This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Secular Media Reporting on Poor RCC Governance by Pope Francis
https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-rome-vatican-city-germany-catholics-liberal-revolution/
So, having access to sources of information not available to the general public, none of this really comes as a revelation, and there's a bunch of biased narration and low level mistakes, but the reporting is broadly accurate. Or rather, delivers big picture accuracy while distorting the true stories of lots of specific incidents to reflect the author's liberal biases. Like here:
What they're referring to is Pope Francis' #2 being revealed to have authored erotic poetry(and a book on kissing entitled "Heal me with your Mouth") and trying to defend himself by calling it theology. It was a scandal but didn't have much to do with the backlash to gay blessings, which was the global south against progressives. African bishops declared their opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, in partnership with the eastern rites, as a group and got concessions.
What the article gets right, I think, is doing a pretty good job of summarizing the pope's inability to hold his own coalition together, and accurately noting that this occurs in an environment where most senior churchmen are laser-focused on the possibility of a conclave very soon. It also begins to convey his immense personal unpopularity with Vatican insiders; even cardinal Parolin is campaigning for the conclave by emphasizing their dissimilarities. I like this anecdote:
This is not the way to win friends and influence people in an oligarchy of elderly true-believing academics.
This is perhaps understating things; many of the cardinals appointed as Francis allies turned on him over something or other, often personal falling outs or mismanagement driven by the tendency referenced above. Factually one of the top papabile in the next conclave, cardinal Pizzaballa, is a recent Francis appointee now campaigning among the conservatives, and the largest initial powerblock in the next conclave is likely to be backers of cardinal Erdo's promise to reign as Benedict XVII. It also understates the mood in the Vatican that pope Francis is going to die any day now.
I wanted to highlight these two paragraphs- the progressive faction(of which cardinal Hollerich is more or less the leader and one of the more extreme examples thereof) is dispirited, weighed down by outsized responsibility for the sex abuse scandal(s), extremely high average age, and ties to an unpopular and more moderate than commonly perceived pope. All the way up and down the totem pole, progressive Catholics are cynical, expect to lose, and increasingly too depressed to even grasp at straws.
My impression is that the Catholic Church is going through a similar pattern to Mainline Protestant churches:
(1) Declining membership in the West (immigrants aside) but still strong in the Third World.
(2) A hesistant pivot to liberalism, which alienates the conservatives in the West and alienates almost all of the Third World, without actually increasing membership in the West. More radical churches pick up the Western conservatives$ and gain strength in the Third World.
(3) Doubling down by pivoting more (but still hesitantly) towards liberalism.
Catholicism seems to be less far down this road that Mainline Protestantism, but it seems stuck. And as the experience of Evangelical Protestants has shown in the past 20 years (AFAIK) conservative Christianity is struggling in the West too, just in different ways (higher apostacy among the young).
$ This does not seem to be happening with the conservative Catholics, but from those I know, they are disengaged and fed up, and this may result in greater apostacy among their children.
Is that accurate? It would confirm my expectations of Pope Francis's papacy, but I have limited info on the Catholic Church these days, so I am worried about confirmation bias.
I'm not too sure, I think Catholicism is doing pretty well in the United States and the Church is holding to her teaching.
One chart I saw recently was at here, pulling together data from The Nones have Hit a Ceiling. It looks as though Catholics are either A) getting lots of converts, B) Better able to retain young people than Protestants, or C) Immigration of more young people than old people from Catholic countries. It might very well be C, but I don't think Catholicism is going to disappear from the US anytime soon.
One thing that helps keep Catholicism on the straight and narrow is that the Church's authority derives from its Conservatism. If it actually tried to change teaching, in such a way that it clearly contradicted past dogmatic teachings, it loses its authority instantly. It's whole shtick is that "We have the Truth, the Truth can't change, we have perfect Divine Authority to tell you the Truth and no one else has this Authority."
Now Europe, Europe is going secular fast. US Catholics joke that we will need to evangelize Pagan Europe all over again.
I think it's both. In a bunch of places (like Latin America) it's declining. But there's a pretty strong population in the United States. Perhaps it's just the circles I'm in, but it seems like a lot of people are converting.
