The Catholic Thing

The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

  1. 7 H FA

    A Little Wisdom from Toonces

    By Francis X. Maier But first a note from Robert Royal: We've gotten off to a good start in our mid-year fund drive, and I'm grateful to everyone who responded so generously. I was also pleased to find some encouraging messages from readers. To cite just a few: "The Catholic Thing is my favorite way to get my mind going in the morning, the essays certainly are thought-provoking and they're much needed in a world gone mad." "A 91-year-old Englishman, I enjoy reading your daily emails/columns. AMDG" "Thank you for your daily dose of Faith and Reason." "It's comforting to still see some of the bedrock sticking up through the quicksand." "Looking forward to the treatment of the Catechism! God bless all of you at TCT!" It's remarks like these that help all of us keep focused on the task at hand. So I urge the rest of you to act now, do whatever you can to keep The Catholic Thing alive - and kicking. Now for today's column... Most of us live at least part of our lives on autopilot. Most of us also, sooner or later, stumble across Albert Einstein's famous warning: "Doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results, is the definition of insanity." Most of us then ignore the warning, because few of us listen the first time. As it turns out, Einstein's words are apocryphal. In real life, he never actually said them. Yet they're nonetheless true. And more importantly, they give us a chance to consider some key tidbits of wisdom, illustrated by Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive a Car. Who was Toonces? For those too young to know, or too old to remember him, Toonces was a frequent guest on Saturday Night Live, 1989-93. A uniquely gifted feline, Toonces was the treasured pet of an everyday human family with unshakable faith in his abilities. Where that typically led is best captured in the brief SNL "Martians" sketch archived here. Toonces was the brainchild of writer Jack Handey, a comedic genius. We can laugh at Toonces and his antics because they capture something true about ourselves. We all have a few unthinking habits; a pattern of brainlessly repeated mistakes tucked away somewhere in our lives. We're each of us imperfect creatures. And our imperfections, in a marvelously ironic, if too-often boneheaded manner, seal us together in a common humanity. We complete each other in more ways than one. God, it turns out, has a vivid sense of humor. Here's the problem: Our little personal foibles, given the right climate and numbers, tend to metastasize into larger, less entertaining tumors. Remember that other, not so funny writer; the one who suggested "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need"? That particular Big Idea – tried again and again, more and more forcefully over the past century with the same unpleasant results – cost some 100 million lives. Millions more were shoveled into forced labor systems. Some 65 million died in the wake of the Chinese Communist revolution, the "Great Leap Forward," and the Red Guard turmoil. Pol Pot's modest attempt at social reform buried two million Cambodians. This, in a population of seven million. And the same sunny Big Idea currently gestates, like the creature from Alien, in some of our loudest, most annoyingly "progressive" political figures. Happily, we Americans don't believe in utopias. Some of us don't seem to believe in anything more than ourselves. If by "we," one means our secularized leadership classes, we're pragmatic in our convictions. We believe that happiness is a product of maximum personal liberty; maximum self-realization; maximum material abundance. We believe that more of whatever we want, or think we need, is always good. This is why more money for bigger budgets is always the answer to obviously ill-structured, misconceived public-school systems that produce semiliterate adults. Looking back, this also explains our actions in Vietnam. The solution was always more troops, more bombing, more aid programs. In effect, more of t...

