In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the boundaries of disagreement with Church teachings. Joe emphasizes the importance of humility and discernment when questioning authority, while clarifying the distinction between infallible and non-infallible teachings.
Transcript:
Caller: As a lifelong Catholic, where are the boundaries with things that I don’t agree with? For instance, like Pope Francis is telling bishops and pastors that they can bless gay couples, which I don’t agree with. And I don’t know if I’m even allowed to question it or argue it or also Pope Leo’s comments about Senator Dick Durbin and his pro abortion stance. So I just don’t know, like, where am I supposed to just accept everything that they say? Or am I allowed to question it?
Joe Heschmeyer: Or you’re allowed to. You’re allowed to question, but I think the approach you should take is one of humility, docility, and very much like the way you would approach a parent or, you know, you like, having an attitude where you’re constantly undermining isn’t healthy. Like, imagine, like institutionally, even here at Catholic Answers, or I don’t know if you work at a company or anything like this. But if you have people constantly acting in kind of an insubordinate way and calling everything into question and second guessing everything, it can do a lot of damage institutionally, just on a natural human level. And this is true as well, at a spiritual level, when we’re talking about the Church. Jesus foresaw Abraham Lincoln and said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
He foresaw Abraham Lincoln.
Is that you’re not telling me he didn’t?
Caller: Okay, well, yeah, he certainly did. Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer: All right. I didn’t technically say he quoted him. I just said he foresaw him. And he also said this. And those two statements, while wildly misleading together, are technically both true.
Caller: That’s what we’re going for, Joe. Technical truths, if you can just technically be true in the things you say.
Joe Heschmeyer: In all seriousness, though, Jesus says that a house divided against itself can’t stand. And so one of the things that I think we see especially online, is that it’s very easy for Catholics to form a kind of circular firing squad and tear one another down. But I don’t think the solution to that is just to blindly say, oh, whatever the Pope says and does is always the right thing, because that obliterates the distinction between infallible and non infallible teaching. So as Catholics, we believe that there are different levels of authority by which the Pope acts in the same way that federal law and the tweets of the President are not the same thing. Like an executive order is an official act in the way a tweet isn’t. So likewise, when somebody is interviewing the Pope off the cuff, that doesn’t have the same kind of authority. So in terms of the comments Pope Leo made about Dick Durbin, I don’t think he was trying to say anything about his pro choice record. I think he actually is trying not to get into it publicly at that juncture because he was very much caught off guard and basically said as much in his comments. And you know, then he talked about the death penalty and things. And I understand that, you know, people read that as a false equation. I don’t think you have to read it that way. So I would say this. Number one, you don’t have to just treat every off the cuff comment as if it’s infallible Church teaching. Number two, you don’t even have to treat fallible Church teachings or decisions or disciplines as if they’re infallible statements of faith and morals. So in the example of fiducia supplicants where the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith permitted spontaneous blessings to be given by same two same sex couples, that you can say that’s wildly imprudent and likely to lead to a lot of confusion about the Church’s sexual teaching and push back against it. And in fact, that is politely what the bishops in Africa did. And the Church was like, yeah, that’s fine, like you can, you can do that. They weren’t, you know, denounced as being insubordinate or anything like this. They said, like, this is, that’s not going to fly. It’s going to be confusing. That’s, that’s not helpful. Because the reality is you can believe both when two people present themselves for a blessing, you can bless them without knowing all of their particulars. That’s true. And people have been doing that with people they didn’t know were involved in immoral sexual relations for time immemorial because you don’t know all the ins and outs of people receiving a blessing. That’s true. But also trying to institutionalize that any kind of official way is potentially scandalous and misleading. So I think you can, well, I know you can judge an action as imprudent. You don’t have to just blindly say whatever the Church or a dicaster within the Church does is automatically the best thing to do. That is not the duty you owe to the Church as a Catholic and the Church does not ask that of you. But you should be ready to submit your intellect and will to the teaching of the Church. And a good word for this is you should be docile to the Church as mother and teacher. And so if you take that approach of Listening, trying to understand. Not starting off from a posture of cynicism, skepticism or rebellion, but rather saying, what can I learn from the Church? And then trying to understand that as best you can, in light of everything else you’ve learned from the Church, that’s the, that’s the path forward.
Caller: What do you think about that, Christa?
Caller: Okay. No, I agree with all that. I just, I just wasn’t sure if I had any right as a Catholic to question anything the Pope says or does. Am I just supposed to accept everything, or am I supposed to use my common sense and my good judgment to say, you know, that doesn’t sound right and like, you know, the blessing of the gay couples. To me, that, that seems like it just causes scandal more than anything else.
Caller: Yeah, I think I had a hard
Caller: time with that one.
Joe Heschmeyer: Perfectly allowed to do again, the fact that there were cardinals and bishops in the Church who pushed back and said, even if this is technically true, it’s very misleading, confusing and scandalous. And that response was treated seemingly pretty favorably. I mean, it didn’t seem like the Pope or the Vatican said, how dare you question that. There was nothing like that. That we, yeah, we don’t want to try to treat everything as if it’s infallible church teaching, because that’s actually confusing and unhelpful.
Cy Kellett: But let me just ask you this, if I may, Krista. I’ll just add this question to yours and you can tell me if it’s dominant, doesn’t fit. But is there, Joe, in all that you’ve said? Is there. Do we have to make a distinction between what we do publicly and what we might do privately?
Joe Heschmeyer: Yes. And this is something the Church talks about. I’m glad you mentioned this. Donum veritatis, I believe, talks about this as well. Okay, actually, here we go. Donum veritatis 27. Even if the doctrine of the faith is not in question, the theologian will not present his own opinions or divergent hypotheses as though they were non arguable conclusions. Respect for the truth as well as for the people of God requires this discretion. For the same reason, the theologian will refrain from giving untimely public expression to them. So even on areas where there’s a legitimate diversity of opinion, we should be very careful about how we speak and act on these questions, because one of the perennial dangers is that we want to present our opinion on a disputed issue as if it’s like the Catholic opinion. And Donum Veritatis 27 is saying, don’t do that. It goes on to talk about cases where an individual disagrees even with the fallible magisterium, and that you should avoid turning to the mass media to try to exert the pressure of public opinion. So you don’t try to do, like, a pressure campaign to be like, can you believe the church did this? And try to organize, you know, a bunch of pushback? Because, again, that undermines people’s trust in their bishops and in their pope. That’s not helpful. Like, even if you win the battle, you lose the war because people just trust the Church less, and. And that causes a lot of damage. So those words are written, you know, particularly for theologians, but I think they’re a good model for all of us.
Caller: All right, Chris, I jumped your question. Was that all right or no?
Caller: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Cy Kellett: Oh, all right, let’s send. If she said no, she was mad at me. I was not going to send her a book. But since she said that was okay, let’s send her Pope Peter, Joe’s book, Pope Peter, about the papacy, one of Joe’s favorite topics. All you have to do.
Hang on, Chris, to give us an address there in New Jersey, and we will.