The case for Catholicism

1. I recently watched a roundtable defense of Catholicism by the best and the brightest:

2. On the one hand Tomaszewski is unusual among Catholic apologists in having gone to Catholic seminary. On the other hand he's a RadTrad, so his position is out of step with establishment Catholicism. He's a throwback to antimodernist Catholicism. So he's not a representative spokesman for post-Vatican II Catholic theology.

3. They appeal to the tradition of communal interpretation–a living oracle. Don't go it on your own. Rely on authority.

But that generates a Catholic dilemma: if unaided reason is that unreliable then you preemptively disqualified yourself from assessing the evidence for Catholicism.

4. They draw a parallel with the authority of Jewish tradition (oral torah) and the religious establishment (Mt 23), which repudiated Jesus. By that logic, Christians ought to submit to the rabbis and reject Jesus.

5. Tomaszewski mentions Japanese Catholics separated for 200 years, no priests, catechism, just some Bibles on hand.

6. The alleged flaw of sola scriptura is that the canon is not internal to scripture. So Protestants must arbitrarily trust the church regarding the canon. But that's incorrect. We go by evidence for the canon.

Catholic apologists operate with a topdown model where to know or have warranted belief in something you must be explicitly given the right answer. Knowledge by description, propositional information.

An alternative is knowledge by acquaintance. Fostering justified belief by putting someone in the right epistemic environment. In that setting a person will believe the right thing. God guided them to that conclusion. It's more providential, organic, bottom-up. A process by which God cultivates certain beliefs. It's a reliable process because God intended the result. Intended that to be truth-conducive.

7. Not a question of trusting the church but sifting multiple lines of evidence. Internal evidence for the canon based on authorship; external evidence from Jewish sources; from collections of the canon circulating in smaller units (e.g. the Gospels, the Pauline epistles); historical testimony from early or well-connected church fathers; hostile testimony.

i) You don't need a list to know everything. Suppose I'm on prescription meds. Do I need a list? Not necessarily. The pharmacist needs the list. I just need the meds. If those are the only meds I have, no more or less, I just take what I have.

Knowledge by description compared with knowledge by acquaintance. How do I know my parents aren't squatters? In principle, I could see the title deed, but that might be forged. Yet if we've never been evicted, that's evidence that we're not squatters. We pay property taxes. So there's no presumption that we're squatters. Indeed, there's a presumption to the contrary.

ii) How do I know my parents are my biological parents? A birth certificate would be official evidence. But other lines of evidence include family resemblance, shared character traits, and DNA.

iii) If I'm a local, a native, I don't need a street map. I just know where things are by experience, even though there can be ways to back that up through corroborative evidence. When I drive to a familiar location I'm not consciously thinking of directions. That's been internalized.

Suppose the Protestant canon is correct. Suppose I know the canon of Scripture because God raised me in a church with Protestant editions of the Bible. That's my table of contents. That's one reason God raised me in or directed me to that particular church. That's the true canon, and God meant for me to discover the true canon by that means.

8. In Jn 14,16, Jesus never said the Spirit will guide the church into all truth; in context the disciples in the Upper Room are the immediate recipients. Certainly nothing about Roman bishops

The church fathers are not analogous to founding fathers. The founding fathers drafted the Constitution. The church fathers didn't draft the NT.

9. Koons confuses eternal security (19C innovation) with perseverance of the saints. To my knowledge, eternal security was promoted by certain Dispensational Baptist circles in the 20C. It's not equivalent to perseverance.

10. Koons raises the stock objection objection to sola fide as a legal fiction. If so, that reduces the treasury of merit to a legal fiction. At the same time it leaves no room vicarious atonement–much less penal substitution. Yet the distinction is no more fictional than the distinction between ascribed status and achieved status. The royal son inherits the throne by virtue of his relationship with his father.

11. Koons accuses evangelicalism of theological innovation, which is self-defeating inasmuch as Catholicism is rife with theological innovation and reversal.

12. Tomaszewski asked what the manna/eucharist stands for if we deny the real presence. In what is that fulfilled? The answer is the crucifixion. In that regard the manna is forward looking while the eucharist is backward looking.

13. They say vicarious atonement is inferior to actual righteousness. What's required is a reversion to status quo ante. But that overlooks how a fallen and redeemed world is so much richer than a world that never fell.

14. They trot out the last rites, but it's not as if everyone anointed by a priest on their deathbed receives physical healing.

15. The participants are confused on the sufficiency of Christ's work. They fail to distinguish between the forensic work indexed to his redemptive sacrificial death and renewal through the regeneration, sanctification, and glorification by the Spirit. We're not saved by the work of Christ alone but in conjunction with the work of the Father and the Spirit. There's a division of labor in the economy of salvation.

