I was recently talking with a non-Catholic about the role of the Pope and how (forgive me if I word this wrong) what we are “supposed” to believe has already been established for us. It was difficult for me to explain that the Pope tell Catholics what the stances are on different teachings. He really did not understand why Catholics need that and said he prefers to think on his own and make his own decisions.
How do I properly explain this to a non-Catholic without making it sound like Catholics just do whatever they are told and cannot think for themselves?
I struggle with this thought as well.
Your question might more easily be understood in a larger context. In other words, at the bottom line, it is only in small part about Catholics as such, and very much about humans as such. It is ultimately about how belief and the need for authority work in the human mind, as well as how pre-cognitive and pre-verbal patterns are set up in the human infant and child, and even the fetus. This, layered with family and social values, peer pressure, and such factors as advertising, all have influence.
In that sense we are, all and each of us, to some extent, such figurative lemmings, including your friend. If it wasn’t true, and we all thought for ourselves, there would be no national cultures, well, if you can put the American people in that category at all, or soon the world. So there are different categories of lemmings even within a large group. Here we have Liberal and Conservative lemmings, or ethnic lemmings, or religious lemmings of a great variety.
An individual who thinks for themselves, is astonishingly rare. Here is a quote from a story called
Gulf by Robert Heinlein. It makes sense to me. See if you agree, as Heinlein indicates, that what gives man superiority is not his body but the quality of his thought:
"…We define thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic and will discard observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.
"That is why there is always room at the top, why a man with a leetle more on the ball can so easily become governor, millionaire, or college president–and why homo sap is sure to be displaced by New Man, because there is so much room for improvement and evolution never stops.
Here and there among ordinary men is a rare individual who really thinks, can and does use logic in a single field–he’s often as stupid as the rest outside his study or his laboratory–but he can think, if he is not disturbed, sick, or frightened. This rare individual is responsible for all the progress made by the race; the others reluctantly adopt his results. Much as the ordinary man dislikes and distrusts and persecutes the process of thinking he is forced to accept the results occasionally, because thinking is efficient compared with his own maunderings. He may still plant his corn by the dark of the moon, but he will plant better corn developed by better men than he.
"Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masks himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; a pink monkey among the brown monkeys–a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he gets caught.
"The brown monkey’s instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.
"Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption and non-fact. Such men exist, They are “New Man”–human in all respects, indistinguishable in all appearances or under the scalpel from homo sap, yet as unlike him in action as the Sun is unlike a single candle.
~RA Heinlein, Gulf, a short novel in Assignment in Eternity c 1949, '53, '81 RAH
We are living in a time when learning and intellect, therefore expertise, is under attack for economic and other reasons. Our Nation has slipped from 1st to 20th or far worse (47th by one internationals index) on many scales of measure. Opinion is often touted as being of equal validity with learned assessment and scientific fact. Even legislatures are swayed by the necessity of dealing with fundamentalist religious nonsense among their own ranks, something that I believe could not happen in an actual civilized and educated society.
So once again, this is not about Catholics. It
may be about a special instance of a general human phenomenon, and not necessarily distributable by any means over a whole category of individuals, even if it may, as it might in any group apply to some.
