Edward Feser's Blog, page 18

Open thread combox

Here’s the latest open thread, by popular demand.  Actually, it was one guy, but I’ll bet there at least twice as many as that who are interested.  From quantum logic to Quantumania, MacArthur at Inchon to Thomas Pynchon, Muay Thai to Jamiroquai, everything’s on topic.  Just keep it civil and classy.  Earlier open threads archived here.

Catholicism, CRT, and the spirit of the age

Recently I was interviewed by the Catholic Herald’s Katherine Bennett about Critical Race Theory and the need for Catholics not to let themselves be intimidated by the progressive spirit of the age.  You can watch the interview at YouTube.

Pope Francis contra life imprisonment

The white supremacist Buffalo shooter who murdered ten people has been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.  According to scripture, natural law theory, and traditional Catholic moral theology alike, he is worthy of death.  It follows that this lesser penalty can hardly be unjust.  However, it seems that Pope Francis would disapprove of it.  For he has on many occasions condemned this sort of punishment as on a par with the death penalty, which he has also famously condemned.  I discussed this neglected but problematic aspect of the pope’s teaching in a Catholic World Report articleoriginally published in 2019, and he has since then made further statements along the same lines.  Current events make the topic worth revisiting.

The pope’s statements on the topic

I am aware of at least ten occasions on which Pope Francis has condemned life sentences.  Let’s review them in order.  In an address to the International Association of Penal Law on October 23, 2014, the pope said:

All Christians and men of good will are thus called today to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also in order to improve prison conditions, with respect for the human dignity of the people deprived of their freedom.  And I link this to life imprisonment.  Recently the life sentence was taken out of the Vatican’s Criminal Code.  A life sentence is just a death penalty in disguise.

In a March 20, 2015 letter to the president of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Francis wrote:

Life imprisonment, as well as those sentences which, due to their duration, render it impossible for the condemned to plan a future in freedom, may be considered hidden death sentences, because with them the guilty party is not only deprived of his/her freedom, but insidiously deprived of hope.  But, even though the criminal justice system may appropriate the guilty parties’ time, it must never take away their hope.

In comments made to the press in September of 2015, the pope approvingly referred to calls to end life imprisonment, comparing the punishment to “dying every day” and a “hidden death penalty,” insofar as the prisoner is “without the hope of liberation.”

In a November 2016 interview, Pope Francis condemned capital punishment, saying that “if a penalty doesn’t have hope, it’s not a Christian penalty, it’s not human.”  For the same reason he went on to condemn life imprisonment as a “sort of hidden death penalty” insofar as it also deprives the prisoner of hope.

In remarks made to prison inmates in August of 2017, the pope called for their reintegration into society and said that a punishment without a “horizon of hope” amounts to “an instrument of torture.”

In his December 17, 2018 address to a delegation of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Francis stated that “despite the gravity of the crime committed, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is always inadmissible because it offends the inviolability and dignity of the person.”  He then immediately went on to say:

Likewise, the Magisterium of the Church holds that life sentences, which take away the possibility of the moral and existential redemption of the person sentenced and in favour of the community, are a form of death penalty in disguise… God is a Father who always awaits the return of his son, who, aware he has made a mistake, asks forgiveness and begins a new life.  Thus, life cannot be taken from anyone, nor the hope of one’s redemption and reconciliation with the community.

In a September 2019 audience with penitentiary staff and prison chaplains, the pope said:

It is up to every society … to ensure that the penalty does not compromise the right to hope, that prospects for reconciliation and reintegration are guaranteed… Life imprisonment is not the solution to problems – I repeat: life imprisonment is not the solution to problems, but a problem to be solved… Never deprive one of the right to start over.

In remarks made to a meeting on prison ministry in November 2019, Pope Francis stated:

You cannot talk about paying a debt to society from a jail cell without windows… There is no humane punishment without a horizon.  No one can change their life if they don't see a horizon.  And so many times we are used to blocking the view of our inmates… Take this image of the windows and the horizon and ensure that in your countries the prisons always have a window and horizon; even a life sentence – which for me is questionable – even a life sentence would have to have a horizon.

In an in-flight press conference, also in November 2019, the pope said:

The sentence should always allow for reintegration.  A sentence without a “ray of hope” toward a horizon is inhuman.  Including life sentences.  One must think about how a person serving a life sentence can be reintegrated, inside or outside.  But the horizon is always necessary, the reintegration. You might say to me: but there are mentally ill detainees, due to illness, madness, genetically incurable, so to speak ... In this case, one must seek a way in which they can do things to make them feel like people.

Finally, and most significantly, in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis stated:

All Christians and people of good will are today called to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, legal or illegal, in all its forms, but also to work for the improvement of prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their freedom.  I would link this to life imprisonment… A life sentence is a secret death penalty.

As far as I know, that is the most recent public statement the pope has made about the issue.

Implications of the pope’s teaching

Let’s note several things about these remarks.  First, the pope claims that life sentences are morally on a par with the death penalty, and suggests that to oppose the latter requires opposing the former as well.  Second, he says that the way they are similar is that they both deprive the offender of “hope” and the possibility of “redemption,” and are both “inhuman” and contrary to the “dignity” of the person.  Third, he has raised this issue repeatedly and in formal addresses, and not merely in an off-the-cuff remark or two.  Fourth, he has invoked “the Magisterium of the Church” when speaking on this issue, rather than presenting it as a mere personal opinion.  Indeed, with Fratelli Tutti he has proposed this teaching at the level of an encyclical.

Fifth, and remarkably, the pope seems to object not only to life sentences, but to any sentences of an especially long duration.  For in his March 20, 2015 letter he criticizes “life imprisonment, as well as those sentences which, due to their duration, render it impossible for the condemned to plan a future in freedom” (emphasis added).  Pope Francis appears to be saying that it is wrong to inflict on any offender a sentence that is so long that it would prevent him from returning eventually to a normal life outside of prison.

Now, the implications of all this are quite remarkable, indeed shocking.  Consider, to take just one out of innumerable possible examples, a serial murderer like Dennis Rader, who styled himself the BTK killer (for “Bind, Torture, Kill”).  He is currently in prison for life for murdering ten people, including two children, in a manner as horrific as you might expect from his chosen nickname.  If Pope Francis is right, then it is wrong to have put Rader in prison for life.  Indeed, if Pope Francis is right, then Rader should not be in prison for any length of time that might prevent him from being able to “plan a future in freedom.”  Rader is 74 years old, so that would imply that Rader should be let out fairly soon so that he can plan how to live out the few years remaining to him.  And if the pope is right, the same thing is true of other aging serial killers.  Presumably the pope would put conditions on their release, such as realistic assurances that they are not likely to kill again.  But his words certainly entail that it would be wrong to deny at least the possibility of parole to any of them, no matter how heinous or numerous their crimes.

