“Pope Francis” Channels “Adolph von Harnack”

They say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. In 1972, David Wells observed that Rome had a “divided mind”; that “present-day Catholicism, on its progressive side, is teaching many of the ideas which the liberal Protestants espoused in the last century.” This has now gone all the way to the top, as “Pope Francis” takes up the 19th century liberal battle cry, “the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man”:

Ratzinger: “for every statement advanced in one direction, the text offers one supporting the other side”

A week ago, I cited Protestant theologian David Wells describing Rome’s Divided Mind. The gist of what he was saying was this:

[Vatican II] actually endorsed two very different theologies and sometimes the differences could not be hidden. Neither side would accept ambiguity nor allow compromise. As a result, on some points the documents speak with two voices—one conservative and one progressive …

When neither side would back down and both insisted on having their views adopted, the Council searched for a reconciling statement which would be ambiguous enough to accommodate both schools of thought. When the Council was successful, both viewpoints were represented in one statement which obviously meant different things to different people …

There were times, however, when no reconciling statement could be found, and attempts to induce a surrender by one side or the other failed. In those cases, the Council would only endorse both positions with professional aplomb as if their mutual incompatibility were not longer glaringly obvious.

One kind of interpretive problem, then, which an analyst of the documents faces concerns the existence of those passages which are so brilliantly ambiguous as to be capable of serving the interests of both parties …

While reading Ratzinger’s work “Theological Highlights of Vatican II”, a work recently re-published touting Ratzinger as now Pope Benedict XVI, it seems as if the good Herr has confirmed the essential correctness of Wells’s analysis of Roman methodology.

Discussing “The So-Called ‘Explanatory Note’” tacked on to the end of the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, which sought to clarify the relationship of “bishops acting in conjunction with their head” with “bishops acting independently of the Pope”, Ratzinger says:

A detailed analysis of this very intricate text would take us here too far afield. The end result, which is what we are concerned with, would be the realization it did not create any substantially new situation. Without doubt the scales here were further tipped in favor of papal primacy as opposed to collegiality. But for every statement advanced in one direction the text offers one supporting the other side, and this restores the balance, leaving interpretations open in both directions. We can see the text as either “primatialist” or collegial. Thus we can speak of a certain ambivalence in the text of the “explanatory note,” reflecting the ambivalent attitude of those who worked on the text and tried to reconcile the conflicting tendencies. The consequent ambiguity is a sign that complete harmony of views was neither achieved nor even possible (Ratzinger, “Theological Highlights of Vatican II”, first published by Paulist Press, 1966, by special arrangement with Verlag J.P Bachem in Köln. English translation ©1966 by The Missionary Society of St Paul the Apostle in the State of New York; Introduction Copyright ©2009 by Thomas P. Rausch, SJ, pg s 170-171)

It should seem clear, even to the staunchest Roman Catholics now, that Wells was correct in his assessment, as it has been verified in print by Herr Ratzinger that official Roman documents “leave interpretations open in both directions”.

Now, this is a convenient state of affairs if you simultaneously (a) want to claim infallibility on a statement and (b) want to claim plausible deniability on a statement.

In the past, I have used phrases such as “what Rome gives with one fork of its tongue, it takes away with the other”

Speaking of “forked tongues” is not at all off the mark here. For in the light of Ratzinger’s statement, where, do we imagine, that Jesus’s statement fits into this official Roman methodology?

let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

“Rome’s Divided Mind”

“Both viewpoints were represented in one statement which obviously meant different things to different people...”

...Both viewpoints were represented in one statement
which obviously meant different things to
different people(click to enlarge).

The Second Vatican Council is different from the many ecumenical councils which have preceded it in at least two respects. First, it did not result from either external persecution or internal heresy. Second, for the first time in conciliar history, the documents which Vatican II developed officially embraced mutually incompatible theologies. This does not mean that councils in the past have always been unanimous in their decisions, for they have not. Nor does it mean that council decision were not sometimes compromises, for they were. And it does not mean that individuals or parties in the Church have always interpreted a council’s statement in the same way, for they have not.

