I can see the logic of the Karl Adam quote you provided. In fact, I think I hold to something much like it regarding unbelievers in general, people of other faiths, and even those within Christendom such as Arminians and Catholics. I do not presume to judge whether or not any given person is among God’s elect and will be saved. That is simply beyond my competence as an individual.

 

That’s pretty much what we believe, too.

 

I agree with the assertion by Adam that there is a difference between formal ideas and the people who hold them.

 

Good.

 

Nevertheless, I can’t quite buy his explanation of how your Church’s anathemas against those who disagree with it are to be interpreted. I have yet to find a single statement by one of your Church’s councils regarding anathematization that makes this distinction. Rather, the anathemas are distinctly personal in nature. If anyone says [x,y,z] let him be anathema”, not “let his ideas be anathema”.

 

Well, the formula is certainly worded in a distinctly personal manner, but the question is, what does it mean? Maybe it would help to take a look at the first Vatican Council, back in 1870. It issued plenty of anathemas, all with the familiar “if anyone says … ” formula. For example, under the heading “God the creator of all things,” canon 1 reads, “If anyone denies the one true God, creator and lord of things visible and invisible: let him be anathema.”

 

As you said, that language is “distinctly personal in nature.” But at the very beginning of the Council’s declarations, before any of the anathemas, the Council declared,

 

It is our purpose to profess and declare from this chair of Peter before all eyes the saving teaching of Christ, and by the power given us by God, to reject and condemn the contrary errors. (Session 3, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 10, April 24, 1870.)

 

Please note that it is the errors that are “rejected and condemned,” not the people who innocently hold those errors. Of course, the key word there is “innocently.” It is indeed true that if someone were to culpably reject an article of the Christian faith, then he would be a formal heretic, and would really be anathema. All I’ve been trying to get across is the fact that our Church does not presume to judge the individual’s culpability. That is for God alone to judge.

 

So when Adam says, “In these pronouncements the Church is not deciding the good or bad faith of the individual heretic.”, I have to scratch my head and go, “Huh? It sure seems that way to me”.

 

Like I said, this is just a formulaic way of defining what errors are to be rejected and condemned. It is only literally true in the case of a formal heretic, and the Church does not presume to judge who is and who is not a formal heretic. Let me quote from yet another Catholic source to confirm this:

 

But we should note at this point that the Church has never condemned anybody, never said solemnly that so-and-so is in Hell. She can’t, because that would be contrary to her mission. No Christian can, in fact, because we’re supposed to judge as we would be judged. The Church can excommunicate somebody, and always has (1 Cor 5:9-12, for instance), but that’s different. It means announcing publicly that this person has acted so scandalously that he cannot receive the sacraments; this allows–even calls for–reconciliation. And even if the person dies excommunicated, the Church prays God to forgive him. (Kevin Orlin Johnson, Why Do Catholics Do That? A Guide to the Teachings and Practices of the Catholic Church, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 52, emphasis in original).

 

By now I’ve quoted from at least two Catholic books and an ecumenical council. I don’t know what more I can do to prove this point. If you still want to believe that the Church thinks she has the power to condemn people to hell, I doubt there’s anything more I can say to demonstrate otherwise.

 

And when he continues, “Still less is she sitting in judgment on his ultimate fate.”, I have to point again to the papal anathematization decree I quoted earlier: “we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church”. Notice the use of the personal pronouns, and the rather definitive-sounding judgment that this anathematized person will be condemned to eternal hell if he does not satisfy the Church that he has changed.

 

And I have to point again to the rest of the papal anathematization decree that you have twice omitted. The next sentence reads, “We deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.” As I said before, it is hoped that if the person in question is a formal heretic, the anathematization will have the effect of “jolting” him back to orthodoxy. But even if the person never recants and never reconciles with the Church, the Church does not presume to know that that person is in hell.

 

To demonstrate this point, I have a friendly challenge for you. As you know, there are countless millions of people in heaven, and sadly, there are probably many more in hell. Now, the Catholic Church has definitively declared that certain people are in heaven (the “canonized” saints). Please name one person that the Church has declared is in hell.

 

I guess all of this makes me wonder about the dichotomy that has apparently been created in the wake of Vatican II to the effect that the Church feels free today to ignore the plain import of the actual words used in the past and speak rather of the spirit in which they were said. That seems a lot like what the U.S. Supreme Court does with the Constitution--it finds all sorts of esoteric things in the spirit of the document that the words don’t seem to allow for.