    8 min

  2. 1 G FA

    Ever Ancient, Ever New

    By Robert Royal St. Augustine famously wrote of having come late to the Beauty that is God: tam antiqua, tam nova ("So ancient, so new"). It's a brilliant and profound way of expressing the truth that the deepest Good is not in the past or in the future, but by its very eternity transcends time. It's like a heart-rending piece of music that, even the very the first time you hear it, is both fresh beyond all expectation and, in the same moment, an evocation of a place that you feel you have known and longed for your whole past life, the one true home of the human heart. By contrast, what we're most often immersed in is a false, politicized version of old and new. A limited politics is, of course, a necessary and good thing. But when politics takes on a religious importance, a defining reality for our lives, it's a dangerous and partial substitute for the real thing. What's "conservative" then becomes merely a return to some idealized past; the "progressive" turns into a drive for some future utopia, whatever the cost (which is usually large in terms of human casualties). Compared with that deeper, truer music of Creation, the substitutes – if they come to possess us – are like an organ grinder's tune geared to make the monkeys dance. That's good neither for our souls nor our public lives. And it's always the main task of our lives to take care of temporal matters with our eyes fixed on the eternal. Which is what we strive to do, day in and day out, here at The Catholic Thing. So today I have to ask you to join us in supporting work that seeks some larger, more Catholic way. We only come to you twice a year asking for your support. And as part of this mid-year funding campaign, we have some remarkable new/old things to report. First, we're re-launching today the website of the Faith & Reason Institute (www.frinstitute.org), the parent institution of The Catholic Thing, in a new format that will make it easy to keep up with our writers, fellows, and varied activities. I think the staff did a wonderful job and produced a format that's both attractive and accessible. Please take a look. You'll see not only worthwhile written material by myself and others at TCT, but also an archive of the Posses; our video series on martyrs and persecution "Faith under Siege"; our TCT courses (my new course on Pope Leo's complicated relationship to his Augustinian heritage starts next week); our annual Summer Seminar on the Free Society, which this year features a dialogue between Western and Eastern Catholics about the public square; and several other new initiatives that we'll be rolling out shortly. We're only able to bring you all this thanks to the generosity and fidelity of people like yourself who care about Catholic truth, and are willing to support us in this mission of keeping Faith and Reason present, together, not only among ourselves but in the whole world. As St. John Paul II wrote at the beginning of his encyclical Fides et ratio: Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know Himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. Much is at stake in this dual approach to knowing God. I'd like to call your attention to one new feature in particular that we're launching. Many people these days are confused about what the Church teaches and why. And while columns on this page often address those questions as they crop up in the news and public debates, and our courses look at broader subjects, we decided that lots of readers would benefit from a simple, but more systematic approach. And what better way to do that than by going through the Catechism of the Catholic Church? And not on your own, but with the guidance of my Posse colleague and friend Fr. Gerald Murray. So, you'll shortly be receiving the first installment via email and an...

    7 min

  3. 2 GG FA

    On Moderation

    By Fr. Benedict Kiely St. John Henry Newman discovered, after much study, prayer. and pain, that the Anglo-Catholic, or Tractarian, concept of the Anglican Church as a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism, was ultimately a house built on sand, without foundation. There is still a small minority within that communion that advances the thesis. But with both female clergy, and now a woman occupying the throne of St. Augustine in Canterbury, that embattled band is like King Cnut vainly attempting to hold back the waves of the ocean. An old joke, perhaps a little unkind, saw that the famous "middle way" was actually the ultimate fudge, an "on the one hand this, on the other hand," that resulted in a position of perpetual fence-sitting, both extremely painful and rather embarrassing. There is, however, a position much needed today in our discourse, certainly on that which used to be called the "printed page," which is neither fence-sitting, nor a vain attempt to keep all sides happy by adopting an anemic position. Hilaire Belloc, the greatest exponent since Jonathan Swift of the specialized form of writing known as the "essay," wrote many essays with "On" in the title. He might write "On Cheese, On Laughter," and "On Getting Rid of People," to name a few. With that in mind, the position, or practice, needed today, especially by those committed to caritas in Veritate, not only those of the clerical order, but also those who claim to speak as Catholics, would be an attitude of moderation. A timely example of this is opinion about the State of Israel. The very mention of this contentious topic is likely, depending on the position chosen, to reverse Dale Carnegie, and "lose friends and influence no one." The moderate stance, entirely in keeping with revealed Catholic teaching and the Magisterium, would acknowledge the right of the secular State of Israel to exist, while discounting the extremes of a certain theology, which sees such a State as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. It would also firmly reject any form of antisemitism, whilst at the same time holding to the eternal and unbroken teaching that the Catholic Church is the new Israel. This moderate stance will infuriate many, on all sides, and lead to loss of friendships from those unable to see through the red mists of prejudice and fear. To practice moderation is not a comfortable place to be, if all you want is to avoid conflict. But it is most certainly not a sign of weakness. Moderation can, and should, also be seen in those who refrain from vulgarity and profanity, particularly in writing, but also in private. It's unseemly to find Catholics using profanity on social media, or other forms of communication. Why, we might ask, is moderation so difficult – and why, now, so necessary? Its very definition implies a sense of "keeping within reasonable limits," with its etymology encompassing the idea of staying "within bounds." That Middle English noun gives us a sense, not only of physical limits, but also of an unreasonableness that, if violated in conversation or writing, inflames rather than informs, and exacerbates rather than brings comprehension. There are phrases and expressions that we know, are "beyond the bounds of decency." But there are also polemical styles, very popular today, which do not serve the Common Good. Moderation encourages us – along with its good companions: temperance and judiciousness. Temperance, we know, to be a virtue, in fact, a Cardinal Virtue, not only in matters of the appetites, but in word and action. Intemperate language may be all the rage, and may encourage clicks, and followers, for those known as 'influencers,' but it does not signify wisdom or civility. Moderate but wise and erudite commentators may not command the highest viewing or listening figures in the illusory world of podcasts, but they will contribute more to intelligent discourse in the long term. And what they say will be remembered, long after the last infl...