What it means is that this council actually endorsed two very different theologies and sometimes the differences could not be hidden. Neither side would accept ambiguity nor allow compromise. As a result, on some points the documents speak with two voices—one conservative and one progressive. They reflect, in a fascinating and perhaps tragic way, the divided mind of modern Roman Catholicism. As a consequence, they pose a difficult problem. In attempting to analyze the mind of Rome, how are we to interpret the most important theological statement to emerge from this Church in [the twentieth] century?

The problem of interpretation will be clarified only when the unresolved confrontation between two theologies is seen clearly. The one theology was traditional, the other was not. The first was championed by the conservatives in general and the Curia in particular, while the second found its proponents among a new school of thinkers who in general represent the New Catholicism. The conservative approach largely concerned itself with representing the ideas of the Counter Reformation and the subsequent periods of high orthodoxy. By contrast, the new thinkers are considerably more flexible in their approach and, compared to draditional orthodoxy, relatively undogmatic. Their theology is rooted more in the patristic period than in the Counter Reformation, though it was mainly from the developments of the 1940s and early 1950s that they received their new direction. At issue in the Council, then, were not only matters of theology, but also questions of ideology, mentality and almost theological heritage.

When these two parties in the Council came into conflict, as they frequently did, one of three solutions was followed. Occasionally, but rarely, one of the positions emerged completely triumphant. Its ideas were written into the Council documents without modification from the other side.

A second solution was less satisfactory. When neither side would back down and both insisted on having their views adopted, the Council searched for a reconciling statement which would be ambiguous enough to accommodate both schools of thought. When the Council was successful, both viewpoints were represented in one statement which obviously meant different things to different people. …

Click to enlarge.

There were times, however, when no reconciling statement could be found, and attempts to induce a surrender by one side or the other failed. In those cases, the Council would only endorse both positions with professional aplomb as if their mutual incompatibility were not longer glaringly obvious. A case in point occurred in the Constitution on the Church which … was dramatically highlighted by Pope Paul VI’s clumsy intervention.

One kind of interpretive problem, then, which an analyst of the documents faces concerns the existence of those passages which are so brilliantly ambiguous as to be capable of serving the interests of both parties …

Vatican II is important because it gave the New Catholicism a legal base from which to operate. If this analysis is correct, the conservative, traditional position, partly endorsed in the conciliar documents, belongs to a dying world. The future is not in the hands of the conservatives….

David Wells, “Revolution in Rome”, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ©1972, pgs 27-36.

Inventing the papacy

http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/rise-papacy/

The Roman Catholic Church is willing to let this commenter be deceived

The Council of Trent held that “the purity itself of the Gospel [is always] preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand”.

Concerning the method of transmission, Trent was clear to state, “(the Synod) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, [considers that the books of the Bible] as having been dictated, either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.

This principle, of exact dictation, conforms with the principle known as Semper Eadem, “always the same”. Owen Chadwick explained:

‘The Catholic faith’—what is it? An unchanging gospel, handed down by pen and mouth from age to age, generation to generation, mother to child, teacher to taught, pulpit to pew. An inexhaustible treasure deposited in a bank, so that all may draw from it. That which has been believed in every place, in every century, by all Christian men and women” (“From Bossuet to Newman” London: Cambridge University Press, ©1957, 1987, pg 1).

For a time, it was thought, Rome never changes. But now, in the world of Vatican II, Roman doctrine has certainly changed. Not only did Rome change in the period of time through the middle ages up until Trent (as Newman recognized), but it has changed radically in the days following Newman. And in Vatican II, seeking, in the words of “Good Pope John” (John XXIII):

The certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which we must remain ever faithful, must be examined and expounded by the methods applicable in our times. We must distinguish between the inheritance of the faith itself, or the truths which are contained in our holy doctrine, and the way in which these truths are formulated, of course with the same sense and same significance (citing from the opening speech at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia).