16. There is no Petrine office in Lk 22 or Acts. There's Peter in his apostolic office, just like the other apostles. A generic apostolic office.

17. It doesn't occur to them that, in context, sitting on the throne of Moses (Mt 23) is sarcastic. Conversely, if we take it a face value, then we should be rabbinic Jews rather than Christians. Christian laymen lack the authority to make those judgments. So that appeal disproves Catholicism.

18. There's no exegetical evidence that the beloved disciple is a stand-in for the church in Jn 19.

19. Pace Tomaszewski, there's no exegetical evidence that Mary is omnipotent by grace (whatever that means), so that God cannot deny her or refuse her.

20. Technically it's true that natures don't have mothers. In context, nature is shorthand for a concretized nature or property instance that exemplifies nature.

21. Even if it happened as described, the "miracle of the sun" is not in itself a Marian apparition. Rather, it's reported in association with purported Marian apparitions at that time and place. Wasn't Lúcia dos Santos the only surviving witness to the apparition proper?

Newman never converted to Catholicism

Newman went deep into church history and discovered that he couldn't find Roman Catholicism in the first few centuries of the church, so he redefined Catholicism by inventing the theory of development. He didn't convert to Catholicism; rather, he converted Catholicism to himself.

Top 3 reasons I became Catholic

I recently watched John Bergsma's testimony about his conversion to Catholicism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06F4i4TtS1c

He's a theology prof. at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. I'd just note in passing that his father was a Navy chaplain. So he probably suffered from a certain amount of paternal neglect as a boy due to family separation when his dad was on tours of duty. That can impact a boy's social and psychological maturation. 

Bergsma gives three reason for his conversion:

1. Jas 5:14-16

Several problems:

i) If that's a legitimate prooftext for Catholicism, then why aren't healing miracles a regular occurrence when Last Rites is administered?

He reinterprets that verse in terms of "spiritual healing" or "victory" over sin. Yet in context it clearly includes physical healing.

ii) It doesn't say confess your sins to a priest.

iii) He says he didn't have a Protestant way to obey that verse. Here's an idea: what about confessing your sin to the person you wronged? 

iv) He says confessing your sins to a priest is confessing to the whole church through him. That's so sophistical. A convenient way to evade your duty to confess your sin to the individual you actually sinned against.  

He says the priest represents Christ. That begs the question. 

v) He says auricular confession sidesteps confidentiality issues. But confessing your sin to the person you wronged is confidential, too. And in many cases, they already know you wronged them. 

vi) He mentions that pastors need someone they can confide in. Sure. But that confuses confession with friendship 

2. At Notre Dame, he was exposed to Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext. Despite already having an MA in Scripture as well as an MDiv., this was the first time he became aware of the fact that Rev 12 is a Marian prooftext. That shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

There are several problems with viewing Rev 12 as a Marian prooftext, but for now I'll focus on two:

i) In terms of Catholic Mariology, the chronology is backwards. Mary is assumed to heaven at the end of her life. But in Rev 12, the woman is up there at the outset, then comes down to earth. In Catholic theology, Mary is not a celestial being who originates in heaven. Rather, she's an earthling to ascends to heaven. But the imagery and sequence of Rev 12 are just the opposite.

ii) Although "sky" and "heaven" are sometimes synonymous, at other times they represent two essentially different domains. The sky contains the sun, moon, stars, and clouds–whereas heaven contains God, saints, and angels. 

That's not the same place, but two different places. "Heaven", in the sense of God's abode, doesn't have day and night, sunshine or lunar phases. Heaven doesn't have rainclouds, hailstorms or blizzards. The saints and angels don't need umbrellas. Heaven isn't outer space. It's not a vacuum at near absolute zero. 

Rev 12 doesn't depict a woman in heaven, but a woman in the sky. So using Rev 12 to prooftext Mary's role as Queen of Heaven is vitiated by fatal equivocation. 

3. Finally, it was at Notre Dame that he first learned about the existence of the apostolic fathers. He never knew there were any Christian writers before Nicea. Once more, that shows you how deficient his seminary education was. And it again illustrates the fact that it's easier to convert the uninformed. 

He then infers that whatever the apostolic fathers teach reflects the original intention of the apostles, since they were in living contact with the apostles. That includes belief in the real presence. But that's a very slippery inference:

i) For one thing, you have to consider the age of an apostolic father at the time he may have encountered an apostle. How much did they remember at that age?