But even this doesn’t really capture the enormity of what Pope Francis is saying.  Consider the Nuremberg trials, at which many Nazi war criminals were sentenced to death or life imprisonment.  Pope Francis’s view would imply that all of these sentences were unjust!  Indeed, Pope Francis’s position seems to entail that, had Hitler survived the war, it would have been wrong to sentence him to more than about twenty years in prison!  For Hitler was in his fifties when he died, so that if he had been sentenced to more than that, he could not “plan a future in freedom” – as a greengrocer or crossing guard, perhaps.  Pope Francis’s views imply that the Nuremberg judges should have been at least open to the possibility of letting Hitler off with such a light sentence and letting him return to a normal life – despite being guilty of the Holocaust and of fomenting World War II!  Perhaps Pope Francis would shrink from these implications of his views.  One hopes so.  But they are the implications of his views.

Now, Mike Lewis, editor of the website Where Peter Is, has claimed that the pope’s statements on this subject have been distorted by his critics.  Lewis says that in the 2019 in-flight press conference quoted above, the pope indicates that “of course there are cases when releasing someone is impossible… because of the danger that they pose to society or themselves.”  This suffices to refute “the more hysterical criticism” by “papal detractors [who] made it sound like he wants serial killers set loose.”

But this completely misses the point.  So far as I know, no one is claiming that Pope Francis has said that we must release serial killers and the like even when they are known to remain dangerous.  They claim rather that the pope appears to think they ought to be released as long as they are not dangerous.  Not only does Lewis not deny this, he approvingly describes the implications of Francis’s views as follows:

Where a prisoner has clearly experienced a dramatic conversion or change of heart, demonstrated over time, and the risk of a return to former ways is deemed negligible – the merciful response is to give that person a second chance at life on the outside.

What the critics object to is precisely this.  The criticism is that, even when the very worst offenders are no longer dangerous, it would simply be a miscarriage of justice to release them, given the enormity of their crimes.  Suppose, for example, that the BTK killer or a Nazi war criminal “clearly experienced a dramatic conversion or change of heart” and could be known to pose no threat to anyone.  By the pope’s criteria, as Lewis himself interprets him, such an offender should be released from prison – regardless of how absurdly light his sentence would then be compared to the many lives he took, the trauma he caused the families of the victims, and the chaos he introduced into the social order.

Lewis also claims that the qualification that offenders who remain a threat should not be released “was always implicit” in Pope Francis’s teaching on life imprisonment.  But as anyone can see who reads the remarks from the pope I quoted above, that is clearly not true.  Out of ten occasions on which the pope has addressed this issue, there is only a single one – the November 2019 in-flight press conference – where he even comes close to qualifying his teaching in this way.  Moreover, the qualification is off-the-cuff and not clearly stated.  In every other case, including the formal context of an encyclical, the pope speaks in an extreme and peremptory way, not even acknowledging, much less answering, the obvious questions raised by his teaching on life imprisonment.  Lewis is correct that it is plausible to suppose that Francis would not want to release offenders who remain deadly threats.  But the fact that he has repeatedly failed clearly to make even this obvious qualification illustrates the persistent lack of nuance or caution in the pope’s statements on the subject.

Doctrinal and practical problems

This brings us to several serious problems with Pope Francis’s teaching on life imprisonment – the first being that, like other novel and controversial claims the pope has made, it is not presented clearly or systematically or in a manner that addresses the many grave doctrinal and practical difficulties it opens up. 

For example, if life imprisonment, and indeed even sentences so long that they would not allow an offender to plan for a return to society, are off the table, exactly what is the maximum sentence the pope would allow?  Should a mass murderer get the same maximum penalty as a one-time murderer or a recidivist bank robber?  Is there at least some minimum sentence that an offender ought to receive for the gravest crimes?  Or should parole be possible as long as repentance seems genuine, no matter how short the time served in prison?  How is the prospect of imprisonment supposed to deter the gravest crimes if the offender knows that he will not get even a life sentence for committing them (let alone the death penalty)?  How are police and prosecutors going to get the most stubborn offenders to cooperate with investigations if they are unable to threaten them with life imprisonment?  Is the pope saying that life imprisonment is intrinsically evil?  Or only that it is wrong under certain circumstances?  What level of certainty do we need to have about an offender’s repentance and likelihood to behave himself before letting him out again?  Is the burden of proof on the offender to prove that he should be let out – or rather (as the pope’s teaching seems to imply) is the burden of proof on governing authorities to prove that the offender should not be let out?  Again, the pope does not even acknowledge, much less answer, such (rather obvious) questions. 

A second problem is doctrinal.  The claim that it is wrong to inflict a penalty of life imprisonment, or even a very long imprisonment, conflicts with the traditional teaching of the Church that “legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense” (as the Catechism states).  For certain crimes are manifestly so grave that nothing short of life imprisonment would be proportionate to their gravity – for example, serial killing and genocide.  To say that not only the death penalty, but life imprisonment or even long imprisonments, must never be inflicted, would be to strip the principle of proportionality of all meaning.

A third problem is that the pope’s claim that long imprisonments deprive the offender of hope seems to presuppose a secular rather than Catholic understanding of hope.  In Catholic theology, hope is a theological virtue.  It has nothing to do with looking forward to pleasant circumstances in this life.  As St. Paul wrote, “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Corinthians 15:19).  Rather, hope has to do with the desire for eternal life and trust in God to provide the graces needed to attain it.  Now, life imprisonment is in no way contrary to hope in this sense.  On the contrary, as the Catechism teaches, “when [punishment] is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation.”  And the possibility of expiation for sin is precisely a reason for hope.  Accepting the penalty of life imprisonment as one’s just deserts can mitigate the temporal punishment one would otherwise have to suffer in purgatory.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine how an offender like the BTK killer or a Nazi war criminal could plausibly be said to be repentant in the first place if he had the effrontery to request going back to a normal life outside of prison despite the enormity of the evil he inflicted.  You might say that, with the worst offenders, the very fact that they want to be released itself proves that they should not be released. 

As I have argued elsewhere, when one considers all the details of Pope Francis’s statements on capital punishment together with the consistent teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and all previous popes, the only plausible way to interpret his teaching is as a prudential judgment that is not binding on the faithful, rather than a doctrinal development with which they must agree.  This clearly applies a fortiori to his teaching on life imprisonment, which is even less clearly or systematically stated and even more out of harmony with the traditional doctrine of the Church.

