Roman Catholic Respectability Bought At The Price Of Liberalism

I recently had an email exchange that was partly about the idea that Catholicism is more appealing than Evangelicalism to people who are more educated. It's often suggested that converts to Catholicism are more educated than converts to Evangelicalism, that learning more about church history or some other subject leads people to Catholicism, that Catholicism is more intellectually respectable because it's more correct on philosophical, historical, and other matters, and so on. And Catholicism's alleged intellectual advantages in such contexts are often portrayed as evidence that the claims of traditional Catholicism are true, that conservative Catholicism has been vindicated. Really, though, something else is going on instead. During the course of my recent email discussion, I was reminded that many people are unaware of how liberal much of Roman Catholicism has become.

I'm not just referring to political liberalism, though that's part of it, but primarily liberalism in contexts like theology and the historicity of scripture. See here regarding how Catholicism has changed in various ways on a lot of issues, sometimes in a liberal direction. For some examples of recent Popes taking liberal positions on issues, see here. Raymond Brown was one of the most prominent Catholic Biblical scholars in recent decades. He wrote a book on the infancy narratives that's still widely regarded as the standard in the field. The view he argued for there was largely liberal. Here's a collection of posts I wrote in response to Brown. You can find discussions of other examples of liberalism in Catholicism in other posts in our archives (e.g., here).

Religious, moral, and political conservatives are often attracted to Catholicism because it's such a large and respected institution, with so much social standing, educational institutions that are highly regarded, associations with the arts, and other attributes they find appealing. But much of that has been purchased at the price of liberalism or purchased through some other problematic means. Would Catholicism retain its popularity, its associations with so many institutions, the amount of media coverage it gets, and so on if it were more consistently conservative and did substantially more to discipline its people for departing from those conservative standards? Surely not, as individuals like Raymond Brown and Joe Biden and their supporters illustrate. Catholicism often becomes more appealing by becoming overly involved in a culture and too much like the culture. That isn't all that's going on. There are some traits of Catholicism that distinguish it from the surrounding culture and move it in other directions than what I'm focused on here. But there's a large strand of cultural adaptation in Catholicism.

Steve Hays wrote a post more than a decade ago about the difference between seeing the church as a tabernacle and seeing it as a temple. That distinction has some relevance here.

“Pope Francis” Brings Doctrinal Anarchy, Leads People Astray

“Pope Francis” Brings Doctrinal Anarchy

The National Catholic Register is probably one of the most mainstream Roman Catholic publications that there is in the US. No one can claim that it’s either liberal or progressivist. They are purely the milquetoast EWTN Catholics. And now they have come out with the headline “Doctrinal Anarchy” in association with the fact that Bishops’ conferences around the world are coming up (as “Pope Francis” intended) with conflicting “interpretations” of the Amoris Laetitia statement.

Since the publication last year of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family Amoris Laetitia, a “doctrinal anarchy” that was feared and predicted at the synods on the family is becoming apparent.

Belgium’s bishops have become the latest to read the exhortation as giving — under certain conditions but with an emphasis on the primacy of conscience — access to the Sacraments for some civilly remarried divorcees without an annulment.

They follow the bishops’ conferences of Malta, the Philippines and Germany, as well as some bishops from other countries who have issued similar guidelines and statements for interpreting Amoris Laetitia’s controversial Chapter 8.

By contrast, Poland’s bishops’ conference last week became the first national conference to declare that Amoris Laetitia has not changed Church doctrine on Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, and that they continue not to have access to the Sacraments as the Church considers them to be living in an objective state of adultery.

I found this article (and a related one) among Jerry Walls’s Facebook posts. Regarding the “doctrinal anarchy”, he asks the question, “are conservative Roman Catholics now accusing their own Church of what they normally accuse Protestants?”

