My answers to "Questions for Catholics"
From a Protestant friend
Above: “Saint Mark Writing from the Mouth of Saint Peter” by Pasquale Ottini (1578-1630).
A Protestant friend put these questions to several of his Catholic acquaintances. I am publishing my responses to them here in case any readers are interested. The last response is the least technical, but I am including all of them.
1. What would falsify Roman Catholicism for you? In other words, what would it take for Protestantism to be true?
I consider Catholicism to be the only viable option for Christianity, such that if I were not a Catholic, I would not be a Christian.
If it were demonstrated that Christ’s body was not raised, Catholicism would be falsified. Though controversial, it seems plausible that if the Pope, the supreme head of the Church, were to declare ex cathedra anything contrary to the Church’s revealed truths or dogma, then Catholicism would be falsified. There might be other cases, but those stand out off the top of my head.
As for Protestantism, I struggle to find meaning in the term beyond “not Catholic.” Aside from opposition to Catholicism, what could possibly unite all the groups that identify as Protestant? There is no plausible understanding of ecclesiology, sola scriptura, sola fide, etc., that could unite them all. Therefore, the answer to the question “What would it take for Protestantism to be true?” is nothing: there is nothing I can think of that would make Protestantism true, given what is already true.
2. Does the RCC have an infallible list of the infallible doctrines of the faith? How many infallible interpretations of the biblical text are there?
It’s hard to understand the first question. Are you using “infallible” univocally here? For instance, “infallible doctrine” seems a bit redundant, as if there could be in some sense fallible doctrines.
Infallibility, in general, is an immunity from liability to error, and in particular it is the prerogative by which the Holy Spirit preserves the Church from liability to error in her definitive dogmatic teaching on faith and morals.
So whenever the Church teaches doctrine definitively on faith and morals, she does so infallibly, i.e., exempt from liability to error. Infallibility is thus a divinely assisted feature of the organs of doctrine. The result is that the Church’s teachings are clearly authoritative. A need for such authoritative teaching is the raison d'être of a divine prerogative of infallibility. When there isn’t a need for that level of authority, there isn’t a need for infallibility.
For a crude example, consider that for 2000 years the Church—through her Scriptures, creeds, liturgy, ordinarium magisterium, etc.—has reaffirmed the teaching that people sin. Has there ever been a definitive teaching specifically that people sin? Not really. But it’s never been in contention and is presupposed by some teachings that are definitive, so there hasn’t been any occasion to establish authority on the matter. The shepherd needs no boundary for sheep that don’t wander.
Given that understanding, the Church does have infallible doctrines, namely, all of them insofar as the Church definitively puts them forward. This is done, e.g., through ecumenical councils under the headship of the pope and through the pope himself (under the conditions spelled out in Vatican I).
To the ordinarium magisterium—that is, in the Church’s normal preservation and reiteration of the Traditions given from Christ and the apostles, the Scriptures (and their interpretations) entrusted to the Church, the teachings of the bishops dispersed throughout the world in union with the Holy See, etc.—to this, we owe religious submission of mind and will. This ordinary magisterial teaching may eventually be definitively put forth but only when there is a need to authoritatively do so. Notice that this is how the councils work: only when there is a need for authority—crisis, controversy, or threat of heresy—only then does the universal Church try to definitively settle question.
Now, in light of all that, what is the meaning of an infallible list of doctrines? That would just be the list itself. If A, B, and C are doctrines (i.e., put forward definitively and thus infallibly), then the conjunction or list of A, B, and C would also be definitive and infallible.
If there’s something else you’re getting at that I’m missing, let me know.
As to how many infallible interpretations of the biblical text there are, I’m not sure what this means. Whenever the Church definitively puts forth something that involves an interpretation of Scripture, that interoperation is, by implication, protected by infallibility. Could we try to go through and count how many times that’s happened? I guess we could. I don’t know the count myself.
3. Did there ever exist an infallible interpreter of the OT prior to the 2nd century? If not, then why did God leave the Jews with just the OT and their fallible interpreters?
Of course there was: as soon as Christ established His Church, the Church was the authoritative custodian and interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures. Whether the Church was properly organized and formed enough to exercise her prerogatives is irrelevant.
Prior to the Church, with the Oral Traditions (most of the Old Testament) that were handed down, I think the following might have been infallible organs of interpretation: the chair of Moses, the gift of prophecy to the prophets, the Urim and Thummim, and so on.