    6 min

  4. 3 GG FA

    Lucky Sevens: Caravaggio's 'Works of Mercy'

    By Brad Miner By first a note from Robert Royal: There's just over a week until I begin my brief course on Pope Leo and the Augustinian tradition. Don't miss this chance to learn more about our American pope, the religious tradition he was formed by, and the ways in which he seems to follow or depart from the legacy of perhaps the greatest thinker in the early Church, St. Augustine of Hippo. You can register easily and quickly by clicking here. I hope to see you then. Now for today's column... First, let's review the Corporal Works of Mercy, which are seven in number: 1. To feed the hungry 2. To give water to the thirsty 3. To clothe the naked 4. To shelter the homeless 5. To visit the sick 6. To visit the imprisoned 7. To bury the dead There's a church in Naples, Italy, devoted to them. And its founding is a lovely story. In 1601, seven (how appropriate) young Neapolitan noblemen, all in their 20s or 30s, joined together to form Pio Monte della Misericordia (the Pious Mount of Mercy). And on every Friday, they gathered at the Hospital for Incurables (Ospedale degli Incurabili) to minister to the sick. Then they decided to elevate their commitment by founding the Mount – and a church with it. The charitable institution and the church survive to this day; the hospital is long gone. But when the construction of the church was finally completed, an altarpiece was needed, so one of the seven young nobles, Giovan Battista Manso, a patron of the arts (and a friend of the poets Torquato Tasso and Giovan Marino, and the scientist Galileo Galilei), knew that a certain young painter, Michelangelo Merisi, had just arrived in Naples. We know him, of course, by the name of his birthplace, Caravaggio, and he was on the run from the law for having murdered (on May 29, 1606), a young Roman nobleman, Ranuccio Tomassoni (noble only in the sense of his family's "dignity"). Giovan Manso did not care about that, and he was happy to shelter Caravaggio – if he would paint an altarpiece for the Pio Monte della Misericordia. Besides, Caravaggio had been spirited to Naples by the Colonna family, and though I don't wish to evoke vile stereotypes, that bunch stepped right out of a Baroque-era version of The Godfather. Of course, what we think of today as "the law" was rather ad hoc in the 17th century Caravaggio didn't hesitate to accept the commission. Work was his drug. Besides, Manso and the Monte didn't nickel-and-dime the artist. His fee is estimated to have been in the range of $150,000 to $220,000 in 2026 U.S. dollars! That's more than a fair wage for the amount of time the painter spent creating it between September 23, 1606, and January 9, 1607. Three months and a skosh, for heaven's sake. The painting is extraordinary. It is also, perhaps, the most difficult to "see." Caravaggio was the preeminent tenebrist. That term comes from the Italian word tenebroso, meaning dark or brooding or mysterious, and the words tenebrist or tenebrism likely weren't used in the 17th century – may, in fact, be 20th-century coinages. But I think we can be confident that when Giovan Manso – or if not he another – first saw the finished work, there was a whispered, "Tenebroso." Being an art lover but not an art historian, I can only speculate that Caravaggio's development of the technique (and he was surely its master) had something to do with his love of the human figure and the drama in humanity, and with his rather unique process (working quickly, painting directly on canvas without sketching), and (here I speculate) looking over his shoulder to see if the law was about to kick down the door. Whatever the reasons, the results were always stunning, and you see it from his earliest work all the way to the last: from Boy Peeling Fruit (c. 1592) to Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (1610). But it was never so stunning or as impenetrable as in The Seven Works of Mercy. Let's break down The Seven Works of Mercy into four parts: top, middle (right and left), and bottom. At t...