 

If you’re right, and the Church prior to Vatican II felt she had the authority to cast someone into hell, or at least the authority to judge that a given individual was in hell, then it should be very easy for you to find at least one person whom the Church has definitively declared to be in hell.

 

Also, from a Protestant perspective (and that of so-called “traditionalist” Catholics) it appears as if the modern Catholic Church has changed its historic positions on some things and yet, still tries to claim infallibility.

 

I don’t think I have to explain development of doctrine to you, because you already understand the concept very well. The essence of a doctrine never changes, but our subjective understanding of it does. As St. Augustine put it,

 

While the hot restlessness of heretics stirs up questions about many things belonging to the Catholic faith, in order to provide a defense against these heretics we are obliged to study the points questioned more diligently, to understand them more clearly . . . and thus the question raised by the adversary becomes the occasion of instruction. (The City of God, 16,2,1. From Jurgens, William A., ed. and tr., The Faith of the Early Fathers (FEF), 3 volumes, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970, vol. 3, 103. )

 

I submit that the Church has never changed the essence of any of her doctrines. She has come to understand them better, but she has never understood them to mean the opposite of what they once meant.

 

At nearly every point along the soteriological way, I seem to believe in a different sort of Christ and a different sort of Atonement than does Rome. I reject the Roman conception of the Gospel. Does that not make me a formal heretic?

 

First of all, your Christology is entirely orthodox. You and I believe in exactly the same Christ. As far as that goes, you are neither a material nor a formal heretic, but you have peserved the Catholic and apostolic faith unblemished. As far as the atonement goes, I don’t know where we differ on that. I assume we agree that Christ willingly sacrificed himself to make atonement for our sins, and that this sacrifice is the only way sins can be forgiven.

 

Yes, I believe all those things. However, I do not believe in an atonement that has to be “represented” constantly in an “unbloody” manner,

 

I’d bet almost anything that you don’t understand what we mean by that. Most people don’t. But let’s leave that for another time.

 

or a Christ whose death has to be mediated to me through the intercession of His mother and / or other saints,

 

Let me ask you something: Do you pray for the salvation of your unsaved friends? If you do, do you do it because the prayer of a righteous man availeth much (Jas. 5:16), or is it just mindless rote? In other words, do you think your prayers will make a difference in whether or not your friends will be saved, in which case it could be said that in some way Christ’s death was mediated to them at least in part because of your intercession? Or do you think that intercessory prayer is really just a waste of time?

 

I mean no disrespect by this, but it seems to me that you guys have a rather narrow view of God. It seems that you conceive of him as being somewhat selfish and jealous of His prerogatives. But we see God as a loving Father, who wants to involve His children (including you, and me, and Mary, and the saints) in everything he does; not because he “has to” but because he wants to.

 

or that justification through His blood is attained through a long process of works which, though done by God’s power working in me, actually “merit the merit of Christ” for me. That is what I was driving at in my original statement.

 

Well, we don’t believe that either, Tim. The first canon on justification from the Council of Trent says, “If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.” (There’s that formula again!) We receive justification freely, and instantly. There is nothing we can do to merit it. Nothing.

 

* * * * *

 

Consciously rejecting the Catholic faith does not make you, for that reason alone, a formal heretic. Other factors come into play, such as, any anti-Catholic prejudices you may have, or false teachings you may have embraced...You will only become a formal heretic if and when you have seen good and sufficient reason to overcome any biases you may have, and to believe that the Catholic faith really is the faith once delivered unto the saints, and yet, reject it. That is a very subjective thing, and it is for God to judge, not me.

 

And apparently, it’s not for the post-Vatican II Catholic Church to judge, either.

 

Or the pre-Vatican II Church, either. For example, in 1863, about a hundred years before Vatican II, Pope Pius IX wrote,

 

It is known to us and to you that they who labor in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion and who, zealously keeping the natural law and its precepts engraved in the hearts of all by God, and being ready to obey God, live an honest and upright life, can by the operating power of divine light and grace, attain eternal life, since God who clearly beholds, searches, and knows the minds, souls, thoughts, and habits of all men, because of His great goodness and mercy, will by no means suffer anyone to be punished with eternal torment who has not the guilt of deliberate sin. (Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, August 10, 1863.)

 

It is God who “clearly beholds, searches, and knows,” and it is he who judges. He has not delegated that responsibility to His Church.

 

Given that the Catholic Church of today is alleged to be the same one that Christ founded, the same one that has existed throughout the last 2,000 years, that is quite confusing. How can the Church definitively anathematize individual people in the sixteenth century, but it can’t do so today?

