Why Should We Listen To The Church?
Editorial FAITH Magazine January-February 1995 by Tim Finigan
This was the question that some students of London University invited me recently to answer recently at a meeting of their Catholic Society. They were not being hostile themselves; they wanted some way to give an account of their own faith and this was the question which they felt needed an answer.
It is well phrased and it gets to the heart of a real problem for the Church in her evangelisation. The culture in which young people are immersed is one that has no real understanding of authoritative teaching. In political life, the assumption of public authority has almost entirely been replaced by the trial of the media and the appeal to public opinion. In public morality, there is no sense of what is objectively right or wrong; it is entirely a question of what reasonable people think. If they disagree then “you go your way and I’ll go mine” and everybody respects everyone else’s point of view. Every matter of doctrine, policy, morals, even history itself becomes a matter of taste open to debate.
We could, of course examine these assumptions and show their philosophical inconsistency; we could draw attention to the teaching of Veritatis Splendor, and the Holy Father’s timely reminder of the real and objective character of right and wrong in morality. For the moment, however, let us simply note that this is in fact the environment in which the young receive their education and formation. On the basis of every other area of debate, the natural approach for a young person to the Church as teacher would be to treat her the same as any other modern teacher. They will be predisposed to see her as one voice among many. If her representative in a particular place happens to be exemplary, then the teaching may be worth hearing. If there are a lot of stories in the paper about bad priests, then perhaps it will not be worth listening to their Church.
This view of the Church as one voice among many is reinforced by the attitude of some within the Church who treat the magisterium in this secular way. For instance, some officially arranged training courses on the Catechism of the Catholic Church will treat it as an interesting text with strengths and weaknesses. It is presented as a resource to be discussed, examined critically and then used insofar as we, in our judgement, find it helpful. This is similar to the way that a group of teachers might assess a new set of resources for the National Curriculum or a group of voters a new Government policy.
It is a seductive approach. After all, who would say that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is perfect? So if it is not perfect, surely we should debate its strengths and weaknesses and use it accordingly? Such reasoning is hard for a young teacher or student to challenge even when they suspect that something fishy is going on and that the debate over the strengths as weaknesses of the Catechism is really an excuse to moan about not using politically correct language and about the Church having a Catechism at all.
He who hears you hears me
We need to cut to the heart of the matter. Before we even begin to present the distinction between the office and the holder of the office, before we can start to tackle questions of the truth and the manner of its presentation, we need to establish why we should listen to the Church at all. We are making a case for authoritative teaching in a culture that rejects authoritative teaching as inherently suspicious. The only way to do this is to make clear first of all the divinity of Christ and then the living link between Christ and the Church as shown in the teaching of the Church.
On the question of the divinity of Jesus Christ, we are in uncharted territory for many of the young. The natural assumption will be to think of Christ as purely human but there will be a nagging sense that there is something more. We can make explicit the faith of the Church through the ages in the divinity of Christ and, by referring to the magnificent I am sayings in the Gospel of St John, we can draw out the Church’s vision of Christ in a way that is thrilling and novel to many.
While many young adults would assume that we must always subject the Church’s teaching to the judgement of human opinion, most would at least be interested to hear more on the subject of our attitude to the teaching of Christ. Do we set ourselves up as the judges of the strengths and weaknesses of his teaching? And was his teaching simply for the apostles and followers who happened to be alive during his public ministry?
We may still need to labour the point, however. Familiarity with sources is another casualty of the “instant comment” culture. It is possible to hear only opinions about a subject and never to see the source at all. A few months ago, for example, everybody had an opinion on the Maastricht agreement. Only a very small minority, even of those who commented publicly, had any direct knowledge of the text of the agreement itself. The same is true of the teaching of Christ. It is easy to gather opinions on Christ or on Christianity without having any but the most cursory knowledge of even the gospels. So we may need to draw attention to the manner of Christ’s teaching, how he indeed taught with authority and how he made clear the moral character of faith in his teaching; he who believes and is baptised will be saved, he who does not believe will be condemned. (Mk 16.16) We can draw attention to the character of his teaching in the sermon on the Mount. When Jesus Christ said you have heard it said of old … but I say to you, he was making his teaching equal in authority to the teaching of the Most High who delivered the law to Moses in cloud and lightning on Mount Sinai. When Moses returned after speaking with the living God, his face was so radiant that the people could not look on him. It is this character of teaching which Christ makes his own.