You can't presume that the apostolic fathers were personally mentored by the apostles, just because they may have heard them speak on one occasion or another. Consider large crowds that gathered to hear the apostle John in old age. Not much opportunity for individualized tutorials. 

ii) To take a comparison, I knew my maternal grandmother as well as some aunts and uncles. But what I know about them is pretty limited because I was young and I didn't think to ask many questions. Many of us wish we'd asked our elderly relatives more questions when they were still alive, but it didn't occur to us at the time. 

iii) Catholic appeal to the apostolic fathers is usually quite careless, but the appeal needs to be far more discriminating: 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-apostolic-fathers.html

Robert Koons on sola scriptura

Robert Koons is a highly regarded philosopher by Christian colleagues. And he's a Lutheran convert to Catholicism. I always try to test my own position against the best of the competition. Here's his case for Catholicism:

http://robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b7ffffd524.pdf

The dilemma is that his case involves a comparison between Lutheranism and Catholicism. But since I'm not Lutheran, that's not my frame of reference. That makes it harder to directly evaluate his argument, since I don't cast some issues the same way he does. So there are times when I will have to reframe the issue. 

Retroengineering the canon

...the Scriptures themselves do not contain a list of which books must be included (nor even very explicit instructions about how to determine the list – is Luke or Mark an apostle?).

http://robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b7ffffd524.pdf

i) Why would you need a list if you have the Scriptures in hand? You can make a list from the Scriptures themselves.

ii) Likewise, why would you need explicit instructions about how to determine the list if you have actual examples? Just by looking that the OT and NT, you can see the kinds of books that made the cut. And by implication, the kinds of books that didn't make the cut–since they were not the same kinds of books.

iii) The church inherited the OT from the Jews. In that respect, it didn't begin with explicit instructions, but the end-product. And if you have the end-product, there's a sense in which you can reengineer the canon. 

Same thing with the NT. By the time formal canonization debates were underway, the church already had the NT books. Indeed, those are the first extant Christian writings. They were written long before the canonization debates. They were in circulation long before the canonization debates. Widely distributed and used by Christians. 

In that regard, the church at the time of canonization debates was in the same position as the Protestants. At that stage, it already had the end-product. 

By then there were other books floating around. Some legitimate (subapostolic fathers) and some illegitimate (apocrypha). But they weren't the same kinds of books we find in the NT. They didn't have the same characteristics. The Bible itself is a model. 

iv) Assuming traditional authorship (which is eminently defensible), when we look at the NT books, they were all written in the 1C. All written within living memory of Jesus. Written by apostles, protégés of apostles, or members of Christ's nuclear family. Written by eyewitnesses of Jesus or those who interviewed eyewitnesses of Jesus. 

That doesn't give you a set of instructions, but a set of characteristics. What's the competition? 

Authentic Catholicism

1. I've often said that most Catholic apologists present an inauthentic version of Catholicism because most of them are evangelical converts to Catholicism. In general, they have a far more conservative view of Scripture, which is a carryover from their evangelical past. By contrast, here's an example of a Catholic apologist who's the real deal. This is what a standard Catholic college and seminary education will get you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh902gtjFU0

2. Evidently, Casey was only exposed to one side of the argument: mainstream Catholic Bible scholarship. Many of his examples could be resolved by consulting evangelical commentaries on the Bible, as well as standard monographs on the inerrancy and historicity of the Bible, viz. Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (B&H Academic 2016); D. A. Carson, ed. The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans 2016); James Hoffmeier & Dennis MaGary, eds., Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? (Crossway 2012); Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans 2003); Vern Poythress, Inerrancy and the Gospels (Crossway 2012); Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (Concordia 2011).

3. Unfortunately, when he talks about "smoothing over stories and performing tremendous mental gymnastics," he shields his own position from correction by preemptively discrediting attempts to harmonize Scripture or defuse allegations of error. He's not open to that possibility. He's convinced himself that even making the effort is an exercise in special pleading. 

4. A basic problem with his mind is that once you adopt that view of Scripture, you begin to see mistakes and contradictions everywhere. There's no longer any presumption that what the Bible say is true. No distinction is drawn between differences and contradictions. Critics of inerrancy sometimes allege that inerrancy fosters a house-of-cards mentality, yet the denial of inerrancy becomes a mania to compulsively presume error. 

5. In addition, Casey's view of Scripture is a universal acid that dissolves historical theology. For the same reflexive skepticism can be extended with even greater ease and plausibility to the so-called development of doctrine. 

