Catholics and Partisan Excuses

There is a dangerous attitude today which is willing to assume that a person belonging to an ideology we oppose can do no right, while one we approve of can do no wrong—even if both people happen to do the same act. Take for example, the case of the news story about Trump paying off a porn star. The Washington Post wrote an article about Evangelical leaders giving him a pass when they were outraged with Clinton. Now the point is valid. But what the article doesn’t mention, however, is that those criticizing Trump were the ones wanting to give Clinton a free pass.

I don’t bring this up to say “we should ignore both” or say “there is wrongdoing on both sides” in a sense that negates wrongdoing. Nor am I trying to make a tu quoque argument. Rather, I think we need to practice consistency. If an action is morally wrong and needs to be publicly denounced, then we need to speak out consistently, and not give the person we agree with a “free pass.”

By the same token, when a public person does something right, we should not praise only when it when done by someone we approve of while committing the “moving the goalposts” fallacy when it comes to someone we dislike. If we complain that politician X doesn’t do “enough” on a subject, and we constantly redefine what “enough” is so that the disliked person never quite reaches it, we’re not making a stand for the Church teaching. We’re making our moral stand seem like a partisan bias.

If a politician is wrong on an issue in light of the Catholic teaching we hold, we cannot downplay that issue. I’ve seen Trump supporters downplay Church teaching on social justice. I’ve seen Trump opponents downplay Church teaching on the right to life. In such cases (and it is not just something that happens with Trump), whatever Catholic Moral Teaching does not square with the supported politician is denigrated as a “lesser issue.” The politician is given a free pass on that issue so long as he does other things the partisan Catholic already agrees with.

We can’t bear proper witness to what we believe if we show the world that our morals flex when it suits us, and only hold firm when we want to denounce someone. The non-Catholic will then see social justice as proof of “liberal bias” and the moral issues as proof of “conservative bias.” They won’t see our stands as testifying on how all of us are called to live. They’ll see it as just one more political squabble.

Nor can we take this and point to the “other” side while refusing to examine our own behavior. This is an example of Our Lord’s warning about the splinter in a brother’s eye and a log in our own. If we loudly denounce others while doing the same thing, we make Our Lord’s Church look like nothing more than partisan hypocrisy. Such behavior would be a scandal, turning away people who need to hear the teaching of the Church.

Mistaken Papal Critics and History We Forget

Preliminary Note

I have no intention of passing judgment on successors of the apostles like the "dubia cardinals" led by Cardinal Burke, or the Kazakh bishops. Just as anti-Francis Catholics have misrepresented the Holy Father to support their narrative of a "heretical" Pope, I find that these cardinals and bishops were also misrepresented, with anti-Francis critics making it sound as if these cardinals and bishops "supported" their schismatic behavior.

This article does not claim to say that these churchmen are guilty of the same wrongs Sts. Cyprian and Hippolytus committed. I merely write this article to show that misinterpretation and attacks on Popes were not limited to the pontificate of Pope Francis. Rather, I wish to point out these two cases where the Popes were misrepresented and attacked as a reminder that even men known for their holiness can go wrong if they put themselves in opposition to Popes using their teaching office.

Introduction

One of the popular narratives in opposing Pope Francis is to point out some of his predecessors—such as Liberius, Honorius I, and John XXII who were suspected of privately holding error. The anti-Francis Catholics point out that these Popes are proof that a Pope can err. From that, we have a string of tortured logic arguing that because those Popes privately erred [a claim disputed among Church historians], Pope Francis can publicly err in his words and actions that sound unfamiliar to our own understanding of Church teaching.

These critics overlook a different part of Church teaching—where Popes have taught and certain bishops of the Church mistakenly thought the Popes were teaching error and publicly took a stand in denouncing them.  I would like to briefly discuss the case of two papal critics from the Third Century AD.

Pope St. Stephen I vs. St. Cyprian

One example of this took place in the Third Century AD. St. Cyprian held that the baptism of heretics was invalid, and if any of these heretics should convert to the Catholic Church, they needed to be rebaptized. 

However, St. Stephen I taught differently. He held that if the heretic was baptized in the proper formula, the baptism was valid. If this heretic turned/returned to the Catholic faith, he did not need to be rebaptized, but merely perform penance. Instead of realizing he had misunderstood the nature of baptism and changing his views, St. Cyprian accused St. Stephen I of promoting heresy in a series of letters to his fellow African bishops. For example, in his Epistle LXXIII, to Pompey:

2. He [Pope Stephen I] forbade one coming from any heresy to be baptized in the Church; that is, he judged the baptism of all heretics to be just and lawful. And although special heresies have special baptisms and different sins, he, holding communion with the baptism of all, gathered up the sins of all, heaped together into his own bosom. And he charged that nothing should be innovated except what had been handed down; as if he were an innovator, who, holding the unity, claims for the one Church one baptism; and not manifestly he who, forgetful of unity, adopts the lies and the contagions of a profane washing.

Cyprian of Carthage, “The Epistles of Cyprian,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, vol. 5, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 386.

But the fact is, the Catholic Church followed the teaching of St. Stephen, not St. Cyprian. If a person who was validly baptized by a non-Catholic intending to do what the Church intends, we hold that baptism to be valid. Even an atheist can validly baptize. The Catholic Church holds it is wrong to rebaptize. If a person was never validly baptized, we baptize. If there is a question about whether a person was validly baptized, we give conditional baptism. 

