How does our learning new things about God’s creation (science) affect faith and morals?
There’s a long history of this, going back as early as the early Greek language commentators on scripture, such as Origen. St. Thomas Aquinas used the empiricism inherent in Aristotelian philosophy to distill his philosophy and theological bases.
A more easy-to-understand version of how science affects faith and morals is the story of Galileo. His persecution was based on the Church in his contemporary times wrongly grafting a geocentric understanding of cosmology onto our understanding of faith and morals. In a sense, that’s a very good illustration of how our assumptions and desires (e.g., that humanity is the center of the universe) can cause us to mistake what is truly an element of faith from what’s actually a construct of human desire (i.e., coveting the universe to be as we wish). In the extreme, I would guess that such defending those constructs as essential to the faith (that later proves to be wrong) would qualify as idolatry (i.e., suggesting that true worship of God requires something artificially constructed by humanity). Science helped to purge the geocentric fallacy from our minds.
There are other such examples which might be listed here, but I’d rather not dwell on the particulars, but just to illustrate how science helps us.
This concept that learning from outside the Church can help to move us toward a truer understanding of our faith is reflected in
Lumen Gentium 8:
- “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him,(13*) although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.”*
All authority is God-given; thus, God binds even before the Constitution does.
Agreed. But what does this mean in terms of practical politics? Saying that God binds may tell us our objectives (e.g., caring for “the least of these”) and Catholic social teaching may constrain how we best achieve those objectives (e.g., subsidiarity). However, specifying an objective does not dictate the strategy for getting there. We don’t like drug use, so we make it illegal. Does that mean that drug use and violence don’t occur? Violent crime is illegal, but it’s prolific, particularly in our cities. Speeding is illegal, but extremely common. We outlawed abortion before Roe v. Wade, yet I’ve seen estimates in pre-1970 scholarly articles estimating that the annual incidence of abortion was 250,000-1,000,000 (and yes, I’ve seen the article from the ex-abortionist who claims the number to be only 100,000, but as a scientist I place serious doubt in the precision of any single claim not published in a peer-reviewed journal).
To me, the way to solve these problems isn’t by trying to make the government into the Kingdom of God. It’s to build the Kingdom, through ministry, cultural change, mission (particularly among the poor), and holding a mirror up to the powerful. See Acts 1-8 for good examples of what I mean.
This isn’t to say “yay abortion” or any such thing. If you look today at who gets abortions, it’s predominantly young women who have insecurity in their personal economic situation and in their relationships. Look at Acts 1-8… how would the Apostles have handled this problem? Seriously, think about it outside our partisan political morass, and think about how you change the culture.
This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King. This is an important aspect of Catholic social teaching which we should all learn more about.
*“We are called to be light for the Kingdom, to live in the freedom of the City of God!”
*-David Haas, “We Are Called”
Most people using te term liberal Catholic mean it to describe a person who espouses and promotes beliefs which are contrary to the teaching of the Church while maintaining some form of Catholic identity.
While that may be the case, as a liberal Catholic, I am utterly opposed to this definition. I am a Catholic who attends mass at least weekly, is a member of a small church community within my parish, reads the Bible and CCC regularly, prays with my daughter every night when I put her to bed.
I am utterly disgusted by any assertion suggesting that being politically liberal has anything whatsoever to do with how faithful a Catholic is. Sorry conservatives, it’s not “your church,” and liberals aren’t heterodox rivals seeking to redefine the Church as a hippie commune in 1969. We read the same Bible you do. St. Paul was right when he said we are one body in Christ. He wrote these verses from 1 Corinthians in a different context, but it applies today as well:
“18First of all, I hear that when you meet as a church there are divisions among you, and to a degree I believe it;i 19there have to be factions among you in order that (also) those who are approved among you may become known.”
These contrary beliefs include that abortion is not something which should be prohibited, that marriage between a man and a woman is to be supported, that contraception is wrong, etc.
Again, I’ll just respond that I don’t think there’s only one way to achieve an objective, as those you lay out above. Just saying what you want to see happen in the world doesn’t make it actually true. We must be the Kingdom, and can’t leave it up the government.
A liberal Catholic as a descriptive phrase is different from a Catholic who happens to politically be one of the many forms of liberalism which exist.
Semantics.
