Some Reflections on the Enlightenment

René  Descartes 

I was raised in a very Catholic environment and before the Second Vatican Council.  I lived in a strong Catholic Ghetto in which public school education was anathema and you didn’t go to the YMCA even though they had an indoor swimming pool.  The Sisters of Mercy taught me in primary school—from which I graduated in 1962, the year Vatican II opened.  I had the Jesuits in High School and Vatican II held its final session in December of my Senior Year.  These were formative years for me and there was great harmony between the faith that I was being taught in school and the faith my parents, both devout Catholics, were conveying to me and my siblings at home.  My Mom was a member of the Parish Altar and Rosary Society; my Dad a member of the Holy Name Society.  Together they were members of the Christian Family Movement and hosted in our home bi-weekly meetings of other couples who, with one of the parish priests, studied the faith together.  My Dad was a daily communicant and devoted to the rosary.  Our home was consecrated to the Sacred Heart.  We regularly—often two or three nights a week—had various priest friends at our home for supper.   All this is to establish my credentials as having been raised an authentic dyed-in-the-wool Roman Catholic in the best of pre-Vatican II faith. 

That being said, we believed that somewhere just slightly after the Blessed Mother and somewhere up the ranks from the seraphim and cherubim stood robed in the glory of God, Franklin D. Roosevelt.   We believed that, while we each have a personal responsibility for charity, through the collective agency of society represented by government, we have an joint obligation to assist those less fortunate members of society and to level—to some authentic degree—the playing field so that all had a relatively equal access to building a future for themselves.  We were taught to believe that workers had a God-given right to organize and had as much right to the profits of their work as did the owners of capital.   This was before Mater et Magistra or Laborem Exercens, or Popolorum Progressio, but we were schooled in reverence for Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.    While it was in the day before LGBT issues emerged from the social closet, we were taught to believe that discrimination against individuals for any reason—racial, ethnic, religious—was inherently unjust and that while we might disagree with a person whose opinions were different than ours, there were rules of civility to be followed.  And we were taught that while the Middle Ages represented a flourishing of our Christian Faith, and the Protestant Reformation represented a breakdown of the social order, that the Enlightenment was the foundation of all that is good in our modern world and especially in these United States. 

I still agree with most of what I learned in those years of my Catholic youth but I am seriously questioning the Enlightenment.  In fact, the more I look at it, the more insidious I see its effects. 

The name attempts to sell the basic goodness of the period.  Enlightenment.  Don’t we all want to be enlightened?  First of all, the name, Lumières,  was coined by one of its leading proponents, the Abbé Jean Baptiste Dubos.  Always be aware of self-advertising. Dubos, though a priest, did not practice his ministry but was noted for his work as a historian and litterateur.  He was a member of the Académie française and elected perpetual secretary of the same in 1723.  Kant introduced the term into German as Aufklärung (from aufklären—to make clear, to enlighten) in 1784.  The term Enlightenment only came into English in the second half of the 19^th century, long after its havoc had been wreaked on the western—and in particular, the American, mind. 

In many ways the intellectual revolution of the 17^th and 18^th centuries that we sanctify with the title “the Enlightenment” was a consequence of the Protestant Reformations and the breakdown of Traditional authority structures that the Reformations both represented and caused.  This breakdown of Traditional authority structures, structures that were petrifying into absolutism both in Church and State, was far from all bad.  Monolithic power—whether represented by Royal Absolutism in Tudor-Stuart England, Bourbon France, Hapsburg/Bourbon Spain, or by the growing power of the papacy in post-Trent Catholicism was putting western society on an intellectually and politically suicidal trajectory that the intellectual challenges raised by Enlightenment scientific and philosophical figures were able to thwart before we sank back into a new Dark Ages.  Protestantism, from the mild variety of Luther to the radical strains of the Anabaptists and Unitarians, made sure that the western mind knew that there must be nothing beyond questioning yet Protestantism itself, when once established by the State in Anglican England, Lutheran Denmark, Calvinist Geneva, took itself as seriously as the Inquisitorial Catholicism of Spain.  It took the post-Christians philosophes to continue to insist on the freedom of the intellect to inquire and challenge. 

In many ways the Church’s lock hold on intellectual life began to crack not only before the philosophes of the Enlightenment but even before the Reformers posed their theological challenges.  William of Ockham (1287-1347), an English Franciscan Friar who taught Philosophy at Oxford challenged the established thought of his time by pioneering Nominalism—a philosophy that denies the existence of universals or abstractions and posits that things exist only in their individual realities.  Ockham also posited, in distinction to Aquinas, that theological truths could only be apprehended by faith and that reason plays no part in theology.  This opened a philosophical chasm by which theology—or even faith in God—could be separated from science and scientific reasoning.

