Edward Feser's Blog, page 14

All One in Christ on EWTN Bookmark

Some timeback I was interviewed about my book AllOne in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory for EWTN Bookmark with Doug Keck .  The episode airs on Sunday, August 27 at 10 a.m.ET.  It encores on Monday, August 28 at 5a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, and on Saturday, September 2 at 9:30 a.m. ET.  Here’s the advert forthe episode.

Haugeland on hylomorphism

In his essay“Ontological Supervenience” (in his anthology HavingThought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind ), John Haugeland putsforward an unusual criticism of hylomorphism, essentially accusing it of beingtoo parsimonious.  The standard objectionto hylomorphism is that it posits moredistinctions and entities than are necessary. Haugeland suggests that it posits too few, thereby failing to capture all of reality.

Let’s take alook, starting with the key passage:

The fatal flaw in hylomorphism isthat it leaves too little room for distinctions: being concrete, individual,temporal (contingent), and material are all lumped together.  That is, all and only material entitiesare particular, temporal concreta – everything else is anabstract, eternal kind.  Moreover, thereis only one possible relation between the two sides: inhesion (instantiation…). And, finally, the modes of compositionare asymmetrical: you can go horizontally or up, but notdown.  That is, you can take an arbitrarybunch of material individuals and fuse them into a newone; or, you can abstract away from – rise above – all their materialityto get a pure form...  Whatyou can't do is go the other way, and make matter out of forms – once eternal,always eternal.  The result is a rigidhierarchy, with all temporal individuals exactly on a par at the bottom. (p. 121)

The firstthing to say is that Haugeland appears to have Aristotle’s version ofhylomorphism in mind, rather than the emended versions developed by Aquinas andother Scholastics.  For those laterversions do indeed recognize further possibilities beyond those to whichHaugeland says hylomorphism is limited. 

Consider theaccount Aquinas gives of angelic intellects. Each such intellect is a concrete particular, not an abstract kind.   And since each has a nature, each can besaid to have a form.  But an angel is nota material substance, and thus itsform is not instantiated in matter. Since an angel is immaterial, it is also not in time, though it is alsonot strictly eternal.  It has anintermediate kind of existence which Scholastics called aeviternity.  Moreover,though there is a sense in which it exists in a necessary way, there is also asense in which it is contingent.  It isnecessary in the sense that once it exists, it cannot be made to go out ofexistence by anything in the created order, either in its own nature or inother created things.  But it iscontingent in the sense that, like anything else in creation, it could notexist at all if it were not caused to exist by God, and it could be annihilatedif God ceased conserving it in being.

No doubtHaugeland wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of angelic intellects.  He might also object to the metaphysicalapparatus Aquinas deploys to make sense of immaterial substances, whichincludes notions such as the real distinction between essence andexistence.  But that is not to the point.  What matters is that the key notions ofhylomorphism in fact can be and have been systematically elaborated upon andsupplemented in a way that allows it to accommodate more kinds of reality thanHaugeland thinks it can.

But whywould Haugeland suppose in the first place that there really are any entities thathylomorphism cannot capture?  The answeris that he offers a couple of specific examples that he thinks don’t fitcomfortably into hylomorphism’s ontology. He asks us, first, to consider a storyand its relationship to the particular material entities that convey it (suchas a collection of ink marks on the pages of a book).  Deploying thetype-token distinction, Haugeland says that the story itself is a type andthe different sets of ink marks that convey it (in different copies of the samebook, say) are tokens of this type.  Heclaims that “in some sense, astory-type is composed or ‘made up’ of its tokens: it has its being in andthrough them – without them it wouldn’t exist at all” (p. 121).

But exactlywhat, Haugeland asks, is the relationship between these tokens and thetype?  Should we think of it as apart-whole relationship?  That can’t beright, for that would make copies ofa story parts of it in just the way that chaptersin a story are parts of it, which they obviously are not.  Moreover, if there were only one copy of astory, the distinction between type and toke would collapse.  Should we think instead, asks Haugeland, of astory-type as a timeless kind?  But a story is temporal and contingent,coming into being at some point.  Andtimeless kinds are not like that. Furthermore, any given particular story is not really itself a kind, but rather an instance of a kind – of the mystery story kind, or the romance kind,or whatever.

It’s notclear to me exactly how this is supposed to be a problem for hylomorphism.  For one thing, Haugeland’s suggestion that “astory-type is composed or ‘made up’ of its tokens” seems to me just wrong.  The word-type “cat” is not somehow made up ofall its many tokens (all the particular individual instances of the word writtenin pencil, ink, or chalk, the various verbal utterances of it, etc.) as isevident from the fact that all of those could go out of existence, but the word “cat” would not thereby go out ofexistence.  Word-types are abstractobjects of a sort, and story-types seem to be too.  But abstract objects are not “made up” ofanything.

PerhapsHaugeland merely means to suggest that the hylomorphistmust think of a story-type as made up of its tokens?  The idea here, perhaps, is that sincehylomorphism takes things to be made up of form and matter, it must regard astory-type as a kind of form and its tokens as a kind of matter.  But in that case (Haugeland might then beobjecting) this proposal is open to the difficulties he identifies.

But if thisis what Haugeland means, the problem is that I don’t know of any hylomorphistwho would conceive of story-types in this fashion.  Nor, as far as I know, would any hylomorphistsay that everything, withoutqualification, is made up of form and matter. The immediate application of the form-matter analysis is to physical substances, specifically.  A stone, a tree, or a dog is composed of formand matter – more precisely, of substantial form and prime matter – but thereare lots of other things that are not.  I’vealready given one example, namely angelic intellects, which are immaterialsubstances.  But there are lots of otherthings that are not made up of form and matter. For example, substances have attributesand bear relations to oneanother.  And attributes and relationsare not made up of form and matter (even if the substances that bear the attributes and relations aremade up of form and matter).

And theontology of the typical Scholastic hylomorphist goes well beyond this.  For example, there are what Scholastics call “beingsof reason” – things that exist as objects of thought.  Now, this is how to understand abstractobjects.  They are natures, properties,patterns, and the like considered by the intellect in abstraction from the concrete circumstances in which they might beinstantiated.  And this, I would say, is alsohow what Haugeland calls “story-types” should be understood.  They are “beings of reason,” not physical objectsor even immaterial substances.  Hence itis a mistake to try in the first place to give them a form-matter analysis, sothat the difficulties in doing so identified by Haugeland are moot.  Once again, Haugeland sees a difficulty forhylomorphism only because his conception of hylomorphist ontology is simplisticand neglects what later Aristotelians added to the picture.

The same canbe said of Haugeland’s other example.  Heasks us to consider a club devoted to some hobby, which has twelvemembers.  He says that “in some sense, a club is composed or ‘madeup’ of its members” (p. 122).  But healso takes it to be obvious that “a club is identical neither to the set of itsmembers nor to the fusion of their bodies.” (ibid.).  And we can readily agree, given that, forexample, a club can persist despite a complete change in membership.  But then (Haugeland seems to think) it’s notclear what hylomorphism would say is the relationship between the club and itsmembers.

The problemhere is that, like many critics of hylomorphism, Haugeland neglects thedistinction between a substantialform (which marks a true substance) and an accidentalform (which is what mere aggregates and artifacts have).  The latter have looser identity conditionsthan the former, identity conditions that can depend on human custom orconvention.  One mistake critics ofhylomorphism make is to take an example of some aggregate or artifact, note thatthere is a difficulty with giving its identity conditions (which is notsurprising given that these sorts of entities inherit all the messiness ofhuman purposes), and then fallaciously conclude that the hylomorphist accountof true substances is thereforeproblematic.  That seems to be whatHaugeland is doing here.  A club is akind of artifact, and thus inherits all the messiness that artefactual kindstend to exhibit given the vagueness, contradictions, etc. of human purposes.  But this tells us nothing about theplausibility of the hylomorphist analysis of natural kinds (stone, water, lead, gold, trees, dogs, etc.).

In fairnessto Haugeland, it should be noted that his primary target in the article inquestion is not hylomorphism itself, but a metaphysical position developed byGeoffrey Hellman and Frank Thompson which Haugeland thinks is in certain wayssimilar to hylomorphism.  Hence hecriticizes hylomorphism as a way of indicating what he thinks is wrong withtheir position.  It may be that thedeficiencies in his objections reflect an inadvertent assimilation of the oneto the other – that what may (or may not) be good objections to theHellman/Thompson view are simply non-starters when applied to hylomorphism asthe Scholastic tradition developed it.

For adetailed exposition and defense of hylomorphism (or “hylemorphism,” a spellingwhich is less common but which I prefer), see my book ScholasticMetaphysics, especially chapter 3.

Open-minded open thread

It’s timefor an open thread.  So dust off those otherwiseoff-topic comments you’ve been aching to post. Because from M.C. Escher to MC Hammer, from pick-up sticks to Kubrickflicks, from panpsychism to pan pizza, everything is now on-topic.  Just keep it civil and in good taste, asalways.  Previous open threads archived here.

Stove and Searle on the rhetorical subversion of common sense

One of thestranger aspects of contemporary political and intellectual life is thefrequency with which commentators put forward extremely dubious or evenmanifestly absurd claims as if they were obvious truths that no well-informedor decent person could deny.  Exampleswould be woke assertions to the effect that womenhave penises or that everything from professionalismto exerciseto dislikingbody odor to gettinga good night’s sleep is “racist.” In his book ThePlato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies , David Stovecharacterized a similar rhetorical move sometimes made by philosophers as “reasoningfrom a sudden and violent solecism” (p. 142).

A solecismis an ungrammatical utterance, breach of etiquette, or deviation from someother recognized norm.  For instance, “Icould of cared less” is a common grammatical solecism, and addressing KingCharles as “pal” or “buddy” rather than “Your Majesty” would be a solecismconcerning decorum.  What Stove had inmind are abuses of language that he takes certain philosophical lines ofargument to rest on.  He offers anargument from Berkeley as an example. Berkeley, says Stove, alleges that what it means to say that a certain physical object exists or has someproperty is that the object is or could be perceivedto exist or have that property.  And fromthis Berkeley infers an idealist conclusion. But in fact, complains Stove, this is obviously not what it means to say that a physical object exists or has someproperty.  Berkeley’s argument rests on amanifestly false claim about ordinary usage that he puts forwardmatter-of-factly, and in that way he reasons from a “sudden and violentsolecism.”

For purposesof this article, I put to one side questions about Berkeley’s views and whetherStove is representing him fairly.  WhatI’m interested in here is the general idea of the “sudden and violent solecism”as a rhetorical move.  Stove has more tosay about how it works, in his characteristically bitingly witty style:

The premise entails the conclusionall right, but it is so astoundingly false that it defies criticism, at first,by the simple method of taking the reader’s breath away… Say or imply, forexample, that in English ‘value’ means the same as ‘individuality’.  You can be miles down the track of yourargument before they get their breath back.