In our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, Joe Bessette and I discuss in some detail the teaching of Pope Pius XII on the topic of crime and punishment (at pp. 128-34).  It was a theme he treated in a series of addresses, and to our knowledge, no other pope has come close to setting out Catholic doctrine on the matter at such length or in such a systematic way.  Now, Pius’s teaching is entirely in line with the Thomistic natural law approach to punishment that Bessette and I expound and defend in our book.  Pius emphasizes how retributive justice must always be factored in when considering what punishments to inflict, even if it is not the only consideration.  He rejects the idea that punishment should consider only what is conducive to rehabilitating the offender and deterring him from future offenses.  Rather, guilt for past offenses is enough to justify inflicting a penal harm on the offender, and this penalty ought to be proportionate to the offense.  Indeed, Pius says that this is the most important function of punishment.  He considers the suggestion that such a retributive aim reflects past historical circumstances and is no longer fitting in modern times – and he explicitly rejects such claims as incompatible with scripture and the traditional teaching of the Church.  While condemning excessively harsh punishments, he also warns that there is an opposite error of making punishments too lenient, and that making punishments proportionate to the offense is the key to avoiding both errors.  Unsurprisingly, in light of all this, Pius explicitly affirmed on several occasions the continuing legitimacy of inflicting capital punishment in the case of the most heinous crimes.  Obviously, it would follow logically that life imprisonment can be a justifiable punishment too.

Any Catholic who wants to think seriously about these issues should study Pope Pius’s teaching carefully.  Again, in our book, Joe Bessette and I discuss it in detail, providing many quotations from the relevant texts.  Now, it is very hard to see how the teaching of Pope Francis can be reconciled with that of Pope Pius XII, with respect either to their conclusions or the principles they appeal to in reaching those conclusions.  To be sure, as with Pope Francis, Pope Pius did not make any ex cathedra pronouncements on the subject.  However, in the case of Pope Pius, we have teaching that is set out in a very clear, detailed, and systematic way; that is perfectly consistent with scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, all prior popes, and the natural law theory that the Church has adopted as the core of her moral theology; and whose implications and applications to concrete circumstances are straightforward and unproblematic.  By contrast, with Pope Francis, we have teaching that is unsystematic and embodied in extreme and sweeping assertions rather than precise doctrinal formulations; that is novel and hard to reconcile with scripture and tradition; and which opens up many grave but unaddressed difficulties where practical application is concerned.

Given these considerations, together with the fact that Pope Francis’s teaching is most plausibly read as prudential and non-binding, it is hard to see how a Catholic could be obligated to agree with Francis over Pius where their teaching seems to conflict.  In any event, here as in other areas (such as Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, and capital punishment), Pope Francis has muddied the doctrinal waters.  And in this case there are dire implications not only for the faithful’s trust in the Magisterium (which would be bad enough), but also for the social order more generally.  Like the successors of popes Honoriusand John XXII (who also generated doctrinal crises), the successors of Pope Francis will have their work cut out for them.

The Faith Once for All Delivered

Coming soon, the important new anthology The Faith Once for All Delivered: Doctrinal Authority in Catholic Theology , edited by Fr. Kevin Flannery.  Contributors include Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke (Foreword and Introduction), C. C. Pecknold, Christopher J. Malloy, Thomas Heinrich Stark, Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., John M. Rist, Edward Feser, Eduardo Echeverria, Kevin L. Flannery, SJ, Robert Dodaro, OSA, John Finnis, Guy Mansini, OSB, and Robert Cardinal Sarah (Afterword).  My essay for the volume is on the topic “Magisterium: The Teaching Authority of the Church.”

Talking about All One in Christ

The latest on my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory :  Recently I was interviewed for the EDIFY Podcast on the topic “The Truth about Critical Race Theory.”  You can listen to the interview here.  I was also interviewed about the book by Deal Hudson for the Church and Cultureradio show.  You can listen to the episode here.  Other reviews of and interviews about All One in Christ can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

An anonymous saint?

When we think of saints, we often associate them with mighty spiritual feats – dramatic martyrdoms, the production of works of great theological learning or spiritual insight, the founding of religious orders or vast charitable enterprises, and so on.  But saintliness, like the still small voice heard by Elijah, can manifest itself in subtler ways.  An illustration is provided by the life of Fr. Ed Dowling, SJ, the subject of Dawn Eden Goldstein’s fine new book Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.’s Spiritual Sponsor . 

The “Bill W.” of the subtitle is Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.).  Though not an alcoholic himself, Fr. Dowling was highly impressed by A.A.’s principles and success rate, and became a lifelong proponent of the movement and a close friend and advisor to Wilson.  Ministering to those struggling with alcoholism was of a piece with Dowling’s devotion to all those afflicted by mundane but intractable difficulties – marital unhappiness, depression and anxiety, drug addiction, and so on.  He helped found the Cana Conference movement to assist married couples, was involved with the Recovery organization’s efforts to help the mentally ill, and worked also with other such groups.  And in innumerable one-on-one relationships he personally helped suffering human beings – and brought them, where he could, into the sacramental life of the Church, where alone the most important source of healing can be found.

Suffering was something Dowling knew well.  Goldstein recounts the spiritual crisis the Jesuit priest went through in his early life, before becoming certain of his vocation.  And she provides a poignant account of the poor health and physical pain that afflicted him throughout his life.  Ankylosing spondylitis, a severe form of arthritis, calcified Dowling’s spine and one of his legs, to the extent that (as he liked to put it) it was as if he were gradually turning to stone.  But he doggedly embraced this suffering out of solidarity with others who suffer, and as God’s means of perfecting him.  Fr. Ed’s view was that “the shortest cut to humility is humiliations.”

Goldstein’s description of Dowling’s first meeting with Bill W. is especially moving.  Wilson was lying on his bed, at a low moment in his life, when the rumpled priest ambled up his stairway for a visit.  As they discussed A.A. and Wilson’s personal struggles, Bill later reported:

My spirits kept on rising, and presently I began to realize that this man radiated a grace that filled the room with a sense of presence.  I felt this with great intensity; it was a moving and mysterious experience.

But this was not the result of any shallow self-help happy talk on Fr. Ed’s part.  On the contrary, one of the remarkable aspects of their long discussion that evening is the emphasis the priest put on the divine call to patient endurance of dissatisfactions for the sake of a higher reward in the hereafter.  But he did so with such gentleness, kindness, and empathy that Bill took comfort and hope from it.  And it inaugurated a close friendship that lasted until Dowling’s death.