That separation would be put to the test in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish/Prussian astronomer.  Copernicus was a true polymath and was educated in Poland and in Italy with backgrounds in mathematics, geometry, philosophy, classical languages, medicine, Canon Law, and astronomy.  Although he was never ordained a priest, his maternal uncle Lucas Watzenrode, Prince-Bishop of Warmia, arranged for him to be a canon in his cathedral.  His duties as a canon, since he was not a priest, were mostly administrative but also included the practice of medicine.  Through his entire life he was fascinated with astronomy and during his studies in Italy he shared a residence with Dominico Maria Novara de Ferrara whose chief assistant he became for the years he studied in Bologna.  His interest in astronomy continued and he began to acquire the writings of ancient astronomers such as Aristarchus of Samos, Cleomedes, Heraclides Ponticus, and Ecphantus the Pythagorean.  His studies led him to return to the ancient Greek theory that the earth revolved around the sun rather than that the sun and planets revolved around the earth. 

This idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system was perceived to be a direct threat to Christian faith by Church authorities for whom the Bible clearly taught that the earth and its inhabitants are the very reason for the existence of creation and therefore must be its center.  In fact, several of the ancient astronomers had long posited that the earth revolved around the sun, but the triumph of Christianity in Western Europe and Islam in the Near East, North Africa, and Spain both theologically demanded a geocentric universe.  (To be fair, Aristotle and Ptolemy both held to a geocentric model so it was not without its advocates outside Judaic/Christian/Islamic sphere.) 

Copernicus’ theories did not raise a lot of theological dust within his lifetime, but it sure got Galileo in a boatload of manure despite his friendship with Pope Urban VIII who was a strong admirer of Galileo and who often spoke with him about heliocentrism.  Unfortunately in one of his books defending a heliocentric universe Galileo used the Pope’s conversations in a way that made Urban look foolish and that brought down the theological establishment both on the astronomer and his theories.  Of course, while in the short run Galileo paid for his intellectual adventurism, in the long run the Church came out looking absolutely stupid for its opposition to contemporary science.  (Hmmm, is there a lesson to be learned here.)

In many ways the Enlightenment is rooted in the scientific discoveries of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, which not only challenged but overturned the received wisdom of earlier ages.  The Englishman, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), is considered to be one of the founders of modern science.  Bacon was both a philosopher and a scientist—and, for that matter, a man of religious faith. (He was Church of England.) Bacon advocated the use of experiments and observation to advance scientific knowledge rather than abstract philosophical argument.  It seems elementary to us today that one advances knowledge by observation of the facts but in the theologically dominated world of the time all truth was seen as needing to be conformed to theological and philosophical principles rather than having an integrity of its own.  This was basically the same problem faced by Galileo: when our observation of physical realities conflicts with biblical texts or theological principles, which “truth” is to be accepted?   And so we have this famous quote

God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

Well, maybe she didn’t really say that, but there are people who believe something mighty close to this freakish idea because for them religion still trumps science. 

Another figure on whom the Enlightenment is founded is René  Descartes (1596-1650).  Descartes was a mathematician, the founder of analytic geometry.  But he is remembered precisely for his philosophical role.  Descartes considered himself to be a devout Catholic and indeed, though he lived much of his life in the Calvinist Netherlands and Lutheran Sweden, he remained constant in the practice of his faith and was ultimately buried in one of my favorite Parisian churches, Saint Germain de Prés.  Descartes is famous for his Cogito ergo sum: I know, therefore I am.  This is theologically revolutionary.  No longer is it that the certainty of my existence is contingent on God’s being, but rather I can be certain of my existence because I am self-aware.  The philosophical center has shifted from God who has created to the human person who is aware of his own being.  Note, this self-awareness does not deny the existence of God, nor does it deny that God is creator, but it does rob God of some of his thunder because it permits me my own existence on my own terms.  I no longer need God—or the Church—as an authority because I can rely on my own knowledge that comes not from outside “givens” but from my own observation and reflection.  The human intellect, not the Bible, not the Church, now is the arbiter of truth.Descartes sent the pious Pascal into paroxysms of religious fury and ended up after his death with his works on the Index of Forbidden Books. 

When it comes to Copernicus or Galileo or Descartes and the interplay between religious faith and scientific knowledge, I don’t have a problem and indeed I would argue that science, even the broader sense of all human knowledge,  has to be able to pursue its exploration without having its conclusions short-circuited by religious doctrines.  But we have only scratched the surface of the Enlightenment.  In future postings I think we can see some of the serious problems the rationalism of the Enlightenment will spawn.   