Faithful Catholics waiting for the bus that never comes

Dutifully they go to the same bus stop everyday, but that route was discontinued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/opinion/sunday/conservative-catholic.html

Catholicism: 28 Weeks Later

Luis Dizon has penned a first-year retrospective on his reversion to Catholicism:

https://eacanada.wordpress.com/2019/10/31/looking-back-at-the-reformed-tradition-one-year-later/

1. Before commenting on specific passages, I'll venture some preliminary remarks:

Human beings aren't logic boxes, so there can be personal pressures and incentives that figure in our political and religions affiliations. For instance, Luis said on Twitter (pined tweet): 

- During my Protestant days, I considered becoming a minister. I've since dropped this idea

- Not considering the priesthood. Permanent diaconate after marriage is still on the table, however

This drift of this seems to be that he wants to have a normal family life, something he'd be free to do as a Protestant minister but not as a Catholic priest. With that in mind, I wonder if the pool of marital prospects isn't a whole lot deeper for a Filipino-Canadian Catholic than a Filipino-Canadian Reformed Baptist. 

Standing in judgment of the Magisterium

The Magisterium must seek to present a convincing case, showing how its presentation of the faith is in itself coherent and in continuity with the rest of Tradition. The authority of the papal Magisterium rests on its continuity with the teachings of previous popes. In fact, if a pope had the power to abolish the binding teachings of his predecessors, or if he had the authority even to reinterpret Holy Scripture against its evident meaning, then all his doctrinal decisions could in turn be abolished by his successor, whose successor in turn could undo or redo everything as he pleased. In this case we would not be witnessing a development of doctrine, but the dire spectacle of the Bark of Peter stranded on a sandbank.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/02/development-or-corruption

I quoted this once before, without comment, but now I'd like to tease out the implications of the statement. Cardinal Müller is one of the premier Catholic theologians of his generation. Benedict XVI appointed him prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but Francis sacked him. So he represent the conservative wing of the church. 

1. The first implication of his statement is that the veracity and legitimacy of Catholicism depends on historical continuity at the level of Sacred Tradition. Likewise, popes don't have the authority to abrogate the binding teachings of their predecessors. 

2. The second implication is lost on many converts and Catholic apologists. Continuity at the level of Sacred Tradition must be demonstrable. The Magisterium must be able to show continuity, not stipulate continuity. The argument can't be that it's consistent because the Magisterium says so. No, that has it backwards. For the authority of the Magisterium hinges on continuity at the level of Sacred Tradition. So whether or not there is historical continuity at the level of Sacred Tradition is an independent judgment that must be made apart from the Magisterium. Hence, private judgment is indispensable, and prior to the Magisterium. 

Coming home to Mother Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgBS8ioM_Q

That moment when you realize, in midflight, that you boarded the wrong plane

For the first time since my conversion to the Catholic faith I don’t think if I was an Anglican now I would have bothered converting. Don’t get me wrong I’d never go back to Anglicanism.. but I don’t think that if I was an Anglican now I’d see the point of being a Catholic. 1/2

— Fr David Palmer (@FrDavidPalmer) October 26, 2019

The populist RadTrad insurgency

The Francis pontificate has reignited the RadTrad movement. This is primarily a grass-roots insurgency, with a few impotent, aging prelates on their side. It's made possible by the Internet. The RadTrad movement is a virtual church–or counter-church. The electronic alternative to official Catholicism. It's like the Essenes who broke off from the religious establishment in Jerusalem and formed alternate Jewish communities in the desert. A separatist movement. 

The RadTrad movement has been around, in fits and starts, since Vatican II. These divisions were already represented at Vatican II, in conference rooms as well as floor debates in St. Peter's Basilica. 

Ironically, most RadTrads were born after Vatican II. They're like the first-generation kids of Muslim immigrants who self-radicalize in the host country. 

But here's another thing: the rise of spokesmen like Taylor Marshall is also made possible by the silence of "respectable" conservatives like Bryan Cross. Called to Communion is the nexus of bliss (Trekkies take note) into which converts and apologists like him retreat. The nexus of bliss exists outside the space-time continuum of Catholicism on the ground. It's all about Catholic ideas. Catholicism on gilt-edge vellum. 

The problem is that when "respectable" conservatives like Cross sit out the debate, that creates an opening for spokesmen like Taylor. Francis has plunged his church into civil war. When apologists like Cross refuse to take sides or offer a mediating position, that leaves a vacuum which is filled by Taylor and his ilk. He is giving voice to the concerns of many of the faithful. 

Presumably, the reason Cross says nothing is that, like many converts and apologists, he doesn't know what to say. Surely he finds some of the developments under Francis alarming or dismaying, but he doesn't know for sure where that will end up. 

Many Catholic apologists initially defended Francis. They made excuses for him. But when the direction of his pontificate become unmistakably clear, they fell silent. By vacating the field, RadTrad warriors like Marshall moved in. 

