Catholic Exchange » Mark Brumley

Same-sex Marriage’s Unintended Case Against Marriage

Mark Brumley — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 05:03:07 +0000

Is there a fundamental right to marriage? That, we’re told, is the basic question behind the same-sex marriage business.

Unfortunately, that question doesn’t go far enough. Is there a fundamental right to marry whomever one chooses? That’s the real issue. And the answer is no. One can’t, for example, marry someone who can’t consent to marriage—a five-year old, for instance, or an insane person. Nor can a person marry someone who is already married to someone else, or otherwise marry more than one person at a time. And, at least in most places right now, a person can’t marry a member of the same sex.

In short, there is a fundamental right to marry, but there are all kinds of provisos and prerequisites having to do with whom one may marry. The fact that many same-sex marriage proponents continue to speak as if “the fundamental right to marry” has no qualifications betrays their fundamental confusion or disingenuousness on the subject.

Likewise, all the loose talk about how “equal protection of the law” requires legal recognition of same-sex unions in marriage. In fact, there is presently equal protection of the law when it comes to homosexual persons and marriage. They are not treated differently when it comes to marrying. Two heterosexual men can no more legally marry one another than can two homosexual men. Two lesbians have the same rights to marry men as have heterosexual women. For both heterosexual and homosexual persons, the law requires that marriage is between one man and one woman.

Of course, if one has a fundamental right to the state’s recognition as marriage of one’s lifelong commitment with another, regardless of the other’s gender, then those who have made such commitments are unjustly discriminated against if they’re unions aren’t recognized as marriage. But the equal protection argument simply begs the question. It assumes but does not prove that there is a fundamental right to the state’s recognition as marriage of one’s lifelong commitment with another, regardless of the other’s gender.

Critics have not proved unjust discrimination when it comes to defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. But seeing this requires a willingness to see the civil purpose of recognizing marriage in the first place. That purpose is to privilege civilly those unions that are the kind of unions in which procreation of human beings occurs (i.e., heterosexual unions), even if, in particular cases, as a result of age, defect, or choice, procreation doesn’t in fact occur. There are civilly-pertinent reasons to encourage couples who regularly engage in the kind of acts that can generate new human beings to enter into the stable, permanent, and exclusive union we call marriage. Those reasons include creating a stable environment in which children can know and be raised by the man and woman who procreate them.

And in fact, same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions are in fact not equal, contrary to what federal judge Walker, who ruled against California’s Prop 8, supposes. At least, they are not equal when it comes to procreation of new human beings. There, opposite-sex couples have a decided advantage.

Nevertheless, Judge Walker thinks unjustly discriminatory the denial of same-sex people’s legal right to have their life choices recognized as marriage by the state. This is because he thinks that same-sex oriented people have some fundamental human right to enter into a lifelong commitment with people of the same sex and, here is the crucial part, to have the state recognize and compel others to recognize such unions as marriage. But Judge Walker provides no truly rational grounds for showing why “the fundamental right to marry” includes same-sex couples but does not include, say, the union of three or more people. He gives no sound reason why the state should not be compelled to recognize as marriage “lifelong” friendships. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, he gives us no reason why the state should be in the marriage-recognition business at all.

Why must civil law and society recognize that two people have decided to commit themselves to one another “for as long as they both shall live” or something less than that if they choose to divorce? Once the law has ceased to have as the underlying purpose of state recognition of marriage the fostering of stability, permanence, and exclusivity in the unions in which couples can engage in procreative kinds of acts, the law has largely, if not entirely, ceased to have a reason to be involved in the marriage business. Commitments to lifelong unions become, like commitments of friendship, private matters and not the business of the state.

By trying to make the case for same-sex marriage, proponents wind up undercutting the case for the state’s involvement in marriage at all.

Signs of Repentance or of the Status Quo?

Mark Brumley — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:03:32 +0000

A canon lawyer friend of mine says Senator Edward Kennedy had a canonical right to a church funeral. Not that my friend is a Kennedy fan. He just thinks the law reads that way. I think he is right, though whether it should read that way is another matter. Towards the end of his life Mr. Kennedy attended Mass, led family prayers, and met with priests. These activities, my canon lawyer friend contends, are canonically acceptable “signs of repentance”.

“Signs of repentance?” you may wonder. Why are these needed? Senator Kennedy was well-known for stances at odds with Catholic teaching. For instance, he supported abortion rights when he should have defended the right to life for unborn babies. He advocated experimentation on embryonic human beings when he should have stood up for their rights not to be manipulated and killed. And he also supported same-sex marriage when he should have upheld marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The positions Senator Kennedy took on those issues are, according to Catholic teaching, objectively gravely sinful. Indeed, they are so sinful that someone who does them should refrain from receiving Holy Communion (Canon 916). If he does not, and if he manifestly and obstinately persists in them, then he should not be admitted to Holy Communion (Canon 915).

This is not a question of judging a man’s soul, but of his public actions. Such actions are, in themselves, contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church. A Catholic who publicly supports abortion rights, embryonic experimentation, and same-sex marriage misrepresents to others the incompatibility of such things with Catholicism. Whatever a politician’s personal culpability before God, he is a “manifest sinner” in terms of his public actions when he supports such evils.

Canon 1184 says that church funeral rights are to be denied certain groups of people, which includes “manifest sinners”, “unless they gave some signs of repentance before death”. The argument that justifies Senator Kennedy’s church funeral says that as he prepared to die, Senator Kennedy participated in Mass, led family prayers, and was visited by priests. He also sent a letter to the Pope in which he acknowledged that he had not been perfect but that his faith sustained him. These activities are interpreted by canonists, including my canon lawyer friend, as “signs of repentance”. So Senator Kennedy got his church funeral.

As far as Mr. Kennedy is concerned, I pray for the repose of his soul. Since I have more interest here in the general question of what ought to be than I do the particular question of whether Ted Kennedy met the current requirements, I will recast the discussion in general terms.

Suppose a politician is well-known for his support of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Suppose he is a Catholic and suppose he has been told repeatedly by bishops and others what the Church teaches and of his grave responsibility to promote laws consistent it, including regarding the rights of the unborn and the defense of marriage. Furthermore, suppose despite all the politician has been told by the Church, he continues to support abortion, embryonic experimentation and same-sex marriage. Furthermore, he denies that his support of these evils is incompatible with his faith, so he receives Holy Communion at Mass, leads family prayers, and visits with priest friends.

Now suppose the Catholic politician becomes terminally ill and goes to his death bed. He has Mass in his home and receives Holy Communion, leads the family prayers, and visits with priest friends. He writes a letter to his bishop admitting that he is a fallible human being, mentions the good things he did as a politician, and asks for the bishop’s prayers. He says nothing in the letter about his public abortion rights activities, embryonic experimentation, or his public support for same-sex marriage.

Under the circumstances, do the activities of receiving Holy Communion, leading family prayers, and visiting with priests amount to “signs of repentance”? Canonists may count them as such but in the situation I just outlined, we can’t say that they really are. Why not? Because the politician received Holy Communion, led prayers, etc., before he was on his death bed and all the time maintained that his manifestly, objectively sinful activities were compatible with his Catholicism. How, then, can we suppose his death bed actions show he has repudiated his earlier actions?

As I say, I prefer not to address the issue in terms of Senator Kennedy’s case, even though I take elements of my example from it. Unfortunately, my example could apply to many Catholic politicians. That leads me to wonder whether Canon 1184 is helpful if it is to be understood as permitting a church funeral for Catholic politicians under the circumstances I have just outlined.

The requirement for “signs of repentance” in Canon 1184 seems to be there to prevent the “public scandal to the faith” that a church funeral for a “manifest sinner” would otherwise cause or seriously risk. But if, as in the case just outlined, what are taken as “signs of repentance” can’t tell us anything about whether the politician came to see his support of forty million legal abortions, embryonic experimentation, and same-sex marriage as incompatible with the Catholic faith, how can a church funeral for such a politician avoid giving scandal? How will it be taken by many people or most people to mean anything but that these things are not, after all, serious evils and incompatible with the Catholic faith?

