The Church has traditionally categorized theological propositions on the basis of how authoritatively they have been answered: There is a spectrum from those that are matters of faith (de fide), to those that have been taught authoritatively but not as matters of faith, to those on which there is wide theological consensus but no authoritative teaching, to those that are matters of "free opinion." By far the largest number of questions are in the last category.
(2) Moving from theology to philosophy, there is even greater freedom. the Church has stated that there is no one philosophy to which Catholics must subscribe. One can be an Aristotelian, a Platonist, a realist, a nominalist, and so forth.
(3) When it comes to politics, economics, science, the arts, and so on, there is greater freedom still. One can be anything from a leftist to a monarchist. One can believe this or that scientific hypothesis. One can be a flat-earther, a birther, a global warming believer or skeptic.
(4) Even on those questions where there is clear and authoritative Church teaching, there are endless questions for theological reflection and investigation, because those teachings touch on matters of deep mystery. That is why there is such a variety of theological approaches and styles. The great theologians had very different ways of looking at things.
I suggest that this young person disconnect from comment boxes (after reading this one, of course) and start reading the books written by Catholic intellectuals of undoubted orthodoxy from the earliest days down to own. He will see how vigorous and various Catholic thought is, and how much intellectually stimulating debate there has been and continues to be.
Yes, there have always been second-rate minds that are content to "paint by the numbers", who want everything laid out in such a way that they never have to think about anything. One finds that everywhere --- in the secular academy as much as anywhere else (indeed more so). But for those who do "seek understanding", there is ample scope for the mind within the Catholic Church.
“The Church has traditionally categorized theological propositions on the basis of how authoritatively they have been answered: There is a spectrum from those that are matters of faith (de fide), to those that have been taught authoritatively but not as matters of faith, to those on which there is wide theological consensus but no authoritative teaching, to those that are matters of "free opinion." By far the largest number of questions are in the last category.”
Mr. Barr, would you be good enough please to give an example or two of theological propositions that are matters of “free opinion”? I’m afraid my mind has drawn a blank.
Sincerely,
MC
"Harry, let me warn you - those cruises to Greenland to prove it exists? Also run by the cartographer's conspiracy. They take you to Baffin Island instead."
I was afraid of that. ;o)
@Stephen M. Barr
"You made it sound like it was all a matter of submission ..."
The essentials of the faith ARE a matter of submission. The trinity cannot be accepted because we are able to UNDERSTAND how three distinct and separate persons, each being God in themselves, are only one God. We can't reason our way to the incarnation via a virgin or to bodily resurrection. As Augustine put it, "I believe in order to understand," or as Anselm put it, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand." Yes, Catholicism leaves one a huge amount of room for fruitful reasoning, but it seems the first thing one need to grasp is that the truths of God are beyond the reach of reason alone.
which are matters of free opinion --- i.e. where there is neither an
authoritative teaching of the magisterium nor a consensus among
orthodox theologians. I will give ten examples, and not trivial examples
but quite significant questions. It will be obvious after I give them that
there are countless more.
(1) Is the universe six thousand years old as a literalistic reading of
Genesis would have it, or billions of years old? A Catholic may think
whatever he wants on this. Pope Pius XII thought it is as billions of years
old, as do almost all educated Catholics today, including Pope Benedict XVI,
and presumably virtually all bishops, and theologans. But a Catholic would
be in no way unorthodox if he believed the universe six thousand years old.
(2) Did God create the universe in one moment or in a succession of stages
as depicted in Genesis? St. Augustine thought the former, as did St.
Thomas Aquinas. But other Fathers of the Church thought the latter. St.
Thomas Aquinas explicitly stated that in such matters Catholics could
take varying opinions, so long as they upheld the veracity of Scripture.
(3) Were the bodies of the first human beings directly formed by God
from the dust of the ground or were they formed "from pre-existing living
matter", to use Pope Pius XII's formulation? That is, did our bodies
arise by special creation or by evolution? This is a matter on which
Catholics are free to differ. Pius XII said that Catholics have freedom
of opinion on this matter, as long as they are not rash in their judgments.