This method is not onlyphysiologically but ethologically sound.  Of course it should never be used first.  You need first to earn therespect of your readers, by some good reasoning, penetrating observations, orthe like: then apply the violentsolecism.  Tell them, for example, thatwhen we say of something that it is a prime number, we mean that it was bornout of wedlock.  You cannot go wrong this way.  Decent philosophers will be so disconcerted bythis, that they will never do the one thing they should do: simply say, ‘Thatis NOT what “prime number” means!’  Instead, they will always begin to display feverish ‘displacementactivity’ (in Lorenz’s sense), casting about for an excuse for someone’s saying what you said, or ahalf-excuse, or a one-eighth excuse; nor is there any danger that they willsearch in vain.  And with this, not onlyis your philosophy of arithmetic launched, but you have already got otherpeople working for you, free of charge, at its development. (p. 142)

Note thatStove here identifies three key components to the rhetorical move inquestion.  First, the speaker has to havealready independently established his credibility with the listener.  He doesn’t open with the solecism, but introduces it only after his audiencehas been primed to take seriously whatever he has to say.  This might involve his holding an academicdegree or a prestigious academic position, a show of great learning, theputting forward of arguments of a more obviously sound and uncontroversialnature, the airing of opinions that are generally considered respectable, andso on.

Second, whenthe solecism is introduced, it has the effect of throwing the listeneroff-balance, precisely because it bothsounds counterintuitive but has also beenput forward by someone who seems credible. Rather than immediately objecting, the listener begins to doubt himself. “That sure sounds bizarre,” he thinks, “but the speaker is so smart!  Maybe I’mwrong, or maybe I’m misunderstandingsomething!”

Third, thelarger social context plays a crucial role in sustaining the rhetoricaleffect.  It isn’t just that the speaker,who seems credible, says these weird things. It’s that other people whoalso seem credible take these things seriously even when they acknowledge themto be weird.  They too seem to think that if they object to the odd utterance, they might be the ones who are wrong orfailing to understand.  As a result,rather than criticizing the odd utterance, they look for ways to render itplausible.  Before long, the speaker’sutterance becomes more than just some weird thing he has said.  It becomes a thesis on the menu of possible opinionsthat a group of people discuss,debate, and otherwise regard as worthy of being taken seriously.

John Searleindependently identified a couple of related rhetorical moves, which reinforcethe tactic of “reasoning from a sudden and violent solecism.”  In his book TheRediscovery of the Mind, Searle observes:

Authors who are about to saysomething that sounds silly very seldom come right out and say it.  Usually a set of rhetorical or stylisticdevices is employed to avoid having to say it in words of one syllable.  The most obvious of these devices is to beataround the bush with a lot of evasive prose… Another rhetorical device fordisguising the implausible is to give the commonsense view a name and then denyit by name and not by content… And just to give this maneuver a name, I willcall it the “give-it-a-name” maneuver. Another maneuver, the most favored of all, I will call the“heroic-age-of-science” maneuver.  Whenan author gets in deep trouble, he or she tries to make an analogy with his orher own claim and some great scientific discovery of the past.  Does the view seem silly?  Well, the great scientific geniuses of thepast seemed silly to their ignorant, dogmatic, and prejudiced contemporaries.  Galileo is the favorite historicalanalogy.  Rhetorically speaking, the ideais to make you, the skeptical reader, feel that if you don’t believe the viewbeing advanced, you are playing Cardinal Bellarmine to the author’s Galileo. (pp. 4-5)

Searleoffers the example of philosophers of mind who attack the commonsensesupposition that we have beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, conscious experiences,and so on by giving it the label “folk psychology.”  By discussing it under that label, thesephilosophers can make it seem as if the supposition that beliefs, desires,consciousness, etc. are real is merely one possible theory alongside others, noless open to debate and doubt.  Bycriticizing “folk psychology,” they can avoid coming out and straightforwardlyasserting that the human mind does not exist. By associating their critique with scientific precedent, they can makeit appear as if denying the reality of the mind is no more outrageous thanarguing that the sun is at the center of the solar system. 

Note thatwhat Searle calls the “give-it-a-name” maneuver is essentially a more subtleversion of what Stove calls the appeal to the “sudden and violentsolecism.”  What Searle is describing isalso an appeal to a solecism, but one that is disguised and insinuated ratherthan sudden and violent.  When otherwriters adopt the novel labels and go along with treating them as if they namedcontroversial theories (as talk of “folk psychology” has now become common inthe philosophical literature), we have an instance of what Stove calls“[getting] other people working for you, free of charge, at [the] development”of your idiosyncratic ideas.  And the“heroic-age-of-science” maneuver is a method for what Stove describes as “earn[ing]the respect of [one’s] readers” before introducing the solecism.

A morerecent example of the “give-it-a-name” maneuver is the attaching of labels like“cisnormativity” and “cisgenderism” to the commonsense supposition that humanbeings naturally fall into one of two sexes, male or female.  This serves the rhetorical function ofinsinuating that the commonsense view is at best merely one tendentiouspossibility among others, rather than being obviously correct or even havingany presumption in its favor.  Thepretense that something called “transgender studies” has rendered thecommonsense view problematic, or even established its falsity, is a variationon the “heroic-age-of-science” maneuver. (“You deny that trans women are women? You’re a bigot, like those who refused to look through Galileo’stelescope!”)

Why dopeople fall for rhetorical tricks like the ones identified by Stove andSearle?  There are several factors, oneof them being an overestimation of the argument from authority.  To be sure, not all arguments from authorityare fallacious.  If you believe somethingbecause some expert has said it, you aren’t guilty of a fallacy if you havegood reason to think that the person really does have expertise on the topic inquestion and is objective.  All the same,even non-fallacious arguments from authority are, as Aquinas famouslyacknowledged (despite often citing authorities himself), nevertheless weak.  That an authority says something may give yousome reason to believe it, but not aterribly strong one, especially if what he says is deeply at odds with theevidence of everyday experience and common sense.  A solecism is a solecism, whatever theexpertise of the person uttering it.

A secondfactor is the influence of a vice of excess where open-mindedness isconcerned.  Every philosopher is aware ofthe dangers of unexamined premises and of foreclosing an investigation toohastily.  But it is possible to go to theopposite extreme of attributing intellectual value to what is in reality merepedantry or nitpicking.  This would be aninstance of what Aquinas calls the vice of curiosity.  By “curiosity” Aquinas doesn’t mean thedesire for knowledge as such (which is, of course, of itself good) but rather adesire for knowledge that is disorderedin some way.  For example, it may stemfrom an unhealthy motivation like pride. Quibbling over matters that the average person takes for granted cansometimes reflect, not a genuine desire for deeper understanding, but pleasurein the feeling of superiority over those perceived as less intelligent orlearned.  Or it might reflect an impulseto undermine or “do dirt on” their decent sensibilities.  Or it might stem from a desire to make one’sreputation by contributing to some body of academic literature that is notterribly important in itself but helps pad the resume, or by flattering other,better-known contributors to such a literature who might help one’s career.  These factors, I submit, can all contributeto one’s being taken in by rhetorical moves like the ones identified by Stoveand Searle.

A thirdfactor is the influence of bad theory.  Supposeyou’re already independently convinced that some version of materialism must betrue.  Then you’re more likely to take seriouslya “give-it-a-name” maneuver like treating “folk psychology” as if it were some debatabletheory.  For you might worry that failingto do so would close off a possible avenue of escape from anti-materialistarguments.  Treating “folk psychology” asoptional opens the door to eliminative materialism as a “doomsday weapon” todeploy if all other defenses of materialism fail.

A fourthfactor is the influence of moral vice. For example, if you have some deeply ingrained sexual perversion,especially one that you would like to indulge rather than resist, you’re more likelyto take seriously some academic theory you’d otherwise dismiss as crackpot, ifsaid theory would provide a rationalization for indulging the perversion. 

A fifthfactor is the influence of what, in anearlier post, I labeled the “associationist mindset.”  Ideas that don’t bear any interesting logical relationship to one another cannevertheless come to be closely associated in a person’s mind because of psychological factors such as emotionand past experience.  In someone whosecapacity for logical reasoning is weak, this can entail a tendency to latchonto silly ideas (such as that punctuality, proper speech and etiquette, and otherstandards of professionalism are “racist”).

A comment on the Lofton affair

For anyreaders of myrecent reply to Michael Lofton who have not been following events atTwitter and YouTube, Lofton has, over the course of the last few days, posted aseries of tweets at the former and a series of videos at the latter stronglytaking exception to my article.  I haveto say that I am mystified at the number and vehemence of these responses.  But Lofton seems especially angry about mycharacterization of his initial video as “defamatory” and “libel.”  What follows are some brief remarks that Ihope will put his mind at ease and allow us to move on from this affair.

First, Loftonappears to think that I was accusing him of “libel” in the legal sense.  I would have thought it obvious to theaverage reader that that is not the case. Words like “libel” and “defamation” have narrow and technical legal meanings,but also broader meanings in moral theology and everyday life.  “Libel” and “defamation” in the legal sensehave to do with matters of provable fact.  They do nothave to do with matters of opinion,not even opinions that are reasonable, well-founded, etc.

Hence,suppose someone said “Feser is incompetent as a philosopher.”  Naturally, I think this is not only false,but (I also like to think!) easily shown to be false by (say) perusing some ofmy better academic articles.  Moreover,if someone got lots of people to believe this false proposition, he couldplausibly be said to be “defaming” me. However, it would be ridiculous to suggest that this imaginary critichad committed “libel” or “defamation” against me in the legal sense.  Judgementsabout a person’s competence are too controversial and complicated a matter tofall into the category of provable fact in the legal sense.  By contrast, if someone had claimed that Ihad once been convicted of drunk driving, the falsity of such a defamatoryclaim would be a matter of provablefact.  For it can crisply and clearly beestablished that such an event never happened.

When I saidthat Lofton’s remarks about me were “defamatory” and “libel,” what I(obviously) meant is that in myopinion, his opinions about what Ihad written were defamatory in the broader, moral sense.  I was not claiming that he had committed libelin the legal sense.

Second, Iexplained the reasons for my judgment in my previous article, but let me say alittle more here.  As manuals of moraltheology note, someone can be morallyguilty of defamation or libel (even if not legallyguilty) by damaging someone’s reputation not only directly and explicitly butalso either “implicitly,” or by way of “half-truths that convey the impressionof what is untrue,” or in an otherwise “indirect” way.  (I take these phrases from McHugh andCallan’s Moral Theology, Volume II,pp. 221-22.)  It was in this sort of waythat Lofton’s remarks about me in his original video seemed to me to bedefamatory and libelous.  As I noted inmy article responding to that video, the video gave the impression that I wasdefending the claim that with the appointment of Archbishop Fernandez, theMagisterium of the Church would be entirely suspended.  He describes the things I say in my articleas “weird,” “odd,” and “serv[ing] an agenda” in such a way that he is “leftscratching [his] head” about what I might be up to.  But he also suggests that some people advancesuch views in order “to prepare people to reject papal teaching authority… touse it as an excuse to ignore the papal magisterium.”  All of this makes it seem as if this islikely my intention but that I’m notbeing up front about it.