If that is the way Christ taught and if, in order to be saved, we need to receive the same certain and divinely revealed teaching of Christ, we can then ask where it is to be found today.
Making the link
How we establish the link between the teaching of Christ and the teaching of the magisterium of the Church is essentially the same question as that which Newman set out to answer in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. That much abused essay was not an attempt to demonstrate that doctrine develops. It was an essay to account for the fact that doctrine develops and to show that the very developments led the fair-minded enquirer to the gates of Rome as it indeed led Newman himself.
In Newman’s time, the seeds were being sown of the denial of supernatural revelation. Nevertheless, he took it as an assumption that could be made in proving an argument. So for instance, speaking of how an infallible developing authority was to be expected, he said “The most obvious answer, then, to the question why we yield to the authority of the Church in the questions and developments of faith, is that some authority there must be if there is a revelation given, and other authority there is none but she.” (1878 ed. 2.II.12) What we need to do first of all is to establish that there is a divine revelation given. Hence the importance of a basic catechesis on the divinity and the divine teaching of Christ. Then, however, Newman’s argument comes into its own. He showed that if we seek a supernatural authority equal to that with which Jesus Christ taught, we will not find it in the history of those Christian communities which have relied upon personal inspiration nor in the Anglican Church which in his time sought the via media of returning to the early Church and rejecting the innovations of Rome. As he pointed out, “…if it be narrowed for the purposes of disproving the catholicity of the Creed of Pope Pius [IV], is becomes also an objection to the Athanasian; and if it be relaxed to admit the doctrines retained by the English Church, it no longer excludes certain doctrines of Rome which that church denies. It cannot at once condemn St Thomas and St Bernard, and defend St Athanasius and St Gregory Nazianzen.” (op cit Introduction 8)
In one sense, our task today is easier than Newman’s. We are not likely to have to persuade convinced supporters of the via media that theirs is no route to revealed truth. All that we need to do is to show that revealed truth will not be safeguarded in the rules of procedure of an “Any Questions” panel. The greater difficulty for us is to get across the notion of revealed truth to begin with. We need to begin with the transcendence of God himself and show that Jesus Christ is truly God the Son, the divine Word made flesh. If that is clearly perceived then the idea of revealed truth will begin to follow naturally. We listen to the Church because in doing so, we listen to Christ. He who hears you hears me—there is no greater motive and no authority more trustworthy. Furthermore, as the Pharisees found, he alone is totally above reproach.
John Fisher, Thomas More and the “sleaze factor”
Sadly, the Church has a long familiarity with the “sleaze factor”. Scandals both financial and sexual have dogged her history since Ananias and Sapphira and the Corinthian incest case. One obvious point to make is that precisely because of his understanding of human fallibility, Christ did not entrust the custody of revealed truth to the presumed perpetual holiness of the individual members of the Church. The Church is sanctified by Christ and not by us. Scandals caused by human weakness have brought down many Kingdoms and governments. Were the Church to rely for credibility on human holiness, she too would have been forced to “Resign!” centuries ago.
The great martyrs John Fisher and Thomas More shed light on the matter by their example. They died because they could see clearly the distinction we make between the divinely revealed truth (and divinely given authority) and the fallible, sinful human bearers of that authority. Julius II, whose authority they upheld, had fathered three daughters as a cardinal and was nicknamed Il terribile as a man exemplary more for his military enthusiasm than for his spiritual life. As keen Europeans, Fisher and More were well aware of the ferment of thought which gave rise to the Reformation and of the abuses which stirred the extreme reformers. Nevertheless, as humanists themselves and promoters of progress and the “new learning”, the upheld the authority of Rome to the point of suffering imprisonment and death.
To the student of today, we can commend their example while recalling with gratitude the exemplary lives of the modern Popes. Even with a Pope renowned for his holiness, we do not rely on that for the authority of his teaching. The holiness is fitting and called for by the nature of his office but the office does not depend on it. The office and authority of teaching depends on the living power of Christ alone and it is that divine guarantee that beckons our conscience to follow. The moral life of the Bishop or Pope can cloud the teaching or point it out more clearly; it does not itself produce it.
