Popery potpourri

Jonathan Prejean, of Crimson Catholic fame, posted the following comments on my blog:

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Patrick didn't disagree with either one of us. It's not as if papal infallibility is simply separate from the Church, as if the Pope says it, and that's it. The teaching has to be evaluated in the context of the belief of the entire Church. Until that process is complete, the "meaning" of even an infallible pronouncement is not settled.

I'd analogize it to law, a situation that has been noted in the past. When the legislature passes a law, the law's meaning is not definitely fixed based on the opinion of any of the legislators that went into it or even the prevailing arguments, because people may have had vastly different reasons for voting for the law, so there has to be some principle for determining the meaning of the law authoritatively (a "rule of law"). Ordinarily, the meaning of the law is determined in subsequent applications, actual decisions made using the law, which may or may not reflect the intent of any of the particular legislators who passed it. That is the difference between an objective discipline determined based on formality (which the authority of the Catholic Church is), and a subjective discipline based on persuasion. Patrick's point is exactly that you have to appeal to objective teaching to ground anything, and Shawn and I are simply applying the rather ordinary criteria that one interprets the meaning of objectively authoritative statements primarily based on how they are subsequently applied (which is effectively what is binding) and the general reception of the document in the community, rather than the intent the authors had for the document (which is not). The canons of "Catholic jurisprudence" aren't all that different from English common law, which is unsurprising, as Catholic canon law was the primary basis for those systems.

Honestly, Catholicism is not particularly different from from legal scholarship. Before a definitive Supreme Court ruling, there may be a number of theories among lawyers, judges, and academics as to what the law means, none of which are binding but all of which represent various ways to understand and meaningfully apply the law, considering things such as original intent but also factors such as overall coherence of the jurisprudence in the area, giving effect to all provisions, presuming against repeal or preemption without stated intent, etc. After a while, you'll usually note some kind of practical consensus, which typically guides practitioners from there on out (this is what Patrick means by the "apologist" view as opposed to the "speculative views."). Sometimes, it simply remains bitterly divided even among different regions of the county, and sometimes the Court simply leaves it that way, exercising its own discretion as to when it reins in the lower authorities. This acceptance does not indicate that the Court agrees with all of the views or even any of them, but merely that until something definitive comes down, everyone does the best that they can.

Obviously, in such an objective system, formality is huge; anything which is definitely formal cannot be ignored. A step below that are matters of technical informality but high relevance, such as Supreme Court reasoning (not technically binding, but almost invariably persuasive), and there are steps below that, again based on relative formality, not authority. There's nothing inherently anarchic about such a system; indeed, I can hardly figure out how any system based on the "will of the people" giving meaning to objectively authoritative pronouncements (which Catholicism inherently is) can be grounded in anything other than such jurisprudence.

That's why we Catholics are always a bit baffled by the obsession with finding a definitive meaning for everything that can be fixed at a particular moment in time; that's simply not necessary for language to be objectively and authoritatively binding (and indeed, it's questionable as to how the definitive meaning can possibly be fixed in anticipation of all possible future contingencies). Epistemic certainty about meaning simply isn't necessary for something to be authoritatively binding; there's nothing incoherent about accepting an authority without having a definitive knowledge of every ruling the authority has made. You simply judge based on the internal operation of the legal system and the likelihood of interpretation within that system. Indeed, one could argue that there is considerably *less* certainty in the American jurisprudential system (since unlike the older English common law or the Catholic Magisterium, Supreme Court decisions can be overruled later), but we fallible lawyers all manage to muddle through somehow. Your argument sounds a great deal like "You shouldn't be American because your legal system doesn't provide certainty," to which I reply "Perhaps that's not a reasonable basis on which to make one's decision to be American."

Vatican pronouncements, like Supreme Court decision, are rather extraordinary means to resolve doctrinal disputes. In the ordinary course of things, teaching filters down by this deliberative process of determination within the Church, and unless there is such an extreme risk in allowing the process to continue that it must be cut off, that is ordinarily the preferred way for things to happen (viz., people achieving gradual consensus through deliberation). The PBC is nothing more than another voice in those deliberations; it provides a venue for certain people to speak their views based on their expertise. Generally, if people aren't advocating out-and-out lawlessness (i.e., denial of the objective authority of the Magisterium), then it's ordinarily permissible for this process to take place. That's why I tend to be less harsh on liberal and traditionalist Catholics than most; it's not my job to discipline them, but to bring them around to my way of thinking through articulation of my views (deliberative process). But if the rule of law itself is rejected (as in Protestantism), then there's no common foundation even to discuss things.

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By way of comment:

1.Prejean is imputing to Patrick a number of things that Patrick never said or implied. Perhaps Prejean is acting in legal capacity by making a better case for his client than his client could make for himself. And there’s no doubt that Prejean’s pro bono work in this regard has resulted in an argument with far more horsepower than the original—like swapping out a Hyundai motor for a racing car engine. I’m also more than happy to engage this new and improved version. But in the interests of intellectual property rights, I really must insist on giving credit where credit is due.

2.As to the legal analogies, it sounds as though Prejean is playing Larry Tribe to my Bob Bork.