St. Cyprian’s error was in assuming that his position was correct and that the Pope must be wrong. From that assumption, he drew the false conclusion that the Pope was doing damage to the Church from his “error,” and had to be opposed. But since St. Cyprian was in the wrong about baptism, his condemnation of the Pope was simply wrong.

Pope St. Callistus [†] vs. St. Hippolytus 

Another example of a bishop wrongly accusing a Pope involved Pope Callistus. In a time when the Roman Empire held that slaves could not marry free citizens, the Pope decreed that such a marriage was valid. 

St. Hippolytus thought the Pope was in error. In a denunciation, he declared that the Pope’s action would lead to divorce, use of contraception, and attempted abortion on the part of a free woman who married a slave, writing [§]:

For even also he [Callistus] permitted females, if they were unwedded, and burned with passion at an age at all events unbecoming, or if they were not disposed to overturn their own dignity through a legal marriage, that they might have whomsoever they would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free, and that a woman, though not legally married, might consider such a companion as a husband. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth.9 Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time! And withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church!

Hippolytus of Rome, “The Refutation of All Heresies,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. J. H. MacMahon, vol. 5, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 131.

I find this remarkably similar to the statements of some Catholics who claim that what the Pope said in Amoris Lætitia would mean people in a state of mortal sin seeking to receive the Eucharist—assuming that the abuse was directly caused by the Pope’s action as opposed to being an abuse of his teaching. 

Yes, a third century Catholic could think about becoming pregnant by a slave husband in that way, but that would be doing evil that was not in accord with the Pope’s teaching. This was a post hoc fallacy by St. Hippolytus which is similar to the one committed by Pope Francis’ critics.

Conclusion

These cases are examples of members of the Church who confused their interpretation of what should follow from Church teaching with Church teaching itself. Because of this, they falsely accused Popes of promoting error, attributing worst case scenarios as directly caused by the Pope who declared the teaching. These cases also involved the accusers assuming the worst of the Popes, leading them to think they must support the worst abuses.

I believe that these are the proper historical counterparts to the opposition to Pope Francis, not the examples of “bad Popes” people try to cite. People who have assumed that all people who are divorced and remarried must be in a state of mortal sin cannot reconcile that assumption with the Pope correctly pointing out that assessing culpability must be done with remarriage as well as with every other grave sin.

Like the third century critics of Popes, the 21st century critics of this Pope have confused their view with Church teaching itself. The Pope has made a reasonable teaching, but some people, failing to understand it, assume their fears of negative consequences through abuse is the intended teaching.

______________________

[†] Also known as Callixtus.

[§] This is commonly cited [correctly] as proof that the Church consistently condemned contraception and abortion.  But I find it interesting that Hippolytus slandered Callistus in doing so just as some critics today slander Pope Francis. These critics are correct that the teaching they defend is true. But they err in thinking the Pope’s teaching contradicts it.

Theologians, Bloggers, and Authority

It is the teaching of the magisterium that binds and looses, as well as interprets how to apply the teachings of the past to the present age. When the Pope and bishops in communion with him do this, we have the obligation to give assent to these teachings. There is no appeal to the decision of a Pope (canon 1404), though a later Pope can decide on a different approach from his predecessor. The magisterium does not invent new revelation, but can develop doctrine from the timeless teachings meeting current needs and challenges.

For those Catholics who are not members of the magisterium (most of us), we do not have the authority to bind and loose. Nor do we have the authority to declare what is the proper teaching and judge people who disagree with us to be enemies of the faith. The value of what we write only goes as far as we accurately portray the teaching of the Church. We might think that position Z logically follows from teaching X and Y, and perhaps our insights may help the Church to deepen our understanding of the faith, but we cannot claim that Z is Church teaching if the Church does not teach Z. Nor can we accuse the Church of error if she rejects our reasoning.

This is important because there is a growing number of theologians and bloggers out there who presume to pass judgment on the current magisterium based on their own interpretations of what should follow from past Church teaching. If they hold one thing, but the magisterium does not act in accordance with that interpretation, these theologians and bloggers have no right to declare them in “error.”

This is the reality we must adjust to. The “progressive” Catholic who wants to change Church teaching or the “traditionalist” Catholic who wants to resist change cannot declare the Church to be in error if the Church should reject their interpretation.

This means we have an ongoing obligation to study what the Church teaching is, and how it is applied. If we find our view is at odds with that of the teaching authority of the Pope, that’s a good sign that our view is the one in error. We have an ongoing obligation to understand in context what the teaching we have problems with really means.

The 2000 years of teaching from the Church cannot be cherry picked to reach a conclusion that we think is more in line with what we think the Church should be. Individual saints from the Church Fathers occasionally offered ideas which the Church eventually rejected. We cannot appeal to those ideas. Occasionally, theologians offered opinions that they later retracted. We cannot try to use the name of the theologian to justify what he later rejected.

The fact is, we do wrong if we seize on these ideas and call them “Church teaching,” when the actual Church has decided against this view. In short, we cannot bind what the Church has loosed, nor loose what the Church has bound. If we think otherwise, we act without authority and become stumbling blocks to the faithful.

That doesn’t mean we can’t theologize or encourage fellow believers to act rightly. But it does mean we must offer submission to the magisterium when she teaches in a way which goes against our preferred view.