Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:21pm

Bishops? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Bishops!

 

In the spirit of the Obama Worship Day at Notre Dame in 2009, Notre Dame Professor of Philosophy Gary Cutting has a recent article in the New York Times, the high worship rag for all liberal apostate Catholics, in which he explains why Catholics should not pay attention to the Bishops and the silly fuss they are making over the HHS Mandate, which, among other things, rips to shreds freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment.  I was going to give the article a fisking to remember, but Christopher Johnson, a non-Catholic who has taken up the cudgels so frequently in defense of the Church that I have named him Defender of the Faith, has beaten me to it:

Roman Catholics will be interested to learn that Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame and someone who claims to be a Catholic, recently discovered that the Reformation is finally over and that the Protestants won:

What interests me as a philosopher — and a Catholic — is that virtually all parties to this often acrimonious debate have assumed that the bishops are right about this, that birth control is contrary to “the teachings of the Catholic Church.” The only issue is how, if at all, the government should “respect” this teaching.

Good question since Gutting thinks that Catholics have pretty much plowed it under and sowed the furrows with nuclear waste.

As critics repeatedly point out, 98 percent of sexually active American Catholic women practice birth control, and 78 percent of Catholics think a “good Catholic” can reject the bishops’ teaching on birth control.  The response from the church, however, has been that, regardless of what the majority of Catholics do and think, the church’s teaching is that birth control is morally wrong.  The church, in the inevitable phrase, “is not a democracy.”   What the church teaches is what the bishops (and, ultimately, the pope, as head of the bishops) say it does.

The bishops aren’t the boss of us!!

But is this true?  The answer requires some thought about the nature and basis of religious authority.  Ultimately the claim is that this authority derives from God.  But since we live in a human world in which God does not directly speak to us, we need to ask, Who decides that God has given, say, the Catholic bishops his authority?

Who died and made the bishops religious leaders?

It makes no sense to say that the bishops themselves can decide this, that we should accept their religious authority because they say God has given it to them.  If this were so, anyone proclaiming himself a religious authority would have to be recognized as one.  From where, then, in our democratic, secular society does such recognition properly come?  It could, in principle, come from some other authority, like the secular government.  But we have long given up the idea (“cujus regio, ejus religio”) that our government can legitimately designate the religious authority in its domain.  But if the government cannot determine religious authority, surely no lesser secular power could.  Theological experts could tell us what the bishops have taught over the centuries, but this does not tell us whether these teachings have divine authority.

Out: cujus regio, ejus religio.  In: vox populi vox dei.

In our democratic society the ultimate arbiter of religious authority is the conscience of the individual believer. It follows that there is no alternative to accepting the members of a religious group as themselves the only legitimate source of the decision to accept their leaders as authorized by God.  They may be wrong, but their judgment is answerable to no one but God.  In this sense, even the Catholic Church is a democracy.

You know that joke I like to make about how in the future, everybody, to paraphrase Andy Warhol, will be an Episcopal bishop for fifteen minutes?  As far as Gutting is concerned, every single Roman Catholic is a bishop right now.

But, even so, haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church?  By no means.  There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines.  Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone.  Most Catholics — meaning, to be more precise, people who were raised Catholic or converted as adults and continue to take church teachings and practices seriously — now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept.  This is above all true in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control, where the majority of Catholics have concluded that the teachings of the bishops do not apply to them.  Such “reservations” are an essential constraint on the authority of the bishops.

So you can take all those cafeteria Catholic, cultural Catholic and CINO blasts and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine, pal.

The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine.  They speak of “cafeteria Catholics” or merely “cultural Catholics,” and imply that the only “real Catholics” are those who accept their teachings entirely.  But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority.  Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority.  The bishops truly are, as they so often say, “servants of the servants of the Lord.”

You get the idea.  The blithering idiocy of Gutting’s claim should become patently obvious by asking yourself a simple question.  Is it immoral for a Christian to own a slave?  Most, and hopefully all, Christians would say of course it is.

But according to his own proposition, Gutting can’t honestly answer the question, at least not directly.  Because there was probably a point in this country’s history where the majority of American Catholics, while they would never have owned a slave themselves, had no moral objections to other people owning them.

So according to Gutting, if a Catholic bishop of that time decided that he agreed with the abolitionists, he would have been derelict in his ecclesiastical duty because he read the Scriptures, prayed and listened to the Spirit rather than listening to the voice of the people, most of whom probably would have thought he was going Protestant on them.

Gutting apparently believes that morality can be determined by majority vote, a concept which would greatly interest all the adulterers in Roman Catholic pews as well as take a great deal of pressure off any surviving Germans who enthusiastically supported Adolf Hitler in the early 1930?s.  So Gary Gutting’s “morality” is nothing more than societal convention and is correspondingly worthless.

Go here to read the brilliant rest. 

Catholicism is a revealed religion.  What Catholics have believed, taught and died for over twenty centuries has never been a creation of what ever fickle and ever fleeting popular opinion has believed, but is a truth given to us by revelation from God.  It would be hard to be more wrong than Professor Gutting is when it comes to his idea that the Bishops have not been granted their authority from God and that they, and Holy Mother Church, must bow to fashionable sins and popular prejudices.  One of the proudest claims of Catholicism down through the ages is that we hold to the truth revealed to us by God no matter whether it is popular or unpopular, fashionable or unfashionable.  Our greatest saints have stood up against the clamor of their times.  We remember Saint Justin Martyr,  Athanasius Contra Mundum, Saint Ignatius Loyola, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Saint Maximilian Kolbe and a glorious galaxy of other Saints who stood foursquare for the Faith granted to us by the hand of God against the forces of their day, not infrequently at the cost of their lives.  That is Catholicism.

