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| John Henry Newman in 1873 |
THE DOCTRINE OF RECEPTION
Some Catholics misunderstand the magisterium as a teaching authority placed over the Church and equipped with the special assistance of the Holy Spirit to define faith and doctrine rather than through an office through which the faith entrusted to the entire Church comes to expression. From the former perspective the magisterium was described as ecclesia docens, the “teaching Church,” placed over and separate from the ecclesia discens, the “learning Church.”
Similarly, some Catholics continue to imagine the pope as the source,
after God, from which all power and authority flow and as the chief decision
maker for contemporary questions. Such people still perceive the Church
monarchically. Disputed questions are answered simply by citing what the pope
has said. Thus complicated questions are decided simply on the basis of an
appeal to authority, and the whole complex process of doctrinal development is
ignored. This approach represents the Catholic version of the fundamentalist
attitude, though it is a papal or magisterial fundamentalism rather than a
biblical one.
In the real order, the magisterium functions quite differently. The
Church is not fundamentally an institution, exercising teaching authority from
the top down. The Holy Spirit is active in the whole Church, not just in the
hierarchy. The doctrine of the sensus fidelium (“sense of the faithful”) shows
that the Church’s doctrines and dogmas emerge out of the faith of the entire
Church. The formulation of doctrine is not based on a majority opinion, but
emerges out of a consensus, which under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
embraces both pastors and laity (Lumen Gentium 12).
The ecclesial practice of “reception” of doctrine is further evidence
of a mutuality or interdependence between hierarchical authority and the body
of the faithful in the formulation of doctrine, leading occasionally to the
modification or revision of the teachings of the ordinary papal magisterium.
For example, Pius XII’s exclusive identification of the Catholic Church with
the mystical body of Christ in his encyclical Mystici corporis was changed by
the Second Vatican Council; the council said that the Church of Christ
“subsists in” rather than “is” the Roman Catholic Church, as the original draft
had stated (Lumen Gentium 8). [1] The development and formulation of doctrine
is always a complex process involving the work of theologians, the sense of the
faithful, the process of reception, and the authoritative teaching of the
Church’s bishops. To believe that Christian truth is discerned simply by
magisterial pronouncement without taking this complex process into account is a
variety of the papal fundamentalism mentioned above.
Citations
[1] See Francis A. Sullivan, The Church We Believe In: One Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic (New York: Paulist, 1988), 22-33.
Source: Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., Catholicism in the Third Millennium,
second edition (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2003), pages
52-53.
ON CONSULTING THE FAITHFUL IN MATTERS OF DOCTRINE
Newman described the sense of the faithful in a famous 1859 essay, “On
Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.” He suggested that one could
think about the sense of the faithful in five ways: a testimony to the fact of
apostolic dogma; as a sort of instinct or phronema, a Greek term which we might
best translate as “fundamental intentionality,” deep in the life of the Church;
as an action of the Holy Spirit; as an answer to the Church’s constant prayer;
and as a “jealousy of error,” by which he meant a sensitivity to whether
something fits or clashes with the lived experience of the community. This
latter point is illustrated by the fact that often in the Church we may not
know how to say rightly what we believe, but we certainly recognize when it is
said wrongly. So we may not be able to explain precisely what we mean when we
say there are three persons in God, but if someone were to maintain that it
means that there are three Gods, we would immediately respond that such a
position is false. This jealousy of error—the ability to recognize an inadequate
formulation of the Church’s faith, this phronema—this basic direction of life
and thought in the community, is the sensus fidelium that Newman regarded as
absolutely central to the life of the Church. This continuing infallible
presence of the Spirit guiding the life of the Church is the real gift of
infallibility in the Church. That was why Newman had little difficulty in
accepting the teaching on papal infallibility of Vatican I, although he thought
that it was ill-timed and not especially well stated in the council’s
formulation. Vatican I, in its definition of papal infallibility, defines that,
under certain conditions, the bishop of Rome is endowed with that infallibility
with which Christ willed that his Church be endowed. So infallibility is not a
personal possession of the bishops of Rome. Rather, they possess the charism of
infallibility because they speak in the name of the Church, the whole people of
God, which is the primary recipient of the charism.
Newman’s description may sound unobjectionable to us, but it was a
source of bitter controversy in 1859. Let me quote to you a notorious letter of
Msgr. George Talbot, the highest-ranking English-speaking member of the Roman
curia at the time. Writing of Newman’s preposterous idea that one might consult
the laity on matters of faith, Talbot asked, “What is the province of the
laity?” He answered his own question: “To hunt, to shoot, and to entertain.
These matters they understand, but to meddle with ecclesiastical matters they
have no right at all.” [1]
Citations
[1] Apart from the outrageousness of limiting the laity’s role to
hunting, shooting, and entertaining, do not fail to note that the only lay
people Talbot could even imagine were of a class wealthy enough to own large
country houses where they could host shooting parties. It apparently never
crossed his mind that Newman could possibly mean that the laity who mopped
floors in those country houses or the grooms who tended the horses in their
stables should be consulted about matters of faith.
Source: Rev. Michael J. Himes, “What Can We Learn from the Church in
the Nineteenth Century?” The Catholic Church in the 21st Century: Finding Hope
for Its Future in the Wisdom of Its Past, edited by Rev. Michael J. Himes,
introduction by Richard W. Miller II (Liguori, Missouri: Liguori, 2004), pages
72-73.
The doctrine of reception is illustrated in the case of Pope John
XXII’s teaching on the beatific vision after death.
POPE JOHN XXII AND THE BEATIFIC VISION
In the last years of John's pontificate there arose a dogmatic conflict
about the Beatific Vision…. Before his elevation to the Holy See, he had
written a work on this question, in which he stated that the souls of the
blessed departed do not see God until after the Last Judgment. After becoming
pope, he advanced the same teaching in his sermons. In this he met with strong
opposition, many theologians, who adhered to the usual opinion that the blessed
departed did see God before the Resurrection of the Body and the Last Judgment,
even calling his view heretical. A great commotion was aroused in the
University of Paris when the General of the Minorites and a Dominican tried to
disseminate there the pope's view. [NOTE: Resistance to the propagation of John
XXII's view shows the sensus fidelium at work.] Pope John wrote to King Philip
IV on the matter (November, 1333), and emphasized the fact that, as long as the
Holy See had not given a decision, the theologians enjoyed perfect freedom in
this matter. In December, 1333, the theologians at Paris, after a consultation
on the question, decided in favour of the doctrine that the souls of the
blessed departed saw God immediately after death or after their complete
purification; at the same time they pointed out that the pope had given no
decision on this question but only advanced his personal opinion, and now
petitioned the pope to confirm their decision. John appointed a commission at
Avignon to study the writings of the Fathers, and to discuss further the
disputed question. In a consistory held on 3 January, 1334, the pope explicitly
declared that he had never meant to teach aught contrary to Holy Scripture or
the rule of faith and in fact had not intended to give any decision whatever.
Before his death he withdrew his former opinion, and declared his belief that
souls separated from their bodies enjoyed in heaven the Beatific Vision.
—Johann Peter Kirsch, “Pope John XXII,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910)
Reception is one important means whereby the fallibility of the
ordinary magisterium is exposed and demonstrated.
Public domain image
ReplyDeleteImage link:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Henry_Newman_in_1873.jpg
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7 CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE IN THE CHURCH
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Church does not change Her teachings, it has been recognized since at least the fifth century with Vincent of Lérins’ Commonitorium that doctrine does “develop” over time. The fullest exposition of this idea comes from Blessed John Henry Newman’s (1801-90) An Essay on the Development of Doctrine.
…Newman draws a distinction between “development” and “change,” or what he calls “corruption.” He defines an authentic development as the “germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field” (1.1.5.). For example, the seed form of the doctrine of the Trinity may be seen in Scripture (“the Father and I are one” (John 10:30)), but it isn’t until the fourth century at the Council of Nicea (325) that a nuanced articulation is attempted, such that we now say that the persons of the Trinity are “consubstantial” (homoousios).
A corruption, on the other hand, is “the breaking up of life preparatory to its termination. This resolution of a body into its component parts is the stage before its dissolution; it begins when life has reached its perfection, and it is the sequel, or rather the continuation, of that process towards perfection, being at the same time the reversal and undoing of what went before” (5.3.). For example, Newman saw the fourth century Arians, who did not believe that the persons of the Trinity are consubstantial, as offering a corruption when they introduced the idea that the Logos is part of God’s creation and, as Arius famously said, “there was a time when the Logos was not,” which stands in contrast to John’s claim that “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” (1:1).
How can we know what is a development and what is a corruption? In order to determine the difference between the two, Newman offers seven “Notes,” or litmus tests, that may be applied to any doctrine.
https://dailytheology.org/2016/09/15/theology-101-newmans-concept-of-doctrinal-development/
—Stuart Squires, Ph.D., “Theology 101: Newman’s Concept of Doctrinal Development,” Daily Theology, September 15, 2016
To be continued
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Unity of Type
DeleteThe first note of genuine development Newman calls unity of type. He considered this first criterion the most important of the seven.
What he means by type is the external expression of an idea. The unity or preservation of type refers to the continual presence of a main idea despite its changing external expression. When we see change in the teaching on a subject, can we discern nevertheless that the main idea remains unchanged? If so, we know that the change is a genuine development, not a corruption.
…Continuity of Principles
The second note of genuine development is continuity of principles.
Newman insists that for a development to be faithful, it must preserve the principle with which it started. While doctrine may grow and develop, principles are permanent.
…Power of Assimilation
The third note of genuine development is power of assimilation.
In introducing this criterion, Newman notes that in the physical world living things are characterized by growth, not stagnancy, and that this growth comes about by making use of external things. For example, as human beings we grow by taking into our bodies external realities such as food, water and air.
…For Newman, a true doctrinal development is capable of assimilating external realities (such as non-Christian philosophical concepts, customs or rites) without in any way violating its principles. In fact, in the process of assimilation it’s the external realities themselves that are transformed (once they are assimilated), not the doctrine.
In Newman’s view, the more powerful, independent and vigorous the idea, the greater its power to assimilate external ideas and concepts without losing its identity.
…Logical Sequence
The fourth note of genuine development is logical sequence.
By this Newman means that a doctrine that’s defined and professed by the Church at a point historically distant from its original founding can be considered a development, and not a corruption, if it can be shown to be the logical outcome of the original teaching.
To be continued
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7 CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE IN THE CHURCH
DeleteContinued 2
…Anticipation of Its Future
The fifth note of genuine development, which could be seen as a corollary of the previous one, is anticipation of its future.
Doctrines in some way imply or allude to their later development. So authentic developments will have some logical connection to the original deposit of faith, however vague the “embryonic” form might have been in the earliest days of the Church.
…Conservative Action
The sixth note of genuine development is conservative action upon its past.
In other words, a development is not a corruption if the doctrine proposed builds upon the doctrinal developments that precede it, often clarifying and strengthening them. A corrupt doctrine, on the other hand, is one that contradicts or reverses a preceding doctrinal development.
…Chronic Vigor
The seventh note of genuine development is chronic — that is, abiding — vigor.
As long as a doctrine maintains its life and vigor, its ongoing development is assured. However, once a corruption enters into the process, it leads, by its nature, to death and decay.
…When we talk with our Protestant friends about the development of doctrine, we should point out that nearly every Christian tradition accepts this reality in some form or another. For example, the Nicene Creed’s profession of the Blessed Trinity doesn’t appear explicitly in Scripture; instead, it’s a development of truths found in Scripture. Yet most Protestant denominations affirm this doctrine.
Newman’s seven criteria help us see that some kinds of doctrinal change, resulting in greater complexity, are not only legitimate but also necessary. To borrow Newman’s analogy: An acorn that somehow changed into a walnut would be a mutation. But an acorn that never developed into an oak would be lifeless.