Dowling was struck by parallels he saw between A.A.’s Twelve Steps and St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises – especially after Bill told him that he had no knowledge of Ignatius, so that any similarity was coincidental.  In the years that followed, Bill would come to be attracted to the Catholic faith, receiving instruction not only from Fr. Ed, but also from Bishop Fulton Sheen.  Yet Wilson nevertheless stopped short of conversion.  The desire to keep A.A. free of an association in people’s minds with any particular religion might have been a factor.  Wilson seems also to have had difficulty with the requirement to submit to the mind of the Church on doctrinal matters.  In one letter to Dowling, he admits: “Maybe deep down I don’t want to be convinced – I just don’t know.”

Wilson was in any case also drawn to rivals to the Christian faith – Jungian therapy, spiritualism, even experimentation with LSD in the days when the drug hadn’t yet gained the notoriety it would later come to have.  Dowling tried gently but firmly to warn him away from such enthusiasms, with only limited success.  Goldstein’s account of the years-long back-and-forth between the two on the subject of Catholicism affords an interesting case study in the literature on conversion (or lack thereof).  As Goldstein writes, Dowling and Wilson himself seemed to agree that there was perhaps “an element of willfulness” in Wilson’s reluctance.

In any event, they maintained their friendship to the end.  And Wilson was just one of many who felt especially indebted to Fr. Ed for the help and spiritual guidance he provided.  Goldstein’s touching description of the humble priest’s funeral, and the sea of mourners who attended it, is a fitting conclusion to this excellent biography.

All the same, because it is a biography rather than a work of moral theology, it suggests, but without addressing, some tantalizing questions that seem worthy of future exploration (whether by Goldstein or someone else inspired by Dowling’s life and work).  For example, how would Dowling have applied his approach to dealing with people in thrall to addictions like those that predominate today?  Alcoholism continues to be a problem, of course.  But drug addiction has now spiraled well beyond anything Dowling had to encounter, and has taken on ever more destructive forms (as the meth and opioid epidemics illustrate). 

There is also pornography addiction, and a plethora of sexual vices which are no longer even recognized as such.  It is absolutely fundamental to the Twelve Steps approach endorsed by Fr. Dowling that one admits that one has a problem.  But stubbornly refusing to admit that one’s behavior is in any way problematic is characteristic of sexual sin today.  Fr. Ed also consistently emphasized the need to learn humility in the face of one’s struggles with sin.  But the emphasis today is instead on pride in what the Catholic faith teaches is sinful, and on indulgence in it rather than struggling against it.  The basic moral assumptions taken for granted in contemporary society are simply radically different from those that prevailed in Dowling’s day.  By no means does that make his approach any less necessary today.  But it does make its application more difficult.

Another area for possible exploration is the relationship between Fr. Dowling’s work and that of a contemporary of his, the moral theologian Fr. John C. Ford, SJ.  Ford is mentioned only a couple of times and in passing in Goldstein’s biography.  But Ford also knew Bill Wilson, admired A.A., and indeed at one point had struggled with a drinking problem himself and found A.A.’s approach useful.  Moreover, he wrote on the topics of alcoholism, and habitual sin in general, in a way that combined orthodox moral reasoning with psychological nuance and pastoral sensitivity.  It would be intriguing to bring his work to bear on the study of Fr. Dowling’s approach to dealing with people with problems.

But these remarks are not meant as criticisms of Goldstein’s book.  They are, again, rather in the nature of suggestions for further inquiry.  As it is, Father Ed is inspiring reading, and will do much good both for its readers and for the reputation of a holy priest who deserves to be more widely known.

Avicenna on non-contradiction

We’ve been talking about the law of non-contradiction (LNC), which says that the statements p and not-p cannot both be true.  (In symbolic notation: ~ (p • ~p) )  We briefly noted Aristotle’s view that skepticism about LNC cannot be made a coherent position.  Let’s now consider a famous remark on the subject by the Islamic philosopher Avicenna or Ibn Sina (c. 970-1037).  In The Metaphysics of the Healing, he says of such a skeptic:

As for the obstinate, he must be plunged into fire, since fire and non-fire are identical.  Let him be beaten, since suffering and not suffering are the same.  Let him be deprived of food and drink, since eating and drinking are identical to abstaining. (Quoted in the SEP article “Contradiction”)

Is this merely an expression of frustration with the skeptic?  Or is there an argument here?  Not quite either, I think.  The use of “must” and “since” indicates that Avicenna does suppose that inflicting such pain on the skeptic should convince him of the error of his ways even if nothing else does.  Hence there is more here than just a desire to punish the obstinate skeptic.  Avicenna seems to think the pain should correct him.  But it can’t be that Avicenna supposes that his remark amounts to a further argumentfor LNC.  That the defender of LNC holds that fire is not the same as non-fire, suffering not the same as not suffering, etc. is something the skeptic already knows.  These examples by themselves don’t add anything argumentation-wise to less harrowing examples that will no doubt already have been presented to the skeptic (e.g. that something can’t be both a cat and a non-cat, can’t both be a carrot and not be a carrot, and so on).

Obviously there is something about the unpleasant nature of the specific examples Avicenna uses that is supposed to be doing the work – and in particular, something about actually inflicting this unpleasantness on the skeptic that would do the work, rather than merely having him tranquilly contemplate the thesis that fire is not non-fire. 

What is going on, I suggest, is that Avicenna takes the defect in the skeptic to lie in the will, not in the intellect.  It is not that the skeptic’s intellect needs further argumentation in order for him to see that his position is mistaken.  All the necessary argumentation is already present; in particular, all a properly functioning intellect should need to know is that denying LNC is simply incoherent.  Rather, the skeptic is being willful – pretending, as it were, that there is really some serious doubt about LNC when in fact there is none.  And his will accomplishes this by not allowing the intellect to dwell on the incoherence, thereby facilitating its focusing instead on the fact that we can saythings like “Perhaps LNC is not true,” as if this expressed a real possibility rather than mere verbiage. 

Literally thrusting the skeptic into the fire, Avicenna is (I suggest) saying, would nullify the will’s distraction of the intellect, and force the intellect to see reality.  Under intense pain it could no longer maintain the pretense that the fire it feels might at that same moment and in the same sense be non-fire. 

Another way to put it is that what the skeptic needs is not rational argumentation, since his delusional position of its very nature makes him incapable, while he is entertaining it, of listening to reason.  Rather, what the skeptic needs is a kind of treatment or therapy – indeed, something like shock therapy to bring him back to reality and cease clinging to his foolish and merely verbal quibbles. 

Quantum mechanics and the laws of thought

It isn’t news that much pop philosophy nonsense is peddled in the name of quantum mechanics.  Perhaps the best-known example is the claim that quantum mechanics refutes one or more of the traditional “laws of thought.”  The arguments are fallacious, but stubbornly persistent. 