I explicitlyacknowledged that Lofton goes on to state that he “[doesn’t] know what[Feser’s] intentions are, specifically.” But the innuendo and insinuation seemed, in my view, so obvious from theoverall video that I judged this remark to be nothing more than a way to avoidbeing accused of stating directlywhat I took him to be obviously implying.  Viewers of the original British version ofthe series House of Cards will befamiliar with the lead character’s signature line “You might very well thinkthat; I couldn't possibly comment,” uttered when scandalous suggestions aboutanother party were put to him.  It wasfamously a way for him to spread defamatory claims in a manner that on the surface pretended to be doingotherwise.  It seemed to me that that isthe sort of thing Lofton was doing in his original video.

Lofton hassince explained that I have misunderstood him. I’ll come back to that in a moment. But it is important to note that many of Lofton’s own viewers seemed toderive from his video exactly the message that I claimed it was sending.  For example, in the chat and comments sectionsof the video, one reader judged my view to be “sedevacantism with extra steps”;another took it to be “an essentially Protestant view of teaching authority”; athird said “I believe Feser is proposing/defending this theory because itallows him to dissent from the Magisterium”; another regarded my view as “veryobviously an ad hoc hypothesis made up to justify dissent from the Magisterium”;yet another averred that I was trying to “prove… a suspended Magisterium” andthat this “makes me question whether Edward Feser deserves his teaching licenseafter making such terrible claims”; yet another said “Please tell me Ed Feserisn’t going the Pseudo-Trad Protestant route.” Then there were viewers who also thought that Lofton was alleging suchthings, but judged it “slander” for him to do so (as one viewer put it).

I submitthat it was hardly unreasonable for me to judge that Lofton was guilty ofdefamatory innuendo and insinuation, when many of his own viewers took him tobe saying exactly what I claimed he was saying.

However –and to come to the final point – Lofton insists that, despite how thingsappeared to me and others, in fact he intended no such thing.  And the number and vehemence of his comments overthe last few days indicate that he feels very strongly about this.  I certainly understand why someone would beupset if he believes he is being misunderstood, since it happens to me quitefrequently, and I believe Lofton in his original video badly misunderstood myarticle.

But again,he insists that he did not mean to do this. I am willing, then, to take Lofton at his word, and I accept hisexplanation that he did not intend to defame or libel me.  Online exchanges often produce more heat thanlight and lead to mutual misunderstanding. Charity requires that parties to a dispute try to clear up such misunderstandings.  Having already explained in my previousarticle what I actually meant, I am happy to accept Lofton’s explanation of hisown intentions and to leave the matter there. I wish Lofton well and hope that this will close this matter so that wecan both move on to other, more edifying things.

Lofton’s YouTube straw man (Updated)

There’s apopular mode of online intellectual discourse that I rather dislike, whichmight be labeled “the extended YouTube hot take.”  It involves a talking head riffing, for anhour or so, on something someone has written on a complex philosophical ortheological topic (an article, a book, a lecture, or whatever).  My impatience with this kind of thing is nodoubt partly generational, but there is more to it than that.  The written form is more conducive tointellectual discipline.  A good articleon a philosophical or theological topic, even when written for a popular ratherthan academic audience, requires the careful exposition of ideas and lines ofargument, both the writer’s own and those of anyone he’s responding to.  It also has to be clearly written andwell-organized.  You can’t achieve all thisby simply pouring out on the page whatever pops into your stream ofconsciousness.  It takes time, and as awriter tries to whip a piece into shape, he’s likely to mull over the ideas andcome to see flaws in interpretation and reasoning he would otherwise haveoverlooked.  A video, because it is somuch quicker and easier to make, is for that very reason likelier to be of considerablylower intellectual quality. 

Naturally,I’m not saying that such videos are alwaysof low quality or that written pieces are always of good quality.  Obviously, there’s a lot of good material tobe found at YouTube and similar platforms, and a lot of garbage in writtenform.  The point is just that, all thingsbeing equal, written pieces are likelier than quickly-made videos to be ofintellectual substance. 

There’s alsothe fact that watching a video requires a much higher time commitment.  A book or article is all laid out in front ofthe reader, and typically organized into units – chapters, sections andsub-sections, paragraphs, and so on.  Youcan scan the whole and get a sense of what it covers and where, and thus seerelatively quickly whether it is necessary to read the whole thing, which partsare relevant to your interests, whether certain topics that are not covered inone part are addressed in another, and so on. Videos are not like that.  Youpretty much have to watch the whole thing in order to know exactly what’s init.  And though a video is sometimesbroken into segments, the brief descriptions of these are nowhere near ashelpful as being able to scan ahead in a text and see exactly what is coveredin each section or paragraph.  On top ofthat, if you want to reply to such a video, you have to carefully transcribeany remarks you want to quote and comment on, which requires playing andreplaying the same segments, and this also sucks up time.

Finally,such videos are typically made either by amateurs, or by people who, thoughthey may have some academic training, spend far more time making videos andother online ephemera than doing the much harder work of producing writtenmaterial that is publishable and has to get through the gauntlet of an editoror a referee.  Hence the videos and otheronline ephemera are not popularizationsof their more substantive work.  Thevideos and online ephemera pretty much aretheir work.  Naturally, this work issimply not going to be as substantive as that of someone who has anintellectual day job, as it were.

The bottomline is that engaging with what I am calling “the extended YouTube hot take”requires a high time investment with the promise of a low intellectualreturn.  And I’m just not interested inthat, which is why I don’t watch a lot of this stuff.  That includes material of this type that isdirected at things I’ve written.  Overthe years, readers have often asked me to reply to this or that video commentingon some book or article of mine.  Irarely do it, because I’ve got too much else going on.  There is, for example, always a ton ofwritten material, much of it of high quality, that I need to get through in thecourse of working on whatever book project or academic article I’ve got goingat the moment.  To be sure, theoccasional respite from that is welcome. But even then, it rarely seems to me worthwhile to (for example) spendtwo or three hours watching snarky videos some kid has made about an academicbook that I spent years writing.

Lofton’s libel

All thesame, occasionally I’ll make an exception. That brings me to Michael Lofton, about whom I know very little otherthan that he appears to fancy himself an upholder of Catholic orthodoxy anddevotes a lot of time to making videos of this kind.  This week he posted a YouTube videoresponding to my recent Catholic WorldReport article “CardinalNewman, Archbishop Fernandez, and the ‘suspended Magisterium’ thesis.”  It’s quite bad, in just the ways that“extended YouTube hot takes” tend to be bad. But on top of that, it’s bad in a special way that online Catholiccontent, in particular, tends to be bad these days.  I refer to the kneejerk tendency of a greatmany Catholic commentators of all stripes to approach any topic having to dowith Pope Francis in a Manichean, ideological manner.  Too many of the pope’s critics will acceptnothing but the most negative and apocalyptic interpretations of his every wordand action.  Too many of the pope’sdefenders refuse to consider even the most measured and respectful criticism ofhim.  Everything one side says is foldedby the other side into a simplistic “good guys/bad guys” narrative.  And if you plead for nuance, you will beaccused by each side of “really” aiming subtly to do the work of theother.  It’s tiresome, intellectuallyunserious, and deeply contrary to justice and charity.  And while each side self-righteously thinks ofitself as defending the Church, all they are really accomplishing is tearing itfurther apart.

How doesthis play out in Lofton’s case?  Over thecourse of an hour, he works through my article line by line, suggesting earlyon to his listeners that there is something “weird” or “odd” about it andhinting darkly that it “serves an agenda.” And what agenda is that?  By the endof the video, it is finally revealed that:

To entertain talk about suspense inthe magisterium… I think is to prepare people to reject magisterial teaching…to prepare people to reject papal teaching authority… to use it as an excuse toignore the papal magisterium.

To be sure,he immediately tries to cover his rear end by acknowledging that he “[doesn’t]know what [Feser’s] intentions are, specifically.”  But he insists that “at least… some people” havethis agenda, and is “left scratching [his] head” about exactly what my ownintentions could be.  The obviousinsinuation – especially given all the heavy going throughout the video abouthow “weird” my article is – is that this is my agenda too and that I am beingcagey about it.  Thus does Lofton fold myarticle into the hackneyed narrative of a dark army of bogeymen seeking by hookor crook to undermine Pope Francis.

Theinsinuation is defamatory, and a travesty of what I wrote.  What follows is intended to correct therecord.  I apologize in advance for thelength of this post.  Unfortunately,Lofton has a gift for packing ten pounds of error into a five pound bag, and itall has to be carefully and tediously unpacked. I also apologize in advance if I lose my temper here or there –something that has been very hard to avoid given the many hours I’ve now had towaste on this that could have been devoted to something of greater intrinsicvalue.  I hope not to watch anotherYouTube hot take again for a long time.

My CWR article essentially has two halves,and Lofton badly distorts what I say in each one.  In the first, I explain what some of PopeFrancis’s critics mean when they claim that the Magisterium has been“suspended” during his pontificate up to this point.  Lofton gives the impression that I am atleast somewhat sympathetic with this thesis. But in fact, not only do I not endorse it, I explicitly reject andcriticize it.  In the second half of myarticle, I suggest that the remarks made by Pope Francis and ArchbishopFernandez upon the archbishop’s appointment as prefect of the Dicastery for theDoctrine of the Faith (DDF) imply that the DDF, specifically, will to a largeextent no longer exercise its traditional magisterial function.  Lofton transforms this into the claim that the magisterium of the Church in generalwill from here on out be suspended – something I never said and would not say.  He accomplishes this sleight-of-hand byreading portentous meanings I never intended into innocuous remarks, andespecially into my use of the phrase “organ of the Magisterium.” 

The “suspended Magisterium” thesis

Let’sconsider each half of my article in turn. Those who posit a “suspended Magisterium” claim to get the idea from St.John Henry Newman, so I began my article by rehearsing some of the remarksNewman made about the behavior of the Church’s hierarchy during the Ariancrisis.  Lofton gives the impression thatmy comments somehow make stronger claims than Newman himself did about thefailure of the bishops, and about the temporary lapse of Pope Liberius.  That is false.  I simply report Newman’s own position, and inparticular the position he took on the matter after his conversion toCatholicism in an appendix to hisfamous work on the crisis. 

Loftonclaims that my remark about Liberius’s temporary agreement to an ambiguousformula is “in error,” and cites Bellarmine in his favor.  He makes it sound as if I had flatly made a simplehistorical mistake here and/or gotten Newman’s views about Liberius wrong.  But that is not the case.  Newman himself claims that Liberius “sign[ed]a Eusebian formula at Sirmium,” and approvingly quotes remarks from saintsAthanasius and Jerome to the effect that Liberius had under pressuretemporarily “subscribed” to the heresy, and a claim by another authority that Liberiustemporarily “[gave] up the Nicene formula.” Moreover, Bellarmine is neither infallible nor the final word amongorthodox Catholic historians on the matter. That is not to deny that Bellarmine, Lofton, and others have the rightto defend Liberius against this charge. That is not the point.  The pointis rather that the matter iscontroversial and Catholics are at liberty to take either position.  Hence Lofton has no business claiming that Iflatly made a historical “error” here. The most he is entitled to say is that reasonable people can disagreeabout the issue.