Except, in the “reformulating” of these “truths which are contained in our holy doctrine”, Vatican II used the very words of the flaming liberals, as one commenter put it. This writer contends that he and other “conservative Catholics” (whose “personal interpretation” of the Vatican II documents is perspicuously the correct one, whereas, the liberals are wrong), notes, that “belief in six-day creationism” is not merely “simplistic literalism”. Rather it is “a literal historical fact”. This commenter, is, in fact, much smarter and even more correct than Pope John Paul II, who said that “the recognition of the theory of evolution [is] more than a hypothesis”. Of course, now, “The Church's magisterium is directly concerned with the question of evolution, for it involves the conception of man”. In fact:

“Pius XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere iubei"; Humani Generis 36)”.

Fortunately, both of these evolution-friendly popes are dead, and this commenter now may continue to be the bulwark of support among Roman Catholics that “belief in six-day creationism” is “a literal historical fact”. (Any day now, Pope Benedict is going to kick the bucket; a new pope is waiting in the wings to recognize, infallibly and ex cathedra, what this commenter has been saying all along).

As I mentioned, Raymond Brown, was, according to this commenter, “was a flaming liberal, who unfortunately influenced a lot of Catholic laity and clergy”. Apparently, he and “other flaming liberals” not only influenced “a lot of laity and clergy”. But they influenced popes and conciliar doctrinal statements.

In his “Introduction to New Testament Christology”, here is what Brown says:

By the 1960s official church teaching affirmed that the Gospels were not necessarily literal accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus. [Contra Trent: see above]. … Yet this change of teaching has not been successfully communicated to the Catholic public at large; and so nonscholarly conservativism still prevails … Most churchgoing Catholics are not yet aware of any other view, even though now almost all Catholic biblical scholars (see below) have accepted that the Gospels manifest a development beyond the era of Jesus and for years have taught such a development to candidates for the priesthood or theological degrees (Brown, “An Introduction to New Testament Christology”, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, ©1994 by Associated Sulpicians of the U.S., pg 9).

Sulpicians, by the way, are an order devoted to teaching “candidates for the priesthood”, and Brown was one of them.

Brown points to the Pontifical Biblical Commission's 1964 "Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels", noting that “The substance of this instruction made it into Dei Verbum 5.19”, he said.

Here is what the “Instruction” said:

IX. This primitive instruction, which was at first passed on by word of mouth and then in writing--for it soon happened that many tried "to compile a narrative of the things" which concerned the Lord Jesus--was committed to writing by the sacred authors in four Gospels for the benefit of the churches, with a method suited to the peculiar purpose which each (author) set for himself. From the many things handed down they selected some things, reduced others to a synthesis, (still) others they explicated as they kept in mind the situation of the churches. With every (possible) means they sought that their readers might become aware of the reliability of those words by which they had been instructed. Indeed, from what they had received the sacred writers above all selected the things which were suited to the various situations of the faithful and to the purpose which they had in mind, and adapted their narration of them to the same situations and purpose. Since the meaning of a statement also depends on the sequence, the Evangelists, in passing on the words and deeds of our Saviour, explained these now in one context, now in another, depending on (their) usefulness to the readers. Consequently, let the exegete seek out the meaning intended by the Evangelist in narrating a saying or a deed in a certain way or in placing it in a certain context.

Now, here is what Dei Verbum 5.19 said:

19. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day …  The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus. For their intention in writing was that either from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who "themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word" we might know "the truth" concerning those matters about which we have been instructed (see Luke 1:2-4).

There is no question that, even if our commenter rejects this 1964 “Instruction”, Vatican II certainly endorsed it. This episode, of course, falls into the category of “those passages which are so brilliantly ambiguous as to be capable of serving the interest of both parties”, according to David Wells.

My point, for the sake of the commenter, is not that the Pontifical Biblical Commission today has any authority. My point is, it had very real authority for the writers of Vatican II, (wasn’t one of them named Ratzinger?), and that, this is one of several statements of “passages which are so brilliantly ambiguous as to be capable of serving the interest of both parties”.

So to be sure, “flaming liberal” interests have been served well – they are on the books now, written into a Roman Catholic Council, endorsed by popes and bishops, and if our commenter thinks that the infallible Magisterium of today’s Roman Catholic Church believe in “the historical Gospel accounts and in six-day creationism” that “Church Fathers shows very clearly they believed in”, well, he can go on deceiving himself. His “Church” is certainly willing to let him continue to be deceived.