    8 min

  5. 4 GG FA

    For a More Manly Catholicism

    By David Warren Edgar Allan Poe mentioned three things, in connection with the Earthly Paradise, or perhaps there were four; I don't pretend to be a Poe expert. But so far as I remember, they were: life in the open air, the love of a good woman, and the creation of some original form of beauty. These struck me at the time (I was a teenager, and not yet consciously a Christian) as a useful list, so long as I could choose the location, the girl, and the art. Of course, location would include the season, with temperature, precipitation, and wind velocities, for I come from Canada where it can be awesomely cold, wet, windy, and uncomfortable if one is not dressed properly. There are other considerations, and as the reader will immediately see, many are not man-made. Too, other men may have divergent opinions. Fights over Paradise may, alas, easily erupt; indeed, fights even over what we are dreaming. It is difficult to be laissez-faire about Paradise. This was never a Christian strategy, however. It is not even a Christian practice to enjoy the good, and suffer through the evil. Nature provides this service, which is built into our very physiology, as it was built into that of dogs and mayflies. Short – and usually until just short – of death, we have some moral control over our own behavior, and through family and friends some slight influence over the behavior of others. But it is through politics that we form the illusion that we can take more of the decision-making away from God when we disagree with Him. In the end, however, we may not be consulted on our own fate. Is the world unfair? We have a gunslinger culture, as one learns by paying attention to "the media." This gives us the illusion that every gun-toting (or "empowered") person has the means to change history, even more than with the vote. It is an illusion because the consequence of a killing – whether as crime or within the scale of a war – can seldom be anticipated. All the "go back in time and shoot Hitler" scenarios I have audited over the years shared this one easily overlooked feature: each is astoundingly naive. For all you know, you have just made the Nazi party more efficient, by getting rid of its principal liability. And thus, you have helped the Axis win the war. The Catholic Church has long been aware that interventions in politics work like this. Those who think that a single clever move, or even a sequence of them, can improve our lives, or even bring Paradise, are, we KNOW, the enemies of prudence. Instead, things improve when men and women cease being evil, and instead become good. In consequence, we have wisely directed our creative energies to recording and celebrating the Saints, starting, of course, with Saint Jesus. The "downside" of this isn't immediately apparent, or rather, is itself an illusion. True, our economy might languish, if people everywhere became Saints, and I could foresee other unfortunate statistical correlations. But these in turn would be the occasions for more saintly acts, and perhaps the odd miracle. My readers are advised against expecting any specific miracle, however. (I'm not a politician, after all.) Wisdom and prudence generally warn us against doing anything that will bring about change. It is as the estimable Fr. Frederic William Faber (1814-1863) said. He famously, though perhaps apocryphally, declared himself against all change, including Change For The Better. This blessed Oratorian was expressly opposed to innovations in theology and the liturgy, and noted that among His majestic qualities there was God's immutability. Fr. Faber also partook of the divine kindliness, which is why he is safe to follow. But in recalling the creation of man in God's image, we must consider God's manliness. And in thinking prudently, recall that prudence has multiple aspects. One must consider what could be the consequence if one acts in the way indicated, but also what will happen if one doesn't act this way. In other words, on...