(4) There are conflicting theories of how God's Providence is to be
reconciled with human freedom. The Thomists have one theory and
the "Molinists" another. This issue was hotly debated between
the Dominicans (Thomists) and the Jesuits (Molinists). Both views are
regarded by the Church as acceptable. There are other schools
of thought on this issue besides these two. I suggest you read up on
this very famous controversy. Theree were great theologians on
each side.
(5) What happens to unbaptized babies? A traditional theory (which I
tend to favor, or at least think as reasonable as any other) is that they go
to limbo, i.e. do not have the "beatific vision" but have natural happiness.
Another theory is that they go to heaven. The Church has no official
teaching on this: she does not say that they are saved or that they are
damned. She says that we can hope and pray for their salvation.
(6) When does ensoulment take place? While it is infallibly taught that
taking the life of an unborn child is gravely immoral from the moment
of conception, that teaching is NOT based on any theory of ensoulment.
Most theologians today would say that ensoulment happens at
conception, or very soon after. (That is my view also.) But that was
not the view of some great medieval theologians who were influenced
by Aristotle. The Church does not have an authoritative teaching on this.
A related question: when a human fertilized egg twins to become two
human beings, what happens to the soul? Does ensoulment take place
after twinning? Did it take place before twinning? If the latter, did
the soul divide somehow into two souls?
(7) Is lying always a sin, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas taught? Or are
there times when telling falsehoods is allowed, as some of the Church
fathers, and some other eminent theologinas taught? There are stricter
and laxer schools of thought on this. For example, lying
to protect the Jews hiding in the cellar from the Gestapo, lying to deceive
an enemy in wartime, lying to avoid revealing a secret and this betraying
a confidence. These cases would have been analyzed differently by
different respected moral theologians. For a discussion of some of the
disagreements between fathers and doctors of the Church on the subject
of lying, read the Appendix to John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro
Vita Sua.
(8) Were the John who wrote the Book of Revelation, the John who
wrote the Epistles of John, and the author of the Gospel of John
all the same person, or were there two, or were they three. There have
been various theories, even among the Church Fathers and other early
writers.
(9) Was the Septuagint inspired, even in the passages where it disagrees
with the Hebrew Old Testament?
(10) Will this physical universe be utterly destroyed and replaced by something
completely new? Or will the universe be transformed and renewed in some way?
There are scriptural passages that could be seen as supporting each view.
In other words, how much physical continuity is there between this world
and the next? A related question: It is de fide that we shall have the "same"
bodies in the next life: in what sense are they the same?
But I agree with the thrust of the article. Catholicism is nothing if not intellectually rigorous. There's 2000 years' worth of books in our library. No one will run out of food for thought anytime soon.
Faith in the religious sense needs always to be differentiated from "reasonable expectation based on evidence" which is what we generally use to run our lives (such as the expectation that you will be able to button your shirt or put your car in gear). Religious faith is another thing, altogether, that has no dependence on evidence as you can easily see if you look at the faith of someone in another religion from your own. Catholics might look closely at Mormons who have complete faith in Joseph Smith, who we now know as a complete fraud. That kind of faith rejects what we know of true history for the fairy tales that make people feel better and that they are included in a supportive group. This is a strong aspect of human nature, and something every religion depends on to propagate.
Tell your young friend to seek the truth based on evidence, and he will find his own way, with his brain still fully functional.
You're welcome. "They all seem meaningless to me?" Really!? The question of what happens to unbaptized babies after they die is meaningless? I wouldn't think it meaningless to the baby who died or the parents of a baby who died! Whether man evolved is a "meaningless" question? Wow. It is one of the most contentious always wrong is a meaningless question to you?
To most people these are slightly more important than what Coke is better than Pepsi.
You may have stumbled on the wrong website here. At First Things we don't concern ourselves with the relative merits of Coke and Pepsi.
I am afraid that I wasted my time in answering you. But maybe other readers found something useful in what I wrote.
And one more point: There is no logical difference between freedom with respect to a question and freedom with respect to the various propositions that could be given as answers to that question.
