Boy, am I inept at this!

My purpose in this thread was not to address “foundational issues”. That was done in my book By What Authority, which you read some time back.

My purpose here was to clarify for Michael what is and is not the dogmatic teaching of the Church regarding Mary. (It turns out the notion of Mary as the New Eve is not a dogmatic title like Theotokos, but that this hardly matters since the understanding of her in this vein is so kneaded into the liturgy, piety and theology of the Church, you might as well try to pull the yeast from the dough.)

That was basically my purpose here. I don’t claim to have any corner on the truth. Indeed, Pope John Paul made no such claim. He taught in Veritatis Splendor that we humans cannot possess the Truth since the Truth is a person. That Person founded a Church and gave it the authority to settle doctrinal matters when the need arose. He didn’t give it to Bryan, me–or you. So being the sort of person who gapes and grins and does as he is told, I tend to go with that Church, founded on the cornerstone of the apostles and built on Kepha. I say that, not in the interest of trying to heal any breach (not the purpose my posting here) but to tell you how I look at things.

Curiously, after berating me for my allegedly monolithic treatment of Protestants, you suddenly adopt completely monolithic voice and presume to speak for all Protestants:

But my original purpose here was not to start a fight as Mark Shea claims. I wanted to make it clear–and I think I have–that the issue between Catholics and Protestants [all of them? Really?] on the Marian doctrines is not the doctrines per se but the fact that the Roman communion has made these doctrines a part of the gospel quite without the help of the rest of Christendom. And, as such, we as Protestants [all of you? Really?] disagree not so much about the doctrines themselves but that this unilateral action on the part of Rome is part and parcel why there is a virtually irreparable breach between us.

Given that my archbishop is busily engage in ecumenical conversation with Anglicans who have essentially come to agreement with the Catholic communion about the Immaculate Conception, I’m not so sure that either of these propositions is true of “Protestant” (unqualified). Indeed, I would hesitate to say that, with the rise of the Emergents and their new found interest things Marian (or anything else that ticks off old school Evangelicals and Truly Reformed folk) that it’s particularly sound to say, without qualification, what constitutes a virtually irreparable breach between Catholic and Protestants (unqualifed). The terms are constantly changing. However, I’m certainly willing to grant that, yes, the Catholic communion does not always stand around waiting for approval from non-Catholics before adjudicating her internal affairs. Why this should matter so much to a non-Catholic is one of the great mysteries of the universe to me.

Regarding whether or not the Roman Church is in the business of binding the consciences of Christians outside her fold–you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either Rome is the visible Church on earth and as such calls all to herself or she is not. It’s not really a matter of authority that is at issue here but the identity and nature of the Church herself. Do we really believe that Rome IS the primary visible expression of the Church on this earth–because Mark Shea does.

The matter of authority and matter of the identity and nature of the Church are inextricably linked. It is characteristic of the curiously monochromatic take on the Catholic Church among those who are still stuck in the 16th Century that they insist on speaking of “Rome” instead of the Catholic Church. Despite, once again, being told what I believe by you, I should point out that I do not, in fact, believe what you tell me I believe. I don’t think “Rome” is the primary visible expression of the Church on this earth. I think:

CCC 816 “The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”

I also think:

The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism explains: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.”

But at the same time I think:

CCC 818 “However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers . . . . All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.”

819 “Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth” are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: “the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements.” Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to “Catholic unity.”

Because I think all this, I take into account, not just “Rome”, but the Tradition as it is expressed in both East and West. This is one of the reasons I think its a waste of time for a small minority of Protestants to stamp their feet and demand that the whole eastern and western tradition in the apostolic Churches stop acclaiming Mary as sinless, ever-virgin and assumed into heaven on the basis of their odd notion that only beliefs with a paper trail acceptable to a small cadres of theological rationalists can constitute the tradition. The notion that “Rome” alone somehow ginned up this tradition is laughable to the entire eastern Church.