 

Who would you suggest we anathematize?

 

This question may be partly answered by the idea that Luther and Calvin actually were formal members of that Church at one time, but I’m not sure it blunts the question entirely.

 

I think that it does. As far as I know, the Church has never tried to anathematize someone who is not under her jurisdiction. I don’t believe she ever anathematized Joseph Smith, Jr., for example.

 

And then there is the matter of the fact that some Catholics (Mother Theresa comes readily to my mind) actively taught that other religions--even ones such as Buddhism and Hinduism!!--could provide valid paths to God.

 

So what? What is your point here? You seem to be saying that if any individual Catholic teaches something that the Catholic Church herself in fact condemns, that somehow proves that the Catholic Church doesn’t teach the truth. Do you apply this same logic to your own faith? If some individual in the Reformed faith were to deny the deity of Christ, would that prove that the Reformed faith was Arian? One can only judge the Catholic faith by the official teachings of the Catholic Church, not by those who deny those teachings.

 

Regarding Mother Theresa, she was not a teacher, or a theologian, so I don’t think she “actively taught” anything. However, if she believed what you say she believed, then she was wrong. What you describe is called “Indifferentism,” and regarding that, the Vatican I council declared, “The situation of those, who by the heavenly gift of faith have embraced the catholic truth, is by no means the same as that of those who, led by human opinions, follow a false religion.” The fact that God may in His mercy choose to save some out of Buddhism and Hinduism does not mean that those are valid paths to God. Any Catholic who believes or teaches otherwise is out of step with the Magisterium, and is in error. As we see it, if any Hindu or Buddhist is saved, it is only through Christ, and it is in spite of, not because of, his beliefs.

 

What are we Protestants to make of how our forebears were burned at the stake for contradicting the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but today, we, their descendants, are implored in irenic terms to come back to “Mother Church”, which has suddenly become rather “open-minded” about the Gospel?

 

I don’t know. What are we Catholics to make of how our forebears were murdered by the thousands in England and Ireland for refusing to be “Protestantized,” but today, we, their descendants, are implored in irenic terms to come out of the Catholic Church and into the “true gospel”? Perhaps both sides should realize that the actions of our forebears, whether good or evil, are completely irrelevant, and prove nothing one way or the other.

 

Is the post-Vatican II Catholic Church one and the same Church that commemorated with a medal the slaughter of nearly 70,000 French Huguenots in 1572 (the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre)?

 

Let me see if I follow you here. A sixteenth-century pope (Gregory XIII) acted in extremely bad taste by commissioning a medal to commemorate what he mistakenly thought was the victory of the French government over would-be assassins, and that somehow proves that the Church today is not the same Church as in the sixteenth century? I’m afraid I don’t get it.

 

By the way, contrary to the initial reports the pope received, it turned out that the massacre was unprovoked by the Protestants. There had been no plot to assassinate the king, and when the pope was later informed of this, and of the extent of the massacre (which apparently had initially been vastly underestimated), he reportedly became very angry. In fact, in October of 1572, when the Cardinal of Lorraine wished to present Maurevel, one of the chief instigators of the massacre, to the pope, Gregory XIII refused to receive him, saying, “He is an assassin.”

 

* * * * *

 

But let me ask you this: do you value Christian truth above denominational loyalty? Is your loyalty to Christ greater than your loyalty to anything else? Would you follow Christ anywhere? even into the Catholic Church, if that’s where you thought he was leading you? If you can answer those questions affirmatively, then you are not a formal heretic, even though you consciously reject the Catholic faith.

 

Even if I can answer all those questions affirmatively, it doesn’t relieve your Church of responsibility for the things I listed above. How can one generation of people be vehemently condemned for “following Christ where they thought He was leading them”, but another generation some five centuries later is virtually wooed to come back to the institution that sanctioned the murder of their spiritual fathers? (I am not deliberately trying to use “bombastic” language, but merely to express as clearly as I can my questions).

 

I understand. First of all, if you think past persecution is a valid reason for rejecting the Catholic Church, then you must also reject your Reformed Church, because it was guilty of the same kinds of things. In fact, according to Protestant author Henry Hallam, “persecution is the deadly original sin of the Reformed churches, that which cools every honest man’s zeal for their cause in proportion as his reading becomes extensive.” (Constitutional History of England, vol 1, 63.) Woe to that resident of Geneva who dared to disagree with John Calvin!

