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What Do Catholics Have to Believe? (#137) · Considering Catholicism

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If you ache for truth, goodness, and beauty, If you're hungry for a Christianity with substance and strength, if you long for a faith that's big and bold and biblical and all about Jesus Christ, if you're inspired by the idea of one church that has spanned twenty centuries, twenty four time zones, and two hemispheres, enfolding every race, nation, and language, then you're considering Catholicism.
So welcome back to a conversation that Corey and I have been having sitting out here in the piney woods on the shore of a great lake at the secret compound on an evening as the sun sets to the west.
Over the lake and if that gives any of you like a clue now, we have to move you've given away our location That's right.
Like if you want to You want to get on google earth? and do some Figuring out about where we might be.
I was actually pretty easy to figure out where we are the hint is That as the sun sets it's setting over this great lake from our perspective So in any case we've been out here this evening and we just finished an interesting conversation, which was the last episode at least I think it was interesting about knowledge and belief and faith and sort of what faith is.
This is part of sort of a, little bit of a series we've been doing.
Corey and I talked for several episodes about faith and science and the history of Catholicism and scientific.
And then Ed and I did several episodes about the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament and the authority of scripture.
And so we just kind of thought it'd be interesting to kind of keep this going and talk about faith and what we believe and what we're required to believe and what we know and what we know by faith and so forth.
So in the last episode, we were talking about the kind of three things, knowledge.
And belief and faith and what those differences are so you can go back and listen to that episode Yeah, but we're going to keep this going and drill down a little bit on faith and the things that we believe by faith and in a sense the things that we are required to believe by faith and catholicism Is a faith it is the catholic faith.
It has a substance to it Catholicism is not just showing up to mass and it's not just going through the motions.
It is actually believing And having and holding The Catholic faith.
There is intellectual and assent involved.
There's intellectual assent and then as we look in Hebrews 11, right? That intellectual assent, that certainty and assurance translates into action.
And that's the whole point of Hebrews 11 is by faith.
People act and so what we want to talk about here in this conversation is what the Catholic faith asks us to believe because I think there's a lot of people listening who go, All right, I'm sort of attracted to some aspects of Catholicism.
I find some of this super interesting.
I'm considering it.
But I want to know what I have to believe and particularly with Catholicism, like, I'm assuming that most of the people who listen to this, if, if they already are maybe a Christian or Protestant or whatever, you know, they believe in God and they believe in Jesus.
But what are the peculiarities of Catholicism? And they wonder, do I have to believe in every miracle, any, every Marian apparition, every dogma that's, or doctrine that's handed down by a Pope? And I know.
That a lot of my protestant friends, and when I was a protestant, one of my concerns was, if I become catholic, is the pope just gonna make up crazy stuff and I'm required to believe it? Right.
Is it shifting sands under my feet? It might, might change tomorrow.
Well, were that or is it just crazy stuff like that? Can the pope just make stuff up? And so anyway, we want to get into that.
What is the substance of the catholic faith? And what are we? Asked to believe, what are we required to believe, what is doctrine and dogma and how is all that defined, right? Yes.
Now, Corey is going to do some of the heavy lifting here because he's, bright and scholarly and has looked up all this stuff.
because, Catholicism, you know, as Chesterton said, one else has spent 2, 000 years thinking about thinking, and it really has a very well developed system, sort epistemology of knowledge, that there are certain sort of categories of belief.
There are things that you are required to believe, things that you are recommended to believe, things that, right? Yep.
So, Corey is going to break all that down a little bit.
So, Corey? If that's who you really are, as we said in the last episode, for all I know, you could be a, an imposter and witness protection, go back and listen to the last episode and I'll explain that, but Corey, if that's your real name, why don't you go ahead and run with this? Okay, I will.
Um, so, the easiest way to do this, I think, is going to be to...
walk through the different categories first, so that we have language and definitions to use to talk about this, and then we can talk about particulars, because I know any given listener might have a question about a particular type of teaching or document or whatnot, put out by And so the, the way I'm going to approach this is that, if you were going to be invested with the authority to teach the Catholic faith, if you were going to be a bishop or a seminary rector or something like that, you would be required to take an oath.
Profession or an affirmation of faith that you're going to be faithful to the teachings of the church.
And so that oath, an official oath that is given in those circumstances contains the categories of teachings.
That are official and that are the different ways that we understand this and so I'll I'll quote a section And then talk about it a little bit just to elucidate it If you want to chip in Greg you chip in at any time And then once we've been through the categories we can talk about particulars So to begin with that person would would affirm the creed so the the Apostles Creed which walks through the the basics of the faith and then sort of joined to that, um, they would vow with firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the word of God, whether written or handed down in tradition, which the church, either by a solemn judgment or by ordinary and universal magisterium, Sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.
So there's a lot of terms in there.
this is the category of dogma.
