John Paul II's legacy

Leonardo De Chirico writes about John Paul II's legacy.

Roman or Catholic?

An Unsettled Tension 
One of the roles of the pope has always been the maintenance of the balance between the Roman and the Catholic dimensions. Roman Catholicism is the ongoing tension between two fundamental aspects of the whole: the Roman side, with its emphasis on centralized authority, pyramidal structure, binding teaching and the rigidity of canon law; and the Catholic side, with its emphasis on the universal outlook, the absorption of ideas and cultures and the inclusive embrace of practices into the Catholic whole. The resulting system is Roman Catholicism, at the same time Roman and Catholic. The human genius of Roman Catholicism and one of the reasons for its survival across the centuries has been its ability to be both, though not without tensions and risks of disruption.

Popes embody the Roman Catholic synthesis by holding together the Roman apparatus and the Catholic vision. Of course, they each do it differently, especially after the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II, for example, was a very Roman pope but at the same time a very Catholic one. For example, he strongly defended traditional Roman Catholic teaching (e.g. by launching the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church), but was second to none in promoting the universality of this Church around the world (e.g. inter-religious dialogue, traveling globally). Unlike John Paul II, who was both Roman and Catholic, Benedict XVI made the pendulum swing over the Roman pole. With his staunch conservativism in areas such as liturgy, morality and the critical relationship with the secular world, Benedict appeared to be more Roman than Catholic. He seemed to be a rigid, centripetal, doctrinaire pope. A Roman pope. Many felt that his papacy, while strong in its Roman centredness and boundaries, was weak in its Catholic breadth and warmth.

This criticism helps explain why a pope like Francis was chosen to succeed him. With the election of Pope Francis, Rome seemed to be wanting the pendulum to move in the opposite direction in order to re-address the balance. Distancing himself from many Roman features of the office (e.g. his refusal of the pomp of the Vatican Curia, his blurred teaching that leans away from official teachings), Francis has embodied the role of a very Catholic pope. His stress on “Who are we to judge?”, universal brotherhood with Muslims and other religions,ecological concerns, etc. made his papacy significantly shaped by the Catholic elements. The open-endedness of his teaching, coupled with the ambiguity of his language, has created some interest in the secular West, which resonates with much of what he says on social issues. This is to say that he is a very Catholic pope. Perhaps too Catholic andtoo little Roman for a growing number of Roman Catholics!

http://vaticanfiles.org/en/2020/02/vf172/

“Pope Francis” vs “Pope John Paul II”: Opposing “Veritatis Splendor”

The Roman Catholic journalist Sandro Magister has fretted now that the dismissal of Cardinal Gerhard Müller was really “an attack on ‘Veritatis Splendor’”, which he called “the most important doctrinal encyclical” of “Pope John Paul II”, and further, that this “attack” was accompanied by an affirmation of this encyclical, “by fate or divine providence” in “all the Catholic churches of the Roman rite” in the regularly scheduled prayers in last Sunday’s Mass:

“O God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth. Through our Lord...

The first line of that encyclical re-states the Roman Catholic distinction vs Protestantism:

Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, "the true light that enlightens everyone" (Jn 1:9), people become "light in the Lord" and "children of light" (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by "obedience to the truth" (1 Pet 1:22).

“Obedience” makes people “holy”. This precisely mirrors the error that Augustine made, which led to the medieval misunderstanding of justification, which in turn was contested by Luther and the Reformers. The Council of Trent later codified the error as “infallible dogma”.

But there is a second error espoused by “Pope Francis” and “Amoris Laetitia”, and it was articulated by Joseph Ratzinger. Pope Ratzinger, who had been Prefect of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (CDF) prior to Müller, and who “contributed in a substantial way to the writing of that encyclical”, had this to say about it in a recent chapter in “a book in honor of John Paul II”:

“Pope Bergoglio the Tenacious”

Pope Bergoglio the Tenacious

Some folks got a kick out of referring to Karol Wojtyla as “Pope John Paul the Great”, as if a few journalistic designations could help to fix a historical understanding. What we’re beginning to see now are the various shapes of the long term effects of “Pope Bergoglio the Tenacious”. He knows he’s making significant changes, effectively undoing things that Pope Wojtlya put into place, and he is consciously acting in such ways as to assure that his mark will be felt far into the future.