The laws of thought are three:

1. The law of non-contradiction (LNC), which states that the statements p and not-p cannot both be true.  In symbolic notation: ~ (p • ~p)

2. The law of identity, which says that everything is identical with itself.  In symbolic notation, a = a

3. The law of excluded middle (LEM), which states that either p or not-p is true.  In symbolic notation: p V ~p

As philosophers often point out, the laws can be stated either in logical terms (i.e. in terms of propositions and their logical relationships) or in ontological terms (i.e. in terms of the things that propositions are about and their metaphysical relationships).  But the difference is irrelevant to the points I will be making, so I’ll ignore it for present purposes.

Skeptical silliness

The reason these are characterized as laws of thought is that reason, it is claimed, would not be possible at all if they were not true.  They are first principles of rationality in the sense that they are so basic to it that they are more obviously correct than any argument that could be given either for or against them.  Hence, it is claimed, even someone who claims to have reason to doubt or deny any of them must implicitly presuppose them in the very effort to question them.

Take LNC, which is commonly taken to be the most fundamental of the laws.  The traditional defense against would-be skeptics is that it simply cannot coherently be denied.  As Aristotle points out in the Metaphysics, to assert anything at all is to put it forward as true, and therefore not false.  But that includes the skeptic’s own statement that LNC is false.  In making this assertion, the skeptic is claiming that it is true, and therefore not false, that LNC is false.  If he weren’t, there’d be no disagreement between him and the defender of LNC.  But this itself presupposes LNC, so that the assertion is self-undermining.

Note that it misses the point to allege that the defender is begging the question by presupposing what is at issue.  For the point isn’t that the defender is presupposing what is at issue.  The point is that the critic himself is presupposing what is at issue.  It isn’t that the critic can coherently deny LNC even though the defender affirms it.  It is rather than the critic himself, no less than the defender, cannot avoid commitment to LNC.

Another way to see the incoherence of denying LNC is via the principle that from a contradiction, anything follows.  Here’s a common way to explain how.  Suppose that LNC is false, so that two propositions p and ~p are both true.  Then, by the rule of addition in propositional logic, we can infer from p that either p or q (i.e. p V q), where q can be any proposition at all (including the proposition that the denial of LNC is false).  By the rule of disjunctive syllogism, p V qand ~p will then together give us q.  Hence, from the denial of LNC, you can derive the falsity of the denial of LNC.  You will thereby have shown that the skeptic can be refuted from his own premise.  Again, skepticism about LNC is incoherent.

Things are a bit trickier with LEM, and there are also technical arguments by which some have nevertheless tried to challenge LNC.  I’m not going to get into all of that here.  Having given a sense of the traditional approach to defending the laws of thought, I’ll focus just on the objections from quantum mechanics, specifically.

Quantum conundrums

Consider the wave-particle duality phenomena exhibited in the famous double-slit experiment.  The same particles, the experiment shows, behave in both a wave-like manner and a particle-like manner.  But doesn’t this violate LNC?  In particular, doesn’t it show that something can be both a particle and at the same time a non-particle (because it’s also a wave)?  Or doesn’t it violate LEM, insofar as it shows that it is not true that something is either a particle or not a particle?  Or consider the famous thought experiment involving Schrödinger’s cat.  Doesn’t it violate LNC insofar as it shows that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time?  Or doesn’t it violate LEM insofar as it implies that it is false to maintain that either the cat is alive or it is not alive?

Thus, it is claimed, modern physics shows that we need to revise classical logic, insofar as quantum mechanics has refuted these laws of thought.  Mind-blowing!

Well, not so fast.  The first point to make in response is that, here as in other contexts, people speak quite sloppily when they assert that “Quantum mechanics shows that...”  As philosopher of physics Peter Lewis notes in his book Quantum Ontology, when discussing quantum mechanics and its implications, we need to distinguish between (1) quantum phenomena, (2) quantum theory, and (3) alternative possible interpretations of quantum theory.  The phenomena observed in the two-slit experiment would be an example of quantum phenomena.  The mathematical representation of the physical systems central to quantum phenomena together with the laws said to govern those systems and the way their states are measured comprise quantum theory.  And Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation, Bohm’s pilot wave interpretation, Everett’s many worlds interpretation, etc. would be alternative possible interpretations of quantum theory and quantum phenomena.

Now, if we’re talking about what quantum mechanics can actually be said to have shown, that is confined to categories (1) and (2).  We know that there are these odd phenomena, and the mathematical representation quantum theory gives us is the best description we have of the systems associated with those phenomena.  But the breathless pop philosophy claims made in the name of quantum mechanics typically appeal instead to ideas in category (3) – all of which are controversial at best.  None of them can be said to have been shown, or proved, or established by physics.

That includes claims to the effect that quantum mechanics has refuted the laws of thought.  It has done no such thing.  There is nothing in either quantum phenomena or quantum theory that entails that.  Rather, what has happened is that some people have proposed interpreting quantum phenomena and quantum theory in a way that gives up one or more of the laws of thought.  That’s all.  And even then, the interpretation is not a purely “scientific” interpretation of quantum mechanics, because none of the competing interpretations in category (3) is purely scientific.  All of them involve bringing certain philosophical assumptions to bear on the interpretation of quantum mechanics.  (For example, Bohr’s interpretation famously takes for granted an instrumentalist philosophy of science.)

The upshot of this is that revisions to the laws of thought can be read out of quantum mechanics only if they are first read into it.  And thus quantum mechanics itself does nothing at all to establish the plausibility of such a revision.  For anyproposed interpretation in category (3), we need to ask: What philosophical assumptions are independently known to be the most plausible, and thus suitable to guide us in deciding how to interpret quantum mechanics?  The traditional metaphysician would answer that the laws of thought are among these assumptions.  Those who would reject one or more of these laws would disagree, but the point is that they cannot appeal to quantum mechanics as a reason for doing so without begging the question.  Hence arguments from quantum mechanics for rejecting the laws of thought are ultimately circular. 

To address the specific examples cited, consider first Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment.  The first thing to say is that it is only a thought experiment, intended to call attention to some puzzling questions raised by the notion of a quantum superposition.  That’s it.  Anyone who says “Quantum mechanics shows that a cat can be alive and dead at the same time!” doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  You could try to argue that the cat would be both alive and dead at the same time.  Or you could try to argue that it would be neither alive nor dead.  But you could instead, with no less justification (indeed, I would say with far greater justification), argue that neither of these interpretations makes any sense.  And that is exactly what the traditional metaphysician argues, on the grounds that LNC and LEM cannot coherently be denied.  Absolutely nothing in “the science” itself shows otherwise. 