And so this is something that the church has recognized to be divinely revealed.
God has said it to be true.
And so that can, come from a variety of sources.
That can be directly from scripture.
That can be something that the Pope has dogmatically defined.
Um, that can be something that an ecumenical council has dogmatically defined or something.
The phrase ordinary and universal magisterium essentially means this is what the church always and everywhere has believed together.
Okay.
Okay.
Just want to.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Point of clarification.
Yep.
Okay.
you explained it well, but you went kind of quick there and I want to just slow down a little bit.
Yep.
For anybody who's listening.
Dogma.
Cause I know you're going to introduce a distinction here between dogma and doctrines, right? Yep.
Yeah.
And so, just to clarify that, dogma is something that we are required to believe.
We're required? You can, you cannot say...
That you hold the Catholic faith, unless you hold this by faith, unless you believe this.
Right.
So this is the category of dogma.
it is part of the definition of being a Catholic to hold this belief because the church has defined it to be divinely revealed, that God has told us that this is true.
And again, just to be clear, I know you're making this clear, but I want to make it uber clear.
Yep.
Clarity is a good thing.
So we're going to get into, as we move down this hierarchy of knowledge, right, things that you're recommended to believe in, you're going to get to that, right? Yep, we'll get there.
Uh, you know, the belief that the Shroud of Turin is real, you can believe it or not believe it, or that, you know, the Virgin Mary appeared at, We'll get there.
Lords, we'll get there.
Yeah.
But, but I just want to say for those who are listening, not everything in the Catholic faith is required, but there are things that you cannot say.
And I say this not only to non Catholics considering Catholicism, but I say to those of you who are Catholics who, you know, you know who you are, who are maybe a little loosey goosey.
And I think one of the things that We struggle with today is a lot of syncretism, in the postmodern church, individualism, individualism, syncretism, where we, we sort of say, Hey, you know, I've got what I really believe is some kind of weirdo combination of Catholicism and Buddhism and UFO ology and, you know, and stuff that I got off Star Trek and, you know, Star Wars or whatever.
And it's all sort of, you know, kind of become this goulash in my mind.
And that's, You can't do that, at least with respect to these things that are dogmatic.
You have to hold these or you are not holding the Catholic faith.
And in some sense, Corey, is your salvation in danger? Well, you're in error.
and that is a problem that can, error in belief can lead to error in action.
and so simply being mistaken about something doesn't necessarily mean that you have lost your salvation, but it is, it is risky business.
And you, if you are corrected and you do not.
Heed the correction.
Then that's the category of heresy that we talked about.
Yeah.
A few episodes we talked about heresy, but, you know, going back to our last episode about knowledge and belief and all these kinds of things.
it's one thing to say, well, I was mistaken.
Like just because maybe my Sunday school teachers didn't make it clear, somebody I, you know, was not paying attention in class, you know, in confirmation class.
And I just, you know, I, I, I can be mistaken, but if you deliberately choose to believe something contrary to dogma, right? Because you don't want to believe it, then you need to go to confession and you need to change.
You need to change, right? But it is a sin.
It's a mortal sin.
You know, okay.
Right.
I mean, in, in, in Catholicism, you go, if I have chosen to deliberately believe something Contrary to the dogma of the church, I am in mortal sin, if that's a deliberate choice, not just an error, you know, I'm mistaken.
That's the vital distinction.
Then I need to go to confession and confess my error, and if you are a Catholic and you're listening and you have chosen to willfully, contradict the dogma of the church or believe something contrary to the dogma.
you are immortal sin and you are an heir and you need to seek confession and, and, and of course that implies that you, amend your ways.
Now I, I say all that because I want to emphasize, as Corey is, the seriousness of these dogmas, these dogmatic teachings.
Right.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay.
so that's sort of at the high end, the very high end.
And then in this oath, we get to the next part, in which you would vow.
I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitely proposed by the church regarding teaching on faith and morals.
And so to, to parse that a little bit, so this is also infallible teaching.
This, this is held by the church to be true, without error, but it's not something that we know that God has directly revealed to us.
This isn't like the level of dogma of, you know, God has revealed that Christ is God, holy God and holy man.
Give us, give us two practical examples.
Give us a practical example of a dogma.
And contrast that with a practical example of, a doctrine that you're talking about.
Okay, so like what I was just saying, it's dogma that Christ is fully God and fully man.
That Jesus died and rose again.
Jesus died on a cross and rose again.
He was bodily resurrected.
That, that God is Trinity, three in one.
Those, those are examples of dogs, basically the Nicene Creed or the Apostle Nicene Creed and, and some other things.
We can talk more about specific examples.
I believe in God, the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and Jesus Christ is only son.
Right.
And there are things that have been defined by councils and popes to be God has revealed this.
Okay.
Um, and then there are things, the canon of scripture.
Dogmatic, that would fit in this category.
So that, that is something that is free to, disbelieve in the canon of scripture.
You are not free to disbelieve in it.
It is infallibly defined, but it's not at the level of dogma.
So it's at this, this second level.
So these are things that are essentially derived or deduced by the church authoritatively from dogma.
So given dogma, then the implications of dogma are doctrine.
And so a lot of moral teaching would fall in this category.
Give us an example.
the, sort of the classic example from the last couple of generations is contraception.
Pope Paul VI, Saint Paul VI, teaching on the immorality of artificial contraception.
It was based on tradition.
It was based on the natural law and the law of the church on scripture.
and so it was in that sense deduced.
It's not as if God directly told us at the level of dogma, contraception is wrong, but the church has defined this in a way that is not disputable for the Catholic.
Okay.
Since we're sitting out here in the forest and the sun is setting and there's nobody, you know, within a long way around us other than Sasquatch.
And I have an adult beverage and an In Vino Veritas, I'm going to say to you, then, is it licit for a Catholic to be pro abortion? No, that would be an example of this category, that it's a, it's an infallible moral teaching of the church based on divine revelation.
So, think divine revelation, thou shalt not kill.
there, there are specific things in the Bible and in apostolic tradition that prohibit, Moral actions, like abortion, and then the church has reasoned from those things to have that progression.
Let's do lightning round here.
Okay? Okay.
So if I, if I say, all right, let's talk about contemporary Catholics, whether they are individuals or people in positions of influence, like politicians.
Uh, someone who says, I'm a faithful Catholic, but I just believe in abortion.
Illicit.
Illicit.
Illicit.
I am a faithful catholic, but I believe in same sex marriage.
Illicit.
I am a Catholic but I don't believe in the real presence in the Eucharist.
I think that it's just a symbol that would be illicit.
Okay, not not valid Yeah, that would violate this category of infallible teaching that one arguably could be called dog mind I'm not 100% sure about that one because it's scriptural but so dogma You're in mortal sin if you deliberately disbelieve in it, and doctrine are those things that dogma, and therefore carry a sort of weight.
So if I, for example, if I believe something willfully against dogma, but I am an error, I'm not, it's not illicit if I act on that, right? So I'm not a confessor, so I'm certainly open to the correction of, priests and moral theologians.
Yeah, I'm curious about that.
Um, but what, what I understand from these categories is that both dogma and doctrine here are infallible teachings.
what I would say to our listener, neither, obviously, Corey, I mean, I've been a, I was a Protestant pastor, but I've obviously never been a Catholic confessor.
But I would just say as a, brotherly suggestion that if I found myself really doubting the doctrines of the church and I found myself tempted or finding myself falling into believing in things that are not licit, I certainly would go to confession.
Well, if I was, if I was tempted to, or I was doubting.
Probably what I would first do is I would talk to my priest or talk to a, a faithful Catholic who I feel could, you know, talk me through this.
Because if you're at the level of doubts and temptations, then you may not have committed the sin.
If you figure out that you have, then I would go to confession.
but if, if you're in the position where you have definitely.
decided that you oppose the teachings of the church and that's not just you've acted on it.
So, in other words, not just you've had an abortion or you've practiced contraception, but that you basically have decided that you disagree with the church.
I would recommend going to confession and hearing what your confessor has to say.
The thing about it, too, is that.
In order for him to validly absolve you, you would have to actually be contrite.
So you would have to be confessing a sin, not going into confession to say, Ha ha, I believe.
But I would be concerned about myself and I would go in there and say, Hey look, I'm really struggling.
So if you're concerned about it, then that means that...
Either you're the Holy Spirit is working in your heart and leading you away from sin, or you're, you're contrite for something, some sin that you have committed.
And so if you're, if you're worried about it and you're feeling bad about it, that's a good sign.
get thee to a confessional and listen to what your confessor says.
Right, exactly.
so to sum up those, those two top tier categories are both infallible.
The church teaches them, as without error.
The first is dogma.
That stuff God has told us, so we know it's true.
The second level, we can use the word doctrine for that.
It's teachings of the church that have been derived from dogma that are still considered infallible.
No, I keep interrupting your narrative here.
No, go ahead.
But, I know there's gonna be people out there who are gonna say, Well, how am I supposed to understand Catholics who are in positions of influence or in positions of ecclesial office? Mm-hmm.
who run around, whether they're a ca, a professor at a Catholic university, or they're a priest, right.
Or even a bishop who makes public statements.
And teaches things that seem contrary to the doctrines of the church.
Aren't they, are they licit or illicit? Because, like, I'm just, let's put our cards on the table.
You can go on the, on Google, and in five seconds, find priests, professors, even some bishops, who say things that sound like they're pro abortion, pro gay marriage, you know, all the things that you mentioned.
And so it is causing a lot of confusion and concern, not only among the faithful, but among.