Aside from being the pope who has upset the traditional sacramental apple cart, diminishing the once-unique role of “the eucharist” in the Roman Catholic Church by enabling “communion for those who are divorced and remarried without benefit of annulment” in the footnotes of his document, “Amoris Laetitia”, it is becoming clearer that Pope Bergoglio wants to leave his mark in other tangible ways as well:

[“Pope Francis”] has no desire to go down in history as a “transitional” pope. That which he is doing, he wants it to survive his departure. And to make sure of this he is institutionalizing the things dearest to him, he is making them stable, with all the numbers to keep moving forward on their own.

To that end, he is not only stacking the deck of Cardinals who can vote for a like-minded “successor”, but he is also coming up with new “traditions” that future popes will find difficult to stop.

According to the Roman Catholic journalist Sandro Magister, these include:

"A sure norm for teaching the faith"

According to the late John-Paul II:

In 1986, I entrusted a commission of twelve Cardinals and Bishops, chaired by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, with the task of preparing a draft of the catechism requested by the Synod Fathers. An editorial committee of seven diocesan Bishops, experts in theology and catechesis, assisted the commission in its work. 

The commission, charged with giving directives and with overseeing the course of the work, attentively followed all the stages in editing the nine subsequent drafts. The editorial committee, for its part, assumed responsibility for writing the text, making the emendations requested by the commission and examining the observations of numerous theologians, exegetes and catechists, and above all, of the Bishops of the whole world, in order to produce a better text.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved 25 June last and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium. I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion.

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/aposcons.htm

So that's a thoroughly vetted text. But it turns out that it wasn't all that reliable after all: 

The Catechism says succinctly: "Lying consists in saying what is false with the intention of deceiving one's neighbor" (no. 2508). Despite this simple statement, there is a long historical debate about the actual meaning of the term.

Catholic moral theologian Germain Grisez has observed: "Although most Catholic theologians have considered the prohibition of lying a moral absolute, there is a lesser but significant school of thought holding that lying sometimes can be justified, particularly when it is a question of lying to an enemy, who has no right to the truth, in order to protect the innocent from harm" ("The Way of the Lord Jesus,"vol. 2, Franciscan Press, 1993).

These two ways of thinking are reflected in the editorial process of the Catechism, which was revised for the book's second edition. The earlier edition (1994) stated that to lie is "to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has a right to know the truth" (no. 2483, emphasis added). This definition, reflecting what Grisez calls the "lesser but significant school of thought," stems from the teaching of the 17th-century Protestant writer Hugo Grotius.

After the publication of the Catechism, many Catholic scholars wrote to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) about this paragraph. They asked for rectification of the text, which had abandoned centuries of Catholic teaching by accepting the position of Grotius. Fortunately, the paragraph was revised; the 1997 edition eliminates the words "who has a right to know the truth" (see also no. 2484).

https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/ByIssue/Article/TabId/735/ArtMID/13636/ArticleID/495/A-Legitimate-Way-to-Lie.aspx

So, despite the fact that the project was overseen by the Prefect for the Faith (Cardinal Ratzinger), despite the fact that it went through ten drafts, despite the fact that Pope John-Paul pronounced it to be a "sure norm" for teaching the faith, the original paragraph on the morality of lying had to be rewritten after the Catechism was published. And not due to a typographical blunder, but because it promoted an unethical position on lying. Yet this is supposed to be the church that has a divine teaching office. The church that God protects from ethical or theological error in its official teaching. 

Which pope is correct?

Which pope is correct.

John Paul II, from “Familiaris Consortio” (1981)?

the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: ***if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

or Pope Francis?

The guidelines say that some civilly remarried couples who can’t adhere to the Church’s teaching of “living like brothers and sisters,” who have complex circumstances, and who can’t obtain a declaration of nullity for their first marriage, might undertake a “journey of discernment,” and arrive at the recognition that in their particular case, there are limitations that “diminish responsibility and culpability.”

