Bishop Barron Q/A

This month, Bishop Barron did another Q/A, this time from non-Catholics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_dQOHyfts

1. I didn't watch the whole thing since not all of the questions interest me. He did a pretty good job of fielding the question about alleged pagan parallels because Jesus and mythic heroes. 

2. He also gave an adroit answer to how a loving God can send people to hell: 

It's like someone at a party, everyone is having a great time, but you've decided, because you're in a kind of a funk, to sit sullenly in the corner and refuse to participate. Not only are you happy in yourself but the party around you is making you more unhappy. If you're in a really bad frame of mind, who are the most annoying people? Those who are in a good mood.

We're often our own worst enemies. Drug addicts. Choosing contrary to self-interest. 

There's a grain of truth to those explanations. They're useful up to a point.

But what was glaringly absent from his justification is any reference to the punitive function of hell, even though that's fundamental to the biblical concept. 

In Scripture, damnation isn't primarily about rejecting God's love but retributive punishment from wrongdoing. The theme of eschatological justice, which is hell's primary rationale in Scripture, has disappeared from Barron's concept of damnation.

That may be because Barron is a hopeful universalist, so he believes in remediation rather than retribution. 

In contemporary Catholicism as well as contemporary freewill theism, the concept of damnation and warrant for damnation has been recast in terms of love rather than justice. It's all about rejecting God's love, not about just deserts.  

Noble pagans

This is a follow-up to my previous post:

Scott

I have always wondered about that part [about Emeth worshiping Tash as Aslan in C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle], but not yet taken the time to look it up. Does Aslan's quote about "Those who follow Tash but do good actually follow me / and vice versa" accurately reflect CS Lewis' view on the matter?

Thanks, Scott. That's a good question!

1. I'm no C. S. Lewis scholar, but to my knowledge I think Lewis may have been hopeful that some non-Christians could've been saved (e.g. Virgil). That is, my impression is Lewis had some inclinations toward inclusivism, but I don't know if he was an inclusivist. He certainly wasn't a universalist. Maybe others who know better than I do can weigh in.

2. Regarding inclusivism, the Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump offers such an argument here. She even cites Lewis' illustration of Emeth worshiping Tash in The Last Battle. It seems to me Stump's basic argument is we're not saved by facts about a person, we're saved by a person, namely Jesus Christ, but it's possible to know a person without knowing who they are. It's possible for a person who doesn't profess to be a Christian to know and love God despite not knowing God's true identity in this life.

3. On the face of it, it sounds like a reasonable argument, which it is to a degree, but I'm afraid I don't think it works at the end of the day.

a. For one thing, there's a significant difference between loving a person and loving an idea. If we can love God by loving that which God stands for (e.g. goodness, beauty), despite not knowing which (if any) God we're loving, then it seems to me what we're really loving is abstractions or ideas. If a pagan loves an impersonal goodness like a Platonic form of goodness, or if an atheist loves beauty in nature, how would that be loving a God who is personal? That could just as well be loving the creation rather than the creator. So I think there'd still need to be a step from loving true goodness to loving God.

b. With regard to the core claims of Christianity, I don't see how philosophical or theological truths can be so detached from historical facts or foundations. After all, Christianity is a historically revealed religion (e.g. 1 Cor 15). God plants his footsteps in the sea. God works wonders for his people. God speaks to his people via his prophets. God sends his Son. All this needs to be taken into consideration. It can't be ignored or glossed over.

Otherwise, if loving goodness or beauty in the abstract is sufficient for salvation, then all who seek goodness or beauty could be scaling up a different slope of the mountain, but all will reach the same destination in the end. A villager from Africa with no knowledge of Christianity could be seeking goodness. Likewise a Native American. Same with an Australian Aborigine. All in the context of their own culture's spiritual beliefs and practices. And so on. In fact, isn't this in effect what Hinduism teaches? If so, then perhaps Hinduism is the true religion, not Christianity. Perhaps Yahweh is another name for Brahman, not the other way around.

