Please help! Unanswerable dilemma!

[Hope7]

I recently came across a thread called “Doubts about doubt” in which the poster proposed a dilemma which has rocked my world a bit–I can not see any solution to it. (Nobody directly addressed it in her thread, either; the last post was her simply restating her initial problem because all the responses had skirted around it.)

The dilemma involves the Church’s former banning of books. Basically, although protestants were expected to read Catholic works when questioning their own tradition, Catholics were forbidden to investigate protestant works when questioning Catholicism. However, isn’t it necessary to view both view points for an individual to honestly assent to a faith? Otherwise they’ll naturally suspect bias amidst their sources!

(Commented below is a copy of the dilemma as proposed by the initial poster.)

Please help me with this. I see their dilemma as insurmountable, and I was highly discouraged by the lack of solutions presented on the initial post. This is greatly troubling to me–if anyone has any ideas, please help!

Thanks and God bless!

 

[Hope7]

"There seems to be a discrepency in the way Catholics and non-Catholics are supposed to treat doubt. If a Protestant begins to have doubts about his faith, he is supposed to investigate those doubts rather than just stay where he is. If he doesn’t, then he is culpable for not joining the Church, because he is no longer invincibly ignorant: he saw problems with his faith, but he never did anything about it. So for example, the Baltimore Catechism taught:

In like manner one who, doubting, fears to examine the religion he professes lest he should discover its falsity and be convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, cannot be saved.

q. 121
Also in the Baltimore Catechism, even the “slightest doubt” binds a person to examine his religion.

Yet the Church teaches something entirely different to professed Catholics. A Catholic ought not to entertain even the greatest doubt. The ranks of the canonized saints have plenty of folks who had doubts, but nevertheless continued on in spite of these in acts of pure faith. This is regarded as exceedingly virtuous. If a Catholic has a doubt, he ought to turn to God, trust in God, and make an act of faith, casting aside his doubts and living on pure faith, as so many of the saints did.

Now I understand both of these teachings. In fact, both make perfect sense to me, generally speaking. We must not give in to every doubt. When I am at Mass and doubt the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, what great virtue it truly is to bow before It in worship anyways. Similarly, when years ago I began to have doubts about my Protestantism, I was right to investigate things. If I didn’t, then I truly would have been turning away from the truth.

 

[Hope7]

So there is some truth to each of these ideas. They are certainly both true, but also so contradictory, and unlike those contradictions we call mysteries - God is Three and God is one, Christ is fully man and Christ is fully God - these are practical contradictions. We have to actually choose a course of behavior. We have to do what is moral here, and reject what is immoral. To seek an even greater understanding of the Trinity as we are drawn closer and closer to God is one thing, the practical aspects of how we are to live, of moral theology, is another. I think everyone understands what I mean.

Now the problem grows larger when we look at the greater context of Church teaching. The reason a Protestant can be saved if he has no idea he is not in the true Church of God is that God isn’t making a checklist. God is judging the heart. He cares if a person has chosen to truly love Him, or to reject His Love. A Catholic is not saved merely by virtue of being Catholic. He is saved by virtue of accepting God’s mercy andd Grace and of obeying Him, part of which most assuredly includes belonging to His Church.

Now imagine a person born Catholic. This person has a strong faith in God and truly desires to serve Him and to Love Him in Jesus Christ. At some point in that person’s life, he becomes convinced that the Catholic Church is not the Church of God, but a corruption. Were that person to remain in the Church, he would not be saved, for that person would be grievously violating his conscience. As Thomas Aquinas taught, even something that is not a sin is a sin for someone who believes that it is, or, to put it in Biblical terms, we might quote St. Paul: “whatever is not of faith is sin.” If a person truly believes that the Catholic Church is the work of Satan and chooses to remain in it, that person has made a consciouse choice to remain a member of a work of Satan.

