A LABOR OF LOVE
I’d like to share with you today the approach I take to digesting and making sense of the information we receive from the leadership of the Catholic Church these days. What should we do when these documents come out, or when some news headline comes out, or when this or that statement is made by the Pope? I, just like every other Catholic in the world, am faced with the task of trying to make sense of our Catholic faith so that I might live in accord with it. My approach to these things has solidified over time to the point that I can discern a pretty clear method of how I engage these things. That method is what I’m sharing with you today.
Faith
What is the point of faith? That’s our central animating question. The point of faith, put simply, is to reconcile ourselves to God and reality as He/it really is. This is what everything in the life of faith is ordered toward. Closeness to God is what we seek. Such close closeness, in fact, that we hope to one day be utterly dissolved entirely into Him—that nothing of us might remain but Christ Jesus in us.
“For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” (1 Cor 3:11)
The Rule of Faith
Christ and his saints are the rule of my faith. They’re what I turn to; what I try to model my life after; who I try to learn from; who I am encouraged by. I turn to Christ always. Even when I turn to the saints it’s Christ that I’m seeking through them.
I then take as the basis of my understanding of the faith those propositions, delivered by saints, that are clear and comprehensible to me. What have they taught about the spiritual life? About the Church? About God?... I look to the saints takes on all these things as first priority because they are the ones that most sublimely reveal the truth of God and the Holy Spirit in their lives. They have given themselves over most thoroughly and completely to God, and their lives testify to that reality, bearing in them a mark of beauty that softens the heart and encourages the soul. When I see that example—when I hear the stories of these great Saints, animated chiefly by the manifestation of their profound humility toward self, others, and God—I am renewed in my mind and consoled in my heart. What these saints then teach about God, the things of God, Scripture, the world, the forces of evil, and the Church, I trust with an unwavering trust. I’ve gained so much learning about all these things from them.
Devotions
There is no shortage of great saints that I turn to—but I’m happy to share those saints with you that have particularly moved me. Any time I’ve heard a story of a saint that has deeply affected me, often to the point of reverential tears—a piercing of my heart—I add that saint to the litany of saints that I seek intercessions from every day in my prayers. That litany of saints is the following for me up to this point in my life:
St. Paul pray for us
St. Augustine pray for us
St. Monica pray for us
St. Elisabeth LeSeur (servant of God) pray for us
St. Maria Goretti pray for us
St. Jacques Fesch (servant of God) pray for us
St. John Bosco pray for us
St. Thomas Aquinas pray for us
St. Benedict XVI (not canonically beatified) pray for us
St. Elisa (not canonically beatified) pray for us
St. Gerard Majella pray for us
King David pray for us
St. John Chrysostom pray for us
St. Joseph pray for us
Mother Mary pray for us
I hope that litany continues to grow throughout my life; that they may be my first witnesses accompanying me into eternity. I’ve learned more or less from these different saints—but something about each of them deeply moved me and for that reason I cultivate a devotion to them.
Doctors of the Church
There are some 36 Doctors of the Church, but when it comes to studying and learning the faith, I tend to turn to a few of the Saints (Doctors), in particular, that I have devotions to: Namely, above all others, St. Thomas Aquinas;...after that, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and Pope Benedict XVI. The authority amongst them lies in St. Thomas Aquinas, such that I defer to what he teaches above any of the others. And even this I do not defer to arbitrarily, or because of some title—it is because his ability to explain things with profound insight and clarity has always, on every occasion I can recount, trumped anything I’ve learned from anyone else. I know that if St. Thomas Aquinas teaches something different than what I thought was the case, or at odds with something another Saint has said, he will so robustly explain it as to remove my doubts as to whether what he’s saying is legitimate or not. And that has literally been the case in every single instance I can remember.
Amongst the works of Thomas Aquinas, I don’t give pride of place to one individual work, but to whatever I learn on a topic from him that offers the most clarity. For example, Thomas speaks of mortal sin and its distinction from venial sin in each of the following works: De Malo, the Summa Theologia, and in a number of Quodlibets—but his teaching on the distinction between mortal and venial sin is far and away most clear and comprehensive in his treatment of the topic in De Malo. For that reason I defer to that explanation above all the others—it’s the one I can most squarely comprehend and correspondingly apply in my life.
This example illumines how I establish my broader rule of faith based on coherence and an effort to defer to the great saints.
The Church
When it comes to the Church and what it teaches, I always try to submit in humility to that which it teaches. However, it’s not the case that every papal document, or Church council document, is evidently clear to me. I’m also not under the impression that it either should be, or that it is. Ambiguity is not an accidental occurrence in God’s divine plan for the faith: it forces charity to be central in all that we do. (cf. Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on Romans 11:9-10)
That being said, I give pride of place to those things I can understand (even if difficult to understand) and/or that are stated with greatest clarity. (A good list of anathemas is typically very clear.)
I’ve been satisfied reading a couple treatments of Papal Infallibility & Magisterial Authority from the likes of Fr. Ripperger and Ed Feser—they both are guys that bring receipts and make clear arguments. I don’t care to wrestle over the topics beyond that. What they’ve said satisfies my intellectual appetite for those topics.
