More thoughts on bad apologetics

My pet peeve, in case you haven’t figured it out, are those who practice apologetics to the point of being uncharitable.  This lack of charity is based on a faulty logical syllogism, which works like this:

1. The Teachings of the Church are always correct.
2. I am a good catholic and believe the teachings of the Church.
3. There is only one way to correctly understand the teachings of the church
4. My understanding of the teachings of the church is correct

Conclusion:  Those who don’t agree with my understanding of the Church’s teachings are essentially heretics.

What follows is the all too typical historical pattern is an effort to first exclude the heretic as some “cafeteria Catholic,” “CINO,” or the like, then to condemn the heretic through doctrines such as extra ecclesiam nulla salus, next, leading to impatiently killing heretics and witches to demonizing heretics and supporting doctrine such as Catholic anti-Semitism.  (Thanks to Mr. Cork’s scholarly efforts) and ultimately genocide. There is no principled place to stop on this slippery slope. So even if the syllogism is true in a particular instance that another person is in conflict with church teachings, the emphasis has to be on reconciliation not exclusion. Exclusion of others is contrary to Church teachings.

Now, it’s important to observe that syllogisms only need to be internally logical.  If the premises are not accurate, the syllogism retains its internal logic yet leads to an illogical result. Many people construct a syllogistic argument thinking it is logically unassailable because it’s internally consistent. They’re wrong—that’s only half the battle. The syllogism is usually not true at all.

There are subtle errors in the syllogism example above, specifically at numbers 3 and 4. As a matter of fact, there is often room for several equally valid understandings of many Church teachings, and any individual’s understanding is often incorrect or incomplete. Premises 3 and 4, then, are frequently false. Especially on Catholic blogs, I have heard nearly everybody, at least 99% of the bloggers and commenters, at one time or another state a belief that is not in accord with Church teachings. If you are reading this, you’re in that group. (The sole exception to the general rule doesn’t read this blog.) Hell, I’m in that group! First sometimes, I consciously don’t agree with a Church teaching, and other times, I think I know what the teaching is, and I agree with it, but I’m objectively wrong! Note that I will be utterly incapable of knowing I’m in error. I don’t mean to be, but I am. Everybody falls into one of these two situations at one time or another.

Catholic apologetics really screw up badly when they are in error, yet accost another person from a position of righteousness.

Here are some difficulties that often interfere with clearly understanding what a person is saying:  I used the term “Church teachings.” I intentionally did not refer to magisterial teachings. Most people make errors in assuming what teachings are magisterial and what are not.  Furthermore, what is meant by the term “Church?” Is it the pilgrim Church of Vatican II? Or, do we mean the indefectible “Bride of Christ?” If we are speaking of the Church in the sense that the Church is all of us, we can’t be too surprised that the Church is frequently in error and always in need of reform. How you are using the term “church” affects your view of error in church teachings. It’s clear that the term “church” as used by Catholics can mean several equally valid things. At different times a different meaning is meaning assigned to that word. It would always be useful to ask whether another person is using it in the same way I would or is it possible to make the other person’s statement accurate by merely assigning a different meaning to the word “Church” instead of unnecessarily taking umbrage.

Finally, whether you call it “development of doctrine,” or distinguishing between magisterial and non-magisterial teachings, or even determining what is meant by “Church” the position of the church on many issues has changed over the years, and those advocating a specific church position have gone from heretic to hero in relatively short time intervals.

A final observation:  When someone criticizes a church teaching and they are criticizing a teaching that is not magisterial and not the “official teaching of the bride of Christ, it is not good apologetics to claim the teaching was made only by members of the Church and therefore distinguishable as an act of the church as a whole.  That statement is both incorrect and correct and, consequently useless as an apologetic response. Any teaching by a fellow member of the Body of Christ is in some sense a “teaching of the Church.”  That’s why our poor daily witness is so harmful to evangelization. Our daily witness of charity (or lack thereof) is a “teaching of the Church” regarding charity, no less. It always seemed to be better apologetics to simply accept the error, and point out that the Church, composed of humans, does make mistakes and it constantly seeks to bring itself close to the ideal of Jesus Christ