So it is with the “acorn” of the Gospel.
https://www.simplycatholic.com/the-development-of-doctrine/
—Brendan Murphy, “The Development of Doctrine,” Simply Catholic
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WHY IS NEWMAN THE “FATHER” OF VATICAN II?
ReplyDeleteWhen Newman became a Catholic in 1845, he was the most important convert to the Church since the Reformation. His Scriptural and Patristic theology was alien to a Church that was then dominated by a scholastic theology and untouched by the later Scriptural, Patristic, and Thomist revivals. It was the Second Vatican Council, of which he is often called “the Father”, that finally vindicated his theology. The late Cardinal Avery Dulles called him the most seminal Catholic theologian of the 19th century. His classic Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), which fell under the suspicion of the two leading Roman theologians of the day, is the starting-point for modern Catholic theology of development. His On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (1859), which was denounced to Rome by one of the English and Welsh hierarchy, predated by more than a hundred years the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity and the chapter on the laity in the Constitution on the Church. The final chapter of the latter on the Blessed Virgin Mary was the result of the Council’s decision not to have a separate document on Our Lady; its Scriptural and Patristic theology is in accord with Newman’s own Mariology in his A Letter to Pusey (1866). Newman’s interpretation of the First Vatican Council’s definition of papal infallibility in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875) was unwelcome to the extreme Ultramontanes but was vindicated in his own time in True and False Infallibility by Bishop Fessler, who had been Secretary-General of the Council, a book that received the official approval of Pope Pius IX. Newman’s famous “toast” to conscience in the same work referred to the possibility of conscientiously refusing to obey a papal order, not to the possibility of so-called conscientious dissent from papal teachings, as is often falsely alleged.
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/father-of-vatican-ii-5699
—Ian Ker, “The Father of Vatican II,” EWTN.com, taken from L’Osservatore Romano, 22 July 2009, page 7
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WHY ARE NEWMAN’S IDEAS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE IMPORTANT IN VATICAN II?
ReplyDeleteNewman’s considerable influence at Vatican II is also evident in the council’s seminal “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum).” There, the council fathers teach that the great tradition “that comes from the apostles makes progress in the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. … as the centuries go by, the church is always advancing toward the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her.” Thus did Vatican II vindicate Newman’s great work on the development of doctrine, which grew from a theological method that brought history, and indeed life itself, back into play as sources of reflection and growth in our understanding of God’s revelation.
That Newman could make this contribution to the Catholic future was due to the fact that he was neither a traditionalist, who thought the church’s self-understanding frozen in amber, nor a progressive, who believed that nothing is finally settled in the rule of faith. Rather, Newman was a reformer devoted to history who worked for reform in continuity with the great tradition, and who, in his explorations of the development of doctrine, helped the church learn to tell the difference between genuine development and rupture.
…Newman can also help us “read” the post-Vatican II situation in which the church finds itself because he knew, in the late 19th century, that trouble was brewing: “The trials that lie before us,” he preached in 1873, “are such as would appall and make dizzy even such courageous hearts as St. Athanasius, St. Gregory I, or St. Gregory VII.” Why? Because a world tone-deaf to the supernatural – which Newman saw coming – would be a world in which Catholics were seen as “the enemies … of civil liberties and of human progress.”
https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/newman-and-vatican-ii/
—George Weigel, “Newman and Vatican II,” The Arlington Catholic Herald, April 22, 2015
One of the most contentious questions in the reception of the documents of the Second Vatican Council is that of the relationship between unchangeable and absolute truth, on the one hand, and the human expression of that truth in a variety of historically-conditioned forms of thought, on the other. In short: Given that they did not fall from heaven, how do we maintain the enduring validity of the statements of truth asserted in confessions, creeds, and dogmas, and, yes, the documents of Vatican II, while acknowledging their historical conditioning? The answers given to this question of unchanging truth and history reflect conflicting interpretations of Vatican II and its work-product, its sixteen documents.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/10/26/history-unchanging-truth-and-vatican-ii/
—Eduardo Echeverria, “History, unchanging truth, and Vatican II,” The Catholic World Report, October 26, 2018
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WHY ARE NEWMAN’S IDEAS ON SENSUS FIDELIUM IMPORTANT IN VATICAN II?