Those who are considering joining the Catholic Church and going, wait a minute, you guys can't even, your own house isn't even in order.
so what, what's real and what's not real? Let's say you.
Yeah, I mean, you bring up a real problem.
and to one degree or another, it's always been a problem because Human beings are sinful and they, they have errors or they mess up or they do bad things.
And so yes, you're going to find people in positions of authority in the church who are going to be speaking against the truths of the faith, whether they're dogmatic truths or doctrinal truths, infallible truths of the faith.
and that does not change the truth just because someone is speaking in error doesn't mean either that the truth is uncertain or that.
What the church was teaching as true has changed or was false the whole time, and that doesn't change the fact that it's a grave scandal.
Like you say, it, it fills people's minds with doubts.
It, it scares them off of the church.
It, it causes all kinds of problems.
so I'm not excusing it in that sense, but it also doesn't change a person in authority spouting off it.
Against the truths of the faith doesn't change the truths of the faith and I would say to any listener out there who's concerned about that and I'm not going to name names, but you can go on Google and find some prominent Catholic professors, priests and bishops who seem to be saying things that are not licit and like, look, I'm just going to say this.
You don't know how this story ends.
I can go back to scripture and I can see examples not only in the New Testament but the Old Testament of unfaithful priests and that over time God dealt with them.
You know, and I'm not, you know, saying that some, right, it's not, it's not up to me.
I'm not.
Right.
But, you know, you don't know how this is going to turn out.
I think, you know, the one that comes to my mind is the sons of Samuel, right in the old Testament, the priest Samuel, the one who anointed David, Yeah.
Your sons do not follow in your ways.
Yeah.
And his, his sons were corrupt.
And they were taking the tithes and offerings and they were doing all kinds of other sort of corrupt things and, it was a scandal for a long time and in the end it, God dealt with it.
So, you know, for those of you who feel like you turn...
On the internet and you scroll through the news and you go Father so and so or bishop so and so or professor so and so is saying these crazy things and it really distresses me what's happened to the church Aren't we supposed to be faithful to the truth and to the dogmas and the doctrines? Yep Yeah, but and and but be patient because you don't know how this turns out and the wheel of history grinds slowly And I think you bringing up this issue both helps to clarify something about these first two categories and also as a good segue to the next thing we're going to talk about the next set of things we'll talk about in terms of clarifying what we've already talked about.
this speaks to the source of Dogmas or of infallible doctrines, dogmas, as we said, are something that's divinely revealed.
doctrines are derived from those divinely revealed things.
And so the obvious question there is who decided that this was divinely revealed, or that it follows, reasonably from divine revelation and what it says in this oath and what is true is that it's, it's the church.
Big C in the sense of this is something that's been defined, by the universal creeds of the church or by an ecumenical council or by the Pope teaching, with his full authority, not just any old thing he says, which we'll get to, because that gets to our, one of our other categories, but this isn't just Father Father Jim, who said something once, or even Bishop Jim.
Just because Professor Peabody at Georgetown University published a scandalous article, or just because Father Martinez runs around saying things that seem to contradict the doctrines of the church, or just because Bishop Butterpants Published an article.
These names are getting weirder and weirder.
Yeah.
Well as the sun sets and and I enjoy my hot toddy here i'm, i'm getting a little more creative but uh, look But I would introduce another d You talked about doctrine and dogma and doctrine and there's another d that's at play here and that's discipline And the the discipline of god of the discipline of the church sometimes grinds slowly if you look at church history look at the Aryan heresy, of the 4th century.
It took a hundred years, a hundred and fifty years for that to be, work itself out.
History grinds slowly, and the Catholic Church is 2, 000 years old, and things are not always going to be resolved.
In, five years or ten years or a hundred years.
Okay, so I've interrupted you enough.
Dogma, doctrine, go.
Okay, and so the third part of this oath, I'm glad you brought up the word discipline, because I think that's, that's a good, word to have in mind when we get to this third part.
so it says, Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman pontiff, so that's a pope, Or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic magisterium.
So that's them teaching officially, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definite act.
So this is something that a legitimate authority in the church, so the Pope or the College of Bishops, is asserting not definitively.
So this could be a disciplinary measure, or, as, as you mentioned that word.
So this is, we think that this position over here.
Seem shady don't entertain that Or it could be this is a this is a theological idea that is not divine revelation or hasn't been defined by the church But this is my opinion as your bishop or as your Pope and I teach this And it's not contrary to the dogma or doctrine and I'm teaching this And so, the, phrase used here is, religious submission of will and intellect.
So this is, this is a matter of authority.
This is, I'm submitting myself to the authority if they're teaching something that, that's reasonably under the, umbrella of Catholic teaching, but isn't asserted to be definite.
And see, this is where I think the rubber meets the road, and the difference with Protestantism, because in a sort of Protestant, sort of theological worldview, I am the ultimate Arbiter.
Yeah.
I had somebody writing, a couple of people write emails and say that, um, they don't like my pronunciations of words.
And my, what I fall back on is that I grew up in the, uh, surfer beach communities of Southern California.
And so, My Southern California drawl, which has been conditioned by moving and traveling all around the world.
Uh, I don't know, I don't know, whatever.
Arbiter, arbitire, tomato, tomato, whatever.
Right, so, so like, I'm the ultimate judge.
Right, because the notion that I can read scripture.
And decide for myself, right? So so the priesthood of all believers the purpose skewity of scripture all these things that protestantism and calvinism teaches Says I can look at scripture and come to my own decisions And I don't have to submit to authority and you know, you're the chesterton, walking Encyclopedia this quote machine on this but doesn't chesterton have a quote about uh, the the thing about catholicism is acknowledging That there's People who are smarter than you.
Sure.
Sure.
Right? I mean at the end of the day, right? Like I want to believe that I can read my Bible.
I can flip it open.
I can decide what's right and what's wrong Right, but there's no controlling authority in Protestantism I was talking to somebody about that the other day if you look at classical Protestantism you and I were talking about this Yeah, if you look at classical like confessional Protestantism like in the first hundred years after the Reformation you had these synods like Um, the Westminster Confession or the Augsburg Confession or the Heidelberg Confession, but that kind of thing hasn't happened in 500 years.
There is no legitimate confessional authority because any denomination in the United States or Europe right now, and I mean, just go on the news or if you're a part of one, as soon as you come to serious disagreement, the denomination just divides.
Nobody has authority in the, you and I have talked about this a lot, that people will write in and say, What is the Protestant position on X? And you go, there is no such thing as a Protestant position because nobody has authority.
And I think this is really, really super important about if you're considering Catholicism, it is the humility and the willingness to, what's the phrase? Submit religious submission of will and intellect, religious submission of will and intellect.
And, you know, as somebody who spent, you know, my life as an evangelical, Protestant or Calvinist Protestant to say, I am going to acknowledge that there are authorities that I have to religiously submit to, my will and intellect to, even if I don't completely understand or maybe don't even completely agree, I acknowledge that there's legitimate authority.
Right.
And this, and in this category, this isn't something that is being asserted to be definitive or divinely, divinely revealed.
So this will, this category would often, touch on disputed.
Okay, so let me throw, let me throw one out that I think is disputed in the Catholic Church and about which there are disputes and it's something that I had to wrestle with, okay? And that's, um, the Catholic position on the death penalty.
I was gonna bring that one up.
Okay, so here's the deal about the death penalty, right? um, there are still some Catholics who argue because in Catholic tradition there is, or just war theory.
Yeah, which are related.
Which are related.
In which, uh, you can go back to the great Catholic thinkers and doctors of the church, and Thomas Aquinas will defend these things, and then people will say, well, yeah, but the Catholic, and I think one of the things for me about when I entered the Catholic Church, I had several people in my life, right, who said, well, wait a minute, doesn't Catholicism require you to, you know, kind of let go of the death penalty? And I said, well, I don't know for sure if it does, but it seems to, and last few popes have certainly seemed to say that.
And I said, you know, it seems to me part of the religious submission of my will.
an intellect to say, you know, I gotta let this one go.
when I am inclined to say I think maybe the death penalty or just war in certain instances are legitimate I think at a certain point I I had to say, you know What to become catholic is to be humble enough to say I maybe not only do I not have all the answers but sometimes Maybe the answers that I think I have I have to be willing to submit to a higher authority Yeah and that doesn't mean that there can't still be debate and dispute about these kinds of things It does it just means that I'm not allowed to you know Blow up the conversation and leave the table flip the table over there and these issues are not dogma So so I think this is where Protestants get confused.
So the Catholic position on the death penalty or whatever Is not dogmatic.
That's not part of that level of dogma that is required to not asserted it infallibly.
The church is reasoning with scripture and with the deposit of the faith, but it has not made a definition on this.
If you think about this like a series of dominoes or implications, like you can say, okay, here's the first thing that pushes the first domino, right? And that's, those, those are those dogmatic truths, right? Jesus was the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, died on the cross, rose on the third day.
That's the first thing.
Then there is a series of dominoes that if that is true, if then, if then, if then, and when you get to things like the death penalty or whatever you're three or two or three or four or five or however many degrees removed from that.
So in a sense, I'm called to submit maybe to my To my bishop, and not contradict the bishop of the diocese of which I am a member but i'm not required to believe it in the same way That I believe that jesus rose on Easter Sun.
Right.
And the phrase here is adherence with, submission of will.
And so that's not the same as assent.
Right.
Right.
I made, I may humbly disagree, but I also humbly obey.
And you know, I think this is really the hard thing I think for a lot of people about coming into Catholicism and it, frankly, it's hard for a lot of Catholics who are maybe not, maybe living their Catholic faith, who say, I just My positions, and if you look at things like contraception, I saw a statistic today on the internet that 89% of practicing Catholics, in the American church disagree with the church's position on contraception.
I knew it was high.
I didn't realize that high.
you know, and I don't know statistics or stats or stats or stats, right? But it's, it's right.
It's something crazy like that and so again, that's not the same as believing Jesus.
Rose on Easter Sunday morning, but it is a, an act of submission to the authority of the church.
Well, and, and just to be clear, cause we talked about that issue at the level of doctrine.
So that, uh, contraception is not in this third category where there's legitimate dispute, but you should submit.
Correct.
But that's in the previous category.
So going down those domino chain, but there are things where I go, you know, even if I'm struggling with it.
There is a component of Catholicism that is basically understanding that I, there's apostolic authority, the church, and I, and what was the phrase? Religious submission of will and intellect.
Okay, I've interrupted you enough, keep going.
Nope, that's good because we're actually done with the oath.
If you're going to become a bishop or a seminary rector or something like that, your oath is done.
Those are the things that you've promised.
but there's another category of stuff.
People in the church say we'll get to that.
Yeah, but i've interrupted you so many times So why don't you just we want to sum up? I want you to read that oath Okay, just we'll go straight through without me interrupting you.
Okay So from the top with firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the word of god whether written or handed down in tradition Which the church either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal magisterium? sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.
So that's dogma.
It's divinely revealed.
We know that the church has defined that.
I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitely proposed by the church regarding teaching on faith and morals.
So that's infallible doctrine.
It's arrived at by reflection on dogmas and It is asserted to be infallible by the church.
Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definite act.
And so those are teachings sometimes on, issues that are at, are under dispute, but I submit to the competent authority.
Take us into the next, Roman numeral.
Yeah.
So this actually, even though all of those categories are much more important, this is probably where the rubber hits the road for a lot of people, especially in our media saturated world.
this is, stuff my priest said, or stuff that the bishop said, or stuff that the pope said on an airplane, or that article that I read.
this is opinion.
Uh, this is opinion on theology or morals or ethics or prudential judgments on how to live out the teachings of the church.
Before you get there, isn't there something between those? And that is, things that are worthy of belief? Right, so what I'm thinking of is things like, that we get a lot of questions about.
So...
If I become Catholic, do I have to believe that the Virgin of Mary appeared at Fatima? Or, do I have to believe that she appeared to Juan Diego, Right? I mean, those are, there's certain kinds of things That are recommended for belief, but not required, right? Yeah, thank you for introducing that because that is, that does precede what I was going to talk about.
And so, this isn't in the oath either.
This isn't something that anybody would be required by the church to believe.
But this is something that the competent authorities in the church have looked at and have said there's nothing contrary to dogma or doctrine here.
this seems legit.
It seems like there's nothing...
Problematic or dangerous here.
Uh, you're not required to believe it, but we neither do we forbid you from believing it? so that that would be things like apparitions or miracles Or certain pious opinions.
So let's give a couple practical examples saints Okay, so when you like you have a you have a daughter named lucy named after saint lucy Right? Yep.
And so St.
Lucy is a little bit of a, little bit of a mysterious figure in the early church, right? In the sense that, you know, there's, there's attribution to her, but we don't know that much about her from a historical record.
And yet the church says, well, Um, there was St.
Lucie, and, we are recommended to believe in the stories about St.
Lucie.
So there's actually two categories at play here, because a canonization is an infallible declaration.
So if the church tells me that this person is a saint...
That I do need to submit to and believe that I need to believe all the stories but all of the stories not necessarily that That's where we come to the the prudential judgments of the the church authorities or of historians or what have you and so Yeah is st.
Lucia st.
Yes, she is the church.
And that's infallible.
The church asserts that infallibly.
But all of the stories attributed to her.
Are all of the details about her martyrdom or about, there are, there are legends that I love about, uh, apparitions of St.
Lucie.
Oh yeah.
Does the church require me to believe those? No.
Okay.
It doesn't require me to believe those.
Okay, secondly, Marian apparitions because this is a huge deal for for protestants who want to convert to catholicism Do I really need to believe that the virgin mary appeared at such and such a time in such and such a place And I think I thought one time I know I taught a lane class about this, but I don't uh, Lakeshore academy of evangelization That cory and I both work at but uh, I don't I think we did a podcast episode about this way back whenever yeah, we have talked about it before but but there's this whole thing about marian apparitions and that all of them are sort of recommended for belief, but not required belief, right? And this gets into a another way of articulating this that's sort of parallel to the structure we've been talking about.
And that's if something is, part of public revelation or private revelation.
Yes.
And so public revelation would fit into that dogma category.
So this is the, Sacred scriptures and the sacred tradition.
This is something that's dogmatic and required to be believed.
That's public revelation.
That's for everybody private revelation is something that is not required for belief that god may have legitimately revealed it to you like The virgin mary may have appeared to you Um, and there are cases in which the church has ruled that it's very likely that she did Um, there are the famous ones like fatima or lords by the way for those of you who haven't listened to that Previous episode or taking that class.
I think we went through and there's there's only like 11.
There aren't many No, yeah, like people think that the catholic church is full of all these things.
There's only like 10 or 11 marion apparitions in 2000 years that the church says this is worthy or highly recommended and that's because the the church authorities have Investigated they've gone through the evidence.
They've said we think this looks legit You are welcome to believe that this is legit But we cannot and will not require you to assent to this because it's not part of public revelation.
It's not dogmatic.
It's not dogmatic, it's not doctrinal, and it's not required for salvation.
Right.
Okay, keep going.
Yeah, so, so there's that category that would fall under the ones that are officially enunciated.
In that in that oath, and then we get to the one that I was going into about opinion, the thing your priest said, the thing your bishop said, professor Peabody or Father Martinez or Bishop McButterpants, the Pope talking when he's, exhausted after three days in outer Mongolia or whatever.
Pope's on an airplane and he starts going on about plastic.
Okay, I'm gonna put it on the table because there's a lot of people.
I think that most of our listeners, if they are considering Catholicism or not Catholics, we, our audience skews to people who are more theologically conservative.
But not necessarily politically conservative.
Not necessarily, but I'm just saying theologically that's, and I don't think that we necessarily have a lot of people who are like radical progressives who disagree with the teachings of the church that are like, you know, listening to this podcast.
So what I'm going to say is that I think I know from a lot of you.
That you get concerned because you go, I read in a news article that Pope Francis was on an airplane and he was on the way, you know, home from wherever on the airplane.
And he said, X, Y, Z, and, you know, and I know I'm being.
Probably a little bit facetious here, um, but it's like, you know, Pope Francis is against plastic straws because they'll kill the sea turtles.
And if I become Catholic, do I have to believe every time that Pope Francis goes on about the plastic straws, am I sort of required as a Catholic to, to make that an article of faith? What say you Corey? Well, the short and simple answer is no.
Um, you are not required and I know I'm being kind of facetious, but well, well, and the facetiousness I, I, I know is yeah, relevant to the situation, but this, this would be just as relevant if it was however many years ago, 30 years ago, and this was John Paul the second saying something that you didn't agree with.
So if you, for those of you who've ever watched HBO series, the young Pope, if the next Pope is pious the 13th and he's some uber conservative and he starts going on about, I don't know, whatever.
Hmm.
And it's super conservative stuff, right? I mean, I guess it comes down to what are, if the Pope gases on and gives opinions, how, how obligated are we to believe in that? So if this is a matter of prudential judgment, so this is taking the teachings of the church.
So, I mean, let's go with plastic straws because that was the one you brought up.
based on, Dogma and doctrine, we know that God created the universe, God wants us to be good stewards of creation, we ought to, treat creation with respect, and part of that is treating it in a way that doesn't harm our neighbor or harms the environment in a way that isn't helpful.
I'm not articulating it terribly clearly, but like we, we know those things and those, those, those things are, those things have like, like when we go back to the last episode about knowledge, those things are things that we can say.
But then you, then you make an implication from that.
Therefore, I recommend that the government enact.
a policy of having only paper straws.
that is, I know we're being kind of a little bit silly here, but what that is, is now traipsing into prudential judgments.
And so that is making proposals or reasoning to conclusions based on the data in a non authoritative way.
And that doesn't mean it's wrong.
Like maybe the Pope is right.
I don't actually know if the Pope has said plastic straw should be banned.
I know, I'm being, I'm being intentionally facetious.
But if Pope Francis did say that, maybe he's right.
I'm not arguing that he, I'm not arguing that he isn't right.
But I am arguing that you wouldn't be required to believe that.
But as a matter of conscience, I can listen to him.
And I do want to say this, because I told you before we started this recorder, I had seen a quote the other day from Aquinas, but I didn't save it.
But Aquinas was talking about the respect and obedience that we owe the Pope.
And for those of you who say, wow, you know, I don't like Pope Francis, or if the next Pope is super conservative, I don't like, you know, what his opinions mm-hmm.
about, you know, this and that.
You know, Aquinas says, look, basically it makes a distinction that I think a lot of us can understand the distinction between the office and the man.
Mm-hmm.
right.
it's fair to say Thomas Aquinas says the, the man can be flawed.
So we can go back in history and say, Hey, during the Renaissance, the Borgia popes were out of control or whatever.
And you can say that there's a difference between the man and the man may make as a man, he may make.
judgments and have failures and have foibles and frailties and and he comes out of a context, you know, Pope Francis comes from South America and he has a different perspective than A pope from another country or background or whatever, right? That's the man but we owe respect to the office And that's why I will never, have never, will never criticize in any public way on this podcast, on social media, in anything that I do, the Holy Father.