I agree that the inability to change some classes of things definitely has helped Catholics not become like the mainline churches. It has helped also that schism is unacceptable in Catholicism, whereas protestants are more willing to, which causes the most devoted to leave, making it easier for the left to win the next thing. (I suppose the SSPX and similar muddy this slightly, but whatever.)
Of course (to be polemical for a moment), I do think there are probably some changes or contradictions in teaching, like Vatican II's attitude towards non-Catholics vs. Florence's. But not any that I'm aware of where people would be invested on both sides in a contentious manner.
Agreed that Europe is quite secular, though there are a few portions that are holding things somewhat together.
Since you invited a debate, here it goes:
There is a distinction in Catholicism between an infallible statement in a fallible church document. What I mean by this is a Council is only speaking infallibly when it states something in a particular formula. Usually it goes like, "We affirm, with our magisterial authority, that all inside the universal Church are bound to X." That kind of statement, and only that statement, is considered infallible. The surrounding logic or justification is not infallible. The entire document is not infallible. Things the author has said about what they meant when they stated it is not infallible. Catholic doctrine is Textualist, not Originalist.
The infallible statement in the Council of Florence is:
Sounds pretty clear-cut? Only card-carrying Catholics in Heaven? Aright, now square this statement with the more ancient belief in the Harrowing of Hell. For this statement to be infallibly professed, it also needs to be in accordance with prior infallible statements that Abraham, Elijah, and others that predated Christ are in Heaven.
Did no one see that contradiction? Actually, there has been a long history of including people inside the Church who would be very surprised to learn they were in the Catholic Church, being saved by participation in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church this whole time!
When it comes to salvation for people not visibly Catholic, Vatican II didn't say anything unusual or novel. Invincible ignorance has predated Vatican 2 also and was supported by some popes you'd be surprised by. All Vatican 2 did was reaffirm it.
Pope Pius IX wrote in his encyclical Quanto Conficiamur Moeroe, predating Vatican II:
I would just read Florence as talking about after the coming of Christ.
I don't think the passage from Florence is talking about the invisible church (yes, I know Catholics don't like talking about the distinction, but it's literally the issue at hand here). The statement would be rather vacuous. Rather, it makes more sense, especially given the preceding sentence, to read "unity of the ecclesiastical body" as talking about a visible unity, as that is the common feature of jews, heretics and schismatics. Similarly, shedding one's blood for Christ would seem to have in mind that the people in question at least consider themselves Christians. You said you're a textualist, there's your text.
This also makes sense in historical context. Florence was supposed to be the big victory, where everyone was unified again. They clearly very had the unity of the ecclesiastical body in an outward, institutional sense on mind frequently at the council. It would be weird to me, that being the case, if that were not the case here.
Anyway, I think there are a bunch of passages from official documents that are hard to square with an invisible church:
Constance condemns Hus' statement:
The condemned line seems pretty in line with at least your fourth quote.
(Side note, since I'm at that document: I have no idea how the fourth condemnation of Hus, that for some reason you may not say, "The two natures, the divinity and the humanity, are one Christ," despite very similar language in the Athanasian creed is defensible.)
Further, in Unigenitus, the following are condemned:
That reads to me as rejecting the church being something ethereal, but is rather a visible body. Also, maybe not okay with Christ being the head of the church? That's weird to me if so, but it might just be that it's not okay with a those-alive-in-Christ=church method. But ignoring that Unigenitus condemns all sorts of things I think true, the document would seem to oppose the church being invisible in the senses that such unity would require.
I get that invincible ignorance has been around for a while. (The motive to have it exist at the time of Florence would be somewhat lower, as they thought they'd united churches throughout the world, and the americas were discovered only later that century. But I'm not familiar with the state of teaching at the time. Maybe I'd want to go see if Torquemada said anything.) (As a side note, from your quote, does Pius IX think there are people not guilty of deliberate sin? That's kind of extreme, at least, to the Protestant ear.)
