There are three basic problems with the argument:
i) Why couldn't a Muslim redeploy the same argument to defend Islam? Despite all the corruption, Islam has flourished for centuries.
ii) Pruss sees continuity through rose-tinted glasses. Many observers see a dramatic lack of diachronic consistency in Catholic teaching over the centuries.
iii) It's spiritually pernicious and morally subversive to turn pervasive corruption into evidence for the true religion. The more evil it is, the truer it is. That's diabolically clever.
BTW, the combox has some interesting exchanges.
"The consistency over time is amazing enough—but when one notes that the consistency includes popes who were, apparently, quite wicked, but who, nonetheless, did not formally teach the Church anything contrary to the earlier faith, the argument becomes even stronger."
ReplyDelete1. Which pope - the one in Rome, the one in Avignon, the one to come who will occupy the vacant seat?
2. Surely Pope Francis is putting this to the test (e.g. capital punishment).
“Did not formally teach...” — that is insidious. It also gives them wiggle room to get out of anything that hat may have been “taught” by the pope du jour. I call it the “Alias Smith and Jones” apologetic: for all the trains and banks they robbed, they never taught anyone.
DeleteIt seems Catholicism is like Hinduism in this respect. Almost any teaching can be subsumed under Catholicism and still remain true to Catholicism. It's as if one can't ever commit error by accretion.
DeleteNote that in the claim "Rome has never formally taught error", the word doing all the hard work is "formally". There's some small print somewhere that allows it to be claimed that, despite all the error disseminated, that error wasn't, in some sense, actually "taught". Taught, yes, plenty - but not "formally" taught, according to the retrospectively, selectively applied rules of the apologists.
DeleteGood point.
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