Lofton isalso right to note that Newman’s remark about there being no “firm, unvarying,consistent testimony” for sixty years after Nicaea needs to be qualified.  But Newman himself does qualify it, andnothing in what I said is affected by the qualification.  In any event, I was not trying in my articleto offer a detailed account of what happened during the Arian crisis, to defendNewman’s own account of it, or to draw momentous lessons from it.  I was simply giving a brief summary in orderto let readers know where this notion of a “suspended” Magisterium camefrom.  So, it is misleading for Lofton togo on about it to the extent he does.

In a passingremark about the nature of the Magisterium, Lofton asserts that “there is a protectionand assistance of the Holy Spirit to non-infallibleteachings as well,” and that this is something I ought to address.  If what Lofton has in mind here is the claim,which some have made, that even non-infallible exercises of the papalmagisterium are somehow protected from error, then Ihave in fact argued elsewhere that that thesis is incoherent and nottaught by the Church.  (That is not say that such non-infallibleteachings are not normally owed religious assent.  They are owed it.  But that is a different matter.)

Anyway, themain topic of the first half of my article is the claim that the Magisteriumhas up to now been “suspended” during Pope Francis’s pontificate.  Again, I explicitlyrejected this claim.  Indeed, in thepast, I have defended the authoritative and binding nature of Pope Francis’smagisterial acts even in cases where my fellow traditional Catholics haveresisted it.  For example, Ihave repeatedly defended the CDF’s document (issued at the pope’sdirection) on the moral liceity of Covid-19 vaccines – and, I will add, I tooka considerable amount of grief from some fellow traditional Catholics for doingso.  Ihave defended Pope Francis against the charge that he has departedfrom just war teaching.  Ihave defended him against the charge of heresy.  Ihave repeatedly criticized those who have claimed that his electionwas not valid.  It is true that, likemany others, I have been critical of parts of Amoris Laetitia and of the pope’s revision to the Catechism.  But that is not because I do not regard theseas magisterial acts.  Rather, while they are magisterial acts, they exhibit“deficiencies” of the kind that DonumVeritatis acknowledgescan exist in non-infallible magisterial statements.  Lofton would presumably disagree with thatjudgment, but the point is that my own objections do not rest on the claim that the pope has not exercised magisterialauthority.

Loftonsuggests that it is “weird” or “odd” that, when in my article I gave an exampleof Pope Francis’s magisterial teaching, I cited documents issued by the CDFunder the pope’s authority.  Why, heasks, did I not cite instead a document like Amoris?  He suggests I havean “agenda” and insinuates that there is something suspect about theexample.  In particular, he seems tothink it a ploy to try to reduce the papal magisterium to the CDF.

But there isnothing suspect about the example, and by no means do I reduce the papalmagisterium to the CDF.  For one thing,what I actually wrote is this:

For there clearly are cases where[Pope Francis] has exercised his magisterial authority – such as when, acting under papal authorization, the Congregationfor the Doctrine of the Faith under its current prefect Cardinal Ladaria hasissued various teaching documents.

As the words“such as” show, I was clearly saying that such CDF documents are examples of Pope Francis’smagisterium.  Nowhere do I say or implythat they are the whole of it.  For another thing, there is a reason why Ichose that particular sort of example, and it has nothing to do with what Lofton’sfevered imagination supposes it to be.  Iwanted to pick examples that are as uncontroversial as possible, especially among the pope’s critics.  Citing Amoriswould not do for that purpose, not only because it has been widely criticized,but especially because there are those who (again, wrongly) claim that it isnot magisterial.  By contrast, some ofthe CDF documents issued under Cardinal Ladaria at the pope’s behest could notpossibly be objected to by the pope’s critics – one example being therecent responsum affirmingthat the Church cannot bless same-sex unions. It is clearly intended to be magisterial, and not even the pope’sharshest critics could dispute its orthodoxy. Hence it is an ideal piece of evidence against the thesis that theMagisterium has in recent years been “suspended” under Francis – a thesis which,again, I was criticizing, notsympathizing with. 

It is truethat I also say that “because Pope Francis has persistently refused to answer[the] dubia, he can plausibly be saidat least to that extent to havesuspended the exercise of his Magisterium” (emphasis in the original).  But Lofton reads into this remark exactly the opposite of what it issaying.  He asks, shocked: ““What?!  Pope Francis is teaching constantly!  He hasn’t suspended the magisterium!”  But I did not say that he has; indeed, I hadjust got done saying the opposite, and I immediately go on to say: “Again, though,it doesn’t follow that the ‘suspended Magisterium’ thesis is correct as ageneral description of Pope Francis’s pontificate up to now.”

What I meantby the remark Lofton expresses shock at should be obvious to any fair-mindedreader.  I was saying that even if one could maintain that PopeFrancis has failed to exercise his magisterium in the specific case of notanswering the dubia, it simply would not follow that his magisterium has beensuspended beyond that – and, again, I gave specific examples of acts of PopeFrancis that are magisterial in nature. 

Lofton also,as it happens, goes on to claim that the pope has in fact answered at leastfour of the dubia, but that isirrelevant to the present point.  For thepresent point is that even if he hasfailed to answer any of them, that is no grounds to think his magisterium hassomehow been suspended beyond thatparticular example.  Lofton’s problemis that he completely gets my intentions wrong in interpreting what I say aboutthis example.  He seems to think that Iam citing the dubia controversy to lend plausibility to the “suspendedMagisterium” thesis.  No, what I wasdoing was citing it precisely to denyplausibility to the thesis.  I was not saying: “Consider the dubia controversy – that’s pretty goodevidence for the suspended Magisterium thesis.” Rather, I was saying: “Consider the dubiacontroversy – that’s very weak evidence for the thesis, because it does nothingto show that the pope has failed to exercise his magisterium beyond that onecase.”

Organ of the Magisterium?

But whatLofton tries to make the most hay out of is my reference to the CDF (now theDDF) as an “organ of the Magisterium.”  Hetreats this as if it were a bizarre claim or even a theological howler.  First, he objects that DDF documents have noteaching authority on their own, but only when issued under papal approval – asif this were something I don’t know.  Butin fact I explicitly qualified my claim in just this way when I said that PopeFrancis “has exercised his magisterial authority… when, acting under papal authorization,the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under its current prefectCardinal Ladaria has issued various teaching documents.”  (Indeed, Lofton admits this later on in thevideo.  Here’s a good example of thelimitations of the “YouTube hot take” format. If, instead of his stream-of-consciousness commentary, Lofton had triedto put together a well thought-out written response, he would have caught thisand avoided giving his audience the false impression that I had made somerookie mistake.)

Lofton evenclaims that the CDF/DDF “is not a magisterial organ” at all, and that in factthere are “only two organs of the magisterium, the pope and the college ofbishops.”  This makes it sound as if thephrase “organs of the Magisterium” has some precisely delineated technicalmeaning in Catholic theology, and that I misidentified what these well-defined“organs of the Magisterium” are.  Butneither of those things is true, and in fact it is Lofton who is using the termin an unusual way. 

First ofall, the phrase has no precise technical meaning or doctrinal significance, butis simply an expression that crops up from time to time in writing about theChurch to refer to agencies through which the Church might speak or operate.  And it is in fact often used in thesecontexts to refer to the CDF and other such bodies (as a little Googling willreveal to anyone ignorant of the fact).  Forexample, in a Pontifical Biblical Commission statementon the relationship between the Magisterium and biblical exegetes,then-Cardinal Ratzinger noted that “Paul VI completely restructured theBiblical Commission so that it was no longer an organ of the Magisterium” (emphasis added).  Note that this entails that the BiblicalCommission once was an “organ of theMagisterium” – which suffices to falsify Lofton’s claim that the term is usedto refer only to the pope and collegeof bishops.  (Of course, the CDF/DDF andother such bodies are magisterial only insofar as they operate at the pope’s orbishops’ behest.  But I never deniedthat, and in fact implied it when I spoke of the CDF “acting under papal authorization.”)

Now, in myarticle, I also referred to the CDF/DDF as “the main magisterial organ of the Church,” and Lofton reacts as if thiswere somehow especially suspect.  Indeed,he calls it a “jaw-dropping error” and reiterates his claim that “it’s not anorgan, it’s inappropriate to call it an organ, and… it’s not the primary modeor means by which the pope teaches.”  Butmy remark is only an “error” (jaw-dropping or otherwise) if one understands“organ” in Lofton’s idiosyncratic way. Certainly it is perfectly innocent if one reads “organ” in the sense inwhich I meant it.  The Church is a bodywith the pope as its visible head.  The“organs” of the Church, as I was using the term, are those agencies throughwhich the pope and the Church act, just as a human being acts by using organssuch as the tongue (to speak) and the hand (to manipulate objects).  An office like the Dicastery of DivineWorship is the “organ” or agency through which the pope and the Church he headshandle liturgical matters.  And the DDFis that “organ” or agency through which the pope and the Church he heads handledoctrinal matters, specifically.  As I was using the term, it wouldn’t makesense to call the pope himself an“organ,” because, again, the “organs” I had in mind are the agencies the popeworks through.  It also wouldn’t make sense to call othermodes by which the pope teaches – encyclicals, for example, or sermons –“organs” of the Church, for they are not agenciesin the sense in which the DDF is an agency. Issuing an encyclical or giving a sermon is an action that the pope carries out, not an “organ.”

Whenproperly understood, then, my remark that the DDF is “the main magisterialorgan of the Church” is perfectly innocuous. If Lofton or anyone else wants to argue for using the expression “organ”in some other way, that’s fine.  But hehas no business accusing me of an “error,” jaw-dropping or otherwise.  Again, my use of the expression is in linewith common usage, and the term has, in any event, no precise technical or doctrinalmeaning that would render objectionable my description of the DDF as an “organ”or “the main organ” of the Magisterium. Certainly, Lofton has no business drawing from my remarks an absurdinference to the effect that I am trying to reduce the entire Magisterium ofthe Church to whatever documents the DDF happens to issue.  This is a sheer fantasy on Lofton’s part, andnot anything I either said or implied.

Archbishop Fernandez and the DDF

Let’s turnfinally to what I said in my article about Archbishop Fernandez’s appointmentas Prefect of the DDF.  My claim wasquite precise.  I said that the pope’s and the archbishop’s remarksimplied that the DDF would largely no longer be exercising its traditional magisterialfunctions.  Each of the words and phrasesitalicized here is crucial, and they highlight aspects of my remarks thatLofton ignores in order to make his inflammatory charges.

First, Ispoke only of the DDF.  I did notsay that the remarks in question implied that the pope or the Church as a whole would cease exercising theirmagisterial functions.  It’s true that inthe second to last sentence in my article, I quoted Newman’s phrase “temporarysuspense of the functions of the ‘Ecclesia docens,’” in order to wrap up thediscussion by tying it into the reference to Newman with which the articlebegan.  Read in isolation, one mightsuppose from that one sentence that I was speaking about the Church as awhole.  But the larger context makes itclear that that is not what Imeant.  I was clearly referring to the“temporary suspense” of the exercise of theDDF’s traditional function within the Church, specifically.