More on the Mass as Sacrifice --What It Means and What it doesn't Mean

14th century bas-relief depicting

Mass facing the People on the

facade of Lucca Cathedral.

OK, this posting will be a little more heavy than my usual and it may interest a more limited audience, but in the last posting, I dealt with the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice from the perspective of the prayers in the offertory of the Mass of Pius V where the bread and wine are specifically referred to as a Sacrifice.  This is theologically problematic and is one of the reasons that the offertory rite was so drastically revised in the Reform of the Liturgy following the Second Vatican Council.  The Mass is a Sacrifice in as that in the Mass we participate in the one eternal Sacrifice of Christ made on the Cross at Calvary and to which we become mystically present when “we proclaim the Death of the Lord until he comes…”  (I am using the word “mystically” here in the sense that Pius XII used it so describe the Church as the Body of Christ in Mystici Corporis. It does not mean “spiritually” or “symbolically,” nor is it meant to connote the abstraction that is often meant when we use the word “mystic.”  In some sense, mystic means “sacramental,” but it is meant to convey a reality that is more authentic—more real—than the literal or physical sense.  In other words, in the Eucharistic Celebration we are truly and fully present to the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, even more present to it than were those who stood there at the foot of the Cross.)  In no sense is Christ offered in Sacrifice again and again each day on the altars of our churches, much less do we offer God a sacrifice of bread and wine.  We do present to God’s service the gifts of bread and wine so that the Lord’s Death might be proclaimed until he comes again but this should not be considered a “sacrifice.”  Were I a theologian I might go on about how the bread and wine are symbols of our own lives which are presented on the altar so that by Christ’s Redeeming Sacrifice and the Power of the Holy Spirit called down we, by virtue of our baptism, are conformed to Christ in his death and Resurrection and so become his Body—but since I am not a theologian I don’t intend to go there.  I had planned in this posting to talk about Cranmer’s reaction to the concept of the Mass as Sacrifice, but I realize that before I go there, I need to look at the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which, in Cranmer’s day was the only Eucharistic Prayer used in the Western Church (including the distinctly English Rites), to see how the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice is found there.  So let’s look at the Roman Canon. 
There are various phrases in the canon that make it clear that a sacrifice is being offered to God in this rite.  I will highlight the sacrificial language.  Pardon the Latin, but to demonstrate the point, we need to cite the untranslated text lest the translation add or subtract meaning. 

uti accepta habeas et benedicas  haec dona haec munera, haec sancta sacrificia illibata,

vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis, pro se suisque omnibus: pro redemtione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et incolumitatis suae:

Hanc igitur oblationem servitutis nostrae, sed et cunctae familiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine, ut placatus accipias:

Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, siculti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui iusti Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam.

Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: iube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae;

But it is also clear from the prayers, that the sacrifice being offered is not bread and wine, but Christ himself, highlighting not only the sacrificial language, but the reference to the sacrifice being Christ. 

Quam oblationem tu, Deus, in omnibus, quaesumus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilemque facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus et Sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi.

ut quotquot ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filii tui Corpus et Sanguinem sumpserimus,

And it is clear that Christ is not being sacrificed anew but rather that are recalling his one eternal sacrifice.  I have highlighted the phrase, unde et memores, in addition to the sacrificial language because that phrase, usually translated “Calling to mind…”  or in the current translation, “we celebrate the memorial” neither of which phrase keeps the Latin syntax despite Liturgiam authenticam.   

Unde et memores, Domine, nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta, eiusdem Christi, Filii Tui, Domini nostri, tam beatae passionis, necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in caelos gloriosae ascensionis: offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, Panem sanctam vitae aeternae et Calicem salutis perpetuae.

What may have been clear in the seventh century when the Roman Canon achieved what was more or less to be its definitive form, was no longer clear in the sixteenth century (much less the 20^th)  and the nuances of the theology of Eucharistic sacrifice were lost leading to exaggerated ideas.  In their attempts to restore the pristine faith regarding the Eucharist, reformers from Luther to Cranmer to Calvin to Zwingli universally rejected any and all sacrificial language, thus snapping the connection of the Eucharist to the Cross and reducing the Eucharist is a commemoration, not of the cross but of the Last Supper.  Fortunately the recovery of the patristic tradition has led most Protestant—or at least Anglican and Lutheran—scholars back to appreciation of the Eucharist as a sacramental participation in the Death of the Lord until he comes again.  It can also be said regarding us Catholics, that the revised Liturgy of Paul VI has done much to restore our balance in approaching the Eucharist as Sacrifice by clarifying the relationship of the Eucharistic Celebration to the paschal mystery and reducing the superstitious understanding prevalent at the time of the Reformation and, among the ignorant, still prevalent on the eve of the Council.  In regard to a clear theology of the Eucharist, the revised rites of Paul VI are greatly superior to the ambiguities found in the old Missal used until the revisions of Vatican II. 