    6 min

  6. 5 GG FA

    The Ascension as a Gift of Faith

    By Stephen P. White Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Ascension. (Depending on where you are; check your local listings.) It's worth pondering: Why did Christ ascend? Why, having conquered death, did He not remain? Wouldn't it have been simpler for a manifestly divine, resurrected Jesus to walk the earth, for however many millennia it might take, converting sinners by the unmistakable fact of His glorified bodily presence? In the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples ask Jesus a question which suggests that they were thinking along these lines themselves: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" It is a reasonable question to ask the newly risen Messiah, but Jesus avoids a direct answer: "It is not for you to know the times or seasons. . . .But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Both the question and the response suggest an answer to our original question. Jesus did not come to be a worldly ruler. That is to say, He is the master of the universe, but not in a worldly sense. Not in the sense that His disciples, who believed Him divine though they knew Him in the flesh, were inclined to expect. His kingdom, as He told Pilate, is not of this world. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, "God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth." How can we, bodily creatures that we are, learn to worship in Spirit and in truth? The short answer: we learn through faith. Faith is a gift, of course, but more specifically, it's a gift fitting to the limits and condition of our humanity. God is not a capricious trickster who likes to make things more difficult for His creations by making Himself hard to see. He is a loving Father who gives us what is best for us. And faith is a true gift to those whose "best" requires faith. Which is to say, Jesus ascended for our sake. In John's Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus tells His disciples: "But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." The Ascension is a gift precisely because it demands of us a faith in things unseen and opens to us a dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Pope Leo the Great, in the fifth century, reflected on this point in a beautiful sermon about the Ascension: [W]e commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father. On which Providential order of events we are founded and built up, that God's Grace might become more wondrous, when, notwithstanding the removal from men's sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold. For it is the strength of great minds and the light of firmly-faithful souls, unhesitatingly to believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one's affections whither you cannot direct your gaze. The pope continued: And whence should this Godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our eyes? Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt of Christ's Resurrection, until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His very Flesh, "because you have seen Me, you have believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." Jesus ascended, in Pope Leo's words, in order "that we may be capable of this blessedness." Our dependence upon faith is itself a gift. The bodily presence of the Risen Lord was a boon to the faith of the Apostles; its absence is even more of a boon to us. We know the presence of Jesus through the Sacrament of the altar and by the Holy Spirit, who instructs and guides the Church. In...

    6 min

  7. 6 GG FA

    The Devil and 'Emerging Issues'

    By Robert Royal It's often been said, though perhaps not often enough lately, that the Devil can cite Scripture for his purposes. Whether the Evil One is operative in many of the current approaches to Scripture – in university departments and some Church circles – is a question best left to true authorities and even exorcists. But there's no question that the people who wrote Final Report of Study Group Number 9: Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues, which appeared just last week, were engaged in serial Scriptural abuse. Admittedly, they're not alone. A good deal of current Scripture scholarship seems like the work of a lawyer looking for legal loopholes – on behalf of the usual "emerging" subjects: LGBTs, women's ordinations, suicidal concessions to postmodern "paradigms." A long line of doctors, martyrs, confessors, saints, spiritual adepts, holy men and women, ordinary Catholics, and popes – to say nothing of the Apostles and Early Church Fathers – would not even have conceded that such subjects are "controversial" – the original area that the study group was supposed to be considering. Let alone "emerging." Homosexuality, priestesses, and heterodox "paradigms" were quite common in the pagan world during the early Christian centuries. None of that "emerged" into the Church's life at the time. They were all non-starters for followers of "the Way." Which makes the outlandish way that the recent report handles Scripture and tradition so obviously nonsensical, out of a clumsily "contextualized" desire to produce a predetermined outcome, whether it accords with Christian revelation or even verifiable reality. The report purports to believe that there is precedent in Scripture for changing previously held beliefs in the way that the Apostles decided that Gentile converts were exempted from some precepts of Jewish law: Starting from the account of the experiences lived by the Apostles – in particular Peter and Paul with Barnabas, in their ministry of proclamation to the Gentiles – re-read and illuminated in the light of the Word of God, the process of dialogue leads to a progressive and detailed communal discernment of the issue. The decision taken synodally ("it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28) expresses the Church's growing awareness of a more mature relationship with its Jewish roots: for in this relationship it learns to discern, by interpreting under the guidance of the Spirit, the experience it is living, what is of permanent significance and finds its fulfilment in Jesus, and what, on the other hand, has only a provisional value. Ah yes, more mature. As are we. This sounds plausible unless you look more closely at the claim and how it is being manipulated – the moh-zhewst – to a very different end. The gentile converts were told, "You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality."(15:29) So, from potential idolatry and proniegha– which any Greek Lexicon will tell you means not only prostitution but fornication and unchastity. Whatever else it may be said to mean, the passage doesn't allow what both Jewish tradition and the practice of the early Church understood God had forbidden, the kind of same-sex relationships the study group wants to "emerge" now. You would think that, in 2000 years of Christian existence, it would have "emerged' long ago. But it didn't. And, in any honest assessment, can't now either. Behind all this lies another bit of legerdemain, namely an appeal to "lived experience" as a guide to dealing with present debates. In a sense, of course, lived experience is an important component of any individual life. But so is the accumulated "lived experience" of our tradition, or we're all just making it up – to suit ourselves – as we go along. Early Christianity notably learned much from Greco-Roman philosophies in addition t...