Second, Idid not say that the archbishop’s and pope’s remarks implied that the DDF (muchless the pope or Church as a whole) would loseits magisterial function.  I saidexplicitly that what was in question was the exercise of that function. Naturally, even if the DDF did stopexercising that function, it could take up its exercise again immediately anytime the pope wanted it to.  Hence thepoint is not nearly as radical as Lofton implies.  Third, even then I explicitly said that thearchbishop’s and pope’s remarks implied only that the DDF would largely no longer be exercising itstraditional magisterial function – largely,not entirely.  Lofton says that the pope’s and thearchbishop’s remarks make it clear that the DDF would still be teaching, as ifthis were something I denied.  But I didnot deny it.  On the contrary, I quoted those remarks myself, and –again – claimed only that the remarks implied a partial refraining from the exercise of the teaching function, nota complete refraining.

Finally, Iwas not putting forward any bold thesis about the nature of the Magisterium, orfurthering an “agenda” to “prepare people to reject magisterial teaching,” orwhatever else Lofton fantasizes might be my motivation.  I was simply noting the logical implications of what the pope and the archbishop themselveshad said.  And I did so tentatively,explicitly remarking that “it is possible that the remarks will be clarifiedand qualified after Archbishop Fernandez takes office.” 

It is truethat I went on to indicate that I doubted such a qualification would beforthcoming.  I was definitely wrongabout that, because as it happens, the archbishop issued some clarifyingremarks only a few days later, as I noted in afollow-up article.  And hislatest remarks essentially nullify the implications of his earlierremarks.  But as I argue in the follow-uparticle, that makes the significance of the earlier remarks less clear, notmore.  The whole episode amounts to yetanother instance of a pattern of action exhibited by the pope and hissubordinates throughout his pontificate – a tendency to generate needlessconfusion and controversy by failing to speak with precision.

Loftonhimself halfway admits this.  Speaking ofFrancis’s magisterium in general, Lofton says: “I would like to see moreclarification from Pope Francis in some cases.” Of the pope’s letter announcing Archbishop Fernandez’s appointment,Lofton admits: “I have some criticisms of the letter.”  Specifically, with respect to the goals ofupholding orthodoxy while allowing for different ways of expressing the Faith,Lofton acknowledges that the pope regrettably seems “to kind of pit thesethings against each other.”  In thatcase, though, it is intellectually dishonest for Lofton to insinuate that whenI and others have criticized the pope’s and the archbishop’s recent remarks,this criticism must reflect some suspect “agenda.”

There is onemore concession that Lofton makes that is extremely important, and thesignificance of which he and other self-appointed defenders of Pope Francisroutinely overlook.  Commenting onArchbishop Fernandez’s remarks about the “persecution” some theologianssuffered from the CDF around the time of Vatican II, Lofton says:

There were things that the SecondVatican Council taught that ended up vindicating some of the people that…previously… [had] a negative judgment against them [by the Holy Office]…  Over and over and over, the Holy Office didrender negative judgments about people who were later on vindicated… That’s afact, and it’s a fact we see often.

Endquote.  For those unfamiliar with thedetails of this period of Church history, what Lofton is referring to is thesituation of thinkers commonly classified as part of the nouvelle théologie (“new theology”) movement – Henri Bouillard,Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and manyothers.  These writers were highlycritical of, and engaged in a sustained controversy with, the Neo-ScholasticThomists who represented the mainstream of Catholic theology in the decades priorto Vatican II.  Some of them were consideredsuspect by the CDF at the time, and Pope Pius XII’s HumaniGeneris was in part a correction of nouvelle théologie excesses.  (For example, Pius’s famous criticism of thosewho “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order” is widely understood to bea shot across de Lubac’s bow.)  Thesethinkers had to “fly under the radar,” as it were, until the arrival of a morefriendly pontificate.  With Vatican II,they were rehabilitated.  Some of themeven became cardinals, and Ratzinger, of course, became pope.

The ironyhere is many of these thinkers are heroes to Pope Francis’s most ardentdefenders – who nevertheless condemn the pope’s critics for doing exactly whatthe nouvelle théologie writersdid!  They can’t have it both ways.  If it was legitimate for nouvelle théologie writers respectfully to criticize theshortcomings they claimed to see in the Magisterium of their day, then itcannot be denied that it can be legitimate respectfully to criticize theshortcomings some see in Pope Francis’s magisterium.  If the nouvellethéologie writers shouldn’t be dismissed en masse as “dissenters,” then it is not fair to dismiss PopeFrancis’s critics en masse as“dissenters.” 

More to thepresent point, if Lofton is willing to acknowledge the good will of the nouvelle théologie writers and thesoundness of some of their views, despite their having been at odds with theMagisterium of their day, then justice and charity require him to afford thesame courtesy to the sober and respectful critics of Pope Francis.  For example, he should refrain frominsinuating that they have an “agenda” of “prepar[ing] people to reject papalteaching authority.”

One finalcomment.  Apparently worried that hisvideo was insufficiently condescending, Lofton adds a little trash talk in thecomments section, remarking: “I think [Feser] needs to stick to his lane whichis philosophy.”

Well, as theScholastics and the pre-Vatican II popes who commended Scholasticismemphasized, training in philosophy is a prerequisite to doing theologywell.  The reason is that it disciplinesthe intellect, teaching one to use words precisely, to make careful conceptualdistinctions, to reason with logical exactness, and to evaluate texts andarguments with caution and charity. 

Lofton’sresponse to my article provides evidence that he is lacking in thesecapacities.  Hence I’d suggest that hemight consider sticking to his own lane, which is making facile YouTube videos– but about topics other than theology, which requires levels of rigor andcharity that he appears to lack.

UPDATE 7/25: A follow-up comment on the controversy this article generated on Twitter and YouTube.

Lofton’s YouTube straw man

There’s apopular mode of online intellectual discourse that I rather dislike, whichmight be labeled “the extended YouTube hot take.”  It involves a talking head riffing, for anhour or so, on something someone has written on a complex philosophical ortheological topic (an article, a book, a lecture, or whatever).  My impatience with this kind of thing is nodoubt partly generational, but there is more to it than that.  The written form is more conducive tointellectual discipline.  A good articleon a philosophical or theological topic, even when written for a popular ratherthan academic audience, requires the careful exposition of ideas and lines ofargument, both the writer’s own and those of anyone he’s responding to.  It also has to be clearly written andwell-organized.  You can’t achieve all thisby simply pouring out on the page whatever pops into your stream ofconsciousness.  It takes time, and as awriter tries to whip a piece into shape, he’s likely to mull over the ideas andcome to see flaws in interpretation and reasoning he would otherwise haveoverlooked.  A video, because it is somuch quicker and easier to make, is for that very reason likelier to be of considerablylower intellectual quality. 

Naturally,I’m not saying that such videos are alwaysof low quality or that written pieces are always of good quality.  Obviously, there’s a lot of good material tobe found at YouTube and similar platforms, and a lot of garbage in writtenform.  The point is just that, all thingsbeing equal, written pieces are likelier than quickly-made videos to be ofintellectual substance. 

There’s alsothe fact that watching a video requires a much higher time commitment.  A book or article is all laid out in front ofthe reader, and typically organized into units – chapters, sections andsub-sections, paragraphs, and so on.  Youcan scan the whole and get a sense of what it covers and where, and thus seerelatively quickly whether it is necessary to read the whole thing, which partsare relevant to your interests, whether certain topics that are not covered inone part are addressed in another, and so on. Videos are not like that.  Youpretty much have to watch the whole thing in order to know exactly what’s init.  And though a video is sometimesbroken into segments, the brief descriptions of these are nowhere near ashelpful as being able to scan ahead in a text and see exactly what is coveredin each section or paragraph.  On top ofthat, if you want to reply to such a video, you have to carefully transcribeany remarks you want to quote and comment on, which requires playing andreplaying the same segments, and this also sucks up time.

Finally,such videos are typically made either by amateurs, or by people who, thoughthey may have some academic training, spend far more time making videos andother online ephemera than doing the much harder work of producing writtenmaterial that is publishable and has to get through the gauntlet of an editoror a referee.  Hence the videos and otheronline ephemera are not popularizationsof their more substantive work.  Thevideos and online ephemera pretty much aretheir work.  Naturally, this work issimply not going to be as substantive as that of someone who has anintellectual day job, as it were.

The bottomline is that engaging with what I am calling “the extended YouTube hot take”requires a high time investment with the promise of a low intellectualreturn.  And I’m just not interested inthat, which is why I don’t watch a lot of this stuff.  That includes material of this type that isdirected at things I’ve written.  Overthe years, readers have often asked me to reply to this or that video commentingon some book or article of mine.  Irarely do it, because I’ve got too much else going on.  There is, for example, always a ton ofwritten material, much of it of high quality, that I need to get through in thecourse of working on whatever book project or academic article I’ve got goingat the moment.  To be sure, theoccasional respite from that is welcome. But even then, it rarely seems to me worthwhile to (for example) spendtwo or three hours watching snarky videos some kid has made about an academicbook that I spent years writing.

Lofton’s libel

All thesame, occasionally I’ll make an exception. That brings me to Michael Lofton, about whom I know very little otherthan that he appears to fancy himself an upholder of Catholic orthodoxy anddevotes a lot of time to making videos of this kind.  This week he posted a YouTube videoresponding to my recent Catholic WorldReport article “CardinalNewman, Archbishop Fernandez, and the ‘suspended Magisterium’ thesis.”  It’s quite bad, in just the ways that“extended YouTube hot takes” tend to be bad. But on top of that, it’s bad in a special way that online Catholiccontent, in particular, tends to be bad these days.  I refer to the kneejerk tendency of a greatmany Catholic commentators of all stripes to approach any topic having to dowith Pope Francis in a Manichean, ideological manner.  Too many of the pope’s critics will acceptnothing but the most negative and apocalyptic interpretations of his every wordand action.  Too many of the pope’sdefenders refuse to consider even the most measured and respectful criticism ofhim.  Everything one side says is foldedby the other side into a simplistic “good guys/bad guys” narrative.  And if you plead for nuance, you will beaccused by each side of “really” aiming subtly to do the work of theother.  It’s tiresome, intellectuallyunserious, and deeply contrary to justice and charity.  And while each side self-righteously thinks ofitself as defending the Church, all they are really accomplishing is tearing itfurther apart.

How doesthis play out in Lofton’s case?  Over thecourse of an hour, he works through my article line by line, suggesting earlyon to his listeners that there is something “weird” or “odd” about it andhinting darkly that it “serves an agenda.” And what agenda is that?  By the endof the video, it is finally revealed that:

To entertain talk about suspense inthe magisterium… I think is to prepare people to reject magisterial teaching…to prepare people to reject papal teaching authority… to use it as an excuse toignore the papal magisterium.

To be sure,he immediately tries to cover his rear end by acknowledging that he “[doesn’t]know what [Feser’s] intentions are, specifically.”  But he insists that “at least… some people” havethis agenda, and is “left scratching [his] head” about exactly what my ownintentions could be.  The obviousinsinuation – especially given all the heavy going throughout the video abouthow “weird” my article is – is that this is my agenda too and that I am beingcagey about it.  Thus does Lofton fold myarticle into the hackneyed narrative of a dark army of bogeymen seeking by hookor crook to undermine Pope Francis.