Even if they weren’t, there is only a need for a divine prerogative of infallibility when there is a need for authority. So the assumption is that the need for authority is the exact same in the Old covenant as in the New, and that seems false to me.
Here there is also a questionable assumption (to put it mildly) that we need the same guarantees for authority when revelation is ongoing and substantiated with miracles as when revelation is closed and miracles are no longer used to substantiate the revelation. That assumption also seems false.
On the other side, though, perhaps the lesson from the Old Testament is rather that they needed more organs of infallibility than they had! After, all Jesus spends half his time rebuking and correcting the teachers (Pharisees and Sadducees) of the lost sheep of Israel for their corrupt interpretations and false traditions.
4. What criteria defines valid doctrinal development and how you justify this criteria? Suppose the first few centuries tradition taught ~x, but later it affirmed x. is that valid development? Or suppose x was entirely absent for centuries, but later x suddenly appears. Is that valid development? Does such development require at least some grounding in Scripture?
A valid doctrinal development is when the Church clarifies or draws an implication out of something in the depositum fidei. A contradiction with the deposit of faith would be a corruption, not a development.
Given that understanding, it’s clear that there is no strict requirement for “some grounding” in Scripture.
5. Can philosophical reasoning be at least occasionally used to evaluate and judge the validity of some (where applicable) councils, creeds, and any other allegedly infallible doctrines? For example, suppose the Church said, "He who hops on one leg for more than a minute shall be damned forever." Would this be subject to reason from natural revelation, or must reason submit?
I’m not sure what this question is asking. We all have minds and are required to use our reasoning faculties. If we have done our due diligence to form our conscience and rational faculties, and our conscience and faculties indicate an error, then we had better seek help and not just go with what seems like an error. But notice that I mentioned due diligence: conscience only has rights because it has duties, as Newman said. It is a grave sin to claim the rights of conscience and rationality when we haven’t discharged our duty to properly form them.
It’s in principle true that if the Church taught something absurd, we’d have to reject it. What follows from this isn’t clear. It’s also in principle true that if 2 and 2 make 5, then (contrary to what we’ve always thought) 2 and 2 are greater than 4.
6. How do you know Roman Catholicism is true? And how strongly do you believe it? Is the evidence as good as Jesus' resurrection? Where does this evidence come from primarily? Scripture? Tradition? If Scripture, how can you appeal to that as evidence if Scripture is so obscure? If tradition, which tradition? EO? Assyrian Church of the East? Oriental Orthodoxy? What's your criteria for deciding among competing traditions? And how you decide what's true among all the diverse Christian beliefs that we find as early as the 1st century?
Christianity for me just is Catholicism. There isn’t a viable understanding of Christian life, practice, and doctrine outside of the Catholic Church.
In general terms, I’d say that I know Christianity is true the normal way: by the preambles of faith and divine faith thereafter.
As to why Catholicism and not EO or protestantism, I laid out some of the reasons in my own conversion story. I’d also add a few other reasons now, e.g., I think the EO condemnation of the filioque at Blachernae and in 1848 is a big reductio against them, since many of their own Saints (East and West) taught the filioque; and the Council of Florence taught the filioque and Papal primacy, and it satisfies every plausible EO theory of an ecumenical council. If all that leaves something to be desired for this question, let me know and I’ll try to provide something more satisfactory!
Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches of the East stand or Fall with Chalcedon. So if you think that Council was on the right track, as I do, then you aren’t either of those two.
7. If the Holy Spirit protects the church, why didn't the HS protect the church from the Great Schism or the Reformation? There at least 800 million Protestants, and 220 million EOs. If "protecting the church" does not involve eradicating or making these schisms an obscure minority (which happened to many heretical groups), then what does it mean? Only the visible church (RCC) operating from its official capacity is protected from error? So then how do you know it is only your church that God meant to protect from error? What if the HS chose the Reformers or the EOs to correct the errors of the RCC? This would have to be impossible, but how do you prove that?