But even before we get to this point, we have a big problem. Consider a woman from 1935 who comes to doubt that the church to which she belongs is the true Church of God. This person would be bound by her conscience to investigate, or else she would not in fact be following God. She would be choosing to ignore the truth of God for the sake of laziness (not wanting to take the time to investigate), convienence (not wanting to leave the comfortable situation she is in for something else), or fear that her current religion may be false. Now wanting to follow God wherever He leads and wanting to settle her doubt, she goes ahead and reads a book to look into the question.

If this woman is a Protestant, then whatever the outcome, so long as she is honest she has done right. She has done all that is in her power to settle her doubt and to follow God.

If this woman is a Catholic, then whatever the outcome, whether she stays or goes, even if she was as honest as Abe Lincoln, she has sinned. She has sinned by choosing to pursue doubts about the Church. She has sinned by endangering her faith. In fact, she has encurred automatic excommunication reserved to the POPE by virtue of having read a prohibited book.

 

[Hope7]

My question is then, how can this inconsistency be understood? It’s not enough to say simply that a Catholic is already in the true Church and thus the teachings protect such a person’s faith, because once the person has a doubt, their certainty that they are indeed following God by obeying the teachings of the Church is no longer present. A Catholic with a doubt is in the same situation as a Protestant: he wants to follow God and is unsure of how to do so. Submitting faithfully - a la some of the saints - to teachings that he is no longer certain came from God is of no help to him. And thus as a second question, how are we to understand the concept of making an act of faith in the face of doubt as a virtuous act as opposed to a neutral or sinful act? (Note that I am not referring to saints who doubted God’s existence, or God’s Love, or that sort of thing, but rather to those who were uncertain of particular doctrines or of the Church’s authenticity)."

 

[TheLittleLady]

She has sinned by endangering her faith. In fact, she has encurred automatic excommunication reserved to the POPE by virtue of having read a prohibited book.

The article is too long to post, but, I suggest a calm, thoughtful reading of this:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03519d.htm

Excommunication was far more detailed, reserved primarily to the authors and publishers, even for the laity permissions were available.

Printers offending against the law incurred the punishment of excommunication

Any person reading or keeping a book prohibited for other reasons commits a grievous sin and is to be punished according to the bishop’s discretion.

by the Bull “Apostolicæ Sedis” (12 Oct, 1869) Pius IX reorganized the ecclesiastical censures (penal laws of the Church) he abolished the punishment of excommunication which, both in the Tridentine (1564) and Clementine (1596) indexes, was inflicted upon printers as well as authors not submitting their works for ecclesiastical censorship.

The list in question was a discipline, not a dogma.

Not quite sure why this would “rock your world”, other disciplines have been changed, we no longer have to fast overnight before we receive the Eucharist for example, the discipline of eating meat on non-lenten Fridays has changed.

Your doubting 1935 person: Of all of the published books at and up to that time, there are only a minuscule handful that were determined to be dangerous because of blasphemy or other extreme errors. If they doubted their faith, they would be encouraged to sit down and talk to their Godparents, the nun, a priest, they were free to go sit down and talk to the Baptist preacher up the road, to read many non-Catholic books.

This is a good article:

Index Librorum Prohibitorum | Description, Roman Catholic, History, Authors, & Facts | Britannica

The sin is disobedience. The same as with other sins against discipline.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Basically, although protestants were expected to read Catholic works when questioning their own tradition

Were they? Actually, that’s an unfair question to an overgeneralization, because it ultimately depends on the group. Some Protestants are open to the idea of reading alternative views. Some will only do so through a Protestant author. Some will practically treat reading alternative views as a sin. This continues today, and I can’t imagine the latter two groups just suddenly sprung up and that Protestants were otherwise always about reading Catholic works (of course, after literacy was common, which hasn’t always been the case in Protestant history).

Actually, due to my upbringing, I’ve generally viewed Protestants as more ban-happy than Catholics. Most Catholics I knew were pretty laid back. Protestants were willing to ban Pokemon just because evolution was a game mechanic.

