Original Sin: Is There Anything New Under the Sun?

Saint Ambrose of Milan,

mentor of Saint Augustine

Yesterday I wrote on the subject of prevenient grace as the prayer over the gifts in the new translation made a reference to it, but it might be worth our while to take a look at the history of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  It is curious because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception  is only held in the Western Church and not shared in the East (including those Churches which are in Communion with Rome)  which celebrates the conception of the Virgin but, because it has a very different understanding of original sin,  avoids the issue of Mary’s being conceived without (original) sin.  The Eastern Churches pass over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in silence—not denying it but also not teaching it.  They hold that Mary was sinless but do not attribute this to her not having been conceived subject to original sin.  As I just pointed out, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is dependent on one’s understanding of original sin. 
       Saint Augustine is usually “blamed” for introducing the concept of original sin into Catholic (and Protestant) theology, and this explains why the doctrine is held in the Western Church where Augustine is a major figure and not in the Churches of the East where his influence is minimal.  In fact, however, while Augustine devoted considerable paper and ink to the subject of original sin, he inherited the doctrine, at least in seminal form, from earlier Church Fathers such as Iranaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Ambrose who saw in the disobedience of Adam the origins of human rebellion against God.  One of the reasons this doctrine of original sin never “ took off” in the East is that in the early Patristic era (the second through the fifth centuries) the Eastern Churches had more of a challenge from the Gnostic heresies that tended to grossly overstress the role and power of evil and that forced Eastern theologians to stay focused on the essential goodness of God’s Creation.  To admit that human nature is somehow essentially flawed, even by the inherited effects of Adam’s sin, would have played into the hands of the sin-obsessed Gnostics.  Of course Augustine had himself belonged to a Gnostic sect and while he rejected Manicheanism even before his conversion to Christianity, he was far more given to reflect on the dark side of human nature than most, indeed any, of the earlier Church Fathers.  Augustine took the tradition of an inherited sinfulness that had come down from Tertullian through Ambrose and runs with it, developing a very negative anthropology in which the human person is enthralled by Adam’s disobedience and only by grace regains the freedom of the will.  Augustine came into conflict with a Roman priest by the name of Pelagius who argued that the human will is essentially free and able to choose between sin and grace.  This positivist view of human nature and the consequent superfluity of grace was more than Augustine could bear.  He knew from experience—his experience—the evil that lurks within the human heart.  (Sort of like “The Shadow” of old-time radio fame.)    The Church would come down on Augustine’s side—they had to as he was (and still is) the most prolific theologian in the history of the Church and lays the foundation for all subsequent Western Theology—thought in practice we Catholics have a tendency to slide into Pelagianism which is what triggers our attraction to “salvation by works.”  Anyway, as I have said, Augustine taught that the human person has inherited a nature that, while created good, is inherently flawed by the disobedience of our first parents and that this flaw, rooted in human concupiscence, is passed down from father to child through the act of sexual intercourse by which the child is begotten.  This is not to say that Augustine understands concupiscence exclusively in sexual terms.  Augustine gets a bad rap for being anti-sex while in fact he is just about anti-everything, one of those persons who believe that if something is at all enjoyable it must be sinful.  By the way, I am a big fan of Augustine and think that he is the greatest mind in the history of Christian thought so I am not slamming him but the fact of the matter is that he has an incredibly negative understanding—not necessarily wrong, just incredibly negative—of human nature. And then, if human nature is so corrupted by sin, the problem becomes how could the Blessed Mother be tainted by this human nature?  How indeed?   That is the conundrum the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was formulated to resolve. 

Election of bishops

John Carroll, the United States’ first Catholic bishop, was elected bishop by the clergy of his new diocese in April 1789. Twenty-six priests cast the electing ballots, Carroll received 24 of the votes. His election was confirmed seven months later by Pope Pius VI. Carroll favored the idea that his successor(s) would also be elected. This was not as radical an idea in 1789 as it would be today. In fact, until the French Revolution most Catholic bishops were elected rather than appointed by the Pope. The right of election generally belonged to the canons of the Cathedral Church and the “chapter” of canons, in turn, was most often comprised of the rectors of the principal churches of the See City of the Diocese. More precisely the canons of the Cathedral generally held “prebends” (an endowed “stall” or seat in the chancel of the cathedral) whose endowments consisted of the title (the rectorship) of the principle churches of the Diocese and thus were often called "prebendaries." The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic conquest of Europe deprived the Church of most of its endowments, including the prebendaries, as the vast land-wealth which the Church had acquired over centuries was secularized (confiscated by the State). The Chapter of Notre Dame in Paris, for example, was allegedly so impoverished that it could barely afford to buy a broom for cleaning the Cathedral when Divine Worship was reestablished there 1802.
During and after the Napoleonic era the Holy See through a system of concordats (treaties made with the Holy See) with the various courts of Europe was able to bypass the newly reconstituted chapters and arrogate to itself the right to appoint bishops, though in a number of dioceses, particularly in Switzerland and in the old Austrian Empire, cathedral chapters often still have the right of election today. Generally this is worked out in such a way that a candidate favored by the Holy See is chosen by the canon-electors but on a number of occasions in the past three decades the Holy See has sought, if not to usurp the chapter’s rights, at least to appoint bishops to the respective dioceses before the chapter can exercise its traditional prerogative. The election of the pope by the Cardinals who are nominally the deacons of the diaconal churches and parish priests of the principle parishes (along with the seven Cardinal bishops of the seven ancient suburbican sees, and since 1965 those among the Eastern Catholics partriarchs who have been named to the College of Cardinals) is a surviving remnant of the election of bishops by the clergy of the diocese.
In the early Church the laity participated with the clergy in the process of electing the bishop. This was not always a tranquil procedure. In 374 the Christians of Milan were on the verge of riot as the Catholics and the Arians were in a bitter dispute over who the new bishop should be. Ambrose, as the governor of the region, a political post responsible for—among other things—the good civil order of the citizenry, arrived to quell the disturbance. An immensely popular governor the had the respect and trust of all. Someone in the crowd shouted “Ambrose for Bishop.” The crowd took up the cry. Ambrose insisted on declining—he was not even baptized much less a priest. But the crowd—and then the Imperial Court—would not hear of his refusal and he eventually was baptized, ordained and consecrated bishop. His disciple Augustine was elected bishop by the Christian community of Hippo Regius at the request of his predecessor who wanted a coadjutor to help him while he was still alive. Martin of Tours was elected by acclamation of the people of that city to be their bishop in 371. Lay participation in the election of bishops survived in many places of the Western Church, including Rome itself, until the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century when the right of election was generally restricted to the clergy. At the same time, however these elections were rarely free. Political pressure by the Emperor, various kings, or powerful nobles was often applied to the clerical electors to choose the candidate that was the Imperial or Royal choice. While some advocate a return to the election of bishops in the contemporary Church, the experience of Protestant denominations which elect their bishops should give us some caution about politicizing Church leadership and about how such politics can be manipulated for doctrinal matters.
The image today is Francisco de Zurbarán's "Saint Ambrose"