Neuhaus of cards

In the April 2002 issue of First Things, Richard John Neuhaus penned a piece on "How I Became The Catholic I Was."

Given that Neuhaus is a high profile convert, editor of an influential magazine, and a leading ecumenist, it is worth our while if we subject his testimonial to some rational scrutiny.

He says this is more a story than an argument. That may be a sincere disclaimer. But it may also be a way of attempting to secure the cash value of an argument without the rigor of an argument. Everyone likes a good story. But Neuhaus is clearly using his personal story to make a case for Catholicism.

There is an underlying issue here that goes beyond and beneath any particular arguments pro and con. It's really a question of disposition. There is a personality type that, by innate make-up, looks to social validation for its belief and behavior. His sense of emotional, intellectual and spiritual security and identity is bound up with a sense of group-identity. His assurance of salvation comes from a (selective) solidarity with the living and the dead. He looks, not to Christ or the Bible, but to the church, for his assurance. You can see this in all the anguish over the break with Rome and yearning to return to the outstretched arms of Mother Church.

It is very hard to reason with these people because their affiliation is temperamental more than intellectual.

Now, this corporate emphasis is not entirely devoid of value. If no one else sees the Bible the way I do, then that certainly calls my judgment into question. But consensus, of itself, is not a touchstone of truth; rather, it is only of value inasmuch as my independent judgment and your independent judgment coincide on the meaning of Scripture.

Again, the Christian life has a social dimension in the life of the church. But it all depends on our point of departure. Like a pyramid, Christians are related to one aother at the base because they're each related to God. It is the vertical convergent point that generates the horizontal connection, not vice versa.

You can see him takin his first false step by the way Neuhaus has chosen to position himself in connection to Catholicism, both before and after his conversion. He started out by taking Lutheranism as his point of reference. So he's just comparing one theological tradition with another. Instead of asking himself, "How Scriptural is Lutheranism or Catholicism?" he was asking himself, "How Catholic is Lutheranism?" It never even occurred to him to step out of his received tradition and measure both traditions by the word of God. Although he talks about a ressourcement—going back to the sources, yet he never goes all the way back to the primary source—contenting himself with a choice of secondary sources.

I suppose Neuhaus would counter that this is rather naïve, that we are all conditioned by the past, that we can never shed our social skin.

But this is a half-truth. As social creatures, and as timebound creatures, we can never strike a stance of ahistorical objectivity. But, unlike the animal kingdom, we can become aware of our social conditioning. That's one reason for comparative studies. And, by so doing, we can put some distance between ourselves and our inheritance. Up to a point, we are able to step outside ourselves. From that standpoint we may choose to embrace our legacy, disown it, or make critical use of tradition.

The Bible is, itself, a profoundly countercultural document. Under both Testaments it challenges the prevailing social mores. And it can be a corrective to our decadent traditions as well. That's one reason God gave us the Scriptures—to be an agency of change, of cultural as well as personal renewal.

Much of the appeal of Catholicism lies in the power of a master metaphor. Converts to Catholicism view the Protestant/Catholic relation as a part/whole, mother/son or cause/effect relation. Catholicism is the trunk while the Protestant Reformation is an offshoot.

Now, historically, this is just plain false. The Tridentine Fathers—on the one hand—along with the Protestant Reformers—on the other hand—are all in relations of continuity as well as discontinuity with the ancient and Medieval church. To oversimplify, there is a tension in Augustine between his position on church and sacraments, and his position on sin and grace. Trent broke with Augustine over sin and grace, but sided with him on church and sacraments; Geneva (and to a lesser extent, Canterbury) broke with Augustine over church and sacraments, but sided with him on sin and grace; while Augsburg preserved the original tension.

So there is, in the theology of the Protestant Reformation, both tradition and innovation. But the same can be said of Trent.

Throughout the piece you have his assumed identification of the "church" with the "Church of Rome." Whenever he reads some lofty claim made for the NT church, he automatically transfers the title-deed to the Church of Rome. No argument is offered for this exclusive application.

Then he parrots the classic a priori assertion for the Magisterium: "From my boyhood intuitions as an ecclesial Christian, it seemed self-evident that, if God intended to reveal any definite truths for the benefit of humankind, and if Jesus intended a continuing community of discipleship, then some reliable means would be provided for the preservation and transmission of such truths through the centuries. Catholics believe that God did provide such reliable means by giving the apostles and their successors, the bishops, authority to teach in His name and by promising to be with them forever."

Again, no argument or evidence is adduced for either the general claim or its particulars—even though everything else hinges on this assumption. How did OT saints ever manage without a Magisterium?

There's no doubt that the Bible has a high doctrine of the church. But it all depends on how you define the church. The problem facing every high churchman is that although the Bible has a high ecclesiology, it has next to nothing to say about the ecclesiology of the high churchman.

You don't have holy orders in the NT. At most, you have the imposition of hands, which was a ritual with many applications—and far from formal ordination.

Again, the NT never says who is supposed to administer the sacraments. We know that baptism and communion are antitypes of circumcision and Passover. We know that, under the Mosaic law, Passover was a domestic rite over which the pater familias presided. The OT doesn't say who administered the rite of circumcision, but since circumcision goes back to the Abrahamic covenant, whereas the priesthood only goes back to the Mosaic covenant, one supposes that circumcision was ordinarily administered by the father of the child.

We also know that NT churches were house-churches. They were informal, familial affairs, consisting of kin, domestic servants, friends and neighbors.

Even under the law of Moses, with its divine priesthood and cultus, there were times of national apostasy when the faithful were driven underground. Yet their enforced separation from the visible church did not sever them from the invisible church.

But to judge the claim on its own grounds, if a Magisterium were so very vital to the well-being of the church, then why is it only under certain carefully prescribe circumstances that this is infallibly exercised? Is infallibility a nonrenewable resource? The stated principle is in tension with the historical practice. Instead of infallibility protecting the church, the theologians are protecting infallibility from falsification by hedging it in with a host of legalistic little caveats and codicils.

Moreover, this is a bait-and-switch scam, for having played up the necessity of a Magisterium, Neuhaus exercises an escape clause about the frequently jagged, confusing and conflicted voice of the Magisterium. Where's the assurance in that?

And if this were not enough, Neuhaus then attaches yet another rider by saying that the teaching of the Church is lived forward, not reconstructed after the fact. But this is still another apologetic retrenchment. Having played up tradition and continuity, he then tries to immunize this claim by slamming the door on any effort to retrace and verify the essential identity of present dogma with the faith once delivered.

There are two kinds of schism: institutional schism and alethic schism. Protestants broke with the institution because the institution broke with the truth. Which form of schism is more heinous and damnable?

One reason that a Protestant like myself doesn't anguish over denominationalism is because there is so much natural networking between conservative Christians. I can fellowship with Bible-believing Christians from all manner of denominations and independent churches. It's more like siblings who leave home, buy their own place and start a family. That is not the same thing as a broken home. Brothers and sisters still visit each other in their new homes and feel the same way about each other (sometimes better!) than when they were living under the same roof.

Neuhaus speaks of the "wound of our broken communion." With all due respect, this attitude reminds me of a celebrity stalker. In the beginning, he identifies with the character in a film or TV series. The emotions of the character become his emotions, the life of the character becomes his life.

Up to a point, this is perfectly normal. The mysterious power of fiction lies in its capacity to evoke our empathy. While we're watching the screen, we project ourselves onto the screen.

The next step is to transfer our feelings from the character to the actor or actress. We feel about the performer the way we would about a friend or family member.

Again, this is natural inasmuch as the performer is the public face of the character, so that our feelings for the character rub off on the performer.

Such vicarious sympathy makes sense at an emotional and psychological level, but this is also the point at which our head has to act as a check on our heart: our reason needs to remind us that this is fiction, not fact; that the performer is a perfect stranger to us.

And this is the point at which the ecumenist resembles a celebrity stalker: he equates church history with his personal history, their past with his past, their pain with his pain, their story with his story.

Now Neuhaus didn't live through the "breach" with Rome. The 16C is not his century. Even if a "tragedy," it is not a personal tragedy, like a family crisis or a childhood trauma. To think and feel this way is to let his imagination get the better of him. Like a victim of "repressed memories," he is haunted by a phantom past.

Suppose that Neuhaus had never read about the Reformation. Would he still feel "wounded" by an event he'd never heard of? He might be puzzled by why there were so many different churches, and how they came to be, and if all this diversity and duplication was entirely necessary. But he would not feel this spectral longing to belong to Rome. Rome would just be one more denomination among many. Depending on which aspect of Lutheran theology he chose to prize or emphasize, it would have some affinities with Rome, but if he chose to prize or emphasize other aspects, the affinities would lie one the Protestant side of the ledger.

But Neuhaus has an even stronger sentiment to express. He tells us that the church must make every effort to avoid what Augustine calls "the heinous and damnable sin of schism."

Perhaps the first thing to say this that Augustine's historical situation was different from ours. Surely there are worse things than schism. To call this a heinous and damnable sin betrays a profound lack of moral proportion.

Take the Catholic sex scandal. What made this possible was not merely the bad men, but the good men—men like Richard Neuhaus. Because they believe in the system, they back the system. No matter how bad things get, they never buck or break with the system.

That's because they believe that Rome is the only wheel in town. If other churches have wheels, they have square wheels. So it's Rome or bust.

Given this attitude, moral reform is impossible. They have chained themselves to a rotting corpse. Their institutional commitment erodes their moral commitment and spiritual integrity.

And this is the true tragedy—when men of good faith, conscientious churchmen like Fr. Neuhaus, become court preachers for a corrupt system; when they empower the very men they decry.

Like every sincere ecumenist, Neuhaus appeals to our Lord's prayer "that they may all be one."

I've always been puzzled by the way the ecumenist interprets this verse. For he seems to assume, as entirely natural, without any need of exposition or argument, that for two thousand years and counting this prayed has remained unfulfilled—as though the Father were either impotent to answer his prayer, or turned a deaf ear to the dying prayer of his only-begotten Son.

Those who think this way, from high churchmen to cult-leaders, always assume, as a deep, unquestioned datum, that dissent and division are a sure sign that things are not the way they were supposed to be, that this represents some sort of failure—either the plan was flawed from the outset, or else the execution was flawed.

At rock bottom, this reflects a grievous lack of faith in God's sovereignty. Everything that happens is happening as God intended it to happen. This is, after all, God's world. He chose to make this world, and not some other, or none at all. Even sin serves the purposes of God. Some goods are good in their own right, other goods are instrumental to a higher good, while moral and natural evils are also instrumental to a higher good. Everything takes place right on schedule according to God's master plan.

No mechanism can render the church indefectible, for the machinery is no better than the machinist (Isa 31:1-3). No polity has ever saved a church from apostasy. But God does indeed have a reliable method of providing for the preservation and transmission of the Gospel: he does so by means of predestination and providence, grace and revelation.

Neuhaus tells us that finds it sadly amusing that a liberal Lutheran church is going to put moral theology to a vote. But isn't that, in effect, what a papal conclave does? The majority of cardinals vote for the candidate who will take the church in the direction they want it to go, be it progressive or traditional.

Because Neuhaus constantly begs the question, there is a looking-glass quality to his reading of church history. He sees Protestant history as a downward spiral while Rome stayed the course. But in my Protestant mirror, I see a reverse reflection. More generally, what I see in Bible history and church history is not a downard trend, but a cyclical pattern. It reads like the Augustinian philosophy of history. In every generation you have a gracious remnant unbowed before the Baal of the age. And this remnant is coexistent with worldings inside and outside the church. There are many Protestants in the 21C who believe what Protestants believed in the 16C, and who also affirm the creeds of the ancient church.

Finally you have the spectacle of his willfully one-sided statements. How does baptism confer the assurance of salvation? What about duly baptized heretics and apostates? How is the voice of Mother Church saying, "I baptize you," "I forgive you your sins," "This is my body," supposed to resound in the ears of a Bultmann, Wellhausen, Stalin, or Hitler?

This is why the distinction between high church and lower church ultimately breaks down. In a substantive sense, a low churchman has a higher doctrine of the church than a high churchman because a low churchman has stricter terms of church membership. The perennial problem of high church ecclesiology is its persistent failure to make good on the promise. Its lofty claims are consistently belied and debased in practice.

Again, what does it mean to say that nobody knows the Gospel outside the Church? Which church? Whose church? His church? Are there no exceptions whatsoever? Was no one ever converted by reading a Gideon Bible in his hotel room? Of course, Neuhaus would gloss his statement with a thousand qualifications, but it doing so he would lose the persuasive power of the slogan.

Once again, you have his refrain about unequivocal adherence to the Real Presence. But Jesus didn't say, "This is my body in the bread and my blood in the wine." Jesus said, "is," not "in" or "into" or vice versa. While claiming to be literal, consubstantiation and transubstantiation both fudge by interposing their own distancing devices.

He condemns the Protestant principle as too protean and subject to variation, yet he later admits that the RCC permits almost anything in teaching or practice as long as it doesn't involve an open break with the Church. He accuses the Protestants of making up their theology as they go along, but later invokes the Newmanesque doctrine of development to shore up the Catholic claim.

What Neuhaus has offered the read is, indeed, more of a story than an argument. And there's the catch. The Bible is not a bedtime story. Revelation is not imagination. We must either found our faith on fact or else be confounded by fact. Revealed truth is our one and only guide out of the wilderness of error. A beautiful illusion is a deadly delusion.