What is Tradition and Where Should it Go?
Last night I listened to a discussion/debate between Ross Douthat and Dr. Massimo Faggioli, staged under the auspices of the Canadian Catholic media outlet Salt and Light Media, regarding the first five years of Pope Francis's pontificate (video replay can be found here). Douthat has a book coming out about how Pope Francis is ruining everything (though, his posture at the debate was more like "he might ruin everything"), and Faggioli is and was one of Pope Francis's most articulate defenders. While much of the ground covered was rather predictable, there were a couple things that cropped up that were interesting and clarifying for my own thought.
I found myself listening to the debate while also following it on Twitter, especially following the excellent Twitter account of Dr. Natalia Imperatori. To me, she got to the heart of the matter with this exchange:
If a clear and unambiguous 180 on a central theological doctrine that was basically unchallenged prior to the 20th Century is possible, then almost anything is possible, and certainly things far more ambitious than even the most "radical" interpretation of Amoris Laetitia are very possible. The perception that sexual issues are some sort of third rail in Catholic theology is, as I have argued before, really incoherent and has much more to do with the center-Right "sales pitch" version of Vatican II than any sort of solid theological principle.
Along those lines, I was surprised how far Dr. Faggioli was willing to go in his conception of tradition (or "Tradition") in a Catholic context. At several points he emphasized the idea that the Tradition is always in process with no fixed end points and that very little should be understood to be outside the bounds of possible development. I couldn't help but think as I was listening to his formulation "how different is this view from the Anglican position?" Anglicanism marks out a protected center in the form of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadralateral (the canon of Scripture, the Creeds, the basic sacramental theology, and some notion of Apostolic succession via the episcopacy) and then leaves everything else open in principle. While the center would perhaps not be defined in precisely the same way, it seems like Dr. Faggioli is articulating a similar vision. More specifically, I wonder how much Dr. Faggioli would disagree with the basic approach laid out by Richard Hooker, which Dr. Sarah Coakley provides a concise summary of in one of her lectures:
For Hooker, Scripture has and retains unequivocal and primary authority; yet its unfolding meaning is always creatively negotiated in relation to the views of the “rational saints” of earlier generations (that is what he means by “tradition”), and in conversation too with reason itself and natural law. The novum in Hooker, however, is that reason and natural law—unlike in Thomist scholasticism, which Hooker knew well—are themselves dynamic and developmental. The result for theological criteriology is a rich triadic negotiation that constantly remakes and extends its own “tradition” even as Scripture is ever returned to with the aid of a supple and pliant reason. ("Knowing in the Dark: Sin, Race and the Quest for Salvation Part 1: Transforming Theological Anthropology in a Théologie Totale" (Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Volume 34)).
Not surprisingly, I find this understanding of tradition and the role of tradition to be enormously attractive and coherent. But there are two things that I think flow from this understanding need to be acknowledged. The first was a comment made by Douthat that so-called liberal Catholicism needs to move from using ambiguous footnotes to making definitive statements. If one believes, as Dr. Faggioli apparently does, that everything but the absolute core of the small-c catholic faith is at least in principle open to reconsideration, then there is no reason to hide the ball about what you want and in what direction you think this reconsideration should take place. Perhaps more to the point, the vision of tradition laid out by Dr. Faggioli doesn't allow one to say, as Pope Francis did with regard to women priests, that a particular issue is "closed," as almost nothing can ever be in principle be "closed."
The upshot of this is that folks, especially on what one might call the Catholic center-Left, should start owning their own positions. To take a single example of someone I greatly respect, there is no reason Fr. Jim Martin shouldn't say that the current position of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the inherent immorality of same-sex sexual encounters is incorrect and should be changed. Unless of course he doesn't believe that, in which case he should say that--"I agree with the basic premise that same sex sexual activity can never be morally acceptable." Or, alternatively, he might say something like "while I would go farther, I think focusing on changing the language and protecting LGBT folks from being fired is a position that can achieve broad consensus, and so I am only advocating going this far at this time." Under any of these scenarios, he is putting all of his cards on the table and articulating clearly what his vision of the tradition and where it should go.