Five out of Nine

Mark Brumley — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

If the newly nominated Judge Samuel Alito is confirmed, the US Supreme Court will have “five out of nine” justices who are Catholics — Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Roberts. What does that say about the state of things?

Well, in one sense it says something we all already know. Socially and politically, Catholics have “arrived.” It isn’t simply, as it was in John Kennedy’s day, that a Catholic could get elected President of the United States. Catholics can actually be in the majority at the highest levels of what is perhaps America’s most powerful branch of government.

But what kind of Catholicism do the Catholics on the Supreme Court exemplify? We can’t be sure. And that’s part of the problem.

By that I don’t mean that a Catholic justice’s position on any or most cases likely to come before the court should be predictable. Not at all. We can suppose that on a number of issues two or more well-informed and well-formed Catholic justices might differently interpret and apply the Constitution. In theory, the Supreme Court decides cases, not issues. And cases often involve fact patterns about which reasonable and thoroughly Catholic judges may differ in judging the law's relevance to them.

Nevertheless, we should also be able to suppose that on the major issues — issues touching literally on matters of life and death or on the nature of marriage — a Catholic justice’s position should be fairly easy to guess, at least when it comes to his general principles.

SCOTUS veteran Catholics Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have made their judicial philosophies clear enough. Those of Scalia and Thomas, if not mandated by a Catholic worldview, are at least generally in sync with it, although some Natural Law folks will quibble with this or that element of Scalia and Thomas’s approaches. Reagan nominee Justice Kennedy’s decisions are all over the map — often contrary to Catholic teaching, to be sure, but even contrary to sound constitutionalism. Of course, it’s too soon to say where the newly confirmed Chief Justice Roberts will come down. And no one knows about Alito, should he be confirmed.

The point is, we should all know where anyone identifying himself with the Catholic Church stands on basic issues. There is no judicial philosophy worthy of a Catholic jurist that would allow any reasonable person a moment’s hesitation regarding where, as a justice on the Supreme Court, a Catholic jurist would generally stand on the Constitution and such matters as, say, the right to life for unborn children or the nature of marriage.

If clarity would make it harder for Catholics to be confirmed as Supreme Court justices by even supposedly Catholic senators, that’s a pity. But better to be rejected for being a genuine Catholic than to be confirmed as an ersatz one. Blessed is he who is persecuted for righteousness' sake.

How many justices does it take to render a decision of the Supreme Court? Five out of nine, as your high school civics teacher insisted. But how many Catholics does it take? And what kind of decision will they render? Right now, no one but God knows.

Mark Brumley is President of Ignatius Press and Vice President of Campion College of San Francisco. He lectures widely on apologetics and other theological subjects. He is author of 3mil.net .

Some Political Issues Should Be More Important Than Others for Catholics

Mark Brumley — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Are some issues in the upcoming election more important than others? Absolutely. I say that as a long-time advocate of what’s called a Consistent Life Ethic. My thinking has always been that the alternative to a Consistent Life Ethic is an Inconsistent Life Ethic, which doesn’t make sense.

Conditions Are Important, but …

Some people object to pro-life advocates’ emphasis on life issues on the grounds that the conditions of one’s life are important, too, not simply the fact one is alive. Of course it isn’t enough that pro-life people support the right to life. The principle that upholds the right to life — the dignity of the human person — tells us we should be concerned with the conditions under which life is lived.

Nevertheless, as a matter of sheer common sense, protecting the right to life has a practical priority over the right to a certain condition or standard of life, even though the latter is also important. Why? Because unless you’re alive, we can’t talk meaningfully about the conditions of your life. Unless you have the right to life, it’s nonsense to talk about having other rights. Pope John Paul II put it this way:

The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination (Christifideles Laici, no. 38).

Yes, issues such as health care, unemployment, homelessness, education, and poverty are significant ones. Someone genuinely committed to the dignity of the human person and for that reason genuinely committed to the right to life should, as we have said, also support efforts to ensure that people have access to health care, jobs, homes, education, and sufficient wealth to live a decent human life. That is the sense in which pro-life people must have a Consistent Life Ethic.

But those without health care, job opportunities, homes, schooling and economic means include 1.3 million babies who were killed last year through abortion. When they were deprived of their lives, they were deprived of the opportunity for health care, of a chance to begin a life leading to work, of having a home, of eventually attending school, and of attaining any economic means whatsoever. The logical priority of the right to life is unavoidable.

Examining the Absurd Comparisons

Pro-life Catholics have really no choice but to be consistently pro-life — that is, to defend human life against all attacks and to support whatever fosters respect for human life, including insofar as possible the conditions under which human life is actually lived.

Some pro-life activists have been wary of, if not outright hostile to, the Consistent Life Ethic. This is because some people mistakenly claim that pro-lifers must view all issues touching on human life as equally important. Such a view is sometimes called the Seamless Garment approach to life issues, although not all proponents of the Seamless Garment approach think all life issues equally important.

How can someone consistently pro-life hold some life issues to be more important than others? The answer is simple. Some threats to human life are more immediate, more far-reaching, and graver than other threats.

Consider the issues of abortion and the Iraq war. Let’s assume something for the sake of argument that is by no means self-evident — that the war in Iraq is unjust. Legalized abortion is without question unjust because it amounts to state-approved killing of millions of innocent, helpless babies. How do these two things compare with each other?

Often it’s difficult and at times inappropriate to compare this injustice with that injustice. But when it comes to comparing the evils of the Iraq war — assuming as we have that it’s unjust — there is no comparison. American forces in Iraq are not deliberately and directly killing millions of innocent, helpless human beings. You might argue that the number of civilian casualties in Iraq is too high to justify the war. You might make the case that abuses of civilians are far greater than the Bush administration admits. But it would be absurd to argue that 1, 300,000 people were being killed as a result of American policy in Iraq.

Not so with abortion. Last year, abortion destroyed 1,300,000 human lives. And not in the way, say, thousands of people died as a result of criminal assault — through illegal activity — but as the result of government-approved killing. Legalized abortion is not the consequence of an abuse of policy, but the consequence of an abusive policy, one that allows certain human beings to kill other human beings, with the killers’ actions backed up by the police power of the state. Where government should uphold the right to life of unborn babies, it intentionally allows over a million of them to be killed each year through abortion.

There simply is, then, no legitimate comparison between the evil of abortion and the war in Iraq, even on the assumption that the war is unjust. What about another “life issue,” capital punishment?

Again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that capital punishment, as it is practiced in the US, is unjust. I add the qualification “as it is practiced in the US” to help specify things because not all uses of capital punishment are wrong, as far as Catholicism goes. The Catholic Church recognizes the right of the state, under certain circumstances, to use the death penalty (CCC 2267). Whether those circumstances presently exist in the US is an interesting question to debate. For the argument here, though, let’s assume that such justifying circumstances don’t exist.

Where does that leave us with respect to capital punishment and the issue of abortion? According to one anti-death-penalty advocacy group, there were 65 executions in 2003. I would say, “Compare that to 1.3 million abortions in 2003,” but of course once again there’s no comparison. Over a million innocent human beings were killed in 2003 through abortion, while less than a hundred human beings, at least some of whom are arguably not innocent, were killed through capital punishment. That isn’t an argument to ignore capital punishment — assuming it’s unjustly applied in the US — but it is an argument against lumping them together as if they were on more or less the same level.

What Part of “Non-Negotiable” Do You Not Understand?

Abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell experimentation, human cloning, and same-sex marriage have been called non-negotiable issues in certain Catholic circles. Why? Because they involve intrinsic evils that government can never legitimately authorize. They involve issues on which all Catholics are obliged, as Catholics, to agree. Most other concerns — even very important ones such as capital punishment or the Iraq war — are subjects about which Catholics can legitimately disagree. Not so with the five non-negotiable issues. On these issues there is such a thing as the Catholic position, whether or not certain Catholics choose to embrace that position.

Cardinal Ratzinger made this point recently in connection with abortion and euthanasia on the one hand and capital punishment and war on the other. In his letter, “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion,” he set out general principles regarding reception of the Eucharist by those who support abortion rights and euthanasia. Ratzinger wrote,

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage way, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Given the nature of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, the same absolute prohibition that applies to abortion and euthanasia applies to these things. Likewise, Catholic teaching requires an absolute opposition to same-sex marriage.