It's hard for Catholic conservatives to criticize the likes of Marshall when they have no constructive alternative. Sure, they can attack his explanation, but that's not a substitute for having their own explanation. Although the nexus of bliss is a comfortable hideout, it fails to answer the pressing question of what it still means to be Catholic when the ground is shifting under their feet. 

Dying illusions

Taylor Marshall is a zealous convert to Catholicism. A founding member of Called to Communion. He's highly educated. And he's having a crisis of faith in Catholicism. The tensions between traditional Catholicism and the Francis pontificate have reached a breaking point. Watch 45-50 min:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7KKPpI4G4

He's practically in tears. It's like the disillusionment of a devoted teenage son who worships the ground his father walks on until he covers that his dad has been cheating on mom for years. Consider some of the questions he directs at Francis: 

Do you believe every verse of the Bible as coming from the Holy Ghost? When the Bible recounts miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ, do you believe those are historical miracles? 

Problem is, when was the last pope who believed all that? I think you might have to go all the way back to Pius X. 

In another respect, Taylor is like parents who can't bring themselves to believe that their child is lying to them about a drug habit, despite unmistakable evidence. "No, not our child!"

Marshall has been in denial about Catholicism for years.  He closed his eyes to all the evidence that the Catholicism he fell in love with isn't the same Catholicism as post-Vatican II Catholicism. 

A classic example of wanting too much for something to be true. You keep making excuses until you finally get tired of making excuses. You were loyal to something or someone that didn't reciprocate your loyalty. 

He feels betrayed. I'm sorry, but if you've been a willful sucker, then you're not entitled to feel betrayed. I assume he used to be Anglo-Catholic, and it comes as no surprise when Anglo-Catholics convert to Roman Catholicism. Anglo-Catholics are like a shivering beggar peering through the window of the palace at the dinner hall, with the roaring fire and tables piled with food. 

I'd hasten to add that something like this can happen to anyone. It takes different forms. 

I've been publicly defending Christianity for 15 years. I've been defending inerrancy for 15 years. Someone might accuse me of trying too hard to make it work.

But there's a major difference. On the one hand, there's abundant evidence for Christianity–with nothing remotely comparable for Catholicism in particular. 

On the other hand, there is no feasible alternative to Christianity. Christianity is necessary to ground morality, modality, reason, and meaning. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. There's nothing to work with. 

At the moment Taylor seems to be on the brink of sedevacantism. But where does that road end? Consider the cautionary tale of Gerry Matatics. When was the last time he attended Mass? To have valid sacraments, you must have validly ordained priests, and once sedevacantism starts tugging at the loose strand of yarn, the whole fabric begins to unravel. 

As I've often said, you can't keep patching up a fatally flawed paradigm. You have to admit to yourself that it can't be fixed, and scrap it for a different paradigm. 

Correcting Catholic revisionism

https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1186274501237055488

The Catholic feminine

Over at Called to Confusion, Tim Troutman did a 4-part series. It's basically a pretext for Marian dogma. I'll comment on part 3: 

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2019/08/the-catholic-feminine-part-iii-sex-and-virtue/

I agree with Troutman that there are stereotypical physical and psychological differences between men and women. That's to be celebrated. However, he indulges in some sweeping claims of dubious factuality. There's nothing wrong with generalizations, per se. That's unavoidable. The problem is not exceptions to generalizations. The problem is when the claims aren't even true in general. 

He makes very confident statements, but I don't know where he's getting his information. He's getting some of his information from Alice von Hildebrand's The Privilege of Being a Woman. Perhaps that's the uncredited source for most of his sweeping claims.

Touch and taste are the most material of the senses...The natural gaze of the woman tends towards the family, towards the earth. The gaze of the father, as a natural priest of the family, tends towards the heavens, towards God...In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. 

This reflects a classic dehumanized piety in Catholic theology, where true holiness is ethereal and otherworldly. Yet humans are creatures. Humans are earthy. We're not angels. 

And the power of sight most strongly corresponds with the power of reason. Thus, we often use the act of sight as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason.

The problem with that claim is that we often use the act of hearing as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason. 

Women are more oriented towards the touch which is more mundane...

Is that true? Are baby boys less responsive to caress than baby girls? Are young boys less responsive to hugs than girls? There are basically two kinds of touch: platonic and erotic. Men are quite sensitive to both. Because humans are nearly hairless, we have a huge expanse of bare skin. That makes us acutely sensitive to touch–even if it's covered by a thin shirt or blouse. In addition to the fact that we don't have a fur, our skin is probably more sensitive than wild animals, which have a higher pain threshold and pain tolerance. 

Women are more beautiful than men, and beauty per se is not mundane. Beauty itself is by no means superficial. As regards the possession of beauty, women have the greater share in dignity. In her book, The Privilege of Being a Woman, Alice von Hildebrand noted that otherwise in nature, it is the male in the species that is more beautiful (e.g. the peacock, the lion, etc.) This inversion of natural beauty is undoubtedly meaningful. Von Hildebrand suggests that it signifies that sexuality is something different, something higher for man than for animals.  She is correct.

Women are more beautiful than men from the viewpoint of normal men. But women have an eye for handsome men. 

Higher things, physical or abstract, always signify more noble things. Thus a king’s chair is always above the people, never in a pit. Moses ascends the mountain to meet God; Jesus ascends a mountain to pray and to appoint His Apostles. The heavens are above the earth, not below. 

So skyscrapers signify something more noble than lily ponds. A barren volcano signifies something more noble than a lush river valley. A bomber in flight signifies something more noble than an alpine meadow. 

In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. Modern music tends to be heavy with bass and drums – the lower, more primitive and mundane tones.  Most popular music is inherently ordered to draw man to earth – to incline man to look at himself – to draw him away from heaven. Sacred music is just the opposite; it tends to be played on instruments that excel in the upper ranges, and the voices tend towards higher notes (not exclusively of course). 

i) I wonder how many cellists share his intuition. What about all the great solo parts for alto and bass in the sacred music of Bach and Handel?

ii) His generalization is ironic in light of Catholic music, with the tradition of Gregorian chant sung in unison by monks. Male voices singing in the chest register. With a basically baritone range, along with some excursions into the tenor range. 

iii) It's true that there's something special about the soprano line in choral music. However, Troutman is glossing over complications. Consider the difference in timbre between boy sopranos and opera divas. Many opera divas have a sensual, womanly timbre. 

Women have a higher pitch in their voice than men. This again signifies a greater share in beauty.  The higher pitch in their voice not only signifies a greater inner beauty, but also a vocation — their voice is physically more adept to elevate than to bring down and their vocation mirrors this. Hence they are natural encouragers, nurturers, comforters. The physical characteristics of their voice are symbols signifying that women are ordained5 to lift up, to turn our attention to the heavens. How many male saints would without the briefest hesitance credit their mother or grandmother with pointing them towards God? I am no saint, but I owe what little saintliness I have to women in my life and above all to the blessed virgin Mary.  

That's literal nonsense. Pitch isn't actually higher or lower. Maybe that's a metaphor, or more likely, that's based on conventions of musical notion. But pitch is literally or actually about faster or slower frequencies. 

Women are less inclined to be attracted to merely external beauty than men. Again, in this respect, they have a greater share in human dignity by their nature. The gaze of man tends towards that which is most beautiful according to the mode of apprehension. 

I'd like to see more evidence for that claim. What about sunsets and flower gardens or wildflowers in meadows? What about the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe?

Where does figure skating belong in Troutman's classification scheme? What about women as poets, novelists, and short story writers?

My impression is that Troutman's comparisons don't begin from a study of men and women. Rather, he's shoehorning cherry-picked examples into a preconceived theological grid. Casting about for examples to illustrate the feminine side of Catholicism. There's a grain of truth to some of what he says, but he needs to be far more discriminating. 

Bulverism

One not uncommon example of the bulverism fallacy is the argument (either made implicitly or explicitly) by Protestants that the reason the Catholic Church teaches what she teaches about justification, in contrast to the Reformed conception of sola fide, is that we (humans) have this desire for self-justification, and that at some point in the past we (Catholics) distorted the Gospel in order to make Catholic teaching concerning the Gospel conform to that desire. Bulverism is a kind of ad hominem (see #18 here). What is needed instead, to avoid the bulverism fallacy, is some actual historical evidence showing that the Gospel was distorted (and not developed) from sola fide in the early Church, to what the Council of Trent taught, rather than the just-so story that begs the question by presupposing that the Catholic Church distorted the Gospel in this way, and that she did so in order to gratify a human desire for self-justification.

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/reformation-sunday-2011-how-would-protestants-know-when-to-return/?fbclid=IwAR2hn-Us1sDx4bZpnLDddyJG0YRKD51-5xQQw856mjtZJN-njY-Ter7xn4M#comment-215045

In 2011 I addressed here a very similar criticism raised by H. Wayne House in his article titled “Returning to Rome: Should Evangelicals Abandon the Reformation.” House was himself drawing from Ralph MacKenzie, who like Scot Mcknight, had proposed three reasons why Evangelicals become Catholic, none of which were love for truth above all else. Those three reasons were: Catholicism is older, Evangelicalism lacks tradition, the Catholic liturgy has an aesthetic appeal, and House added a fourth reason: there is a security in the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church.