I consider the Holy Father, well, I mean, He is the Holy Father.
So, in the same way that I owe respect to my earthly Father.
so you have the sons of Noah, and after the flood and all that, Noah gets drunk and he's laying, I don't know, naked in a tent, drunk, which is kind of weird.
But anyway, one of his sons kind of laughs at him and goes, look dad, he's drunk and naked, you know.
And then the other sons come in backwards and like lay a, blanket over him or something like that.
Because they show respect of their father even when he...
Yeah, stumbles.
And so again, Thomas Aquinas says we owe respect to the Holy Father and and I should listen, you know, to the pious opinion of the Holy Father, but there's a huge Difference between that and saying the things I am dogmatically required to believe as a Catholic, let me throw out an example for a different Pope earlier in history, just to kind of leave behind some of the baggage of current events that illustrates the fact that there's the Pope isn't always speaking on the same level of authority.
And so, um.
Pius XII, Pope in the middle of the century.
He was Pope during World War II.
He survived into the 50s.
there are a lot of people who have very strenuous disagreements with the prudential judgments that Pius XII made during the Second World War about what he did and didn't do to try and, negotiate or not negotiate with the Nazis or what he did or didn't do, to protect the Jews in Italy.
Like, there's, there's...
Or whether or not he cooperated.
With the von Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler with, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
So there were, like, just to acknowledge...
And if you think just war theory is bunk, then that would be bad.
Right.
But what I'm just saying is, it was a very complicated situation and, you know, there were Nazi panzer tanks in St.
Peter's Square.
And the Pope had to make a lot of prudential judgments and he made a lot of calls.
And some of his calls may have been right and some of his calls may have been wrong.
Right.
And so those are prudential judgments.
That's kind of at the lowest level of the, the Pope speaking with authority in 1950 Pope Pius the 12th defined the dogma of the assumption of our lady into heaven.
That is the absolute highest level of authority that a Pope can speak with.
It's what we call an ex cathedra statement, which simply means he's speaking as the Bishop from his chair, the cathedra, the Bishop of Rome, who has.
The authority to dogmatically define something saying that this is divinely revealed.
So you're saying that the same Pope who may have made prudential, judgments, which calls that may have been right, may have been wrong in a very complex, fluid, hysterical situation.
Right.
Also...
Was able to define dogmatic things and by the way for those who are listening who go man The Pope can just make stuff up ex cathedra How many times in 2, 000 years has the spoke Pope spoken ex cathedra and defined something infallibly twice twice? And that doesn't mean that's the only time that has has exercised infallibility No, but but times in history The Pope has just sat in the chair of st.
Peter and said I just declared this so for those People who are concerned man, you know, if you become catholic, you have to believe the pope is just going to mix stuff up all the time doesn't happen all the time, because Even in that ex cathedra way of speaking, the Pope's role is to defend the dogma that has been given to the church.
I think we're going to have to have another episode where we talk about the role of the papacy in this because, I personally am of the opinion that the Pope's infallible teaching magisterial role is largely defensive.
And I think we have talked about that a bit I want to explore that a little bit.
Because I think it's largely defensive.
In other words, I don't think that the role of the Pope is to make things up.
I think it's to defend the Apostle.
Well, that's not even just what you think.
I'm pretty sure that's...
That's Vatican I.
That's just true.
But I think we should explore that.
Because I think people think, well, the Pope...
Can just make things up.
And I think there are, frankly, I think there are progressive Catholics who hope that Pope Francis will just declare some stuff contrary, like, you know, to the last 2, 000 years.
Can't do it.
It's largely preserving and defending.
Uh, the faith.
Yeah, right.
Absolutely.
Wow.
This well, this was this is super fascinating I'm sure that there are people who are out there that like we've only scratched the surface and maybe only prompted further questions But the episode is getting a little bit long So, um, we're gonna stop here.
Please write us love your emails and we a lot, you know often just choose the topics of episodes based on your emails.
So if there's questions you have, things you want us to talk about, or just feedbacks and comments, please send them to us.
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So thank you very much.
And thank you, Corey.
it is now dark out here.
It's pretty much pitch black.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that, I want to believe.
I want to that Sasquatch is out here, but I just can't quite convince myself.
And the church does not require you to believe that.
That's right.
Okay.
Even if the Pope were to say that he thought Sasquatch was out there.
That's right.
All right.
Thanks a lot Cory.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
My name is Greg Smith, and if you've enjoyed this podcast, would you please hit the like and subscribe buttons wherever you get your podcasts, and please share it with others.
And if you're curious about the Catholic worldview and faith, the church and its saints, or Catholic history, culture, and art, then visit consideringcatholicism.
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Greg at consideringcatholicism.