Catholics have an obligation to form their consciences according to the teaching of the Church. That teaching allows a wide range of conscientious judgments on a number of important, political issues. Abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell experimentation, human cloning, and same-sex marriage are not among those issues. On these subjects there is but a single legitimate “Catholic position.” When it comes to legal support for these issues, one can be Catholic or “pro-choice,” but not Catholic and “pro-choice.”

Mark Brumley is President of The Five Issues That Matter Most.

They’ve Had It

Mark Brumley — Mon, 31 May 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Not all bishops, of course. But many. Certainly, many more this year than in the past thirty years. Consider one example.

Recently, the Bishop of Colorado Springs, Michael Sheridan, issued a pastoral letter warning Catholic politicians who support abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage not to receive Holy Communion. The media had a field day, but Bishop Sheridan didn’t back down. Not even after a major donor to the Diocese of Colorado Springs threatened to withdraw a substantial financial contribution. Bishop Sheridan didn’t do what he was widely reported to have done — say he would deny certain politicians or their supporters the Eucharist. He said that, given the objectively gravely sinful nature of what they’re are doing, they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion. Apparently, the distinction between warning wayward Catholic politicians against receiving the Eucharist and denying it to them, significant as it is, was lost on many in the media.

Other bishops have weighed in on pro-abortion politicians receiving the Eucharist, in varying degrees of forcefulness and clarity, including Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Archbishop John Meyers of Newark, Archbishop Sean O’ Malley of Boston, Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, Bishop William Weigand of Sacramento, California, Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix, and Co-adjutor Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Florida.

The logic of the bishops seems impeccable, irrefutable. Support for abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage is gravely sinful. Those who engage in gravely sinful acts shouldn’t receive Holy Communion. Therefore, those who support gravely sinful things such as legalized abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage shouldn’t receive Holy Communion. Q.E.D.

Although Catholic politicians who reject Catholic teaching on those points cry foul, no one should wonder why Catholic bishops, as spokesmen for the Catholic Church, say such things. They’re simply acting like bishops — pastors — warning their people not to do things that are gravely sinful. At least one bishop has gone farther than issuing warnings. Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians, including presidential candidate John Kerry. The band of brother bishops hasn’t yet followed suit. If they do, are they within their rights?

Within their civil rights, without a doubt. There’s no law against bishops deciding which positions on social issues are gravely sinful according to the Catholic Church. Nor a law against bishops deciding that people who espouse sinful positions — including politicians — put themselves outside the range of acceptable belief to receive the Eucharist.

Yet according to some critics, recent statements by bishops aimed at dissenting Catholic politicians breach the “wall of separation of church and state.” This is sheer nonsense. Set aside the question of whether such a separation of church and state was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. It’s an infringement on the free exercise of religion to insist that Catholic pastors — or any other kind of pastors — must accept as full participants in their church politicians, or their supporters, who act contrary to the church’s central beliefs. So much for civil law. Does denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, or pro-same-sex marriage Catholic politicians violate Church law? Not according to the Vatican’s Cardinal Francis Arinze, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. At an April 2004 press conference to present a new document on the Sacred Liturgy Cardinal Arinze said pro-abortion politicians shouldn’t try to receive the Eucharist and priests ought not to give it to them. Cardinal Arinze’s position is no innovation. According to the Code of Canon Law, “Those who…obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (CIC 915).

Supporting abortion, euthanasia, or same-sex marriage is, says Catholic teaching, objectively gravely sinful. Politicians or their supporters who obstinately persist in promoting such things, well, obstinately persist in grave sin. If they do so before the public, then they obstinately persist in manifest grave sin and shouldn’t, according to Canon 915, be admitted to Holy Communion. From the perspective of Church law, then, bishops are on solid ground to deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who support abortion, euthanasia, or same-sex marriage.

Still, some Catholics object. One priest sermonized that since Jesus didn’t deny Judas the Eucharist at the Last Supper, bishops and priests have no business denying the Eucharist to Catholics, not even to obstinately persistent committers of manifest grave sin. The priest’s objection ignores a crucial distinction between what Jesus did at the Last Supper, when He alone knew of Judas’ sin, and what a pastor does in giving the Eucharist to one who obstinately persists in manifest grave sin. It’s one thing for a pastor to allow someone to receive the Eucharist whom the pastor alone suspects of unrepentant grave sin. It’s another thing for a pastor to do so when everyone in the congregation knows the man to be unrepentant. In the former case, the recipient of the Eucharist brings judgment upon himself, as Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29. In the latter case, both the recipient and the minister of the Eucharist risk leading others to sin. By their actions, the man and the priest imply either that (1) it’s acceptable to receive Holy Communion unrepentant of grave sin; or (2) what the Church claims is gravely sinful really isn’t.

Some observers have wondered aloud about the growing number of like-minded bishops taking energetic stands regarding pro-abortion Catholic politicians. We've had pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion since 1973, the critics note. The bishops, of course, know this. Apparently, they’ve just decided that thirty-one years is long enough.

Mark Brumley is President of Ignatius Press and Vice President of Campion College of San Francisco. He lectures widely on apologetics and other theological subjects. He is author of How Not to Share Your Faith (Catholic Answers). His website is 3mil.net .

Canon Lawyer Clarifies Distribution of Holy Communion

Mark Brumley — Thu, 20 May 2004 00:00:00 +0000

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Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger Mahony is wrong when he claims that a bishop or priest cannot deny Holy Communion to a pro-abortion Catholic politican unless the politican has been excommunicated, placed under interdict, or put under a formal sanction, according to a noted canon lawyer.

Edward Peters, writing on the website www.canonlaw.info, challenges some statements Cardinal Mahony made in an recent interview with Catholic News Service.

A week after a meeting with pro-abortion presidential candidate John Kerry, a meeting characterized by Cardinal Mahony as “very cordial, very friendly,” the cardinal declared himself “slightly mystified” about the controversy over pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion. He observed that there have been “pro-choice Catholic politicians” receiving the Eucharist since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

It's not possible, the cardinal went on to say, for a bishop or priest to deny the Eucharist to someone who isn't excommunicated, interdicted or put under formal sanction.

“That’s wrong,” writes canon lawyer Edward Peters. “Canon 915 plainly says that those who 'are excommunicated, interdicted, or…obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.' It is patent that one need not be under a formal sanction to fall within the purview of Canon 915. Politicians who chronically support abortionism are persisting in grave sin.”

According to Cardinal Mahony, when someone presents himself to receive the Eucharist, he is presumed to be in the state of grace and receiving Holy Communion in good faith. Peters says that statement is incomplete because, like the presumption of innocence, “the presumption of one's eligibility to receive the Eucharist” can be undercut by contrary evidence.

Peters also takes issue with the cardinal's claim that the decision to receive the Eucharist belongs to the communicant, not the minister of the Eucharist. The cardinal confuses Canon 916, which warns individuals conscious of being in grave sin to refrain from receiving the Eucharist, with Canon 915, which directs a minister aware of an individual’s obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin not to admit such person to Holy Communion, contends Peters.

Bishops such as Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, who has threatened to deny the Eucharist to pro-abortion Catholic John Kerry, are completely justified, writes the canon lawyer.

Peters agrees with Cardinal Mahony that pro-abortion Catholic politicians have been receiving the Eucharist since 1973. “What's changed,” observes Peters, “is that we now have bishops who are saying enough is enough.”

Cardinal Mahony's comments are available here.

Dr. Peters' analysis can be found here.

Mark Brumley is President of Ignatius Press and Vice President of Campion College of San Francisco. He lectures widely on apologetics and other theological subjects. He is author of How Not to Share Your Faith (Catholic Answers). His website is 3mil.net .

The Rush on Rush

Mark Brumley — Sat, 18 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Rush Limbaugh’s problem with pain pills has been plastered on the front pages of news magazines and run as lead stories on the nightly news. On the one hand, the prominence of the story makes perfect sense.