The truth of the matter is that Martin is, as his conservative critics contend, dissembling on what his actual, bottom-line position is. Likewise, from this point of view, folks like Pope Francis and Cardinal O'Malley are dissembling about women's priestly ordination. This "oh, gee, I wish it were different, but my hands are tied by the past on this issue" line of argument is nonsense--you don't want to ordain women. No outside oppressive force of history is keeping you from making such a change because there is no such outside force. If the will was there, it could be done, but instead of just admitting that they don't want to do that, they hide behind the fiction of being bound by the past.
Underwriting this problem, in my view, is the basic indeterminacy and opaqueness of the mechanism by which change occurs in the Roman Catholic Church, even on a theoretical level. At one point, Dr. Faggioli said something like "the Pope is a witness to the tradition, not a maker of it." But if the Pope is not a change agent in the Roman Catholic Church, than who or what is? How, in a concrete, operational sense, does the tradition change? I almost get the sense in some of Dr. Faggioli's writing about Vatican II (such as, for example, here) that change is conceptualized as close to a literal divine intervention--some wholly undetermined Event breaks in to the normal course of history, rearranges the deck chairs, and redefines the state of play.
Because there is no defined mechanism by which things change, there is no way that any sort of transparent doctrinal politics (politics in the broadest, Aristotelian sense) can form. A big part of the reason for the dissembling is that none of the positions anyone stakes out have any real relationship to any concrete outcome, so there is no disincentive to taking the most ambiguous stance that will satisfy the broadest possible group of people. I say that Fr. Martin should state clearly his views on the basic moral position of same-sex sexuality, but why? Nothing he says or doesn't say is going to be translated into any outcome except in the most attenuated manner, so why not try to pitch your views in a way that will make the largest number of people happy? Why not preserve maximum freedom of action and wait around to see if the deus ex machina of doctrinal change comes along and gives you what you really want? People can just say anything they want and in any way they want, because nothing that is said really matters.
This Sunday, I will stand as a candidate to be one of my parish's representatives to the diocesan convention in November. This election will be, as far as I know, uncontested, as are most elections that take place in our parish as far as I have seen. But by virtue of standing for such a position, I am participating in a politics. In theory, if our bishop were to step down between now and November, as a delegate of the parish I would have a vote on who the new bishop would be. It would be completely in bounds for folks in the parish to ask me about my views the kind of person I would or would not support as a candidate for bishop, and equally in bounds for them to vote me down if they believed that my views were not in keeping with the vision they have for the parish and the broader church. And I would be accountable for the positions I staked out to the parish--if I said one thing and did another, they would be completely within their rights to, at a minimum, not vote for me in the future. I am obligated to be prepared to articulate what my vision for and understanding of the parish, diocese, and Episcopal Church is, and to be accountable for that vision and understanding. I am obligated to be accountable precisely because there is a direct and visible line between the positions I articulate, the actions I can take in the scope of being a representative, and the concrete state of the church as a result of those actions.
As Churchill tells us "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The kind of doctrinal politics that exists in the Episcopal Church is usually messy and often ugly, but I have found it to be far, far better than the frustrating and impenetrable anti-politics of the Roman Catholic Church. At least in the Episcopal Church, you basically know where everyone stands; in the Roman Catholic Church, there is every incentive for everyone to cloud everything in a thick mist and disclaim responsibility for everything and anything. No one, including the Pope, is really accountable for their positions.
Both Douthat and Dr. Faggioli should be commended for their candor during the course of the conversation--it was one of most open exchanges I have seen. But I think the discussion exposes a more fundamental disconnect, especially for those like Faggioli on the "center Left." If tradition is an evolving river with no fixed end point, then how does the river flow? And how can we change its course so it can flow in a different direction? By articulating a vision of doctrinal change without a concrete mechanism by which such change can and should occur, the more conservative forces are able to build a pretty coherent case that the more progressive elements are engaged in a stealthy subversion of the faith. Or, otherwise, everyone is just waiting around for the river to change course by itself.
