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Posted on 03/13/2012 4:24:23 PM PDT by NYer
A philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame has declared in the New York Times that the bishops no longer decide morality in the Church and that “the immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church.”
Gary Gutting, Endowed Chair in Philosophy, argued that the will of many Catholics who choose to use contraceptives is paramount to the teaching of the bishops.
…haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church? By no means. There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. Most Catholics — meaning, to be more precise, people who were raised Catholic or converted as adults and continue to take church teachings and practices seriously — now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept. This is above all true in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control, where the majority of Catholics have concluded that the teachings of the bishops do not apply to them. Such “reservations” are an essential constraint on the authority of the bishops.
The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine. They speak of “cafeteria Catholics” or merely “cultural Catholics,” and imply that the only “real Catholics” are those who accept their teachings entirely. But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority. Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority. The bishops truly are, as they so often say, “servants of the servants of the Lord.”
It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church. This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority. Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority (“How many divisions does the Pope have?”) expresses more than just cynical realpolitik. The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically. It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it.
The mistake of the Obama administration — and of almost everyone debating its decision — was to accept the bishops’ claim that their position on birth control expresses an authoritative “teaching of the church.” (Of course, the administration may be right in thinking that the bishops need placating because they can cause them considerable political trouble.) The bishops’ claim to authority in this matter has been undermined because Catholics have decisively rejected it. The immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI meant his 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” to settle the issue in the manner of the famous tag, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.” In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.
Gutting’s argument would seem to have Jesus telling Peter, “upon this poll I will build my Church.”
Gutting teaches courses to first year Philosophy students at Notre Dame and includes the writings of radical philosopher Peter Singer.
The point of my post is that when an academic in a non-religious field is asked a question about religion, his opinion has no more weight than that of any person with no expertise.
Thank you for posting a great theological work. Yes I’ve read it.
I’m sorry, my last post was supposed to be to you.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
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-—Gutting teaches courses to first year Philosophy students at Notre Dame and includes the writings of radical philosopher Peter Singer.-—
Parents willingly pay $30k/year for child abuse. Who’s the idiot?
You’ll notice this man doesn’t teach in the THEOLOGY Dept., but the Philosopy Dept., so why would anything he has to say about a crucial part of Catholic Teaching be relevant?
If I was him, I would have pointed them towards someone else for an educated answer then.
Amazing arrogance.
guess he never heard of St Athanasius, who defended Christ’s divinity against the Arians, who were getting control over much of the church.
And actually, if he thinks if the majority think differently, the church should change, he’s lost his argument, because white rich Americans are only a small percentage of the Catholic church.
Of course, Obama is doing his best to spread abortion and homosexuality to Christians in Asia and Africa, but he is opposed by the churches here.
Not really.
And the churches in Africa and Asia are growing.
O ok so we’re safe then.
This is the "Catholic" university which hallucinates that it is the Catholic Yale of the Midwest (in alleged academic quality which says more negative about Yale than positive about Notre Shame). Yale which was founded as a school for Congregationalist teaching and has degenerated into a largely agnostic and atheist institution (see Bill Buckley's 60-year ago book God and Man at Yale and it has gotten far worse since then) is probably marginally more Catholic than Notre Shame. My wife found her Catholic Faith because she attended and graduated Yale and met up with the actually Catholic resistance there.
Harvard and Columbia and Dartmouth (Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza) and probably Princeton and maybe even Brown (Bobby Jindal) have similar Catholic undergrounds. Serious, disciplined Catholicism including many conversions, some priestly vocations, Catholic writers, etc. Even Texas A. and M. (see The Aggie Catholic online newsletter).
Most of Notre Shame's actually Catholic faculty members: Charles Rice, Ralph McInerney, Dean Clarence Mannion, are dead or retired and appear ever more distantly only in the rear view mirror of the university.
For me, the last straw was the despicable hospitality shown Obozo a couple of years ago when he was honored (despite being enemy in chief of the Catholic Church in the US) by an honorary law degree (as if his actual Harvard Law degree were not enough of a farce) and with the opportunity to give a commencement address in the football stadium otherwise dominated by the giant mosaic known as "Touchdown Jesus."
A previous client of mine, good and holy elderly priest from Colorado, afflicted with Parkinson's in his old age made the trip to Notre Shame to protest Obozo's appearance by carrying a cross on the sidewalks on campus. Jenkins, the sorry excuse for a priest who is to Notre Shame (its president) what Robespierre was to the French Revolution, gave orders to Notre Shame security and/or South Bend cops that resulted in the manhandling and arrest of the faithful priest, Fr. Norman Weslin, among many others. Each and every presiding bishop of each and every Illinois diocese (from Francis Cardinal George on down) publicly condemned Notre Shame for inviting and honoring Obozo as did our Illinois State Knights of Columbus convention. My bishop urged parents NOT to send their kids to Notre Shame.
May Notre Shame be consigned to the dustbin of history.
When are you going to publish your memoirs, BlackElk? I’m sure everyone in our homeschool association would buy a copy!
Did I hear something about Black Elk publishing his memoirs? How about self publishing on Amazon, I’ve been told it’s very cheap and easy!!
We can all write really good reviews, too.
:-D
Because their "Catholicism" is at this point no more than a marketing ploy.
I just proposed it, although I’m sure I’m not the first. E-book publishing is low-overhead, too. I’d recommend it to my friends just for the alliteration, compound-complex sentences, quality adjectives, and vociferously vivid invective. If a student wanted to become a great polemicist, there are much worse examples than BlackElk.
yes, and that’s why Obama’s ambassador to Liberia wrote an article a couple days ago bashing “christians” for the homophobia in Africa.
I worked in Africa, and the problem is that gay sex isn’t a big thing, but the gay agenda, that undermines marriage and that encourages gay sex as normal, is an affront to good people, even those who are traditional...
The one thing I am very happy is that my University of Connecticut women Huskies beat the women of ND for the Big East college basketball championship. If they have to meet again, my UConn women beat ND again to get to the NCAA’s championship.
Opps, forgot to say “may” my UConn women beat ND in the March Madness college b-ball round.
You would think that because the Christian churches over there are a LOT more conservative, they have a better opportunity to stand up to that nonsense.
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