Anyway, Florence, in the same document, seems also to require knowledge of Christ at least in some vague sense: "It firmly believes, professes, and teaches that no one conceived of man and woman was ever freed of the domination of the Devil, except through the merit [so said the one English website. But the Latin text I saw was "fidem," faith.] of the mediator between God and men, our Lord Jesus Christ; He who was conceived without sin, was born and died, through His death alone laid low the enemy of the human race by destroying our sins, and opened the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, which the first man by his own sin had lost with all succession; and that He would come sometime, all the sacred rites of the Old Testament, sacrifices, sacraments, and ceremonies disclosed." (That last line should show that "faith" is correct, not merit.)
That said, some, like Aquinas, thought that those who had invincible ignorance and would be saved would be saved through a special revelation of God to them. Does Vatican II still allow for requiring that? I realize that I might be undermining my point here if this is allowing for unity that's not in an ecclesiastical institution.
I'm glad you recognized there was something a little weird about the Papal Bull Unigenitus. It is really weird to say that Christ is not the Head of the Church! But that's not what it says. (This is going to apply to the Condemnation of John Hus as well.)
In this Genre of Papal Condemnation, you will see a statement that declares multiple levels of condemnation. Some of these levels implies falsehood (false,...,and finally heretical, clearly renewing many heresies respectively and most especially those which are contained in the infamous propositions of Jansen.) Some of these levels does not imply falsehood at all, but merely causes offense/scandal (captious, evil-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, pernicious, rash,...insulting not only to the Church but also the secular powers.) No statement has every condemnation leveled against it. You can tell this because the condemnation at the bottom of Unigenitus includes "suspected of heresy, and smacking of heresy itself,..., close to heresy, many times condemned, and finally heretical." Every single item cannot be both suspected of heresy, close to heresy, and simultaneously heretical. That would be a contradiction.
The John Hus condemnation similarly has categories for "many things that are scandalous, offensive to the ears of the devout, rash and seditious." This doesn't mean false.
Why not list out exactly what level of condemnation each statement falls into? Because the Pope/Council wasn't going through the effort to define new teaching or to clear up a theological debate. They just wanted to say, "This guy sucks, his writing sucks, and no Catholic should read this garbage."
I think the statements you copied here would qualify under "offensive to pious ears." Why is that? Because they were made in the context of open rebellion against the Catholic Church. Someone who made those statements from the position of submission to the authority of the Church would not be labeled offensive to pious ears.
Unfortunately he's not responding to my ouiji board (just kidding!) I think it could be a response to a pure hypothetical. “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”
At the same time, he might have a stricter understanding of deliberate sin than you. A deliberate sin is one that someone fully understands is wrong and does it anyways out of their own free will, no coercion. There may indeed be some people who fall under this category, through the Grace of God, particularly those under the age of 7.
Also, a careful reading of the statement shows that he is positively declaring that this specific category can get to heaven, he's not defining people outside this category as incapable of arriving in Heaven. There may be others who have committed deliberate sins but achieved sufficient contrition to be forgiven those sins, who also go to Heaven. He's just not commenting on that aspect at this time.
Yes, it allows that theory, but does not require Aquinas' pious opinion to be held by all. One thing this reminds me of is Sr. Faustina's visions. She wrote, “God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God absolution of sins and remission of punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy! But – horror! – There are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace!”
Fair point about the condemnations not being that every statement is heretical.
But I think it's still useful to try to figure out, at least, why they are wrong (or scandalous, etc.). How would you characterize the problems with 74 and 75?
(To check context: the one is on 1 Tim 3:16. The other is on Ephesians 2:14-16. Both from here. Quesnel's a good writer.)
Kids do things that they know are wrong all the time. 7 is far too high an age. But point taken, I suppose. That does not seem to be what Vatican II is contemplating, though (but I get that your last sentence of that section allows for that).
I think I already explained, I don't think 74 or 75 is wrong. Instead, it was scandalous for someone to use scripture to justify their schism from the Church.
I also explained that this wasn't a teaching document, so the writers didn't feel any need to explain exactly what they didn't like about each statement. There is at least one heretical proposition in the entire document. Heaven knows what it is. (Actually, it's clearly 10-16. Those are Jansenist heresies.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link