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The Dead See Scrolls

By now it is common knowledge that since the close of the Vatican II there has been an effort underway to erect a parallel magisterium comprised of dissident theologians. The battle cry for this movement has been “The Spirit of Vatican II,” a phrase recognized by orthodox Catholics to mean that a stream of claptrap is about to follow.

It is significant that the cornerstone of dissenting theology has been opposition to Pope Paul VI’s prophetic 1968 encyclical that reaffirmed the ban on contraception, Humanae Vitae–significant because, in contrast to authentic Catholic teaching, dissenting theology is not life giving. In contrast to the Holy See, the parallel magisterium could be called the Dead See and its teachings the Dead See Scrolls.

These flaccid teachings not only emasculate Catholic thought where they influence it, but they also manage to take the fun out of Catholicism. Not only do they fail in spiritual procreativity, they are disunitive as well. They eviscerate the very teachings that strike joy in the Catholic heart. They are denials instead of affirmations.

Commenting on Dead See catechesis for children, Peter Kreeft once cried, “Oh no! Don’t take angels away from children; children love angels!” More importantly, angels love children (a sentiment hardly expressed in the use of artificial birth control). More dangerously, most Dead See mariners deny the reality of demons and the doctrine of a real and personal devil, thus falling for Uncle Screwtape’s oldest trick. Pastorally the effect has been catastrophic, for the Dead See Scrolls not only fail to give life–they deal death.

I was told of an instance of a young man who appeared in the office of his chaplain friend and confessor at the Catholic university from which he graduated. He announced to the priest, “I’m dying of AIDS. I wouldn’t be in this position if you had told me the truth–with firmness.” From that day forward that priest resolved to teach what the Catholic Church teaches.

Dissenting moral theology is as old as mankind, and Adam was its first practitioner. “She made me do it!” was his cry as he stood before God. (It makes one shudder to think how many bishops who have caved in to pagan feminist pressure may one day be in the same position.) Intellectually, dissent, as it has come to be known, is hardly worthy of the name. It has become a form of academic bigotry. Its dogmatism, rigidity, closemindedness, and intolerance (of orthodoxy) would put an inquisitor to shame, abusing power while claiming to be the underdog. If it were only a matter of intellectual discussion, it would be one thing, but people are literally dying physically and spiritually as a result of bad theology. There is no future in dissent from reality, and Catholic teaching is the road map of reality.

A former Protestant minister, who is now a Catholic layman, asked a dissident theologian what the difference was between a dissenter and a Protestant. As the dissenter began to get huffy, the convert gave his opinion: The Protestant has integrity.

To the non-believer the claims of Catholicism are wildly arrogant. It claims to have the full truth about all reality. So how does the believer respond to those charges? To claim to have the fullness of truth is not to say the we understand it all yet, but that we have received it. One may receive love, know it, but not understand it. We will be unpacking it forever.

The truth is a Person–actually three Persons–whom we worship. The truth is not just an idea. To worship anything less than these three Persons in one God is idolatry. The need to worship is built into man; if he does not worship God he will worship something else.

Ultimately we become what we worship. If we worship what will be ashes someday, we too will be ashes. But God is more than man and is perfect, so if we worship God we grow more and more like him and ultimately find the fullness of our destiny through having been made in his image. That which is not God is less than God, so if we worship anything else we become less than what we might be. If we worship man we remain less than perfect, and we ultimately disintegrate.

Ideology is the worship of an idea. The Catholic Church is not an ideology because it mediates the true God. It holds the divinely revealed truths about God and the reality set up by him. A sect is a group that holds less than the fullness of God’s revelation, and a cult is a group that claims more revelation than the public revelation that ended with the death of the last apostle. Subsequent private revelation does not add to public revelation, but develops understanding of it and highlights it.

The magisterium of the Church (the pope and the bishops teaching in union with him) claims authority from God and is able to distinguish what is truly part of God’s revelation and what is not. To some this is an arrogant claim that appears to beg the question. But would God give us truth without also giving us the ability to distinguish it from non-truth? What a mishmash otherwise! A Catholic, by definition, believes the magisterium has this power. Dissent attacks this authority, but being a Catholic believer means acceptance of it. To reject the magisterium, either explicitly or implicitly, is to fall into heresy, idolatry (worship of one’s own ideas by placing them above revelation), a sect (accepting less than is revealed in the Church), or a cult (claiming to know more or to “know better” than the Church).

To claim to be a Catholic and yet reject the magisterium is either to be ignorant or a liar. Is it the Church or the dissenter who is arrogant here? It is not a question of honest disagreement–dissent as we now know it moved beyond that long ago. It is obstinate, ideologically-based disagreement based on Enlightenment thought and a 1960s ethos which enshrined indiscriminate rebellion as a heroic virtue.

The Catholic faith is precisely that–faith–but it is not fideism. It is not blind belief. There are answers to questions. A Catholic may not see the reason for a particular teaching, but, no matter how poorly a particular teacher in the Church may have articulated a particular mystery at a given time, the Catholic knows, or ought to know, the Church zeroes in on the answer. It falls to that Catholic to seek out and reconcile his difficulties with seeming contradictions through prayer and study (in that order). Real understanding requires faith, and faith requires conversion.

A man may be at sea, clinging to the flotsam of his capsized life, praying desperately to find land. By the grace of God he washes up on a desert island. He may not know the lay of the land yet, but he’s happy to be no longer adrift. As he begins to explore he finds this is not just an island, but a continent–and not just any continent, but his homeland. The strange people are not so strange after all, but are his people. This is like Chesterton’s man who comes ashore on Brighton Beach. How did he ever get so far from home? In any case, the land offers infinite opportunities for exploration. He does not understand everything he sees, but he knows he loves it and belongs there. He is the learner, not the teacher. He rests on the land and has no need to make it resemble the flat salt sea on which he was adrift.

Dissenters who want to run the government of the continent have not awakened to the experience of being adrift at sea, in a dead see. They need to come to the Living Water. 

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