Nicholas Lash on Teaching vs. Commanding
Today we are blessed with another guest post from David Cruz-Uribe, SFO. We thank him for taking the time for writing this.
Over at America Magazine, Nicholas Lash, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, has an article on the Magisterium, framed as a discussion of the difference between “teaching” and “commanding”. He has many good points, but he raises two I want to throw out for discussion.
The first is on how to characterize people—priest, theologians, laity—who disagree with statements made by the hierarchy: are they “disagreeing” or “dissenting”? If you think of the Magisterium as teaching, then “disagree” would be the operative word. As a teacher myself, I am used to, and indeed expect, my students to disagree with me when we discuss controversial topics. If I think they are wrong, my goal is to try to show them where I believe their error lies, without forcing them (“commanding”) them to believe me on threat of a bad grade. (Frequently, from student evaluations, I see that students believe I punish students who disagree with me, and reward students who agree with me. I wish I could show them my grade book so that they would see that the reverse is often true.)
His second point, however, is more interesting to me. It concerns the role of “reception” in teaching. He says:
Hence the importance of the doctrine of “reception.” In one of St. Augustine’s sermons (No. 272) he says: “When I hold up the host before communion, I say ‘Corpus Christi,’ and you reply ‘Amen,’ which means: ‘Yes, we are.’” The response of the faithful to sound teaching in the church is to say, “Yes, that’s it.” Where this response is lacking, the teaching is called into question. Securus judicat orbis terrarum (“The judgment of the whole world is secure”). In the months leading up to the first Vatican Council, Cardinal John Henry Newman insisted that he “put the validity of the Council upon its reception by the orbis terrarum” (whole world). And when, after the council, he hesitated before accepting the definition of papal infallibility, Lord Acton remarked, “He was waiting for the echo.”
This is an important feature of the life of the Church; I feel that this is THE way in which the laity can “teach” the hierarchy. The only place, however, where its role is openly acknowledged is in the canonization of saints. While not absolutely necessary, it is generally critical to the cause of the saint that there be a widespread cultus which acknowledges the sanctity of the candidate for sainthood. This can be aided (some might say created) by the applications of cash and organization—think of the cause of Fr. Michael McGivney, backed by the full faith and credit of the Knights of Columbus. (Before anyone jumps me for this: I belong to the KofC and find much that is admirable in Fr. McGivney’s life and work.)
I have thought of three other examples, all controversial to one degree or another, on the role of reception and teaching. The most controversial, of course, is on artificial birth control. This is the clearest example of a doctrine that has not been “received” by the laity: polling data demonstrates that the vast majority of Catholics, even those who by other empirical measures are “faithful Catholics” do not accept this teaching. However, the Church continues to regard this as “dissent” and does not seem open to listening to the insight and life experiences that have led to this rejection.
A second example is altar girls, which was a great fight in the late 80′s and early 90′s. Here again, the canons that forbid young women from being altar servers were not accepted, and were openly challenged; first by pastors and their congregations, and later by a few bishops. In the end, Rome changed the canons, and the practice became widespread. There has been occasional push-back (the scandal in Platteville discussed on another thread comes to mind), but I think that this is a clear case in which a “teaching” was no longer “received” and so was changed. But, one thing I recall from the days after the change was the complaint by some conservatives was that the whole incident would “teach liberals that if they whine enough they will get their way.”
A third example is the Tridentine Mass. This is more complicated, because there are currents running in both directions. But it seems to me that one way to analyze this is that a group of laity did not “receive” the changes to the liturgy after Vatican II, and began to push back against their local bishops. As was the case with altar girls, this lack of reception caused Rome to modify its stance, first under John Paul II, and then more broadly under Benedict XVI. While the liturgical preferences of Benedict XVI do play a role in this, it is at least worth asking if he would have acted on the Latin mass if there was not a body of laity who were pushing for it: I don’t think he would respond to a demand that was not there. (Unless, of course, you want to view this in terms of a Chomskian “manufactured consent” analysis.)