 

Second, it is a mistake to attribute past persecution to some defect inherent in the nature of Catholicism (especially since Protestants were also guilty of it). I quote again from Karl Adam’s book, The Spirit of Catholicism:

 

It is true that heretics were tried and burnt in the Middle Ages. But that was not done only in Catholic countries, for Calvin himself had Servetus burnt. And capital punishment was employed against the Anabaptists, especially in Thuringia and in the Electorate of Saxony. According to the Protestant Theologian, Walter Kohler, even Luther after 1530 regarded the penalty of death as a justifiable punishment for heresy. The fact that the persecution of heresy was approved as a justifiable thing by non-Catholic bodies, and in certain cases carried out in practice, goes to show that such persecution did not spring from the nature of Catholicism, or in particular from its exclusive claims. The origin of such persecutions is to be sought rather in the Byzantine and medieval conception of the state, whereby every attack on the unity of the faith was regarded as an open crime against the unity and stability of the state, and one which had to be punished according to the primitive methods of the time.

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Besides this political cause, the mentality of the period played its part. The religion of the medieval man embraced his whole life and outlook. There was as yet no unhappy cleavage between religion and morality. So that every revolt against the Catholic faith seemed to him to be a moral crime, a sort of murder of the soul and of God, an offense more heinous than parricide. And his outlook was logical rather than psychological. He rejoiced in the perception of truth, but he had little appreciation of the living conditions of soul by which this perception is reached. He lived and moved in the dialectical antithesis of Yes and No, of Either and Or, and hardly considered the fact that life does not express itself in the sharp contrast of Yes and No, Truth and Error, Belief and Unbelief, Virtue and Vice, but in an infinite wealth of transitional forms and intermediate stages; and that in dealing with the living man we have to take account not only of the logical force of truth, but also of the particular quality of the mental and spiritual endowment with which he reacts to the truth. Because they were not alive to the infinite variety of such spiritual endowment, they were all too ready, especially when truth was impugned, to conclude at once that it was a case of “evil will” (mala fides) and to pass sentence of condemnation, even though there were insuperable intellectual obstacles (ignorantia invincibilis) in the way of the perception of the truth. This pre-eminently logical attitude of mind is characteristic of the Middle Ages. That epoch had no feeling for life as a flowing thing with its own peculiar laws, no appreciation of history, whether within us or without us. And this attitude was not to be overcome and corrected, until the spirit of the time had changed, until in the course of centuries and by a long evolution a new outlook took its place. Therefore the persecutions of heretics did not proceed from the nature of Catholicism, but from the political and mental attitude of the Middle Ages.

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So with the passing of the Middle Ages such persecutions gradually ceased. The new Code of Canon Law expressly forbids any employment of force in the matter of faith. The great conception of a single Emperor and a single Empire has gone. And the theologian has by means of psychological and historical studies attained a wider understanding and become increasingly cautious in attributing an “evil will” to the heretic. He has become more alive to the thousand possibilities of invincible and therefore excusable error. “It must be regarded as true,” declared Pope Pius IX in an allocution of the 9th December, 1854, “that he who does not know the true religion is guiltless in the sight of God so far as his ignorance is invincible. Who would presume to fix the limits of such ignorance, amid the infinite variety and difference of peoples, countries and mentalities, and amid so many other circumstances? When we are free from the limitations of the body and see God as he is, then we shall see how closely and beautifully God’s mercy and justice are conjoined.” Wherefore the Church’s claim to be the Church of salvation by no means excludes a loving and sympathetic appreciation of the subjective conditions and circumstances under which heresy has arisen. Nor is her condemnation of a heresy always at the same time a condemnation of the individual heretic. As an instance of the generosity of the Catholic attitude, take the words of the celebrated Redemptorist, St. Clement Maria Hofbauer, regarding the origins of the Reformation: “The revolt from the Church began” he wrote “because the German people could not and cannot but be devout.” Hofbauer was a convinced Catholic, who condemned all heresy as a moral and religious crime, as a violation of the unity of the Body of Christ. He was fully aware also that the causes of the Reformation were by no means exclusively religious. But that knowledge did not prevent him from appreciating those religious forces which contributed in no small degree to its success. The fact that Hofbauer has been canonized suggests that the Church did not disapprove of his utterance, but regarded it as a confirmation of her constant belief in the possibility of invincible error and perfect good faith in the heretic. (Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, chapter X).

 

I hope this is sufficient to wrap up this particular discussion. If not, I’ll take another swipe at it.

 

 

Part 1, Part 2