40. Catholicism: Authority (5)

40.1   Authority has to do with power — the power of a voice that we should listen and consider so that adherence springs from this listening and consideration. Real authority is not enforced but recognised. As a film scholar, I do not have to force you to accept my authority in my subject, I just hope that my painstaking scholarship and critical thinking persuade you. This example may seem petty when compared to God. My aim is to highlight the connection between “authority” and “author”. Catholics, like most Christians, think that the ultimate authority is God, because God is the author, the indirect originator of all — “authority” comes from the Latin auctor, “originator, promoter”.

40.2   Catholics acknowledge that the authority of God has to be exercised through human institutions, otherwise the original essence, the truth, would be lost. The transmission of this authority is what we call tradition. Tradition is handed on and regenerated from generation to generation. It includes the Scriptures, but also other writings, forms of devotion and liturgy, stories and images. Tradition therefore has to do fundamentally with memory. The most important role of the Church is to preserve memory. Her authority is rooted in the past of our present, in the ground that we stand on, in that which allows us to realise who we are. For me, the beauty and the splendour of Catholicism lie here.

40.3   The overseeing of the preservation of tradition is the responsibility of the Church hierarchy, which stands in apostolic succession to the first followers and disciples of Jesus, the Apostles. Tradition and memory are the tradition and memory of a community. In contrast with some Christian churches and denominations, the Catholic Church is not a gathering of people who answer to a personal call. It is a community that you join or are born into.

40.4   Tradition is not synonymous with conservatism. Revision, not conservatism, has been the historical norm of the Catholic Church. But revision begs for responsibility before something much greater than a group of people and so it demands caution and it takes time. Serious conflicts about the interpretation of tradition have been resolved in and by the Church Councils, meetings of Bishops. The decisions of these councils along the most significant letters written by Popes and Bishops constitute the corpus of Church Law or Canon Law.

40.5   The decisions of Church Councils are, in principle, binding. (There is a difference between disciplinary decrees and doctrinal ones.¹) Councils, because they are communal, have more authority than the Pope. This is historically true. The Council of Constance (1414-17) formally declared that the authority of a Council is superior to that of a Pope. But peculiar circumstances surrounded this Council: the papacy was in disarray, disputed as it was by three rival Popes. Today, the Church has laws to prevent this kind of non-communal rivalry. Today, even though Councils have, in essence, more authority than the Pope, they are not seen as competing powers. Councils can approve something that the Pope disagrees with, but they need his signature to make it formally binding. In other words, Councils are meant to foster union rather than division. Councils have to be convoked by the Pope, usually following the suggestion of a large number of Bishops. But the Pope is also part of the Councils. On the one hand, the Pope is the centre of the Catholic communion, on the other, he is a Bishop among Bishops. The most recent Council to be held was the well-known Vatican II (1962-65) that introduced changes in the liturgy of the Mass — namely the active participation of the laity (reading from the Bible, for example) and the use of vernacular (native languages) instead of Latin.

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   1. See Catholicism: “Catholic” (4) for the difference between discipline and doctrine.

39. Catholicism: “Catholic” (4)

39.1   Catholicism is part of the Christian faith. Some people disagree with this statement, within the Catholic Church and outside of her. These groups are both extremist: the first say that if you are not part of the Church (“One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic”) you are not truly Christian; the second say that the Church is not really Christian but Pagan. The former people act against one of the most noble impulses of the contemporary Church: the charitable way in which she recognises a basic, common thread in other Christian denominations (and even in other religious traditions). The latter people base their view on misunderstandings like the misapprehension of the Catholic devotion to Holy Mary as “the worship of Mary”. Both seem to know very little about the development of Christianity from the early fathers until today.

39.2   The Catholic Church is not a monolithic institution. Unity does not mean uniformity. The Church is in fact an association of Churches (Latin and Eastern) who are linked, that is, who are in communion. This communion is actualised through the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.

39.3   The Catholic Church is sometimes called, especially in English, the Roman Catholic Church. This is a term that is not very common in other languages and that is not commonly used by the Church herself. The word “Roman” does not suit the Eastern Churches who have a distinct history and a different discipline, but are part of the Catholic Church (even though canon law establishes that their connection with Rome differs from those of the Western Churches to preserve their particular culture and rites).

39.4   Others feel that the Church has hijacked the word “Catholic” which means universal. To understand how important this word is in Christianity we need only to remind ourselves that the official name of the Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Catholic Church. Anglicans, who recite the Nicene Creed, firmly believe “in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” and they are not willing to let go of that third adjective. They should not. That word is not the same word as the one used in “Catholic Church”. They have the same form, but the first one is not part of a name, it is said to be one of the marks of the Church who Jesus Christ founded. The Church is one: it is united in the belief in the Lord, Jesus Christ (whether this unity is spiritual or institutional, invisible or visible, is open to debate). The Church is holy: it is sacred, set apart by and for God, because it springs from Christ and it is guided by him (this does not mean that the Church is perfect, for she is made of imperfect men and women capable of good and evil, but the Church as a sacred idea and body that we hold dear persists and resists). The Church is catholic: it is universal, open to all genders, classes, races, nationalities, and cultures. The Church is apostolic: its teachings come from the Apostles and were transmitted throughout history (additionally, the Orthodox and Catholic Churches claim Apostolic Succession, their succession of Bishops is historically traceable, without interruptions , to the original twelve Apostles). One way of looking at the landscape of Christianity is that the Church is divided but not separated. As a historical Church, the Catholic Church has a paramount role to play in this dialogue. Unfortunately, some branches of Christianity are antagonistic and stridently oppose specific Christian denominations. They concentrate on what separate us instead of what unites us. They reject this brotherhood. And, in doing this, they sadden Christ, who said that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).

39.4   The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church. It accounts for half of all Christians. It has communities and churches across the globe, particularly in places like Latin America that were colonised by Catholic powers. The head of the Church is not the Pope, but Christ, who directs and guides her. The Church is in this sense the mystical body of Christ. The Pope is only the head of the College of Bishops.

38. Catholicism: Other Dogmas (3)

38.1   There are other Catholic dogmas — specific Catholic dogmas. One of them is transubstantiation, the conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements, bread and wine, into the body and blood of Christ at consecration. The historical Eastern Churches also believe in this and call it a mystery of faith.

38.2   Some Catholics think (or seem to be taught) that they have to accept all the teachings of the Church as if they were dogmas. This is not accurate. Not all the doctrine that the Magisterium, the teaching office of the Catholic Church, and the Pope teach is incontrovertibly true. Most of it is not. There is a hierarchy in the teachings: dogmas, doctrines, disciplines, and finally, devotions.

38.3   All dogmatic teaching is by nature doctrinal, but not all doctrinal teaching is dogmatic. Papal encyclicals, for example, are doctrinal but not dogmatic. Doctrines may be different for different branches of the Church and may change over time. In 2006, for instance, Pope Benedict XVI revoked a 1500-year teaching on Limbo, the presumed abode of the souls of unbaptized infants and of the just who died before Christ’s coming, saying that divine love leads these souls in heaven, where they will be eternally in the presence of God.

38.4   Disciplines are practices that the Magisterium defines. They are also altered. Otherwise we would still have the unrestricted and shameful sale of indulgences (the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven) that was widespread during the later Middle Ages and that rightly infuriated Martin Luther.

38.5   Devotions are prayers or religious observances that are continually updated and expanded. They are formally different even within the Church, namely in the 22 particular Eastern Churches that left the Orthodox Church before the Reformation and joined the Catholic Church.

38.6   Papal infallibility is also a dogma of the Catholic Church. It was decreed by the First Vatican Council in 1869 and push forward by Pope Pius IX. It is a dogma that has no bearing on the Catholic religious life — as Garry Wills once said, no Catholic has ever prayed differently because of papal infallibility. Pius IX wanted to claim a power that he felt was being defied all around him. But the Church is an organic body that includes clerics and laypeople and the Pope is a figure that unites her. The Pope cannot impose his own will on the Church. Infallibility is not a general characteristic of the Pope. Papal infallibility does not apply to what Popes usually say and write. The Pope is not infallible, rather he can sometimes speak infallibly. This only happens under very precise circumstances: (1) when he is speaking formally ex cathedra (literally, from the chair), (2) when he is addressing all Catholics, (3) when he is defining and not just making a statement, (4) when he is defining something that has to do with faith or morals and not, say, rituals. It is no surprise then that the Pope only taught infallibly once, when Pius XII defined in 1950 the Assumption of Mary, the reception of the Virgin Mary into heaven, as an article of faith — in an apostolic constitution, the highest level of Papal decree. This is revealing. This definition merely made official an ingrained belief of the community, that is, of the Church. This belief is even shared by Anglicanism and especially by Eastern Orthodoxy, that calls it the Dormition of the Theotokos, the falling asleep of the Mother of God — even though it is not a dogma for them. To sum up, papal infallibility can be seen as a way of restating the unity that the Pope embodies and not as a means of stating his independent authority.

38.7   Like papal infallibility, the infallibility of the Church is the belief that the Holy Spirit will not allow her to make mistakes in beliefs or teachings — under certain circumstances. These circumstances define what is know as Extraordinary Magisterium, the special exercise of the teaching office by either the Pope and Bishops together, or the Pope alone, in which a definitive and solemn definition or judegment is given. Only these rare teachings give rise to dogmas, revealed and established truths that the entire Catholic community holds.

37. Catholicism: Dogmas (2)

37.1   Catholics do not believe in dogmas. Dogmas are instead an expression of the set of beliefs that Catholics hold as true. What are these basic beliefs? Catholicism is a form of Christianity and Christian beliefs are summarised in the formal statements of the Christian faith: the creeds. The Nicene Creed, written in 325 during a gathering of bishops, contains declarations about the Church and the sacrament of baptism that I shall comment on later. It also states five fundamental beliefs on:

(1) the Trinity;
(2) the creator God;
(3) the Fall;
(4) the Incarnation;
(5) the redemption.

37.2   God as defined in Christianity is a Trinitarian God. In God there are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God transcends gender, even though most of the times God is erroneously referred as male — some people refer to the Holy Spirit as feminine as well, for example. Three persons do not equal three gods: in God there are three persons. God is one and is also a community. This is a concept difficult to grasp for us humans. This difficulty can be taken as evidence that such concept was not invented but revealed.

37.3   God is the creator of all we see and cannot see. This does not mean that God creates everything directly. God is always present, but creation is an action/process, but not a constant or incessant action/process. But God sustains the creation and answers the question that the world raises from its very existence as something.

37.4   The Fall of Man,¹ or simply the Fall, is therefore the Fall of Humankind, the lapse of human beings into a state of sin. Some Christians read the story of Adam and Eve in “Genesis” 3 literally, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that this narrative uses “figurative language”.² This means that the disobedience of Adam and Eve, when they share a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, reveals a greater, deeper truth. We are told that they become ashamed of their nakedness. Shame in the context of the tree of morality means that the key is not the event (the eating of the fruit) but its consequences. We feel shame when we do something wrong, something that we know is wrong, and become conscious of it. That is sin. Sin is not an offense to God, but a separation from God. God does not punish, sin contains its own punishment: the consciousness of transgression. Original sin, as it is called, is the moment when men and women consciously, freely turned away from God. What is this sin of the world? The collective failure of humankind to be truly moral, that is, holy or wholly human.

37.5   Incarnation means made man. It is a mystery, just like the Trinity. The second person of the Trinity, the Son, became man, born of Mary. His name was Jesus. Jesus is God and human — these two natures are united via a hypostatic union, a union of substances or natures, the Divine and the human. The powerful persuasion of God is embodied in Jesus, but his humanity is not less important and often forgotten. He was human, more human than we are (because of our sinful tendencies, or more precisely, because of our reluctance to be fully human to ourselves and especially to others).

37.6   The Son became man to free us from sin, to overcome the alienation of humankind from God. Jesus was incarnated to bring human beings back to God through his teachings, death, and resurrection. This is what is called redemption. Jesus Christ, Jesus the anointed, showed the way to salvation, another name for liberation. He consented to his crucifixion because he wanted to “live out the full implications of being loving in a loveless world; he wished to accept the consequence of accepting sinners”.³

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   1. Traditionally, the word “man” has been used to refer not only to adult males but also to human beings in general regardless of sex. In old English, the principal sense of “man” was a human being, and the words “wer” and “wif” were used to refer specifically to a male person and a female person, respectively. Subsequently, “man” replaced “wer” as the normal term for a male person, but the older sense of a human being remained in use.
   2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 390.
   3. Herbert McCabe, The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A New Cathecism of Christian Doctrine (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2000), p. 14.

36. Catholicism: Preamble (1)

36.1   The next posts will analyse and discuss various aspects of Catholicism, a form of Christianity sometimes known as Roman Catholicism, generally contrasted with Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It will be an opportunity for me to make sense of it to others as well as to myself. There are a lot of misunderstandings, even amongst Catholics, of Catholicism and of the Catholic Church.