Two weekends ago, I spent a lot of time driving. Since I don’t regularly listen to the radio, I decided to tune into Catholic radio stations as much as possible, to get a representative sample of the content. I was very surprised with what I heard: I enjoyed Fr. Benedict Groeschel’s reflections on St. Augustine; I was annoyed by the pious lingo (something like the Catholic “shop talk” I’ve heard on retreat core teams or at Franciscan University of Steubenville and alike) and self-importance of several of the call-in show hosts; I was shocked by the conversation on Women of Grace where the host was discussing demonic “portals” and other related topics in ways that were simplistic and seemed superstitious at best and manipulative at worst.
Two of the terms repeated on these Catholic radio shows are the same ones that Kyle has been discussing in his post, “Am I a Dissenter?”: ‘dissent’ and ‘dissenter.’ Every time these terms were invoked they referred to a class of “fake Catholics” who reject or question the teachings of the Church, scripture, and advocate for things like secularism, moral relativism, feminism, the Democratic party, and more. They also used the term ‘liberal’ as a synonym for the term ‘dissenter.’ (Also interesting is the recent news of Fr. John Corapi’s dissent—especially given his strong stance against dissenters in the past. NOTE: This will not become a thread about Corapi.)
After listening to those radio broadcasts and reading though the comments on Kyle’s post, I think I should fess up: I am a dissenter. What matters now is what I mean by the term ‘dissent.’ When I say “I am a dissenter,” what am I trying to say? What do I mean?
This raises the first issue: there is no facile way to understand this, we must struggle to carefully make sense out of what we are saying and meaning. Also: I may mean more than one thing, or I may use the same term to say one general thing in a few different senses. In many ways, making this first claim is an appeal to take this process seriously, to realize that it has both practical and theoretical limits and potential that will require attention and should confuse the entire self-assured discussion about the terms ‘dissent’ and ‘dissenter.’
In this first sense, I dissent from the way that the Catholic radio show hosts use the term ‘dissent.’ I dissent from the use of the term ‘dissent.’ This is obvious: using any term as a substitute for “people I don’t like” or “people I disagree with” is itself a form of dissent. To call someone a dissenter, as a way to protest their viewpoint, is to express dissent. In this first way, we can see that I am not the only dissenter: you—yes you!—are probably a dissenter too. (If you disagree with me about that, then your dissent proves my point. See?)
The word ‘dissenter’ comes from the Latin root ‘dissentire,’ meaning “to disagree.” While people may use the term to mean very different things, the word lacks specificity because of the reflexive nature of dis/agreement. This is very different than, for instance, when we use the word ‘bat’: we may have some options, depending on whether we are referring to the animal “bat” or the baseball “bat,” but those options are limited within ordinary language. Even as a metaphor, a lot of words are easier to parse than a term like ‘dissent,’ a term that moves around.
When people use the word ‘dissenter,’ they often assume it is a pejorative term. (I would accuse both the Catholic radio show hosts I mentioned and the usage in Kyle’s post of this mistake.) Dissenting supreme court justices, for instance, do not use the term this way. When a supreme court justice writes a dissenting opinion, they hardly see themselves as doing something shameful. In fact, when someone dissents from something they feel is worth dissenting from, they often do so as a form of assent or obedience to a higher truth. When Augustine says, “an unjust law is no law at all,” he is both dissenting unjust laws—indeed, he is denying their very existence as such—and he is also assenting to the law of justice.
This is the reflexivity of dissent: it is never done—or at least not done well—in isolation. Dissent requires an assent of some kind, even if that assent is a mystery or something hidden from sight, like the invisibility of the unseen God.
Again: I am a dissenter. You, most likely, are too. We all are—at least, those of us arguing here and elsewhere.
What this means is that, beyond semantics, when we agree or disagree, there is a dialectical, reflexive thing happening. As I understand philosophy and theology, this reflexive dialectic is unavoidable. Both history and language seem to carry it in their structure and practice.
To be a faithful Catholic does not require dissent or assent. One can be faithful outside the domain of philosophy and theology. To be Catholic is not necessarily an intellectual pursuit. One can have the faith of Monica, without the tormented beauty of Augustine’s restlessness. But if you do enter into the discourse of philosophy and theology, then you must dissent. The question is to what, for what reason, how, when, and beyond.
I suspect that anyone reading here is a dissenter—even if they are dissenting from dissent expressed by dissenters (like me!). What we might consider is the life led by those who are beyond the dialectics of language and history and (ir)rational theory: the faithful. The Church. God.
I suspect the problem is that too many of us think that God is a theorist or a theologian or a philosopher—the perfect thinker of things, the one with the answer key. My intuition, my hope, and my prayer is that God is something more like a surprise.
In the meantime, though, we should be honest with ourselves and admit to being snared in this knot of dissent and assent that can become so tangled-up that the two are hard to distinguish. Where does one end and the other begin? If the blogosphere shows anything it proves this: we—those of us tangled in this Gordian knot—are all dissenters.
We should not aspire to assent. After all, it implies and requires its dissident converse. Instead, we should look beyond and aspire to holiness. To assent is not to be holy. To be holy is to dwell in the divine surprise of love.
I have never been more surprised by anything in my entire life than by love. We are astonished by love. We do not assent or dissent love, we do not agree or disagree with it: we simply return the embrace.
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