Catholics were forbidden to investigate protestant works when questioning Catholicism

If we’re thinking about the same thread, as others noted in that thread, the ban wasn’t absolute nor completely enforced. As an example, scholars were obviously given exemption.

Also, the list hasn’t been relevant for over 50 years and was never dogma to begin with. We can discuss whether or not banning books was a good idea, but treating it as anything more than a potential mistake that no longer holds any relevance is pointless. Since it was never dogma, it doesn’t show a flaw in the Magisterium.

However, isn’t it necessary to view both view points for an individual to honestly assent to a faith?

I don’t understand why it would be. Ok, maybe I’m ignorant of Scientology, but I don’t see how my lack of painstaking examination of the evidence for and against Xenu takes away from my faith in God.

Otherwise they’ll naturally suspect bias amidst their sources!

One part of learning to read critically is to recognize that everyone has a bias and that that bias will be present in the work. We may account for it when reading the work, but the presence of that bias doesn’t make anything in the work wrong, even if it may provide insight into why something is wrong.

Basically, I’m not sure why the presence of bias is a problem. If reading only one side bugs you, get a few books that tackle the subject from different sides.

 

[goout]

Doubt is not a sin. Doubt is part of being human. Entertaining doubts can be sinful, but you can get overly scrupulous about what it means to entertain doubt. The point isn’t to be scrupulous, the point is to grow in the love of the Lord. And part of that journey is to face doubts honestly. Admit them, accept that you are burdened with them, and try to resolve them. If reading non-Catholic sources is honestly part of that search, then I think you follow your conscience, and it will lead you to the Church in the end. Reading other materials may help you realize it’s not for you.

For some people (like me) skepticism and doubt are life long struggles.

I’d like to suggest a classic work by Romano Guardini called simply “The Lord”. This book is refreshingly honest in anticipating the doubts and objections of the reader to Christian doctrines. It doesn’t pretend that human beings are instantly able to accept the resurrection and the Eucharist. It admits the obvious objections that arise, and by doing that, it opens the way to a more solid faith in Christ.

And for me, that’s what holds my faith together in the midst of intellectual failings and skepticism. I have nowhere else to go but Jesus Christ. And I’m going to follow even as I’m stumbling.

 

[Hope7]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. However, I have a question with this part:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) TheLittleLady:

Your doubting 1935 person: Of all of the published books at and up to that time, there are only a minuscule handful that were determined to be dangerous because of blasphemy or other extreme errors. If they doubted their faith, they would be encouraged to sit down and talk to their Godparents, the nun, a priest, they were free to go sit down and talk to the Baptist preacher up the road, to read many non-Catholic books.

Apparently, the list also banned broad categories of books:

In accordance with the main end of the law, paragraph 2 forbids books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and in general all writers defending heresy or schism or undermining the very foundation of religion; paragraph 11 prohibits books falsifying the notion of “Inspiration of Holy Scripture”; paragraph 14 condemns all writings defending dueling, suicide, divorce, or representing as useful and innocuous for Church and State Freemasonry and other secret societies or maintaining errors specified by the Apostolic See [those mentioned, e.g., in the Syllabus of Pius IX (1864) or Pius X (1907)]; paragraph 12 interdicts superstitious writings in the following words: It is forbidden to publish, read or keep books teaching or recommending sorcery, soothsaying, magic, spiritism, or similar superstition things; paragraph 9 reads as follows: Books systematically (ex professo) discussing, relating or teaching obscene and immoral things are strictly prohibited; paragraph 21 says: Dailies, newspapers and journals which aim at (data opera) destroying religion and morality are interdicted not only by natural law but also by ecclesiastical prohibition. All works forbidden in the above-mentioned paragraphs may be put together in one group, viz.: irreligious, heretical, superstitious, and immoral writings.

