Take It or Leave it
Rather than saying what I happened to think, I was stating the teaching of the Church on a particular point — and I made it clear that’s what I was doing. It was this — Church teaching — that the reader disputed, winding up with the line above: “I’m a good Catholic, and I don’t accept what the Church teaches about that.”
It was hardly the first time anybody has made such a remark. What are we to make of it? There are several possibilities.
One is that what is being rejected really isn’t the Church’s teaching. If, for instance, a homilist shares his views on fixing Social Security via private investment accounts or on the Redskins’ chances of making it into the Super Bowl, you can take it or leave it, as you like.
Building a House on Sand
The crucial treatment of these matters in modern times can be found in Vatican Council II’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” Lumen Gentium, especially no. 25. Hardly was Vatican II over, though, when the phenomenon of public dissent appeared in Catholic life. It has become disastrously common in the last 35 years and filtered down to the popular level, where people with no theological pretensions at all unblushingly dissent from whatever doesn’t catch their fancy.
Pope John Paul II spoke of this pick-and-choose Catholicism during his pastoral visit to the United States in 1987. In a memorable address to the U.S. bishops gathered in Los Angeles on Sept. 16, he called it a “grave error” to suppose “that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a ‘good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments.”
Someone else once made the same point: “Every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand” (Mt 7.26). Self-proclaimed “good Catholics” who don’t agree with what the Church teaches in the name of Christ really should bear that in mind.
When Dogma is Defined
Another possibility is that the matter in question is Church teaching in a certain sense — meaning it has been proposed as true by some authorized teaching authority in the Church, but in a way that permits withholding assent. Such was the case, for example, with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception prior to its solemn definition by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the dogma of the Assumption before Pius XII defined it in 1950. In a similar way, Catholics navigating modern issues, like participation in an online casino, might consider Church perspectives on moral teachings and the potential risks associated with certain practices. This discernment process allows them to weigh personal decisions carefully within the broader context of faith and morality.
Of course, for a long time before 1854 and 1950 these truths of faith had been accepted by many theologians, believed by large numbers of the faithful, and taught by popes and bishops. Still, a theologically competent individual unable to accept them up to that time might quietly have withheld assent while still seeking to believe. Once the dogmas were defined, that option no longer existed.
Finally, though, there are the cases in which saying “I don’t agree” just won’t do. That is so not only when truths in question have been formally defined, as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption have, but when they have been authoritatively presented by the Magisterium as true and are the “authentic” teaching of the Church.
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