Examination of Conscience
In anything that I make my way through, if I run into something that contradicts something else I’ve learned and incorporated into my life of faith with great fruit—“great fruit” measured by greater and more fervent reception of the sacraments of the eucharist/confession; self-denial; kindness, generosity, patience, forbearance, gentleness, & meekness towards others; zeal for the faith/evangelization; etc.—I first try to challenge myself on it, often for a few days. Is there something in here that can open me up to love of others and love of God in a more profound way? Is there a prideful tendency in me blocking my reception of this (perceived) teaching?... If after a few days, it hasn’t born fruit, I don’t dismiss it as much as I just return to learning my faith from the Saints, and continuing on in devotion to the Mass, personal prayer, examination of conscience & confession, etc.
Modern Documents
Most modern documents don’t end up making that large of an impact on me because I simply can’t make my way through them. I start reading them—be it an encyclical from Pope Francis or Pope John Paul II, Declarations from the CDF, Vatican II documents, etc.—but I often don’t even finish them because they’re too verbose and intellectually undisciplined for my liking. I have no problem with length—I devour the works of St. Thomas… I simply have a problem with vagaries, excessive euphemisms, and misdirection in writing and speech. I simply don’t remain drawn to them long enough to even fully take them in—and I’m filled with a clear sense that I don’t care to study them beyond that. The primary thing I’d gain in studying them beyond that would be an ability to argue with people over them, which seems neither interesting, worthwhile, nor fruitful, to me in my life of faith or my relations toward others. When someone doesn’t try to say what they’re going to say succinctly, and with clarity, they’re not trying to have their thoughts taken seriously—they’re playing at some other social-psychological game that I have neither the authority, the wherewithal, nor the time to dissect and identify. The Lord will do that—I’m fine with that.
The majority of modern documents that I have made my way through have been on account of their beauty, or inspiration, I found in reading/contemplating them. If some of those are long, that’s fine with me, because they inspire me. But if they don’t do that, I evidently don’t possess what I would consider a good motivation to get through them (that is, learning them for my correction or edification;…proving others wrong is expressly not a good motivation by my estimation). I’ll give you two examples of modern documents that I’ve found very beautiful and inspiring:
Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Spe Salvi
Pope Francis’ recent homily On Compunction
The rest of the stuff I read just hasn’t registered for me, no matter how hard I try, or even if I do slog my way through a whole reading of this or that one.
A Labor of Love
So there’s the method I use: Cultivate my faith always—pray, study scripture, learn from the Saints, honor my devotions, defer to the Doctors (& comprehensibility), respect the Church, examine my conscience, incorporate the good; pray, study scripture, cultivate the faith, repeat.
“Test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21)
I try to return back to what I do know and what I’m curious to know. I try to seek answers for those dissonances resting in my mind around this or that topic. The intellectual life is a labor of love—but you don’t grow to love it until you cultivate the practice of doing it. Often, I have a specific question I’m looking to have answered, and it takes me months of diving into this-or-that thing (usually by Thomas), only to eventually carve out, not an answer, but a clearer image of the answer’s landscape and what its substance might entail. When one of those dissonances are finally resolved—sometimes months later, by stumbling across the answer in reading something unrelated—it’s one of the great joys I experience in this life.
To be honest, I couldn’t make my way through the latest document, Dignitas Infinita, because it was too rambling. I read the first about ~10 paragraphs (which is more than I was motivated to do) and it felt like a chore. I don’t know what they mean by “infinite”… I know that Thomas talks about the loss of dignity due to sin (which disqualifies the notion of “infinite” dignity)—but maybe he means something subtle and therefore different…? I know the document introduced distinctions to dignity that seemed superfluous to me—i.e. ontological vs existential dignity..? I know that it seemed to drop a lot of references to Saints/previous Popes/councils to bolster its claims—something that felt suspicious and inauthentic when reading it. If you’re referencing old things at such great length, only to say something new, that strikes me as manipulative. If you’re referencing old things at great length, only to say something not new, then there’s no need to say anything at all. Why not just share what they’ve said and leave it at that? On top of that, the references to Vatican II documents carry little-to-no weight with me because the Vatican II documents are themselves so convoluted and verbose as to be effectively meaningless to quote.
I can’t tell you what games these people are playing—but I can tell you that I’m convinced there are games that they’re playing. Everything is pre-assertive qualifications and hedged bets. Nothing is ever falsifiable with them (I think blank, and if it goes like blank, then I’ll be proven wrong and you can throw out this speculation). It all strikes me as soft—and ultimately softness springs from a lack of humility. People don’t want to be exposed, and so they slither out of the possibility of being wrong. “A Scoffer does not like to be reproved; He will not go to the wise.” (Proverbs 15:12)
With that, my encouragement to you is to keep studying the faith from the saints, increase your practice of prayer and worship, examine your conscience, receive the sacraments of Eucharist & Confession, and seek answers to those questions that are gnawing at you.
May the God of all good things bless you and keep you always. +
Thanks AJ.
We can rest in the fact that the Church is ultimately indefectible.
As Bishop Mar Mari said in a recent speech, even if there is corruption in the leadership, the Catholic Church is holy.
Don't sleep on St. Joan of Arc. I highly recommend reading Mark Twain's book about her. As Twain says, "It took six thousand years to produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty thousand. She is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced."