Vatican Secretary of State: Dissident Catholics More Worrying than Atheists

[Ignatius]

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s comments put me in mind of something St. Bernadette said when asked if she was afraid of the Germans invading France during the Franco-Prussian War. She said the only thing she was afraid of was bad Catholics. If she could only see how much the Faith would be abandoned in her native country, she would have been truly horrified. And in our own day we ought to be horrified by those who want to destroy the orthodoxy of the Church to follow the whims of society, too. That is a much greater threat than attacks from any amount of non-believers.

This is precisely the greatest danger to the Church at this time. God Bless you and the Cardinal. Too bad more of our Bishops don’t recognize this problem, but I guess that is difficult since many of them are unwitting contributors to the problem.

 

[patg]

But you already asserted that the Virgin Birth never happened. Are you now trying to modify your earlier comment to say, yes it did happen, but history can’t verify it?

What? I have never said, asserted, or implied this. I have consistently maintained that it is to be believed as a truth of faith and not history. I think you are seriously misunderstanding me.

No. I find the phrase “verified history” ludicrous, and it has nothing to do with dogma, or history. I don’t think any self-respecting historian would ever use it. I have nothing against history. I love it, read it, and am a student of it, including Christian history.

Me too.

That’s why I have perspective enough to see a fad when I see it even if it does hang on and on At this point I’ll be happy if I can outlive droopy pants and Andrew Greeley.

I can’t imagine this genie being put back in the bottle but I won’t be following it there.

No. Replying “absolutely not” to a direct question as to whether you believe an event happened or not means you don’t believe it. I believe the proper verb for that is “to deny.” It’s your contradiction. Don’t ask me to explain it.

I was never asked whether a specific event happened or not - I was asked whether the virgin birth was a historical event and I answered that based on the standards of historical analysis, it is not. The church teaches that it happened and we are bound by faith to believe it. I’m sorry you have trouble understanding the difference between truth and dogmatic truth.

What the Church is good at is teaching the Deposit of Faith, which in this case, includes the doctrines of Christian Revelation, including the authoritative account of what happened during the Life of Christ. History is at best a tool, not an “authority.” To discount the traditional teaching of the Church in favor of the theories of critical historians gets it all backwards.

I don’t think so. Ignoring historical criticism introduces a lie into any contemporary Christian faith that claims history as its basis. It is not acceptable to assert that one’s views are historically accurate and at the same time reject the standards and practices of historical method and historical thinking. Such a lie undermines Christian practice and spirituality which must have to do with the truth and the real.

I admire Paul VI, and I have been reading the Scriptures with some elements of historical analysis for 40-plus years without ever reaching the absurd conclusion that the synoptic Gospels are a synopsis of Jewish myths rather than a synopsis of the Lord’s life and ministry. Besides, if Vatican II cleared everything up so well why did 2/3 of American nuns, and thousands of priests lose their vocations within a decade?

I’m sure you’ll tell me that this is somehow related to believing the infancy narratives are teaching truth rather than history,

 

[patg]

Again, I say, either the Virgin Birth took place, or it didn’t.

Again I say that this is a meaningless statement in this context since no one can verify whether it happened or not. You believe it as a matter of dogma but this event is unsupportable by historical analysis - there just isn’t any evidence.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Again I say, then apparently you do not accept the gospel of Luke as evidence. I guess the “good news” is nothing other than a ‘good story’?

Do you accept the Resurrection? There was no ‘witness’ to this; there was an empty tomb and there were ‘angel witnesses’ and there were statements from the apostles who saw Jesus afterward. . .but I guess historically speaking you can’t really accept the Resurrection because nobody really saw it actually happen?

You see, these concepts of yours strike me as not just silly but dangerous.

Because once you have accepted that “historical documentation” somehow is ‘above’ belief in that it can be proven but belief is just a ‘choice’. . .

then you have reduced God’s sending of His Son to suffer and die for us as ‘unreal.’

The whole point of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection was that it was a historical event. It happened in time. It deserves the same sort of recognition that it happened like any other event in time. Making it into something “outside of” or transcending time, and making it into something that is not ‘reasonable’ or able to be believed by reason. . . that makes it into some sort of gnostic ‘puzzle’. Since there is no ‘proof’ that Jesus was physical matter (flesh and blood) one falls back onto the ‘conceptual’ Jesus, the mythological Jesus, the ‘pure faith’ Jesus.

