No more use of the term “Church Teaching,” that is. The Church needs to use “Catholic Doctrine” instead of “Church Teaching,” because the Church needs Catholic Doctrine. This column is the second of two to show that Catholic Doctrine is indispensable to Catholic Faith. In the first column, I explained what doctrine is. In this column, I will show why the Church needs Catholic Doctrine, and then I will show why the Church needs to use the term “Catholic Doctrine.”
Relationships
As discussed in my first column, what essentially happens in a person’s relationship with God – when the relationship is the way God wants it to be – is that God reveals Himself to that person and that person has Faith in that Revelation. Faith is the acceptance of Revelation with one’s whole being—not only with one’s will, emotions, and actions but also with one’s mind.
The Revelation-Faith relationship with God is like relationships among persons. We encounter others. We interact with them, but we also come to know them. We need to know something about others in order to decide if we will continue to interact with them. If we continue to interact, then the more we know them, the better we can interact.
The same is true in our relationship with God. We encounter God. We interact with Him in worship, morality, and prayer. We come to know God.
Faith seeks understanding: it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith . . . In the words of St. Augustine, ‘I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe’(CCC 158).
The more we know God, the better we can interact with Him. The best way to know God and His Will is to know Catholic Doctrine (CCC 95). The Church needs Catholic Doctrine so that we interact with Him in worship, morality, and prayer as He wants (CCC 93, 170).
Human Nature
The Church needs Catholic Doctrine because it is made up of human beings, and not animals. Thinking is a requirement of our human nature. Unlike animals, we humans cannot thrive by relying on instinct or on an immediate response to a stimulus. Human nature is composed of a body that senses and acts, emotions that feel, a will that desires and freely chooses, and a mind that thinks. As St. Thomas Aquinas has shown, in order for humans to thrive, the mind must guide the will, which must guide the emotions and the body – all of which the Catechism presumes, as in CCC 1762-1802. The mind is best guided by Catholic Doctrine.
While the Catechism reminds us that “[w]e do not believe in formulas [that is, doctrines], but in those realities they express,” nevertheless the Catechism asserts “[a]ll the same, we do approach these realities with the help of formulations of faith which permit us [and so we need them] to express the faith and to hand it on, to celebrate it in community, to assimilate and live on it more and more” (CCC 170).
Salvation
An analogy from C. S. Lewis is helpful:
Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people [such as the Apostles and Doctors of the Church] who really were in touch with God—experiences with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. . . . you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God . . . Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Collier, 1960).
Salvation is found in the truth” (CCC 851). The Church needs the “map” of Catholic Doctrine to “seek first the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). “The Church needs Catholic Doctrine to save people from Hell (CCC 763-765, 816, 849-851).
The Holy Spirit
It is mistaken to claim that the Holy Spirit can move a pope or bishop to contradict doctrine. The Magisterium has always claimed to be guided by the Holy Spirit when it has asserted doctrine. If the Holy Spirit was not with the Magisterium when the Magisterium claimed in the past that the Spirit was with it, how can we know when the Spirit is with the Magisterium now or in the future?
Or if it is of the nature of the Holy Spirit to contradict Himself, then it is false that “God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth” (CCC 159). If the Holy Spirit changes His mind about doctrine, how can we know if He will not change His mind in the future? The Church needs Catholic Doctrine to stay in the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit wants.
Clericalism
Clergymen practice the old version of clericalism when they act superior to the laity in ways they are not superior. Laity practices clericalism when they cooperate with clergy who act this way. The grace of ordination and the result of formation for ordination do not automatically make someone holier, smarter, or more competent than those who are not ordained.
The “synodality” into which Pope Francis has plunged the Church looks to be clericalism disguised as non-clericalism by including in the synod non-ordained persons among ordained persons. However, when those in the synod – clergy and laity – consider themselves automatically superior, e.g., more “open to the Spirit,” to those not in the synod – clergy and laity – then we have a new version of clericalism. Worse, synodality seems to include non-ordained opponents of Catholic Doctrine along with ordained opponents of it to give the opposition more legitimacy.
The Church needs Catholic Doctrine to be saved from all versions of clericalism and to preserve the Magisterium as Christ intended it.