Now in 2019, Protestants Chris Castaldo and Brad Littlejohn of The Davenant Institute have engaged in this same sort of bulverism. They have done so in three essays: “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 1: Conversionitis,” “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 2: The Psychology of Conversion,” and “Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 3: The Theology of Conversion.” In these three essays they claim that Protestants become Catholic because of a desire for authority, a desire for a sense of holiness, a desire to belong to something big and influential, a desire for certainty, a desire to be connected to history, and a desire for tangible grace. All these treat converts as operating within the paradigm of “ecclesial consumerism,” rather than loving the truth above all else, even if doing so requires sacrifice of many things they would otherwise desire.

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/reformation-sunday-2011-how-would-protestants-know-when-to-return/?fbclid=IwAR2hn-Us1sDx4bZpnLDddyJG0YRKD51-5xQQw856mjtZJN-njY-Ter7xn4M#comment-521945

1. To begin with, does Bryan distinguish between the abusive ad hominem and circumstantial ad hominem? Does he consider both of them fallacies? Does he think the circumstantial ad hominem is necessarily fallacious?

2. Bryan is half-right in this sense: it's fallacious to discredit a claim by drawing attention to what motivates the claim. 

3. That said, if an hominems are necessarily fallacious, then that invalidates the genre of Catholic conversion stories at one stroke. There's a cottage industry of Catholic conversion stories, viz. Surprised by Truth, 1-3. Recent examples include Robert George & R. J. Snell, eds., Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome (2018) & Brian Besong, ed. Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism (Ignatius Press 2019). 

The Called to Communion site is a repository of conversion testimonies. They host conversion testimonies. All or most-all of the contributors have posted their conversion testimony. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, conversion testimonies (as well as deconversion testimonies) are ad hominem. It's not just arguments for Catholicism and against evangelicalism, but an autobiographical narrative about their personal experience. They go into their personal motivations from converting from their original position (usually a variation on evangelicalism) to Catholicism. Bryan Cross did that himself in his contribution to Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism (Ignatius Press 2019). If ad hominem is bulverism, then the whole genre of Catholic conversion stories is bulverism.

This isn't primarily a Protestants characterization of what makes Catholic converts and reverts tick. This isn't a case of Protestant apologists imputing motives to Catholic converts and reverts. To the contrary, it's Catholic converts and reverts who showcase their personal motivations as justification for their switch to Catholicism. 

So Bryan is telling us, with a straight face, that it's warrantable for Catholics to say what motivated their conversion, but it's unwarranted for Protestant apologists who evaluate the motivations which Catholics themselves advance to legitimate their conversion? Where's any semblance of consistency in his overall position? 

The gingerbread house-part 8

This is the final installment in my series on Robert George & R. J. Snell, eds., Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome (2018).

(Thomas Joseph White) the next semester I took a class on Early Christianity, thinking that if I studied the historical genesis of Christianity, I would figure out what it was at the beginning. In that class, we were exposed to authors like Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus and Augustine and Athanasius, including his important book On the Incarnation, and figures like John Chrysostom. As I read them, I had a rising instinct that whatever these authors were articulating, it was something very like Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, like what Newman means when he says that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant (66).

What's striking about this is how, for him, the historical genesis of Christianity is subsequent to NT times. What it was like "at the beginning" means after it changed hands from the apostles and contemporaries of Jesus to the church fathers. He doesn't begin with the NT, or the OT, to see how NT faith is rooted in the OT. 

(Matthew Schmitz) My faith is not shaken by what the pope [Francis] is doing, though I have a very negative view of it. Many would say the pope isn't compromising the Church's teaching on marriage. I don't think that. I think the pope's doing it, and that if he fully and finally succeeded, the Church would be shattered. The Catholic faith would be falsified…If one were prepared to become Catholic before but not after the regrettable events of  2016, one should have given up on the Church much earlier (127). 

A convert with a tipping-point. We'll see if he follows through on that. 

The gingerbread house-7

Continuing my series on Robert George & R. J. Snell, eds., Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome (2018).

(Arkes) The question was, "Do you believe in the Church as a truth-telling institution?" And I thought at once, "I do, I really do…"

Cardinal Law became a good friend, and he never relented in  his interest in bringing me into the Church (152-53). 

Arkes is a Jewish convert to Catholicism. He did yeoman work for the prolife movement. He seems like a good guy.