Theinsinuation is defamatory, and a travesty of what I wrote.  What follows is intended to correct therecord.  I apologize in advance for thelength of this post.  Unfortunately,Lofton has a gift for packing ten pounds of error into a five pound bag, and itall has to be carefully and tediously unpacked. I also apologize in advance if I lose my temper here or there –something that has been very hard to avoid given the many hours I’ve now had towaste on this that could have been devoted to something of greater intrinsicvalue.  I hope not to watch anotherYouTube hot take again for a long time.

My CWR article essentially has two halves,and Lofton badly distorts what I say in each one.  In the first, I explain what some of PopeFrancis’s critics mean when they claim that the Magisterium has been“suspended” during his pontificate up to this point.  Lofton gives the impression that I am atleast somewhat sympathetic with this thesis. But in fact, not only do I not endorse it, I explicitly reject andcriticize it.  In the second half of myarticle, I suggest that the remarks made by Pope Francis and ArchbishopFernandez upon the archbishop’s appointment as prefect of the Dicastery for theDoctrine of the Faith (DDF) imply that the DDF, specifically, will to a largeextent no longer exercise its traditional magisterial function.  Lofton transforms this into the claim that the magisterium of the Church in generalwill from here on out be suspended – something I never said and would not say.  He accomplishes this sleight-of-hand byreading portentous meanings I never intended into innocuous remarks, andespecially into my use of the phrase “organ of the Magisterium.” 

The “suspended Magisterium” thesis

Let’sconsider each half of my article in turn. Those who posit a “suspended Magisterium” claim to get the idea from St.John Henry Newman, so I began my article by rehearsing some of the remarksNewman made about the behavior of the Church’s hierarchy during the Ariancrisis.  Lofton gives the impression thatmy comments somehow make stronger claims than Newman himself did about thefailure of the bishops, and about the temporary lapse of Pope Liberius.  That is false.  I simply report Newman’s own position, and inparticular the position he took on the matter after his conversion toCatholicism in an appendix to hisfamous work on the crisis. 

Loftonclaims that my remark about Liberius’s temporary agreement to an ambiguousformula is “in error,” and cites Bellarmine in his favor.  He makes it sound as if I had flatly made a simplehistorical mistake here and/or gotten Newman’s views about Liberius wrong.  But that is not the case.  Newman himself claims that Liberius “sign[ed]a Eusebian formula at Sirmium,” and approvingly quotes remarks from saintsAthanasius and Jerome to the effect that Liberius had under pressuretemporarily “subscribed” to the heresy, and a claim by another authority that Liberiustemporarily “[gave] up the Nicene formula.” Moreover, Bellarmine is neither infallible nor the final word amongorthodox Catholic historians on the matter. That is not to deny that Bellarmine, Lofton, and others have the rightto defend Liberius against this charge. That is not the point.  The pointis rather that the matter iscontroversial and Catholics are at liberty to take either position.  Hence Lofton has no business claiming that Iflatly made a historical “error” here. The most he is entitled to say is that reasonable people can disagreeabout the issue.

Lofton isalso right to note that Newman’s remark about there being no “firm, unvarying,consistent testimony” for sixty years after Nicaea needs to be qualified.  But Newman himself does qualify it, andnothing in what I said is affected by the qualification.  In any event, I was not trying in my articleto offer a detailed account of what happened during the Arian crisis, to defendNewman’s own account of it, or to draw momentous lessons from it.  I was simply giving a brief summary in orderto let readers know where this notion of a “suspended” Magisterium camefrom.  So, it is misleading for Lofton togo on about it to the extent he does.

In a passingremark about the nature of the Magisterium, Lofton asserts that “there is a protectionand assistance of the Holy Spirit to non-infallibleteachings as well,” and that this is something I ought to address.  If what Lofton has in mind here is the claim,which some have made, that even non-infallible exercises of the papalmagisterium are somehow protected from error, then Ihave in fact argued elsewhere that that thesis is incoherent and nottaught by the Church.  (That is not say that such non-infallibleteachings are not normally owed religious assent.  They are owed it.  But that is a different matter.)

Anyway, themain topic of the first half of my article is the claim that the Magisteriumhas up to now been “suspended” during Pope Francis’s pontificate.  Again, I explicitlyrejected this claim.  Indeed, in thepast, I have defended the authoritative and binding nature of Pope Francis’smagisterial acts even in cases where my fellow traditional Catholics haveresisted it.  For example, Ihave repeatedly defended the CDF’s document (issued at the pope’sdirection) on the moral liceity of Covid-19 vaccines – and, I will add, I tooka considerable amount of grief from some fellow traditional Catholics for doingso.  Ihave defended Pope Francis against the charge that he has departedfrom just war teaching.  Ihave defended him against the charge of heresy.  Ihave repeatedly criticized those who have claimed that his electionwas not valid.  It is true that, likemany others, I have been critical of parts of Amoris Laetitia and of the pope’s revision to the Catechism.  But that is not because I do not regard theseas magisterial acts.  Rather, while they are magisterial acts, they exhibit“deficiencies” of the kind that DonumVeritatis acknowledgescan exist in non-infallible magisterial statements.  Lofton would presumably disagree with thatjudgment, but the point is that my own objections do not rest on the claim that the pope has not exercised magisterialauthority.

Loftonsuggests that it is “weird” or “odd” that, when in my article I gave an exampleof Pope Francis’s magisterial teaching, I cited documents issued by the CDFunder the pope’s authority.  Why, heasks, did I not cite instead a document like Amoris?  He suggests I havean “agenda” and insinuates that there is something suspect about theexample.  In particular, he seems tothink it a ploy to try to reduce the papal magisterium to the CDF.

But there isnothing suspect about the example, and by no means do I reduce the papalmagisterium to the CDF.  For one thing,what I actually wrote is this:

For there clearly are cases where[Pope Francis] has exercised his magisterial authority – such as when, acting under papal authorization, the Congregationfor the Doctrine of the Faith under its current prefect Cardinal Ladaria hasissued various teaching documents.

As the words“such as” show, I was clearly saying that such CDF documents are examples of Pope Francis’smagisterium.  Nowhere do I say or implythat they are the whole of it.  For another thing, there is a reason why Ichose that particular sort of example, and it has nothing to do with what Lofton’sfevered imagination supposes it to be.  Iwanted to pick examples that are as uncontroversial as possible, especially among the pope’s critics.  Citing Amoriswould not do for that purpose, not only because it has been widely criticized,but especially because there are those who (again, wrongly) claim that it isnot magisterial.  By contrast, some ofthe CDF documents issued under Cardinal Ladaria at the pope’s behest could notpossibly be objected to by the pope’s critics – one example being therecent responsum affirmingthat the Church cannot bless same-sex unions. It is clearly intended to be magisterial, and not even the pope’sharshest critics could dispute its orthodoxy. Hence it is an ideal piece of evidence against the thesis that theMagisterium has in recent years been “suspended” under Francis – a thesis which,again, I was criticizing, notsympathizing with. 

It is truethat I also say that “because Pope Francis has persistently refused to answer[the] dubia, he can plausibly be saidat least to that extent to havesuspended the exercise of his Magisterium” (emphasis in the original).  But Lofton reads into this remark exactly the opposite of what it issaying.  He asks, shocked: ““What?!  Pope Francis is teaching constantly!  He hasn’t suspended the magisterium!”  But I did not say that he has; indeed, I hadjust got done saying the opposite, and I immediately go on to say: “Again, though,it doesn’t follow that the ‘suspended Magisterium’ thesis is correct as ageneral description of Pope Francis’s pontificate up to now.”

What I meantby the remark Lofton expresses shock at should be obvious to any fair-mindedreader.  I was saying that even if one could maintain that PopeFrancis has failed to exercise his magisterium in the specific case of notanswering the dubia, it simply would not follow that his magisterium has beensuspended beyond that – and, again, I gave specific examples of acts of PopeFrancis that are magisterial in nature. 

Lofton also,as it happens, goes on to claim that the pope has in fact answered at leastfour of the dubia, but that isirrelevant to the present point.  For thepresent point is that even if he hasfailed to answer any of them, that is no grounds to think his magisterium hassomehow been suspended beyond thatparticular example.  Lofton’s problemis that he completely gets my intentions wrong in interpreting what I say aboutthis example.  He seems to think that Iam citing the dubia controversy to lend plausibility to the “suspendedMagisterium” thesis.  No, what I wasdoing was citing it precisely to denyplausibility to the thesis.  I was not saying: “Consider the dubia controversy – that’s pretty goodevidence for the suspended Magisterium thesis.” Rather, I was saying: “Consider the dubiacontroversy – that’s very weak evidence for the thesis, because it does nothingto show that the pope has failed to exercise his magisterium beyond that onecase.”

Organ of the Magisterium?

But whatLofton tries to make the most hay out of is my reference to the CDF (now theDDF) as an “organ of the Magisterium.”  Hetreats this as if it were a bizarre claim or even a theological howler.  First, he objects that DDF documents have noteaching authority on their own, but only when issued under papal approval – asif this were something I don’t know.  Butin fact I explicitly qualified my claim in just this way when I said that PopeFrancis “has exercised his magisterial authority… when, acting under papal authorization,the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under its current prefectCardinal Ladaria has issued various teaching documents.”  (Indeed, Lofton admits this later on in thevideo.  Here’s a good example of thelimitations of the “YouTube hot take” format. If, instead of his stream-of-consciousness commentary, Lofton had triedto put together a well thought-out written response, he would have caught thisand avoided giving his audience the false impression that I had made somerookie mistake.)

Lofton evenclaims that the CDF/DDF “is not a magisterial organ” at all, and that in factthere are “only two organs of the magisterium, the pope and the college ofbishops.”  This makes it sound as if thephrase “organs of the Magisterium” has some precisely delineated technicalmeaning in Catholic theology, and that I misidentified what these well-defined“organs of the Magisterium” are.  Butneither of those things is true, and in fact it is Lofton who is using the termin an unusual way. 

First ofall, the phrase has no precise technical meaning or doctrinal significance, butis simply an expression that crops up from time to time in writing about theChurch to refer to agencies through which the Church might speak or operate.  And it is in fact often used in thesecontexts to refer to the CDF and other such bodies (as a little Googling willreveal to anyone ignorant of the fact).  Forexample, in a Pontifical Biblical Commission statementon the relationship between the Magisterium and biblical exegetes,then-Cardinal Ratzinger noted that “Paul VI completely restructured theBiblical Commission so that it was no longer an organ of the Magisterium” (emphasis added).  Note that this entails that the BiblicalCommission once was an “organ of theMagisterium” – which suffices to falsify Lofton’s claim that the term is usedto refer only to the pope and collegeof bishops.  (Of course, the CDF/DDF andother such bodies are magisterial only insofar as they operate at the pope’s orbishops’ behest.  But I never deniedthat, and in fact implied it when I spoke of the CDF “acting under papal authorization.”)

