Roman Catholic Fundamentalism

ROMAN CATHOLIC FUNDAMENTALISM

Fundamentalism is a term that describes a Protestant reaction against the influence of liberalism and secularism in the late nineteenth-century. The term derives from the title of a 12-volume series, The Fundamentals, published in 1909, with 64 contributors, all Protestant theologians. It would be correct to describe fundamentalism as religious reaction.

See: https://www.catholic.com/tract/fundamentalism

—“Fundamentalism,” Roman Catholic Answers

 

Today, the term may be appropriately used to describe a rigid, unyielding adherence to religious doctrines and beliefs, a stance that is anti-liberal, often literal and anti-intellectual as well. It is as a rule associated with attitudes that are, among others, absolutist, unscientific, ahistorical, in some aspects Gnostic or Jansenist, sometimes elitist and always exclusionary, markedly strident, and characteristically closed. It commonly pines for an idyllic, manufactured past, a construction sometimes dating to not so long ago and even accessible to the memory of the living. It is necessarily sectarian.

Father Mark S. Massa, S.J. describes “Catholic fundamentalism” this way:

begin “Catholic fundamentalism always takes a sectarian stance within the larger Catholic tradition, rejecting some aspect of Catholicism’s commitment to rationality, history, the material world, or community.”

The sectarian impulse tends to set its face against any accommodation with the world. Any compromise by way of a group’s effort to situate itself in a messy historical reality has profoundly negative connotations for the group and represents a betrayal of the original revelation, he said.

Catholic fundamentalists tend to believe that the true form of religion can be found at some earlier, primitive “golden moment,” and their duty is to hold on to that perfect embodiment forever. “History, then, far from being the locus where the revelation is explored, elucidated and developed, is rather to be resisted and rejected,” said Massa. end

http://tomryancsp.org/fundamentalism.htm

—Father Thomas Ryan, CSP, “Catholic Fundamentalism” 

 

Papa Francesco condemns “Catholic fundamentalism” using these words:

begin The Vatican leader took aim at fundamentalism within the Church during an in-flight press conference at the conclusion of his three-country tour of Africa, calling it a “sickness that is in all religions.”

“We Catholics have some — and not some, many — who believe they possess the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil. They do evil. I say this because it is my Church,” the pope said, according to Catholic News Service.

He further added that fundamentalism is more idolatry than actual religion, warning that “ideas and false certainties” can take the place of faith, love, and God. end

https://www.catholic.com/tract/fundamentalism

—“Fundamentalism,” op. cit.

 

Resistance to acknowledging important nuances of the Magisterium is a type of Catholic fundamentalism. Because the Magisterium is exercised with varying levels of authority, it correspondingly exacts different degrees of adherence. Not recognizing these subtleties and their implications for Catholic belief and practice is a type of Catholic fundamentalism according to the above description.