    7 min

  8. 12 MAG

    Who Gets to Say?

    By Randall Smith I read recently that Cardinal Reinhard Marx says he will allow the blessing of same-sex unions, contrary to Vatican directives. Fr. Davide Pagliarani, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, says he intends to ordain new bishops without a papal mandate. And Luxembourg's Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich says women's ordination is essential to the Church's future; "I cannot imagine in the long run how a Church can survive, if half of the people of God suffers because they have no access to ordained ministry," Well, as a married layman who has "no access to ordained ministry," I can imagine it. I've always thought the priesthood is a special calling to service, not a position of special prestige to which people deserve to be given "access." But Cardinal Hollerich seems to have a different point of view – perhaps because he is feted as a Cardinal. Cardinal Hollerich's statement isn't really news, though. The late Cardinal Pell warned shortly before his death in an article in The Spectator that Hollerich had "publicly rejected the basic teachings of the Church on sexuality, abortion, contraception, the ordination of women to the priesthood and homosexual activity, as well as polygamy, divorce, and remarriage." So, women's ordination isn't the only thing the Cardinal thinks the Church can't do without. I am convinced that the Church can do without those things – quite well, in fact – as do most of the people I know. Cardinal Hollerich may know people with a different view, but there's an old saying that when a man becomes a bishop, he never pays for dinner again, and he never hears the truth again. People tell him what they think he wants to hear. People don't do that with me. And yet, the people I talk to don't seem to count in quite the same way as Hollerich or the "experts" on Synodal Group 9 that announced recently that the Church has been totally wrong on sexual matters. I interact with young people every day, and from that perspective, I would have told them that the Church's teaching is a Godsend – much wiser than anything else on offer today. But that view doesn't seem to count as much, or at all. Which makes me wonder how you get to be a person like Fr. James Martin, S. J., who flies to Rome to consult with the pope and gets quoted as an authority regularly. I suppose one reason that Fr. Martin and others like him have the "access" they enjoy is because he is a cleric, and I'm not. But isn't that clericalism? I thought clericalism was a bad thing, something the Church needs to put an end to. Lots of clerics say this. Some of them blame the entire pedophile scandal on clericalism, not, as one might have thought, on the lax standards regarding sex among some homosexually-oriented clergy. So if clericalism needs to be resisted, why is it especially relevant what Jean-Claude Hollerich thinks about women's ordination, homosexual activity, or divorce and remarriage? The answer, one must assume, is that he is a Cardinal. Fair enough. But Cardinals don't have the authority to dictate doctrine. They are men under authority themselves. And if they don't respect the authority they are under, why should anyone respect theirs? My students come to the Catholic university where I teach not because they want to listen to me. They come because they want to learn what the Church teaches. The only "authority" I have is the authority derived from Church teaching. The class isn't "Randall Smith Theology." Who would take it? The class is Catholic theology. So, when a bishop or Cardinal proclaims something that is contrary to the authority of the Church, it is like he is sawing off the branch he is sitting on. The only reason anyone would listen to a bishop or Cardinal is because that person accepts the authority of his ecclesiastical office based on Scripture, tradition, and magisterium. Otherwise, a Cardinal is just a bizarre old guy in a funny red cap. I know that people on one side or another will say that their ...

    6 min
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

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  • Creatore
    The Catholic Thing
  • Anni di attività
    2020 - 2026
  • Puntate
    60
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    The Catholic Thing

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