For these exceptional cases, the bishops wrote, “Amoris Laetitia opens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”

The guidelines, dated Sept. 5, reached Francis, who answered on the same day, writing: “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”

“Pope Francis” is on the verge of creating “error and confusion” in one direction or another

Decision of “Pope Francis” on communion for divorced and remarried is expected soon.

The Roman Catholic Church is facing the practical consequences of its “both/and” theology, as the recent synods on the family have shown. And now the contradictions of “both/and” are coming home to roost, as “Pope Francis” takes his time in making a decision about the way to move forward.

“His decision could exacerbate the church’s divisions by disappointing one side or the other—or both if he leaves the question unresolved.”

… nothing the pope has done has raised more hopes or fears within the Catholic Church than his decision to open a debate about divorce and remarriage that his predecessors had declared settled.

It is especially raising the fears of theological conservatives precisely because of the prospect that a doctrinal issue (not a “disciplinary” or “pastoral” issue) that “Pope John Paul the Great” had considered “settled”, is not so settled now.

“Pope John Paul II” Photographed in his Underwear With a Woman

The year Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became "Pope John Paul II"

Hundreds of letters and photographs that tell the story of Pope John Paul II's close relationship with a married woman, which lasted more than 30 years, have been shown to the BBC.

The letters to Polish-born American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had been kept away from public view in the National Library of Poland for years.

The documents reveal a rarely seen side of the pontiff, who died in 2005.

There is no suggestion the Pope broke his vow of celibacy.

Of course, he never married. But that bolded statement doesn’t mean he never had sex.

There is a frequent misunderstanding about how the word “celibacy” is used in the Roman Catholic Church. The “vow of celibacy” is not a vow not to have sex; it is a vow not to marry. The old Catholic Encyclopedia makes the distinction this way:

The vow of chastity forbids all voluntary sexual pleasure, whether interior or exterior: thus its object is identical with the obligations which the virtue of chastity imposes outside the marriage state.

Strictly speaking, it differs (though in ordinary language the expressions may be synonymous) from the vow of celibacy (or abstinence from marriage), …

The violation of the vow of chastity is always a sin against religion; it constitutes also a sacrilege in a person who has received Holy orders, or in a religious, because each of these persons has been consecrated to God by his vow: his vow forms part of the public worship of the Church.

A person who, in defiance of his solemn vow, attempts to contract marriage, incurs the excommunication reserved to the bishop by the Constitution "Apostolicae Sedis".

That is a big difference. “Secular” priests (contrasted with those who join religious orders) don’t take vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”. They do however take vows of “celibacy”. A priest who has sex with a woman, or sodomy with a man, can confess the incident and be done with it. A priest who marries is in a whole different world of legal trouble with “the Church”.

Enter this story about Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, who later became known as “Pope John Paul II”.

“Pope John Paul letters reveal ‘intense’ friendship with woman”. The folks at Rorate Caeli tweeted that link with the message “The IMMENSE dangers of Express-Canonization”.

Of course, we all know that “Pope John Paul II”, who died in 2005, was “fast-tracked” into Sainthood, and was canonized by “Pope Francis” in 2014.

The Rorate folks are suggesting that the “fast track” was just simply too fast, and some important things were missed. Such as this “friendship”, for which there is now hard evidence in the form of letters and photographs.

Of course, the canonization committee provided the usual Roman Catholic explanation for the failure to incorporate these letters and photos into the process: “It’s not our fault”. They said:

The process of saint-making is usually long and very costly, but John Paul II was fast-tracked to sainthood in just nine years.

Normally the Vatican asks to see all public and private writings when considering a candidate for sainthood, but the BBC has not been able to confirm whether the letters were seen.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it is up to individual Catholics to decide whether to send in documents.

"All our duties were done," it told the BBC in a statement. "All private documents, sent by faithful as a response to the edict, and documents found in important archives were studied."

The article concludes, “The National Library of Poland disputes that this was a unique relationship. It says it was one of many warm friendships the Pope enjoyed throughout his life.”

Note to National Review: The Real Lesson of “Vatican Diplomacy”

“Pope John Paul the Great” presided over the largest institutionalized cover-up of a sex-abuse scandal in history; this is an unspoken fact that has consequences.

If National Review wants to show that it is presenting some kind of “conservative moral message”, it shoots itself in the foot by continuing to publish George Weigel as if he were some sort of a moral authority.

George “I-had-dinner-with-the-pope” Weigel, writing in National Review, compares the foreign policy initiatives of Karol Wojtyla, “Pope John Paul the Great”, with those of “Pope Francis”.

But it is the public stench of the rot at the heart of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice – supported and enhanced by both of these popes – that is the real message of morality that comes through to the broader world.

Weigel is of the opinion that the current Vatican diplomats might want to study “the failure of the Casaroli Project”, with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli being “the Kissinger of the Vatican” from the mid 1960’s to 1978, who “believed that the Cold War division of Europe were a permanent fixture of world politics at the time. The Vatican’s diplomatic policy at the time was to take an accommodating approach to the Soviet bloc, rather than take a more confrontational stance. In doing so, Weigel suggests that Casaroli thought that the Soviet bloc would lead to “a slowly liberalizing East and an increasingly social-democrat West” that would lead to a type of global convergence.

Weigel describes how Wojtyla, himself from Poland, chose rather to stare down (in a non-confrontational way) the leadership of Poland in the early 1980’s, and he believes this sort of play-acting had something to do with the fact that the Soviet Union fell. My sense of that time period was that perhaps Wojtyla’s personality helped to unify the Polish people so that there was no vacuum after the fall, but that it did not actually precipitate the fall of the communist governments.

Indeed, it is one thing to make a population feel good about itself, but it was the forceful political moves made by Ronald Reagan (increasing defense spending, proposing the “Star Wars” weapons systems), which ultimately forced the Soviet Union out of business.

Weigel also suggests that Wojtyla’s willingness to confront some of the tin-pot dictators of South America that somehow led to an increase of “economic freedom” in Latin America.

John Paul II knew that corruption was one of the primary reasons that Latin America was failing to fulfill its enormous potential. He also knew that the kind of systemic, culturally reinforced corruption that had turned Argentina from one of the world’s wealthiest countries into a bankrupt basket case reflected an enormous failure on the part of the Catholic Church, which had had 500 years to help build something better, something nobler, something more empowering — something more resonant with human dignity.

Weigel goes on to say that “The people in charge of Vatican diplomacy today seem to have missed all this or forgotten all this”.

Today, however, the Vatican’s institutional memory seems to retain little from either the teaching or the accomplishment of John Paul II. And that ill serves Pope Francis, whose public persona and popularity, like John Paul’s, create openings for real change to happen: change that leads to the empowerment and inclusion of the poor and marginalized. Such change seems unlikely, however, in circumstances in which Evo Morales thinks he can offer the first Latin American pope the dumbed-down, faux-Communist equivalent of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ — and get away with it.

But what is really forgotten, what Weigel fails to understand, is that “the pope’s diplomats” today represent an institution that is vastly diminished in many ways. “Pope John Paul the Great” may have made Poles feel good about themselves, but he also presided (wittingly or unwittingly) over the greatest institutional cover-up of an organized homosexual sex abuse effort that history has ever seen.

The constant failure to make this admission shows Weigel, and National Review, as being supremely hypocritical in the face of a watching world.

We are also seeing a broader world that refuses to be held captive to a philosophical agenda in which “individual [sexual] autonomy” is the chief good, and that “Pope ‘who-am-I-to-judge’ Francis” has already paid a form of lip-service to it.

So “the Vatican diplomatic corps” (including “the pope’s diplomats”) is really something of a global laughingstock. Weigel’s suggestion that they would be taken more seriously if they were to spend the summer “studying the teaching of John Paul II on the free and virtuous society of the 21st century”, misses the boat entirely.

Weigel writes about “the Bishop of Rome as the Catholic Church’s leading public witness”. It is Roman Catholic “teaching” that seeks to separate “teaching” from practice. However, Jesus, Paul, and in fact the entire New Testament witness strongly emphasized the need for “practice” to comport with teaching.

There is a simple word for what “Roman Diplomacy” represents to the world: it is pure and simple hypocrisy.

National Review’s reliance on Weigel and Roman “teaching”, while failing to acknowledge its practice, harms its own ability to carry any kind of moral message in a world that badly needs one.

Roman Catholic “presuppositions” on the early papacy are in retreat

Galileo: “If I can do it, Bergoglio can do it”

A “presupposition” is an elementary assumption in one’s reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed… [In the case of Protestant/Catholic discussions], a “presupposition” is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide-ranging foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision. (

That’s a fairly simple and standard definition given by Greg Bahnsen, early on in his work on “Van Til’s Apologetic (Phillipsburg: New Jersey, P&R Publishing, ©1998, pg 2).

Whatever level of “immunity to revision” one’s presuppositions may have, there are simply times and events which force that simply force one to modify one’s presuppositions. Galileo’s study of the solar system was one such occasion, forcing the Roman Catholic Church to modify its own “presuppositions”. (“The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could be supported as only a possibility, not an established fact”. Over time, Roman Catholicism later modified these views even further, and in the 20th century, described Galileo as being among the “most audacious heroes of research”).

I believe that historical research into ancient cultures and “Earliest Christianity” is having the effect similar to Galileo’s on Roman Catholic doctrine, especially with respect to the papacy. In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued a statement Ut Unum Sint, in which he was asked (by whom?) “to find a way of exercising the [papal] primacy which … is … open to a new situation”

He positions this search for “a new situation” as “a request made of me”.

I can’t say who made the request, but in the past I have pointed to a growing body of historical literature (and this blog post only touches the surface) – it certainly seems as if this type of work has, in the growing pressure it puts on the papacy over the last century, “made the request”. It is similar to the pressure that Galileo’s work put on Roman Catholicism to change its views on science.

But these changes with respect to “the earliest papacy” have much to do with the “doctrine” of the papacy, which in turn is at the heart of Roman Catholic doctrine and epistemology.

* * *

In turn, this evolution in papal doctrine has a direct bearing in showing precisely how some scientific and historical research is affirming one aspect of Christianity – and affirming some of the presuppositions that some Christians have held – in this case, the development of the canon of the New Testament – while seriously challenging the presuppositions that Roman Catholics hold about the foundations of their own belief something.

Both of these beliefs are held as presuppositions, or “precommitments”, by conservative Protestants and by Roman Catholics, respectively. This was illustrated in a discussion that I had recently:

The Roots of the Reformation: Indulgences

Indulgences: “Christ’s Satisfaction of Sins was Not Enough”

I’m reading The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence and Rupture (by G.R. Evans, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, ©2012). This is a work that looks at the issues that were prominent in the Reformation, and traces them back to their origins, either in the Scriptures or in the history of the church. I’m finding this to be a highly useful work in understanding those theological and doctrinal issues that the Reformers addressed.

One of those issues still around is “indulgences”. In 1999, Pope John Paul II issued his Papal Bull Incarnationis Mysterium, on “the mystery of the Incarnation” of the Son of God, which provided the rationale and modern justification for the notion that “indulgences” are still valid and can be given out by the pope.

I’ll look first at how Pope John Paul explained these indulgences, then how they actually “developed” in church history.

Who “Ruined” the Roman Catholic Church?

Peggy Noonan, the syrupy WSJ writer (and former Reagan speech writer) who famously coined the phrase “John Paul the Great” (whom Neuhaus predicted would usher in “the Catholic Moment”), now throws that hopeful papacy and the Ratzinger one under the bus and signs onto the “Church-in-ruins” model that Francis of Assisi was asked to fix:

One of the most famous moments in St. Francis's life is the day he was passing by the church of St. Damiano. It was old and near collapse. From St. Bonaventure's "Life of Francis of Assisi": "Inspired by the Spirit, he went inside to pray. Kneeling before an image of the Crucified, he was filled with great fervor and consolation. . . . While his tear-filled eyes were gazing at the Lord's cross, he heard with his bodily ears a voice coming from the cross, telling him three times: 'Francis, go and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruin.'" Francis was amazed "at the sound of this astonishing voice, since he was alone in the church." He set himself to obeying the command.

Go and repair my house, which is falling into ruin. Could the new pope's intentions be any clearer?

But after the great hopefulness of Vatican II, and the long and “great” papacies of JPII (with Ratzinger as the “doctrinal watchdog”) and then Ratzinger the great theologian, how in the world is “my house” [in this metaphor, the “One True Church”] falling into ruin?

Ruin is a very strong word. In this way, the convert-hopefulness of John Richard Neuhaus, exemplified in his work “The Catholic Moment” and the very founding of the journal “First Things”, is in “ruin”. But never mind that.

She continues:

The Catholic Church in 2013 is falling into ruin. The church has been damaged by scandal and the scandals arose from arrogance, conceit, clubbiness and an assumption that the special can act in particular ways, that they may make mistakes but it's understandable, and if it causes problems the church will take care of it.

What were JPII and Ratzinger doing for the last 35 years? Who were the “arrogant”, “conceited” “clubby” “insiders” who, while promising such hope, in the meanwhile, “shepherded” Christ’s “one true church” into ruin? Where is the “true church” if not in this “visible hierarchy” that was so promised to give the kind of “epistemological certainty” that Roman Catholic converts know to rely on?

It’s not “the liberals” who ruined things. It was the last two popes, the last two “shepherds”.

Liccione Quixote

Erick wrote, in response to Paul Bassett:

The problem remains however that the universal church for 15 centuries did not understand the last word on any issue, doctrinal or disciplinary, to be in one’s individual interpretation of Scripture, or even a collective interpretation by a huge community in schism (Presbyterian, Baptist, etc). Obviously, reading the Scripture is very important to Catholics, and many Catholics are willing to go toe to toe with protestants in exegesis; however the solutions that are written down for the problems going on in the NT era are not always applicable since, as time goes on, there arises new problems which are not addressed by the NT.

The Papacy is not an ever-present over-lord on the whole Church, it is a referee there needed for sacerdotal unity. If you read the opening words of certain councils, there are pronouncements that the Bishop of Rome is the occupant of a chair wherein the rock of Church remains. And this went uncontested for a very long time.

But even if you were to show how this was contested, what group, besides your own community of theological thought, even agrees with your positive application of how to do Church and worship, despite their agreement with you on the negative towards the Papacy?

The problem with your comment, Erick, is that “the universal church” did not ever “understand” anything at all with one voice. There never was “a last word” from “the universal church” on anything – not even the Council of Chalcedon [which was “reinterpreted” by later councils].

The quest to find such a thing is a meaningless one. A Quixotic one. There is no “there” there.

To provide just one [fairly big] example: In the fifth century, the Alexandrians (Monophysites) as followers of Cyril, and the Antiochians (Nestorians) as followers of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, both, with their “successions of bishops”, both split with the Greeks and Romans [“the Orthdox”] over the issue of whether Mary was Theotokos or Christotokos. This was the heart and soul of the Nestorian heresy, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.

But consider the Common Christological Declaration that JPII signed with the “Assyrian Church of the East” in 1994 – which you may have otherwise known as the “Nestorian” church. This declaration says The controversies of the past led to anathemas, bearing on persons and on formulas. The Lord's Spirit permits us to understand better today that the divisions brought about in this way were due in large part to misunderstandings.

This is a “misunderstanding” that directly relates to a “doctrinal” issue:

the Assyrian Church of the East is praying the Virgin Mary as "the Mother of Christ our God and Saviour". In the light of this same faith the Catholic tradition addresses the Virgin Mary as "the Mother of God" and also as "the Mother of Christ". We both recognize the legitimacy and rightness of these expressions of the same faith and we both respect the preference of each Church in her liturgical life and piety.

This is the Theotokos vs Christotokos issue that was the very reason for “the Council of Ephesus” (431 AD). It was Cyril’s condemnation of Nestorius for this very issue.