c. Moreover, how would the non-Christian know what is true goodness and true beauty? How far can natural revelation alone take the non-Christian in knowing what is truly good? For instance, isn't there a non-trivial distinction between the regenerate person's conscience and the unregenerate person's conscience? More to the point, our consciences may indeed give us moral insight, but what's needed isn't solely moral insight, but personal repentance.

d. I suspect Stump has in the back of her mind the noble pagan who has never heard the gospel but apparently lives an exemplary life and searches for truth, goodness, and beauty. Such as the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. As far as that goes, I don't know if men like these were so morally exemplary, certainly not by 21st century progressive values (e.g. their arguments regarding slavery, their arguments about how society should be constituted). Furthermore, many of the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the life of the mind, perhaps we could add some of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese, but otherwise how common was "the search for goodness, truth, and beauty" throughout human history? At any rate, I think Stump's argument might make more headway given some versions of freewill theism, but Calvinists would have better answers to the question, in my view, which Triablogue members have responded to in the past.

e. In addition, there are plenty of non-Christians who aren't "noble pagans" but are in fact explicitly serving a god that's inconsistent with true goodness as Stump envisions true goodness. Take Muslims who love Allah. Take, for instance, that to be a good Muslim one evidently needs to treat Jews and Christians as second-class citizens in Muslim lands and one must execute non-Muslims who refuse to become Muslims. If the Muslim does that, then they might be a good Muslim, but they're not doing what's truly good and right because they're mistreating others, according to Stump's exemplar of true goodness. However, if a Muslim does treat non-Muslims much better than they deserve, then they're not being a good Muslim, and it's arguable they may not even be considered a true Muslim by Islamic tradition. In other words, it seems to me on Stump's argument these Muslims could only be saved if they're more like noble pagans than they are like Muslims. So this seems like a quandary.

Bishop Barron's inclusivism

Ben Shapiro asks Bishop Robert Barron about salvation according to Catholicism. I don't recall Shapiro asking William Lane Craig or Ravi Zacharias this question, but it's possible I missed it. Shapiro may have asked John MacArthur, but I didn't watch that episode.

What’s the Catholic view on who gets into heaven and who doesn’t? I feel like I lead a pretty good life - a very religiously based life - in which I try to keep, not just the ten commandments, but a solid 603 other commandments as well. And I spend an awful lot of my time promulgating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues, particularly in Western societies. So, what’s the Catholic view of me? Am I basically screwed here?

No surprise Barron gives a terribly unbiblical response:

No. The Catholic view - go back to the Second Vatican Council - says it very clearly. I mean Christ is the privileged route to salvation. "God so loved the world he gave his only Son that we might find eternal life." So that’s the privileged route.

However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the explicit Christian faith can be saved. Now, they’re saved through the grace of Christ, indirectly received. So the grace is coming from Christ. But it might be received according to your conscience. So if you’re following your conscience sincerely - or in your case you’re following the commandments of the law sincerely - yeah, you can be saved.

Now, that doesn’t conduce to a complete relativism. We still would say the privileged route - the route that God has offered to humanity - is the route of his Son.

But, no, you can be saved. Even Vatican II says an atheist of good will can be saved, because in following his conscience, if he does - John Henry Newman said the conscience is "the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul" (it's a very interesting characterization) - it is, in fact, the voice of Christ if he is the Logos made flesh, right? He's the divine mind or reason made flesh. So when I'm following my conscience I'm following him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist, Vatican II teaches, "of good will", can be saved.

Just a brief response for now:

1. Why bother becoming a Catholic if what Barron says is true. Heck, why bother becoming a theist if what Barron says is true.

2. Barron equivocates between "following one's conscience" and "following the commandments of the law". The two aren't necessarily the same. Especially if we're referring to the 613 commandments in rabbinic Judaism. It's not as if a non-Jew's conscience (however "intact" it may be) would necessarily tell him to follow kosher laws, observe Shabbat, and wear a tallit with tzitzit.