Big Man, Big Sin, Big News

Rush Limbaugh's show is reputed to have 20 million listeners a day. He has been a major voice for populist conservatism, especially of the political kind. It stands to reason that such big news about him would get big coverage.

At the same time, much of the news is cast in a “gotcha” tone. The Great Conservative has been unmasked as the Great Hypocrite, so the story goes. By abusing and allegedly illegally obtaining prescription painkillers, we are told, Rush Limbaugh has sinned a great sin. What is worse, he has presented himself as the Flawless One, standing in judgment on everyone else in America, all the while being guilty of flaws. This is hypocrisy, plain and simple.

Well, perhaps so. Still, the biblical maxim of “Let the man who is without sin cast the first stone” comes into play here. Most of us are hypocrites to some extent, pretending to be better than we are. Even many of those on the political left now criticizing Limbaugh as a hypocrite implicitly do so while touting themselves as moral victors in the battle against right-wing smugness and superiority. They may say, “We're glad to see Limbaugh having to admit he's down in the mud with the rest of us.” But what they seem really to mean is, “We're more virtuous because we're not hypocrites like Limbaugh.” Really?

The French writer La Rochefoucauld said that hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue. But hypocrisy comes in at least two varieties. There is the crass hypocrisy of a man who says he is one thing when he is really something else without the slightest intention of being what he pretends to be. The con man masquerading as the pious preacher is the crass hypocrite. His vice “compliments” his merely apparent virtue only to the extent he finds it profitable to do so.

We All Like to Look Good

Then there is the self-deceiving hypocrite, which is the category into which probably most of us fit at one time or another. We really do believe it's better to be truthful than dishonest, or be faithful than adulterous, or respectful of others' property than to steal, and so on. But we don't always choose to live up to the standard we know, in our heart of hearts, is the right one. And — here's where hypocrisy comes in — we like to appear as if we do live up to the standard.

The problem with this form of hypocrisy is not the standard or that we fall short of it. The problem is that we can con ourselves into thinking that merely appearing to live up to the standard is good enough. To give the philosopher Berkeley's words a different spin, we live by the maxim: “Esse est percipi” — “to be is to be perceived.”. We can fail to be honest with ourselves, fail to acknowledge that, in fact, we have fallen short of what we appear or strive to be. We can think acting the part is the same as being what we pretend to be.

Has that happened to Rush Limbaugh? Perhaps. He has stood for law and order against crime and law-breaking. His actions of acquiring prescription painkillers illegally, if that is what happened, runs contrary to the stance he has taken. In that sense, he has certainly failed to live up to the standard he has espoused. Whether this is hypocrisy or not, it is wrong. For that, he needs to repent, if he has not done so already.

Limbaugh's celebrity is insufficient to account for the “gotcha” tone of the media. That tone, no doubt, is a function of the fact that many people, including many in the media, who feel threatened or challenged by Limbaugh or by what they perceive Limbaugh to represent, think they can legitimately take delight in his fall. A hypocrite of the right has been exposed. Perhaps more to the point, if Limbaugh is “taken out,” they suppose, the ethic of Judeo-Christian values that he allegedly espouses has been shown up. Their uneasy consciences can be put at ease because those who profess to live by a higher standard have, once again, been shown to be frauds and therefore, they think, the standard itself has been discredited.

Sin is No Surprise to Christians

Beyond that, it is hard to say why Rush Limbaugh should be cast in the role of standard-bearer for Judeo-Christian values. He has always been more a champion of things politically conservative than things Christian or even Judeo-Christian, notwithstanding a certain lip-service he has paid to religion. Maybe the mass media and Hollywood equate political conservatism with Judeo-Christian values but the two things are not synonymous. To the extent that Rush Limbaugh has defended Judeo-Christian values, he has done so as part of an (inconsistent) affirmation of traditional values in general, not a thoroughgoing commitment to a vigorous and orthodox Christianity. At best, he might be described as a somewhat diffident cultural fellow traveler of orthodox Christianity, even by those who share his political views. This is something that honest, longtime Christian listeners of his program would have to admit, even if they count themselves “ditto-heads.”

Furthermore, even within the sphere of conservative politics, Rush Limbaugh is really more a thoughtful and provocative entertainer than an entertaining conservative political thinker. He is no Russell Kirk for the masses. He isn't even an everyman's Bill Buckley. He is much closer to the talk radio equivalent of a cross between a politically conservative Will Rogers and a partisan P.T. Barnum. Much of what he does is showmanship and schtick, albeit in relation to things he seems really to believe in. His tone is at times pompous, but no more so than that of hundreds of other radio talk show personalities, whether of the political right or the political left. The difference is, he has been vastly more successful at what he does than the others, and has become proportionately more influential.

Even supposing, though, that Limbaugh were a sophisticated voice for traditional Judeo-Christian values, or even a professed Christian of a specific ecclesiastical affiliation, of course it would not follow that Limbaugh's failure to live up to Christian values invalidates them. Christianity says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” In other words, Christianity espouses the doctrines of human sinfulness and the need for repentance. It can hardly be evidence against Christianity that people repeatedly demonstrate by their wicked actions the soundness of its tenets.

Christianity also espouses redemption in Jesus Christ. Rush Limbaugh has asked for prayers to overcome his addiction. Christians should pray for that, but we should also pray that, having already acknowledged his sin, Rush Limbaugh finds redemption in the midst of his suffering through a full, conscious, and active commitment of faith in Jesus Christ, in whom there is forgiveness of sins and triumph despite suffering. Indeed, in Christ suffering can be transformative and sanctifying. Perhaps a repentant, redeemed, and converted Rush Limbaugh would do more for the cause of the true and the good than the fellow travelling, pseudo-iconic prelapsarian Rush ever did.

Mark Brumley is President of Ignatius Press and Vice President of Campion College of San Francisco. He lectures widely on apologetics and other theological subjects. He is author of How Not to Share Your Faith (Catholic Answers). His website is 3mil.net .

Ignatius Press Launches Two-Year Liberal Arts College in San Francisco

Mark Brumley — Sun, 02 Jun 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Ignatius Press has launched an exciting new venture in Catholic higher education — Campion College of San Francisco. The new two-year program of integrated Catholic liberal arts and great books curriculum is slated to begin in the Fall of 2002.

The program is designed to prepare students to transfer into a four-year university. It offers a single degree: Associate of Humanities.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, a supporter of the program, says, “It will be a beautiful enrichment for the vast field of Catholic education. It will provide an excellent formation in the best tradition of Christian humanism. Campion College is truly full of promise.”

In 2002, a group of faculty members, administrators, and alumni of the St. Ignatius Institute of the University of San Francisco — dissatisfied with changes made to the Institute by a new university administration — decided to act upon an idea they had been thinking about, praying over, and discussing for some years: an independent program embodying both the spirit and the curriculum of the original St. Ignatius Institute, free from the constraints of a larger university that does not share its goals. Campion College is the result.

The world’s most prestigious universities — Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Stanford — are all associated with publishing houses. In these cases, the colleges established the presses. With Campion College, the reverse is true. Campion College is affiliated with the widely respected Catholic publishing house, Ignatius Press.

More information is available at the new Campion College web site. Highlights are found below.

Summary: Campion College of San Francisco is a two-year college with an integrated Catholic liberal arts, great books curriculum designed to prepare students to transfer into a four-year university of their choice. It offers a single degree: Associate of Humanities.

Mission Statement: The mission of Campion College is to provide talented and disciplined young men and women with the solid foundation of an integrated Catholic Liberal Arts education and the academic preparation necessary for the pursuit of further studies necessary for a successful professional career. Its academic curriculum is grounded in the long and rich tradition of Christian humanism as it has been preserved and fostered within the Catholic Church.

Curriculum: Campion College is by intention a small, intense learning community. At its core is an integrated curriculum grounded in the long and rich tradition of Christian humanism as it has been preserved and fostered within the Catholic Church.

Financial Aid: Because this undertaking is designed for young men and women of character who are seeking to live a virtuous Christian life and who are eager to join the Campion community in a pioneering venture in Catholic education, faculty, administrators, and benefactors are willingly making sacrifices to ensure the success of Campion College. We expect our students and their parents to participate in that sacrifice by contributing as much as they are able toward the expenses of the college. However, Campion College is offering full tuition scholarships to every student who is admitted. A personal financial aid package of grants and loans will be worked out with each student. Campion College is committed to ensuring that no student will be unable to attend because of financial need.