…

A second group of prohibited books comprises all insulting writings directed against God and the Church. Regarding them paragraph 11 says: All books are forbidden that insult God or the Blessed Virgin Mary or the saints or the Catholic Church and her rites, the sacraments or the Apostolic See. In like manner all books are forbidden that aim at the defamation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the clergy or the religious. It is hardly necessary to say that a fair historical work, for example, on an individual member of the hierarchy, of a religious order, or even on any particular order who have but disgraced their calling or the Church, is not included in paragraph 11. With this second group may also be reckoned, among the works forbidden by paragraphs 15 and 16, all novel religious pictures that deviate from the spirit and the decrees of the Church, also all works on indulgences containing spurious or falsified statements.

Doesn’t this mean the 1934 woman wasn’t free to read books from another point of view? (which would be akin to “talking with a baptist preacher”?)

 

[fhansen]

Please help me with this. I see their dilemma as insurmountable, and I was highly discouraged by the lack of solutions presented on the initial post. This is greatly troubling to me–if anyone has any ideas, please help!

Things have changed- our world is much more literate and educated now for one thing-so the Church addresses these matters differently. Doubt is normal-while still not something to be satisfied with. Here is what the Church teaches regarding our conscience, which is related to your question:

1782 Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. "He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters."

1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

1798 A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. Everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience.

1801 Conscience can remain in ignorance or make erroneous judgments. Such ignorance and errors are not always free of guilt.

2106 “Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits.” This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it "continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."

Anyway, we will not find unless we seek. And seeking requires that we first of all acknowledge that we don’t already know. Regardless of how much the Church knows, we don’t know it and truly believe it until we know and believe it for ourselves-and so come to agree with the Church. Then we begin to participate in what is known as the “sensus fidelium”.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

I see their dilemma as insurmountable, and I was highly discouraged by the lack of solutions presented on the initial post. This is greatly troubling to me–if anyone has any ideas, please help!

Don’t take this the wrong way, because you have every right to want clarification, but this isn’t even an issue. There aren’t any banned books, and there never were. The Church has no power to ban anything. The books were said to be potentially harmful if they were read by Joe Blow Catholic. That’s it. Being excommunicated for reading a book is an absolutely unenforceable ecclesiastical law.

 

[graciew]

I’d like to suggest a classic work by Romano Guardini called simply “The Lord”. This book is refreshingly honest in anticipating the doubts and objections of the reader to Christian doctrines. It doesn’t pretend that human beings are instantly able to accept the resurrection and the Eucharist. It admits the obvious objections that arise, and by doing that, it opens the way to a more solid faith in Christ.

It was an incredibly different approach to Jesus. Loved that book…
How can anyone get so deep in understanding still amazes me. Makes one stop every a few lines and think…

 

[TheLittleLady]

A second group of prohibited books comprises all insulting writings directed against God and the Church. Regarding them paragraph 11 says: All books are forbidden that insult God or the Blessed Virgin Mary or the saints or the Catholic Church and her rites, the sacraments or the Apostolic See. In like manner all books are forbidden that aim at the defamation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the clergy or the religious. It is hardly necessary to say that a fair historical work, for example, on an individual member of the hierarchy, of a religious order, or even on any particular order who have but disgraced their calling or the Church, is not included in paragraph 11. With this second group may also be reckoned, among the works forbidden by paragraphs 15 and 16, all novel religious pictures that deviate from the spirit and the decrees of the Church, also all works on indulgences containing spurious or falsified statements.

Here is the way I’d break down. If James White or Westboro Baptist Church or Jack Chick were writing their sort of stuff in 1930, it would be on the forbidden list. If you came and asked me if those books were good to read, I would say absolutely no.

BIG difference between reading a classic Christian work like “In His Steps” (non Catholic) and reading something by a defrocked priest who is taking pot shots at the Church.