 

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXXVII

The interior of Wittenberg Castle

Church where Luther was to become

preacher

Well, in our last post we talked about Martin Luther and how his vocation evolved from the study of law to becoming an Augustinian friar of strict observance and a professor of Scripture at the University of Wittenberg.  Luther finished his doctorate in 1512 and the same year began teaching at that university.  The university was new and the pride of its founder, the Elector Frederick III “The Wise” of Saxony, who was anxious that his university take its place among the leading educational institutions.  It was the young friar, Martin Luther, who was to put the University of Wittenberg on the map. 
Luther had access to Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, published in 1514 and was thus able to read the New Testament in its original language.  Reading especially Paul’s Letter to the Romans proved to be a conversion experience for the young friar.  Long troubled by scrupulosity and unable to satisfy his spiritual anguish by religious observances, Luther discovered in Paul that we are set right with God not by our religious practices but by our faith in Jesus Christ.  This was revolutionary for Luther.
By the sixteenth century the Catholic Church had drifted far from the New Testament, not so much in doctrine as in piety and devotion.  Keeping the scriptures in Latin made the Bible the prerogative of the clergy and left the vast majority of laity dependent on the clergy for spiritual guidance.  There were always a few laity who were educated enough to be able to read the Latin text of the Scriptures, and even fewer among them who actually did.  In England, for example, you had Saint Thomas More who as a layman took his faith seriously and whose devotion was very much in line with the best biblical and patristic scholarship of his day.  This was, after all, the beginning of the Renaissance and More is perhaps the best example of the new piety emerging by those desirous of a reformed Catholicism.  But most people were less educated—and less committed—than Thomas More and simply listened to sermons and accepted the Christian faith second hand from preachers—not all of whom were sufficiently disciplined to maintain biblical orthodoxy.
As I write this I know that I am sounding like an anti-Catholic “evangelical” (the sort of person I usually refer to as “pseudo-evangelical” by how they themselves distort the scriptures by taking texts out of context and making the “Good News” (the evangelion) bad news for most of us.  (Evangelion means “The Good News of a Victory” but for many who call themselves evangelicals it has come to mean the bad news of sin supposedly trumping grace in anyone who doesn’t follow their particular religious notions.  They are sort of today’s scribes and Pharisees who claim to know God’s mind because of their particular twist on the Scriptures.) The fact of the matter is that I am an ardent and convinced Catholic but as a historian I need to acknowledge that the Catholic Church, in its practice if not in its doctrines, had drifted far from the apostolic faith revealed in the Christian scriptures.
One of the reasons—and I believe the primary reason—for this drift away from the apostolic truth was a dramatic switch in theological method that took place in the 13^th century and afterwards.  Saint Bernard is often called “the last of the Fathers” because he was the last major Christian writer to use the old patristic method of drawing theological reflection from the scriptures.  Bernard’s nemesis was Peter Abelard. (Actually the way it worked out was that Bernard was Peter Abelard’s nemesis for Bernard brought Abelard down and all but destroyed him for his new ideas.)  Abelard, a professor at the Cathedral School of Paris, drew not on the patristic tradition of scriptural reflection but on a new method based more on Aristotelian logic.  Aristotle’s philosophical methodology had recently been introduced in Europe through contact with the Arab world and its philosophers who had long preserved this tradition that they had learned from the Syrian culture that in turn was strongly shaped by Greek influence.  In Abelard’s system logic trumped Tradition and the new theologians were anxious to redefine the ancient truths of the Christian faith using his new system.  Abelard was condemned for his innovations,  but the methodology persisted and became know as “scholasticism,”—the methodology of the “schoolmen.” (The Latin word for school is schola.)  This revival also coincided with the revived interest in law and philosophers and theologians began working like lawyers—taking an established premise and drawing from it new conclusions far deviant from the intent of the original author.  Thus they might start with a scripture quote or a quote from the Fathers but by the use of logical deduction draw from it entirely new and very untraditional meanings.
The Christian author whose work legitimized the new system was Thomas Aquinas.  Aquinas, of course, was most orthodox in his conclusions even if he was quite revolutionary in his methodology.  The problem is not in the conclusions—at least in Aquinas’ conclusions—it is in the methodology.  Aquinas used the unorthodox system to establish the intellectual legitimacy of traditional doctrine.  Other writers were to take the faith and distort it way beyond the limits of authentic Tradition leading to all sorts of problems for the Church as bizarre practices  became legitimized by this faulty system that valued logic over Tradition. An example of this is that ideas about “sacrifice” were attached to the Mass that had no foundation in Scripture or the Fathers of the Church.  (There are legitimate concepts of sacrifice connected to the Eucharist found both in the language of the New Testament and the Fathers of the Church but the new theologians exaggerated them far beyond their Traditional meaning.)  There were also emerging among the scholastics bizarre notions about sin and about the forgiveness of sin and  the punishments due to sin.  There were exaggerations of the difference between clergy and laity and the “powers” of the priesthood.  All these and other distortions led to some very bad practices in Catholic life. 
One of the most egregious distortions concerned the notion of “indulgences.”  Indulgences were originally substitutes for public penance.  Perform certain acts or say certain prayers and days were taken off the penance given to a penitent in confession.  So, a donation to the Church or a pilgrimage to a local shrine might mean that a penitent had only to fast for a week instead of a month.   That was the original idea.  But as public penance disappeared in the central Middle Ages, let’s say the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and as the doctrine of purgatory gained more and more acceptance, indulgences became seen as so many “days” chopped of a soul’s sentence in purgatory.  Purgatory itself was a problematic doctrine without scriptural foundation and by the sixteenth century an elaborate understanding had evolved of how even when sins had been forgiven there was still a “temporal punishment” due for them.  In other words, most people would have to serve time in some sort of post-mortem jail until their sins had been sufficiently punished and then and then only could they go to heaven.  Indulgences shortened—or even wiped out—the punishment and won the poor soul an early parole.  This is just another example of how scholastic theology invented doctrines and created practices foreign to both the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. 
Luther looked on this whole theological house of cards that scholasticism had created and saw how far it was from the theology of Saint Paul, particularly in the Letters to the Romans and the Galatians.  He posted 95 theses he wanted argued at the university in order to re-focus the Church on its own authentic roots rather than the invented doctrines and practices of the scholastic era.  He would have caused not even a ripple in such debate except for one thing.  The pope needed money to build Saint Peter’s and a German preacher, the Dominican friar John Tetzel, was raking it in with  his distorted preaching on indulgences.      