What lessons can we draw from these and other examples? (I appeal to the Church historians among us for other examples of “reception” or the lack thereof through Church history.) I realize that it is only after the fact that we can truly see whether a lack of reception was the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, but surely there must be some way to discern the working of the Spirit in “the signs of the times.”
Like this:
Comments are closed.
The Church teaches moral truth and moral truth can be expressed as negative precepts. “Do not do this, and do not do that”. It can also be expressed positively, because the negative precepts are not merely instructions about what not to do, they are also show the way a holy life is lived. They help us to see saints. The Church is opposed to the evil of artificial contraception because she is for the good of human life and the good of God’s design. If we do not see why contraception is evil, then we do not really see the beauty of God’s design for the human family.
I think most of this confusion goes away if you consider that there is truth involved in what the Church teaches. Coupled with a knowledge of the hierarchy of truth, and a hierarchy of assent, and all of it goes away. Some things are held up for us to believe de fide. Some things are still up in the air. Everything the Church teaches requires our pious and thoughtful attention. It’s not all that complicated.
At a certain point we have to stop calling into question the Church’s teaching on subjects such as contraception and learn to think with the Church. Satan really likes when we obscure moral truth with uncertainty.
Zach,
In light of the fundamental uncertainty raised by the problem of the “reception” of Church teaching, and the role of the Holy Spirit in shaping the response of priests and laity to that teaching, I am not sure what you mean by say we “need to learn to think with the Church.” Are you asserting that, a priori, the laity has no role in the shaping of the Church’s understanding of the Gospel message (except acceptance)?
Random thoughts (it’s been a long day):
Of course the frustrating thing about reception is that you can’t judge it until it’s over. That said, I think there are ways of behaving in the interim that are beneficial to life in the Church.
To me, it basically amounts to trusting that other sincere believers are not trying to evacuate the deposit of faith. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is gonna get it right in the long-term, but in the short-term let’s try to listen to one another. If the other person is wrong, the truth will not be harmed by them having their say in an appropriate forum. (E.g., Catholics can debate things on the blogosphere but those in positions of disagreement should not use the organs of the Church to promote their positions.) It may, in fact, be helped. The Nicene Creed didn’t fall from the sky.
Also, the thing about changes in Church teaching is that they almost never look the way that they were expected to look before they happened. The Church needs to find a way to hold on to the value that was central to its previous teaching even if there are practical changes made (see usury). In order to do this it needs people who are seriously listening to each other’s concerns and not presuming bad faith and name-calling. That gets us nowhere in terms of either clarifying teaching or developing it (at least one of which has to happen eventually on controverted issues like birth control).
As a side note about the birth control bit: my experience is that most of those who have rejected Church teaching have never actually considered it. They are just following the cultural default position. That said, I do know sincere Catholics who have considered Church teaching on this and rejected it. When I talk to such folk, I do not get the sense that they are carelessly flouting Church authority. They are usually thoughtful people, open to discussion and, often enough, in a quite serious circumstances regarding their discernment to not have (more) children. We can and should continue to witness to such people, but we don’t need to panic about their “dissent.”
But the huge numbers of Catholics using artificial birth control is not the incident of dissent it is made out to be. Most Catholic AC users have little or no idea they are dissenting or what that would even mean. Actual dissent requires thinking through the issue.
Also, the recent Marian doctrines are a good example of the “listening” Church. There are some who are hoping the Church will keep “listening” in this manner:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/z5mardogm.htm
I would add that there are difficulties which come to my mind which must be able to be accorded to with any discussion on this matter: for example, cosmological discussions and how the general populace at one time might have believed something, even with bishops and saints believing it, and nonetheless ending up factually incorrect. If people think through this (and I know it is a minefield) I think one could begin to understand many things better.