Church Unity
Not everything in an official Church document must be agreed with in order to be a good Catholic. For example, Pope Francis has often addressed climate change. Good Catholics agree with him on doctrines, such as stewardship of creation and love of neighbor. However, one can reasonably disagree with him on the extent of climate change and the measures to be taken—which are his social analysis and prudential judgment, not doctrine—and still be a good Catholic. Even everything in the Catechism is not doctrine. For example, the Catechism encourages every Catholic home to have a prayer corner or family oratory (CCC 2691). While we should seriously consider this, we can still be good Catholics if our homes do have these spaces because having them is not a matter of doctrine.
Since Our Lord’s Ascension, the unity of the Church – for which He prayed so fervently at the Last Supper – has been an issue, as demonstrated throughout the New Testament books after the Gospels, with the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-35) as a vivid example. Essential to Church unity is knowing when Catholics should agree with each other and when Catholics may legitimately disagree with each other, when they should do the same thing and when they may do different things.
A related mistake to choose which Catholic doctrines to agree with and live by and which to ignore – to be a “Cafeteria Catholic” picking which doctrines to put on one’s tray, as it were. Every Catholic doctrine is true for everyone, is meant for everyone, is the truth that will set everyone free. The Church needs Catholic Doctrine to avoid heresy, as well as schism and apostasy (CCC 172-175, 815-817, 2089).
A strong challenge to Church unity at this point in history is that there are those who consider Catholic Doctrine to be an obstacle to being “loving,” “pastoral,” “accompanying or walking with someone.” However, as Pope Francis wrote in his first encyclical,
[L]ove requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey (Lumen Fidei, 27).
The Church needs Catholic Doctrine in order to be loving and pastoral as Our Lord wants her to be loving and pastoral.
The Problems with “Church Teaching”
The term “Church Teaching” should no longer be used because it is ambiguous and therefore confusing. Both words in the term are ambiguous.
“Church” in “Church Teaching” is ambiguous. The Church and the Magisterium are not identical.
It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error (CCC 890).
This is not the task of anyone else in the Church.
“Teaching” in “Church Teaching” is ambiguous. Much of what the pope and bishops advocate is not doctrine – not true always, everywhere, and for everyone. Canon law, liturgical rubrics, pastoral guidance, social analysis, solutions to social problems, etc., are true sometimes, in some places, for some people. All doctrine is Magisterial teaching, but not all Magisterial teaching is doctrine. Adding to the confusion is that, especially since Vatican II, official Church documents rarely point out what in them is doctrine and what is not doctrine. Even worse is when a doctrine is treated as though it is a matter of discipline or prudential judgment.
The term “Church Teaching” seems to be another term that entered Catholic vocabulary after Vatican II. Like other terms introduced then, it has ended up dumbing down the Faith and muddying the Faith. Just as we are getting back to using “catechesis” instead of “religious education,” we need to get back to using “Catholic Doctrine” instead of “Church Teaching.”
The Call to Doctrine
Catholic Doctrine is the essentially unchangeable clarification of Revelation and Faith that only the pope and bishops in union with him have the authority to make and that must be accepted as objectively true in order to be Catholic.
Without the deliberate attempt to be faithful to Catholic Doctrine, the attempt to be Catholic – as a person, a parish, an institution – will not consistently avoid error in belief and in practice, error of commission and omission. Crucially needed is a Magisterial definition of “doctrine.”
As the Catholic Church implodes – for example, as Mass attendance, Baptisms, weddings in the Church, self-identification as Catholic, and belief in Transubstantiation declines – we should remember that periods of renewed vitality in Church history were always periods of renewed commitment to Catholic Doctrine. Excellent efforts of Church renewal, like the Eucharistic Congress, will bear little fruit if they do not include the call to assent to all of Catholic Doctrine.
Christ our Lord tells us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And He asks, “But when the Son of Man comes [on the Last Day], will He find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
Again Pope Francis’ first encyclical:
Since the faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity. Precisely because all the articles of faith are interconnected, to deny one of them, even those that seem least important, is tantamount to distorting the whole (Lumen Fidei, 48).
Chesterton again, more poetically:
if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in happiness. . . . A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances, might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs (Orthodoxy in Volume I of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Ignatius Press, 1986.).
We must love Our Lord by keeping His commandments. We must provide Faith on the earth for Our Lord to find when He comes again. We must profess the Faith in all its purity and integrity! The Christmas trees must not wither, and the Easter eggs must not break!
The Church needs Catholic Doctrine. The Church needs to use the words “Catholic Doctrine.” Urgently.
The post No More Church Teaching but Doctrine! Part II appeared first on Catholic Stand.
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Author: Marty Dybicz
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