This question about “what does the Church dogmatically state?” is becoming an almost obsessive preocupation of many Catholics on these forums. While there are many doctrines and dogmas taught by the Church, there are also many things that the Church teaches that are not easily classified as either doctrine or dogma, but they remain Church teachings and must be followed. These come from the Church’s authority to teach.
I understand that there are many people who are afraid of doing the wrong thing or following the wrong road and I can sympathize with that. But I also must express concern for the spiritual health of all Catholics. Spiritual health can be very compromised by anxiety. At some point, good sprituality calls for trust in the Church and trust in her leader’s judgment, above all, trust in God’s mercy.
God is not going to damn someone to hell because they followed a teaching of the Church that may have been wrong, but was followed in good faith. We were invited by Christ to trust the Apostles and their successors. They are human and they make mistakes. They have made many mistakes through the centuries. But despite their errors, the Church has a good record of saints who followed the teaching and leadership of these fallible leaders, even when they were wrong.
Take a simple example. The Church supported slavery as a social good at one time. Saints followed that line of thought. They never veered from it, because this is what the authority of the Church taught. Today, we have a better understanding of Paul’s teaching on slavery as well as the Church’s teachings on human dignity. We understand that slavery as Paul described it and the early Fathers of the Church subscribed to it is not the same as we saw in later centuries. Nonetheless, the saints that followed didn’t know this. They went with trust.
Another good example is has to do with obedience. There was a time when obedience was blind and the more blind the obedience, the more virtuous. Saints taught this to their followers, especially those who founded religious and secular institutes. Many men and women followed this thinking and became saints. Today we realize that many of these leaders commanded and expected obedience in areas that were harsh and unnecessary, sometimes not even virtuous. But the virtue was in the obedience, not in the actual content of the teaching.
You see, God in his mercy, allows us to follow the Church, her leadership and her teachings, doctrinal, dogmatic and prudential and judges us with love and mercy for our humility and our assent to authority. It is only when the content is objectively sinful that we are morally responsible. If there is no objective sin, there is no culpability imputed to the faithful.
Therefore, we can relax in our journey toward holiness, resting in the knowledge that God knows our desire to do what is right and to honor him by honoring those whom he has set above us to govern and sanctify. We can never allow ourselves to forget one of the roles of autority in the Church is to govern, not just sanctify. We tend to look too much toward that “sanctify” part at the risk of losing sight of the governing part.
I always like to explain it in terms of loving parents. Loving parents govern as well as sanctify their families. More often they govern and the sanctifying is more by an act of grace than an act of human will, since we are fallible creatures.
Let’s relax and join with the angels and saints in a life of contemplation and silence. Let us put aside some of our worries abotu getting everything right and get right what is within our reach. God will show the way for the rest. Trust me. I’ve been there.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