I am always mildly amused particularly by American Catholics who would have complete and total obedience in the religious realm but have nothing but contempt for authorities who do not agree with them in the political realm. I am not saying that they shouldn’t, but at least be consistent. Could one say that complete religious uniformity is the foundation of “freedom” for them in the political realm: a sort of justification for their generally unchristian attitude towards the poor, the weak, and the sinner?
“Autre chose est agréer une doctrine, autre chose obéir à un ordre.” Perhaps they need to take a few French lessons. For them, there is no freedom for the children of God, only an enslavement that enriches the self-righteous few. That is why the Vatican can appear “softer” than they would like. I am not too fond of the Vatican in general, but I can at least admit that they are trying to convince rather than to command. The only ones who are trying to command are those busy bodies who have no authority to do so.
@brettsalkeld
Some random responses to your random thoughts! :-)
The evolution of Marian doctrine is a good example of the listening church. I recall reading that at one point the Papacy ordered two religious congregations (I think the Carmelites and Dominicans) to shut up about it because they were becoming quite annoying.
I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about artificial contraception, per se, but this is a powerful example and worth analyzing on the subject of reception. Two things come to mind as I read your post: first, I am not sure that I am willing to accept that Catholics who use AC are not dissenting because they have not thought about it. This strikes me as a very subtle ad hominem argument.
Though, at the risk of contradicting myself (as I said, these are random thoughts), it also strikes me that if you are correct, then this is because pastors are not themselves upholding and preaching on this teaching, which in turn speaks to the question of reception. If a teaching is promulgated, and those most responsible for teaching the laity deliberately refuse to do so, what does this tell us about this teaching?
David,
I think you’re right to nuance my comments about AC and dissent. Without making this into a thread about AC, I think there are useful things to learn about dissent in principle from your insights.
I think that the heart of my comment, that there is a difference between dissent based on thoughtful disagreement and the attempt to form one’s conscience is a different kind of thing than ignorance of Church teaching, is correct. But you are correct that there may be deeper reasons for that ignorance that are not unrelated to certain questions in the life of the Church that relate to dissent.
Point well taken. But let’s ask this question in the context of usury (which I bring up in my comments to Zach). From roughly the 15th to the 18th centuries, the charging of interest expanded as mercantalism and then capitalism began to dominate in Europe. The Church still condemned it, but more and more people went along with it. To what extent were these people engaged in principled disagreement as opposed to ignorant of church teaching? And is this distinction relevant for the evolution of the the teaching on usury?
Again, I want to move away from specific (controversial) issues, and try to discern some underlying patterns or ideas.
I think this article fails to make the distinction between discomfort with a practice and disagreement with a teaching.
Pinky, could you expand upon your comment? I don’t quite understand the point you are trying to make.
Sure the laity has a role in shaping our “understanding” of Church teaching, but the laity is not the Magisterium. We do not have the final say – and there is a final say in the Catholic Church. Thank God we have a Pope.
I suggest that the extent the Holy Spirit shapes our response to Magisterial teaching to the extent that we humbly accept and practice the authoritative moral teachings of the Church.
This is a consequence of the Divine Authority that Magisterium has in Teaching Faith and Morals. Not everything the Magisterium teaches is Divine truth, so we have to learn to be able to distinguish between different types of teaching. But we always have to listen, and to talk back, to ask the Church questions and listen to Her answers. Not the answers of dissenting priests and theologians who have been causing confusion and great sin by publicly rejecting the teaching on contraception or by being silent about it, letting millions of souls learn to tolerate and habituate grave sin.
Zach
I would suggest you read some of the writings of Cardinal Newman on the role of the laity — sensus fidelium.
May I suggest an additional distinction? The distinction between non-reception based on lack of persuasion (a sign that the teaching in question needs further development) vs non-reception based on a competing truth proposition. The problem with the latter is that Catholics have cultured in a pontificating culture, so Catholics will tend to propose such competing truths as binding on the rest of the faithful, and this is not as tenable as such.