Are we equal to the Catechism?
The honest enquirer will then ask how we are to find this authoritative teaching and discern it from the purely disciplinary decree which can be reversed or changed. It is not likely to help very much if we enter on a discussion of the various theological notes. In practice, the young lay Catholic needs to have a ready source in which he can find the teaching of the Church for sure. This is the need which the Catechism of the Catholic Church has met so magnificently. We must not suspect of strategic thinking any of the pious souls in the theological or catechetical establishment who opine—in all sincerity—that they find the section on prayer the most helpful. However, one would beg to differ—in all sincerity. The real impact of the Catechism is to be found in its presentation of the doctrines of the Creed, the Sacraments and the Commandments. As a masterpiece of succinct presentation and explanation, the completeness of the Catechism is quite thrilling. It is there that the student will find a vademecum for the teaching of Christ which has remained the same down the centuries in all essentials yet constantly reformulated to meet the particular demands of every age.
Furthermore, according to the Catechism, the Church does a great deal more than “define the limits”. This view of magisterial teaching makes the Church a kind of referee in theological debate rather than the pillar and ground of truth, teaching positively. Once again, we may consult the character of the teaching of Christ himself. He did not run down the touchlines of debate between the rabbinical schools but intervened directly and authoritatively with the style of teaching that had so profound an effect that even the police were loath to arrest him. He gave to the disciples a formation of mind and heart that was truly pastoral in the nurturing it gave.
The young successors of St John and St Martha should expect the same today and they have a right to it. We do not invite them to listen to the Church as to a human opinion but to listen to the voice of Christ himself as he continues to teach down the ages. In the dreary spiritual wasteland of addiction to sensual pleasure and the angry defence of the most mediocre standards of personal morality, the call of the Lord has lost none of its power to inspire and fulfil. The fullness of human joy and salvation is what we were made for. We listen to the Church because through her, that salvation is made known in the living and active presence of Christ.
Editorial FAITH Magazine January-February 1995 by Tim Finigan
This was the question that some students of London University invited me recently to answer recently at a meeting of their Catholic Society. They were not being hostile themselves; they wanted some way to give an account of their own faith and this was the question which they felt needed an answer.
It is well phrased and it gets to the heart of a real problem for the Church in her evangelisation. The culture in which young people are immersed is one that has no real understanding of authoritative teaching. In political life, the assumption of public authority has almost entirely been replaced by the trial of the media and the appeal to public opinion. In public morality, there is no sense of what is objectively right or wrong; it is entirely a question of what reasonable people think. If they disagree then “you go your way and I’ll go mine” and everybody respects everyone else’s point of view. Every matter of doctrine, policy, morals, even history itself becomes a matter of taste open to debate.
We could, of course examine these assumptions and show their philosophical inconsistency; we could draw attention to the teaching of Veritatis Splendor, and the Holy Father’s timely reminder of the real and objective character of right and wrong in morality. For the moment, however, let us simply note that this is in fact the environment in which the young receive their education and formation. On the basis of every other area of debate, the natural approach for a young person to the Church as teacher would be to treat her the same as any other modern teacher. They will be predisposed to see her as one voice among many. If her representative in a particular place happens to be exemplary, then the teaching may be worth hearing. If there are a lot of stories in the paper about bad priests, then perhaps it will not be worth listening to their Church.
This view of the Church as one voice among many is reinforced by the attitude of some within the Church who treat the magisterium in this secular way. For instance, some officially arranged training courses on the Catechism of the Catholic Church will treat it as an interesting text with strengths and weaknesses. It is presented as a resource to be discussed, examined critically and then used insofar as we, in our judgement, find it helpful. This is similar to the way that a group of teachers might assess a new set of resources for the National Curriculum or a group of voters a new Government policy.
It is a seductive approach. After all, who would say that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is perfect? So if it is not perfect, surely we should debate its strengths and weaknesses and use it accordingly? Such reasoning is hard for a young teacher or student to challenge even when they suspect that something fishy is going on and that the debate over the strengths as weaknesses of the Catechism is really an excuse to moan about not using politically correct language and about the Church having a Catechism at all.
