Robert George On Our Differences

Further to my posts yesterday on dotCommonweal http://commonwealmagazine.org/blog/ and below regarding differences between "left" and "right" Catholics is this interesting response from friend-of-MOJ Robbie George:

Dear Mark:

I just read your most recent posting on the MoJ website, and was a little perplexed by one thing you said.

"Of course, as the recent exchange between Robbie and Mike P and Eduardo suggests, those writers [referring, I believe, to Neuhaus, Weigel and George] regard themselves as speaking for the core of Catholicism, an assumption with which many of us would argue."

I know that you and I disagree about some questions on which the magisterium of the Church has not proposed a teaching as authoritative.  But I was not aware of disagreements between us on teachings that have been so proposed.  Are there such questions?

I try to be careful in my own public advocacy to distinguish between authoritative teachings of the Church (which I am happy to defend where defending them is within my competence) and views I happen to hold that are not authoritative teachings of the Church.  If there is a sense in which I regard myself as "speaking for the core of Catholicism," it is in my willingness to defend teachings that the magisterium itself proposes as binding on the consciences of Catholics---or, to put it another way, teachings that call for assent of intellect and will pursuant to the norms articulated in Lumen Gentium.  I do not purport to speak for "the core of Catholicism" in articulating or defending my views on issues not calling for such assent (everything from affirmative action and agricultural policy to the Patriot Act and welfare reform).  I try to be very careful to avoid even the remote suggestion that my views on such issues represent the Catholic view.  And, as you know, I publicly acknowledge that there are liberal Catholics who are as faithful to the teachings of the magisterium as I hope I am.  Despite my differences with them on a wide variety of political questions, and even some moral ones on which the Church has not (yet) settled the matter, I regard them as speaking for the core of Catholicism every bit as faithfully as I seek to do.

Of course, I recognize that sometimes it is unclear what exactly the magisterium is proposing or whether it is proposing a certain teaching as binding the consciences of the faithful.  The best example, I suppose, is the death penalty.  There are good faith debates among intelligent and well-informed Catholics both about what exactly is being proposed in Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism on the subject, and whether the exclusion of the death penalty, in the circumstances in which the developed teaching does exclude it, is being proposed by the magisterium as something to be held by the faithful as a binding norm.  As I think you know, I believe that the magisterium is proposing that the death penalty cannot legitimately be used for retributive purposes and that this teaching is being proposed as a binding norm.  (I guess I come out on the "liberal" side on this one.)  Avery Dulles disagrees.  But this case is different from the debates over, say, contraception or sodomy.   On those issues, it's perfectly clear what the magisterium is proposing and it is equally clear that the teachings are proposed as binding norms.  The issue in dispute (between, say, Michael Perry and myself) is whether the magisterium is right or wrong and whether Catholics are entitled to dissent from a teaching despite the fact that the magisterium is proposing it as an authoritative.

Anyway, these are my thoughts in reaction to your posting.  I would be curious to know where you and I disagree, if in fact we do disagree. [end quote]

Robbie makes his usual helpful and precise distinctions. And Robbie is indeed always very careful to make clear when he is making arguments in terms of the magisterium and when he is arguing on purely secular terms. His arguments against abortion, for example, are a case in point; he has argued persuasively against it without any reference to Catholic religious principles.  He asks, in essence, whether our differences are over the actual teachings of the magisterium, or over, in effect, those areas, where the magisterium has not spoken, or is not clear enough, to require the assent of the faithful. I would respond with the following distinctions:

1. Some would allow for a right of conscientious dissent from the magisterium -- e.g., Mike Perry on same sex marriage.

2. Some would countenance greater recognition of the evolution of doctrine and the magisterium over time -- e.g., Judge Noonan vs. Cardinal Dulles.

3. Some would have a conception of the Church as a very big tent ("here comes everybody") with a variety of views and practices which deserve at least some degree of toleration, versus a view of the Church as circle that should be drawn tighter, with a deeper commitment to doctrinal purity.

4. Much of the difference between the "sides," however, is over how they extract from Catholic principles an approach to social political and economic questions. Consider, for example, the differences between Michael Novak and the Acton Institute on one side and the US Bishops in "Economic Justice for All" and the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility on the other, over the fundamental conceptions of economic and social justice. Each side claims to derive their guiding principles from Catholic social teaching, and chastizes the other for incorporating secular ideolgies into their arguments. Sometimes this dispute is dismissed as a mere prudential disagreement over means, but I believe it is a fundamental disagreement over what is "Catholic."

5. Finally, there is a disagreement over priorities: the Bernardin seamless garment seems to some to express their deepest sense of being Catholic. For others, it is a gross overvaluation of issues about which Catholics can disagree and gross underevaluation of the grievous wrong of abortion.

This is a quick sketch of the fault lines -- there may be more, and I invite comment from Robbie and

others.

--Mark