Student Life: While the defining purpose of all education is the pursuit and communication of truth, those who study and teach are human beings created in the image of God, who has destined them not only for knowledge and wisdom, but for virtue, love – of God and neighbor – service, and ultimately for eternal life with the Holy Trinity in the communion of Saints. Because Campion College is a Catholic institution grounded in the Church’s rich tradition of Christian humanism, the personal, moral, spiritual, and social development of its students-and faculty – are an integral part of its mission.

Spiritual Life: As a Catholic community of scholars, we understand that the ultimate aim of our lives is union with God in Christ. Our intellectual mission as students, faculty and staff is embedded in this higher and deeper vocation. We therefore place the sacramental life of the Church at the very heart of our communal life, and commit ourselves to doing everything possible to deepen, strengthen, refine and increase our life of faith, as individuals and as a body of believers.

Campus: Campion College is in an urban residential neighborhood. Within two blocks are the Carmelite Monastery of Cristo Rey, the University of San Francisco (with many free events and activities open to the public), the world-famous Golden Gate Park, St. Mary’s Hospital, St. Ignatius Church, Rossi Park, and bus stops for four different San Francisco bus routes. Campion College’s administrative offices are collocated with those of Ignatius Press at 2515 McAllister Street. There are classrooms, a library, offices for students to meet with faculty and administrators, and rooms available for student lodging in or near the neighborhood. In effect, the neighborhood and the city of San Francisco is our campus.

Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work

Mark Brumley — Mon, 03 Dec 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Mark Brumley is managing editor of Catholic Dossier, where this article first appeared. A convert from Evangelical Protestantism, he was greatly influenced by Bouyer's book, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, when he first read it over 20 years ago.

Interpreting the Reformation

Here’s what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s expression) or it was tragic because it was unnecessary.

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is “Come out from among them” and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God “raised up” Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work—for Protestantism’s principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.

From Bouyer’s conclusion we can infer at least two things. First, Protestantism can’t be all wrong, otherwise how could the Catholic Church bring about the “full flowering of the principles of the Reformation”? Second, left to itself, Protestantism will go astray and be untrue to some of its central principles. It’s these two points, as Bouyer articulates them, I would like to consider here.

One thing should be said up-front: although a convert from French Protestantism, Bouyer is no anti-Protestant polemicist. His Spirit and Forms of Protestantism was written a half-century ago, a decade before Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, yet it avoids the bitter anti-Protestantism that sometimes afflicted pre-conciliar Catholic works on Protestantism. That’s one reason the book remains useful, even after decades of post-conciliar ecumenism.

In that regard, Bouyer’s brief introduction is worth quoting in full:

This book is a personal witness, a plain account of the way in which a Protestant came to feel himself obliged in conscience to give his adherence to the Catholic Church. No sentiment of revulsion turned him from the religion fostered in him by a Protestant upbringing followed by several years in the ministry. The fact is, he has never rejected it. It was his desire to explore its depths, its full scope, that led him, step by step, to a genuinely spiritual movement stemming from the teachings of the Gospel, and Protestantism as an institution, or rather complexus of institutions, hostile to one another as well as to the Catholic Church. The study of this conflict brought him to detect the fatal error which drove the spiritual movement of Protestantism out of the one Church. He saw the necessity of returning to that Church, not in order to reject any of the positive Christian elements of his religious life, but to enable them, at last, to develop without hindrance.

The writer, who carved out his way step by step, or rather, saw it opening before his eyes, hopes now to help along those who are still where he started. In addition, he would like to show those he has rejoined how a little more understanding of the others, above all a greater fidelity to their own gift, could help their ‘separated brethren’ to receive it in their turn. In this hope he offers his book to all who wish to be faithful to the truth, first, to the Word of God, but also to the truth of men as they are, not as our prejudices and habits impel us to see them.

Bouyer, then, addresses both Protestants and Catholics. To the Protestants, he says, in effect, “It is fidelity to our Protestant principles, properly understood, that has led me into the Catholic Church.” To the Catholics, he says, “Protestantism isn’t as antithetical to the Catholic Faith as you suppose. It has positive principles, as well as negative ones. Its positive principles, properly understood, belong to the Catholic Tradition, which we Catholics can see if we approach Protestantism with a bit of understanding and openness.”

The Reformation was Right & Wrong

The Reformation was Right

Bouyer’s argument is that the Reformation’s main principle was essentially Catholic: “Luther’s basic intuition, on which Protestantism continuously draws for its abiding vitality, so far from being hard to reconcile with Catholic tradition, or inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles, was a return to the clearest elements of their teaching, and in the most direct line of that tradition.”

1. Sola Gratia. What was the Reformation’s main principle? Not, as many Catholics and even some Protestants think, “private judgment” in religion. According to Bouyer, “the true fundamental principle of Protestantism is the gratuitousness of salvation”—sola gratia. He writes, “In the view of Luther, as well as of all those faithful to his essential teaching, man without grace can, strictly speaking, do nothing of the slightest value for salvation. He can neither dispose himself for it, nor work for it in any independent fashion. Even his acceptance of grace is the work of grace. To Luther and his authentic followers, justifying faith . . . is quite certainly, the first and most fundamental grace.”

Bouyer then shows how, contrary to what many Protestants and some Catholics think, salvation sola gratia is also Catholic teaching. He underscores the point to any Catholics who might think otherwise:

“If, then, any Catholic—and there would seem to be many such these days—whose first impulse is to reject the idea that man, without grace, can do nothing towards his salvation, that he cannot even accept the grace offered except by a previous grace, that the very faith which acknowledges the need of grace is a purely gratuitous gift, he would do well to attend closely to the texts we are about to quote.”

In other words, “Listen up, Catholics!”

Bouyer quotes, at length, from the Second Council of Orange (529), the teaching of which was confirmed by Pope Boniface II as de fide or part of the Church’s faith. The Council asserted that salvation is the work of God’s grace and that even the beginning of faith or the consent to saving grace is itself the result of grace. By our natural powers, we can neither think as we ought nor choose any good pertaining to salvation. We can only do so by the illumination and impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Nor is it merely that man is limited in doing good. The Council affirmed that, as a result of the Fall, man is inclined to will evil. His freedom is gravely impaired and can only be repaired by God’s grace. Following a number of biblical quotations, the Council states, “[W]e are obliged, in the mercy of God, to preach and believe that, through sin of the first man, the free will is so weakened and warped, that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or do good for the sake of God, unless moved, previously, by the grace of the divine mercy . . . . Our salvation requires that we assert and believe that, in every good work we do, it is not we who have the initiative, aided, subsequently, by the mercy of God, but that he begins by inspiring faith and love towards him, without any prior merit of ours.”

The Council of Trent, writes Bouyer, repeated that teaching, ruling out “a parallel action on the part of God and man, a sort of ‘synergism’, where man contributes, in the work of salvation, something, however slight, independent of grace.” Even where Trent insists that man is not saved passively, notes Bouyer, it doesn’t assert some independent, human contribution to salvation. Man freely cooperates in salvation, but his free cooperation is itself the result of grace. Precisely how this is so is mysterious, and the Church has not settled on a particular theological explanation. But that it is so, insist Bouyer, is Catholic teaching. Thus, concludes Bouyer, “the Catholic not only may, but must in virtue of his own faith, give a full and unreserved adherence to the sola gratia, understood in the positive sense we have seen upheld by Protestants.”

2. Sola Fide. So much for sola gratia. But what about the other half of the Reformation principle regarding salvation, the claim that justification by grace comes through faith alone (sola fide)?

According to Bouyer, the main thrust of the doctrine of sola fide was to affirm that justification was wholly the work of God and to deny any positive human contribution apart from grace. Faith was understood as man’s grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-completed response to God’s saving initiative in Jesus Christ. What the Reformation initially sought to affirm, says Bouyer, was that such a response is purely God’s gift to man, with man contributing nothing of his own to receive salvation.