3.One problem with the legal analogy is that it begs the question by assuming such an analogy rather than mounting an actual argument from analogy.

4.Presumably, a divine teaching office does enjoy a measure of divine foresight. Therefore, it ought to anticipate future contingencies. If it can’t to that, then wherein lies the divine guidance? Anyone can to do fix-up job after the fact.

5.Prejean’s retrojective warrant reduces to a tautology: meaning is whatever we say it is, whenever we say it. Yesterday’s meaning may not be today’s meaning, and tomorrow’s meaning may not be today’s meaning. But that is less an argument than a sanctification of the status quo.

And if the meaning of a magisterial document really has such an ephemeral shelf-life, then Catholic claims suffer from built-in obsolescence. So Prejean’s argument seems to be self-refuting.

6.For that matter, retrodictive proof can justify any outcome whatsoever, including contrary outcomes, for any modern-day state-of-affairs has a historical trajectory behind it. If it validates Catholicism, then it validates Calvinism and Lutheranism and Anabaptism and fundamentalism and Pentecostalism and Nestorianism and Mohammedanism, &c.

6.Even if we accept the legal analogy, I’d take it in a rather different direction. In terms of Biblical ethics, the Bible contains a number of general norms. Their range of application varies with the concrete circumstances. A valid application is a special case of a general norm.

However, unless the norm enjoys an invariant meaning, we would never know how it was meant to be variously applied.

7.In Evangelical hermeneutics, meaning is tied to authorial intent. It is tied to the secondary authorial intent of the human agent, which is, in turn, tied to the primary authorial intent of the divine agent who inspired the human agent.

Now, the resultant text may contain logical implications which outstrip what the human writer was conscious of, but they may not contradict original intent.

8.Again, there’s a sense in which the original reader may complete the meaning. For the word was given with an implied audience in mind. It takes for granted a common cultural preunderstanding. More is assumed than is actually said, for writer and reader share a common referential universe of natural cues and social codes. And the aim of the grammatico-historical method is to recover that common knowledge.

9.It is true that certainty and authority are not the same thing. The question, though, is not about abstract possibilities, but the concrete question of what level of certitude the Catholic rule of faith claims for itself in relation to the Protestant rule of faith.

10.It is also quite true that you can accept an authority-source without foreknowing every consequence. But that, of course, assumes that you have good reason to credit your authority-source in the first place.

And this is where Prejean’s argument runs razor thin. For it remains entirely on the plane of a purely abstract structure or formalism. We have criteria applied to nothing, distinctions applied to nothing.

What one would like to see is how he applies his own criteria to make a case for his own authority-source. As it stands right now, we are being paid in verbal vouchers unredeemed by concrete content.

Surely Prejean isn’t waiting for the Evangelicals to make their case first. For, if they have failed to make a persuasive case up until now, then that makes his own job all the easier, does it not?

11.I also don’t see what the trickle-down process and incremental consensus-building has to do with high-placed liberals like Brown and Fitzmyer.

Indeed, the logic moves in the opposite direction. Prejean appears to be setting up a false antithesis between gentle persuasion and forcible intervention.

To simply depose a Brown or Fitzmyer does nothing to build a contrary consensus. But promoting them only has the effect of mainstreaming and standardizing their viewpoint.

There is a third way, which is for a curial congregation or a special commission to offer a reasoned rebuttal of erroneous views. And that would give a potential consensus something to coalesce around. You can’t beat something with nothing. If Brown or Fitzmyer are to the left of the magisterium, then in order for a contrary consensus to form, the magisterium needs to speak up and offer an alternative vision.

12.To say that the Protestants have rejected the rule of law is, I guess, a metaphor for the Protestant rule of faith.

But in what sense is sola Scriptura not a common foundation? It is not a common foundation for liberal Protestants, to be sure. But, then, they’re analogous to liberal Catholics who reject the Catholic rule of faith.

The fact is that Protestant theology is quite stable. It takes the form of two-tiered consensus. There is a synchronic/diachronic inter-Evangelical consensual level as well as the diachronic intra-Evangelical consensual level. There is what all Evangelicals hold in common, at any given time, and over time, and then there is the perpetuation of distinct Evangelical traditions over time.

The Protestant Reformation firmed up and settled down very quickly. Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Anabaptism continue to perpetuate themselves. These have, in turn, propagated a number of variants—some more moderate than the original, others more radical, still others a synthetic variant thereof--but all true to type. And even the more radical or reactionary progeny tend, over time, to assimilate with and be reabsorbed into the host.

One can find parallels for this in Judaism and Islam and Roman Catholicism. The religious spectrum repeats itself because human nature repeats itself, and there are only so many viable options. This is a combination of nature, grace, and sin.

It only takes a handful theological traditions within any given religion to exhaust what different personality-types are attracted to. That’s why the religious continuum reiterates itself in every time and place. The variations are cyclical rather than linear, microevolutionary rather than macroevolutionary.

By contrast, the Hegelian model of development which has captured the contemporary Catholic church is linear rather than cyclical, macroevolutionary rather than microevolutionary.