Same with the two-slit experiment.  What we can say with confidence is simply that there are some weird phenomena here.  But how to interpret them is another story.  Yes, there is something here that in some respects behaves in a wavelike way and in other respects in a particle-like way.  But by no means does that entail that it is, say, both a particle and not a particle at the same time, or that it is neither a particle nor a non-particle.  Here too, you could try to make the case that we should interpret what is going on in a way that rejects either LNC or LEM.  But you could with no less justification (indeed, I would say with far greater justification) hold instead that any such oddball interpretation is just a non-starter.  And once again, “the science” itself gives no reason whatsoever to doubt the soundness of this traditional metaphysical judgment.  (I discuss the philosophy of quantum mechanics in more detail in chapter 5 of Aristotle’s Revenge.)

Related posts:

Koons on Aristotle and quantum mechanics

Heisenberg on act and potency

Schrödinger, Democritus, and the paradox of materialism

Color holds and quantum theory

Causality and radioactive decay

Fallacies physicists fall for

 Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy?

Cartwright on theory and experiment in science

Nancy Cartwright’s A Philosopher Looks at Science is a new treatment of some of the longstanding themes of her work.  It is written in her characteristically agreeable style and full of insights.  The book is devoted to criticizing three widespread but erroneous assumptions about science: that science is essentially just theory plus experiment; that in some sense everything science tells us is reducible to physics; and that science reveals that everything that happens, including human action, is determined by the laws of physics.  In this post I’ll discuss what she says about the first of these claims, which is the subject of the first and longest chapter in the book.  I may devote a later post to the other claims.

The supposition that science amounts to theory plus experiment is, Cartwright observes, widespread among laymen, scientists, and philosophers alike.  The mathematically expressible kind of scientific theory, familiar from modern physics and enshrined in equations like F = ma, is taken to be the gold standard.  From such equations, it is thought, specific observable consequences are predicted, and the point of experimentation is to test these predictions.  And that’s basically it.  Except, as Cartwright shows, that isn’t it, not by a long shot.  In addition to theory and experimentation, there are models, narratives, diagrams, illustrations, concrete applications, and so on.  None of these is reducible to theory or experiment, and neither are they any less essential to the practice and content of science.  And when we take account of them, both science and the world it describes are seen to be far more complicated than the common conception of science and its results implies.

Theoretical concepts

Cartwright begins her analysis by noting that any theory is expressed in concepts, and that science aims for concepts with content that is both unambiguousand empirical.  As all philosophers of science know, it turns out to be very difficult to come up with a general account of how this is achieved.  Cartwright summarizes the familiar difficulties.  First of all, explicit definitions of theoretical terms are obviously of limited help when the definition is itself couched in yet further theoretical terms.  At some point we need to arrive at terms with clear empirical content.  But exactly how does that work?

Operationalism held that the solution was to define a theoretical concept in terms of some operation by which the scientist could measure the empirical phenomenon captured by the concept.  But there are several reasons why this won’t work.  For one thing, it entails reductionist analyses that we can independently know to be false.  Cartwright offers the example of behaviorism, which was an application of operationalism to psychology.  The behaviorist would define anger, for example, in terms of the observable behavior on the basis of which we would attribute anger to someone. 

Note that the implication of operationalism here is not just that we can know someone is angry by way of observing his behavior.  It is that there is nothing more to anger than the behavior.  Now, one problem with this claim is that it simply isn’t true.  A person could be angry without exhibiting the usual behavioral signs of anger, and could also exhibit those signs without actually being angry.  Hence anger is something more than the behavior.  Another problem is that it turns out even apart from that to be impossible entirely to analyze anger or any other mental state in entirely behavioral terms.  Suppose we say that “John is angry” means “John is disposed to raise his voice, frown, stomp his feet, etc.”  The trouble is that this sentence will be true only if John does not desire to hide his feelings.  But if we add a reference to the absence of this desire to our definition, we’ve now got a further mentalistic concept – desire – that needs to be given a behaviorist analysis.  And it turns out that to carry out such an analysis, we need to make reference to yet furthermental states, with those now needing a behaviorist analysis, and so on ad infinitum.  Hence the operationalist analysis cannot actually be carried out. 

A second problem with operationalism is that it has the false implication that there cannot be different empirical tests for the same concept.  For again, operationalism holds that there is nothing more to a concept than the operation by which we test its application.  Hence, if we have two different tests, we must be dealing with two different concepts.  But that’s absurd.  Take, for example, the concept of being round.  I can test whether something is round either by looking at it or by feeling it, and obviously it is one and the same concept I am applying in both cases.

A third problem, as Cartwright emphasizes, is that in actual scientific practice it often takes a lot of hard work and argumentation to show that a certain empirical test plausibly measures the reality captured by some scientific concept.  That could not be the case if there were nothing more to the concept than the empirical test.  It follows that there is more to theoretical concepts than what is captured by such tests, in which case operationalism is false.

Logical empiricism, as Cartwright notes, was another failed attempt to solve the problem.  The “logical” component of logical empiricism had to do with its application of modern formal logic to the formulation of scientific theories, e.g. as axiomatic systems from which theorems could be deduced.  The “empiricism” component had to do with the idea that the claims of a theory could be verified by observation.  Here too there are several problems. 

For one thing, exactly what counts as an observation?  Only what can be perceived by the naked eye (or the naked ear, the naked nose, etc.)?  Or do observations made using instruments count?  Furthermore, what exactly is it that we are observing – mind-independent physical objects, or sense data?  And are all scientific claims really verifiable in this way in the first place?  (See pp. 139-51 of my book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science for detailed discussion of the intractable problems facing verificationism.)

It turns out that, just as the content of theoretical concepts outstrips what can be captured in an operational definition, so too, more generally, does it outstrip what is observable.  The content of concepts is given instead by the axioms of the theory in which they are embedded.  But the problem now, as Cartwright notes, is that such axioms are never sufficient to determine exactly what it is in the empirical world a theory is about.  Consider, again, the equation F = ma.  Considered just by itself, it tells us nothing more than that one quantity is equal to the product of two others.  And as Cartwright observes, this is true not only of the force, mass, and acceleration of a material object, but also of the area of a rectangle with respect to the length of its sides.  There is nothing in the equation itself that tells us which of these is its subject matter.  Of course, we could add further items to our set of axioms, such as Newton’s law of universal gravitation.  But no matter how many we add, there will always be alternative possible interpretations. 

(This issue is closely related to the epistemic structural realist thesis that physical theories reveal to us only the abstract structure of the physical world and not its intrinsic nature.  See chapter 3 of Aristotle’s Revenge for detailed discussion.)