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXXVI

Wittenberg Castle Church where Martin Luther

posted his 95 Theses

Before we look at why Henry didn’t get his annulment, we need to look for a moment at the broader picture of Europe in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. 

In 1517 a Saxon friar of the Augustinian Order, one Martin Luther, a professor of Sacred Scripture at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, posted 97 theses for debate on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church.  There was nothing unusual about this in an university town.  It was not an act of rebellion.  There was a long established tradition in university towns of professors or students posting subjects for debate.  Debate, particularly theological debate, was a major form of entertainment in university life.  Participation in such public debate was part of the requirements for one to be given the Doctorate.  Luther was a young hot-shot professor at a new university and both he and his university were trying to establish their respective reputations.  But this list of topics was to set off a chain reaction that shattered the Catholic world.
Luther had been born in 1483.  His parents were upwardly mobile but not particularly wealthy Germans of peasant stock but who had acquired some property and means.   His father was in the copper business, leasing mines and operating smelting works.  His mother was industrious and added to the family income through various domestic industries.  While the family was sufficiently devout, his father, Hans, wanted to see his eldest son, Martin, become a lawyer and was not enthused about Martin’s religious vocation when it emerged.  Martin had been given a very sound education by the Brothers of the Common Life.
Luther had a spiritual restlessness and Law was not meeting his psychological needs.  He seems from an early age to have been preoccupied with the question of his eternal salvation.  Law is a profession for cynics not searchers and Luther soon abandoned it.  There is a story—and it seems to be rooted in fact—that the young Luther was frightened during an electrical storm in which he was caught in a woods and vowed to Saint Anne that he would become a monk should he be delivered. 
Luther entered a very strict order, technically not of monks but of friars, the Augustinian observants.  (The various orders of the day mostly had observant branches which were reform movements within the orders and followed very strict rules regarding fasting, prayer, and separation from the world.  It is significant that Martin had joined an observant order, and one of the strictest, as that tells us about this religious enthusiasm.)     Luther had an excellent spiritual director in his superior, Johan van Staupitz, but seemed unable to break through scrupulosity that verged on a serious neurosis. Luther was ordained a priest and sent on for studies, receiving the Doctorate in 1512. Two years before he had made a fateful trip to Rome where he was thoroughly disillusioned by the scandalous conditions and cynical “faith” of so many involved in the governance of the Church.   (For information about Martin Luther’s trip to Rome, check out blog entries for September 13^th and 15^th 2011).   Rome can still be a scandal to the faithful.  Saint Francis had admonished his friars that for the good of their souls they should avoid going to Rome.  
Luther joined the faculty at Wittenberg in 1512 and a professor of Bible.  In 1514 the Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, published the first critical edition of the New Testament in Greek enabling biblical scholars to look at the text in the original language.  It was a huge breakthrough for scripture scholars and the young professor from Wittenberg threw himself into the task of studying the scripture in Greek.  He came to be thoroughly familiar with the Epistles of Saint Paul and was captured by Paul’s insistence that we are saved not by our righteous works but by faith in Jesus Christ.  Here Luther found a balm for his scruple troubled soul and as began to take St Paul to heart he became more and more uncomfortable with many contemporary Catholic practices.  This led to the publication of the 95 thesis.