In other words, it isn’t as if God does his part and man cooperates by doing his part, even if that part is minuscule. The Reformation insisted that God does his part, which includes enabling and moving man to receive salvation in Christ. Man’s “part” is to believe, properly understood, but faith too is the work of God, so man contributes nothing positively of his own. As Bouyer points out, this central concern of the Reformation also happened to be defined Catholic teaching, reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

In a sense, the Reformation debate was over the nature of saving faith, not over whether faith saves. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine and the patristic understanding of faith and salvation, said that saving faith was faith “formed by charity.” In other words, saving faith involves at least the beginnings of the love of God. In this way, Catholics could speak of “justification by grace alone, through faith alone,” if the “alone” was meant to distinguish the gift of God (faith) from any purely human contribution apart from grace; but not if “alone” was meant to offset faith from grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-accomplished love of God or charity.

For Catholic theologians of the time, the term “faith” was generally used in the highly refined sense of the gracious work of God in us by which we assent to God’s Word on the authority of God who reveals. In this sense, faith is distinct from entrusting oneself to God in hope and love, though obviously faith is, in a way, naturally ordered to doing so: God gives man faith so that man can entrust himself to God in hope and love. But faith, understood as mere assent (albeit graced assent), is only the beginning of salvation. It needs to be “informed” or completed by charity, also the work of grace.

Luther and his followers, though, rejected the Catholic view that “saving faith” was “faith formed by charity” and therefore not “faith alone”, where “faith” is understood as mere assent to God’s Word, apart from trust and love. In large part, this was due to a misunderstanding by Luther. “We must not be misled on this point,” writes Bouyer, “by Luther’s later assertions opposed to the fides caritate formata [faith informed by charity]. His object in disowning this formula was to reject the idea that faith justified man only if there were added to it a love proceeding from a natural disposition, not coming as a gift of God, the whole being the gift of God.” Yet Luther’s view of faith, contents Bouyer, seems to imply an element of love, at least in the sense of a total self-commitment to God. And, of course, this love must be both the response to God’s loving initiative and the effect of that initiative by which man is enabled and moved to respond. But once again, this is Catholic doctrine, for the charity that “informs” faith so that it becomes saving faith is not a natural disposition, but is as much the work of God as the assent of faith.

Thus, Bouyer’s point is that the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) was initially seen by the Reformers as a way of upholding justification by grace alone (sola gratia), which is also a fundamental Catholic truth. Only later, as a result of controversy, did the Reformers insist on identifying justification by faith alone with a negative principle that denied any form of cooperation, even grace-enabled cooperation.

3. Sola Scriptura. Melanchthon, the colleague of Luther, called justification sola gratia, sola fide the “Material Principle” of the Reformation. But there was also the Formal Principle, the doctrine of sola Scriptura or what Bouyer calls the sovereign authority of Scripture. What of that?

Here, too, says Bouyer, the Reformation’s core positive principle is correct. The Word of God, rather than a human word, must govern the life of the Christian and of the Church. And the Word of God is found in a unique and supreme form in the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The inspiration of the Bible means that God is the primary author of Scripture. Since we can say that about no other writing or formal expression of the Church’s Faith, not even conciliar or papal definitions of faith, the Bible alone is the Word of God in this sense and therefore it possesses a unique authority.

Yet the supremacy of the Bible does not imply an opposition between it and the authority of the Church or Tradition, as certain negative principles adopted by the Reformers implied. Furthermore, the biblical spirituality of Protestantism, properly understood, is in keeping with the best traditions of Catholic spirituality, especially those of the Fathers and the great medieval theologians. Through Scripture, God speaks to us today, offering a living Word to guide our lives in Christ.

Thus, writes Bouyer, “the supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematized by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity.”

The Reformation was Wrong

Where does this leave us? If the Reformation was right about sola gratia and sola Scriptura, its two key principles, how was it wrong? Bouyer holds that only the positive elements of these Reformation principles are correct.

Unfortunately, these principles were unnecessarily linked by the Reformers to certain negative elements, which the Catholic Church had to reject. Here we consider two of those elements: 1) the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the nature of justifying faith and 2) the authority of the Bible.

1. Extrinsic Justification. Regarding justification by grace alone, it was the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the rejection of the Catholic view of faith formed by charity as “saving faith.” Bouyer writes, “The further Luther advanced in his conflict with other theologians, then with Rome, then with the whole of contemporary Catholicism and finally with the Catholicism of every age, the more closely we see him identifying affirmation about sola gratia with a particular theory, known as extrinsic justification.”

Extrinsic justification is the idea that justification occurs outside of man, rather than within him. Catholicism, as we have seen, holds that justification is by grace alone. In that sense, it originates outside of man, with God’s grace. But, according to Catholic teaching, God justifies man by effecting a change within him, by making him just or righteous, not merely by saying he is just or righteous or treating him as if he were. Justification imparts the righteousness of Christ to man, transforming him by grace into a child of God.

The Reformation view was different. The Reformers, like the Catholic Church, insisted that justification is by grace and therefore originates outside of man, with God. But they also insisted that when God justifies man, man is not changed but merely declared just or righteous. God treats man as if he were just or righteous, imputing to man the righteousness of Christ, rather than imparting it to him.

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible’s treatment of “imputed” righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

“Without the least doubt, grace, for St. Paul, however freely given, involves what he calls ‘the new creation’, the appearance in us of a ‘new man’, created in justice and holiness. So far from suppressing the efforts of man, or making them a matter of indifference, or at least irrelevant to salvation, he himself tells us to ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’, at the very moment when he affirms that ‘. . . knowing that it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish.’ These two expressions say better than any other that all is grace in our salvation, but at the same time grace is not opposed to human acts and endeavor in order to attain salvation, but arouses them and exacts their performance.”

Calvin, notes Bouyer, tried to circumvent the biblical problems of the extrinsic justification theory by positing a systematic distinction between justification, which puts us in right relation to God but which, on the Protestant view, doesn’t involve a change in man; and sanctification, which transforms us. Yet, argues Bouyer, this systematic distinction isn’t biblical. In the Bible, justification and sanctification—as many modern Protestant exegetes admit—are two different terms for the same process. Both occur by grace through faith and both involve a faith “informed by charity” or completed by love. As Bouyer contends, faith in the Pauline sense, “supposes the total abandonment of man to the gift of God”—which amounts to love of God. He argues that it is absurd to think that the man justified by faith, who calls God “Abba, Father,” doesn’t love God or doesn’t have to love him in order to be justified.

2. Sola Scriptura vs. Church and Tradition. Bouyer also sees a negative principle that the Reformation unnecessarily associated with sola Scriptura or the sovereignty of the Bible. Yes, the Bible alone is the Word of God in the sense that only the Bible is divinely inspired. And yes the Bible’s authority is supreme in the sense that neither the Church nor the Church’s Tradition “trumps” Scripture. But that doesn’t mean that the Word of God in an authoritative form is found only in the Bible, for the Word of God can be communicated in a non-inspired, yet authoritative form as well. Nor does it mean that there can be no authoritative interpreter of the Bible (the Magisterium) or authoritative interpretation of biblical doctrine (Tradition). Repudiation of the Church’s authority and Tradition simply doesn’t follow from the premise of Scripture’s supremacy as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, the Tradition and authority of the Church are required to determine the canon of the Bible.

Luther and Calvin did not follow the Radical Reformation in rejecting any role for Church authority or Tradition altogether. But they radically truncated such a role. Furthermore, they provided no means by which the Church, as a community of believers, could determine when the Bible was being authentically interpreted or who within the community had the right to make such a determination for the community. In this way, they ultimately undercut the supremacy of the Bible, for they provided no means by which the supreme authority of the Bible could, in fact, be exercised in the Church as a whole. The Bible’s authority extended only so far as the individual believer’s interpretation of it allowed.

The Catholic Church & Reformation Principles

As we have seen, Bouyer argues for the Reformation’s “positive principles” and against its “negative principles.” But how did what was right from one point of view in the Reformation go so wrong from another point of view? Bouyer argues that the under the influence of decadent scholasticism, mainly Nominalism, the Reformers unnecessarily inserted the negative elements into their ideas along with the positive principles. “Brought up on these lines of thought, identified with them so closely they could not see beyond them,” he writes, “the Reformers could only systematize their very valuable insights in a vitiated framework.”