ReplyDeleteThe canonical doctrine of reception, broadly stated, asserts that for a law or rule to be an effective guide for the believing community it must be accepted by that community.
This doctrine is very ancient. It began with John Gratian in the twelfth century. Gratian based his version of the teaching on the writings of Isidore of Seville (seventh century) and Augustine of Hippo (fifth century). The development, varieties and vicissitudes of reception have been explored in recent years in a series of important studies by Luigi DeLuca, Yves Congar, Hubert Müller, Brian Tierney, Geoffrey King, Richard Potz, Peter Leisching, and Werner Krämer. This present work draws upon those historical studies and attempts to formulate the doctrine itself. This is an effort to articulate the theory of canonical reception.
Reception has been described as a spectrum of opinions about the establishment of canonical rules and their acceptance or rejection by their subjects. It has been characterized as no more than a series of explanations for failed laws. But reception is much more than a way of explaining why laws did not work. It is a sound canonical theory about rule-making which has firm footing and long standing.
The theory of reception has taken a variety of forms. One is the philosophical claim that the acceptance of law by the people is an essential part of the law-making process. Another holds that reception is simply a way of acknowledging that some laws are not very well cast and are, in fact, ineffective. Because of the range of canonical viewpoints on reception the "doctrine" sometimes appears obscure or amorphous. This present study attempts to state a clear and coherent doctrine of canonical reception.
https://arcc-catholic-rights.net/doctrine_of_reception.htm
—James A. Coriden, “The Canonical Doctrine of Reception,” Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, October 26, 2018
Vatican II. The council’s focus on what the Church itself was and how it related to the larger world necessarily involved a deeper appreciation of all believers in the Church. The laity in particular needed to be reminded of their inherent dignity and of their contribution to the building up of God’s kingdom. The council spoke of all the faithful participating in the offices of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Baptism into Christ means that each believer can claim to exercise these offices. The council also spoke of the Holy Spirit imparting the gift of faith and bestowing charisms on each Christian. A positive, active, and dynamic understanding of the believer emerged. The teaching of the sensus fidelium in particular helped clarify the prophetic duty of the believer to proclaim the word of God. The laity were challenged to deepen their understanding of the faith by prayer, study, discussion, and committed action. The ambit of their intellectual penetration is not restricted solely to secular matters, though there obviously the laity have an especial contribution to make and in such matters they speak with particular authority. On matters of faith and morals, too, they are called to fulfil their prophetic task in communion with their leaders.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sensus-fidelium
—J. J. Burkhard, “Sensus Fidelium,” Encyclopedia.com
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[Correction] ...the laity have [a special] contribution to make...
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Lumen Gentium, 12
ReplyDeleteThe holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office; it spreads abroad a living witness to Him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the tribute of lips which give praise to His name. (110) The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, (111) cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when “from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” (8*) they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God. (112) Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints, (113) penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life.
Notes
(110) Cf. Heb. 13:15.
(111) Cf. Jn. 2:20, 27
(112) Cf. 1 Thess. 2:13.
(113) Cf. Jud. 3
Supplementary Notes
(8*) Cfr. Leo XIII, Epist. Encycl Divinum illud, 9 maii 1897: AAS 29 (1896-97) p. 6S0. Pius XII, Litt Encyl. Mystici Corporis, 1. c., pp 219-220; Denz. 2288 (3808).S. Augustinus, Serm. 268, 2: PL 38 232, ct alibi. S. Io. Chrysostomus n Eph. Hom. 9, 3: PG 62, 72. idymus Alex., Trin. 2, 1: PG 39 49 s. S. Thomas, In Col. 1, 18 cet. 5 ed. Marietti, II, n. 46-Sieut constituitur unum eorpus ex nitate animae, ita Ecelesia ex unil atc Spiritus...
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