He who hears you hears me
We need to cut to the heart of the matter. Before we even begin to present the distinction between the office and the holder of the office, before we can start to tackle questions of the truth and the manner of its presentation, we need to establish why we should listen to the Church at all. We are making a case for authoritative teaching in a culture that rejects authoritative teaching as inherently suspicious. The only way to do this is to make clear first of all the divinity of Christ and then the living link between Christ and the Church as shown in the teaching of the Church.
On the question of the divinity of Jesus Christ, we are in uncharted territory for many of the young. The natural assumption will be to think of Christ as purely human but there will be a nagging sense that there is something more. We can make explicit the faith of the Church through the ages in the divinity of Christ and, by referring to the magnificent I am sayings in the Gospel of St John, we can draw out the Church’s vision of Christ in a way that is thrilling and novel to many.
While many young adults would assume that we must always subject the Church’s teaching to the judgement of human opinion, most would at least be interested to hear more on the subject of our attitude to the teaching of Christ. Do we set ourselves up as the judges of the strengths and weaknesses of his teaching? And was his teaching simply for the apostles and followers who happened to be alive during his public ministry?
We may still need to labour the point, however. Familiarity with sources is another casualty of the “instant comment” culture. It is possible to hear only opinions about a subject and never to see the source at all. A few months ago, for example, everybody had an opinion on the Maastricht agreement. Only a very small minority, even of those who commented publicly, had any direct knowledge of the text of the agreement itself. The same is true of the teaching of Christ. It is easy to gather opinions on Christ or on Christianity without having any but the most cursory knowledge of even the gospels. So we may need to draw attention to the manner of Christ’s teaching, how he indeed taught with authority and how he made clear the moral character of faith in his teaching; he who believes and is baptised will be saved, he who does not believe will be condemned. (Mk 16.16) We can draw attention to the character of his teaching in the sermon on the Mount. When Jesus Christ said you have heard it said of old … but I say to you, he was making his teaching equal in authority to the teaching of the Most High who delivered the law to Moses in cloud and lightning on Mount Sinai. When Moses returned after speaking with the living God, his face was so radiant that the people could not look on him. It is this character of teaching which Christ makes his own.
If that is the way Christ taught and if, in order to be saved, we need to receive the same certain and divinely revealed teaching of Christ, we can then ask where it is to be found today.
Making the link
How we establish the link between the teaching of Christ and the teaching of the magisterium of the Church is essentially the same question as that which Newman set out to answer in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. That much abused essay was not an attempt to demonstrate that doctrine develops. It was an essay to account for the fact that doctrine develops and to show that the very developments led the fair-minded enquirer to the gates of Rome as it indeed led Newman himself.
In Newman’s time, the seeds were being sown of the denial of supernatural revelation. Nevertheless, he took it as an assumption that could be made in proving an argument. So for instance, speaking of how an infallible developing authority was to be expected, he said “The most obvious answer, then, to the question why we yield to the authority of the Church in the questions and developments of faith, is that some authority there must be if there is a revelation given, and other authority there is none but she.” (1878 ed. 2.II.12) What we need to do first of all is to establish that there is a divine revelation given. Hence the importance of a basic catechesis on the divinity and the divine teaching of Christ. Then, however, Newman’s argument comes into its own. He showed that if we seek a supernatural authority equal to that with which Jesus Christ taught, we will not find it in the history of those Christian communities which have relied upon personal inspiration nor in the Anglican Church which in his time sought the via media of returning to the early Church and rejecting the innovations of Rome. As he pointed out, “…if it be narrowed for the purposes of disproving the catholicity of the Creed of Pope Pius [IV], is becomes also an objection to the Athanasian; and if it be relaxed to admit the doctrines retained by the English Church, it no longer excludes certain doctrines of Rome which that church denies. It cannot at once condemn St Thomas and St Bernard, and defend St Athanasius and St Gregory Nazianzen.” (op cit Introduction 8)
In one sense, our task today is easier than Newman’s. We are not likely to have to persuade convinced supporters of the via media that theirs is no route to revealed truth. All that we need to do is to show that revealed truth will not be safeguarded in the rules of procedure of an “Any Questions” panel. The greater difficulty for us is to get across the notion of revealed truth to begin with. We need to begin with the transcendence of God himself and show that Jesus Christ is truly God the Son, the divine Word made flesh. If that is clearly perceived then the idea of revealed truth will begin to follow naturally. We listen to the Church because in doing so, we listen to Christ. He who hears you hears me—there is no greater motive and no authority more trustworthy. Furthermore, as the Pharisees found, he alone is totally above reproach.