One writer there, Mark Daviau (a recent “Catholic Convert” who seems to be representative of such folks), apparently gave a response to the effect that “It’s no big deal; the pope wasn’t speaking ex cathedra and no dogma was changed”. For many Roman Catholic converts, this is their stock-in-trade. For them, the fact that “Roman Catholic Dogma” is not changed, is 100% of the reason for their “faith in the Church”. Nothing else matters. Never mind it is the case that Rome adds layer upon layer of obfuscation as time goes on, which, in reality, does change Roman Catholic dogma.

As Raymond Brown has said, “Essential to a critical interpretation of church documents is the realization that the Roman Catholic Church does not change her official stance in a blunt way. Past statements are not rejected but are requoted with praise and then reinterpreted at the same time” (Raymond E. Brown, “The Critical Meaning of the Bible,” New York, NY: Paulist Press ©1981, Nihil Obstat and Imprimitur, pg 18 fn 41).

Francis Beckwith, the took issue with this, noting (as in the screen capture nearby), that the real issue is (assuming Rome’s definition of “marriage” is correct) that Amoris Laetitia allows people to live with sin that’s equally as culpable as if they were to “watch pornography and miss Mass” on Sundays (both mortal sins if done with the knowledge that they are such).

What “Pope Francis” seems to be doing is creating a public mood in which, more and more Roman Catholics accept the practice, leading to a situation in which the sensus fidelium is that such things are all right. Some years down the road, some other pope or council will then recognize this practice as being part of “The Tradition” – the old doctrine will be “requoted with praise and reinterpreted at the same time” to give the appearance that it was always a part of Roman teaching. It existed in the teaching of the Apostles in “seed form”.

This is the same way that the Marian dogmas of 1854 (“Immaculate Conception”) and 1950 (“Assumption of Mary”) were given credibility.

How Roman Catholic Apologists Operate

The work of Roman Catholic Apologist Peter D. Williams 

Did Matthew Derive His Infancy Narrative From His Scripture Citations?

Since some critics still claim that Matthew's accounts in his infancy narrative were made up on the basis of the passages of scripture he cites, I want to quote what Raymond Brown wrote on the subject:

In this matter there have been two general lines of scholarly opinion, namely, that the citations gave rise to the infancy narrative, or that they are appended to a narrative that already existed….

Several factors favor the thesis that in chs. 1-2 Matthew added the citations to an already existing narrative. First, in a section like 2:13-23 it is extremely difficult to imagine how the narrative could ever have been made up by reflection on the three formula citations contained therein, since the citations deal with aspects that are only minor in the story line. The same may be said of the citation of Micah 5:1(2) in Matt 2:5b-6. Reflection on that citation might have caused a Christian to compose a story locating Jesus' birth at Bethlehem, but it could scarcely have led him to the narrative about the magi. Reflection on the LXX of Isa 7:14 (cited in Matt 1:22-23) might have caused a Christian to compose a story about Jesus' mother being a virgin, but it could scarcely have led him to compose a narrative wherein Joseph was the main figure.

Second, four of the five formula citations in the infancy narrative have a definite air of being appended. The reader should make the experiment of reading the stories in 1:18-25 and 2:13-23 omitting four of the formula citations (1:22-23; 2:15b; 2:17-18; 2:23b). The story line not only makes perfect sense without them but even flows more smoothly. The only citation that is woven into the plot is the one that is dubiously a formula citation (2:5b-6). This observation weakens even the more subtle form of the thesis that Matthew composed his narrative on the basis of the citations, for they are too tangentially related to the plot to have served as a nucleus in gathering fragmented traditions into a consecutive story.

Third, we have other instances of Matthew's appending formula citations to stories that already came to him. For instance, Mark 1:14 and Luke 4:14 agree that after his baptism Jesus went to Galilee, but only Matt 4:12-16 comments on this with a formula citation from Isa 8:23-9:1 (=RSV 9:1-2) which speaks of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, toward the sea, Galilee of the Gentiles. Matthew prepared for the introduction of the citation by reporting not only that Jesus went to Galilee, but also that he went to Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. The citation could not have caused Matthew to create the story of Jesus' going to Galilee - he had that in Mark - but it did cause him to color and adapt the Marcan narrative, so that the correspondence to the prophecy might be more obvious. We have a good analogy then for arguing that the same process occurred in the infancy narratives where we do not have a control coming from comparative Synoptic material….