Why we should continue to bring up the Roman Catholic sex scandals

If you were to study the history of Vatican II, you would see that there were two primary factions present: those who might be called the “traditionalists”, and those who might be called “the progressives”. At Vatican II, Rome didn’t solve the “unity” problem between these two groups on the strength of its doctrines. It papered over the problems with what amounted to a form of equivocation.

Rome has a history of pressing the unsavory use of language to its advantage (consider the tactic of mental reservation, which is really only an institutionally-sanctioned form of lying). Many of these recent scandals we are seeing really are only the fruit of its practice.

We are aware of the criticisms of the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” statements, which relied on equivocation of terms in order to demonstrate some form of agreement. In the case of Vatican II, (and in the “Spirit of Vatican II”), Rome used equivocation and amphiboly to paper over the differences between the “traditionalists” and the “progressives”. The Protestant theologian David Wells, in his brief 1972 book “Revolution in Rome” commented on one particular example:

One kind of interpretive problem, then, which an analyst of the (Vatican II) documents faces concerns the existence of those passages which are so brilliantly ambiguous as to be capable of serving the interest of both parties. The statement on biblical inerrancy best illustrates this problem. The council affirmed:

“since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” (Dei Verbum 11).

This statement, over which there was a considerable tussle both in private and in public, seems at first sight to affirm Rome’s traditional stance on this matter. For this reason, conservatives in the Council agreed to it, and some Protestants subsequently have been led to think that Catholicism’s historic stance on this matter is unaltered….

But is this really the case? A careful scrutiny of the Council’s statement shows that it can be interpreted in an entirely different way, one which a majority of Catholic scholars are now following. In perhaps the most lucid account of the Council’s theology, B.C. Butler, explains how. The council obviously spoke of the Bible “teaching without error”, but the significance of this phrase, he argues, depends on the view of “the truth” which Scripture is said to teach without error. ‘Here the word “truth” is qualified by a statement of the finality or purpose of inspiration; it is a question of truth relevant to God’s saving purpose summed up in Christ. The point he is making is that many truths of science and history have no part to play in our salvation. “For instance” he says, “the date of the appearance of the human species in natural history is not formally relevant to our salvation; the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection is formally relevant.”

The illustration in the first half of Butler’s sentence is so obvious that the reader is disarmed against the thrust of the second half. The council’s statement, he argues, guarantees as inerrant only those truths necessary for our salvation. The meaning of the passage, therefore, turns on the question of how much we need to know with certainty to be saved. Apparently there is room for discussion on this point. Butler has limited the inerrant statements of Scripture to those which bear on the saving actions of God which were summed up in Christ, but Gregory Baum has trimmed this core even further. To be saved, he says, we need to know exceedingly little; exceedingly little, then, is inerrantly taught in scripture (Wells, p. 29-32).

It should be said that the whole of Vatican II was pervaded by this “Spirit”. And coming out of this “Spirit” were highly liberal individuals such as, in the words of Carl Trueman, “the Kungs, Rahners, Schillebeeckxs and the journalists at the National Catholic Reporter”. Roman Catholic epologists in our day automatically exclude these individuals from even being Catholic, but as Trueman says, “They all claim to be good Roman Catholics and find their unity around the Office of the Pope, after all. Let us not exclude them on the dubious grounds that they do not support our own preconceived conclusions of how papal authority should work.”

Well, this faux “unity” is now coming home to roost for the Roman hierarchy.

To be sure, the doctrinal questions are at the heart of everything. And these sexual abuse scandals are something of a side show. James Swan at Beggars All has raised the question of just how useful it is to bring up the various scandals. And Luther himself said “Life is bad among us as among the papists. Hence, we do not fight and damn [the Roman Catholics] because of their bad lives …. I do not consider myself to be pious. But when it comes to whether one teaches correctly about the word of God, there I take my stand and fight. That is my calling. To contest doctrine has never happened until now. Others have fought over life; but to take on doctrine—that is to grab the goose by the neck! …” (Cited by Steven Ozment,”The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe”, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 198), pgs 315-316).

But today, Roman Catholicism is more than just the sum of its doctrines.