I found myself listening to the debate while also following it on Twitter, especially following the excellent Twitter account of Dr. Natalia Imperatori. To me, she got to the heart of the matter with this exchange:
Changes in sexual ethics are a big thing, don't you think? asks Ross. "No" responds Massimo. Excellent. #francisatfive— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) February 1, 2018
Compared to changes on the church's view on Judaism, they aren't bigger.— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) February 1, 2018
Post-Vatican II Catholicism has consistently and systematically undersold the radical theological changes made by Dignitatis Humanae and especially Nostra Aetate. East and West, Protestant and Catholic, Christians were essentially unanimous that with the coming of Jesus the true and singular inheritors of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants were Christians, and that Jews who did not accept Jesus had no particular standing or status with God (and, indeed, were God-forsaken). Moreover, the relationship between Jews and Christians is, while perhaps not on the level of the Creeds or the basic sacramental theology, is no worse than a second-order question--Paul spends a good deal of his epistles dealing with the question, as one marker. And Nostra Aetate takes all of that theology and throws it in the garbage--"Nevertheless, God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues" (Nostra Aetate, paragraph 4).What about reversing "error has no rights?" Or stopping forced/tortured conversion? Or disallowing slavery?— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) February 1, 2018
If a clear and unambiguous 180 on a central theological doctrine that was basically unchallenged prior to the 20th Century is possible, then almost anything is possible, and certainly things far more ambitious than even the most "radical" interpretation of Amoris Laetitia are very possible. The perception that sexual issues are some sort of third rail in Catholic theology is, as I have argued before, really incoherent and has much more to do with the center-Right "sales pitch" version of Vatican II than any sort of solid theological principle.
Along those lines, I was surprised how far Dr. Faggioli was willing to go in his conception of tradition (or "Tradition") in a Catholic context. At several points he emphasized the idea that the Tradition is always in process with no fixed end points and that very little should be understood to be outside the bounds of possible development. I couldn't help but think as I was listening to his formulation "how different is this view from the Anglican position?" Anglicanism marks out a protected center in the form of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadralateral (the canon of Scripture, the Creeds, the basic sacramental theology, and some notion of Apostolic succession via the episcopacy) and then leaves everything else open in principle. While the center would perhaps not be defined in precisely the same way, it seems like Dr. Faggioli is articulating a similar vision. More specifically, I wonder how much Dr. Faggioli would disagree with the basic approach laid out by Richard Hooker, which Dr. Sarah Coakley provides a concise summary of in one of her lectures:
For Hooker, Scripture has and retains unequivocal and primary authority; yet its unfolding meaning is always creatively negotiated in relation to the views of the “rational saints” of earlier generations (that is what he means by “tradition”), and in conversation too with reason itself and natural law. The novum in Hooker, however, is that reason and natural law—unlike in Thomist scholasticism, which Hooker knew well—are themselves dynamic and developmental. The result for theological criteriology is a rich triadic negotiation that constantly remakes and extends its own “tradition” even as Scripture is ever returned to with the aid of a supple and pliant reason. ("Knowing in the Dark: Sin, Race and the Quest for Salvation Part 1: Transforming Theological Anthropology in a Théologie Totale" (Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Volume 34)).
Not surprisingly, I find this understanding of tradition and the role of tradition to be enormously attractive and coherent. But there are two things that I think flow from this understanding need to be acknowledged. The first was a comment made by Douthat that so-called liberal Catholicism needs to move from using ambiguous footnotes to making definitive statements. If one believes, as Dr. Faggioli apparently does, that everything but the absolute core of the small-c catholic faith is at least in principle open to reconsideration, then there is no reason to hide the ball about what you want and in what direction you think this reconsideration should take place. Perhaps more to the point, the vision of tradition laid out by Dr. Faggioli doesn't allow one to say, as Pope Francis did with regard to women priests, that a particular issue is "closed," as almost nothing can ever be in principle be "closed."
The upshot of this is that folks, especially on what one might call the Catholic center-Left, should start owning their own positions. To take a single example of someone I greatly respect, there is no reason Fr. Jim Martin shouldn't say that the current position of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the inherent immorality of same-sex sexual encounters is incorrect and should be changed. Unless of course he doesn't believe that, in which case he should say that--"I agree with the basic premise that same sex sexual activity can never be morally acceptable." Or, alternatively, he might say something like "while I would go farther, I think focusing on changing the language and protecting LGBT folks from being fired is a position that can achieve broad consensus, and so I am only advocating going this far at this time." Under any of these scenarios, he is putting all of his cards on the table and articulating clearly what his vision of the tradition and where it should go.