We have a partial control in relation to the formula citation: "He will be called a Nazorean" (Matt 2:23). The citation did not cause Matthew to invent the information that Jesus' family dwelt "in a city called Nazareth." Such geographical information was part of the common Gospel tradition.

(The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 99-101, n. 8 on 101)

For more about the broader argument that the infancy narratives were derived from the Old Testament and ancient traditions about the Old Testament, see here.

A Response To Annette Merz On The Infancy Narratives (Part 4)

(Previous parts in the series: part 1, part 2, part 3.)

One of the most foundational criticisms of the infancy narratives is that they're inconsistent with the accounts we have of Jesus' adulthood. Merz appeals to that objection:

The huge discrepancies between the Matthean and Lucan accounts notwithstanding, both nativity stories agree that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he was recognized as the future king and Messiah/Christ (Matthew 2:2,4,11) and as savior, Messiah/Christ, and bringer of peace (Luke 2:11,14), respectively. Both agree that in addition to heavenly agents (the Matthean star, the Lucan angel and multitude of the heavenly host), human witnesses (the magi and the shepherds) were involved, interacting with the newborn's parents and making known to them the greatness of the moment and the predicted future significance of their son. As historians, we have to ask whether this picture is best explained as a retrospect projection of messianic beliefs into the youth of the hero or as a refraction of memory. If the latter is the case, the rest of the Jesus traditions should concur with this picture to a certain extent. Thus, the last part of this chapter is dedicated to the question of whether the Jesus tradition as a whole allows for an early anticipation, acceptance, or celebration of the king-/messiahship of the newborn Jesus, as it is depicted in the birth stories of Matthew and Luke....

In this light, it is noteworthy that we have several traditions that leave no doubt about the fact that the family of Jesus and his fellow villagers in Nazareth were not among the first followers of Jesus; indeed, on the contrary, we know that they resisted him and tried to bring his mission to an end....

Luke and Matthew have considerably mitigated this tradition [found in Mark 3:20-34], especially leaving out the family's comment declaring Jesus mentally ill. But a comparable picture emerges from other texts: John 7:5 states that "even his brothers did not believe in him," and we have indications that it was only after an appearance of the risen Jesus that James came to believe that Jesus indeed had a divine mandate. The villagers of Nazareth did not even believe that Jesus was a prophet, let alone the Messiah, as we see in Mark 6:1-6....All of those traditions are very hard to explain had there been some early ascertainment of Jesus' significance in the plan of God. To his fellow villagers, Jesus was, according to Mark 6:3, "the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon," as well as several unnamed sisters, not some famous child who had been predestined for future greatness by a perceived heavenly sign. (487-8)

The Media's Thumb On The Scale On Christmas Issues

Here's another misleading Christmas article by Time. We get this sort of thing year after year, from so many media outlets. Liberal sources, like Time, run stories critical of a traditional view of Christmas, while more conservative sources in the media tend to either not respond or respond with a shallow affirmation of traditional beliefs.

Ashley Ross cites Luke's comment about Jesus' approximate age (Luke 3:23) and tries to turn it into something Luke "slightly miscalculated", which is "confusing". Since Luke is giving an approximation, how does that involve miscalculation or confusion?

Much of her article is about extrabiblical traditions, like whether Jesus was born on December 25. She raises the common objection to shepherds tending their flocks in winter and Joseph and Mary traveling at that time of year. She doesn't interact with the counterarguments, like the ones I bring up here.