More to follow. 

A Contemporary Reflection on the Becket Controversy, continued

Statue of Becket in

Canterbury Cathedral

The first generations of Christians did not have a comfortable relationship with the culture in which they lived.  They were persecuted and despised by the government.  They certainly were in no position to write the laws by which the empire was governed, nor did those laws reflect their values and beliefs.  Nevertheless they were admonished by their scriptures to be good and obedient citizens.  The author of First Peter (most probably not Peter himself and probably written during the persecution of the Church under the Emperor Domitian) instructed his readers:

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.  For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.  [Act] as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but [use it] as bondslaves of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

Called to responsible citizenship in the Empire and obedient to its laws, Christians were guided in their moral choices by a superior law—the Law of Christ and his Gospel.  In a culture that saw no problem with adultery, fornication, homosexuality, pederasty, and any number of other sexual variations they strove to honor marriage and family life by their own committed example.  In a society that knew and used abortifacient drugs and various forms of contraception they recognized that the killing of the unborn was evil and did not practice it.  Nor did they endorse contraception.  (at the time, their understanding of contraception saw it as a form of destroying human life as they believed that the entirety of the human person was contained in the male semen and to block the semen from the womb, where they thought the seed matured into a fetus, was to cause the death of that human person.)  They lived in a society where unwanted children were left exposed to die. They, of course, did not practice infanticide.  They lived in a world where the head of the household had life and death power over not only his slaves but his children—yet they did not take lives.  There were other “liberties” granted under law in which they did not engage. Nor did they did serve in the military or undertake duties in which they might have to take a human life.  They did not go to the theatre.  In a culture that was fairly “wide open” they lived life by the narrow path that Jesus had prescribed. 

