There are times when I am struck by the seeming inability of Catholics on the left and on the right to engage in calm and reasoned debate with each other. It is true: We do not treat each other as the loyal opposition.
Often, Catholics on the right will analyze the writings of liberal theologians as if their goal is to demonstrate that the writer in question has crossed over into heresy, instead of considering his analysis of the issue. In turn, Catholics on the left will use terms such as “witch-hunter” and “narrow-minded fundamentalist” to demean the views of conservative critics, rather than reassure them that a new interpretation of a tenet of the Faith is meant to deepen our understanding of what it means to be Catholic. We do not grant each other the benefit of the doubt.
Why is that so? If an intelligent Martian landed on earth and was given a summary of the issues that divide Catholics, he would be puzzled by the acrimony of the debate. He would think that members of the same church could discuss whether the Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo leads to greater piety, without tempers rising. He would think the same about the questions of General Absolution and married priests. Why get angry with someone who thinks the impact on the faithful would be different from what you think it would be?
In fact, our Martian would think we could even discuss when and how Christ became aware of His divinity without slamming the door and walking out of the room. Christ’s humanity “limited” his divine nature to the extent that he could feel pain. What would it do to the omniscience we attribute to God? Could the infant Christ have constructed a laptop computer in his father’s workshop? If someone doubts that he could, does that imply he has doubts about Jesus being truly God?
I know that I would be uncomfortable taking the position that Jesus’ knowledge was limited in this way. I would feel that I was questioning His divine nature. But if someone with a doctorate in theology believes this theme can be explored without casting doubts about the nature of the Incarnation, why is it that so many of us on the right get our dander up rather than give him a hearing?
Permit me to take a stab at explaining why. The reason I tend to be wary of those who are looking to “update” the Faith is that I suspect the presence of what might be called “the hidden agenda.” What do I mean by that? Well, I have learned over the years that those who tell us that they want to reinterpret the teachings of the Church to make them more “relevant,” more often than not, are looking to undermine them. I just recently took a look at a book on liberal theologians (Jesus Christ Before He Became a Superstar) that I wrote back in 1976. I was struck by how many of the updating theologians that I wrote about have since left the Church.
Why did they leave? I think it fair to say that they were using their positions as Catholic theologians at the time in order to advance a secular ideology to which they were drawn. They stayed Catholic to be able to preach to us, to attract Catholics to whatever “ism” they were committed to, by making it seem as if that ideology — Marxism, existentialism, behaviorism, secular humanism, etc. — was the logical next step a “mature” Christian should take, as he liberated himself from the “medieval” aspects of institutionalized Christianity. They were preaching to us as if they were fellow-believers, when they were actually more like missionaries for their new “faith.” And my suspicion is that they left the Church when they found a more effective way to carry out this new mission.
This, I suggest, is why Catholics loyal to the Faith as understood by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, Cardinal Newman and G.K. Chesterton have reason to be leery of the updaters. We know, for example, that there are those who want to revamp the Mass into nothing more than ceremonial expression of human brotherhood; that this is the only “communion” they believe in. So when a “liturgical reformer” tries to introduce more interplay between the worshippers and eliminate times of quiet prayer at Mass, it is not unreasonable to ask ourselves if this is what they are up to. Not if you ask me.
Similarly, there are those who think that Jesus is alive only the way that Elvis or James Dean is “alive” in the minds of some middle-aged woman; that He “saves” only to the extent that His message continues to inspire men and women to reach their full potential as members of the human community. We are within our rights to ponder if the priest or theologian who is fond of making the point that “Jesus is present in our fellow Christians as much as He is in the tabernacle” is motivated by this secular humanist understanding of Jesus role in history.
There are those who believe that sin is nothing more than an estrangement of the individual from the human community, an act of social injustice. Is it far-fetched to believe that those who push for General Absolution are looking to nudge Catholics into seeing sin in this way; that they want us to see forgiveness coming from the assembled community, rather than from the priest acting as God’s intermediary with the individual penitent?
We could go on, with issues such as homosexuality, the meaning of the Resurrection, Mary’s role in the Church, and Jesus’ promise of eternal life. History is not over. No doubt, there are new insights into all these things that theologians loyal to the Church can give over time to the Catholic faithful. But it is unreasonable to ask us to proceed as if all clerics and theologians have the best interests of the Church uppermost in their minds and hearts. The sex scandals of the last two years have made that clear.
We have the right to be skeptical about a priest or theologian who asks us to “rethink” broad swathes of Catholicism. It is not hard to picture a theologian developing a curiosity about certain individual teachings of the Church because of his scholarship in that area. There are many examples. Perhaps a priest who has a background in physics might be convinced he has a new way of explaining what the Apostles saw when they described the Lord’s Ascension. Maybe he has what he thinks is a better way of understanding the phenomenon than picturing Jesus rising up through the clouds. Okay. Let’s listen.
But when a theologian asks us to rethink page after page of the Scriptures in order to “understand them more maturely” — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the miracles, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, the nature of the Sacraments, the Apostolic Succession, the meaning of prayer and the forgiveness of sins, eternal life — there is good reason to suspect that we are dealing with a wolf in sheep’s clothing — a Modernist.
There are such things. The popes have instructed us that not all theological inquiry is legitimate. Pope Pius X told us what to be wary of in the second paragraph of Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “That we should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the church’s open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and they are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open.”
Fair enough: We should think twice before labeling a priest or theologian a Modernist. It is a serious charge. We should weigh our words. But there is no reason to ignore Pius X’s warning. He was talking about the hidden agenda.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