Note the following OLTV video in which the Orthodox bishop Timothy "Kallistos" Ware just comes right out and says "Nestorius was not guilty of the Nestorian heresy". You can see the video here:

http://www.oltv.tv/id553.html (Look at "Plenary 1", Clip 1, beginning approximately 2:20)…

…and read more about the dispute here:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f18/nestorius-council-ephesus-53817/

Your premise that “the universal church” did anything at all for 15 centuries is a false one. The “Nestorian” church never was not part of the universal church. Even though it had “bishops” in “succession”. The universal church had a mixed voice on this issue.

And it was mixed because of misunderstanding. Yes, doctrinal misunderstanding.

…the last word on any issue, doctrinal or disciplinary, to be in one’s individual interpretation of Scripture, or even a collective interpretation by a huge community in schism (Presbyterian, Baptist, etc)….

There never has been a “last word”. So the question “whose interpretation” really provides an answer that is far more convoluted than the answer you will receive at CTC. The very quest for alast word is a Quixotic one. Do you not see this?

Liccione’s “IP” which he finds “preferable” – because it offers a “a principled as opposed to an ad hoc way to distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions”, has no correspondence whatsoever with the actual course of church history. The universal church, not anywhere, ever, has identified [except by Roman fiat] this “formal, proximate object of faith” for which you are seeking. Even by his own standard of “papal ratifications of dogmatic canons issued by general councils meant to bind the whole Church”, you have, in the words of JPII, “a misunderstanding” which led to “anathemas” and schism.

This is an issue that is far older than Protestantism.

Housewives Called to Communion

I keep handy a copy of J.I. Packer’s “A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision for the Christian Life” [©1990 Crossway Books]. According to Packer, with respect to spirituality, “the Puritans are giants compared to us, giants whose help we need if ever we are to grow” (16).

Last, night, I came across the chapter on marriage and family. Packer notes “there is much to be learned by tracking Puritan thought on marriage and the family” (260). Especially, he notes, “the Puritans, like the Reformers, glorified marriage in conscious contradiction of the medieval idea that celibacy as practiced by clergy, monks, and nuns is better—more Christlike, more pleasing to God—than marriage, procreation, and family life” (260).

Packer cites a number of Puritan writings on the tenderness of married love. Here are several selections:

There is no such fountain of comfort on earth, as marriage.

It is a mercy to have a faithful friend that loveth you entirely … to whom you may open your mind and communicate your affairs …. And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul and … to stir up in you the grace of God.

God is the first Institutor of marriage, gave the wife to the husband, to bee, not his servant, but his helper, counselor, and comforter.

And then there is the well-known commentary of Matthew Henry on Genesis 2:22:

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near to his heart to be loved”.

Packer speaks of “the erotic agape of a romantic marriage” which was common in Puritan life.

Called to Desperation

This runs counter, now, to what the Called to Communion wives are experiencing. Perhaps they went along with their husband’s whims to give up the Reformed faith and move to Rome. I know, from correspondence with members of Jason Stellman’s church, that Jason’s wife did not give up her membership at Exile Presbyterian, and further, Jason’s youngest son made a profession of faith in that church. We should continue to pray for the difficulties left behind when these men gave up the faith.

“Marriage and Family” have a somewhat different meaning for Roman Catholics. Packer notes:

Thomas Aquinas gave teaching on womanhood that undergirded the opinion [that celibacy is more virtuous, more Christlike, and more pleasing to God]. He went so far as to opine that the birth of a girl is the result of a male embryo going wrong; that while a married man’s wife is a convenience to him, in that she enables him to procreate and avoid concupiscence (roving passion, prompting promiscuity), in all other respects a man will always make him a better companion and helpmeet than his wife, or any woman, can ever be. Furthermore, affirmed Aquinas, woman are mentally as well as physically weaker than men, and more prone to sin, and are always by their nature subject so some man. Husbands may correct their wives by corporal punishment if necessary, and children ought to love their father more than their mother. It may be said without fear of contradiction that the great theologian’s oracles about the second sex make distinctly dismal reading.