Christians of every stripe are committed to the idea that the Holy Spirit grants infallibility (in some sense or other) and protection to the Church. So if this is a problem for Catholics, it’s a problem for everyone else.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone alive during the rise of Arianism, when many of the bishops were in heresy. Or consider the crisis of biblical studies in the start of the twentieth century. Christians had always believed the inerrancy of Scripture. What, then, were the faithful to do when the academy, including many self-professed Christian scholars, undermined the authority of the Bible with their revolutionary findings of "science" and "higher criticism"? Or consider the faithful Catholic layman just prior to Humanae Vitae. The same evil forces at work today were there as well, laboring hard to push the Church to license contraception and more. The cultural tide was strong, sweeping bishops and cardinals in its wake. Or think of the fear which overtook the disciples after our Savior's gruesome death. Or imagine the faithful Israelite as he was exiled off to Babylon, not for any fault of his own, but for the wicked actions of the leaders of God's "chosen" people. There are more examples. The idea that the wicked are winning, and the righteous failing, is not very new. In each of these cases, it might well have seemed like a death knell for Christianity.
The Psalmist knew those situations well:
Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves? They break in pieces thy people, O Lord, and afflict thine heritage.
I imagine that you and I, had we lived through such times, would have felt much the same as we do right now. In those circumstances, the foundations of Christianity seemed under threat. God would, of course, make a way, but in the moment it wasn't clear that He would; it wasn't clear how or even when. One simply had to pray and fast and exercise those neglected virtues of courage, hope, and faith. How else could one get on? Fear is not of the Lord, but it comes naturally to our sinful state, which is why those virtues are difficult. Many faithful Christians, including many saints, survived on hope but never lived to see the realization of its object.
In the end, the real question is this: should we be surprised that the Church, at certain points in time, and even now, must defend herself from attackers within or without—from doubters and schismatics, heretics and apostates, false teachers and men of infidelity? Has it not always done so?
Recall again, say, the Arian heresy. And did not our Lord tell us that this must be so within the Church? Meditate briefly on a parable from St. Matthew's gospel:
And he put before them another parable; Here is an image, he said, of the kingdom of heaven. There was a man who sowed his field with clean seed; but while all the world was asleep, an enemy of his came and scattered tares among the wheat, and was gone. So, when the blade had sprung up and come into ear, the tares, too, came to light; and the farmer’s men went to him and said, Sir, was it not clean seed thou didst sow in thy field? How comes it, then, that there are tares in it? He said, An enemy has done it. And his men asked him, Wouldst thou then have us go and gather them up? But he said, No; or perhaps while you are gathering the tares you will root up the wheat with them. Leave them to grow side by side till harvest, and when harvest-time comes I will give the word to the reapers, Gather up the tares first, and tie them in bundles to be burned, and store the wheat in my barn.
Consider also:
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus came not to found a movement or social program. He came, as Msgr. Ronald Knox put it, "to found a Church; and he foresaw how that Church would develop through the centuries and has prophesied for us, though it be only in rough outline, its development." The kingdom of heaven of which our Savior speaks is certainly not the future life that we will enjoy in heaven; the parables would make no sense if He had meant that. It is rather the visible Church on earth, "which is the appointed means of conducting us to [heaven]." It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, which grows into a massive tree; it is like a small bit of leaven, which is hid in the meal but spreads slowly throughout the whole.
How do we know that the current crisis is not simply the reaping of the latest tares that were sowed by the Enemy, who hates both Christ and His bride, the Church? Indeed, who can know? Your answer to that question will largely depend on your opinion of the Church's claims in general; they are prior to any interpretation of critical historical events.
In any case, within the visible Church, as Christ himself has said, the tares will remain with the wheat until the harvest. The net gathers both good and bad fish; the latter are not automatically cast away. There will be schismatics, heretics, doubters, false teachers, immoral men, and the like; they were sowed by the Enemy, and are caught in the net, and they will remain side by side with the faithful till the end.
I turn again to Msgr. Knox:
It is necessary to the world, [Jesus] said, necessary, that scandals should come [Luke 17:1]; it is part of our probation, he would have us understand, that we should be puzzled by all these anomalies of religious history, and distressed at them, and yet have enough strength of resolution to see behind them and beyond them, and recognize the Church as his own Bride, the inheritor of his promises and the completion of his life.
I hate the ugliness which comes from the abuses of art and liturgy, and the confusion and errors which come from twisted theology, schisms, and heresies. Yet, abusus non tollit usum, and corruptio optimi pessima. Why think that current events are a sign of falsity? They might also be inversely proportionate to the good, true, and beautiful things which are being attacked; in a word, the corruption itself might be a sign of, a pointer to, the truth. (In a similar way, the destruction wrought by the sexual revolution was as bad as it was precisely because of the good which was perverted.)