John Fisher, Thomas More and the “sleaze factor”
Sadly, the Church has a long familiarity with the “sleaze factor”. Scandals both financial and sexual have dogged her history since Ananias and Sapphira and the Corinthian incest case. One obvious point to make is that precisely because of his understanding of human fallibility, Christ did not entrust the custody of revealed truth to the presumed perpetual holiness of the individual members of the Church. The Church is sanctified by Christ and not by us. Scandals caused by human weakness have brought down many Kingdoms and governments. Were the Church to rely for credibility on human holiness, she too would have been forced to “Resign!” centuries ago.
The great martyrs John Fisher and Thomas More shed light on the matter by their example. They died because they could see clearly the distinction we make between the divinely revealed truth (and divinely given authority) and the fallible, sinful human bearers of that authority. Julius II, whose authority they upheld, had fathered three daughters as a cardinal and was nicknamed Il terribile as a man exemplary more for his military enthusiasm than for his spiritual life. As keen Europeans, Fisher and More were well aware of the ferment of thought which gave rise to the Reformation and of the abuses which stirred the extreme reformers. Nevertheless, as humanists themselves and promoters of progress and the “new learning”, the upheld the authority of Rome to the point of suffering imprisonment and death.
To the student of today, we can commend their example while recalling with gratitude the exemplary lives of the modern Popes. Even with a Pope renowned for his holiness, we do not rely on that for the authority of his teaching. The holiness is fitting and called for by the nature of his office but the office does not depend on it. The office and authority of teaching depends on the living power of Christ alone and it is that divine guarantee that beckons our conscience to follow. The moral life of the Bishop or Pope can cloud the teaching or point it out more clearly; it does not itself produce it.
Are we equal to the Catechism?
The honest enquirer will then ask how we are to find this authoritative teaching and discern it from the purely disciplinary decree which can be reversed or changed. It is not likely to help very much if we enter on a discussion of the various theological notes. In practice, the young lay Catholic needs to have a ready source in which he can find the teaching of the Church for sure. This is the need which the Catechism of the Catholic Church has met so magnificently. We must not suspect of strategic thinking any of the pious souls in the theological or catechetical establishment who opine—in all sincerity—that they find the section on prayer the most helpful. However, one would beg to differ—in all sincerity. The real impact of the Catechism is to be found in its presentation of the doctrines of the Creed, the Sacraments and the Commandments. As a masterpiece of succinct presentation and explanation, the completeness of the Catechism is quite thrilling. It is there that the student will find a vademecum for the teaching of Christ which has remained the same down the centuries in all essentials yet constantly reformulated to meet the particular demands of every age.
Furthermore, according to the Catechism, the Church does a great deal more than “define the limits”. This view of magisterial teaching makes the Church a kind of referee in theological debate rather than the pillar and ground of truth, teaching positively. Once again, we may consult the character of the teaching of Christ himself. He did not run down the touchlines of debate between the rabbinical schools but intervened directly and authoritatively with the style of teaching that had so profound an effect that even the police were loath to arrest him. He gave to the disciples a formation of mind and heart that was truly pastoral in the nurturing it gave.
The young successors of St John and St Martha should expect the same today and they have a right to it. We do not invite them to listen to the Church as to a human opinion but to listen to the voice of Christ himself as he continues to teach down the ages. In the dreary spiritual wasteland of addiction to sensual pleasure and the angry defence of the most mediocre standards of personal morality, the call of the Lord has lost none of its power to inspire and fulfil. The fullness of human joy and salvation is what we were made for. We listen to the Church because through her, that salvation is made known in the living and active presence of Christ.