Ignoring the man who lived and walked the earth. . . Jesus.

 

[KathleenElsie]

Is it just me or has this thread gone off its original intent?

Maybe the historical ability to prove our faith belongs someplace other then the News. But, again this is just my opinion.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Is it just me or has this thread gone off its original intent?

No, it isn’t you (actually a lot of it was me, mea culpa)

Let’s go back to the news. With a heroic effort (well it is) I will not sidetrack any more on the historic events of the Bible.

(anybody else hear that cheering?)

And yes, I thoroughly agree with the Vatican Secretary of State that we must consider dissident Catholics more worrying than atheists. Atheists can be converted to Christianity. Dissidents think they’re the real Christians and the rest of us are medieval fogies!

 

[fcbv]

But don’t have any doubt about that! The Church is more attacked by those guys who call themselves Catholics but don’t recognize the papal authority than by the atheits!

 

[irenaeus1]

That’s for sure.

“Spoon fed???” Oh please, when I realized the church didn’t require me to believe the literal fundamentalism of my childhood religion classes I gulped down everything I could find by the Church’s masters of biblical scholarship. I would be long gone from the Church if it were not for them.

The Church does not allow you to deny that the virgin birth, or the miracles of Jesus, or the Resurrection of Jesus did not actually take place in time. And I didn’t realize that believing in these things categorizes one as a literal fundamentalist. Being able to believe in the virgin birth while at the same time being ‘allowed’ to deny that the virgin birth actually took place in human history kept you in the Church? Interesting considering that the Church does not even teach this sort of convoluted approach of separating the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith.

Modernists do not believe either in the Virgin Birth, or any other event in the life of Christ, including the Resurrection, as historical events, i.e., that they actually happened. Period.

I’ll speak for myself - your statement is patently false, period. I can’t imagine you can’t see the difference between asserting that these events never happened and asserting that history cannot verify that they happened and thus they are primarily a matter of faith. Lets take the Immaculate Conception, a Dogma of the church. And what is a “dogma”? According the dictionary, it is "a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning* faith*** or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church". Do you see the phrase “verified history” in there? It’s all about FAITH!

How is this patently false. You yourself have said it. You yourself have stated that the Virgin Birth was not an historical event. Historical verification has absolutely nothing to do with it. Remember, originally I had asked you whether you believed that the virgin birth was an historical event, to which you repled, “Absolutely not.” I did NOT ask you whether the virgin birth could be historically verified. Whether a particular event happened in time does not depend on documentary evidence. There are multitudes and multitudes of events that have happened in human history of which nothing is documented; e.g., Johnny crossed Maple St. in a small town in west Texas yesterday afternoon… this is an historical event; that is, it is an event that actually took place in time, regardless of whether a historian could prove that it actually occurred 100 years from now. Jesus’ resurrection is an historical event; that is, the resurrection of Jesus actually took place in time. There are non-believers who of course do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead and have concocted all kinds of alternatives. Some believe that the body of Jesus was stolen, which is for them an historical event… an historical event that cannot be verified either. Others believe in the Swoon theory – that Jesus never really died, but passed out from blood loss and exhaustion and was resuscitated while in the cool, damp tomb and presented himself alive to his followers as risen from the dead. This obviously is believed to actually have happened by those who hold to this alternative to the resurrection as an historical event, although this cannot be verified. The fact that none of these alternatives can be verified to have taken place in time does not mean that none of them happened. Obviously, something happened regardless of whether any of them can be proven. You cannot separate history from faith if the very article of faith being discussed relies on an event that took place in time. That is why it is ludicrous to make such a statement as “I absolutely believe in the virgin birth, but I absolutely do not believe that the virgin birth actually happened in human history.”

Having faith in something means you don’t believe it? That’s a little strange. Having faith is how you believe in those things you can’t prove.

Yes, but that does not preclude faith in an event that took place in history.

In Christ,
Irenaeus

 

[irenaeus1]

Ok, so use the standard tools of scholarly historical analysis and prove that it happened. This is a matter of faith and no matter how strongly and sincerely you believe it to be true, it is clearly outside the realm of human experience, and hence not part of history.