So: I’m happy to acknowledge the great gifts and blessings at work in the various Protestantisms and I’m quite willing to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is at work there. But it does not follow from this that I think the apostolic Churches need to get rid of their Marian doctrine and devotion on your say so. Attempts to steal bases notwithstanding, the reality is that the Catholic communion has every right to order its internal affairs and state what she does, in fact, believe. Nobody is compelling you to accept it. I’m merely saying that your arguments against it amount to an attempt to claim an apostolic authority to interpret the Tradition that you don’t have. You, like me, are just this guy, Kevin.

At any rate, what a miracle it is that two Catholics agree with one another regarding how we view the gospel! Mark, I don’t doubt that you and Mr. Cross feel completely justified in how you look at history and the text of Scripture and really I’m not here to argue about our differences too much because the foundational issues at hand are simply not being addressed.

Your perspective does not in any way heal the breach between us in terms of restoring unity and continual rehashing of the point only makes the divide wider. Nor does your agreement with Mr. Cross mean that you two have a corner on the truth of this matter and failing to address the foundational differences between us regarding why we would look at this differently is where the real work is.

In reference to your comments about Protestants, my point was not merely about your discussion here at Michael’s site but really about how I’ve seen you address Protestants and Protestantism in general. So sorry to leave you with my impression of the matter. When did I ever say it was a matter of fact? Owning an opinion is difficult these days to be sure.

But my original purpose here was not to start a fight as Mark Shea claims. I wanted to make it clear–and I think I have–that the issue between Catholics and Protestants on the Marian doctrines is not the doctrines per se but the fact that the Roman communion has made these doctrines a part of the gospel quite without the help of the rest of Christendom. And, as such, we as Protestants disagree not so much about the doctrines themselves but that this unilateral action on the part of Rome is part and parcel why there is a virtually irreparable breach between us. Additionally, I also wanted to point out that Protestants are not always stuck in one mode of hermeneutical inquiry regarding Scripture.

Regarding whether or not the Roman Church is in the business of binding the consciences of Christians outside her fold–you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either Rome is the visible Church on earth and as such calls all to herself or she is not. It’s not really a matter of authority that is at issue here but the identity and nature of the Church herself. Do we really believe that Rome IS the primary visible expression of the Church on this earth–because Mark Shea does. Or can we see the Holy Spirit at work elsewhere in and among His own outside the walls of one historical communion who has grown a bit big for her britches. The Reformers didn’t have a big fight about this question for nothing and as such we shouldn’t pretend that the question is unimportant.

What the Marian doctrines show us is the working out of this doctrine of the Church as Rome sees it. My point in all of this is that this in and of itself is what continues to keep us apart.

I’m not sure how much more there is to say on this matter. Kevin appears to mostly be looking for a fight since he is here to make a number of hasty and broad statements that indicate a lack of interest in what I’ve said combined with rather too much interest in whanging on Rome.

So, for instance:

1. Vatican I did not define either the Immaculate Conception nor the Assumption. The former was defined in 1854 by Pius IX and the latter in 1950 by Pius XII. Those passionate about disputing the doctrines should know some of the elementary facts about them.

2. When Kevin declares,

“In fact, Shea and others go too far to claim the fourfold sense of interpreting Scripture as a Roman Catholic method. In reality, this was a method of interpreting the Scriptures that belonged to the whole Church and has been used by various people throughout the life of the Church and not just by Roman Catholics”

…I have no idea what he’s talking about. For it sounds very much as though he thinks he is refuting some outrageously claim by me that the four senses of Scripture are the private property of the Roman Catholic Church, a claim I never made. I do say that there is a real difference in the way many Protestants approach Scripture when it comes to the texts that the Father, both and East and West, regard as Marian, but that’s not because the Church hold a patent on the four sense. It’s because there *is* a real difference. Ezekiel 44(?) (can’t remember the chapter and verse, but it’s the passage about the gate to the temple) has, for instance, long been seen as a prophetic foreshadow of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary and many Protestants open scoff at this, largely because they don’t seem to get how the early Fathers read a text like this.

But the basic thing here is that Bryan is right: What Kevin is trying to do is the equivalent of stealing bases or demanding “When did you stop beating your wife?” Specifically, he tries to order the discussion from the outset on this basis: “Assuming, of course, that I am right that the Marian doctrines are wholly unessential to the faith, let us now get on with the explanation of why any Catholic notion that they are both true and essential is wrong.”

I daresay that, given the premisses, the conversation is hardly going to be particularly illuminating about why the Church might happen to think that the Marian dogmas are neither unessential nor wrong. But, of course, I don’t grant the premisses and I don’t see what gives Kevin or any other individual Christian the authority to declare that they are the final arbiters of what is an is not essential to the Faith. Kevin, having read my By What Authority? knows why this is.

3. Kevin chastises me for referring to “Protestantism” as a monolith, saying, “I don’t know if Mark Shea means to do this or not, but I see him referring to Protestants and Protestantism a lot without really qualifying his comments with a note about the diversity of opinion within our circles on these and other issues as well as a recognition that there are more and less informed voices on our side about these things.”

Here are the sentences I wrote in the exchange above which mentioned Protestants:

The titles to which most Protestants react aren’t new.

You will find that Catholic doctrine is partly biblical and partly extrabiblical (just like Protestant doctrine).

As near as I can tell, the only sentence that does not either point to something which really *is* common to all Protestants or (rather laboriously) point out the obvious fact of Protestant diversity when I speak of something that is not common to all Protestantism is the penultimate quote. So, apparently by “a lot” Kevin means “once.”

For the record: Protestants are diverse. So diverse, in fact, that I have said more times than I can count that there is no such thing as Protestantism. There are only Protestantisms, as numerous as there are Protestants. This often generates another sort of offense among (some ) Protestants, but that’s how it goes.

Finally, I was unaware of the fact that when the Church defines her teaching for the members of her flock, she is in fact binding the conscience of Mr. Johnson and all Christians everywhere. That, however, is all I can make of his strange remark that “Rome…determined for all Christians was a part of the gospel”. So far as I know, Rome simply defined for Catholics what was part of the gospel.

As far as I can tell, once you clear away Kevin’s attempt to steal bases, Bryan’s point stands essentially unrefuted. The basic difference between the Church’s choice to define the unbiblical term “homoousious” and the Church’s choice to define the Immaculate Conception is about 1500 years and that’s about it. Critics of both choices made exactly the same argument: the Scriptures never heard of or used the term, so by what authority does the Church bind the conscience of the believer to profess something the Scripture never said they had to profess? The answer to both sets of critics (and to the slightly earlier, but almost identical arguments of the Judaizers, who had the scriptures all on their side when it came to the question “How do you join the covenant people?” yet still lost the argument) is the same: “He who listens to you, listens to me and he who listens to me, listens to him who sent me.”

Thanks for your reply. The sticky point here, it seems to me, is in your test of a “clear historic and biblical trail”. First, as it stands, the phrase is rather vague. Clear to whom? All who call themselves Christians? The majority? Academics? How clear does it have to be to satisfy the ‘clear’ criterion? And can development (i.e. making explicit of what is implicit) count as a trail or must the trail be non-developmental? If development *cannot* count as a trail, then it seems that there is no trail to homoousious, since the concept of consubstantiality is not explicit in the New Testament. If, however, development *can* count as a trail, then we need a principled difference between a trail of development and an addition, in order to show that the Marian dogmas are additions and not developments. Second, your test presupposes that writers have recorded and history has then preserved all the information necessary for contemporary historians to reconstruct unbroken historical trails behind all genuine clarifications/developments back to the Apostolic era. What justifies that assumption? Third, your test (by requiring a “clear … biblical trail”) seems to presuppose that the gospel was written out in its entirety in the New Testament Scriptures. What justifies that assumption? Fourth, your test does not seem to pass its own test. Where is the clear historic and biblical trail from your requirement that genuine developments/clarifications have clear historic and biblical trails, to the early Church or to Scripture? If there is no such trail, that would suggest that your test itself is an addition, and not a genuine development/clarification, if we must follow your test. But if your test is an addition, then why should we accept it?

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan