Edward Feser's Blog, page 15

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. 

The vice of insensibility

Temperance ormoderation is the virtue governing the enjoyment of sensory pleasures.  In particular, and as Aquinas says,“temperance is properly about pleasures of meat and drink and sexual pleasures.”  These pleasures reflect our bodily nature(which is why angels, unlike us, neither need the virtue of temperance norexhibit the vices opposed to it). Specifically, they reflect our needs for self-preservation and forpreservation of the species.  Eating anddrinking exist in order to meet the first need and sex exists in order to meetthe second.  The pleasures associatedwith these activities exist in turn so that we will be drawn to carrying themout.  And temperance is needed so that thepleasures will perform that motivating task successfully.  In short, temperance exists in order that wewill be drawn to the right kinds of sensory pleasures and to the right degree;those pleasures exist for the sake of encouraging eating, drinking, and sexualintercourse at the right times and in the right ways; and those actions exist,in turn, in order that the individual and species will carry on.

It goeswithout saying that it is extremely common for people to seek these pleasures toofrequently, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way.  In doing so they exhibit the vice of intemperance or licentiousness.  But mostvirtues are means between extremes, one of excess and one of deficiency.  And that is true in this case.  Intemperance is the vice of excess where sensorypleasure is concerned.  The vice ofdeficiency in this area – of being toolittle disposed to seek sensory pleasure – is known as insensibility.  Becauseintemperance is far and away the more common vice, especially today,insensibility is rarely discussed.  But,precisely because intemperance is more common, it is important to understandinsensibility, because those rightly concerned to avoid the first vicesometimes overreact and fall into the second.

Aquinas sumsup as follows the reason why insensibility is a vice:

Whatever is contrary to the naturalorder is vicious.  Now nature hasintroduced pleasure into the operations that are necessary for man's life.  Wherefore the natural order requires that manshould make use of these pleasures, in so far as they are necessary for man'swell-being, as regards the preservation either of the individual or of thespecies.  Accordingly, if anyone were toreject pleasure to the extent of omitting things that are necessary for nature'spreservation, he would sin, as acting counter to the order of nature.  And this pertains to the vice ofinsensibility.  (SummaTheologiae II-II.142.1)

Hence, hegoes on to say, it is an error to think that avoiding pleasure altogether is agood way to avoid sin.  On the contrary,“in order to avoid sin, pleasure must be shunned, not altogether, but so thatit is not sought more than necessity requires.”

Now, doesthis entail that it is always andinherently wrong to avoid a certain kind of sensory pleasurealtogether?  And what does it mean for akind of pleasure to be “necessary”?  Let’s address these questions in order. First, Aquinas acknowledges that there are cases where it is good toshun sensory pleasure.  In the samearticle, he writes:

It must, however, be observed that itis sometimes praiseworthy, and even necessary for the sake of an end, toabstain from such pleasures as result from these operations.  Thus, for the sake of the body's health,certain persons refrain from pleasures of meat, drink, and sex; as also for thefulfilment of certain engagements: thus athletes and soldiers have to denythemselves many pleasures, in order to fulfil their respective duties.  On like manner penitents, in order to recoverhealth of soul, have recourse to abstinence from pleasures, as a kind of diet,and those who are desirous of giving themselves up to contemplation and Divinethings need much to refrain from carnal things. Nor do any of these things pertain to the vice of insensibility, becausethey are in accord with right reason. 

Endquote.  Similarly, Aquinas says thatforsaking marriage (and thus the pleasure of sex) for the sake of the highergood of complete devotion to the contemplation of God is not only lawfulbut superior to marriage. 

However, ineach of these cases, sensory pleasure is forsaken for the sake of some specialsituation or state in life.  Absent suchcircumstances, it can be vicious to eschew the pleasures in question.  For example, suppose a person is married, anddesires to abstain from sex altogether for the sake of complete devotion tospiritual things, but his spouse has not consented to this.  Then, as Aquinas says,it would be wrong to refuse sexual intercourse with the spouse.  In the typical case, sexual pleasure issimply a normal part of married life, and ought no more to be shunned than thepleasures of eating and drinking that are also a normal part of life.

What, then,of the other qualification Aquinas makes, to the effect that “pleasure must beshunned, not altogether, but so that itis not sought more than necessityrequires”?  Some readers might assumethat he is saying that we ought to indulge in those pleasures that simplycannot be avoided (such as the minimal pleasure that accompanies any normal actof eating or having sexual relations) but should avoid any pleasure that goesbeyond that.

But that is notwhat he is saying.  To see why, considerfirst what more he says about the nature of the pleasures associated witheating, drinking, and sex, in the context of defending his view that sensorypleasures have primarily to do with the sense of touch.  He allows that there are secondary pleasuresassociated with these activities that involve the other senses:

Temperance is about the greatestpleasures, which chiefly regard the preservation of human life either in thespecies or in the individual.  On thesematters certain things are to be considered as principal and others assecondary.  The principal thing is theuse itself of the necessary means, of the woman who is necessary for thepreservation of the species, or of food and drink which are necessary for thepreservation of the individual: while the very use of these necessary thingshas a certain essential pleasure annexed thereto.  In regard to either use we consider assecondary whatever makes the use more pleasurable, such as beauty and adornmentin woman, and a pleasing savor and likewise odor in food. (Summa Theologiae II-II.141.5)

In otherwords, with food and drink, though what is absolutely inseparable from them arepleasures known through touch (such as a pleasing texture, temperature, and thelike), there are also secondary pleasures of taste and smell.  Nor are these somehow pointless, for as hegoes on to say, they “make the food pleasant to eat, in so far as they aresigns of its being suitable for nourishment.” Similarly, though the pleasure of sex involves primarily the sense oftouch, the activity is made “more pleasurable… [by] beauty and adornment inwoman,” and these pleasures are associated with sight more than touch.

Now, itwould be absurd to suppose that Aquinas thinks that temperance allows for theenjoyment only of what is “necessary” in the strictest sense of beingabsolutely inseparable from food, drink, and sex – for example, that it istemperate to enjoy the texture of food but intemperate to enjoy its taste orodor, and temperate to enjoy the feel of sexual intercourse but intemperate tofind pleasure in one’s wife’s beauty. For one thing, these pleasures, despite being “secondary” in Aquinas’ssense, are obviously as naturally associated with food, drink, and sex as thepleasures of touch are.  Nature makesfood taste and smell good for the same reason it makes eating it feel good,namely to get us to eat.  And the beautyof the female body, no less than the pleasures of touch associated withintercourse, is obviously also part of nature’s way of getting men togetherwith women so that they will have children.

For anotherthing, Aquinas explicitly says elsewhere that temperance allows for theenjoyment not only of pleasures that are necessary in the strictest sense, but alsothose that are necessary in a looser sense or even not necessary at all:

The need of human life may be takenin two ways.  First, it may be taken inthe sense in which we apply the term “necessary” to that without which a thingcannot be at all; thus food is necessary to an animal.  Secondly, it may be taken for somethingwithout which a thing cannot be becomingly. Now temperance regards not only the former of these needs, but also thelatter.  Wherefore the Philosopher says(Ethic. iii, 11) that “the temperate man desires pleasant things for the sakeof health, or for the sake of a sound condition of body.”  Other things that are not necessary for thispurpose may be divided into two classes. For some are a hindrance to health and a sound condition of body; andthese temperance makes not use of whatever, for this would be a sin againsttemperance.  But others are not ahindrance to those things, and these temperance uses moderately, according tothe demands of place and time, and in keeping with those among whom onedwells.  Hence the Philosopher (Ethic.iii, 11) says that the “temperate man also desires other pleasant things,”those namely that are not necessary for health or a sound condition of body, “solong as they are not prejudicial to these things.” (Summa Theologiae II-II.141.6)

So, sensorypleasure can in a relevant sense be “necessary,” for Aquinas, not only when itis strictly unavoidable in order for eating, drinking, and sex to exist at all,but also when it is simply “becoming” in relation to these things.  And temperance allows for pleasures as longas they are not a “hindrance” or “prejudicial” to health and soundness of body,even if they are not quite necessary either. One need merely consider the “demands of place and time, and [what is]in keeping with those among whom one dwells.” 

Aquinas doesnot think, then, that temperancerequires a meal or sexual relations to be quick and businesslike, such that anypleasure beyond the bare minimum associated with that would amount tointemperance.  And that is, of course,just common sense.  It is normal forhuman beings simply to get on with eating, drinking, or lovemaking withoutscrupling over whether they are taking too much pleasure in it.  Indeed, apart from cases where someoneclearly has disordered appetites (alcoholism, hypersexuality, or the like) itwould ordinarily be neurotic and spiritually unhealthy to fret over such things– to worry that one is guilty of sin for eating an extra slice of bacon, orkissing one’s spouse with great passion, or what have you.

That is notto deny that there can be excess short of addictions like the ones mentioned.  For example, Aquinas notesthat one manifestation of the vice of gluttony is evident in those preoccupiedwith “food prepared too nicely – I.e. ‘daintily.’”  I would suggest that the sort of thing he hasin mind is evident today among people who call themselves “foodies” – alwaysgoing on about food in an embarrassingly overenthusiastic way, endlesslyseeking out new culinary adventures, and so on. Similarly, even people who are not quite sex addicts can develop anunhealthy preoccupation with it.  Whenfood, drink, or sex becomes, not just a background part of normal human life,but a fixation, that is an indication that someone has fallen into hedonism andthus the vice of intemperance.

Then thereis the fact that one might now and again forego the pleasures of food, drink,or sex not because enjoying them would be excessive or in any other waydisordered, but simply in a spirit of sacrifice – that is to say, not out of ajudgment that they are bad, but rather out of a judgment that they are good butthat it would be better still to do without them for the sake of some higherend (to do penance, to develop self-discipline, or whatever).

However,supposing that one is neither engaged in such occasional asceticism nor proneto hedonism, then, as I have said, it would be neurotic and spirituallyunhealthy to fret over the minutiae of everyday eating, drinking, and maritalsexual relations – to try to ferret out subtle sins, in oneself or others,relating to these things.  A person whotends to be overly suspicious of such pleasures is often characterized as aprig, killjoy, or “stick in the mud,” and I’d suggest that this character typeis one manifestation of the vice of insensibility.  Specifically, it involves insensibility of akind related to scrupulosity, the obsessive tendency to see sin where it doesnot exist.  It can arise as anoverreaction to the opposite extreme vice of intemperance, either in oneself orin the larger society around one.

However,that is not the only source of the vice of insensibility.  Some people are simply “cold fish,” eschewingsensory pleasures of one kind or another not because they suspect them of beingsinful but rather because they just lack much if any interest in them.  Of course, there is a normal range ofvariation in appetites for food, drink, and sex, just as there are normalranges of variation with respect to all human traits.  But just as some people have extremely strongappetites for one or more of these things and thus are in greater danger thanothers of falling into intemperance, so too do some people have extremely weakappetites and are in greater danger of falling into insensibility. 

Whatever thepsychological factors behind a given person’s insensibility, it is truly a vicerather than a mere variation in temperament, because it can harm both theperson himself and those with whom he lives. In his 1953 dissertation TheThomistic Concept of Pleasure, Charles Reutemann explains the individual’sneed for pleasure as follows:

The conscious suppression of pleasurewithout some form of sublimation can have very harmful effects, since therebyan appetitive tendency is frustrated in its natural movement.  Not only would the appetitive movement tend tobecome atrophied, but the whole man would be reduced to a state of sorrow anddepression…

Inasmuch as [intellectual] activitieshave constant recourse to the ministrations of sense, there must be a restingto relieve the attendant “soul-weariness.”

If pleasure is necessary as a curefor “soul-weariness,” it must be more necessary for the body, since even“soul-weariness” is reductively attributed to the body.  For two reasons the body demands pleasure: asa remedy against pain, and as an incentive to its own activity which isgenerally laborious.(p. 22)

And on thenecessity of pleasure to human social life, Reutemann writes:

Pleasure contributes mightily to theestablishing and facilitating of harmonious relations among men.  For, just as society would lose its integrityif men did not respect and manifest the truth to one another, so it would loseits intrinsic dynamism if pleasure were not used as a “lubricant” to facilitateinter-personal relationships.  Givingpleasure and living agreeably with one’s neighbor is considered by St. Thomasto be a matter of natural equity. (p.23)

Reutemannhas pleasure in general in mind here, but let’s consider, specifically, thepleasures governed by temperance.  Inhuman beings, eating is not mere feeding, but the having of a meal, which iscommonly a social occasion.  Drinking,too, is something people prefer to do together – in a bar, at a party, whilewatching a game together, or what have you. Routinely to have to eat or drink alone is commonly regarded assad.  Breaking bread or having a drink togetheris commonly thought to foster peace and understanding between people who mightotherwise be at odds.  What all thisreveals is that the pleasures of food and drink are typically shared pleasures, and the more intensewhen they are shared.  We take pleasurenot just in the meal, but in the fact that our family, friends, oracquaintances are taking pleasure in it too, and taking pleasure in it with us. Food and drink thereby reinforce social bonds, and all the goods thatfollow from having those bonds.  A personwho, due to the vice of insensibility, is insufficiently drawn to such pleasuresis thereby going to be less fulfilled as a social animal – lonelier, moreself-centered, less able to contribute to or benefit from the social orders ofwhich he is a part.

Sexualpleasure too, when rightly ordered, is inherently social in nature insofar asit functions to bond the spouses together via the most intense sort of intimacyand affection.  The vice of insensibilitymanifests itself in this context when, due either to priggishness or a colddisposition, one refuses sexual relations to one’s spouse, or participates inthem only grudgingly and unenthusiastically. The frumpish wife or boorish husband can contribute to an atmospherewherein this vice is likely to take root. When it does, sex is likely to become a source of marital tension ratherthan amity.

Temperance in sexual matters, specifically, isknown as the virtue of chastity, andit is a large topic of its own.  Needlessto say, for Aquinas and Catholic moral theology, the fundamental principle hereis that sexual intercourse is virtuous only between a man and a woman married toone another, and when not carried out in a contraceptive manner.  Within these constraints, there is much inthe way of lovemaking that is consistent with chastity.  I have spelled out the details in my essay “InDefense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” from my book Neo-Scholastic Essays.  And I’ve said a lot more about sexualmorality in a number of other articles and blog posts, linksto which are collected here.

Whenaddressing matters of sexual morality, Thomist natural law theorists andCatholic moral theologians have much to say about the vice of intemperance inthis area.  This is quite natural andproper, given the extreme sexual depravity that surrounds us today.  Sins of excess related to matters of sex areby far the more common ones, and the ones modern people are most resistant tohearing criticism of.  All the same, thisis only part of the story, because there is an opposite extreme vice too, evenif less common.  Marital happiness, andthe good of the social order that depends on it, require avoiding that vice aswell.

Pilkington responds

Philip Pilkington sent me a responseto myreply to his American Postliberalarticle. I thank him for it and am happy to post it here:

Feser'sresponse to my piece is a welcome effort at clarification. We need suchclarification if postliberalism and related thought is to move from theabstract to the concrete. Here I will address the key points, as best I can.

Regardingthe base versus superstructure distinction, we should probably better determinewhat we are talking about. When Marxists discuss them – typically in thebroader context of their ‘science’ of ‘dialectical materialism’ – they appearto be engaged in something in between metaphysics and political economy. AsFeser says, for them the economy truly determines all – and it does so on an apriori basis.

I wouldsuggest that, to the extent that postliberals choose to use this terminology,they completely abandon any a priori conceptions beyond the terminology itself.Base and superstructure should be seen as metaphors – rather loose metaphors inmany ways – to organise thinking on political and policy issues. Feser'sterminology of spheres is probably, as he says, less loaded. On the other hand,the base and superstructure terminology plugs into decades of political economydiscussion.

Moreimportantly is the question of cause. Here we truly descend into the realm ofthe practical. Yes, the norms that we may seek to set are groundedmetaphysically in the natural law tradition. But beyond this, everything isempirical. The problem, of course, is that social science cannot reallydetermine cause in any meaningful sense. The best that can be done is toestablish correlation – and, perhaps, in the best case correlation at a lag(econometricians call this ‘Granger causality’. In such questions, we are allHumeans whether we like it or not.

Feser hintsthat I may be emphasising economic causality over cultural in my initial essay –and I think he is correct. Some of this is rhetorical – I want to shakeconservatives into seeing these connections. But some of it is not. I doincreasingly think that many of the developments we are seeing in our cultureare being driven primarily by liberal economic relations being pushed past thepoint where they yield anything positive.

Take theexample of birth rates in Islamic countries that Feser references. It is nodoubt true that birth rates in Muslim countries are higher than inpost-Christian countries, but this is only true on a diminishing basis. ManyMuslim countries simply remain economically undeveloped. In these countries,people live for most part as they have for centuries. In the countries thathave made efforts in the direction of economic development – most notably Iran –birth rates have fallen precipitously.

In 1978,when the Iranian Revolution was launched, Iran's fertility rate was just above6.3. Recall, this was the fertility rate in an Iran run by the famously rathersecular Shah. Today, after years of economic modernisation, the fertility rateis well below replacement at 1.7. Recall, in contrast to the Shah's secularstate, this is Iran under the Mullahs – complete with its infamous moralitypolice. If we look at indicators of economic change, this starts to make sense.At the time of the Revolution less than 5% of Iranian women were enrolled intertiary schooling. Today this number is around 60%. Iran is a fascinating casestudy because it is a model in tension with itself. The revolutionaries wantedto modernise society but maintain an Islamic state. The results have been,shall we say, mixed.

But let usthink about this in positive terms. Imagine if we could run a successful familypolicy that pushed the fertility rate back up to around 3 (similar to whatexists in Israel today, but we would hope one more spread out and lessconcentrated amongst the Haredi). In such a society, the average family wouldhave three children and the state would be promoting this as something great.Could this possibly not drastically change the culture? It seems highly unlikelyto me that a nihilistic, hyperconsumer culture that we have today would fit insuch a society. People would simply not have time to be interested in suchfrivolities and much of it would be driven back underground, the province ofbohemians and oddballs.

On the otherhand, do we really think that a conservative cultural turn would vastly impactthese trends? We had a conservative revolution of sorts in the late-1970s. Andeven though the 1980s and 1990s were far more culturally conservative than the1960s and 1970s, none of the fundamental forces were reversed. Divorcecontinued to rise, family formation fell, birth rates fell – and so on. As withIran, the packaging can look as conservative as you please, but it matterslittle if people are not living it out.

A few yearsago I visited Croatia. On Sunday the churches were full. I expect that attendancerates were around 80-90%. All over the towns were spontaneous Catholic shrines.The air was thick with conservative sentiment. And yet, for all that, therewere few families. People were just sort of milling around aimlessly. While onthe beach I looked up the fertility rate on Google. It was 1.5.

Postliberalism, economics, and culture

I commend toyou economist Philip Pilkington’s fine essay “Towardsa Postliberal Political Economy,” at The American Postliberal.  Itis in part a response to my recent PostliberalOrder article “InDefense of Culture War.”  Itseems to me that we are essentially in agreement, and that for the most partthe essays complement rather than contradict one another.  But there might be some differences overdetails, or at least of emphasis.  Let’stake a look.

Liberalism and postliberalism

First, letme address a terminological matter that will not throw off readers who havebeen closely following the recent debate over postliberalism, but doessometimes confuse those who are not familiar with it.  Pilkington frequently refers to the “liberalconservative” approach to cultural and economic issues.  American readers who use the word “liberal” toconnote views of the kind associated with the Democratic Party are liable tomisunderstand him.  They may find the phraseoxymoronic, or perhaps will suppose that Pilkington must be referring tosocially liberal Republicans or the like. But “liberal conservative” is not intended to refer to such people (ornot them alone, anyway), and the phrase is perfectly sensible when properlyunderstood.

In politicalphilosophy, the word “liberal” has a broader sense than it has in contemporaryAmerican politics.  It refers to a broad traditionthat goes back to thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill,and that has among its fundamental themes individualism, the thesis thatpolitical authority is the product of a social contract, and the principle thatthe state ought to be neutral between competing religious doctrines.  Secondary themes would be an emphasis on themarket economy and limited government, though these are not per se liberal.  (To be sure, doctrinaire or ideologicalversions of market economics and limited government are essentially liberal, but my point is that a non-liberal couldfavor non-doctrinaire or non-ideological policies of a free market or limitedgovernment sort.)  In the twentiethcentury, thinkers like John Rawls took liberalism in a more egalitariandirection, and thinkers like Robert Nozick took it in a more radicallylibertarian direction.  In the Americancontext, the word “liberalism” has come to be associated with egalitarian liberalismin particular.  But in reality, that kindof liberalism is just one specieswithin a wider genus.

Now, manymodern conservatives are liberals in the broader sense in question.  They are not egalitarian liberals and they are not libertarian liberals, but they are still liberals in the sense that they regard the work of thinkers likeLocke and Smith as foundational to a sound political philosophy, and more orless take for granted liberalism’s commitment to individualism, the idea ofpolitical authority as deriving from contract, and state neutrality on mattersof religion.  This is especially true ofconservatives influenced by the “fusionism” of Frank Meyer, which came to beassociated with William F. Buckley’s NationalReview.  Fusionism is essentially theidea that a commitment to individual liberty as understood in the Lockeantradition can and ought to be “fused” with a commitment to traditional moralityas enshrined in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

“Liberalconservatives” in this sense are, accordingly, as prone as libertarians are toargue for market-based approaches to social problems, and to see governmentaction as itself part of the problem rather than a possible solution.  Accordingly, they deploy the rhetoric of“freedom” as often as, or even more often than, they appeal to tradition,family, or religion.  That they would putEdmund Burke alongside Locke and Smith in their pantheon of early modernthinkers, and prefer F. A. Hayek to Nozick or Ayn Rand among contemporaryfree-marketers, is what makes their liberalism “conservative.” But, again, itis still a kind of liberalism in thebroad sense.

Now, the postliberal Right is defined by itsrejection of liberalism in this broad sense no less than in the narrow sense,and thus by its rejection of fusionism and any other attempt to marryconservatism to the liberalism of Locke, Smith, and Co.  For postliberals, the paradigmatic politicalphilosophers are thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas.  For theoretical articulation and defense ofthe foundations of political morality, they would look to Thomistic natural lawtheory (or something in that ballpark) rather than Lockean natural rightstheory.  They take the family rather thanthe individual to be the basic unit of society, and regard the state as anatural institution rather than the product of a social contract.  In addition, Catholic postliberals tendtoward the “integralist” position that it is preferable at least in theory forthe state to favor the Church rather than to remain neutral on matters ofreligion.  (Whether it is better in practice, and exactly what it would looklike for the state to favor the Church, are complicated matters that Ihave addressed elsewhere.)

Naturally,the views of individual thinkers of either a liberal conservative sort or apostliberal sort are bound to be more complicated than this summaryindicates.  A liberal conservative might countAristotle and Aquinas as influences too, and a postliberal might acknowledgethat there are insights to be drawn from a Burke or a Hayek.  What I am describing here are the generaltendencies and basic commitments that differentiate the two points of view.

I wouldn’twant to put words in Pilkington’s mouth, and perhaps he would disagree with orqualify some of what I’ve said so far. But that is how I understand liberal conservatism and postliberalism,and I am supposing that that is more or less how he understands them too.

From culture to economics and backagain

In my ownessay, I discussed the famous Marxist distinction between the economic “base”of society and the political, legal, and cultural “superstructure” constructedon that base.  The distinction providesthe organizing theme of Pilkington’s article, and he appeals to it in order tocharacterize the different approaches to economics and culture represented byMarxism, liberal conservatism, and postliberalism.

The Marxistposition, of course, is that the economic base determines everything else.  Law, politics, and culture merely function tokeep in place the prevailing economic order and its ruling class, and have noother significance.  By contrast, liberalconservatives, says Pilkington, take the economic and cultural spheres to beautonomous.  They take the market economyto be a neutral wealth-generating mechanism that can and should be left toitself or at most tinkered with slightly so as to improve its output.  They take the real action to be at the levelof culture, and they think that advancing their goals in that sphere is simplya matter of convincing people to adopt them by making good arguments (asopposed, say, to changing basic economic structures).

Postliberalism,says Pilkington, rejects both of these positions.  Like Marxism and unlike liberal conservatism,it holds that economics influences culture. But, unlike Marxism, it holds that culture also influenceseconomics.  Hence, like liberalconservatism and unlike Marxism, it rejects economic reductionism and takesculture and argumentation to enjoy some independence of economic factors.  But it also rejects the liberal conservativeview of the economy as a neutral mechanism that should largely be leftalone.  Securing cultural goals requires economicchange, and not just making good arguments. In short, economics and culture significantly affect one another, sothat policy cannot focus just on one to the exclusion of the other.

So far I warmlyagree with Pilkington, though there is a terminological difference between us,albeit one which is – probably – merelyterminological rather than substantive. Throughout his essay, Pilkington retains the Marxist jargon of economic“base” and cultural “superstructure.” Again, he rejects Marxism’s claims about their relationship, andemphasizes their mutual influence.  Butto keep referring to economics as the “base” leaves the impression that it isstill somehow more fundamental.  Iimagine that Pilkington does not intend this, and that he retains theterminology merely for ease of exposition. But I would prefer to speak of economic and cultural “spheres” (or somesuch term) rather than maintain the loaded terminology of “base” and“superstructure.”

On the otherhand, some of what Pilkington says might at least give some the impression thathe does indeed take economics to be fundamental.  In particular, he discusses several examplesof phenomena that might at first glance appear to have purely cultural significance,but where, he argues, closer inspection will reveal underlying economicfactors.  To be sure, his point may bemerely that economics and culture interpenetrate in these cases, without eitherbeing the more fundamental.  And Isuspect that that is indeed his view. But it seems to me that even in the cases he discusses, the culturalfactors are indeed the more fundamental ones, even if he is right to note thatthere are crucial economic factors as well.

Hence,consider what Pilkington has to say about modern changes in familystructure.  Liberal conservatives, hesays, attribute this mainly to moral decline, and in part to the welfarestate.  But he notes that other crucialfactors are the dramatic decline in the birth rate and the entry of women intothe modern workforce.  Pilkington emphasizesthat while women worked in earlier ages (for example, in agriculture) what is distinctiveabout modern women’s workplace is that it has separated work from home andfamily life.  Now, these changes areeconomic in nature.  Hence, it seems, wehave a clear case where economics has driven cultural change.

That is fairenough as far as it goes.  But I’d pointout that the story doesn’t end there. For why have birth ratesdeclined, and why have women entered the modern work force in such largenumbers?  The answer, in large part, hasto do with the legalization of birth control and the rise of modern feminism,with the political and legal changes that went along with it.  And those factors, in turn, were the resultof cultural changes.  Notice too that, despite the tremendousinfluence of Western capitalism on the rest of the world, the birth rate andthe economic situation of women has not changed nearly as radically in Muslimcountries.  Why not?  Because of legal, political, and culturalfactors.  So, as I argued in my earlieressay, we see once again that lurking behind economic factors are deeper culturalpreconditions.

Somethingsimilar can be said even of the most seemingly crudely material offactors.  For example, it is often claimedthat the birth control pill changed sexual mores more than all the propagandaof sexual revolutionaries could have. And the pill is a drug that directly affects body chemistry, not people’sideas.  But the birth control pill didnot fall from the sky.  It had to beinvented, produced, and marketed.  Andits mere existence doesn’t force anyone to take it.  Tobacco also still exists, but the number ofpeople using it has dramatically declined. Nor does the fact that tobacco poses health risks entirely explain that,because alcohol and marijuana also pose risks, yet alcohol use has not greatlydeclined, whereas marijuana use has increased. 

The reason,of course, is that there has been vastly greater cultural pressure against tobacco use than against alcohol use, andalso cultural pressure in favor ofmarijuana use.  And cultural pressuresare also responsible for the development and use of the pill.  It was precisely because of changes in sexualattitudes that the pill was developed, marketed, and used in the first place,even if this in turn went on to accelerate the changes in sexualattitudes.  Hence even the pill is not apurely material factor, nor indeed even primarily material in nature, allthings considered.

Pilkingtonalso argues that changes in economic policy can improve the health of thefamily, and that improving the health of the family will in turn bring aboutcultural changes.  For example, “studiesshow that strong families tend to vote more conservative than atomisedindividuals.”  Hence, he suggests, “itmay not be too much of an exaggeration to say, given how integrated personaland economic life are in today’s intensive consumption-production economy, theonly way to engage in meaningful reforms is to tackle them first at an economiclevel.”

But here toothe idea that economic policy is more basic than culture, or even equallybasic, collapses on closer inspection. For suppose we were to try to follow Pilkington’s advice and focus for atime just on the economic question of what sorts of policies would contributeto strengthening the family.  What countsas “family”?  And what counts as a“strong” family?  Woke ideologues willhave answers to those questions, and they will be very different from theanswers a postliberal would give.  Andthe difference in the answers will reflect different assumptions of a moral andphilosophical nature – in short, of a culturalnature.  Yet again, lurking behindpurportedly purely economic considerations are deeper cultural issues. 

Similarpoints can be made in response to Pilkington’s other examples.  And then there is the fact that, no matterhow important some specific economic reform is, actually to achieve it willrequire political action, whichrequires changing minds.  That, in turn, will require convincing acritical mass of people of the importance of such-and-such economic factorsrelative to other considerations.  Andthat is an essentially philosophical task rather than an economic one.

Pilkingtonmay well agree with this.  Indeed, asI have discussed elsewhere, Pilkington is well aware of the philosophicalassumptions that underlie economic lines of argument.  Again, there may at the end of the day be lessof a substantive difference between our views than there is a difference ofemphasis, or perhaps at most of short-term strategy.  And I certainly do not deny that economics isa crucial part of a complete postliberal program.  But that is not because economics is morebasic than culture, or even because it is equally basic.  It is because culture works in part through economics,and indeed because economics is itself a part of culture.