Of course, in practice, scientists and the laymen who are familiar with their work don’t worry about such problems.  The reason is that, for one thing, when encountering an equation like F = ma, most people have at least in the backs of their minds the ordinary language usage of terms like “force,” “mass,” and “acceleration,” and thus naturally interpret the variables in light of them, even if they know that the variables aren’t meant to correspond exactly to our commonsense notions.  For another thing, they often apply the equation as a tool for carrying out very practical tasks, such as figuring out the speed of a ball hit by a tennis player (to borrow an example of Cartwright’s). 

But all of this comes from outside the theory itself, at least if we take the mathematics alone to be what is essential to theory as such.  Moreover, as Cartwright emphasizes, this utility of theory in practical applications does not entail that the world really is exactly the way the abstract theory represents it as being.  (She gives the well-known example of phlogiston theory, which was very useful predictively and technologically despite the fact that it turns out that there is no such thing as phlogiston.) 

I would emphasize a further point.  It is commonly assumed that scientific theory gives us a richer and more accurate representation of the world than common sense does, and indeed ought to replace the commonsense description of phenomena.  But as Cartwright’s argument indicates, this is the reverse of the truth.  For one thing, scientific theory in fact cannot even be given a determinate interpretation without some connection to the ordinary linguistic usage from which its concepts ultimately derive, and the concrete applications to which theory is put.  For another thing, what theory describes are really only abstract features of the world of common experience rather than that world in all its rich complexity.  That doesn’t necessarily entail that scientific theory should be given an instrumentalist rather than realist interpretation.  But it does support the epistemic structural realist view that, while what theory describes is really there in nature, it is very far from capturing everything that is there in nature.  (See Aristotle’s Revenge for detailed exposition and defense of this view.)

Beyond theory

Now, because of the way the actual applications of a theory often unconsciously determine how we interpret it, we can be blind to how much work is being done by the application and how little by the theory considered in isolation.  In particular, when we consider a theory in isolation, just in terms of its mathematical formulation, its concepts can seem very precise.  But a concrete application of the theory may nevertheless involve an interpretation of those concepts that is not so precise.  Yet it may retain its utility nonetheless, and retain it precisely because the concepts are being applied in a way that goes beyond the content of the theory itself.

The consequence of this is that scientists often end up supposing that precision is possible where really it is not.  Or, because a concept’s application may be susceptible of precision in one, limited domain, scientists can fallaciously suppose that it must be equally capable of precision when extended beyond that domain.  This is, Cartwright argues, especially likely in social science.  She gives as an example the notion of probability.  When we consider simple examples like pulling cards from a fair deck, the probabilities of various possible outcomes can be determined with precision.  But it simply doesn’t follow that we can meaningfully assign probabilities to events in general, and Cartwright thinks there are good reasons to suppose that this is not in fact possible. 

In particular, she notes that probabilities are determined relative to what Ian Hacking calls “chance set-ups.”  These are circumstances where both the possible outcomes and the processes that might lead to them can be fully specified, and where there are probabilities built into the situation at the start from which the probabilities we wish to calculate fall out logically.  Again, pulling cards from a fair deck would be an example.  But much of what happens in nature does not amount to a chance set-up in this sense.  For example, in the real world (as opposed to what Cartwright calls the “small world” representations that social scientists make use of) there often simply isn’t one relatively simple and fixed set of variables that might influence possible outcomes.

For this reason, Cartwright judges that much of what is said by social scientists about “effect sizes” when evaluating alternative policy proposals is poorly founded.  (Cartwright doesn’t mention the relevance of all this to arguments for various pandemic policies, criminal justice reforms, “equity-conscious” educational proposals, and other currently trendy issues, but it is obvious.  I leave the specifics as homework.)

In any event, in natural science and social science alike, Cartwright argues, theory is only ever brought to bear on the world by way of various intermediaries.  First of all, there are the idealized models by which we bring abstractions like the laws of physics to bear on concrete reality.  For example, when we apply Newton’s laws to the solar system, we do so by modeling the latter (in terms of a system of point masses orbiting a larger point mass, and so on).  In this way, our application of abstractions is mediated by further abstractions.  There are also the concrete narratives by which all of these abstractions are made intelligible.  (Think of the way that, in order to understand even a simple system like the solar system, we still have crudely to visualize large objects moving through space over time around other large objects; that in order to understand the implications of special relativity, we tell stories about twins traveling on rocket ships; and so on.)  Cartwright notes that diagrams, graphs, and illustrations also deeply influence how we interpret and apply theory.  Nor are these various intermediaries dispensable.  We simply couldn’t understand or make use of theories without them.

Finally, experimentation too, Cartwright argues, is a much more complex affair than is implied by the common notion that “science = theory + experiment.”  Experiment is often treated as if its only point is to test theory.  But that is not the case.  Sometimes experimentation is carried out even in the absence of any well-worked out theory, in an exploratory way that aims simply to see what will happen under various circumstances.  Sometimes experimentation createsnew phenomena that would otherwise not be observed – where, precisely because they have not otherwise been observed, no theory yet exists to account for them.  Sometimes experimentation reconstitutes phenomena in the sense of deeply altering our understanding of them, even in the absence of theoretical considerations.  And in all these cases, experimentation, like theory, depends on fixing the content of concepts, on models, and so on.

“Science ain’t an exact science”

I’ve mentioned already one of the implications I see in Cartwright’s discussion, viz. support for an epistemic structural realist interpretation of modern physics.  Here’s another.  It is a commonplace of modern philosophy of science that theory is underdeterminedby empirical evidence.  What that means is that for any body of empirical evidence, there are always alternative possible theories that are incompatible with each other but consistent with that evidence.  That does not entail that all theories are equally good, but only that considerations independent of both theory and empirical evidence are ultimately necessary in order to choose between theories.  Philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have also shown how extra-scientific considerations (of a philosophical sort, for example) play a crucial role in determining the outcome of scientific investigation.

The considerations raised by Cartwright greatly reinforce these judgments.  In particular, they reinforce the underdetermination of theory by evidence insofar as it isn’t just alternative theories that are compatible with the same empirical evidence.  There are also the alternative possible models, narratives, diagrams, etc. which mediate between theory and evidence.  And as with theories, so too with models, narratives, diagrams, etc., philosophical considerations no less than empirical ones can influence our judgments about what is within the range of respectable options, what is plausible all things considered, and so forth.

By no means does this entail that science is not a rational enterprise, any more than philosophy is not a rational enterprise.  What it does entail, though, is that the boundary between science and philosophy is much less sharp than is commonly supposed.  As I have argued at length elsewhere (including in Aristotle’s Revenge), much of what is today assumed to be “scientific” – the refusal to countenance irreducibly teleological explanations, the primary/secondary quality distinction, and so on – are really just contentious philosophical assumptions masquerading as empirical results.  And it is not possible to do science without making philosophical assumptions of some kind, which are bound to be controversial.

To borrow a line from the movie 12 Monkeys, “science ain’t an exact science.”  To be sure, there is an exactness in its purely mathematical aspects, but that is precisely because mathematical representations simply leave out all aspects of reality that don’t fit that exact mode of representation – which turns out to be quite a lot.  There are not only more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by scientists, there is more to science itself than is dreamt of by them.

Related reading:

Dupré on the ideologizing of science

Scientism: America’s State Religion

The particle collection that fancied itself a physicist

Fallacies physicists fall for

One Long Circular Argument

Science and Scientism

Blinded by Scientism

Rosenberg roundup

Benedict XVI, Cardinal Pell, and criticism of Pope Francis

In the wake of the deaths of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell, it has emerged that each of them raised serious criticisms of aspects of Pope Francis’s teaching and governance of the Church.  How might the pope respond to these criticisms?  As I have explained elsewhere, the Church explicitly teaches that even popes can under certain circumstances respectfully be criticized by the faithful.  Moreover, Pope Francis himself has explicitly said on several occasions that he welcomes criticism.  It seems clear that the criticisms raised by Benedict and Pell are precisely the kind that the pope should take the most seriously, given the teaching of the Church and his own views about the value of criticism.

First, what are the criticisms?  In the case of Benedict, we know about them via the new book written by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who was the late pope’s longtime aide.  For one thing, Benedict had reservations about Pope Francis’s controversial exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and in particular was concerned that “a certain ambiguity had been allowed to hover in that document.”  And he was surprised that Pope Francis never answer the dubiaissued by four cardinals who were seeking to resolve these ambiguities.  For another thing, Benedict thought the restrictions imposed on the celebration of the Latin Mass by Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes were “a mistake” that “jeopardized the attempt at pacification” of traditionalists within the Church.  He also thought that Francis had misstated Benedict’s own intentions in giving wider permission for the Latin Mass in Summorum Pontificum.  Gänswein has said that Traditionis Custodes caused Benedict heartache. 

Cardinal Pell was far more blunt.  In the last article he wrote before his death, he criticized the current Synod on Synodality’s working document as “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome,” a “toxic nightmare” full of “neo-Marxist jargon” and “hostile in significant ways to the apostolic tradition.”  But it has also been revealed that Pell was the author of an anonymous memo that circulated among the cardinals during Lent last year, critical of the current state of the Church.  Summing up teaching and governance under Pope Francis, the memo asserts that “commentators of every school, if for different reasons… agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.”  It then goes on to address in detail various doctrinal controversies, financial scandals, failures to support loyal Catholics and human rights in China and elsewhere, and needless alienation of traditionalists and others within the Church.

As I document in the article I referred to above, both the tradition of the Church and the recent teaching of the magisterium show that the clearest sort of case where a Catholic might respectfully raise criticisms of some papal statement or action is when it appears to conflict with binding past teaching.  Pope Francis can hardly disagree with this, for he has expressed a willingness to hear out challenges even to Church teaching itself.  In particular, in the exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, he says that “doctrine, or better, our understanding and expression of it, is not a closed system, devoid of the dynamic capacity to pose questions, doubts, inquiries.” 

Now, if the faithful can raise questions, doubts, and inquiries even where expressions of Catholic doctrine are concerned, then a fortiori they can raise questions, doubts, and inquiries where apparent conflictswith Catholic doctrine are concerned.  For example, they can do so with respect to the problematic “ambiguity” in Amoris Laetitia referred to by Benedict XVI.  How could this possibly not be permissible, by Pope Francis’s own lights?  That is to say, how could it be permissible to “pose questions, doubts, inquiries” about perennial Catholic teaching on marriage and the Eucharist, but not permissible to pose them about a passage in a recent exhortation that fails clearly to reaffirm that traditional teaching?

Pope Francis has also more than once explicitly said that he personally can legitimately be criticized.  In 2015, in response to criticisms raised against some of his remarks on economic matters, the pope said:

I heard that there were some criticisms from the United States.  I heard about it, but I haven't read about it, I haven't had the time to study this well, because every criticism must be received, studied, and then dialogue must be [sic] ensue.  You ask me what I think.  If I have not had a dialogue with those who criticize, I don't have the right to state an opinion, isolated from dialogue, no?...

Yes, I must begin studying these criticisms, no?  And then dialogue a bit with this.

Similarly, in 2019, when asked about criticisms raised against him by American Catholic laymen, churchmen, and media outlets, Pope Francis said:

First of all, criticisms always help, always, when one receives a criticism, immediately he should make a self-critique and say this: to me, is it true or is it not true, until what point?   Of criticisms, I always see the advantages.  Sometimes you get angry, but the advantages are there…

Criticism is an element of construction and if your critic is not right, you [must be] prepared to receive the response and to dialogue, [to have] a discussion and arrive at a fair point…

A fair criticism is always well received, at least by me.

And through Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the pope made it clear that “he always considers criticisms an honor, particularly when they come from authoritative thinkers.” 

The reference to “authoritative thinkers” calls to mind canon 212 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law, which affirms the right of Catholics publicly to express their opinions about matters affecting the Church, especially when they have relevant expertise.  The canon states:

The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.

According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

Now, apart from the pope himself, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Pell had about as much “knowledge, competence, and prestige” vis-à-vis ecclesiastical matters as it is possible for anyone in the Church to have.  Moreover, they had special expertise with respect to the specific matters they commented on.  Benedict was one of the most eminent Catholic theologians of the age, had been the longtime Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and, of course, had been pope himself.  He had also, in his younger days, flirted with the more liberal position on Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried that some think is reflected in Amoris, only to change his mind about it.  His opinion on that particular theological matter thus carries enormous weight.  So too does his opinion about liturgical matters and Vatican relations with traditionalist groups in the Church, about which he also had a longtime interest and special expertise, and which he dealt with extensively as head of CDF and as pope. 

Cardinal Pell, meanwhile, had a doctorate in church history, years of experience as an archbishop, and was a member of Pope Francis’s own Council of Cardinal Advisors.  He could be expected to know the current state of the Church, and how it compares to previous eras in Church history, as well as anyone.  He had also for years been Francis’s Prefect for the Secretariat for the Economy.  Thus, no one could speak with more authority about the financial matters addressed at length in the secret memo which he has now been revealed to have authored.

In short, if ever there were criticisms that Pope Francis and his defenders ought to take seriously and consider prayerfully, it would be those leveled by Benedict and Pell.  Let us pray that the Holy Father does so.

Related posts:

The Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinas on St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

When do popes teach infallibly?

Papal fallibility