In 312 things changed drastically for the Christian population.  The newly victorious Emperor, Constantine, not only legalized their religion but gave them a religious preeminence over the other cults common in that society.  Constantine did not close the pagan temples or the theatres with their gladiator shows and sometimes somewhat pornographic entertainments.  Christians still refrained from going to the theatres or worshipping at the temples.  Eventually Christians became not only the established religion but for all practical purposes the sole religion of the Empire.  In the fifth century the temples and theatres were closed.  Laws were written to proscribe sexual practices that were contrary to the Judeo-Christian revelation.  Those laws were not always enforced but the mentality gradually shifted that the State should base its legal system on the religious moral code.   This was not only a Christian moral principle.  With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Islamic states also determined their civil and criminal law according to the revelation proper to their religion.  In Christian Europe, Judaism and Christianity more or less shared a moral code, especially in regard to sexuality, marriage, and family life.  The one difference that comes to mind was the permission in Judaism for divorce and the law codes of the developing European societies did not attempt to restrict that privilege among the Jewish community.  In fact, a blind eye was often turned towards divorce and concubinage and sometimes homosexuality in the Christian community as well.  In fact, while laws governing moral behavior were often “on the books” they were just as often not enforced.  Nevertheless the standard remained that the law should reflect Christian moral principles. 
With the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth century cracks appeared in the relationship of Church and Law.  Some Protestant States began to look differently on some issues, most notably divorce, than Catholic tradition.  (Ironically, at least at first, England was not one of those States.)  In fact, among some of the radical reformers such as the Anabaptists of Münster, traditional marriage gave way to a sexual libertarianism.  Of course, even here, the laws permitting this were written in accord with the religious doctrines governing the state. 
More to the core of the issue, the religious diversity created by the Reformations of the sixteenth (and seventeenth) century were responsible for the creation of a secular mentality.   The conflicting religious claims of the various Churches and sects led the philosophes of the Enlightenment to look for a morality grounded not in religious doctrine but in human reason.  This was the outlook of the majority of the founders of our Republic—Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Madison and others.  Even Catholic thinkers at the time did not disagree as Catholic doctrine, always more positivist than Lutheran and Calvinist, held that the moral Truth of revelation was attainable through human reason—the so-called Natural Law.      
While the Catholic Church in America supported the idea that Church and State should be separate, Rome did not.  And even though Catholic thinkers said that Natural Law was apparent by reason as well as by revelation, the Church insisted that the State should draft its laws to preserve and protect the Church and its teaching.  In countries where the Catholic Church was established by law or accorded a special constitutional place—Italy, Ireland, Spain, among others—divorce was illegal, contraception unavailable, abortion a criminal offense. 
This relationship of Church and State became shaky in the twentieth century and after Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II assured that the sovereignty of each conscience should be respected cracks appeared in those legal systems that had formally incorporated Catholic teaching in the legal codes. 
This brings us to our current dilemma.  There are many in the Catholic community, including many Catholic bishops, who want the laws that govern our society to be written to incorporate Catholic moral principles.  Yet it is clear to many others of us that the laws in democratic society must reflect not the teachings of one specific religious group but the moral consensus of the entire society.  This does not mean that we have to abdicate our moral principles in favor of a least-common-denominator morality much less yield to an amoral social code.  We have every right to persuade others in our society that our moral principles have a validity that transcend our doctrinal stance.  The key word here is persuade.  We have no right to impose our moral code but we have every right to offer persuasive evidence to help our fellow citizens to form their own moral conscience without our imposing our beliefs on them.
A particular urgency in this matter concerns our need to protect the unborn.  Every day hundreds of unborn children are deprived of the lives for which they were created.  It is tempting to try to force a unilateral solution to this tragedy by attempting to use politics to impose laws that protect the unborn.  The problem is that a significant number of our fellow citizens either do not accept the premise that the unborn are human lives or they prefer to close their eyes and ignore the moral quandary of conflicting interests between the unborn and the women who carry them.
I remember reading Cider House Rules by John Irving.  I probably read it twenty years ago.  It is an exceptionally well-written novel.  Inj the context of the story between the director of an orphanage, Dr. Wilbur Larch and his young protégé, Homer Wells, Irving manages to give clear and unbiased statement to both sides of the abortion issue.  While the pro-life case is well presented, it does lose out in the story to the pro-choice argument. This is not surprising as Irving had been commissioned to write a novel to win the audience to the pro-choice view.  Indeed he is to be commended in stating the pro-life views as fairly as he did.  At the time I read the book, I could not but help think that it was tragic that American Catholics had not employed a novelist of Irving’s stature to make the emotional and intellectual appeal to win public opinion to the cause of the unborn.  But this is the failed strategy.  We have tried to force laws on people rather than win their intellects and their hearts to our cause.  Jesus never gave his Church a commission to change laws.  The Apostles never undertook a political agenda in the Roman Empire.  Our commission is to preach a Gospel that changes hearts.  We will, no doubt, make enemies if we change hearts for the good but not nearly as many enemies as we are making now by trying to force a political solution that does not have the support of the vast majority of the population. Moreover, while we will make some foes if we are successful in evangelizing with a Gospel of Life we will have the moral high ground and be faithful to our mission.  Our attempts to coerce rather than to convert are not only doomed to failure; they betray the mission we have been given as a Church.      

Inaugural Weekend II

So we owe gay marriage to Martin

Luther?  Well, in a certain sense, in

the world of unintended consequences,

yes. 