That said, it's striking how blind he is to the irony of these two statements, which he makes back-to-back in the interview. Was Cardinal Law a truth-teller about the clerical abuse scandal? Has the Catholic church been a truth-teller about the clerical abuse scandal? What about the False Decretals? 

The gingerbread house-part 6

Continuing my series on Robert George & R. J. Snell, eds., Mind, Heart, and Soul: Intellectuals and the Path to Rome (2018).

Pecknold attended a magnet humanities school in Seattle, where a teacher introduced him to existentialist like Camus and behaviorists like B. F. Skinner. From Camus's Myth of Sisyphus he took away the message that life "is all meaningless, all I have is my friendships here, and that is it." And so one day in his teens, after a relationship with a girlfriend had broken up, he was suddenly struck, while driving somewhere, with the insignificance of our lives "on this tiny blue planet," and he had to pull the car over, simply shaking with the despair of it. 

It was shortly after that, in the darkness of his bedroom in his family's home, that Pecknold literally had a vision. "The room was illuminated, and the face of Christ came to me and said 'give me your life'…I think the face of Christ was very much like Eastern Orthodox icons (215).

i) I don't object in principle to modern-day visions of Jesus. But it's odd that a Christophany would have the appearance of a Byzantine icon. That's a stylized, unrealistic image of Jesus. If Jesus really appeared to Chad, why would he look like a work of art?

At Seattle Pacific University he encountered the countercultural side of evangelical Christianity, reading Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon's Resident Aliens...A NT professor at SPU named William Lane become a kind of mentor… (216).

After chapel, we'd meet to talk, get some breakfast, then go hear Earl Palmer, who was a Presbyterian pastor at the University [Presbyterian] church [near the University of Washington campus]….then we'd go for a big long hike, or do something big in the afternoon, and then we'd go to St. Mark's [Episcopal] Cathedral for Compline (216).

Those Earl Palmer sermons at University presbyterian Church, often invoking Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C. S. Lewis, had their effect as well (217). 

i) There's a twinge of nostalgia as I read these descriptions because his life crisscrosses mine. We were both students of Bill Lane. I used to attend concerts at UPres. A performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion lingers in memory. I used to listen to the compline service on radio, and I once attended the service. It was entertaining to hear Peter Hallock's florid recitation of 1 Pet 5:8. I drove past St. Marks hundreds of times. 

ii) But with the partial exception of Bill Lane, Chad's Protestant experience was mainly progressive. Reading trendy theologians like Hauerwas, and sitting under PCUSA pastor Edwin Palmer, with his chic references to Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tolkien, and Lewis to impress university students. 

But Chad kept coming back to the question of ecclesiology as primary, and with it the apostolic succession, which "mattered as something that God established to guard the deposit," something he did not see the Church of England doing. If the Church was indefectible, he increasingly thought, then somehow the papacy was too. "Papal claims are just extensions of ecclesial claims…If we want a really coherent Church, it has to have recourse to transcendent claims that govern it, and that has to be Scripture and Tradition, and they have to be juridically enshrined and protected, and that has to be through councils and it has to be through popes, because those are the divine vehicles through which God governs" (220). 

i) The church can be indefectible even though denominations are defectible, because the church is instantiated in different denominations at different times and places. When they outlive their usefulness, the church is then instantiated in newer denominations. There's a constant process of turnover–like the human body, which loses old cells and gains new cells. The body, the structure, remains, but the composition undergoes continuous change. 

ii) Like many converts to Rome, Chad doesn't begin with the historical phenomena of the church but with an abstract, Platonic ideal. It has to be this way, even though there's a glaring mismatch between the paper theory and obstreperous reality. 

Yet when we went into Memorial Chapel and approached the shrine to Mary to pray about the two jobs, suddenly he felt that the eyes of the icon of Mary were on him, staying with him as he moved (223).

It's hard to take that seriously. The impression that the eyes of a painting (or icon) follow the viewer is a common optical illusion. Nothing miraculous. It has a scientific explanation:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/sep/22/arts.science

And even if we didn't have a scientific explanation, it's still a naturally occurring phenomenon. 

She stared me right in the eye, pierced me with her eye, and said, "I want you to go to Catholic University." (223).

How should we interpret his claim?

i) It could be a tall tale. That's not the first explanation I'd reach for.

ii) It could be a hallucination. I don't know enough about his state of mind at the time to have an informed opinion one way or the other. 

iii) It could be supernatural but occultic. Notice the striking parallel between his purported experience and this:

14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed (Rev 13:14-15).

From a Protestant perspective, an icon of Mary is equivalent to a pagan idol.