The irony is profound. The Reformation sought to recover “genuine Christianity” by hacking through what it regarded as the vast overgrowth of medieval theology. Yet to do so, the Reformers wielded swords forged in the fires of the worst of medieval theology—the decadent scholasticism of Nominalism.

The negative principles of the Reformation necessarily led the Catholic Church to reject the movement—though not, in fact, its fundamental positive principles, which were essentially Catholic. Eventually, argues Bouyer, through a complex historical process, these negative elements ate away at the positive principles as well. The result was liberal Protestantism, which wound up affirming the very things Protestantism set out to deny (man’s ability to save himself) and denying things Protestantism began by affirming (sola gratia).

Bouyer contends that the only way to safeguard the positive principles of the Reformation is through the Catholic Church. For only in the Catholic Church are the positive principles the Reformation affirmed found without the negative elements the Reformers mistakenly affixed to them. But how to bring this about?

Bouyer says that both Protestants and Catholics have responsibilities here. Protestants must investigate their roots and consider whether the negative elements of the Reformation, such as extrinsic justification and the rejection of a definitive Church teaching authority and Tradition, are necessary to uphold the positive principles of sola gratia and the supremacy of Scripture. If not, then how is continued separation from the Catholic Church justified? Furthermore, if, as Bouyer contends, the negative elements of the Reformation were drawn from a decadent theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages and not Christian antiquity, then it is the Catholic Church that has upheld the true faith and has maintained a balance regarding the positive principles of the Reformation that Protestantism lacks. In this way, the Catholic Church is needed for Protestantism to live up to its own positive principles.

Catholics have responsibilities as well. One major responsibility is to be sure they have fully embraced their own Church’s teaching on the gratuitousness of salvation and the supremacy of the Bible. As Bouyer writes, “Catholics are in fact too prone to forget that, if the Church bears within herself, and cannot ever lose, the fullness of Gospel truth, its members, at any given time and place, are always in need of a renewed effort to apprehend this truth really and not just, as Newman would say, ‘notionally’.” “To Catholics, lukewarm and unaware of their responsibilities,” he adds, the Reformation, properly understood, “recalls the existence of many of their own treasures which they overlook.”

Only if Catholics are fully Catholic—which includes fully embracing the positive principles of the Reformation that Bouyer insists are essentially Catholic—can they “legitimately aspire to show and prepare their separated brethren the way to a return which would be for them not a denial but a fulfillment.”

Today, as in the sixteenth century, the burden rests with us Catholics. We must live, by God’s abundant grace, up to our high calling in Christ Jesus. And in this way, show our Protestant brethren that their own positive principles are properly expressed only in the Catholic Church.

Book Review Reformation Thought: An Introduction

Mark Brumley — Thu, 08 Nov 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Arguing with Protestants

A few years ago, a cradle-Catholic friend heavily involved with apologetics asked for advice about a discussion he was having with a traditional Lutheran regarding the Bible and the Church. The Lutheran fellow didn’t hold what my friend regarded as the standard “Protestant view” of “Bible only” Christianity, so my friend couldn’t use his regular bag of apologetical tricks.

My only advice (apart from some book recommendations) was for my friend not to put his discussion partner’s views into a box labeled “The Protestant Position.” “Listen to what he says he believes and discuss things accordingly,” I said.

The alternative is to waste time arguing about a position the other fellow doesn’t really hold. Many Catholics don’t realize the range of diversity among Protestants even on subjects such as sola Scriptura. Which is one reason Catholics (especially those with an apologetical bent, like my friend) would benefit from Evangelical theologian Alister E. McGrath’s Reformation Thought.

A concise overview of the Reformation, the book will help Catholics avoid seeing the Reformation entirely through the prism of polemics on the one hand and the false irenicism of ecumenical excess on the other. The “conservative” or “traditional” Catholic often inclines to the former; the “liberal” or “progressive” Catholic to the latter.

Reformation Thought is, to be sure, only an introduction and, in the final analysis, the work of a partisan, in the best sense of that often pejorative term. McGrath writes as an Evangelical Protestant theologian of the Anglican variety, not really as a historian—-notwithstanding his ample and careful use of historians and historical analyses and his attempt to set Reformation ideas into historical context. Reformation Thought is, in the strict sense, a work of historical theology and one written from within a specific theological stance, even granting its author’s diligence in being evenhanded.

Even so, McGrath’s partisanship works to the advantage of the Catholic reader. Both Catholic polemical and hyper-ecumenist assessments of Protestantism distort the Reformation, though in opposite directions. The book’s Protestant commitment, though usually subdued and implicit, helps the Catholic polemicist fill in the missing color and detail of his often sketchy picture of the Reformation, while bringing out the sharper edges sometimes obscured in the hyper-ecumenist’s impressionist rendition.

McGrath maps the main contours of the Reformation terrain. The Lutheran and Reformed movements (otherwise known as the Magisterial Reformation because these movements relied on secular, civil authorities or magistrates to further their ends) are distinguished from the anti-establishment and even anarchical Radical Reformation of the Anabaptists and their fellow travelers. Then each camp’s positions on various Reformation hot-button issues (justification by faith, predestination, Scripture, the sacraments, the Church and the political order) are explained, with the Tridentine Catholic response usually thrown in (although McGrath’s treatment of the Catholic view is occasionally perfunctory).

Clarifying Things

The book clears up a number of misconceptions in the longstanding Catholic-Protestant debate. For example, regarding the doctrine of justification, Catholics and Protestants certainly differ and McGrath doesn’t gloss over it. But the differences aren’t as great as traditionally thought. Perhaps that conclusion seems insignificant in our age of ecumenical dialogues and given the recent Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on Justification. Nevertheless, many Lutherans (and other Protestants) and Catholics still don’t understand that we agree more than it might seem, nor do they always grasp where the disagreements really are.

Often people (whether Catholic or Protestant) reduce the question of justification to faith alone vs. faith plus works. Protestants are said to affirm “faith alone”; Catholics “faith plus works.” But that way of putting things can obscure the real beliefs of Protestants and Catholics. Both sides accept that justification occurs by grace alone, without any positive, merely human contribution. Both agree that justification is received by faith, which is itself a gift of grace. And both sides agree that the justified man ought, by God’s grace and power, to obey God and do good.

Yet Catholics and Protestants generally differ over whether, in addition to faith, love of God is necessary for justification. Catholics say love of God or charity needs to complete faith in order for faith to be salvific. Protestants appear to say it doesn’t, although at other times they seem to think that genuine saving faith includes some element of charity (though the Reformers as controversialists denied this.) They also differ over the nature of justification—-whether it is merely imputed or extrinsic (occurring outside of man), as Protestants hold, or imparted and intrinsic (occurring within man), as Catholics hold.

McGrath enters this debate only to explain what the various Reformers held on the subject, how they came to their views and how the Catholic Church responded to them. He doesn’t claim that the Catholic Church’s position was a crude Pelagianism or “works righteousness,” in which a man earns his own salvation and can compel God to accept him on the basis of his own righteousness. Nor does he dismiss Catholicism as “meriting the merit of Christ.” He acknowledges that, as far back as the sixth century, at the 2nd Council of Orange, the Catholic Church taught that justification comes by grace alone, without human contribution. The trouble is, argues McGrath, this teaching was obscured by contrary practice and the doctrinal confusion and failure of leadership of the late medieval Church.

McGrath acknowledges that Luther’s doctrine of forensic justification—that God only declares, rather than makes, man righteous—-broke with a thousand years of Christian teaching, including that of St. Augustine, on whom Luther in so many ways relied. But McGrath doesn’t pose the question of whether this break undercuts the validity of Luther’s doctrine or whether Luther was inconsistent or wrong on his own terms to see Augustine as the model for his understanding of biblical teaching about justification by grace. He summarizes the teaching of Trent fairly enough, but he never directly tackles the issue of whether the Reformation’s formulation of justification by grace through faith was strictly necessary to uphold the truths in question.

