Sibling Rivalry
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One wonders at the variable and accommodating nature of the infallible pronouncements of infallible general councils and other teaching authorities of the mighty Roman Catholic Church. On one hand, they condemn all who do not cleave strictly to the Catholic line, while on the other; they offer excuses for our failure to hold to Catholic doctrine and dogma and call us separated brethren. If I were an imaginative person, I might imagine such contradictory statements to be a clear indication of a house divided against itself. Actually, I reckon, what these polar shifts really point to is the simple fact that infallible doctrine and dogmas of the “always the same” (Semper Idem) Catholic Church are adaptable to the changing needs of that church. In other words, what was infallibly wrong and punishable by anathema or worse a few centuries ago, while still on the books as unacceptable behavior meriting anathema, no longer is really so bad at all and is excusable because the "separated brother" simply doesn't know any better. Let me point to a couple of instances. The Fourth Session of the Council of Trent declared the Old Latin Vulgate to be the "official" Bible with these words:
That is pretty strong stuff. The Council also decreed the contents and order of the Canonical books that, together, made up the Vulgate Bible. The Old Testament was to include:
The New Testament was to be:
This list does not, of course, coincide with the Canon of Scripture as accepted by so-called Protestants. Is that a problem? Well, according to Trent, those who disagree are in big trouble. As the Council declared:
Is anathema a big deal? The Catholic Encyclopedia offers a quote to help readers understand what being anathema entails:
To be "cut off" in the old days literally meant to be killed. That is powerful stuff. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, being declared anathema in the New Testament no longer meant the death penalty. Rather, the anathematized person lost his goods and/or was ostracized by the faithful. [Gignac, Op. cit.] That is still pretty awful. Suffice it to say that disagreeing with the Romish version of the Canon of Scripture or the Roman choice of Bibles means a person is cut off from the body of the Catholic faithful. Or does the Old Testament penalty of stoning still apply? Hmm. Well, maybe the folks who gathered for the Council of Trent were only kidding. Why not look to the Bible itself to see if we can discover a Scriptural basis for their decrees. After all, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that he should:
Oops! We run into another problem here. That nasty old Council of Trent, in its fourth session again, made it a violation for folks to study Scripture on their own. Seems folks are only permitted, in the Catholic view, to go to Scripture if what they understand Scripture to say coincides precisely with what the Magisterium says it says. In other words, Catholics are not really permitted to study Scripture. What they are permitted to study is the Magisterium's interpretation of Scripture. Is that a big thing? Well, those folks at Trent went on to tell us:
Guess all those pretty words boil down to meaning folks will pay a penalty for studying Scripture if the result of that study differs in any way with the Romish party line. Of course, there are lots and lots of Catholic Canon Laws and lots and lots of anathemas, but these are adequate to make my point. Let me cut this down to size: According to the decrees issued after the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent, folks who do not fully accept and use the Old Latin Vulgate Bible are anathema and those who study Scripture without adhering absolutely to the Magisterium's interpretation are to be punished. If one looks at the list of Canon Laws and Decrees published after the Council of Trent, it should be pretty apparent that Protestants are in big trouble, at least in so far as the Roman Church is concerned. In fact, it would be safe to say that Bible-believing Protestants once stood much farther away from the Catholic hope for eternity than did Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, or animists in the rainforests of the southern continents. After all, Protestants rejected the Romish doctrines of transubstantiation, Purgatory, Penance, Baptism, the Eucharist, Limbo, the Canon of Scripture and on and on and on. Most of the folks in those other religions really could not have cared less about what Rome proclaimed and so did not fall under many of the anathemas. And so it went for a few hundred years. Then, Pope John XXIII convened the general council referred to as Vatican II in 1962. Now, rather than being anathematized and outcast, we Protestants are called separated brethren. We are told that, even though we reject the RCC Canon of Scripture, the RCC list and understanding of Sacraments, the RCC understanding of God's salvific program, the RCC's special relationship to Mary and Rome's penchant for praying to and for the dead, everything is gonna be okay. We simply are ignorant of the truth. In the Vatican II decree called Unitatis Redintegratio, we learn that we separated brethren aren't so bad after all. In fact, we really are pretty decent sorts, although confused in many ways. Pope Paul VI went on to pat Protestants on the head for the love we hold for Scripture. In Chapter III, we read:
In other words, we love the Word of God, but we just don't know how properly to read it. For that we need Rome. However, in the interests of unity, Catholics and Protestants might meet on the common ground of Scripture -- except that we cannot agree on what the Canon of Scripture is and who is able to read it. My point, in case it has gotten lost in all this verbiage, is that Rome considers the revealed Word of God to be its exclusive property -- to be interpreted and doled out to the faithful as Rome considers appropriate. According to one infallible council, all who oppose that view are anathema -- cut off from common commerce with the Catholic faithful. Then, a few centuries later, another infallible council issued a document calling Protestants “separated brethren” and praising our love for and study of Scripture, though it did gently chide our failure to understand that only Rome has authority to interpret Scripture. All this leads to a few questions: If one council declaration was infallibly derived, how can another infallible council publish a statement that what the first council denounced with anathema is not so bad really and the once-anathematized are now separated brethren? Is infallibility a sometime thing? Can any Catholic truly know the infallible position of the church on any issue? Just a closing comment to make my position infallibly clear: Vatican II tells the world that everyone who has been "justified by faith in baptism" is a member of the Body of Christ; they all have the right to be called Christian; the children of the Catholic Church accept them as brothers. I do not believe that anyone is "justified by faith in baptism." I believe we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and that no works of any kind, including sacraments, are involved in the salvific process. Therefore, by this definition offered by Vatican II's Unitatis Redintegratio, I am not a member of the Body of Christ nor do I have the right to be called Christian. I do not possess either the wit or the vocabulary adequately to articulate the depth of my disagreement with Rome's position. In any event, I consider myself brother to all true believers, and utterly reject the suggestion that I be considered a spiritual brother to any heretic hovering under the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church.
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