ROMA LOCUTA, CAUSA FINITA EST? First, let me be clear on the role of Church authority in this discussion. I understand, and can defend with no reference to Church authority, Catholic teaching on almost everything that divides Sullivan and me. Sexual fidelity, marriage, contraception, the Bible, all good. Ordination of women, never really investigated, basically suspect that if women could be priests several of the score of Marys who populate the Gospels would’ve been ordained already, since they tended to be more faithful witnesses than the men. It’s really only on the issue of homosexual acts that I have to admit that I don’t get it. (Reading some Jewish theology has actually been more helpful than most of the Catholic writing I’ve read on this topic. I’d recommend the essays on incarnation in Christianity in Jewish Terms–none of which explicitly touch on homosexuality–and Rabbi Barry Freundel’s essay in Same-Sex Matters. But this is still something I wrestle with and struggle to understand.)

When I do defer to the Magisterium, here’s why: I acknowledge that God knows more than me, and that He has set up the Church–with the promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her–not only in order to give me the sacraments but also in order to instruct me. The Church’s teaching authority is there to surprise and correct me. (As I said here, some source of surprise and correction is necessary for ethics, although obviously many religions don’t make authority-claims as strong as the Catholic Church’s.) Without it, I’d know only the truths that I managed to reason to on my own. If there is no infallible authority, then OK, it’s not there, and I’m left with my own resources. But since I acknowledge that pretty much nobody is likely to come up with the Whole Truth about God, the universe and everything on his own, I’m grateful that the Church’s authority exists. The Church’s authority means that even popes get corrected.

This is why I mentioned that I had changed my mind about the reasonableness of the Church’s position on contraception: I disagreed, I studied more, I got it. I’m very glad that I accepted the Church’s teaching even before I grasped the reasons behind it. If I had, instead, (gotten married and) used birth control, I would regret it once I figured out why the Church was right.

Finally, I don’t get how someone can rely on the Gospels without relying on the Church. Where’d you get these books about Jesus? They didn’t fall out of the sky stamped, “ATTEND, MORTAL! THIS IS GOD SPEAKING!” They were compiled and vetted by the Church. And other books (the ones that spring to mind are Thomas and Nicodemus, but I know there are others) were left out. If you don’t trust the Church, why would you trust the Gospels?