Nowadays, Roman Catholics pride themselves on their Church’s “Social Teaching”, but that is only a recent phenomenon. These attitudes of Aquinas were dominant for perhaps the largest portion of the time when “the Roman Catholic Church” was in ascendancy.

Thomas’ negativism here was not, indeed, entirely his fault; not only did Aristotle, whose thought Thomas sought to claim for Christianity, take a very low view of women, but many of the orthodox Fathers, whose teaching Thomas’ method required him to follow, had been just as negative and down-putting with regard to women, and even more so with regard to sexual relations in marriage. Chrysostom had denied that Adam and Eve could have had sexual relations before the Fall; Augustine allowed that procreation was lawful, but insisted that the passions accompanying intercourse were always sinful; Origen [who had made himself a eunuch for the Kingdom] had inclined himself to the theory that had sin not entered the world the human race would have been propagated in an angelic manner, whatever that might be, rather than by sexual union; and Gregory of Nyssa was sure that Adam and Eve had been made without sexual desire, and that had there been no Fall mankind would have reproduced by means of what Leland Ryken gravely calls ‘some harmless mode of vegetation’. (260–261).

Never fear. One reason why 90+% of Roman Catholic married couples today thumb their noses at Roman Catholic teaching about “marriage and family” is because John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been champions of a similar ethic on marriage. When he was a mere bishop, Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) wrote the book that was a major contribution to the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes from prison (December 18, 1943) “to put it plainly, for a man in his wife’s arms to be hankering after the other world is, in mild terms, a piece of bad taste, and not God’s will. We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelmingly earthly happiness, we mustn’t try to be more pious than God himself and allow our happiness to be corrupted by presumption and arrogance, and by unbridled religious fantasy which is never satisfied with what God gives” (Letters and Papers from Prison, pg 168).

The Emperor Wants your Marriage

And yet, this is exactly the way that the “Holy Fathers” want Roman Catholics to approach love in marriage.

John Paul II cautions his readers that love in marriage can quickly turn to lust, and urges his readers not to succumb to it. There is a difference between “lust” and “holy sexual desire”. “John Paul goes on to articulate that while the sexual urge is itself a gift from God that attracts towards one another, it is possible that this can easily corrupt the person when he/she seeks only the sexual attributes of the other than the person as a whole.” (Rev. Benjamin P. Bradshaw: “The Theology of the Body according to Pope John Paul II: Conference IV: From Lust to Love, updated 3/20/2010). Citing Wojtyla’s “Love and Responsibility”:

Inevitably, then, the sexual urge in human beings is always in the natural course of things directed towards another human being, this is the normal form in which it takes. If it is directed towards the sexual attributes as such this must be recognized as an impoverishment or even a perversion of the urge…It is just because it [sexual urge] is directed towards a particular human being that the sexual urge can provide the framework within which and the basis on which the possibility of love arises (pg 49).

The document continues, citing Benedict XVI:

For his part, Pope Benedict beautifully addresses this distinction in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est/God is Love published on Christmas day, 2005. In part I (of II) of the encyclical, Benedict addresses the transformation of eros, or erotic love (amor concupiscentiae) to agape or self-giving love (amor benevolentiae). The Holy Father points out that while erotic love is itself a great good, it must be purified, and in a way vivified by the self-sacrificing nature of agapic love:

An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns…Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or “poisoning” eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.

For the Roman Catholic male, then, you should remember Pope Benedict XVI when making love to your wife. He says it is good to make love to your wife, but then, the pope wants you to know that you ought not to be thinking lustful thoughts about her. That is a fall, a degradation. At that moment, you must take the pope’s instructions to heart and work toward “purification and growth in maturity” which are called for.

Wives, Roman Catholic wives, now, do not tempt your husbands to lust. Burn your lingerie, your lacey nighties; you too, must work for purification of yourself and your husband in bed, lest your corrupted eros ultimately lead to lust, and pride, and using your husband as a product.

You Desperate Called-to-Communion Housewives should now pause for a word from Your Holy Sponsor.