This pretty much makes my point for me…

This pretty much makes my point for me… 2014-12-31T14:06:15-07:00

A reader writes:

I really canot see why you are so aggressive against Voris when you have far worse enemies to contend with like those fellows at the non catholic NCR.

I don’t consider Voris or the average writer for the Reporter “enemies”. I consider them members of the Catholic Church, brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I have sundry disagreements. My reader’s choice to label them “enemies” illustrates everything I am trying to point out concerning the fleshly sin of sectarianism Voris (and, frankly, the Reporter) encourages and how poisonous it is.

Apparently, it has gone entirely unnoticed, but when I argue with a fellow Catholic, I am arguing against their ideas and actions. I think it is safe to say (when appropriate) that an idea or action is wrong (or, more typically, not fully right). But I have a decided scruple against saying that a brother or sister Catholic is “not really a Catholic” and talking as though somebody died and made me competent to excommunicate anybody.

That means that everybody I argue with–from torture defenders to pro-choice Catholics–is somebody I regard as a Catholic (assuming, of course, that they claim to be Catholic). They may be, as I think they sometimes are, Catholics in grave error. But they are Catholics nonetheless–sinners who are, like me the chief of sinners, stumbling along and seeking grace in our frequently stygian intellectual, spiritual, and moral darkness. If a bishop excommunicates somebody (that rare event) I will go with the mind of the Church. But I ain’t excommunicating anybody. Still less am I inclined to regard anybody in the Church as my enemy (though I know there are numerous folk who regard me as theirs). I may tell somebody that they are Protestant *in their thinking*. But I will never tell somebody they ought to leave the Church for the same reason I won’t tell a sick person to get out of the hospital. That’s the bishop’s job, not mine.

Bottom line: I draw a sharp distinction between saying an idea is unCatholic and declaring persons to be “not really Catholic”. Why? Uncle Screwtape explains it all for you:

I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do—if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner—then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question “If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?” You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy’s ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these “smug”, commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.

That’s why I regard it as so sinister that Voris sends the message (and his followers in my comboxes receive it loud and clear) that the bulk of their fellow Catholics are, as my reader makes clear above, “enemies”. I don’t think we are called by Christ to regard the members of the Church, including “the bishops” (that indiscriminate faceless mass) as “enemies”. I think we are called to regard our brother and sister Catholics as brother and sister Catholics, even when they read the Reporter and despise us, and even when they hold much of the Church’s teaching in contempt. You pick your friends. You are stuck with your family. Doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. (Indeed, one of the things I love about the freedom of the Catholic intellectual tradition is that you really can disagree strongly with fellow Catholics about all sorts of stuff.) It just means you face the fact that if Christ calls them his brothers and sisters in baptism, then they are your brother and sister too.

So, unless a Catholic is a) excommunicated or b) specifically declares that he no longer wishes to be considered a Catholic, I will assume he is one. He may be a very bad Catholic either morally, intellectually, or spiritually. But then so am I, so it would hardly do for me to show him the door unless I want to show myself the door at the same time, which I don’t since I need Jesus. So I will content me with arguing with ideas and not kicking anybody out (as if I have any power or right to do that).


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