At best, I think, conscience might coincide with the Noahide laws, but even that's hardly a given. Does a pagan's conscience necessarily tell them not to worship an idol? Doesn't a good Buddhist (Mahayana) think he's doing right by his conscience in what he does for Buddha? Doesn't a good Muslim have a clear conscience when worshiping Allah? Yet post-Vatican II Catholicism even accepts that good people in other religions can be saved.

Or take the prohibition against murder. One could be a good communist who believes murder is wrong, but who doesn't consider killing the bourgeoisie "murder". One could be a modern American progressive Catholic who believes murder is wrong, but who doesn't think abortion is murder. That's not what their conscience tells them.

3. Perhaps Barron would reply these people have a seared conscience. A good conscience would have to align with biblical morality. But how far does that go? Wouldn't a Catholic in Barron's vein accept that worshiping a false god could somehow be done unto the true God? Similar to how Emeth in The Last Battle worshiped Tash. Yet biblical ethics would say that'd be a clear violation of the ten commandments.

4. I don't follow how Christ being the Word (Logos) made flesh means our conscience is "the voice of Christ". I don't doubt God could well speak to us through our conscience. I could even agree with Barron's conclusion that a good conscience is God's voice. However I don't see what this has to do with Christ being the Logos.

5. Of course, much turns on the phrase "of good will". What does that mean exactly? Who decides? I suspect much of this turns on Catholic natural law. All this would suggest severe faultlines in Catholic inclusivist soteriology, but I'd have to do a lengthier post about all this.

Defending celibacy

It's striking to see Catholic religious leaders continue to defiantly back and rationalize mandatory clerical celibacy. Bishop Barron is a case in point. One thing I've noticed, although it's just a cursory impression, is that the folks defending clerical celibacy seem to be, for the most part, clerics rather than layman. There's not the same grassroots enthusiasm for the policy. Unless I missed it, most Catholic apologists don't seem to be going to bat on the issue. And it wouldn't be surprising of Catholic fathers and mothers are wary of the policy. They've seen the damage at ground level. 

The paradox of the policy is that the more it fails, the more Catholic leaders defend it. As a rule, policymakers don't feel the need to defend a successful policy. Its success is the selling point. 

The more that Catholic leaders double down and circle the wagons to defend the policy, they more they draw attention to its abject failure. When you pigheadedly hang on to a counterproductive policy, that constantly puts you on the defensive. 

Pop Catholicism

Around the 26 min. mark:

https://wordonfireshow.com/episode194/

Bishop Barron throws lay Catholic pop apologists under the bus:

Everyone and his brother can hang out a shingle and say "Hey, I'm a Catholic [whatever]." Well, are you–and what's your background and what's your formation and your education and your credentials, and does your bishop know what you're doing and what you're saying? 

La Virgen Morena

1. As many know, the Lady of Guadalupe is a vision of a woman that an Aztec peasant named Cuauhtlatoatzin (Christianized name: Juan Diego) claimed appeared to him on four separate occassions. All the visions occurred in the month of December 1531. All the visions appeared to him near or on the hill of Tepeyac. This hill was outside Mexico City back then, but today it's within Mexico City.

There's a fifth vision, but Juan Diego didn't see it. Rather it was Juan Diego's uncle Juan Bernardino who claimed to have seen the Lady of Guadalupe at his bedside.

2. Triabloggers have discussed the Lady of Guadalupe:

• The Virgin of Guadalupe
• "Our Lady of Guadalupe"
• Apocalyptic Guadalupe
• 'Cause in a sky full of stars, I think I saw you

3. Who or what could the Lady of Guadalupe be? Some possibilities:

"'Cause in a sky full of stars, I think I saw you"

Bishop Robert Barron writes in his book Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, pp 108-111:

On December 9, 1531, just about ten years after the Spaniards had first brought the faith to Mexico, an Indian man named Juan Diego, a recent convert to Christianity, was making his way along the hill of Tepeyac, just outside the city of Tenochtitlan, which would later evolve into Mexico City. He was heading to morning Mass. He heard a burst of birdsong and turned to see where it was coming from. What he saw took his breath away, for standing before him was a woman clothed in celestial light. The Lady announced herself as the “Mother of the Most High God,” and she had a request for Juan Diego: “Would you ask the bishop to construct a temple here in my honor?” Being a simple man, Juan Diego obeyed. He was ushered into the presence of Bishop Juan Zumárraga, a Franciscan friar and a good man, the builder of the first hospital and university in the Americas, and a protector of the native population. Bishop Zumárraga listened patiently to Juan Diego’s story, but, understandably enough, he asked Juan Diego for a confirming sign from the heavenly Lady. On December 12, Juan Diego went once again to Tepeyac and found the Virgin there. She invited him to remove his tilma, the simple, coarse poncho-like garment he was wearing, and then, with her help, he gathered up a bunch of roses that were, despite the lateness of the year, in bloom. This, she said, would be a sign for the bishop. Juan Diego hurried with his bundle to the bishop’s office, but he was made to wait. It is said that officious aides of Zumárraga’s tried, without success, to find out what the Indian was carrying in his tilma. Finally Juan Diego was brought into the bishop’s presence. He opened his cloak and the roses spilled out, but then, to Juan Diego’s amazement, the bishop and his assistants were kneeling, for on the inside of the tilma was something extraordinary: an image of the woman clothed in light. On the spot, Zumárraga vowed to build the temple the Lady had asked for, and it still stands near the hill of Tepeyac.

A wakeup call for Catholics

1. In this video, Bishop Barron, who's far and away the most popular Catholic apologist of his generation, is tearing his hair out over the fact that 75% of American Catholics don't believe in transubstantiation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yTGlYCIvks&app=desktop

In addition, the figure rises to 80% for the younger generation–and that's the future of his sect. 

2. He quotes Flannery O'Connor's exclamation that if the eucharist is only a symbol, then "I say: to hell with it"–adding (in his own words), "why bother?".

That's a revealing reaction. Imagine an OT Jew exclaiming, "If Passover is just a symbol, then I say: to hell with it! Why bother?"

3. It's especially ironic because a large part of his apologetic for Catholicism trades heavily on aesthetic symbolism. Catholic art and architecture. The rose windows of Notre-Dame de Paris are a favorite theme of his. Why doesn't he exclaim: "If the rose windows are only symbolic, to hell with them!"

4. He goes on to say the eucharist is "tied to divinity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the sacraments, the church, and everything else". 

i) In part, that's an allusion to his view that the real presence is a prolongation of the Incarnation.

ii) In addition, the real presence is a presupposition of the priesthood. It takes a priest to change the communion elements into the "true body and blood of Christ". If you deny the real presence, that eliminates a key rationale for the priesthood. 

To be sure, priests have other sacramental functions like the rite of penance. Yet a major reason for penance is to prepare communicants to receive the eucharist. 

If you deny the real presence, it tugs a thread that unravels the entire tapestry of Catholic theology. That's because Catholic theology is a package deal. Not only are some dogmas logically and internally linked to other dogmas, but all the dogmas rely on the authority of the Magisterium. 

5. The Catholic church is in a state of crisis, on multiple fronts, in multiple countries. And we should be thankful for that.

The problem with his wakeup call is that many Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals have a highly secularized outlook. They no longer believe in Catholic dogmas. They no longer believe in Catholic supernaturalism. So they don't share his sense of alarm. 

Mind you, evangelicalism has its own challenges. Its own attrition rate. Nominal piety. 

Modern Catholicism on hell

Here's a good example of how post-Vatican II theology struggles to make the transition from traditional Catholic exclusivism to modern Catholic inclusivism. How to straddle two diametrically opposed positions. This is euphemistically dubbed the development of doctrine. 

https://www.wordonfire.org/hope/

Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of Fantasia

In this post I'll comment on some representative passages in Robert Barron's Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (2011). I already commented on one section:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/07/our-lady-of-guadalupe.html

I believe Barron has a virtual following second only to Pope Francis. That may be due in part to the theological vacuum in the hierarchy. So few bishops seem to be believers, even by Catholic standards. In addition, he has a certain charisma. A prissy, sissy, fussy, fusty old biddy like Cardinal Burke lacks the common touch and popular appeal. 