Scripture and Tradition

McGrath’s treatment of the Reformers’ views of Scripture is at once helpful and problematic. It is helpful because McGrath shows that only the Radical Reformation formally repudiated all tradition and Church authority in order to affirm the full authority of Scripture. The Magisterial Reformers accepted tradition and Church authority in a limited way (which explains my apologist friend’s difficulty in arguing with a traditional Lutheran; my friend’s arguments addressed the extreme view of the Radical Reformation).

Drawing on the Protestant scholar Heiko Oberman, McGrath distinguishes two views of tradition. First, there is Tradition 1 or tradition understood as the “traditional way of interpreting Scripture within the community of faith.” Such a view is compatible with what is called “the material sufficiency of Scripture,” a position which McGrath attributes to most medieval theologians. Material sufficiency of Scripture means that the Bible contains, in one way or another, everything essential to the Christian Faith. Tradition 1 amounts to “the traditional understanding of Scripture,” which helps the reader glean the essential elements from the Bible. Because in this view Scripture represents a single source of doctrine, albeit with the help of tradition, it is called the single-source theory.

Tradition 2, on the other hand, understands tradition as “a separate, distinction source of revelation, in addition to Scripture.” This involves what is called the two-source view of Scripture and tradition, with tradition providing data of revelation not included in the Bible. McGrath argues that the Magisterial Reformers rejected the two-source view of Scripture and tradition, not the single-source view. The Council of Trent, he argues, adopted the two-source theory, the “later, less-influential medieval view”; while the Reformers held to the more traditional (pardon the pun) view.

But there is a third position regarding tradition, which McGrath dubs “Tradition 0.” This is the view of the Radical Reformation, which as we have said rejected tradition and Church authority altogether as norms for belief. The Magisterial Reformers and the Catholic Church agreed in principle on rejecting Tradition 0 of the radicals.

Closely related to the issue of Scripture and tradition is the question of who has the right to interpret the Bible. McGrath contends that the Magisterial Reformers initially took a more egalitarian view, holding that the Bible is perspicuous and that every man could interpret it for himself, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But that “exegetical optimism” changed by the late 1520s, due to Luther and Zwingli’s dispute over the Bible’s teaching on the Eucharist. According to McGrath, the depth of their disagreement “demonstrated how difficult it was to reach agreement over the interpretation of even those passages of Scripture which Luther regarded as most straightforward.”

McGrath’s discussion is valuable, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t adequately address the issue of whether Tradition 1 is necessary or merely helpful when it comes to authentically interpreting the Bible. The Reformers accepted Tradition 1, but, as McGrath points out, “provided that this traditional interpretation could be justified” (emphasis in the original). In other words, the individual Reformer retained the right to stand in judgment on the tradition of the community of faith, if that tradition conflicted with the Reformer’s personal interpretation of Scripture.

Nor does McGrath adequately grapple with the other major weakness of the Reformation position here: the inability of anyone to speak objectively for the Church as such, when it comes to how Scripture should be understood. Even granting Tradition 1, it doesn’t follow that there is no divinely established teaching office to decide what is or isn’t in line with Tradition 1 or whether what purports to be genuine tradition is, in fact, tradition. Who decides what is the traditional view of the Church? Who decides the extent to which an interpretation of Scripture presented as “traditional” is binding? Are these questions to be left only to the individual exegete or pastor? If so, doesn’t the Magisterial Reformation affirmation of Tradition 1 practically collapse into Tradition 0? For even the Radical Reformers accepted views held by the Fathers of the Church or medieval theologians when they thought such views could be justified by Scripture.

McGrath’s treatment of the Catholic response regarding Scripture is problematic in other ways too. He summarizes what he regards as the Council of Trent’s position, but he says little about a much-controverted issue: whether Trent affirmed the one-source or two-source view of Scripture and tradition. Almost in passing, he states that “in recent years there has been a certain degree of ‘revisionism’ within Roman Catholic circles on this point, with several contemporary theologians arguing that Trent excluded the view that ‘the Gospel is only partly in Scripture and partly in the traditions’.” But he doesn’t tell us why this “revisionism” is unjustified (as he apparently thinks it is) and he refers only in a footnote to a single work, George Tavard’s Holy Writ or Holy Church? The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation. Nowhere are the arguments for the contrary interpretation of Trent engaged or even summarized.

As for the effect of Trent’s teaching, McGrath admits that it restored order “within its own ranks.” Yet he doesn’t say whether it slowed, halted or in some places reversed the spread of Protestantism. He also concedes that Trent enabled the Catholic Church “to speak with a single voice on matters of doctrine and biblical interpretation.” But he adds that it did so at a “high price”—-a powerful setback to Catholic biblical scholarship as compared with Protestantism.

Of course, many scholars—including some Catholics —would, to some extent, agree with McGrath’s assessment. Yet he leaves out half the picture. Post-Tridentine Catholic scholarship was hampered at times by an overly restrictive approach to biblical scholarship, but it was also spared the schism, conflict, confusion, heresy and radical skepticism that followed from Protestant biblical scholarship’s liberty. Radical demythologizing and biblical revisionism are also the progeny of Protestantism’s laissez faire approach to Scripture.

The Reformation and Science

McGrath is also eager to show how the Reformation contributed to the modern world, yet in doing so he often overstates his case. For example, according to McGrath, the Reformation all but invented modern science. He asserts that “the scientific revolution of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries rests firmly upon the religious ideas which came into being at the time of the Reformation….” But the evidence he adduces for this claim shows no such thing, nor does he engage the evidence for the medieval contribution to modern science in such figures as Robert Grosseteste, Adelard of Bath, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon and Jean Buridan.

McGrath rests his case for the Reformation origin of science largely on Calvin, whom he says made two major contributions. On the one hand, Calvin supposedly positively encouraged the scientific study of nature through his emphasis on the orderliness of creation. On the other, he allegedly removed an obstacle to that study by supposedly doing away with biblical literalism and developing a theory of biblical accomodationism, in which God is thought to have accommodated himself in revelation to the ideas of the people of the time, rather than to have communicated scientific knowledge in Scripture.

But neither the orderliness of creation, nor God’s accommodating himself to man in revelation belongs to “the religious ideas which came into being at the time of the Reformation.” The great medieval and even patristic theologians affirmed both of these ideas. One might argue that certain aspects of Reformation thought fostered a deeper appreciate of these things-—though one could say the same thing about elements of the Catholic Reformation. But it is simply wrong to credit the Reformation with their discovery. And it is a mistake to ignore the medieval roots of modern science.

Moreover, Calvin’s contribution to feeling exegesis from literalism wasn’t as significant as McGrath makes out. Calvin’s “accomodationism” didn’t liberate him from literalism when it came to Genesis 1, as Father Stanley Jaki demonstrates in his work Genesis 1 Through the Ages. Calvin insisted on six literal days of creation and criticized those who taught that the “days” of the creation account were figurative. He also rejected figurative interpretations of the “waters above the firmament” in Genesis and argued that the clouds were suspended in air and prevented from falling on us by God.

But McGrath goes much further than merely crediting the Reformation with having invented science. He claims that Protestantism is more congenial to producing “first-class natural scientists” than Catholicism. As evidence, he refers to a “large body of sociological evidence stretching back more than a century,” but he cites no specific studies, nor does he show how such alleged differences between Protestantism and Catholicism are based on specifically Protestant or Catholic tenets, rather than other factors in cultures traditionally identified as Protestant or Catholic.

Conclusion

McGrath does a good job of summarizing the Reformation’s principle ideas. He tries to be fair to all sides of the Reformation debate, including the Church of the Middle Ages and of the Catholic Reformation, even while being honest by his treatment of the subject-matter where his own sympathies lie. So long as the Catholic reader knows he’s getting only half the story-—albeit recounted in a sincere and scholarly fashion—-Reformation Thought is a helpful primer and a genuine counter-balance to polemical Catholic treatments, excessively irenical ecumenical assessments, and secular renditions that minimize or ignore the power of theological ideas to revolutionize a culture.

Mark Brumley is managing editor of Catholic Dossier, where this article first appeared.