For many Roman Catholics, so much of it really isn’t about “the doctrines” or doctrinal arguments any more. It’s cultural. It’s an ethos. We are frequently asked, “given the doctrinal difficulties that Rome faces, what is it that allures smart people to convert to Rome?” I’m convinced that at least part of the attraction is the ethos of Rome.

Vatican II was largely about something I’ll call “the glories of the church”. Showing off “the splendor of unity”. For most Roman Catholics today, John Paul II was something like a kindly grandfather. He spent years of his life talking not about theology, but something called “marriage and family”, which, in good part, was a defense of Humanae Vitae and related issues of sexuality. And the ethos may be characterized as saying “it’s good to be Roman Catholic. I can live my life according to these rules, and feel good about myself.”

If you have ever been to a Friday fish fry, or heard your co-workers sitting around talking about “what they’re giving up for Lent”, well, that’s what “cultural” Roman Catholicism becomes in its local communities. It’s all about “good food, friends from the neighborhood, and fellowship at a place we can trust”. It is largely cultural.

Thus, this “sexual abuse scandal”, which occurred under the watch of the grandfatherly John Paul II really undermines all the good feelings that lots of people had about that time and era. There’s a real “yuck” factor with the sexual abuse scandal. But further to that, the sexual abuse stories aren’t even about the sexual abuse. They’re about the cover-up. They’re about the criminal behavior of the bishops and church administrators. And when we bring up these scandals, (and the daily newspaper makes that easy to do), the question becomes, “are these the individuals you want to trust with your soul?” A further (doctrinal) question might be, does God really promise to give special guidance to “the Church”, an organization like this one, which is simultaneously “leading the flock” and engaging in criminal behavior?

Historically, Rome has showed itself off to the world as an unyielding edifice, a shelter against the storms. The problem with that, is that only “The name of the LORD is a fortified tower” (Proverbs 18:10). Even the mighty Vatican is going to crumble some day.

And Jesus was right: we can discern a tree from its fruit. And so now, in pointing to the feminist nuns who are now in battle with the Bishops, [who are what they are “in the Spirit of Vatican II”] to the huge percentage of priests and bishops (estimates range from 20% to 50%) who are said to be gay, we may legitimately say, “Here is your infallible Church in action”.

There is rampant sexual scandal in the Roman Church, all through Church history. At a minimum, bringing all this up will give us the opportunity to ask Roman Catholics (as I have done) to articulate again the specific doctrines which say, yes, “even though these are the most wicked people in the world, Christ still promises to protect them from erring doctrinally”. That is a very lame argument, when you look at it, and I don’t think many people have the stomach for it.

The Internet and the speed of modern communications is genuinely shining a light on the difficulties that Rome’s ancient method of manipulation. Words really do mean things. Rome’s “we are the masters of the word” attitude has come into clear view, with bishops, who after all created “the Spirit of Vatican II”, now chastising the feminist nuns that their own practice of equivocation initially fostered. It is coming home, full circle.

In reality, Rome’s Vatican II solution was a cowardly solution. It was a failure to stand on principle, and these sex abuse cover-ups and this situation with the nuns that is the fruit of that flight from principle.

Rome’s epologists love to talk trash about “scholarship”. Pay no attention to the truth, or to the facts. What Rome has always said is really what it has always been”. Bringing up these modern-day failures of Rome’s ancient method is an exceptional way of undermining the veracity of what Rome has to say.

No, it’s not a primary “argument”. But it is a cultural factor that strips away some of the shine of the “cultural” reasons for becoming, or remaining, Roman Catholic. 

David Wells on Petitionary Prayer as Rebellion

“What, then, is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion--rebellion against the world in its fallenness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is, in this its negative aspect, the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God. As such, it is itself an expression of the unbridgeable chasm that separates Good from Evil, the declaration that Evil is not a variation on Good but its antithesis...

“It is therefore impossible to seek to live in God’s world on his terms, doing his work in a way that is consistent with who he is, without engaging in regular prayer.”

- David Wells, “Prayer: Rebelling Against the Status Quo”
[http://resources.campusforchrist.org/images/3/33/David_Wells.pdf]