A followup on Fr. Martin

Which, in your judgment, is the more disastrous trend for the Church:

1. Someone barely out of college who spends his days cherry-picking quotes and thumbing through the Catechism in an endless game of Catholic gotcha.
2. Someone years out of college, well established in academic or religious circles, who spends his days cherry-picking quotes and thumbing through back issues of America in an endless game of rejecting the Church's teaching and authority.

I have always opposed self-licensed heresy-hunting. I've certainly seen a lot of attempts at theological argument by people who were way out of their depth.^* I am often reminded of St. Thomas's statement that it is the height of madness is for a simple man to declare something a philosopher says to be false only because he doesn't understand it.

But, as the Curt Jester points out, "you don't need a degree to say that abortion is intrinsically evil." The Catechism really does suffice to answer the question, "Does the teaching authority of the Church lie with academic theologians?" To deny that entire congregations of women religious have given up any real pretense of obedience to legitimate Church authority is folly. When a priest says, "What the Church teaches is wrong," it's a sign of over-education to argue that he is not rejecting what the Church teaches.

---

* My own blog could be described as "a lot of attempts at theological argument by a person who is way out of his depth." But my conclusions are rarely recommendations of official censure of others.

Link | 0 comments | Tweet

---