 As I stated yesterday in a post which may be read here, this is not just an election year anymore for American Catholics.  Powerful forces in this country, led by the Obama administration, are attempting to foment a schism in this country and render the Church powerless to oppose the South Side Messiah and his acolytes.  Professor Gutting, whether he is conscious of the fact or not, is a foot soldier in that effort.  Elections come and go, but I can think of no American president who has ever gone to war against the Church in this country and that is precisely what Obama and his minions are doing.  Fortunately the Church has a very long history of such Church-State confrontations:

 

 After the dust settles it is always the Church that remains standing.

 

 

 

 

 

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c matt
c matt
Tuesday, March 13, AD 2012 1:26pm

Who died and made the bishops religious leaders?

Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue…begins with a J …. Jim… John …. Joe… Jesse… Jesus!! That’s it.

Wayne
Wayne
Tuesday, March 13, AD 2012 1:53pm

What I read in here is all true. There is nothing other than the Church that claims the Bishops have the authority of Christ to teach in the name of Christ. However, it is stated in the Bible (which was given to us through Tradition passed to us through the Church), that these men were given the authority by Christ himself. Of course, one would have to have Faith in order to “buy in” to that system. Otherwise, it does all become about power and autonomy and the most popular belief (as we have seen work to the great demise of most protestant faith traditions). Do I believe that the Bishops have the authority to teach and have consistently lead the Church through the past 2000 years by the direction of the Holy Spirit? Yes or No? The evidence certainly would point in favor of the constant teachings of the Church, but it still requires faith and a bit of humility. Unfortunately, those are two qualities this world despises. This professors is logically correct in his argument, saying that however, logic and reason can take you only so far. At some point, you must either ascent to the truth or you must deny it. It’s a shame so many choose to deny it, but that doesn’t make it less true.

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Tuesday, March 13, AD 2012 3:44pm

Remember, the whole point of President Caiaphas’ efforts, and those of his infernal minions, is to cause the Church’s charities, medical facilities and social services to close, so they can take over.

That makes Professor Gutting (ironic, that) a Fascist pig, since anything which does not stand in defense of the First Amendment’s Freedom of Religion clause then stands against it. Any attempt to weaken the Church or divide its members is an attack by the powers of darkness and oppression.

Surely, a Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame cannot be stupid enough to not see what he’s doing. Thus, it must logically follow that he has consciously and purposefully enlisted in the ranks of the Godless totalitarians, seeking by intent to ruin the Church and eviscerate America in the process. By this overt action he could, and should, be excommunicated.

What will it take to start the excommunications en masse? What will it take to have the Bishops stand up and slice these forked-tonged serpents to tiny bits? Why so long?

jane a.
jane a.
Tuesday, March 13, AD 2012 11:38pm

I have recently read somewhere that these “so-called” catholics have excommunicated themselves….a pattern that has come about perhaps since Vatican 2. The article I cite did put forth the idea that the Bishops were very careful not to sound too dogmatic! ha ha…..I, for one, would love to hear a Bishop or Cardinal speak out about our high profile catholics (small c)…Let Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sibelius, and others of their ilk be called on the carpet…I hope I am not sounding judgemental, but it might be the one of the jobs of the hierarchy to excommunicate people. The time has come for those closest to the Lord to take a stand!

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Wednesday, March 14, AD 2012 11:48am

[…] Bishops? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Bishops! – Donald R. McClarey, The American Catholic […]

lydia
lydia
Wednesday, March 14, AD 2012 2:17pm

What are Catholics to think about their bishops when they preach the evil of abortion and glad hand the purveyors of it. I’m talking about their cozy relationship with the democrats. When I witnessed Ted Kennedys funeral and the reception of his casket by the Cardinal of DC I wanted to puke. The excuse for overlooking his evil was the social justice babble. Once again they threw their weight behind the dems with obamacare and are surprised by what came out of that public financing of abortion. These are highly educated men how can they be so foolish to have trusted the radical community organizer in the white house to produce a clean reasonable bill. Do they think now that abortion is the only horror in this bill, have they not figured out that the handicapped the elderly and those babies with handicaps that were lucky enough to make it into the world will have reduced medical care as in the eyes of some of his advisors are of little use to the state. There are some good thoughtful bishops who adhere to church teaching and then there are the others unfortunately the ones usually quoted by the media are the misguided ones.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, March 14, AD 2012 4:16pm

Is the following quote pertinent to both clerics and laity?

“What is reprehensible is that, while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some fearing to offend shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. To be sure, the motive behind their tolerance is that they may suffer no hurt in the possession of those temporal goods which virtuous and blameless men may lawfully enjoy; still, there is more self-seeking here than becomes men who are mere sojourners in this world and who profess hope of a home in heaven.” from St. Augustine, The City of God.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, March 14, AD 2012 8:31pm

Finite minds need infinite wisdom.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, March 14, AD 2012 8:40pm

JANE a. Sebelius was instructed to not present herself for Holy Communion by her bishop and Pelosi was called to the Vatican. Pelosi’s meeting with Pope Benedict XVI remains private. I think Pelosi and Sebelious do so much bellowing about being Catholic because they are not Catholic and have been chained. Pelosi and Sebelius are like chained devils, rattling their chains.

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