Regarding Pope Benedict XVI's book on the infancy narratives, she writes:

Problems With Raymond Brown's The Birth Of The Messiah

Brown's work on the infancy narratives is still widely regarded as the standard in the field. Though he wrote from a largely liberal perspective, conservative scholars and Christian apologists have had far less to say in response to Brown than you'd expect. What I want to do in this post is gather together some of the posts I've written over the years that are relevant to Brown's book and his arguments more broadly.

Christians Should Be Posting More At Amazon

As of late last year, every review of Raymond Brown's The Birth Of The Messiah at Amazon was highly positive. For more than a decade, everybody gave it four or five stars, and little negative was said about it. Here are some examples of what people were saying about the book:

Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 2): More About Raymond Brown's Objections

In my last post, I addressed some problems with Raymond Brown's view of the relationship between the infancy narratives and what other early sources said about Jesus. In this post, I want to discuss the Biblical passages Brown cited to support his position.

Jesus' Childhood Outside The Infancy Narratives (Part 1): Introduction

(This will be an eight-part series. After completion, the entire series will be linked in one post.)

One of the most common and most foundational objections to the historicity of the infancy narratives is the notion that their events haven't left enough of a trace in other sources. Some critics will go as far as to suggest that there's no indication of anything supernatural in Jesus' childhood in any other early source, including the remainder of the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Supposedly, what's said of Jesus in the later chapters of Matthew and Luke and in the rest of the New Testament is inconsistent with what's reported in the infancy narratives. Here are some of Raymond Brown's comments on the subject:

Richard Bauckham On Luke's Genealogy And Raymond Brown's Work

Here are some comments Richard Bauckham just posted at Larry Hurtado's blog. Though he doesn't mention it in his post, my understanding is that Bauckham is in the process of writing a commentary on Luke's gospel. Keep that in mind as you read his comments:

Since the genealogies are now being discussed, may I mention that I have a detailed discussion of Luke’s genealogy in my book ‘Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church’, in which I argue in detail that Luke’s genealogy is the one that was used by the relatives of Jesus who (according to Julius Africanus, who had access to Palestinian Jewish Christian traditions) used a family genealogy in their preaching of the Christian message. I think it is very plausibly a traditional family genealogy that has been manipulated a bit to fit a numerical scheme (as often in OT and other ancient genealogies) of 77 generations. It is clearly the genealogy of a minor branch of the Davidic line and it is very likely that such a family would maintain the tradition of its Davidic descent.
But both genealogies now need to be studied in the light of the huge amount of information we now have about Jewish name usage in the Second Temple period. We ought now to be able to tell whether the names in the later parts of the genealogies fit plausibly into the pattern of name usage in those periods that we can now reconstruct. This work has still to be done. By the way, in my opinion, Raymond Brown’s book on the infancy narratives is much over-rated. Its strength is that he read nearly everything anyone has written about those biblical texts. Its weakness is that he never seems to read the relevant Jewish literature for himself but depends entirely on what other NT scholars say about it. This can lead to bad mistakes.

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.

Understanding the Early Development of the House Churches in Rome, part 2

I’m following up on my previous post about William L. Lane’s discussion of the origins of Christianity in Rome and the development of a network of house churches (pointing an absence of a “bishop of Rome” generally, and in particular, an absence of a Vatican I notion that Peter was a pope and that there were “successors” in any sense.) Returning to Paul, Lane says that he:

makes it clear that he does not want to intrude upon the Roman Christians. The Roman communities had not acknowledged his authority, and Paul exercises deliberate reserve in addressing them. His approach remains tactful and diplomatic. He assures his readers that he is confident of their faith and ability to instruct each other and that he writes only as a reminder (Romans 15:14-15). He concedes that he has written boldly on some points, but he goes on to explain his apostolic mission and plans and to inform the church that his stay in Rome will be temporary, not permanent (Romans 15:24) (201).

Moo, in his NICNT Commentary on the “Epistle to the Romans” (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©1996) agrees with this, noting that