This weekend the Liturgy of the Roman Rite presents us with the Gospel of the Wedding Feast at Cana.  And there will be many parishes, tragically, that will use the occasion to “defend Marriage” by attacking their fellow citizens whose understanding of what constitutes a marriage is different than our Catholic understanding.  And a fortuitous coincidence of Gospel and calendar will provide an opportunity, while they are at it, to knock the President as he begins a second term of service.  Incidentally, I don’t understand how attacking same-sex marriage, “defends” or upholds the commitment of those in traditional marriages.  I think we need to do everything we can to support those who have committed themselves to Christian marriage, but attacking others doesn’t seem to really add anything positive.   
What we probably should note, though not necessarily in the homily, is that we are at one of those rare historical moments where the tectonic plates of culture are shifting.  The era of Christendom—that period in which a large segment of culture (in this case, “Western” or Euro-American culture) was fashioned by Christian faith and doctrine—is over.   It has been imploding for some time; certainly from 1789 and the end of the ancien regime with its alliance of throne and altar.  The roots of this secularization go back further through the Enlightenment to the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth century.  (Martin Luther would die to think that he is in some way responsible for gay marriage, but then as he is dead anyway—what difference would it make?)    
Instead of crying about the spilt milk of the Church’s loss of influence (or should we say power?) over society and its norms, we need to ask ourselves what we must do to live as Christians in a post-Christian world.   The game has changed; indeed I think it is becoming more interesting.  This isn’t about Barack Obama and it isn’t about gay marriage: it is about Christians making a choice to follow Jesus Christ in a world that, very much like the world of Jesus and his disciples, challenges rather than supports Gospel Values.   It is time to put on our big boy (or big girl) pants and take responsibility for making Christian choices in a world that demands discipleship be  a decision and not a default. 

Ecclesia Semper Reformans--Back to the theme of Reform

A freso in the Basilica of San Martino in Rome

of Saint John Lateran Basilica as it appeared in

the Middle Ages.  In the eleventh century three

Councils met in this Church. 

I mentioned in my last entry about the need for Church leadership who can “think outside the box” to meet the crises in which the Catholic Church—and I think organized religion in general—finds itself in today’s secularizing and increasingly hostile society.  “Outside the box” thinking is a natural segue into our next Reformation—that of Innocent III, probably the most creative and innovative in the Church’s two millennia. 
     We left off our saga of the Ecclesia semper reformans  semper reformanda (The Church, always reforming, always in need of reform) with Gregory VII.  Gregory died in defeat, an exile from Rome where his nemesis, the Emperor Henry IV, had declared Gregory deposed and had installed  Guibert of Ravenna as (anti)Pope Clement III.  History,  however, doesn’t give the laurels to the winner of a battle but only to the winner of the war and Gregory’s cause of making the papacy independent of (and to some extent superior to) the Empire would prevail.  Had Gregory not succeeded, posthumously of course, the Catholic Church would have been no different than the Orthodox Churches of Constantinople and Russia—a pawn of their respective imperial crowns.   This victory of the papacy over empire has implications far beyond Catholicism.  An imperial Church would never have tolerated a Luther and perhaps even Calvin and Zwingli may not have been able to escape the clutch of the crown.  Who knows?  The What-ifs are great fun to play but since any one variable opens up dozens of alternative doors for history to have gone through, one really cannot trace a new path for humankind should any one factor have been different.  Anyway, let’s move on towards Innocent. It will take us long enough as it is to get there because while there is a natural progression from the Gregorian Reform to the Reforms of Innocent III, there is a good deal of historical development to span.
       One of the effects of the Gregorian Reform was a renewed interest in canon law—actually almost an obsession with canon law.  There was at the time no unified code of canon law (that would come only in 1917 and again in 1983).  A canonist had to know the decrees of a wide spectrum of councils and synods ranging from the great Ecumenical Councils to numerous local synods that spanned a thousand years of European history.  The same canonist would also have to know countless papal decrees, unwritten traditions from Rome and elsewhere, and have familiarity with the Church Father’s whose teachings bore great authority.  As all these sources were often in contradiction with one another, they had to be balanced out and weighted with regard to the relative authority they bore.  Canon law was not unlike the rabbinic arguing over the Talmudic tradition in medieval Judaism and like rabbinic authority among orthodox Judaism, canon law came to have more and more bearing on the daily lives of everyday Catholics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  
      The twelfth century saw a procession of canon-lawyer popes and ecumenical councils.  Callistus III convoked the First Lateran Council in 1123 to solidify the gains of the Gregorian Reform, particularly in regards to the independence of the Church from Imperial and Royal control in the naming and investing of prelates.  In 1139 Pope Innocent II convoked the Second Lateran Council. Over a thousand churchmen—bishops, abbots, theologians—clerical and lay—attended.  It called on the clergy to dress simply and modestly and it reinforced the requirements of celibacy.  Forty years later in 1179 Pope Alexander III summoned the third Lateran Council which reaffirmed the exclusive right of the College of Cardinals to elect the pope and introduced a wide variety of reforms.  (We will have to do a separate entry just on Lateran III  because its legislation is so extensive and so important).  Lateran III also tried to deal with some current dissent in the Church that was rooted in the widespread financial excesses and moral failures of clergy and religious.  There were devout laity who were genuinely shocked and distressed by the condition of the Church and many bishops lacked the moral credibility for effective leadership.    It was a dangerous situation and we will talk about it in our next posting.