Blind Submission amd Reasonable Deference

In his most recent post, Steve reiterates an earlier posting: “If the person has followed the Magisterium through an exercise of independent judgment accompanied by deference, I do not think such deference is incompatible with good citizenship or American democracy (though many might disagree). I do think it is hard to reconcile absolute submission to the Magisterium with American democracy.” 

I agree, but I want to go deeper and ask whether blind absolute submission to the Magisterium is inconsistent with Catholicism itself.  I would argue yes, that such a submission is inconsistent with Catholicism.  Catholic Christianity is, I would suggest, a reasonable faith – we can articulate reasons why we believe that Catholic Christianity is true.  We should not come to it blindly.  Faith comes in when I conclude that Catholic Christianity is not only reasonable but is true – that I am going to stake my life – form my life – around it.  I have a colleague, for example, who is not a Christian.  He has read C.S. Lewis, Luigi Giussani, and others and has concluded that Christianity is reasonable, but he has not – to date, anyway – made the leap from reasonable hypothesis to truth.

Since I have concluded that the reasonable proposal of Catholic Christianity is true, I defer (reasonably, I think) to the Magisterium’s judgment on faith and morals, knowing that the Magisterium (because of its office) receives certain protective graces from the Holy Spirit that I don’t receive, and that it has had the advantage of a 2000 year history working in multiple cultures with access to some of the finest minds in history helping it form its judgments.  How can my “independent judgment” on particular current moral or theological issues stand against this?  After all, I am a bear of very little brain (as Winnie the Pooh would say), and I have been born into a particular family, culture, and society, possessing their own biases and blind spots.  The reasonable thing for me to do, given my belief that Catholic Christianity is true, is to defer to Church’s judgment on faith and morals. 

As I have said before on MOJ, having accepted as true the basic tenets of Catholicism, where I “disagree” or fail to understand a Catholic teaching on faith or morals, my first assumption is that there must be something wrong with my “independent judgment,” and then I set out on a journey of rigorous study and prayer to see if I can reconcile my “independent judgment” with the Church’s teaching.