The line about indulgences containing spurious or false statements, think of the “This prayer is NEVER KNOWN TO FAIL, say it three times and turn around facing north and your wish will be granted” superstisions stuff or things from unapproved apparitions and how far it is from, say, the message of Fatima.

This stuff is not good for anyone!

And reading a book of heresy is not the same as talking to the preacher up the road.

 

[goout]

goout:

I’d like to suggest a classic work by Romano Guardini called simply “The Lord”. This book is refreshingly honest in anticipating the doubts and objections of the reader to Christian doctrines. It doesn’t pretend that human beings are instantly able to accept the resurrection and the Eucharist. It admits the obvious objections that arise, and by doing that, it opens the way to a more solid faith in Christ.

It was an incredibly different approach to Jesus. Loved that book…
How can anyone get so deep in understanding still amazes me. Makes one stop every a few lines and think…

One passage that sticks with me is when he discusses the incarnation and the scandal it can cause in the reader; that God would take on the human condition for a rescue operation. And he relates the explanation he received from a mentor in his youth:

“Love does such things”. And that about says it all.

 

[tafan2]

And yet, the vast majority of our Catholic ancestors who lived under these disciplines remained faithful Catholics their whole lives. Few of them were burdened with your trouble.
They were not ignorant about their faith, they lived their faith.
I see that you are in RCIA. Perhaps you can just accept the the Church has different disciplines in different times and places. And for good reasons. But these do t always change as quickly as the changing times warrant.

 

[JimG]

As for the Index of Prohibited Books, apparently the first list was issued in 1559. (There weren’t many books before that.) The last revision, the 20th, was published in 1948, and the Index was discontinued in 1966.

I can’t imagine the Vatican trying to even keep up with books after that. Now, when some publishing houses specialize in anti-Catholic books, others specialize in the doctrines of various non-Catholic denominations, and a great many specialize in soft and hard core pornography, there would have to be thousands of books per year added to the list! Who could keep up?

In the U.S., there also used to be the Legion of Decency, which rated movies from various degrees of okay, to condemned. But back then, the Hollywood Hayes Code had its own form of self censorship. There is still a rating system, but a great deal of what gets filmed today would hardly pass muster under the 1940 standards. Society has greatly lowered its standards in some ways.

 

[JimG]

It’s a little similar to parents having a list of forbidden junk foods, for their children: “Don’t eat this stuff; it can be harmful to your body.” I suppose they might have a similar list of harmful reading and viewing matter that could be harmful to the soul.

 

[Hope7]

I totally understand that, but what if someone who was living at that time had doubts about Catholicism? And what if they felt they had to investigate non-Catholic claims, in order to honestly assent to the Faith?

Wouldn’t they be stuck between being terrified of excommunication/disobeying the church, and not being able to main intellectual integrity?

 

[TheLittleLady]

Wouldn’t they be stuck between being terrified of excommunication/disobeying the church, and not being able to main intellectual integrity?

Not likely as they did not have the problem of armchair canonists on Reddit telling them “reading this book will get you excommunicated!!!”

I’d wager if you sit down with some of the oldest members of your parish and ask them, they were likely not even aware of such.

 

[Hope7]

Haha I’m sure you’re quite right! Thank you again for taking the time to respond.

I hate to be a stickler though, but I must ask–doesn’t the fact that Catholics were probably unaware of a rule not negate the fact that the rule was harmful & contradictory? Because say they did know about the rule. Then we’re back to square one, no?

Maybe I should just let this go. I definitely still find it troubling, though…

 

[JimG]

I totally understand that, but what if someone who was living at that time had doubts about Catholicism? And what if they felt they had to investigate non-Catholic claims, in order to honestly assent to the Faith?

You mean, investigate by reading books on the Index published before 1948? Those were probably not even very useful for examining doubts. Not every book discussing religion was on the Index, and a great many of them were from prior centuries. Some Catholic university professors would assign a book on the Index for reading, after getting a waiver from the Bishop, but they were not exactly exciting reading.