Barron is an eloquent, seductive mythmaker. His biblical prooftexts for Catholicism detach the text from the original meaning, and reattachment it to "development". Once theology is cut off from the sacred text, it takes on a life of its own, in ever-bolder flights of fantasy. The exercise has a snowball effect, as seminal errors accumulate and magnify. No longer constrained by the reality of revelation, it goes wherever imagination takes it. In some ways, Barron's book is a throwback to Chateaubriand's The Genius of Christianity. An apologetic heavy on aesthetics. Catholicism is too pretty not to be true!

"Our Lady of Guadalupe"

1. I've done a couple of posts on Fatima:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/miracle-of-sun.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/12/our-lady-of-fatima.html

Now I'd like to revisit the issue of Marian apparitions using a different example. Recently I was reading Bishop Barron's Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (2011). At some point I may comment the whole book, but for now I'll focus on one thing. On pp108-13, Barron rehearses the story of Mary appearing to Juan Diego, then provides evidence for the authenticity of the apparition. 

Assuming that Barron's information is accurate, I agree with him that this was a supernatural event. It defies naturalistic explanation. The evidence he offers is quite impressive. Indeed, more impressive than Fatima. 

Admittedly, I haven't researched the issue, in part because my own position doesn't require me to debunk it, and in part because I'm not sure the Internet has good sources to investigate a claim like that. (By "debunk," I mean a naturalistic explanation.)

2. However, I can concede all that without it shifting me even slightly in the direction of Catholicism. Why? 

To begin with, not all supernatural events are from God. The locus classicus is Deut 13:1-5. That principle or prediction is reaffirmed no fewer than three times in the NT: Mt 24:24 (par. Mk 13:22), 2 Thes 2:9, & Rev 13:13-15. We also have similar statements by St. Paul (Gal 1:8; 2 Cor 11:14). 

3. But I'd like to anticipate an objection. What if I'm wrong? If I attribute a Marian apparition to the dark side when, in fact, it's genuine, am I committed the unforgivable sin (Mt 12:31-32, par. Mk 3:28-29; Lk 12:10)?

i) One response is that it's quite a stretch to extend that to Marian apparitions. I'm not attributing the miracles of Jesus to the dark side. 

ii) However, a Catholic apologist might respond that my attitude is analogous to the unforgivable sin, which concerns the general principle of attributing divine miracles to the dark side. 

iii)  Okay, so what about that?Unlike the Jewish leaders, I didn't witness the purported apparition with my own eyes. So my epistemic position is different from theirs.

iv) In addition, motivation makes a difference. The Jewish leaders were motivated by malice and ill-will. That's very different from an innocent mistake. 

v) For that matter, doubting a Marian apparition doesn't require you to ascribe the apparition to the dark side. You can simply suspend judgment. You make allowance for the possibility that it emanates from the dark side. By contrast, the Jewish leaders didn't withhold judgment regarding Jesus. 

vi) Apropos (v), even the Catholic church takes the position that purported private revelations lack the obligatory status of public revelation–from what I've read. 

vii) God can't intend us to be so spooked by the threat of the unforgivable sin that we nullify repeated warnings about occult miracles. It would be quite coup for the Devil and the Antichrist if we had to credit every messenger with miraculous signs because we dare not consider the possibility that it had its source in evil spirits. 

There are so many candidates. What if I'm wrong about Muhammad? What if I'm wrong about Swedenborg? What if I'm wrong about purported Mormon miracles? What if I'm wrong about Marian apparitions? We can't very well credit them all. And God can't intend the specter of the unforgivable sin to be a gun to our head so that we never take the occult into consideration. How else can we rule out false prophets or the Antichrist? 

viii) Moreover, Catholics hardly have a monopoly on purported miracles and apparitions. As Barron knows, Latin American Pentecostals have made major inroads into Catholicism in South and Central America. Non-Catholics, including Protestants experienced purported miracles, angelic apparitions, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, and visions of Jesus.  

ix) Finally, you'd expect pre-Columbian Mexico to be a hotbed of evil spirits, with all the witchcraft and human sacrifice. So it wouldn't be surprising of an evil spirit appeared to Juan Diego. Once again, it isn't necessary to take a firm position on that. We can treat that as a live option. 

4. But I'd like to anticipate another objection. Barron says the apparition had beneficial results. The mass conversion of Aztecs to Catholicism. And the dissolution of the Aztec religion. 

i) To begin with, that's not all of a piece. The dissolution of the Aztec religion was a salutary result. But pilgrims making the journey to her shrine on their knees (p111) is only a good thing from a Catholic viewpoint. 

ii) But if the apparition is not of God, why would God allow it? Because God is the kind of God who brings good out of evil. He permits the evil of the apparition, and the religious delusion that spawns, but he mitigates the evil. 

Suppose an evil spirit appeared to Juan Diego. The evil spirit has malevolent intentions. But God thwarts that by using the apparition to abolish the atrocity of the Aztec religion. Think of how God manipulates Balaam. Or how the Devil engineers the Crucifixion, only to that that explode in his face. 

5. The cult of Mary

i) When I read about Marian apparitions, even one as well-attested as Juan Diego, I can't blank out the fact that from my study, Catholicism has been falsified by multiple lines of evidence. 

ii) Regarding the cult of Mary in particular, that has no justification in Scripture or historical evidence. We see a legend growing right before our eyes. And the cult of Mary massively diverts devotion away from Jesus to "Mary". And not the historical Mary, but a theological construct based on folk theology and post hoc rationalizations. 

"Catholic myths"

I'm going to comment on a new interview with Bishop Barron:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njZoHnPYGe0

I can imagine Barron is very persuasive if you're already sympathetic to Catholicism and desperate for pat answers to objections. Likewise, he's persuasive if you lack a proper frame of reference to assess his explanations. 

Q/A with Bishop Barron

This is Bishop Barron doing what he does best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQY0py3SuXQ

He's to be commended for fielding questions from non-Catholics. He did that on Reddit a while back. A large part of Barron's appeal lies in how he files off all the sharp edges of traditional Catholic theology. He often panders to modernity rather than challenging modernity. The Q/A showcased both his strengths and weaknesses. 

Evangelizing the imagination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-VrCTpwXAc

1. This is Bishop Barron doing what he does best. He presents a very winsome version of Catholicism, albeit a Catholicism that in key respects didn't exist until about the mid-20C or so. 

In his interpretation, fiction writers like Lewis were literary evangelists proselytizing the imagination. They realized the need to express the old faith in a new way if they hoped to reach an increasingly secularized audience. Tolkien's fiction is a Catholic pill. An exercise in pre-evangelization. That's an interesting thesis, but I find it questionable:

2. I think it's more likely that, first and foremost, they were evangelizing themselves. Their allegorical fiction creates theological analogues for traditional Christian doctrine. It's a of making traditional Christian theology more believable for themselves (i.e. Lewis, Tolkien). They translate some core doctrines and biblical accounts into fictional analogues that that they find more credible than the original accounts. 

3. There are roughly three ways you can view biblical narratives:

i) They are imaginary, like Alice in Wonderland.

ii) There's a real event that lies behind the account, but the account itself is a fictional analogue of what happened, like Godspell.

iii) The narratives provide realistic descriptions of real events.

4. I think in some cases their position corresponds to (ii). If so, one basic problem is that we lose touch with the truth that (on this view) lies behind the account. If the original account isn't a realistic description of what happened, but just an allegory of what happened, then we have no frame of reference to determine what parts of the analogy correspond to the underlying event. We can't say which analogies are closer to the event than others. We're just left with variations on some archetypal motifs, stock characters, and type-scenes. The specific setting, characters, dialogue, and plot are imaginary.   

5. On this view, allegories may replace the original account, because the original account is in itself a fictional analogue for whatever really happened. The theological allegories of Tolkien and Lewis are just as legitimate as the original, and have the added benefit (on their view) of being more believable than the original. 

(I realize they resist the classification of their fiction as allegorical. I'm not going to get hung-up on a pedantic or idiosyncratic definition of allegory.)