Now, in myarticle, I also referred to the CDF/DDF as “the main magisterial organ of the Church,” and Lofton reacts as if thiswere somehow especially suspect.  Indeed,he calls it a “jaw-dropping error” and reiterates his claim that “it’s not anorgan, it’s inappropriate to call it an organ, and… it’s not the primary modeor means by which the pope teaches.”  Butmy remark is only an “error” (jaw-dropping or otherwise) if one understands“organ” in Lofton’s idiosyncratic way. Certainly it is perfectly innocent if one reads “organ” in the sense inwhich I meant it.  The Church is a bodywith the pope as its visible head.  The“organs” of the Church, as I was using the term, are those agencies throughwhich the pope and the Church act, just as a human being acts by using organssuch as the tongue (to speak) and the hand (to manipulate objects).  An office like the Dicastery of DivineWorship is the “organ” or agency through which the pope and the Church he headshandle liturgical matters.  And the DDFis that “organ” or agency through which the pope and the Church he heads handledoctrinal matters, specifically.  As I was using the term, it wouldn’t makesense to call the pope himself an“organ,” because, again, the “organs” I had in mind are the agencies the popeworks through.  It also wouldn’t make sense to call othermodes by which the pope teaches – encyclicals, for example, or sermons –“organs” of the Church, for they are not agenciesin the sense in which the DDF is an agency. Issuing an encyclical or giving a sermon is an action that the pope carries out, not an “organ.”

Whenproperly understood, then, my remark that the DDF is “the main magisterialorgan of the Church” is perfectly innocuous. If Lofton or anyone else wants to argue for using the expression “organ”in some other way, that’s fine.  But hehas no business accusing me of an “error,” jaw-dropping or otherwise.  Again, my use of the expression is in linewith common usage, and the term has, in any event, no precise technical or doctrinalmeaning that would render objectionable my description of the DDF as an “organ”or “the main organ” of the Magisterium. Certainly, Lofton has no business drawing from my remarks an absurdinference to the effect that I am trying to reduce the entire Magisterium ofthe Church to whatever documents the DDF happens to issue.  This is a sheer fantasy on Lofton’s part, andnot anything I either said or implied.

Archbishop Fernandez and the DDF

Let’s turnfinally to what I said in my article about Archbishop Fernandez’s appointmentas Prefect of the DDF.  My claim wasquite precise.  I said that the pope’s and the archbishop’s remarksimplied that the DDF would largely no longer be exercising its traditional magisterialfunctions.  Each of the words and phrasesitalicized here is crucial, and they highlight aspects of my remarks thatLofton ignores in order to make his inflammatory charges.

First, Ispoke only of the DDF.  I did notsay that the remarks in question implied that the pope or the Church as a whole would cease exercising theirmagisterial functions.  It’s true that inthe second to last sentence in my article, I quoted Newman’s phrase “temporarysuspense of the functions of the ‘Ecclesia docens,’” in order to wrap up thediscussion by tying it into the reference to Newman with which the articlebegan.  Read in isolation, one mightsuppose from that one sentence that I was speaking about the Church as awhole.  But the larger context makes itclear that that is not what Imeant.  I was clearly referring to the“temporary suspense” of the exercise of theDDF’s traditional function within the Church, specifically.

Second, Idid not say that the archbishop’s and pope’s remarks implied that the DDF (muchless the pope or Church as a whole) would loseits magisterial function.  I saidexplicitly that what was in question was the exercise of that function. Naturally, even if the DDF did stopexercising that function, it could take up its exercise again immediately anytime the pope wanted it to.  Hence thepoint is not nearly as radical as Lofton implies.  Third, even then I explicitly said that thearchbishop’s and pope’s remarks implied only that the DDF would largely no longer be exercising itstraditional magisterial function – largely,not entirely.  Lofton says that the pope’s and thearchbishop’s remarks make it clear that the DDF would still be teaching, as ifthis were something I denied.  But I didnot deny it.  On the contrary, I quoted those remarks myself, and –again – claimed only that the remarks implied a partial refraining from the exercise of the teaching function, nota complete refraining.

Finally, Iwas not putting forward any bold thesis about the nature of the Magisterium, orfurthering an “agenda” to “prepare people to reject magisterial teaching,” orwhatever else Lofton fantasizes might be my motivation.  I was simply noting the logical implications of what the pope and the archbishop themselveshad said.  And I did so tentatively,explicitly remarking that “it is possible that the remarks will be clarifiedand qualified after Archbishop Fernandez takes office.” 

It is truethat I went on to indicate that I doubted such a qualification would beforthcoming.  I was definitely wrongabout that, because as it happens, the archbishop issued some clarifyingremarks only a few days later, as I noted in afollow-up article.  And hislatest remarks essentially nullify the implications of his earlierremarks.  But as I argue in the follow-uparticle, that makes the significance of the earlier remarks less clear, notmore.  The whole episode amounts to yetanother instance of a pattern of action exhibited by the pope and hissubordinates throughout his pontificate – a tendency to generate needlessconfusion and controversy by failing to speak with precision.

Loftonhimself halfway admits this.  Speaking ofFrancis’s magisterium in general, Lofton says: “I would like to see moreclarification from Pope Francis in some cases.” Of the pope’s letter announcing Archbishop Fernandez’s appointment,Lofton admits: “I have some criticisms of the letter.”  Specifically, with respect to the goals ofupholding orthodoxy while allowing for different ways of expressing the Faith,Lofton acknowledges that the pope regrettably seems “to kind of pit thesethings against each other.”  In thatcase, though, it is intellectually dishonest for Lofton to insinuate that whenI and others have criticized the pope’s and the archbishop’s recent remarks,this criticism must reflect some suspect “agenda.”

There is onemore concession that Lofton makes that is extremely important, and thesignificance of which he and other self-appointed defenders of Pope Francisroutinely overlook.  Commenting onArchbishop Fernandez’s remarks about the “persecution” some theologianssuffered from the CDF around the time of Vatican II, Lofton says:

There were things that the SecondVatican Council taught that ended up vindicating some of the people that…previously… [had] a negative judgment against them [by the Holy Office]…  Over and over and over, the Holy Office didrender negative judgments about people who were later on vindicated… That’s afact, and it’s a fact we see often.

Endquote.  For those unfamiliar with thedetails of this period of Church history, what Lofton is referring to is thesituation of thinkers commonly classified as part of the nouvelle théologie (“new theology”) movement – Henri Bouillard,Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and manyothers.  These writers were highlycritical of, and engaged in a sustained controversy with, the Neo-ScholasticThomists who represented the mainstream of Catholic theology in the decades priorto Vatican II.  Some of them were consideredsuspect by the CDF at the time, and Pope Pius XII’s HumaniGeneris was in part a correction of nouvelle théologie excesses.  (For example, Pius’s famous criticism of thosewho “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order” is widely understood to bea shot across de Lubac’s bow.)  Thesethinkers had to “fly under the radar,” as it were, until the arrival of a morefriendly pontificate.  With Vatican II,they were rehabilitated.  Some of themeven became cardinals, and Ratzinger, of course, became pope.

The ironyhere is many of these thinkers are heroes to Pope Francis’s most ardentdefenders – who nevertheless condemn the pope’s critics for doing exactly whatthe nouvelle théologie writersdid!  They can’t have it both ways.  If it was legitimate for nouvelle théologie writers respectfully to criticize theshortcomings they claimed to see in the Magisterium of their day, then itcannot be denied that it can be legitimate respectfully to criticize theshortcomings some see in Pope Francis’s magisterium.  If the nouvellethéologie writers shouldn’t be dismissed en masse as “dissenters,” then it is not fair to dismiss PopeFrancis’s critics en masse as“dissenters.” 

More to thepresent point, if Lofton is willing to acknowledge the good will of the nouvelle théologie writers and thesoundness of some of their views, despite their having been at odds with theMagisterium of their day, then justice and charity require him to afford thesame courtesy to the sober and respectful critics of Pope Francis.  For example, he should refrain frominsinuating that they have an “agenda” of “prepar[ing] people to reject papalteaching authority.”

One finalcomment.  Apparently worried that hisvideo was insufficiently condescending, Lofton adds a little trash talk in thecomments section, remarking: “I think [Feser] needs to stick to his lane whichis philosophy.”

Well, as theScholastics and the pre-Vatican II popes who commended Scholasticismemphasized, training in philosophy is a prerequisite to doing theologywell.  The reason is that it disciplinesthe intellect, teaching one to use words precisely, to make careful conceptualdistinctions, to reason with logical exactness, and to evaluate texts andarguments with caution and charity. 

Lofton’sresponse to my article provides evidence that he is lacking in thesecapacities.  Hence I’d suggest that hemight consider sticking to his own lane, which is making facile YouTube videos– but about topics other than theology, which requires levels of rigor andcharity that he appears to lack.

What is classical theism?

Recently, Iwas interviewed by John DeRosa for the Classical Theism Podcast.  The focus of our discussion is my essay “Whatis Classical Theism?,” which appears in the anthology ClassicalTheism: New Essays on the Metaphysics of God , edited by Jonathan Fuquaand Robert C. Koons.  We also addresssome other matters, such as the book on the soul that I’m currently workingon.  You can listen to the interview here.

Archbishop Fernandez’s clarification

Recently, itwas announced that Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernandez would become the newprefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).  As I noted in anarticle last week, Pope Francis has stated that he wants the DDF under thenew prefect to operate in a “very different” way than it has in the past, when “possibledoctrinal errors were pursued.”  Thearchbishop himself has said that he wants the DDF to pursue “dialogue” and to avoid“persecutions and condemnations” or “the imposition of a single way of thinking.”  He also indicated that he took this to mark adifference from the way the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (as theDDF was known until recently) has operated in recent decades.  As I argued in the article, the logicalimplication of the pope’s and archbishop’s words seemed to be that the DDF wouldlargely no longer be exercising its traditional teaching function. 

However, in aninterview with The Pillar yesterday,the archbishop was asked whether the DDF would move away from its traditionalrole in safeguarding doctrine, and he answered:

Look, if you read the pope's lettercarefully, it is clear that at no time does he say that the function ofrefuting errors should disappear.

Obviously, if someone says that Jesusis not a real man or that all immigrants should be killed, that will requirestrong intervention.

But at the same time, that[intervention] can be an opportunity to grow, to enrich our understanding.

For example, in those cases, it wouldbe necessary to accompany that person in their legitimate intention to bettershow the divinity of Jesus Christ, or it will be necessary to talk about someimperfect, incomplete or problematic immigration legislation.

In the letter, the pope says veryexplicitly that the dicastery has to “guard” the teaching of the Church.  Only that at the same time – and this is hisright – he asks me for a greater commitment to help the development of thought,such as when difficult questions arise, because growth is more effective thancontrol.

Heresies were eradicated better andfaster when there was adequate theological development, and they spread andperpetuated when there were only condemnations.

But Francis also asks me to helpcollect the recent magisterium, and this evidently includes his own.  It is part of what must be “guarded.”

Endquote.  It is only just to acknowledgethat these words clearly state that the DDF’s traditional function of rebutting“possible doctrinal errors” will notbe abandoned.  All well and good.

However, thesenew comments make the significance of the earlier ones I quoted in my previousarticle less clear, not more.  For thepope and the archbishop indicated that they want the DDF to operate in a way thatis “very different” from the way it has operated in recent decades.  But if the DDF is going to continue with its “functionof refuting errors,” including “strong intervention” to rebut those who promotesuch errors, how does that differ from how the CDF operated in recent decades?

