Turning to Catholicism-3

This is the third installment in my review of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. Several contributors use variations on the same argument. For instance, Ed Feser says:

A book is merely the expression of the thoughts of the person who wrote the book. In order to know for sure what he intended as part of the book and what he meant by it, you have to ask him. Or you might ask someone who knows him, or someone he has given authority to represent him. The point is that you have to be able to ask, and you can't literally ask a book anything. You can only ask, and get answers from, something personal rather than impersonal…Now, when Christ was on earth, he could obviously be asked by his disciples about his revelation. After he departed, these disciples themselves could do the job for others who had questions. Unless these disciples themselves left successors, in each succeeding generation, with the authority to do the same, those later generations would be unable to get an answer to the question of what is truly part of Christ's revelation and how to understand it…Where these persons disagree, the institution cannot function unless there is some chief executive with authority to break any deadlock. In short, divine revelation, to be effective, requires something like apostolic succession and a papacy–that is, of course, exactly what Catholicism maintains…Without such an institutional authority, whether to accept something as part of divine revelation, and how to interpret revelation, ultimately seem arbitrary, subjective, and fideistic… (49-50).

While Cutter says:

A living teaching authority is also, I think, a practical necessity for the spiritual life of the individual believer…If the Catholic Church did not have divine authority, then there was no hope of gaining firm knowledge of much of anything in theology. I felt that if the Church of Rome could not be trusted, then the whole Christian theological project was hopelessly under-constrained (95; cf. 107-08; 230). 

i) That's a standard Catholic tactic. It goes back to the Pyrrhonian skepticism of Counter-Reformation apologists. But such radical hermeneutical skepticism boomerangs on the Catholic apologist. To begin with, that makes it impossible to provide epistemic warrant for conversion to Catholicism. Take Catholic prooftexts from the Bible and the church fathers. But if interpreting a text is so hopelessly subjective and arbitrary, then the prooftexts can't be used to establish a "living teaching authority" in the first place. So conversion to Rome can never be justified. 

ii) Apropos (i), how do Cutter and Feser know that Jesus founded a church? How do they know what he meant? How do they know he even existed? Given their radical doubt about communication, they can't appeal to the NT or the church fathers. They can't appeal to documentary evidence, since that must be interpreted. So what's their source of information? What's their frame of reference? 

iii) Likewise, it isn't possible on their view to compare the Catholic alternative to Protestant theology. For instance, you can't compare and contrast Tridentine theology to the Westminster Confession if you think interpreting a text is so hopelessly subjective and arbitrary. 

iv) By the same token, where does that leave The Catechism of the Catholic Church, or papal encyclicals? How many Catholic laymen can grill the pope what a particular sentence means in the Catechism or some papal encyclical? 

v) Feser seems awfully confident about his grasp of Aquinas. Did he step into a time machine and consult Aquinas in person? Did he consult Reginald of Piperno? 

vi) Feser is utterly convinced that Pope Francis is wrong about capital punishment. Feser is sure he can interpret church tradition regarding capital punishment independently of the pope and in defiance of the pope. 

vii) How can a reader evaluate Hume's objections to miracles and theistic proofs given their radical hermeneutical skepticism? How can a Catholic apologist or prospective convert understand and evaluate Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine if a reader must be able to ask the author what he meant? 

viii) The reason we have a Bible, the reason some things were committed to writing, was to provide a permanent record for posterity in the absence of Jesus, the apostles, and OT prophets. Since we didn't live by then, that's our referent point.

ix) In addition, some NT epistles were written with the express purpose of resolving a doctrinal dispute–in the absence of the writer. Imagine of the opponents of St. John or St. Paul resorted to the impious skepticism of Cutter and Feser? "That's just a text! It could mean anything! Unless I can personally quiz St. John (or St. Paul), I'm entitled to disregard their letter!"