The truth of the matter is that Martin is, as his conservative critics contend, dissembling on what his actual, bottom-line position is. Likewise, from this point of view, folks like Pope Francis and Cardinal O'Malley are dissembling about women's priestly ordination. This "oh, gee, I wish it were different, but my hands are tied by the past on this issue" line of argument is nonsense--you don't want to ordain women. No outside oppressive force of history is keeping you from making such a change because there is no such outside force. If the will was there, it could be done, but instead of just admitting that they don't want to do that, they hide behind the fiction of being bound by the past.
Underwriting this problem, in my view, is the basic indeterminacy and opaqueness of the mechanism by which change occurs in the Roman Catholic Church, even on a theoretical level. At one point, Dr. Faggioli said something like "the Pope is a witness to the tradition, not a maker of it." But if the Pope is not a change agent in the Roman Catholic Church, than who or what is? How, in a concrete, operational sense, does the tradition change? I almost get the sense in some of Dr. Faggioli's writing about Vatican II (such as, for example, here) that change is conceptualized as close to a literal divine intervention--some wholly undetermined Event breaks in to the normal course of history, rearranges the deck chairs, and redefines the state of play.
Because there is no defined mechanism by which things change, there is no way that any sort of transparent doctrinal politics (politics in the broadest, Aristotelian sense) can form. A big part of the reason for the dissembling is that none of the positions anyone stakes out have any real relationship to any concrete outcome, so there is no disincentive to taking the most ambiguous stance that will satisfy the broadest possible group of people. I say that Fr. Martin should state clearly his views on the basic moral position of same-sex sexuality, but why? Nothing he says or doesn't say is going to be translated into any outcome except in the most attenuated manner, so why not try to pitch your views in a way that will make the largest number of people happy? Why not preserve maximum freedom of action and wait around to see if the deus ex machina of doctrinal change comes along and gives you what you really want? People can just say anything they want and in any way they want, because nothing that is said really matters.
This Sunday, I will stand as a candidate to be one of my parish's representatives to the diocesan convention in November. This election will be, as far as I know, uncontested, as are most elections that take place in our parish as far as I have seen. But by virtue of standing for such a position, I am participating in a politics. In theory, if our bishop were to step down between now and November, as a delegate of the parish I would have a vote on who the new bishop would be. It would be completely in bounds for folks in the parish to ask me about my views the kind of person I would or would not support as a candidate for bishop, and equally in bounds for them to vote me down if they believed that my views were not in keeping with the vision they have for the parish and the broader church. And I would be accountable for the positions I staked out to the parish--if I said one thing and did another, they would be completely within their rights to, at a minimum, not vote for me in the future. I am obligated to be prepared to articulate what my vision for and understanding of the parish, diocese, and Episcopal Church is, and to be accountable for that vision and understanding. I am obligated to be accountable precisely because there is a direct and visible line between the positions I articulate, the actions I can take in the scope of being a representative, and the concrete state of the church as a result of those actions.
As Churchill tells us "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The kind of doctrinal politics that exists in the Episcopal Church is usually messy and often ugly, but I have found it to be far, far better than the frustrating and impenetrable anti-politics of the Roman Catholic Church. At least in the Episcopal Church, you basically know where everyone stands; in the Roman Catholic Church, there is every incentive for everyone to cloud everything in a thick mist and disclaim responsibility for everything and anything. No one, including the Pope, is really accountable for their positions.
Both Douthat and Dr. Faggioli should be commended for their candor during the course of the conversation--it was one of most open exchanges I have seen. But I think the discussion exposes a more fundamental disconnect, especially for those like Faggioli on the "center Left." If tradition is an evolving river with no fixed end point, then how does the river flow? And how can we change its course so it can flow in a different direction? By articulating a vision of doctrinal change without a concrete mechanism by which such change can and should occur, the more conservative forces are able to build a pretty coherent case that the more progressive elements are engaged in a stealthy subversion of the faith. Or, otherwise, everyone is just waiting around for the river to change course by itself.
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