Presumablythe answer has to do with an emphasis on “accompanying” the person guilty ofthe errors, rather than “only condemnations.” But this too is not in fact a departure from the way the CDF operatedunder prefects like cardinals Ratzinger, Levada, Müller, and Ladaria.  For example, though Ratzinger was caricaturedin the liberal press as a “panzer cardinal,” that is the opposite of how heactually ran the CDF.  As hecomplained in 1988:

The mythical harshness of the Vaticanin the face of the deviations of the progressives is shown to be mere emptywords.  Up until now, in fact, onlywarnings have been published; in no case have there been strict canonicalpenalties in the strict sense.

For instance,theologian Edward Schillebeeckx was investigated by the CDF under Ratzinger,for Schillebeeckx’s dubious Christological opinions – precisely the sort ofthing Archbishop Fernandez offers as an example of an error the DDF should dealwith.  But Schillebeeckx was given theopportunity to explain and defend his views, and his books were nevercondemned.  More famously, Hans Küng losthis license to teach Catholic theology because of his heterodox views on papalinfallibility and other matters.  But he continuedteaching at the same university and remained a priest in good standing.  So far was he from being “condemned” by theChurch that one of Ratzinger’s first acts after being elected Pope Benedict XVIwas to invite Küng over for a friendly dinner and theological conversation.

In reality,the person dealt with most harshly by the CDF under Ratzinger was not aprogressive, but rather someone with whom Ratzinger was accused of being toosympathetic – namely, the traditionalist Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicatedin 1988.  And it is preciselytraditionalists whom PopeFrancis has also dealt with most harshly during his own pontificate.  Indeed, Pope Francis’s treatment oftraditionalists seems the reverse of what Archbishop Fernandez characterizes asan “accompanying” rather than “condemning” approach.

Hence, whilethe archbishop’s most recent remarks are welcome, they make the import of hisearlier remarks, and the pope’s, murkier rather than clearer.  In any event, if a patient and charitableapproach to dealing with doctrinal disputes is what the archbishop is after,then PopeBenedict XVI in fact provided a model to emulate rather than abandon.  And Pope Francis too provides something of aroadmap, insofar as hehas many times said that he welcomes respectful criticism. 

ArchbishopFernandez ends the interview by asking for prayers as he takes up his new post,and makes clear that he would be “grateful” for the prayers of his critics noless than those of his supporters.  It wouldbe most contrary to justice and charity for anyone to refuse this humblerequest, and I happily offer up my own prayers for the archbishop.

Cardinal Newman, Archbishop Fernandez, and the “suspended Magisterium” thesis

St. JohnHenry Newman famously noted thatduring the Arian crisis, “the governing body of the Church came short” infighting the heresy, and orthodoxy was preserved primarily by the laity.  “The Catholic people,” he says, “were theobstinate champions of Catholic truth, and the bishops were not.”  Even Pope Liberius temporarily caved in topressure to accept an ambiguous formula and to condemn St. Athanasius, thegreat champion of orthodoxy.  Newmanwrote:

The body of the Episcopate wasunfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to itsbaptism… at one time the pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, orother great see, at other times general councils, said what they should nothave said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on theother hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were theecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellae, and othergreat solitary confessors, who would have failed without them.

As Newmanemphasized, this is perfectly consistent with the claim that the pope andbishops “might, in spite of this error, be infallible in their ex cathedra decisions.”  The problem is not that they made ex cathedra pronouncements and somehowerred anyway.  The problem is that therewas an extended period during which, in their non-ex cathedra (and thus non-infallible) statements and actions, theypersistently failed to do their duty.  Inparticular, Newman says:

There was a temporary suspense of thefunctions of the ‘Ecclesia docens’ [teaching Church]. The body of Bishopsfailed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, afterNicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years.

Newman goeson to make it clear that he is not sayingthat pope and bishops lost the power to teach, and in a way that was protectedfrom error when exercised in an excathedra fashion.  Rather, while theyretained that power, they simply did not use it. 

In recentyears, some have borrowed Newman’s language and suggested that with thepontificate of Pope Francis, we are once again in a period during which theexercise of the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church has temporarilybeen suspended.  Now, this “suspendedMagisterium” thesis is not correct as a completely general description ofFrancis’s pontificate.  For there clearlyare cases where he has exercised his magisterial authority – such as when,acting under papal authorization, the Congregation for the Doctrine of theFaith under its current prefect Cardinal Ladaria hasissued various teaching documents.

To be sure,there may nevertheless be particular caseswhere the “suspended Magisterium” characterization is plausible.  Consider the heated controversy that followedupon Amoris Laetitia, and inparticular the dubia issued by fourcardinals asking the pope to reaffirm several points of irreformable doctrinethat Amoris seems to conflictwith.   As Fr. John Hunwicke hasnoted, because Pope Francis has persistently refused to answer thesedubia, he can plausibly be said atleast to that extent to havesuspended the exercise of his Magisterium. Again, this does not mean that he has lost his teaching authority.  The point is rather that, insofar as he hasrefused to answer these five specific questions put to him, he has not, atleast with respect to those particular questions, actually exercised thatauthority.  As Fr. Hunwicke notes, hecould do so at any time, so that his teaching authority remains.

Again,though, it doesn’t follow that the “suspended Magisterium” thesis is correct asa general description of Pope Francis’s pontificate up to now.  However, recently there has been a newdevelopment which, it seems to me, could make the thesis more plausible as acharacterization of the remainder of Francis’s pontificate.  The pope has announced that Cardinal Ladariawill soon be replaced by Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernandez as Prefect of whatis now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). 

Fernandez isa controversial figure, in part because heis widely thought to have ghostwritten Amoris. What is relevant to the present point,however, is what Pope Francis and the archbishop himself have said about thenature of his role as Prefect of DDF.  Inapublicly-released letter to Fernandez describing his intentions, thepope writes:

I entrust to you a task that Iconsider very valuable.  Its centralpurpose is to guard the teaching that flows from the faith in order to “to givereasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns.”

The Dicastery over which you willpreside in other times came to use immoral methods.  Those were times when, rather than promotingtheological knowledge, possible doctrinal errors were pursued.  What I expect from you is certainly somethingvery different…

You know that the Church “grow[s] inher interpretation of the revealed word and in her understanding of truth”without this implying the imposition of a single way of expressing it.  For “Differing currents of thought inphilosophy, theology, and pastoral practice, if open to being reconciled by theSpirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to grow.”  This harmonious growth will preserveChristian doctrine more effectively than any control mechanism…

“The message has to concentrate onthe essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and atthe same time most necessary.”  You arewell aware that there is a harmonious order among the truths of our message,and the greatest danger occurs when secondary issues end up overshadowing thecentral ones.

There areseveral points to be noted here.  First,the pope makes it clear that he wants the DDF under Archbishop Fernandez tooperate in a “very different” way than it has in the past.  Second, he indicates that part of what thisentails is that the DDF should focus on “essentials” and “central” issuesrather than “secondary issues.”  PopeFrancis doesn’t spell out precisely what this means, but the context indicatesthat he regards many of the issues the CDF has dealt with in the past to be“secondary.”  Third, when the DDF doesaddress an issue, it should not do so as a “control mechanism” that “pursue[s]…possible doctrinal errors” or “impos[es]… a single way of expressing” theFaith.  Fourth, it should speak “not asan enemy who critiques and condemns.”

In arecent interview, Archbishop Fernandez has commented on his ownunderstanding of his role as head of DDF, and his remarks echo and expand uponthe pope’s.  Fernandez says:

So you can imagine that being namedin this place is a painful experience.  Thisdicastery that I am going to lead was the Holy Office, the Inquisition, whicheven investigated me…

There were great theologians at thetime of the Second Vatican Council who were persecuted by this institution…

[The pope] told me: ‘Don't worry, Iwill send you a letter explaining that I want to give a different meaning tothis dicastery, that is, to promote thought and theological reflection indialogue with the world and science, that is, instead of persecutions andcondemnations, to create spaces for dialogue.’…

Thearchbishop went on to say that he wants the DDF to avoid:

All forms of authoritarianism thatseek to impose an ideological register; forms of populism that are alsoauthoritarian; and unitary thinking.  Itis obvious that the history of the Inquisition is shameful because it is harsh,and that it is profoundly contrary to the Gospel and to Christian teachingitself.  That is why it is so appalling…

But current phenomena must be judgedwith the criteria of today, and today everywhere there are still forms ofauthoritarianism and the imposition of a single way of thinking.

Here toothere are several points to be noted. First, like the pope, the archbishop indicates that he wants the DDF tomove away from the sort of activity that occupied it in the past, but he is abit more specific than the pope was.  Hecites, as examples, investigations of theologians at around the time of VaticanII, and the investigation the CDF made of his own views (which, as theinterview goes on to make clear, had to do with some things he’d written on thetopic of homosexuality).  So, he doesn’thave long-ago history in mind, but the recentactivity of the CDF.  Furthermore, hecriticizes even this sort ofinvestigation (and not merely the harsh methods associated with theInquisition) as a kind of “persecution.” 

Second, thearchbishop says that what the pope wants is for the DDF not only to avoid such “persecutions”of individuals, but also to refrain from “condemnations” of their views.  In place of such persecutions andcondemnations, he wants “dialogue.”  Third,he takes this to entail that the DDF will refrain from “the imposition of asingle way of thinking.”

Taking allof Pope Francis’s and Archbishop Fernandez’s comments into account yields thefollowing.  The DDF, which has heretoforebeen the main magisterial organ of the Church:

(a) will infuture focus on central and essential doctrinal matters and pay less attentionto secondary ones;

(b) where itdoes address some such matter, will not approach it by way of ferreting out doctrinalerrors or imposing a single view;

(c) willemphasize dialogue with individual thinkers rather than the investigation,critique, and condemnation of their views;

(d) should inall these respects be understood as playing a role very different from the oneplayed by the CDF in recent decades.

In short,this main magisterial organ of the Church willlargely no longer be exercising its magisterial function.  It will issue statements about central themesof the Faith, but it will no longer pay as much attention to secondarydoctrinal matters, will no longer pursue the identification and condemnation oferrors, will no longer investigate wayward theologians or warn about theirworks, and will in general promote dialogue rather than impose a singleview.  Hence it will no longer do thesort of job it did under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, let alone the jobthat Newman says the bishops failed to do during the Arian crisis.  And notice that, followed out consistently,this means that the teaching of Pope Francis himself (let alone the deposit ofFaith it is his job to safeguard) is not something the DDF is in the businessof imposing.  It too would simply amountto a further set of ideas to dialogue about.

The implicationsof these recent remarks are, accordingly, quite dramatic.  And while it is possible that the remarkswill be clarified and qualified after Archbishop Fernandez takes office, thetrend of Francis’s pontificate is precisely one of avoiding the clarificationand qualification of theologically problematic statements.  But whereas, in the past, this avoidancepertained to a handful of specific issues, it now seems as if it is beingraised to the level of general DDF policy.

If so, letus hope that this “temporary suspense of the functions of the ‘Ecclesia docens’”does not last sixty years, as the previous one did.  St. John Henry Newman, ora pro nobis.