For example, it’s one thing to not be persuaded by the current explanations for the teaching about the restriction of Orders to men. It’s another thing to bind the rest of the faithful to accept as valid the purported ordination of women in individual fact.
Liam,
I think this is a useful distinction. Further, it leads to healthy consideration of concrete practice. For example, how I must behave if I am convinced in conscience that following Church teaching would be sinful is different than how I must behave if I merely struggle to see all the logical connections in a given teaching.
Zach,
what you write is true as far as it goes, but it seems to me that it falls short since it reduces the laity to a completely passive role: in essence to listen and accept and never to question or challenge. Also, I think your equation of “the Church” with the Pope and the hierarchy does real violence to the identity of the Church as the Body of Christ: are not the laity and lower clergy also “the Church”?
Moving away from artificial contraception, let’s consider the question of usury, which the hierarchy continued to denounce in categorical terms for decades after the practice became well entrenched in European commerce and theologians had proffered justifications for its acceptance. They were, in your language, “dissenting priests and theologians who [caused] confusion and great sin by publicly rejecting the teaching” the teaching on usury. But in the end this teaching was changed.
I am not interested in debating usury qua usury (any more than I want to turn this into a discussion on artificial contraception) but I am curious: how would you distinguish between these two?
David,
I never suggested the laity be “passive”. Listening is not a passive activity. I also did not say that we should never question or challenge. In fact, I explicitly said, quoting Venerable John Paul II, that we should “think with the Church”. And as you point out, this includes the Magisterium as well as the laity; the totus Christus. I never said and did not mean to imply that the Church is simply the Bishops or the Bishop of Rome. That would be like a head without a body. The real takeaway from my comment was supposed to be that there is a point where questioning divinely revealed moral truth becomes the encouragement of doubt. The distinction is only really clear in particular circumstances.
Your article provides such an occasion. Presenting the topic of artificial contraception as an open question, as something that is still up-in-the-air, encourages doubt and dissent. This happens in a number of different ways. (1)You make the distinction between dissent and disagreement, but you are unclear about what either category means. It’s clear you can disagree with the teaching but still assent to it (practice it and preach it). But you suggest that those who disagree with the teaching are not usually or necessarily dissenting, which has to be false. Most people who disagree with the Church’s teaching also preach that the Church is wrong about contraception and practice contraception themselves. This is dissent. (2) You suggest that the laity has a role in resolving the issue of artificial contraception, which cannot be. roma locuta est, causa finita est. The laity has some role in helping the hierarchy to understand moral teachings, and in that sense they help to define them, but strictly speaking the laity does not and cannot define moral truth, whereas the Magisterium can.
I don’t know enough about usury and how the teaching has changed to comment on the particulars, but I would suspect that, if the teaching has changed, its not the principle of the teaching but the semantics and the extent of the teaching. I’m also not familiar with the Magisterial documents w.r.t. this issue.
Henry,
I’ll check it out.
Zach,
in one sense, you are correct, artificial contraception is a settled question since the teaching Magesterium has declared it closed. However, from the perspective I am raising in this post (which is not questioning the teaching per se but using it as an example of a more general phenomenon) it seems extremely dubious to call it closed, since:
1) the vast majority of lay faithful do not accept it;
2) a large number of theologians openly question it;
3) a large majority of priests will not preach on it, and do not raise the question in the confessional;
4) some number of bishops are at best weak in their support for this teaching.
You can dismiss these facts as “dissent” but that avoids the fundamental question I am interested in: the role of “reception” or the “sensus fidelium” in the discernment of Church teaching and the gospel message. You have categorically rejected that the laity can have any role in analyzing this moral question. So then, how is this wholesale rejection to be understood?
On the subject of usury, I did some poking around on the web and found a few things:
From the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 557 (from Google Books): in 1179, Pope Alexander excommunicated all Christian usurers, and declared that the taking of interest was contrary to both Scripture and the natural law. (loose paraphrase; I can’t cut and paste from the text)
Benedict XIV in 1745, in his encylical Vix Pervenit is categorical in condemning the charging of interest at any rate.
John Noonan has argued persuasively that the doctrine on usury changed in substance (and not in “semantics or extent” as you put it) and this change was driven from below.
Calling heterodox belief and practice dissent is not “dismissing” any facts. It’s calling a spade a spade.
Again, I reject the idea that I have said that the laity have “any role in analyzing this moral question.” The laity do not decide this question. But they can certainly analyze the question, and even inform the Church’s teaching of the issue, but they cannot decide the question one way or the other. For example, lay theologians may influence the way the Church expresses the teaching (words etc.)
The best way to understand the wholesale rejection of the teaching on artificial contraception is that the teaching is very difficult! It’s not easy to pick up the Cross and walk with Christ. Especially since we live in a sex-obsessed culture, a culture obsessed with immediate gratification without consequences. Saying no to artificial contraception entails a great deal of self-denial.
As for your other questions: theologians openly question the teaching because they represent the culture at large; priests avoid talking about it because they are scared they will scare everyone away from the Church and they will have no parishioners. It’s hard to speak the truth when the truth is extremely unpopular. And it’s the same way for the Bishops. They aren’t perfect, and not all of them are fearless. Pray that we all might have the fortitude necessary to speak the truth for the salvation of souls.
Let me move this discussion in another direction. I have been reflecting on one of my examples—the fight over altar girls—in connection with another discussion: the fracas involving the parish in Platteville, Wisconsin.
The example of altar girls is interesting because it involves both of Lash’s categories: teaching and commanding. The Church taught that only young men could be altar servers, with various explanations advanced: it introduces boys to the priesthood and encourages vocations, having girls serve with a male-only priesthood will engender confusion, sexual differences mean boys won’t want to serve with girls, etc. (I have elided together formal reasons with popular explanations.) Nevertheless, this teaching began to be questioned as these reasons began to fall short for a large number of Catholics. Nevertheless, the Church continued to command this teaching, with canon law forbidding women as altar servers.
Again, in Lash’s categories, the disagreement with the teaching, not being accepted, turned into dissent from the command: more and more parishes, either with the tacit support of their bishops or despite the opposition of their bishops, began to to use altar girls. This disobedience caused the hierarchy to listen in ways that their disagreement did not: the official interpretation of canon law was revised, and altar girls were permitted.
Which brings me to Platteville. I do not want to rehearse the whole sad story, but I want to focus on one of the complaints: that the new pastors (Spaniards from a conservative order) had decided to only use boys as altar servers in their parish. This provoked (or was one of several incidents that provoked) a strong backlash from the parish. I want to look at this incident from the perspective of this thread. Looking from the outside in, I am inclined to interpret this as a reaction to the Church (as represented by these priests and backed by their bishop) failing to “listen.” Depending on whether this parish was part of the the original movement for altar girls, they may have had girls serving in this role for up to 25 years—the reinterpretation of canon law was itself over 15 years go. Their understanding of the matter was settled. Then the new pastors “commanded” the older teaching by restricting service to boys. They tried to “teach” but their explanations (e.g., they want to encourage vocations) were the very reasons that had failed to persuade a generation ago. In other words, it seemed as though they (the parishoners) were not really heard the first time around.
I want to forestall responses that will turn this into a debate about altar girls—I know that altar girls are now permitted but not required, and yes, I know that pastors have a duty to act as they think best for their parish, and parishoners need to “listen” to their pastors. But, if we are going to take seriously the sensus fidelium, and if we are going to deal with the fact that teaching must be “received” I think we need to explore how the hierarchy (again, in this case represented by the priests and the bishop) listen and accept what the laity have to teach. It would seem to me that in this case, the pastors would have been much better off to listen to their congregation and accept a practice (altar girls) they disagreed with but which is allowed and that their parish wanted. In saying this I am not claiming the Church is a democracy—but it is a community, and to be a community there must be listening and give and take by all parties.