Then why can you not take it on faith that it happened in human history? And what the heck do you mean by ‘outside the realm of human experience’? In the case of the virgin birth, Mary experienced it. Did the leper not really experience healing at the hands of Jesus? What about the blind man or the woman with the issue of blood or the centurion and his servant or Jairus and his daughter, etc. Did Mary Magdalene or the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, or the disciples in the locked room never really experience meeting the risen Jesus walking and talking among them. You mean to tell me that these are not human experiences, and therefore, not a part of history?

 

[irenaeus1]

Originally Posted by estesbob

I agree. The virgin birth was an historical event (based on faith). But this is not what patg stated, and this is what I’m trying to get my hands around.

 

[irenaeus1]

I have no problem with my children being taught that historians can not validate the Virgin Birth. That is not false catechesis, as long as they are taught that we believe it is so. In fact, I think it is important that they are taught this, or else they will falsely believe the Church lied to them when they take a regular history course in a public high school or university.

If they are told that the Virgin Birth absolutely didn’t happen, that would be false catechesis.

Historians cannot verify anything in the absolute sense anyway… only by conjecture, reconstruction, corroborating evidence, eyewitness accounts, etc. At best, they can provide a plausible scenario perhaps beyond a reasonable doubt. Historians cannot even agree whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, just because we do not know the full thruth does not preclude the fact that the truth of what actually happened does not exist. Even with a secular event like this, people choose to *believe *various scenarios and theories, but they cannot all be correct.

 

[irenaeus1]

It is not a matter of fact, but rather a matter of faith. We believe that Jesus is God as a matter of faith. It cannot be verified as a fact. The same with Transubstantiation. We believe it to be true - as a matter of faith. There is no way to prove Transubstantiation except by our assent to Church teaching.

But, if we believe it to be true, then we believe it to be fact.

 

[irenaeus1]

Nor with the opinions of Theologians. Theology and History are two different realms.

Accept when theology teaches that something happened in human history.

 

[flazor1]

You can find it here. papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm

Great post, BTW. One of the big problems in the Church is these people end up teaching RCIA.

Thank you for finidng that link. I think you’re explaining it better than I am.

 

[Richardols]

Accept when theology teaches that something happened in human history.

Accept only in faith. One can’t use theology to prove history any more than one can use history to prove theology.

 

[flazor1]

So you want historians to accept angels as historical witnesses? Great. I hope you and Tantum Ergo don’t get together to put on a history seminar.

Again, the angels were secondary. Mary and Joseph were the primary witnesses. But just as a point of interest, by what historical criteria would an angel’s testimony have to be excluded?

 

[Richardols]

But, if we believe it to be true, then we believe it to be fact.

Believe is the operative word. It may or may not be actual fact. We believe such things to be true or facts as a matter of faith, not necessariy as a matter of empirical reality.

 

[flazor1]

You handle the lecturing, I’ll handle the light show. Our seminar will rock.

 

[flazor1]

Well, as I said, I’m no professor. But since one of my two degrees is a B.A. in History, I hardly think that given the time and opportunity that I would do any worse than the average history teacher in presenting a seminar.

You would do better. You handle the lecture, I’ll handle the light show. Our seminar would rock.

 

[flazor1]

It is not a matter of fact, but rather a matter of faith. We believe that Jesus is God as a matter of faith. It cannot be verified as a fact. The same with Transubstantiation. We believe it to be true - as a matter of faith. There is no way to prove Transubstantiation except by our assent to Church teaching.

For me this is not complicated. Truth is not subjective: that is the error of atheism and protestantism. Truth is truth regardless of whether I believe it or not. If something is not a fact, it is not anything. If it is not a fact that Jesus is God, then the adverse, that Jesus is not God must be true. This is simple logic.

I agree that there are theological facts that cannot be proved empirically, such as Transubstantiation, but that doesn’t mean the Church is asking me to believe something that is not a fact. If Transubstantiation only happenesd in my head, it doesn’t happen. In fact, this subjective view of it was specifically a condemned as a protestant heresy at the Council of Trent.

But I think this is a poor comparison to the historical events of the Lord’s life, which had many, many witnesses and a lot of documentation that meets historical testing. It’s just that one side in this debate has utterly scorned the NT and the testimony of the earliest church fathers as having any historical value, as I conclude from their 100% failure to even once mention these sources in their repeated declarations that certain events have NO historical basis.